Index
Chapter 1: Foggy Shades of Grey
Chapter 2: Old Wounds
Chapter 3: Holiness and Hollowness
Chapter 4: Quagmires
Chapter 5: Rapids Thaw
Chapter 6: Lost in Translation
Chapter 7: Blind Dogma
I don’t
own Saiyuki etc etc etc and I’m broke anyway.
Suing me would be like suing Faye Valentine - there’s
no assets, only debts.
Rating
is for violence, self-inflicted injury, angst, enough cynicism to peel the
paint off a car at twenty paces, and Gojyo swearing for three lines straight.
This is
technically an odd sort of team effort; there’s a “sister fic”
to this one, done first-person Gonou/ “Hey You”/Hakkai,
that covers the same period of time; we both worked out the timeline of what
happens when, coordinated on details of the major points both characters were
involved in (the objective details at least - since first person POV has a
rather large effect on how some things read), and have been writing…semi-independently
otherwise, although technically those who’ve found these fics
on fanfiction.net would know that she’s actually six or seven chapters ahead of
me. Also, I had originally -INTENDED-
for this to start around the same point its partner-fic,
“Here Lies Gonou” did…then Sanzo decided to start at an earlier point in
time. So I figured I’d at least make the
first chapter break around the same event. BUT,when
that hit 14 pages, I realized that not only was I adding a good day almost onto
the time covered, but that there were long periods where Gonou was
unconscious/incoherent/not really saying much, so his side of things was
shorter than Sanzo’s, nevermind Gojyo being Gojyo in all of his Gojyo-ness and
taking unfair advantage of the period when Sanzo did not have a gun to shoot
him with. I hope he knows how lucky he
is to’ve lived through the first chapter.
----------------------
----------------------
Cho Gonou had one accomplishment right before he was no
longer Cho Gonou that nobody ever heard about.
Cho Gonou brought one stupid monk back from the dead.
I had
died maybe a week before I found Goku.
Everything I'd tried to do had turned to ash; everyone I'd tried to help
had suffered, most had died. When I
stood between those stone bars, the morning sun rising to my right, the light
drowned out my bleeding hands, the ragged state of my robes, the fact that I
was leaning on the rock so as not to fall over, and then Goku looked up almost
in disbelief that I was there - I felt like I had walked into a divine
joke. My reflection in those big gold
eyes was everything I should've been, and a reminder of what I could never live
up to. "Stop calling me. It's getting annoying, and you're driving me
nuts." I'm not a savior, I'm not
a saint. Don't rely on me, I can't be what you want.
When I
climbed the mountain, it was because I had made a promise to Koumyou not to walk
away when someone called for my help, whether they knew they were calling or
not. He’d made that promise a very
serious thing, and didn't put any illusions to it - he'd told me it would hurt
sometimes, to never turn away. I climbed
the mountain intending for that to be the last thing I ever did; I would find
out what I needed to do, and when it was done, it'd be over. After all,
everything else I'd touched had died, so it couldn't last that long, right?
Ha. Ha.
Ha.
So for
a long time, I limped on. A Sanzo is supposed
to be strength for others, and I had responsibilities that wouldn't go away
thanks to a certain talking thistle burr, so I walled everything back to die in
the dark; when I came across something I needed to help with, I did what was
necessary and walked away. I even
started spending time in the temples again instead of traveling, not because I
have any fondness for them, but because it was responsibilities I could attend
to that were nonthreatening, nipping at the heels of
the priesthood to punch holes in their hypocrisy now and then, walking dead
without feeling anything.
I
intensified my long tradition of not listening much to the other things I Heard
anymore; sealed up my own empathy, that sense of overhearing emotions,
intentions, who someone really was, save for knowing when someone was a threat,
being able to predict ambushes, and being able to tell when a stupid hannyou was lying to me.
"No,
haven't seen him. Why're
you asking?"
I
caught that startled pause behind guileless red eyes and the mental 'eep' just past a calm, unwavering
voice. He's a good liar,
it's just too bad I'm paying attention to the parts one usually doesn't need to
train for deception.
"He's
wanted for the murder of two clans of youkai." That was a warning; a nudge of how serious
this was, to tell me the truth.
"Really? Hunh." He's leaning
slightly against the door, closer than I'd like to stand, but he's not moving
because he's trying to block me from the door without making it look like he's
blocking the door, smoking nonchalantly.
Although there was a glimmer of surprise at my words, it's not as much
as I would've expected. "So what do
you want with him?"
"I'm
here to bring him back to the Temple of the Setting Sun for trial." No flicker of shifting intention; he's
blocking the door, and knows what - who - he's keeping me
away from. "Whatever you're hiding,
it won't do any good." He doesn't
even seem to care about the needling; I don't register as a real threat
yet.
The
door cracks, behind him, and I catch green eyes over his shoulder, dark hair, a
startled blink, and an aura louder than normal gradually blending out of a
jangling, mismatched state; youkai but doesn't look like it, although it's not
hard for me to recognize the ear-cuffs as limiters, even without the strange
aura.
So it
really did work, to become youkai by killing a thousand.
Gojyo's
hands go to the doorframe as a visible panic hits and he snaps, "Get back
ins-", just as my knee hits him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of
him. Before I can get by him, almost
before he's caught his breath, he's standing in my way again with a fierce
snarl; now he's angry.
I take
a swing, hoping to get him out of the way before he's recovered; he blocks, with
a small surprised wobble but the block holds solid now that he's realizing he's
in for a fight.
He ends
up looking down the barrel of my revolver, a warning shot going off past his
head aimed upward; I'm not going to drag this out any more than I have to. "Get out of my way or I'll kill
you." If I'd really wanted him
dead, I wouldn't have warned him, but it still wasn't an idle threat; I knew
just enough to know that this wasn't a situation I could take lightly. Gonou's still holding the door partway open,
a tinge of fear for Gojyo's sake and a stifled, "Gojyo!", and it
starts to occur to me that there's something else to this.
Gojyo's
eyes narrow, and I've just gotten the "threat - serious threat" tag
that was missing earlier - then there's movement, he's actually ducked and
twisted my wrist with one hand, the gun goes off hitting the doorframe as I'm
forced to drop it; he's faster than I'd expected, outweighs me half again, and
is no stranger to a fight. That
registers as he shoulders past me, knocking me off balance, pulling my wrist
with him so that it's bent behind my back, and I end up eating dirt with his
knee buried in the small of my back, one hand holding my wrist behind my back,
the other around the base of my neck holding me down. He doesn't like me; really doesn't like me,
there's disgust and contempt, I can almost hear the
words 'hypocrite' or 'liar' attached to my robes. Feh, he should see
the ones that aren't open about their faults.
"Go,
get out of here!" - he's going to hold me down so
Gonou can escape, and Gonou was hesitating in the door, unsure how to
react. Gonou runs, but doesn't get ten
feet before there's a familiar blur from the woods tackling him; he actually
manages to kick Goku off as they fall.
Goku
lands on his feet, skidding back with that reckless feral grin. "Hey, you are strong!" Of course he's strong you idiot, he killed
that many youkai, doesn't it register that "he's strong" means
"you could get hurt or dead"?
It doesn't bother me that he's helping, but that damn careless
attitude...
And
Gonou picks himself up out of the dirt, with a shift of something in his aura
and his eyes as he's cornered; it's something cold-blooded, deadly, a
suspension of remorse, something I've seen the kid brother of surfacing in my
own mind a few times - I wouldn't toy with mine, and this is off by a couple
powers of ten.
And my
pistol's barely a foot from his hand.
I start
struggling, snarling, trying to throw Gojyo off; he digs his fingers into the
back of my neck, putting more weight there to pin me, and when that doesn't
stop me, he moves my wrist up half an inch, enough that if I move, it'll either
hurt like Hell or start tearing part of my elbow.
Not
like I'm paying attention to the "hurt like Hell" part.
Goku
dives, I can see the flicker as Gonou notices my pistol and snatches it, I
wince and freeze, going mostly limp as Goku realizes what's going on too late
and practically runs face first into it, I'm not looking but waiting for the
gunshot that'll be the end of the one thing that's truly forced me to live for
years now -
And
there's no gunshot; I'm left with a flicker of a pulse back behind all those
walls, a brief pang that maybe everything under my routines isn't as dead as
I'd thought, and there might be something alive enough to care in me yet; a
realization that I was afraid for him.
Goku's
still standing frozen, staring down my revolver stuck in the moment of dawning
recognition. Gonou's looking up,
breathing hard - pain? - I can see him reining in the beast, dragging it back, trying to hold his aim steady as his shoulders shake.
"Please..I have...one thing I need
to do...just let me finish this one thing, and I'll come back and turn myself
in, I'll accept whatever punishment awaits." He's speaking haltingly through pain, but the
words are bleeding out of him; he's not lying, he's throwing everything on our
mercy.
He
staggers to his feet, not moving his aim off Goku; backs into the woods, then
turns and breaks into a stumbling run.
Goku
blinks, almost relaxes, then snaps around to face
Gojyo. Gojyo's relaxed his grip on my
neck and wrist, and is...watching my face with a sense of total confusion,
trying to make sense of something that doesn't match what he'd seen previously,
the hostile intent's gone behind the new puzzle.
He waits
until Gonou's footsteps can't be heard to cautiously let go of my wrist and
neck and stand up, warily; the active hostility might be gone, but he's still
aware that I'm a possible danger. I sit
up, dusting off the front of my robes as if it'd brush off whatever he saw in
me. Goku's attention is focused on him
behind me.
I could
do the cautious, strict to orders thing; leave Gojyo to Goku to deal with, stop
Gonou and just take him back to the Temple and get this over with. Even if it came to a fight, he's wounded, I should be able to manage. I could stick to the base responsibility I
was given, leave no openings for him to escape, strangle that flicker of a
pulse and make sure I never felt anything again.
Instead,
I stand up, turn to Gojyo, and demand, "What's
going on here?"
"That's
funny, I was about to ask you the same thing."
"How
much do you know?"
"Not
a whole lot, apparently." He's
pulled out another cigarette and is lighting it to replace the one that got
lost in the fight. "Don't think we wanna talk about it out here in the middle of the street,
though." He walks back to his door,
pushing it open, and half-mockingly motions to usher me in.
A few
minutes later, I'm sitting at a small, cluttered table in the front room of a
cramped apartment, leaning on folded hands; there's an almost overflowing
ashtray in the middle, a lot of empty bottles and cans, and Goku's attacking a
bowl of apples Gojyo gave him open season on.
Gojyo's barely fighting off a nervous pace.
"So
what are you, the temple's hired assassin or something?"
Bloody
Hell, I just had this argument with the damned temple before I came out here,
and the only reason I was even out here, was that they'd managed to convince me
that wasn't the kind of work I was doing.
Sort-of.
Gah, this is why I'd taken off into the
wilderness that first time... There is no amount of profanity that could
accurately convey my response to his question, so I settled on the kind of
glare that caused temple acolytes to wither where they stood.
His
cigarette shifts in his mouth, he raises an eyebrow that disappears into bright
red bangs in speechless silence, and I think his entire mental description of
me in that moment collapsed down to 'What the fuck?' “Oookay,
maybe not.”
"How
much do you know about him?" I was
quite pointedly not acknowledging the existence of his question.
"Shouldn't
I get to ask first since I'm the host?"
I brush off his annoyance with another sharp look. "Alright,
alright." He leans on the
doorframe, looking down distantly, counting off. "His name's Cho Gonou. I found
him bleeding to death in the rain not too long ago. Brought him in, fixed him up, got a doctor
in, made sure he'd survive. He's quiet, polite, doesn't talk much, and
didn't expect to live; he never offered any explanation, and I never
asked. He has nightmares, bad ones, gets
kinda morbid occasionally, and there's a name he keeps mumbling in his
sleep. That's about it." Gojyo's not entirely trusting, I got that
from how he dealt with me and the sense that he's still not saying everything,
yet he had no problem taking in a stranger without any explanation. There's something there I'm not going to
guess at except to realize I can't predict his actions. "You?"
"I
was sent to retrieve him, because he killed at least one thousand youkai, from
Hyakugan Maoh's clan and the Dark Crow; decimated both of them. I was given a description, and that was about
it; I was not told anything more. That
he had the potential to be dangerous was a foregone conclusion."
“And
you brought the kid with you for something like that?” He raises an eyebrow at me over his
cigarette. Goku looks over with a piece
of fruit in his mouth half-forgotten, realizing he's become the topic.
“Goku
can take care of himself, and he would have terrorized the other monks if I'd
left him there alone. Besides, he
insisted.”
“If I
were going just by what you knew, I'd call that pretty irresponsible of
you. But then, what would I know,
eh?” He's acting like he's blowing it
off, but he's definitely fishing; trying to get a reaction.
“I'm
supposed to care?”
My
reputation here just clicked another step back towards "son of a
bitch", but he's still holding off on that for something. "So what're you going to do now?"
"Do
you have any clues where he's going?"
"Nope."
Half-truth; nothing specific but it seems he's got a few clues.
"You honestly have no clue where he's going?"
"None at all."
Gojyo's stubborn.
The direction
he'd fled...there's only really one thing that way that I know of that'd be
relevant. "I think I
know." I stand up. "Goku? We're going." He looks up, nods, and runs outside ahead of
me, the door falling back shut behind him.
"What're
you going to do when you catch up to him?"
Gojyo shifts in the doorframe, so that he could easily block my way out
if he wants.
"I'm
not sure yet; it'll depend on what he does."
"If
you take him back - what's the temple going to do?"
"That's
not my issue; they're Buddhists, so I doubt they'll call for an execution, but
it won't be taken lightly."
"And
if he decides not to surrender?"
He's gone serious, quiet.
"He's
killed before; he's a fool if he thinks he could make that choice without
setting himself up for conflict. If it's
not us, it'll probably be someone striking for revenge; he won't get away from
this cleanly." I wait a moment for
that to sink in, gauging his reaction; he doesn't particularly seem to care,
he's gotten involved and obviously isn't walking away. "You can't protect him forever."
Things
border on a staredown; he's half-blocking my path, seriously considering his
chances if he tries to stop me. He
straightens a bit closer to his full height so he's looking down at me - he's
half again my size. He's resolutely
refusing to be intimidated, too annoyed to let me win, and I'm too used to
being outnumbered and outweighed to be bothered. Some of his attention is on the door;
doubtless wary of Goku intervening.
"Guess
I'll just have to tag along then."
He grabs a polearm that's by the door by a
simple strap-harness, slinging it over his left shoulder, then turns to open
the door and let me out; but when I reach the door, he stops me with his hand
on the door handle.1
“You
know, the kid could've gotten killed back there.”
I stare at the door, hissing through my teeth
slightly. “He was being careless; it
would've been his own damn fault.” It's
not like I hadn't realized that, and if he had...
"It's funny; you say you don't care, but the way
you were acting a minute ago, I would've sworn you were the one staring down a gunbarrel."
“That wouldn't be my problem; I meant what I said.” I look up with a harsh glare, warning him
off. If the gun had gone off, it
would've killed both of us; Goku is the one thing I've been forcing myself to
live for that isn't looking more and more like a hopeless wild goose chase with
each passing year, and I'm not going to deal with this topic any further.
The latch clicks and he pushes it open. He seems determined to tread on every nerve
of mine he can.
Goku
keeps running a bit ahead, then coming back to where I'm walking; Gojyo hangs
about fifteen feet back. I can feel that
he's watching me, gauging me, trying to figure out what to expect, how much I'm
hiding - what's under the stoneface.
If
anyone had asked at the time, I'd have said he found nothing he could puzzle
out because there wasn't really anything to find; masks left running on long
after the face under it had died and rotted away, a position that wasn't a
person anymore.
For a
moment, Goku gets far enough ahead that I almost lose sight of him, and I
remember that Gonou still has my gun and came within an inch of shooting him
before. "Hey, idiot, don't get that
far ahead!", I snap, calling him back.
Goku
stops to wait for us to catch up, then starts pacing
me, walking right next to me with a whiff of annoyance. "So...what's with him? He seems like an okay guy." He's trying to keep his voice down, with only
a slight tilt of his head Gojyo's direction; Gojyo can probably hear him
anyway.
"He's
still a threat; you don't need to be evil to be dangerous." I'm trying to keep my voice down as well,
counting on him being more directly behind me to make it harder to hear, but the
gaze on my back just twitched, so he must've heard enough to tell something of
what I said.
"Sanzo...what's
going on here?"
I can't
give him clarity. "A mess; that's
all you need to know." I can't tell
him who the bad guy is; I'd stayed silent when I was first told Gonou had
killed Hyakugan Maoh's clan, because I didn't think "That's a
problem?" or "Good for him" would go over very well. There's something we haven't been told yet
about why, as well..."and there's a name he keeps mumbling in his
sleep"...that could mean a lot with that clan, and I'm getting the
feeling if I knew the details, I might end up siding with Gonou. I haven't gotten any indication from Gojyo
that he'd act on malice; there's been nothing more sinister here on Gojyo's
part than a stubborn protectiveness. The
more I can figure out about this job, the more I think I'm standing by the law
not because of justice, but because of the magnitude of Gonou's actions, or
maybe just because he's probably better off with the temple's punishment than
with the vengeance of Hyakugan Maoh's allies or any potential survivors. We've walked into a big, foggy grey area,
where there isn't really a definable "Justice", only a lot of
wreckage to untangle.
"Y'know, you're about the unholiest
monk I've ever seen; were you a mob enforcer in another life?" I'd kill Gojyo, but that'd be giving him the
reaction he wants. "Come to think
of it, how do I even know you're really a priest?"
"If
I were lying about being a priest, I'd actually be trying to live up to
people's stupid unrealistic expectations."
When I look over my shoulder, he's smoking; it seemed like he'd walk to
his death with a cigarette in his mouth.
It irks me with a twinge of a craving made worse by raw nerves, but I
wasn't going to fumble with it in a situation like this.
"Or
you might be a bad liar. Not real rare,
for hitmen to be lousy liars." Great, now he thinks I'm with the mob.
"Sanzo's
a priest, and an important one, really!
Sometimes all he has to do to get the others to shut up and listen is
look at them, and I haven't really seen anyone that outranks him, he lives at
the temple most of the time except when he gets too annoyed at them 'cuz they won't let him drink or smoke or eat meat and they
get really upset when he scares the acol-" I cuff him upside the head while he's walking
sideways to yammer at Gojyo, sending him stumbling briefly with a sharp
"Shut up!"
"What,
it's the truth, you say yourself that you really don't get along with-" He doesn't
quite manage to duck even though he tries, but now that he's expecting it, it
doesn't bother his balance.
He
mutters and glares at me indignantly, and I glare right back, but honestly, the
mumbling outrage is easier for me to take than the times he gives me that look
of absolute faith and trust. That
continues for a few minutes as we walk in silence.
"I
still say you act more like a hitman than a
monk."
I whip
around, threatening him with the pistol half-reflexively. "Now listen, if you want to die that-" And the cold
snarl dies a quick death as I realize I'm sighting down empty air; Gonou still
has my gun. Gojyo raises an eyebrow with
an odd, cold twitch at the corner of his mouth; if the situation were a little
less serious, he'd probably be laughing at me right about now.
Anything
else I say will only damage my dignity further, so I turn back to continue
walking with a huff; I can't believe I've already let him goad me into making a
fool of myself.
After
another ten minutes or so, I hear a click and rattle from the polearm's harness, and start paying a bit more attention to
what he's focusing on and if there's the slightest flicker of hostile intent
towards me. The blade's whistling
through the air as he's toying with it; his attention is on me, distrusting and
analyzing, but nothing actively violent - he's testing me. I tense at the snap and rustle as he takes
off an overhanging tree limb with it, but don't look back; I can get enough off
his aura to know if he turns threatening, and until then, I'm not going to give
him a reaction. After a few more swings,
I hear him put it back.
The further
we get, the more unnerving the calculating gaze between my shoulder blades gets.
I'd tune it out more, but I'm still not
sure he won't try anything, and watching for any warning flicker of active
hostility is more important at the moment than shrugging off the nerves,
particularly when he's periodically toying with his weapon behind me. If he decides to try anything, he could kill
me, and I'll likely only get a second of real intent of violence off his aura
in warning.
Goku
finding signs of blood rubbed off on one of the trees, still damp, is only a
momentary distraction; none of us were hurt, it has to be Gonou’s, there must
be some preexisting injury, which would explain some of how he acted
earlier. It seems like he's trying to
ignore it, and if he's bleeding enough to lead a trail, there's a chance he might
not get to where he's going.
I try
to pick up the pace after that, but quickly get reminded of the eyes on my
back, the weighing sense redoubled for some reason. It's like he's trying to read every move I
make, and even the paranoid jabs would be preferable after a while to the
silent, appraising stare.
I
ignore it as long as I can, until it finally gets to me. “Look, if you're going to insist on tagging
along, you may as well do it where I can see you.”
Something
amused crosses his face. “Whatever you say.”
The
walk continues in silence, him walking beside me now; the only real change is
that now we're both watching each other out of the corner of our eyes, while
trying not to look like we're watching each other. It's a good thing Goku's good at tracking, I
don't think I'd be able to find shit and still deal with Gojyo.
A long
period of quiet ended when Goku froze.
"Did you hear that?"
Of
course I didn't hear whatever he just heard; he could hear a pin drop from two
city blocks away on a busy day in Chang’An, and even
though I've stopped to listen, I can't catch anything more than wind in the
leaves. "What was it?"
"It
sounded like -"
He tenses suddenly.
"I smell blood!", and he's off, sprinting full-tilt into the
woods with Gojyo and I struggling to catch up.
I can
just catch a quiet murmur of Gonou's voice, another aura cold and hurt and
hostile, before he's drowned out by Goku shouting ahead somewhere -
"STOP
IT! Damnit, what the Hell do you think you're doing?!"
I come
to a stop around a corner in the path; Goku's just tackled Gonou, who's on the
ground in a moment of stunned shock, the fingers on his right hand bloodied and
half-changed to claws, blood streaming down his face from his right eye; at
first it looks like it might be missing, but it's just been cut into and so
red-drenched that it's hard to see.
"You've got nice eyes, you should be trying to keep them, not get
rid of them!" That confirms it; he
was trying to take his own eye out. I
bite back a sickened twinge; this is already a wreck, it'll only be harder to
deal with if I start caring. Goku still
doesn't seem to grasp the reasoning behind self-inflicted injury, he's confused
enough by simple apathy, much less outright trying to hurt one's self; Gonou's
trying to shrink from him, hands returning to normal. There's blood starting to show from his side,
the injury from earlier; he's dropped my gun next to him.
And there’s
a sense of surprise briefly interrupting the blanket hate from the youkai I'd
just almost run into; there's two more people on either side of him, and
they're between Gojyo and I, and Gonou.
Not
that it takes them long to react to our presence; the youkai in the middle
whips around to face me, and the other two - humans - sidestep to where they
can watch us and Goku at the same time.
“What
the Hell - is this kid yours?”
I give
a curt nod, looking up at pale eyes; he's a good head taller than I am, dark
figure, black-feathered mantle, and looks like he's probably at least not
clueless in a fight. I hate fighting
youkai unarmed.
“Listen,
this is none of your business; we don't have any fight with you people. Just walk away.” The youkai’s not threatening me - yet.
There's
a brief, weak, “You don't have to-“ from Gonou that I
ignore, completely.
“I
can't do that; I don’t want a fight with you, but this has already been made my
business. You walk away or else.” I've already committed myself to this
one. This'd probably be the kind of
fight where it wouldn't be a bad idea to invoke the Makai
Tenjou, except that I'm barely two feet from him, and
most youkai tend to recognize holy magic of a certain scale and that it's a
good idea to interrupt the poor sot chanting before it has a real effect if
they can, typically by inflicting a large degree of injury.
He
glowers at me, then to Gojyo next to me, not really taking his eyes off me -
“You, with the red hair - Taboo brat!”
There's a sharp, angry intake of breath from Gojyo; the human on that
side flinches. “Stay out of this!”
The
human steps closer with a hand raised trying to motion
for calm. “Aah
- listen, Gojyo, this isn't what it looks like, and we could probably use your
help here - give us a hand and I can explain every-“
“Just
shut the fuck up already - I know plenty, and you shit-for-brains assholes can
go fuck yourselves up the ass with a rusty poleaxe if
you think I'm going to be your little fetch-bitch, and if you hog-reaming horsefuckers so much as lay a finger on Gonou I swear to
the Gods I'll-“
I put
my arm out, cutting him off in mid-sentence.
“You may as well leave now, if you don't want a fight; neither of us are going to walk away.”
Not that I wasn't…impressed with Gojyo's creativity, but I didn't think
they'd let him continue much further anyway.
The
youkai takes a swing at me, already showing claws and shifting partway, feathers
and partial-wings off the arms; I dodge back, but almost run into Gojyo, so
that while it doesn't hit me, it does catch the front of my robes, enough to
lift me off the ground. Before it can do
anything else, Goku's kicked it from behind, knocking it stumbling so that it
drops me; Gojyo's got the one that recognized him, the other one's trying to
stop me as I dive for my pistol.
This is
slightly delayed by Gonou picking it up himself, aiming very shakily at the
youkai, clicking the trigger rapidly in confusion; it’s not that hard to note
that he doesn’t seem to realize the hammer needs to be cocked for a revolver to
fire.2 The
youkai wheels around to pursue either me or Goku as Gonou drops it, getting to
his feet to fight barehanded. Before he
can go after the youkai, I’ve already retrieved my gun and fired. The youkai falls against a tree, a large hole
in one shoulder that nearly took off the arm. Gojyo raps the polearm
on the ground, the man he'd been fighting is on the
ground already, unconscious. The last
one is frozen, realizing how close the shot that'd just hit the youkai had come
to him, and that he's now got our full attention; he turns and bolts without a
second thought.
I stand
up, putting my gun away and dusting off my robes with a sharp look at the
wounded youkai. “You have a chance to
leave here alive; don't do anything stupid.”
When I
turn to help Gonou up, I end up catching a glimpse of him dashing into the
woods after the one that bolted, the patchwork jars sticking out sharply. Before I can say or do anything, I see fast
movement from Gojyo's polearm, directed off out of my
vision - towards Goku's aura, impossible to mistake.
For a
moment I hold the aim on the back of Gojyo's head; he's put the polearm's blade into the bushes, but not hit anything. Goku's griping at him and he's dropped the
weapon, holding both hands up mumbling an apology. He turns around just as I'm putting the gun
away, again, and there's a glimmer of recognition that he just almost got shot;
Goku hops back into the clearing, asking where Gonou went to.
I start
to turn back to look the direction he went, but of course the world's insane,
so the idiots in it have to follow suit. I know there's trouble when I start hearing a
broken, weak chuckle from the youkai, on the ground barely a foot behind Gojyo,
and there's definitely violent intent but I don't think it's got a clue who to
direct it at. I slide a tired glower
over, to see it standing up behind Gojyo with Gojyo’s polearm
in one claw, moving to either use him as a shield or kill him with his own
weapon, I don't think it's even sure which at this point, it's snapped. I can just see its head over his shoulder, its
other claw in the process of grabbing his arm, and while he's realized what's
going on, he's in no position to move fast enough to get away from it.
A split
second later, there's a gunshot that cuts close enough to Gojyo's head to leave
a few strands of crimson red drifting away, and it falls dead, dropping the polearm; Gojyo blinks widely and nervously at me, and the
gun in my hand, and the twitch I'm starting to develop.
“Does
anyone else feel like doing anything stupid?”
My snarl isn't directed at any particular conscious target, pistol aimed
in the air; this entire night has been one long trend of the world trying to
tread on every single nerve I have, and I'm getting sick of it. “I'd like to know before I bother putting
this away again.”
The
breeze whistles through the leaves, with no other answer. I put the pistol away, and turn to Goku. “We’re going to have to track him down. Again.”
Gojyo
lags behind Goku and I while he replaces his polearm
in the harness, then easily keeps up with us. Goku takes up the trail through the woods,
following it at a fast pace; between blood and broken branches, even I could’ve
followed this. At one point Goku stops
suddenly with an “Eeggh!”, then stops in front of us,
pointing to the side with a “He went this way!”. I don’t know why he even bothers pointing that
out, since again even I could follow the trail without trouble, but I humor him
just to get through this faster. It
doesn't take long to catch up to Gonou, limping ahead slowly.
I don't think he even realizes Gojyo and I have almost
caught up to him; we fall in on either side of him behind, matching pace. He doesn’t pay attention to us, but any time
we try to catch up to walk beside him, he starts pushing himself harder.
"We're
going with you." No options given.
He
glances back just long enough to see the Ultimate Glare Of
I'm Already Pissed So Don't Push Your Luck, and continues on anyway.
"Who
knows, we might be able to help.", Gojyo adds;
his refusal of argument is more friendly sounding than mine, but no less
adamant.
He’s
not arguing, but he doesn’t stop trying to keep ahead of us; finally we just
settle into following behind like jackals, staying just far enough behind that
he doesn’t struggle to outpace us again.
----------------
----------------
1 - Yes, I know in the series the shakujou
gets Hammerspace to some extent; it was something of
a judgement call, but since Gojyo doesn’t seem horribly apt at magic and all, I
kinda…drug it a bit more toward the “realism/normal” end.
2 - This kinda makes Sanzo’s panic attack about Gonou
holding the gun on Goku pretty ironic, not that he’s going to really comment on
that.
…Erm, yeah, I don’t own them,
angst, blood, violence, self-inflicted injury, bitchy Sanzo train of thought,
I’m not sure I’m going to approach Gojyo’s little rant of last chapter again in
this entire fic so language feels redundant, the
usual.
----------------------
----------------------
The sky
is starting to turn the vague shade of pale-dark that comes just before sunrise
by the time the forest thins out to a clearing.
The air's thick with the smell of smoke; there's no towers or keep on
the hilltop, only a pile of burned-out rubble and cooling ashes, smouldering
down in silence. Gonou stumbles a few
more steps towards it in a daze; I keep my eyes down, on the wreckage. In a few years, it'll be impossible to tell
there was even anything here; all of Hyakugan Maoh's infamous rapacious
arrogance reduced to nothing.
Gonou
drops to his knees with a howl of pain and grief, and a hollow cry from the
blurring-off aura that buffets into me despite my best efforts at focusing to
not Hear it; raw sorrow prying another fleeting echo out of me, another ghost
of a pulse. For a minute, it's all I can
do to stand still and play statue, not betraying any reaction; I manage a flat,
"I heard that this place burned down a few days ago. Nothing survived.", and that’s about it.
Gonou's
digging through the rubble frantically, heedless of his own injuries, fighting
to find something in the ruin. I
struggle the sense back down to just a presence, awareness that yes, there's a
living aura in front of me and nothing more.
Goku's standing halfway between me and the ruin, looking torn between
wanting to help and not knowing where or how to start; he shoots me a pleading
look, whether for answers, explanation, or aid I can't tell. “Sanzo?”
“Tch. Don't look at me.” I almost snap the words, letting cynicism
bury anything else that might creep in. There's nothing I can give; the ruin
already happened, and I have no more idea how to answer Gonou's cries than Goku
does. I can't fix what's been broken
here, there's no help to give that'll change his loss.
The
ashes are burning down, and I don't have enough left to bleed out if I let
myself stop being detached, even while Gonou's frantically digging through the
rubble until there's nothing left to do but batter at the larger debris hopelessly. Gojyo's walked out to him, laying a hand on
his shoulder; he slumps, breathing hard, kneeling in the ruins that cover the
better part of the hillside. “Oy, I know how you feel, but even if her body did
survive….you could dig for a month and not get anywhere.”
“I'm
not leaving. Not until I've prepared her
a grave or monument.” His voice sounds
hollow, drained out, broken.
That’s one
pronoun that had been missing from my attempt at finding out what was happening
earlier that likely filled in a lot of blanks.
The line of why Gonou was a criminal and Hyakugan Maoh, not, was drawn
in lines where the temple and surrounding authorities became no less wolves than the Youkai lord or the organized crime
groups he associated with. Hyakugan Maoh
had gotten away with whatever he wanted because he was the authority in this
area, and politics had given him a nice insulating web where no one had dared
to speak up for fear of the complications and conflict that would follow, the
old established pecking orders that were more important than the victims. Because of that, I was supposed to treat Cho Gonou as a criminal because nobody else had cared to
act until things broke and went too far.
Gojyo's
walked back in silence to stand in front of me grimly, Goku sitting cross-legged
a few feet away.
“Shouldn't
you be saying a prayer for the dead or something - for Kanan?” Red eyes trying to skewer me with what I'm
supposed to be, an accusing glare.
“I only
pray for the living.” I meet the glare
and return it; I haven't said a prayer for the dead in years now. Prayers for the dead are the emptiest form of
apology on Earth when you were involved, a way to feel like you've done
something useful without putting forth any effort if you weren't; one fool in
robes chanting sutras changes nothing for someone who's already passed on. Prayers for the dead aren't for the dead, they're for the living left behind.
He
turns away from me in disgust, taking a few steps away with his back to me,
muttering something I can't catch besides edges of profanity barbed my
direction. Gonou is weakly rearranging
stones to build a cairn, blood running over the pieces from scrapes and cuts on
his hands as he stacks them awkwardly, the sky starting to tint red with dawn
casting shadows.
The
living left behind - is enough reason to relent. I carefully settle down into lotus position;
Goku looks back from the ruins to me, blinking, having been around me long
enough to know how rare this is. There's
a break in Gojyo swearing under his breath as he glances back, then does a
double-take.
The
sutra returns to me easily; surprisingly easily - I haven't spoken it
since…since the week before I'd found Goku; six years, thereabouts, but perhaps
I should've expected it to never leave, it'd become such rote by the time I
gave it up. For the first time in years,
it feels like the words might have meaning again, something restored after
having been said so many times to have started ringing hollow. It's the sutra intended to be read for the
dead, but they won't need it; the ones here most in need of prayers are still
alive, however cast-off we might be - where life's gone on whether fate seems
to have intended it or not - a dead-inside heretic of a Sanzo praying for a
forgotten, innocent prisoner of five hundred years, a gambler that never
should've been born…
And a
fledgling youkai with nothing to go back to, building a grave for a victim
nobody else cared enough to defend.
A
prayer for the dead said for the living - but perhaps it's the only appropriate
prayer for people who're living in spite of the best efforts of the world to
take everything away.
By the
time I reach the end of it, Gonou's finished his cairn, kneeling before it with
his back to us, and the sunrise has begun clearing
from burning red to blue. For a moment,
there's a peaceful calm over the hillside, silence save for a breeze and
birdsong.
Then
there's a sudden movement from Gonou that I can't make out at first, except
that there's a renewed flow of fresh blood on the stones as he collapses.
"Fuck!" In an instant, all three of us are scrambling
to his side, and the one word's trailed off as it's my turn to mutter a string
of profanity under my breath. Gojyo
helps me shift Gonou onto his back, to get a better look at the wound, Goku's already dumping out our pack to retrieve the
bandages and supplies I keep. Gonou's
drenched down the front with his own blood, turning a nasty shade of pale, how
the Hell did he practically gut himself that quickly - he was bleeding already,
he must've just reopened the wound, there's no way we can get him back to town
like this, Gojyo's actually keeping him from literally falling apart and
already snatching up the cloths Goku's tossing our way to try to staunch the
blood.
"Needle,
thread, hot water!", I snap at Goku, and snatch a
flask from the pile of other supplies - not my somewhat spiked tea, the
stronger whiskey, that Goku's griped "could peel paint". He passes me needle and thread, then flinches
as he realizes he needs a fire and dashes off gathering firewood for the hot
water.
I take
the lid off the flask and drop it, and there's a momentary conflict between
Gojyo and I as I'm trying to move him to his side again and Gojyo's trying to
staunch the bleeding and keep him prone before I snap, “I need to clean the
wound!” He blinks with a “yessir” and helps shift Gonou so the alcohol drains out,
keeping a hand with one of the cloths so that Gonou's organs stay inside where
they belong. Gonou's aura is still
there, he's still breathing, he's not dead yet, that's what counts, but
whatever's left of the whiskey is going for me when this is over; you'd think
someone who's killed as many times as I have would be less rattled by the sight
of blood and this kind of injury. I'm not sure if everything is exactly where
it's supposed to be, but it looks about right and I'm going to end up taking
him straight to a doctor anyway.
It's
strange how it's easier to cause wounds than to deal with it afterwards; cause
an injury, it's one shot and you can turn away, work on closing it and you have
to study it, go over every detail of the damage, the ragged lines where the
wound had almost healed before it was pulled open again…and realizing that the
scar tissue spreads further than the reopened injury enough to make suturing it
shut almost an impossibility. I ended up
settling for enough of a jury-rig that we could move him without worrying about
anything falling out, then snatching the small metal teakettle from where
Goku's been holding it over the fire on a stick; we may not be able to boil the
rags we'd kept with us here, this will have to do.
It
doesn't take any communication to get help from Gojyo bandaging him enough to
stop most of the bleeding and keep him together; Goku just sits hunched next to
the cairn, watching with silent worry.
Once that's done, there's a pause; Gojyo checks briefly that he's still
breathing, while I just kneel next to him, wiping the blood off my hands. I don't bother with the red stains on my
white robes, it's a lost cause by now anyway, and as long as the idiot lives,
it won't bother me.
Goku
leans in to look up at both of us, watching our faces. “Is he going to be okay?”
“He'd
better be. We'll need to get him to a
doctor before we can take him back to Chang'An.” I give Gojyo a pointed look on that one; he's
local, he said he'd had a doctor in to look at Gonou before.
“Any
particular reason you're worried?”
There's that challenge again, baiting me, trying to draw me out.
“I was ordered
to bring him back to the Temple of the Setting Sun to stand trial, and corpses
don't stand trial. That's all I'm
worried about.” The brief “yeah, right”
look Goku gives me mirrors the murmur from some half-dead corner of my mind
that I've been trying to ignore; it's almost impossible that this is going to
end well, particularly when Gonou wants to die like this, and I'm going to stay
detached, Damnit. Fortunately Gojyo
seems to have been intent enough on reading my expression to have missed Goku's. There's another quiet pause. “I'm not carrying him.”,
I point out, and again I look to Gojyo; Gonou may be at least as light-built as
I am, but he's still taller than me, and doubtless outweighs me; and while Goku
might be strong enough, it'd be awkward enough that Gonou would likely get hurt
further en route.
“Wha? Me? But-“
The
glance up turns into a 'do or I'll kill you' glare.
“Alright,
I'll carry him.”, he mutters grudgingly, picking Gonou up with a slight, almost
imperceptible wince; it occurs to me that I'd caught him pretty hard in the
ribs last night, but as much as he's blowing it off, it shouldn't be that
bad.
The
trip back to town is mostly quiet except for the occasional commentary from
Goku; Gojyo seems to have mercifully given up on pressing my buttons. I end up fighting the urge, more than once,
to look back and check; if Gonou got any worse, Gojyo would say something, or
call a halt. He's too protective to do
anything less, and seems slightly less leery of me by now. The temptation to fret reaches a point where
I finally give in, pull out a cigarette as I'm walking, and light it, letting
the worse parts of the raw nerves drain out into the
smoke. Worrying more here won't do me
any good; getting back to town, to a doctor, is the best I can do right now.
Wait,
I'm not worried.
Damnit.
Within
seconds I can feel that confused, questioning look from behind. A quick glance back confirms that I'm getting
another look of dumbfounded disbelief.
Hell, it's not like Goku hadn't said it outright earlier... "What?!", I snap back at him.
"Nothing,
nothing..." If his hands were free, I don't doubt they'd be in the air in
feigned innocence.
So maybe
I do act more like a criminal than a priest.
Maybe I should be surprised my identity's not challenged more often;
maybe I should kill this train of thought since I don't need an identity crisis
when lives are at stake.
Concentrate
on the task at hand. Get Gonou to a
doctor until he's well enough to walk back to Chang'An, to stand trial for over
a thousand deaths, however redundant it might seem with how intent he seems on
punishing himself, however much sympathy I probably shouldn't be feeling right
now. Not all of the victims of his vengeance
were guilty, as much as many of them had earned it. There is no justice here, only cleaning up
lost and broken pieces.
"Nyaah, how slow can you two get?" Goku's running back from where the path
disappears into the trees; I hadn't even realized he'd gotten out of
sight. "We need to hurry up and get
him to a doctor, right? What's taking
you guys so long?"
"You
think I don't know that?! I'm going as
fast as I can here!" Gojyo griping from behind me saves me the trouble of
responding for the moment.
"He's
too thin to be that heavy! You're just slow!
Sanzo, can't we get there any faster?"
"We're
moving as fast as we can without hurting Gonou, so shut up and learn what
patience is, stupid monkey!"
He
stops sullenly and waits for us to catch up, then trudges along just in front
of me, kicking rocks out of the road here and there and muttering darkly. I catch a louder word here and there,
"Still say it's too slow", "Have a name damnit",
"gonna die before we get there at this rate.".
I look
back while I'm walking; his breathing looks even at least, and if he's still
bleeding it's not visible, so it's at least slowed if not stopped. He may not be in good shape, but he should be
stable enough to make it to a doctor.
Gojyo
stops. "Something
wrong?"
"Just
keep walking." I don't wait to see
if he's going to keep up; his footsteps start back up when he realizes that.
"You
really need to stop doing this to me.", I can
hear him mutter to Gonou. I'm probably
still going to have to assume that Gojyo might interfere with taking Gonou back
to Chang'An.
When we
get into town, it's well into the morning, and while
we draw quite a bit of attention, nobody seems inclined to bother us; that
makes this easier. I back off to let
Gojyo take the lead, since he knows where the doctor is; he's slowing down
more, starting to look tired and dragging.
It's not too surprising; none of us have gotten any sleep, and I even
catch Goku yawning in between muttering about breakfast.
Goku
gets the door, and before he's even inside Gojyo tiredly calls, "Guess who's
back.".
The
doctor - middle aged, thinning dark hair, lines starting to show in his face -
gets up from his desk, waving his teenage assistant to go on in back. "What happened?"
"Wound
reopened. Pretty
bad." Good Gojyo; this
situation's messy enough without telling the doctor how it reopened.
"Anything to do with the gunshots last night?" The doctor sounds resigned, like he'd almost
expected it; like this kind of trouble isn't new around here.
"Something
like that."
"And
you're just getting him here now?"
"Well,
it wasn't exactly - we got here as soon as we - Talk to him!" Gojyo jerks his head back at me; the doctor
looks startled at first, then gets an appraising,
warning look, and I put my cigarette out.
The assistant pokes his head out of the back room, and the doctor
motions us all toward it.
"Get
him safe, I'll be getting my things, I'll ask later. Neither of you smoke in
here!" He jabs the warning
at me and Gojyo, who whimpers slightly; and I thought my withdrawal got
bad. His assistant follows him, casting
curious looks back at us as we disappear into the back room.
Gojyo
lays Gonou down, grinding his teeth with a clear wince, one hand going to his
ribs where I'd kneed him briefly as he straightens up; he must've been hiding
that it bothered him the whole time - no wonder he's been so short.
Goku
bounces over and pokes him right in the surprisingly large red and black bruise
barely visible under his vest; he squawks awkwardly and almost doubles over,
twitching and looking ready to strangle Goku.
"Heeey, Sanzo, how hard did you hit
him?" Apparently hard enough; I'd caught him by surprise, and he'd been so
intent on blocking the door that he hadn't moved with it at all - I might've
broken something without realizing it.
Gojyo takes a weak swing at him, which he dodges easily. "You should get that looked
at!" Any pang of guilt is lessened
by my own bruises, sore spots, and raw nerves.
I push
the door open a crack, leaning out just enough to see the door the doctor had
gone through. "There's more than
one idiot wounded in here." As the
door shuts again, from the wounded, angry look Gojyo's giving me, you'd think
I'd kicked him again.
It only
takes a few minutes for the doctor to get back, setting Gonou's shirt aside and
stripping off the bloodied bandages we'd put there. "So how did this happen?"
"There
was a scuffle last night; things got complicated. The wound didn't get reopened until sunrise,
but we were aways from town by then."
"Who
tried to stitch the wound?" He's
cutting out the stitches.
"I
did. We couldn't move him with it open
like that."
"Well,
I can't fault you that, but you can't keep a wound like this stitched; the best
we can do at this point is keep it bandaged tightly enough to hold everything
in, and get him to a youkai healer as soon as possible." The doctor pauses in cleaning the wound to
rub his eyes. "The closest that I
know of, at this time, is in Chang'An."
That
gets a sharp "Feh" from Gojyo and a
mistrusting glare at me; he knows it gives me an easy excuse to take him as
soon as he can walk, and I'm willing to bet he's planning on following.
"You
said someone else was wounded?", he adds while
finishing winding the fresh bandages.
"Gojyo." I
wave a hand at the dark mark he's trying to hide under his vest.
The
doctor stands in front of where he's sitting, and he sullenly takes off the
vest, leaning back so the doctor can examine it. The doctor’s oblivious of the staredown
that's started over his shoulder; Gojyo doesn't break it even when he winces
slightly as the doctor's feeling out how bad the damage is. "How did this happen?"
"Oh, just some overzealous, corrupt, bitchy, violent,
hypocritical pissant." I mime a slight mock-bow in reply; the
doctor's back is to me and his attention on the injury, so he doesn't see.
"Well,
they're not completely broken...just cracked rather badly. You'll need to keep them bandaged and stay at
home resting for at least a week."
"A...week?"
If this
means what I think it means...
The
doctor turns and motions for the other bandages; I gather up the ones next to
me and toss them to Gojyo, who catches them one-handed with a glower.
"How
long's he gonna be out?", Gojyo asks, nodding toward Gonou.
"Mmm, probably a day and a half; he'll need someone to help
him to Chang'An right then, and you need to rest..."
"I'll
do it - it would be no trouble at all; I was going to Chang'An
anyway." The doctor raises an
eyebrow at the odd, oily smug edge on my mood.
This makes things so much easier, if I don't have to worry about keeping
track of Gojyo or wondering about what Gojyo is going to do; I have enough to
worry about with just Gonou.
"Well,
that will make this simpler."
"But-but-"
The
doctor doesn't even turn around, ‘I don’t want to know’ written
all over his face. "Your dedication
to helping is admirable, Gojyo, but if you travel in that condition, you'll
only break your ribs further."
Gojyo
grumbles a response and hunches over, glaring sullenly at me.
"I'll
have other patients to take care of; can you keep an eye on him for a
while?" He’s addressing it to me.
"I'll
stay here."
Gojyo
wordlessly scrunches more into the bench, making it clear he's not going anywhere,
either.
The
doctor bustles out, pausing only to re-iterate the no-smoking rule, leaving us
alone with Gonou. There's a terse
silence while Gojyo sulks at me for a few minutes. I indulge the staredown, then
notice that Goku's been unusually quiet; he's sitting cross-legged on the
ground near Gojyo, nodding off. Nothing
seems to bother him for long.
"Goku!"
He
starts awake suddenly. "HuhIwasn'sleepingwhendoweeat?"
I toss
a small bag of coins to him. "Go
get food and bring it back; we're staying here for now."
"Should
I get anything for Gojyo?"
"I
don't care, just don't waste money."
He
darts out, leaving the door to swing shut in his wake.
"Well,
looks like you win this one." The
words drip with derision.
"I
told you, you can't protect him forever."
His
face lapses into a brief snarl, then he breaks out of the challenging glare,
turning more pensive watching Gonou sleep; he flips out a cigarette, but
doesn't light it, just holding it in his mouth thoughtfully.
"You
know what he did - why are you so protective?" Too tired to put the usual sting into it, and
there's no reason to here anyway; he can't feasibly challenge me anymore.
"Put
enough time into keeping him in one piece; why shouldn't I be?"
"You
know you could be ruled an accomplice for helping him, nevermind if anyone else
comes after him on personal vengeance.
Why risk getting yourself in trouble over his crimes?"
"What,
you gonna try and arrest me too?" The edge to his voice promises a fight, even
while he’s hurt, if I so much as move his direction.
"Feh. I've gotten you out of my hair for the trip back, I'm not going to mess that up. I just want to know why you're so
involved." And how likely he might
be to do something stupid - I've learned to always bet on stupidity.
"Y'know, I'm not sure."
He looks back to Gonou, the challenging edge vanishing almost
immediately. "At first, I just
found him torn up and couldn't just leave'im like
that...and he was a nice enough sort, even if he was a bit depressed all the
time, insisted on helping out, even with the messy stuff...an' when I started
finding bits out, well..." For the
first time, he looks at me without hostility or suspicion. "I thought about it, and I couldn't
really blame him; if I ever found someone that important to me, and had somethin' like that happen to'em,
I don't know what I'd do." If I
ever found someone important - everything I've heard is that he lives
mostly alone, nobody seems to know much about where he came from; he’s just
some womanizing gambler with crimson hair and eyes that nobody here seems to
grasp the significance of, and old scars nobody seems to know the story behind.
"Besides," he twirls a lock of red around one finger, gazing at it
distantly, "he's the first other person to call this the color of
blood." Great; so
everyone here besides Goku is morbid.
"Blood
isn't the only thing that color."
He
flinches in surprise, then leans back against the
wall. "Well, I guess I just got a
bit lonely then. Not like you'd probably
understand that, eh?"
Fuck. I should've known he couldn't stay away from
challenging me for long. "What's
that supposed to mean?"
"Well,
you've got the kid with you all the time, he said you lived in the temples and
had some rank, eh? Power, authority, all
the other priests..."
"Goku
is just some stupid castoff I found that I can't push off on anyone else, and
the other monks are all thoughtless fools that never mean what they say and
think acting holy and moralistic somehow makes them better than everyone
else."
"So
you are lonely." He says it
matter-of-fact, and far too smug.
"I
don't need anyone else." My best
ruffled, imperious glare isn't leaving a dent; he knows he hit a nerve
somewhere in there, one corner of his mouth quirking upward in triumph.
He
produces a deck of cards practically out of nowhere, shuffling easily.
"You work pretty hard to cut everyone out, don'tcha,
priest-boy? What're you so afraid of,
anyway?"
I'm not
going to take the bait this time.
"You've
got a lot of spite for anything holy, and you certainly don't act it yourself,
so it can't be that someone might figure out you're not the perfect meek little
priest." He starts toying with the
cards, fanning them as he shuffles, showing off. "Kid says you're high up, but you're
quicker with the gun than you are with your rank, so you're not insecure in
your authority." He flips out two
of the kings, flashing them between his fingers and slipping them back into the
deck as he's riffling through it.
"The whole pissy bit about you not being
a hitman - you get that a lot, don'tcha? Really rubs you the wrong way; like you don't
like the criminal types either, so you're not as corrupt as you look. But y'know the
strongest reaction I've seen outta you so far, only
time you've consistently dropped your guard?" He claps the deck between
his hands, eyeing me with a sly, eager grin; I pull back closer against the
wall. "All your cool goes 'piff' when someone gets hurt who's not supposed
to." He holds up the top card - Ace
of Hearts.
Showoff.
"And
that, is why I'll be a good boy and stay here and heal
while you take him to Chang'An, because I'm willing to lay strong odds that
you're not going to let anything happen to him, bitch though you might
be." He's acting far, far too
pleasant; I'd put a bullet through some of that red hair he's so funny about,
but he'd only take it to mean he's right and I do care.
He flips
the ace back into the deck, his eyes never leaving my face; the more chill I put up, the more smug he seems to get.
Before
it reaches a point that there's gunshots, Goku bursts
in the door juggling bags and boxes that most would call enough for six
people. We'll probably still end up
packing some of it with us; he always overshops.
"Sanzo,
I got din-" He
freezes, looking between me and Gojyo curiously. "I'll just start putting stuff down
then." He pulls one of the boxes
out and passes it to Gojyo.
"Here! Got
this for you."
He
blinks in brief surprise, then puts away the still-unlit cigarette and takes it
with a sunny, “Why thank you.”; glancing at me, he
tags on, “At least someone here has some manners.”
“Sanzo? What about him?” Goku points to Gonou. “Is he gonna be
okay without eating this long?”
“I’d
have to ask the doctor to be sure, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to
put food into someone with a gut wound like that.”
I lean
down snatching a container of soup and ignoring the rest; I'm not really
feeling up to eating much. Looking at
even that gets the hint of nausea I've learned to heed as a warning - the 'food not welcome here' sign.
There's only one thing that seems to help it; I'd resolved to claim the
rest of the whiskey anyway. Somewhere
while I'm eating, drinking, and seeking some kind of peace and quiet, I realize
that once again I'm getting the disbelieving look from Gojyo.
"Y'know, at this point, all you've got to do is go out
picking up women."
That
calls for another shot of whiskey and pointedly ignoring him.
Goku
closes one eye at that quizzically, thinking.
"That doesn't make any sense...what's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't
ask.", I snap at Goku.
"...Hey,
that's the same kind of don't-ask-twitch you got when I asked why that drunk
girl was trying to hang off you, or why that other lady you were avoiding kept
saying it was too bad you were a monk, or why you broke that one guy's elbow
backwards in that place you called the bad part of town or why you pulled your
gun on..." He continues on in that
vein for a few minutes, Gojyo getting more and more of a bemused smirk while I
bury my head in my hands and try to disappear into me robes, finally growling,
“Shut. Up.” ,
in a tone that promises injury and maiming if not complied with.
Gojyo
finishes eating before I’m done picking at mine or Goku’s done decimating what
was brought in; after sitting drowsily for a few seconds, he stands, and starts
to walk out.
“Where
are you going?”
He stops next to me, in front of the door. “Home. He’s not gonna be
up for a while, and I haven’t slept in two days; as long as you behave, I’ve
got no reason to hang around here while he’s out.”
I shrug, and go back to ignoring him as he leaves.
Goku does a lot of the picking up while the lack of
sleep starts catching up to me; I try to stave it off, and don’t even realize
I’ve failed until I start awake, already snatching the doctor’s wrist in a
prelude to either twisting it immobile or doing damage. It looks like my reflexes have about given
him a heart attack; I let go and lean back, still feeling drowsy; Goku’s curled
up by the far wall, still asleep.
“All I did was tap your
shoulder, you were asleep when I walked in!”
I mumble something dismissive at first, not really
trying to make it anything coherent.
“How long have I been here?”
“Several hours; it’s after sunset. I’m going to be closing up here.”
“It’s probably not a good idea to move him right now, is
it?” It’s not so much a question as a
tired statement checking for confirmation.
“Not unless he can be kept steady the
whole time.”
“We’ll stay here then.”
With the way things are going lately, I’m not taking my eyes of him for
a second; there’s doubtless still someone after him. “Just in case.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Go ahead and lock up; we’ll be here in the
morning.”
“…I’ll leave a set of keys here in case you need
anything then; I’ll be back tomorrow.”
He sets down a ring of keys next to me on the bench, keeping a cautious
distance now, and backs out.
There’s probably enough in what’s left over from lunch
to scratch a dinner out of when Goku wakes up; I doubt I’ll need to use the
keys for much. It’s dark, and quiet, and
I’m the only one awake. Gonou still
looks too pale, especially in the dark; too much blood lost, but at least he
shouldn’t get any worse. I’m
half-tempted to smoke, just for something to do in the dark, but I’m not about
to break the doctor’s prohibition.
He looks so frail and fragile, bandages on his face and
around his stomach, shadows cast over his face marking his bone structure starkly,
almost barely seeming to breathe in the twilight; like something would break if
he were moved or touched wrong. It’s
almost hard to believe, seeing him like this, that he practically wiped out two
entire clans of youkai single-handedly; if I hadn’t seen that glimpse of
something in his eyes and aura last night, I might’ve questioned that this was
the man I was looking for, even with his own admission of guilt, much less that
he might have it in him to be more dangerous than I am. My worst record in one night so far is what,
fourteen? Probably more than that in
some of the tangles in the bad parts of the cities, but I didn’t have much
cause to stick around and keep count those nights.
Not like he seems inclined to do something like that
again, or Goku’d be dead now.1
Frail, fragile, vulnerable…definite danger to self,
possible danger to others; can’t walk on the rapids when the river thaws.
The temple can’t execute him, but the rate he’s going,
it’s not very likely he’ll live long after anyway; all I need to worry about is
my job here, getting him back to Chang’An in one piece.
Why do I always get the fucked up cases?
----------------------
The
first thing I’m aware of the next morning is being poked with a stick, a stick
that is very swiftly in pieces, and my own hissing growl.
“Good
morning! The doctor brought breakfast by
when he came in this morning, yours is right here, I finished off the stuff
from last night though, he was kinda afraid to wake you up for some reason so I
said I’d do it, not that I really blame him, that wrist trick stings and you’re
always so cranky when you wake up!”
Nobody should be allowed to be that cheerful in the morning. There’s coffee on the tray, however, and
that’s enough to prevent a murder.
There’s
light coming in from outside; probably well enough into the morning, but it’s
still before noon. Day
and a half…that gives us until sometime this afternoon most likely, early
evening maybe. Gojyo’s doubtless
going to be back to see us off before then, and that’ll be another opportunity
for him to change his mind about taking care of his ribs and try to follow us;
he’s just stupid enough to do it, too.
If I
have to put up with him for another day, I will kill him.
That
leaves the option of leaving town before Gojyo can catch us; but that’s
probably going to require moving Gonou before he’s awake somehow.
“Goku -
can you go find a merchant, or someone with a cart I can hire, who’s heading
out of town toward Chang’An and will get us partway out of town before Gonou
wakes up?”
“Is it
really OK to move him like that?”
“We
need to get him to Chang’An as soon as possible, and the longer we stay here,
the more likely something else will catch up chasing him.” Perfectly valid and accurate reasons, I’m
just leaving out the other, more ulterior motive.
“What
about Gojyo?” That look of unblinking
innocence, and just what I was trying to avoid.
“We’ll
fill him in later; he needs to heal.
It’s more important to get moving.”
Goku
nods and runs out to do that.
----------------------
I tell
the farmer that gave us a lift on the haycart to drop
us off by the side of the road when Gonou starts to stir; it’s at least a few
hours out of town, far enough that even if Gojyo’s found out we’re gone, we
have a head start on him. It’s a bright,
warm, sunny day, and as incongruous as the good weather is at a time like this,
at least it’ll make the trip easier.
Goku quickly finds various distractions while I just sit kneeling next
to Gonou, propped up against a tree by the roadside. The cuts around his eye are still
cringe-worthy, although they’re cleaned up, and the doctor had insisted that
the bandages not be on any longer than necessary - a risk of him going blind in
that eye if it’s not used while healing from that kind of trauma; of course,
it’s another injury that normal medicine and healing won’t deal with
properly.
He
moves, shifting against the tree, with a flicker under his eyelids; waking up.
“If you
ever pull a stunt like that again, I’ll kill you.” I’ve got too many raw nerves right now to
care about the glaring fault in logic, threatening to kill someone for trying
to commit suicide.
He
opens his eyes, the right not quite tracking properly with the left, just
staring off into space, then closes them again, shaking slightly, with the
calm, gloomy look changing to one of utter suffering. I catch his chin, forcing him to look at me;
there’s nothing but cold, hopeless despair in his eyes or the aura that’s
gnawing up my hand, impossible to ignore from the contact. The injured right eye ticks off away from me
with red staining around the green, the left barely
seems to focus. He’s not walking for a
while yet. “You are going to lie there
and rest - my orders are to bring you back to the Temple of the Setting Sun
ALIVE, got that?”
He
pulls away, closing his eyes and looking away from me, the blank misery
actually deepening. I amend out the
“possible danger to others”; he doesn’t have the mental strength in him to be a
threat to anyone but himself right now, maybe not even that. Any punishment for his crimes seems more and
more like a redundancy; he’s self-destructing on his own, without any prodding
from anyone, the trial’s just going to be a formality.
I had
to finish the whiskey before we left and not replace it, didn’t I.
--------------------
--------------------
1 - Yes, he’s forgotten that Gonou didn’t know how to work a
revolver at the time. Don’t remind
him. He’ll just give you the Glare Of
Paint-Peeling.
Slightly shorter update, due to where the convenient chapter breaks in events are. Nope, still don’t own them.
And..uhm…warnings…some language, and very snippy angst.
Sanzo? Bitter? NEVER, whatever would give you that idea?
----------------------
----------------------
In good weather, keeping a decent pace, it's two days walk between the village and Chang'An; bad weather or slow travel drag it out to three or four, and we move at a crawl. It's not that I don't want to get him to Chang'An as soon as possible, to get him to a healer and get this whole fucked-up wreck over with, but I don't dare push him with his injuries - not that I think he'd complain if I did. He takes the three days walk never speaking, only eating or sleeping when commanded, mechanically following whatever pace I set with one distant, uninjured eye that doesn't even seem to see me or Goku. The wounded eye wanders aimlessly elsewhere while he scratches at it now and then, despite my best efforts to stop him. It's less like I'm leading a living person and more like I'm some necromancer from the old tales, forcing the unburied dead to follow my lead from where he fell to where the proper last rites can be done. A few times Goku even tries to talk to him, over meals or a campfire at the roadside; the most he gets is a vague acknowledgement that he's there. Goku hasn't complained about the slow pace once; he opened his mouth once or twice after running ahead, then looked guiltily at Gonou, limping along just behind me, and then usually joined us trudging along for a while, suddenly finding the road gravel inordinately and glumly fascinating. Traffic doesn't spare us a second look, although I catch a few pitying looks that hurry by faster, afraid to ask, when Gonou stumbles.
Gonou's walking dead, limping along brokenly waiting to be allowed to die; just like I was doing six, seven years ago.
Just like I think I'm still doing on some level; one walking corpse leading another.
The further we get, the more I find myself giving up; I've started caring about what happens here, it hurts too much to watch to honestly say everything's still dead like I'd believed. The more I admit that, the more it feels like I'm putting whatever's still alive to care in the noose to wait.
A day and a half out, between the worsening condition of his eye and the hints of damp where the bandage rests, threatening infection, I lead to a small clinic among a collection of buildings on the roadside. There's some travelers and local farm folk waiting; I pause long enough to check that there's no serious injuries or illnesses, and cut through the line to the front, just lucky enough to catch the doctor cleaning up from his last patient. He's a bit younger than the doctor back in the village.
"I'm on temple businesses; I have a young man with serious injuries that need to be tended before we can continue."
He starts to argue, pointing at the line; I fix him with a sharp look, and he glances between me and Gonou with a frown, sighs, and waves us in. Goku hops on a bench in the corner, watching and listening intently; Gonou blankly takes a seat on the table.
"Alright, what's wrong?" The question is addressed to Gonou, who doesn't even seem to hear.
"There's bandages on a gut wound that need to be changed so we can get him to a chi-healer, and his eye injury is getting worse."
He pauses in surprise that I've answered, and studies Gonou with an unsettled frown, as Gonou doesn't even look up. It's almost like he doesn't even notice when the doctor strips off his shirt to check the bandage, wincing with a murmur of shock at the seriousness of the injury. "What happened?"
"Youkai attack." Like I'm going to go into this one with a roadside clinic.
He changes the bandages with a sort of timid caution, as though almost afraid to handle the wound, and pauses with visible relief when the new bandages are wound, another awkward pause when he realizes Gonou has yet to acknowledge his presence. "Alright, let's look at that eye." It seems less like he's trying to talk, than that he's staving off any reaction in standard clinic chatter; as he wrings out a rag of warm water and reaches to clean Gonou's eye, Gonou reacts for the first time, flinching away, starting to tremble again as the eye is cleaned. Once the dried blood is gone, the doctor starts examining it, holding Gonou's face steady in the light gently; Gonou flinches again when the doctor lifts the lid to examine the eye itself, breath catching into a low, breathless whistle through his teeth. "The cuts go almost all the way through the lid...there's an old blood clot caught under it that looks like it's been there a day or so, it's probably what's been irritating it." It's a small relief that his scratching may not've been purely self-destructive. "I'll clean out what I can, but it will start bleeding again, and if it gets damaged any further he might lose the eye; you're close enough to Chang'An that it might be best to keep a bandage over it until he sees a healer, just to keep anything else from getting stuck under it." It's like he's gotten used to the idea, by now, that Gonou won't acknowledge or answer, and everything is directed to me.
Gonou twitches with a slight whimper as the doctor removes the clot, hunching over and pulling back again into the foggy distance as the eye is cleaned again and bandaged. The doctor releases us with a sort of quiet, marveling worry, almost asking questions several times as he finishes and sends us on our way.
On the last day, we pass the traveler's shrine on the road close to Chang'An, offerings to the gods laid out around its feet for safe passage.
The gods save no one.
When I stop alongside it, studying it coldly, Gonou comes to a slow halt, not even looking up, just standing still waiting for me to move again; Goku looks back, recognizing the look, and hops into a low-hanging tree branch to watch in resigned patience for whatever fit of pique just struck. It's daytime, heavy traffic, and I'm both too sober and too on-duty to cuss the shrine out like I'd like; but that doesn't mean I can't say a prayer.
And if the quiet sutra sounds bitter, sarcastic, or cynical to anyone, they're just listening close enough to catch what I actually mean.
I bet you think this is hilarious, don't you - turning him into all my worst parts. Take some other poor unsuspecting sucker with a happy life, and ruin it and a lot of others just so you can remind me what I really am; and if this was some warped way of answering my wish that something would be done about Hyakugan Maoh, you can have that rusty poleaxe Gojyo was talking about a few days ago - I'm sure you'll know what to do with it. What the fuck did I ever do to you anyway, to get this kind of lead-touch karma, eh? Oh, no, can't do the simple, honest thing and throw me in a dungeon to be tortured for a few decades; you have to get creative, play a bank shot, and make sure everyone I even think about helping suffers. What's the point of this one? Don't tell me you didn't have a hand, either, when you had the damned Sanbutshin tell me to do it; had to make sure I knew it was your idea, to make me a part of this, all this blood and misery. What, did you realize there might be something in me you assholes hadn't broken yet? Can't have that, now, can we? Well, you know what? This red on my hands is blood, and just like I know some of his victims were perfectly innocent, I know some of mine haven't deserved it either, and when I die this life, you can go ahead and give me a tour of the Hells for it; I'm sure the demons, who're at least honest about their torments, are better company than you jokers any day, and it'd be a nice break from this fucked up cosmic joke you call a life.
Sons of bitches.
When I turn to continue on, Gonou hasn't moved from where he stands until I start walking again. Goku hops back to the road with a curious look and a list of questions about how I never pray to the gods, trying to figure out when the other shoe's going to drop or if it already has and he just didn't see it.
----------------------
I've barely gotten in the gates when some acolyte catches me with a message that I'm to bring him directly to the temple, no detours. Of course the kid doesn't have the authority to tell me any more than that, or for me to argue at all and actually get anywhere, that's why they sent a lower acolyte instead of one of them telling me themselves; make it so I have to go there to argue, which means bringing him and precludes whatever I'd be arguing anyway. As soon as the message is delivered and I've recognized the futility of snapping at the flinching student, he races back to let them know I'm here.
And apparently, they managed to hear one way or another of my progress down the road, enough to know when I was going to show up, and be ready and waiting. They're probably hoping to move things along quickly enough to make it hard for me to argue with them or their decisions. Of course, now that they've been warned I'm there, they've all made it to the great hall, leaving me with nothing but students and monks without the authority for anything I say on the way in to do any good. I snap instructions at Goku to try not to cause too much trouble and dismiss him to free run of the temple, and lead Gonou to the great hall.
Even at the gate to the hall, it's just one of the lower functionaries, a glorified secretary, who meets us, with one of the guards shifting nervously behind him, carrying shackles; there's a moment of disbelief as he sees the young man behind me.
The first active thing Gonou's done in days is to hold out his hands for the shackles.
“That won't be necessary.” The monk holding the shackles freezes; it's hard to tell who he's more afraid of, me or Gonou.
Gonou turns to look me in the eye, keeping a steady gaze. “It's okay.” It's almost as if he's barely remembering how to speak, just enough to say that; an aura-prickle from the one unbandaged green eye, all worthlessness and guilt, soul bleeding out onto the stones. The phantom noose tightens with a jerk, old knives in old wounds twisting at my own helplessness to do anything. The only consolation is that they can't execute him and still be good little Buddhists; he's not walking to his death.
“Fine then, suit yourself.” I turn away as the shackles click shut, a raw feeling in my throat; it probably won't even matter what judgement passes, the wreckage this mess's been from the start is still twisting away inexorably, dragging out in front of me.
The door opens as we're announced; the functionary stays outside, shutting the door behind us, Gonou walking beside me between the two rows of all the highest-ranking priests and monks in the temple kneeling on cushions. The only light comes from candles spaced along the walls. The head of the temple is sitting up a few steps at the far end of the room; a place has been left empty for me at the head of the right row, another marked out in the middle in front of it for Gonou. I walk to it staring straight ahead, without looking at or acknowledging any of the other priests. Gonou kneels obediently at the bottom of the steps.
“Cho Gonou, you are brought before us today to answer for your crimes. You have killed two entire clans of youkai, numbering roughly one thousand in all. What excuse do you give for your actions?” His voice echoes through the silent stone chamber; he speaks strongly, for someone who's barely set foot outside this temple in his life, has no real comprehension of what the world outside is, and who's expressed a desire to see me in the spot Gonou's kneeling now more than once, stopped only by my rank as Sanzo.
“None.” The near-whisper is picked up by the stone walls, mixed with a wave of surprise that moves through the room; I'm sure they'd all expected protestations of innocence, or at least an attempt at explanation of motives; when the normal law enforcement defers to the temple as a neutral authority, it's never a simple matter.
“Do you admit to these heinous actions and accept whatever sentence is given to you for your crimes?” He's still poised and expecting some challenge, some argument back.
“I do.” Gonou looks up calmly. It's probably not my imagination that there's a brief flinch from the head of the temple, but it's only momentary before he recovers his usual holier-than-thou attitude.
“Then for your crimes you will atone, through fasting and meditation, one day for each of your victims. You will spend each day meditating on one of the innocents you killed, and how they might have lived their lives had you not cut their days short.”
What.
The.
FUCK?! Goddamned fucking BASTARDS! Trust these hypocritical self-righteous sons of bitches to not only find a loophole out of “Never take another life”, but to find a way to do it and assure a slow, horrible death. I look at the others assembled for the first time, scanning the room without moving, trying to find any trace of a smug flicker that might tell me whose idea this was; the calm, approving mutter gives no real clues, although I can think of a few I'm going to have words with later, one of whom catches my gaze and flinches - especially words with -him-. Gonou bows without any sign of caring what he's just been sentenced to; if this is what I brought him all the way here and went to all this trouble for, why didn't they just tell me to shoot him when I found him and get it over with quickly and cleanly?
“That's hardly a fair sentence.” Gonou looks up at me in surprise. “This man will die long before the thousand days are up.” There's a large number of 'don't-tell-me-Genjo-Sanzo-the-psychopath-is-getting-a-sense-of-mercy-now' stares settling on me; one of these days, they're going to push their little too-holy-to-care games too far, and I'm going to snap and kill every one of them. I've killed priests before, I know I'm capable. Something clicks in my head from three ways, that I may yet be able to do something to make this salvageable and beat them at their own game, yank their loophole out from under them. “For sins as serious as his, he should suffer much more than a mere handful of days before his body gives out.” And it'd probably be less than that, with his wounds. “Death would only be an escape for him; he should be made to live every day with the knowledge of what he's done, and devote his life to atonement for his crimes.” That flinch away from living is showing in his eye again, as he drops his head and slumps in front of me. Dying like this would change nothing; leave behind some wreckage of a tragedy for people to shake their heads at in later days and forget about.
“Surely you can't be serious; this judgement was not made with suffering as an intent, only atonement.” Gods I hate him.
“My statement stands regardless; death by starvation is suffering whether you choose to acknowledge that or not, and for over a thousand lives, a few days of suffering is measly penance. He has expressed that his life has no worth, so it's not like he's gaining anything by living save more time to spend in atonement, and if that is the true goal of this judgement, than is it not more worthy that he should live until he's made -proper- restitution for his crimes?” My attention is entirely and coldly on the head of the temple, daring him to go ahead - find some way to argue that he's not really trying to execute Gonou without getting blood on his hands.
“I'm afraid that we cannot release him with no further comment; there must be some proper punishment made. One should not be allowed to walk away from the taking of a life without atonement.” A sharp edge on that sentence, a subtle jab at me. “We cannot turn a blind eye to such deeds forever.” A not so subtle jab at me.
“Then allow the name of Cho Gonou to die here, to become a new life dedicated to payment for these crimes.” Symbolic death, not a rare occurrence in the temple at all.
“Do you really believe a simple symbolic death and taking of a new name would be sufficient for even one tenth of his crimes?” Pure disbelief and aloof arrogance.
“Far moreso than a few brief, cut off days of torment.”
“I am afraid we cannot agree with this judgement; something must be done to properly acknowledge the magnitude of his sins. Even should he be allowed to continue as another life, he must be made to comprehend his actions.”
Fine then; make me play dirty. “If you feel that strongly about this simple murderer's case, I could always take it up before the Sanbutshin, as they have, after all, apparently taken an interest in requesting my direct involvement with, and responsibility for, Cho Gonou.” That's two not-so subtle reminders; first that I technically can gain an audience with the Sanbutshin without being summoned, and therefore outrank him, potentially enough to override him outright; and second, that the Sanbutshin themselves made Cho Gonou my responsibility.
He flags with a wounded expression, shocked whispers running through the others. “That…truly won't be necessary; perhaps we could seek a compromise?” There's a badly-quelled whining undertone beneath his carefully groomed arrogance.
“Perhaps, if proper terms can be met that do not involve a misnamed execution.” Sour whispers and mutters all around me; they don't like being called on their hypocrisies.
“We shall concede life as perhaps a more proper fate in this instance, and the death of Cho Gonou. However, surely you must agree that some concession must be made to the seriousness of his crimes, and to the building of a proper foundation for a new life?”
“That will depend upon the form the concession takes.” I'm not giving up the upper hand in this so easily.
“Maintain the thousand days of atonement as an acolyte here, to be given a new name at the end of that period; of course he will be under your direct supervision for that entire time, being your responsibility." One thousand days...just under three years, cooped up in here, calling him "Hey you" for lack of a name, both putting up with the other assholes here and trying to keep them from harassing him too badly. Oh fuck no, he knows I won't go along with that.
"And of course, as my responsibility, any details of that atonement, including decisions on alterations to its exact length, will be at my discretion."
He shifts uncomfortably, realizing that he gave me that loophole to work with, and if he argues, he'll be hanging his own arguments. "Very well. These terms are accepted."
All eyes fall on Gonou, who's kneeling slumped, with no reaction; aura gone to a dark roil turned in on itself. He may not've even heard a word that was just said.
The head of the temple clears his throat. "Cho Gonou, hear your sentence!", he snaps; Gonou flinches and looks up. "Cho Gonou is hereby sentenced to immediate death. You, nameless one, will remain here as a lowly acolyte and purify yourself through atonement and abstinence. The honored Genjo Sanzo will be responsible for your actions, so mind you act appropriately to repay him for sparing your life." They'd better leave what's appropriate to my discretion; and of course now his life is being spared, although they claimed they weren't trying to kill him. "You will be under his care for one thousand days, or until he judges that you have atoned for your sins, at which time you will return here and be baptized with a new name to fit your new life."
The echoes fade out; the now-nameless looks stunned and dumbfounded as the lines start filing out, not moving until I stand and start to walk past him. The functionary is already waiting with a note of further bureaucracy; at this rate, I'm not going to be able to get him to the healer until tomorrow morning.
----------------------
The candles in the chamber of the Sanbutshin gutter as I pass, eyes on the floor; I stop to kneel in front of them, never looking up. It's enough that I'm trying to burn a hole in the floor by staring at it; I'm tempted enough to remember that I could bitch out the Gods' representatives directly, instead of ranting at poor innocent shrines here and there, without looking up and seeing them. I think all that stops me some days is that dealing civilly with them is part of my job, and I was trusted with this job by someone whose opinion actually mattered to me.
"Genjo Sanzo." How nice of them to be slightly informal; if I hear my full title today any more than I have to, I might kill something.
"I brought him here." Go ahead, ask me how it went.
"...Good." They're thinking something over, but of course they're not going to fill me in on what's going on. I just wait for them to say something, or ask for further report, maybe volunteer an explanation for once, but it never comes. "You are dismissed."
I stand and turn without ever looking at them and sweep back out, my passing disturbing the candle flames again.
----------------------
After much running of errands, it's after sundown and I've barely caught a hazy snatch of dinner, my nameless charge is asleep in his cell, and I don't know of any healers I can catch at this hour, but there's one last unscheduled meeting I need to make. I find a spot just out of easy sight by a pillar in the main hallway of the north wing of the temple, counting on routine and habit, watching a candle slowly burn down while I wait for one specific cadence of footsteps.
Sure enough, not ten minutes later there's a hurried tak-t-tak-tak-t-tak passing by, walking unusually fast on his way to his chambers.
"Good evening, Sir Constable-Intermediary." Caught him; the official in charge of dealings between the temple and secular authorities.
He misses a step at my voice, halting on the other side of the pillar. "Why, most honored Sanzo, what brings you to this hallway this late?" A nervous quaver tinges his voice.
"Well, seeing as how my chambers are here in the north wing, it shouldn't be that surprising. You seem to be in an unusual hurry, though.” I have no need to rush; I'll give him his empty pleasantries, he knows damn well why I'm here.
“Just wrapping things up for the day, the usual…” He's skittering around the subject of why I hailed him down. “Mightn't you have some business to attend to?”
“Actually, I had hoped to have a talk with you about certain recent events.” Cat-paw slams down on mouse-tail.
“Oh…really…which events would those be?”
“It would seem that everyone was quite well prepared for my arrival today.”
“Oh yes, that…” He trails off with a slight nervous laugh.
“I would rather hope, that the sentence was merely something meant to test my responses, as a temple dedicated to the mercy of Buddha should be above such petty hypocrisies; but that's probably too much to ask, now isn't it? After all, if it had only been intended as a test, I doubt I would have had to invoke the Sanbutshin and my own authority to deal with that. You wouldn't happen to know whose idea it was, would you?” He can't get away without slighting me, and I outrank him, but I'm sure by now that he wants to escape rather badly.
“No, of course not!” Shades of a lie.
“Considering the affair at hand, that seems slightly suspicious; if I were to hazard a guess, I'd think you were rather likely to've had a hand in it.”
“It most certainly was not my idea.” The truth, but some other glimmer; not his idea, but he'd supported it.
“That's quite good for you; if it had been your idea, I'd have to think that you were dealing with certain associates again.”
The nervous twinge shoots out to a colder fear. “I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, Honored Sanzo.”
“Well, then, I'll make it simple and straightforward. If I find out that you're taking payoffs, rolling over to threats, or otherwise letting certain criminal elements dictate your actions again…” I take out the pistol, click it open to check that it's loaded, then click it back together with a spin to the revolver's chambers, just to make sure he hears it. I can hear him swallow hard. “They're not the only ones that can make people disappear. You haven't been dealing with them lately, have you?”
“No - not at all, not that way.” Mostly not a lie. Mostly.
“It might be wise to make sure that you don't, then.” I walk out from behind the pillar, spinning the revolver around one finger just to make sure he sees me put it away as I head for the stairs leading up to my room.
It's sorta amusing what comes out in one perspective that's
background chatter to another....
Don’t worry, Mr. Nameless Half-Dead will be MUCH more talkative
after some of those nagging life-threatening injuries are dealt with.
----------------------
----------------------
One
would think that having a lock on my door and shutters on the window - even
broken ones - in the temple would allow some peace in the mornings.
"Sanzo! It's
time for breakfast!"
That
assumption, of course, does not plan for Goku.
"San-zooo! Come on!
You can't sleep all day!"
Sunrise
was what...an hour ago? I haven't been
asleep the last twenty minutes, just lying in bed trying to ignore the monkey
banging at my door. "Come on Sanzo, stay in bed much longer and we're
going to miss breakfast!"
Sometimes, I suspect that his insistence on dragging me to eat when
we're in the temple is just an insidious ploy to make sure I can't skip meals;
he's known enough here that he could go get food from the kitchen all by
himself. "Saaanzoooo!"
He quits
banging on the door and yelling when I get out of bed, and actually gives me
the time to get cleaned and dressed. When
I open the door, he's standing right in front of it expectantly, then takes up
basically running circles around me, launching into a narration of everything
that'd gone on yesterday while I was busy, how cranky the groundskeeper is,
that all the monks were stuffier than usual at him, and the one handling dinner
had practically begrudged feeding him, and wait this isn't the way to the
kitchen why were we going to the basement?
"I'm
going to check on him first." And
hopefully haul him to the healer, before anyone around the temple can come up
with anything else to distract me with.
"Aaaaah.", he nods, and runs ahead, still talking a red
streak; as I head down the stairs, one of the monks is only just lighting the
candles in the dark stone hallway, and there's a few annoyed mutters and brief
glares into the hall at Goku's chattering passage, which includes a "Heey Sanzo, they put someone in that room they tried to
stick me with!"
I get
curtly directed to the right cell by the monk lighting candles; after the
initial murmur, there's a stony silence as everyone down there is waiting for
us to finish our business and leave them in peace. The door clicks open with a creak onto the
dim, small, bare stone room. There's
little in the room but a small table, a rough wooden chair, and a small cot,
where my now-nameless charge is asleep under a rough-woven blanket, curled
uncomfortably. He doesn't wake at a
nudge to his shoulder, though he cringes more into the blanket with a soft
mumble; he seems chilled, trembling, and definitely doesn't look healthy. Dried blood is crumbling down his face from
the bandage on his wounded eye. Even
keeping a slow pace, making him walk three days was pushing hard with how much
blood he'd lost and how badly injured he was; forcing him into more activity
might be worse than leaving him rest, but if his condition gets any worse, rest
won't help either.
I put a
hand to his forehead to check; he's clammy and noticeably warmer than he should
be, but not dangerously so, and once again his aura crawls up my arm in a dark,
dismal, bloody spiral, coiling inward to devour itself. I pull my hand back with a chill of my own
before I start overhearing his nightmares; the way he's been the last few days,
I should've known that touching him to see if he's miserable was like sticking
my hand in a campfire to see if it's hot.
"Is
he gonna be OK?
Shouldn't we get him to a healer?"
"We'll
take him when he wakes up; for now he needs rest just as much." And to get cleaned up, and fresh clothes,
which will mean I can't stay here and watch him and get that arranged, but if I
leave him alone like this, I won't know if he starts getting worse. "I have things I need to get done while
he's out; you keep an eye on him, and if he wakes up or seems to be getting
worse, get me immediately."
"Right!" He
pulls the chair over by the cot backwards and hops to perch on it. "Wait - what about breakfast?"
"We'll
eat once we've gotten him to a healer."
I shut
the door behind me as I leave, catching a few disgusted and irritated stares as
the acolytes realize Goku's not leaving with me. The monk in charge of taking care of the
lower cells tries to avoid me at first on his way out, until he realizes I've
stood in his path and am not passing by as usual.
"Yes,
Honored Sanzo?" His tone carries
the dread of the realization that he's going to be seeing a lot more of
me.
"I
have a charge here; we've just come in from a long trip, he's injured, and will
need a bath and a change of clothes before anything else. He's not in a condition to deal with the
normal baths."
"Yes,
Honored Sanzo." He's not
acknowledging any action, just that yes, he heard me, and he comes within a
fraction of an inch of rolling his eyes at me.
"He'll
need a tub, soap, and water brought to his room, as well as a clean robe and a
towel." If I leave anything out,
they'll avoid it and pretend it wasn't obvious what I meant; saying it like I'm
talking to a small child is only natural, since that's the level they keep
making me work at to get anything done.
"Of course, Honored Sanzo." He hasn't looked directly at me once.
"See
to it that's done as soon as possible, right after you're done here." No time loopholes to blow me off on either, I
know he doesn't have much to do for another few hours unless some trouble
starts. If one of the other acolytes
starts trouble today, so help me I'll step in and deal with it myself, and
there'll be a few more acolytes with permanent nervous twitches this year.
"Yes,
Honored Sanzo." He doesn't budge
until after I've turned and started to walk away.
I'm
used to some degree of the other priests and monks here trying to distance
themselves from me, but it's usually just the ones I've dealt with directly; as
I try to get minor business done going over arrangements for my charge, even so
much as flagging someone down seems to be pulling teeth, and whispers follow my
back, everything dragging out ten times longer than it needs to be. It seems I've managed to walk into another
time when gossip outweighs Right Speech and "Do Not Speak Ill Of Others"; even trying to get an idea who I need to
look out for leads in circles.
There's
only one place I can get straight answers without threats of violence on a day
like this.
The
library's silent and almost seems empty as I push the doors open and enter; no
sign of the librarian or anyone else. The
shelves and balconies form their own little labyrinth where it's easy to
disappear, the very structure of the room seeming to muffle sound; there's
total silence until I ring the chime on the desk by the door.
"Yesyesyes what?", comes from a
set of shelves with a series of thumps; he must've been putting books
away. The old man bustles out of the
shelves on a balcony to my right, stopping when he sees me to adjust his
glasses from the side and squint.
"Oh. It's you." He takes a slower pace down the stairs, still
squinting at me through his narrow lenses.
"Taking in strays again, I hear.
One can only hope this one will be better behaved than the last." He pauses at the bottom to lean on the
railing. "Speaking of whom, the
groundskeeper figured I'd see you before he did; do you want his message as he
worded it, as he meant it, or do you have both versions memorized by now?"
I wave
it off; the sky is still blue, grass is still green, the groundskeeper still
hates Goku. "I'll get it from him
directly later. I take it you heard
about the trial yesterday?"
"Even
the younger acolytes heard about the trial yesterday, and several permutations
thereof; of course, I got tired of the gossip and read the functionary's
verbatim record when I filed it.
Frankly, I've never seen why the Temple should even be involved in
deciding legal affairs that do not otherwise concern it, so it was doomed to be
a farce from the beginning, although I'm surprised you two kept such civil
tongues through that argument."
"Do
you know whose idea the original sentence was?"
He sits
down at his desk with a wry chuckle. "Politics - a fate only marginally worse than being devoured
alive by ravenous wasps."
There's a bemused glimmer in his eye as he looks up at me, still
standing in front of the polished wood desk.
"No; they didn't even inform me of when the meetings were to plan
for this, and I haven't had a reason to check the archives for records of those
discussions. You seemed quite irritated
that they meant to hold the trial immediately, I understand; any particular
reason?" He holds motionless
waiting with a sharp, prodding gaze, blue eyes bright.
He
would catch that through all the rumours.
"He's wounded - stable for now, but as soon as he wakes up, I will
be taking him to a healer." The
wheels are turning in his head, I know it.
"Aaah....so you have taken a personal interest in this
one." That voice was too close to
his lecture voice. "Something
must've caught your interest, for you to agree to be tied to this mess for so
long so easily; but then, I guess it was just a matter of time before you found
a kindred spirit dealing with murderers and criminals."
I favor
him with a withering look. "Did you
expect me to leave that original judgement standing? An execution would have been one thing, that was sadism."
He
hunches forward in his chair, poking a finger in the air at me. "You're just annoyed because you'd
wanted a shot at some of the people he killed yourself - you've tangled with connections
of theirs on the waterfront district, correct?" My withering look narrows and
intensifies. "As rarely as it
happens, I agree with you - the original sentence was something a temple of
Buddha should've been above. However,
not everyone can stay above mortal law as you are, and no one escapes karma,
not even you, Honored Genjo Sanzo."
He adds my full title with a quiet, sarcastic slant to it.
"I'm
not trying to."
"As
long as you're aware of what path you're on." He nods slightly to that. "Well then, is
there anything else you wanted to ask?"
I speak
flatly, with a slight bow as I leave.
"No thank you. That will be
all."
I
manage to catch most of the others on the council that have enough spite in
them to have come up with something like that; within the space of the first
part of the day, my title has been thrown back at me with every possible shade
of derision they can manage, and if I weren't able to sense when they were
lying, there would've been a runaround taking a week. Soon there's only one person from the trial
left who'd consider something like that without prompting.
The
door into the office room of the chambers of the head of the temple rattles
against the wall as I brush it aside; he looks up, briefly startled.
"It
was your idea." The door swings
shut behind me with a swift click.
"Come
again?" He gives me a shaded, blank
look. "Is something wrong, Most
Honored Genjo Sanzo?" Correction,
there's one form of derision the others missed; the slight, chiding barb, as if
the full title should be a reminder of something I've forgotten.
"That
first judgement was your idea."
"Aaah, that."
There's just a slight hint of exaggeration to his moment of
comprehension to betray that it's feigned; he knew what I was here for from the
start. "Well, fasting and
meditation of this form has often been the atonement for murder; usually it's
more than merely a day for each death, so you see, it was actually cut shorter
than the traditional form."
"The
traditional form was never intended to be fatal."
"Forgive
me for needing to adapt things slightly; there was nothing in the traditional
records for genocide save outright execution, and we are not to shed
blood." Undertones
of venom in answer to my sharp edges.
"Ah,
I see, it is preferable to kill by torture than just to kill. Your sense of mercy is astonishing."
He puts
down his pen, losing even the badly faked veil of courtesy. "Is there something you wished to
discuss, or were you just looking for an argument?"
"I
merely wished to confirm who I need to be wary of; of course, I find this to
have been a very redundant line of inquiry, as I already knew you were a
spiteful, deceptive worm that only paid lip service to the ideals you're
supposed to stand for, so I should've expected this."
"You
are hardly one to speak of another who actually follows the Eightfold Path,
being one that doesn't even bother to try."
"It
doesn't matter how much you gild carrion - it's still rotten, only now you're
lying about it."
There's
a minute of boiling silence while we snarl at each other, then he stands
resolutely. "I believe,
that there is no more purpose to your presence here, Most Honored Genjo
Sanzo." He seems unsure of whether
he should be hissing or snapping my title, so settles for spitting each word.
"Quite
right, I have better things to do than listen to your lies and
hypocrisy." I stalk out, heading
back for the basement.
That
simplifies things, and answers who in the temple is against me on this one -
Pretty much everyone.
-----------------
As I
get close to the basement, I can hear Goku sporadically yelling; "Go on, I
don't hang around your door staring at it, so what're you doing? Hey, I heard that! Aren't you people supposed to not say bad
things about others? You! Don't even start!" The monk in charge of the lower cells is
sitting by the door with his head in his hands.
"Please
tell me you're here to collect him?", the monk
whimpers weakly.
"Oh,
I don't know, he certainly seems to be making things here
interesting."
He only
cringes in response as I pass by.
There's
a knot of acolytes hanging in the hallway at the spectacle that scatter at my
footsteps on the stairs like carp at a thrown rock, disappearing into their
cells. Goku's outraged ranting fades to
a more worried agitation, as he's standing in the cracked-open doorway to the
cell. "Sanzo, he's still not awake;
when are we going to take him to a healer and get something to eat?"
"When he wakes up." I walk into the cell barely looking at Goku;
if all the noise Goku was making didn't wake him up, maybe he's worse than I'd
thought. He's still curled up where I'd
left him, his back to the door; if he weren't breathing and trembling slightly,
I'd have been worried he was dead. At least
the tub of water is in one corner, soap, a towel, and a folded white robe on
the rough table beside it. Goku slips in
himself and closes the door, leaning in the frame.
He
still doesn't wake up at a nudge to his shoulder. He doesn't look any better, and there's a
good chance the light fever hasn't broken.
The flecks of dried blood from his face are spreading over the thin
pillow, one hand curled almost under his face where he's been scratching at it
in his sleep, clawing at the fresh scabs through the bandage.
I reach
down carefully, trying to tug his wrist through the blankets to shift his hand
away from his face; he stirs with a faint grumble, still asleep, pulling it
right back.
It's a
small consolation that he's not picking at it enough to do damage, and that
it's not conscious.
I back
away to stand next to the door, leaning against the cold stone wall. The one candle on the table is burning down
as we wait, making all the shadows flicker on the walls dimly; the room's
washed out to greys. Goku's mountain
cage was a less depressing prison.
Five
minutes pass, then ten, then a few hours of watching for any sign that he might
be getting worse, before he finally starts stirring more than simple murmuring
at nightmares; sitting up limply, back to me, his attention blankly focused on
his hand and the dried blood on it, unaware of me or Goku. His clothes are still stiff with older blood,
almost stained to black in places. He
shifts with an odd tilt to his head, then itches at his eyes absently.
My
tongue tries to stick in my throat briefly; I point to the tub, one word
crawling out of a combined need to distract him from his self-destruction
before the eye gets any worse, get him cleaned and out of the bloody old
clothes, and get him to the healer. "Strip!" He
starts, realizing we're there with a fast backward glance. "Wash." I point to the tub and other things brought
in to spare him the semi-public baths, trying to untangle a few nerves enough
for full sentences.
He
slinks painfully off the cot, shedding the old clothes in a rumpled, stiffened
heap in the center of the room. His
shadow flickers and twists on the wall in the guttering candlelight, warping in
the darkness. Besides the bandages on
his stomach and eye, he seems mostly unhurt; any other injuries he'd had
must've healed cleanly. To have fought
through two entire clans of youkai close-quarters and come out of it with that
little in the way of serious injury - what did he do for a living before
this? He doesn't act or carry himself
like he's used to fighting without being pushed. He's still shaking and unsteady, distant,
only barely more aware than he was on the walk back. It's likely that the disorientation is more
because of his injuries than anything else; I don't dare take any more time
getting him to a healer. Anyone getting
in the way once we leave this room, is going to end up
in pain.
He
dresses shakily, still moving like it takes an act of
effort to keep any kind of coordination.
The white acolyte's robes hang oddly off his frame, awkward and
incongruous. "Come on." When I turn to leave, he follows haltingly,
Goku falling in behind me and just in front of him. Goku starts rambling as
we're walking, a steady stream of “Hey, Sanzo,
where are we going? Are we going into town? Will you buy
me something to eat? You made me miss breakfast, so you'd better make up for
it! You should remember to eat something
too, y'know…” My now-nameless
charge is actually showing signs of acknowledging our presence, but still seems
dazed and distant. The other monks and
acolytes giving us a wide berth; I keep catching myself moving faster than what
he can manage with his injuries, and needing to stop and wait - as much as I
want to get him to the healer and get away from the temple for a while, making
him keep up with my usual pace in his condition will only make things
worse.
One of
the monks guarding the gate moves halfway into my path, torn between the
confused realization that my charge isn't supposed to be leaving, and fear of
me - he was one of the students involved in the fiasco a few months ago where I
got "strongly suggested away" (in other words, banned) from watching
the self defense classes.
"I
was told, Most Honored Sanzo, that he wasn't to leave temple
grounds..." He's holding still, but
it's less standing his ground and more trying to not make any sudden moves
around something dangerous, even though I have to looking up at him.
"He's
badly injured and technically needed to see a healer yesterday. I'm not about to trouble a busy chi-healer
that doubtless has other patients to attend to by forcing them to drop
everything and run to the temple."
If he makes me actually say 'stand aside', he's not going to be
standing.
He
frets it over; I've left him with a choice between risking getting in trouble
with the other temple authorities, and the more immediate threat of getting in
trouble with me when I'm in a foul mood.
It only takes a couple seconds for him to decide, then
he edges out of our way.
"Understood, Honored Sanzo." The honorific isn't said so much with a sense
of respect as, 'if I follow the rules of courtesy maybe he won't hurt me'.
Chang'An
is a large and noisy city once outside the temple gates, split between squares
and main roads with the spaces between filled with large buildings and narrow,
winding streets. The nearest chi-healer
that I know and trust is off the main thoroughfares, somewhere more the
direction of the waterfront but still in the safer areas of town; someone less
familiar with the city would get lost in two turns, but it's become a path I
could almost follow blindfolded.
The
healer's shop is small, worn, and about on par with the area around it; it’s away
from the main streets and busy districts, where the lower classes most in need
of a good healer who doesn't need tools tend to congregate, and there isn't as
much need to keep up appearances. I
stand just inside the doorway while the other two wait outside; the old
healer's already waiting, and had probably sensed me coming.
“This
is a bit of a surprise, Sanzo. I hadn't
even heard you were back in town…and usually, when you come here with someone,
it's because they're carrying you.” The
last part of it was a very intentional, but relatively gentle prod, a
not-openly-stated repeat of his old admonishment for me to try and keep myself
in one piece more.
“He's
hurt - badly.”
“Not
very hard to see…what, exactly, happened?”
“A long story not worth repeating.”
“…One
of those cases, hmm? Would this relate
to your recent trip out of town?”
"I
have no reason to explain." I might
trust him, but this is far too close to the waterfront, my ward has far too
much of a reputation, and if anyone overhears in the slightest -
I hand him
coins, enough to easily cover something this severe, and another signal that
the discussion was over.
The
doctor can handle things, I just need to wait, avoid attracting attention, and
make sure the patient stays put - a couple wrong turns from here and he might
run straight into some old friends of Hyakugan Maoh's.
Goku's
a few feet away, staring at a bakery a couple doors down as if it were an oasis
in the desert - I know this's longer than he usually
goes, but can he get a little patience
to make sure this guy survives?
"Goku!" He hesitates, turning back reluctantly,
already knowing he's not done yet.
"Stay here and make sure he-" I point back at my ward
-"doesn't go anywhere until the old man's done with him. Then bring him along, and come find
me." If I just
hang around, I'm going to attract attention, and questions, quite possibly of
the kind I really don't need right now.
Goku's one of the people that's carried me here before, he knows why I'd
be cautious of saying much here.
He nods
and stands by the door soberly, guarding, while the doctor waves my ward
in. Goku can handle anything that might
go wrong here; I turn down the street, to get out of sight and maybe hear what
I might need to watch out for outside the temple.
There's a small bar around a few side streets, closer
to the temple - close enough to it to be safe, but in the city enough to hear
about the other places. It's a narrow,
spare place wedged in between two other buildings, and a common enough retreat
of mine that nobody looks twice at me entrance; it's counted with the temples
as "mine" to the waterfront bosses, after I got drug into a squabble
here. There's only a few people, old
regulars, besides the staff, and nobody comments as I drift back to my regular
table in a back corner near the bar.
The
owner brings over a bottle of brandy and hands a glass down to me, leaning on
the bar so that he could easily feign indifference. "Back in town
already?"
"Trip
didn't take real long." The pack's still in the pocket with my lighter - they haven't
managed to make my cigarettes disappear yet.
"Did I miss much?"
"Not
really. The waterfront crowd's in a
tizzy, but the Temples dealt with the only target they could aim at, so all
their confusion's sorting out internal politics." I go through the first glass, and he hands me
a second without blinking. "They're
nervous, I will say that - I think it's sinking in that they just lost major backup,
and they're the kind of nervous that makes them more dangerous than
usual." Polishing off the second
glass, some of the nervous-sick that's been a perpetual state loosens its
grip. "I wouldn't recommend showing
yourself around them for a while; they're looking for targets, and they don't
like you even if you did just do their work for them." He hands down a third glass.
"Shouldn't
be a problem; I'm going to be too busy to get in their hair for a good
while. I ended up getting stuck with a
new acolyte on the trip, and this one's going to take up all my time." Everything I said was true; it's the parts I
left out that'll hopefully stave off too many questions from the wrong quarters
about a certain new responsibility. "Might not even be able to make it out here much." I don't have to feign disappointment at that;
part of the reason I've kept the organized crime types out of this area so
vehemently, is that this place's close enough and discreet enough that I can
get a drink here and there while I'm staying at the temple without it turning
into a major debacle every time.
Things
trail off into quiet, nothing but the usual background noise as people are
filtering in and out; just keeping an eye on things and handing me a glass now
and then without paying much attention to me is practically an old ritual for
the bartender. Somehow, places like this
feel more calm than the temple, for all that it's
noisy, dimly lit, and replaces incense with smoke. I've been here often enough that most of the
patrons don't pay any attention to my presence; I can fade into the background
with my drink and my cigarette without any prickle of disapproving looks or
people watching me just because I have a title and a relic draped over my
shoulders. It's gotten worse since I
brought him back, to boot; the Temple's feeling almost as much like enemy
territory as some waterfront boss's home, just because I altered the ruling in
favor of sparing Gonou's life.
It's
hard to miss when they catch up; the murmur's
punctuated briefly as the few others there notice Goku coming in accompanied,
I'm sitting where I can see the door, and even avoiding paying attention it's
hard to miss Goku's too-bright aura and the irked sort of surprise from behind
him.
He
still seems frail, but less distant, steadier on his feet; less a ghost
trailing behind, disjointed from his surroundings. His right eye is tracking with the left, but
there's now a silver-framed monocle perched on his nose, reflecting the
flickering lanterns.
Goku's
swiftly leaning on one of the chairs across the table from me, going complete
begging puppy. "Hey, Sanzo, can I
eat now?" The expression of utter
pleading promises that if I come up with one more delay, I'm going to get
whined at for hours, but there's not really anything else I need him for. I toss him the rest of what I had left from
the travel money.
"Here,
go buy something to eat. Meet me back
at the temple later."
He
clutches it with a grateful grin and bolts out happily, leaving my ward in his
wake, still giving me and the empty glasses that bewildered look. I get up, ignoring it, and head out, followed
by the continued confusion.
"Doc
give you that for your eye?" I try to keep it offhand - it can only really
mean that the eye didn't heal right or completely for some reason; I've never
known that healer to leave scars, even with delicate damage like eye
injuries.
His
answer's thick with barbed sarcasm that stings all the harder for coming from
him behind me, dragging part of my stomach right back into my throat. "Yes, Honored Genjo Sanzo."
I
almost miss a step reacting. "Don't
call me that!" Take a breath and
turn enough to look at him, I have enough to fret over
without this... "Just 'Sanzo' if you must call me anything at
all." Damnit, he can ignore me if
he wants, but if I have to face that attitude from him when I'm digging my own
grave defending him, it'll be more than I can handle.
He's
silent for a moment, whatever train of thought he'd had thrown off, and at
first he's just starting to mouth words without quite seeming to know what he's
trying to say. "....Er....alright....Sanzo."
"That's
better." Confused I can live with,
at least for now.
We make
it back to the temple without incident, and the guard opens the gate before I
even say anything. The trees are casting
shadows almost to the far end of the main courtyard - the sun's going down;
it's later than I'd thought. Now that
he's coherent enough to be aware of his surroundings, I make the rounds of the
temple rattling off where everything is, in the hopes that he catches enough to
get around on his own when I'm not there.
He doesn't even try to comment until the end, when I stop outside the
kitchen. "...and that's the
kitchen. You missed dinner, so if you
need to eat, you can grab something here."
"Dinner?"
He looks more dumbfounded than when I told him to drop the title. "But....I thought it was
morning...."
The
sun's been dipping lower as we've been circling the temple, and it's not just
called "The Temple of the Setting Sun" for show - the main courtyard
faces west; it's hard to miss sunset here.
Is he that disoriented still?
"It's close to sundown."
"I
see." Lost and dazed; like sundown
threw off whatever grasp he was starting to have of things. "I'll take my leave then." He bows, turns, and heads off into the main
complex.
I'd
stopped at the kitchen because I'd intended to finally catch something to eat,
but now that I'm faced with it, I'm not sure I feel up to keeping anything down
again; I'm still staring at the door debating when Goku catches up.
"Sanzo!" He
looks around, peering around the doors.
"He go to bed or something?"
"Something
like that."
I shrug; it's not like I need to keep track of where he is every moment,
so long as no one harasses him. It
doesn't seem like there's much risk of him getting into trouble.
"Already? He practically
slept all day...did he get anything to eat?"
"He
knows where the food is."
Now
he's in front of me, giving me the poking, studying look. "Did you get anything to eat?"
"I
came here for dinner almost half an hour ago." It's not a lie, that is why I came to the
kitchen, and I think that's about when we got here.
He
almost doesn't let me off the hook on it, but doesn't question any
further. "Alright, I'll be
around." He dashes off
outside.
The
baths are empty, which is nice, since I don't really feel like the usual hassle
that goes with getting a private bath; after that I head back to my room, after
sunset.
On
opening the door, I'm immediately greeted by what usually happens to a
closed-in, unventilated room during the hottest part of summer in a warm,
coastal area - it turns into a sauna and stays that way. I shut the door, fold the sutra, and get out
of the thick cotton outer robe before facing the broken window-shutter.
The
metal shutter folds up lengthwise along the large window; I usually only close
it when I'm not staying here, since rain only gets in when the wind is blowing
it horizontal. It wouldn't be such a
pain if Goku hadn't broken it getting into the room from the outside when I'd
first brought him here; I was too frazzled last night to care, but it's getting
to be too much.
I have
to kneel on the bed to deal with it; the latches flip open easily enough - they
were replaced, being inside and easy to get to without a three-story drop. The rest takes bracing against the bed and
struggling with the handle while holding the left hinge together.
It
starts to give, then the hinge starts catching my hand, cutting into it; my
grip on the handle slips at the same time as the covers on the bed, and the
next thing I know, stars are clearing out of my vision from cracking my head on
the floor, and I'm sprawled half off the bed having gained three inches open on
the window.
I'm
seriously considering giving up on it when Goku sticks his head in the
door. "Sanzo! What happened, are you alright?"
I give
him the level best "Go hang yourself and die" look I
can achieve while seeing him upside down.
"You broke it, you get the damn thing
open."
He
slinks behind the door with a nervous, "Oh...eheh...",
then sidles in and shuts it behind himself.
He gets
it open by bracing not on the bed, but on the wall beside it; it screeches open
while I'm sitting up rubbing where I hit my head absently. The nick the hinge gave me on the hand is a
papercut-thin line of red on the side of my hand; it won't even be visible by morning,
probably. The breeze that comes in is a
welcome change from the stifling humidity.
Goku
perches on the edge of the bed next to me.
"It's not that hard to open, even if the hinges are a little funny
-" He cuts
off at the sideways glare that gets.
"I'll go to bed then, if you're alright..." He hops off and leaves.
I fall
back on the bed, not bothering with my underclothes or picking up the blanket;
it's not like I need it tonight. The one
thing that keeps me from just passing out is the paranoid reflex, to sit back
up, cross the room, and move the folded sutra and my gun to rest under the
pillow, then just collapse into the bed.
Still, I find myself staring out the window at the cloudless sky for a
while. I seem to've
outdone myself on turning the temple against me, and not even by doing anything
worse than, for once, holding them to their own teachings. I don't have the
slightest clue what the now-nameless Gonou is supposed to do when his time here
is up; from how I found him, it looks like any life he had to go back to is
gone, assuming I could send him back without the crime lords hunting him
down. The one time I got a coherent
reaction from him besides disorientation, it was sarcasm and scorn, and it's entirely
likely that's what I'll be looking at for a while; between him, the criminal
element, and the temple, I'm the only one that wants him to live, and I'm not
sure if making him live at this point even counts as mercy.
This marks a rare occasion - this chapter ends in about
the same place in “time/events” as the chapter-break in Here Lies Gonou. (Which
should get posted here as well as on fanfiction.net) Isil’s
comment was, “....it'll never happen again, you realize.”
-------------------------
-------------------------
I wake up
to someone banging on my door; the stars are still out, the moon's set, and
there's no sign of sunlight yet, so it's somewhere around three. Fucking. AM.
"Honored Sanzo?"
It's not Goku, it's one of the monks; I shouldn't shoot at the door to
make him go away, but it's tempting anyway. He bangs on the door again, and I
drag myself sitting up, trying to will a horrible death through the closed
door. "Most Honored Sanzo...?"
He
starts knocking again while I'm crossing the room. "Give me a minute!"
"There's
something you need to attend to, most honored Sanzo." ,
he whines; Patience, they preach - patience my ass.
I crack
the door, leaning on it; his impatient fretting flags when he sees the snarl
he's getting. "Whatever it is, it
can wait until morning." I start to
shut the door; he catches it, wincing as it closes on his hand.
"Please,
Honored Sanzo, this needs to be dealt with!" He's determined to not go away short of me
shooting him, and he's not worth waking up a healer this late.
"If
it's that important, it can wait until I'm dressed!" I glare at him until he pulls his hand out of
the door to wait. I could decide that
"when I'm dressed" means "when I get up in the morning and get
dressed", and just go back to bed, but he'd probably just keep banging at
my door until I humor him. I pull on my
outer robe, put my gun in the holster hidden in the sleeve, and take the time
to make sure the sutra's draped neatly over my shoulders, the monk at the door
getting more irritated with every second I take.
His
resolve on getting my attention staggers again when I storm out and pull my
door shut, but he doesn't budge beyond a nervous swallow.
"Well? What is it?"
"Your acolyte. This way - the Great Hall." He starts walking like it's a foregone
conclusion that I'm going to follow him, with no intention of answering me
until he's shown me whatever he's upset about; if "my acolyte" is
actually starting trouble, he's toast, but if this is just some over-reacting
twitch, I'm going to take the monk's head off.
He moves briskly down the stairs to the Great Hall, where the candles
are lit, and "my acolyte" is kneeling on one of the cushions in
complete silence in front of the Buddha statue.
"You
see, Honored Genjo Sanzo? There he
is!" The monk's
dead meat.
"I
see him. What about it?"
"He
is...he is..." The monk - actually younger
than me - is speaking as if he's doing something too horrible to contemplate.
"I
am meditating on the lives that ended because of my actions. Isn't that what I'm supposed to be
doing?" He didn't even move to look
away from the candles and the statue, his voice quiet, worn out, sardonic. The monk just points as if somehow, it should
all be clear to me how awful this is, giving me an expectant look.
"Well? Doesn't look like there's a
problem. What'd you wake me up
for?" And pick your reasons well if
you like breathing.
"But
Genjo Sanzo....perhaps he should find some other place to meditate?" I should've remembered,
any reminder that anything outside their nice narrow little bubble exists is
far too much of an offense to their delicate sensibilities.
"Why,
what's wrong with here? This is where
everyone else comes to meditate, isn't it?" You're the one that called him an acolyte, you're barely out of an acolyte's robes, what the
Hell is wrong with you?
"But
it's disgraceful!", he blurts, as if he can't
wrap his head around why I don't see this as some terrible transgression.
"What's
disgraceful about it?" One more
'but this should be self-evident' answer and he's getting a fan upside the
head, and should count himself lucky it's not a gunshot.
"It's
unseemly that such violent thoughts should be brought into the Buddha's
presence!" Violent. Thoughts. He's upset about violent thoughts so he woke
ME up at 3 fucking am?! Who does he
think he's talking to? I open my mouth,
to excuse both myself and my ward - if he doesn't want violent thoughts in the
temple, I'll just remove myself -
"My apologies. I
will remove my unworthy thoughts from the Buddha's presence." He barely succeeds at keeping it flat, just
enough to make it hard to tell if he's sarcastic or serious, annoyed or
apologetic. He stands up from the
cushion, does a small, stiff formal bow, and walks out.
The
candles flicker in silence with both of us staring off the way he just went, then the monk looks to me for some clarification of what
just happened. I keep my entire response
to straightening over him and glowering at him until he shrinks down and slinks
out, glancing back to me for some answer on what he just did wrong.
If this
is how things are going to go, I'm going to be nuts before the month is out.
-------------------
I spend
a good twenty minutes, half an hour maybe, first staring at the ceiling, then
out at the cloudless night sky. Sleep's
not coming, as much as I'd like to get back to it. I get up, get dressed again, and leave my
room, listening to the too-quiet of the temple at night and looking for where
this newest nameless, faceless gnawing is coming from.
I find
myself in the great hall almost before I've realized I'm there; it's empty now,
the candles have all been put out, washing everything to shades of grey and
shadow. For all the fuss that monk made,
nothing's come of it but an empty hall; the building creaks and settles with
the sound of a breeze, and if I were to tell someone who'd never seen it in
daylight that it was haunted and long-abandoned, I don't think they'd
argue. The wind whistles around it as if
it were deserted, and the sheer emptiness of it starts gnawing, threatening to
bring up a few other entries in my list of old bad memories; I walk outside
before it gets the chance, to the equally empty courtyard, the night breeze off
the ocean chilled. There's a few lights
still burning in the city, as always; the night-shift gate guard gives enough
acknowledgement for propriety as I head out, practically one of the statues
himself.
Once
I'm down the temple steps, I light a cigarette, and just let rote guide me on a
practiced path through this area of the city; the shops are closed, even the
bars have been closed for a while, the gaslight streetlamps are only
sporadically on, there's voices here and there but no one on the road visibly.1 My
own footsteps on the cobblestone are enough to obscure anything overheard to
where it can't be understood. All I need
to do is pin down what's eating at the back of my mind; watch the paving stones
go by until something comes forward.
I
wouldn't even be awake now if not for that stupid monk getting a burr up his
ass and deciding that piety was more important than patience. Koumyou used to find it oddly amusing that
two of the more important symbols in Buddhism were a jewel and a lotus, yet it was
often left to footnote in the temple that jewels had to be dug out of the dirt
and lotuses grew from swamp muck. The joke, he said, was that in striving for
purity, everyone tries to find the flower by killing the roots. I wonder if the monk caught that the only one
in that room that wasn't being openly hostile, was the one he was so upset
about finding meditating in the great hall.
Meditating
on his sins...like it'll accomplish anything like this. Nothing will change what happened; certainly
not kneeling in front of a statue dredging the past like fishing bloated
corpses out of a lake. If the dark
spiral I touched that first time I checked on him in the cell was any
indication, he doesn't need any help turning inward on himself; it was like
sticking my hand into one of the old hell-paintings of the centipede devouring
itself, but I'm short on options to distract that with how the judgement ended
up.
I was
too tired, too cranky, too habitually closed-off to have picked anything up
when he decided to leave the great hall; too tired and dumbfounded at his
cutting me off to have stopped him. He
went from the sarcasm and derision of earlier to ...was
that seeking a compromise, annoyance at our argument, or self-reproach? I wasn't watching, and I'm not sure watching
would've told me much even if I had been paying attention. It wasn't what I had expected to happen...but
then, how much do I really have to build an idea on?
Can't walk on the rapids when the river thaws.
I come
to a square with a fountain, four dragons rising from
the center spouting water, and sit on the edge absently, ignoring the
occasional fleck of water from the center spray. I have no clue, really, what I'm dealing
with, beyond some sketchy observations.
Most of the time I've known him so far, has been while he was too wounded
and disoriented to even really be aware of his surroundings. Even the aura-bits I read while he was out of
it are likely affected by the injuries; I can't rely on that now that he's
intact. Scratch out everything from his
suicide attempt in the ruins to when he arrived at the doctor's until I have
more to build on to look at it from; it won't help me. What else do I have? Before the ruins, there's what I saw of his
actions, and what Gojyo said; the former is still sketchy and more seeing
winter-ice than water beneath, the latter's suspect because I know Gojyo
omitted quite a bit in mistrust. After
he came out of the doctors - a sarcastic jab my direction,
and a lot of bewildered following me around absorbing information, then the
little display in the Great Hall. Not
enough to get a clear picture, or do more than confuse myself with speculation
until I have something more to add to the picture.
Cho Gonou may be dead and in many ways a new creature, but who and what ever walks out of this temple at the end of
this, will have come from those roots.
It's almost dead certain that I'm not going to get a clear picture of
what I'm dealing with now until I have some idea of who he was, then enough
time to get a more solid idea of his reactions now.
I start
walking back, the streets still empty. I
don't know what I'm getting into, but I'm eyeball deep in it, and the rest of
the temple won't be any help; something familiar's creeping up -
Responsibility. Not
just short-term, dealing with a specific job or event and moving on; I've set
myself up as being responsible for him, and while there's technically a
timetable to it, he has nothing to go back to really, and I'm not going to
carelessly ditch him to that when this is over.
It may not be on the magnitude of what I took on when I brought Goku off
the mountain, but I've still made myself personally, legally, and officially
responsible for him and what becomes of him, and I'm not sure I have the
slightest clue what I'm doing.
I
barely remember to get rid of the burned-down remains of my cigarette before I
reach the gate, the sky lightening behind me; the guard lets me in without any
comment. Putting names to the nervous
frets hasn't quelled them entirely; instead of heading for my room, I cut
through the Great Hall, and check the smaller meditation halls in the acolyte's
wing. A few of the normal acolytes are
either up early or having their own bouts of insomnia; I get a few glances in
passing, but there's no sign of my ward.
I check his cell, in case he went to bed; there's no sign of him there
either. The kitchen's empty, so he isn't
taking time to eat; I start making the rounds of the gardens, since people will
often head to them in better weather. I
start worrying as I continue to find nothing.
I didn't leave that long, the gate guard would've stopped him if he'd
tried to leave by himself and didn't seem to have had anything happen, so he
shouldn't have left, unless he found some way out that isn't watched - entirely
possible. If he got out of the temple,
with local politics....He's got nowhere to go, I hope
he wouldn't be that stupid.
Another
circle of the courtyards and gardens, people are starting to move around and
the sun's rising, I'm not hearing any word of him from anyone wandering around
or seeing him in passing either. I end
up stopped under my own window, in the north courtyard, in front of the lotus
pond with the one gnarled water-tree in full bloom. I lean back on the wall,
rubbing the bridge of my nose, the air seeming three times thicker. There's got to be some way to figure out
where he is, to tell if something happened, and it strikes me how much could've
happened - I'm dealing with someone with demonstrated suicidal tendencies that
a good chunk of this area wants dead. If
someone hasn't seen him, then he must've gone somewhere out of sight, if he's
not in the temple then he either slipped past the front gate guard, or found a
way out that wasn't guarded; I'm not aware of any, but this is a large and old
enough building that there's probably some we don't know about. If he is here, then he's somewhere that
someone wouldn't have seen him, like an unused room, or some little niche in
the gardens; that leaves…a horribly huge amount of ground to cover, without
much in the way of clues to go on.
When I
start checking attic-rooms and lesser-used places in the north wing, I end up
passing Goku on his way to wake me up for breakfast. The first "Sanzo?" almost doesn't
register as I'm checking doors; most of the rooms around mine aren't used
unless there's someone important visiting, and he just watches me quizzically
while I'm systematically opening doors. "Sanzo? Did you
lose something?"
I turn
to him. "Where's -", and lapse
into a few empty gestures for lack of any name to use; he gets it anyway, and
shrugs.2
"Haven't
seen him - shouldn't he be in his room or something like that?"
"Not
there, some moron was hassling him last
night." I start checking doors
again.
"Ehh...so you think he's hiding somewhere?" He brushes his hair back uncertainly. "Geez, there's
tons of places to hide around here that nobody ever bothers with."
My
reply's a curt "Hrph." and a
shoulder-hunch.
"Sooo should I get breakfast for you
and leave it in your room or something?"
"Don't
bother; I'll get something when I've found him."
I can
feel the bewildered, almost-frustrated look - the 'gauging whether or not I
need pestering to remember to eat' look, then he just wishes me luck and runs
off toward the kitchens.
The
morning wears on to a lot of quizzical looks and empty rooms until I've covered
not only the entire main temple complex, but the annex buildings as well; he's
not indoors, unless he's gone somewhere behind me, and more than one priest
gets stopped with a "Where's -?" or "Have you seen -?" long
enough for me to get an "I don't know, Honored Sanzo" or a "No,
Honored Sanzo" or a shrug and a look like I've lost my mind - so wherever
he is, he probably hasn't passed through anywhere he'd be visible.
The
gardens are designed to encourage quiet solitude; normally I'd be grateful for
the way it's organized into hundreds of nooks, crannies, small vales, and
hidden sitting-spots that all tend to shift over time depending on individual
plants and the groundskeeper's whims, now it's just frustrating, and makes
checking the main gardens take forever.
I end up running into Goku again, on one of his usual routines of
exploring the gardens; after my growl and glower at "...still haven't
found him?", he volunteers to let me know if he
finds anything, and peels off a different direction.
There's
no sign of him in any of the larger gardens, which leaves some of the smaller
courtyards and lesser gardens in niches around annexes, smaller shrines, and
between buildings or in corners - the ones that you practically have to stumble
across to know about, and if he's in one of those, then I don't need a panic
attack. I head off blowing past before
anyone can even attempt to get my attention if they're not bringing up where he
is, ticking over what I know of the place to find every one of the little nook
and cranny gardens that I can. Half of
them are overgrown and near-forgotten, beyond the scope of the groundkeeper and
his assistants to keep up with more than sporadically.
I
finally find him curled up asleep in a thorn-overgrown garden in a cul-de-sac
of some of the back halls, the sun close to straight overhead. There's a small, run down shrine being slowly
swallowed by the vines, escapees from a trellis in another garden; the things
carpet whatever they cover in white flowers for a while in spring, and
otherwise are mostly just fast-growing clinging carpets of jagged sharp
edges. He's asleep in front of the
shrine, sitting up with the special slump from nodding off kneeling in
meditation that usually gets younger acolytes in trouble; it's more than likely
that he's been out here pretty much since he left the main hall.
I nudge
his shoulder; he wakes with a start, twisting around to blink at me in
surprise.
"So
this is where you've been."
He
settles back to facing the shrine.
"Its run-down imperfection is more suitable for a detestable sinner
like me." It's the same flat voice
as last night, but whether the self-deprecating warp was there so strongly last
night or not I'm not sure.
"You
didn't have to leave the main temple, you know." I shift my gaze to the side, to the
ground-runners of the thorns.
"I don't want my actions to
reflect badly upon you." Reflect
badly? Him? "I'm supposed to be showing you the
proper respect. After all, you're
responsible for my actions."
There's that sardonic, derisive lilt again.
With
my reputation - if he knew that my usual reaction to running across an acolyte
falling asleep like this, was a gunshot straight up
right behind them..."You're hardly going to affect my
reputation." I've been around this
temple enough that I know my reputation's a joke; I'm tolerated because I can't
be removed from my position.
He
laughs bitterly, quietly. "I'm a
sinner and an abomination. You're the
holy Genjo Sanzo. How am I not going to
be a stain on your reputation?" The
dark twist is directed more inward, though it's hard to tell through the thick,
erosive tone. I'm still in the
"holy" category somehow - I think I'd prefer that spiral aimed at me,
at least then I'd have some sense that he still had some will to keep living
without me standing over him.
"Feh. About as holy as..." The dark mutter's
directed more at myself than a part of the conversation.
He
picks up quickly, the bleak tone of voice gaining sharp edges, dark cloud
putting claws outward - "Not that you should care whether your fellow
monks like me or not; I'm just alive so that I can suffer, right?" He turns suddenly with a cold, vengeful glare, all the sharp bits in his aura suddenly pointed my
way in accusation. "Isn't that why
you spared my life?" The spiral's all mine for the moment, but...hatred
for wanting him to live... Undercuts everything, deeper than I'd expected,
dragging back to the fear that what I'm asking of him is no more than petty
selfishness turned to cruelty, and I don't have any answers for that trapped
outrage; a weak "No..."
scrapes out my throat.
A
moment of confusion trips up the sharp edges; he lowers his voice. "There's no other reason for me to be
alive."
Why
did I save him, argue so vehemently to keep him alive? "I couldn't leave you like that."
"It's
what I wanted." It's too quick to
be a simple statement, too almost-flinching and weakened to be a snap; a weak
echo of frustrated despair and a plea for explanation.
I
don't really have anything I can say, to give him a reason to live besides my
stubborn sense of responsibility.
The
black spiral settles back around him even though that look, that haunted plea,
doesn't shift; then the noon bell starts tolling, breaking up the silence.
-------------
-------------
1 - There’s been some slightly awkward decisions of how to
handle the uneven technology level displayed in the anime. We’ve opted for the assumption that, with how
scattered the communities seem, it varies from area to
area; Chang’An being a major city approaches early-1900s in some respects, with
gaslights and sporadic running water, while places further out are more lacking
in amenities. There’s also some basic
assumption that either at some point in the past-history, or some other region,
some more advanced devices are known, hence the occasional appearance of
cars-besides-Hakuryu’s-Jeep-form and such. Firearms seem to be an uncommon thing in the
anime/manga, so are treated as such here; known, but
not widely familiar.
2 - The “Nameless”
thing is going to drive me insane as a writer by the time this fic is through. Mark
my words. Isil
got the easy side - all she has to do is “I”….I actually have to figure out
ways to make it clear who I’m referring to without names, and Sanzo’s
accustomed enough to the idea of the “symbolic death/rebirth/name-change” thing
to avoid even using “former name” mentally.
And now we
return to our regularly scheduled disparity with the sister-fic.
I don’t own
them. Sanzo’s still bitchy. He’s always
bitchy. Bitchy is his natural
state. The-Youkai-Formerly-Known-As-Gonou
gets some of his own moments of bitchiness to boot, so there’s a bitchiness
warning.
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
He drifts behind me silently to the commons
hall in the central temple; I keep my eyes straight ahead, trying not to let
the number of pricks of contempt aimed our direction claw too much at raw
nerves freshly pulled to the surface. If
anything's going to get my composure to crack, it's not going to be these
assholes.
I take a plate and stare down at it
dubiously while he's getting his; the mere presence of food is bringing up
pangs of nausea, and I'm probably not going to get anything much down until
either the frayed nerves unknot, or I get something to settle it, and I'm not
sure how long it'll be until I can get a drink.1
"Don't bother looking for a
place to sit. We're not
staying." If the prevailing mood is
enough to bother me, then it's definitely worth making this a 'we'; he's sneaking
glances around, then looking away at each accusing look. The overseeing priest pointedly looks from my
plate, to his, to him, a rather obvious gesture with a sharp look of command.
"Then where shall I carry your
plate?", he asks, shuffling his own plate to hold
a free hand out for mine.
I give the priest a glower - they're trying to
turn him into a servant already - and hand it to him, not wanting to start a
scene here right now.
"Whatever."
I stalk out, taking side paths
that're less inhabited until I reach the north yard by the pond, the branches
of the ornamental tree shading off some of the noonday sun. He hands me back my
plate as soon as I sit down, then bows and turns to leave.
"Where are you going?"
"I thought I'd return to my
cell. Isn't that what would be
proper?" There's a definite barb of
sarcasm as he looks back at me.
"'Proper' is not exactly a
concern of mine." The offending
word gets a sarcastic snarl, just a word used as an excuse when someone wants
to justify being a pain in the ass without admitting it.
"I wouldn't want to
disturb your meal." He's reaching
the level of backhanded imperiousness I usually reserve for the head of the
temple.
This is gonna
be a real fun three years or so. "You're
not disturbing anything." I
probably shouldn't be taking the bait of his attitude like this, but I find
myself in a staredown regardless, like a pair of unfamiliar wolves waiting for
one or the other to do something. Then,
he bows, stiff and forced. "As you wish, Sanzo." No, not the same backhanded maliciousness I
give the temple-head; he somehow manages to be utterly snide and cutting and
vaguely indirect at the same time. He
sits down almost at the far corner of the pond, facing it. At first I catch his gaze flickering again,
as if checking that I'm still watching him sidelong, then
he pointedly focuses on his plate as if I'm not even there. He stares at it uncertainly, then starts picking at it, grudgingly.
I stare at mine, cooling, and try to
remind my stomach that technically I do need food, as much as it may think
otherwise; a few bites and it's even knotting on cool rice, threatening open
revolt and rebellion. I'm just going to
have to wait and eat later. He's still
ignoring me; there's nobody else around, and it idly occurs to me that I have
no clue if Goku might still be looking for him, or how to let the monkey know
that he can stop without tearing the temple apart a second time today. Eh; he probably beat us to lunch, and knowing
how many random rooms and gardens he's been chased out of for various reasons,
he's probably going to use the excuse of "I'm on an errand for Sanzo"
for all it's worth.
He gets up and starts to leave.
"Where are you
going?" He stops and looks back at me
oddly, and I start backpedaling; I'm not going to hover around him constantly.
"Not that I care to follow you, but I want to know where to look if they
decide they need to know where you are again."
There's a split-second confused
falter before the attitude returns with a flat chill. "I'm returning my
plate. Shall I take yours back as
well?"
I spare it a glance; it's almost
full, but if I eat any more, I'll just be making myself sick. "May as well.",
I mumble, and hold it out to him.
He almost leaves, but stops just
short of the arch separating the pond's courtyard from the north edge of the
main yard. "If my presence won't
sully the books too badly, I might look at the library." The casual
sarcasm's veiling something - but it seems that he's turned the bitterness
inward again. I'm not sure how much of
it is asking permission.
"Go ahead." It's not like I've limited his movements here
before.
He leaves without any further
reaction.
The north courtyard remains empty
and quiet; it's a narrow strip between the main yard and some little-used back
gardens, where few people pass except the groundskeeper. The librarian won't bother him unless he goes
out of his way to annoy the old man, and won't brook someone else bothering
him; if he's spending time in the library, I don't need to worry about
him. The quiet, without even another
presence to mind except an occasional flicker of koi
under the lotus-leaves or anything I need to worry about elsewhere, is a
relief. With the temple being in the
middle of Chang'An, the only places with any real solitude are the less visited
gardens like this, the streets at three am, or a good hour's walk out of
town.
So I've got what I'm doing for
however long this takes set; all I have to do, is keep
him in one piece. And try to keep the
other priests from harassing him too much.
And keep the Waterfront District crowd from realizing he's not
dead. And try not to let his attitude
when he's lashing out drive me too nuts.
And try not to let the inward-spiral drive me too nuts dealing with
it. Oh, and on that note, keep him from
self-destructing. And keep an eye on
Goku while I'm at it. And put up with whatever
'duties of my position' the Temple higher-ups might push off on me. And keep all of that going until he seems
capable of surviving and I can think of somewhere for him to go.
The groundskeeper comes in with
tools to tend the pond, feeding the fish; he does a bewildered double-take,
then when I don't acknowledge his presence, he goes about his work, giving me
odd glances while trying not to disturb me.
Probably not a good idea to make a habit of sitting out here - Hell,
just putting up with the reaction of the higher-ups to hearing that I was
"out meditating" and "acting vaguely Sanzo-like" is going
to be obnoxious enough, much less if I fall into a pattern where they know
where I go for peace and quiet. The head
of the temple expects this to last for almost three years; if they don't push
him over the edge, they sure as Hell will me.
The groundskeeper finishes up there
and moves on, leaving me alone again, trying to sort out what I've gotten
myself into. Temple politics is a known
equation; it's just going to be nastier than usual. The one big unknown variable remains the one
I'm directly responsible for. If he
continues reacting the way he has so far today, I'm looking at months or years
of juggling porcupines, and I'm damned if I know how to defuse his attitude,
toward me or himself.
Go over what I know - objective
details - the Sanbutshin didn't tell me overly much. He'd killed around a thousand youkai in a few
days. Neither clan was exactly pleasant
- Hyakugan Maoh had terrorized his subjects besides his depredations on women,
and the Dark Crow were flunkies for every crime lord and bloody-minded Maoh
this side of the Great River. Knowledge
of the motives is sketchy; he'd gone back to the ruins looking for a body -
Kanan, Gojyo had said - almost definitely a victim of Hyakugan Maoh's. The attack could've been either a rescue that
didn't work, or a very bloody streak of vengeance; possibly elements of
both. He hadn't known how to handle a
gun; that may not mean much, since guns aren't horribly common. If he'd had previous dealings with the
criminal element, it wasn't in any respect I'd heard of; he didn't seem known
around Gojyo's village save as "That guy Gojyo took in", so he's from
somewhere else, either from another area in Hyakugan Maoh's territory, or
traveling through. His reactions haven't
been stable or predictable; river's thawing and I think I've gotten myself
knee-deep in rapids already. I'm going
to have to go through the temple library to check archives quietly; research
into his background through normal avenues might draw attention from people I
want believing he's literally dead.
"Hey
Sanzo!" Goku's flouncing in
from the side, dashing up to where I'm sitting.
"Did you find him yet? I
looked all over and I heard some of the monks muttering about him being in the
library, and I'm not sure the librarian won't chase me out, but I thought you'd
want to hear...Sanzo?"
"I found him earlier. He said he was going to the library."
"Oookay...so
you're just sitting here?"
"Yes. It's peaceful and quiet here. Usually." I finally move, to give him a sharp look on
the 'usually'.
He turns on his heel whistling, and
walks off in a hurry, breaking into a run with a yell of "Okayseeyabye!"
Quiet settles back in after he's
left except for an occasional flicker of fish under the lotus-leaves. The edges of the whole tangled dilemma are
taking on a sort of dim fuzzy quality; things running in circles and grey areas
until the mess of politics, bits of actions and events, and unknowns becomes a
sort of fuzzed mush among the green leaves and splashes of fish-color, reweaving
themselves somewhere just out of my reach, as if there's some pattern I'm just
not seeing except in snatches; gold, white, green, and red, cobwebs and
shadows.
Then there's movement to my right,
something offered, and I start out of it; I'd managed to doze off without even
realizing, last night's insomnia catching up.
It's - he's just handed me a plate of food? The sun's dropped down; I must've drowsed
through the dinner bell. The fuzzy
cobwebs are slow to go away, although a tentative attempt at eating finds food
still unwelcome, and I give up on it; I'm not going to get anything down at
this point without something to settle it, so I'll just have to sneak out when
I get a chance and get a drink.
"Sanzo?" There's actual honest concern instead of the
confrontational tone of earlier, and I catch myself blinking over at him
blankly for a minute as it registers that he's looked between me and my full
plate, while his is empty.
"I'm fine, I'm not
hungry." A
practiced mantra from the questions of others.
"You should eat more than
that. You barely touched
lunch." It's a controlled, gentle
prod, leaving me lost in the lurch again at the sudden behavior-shift - so drop
deciphering, and deal with what I'm faced with.
"I wasn't hungry then, either." If I'd been able to eat, I
would've.
"What shall I tell them, then,
when I bring your plate back still full?"
The edge returns quickly once it shows itself. "That my presence turned your stomach?" Does he really think I'm that arrogant? No, no assumptions; the dark spiral in his
aura's tangled, but undirected, looping at random - strangling inward just as
much as lashing out.
I'm a sinner and an abomination. How could I not be a stain on your
reputation?
If my presence
won't sully the books too badly...
The dark spiral in his cell, the
hell-painting - centipede devouring itself...
There hasn't been a single barb at
me that hasn't been couched in an equal or worse barb
at himself; any anger at him only acts to reinforce it. The almost-snap-in-response dies with a
mental flicker of his assertion that I'd preserved him solely to suffer, and
the wording I'd used in the trial - I'd fed the spiral-in well, said much to
justify its existence. I drop my gaze
back to the pond. "It has nothing
to do with you. I've always been this
way."
There's a moment of silence, then he
suddenly leans over, scraping most of the food off my plate to his own -
currents shifting again, and I look back to him, lost.
The accusing barb's retreated, back
to a calm reassurance, the spiral warping to another intent - of taking
whatever questions might've been directed at me; he looks down to shift the
food so that it looks picked at instead of just dumped onto the plate. "If you keep that up, you'll put a hole
in your stomach.", he almost whispers; the spiral's tangled into something
else, shifting again, pulling apart and re-fusing; the only direction I can
pick out is a conscious tug away from being directed at me. Honest concern earlier - taking the blame for
my lack of appetite -
Damnit, I'm supposed to be the
responsible one here; have I slipped that much?
"I'll get sick anyway, if I eat this." I don't think I've commented on the nervous
metabolism more than a word or two since...since well before I found Goku.
"What should I bring you, next
time?" He's talking more steadily,
picking words carefully, no readable inflection.
How am I supposed to explain what
most healers have been at a loss to comment on besides confirming 'that's all
that works'? "A
drink."
Very predictably, the quiet worry
turns back into the barbed outward spiral, cold sarcasm and all. "Just one?"
"I wouldn't want to piss them
off too much." Every time my eating
habits come up, from the time I was thirteen and that toothless old coyote had
hit on the only working solution half-accidentally, I've had to go through the
disbelief, the questioning and derision, nevermind that I've been through every
folk remedy and tested medicine on the bloody continent.
"And what sort of drink does my
honored savior require?" There's
the disgust coming in, right on schedule; the old 'that's a sorry excuse for
drinking'.
"What ever
you can sneak past the monks."
I will not glare at him. I was
going to avoid feeding his self-loathing any more, and will not allow something
this trivial, worn, and stupid to get to me.
"And if I bring you food, will
you eat it? Or will you just drink
yourself sick?" Sarcasm's gone, the hostility's open; what options do I have if I'm
not going to meet it? It's starting to
become juggling broken glass - no sarcasm, no hostility.
"If I have something to drink,
I'll eat." It almost surprises me,
the flat defeat that's left.
The dark barbs roll back inward, as
badly as if I had snapped back at him.
He takes the plates and leaves wordlessly, and I'm left with the feeling
that somewhere, I'd dropped one of those broken-glass bits I was juggling, and
I'm not even sure what I did this time.
I'd thought that not choking out the empathy in his case might help
figure out what I was dealing with, but it's just driven home how treacherous
the footing really is; no sooner do I start to get a handle on his mood than it
shifts into something else. Some of the
self-destructive patterns were there when I found him, I know that, but…the
first time he'd lashed out at me, he'd brought up what I'd said during the
trial, so I can't say it's not justified the times I've been included among its
targets. The more I sit by the pond
trying to think of something, the more I realize that I don't really have the
slightest clue how to uncoil his inward spiral; reading intentions, moods,
states of mind doesn't cover the reasoning behind it, it's just adding to the
feeling that in some respects, I'm still a spectator on the sidelines of a
wreck. The sun all but sets without any
answer presenting itself, as the cobwebs start knitting thoughts together in
patterns with a few more sharp edges.
“Sanzo?” I hadn't really been drowsing, but I still
hadn't heard him enter the garden - he caught me by surprise; I catch the
twitch too late, then stand up stiff.
"It's getting dark. You should go inside and get some
sleep." He's back to the quiet,
controlled concern.
I cover a yawn, and try to get blood
back in my feet without wobbling on my way to the arch. He'd stayed up while I'd been asleep, and
he's probably still recovering - how is he managing to comment on my sleeping
habits? "You
too."
He shadows me into the temple, then heads off toward the acolyte's wing; I must've lost
more sleep than I thought over the last few days. I drop the outer robe on the floor, fold the
sutra and my gun under the pillow, and drop off asleep on the bed.
The next morning, I wake up to sunlight, a cool breeze
off the oceans tempering the late-summer heat, and Goku banging on the
door. "San-zoo!!"
I fold the pillow over my head,
ignoring the revolver chamber that's jabbing my arm under the pillow. It doesn't help. "Sanzooo come
on, it's time for breakfast!"
I growl, and sit up, staring at the
far wall and the dresser for a minute. I
have ten seconds to stand up before he starts yelling again, and I try to make
the most of it; I reach to move the blanket, then
remember that I slept on top of it last night.
It's too late in the morning for the baths to be quiet; I don't feel
like going to the trouble of getting a bath brought in - it'd guarantee that
whatever cigarettes I have stashed would vanish, if they haven’t already - so
I'm just going to have to deal with the main baths after breakfast.
I pick up my robe off the floor, get
everything ready, and open the door to find Goku leaning on the wall
waiting. He takes off, staying a few
feet ahead all the way to the kitchens, giving a running narration of what's
different on the grounds lately, what birds are where, how run-in-circles he'd
gotten by the monks for hanging around the martial arts classes,
how-did-I-just-sit-still-all-day-like-that-had-I-fallen-asleep-or-something,
and on, and on.
While Goku's eating, I hang off to
the side with a piece of bread, picking at it without really eating; there's no
sign of my charge anywhere, and no one’s seen him yet this morning. Goku catches up as I'm filtering around
asking questions, offering with a shrug, "Maybe he's sleeping in?".
He gets ahead of me to the acolytes'
cells, so at first I figure the low whispering is the usual disturbance caused
by Goku's passage; then I get down the stairs to see
him leaning in the open door. As I get
close, he steps back out, scratching his head.
"He's not here." When I
reach the door, he continues, "It doesn't even look like his bed's been
slept in or smell like he's been here for a while..."
Disappeared,
again. There's almost a flutter
of panic - did he find some new hiding-hole, or walk into something?
"Maybe he's sleeping outside
somewhere - like I did when they stuck me down here until it rained and I sorta broke your shutters getting in? Though I don't think he'd climb up a tree
like I did, at least, he shouldn't if he's still healing...Hey, where'd you
find him last time?"
Trust the monkey's thinking out loud
to keep things simple. "Back garden
- we'll check there first."
As we're walking out, he starts up
again, disrupting any attempt at thinking much.
"I get it - you're worried about him 'cuz
he might still be sick, or that he might hurt himself again, right?" I suppress a flinch; the moron's not psychic,
but he's damn good at tripping over things.
"I'm supposed to be responsible
for him. That's all." I give the last word the stress of
finality. He turns walking almost
backwards long enough to give me a look where I can't decipher if it's worried
about me, worried about him, or just answering my blow-off with a disbelieving
'yeah, sure, whatever'.
He turns back to facing forward,
crossing his arms behind his head.
"If you're worried about him, you should just say so."
I glare aside at a candleholder,
keeping the reaction to an annoyed, "tch."
"Well, on the bright
side," he offers, dropping the needling, "if he is sleeping outside,
at least it's not the rainy season yet, so it doesn't get that cold or wet at
night yet."
Goku actually keeps quiet the rest
of the way, sporadically falling behind to see which way I'm going before running
ahead again; a few times he leaves the path entirely, taking to rows of rocks
or lower tree-branches.
When we reach the little niche
garden, he's there, asleep in the middle of it, curled up on the ground. I kneel next to him, brushing off a few dead
leaves and bits of dried vine clinging to his hair and robe. He's flat out, and nudging his shoulder
doesn't even get so much as a mumble.
"We should get him
inside." I give Goku a few feet
away a pointed look; he blinks, and rolls his eyes with a sigh, catching the
implication.
"So where are we takin'him? He must not've wanted to sleep in his cell pretty badly, not that I
blame him...", he asks, gathering up my sleeping ward so that he can carry
the larger man without being too awkward; Goku doesn't even seem to notice the
weight. He blinks with a sort of worried
amazement, adding, "Damn, he's almost as bony as you..."
Besides whatever caused him to sleep
out here...."My room's closer anyway, and there'll be fewer people in our
way; it'll be quieter." I stand and
walk out, Goku following.
"Yeah, the acolytes down there
are pretty nosy. Has he been eating
okay? I don't think it's good to be that
bony, y'know.
Course, I guess he's still recovering, right? He still kinda smells like blood even, unless
that's normal for him or something, but...eh, probably nothing, he's been
around blood a lot lately, that might be it too...and he's been blundering
around all these thorns in the dark.
Hey, how long do you think it'd take to talk them into getting him a
better room if the acolytes' cells bother him that much? I know he's supposed to be being punished and
all, but it won't mean much to give him that room if he won't stay in it, and I
wouldn't stick a rat in those rooms, and it didn't take you long to get me my
own room near yours when you started bugging them about it. Maybe just one of the other
rooms, right? But it'd have to be
something away from the stuffy ones-"
"Goku?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
He goes quiet with a mutter as we
get out of the gardens to the main building.
He stays quiet until we're almost to my room.
"Sanzo? You didn't eat at breakfast."
"Feh." I
shrug and open the door.
He stops outside the door I'm
holding open, giving me a sharp look.
"You are gonna eat, right?"
"I'll go by the kitchens
later." I wave him in, blowing it
off. He walks in with a sidelong glare,
setting my charge in my bed and pulling the blanket over him while I let go of
the door; once that's done, he faces me, arms crossed, tapping one foot.
"And you'll eat when you do,
right? You'd better not be skipping
meals until you pass out again."
I hunch my shoulders, leaning on the
wall by the door and glaring right back.
"I'll get something."
He glowers, catching the loophole,
then storms to the door. "If I have
to carry you somewhere 'cuz you pass out again, I'm gonna dump you in the koi
pond!"
And pulls the door shut behind him
with a resounding 'whumph'.
I'm left with a quiet vigil; he
didn't stir once that I noticed the entire time he was being carried. He's breathing evenly and seems alright, he's
just sleeping like the dead. I catch
myself with one hand curled in front of my face in a gesture of habit; the big
window's open letting a good breeze through, and I'm not going anywhere, so I
check the inner pocket of the robe - and it's empty. A second pocket in the sleeve is also empty,
although my lighter, as usual, is right in the pocket it usually stays in. I've already emptied and put away everything
out of my satchel; digging under some folded formal silk robes in the bottom
drawer finds - nothing. The acolyte
cleaning-fairies have been busy again.
I've got no clue what it matters; for this to happen this consistently,
one of the higher-ups has to be ordering them to make sure I don't keep any
cigarettes stashed. One of these days,
I'm going to have to booby-trap my drawers.
I pull out the chair by my desk and
sit down, next to the bed. It's a bright
day out, and sunlight streams through the window, reflecting off his monocle; I
briefly wonder if I should move the eyepiece, but it doesn't seem to be
bothering him, and if he's passed out this thoroughly, he probably needs the
rest - I'd rather not disturb him.
There's nothing to do but sit here, listen to the birds outside, and
wait, while the sunlight shifts angle until it's
falling straight into the room, over the bed and part of the chair. After a while, I stand up and pace for a
minute, then go back to leaning against the door.
The sun's been straight in for a few
minutes when his eyelids flicker and open, eyes staring blearily at the
ceiling.
"Why did you stay out all night
like that?"
"Did I?" He seems to be not-quite focused on the
ceiling, still half-asleep.
"Yes. I found you passed out this
morning." I kick the temptation to
let any irritation creep in; I've already been through something like this with
Goku a few years ago.
"What time is it now?", he asks, still dazed but less aimlessly muzzy.
"Almost
noon." I rub the bridge of
my nose, fighting off sarcasm as he's sitting in the spill of bright, shadowless sunlight.
He flinches, sits up with a wobble,
and fumbles with his eyepiece, taking a second to get ahold
of it before he takes it off and sets it on the blanket, rubbing his eyes. He just pauses like that, holding still; the
clouds in his aura go from dazed and hazy to coalesce back into the spiral,
coiling inward.
"Why did you stay out all
night?" No confrontation - all I
need is a reason, I don't need him feeling threatened.
He folds his hands on the blanket in
front of him, then...something, a shift, an upset in the spiral shrinking in,
and he shudders and pulls his arms around himself as if the room were suddenly
freezing. "I needed some fresh
air", he quavers, and there's something major left out and skirted. He draws a few deep breaths, shaking
slightly. "I guess I was more
exhausted than I thought." A sort of
forced calm struggles over his voice.
Something got to him and it wasn't just stale air - with Goku it was a
hatred of confined spaces bordering on claustrophobia; he's shown no signs of
being bothered by enclosed spaces so far, was it the dark or just the
oppressive atmosphere?
He picks up the monocle and puts it
back on, then blinks blankly a couple times, looking around the room as if it's
only just registered. "You..."
He looks again, double-checking, then gives me a
wide-eyed, quizzical look. "Brought
me to your room?"
“It was closer than yours.” And less hassle. And quieter.
He looks back down to the blanket,
picking at it; his voice drops out into gloom.
“You shouldn't have bothered.”
There's a brief, visible struggle to hide it, as if he's flinching away
from what was just voiced; his tone flattens out. “I'm sure the other monks threw a fit. I'm supposed to be paying you the proper
respect for saving my life, and I'm just being a bother to you.”
The other monks didn't even really
see us carry him in, but that's not really the important point. “They're not even a part of this. I'm responsible for what happens to you, and
I'm not going to leave you in the cold like that.”
That almost seems to startle him
into looking up and meeting my gaze, caught off-balance; the spiral fractures
out lost and confused, then lashes back inward, as he cringes, wrapping his
arms around himself as if the room went freezing again. "I'm not worthy of your
concern." For the first time, the
dark spiral's plain in his voice, dark, quiet, soaked through with loathing
turned inward. He tenses, pulling inward
and away. It's as if he's turned all to fragile crystal-spun glass, on the brink of shattering,
and I'm the wrong person for handling crystal, when one wrong word could break
everything - but I can't walk away, there's no one else here.
"It's my decision who I'm going
to worry about." No sarcasm. No veiled hostility, maybe less of my usual
arm's length than I'd like, and - I did just admit it out loud, didn't I; there
just went any denial that I'm worried about him.
He stops cringing so much, but it's
less relaxing and more a defeated slump.
The spiral's coiling into a strangling noose, shredding itself as it
collapses inward. It doesn't seem to
matter if I'm harsh, indifferent, or dragging out admissions that I care about
him; everything I do just seems to cause him to turn more in on himself. Besides the promise not to walk away, I've
accepted being specifically responsible for what happens to him, but nothing I
do seems to be making any difference, besides preventing him from dying.
“I'm sorry. I won't stay out all night again.”, he half-whispers; there's a quirk of something left out,
barely caught through the rest of the roiling.
“You need to take care of yourself.”
“Why?”,
another half-whisper, a slight wince.
“I didn't save you to watch you
die.” The words are detached, distant;
as if somehow I'm no longer controlling my own speech, as if the dark little
corners are worming their way into the open of their own free will.
Somehow, the roil snaps itself into
the coiled-spiral; the shivering stops, and he's just staring down at the
blankets. “I understand.” His voice is either calm, flat, or shades of
both, and it seems like there's nowhere else to go from whatever corner we've just
unearthed, except back to the rest of the world, and the day to day worries.
“When was the last time you ate
something?”
He blinks and starts. “I ate dinner.”, he
says simply, off-balance, and it's a familiar dodge if ever I heard one.
“Last night?”
“Yes.” He turns suddenly, looking at me, and the balance
shifts back away from me. “When was the
last time you ate?”
It's my turn to flinch; I'm never
going to get away from this today, am I?
I look away at the floor. “Yesterday.”
I'm preparing for the lecture, but
all he does is stand up and start straightening his robes and dusting off,
composing himself, his entire demeanor and tone of voice suddenly changed to
calm, composed, and politely friendly.
“I'm sorry, I'm being lax in my duties.” He does a perfect formal bow, and then looks
at the door, clear intent to leave; I unlock it and hold it open. “I will return as soon as I can; it may take
a while to find what you asked for.”
“Thank you.”,
I mumble, staring at the floor, trying to make sense of where this new and very
sudden shift came from. He bows again,
smiling, and leaves, and it isn't until several
minutes later that I catch up to what just happened.
Some order came out of the spiral,
and I'm not sure what to make of it.
He's stopped snarking at me. He
seems to have decided he's going to take responsibility for me. Lax in his duties - find…that subject…
He's going into town.
I have a sudden and very visible
twitch. Then, I'm down the hall headed
to the gates.
When I get there, there's no sign of
him; at first I wonder if I beat him out, and start scanning the courtyard to
see if he's around, then I notice the gate guards giving me odd looks. I ask the nearest one, "Has....?", with the same set of charades from the other day; he
nods, with an expression between confusion and something wrong.
"Yes, he just left - he said
you'd sent him on an errand."
He went into town. Nothing will come of it if he sticks to the
busy market squares, and technically he is doing what I told him to, but - I
scan the courtyard again for Goku, to send Goku with him, but the boy's nowhere
to be found. Sending one of the guards
to accompany him will defeat the purpose.
Going out myself will draw attention, moreso than he probably will on his own.
"Was this the truth?"
"Yes. Yes, he is on an errand I'd
requested." Half-accidentally, but
I did.
"Then is there a problem?"
If I say yes and don't explain, I'm
going to get him into trouble. If I say
yes and do explain, there'll be noise raised and people sent out. "No."
I turn around and walk back to the
main building, trying not to look too much like I'd just gotten confused. Not far in, I catch sight of the
Constable-Intermediary headed for one of the smaller rooms usually reserved for
quiet study and meditation.
I tail him, following him in; he
doesn't even notice until the door clicks shut.
He stiffens, quickly guessing that he's just walked into a trap. He does a quick double-take over his shoulder
at the door to confirm that it's me, then turns with a
dejected, resigned short bow.
"Is there a problem, Honored
Sanzo?"
"I just wanted to amend what
I'd said before - there's some specific things I want
you to keep in mind."
"And that would be, Honored
Sanzo?" He's running up a sort of
white flag already.
"Just to make sure that certain
parties who are likely assuming his death was literal,
don't realize it wasn't."
He sighs, as though he'd been
expecting it, then a wry, stressed-out chuckle escapes. "You think I'd want them realizing
that?" At my lapse into a
dumbfounded pause, he continues.
"You know the laws they work under as well as I do. They haven't meddled because they believe
he's dead; I was assured that if that were not the case, they would respond as
per their usual customs of retribution."
The realization of what that would
mean dawns cold.
"Return the injury in kind, then go beyond
that to warn anyone from doing anything like that again." Kill him, then kill
anyone connected to him, anyone aiding him, seeking blood for blood until it's
even. The temple's sheltered him. "They'd try to wipe out the Temple of
the Setting Sun."
"It's not that I lack respect
for the better martial artists here, but if they attempt that, they would be on
our doorstep before the city guard realized there was a problem, and there
would only be three people here I'd expect to be able to do much to defend this
place - you, Goku, and him. That is
assuming, of course, that it remains an isolated incident, which I doubt. For my part, I've already assured them that
he is dead, and they're not fond of being lied to - I've been trying to
maintain enough distance to believably claim ignorance."
"Shit..." I bury my face in my hands, rubbing my
temple.
"Please tell me you'd thought
of that and have this planned?"
"I've already explained him as
a random disciple picked up on the trip.
We stick with that until I can find a place for him to go, and get him
out of their way."
He shifts uncomfortably. "I suppose that's the best I should've
expected. Are you really going to keep him
here a thousand days?"
Especially with
this reminder? "Hell
no."
"Well then - whenever you see
fit to call the council to cut the sentence short, you'll have my
vote." He hasn't lied or dodged my
questions once; this has him honestly scared.
"Alright. Whatever." I turn the handle one-handed and slip
out.
I pace the courtyard for a while,
far enough from the gate to not draw the questions of the guards, but within
sight of it. The more agitation creeps
into my pacing, the more odd looks and whispers I find myself shrugging off and
trying to ignore. Finally I just sit,
hunched over, on the edge of a raised garden area at the base of a tree,
watching the gate.
I'm there long enough to almost
start falling back into fretting when Goku perches on the edge next to me,
after coming through the bushes behind me.
He's got some kind of pastry, and I'm not even going to bother asking
where he got it. He leans forward until
he's more than in the edges of my peripheral vision, then when I don't acknowledge
him, he shrugs and sits down, eating.
It's some kind of small meat pie, so I know it didn't come from the
temple.
"Still sneaking out?"
He freezes, trying to figure out if
he's in trouble or not.
"If it comes up at all - Cho Gonou is dead, and my new acolyte is someone
else."
The confusion drops into an offended
look. "Well DUH!" He glances back and forth, then
lowers his voice. "Of course I'm
not going to go blabbing about that when those creeps might be around! That was the whole point of the symbolic
death thing, to throw them off the track, right?"
I catch myself chuckling dryly in
spite of myself. "Town
quiet?"
Goku rolls his eyes. "It's market day. It's never quiet on market day, there's too
many people and too many merchants and travelers and things from all over for
it to be quiet."
"The other
kind of quiet."
"Oh. Yeah, nothing's going on that way." He leans forward again, then tracks the point
my gaze hasn't moved from. "Why are
you watching the gate? Are you expecting
someone?" He studies the gate hard
again, and my face. "...wait, I
thought he wasn't supposed to leave the temple..."
"He's on an errand." Flat voice.
"So that was him."
I look away from the gate to
him. "You saw him?!"
"Well...maybe not, I dunno, but most of the people in robes have shaved heads, I
just figured it probably wasn't him 'cuz he's not
supposed to leave, and it was the middle of the square so it was kinda hard to
keep track of things and smells get all confused so I'm still not sure, but
yeah, I think it was, if he went into town.
Why'd you send him out like that all of a sudden if he's not supposed to
go out? Aren't the stuffy people going
to get angry about that? Is it really a
good idea for him to go out like that, if you're worried about them going after
him an' don't want them knowing he's still alive?"
In a rare event, Goku actually
recognizes the beginning of a twitch, and shuts up, returning to the meat pie
and edging a half-inch away. There's a few minutes of
silence after it's gone, both of us watching the gate, before he starts up
again.
"Well...it looked like he
wasn't really wandering off - an' he can probably take care of himself pretty
well, right? I mean, if any of them try
to harass him, I think I'd feel sorry for them." Silence, birds chirping. "Sanzo? Have you eaten breakfast or anything since
this morning?" I hunch forward a
bit more, and he starts glaring at me in dull annoyance. "When was the last time you ate,
anyway? You're going to pass out again
at this rate, or make yourself sick!"
My only response is to glower at the gate, and his irritation
spikes.
One second I'm sitting hunched over
on the ledge, the next I've been shoved off it so that I almost stumble over
into the paving stones. "GO
EAT!! I'll keep an eye out for him and
go looking for him if he's not back in a few minutes, you need to take care of
yourself," he ducks the fan thrown at him without even missing a beat,
"an' if you don't go eat something, I'm going to drag you to the kitchen
and sit there until you eat something!"
There's a staredown as he's glaring
at me, standing on the ledge, I'm glaring back, and the normal courtyard
traffic has stopped and is all watching us.
Neither of us is yielding, until finally I turn away, and dust off my
shoulder. "You'd better keep an eye
out for him while I'm inside." I
storm into the temple; he's not following or saying anything, so he must not've caught that I didn't say I'd eat.
The first place I try to head is
actually the baths, but I'm barely inside the main building when there's a call
of "Honored Sanzo!" behind me and one of the older monks is hurrying
to catch up to me. I just stop as he
jogs up, leaning on the wall behind me to catch his breath.
"Yes?" I slowly look over my shoulder with a warning
glare.
"There was...something...I
meant...to discuss with you."
Oh.
Joy. "And that is?"
"The boy - Goku - you're not
considering naming him your successor, are you?"
I turn around, to better glower down
at him as he's regaining his composure.
I wouldn't stick Goku with this job for anything, but it annoys me more
that they seem to think they can dictate who I should pass it on to if anything
happens to me. I bet the other Sanzos don't get harassed about succession as much, that
the whole subject is some thinly-veiled plea to the Gods for me to bite it so
someone less obnoxious to them can take the job. "What would make you think that?"
He almost seems tempted to edge back
an inch, but holds his ground.
"Well, it's just that, when Koumyou Sanzo was alive," -this
idiot's dead- "he doted on you the same way you dote on that boy - it
was always Kouryu this and Kouryu
that," I will not kill him for invoking old ghosts and dead names, I will
not maim another monk on temple grounds for being a moron, no wounding even, I
keep any expression of how much he's tempting fate to a quiet hiss between my
teeth and seeing if I can will his head to implode by glaring, "and you've
always been so - ah - harsh on your students that it seems as though you don't
have any other options under consideration, while you're often putting yourself
in unnecessary danger, so I'm sure you should understand our honest concern
with regards to your decision in this matter…”
He trails off, waiting for an answer, as my ward walks up behind him,
perfectly intact, carrying a partially-wrapped loaf of dark grain bread almost
two feet long.
“I have returned with that bread you
asked for, Honored One.” It's oddly
impressive, that he can sound that calm and self-abasing while fighting to
avoid the expression of the cat that got the canary. Whatever he's up to, it's an excuse to get
away from the blithering waste of space.
“Bring it to my rooms.” The monk's still there, waiting with an
expectant look; he probably expects me to hang around to 'discuss the
matter'. I turn to lead the way back to
my room, only giving a cold, “I will give your words the consideration they
deserve.”, over my shoulder, not bothering to try to
cover that I'm blowing him off. I hear
him sigh dejectedly behind me, and I'm sure the head of the temple will hear
about this one. “Follow.”, I add,
directed at my ward. I hear him
apologizing to the twit for the disturbance, then he
catches up behind me. More than once on
the way up to my room, other monks end up scattering out of the hallway ahead
of me; I can hear the
disapproving mutters in my wake. If any
of them even tries to interrupt me, there won't be any attempts at propriety.
They stay out of the way until I've
reached my room. I only stop to unlock
the door, just leaving it open long enough for my ward to follow before I close
and lock it. He sets the bread down on
the small, round table off one side, and turns to face me, as if everything
should make sense now.
"Why is there bread on my
table?" If that was all that he went into town and gave me that heart attack
over...
The smug only grows under the
surface of his flat expression.
"Ah, this bread is highly recommended for its delectable
insides."
The sneaky bastard was true to his
word and outsmarted the guards. "So that's how you snuck it in."
He reaches over, as close to
grinning as he seems capable of, and pulls the loaf apart; it looks like the
whole thing was neatly cut previously, as it comes apart cleanly, three ceramic
bottles in hollowed out spaces in the bread.
He sets the top half down, pulls the chair out, and steps aside,
motioning me to it.
He's still being unpredictable as
all Hell, but at least it's not always in ways that make things more
difficult.
I sit down, with him watching
expectantly. The bottles are plain and
unmarked, white without even any tint to the glaze. I pull the stopper out and take a sip. Whatever annoyance he'd had over the request
for alcohol, he must've gotten over it, since he brought back strong, sharp
whiskey; I give it time to warm and settle.
"Try the bread.", he nudges.
I pull a piece off and study it,
wary for any warning twinges, but the whiskey seems to already be deadening it
into submission; I can't say I'm exactly hungry, but I'm not feeling sick
thinking about eating.
It occurs to me then, that he'd left
right after talking to me this morning, and if he spent his time getting the
whiskey and setting up the bread for smuggling, he might not've
eaten. I give him a prodding look. "Don't you need to eat, too?"
He shakes his head calmly. "I picked up something to eat while I
was in town." He's telling the
truth, but he didn't say he ate; I'm not sure if he honestly ate, or if he's
using one of the same dodges I'm prone to.
I could challenge him on it, but ... He's actually eaten in the last
couple days when I haven’t; one missed meal isn't going to kill him, if he did
skip it, and I don't feel like another confrontation if I don't have to. I shrug it off with a nod and start eating
slowly, sipping on the whiskey whenever the knots threaten to return.
He stays watching, probably just to
make sure I'm actually eating enough to be worthwhile, then
quietly says, "There's something I have to go do."; the smug is
fading tiredly.
I give him another quiet nod, and he
slips out, the door shutting behind him.
I go on picking on the bread,
rationing out the whiskey; I can't be sure when I'll get more. It's not that everyone who's nagged me about
my eating habits doesn't have a point; I know bloody well that I need to eat,
but it seems pointless to force myself when I know it's just going to make me
sick without a drink. Given the choice between skipping meals and throwing up,
I prefer skipping meals.
I stash the bottles in a desk drawer
under some papers, where anyone getting in to clean isn't likely to look, put
the loaf back together and wrap it on the dresser.
When I finally get to the baths,
they're about empty, affording some blessed privacy for a change. The communal baths and the kitchen are the
only places in the temple with running water; according to the records, when
the pipes were built for the rest of the city, they'd wanted to disturb the
temple as little as possible. For some
reason, they've been allergic to anything like curtains or screens, although
some of the corner stalls and tubs are a little less open, in the back. Few people come in the day, so it's not too
hard to get soap and towels myself and slip to the back without anyone
seeing. I snatch the back corner that's
actually got a showerhead and some privacy, folding the sutra carefully within
reach, and laying everything else nearby.
I actually get a few minutes of
peace and quiet to clean up and relax.
Then there's the noise of a couple other people - acolytes, teenagers -
coming in trying to be quiet and failing.
As usual for my luck, they end up over on the other side of one of the
thin dividing walls from me.
"...ran the groundskeeper ragged
after stealing almost all the berries off the north hedgerows; there was a
scene in the south courtyard right before he went straight over the wall. Sometimes I wonder why they let him stay here, he's not even a student."
"He's Genjo Sanzo's ward; he
goes wherever the Sanzo goes."
"Sometimes I wonder about the
Sanzo, too." Just
what I wanted to listen to.
"How do we know he's actually the one the Gods ordained to carry
the sutra?" I lean back against the
wall under the still-running water, torn between leaving, trying to just tune
them out, or letting them know I’m here.
“He has the red chakra
mark, and he’s been carrying it for years now…”
The really stupid one drops his
voice. “The mark’s not hard to
duplicate, and he’s not really a part of the temples himself - he’s not
Buddhist, he scorns the tenets and the Gods, and he’s known to spend time
around the criminal elements of the city quite a bit.” Spend time around them threatening answers
out of them and trying to keep them vaguely in line when I can’t get rid of
them outright. “He’s injured students
before, too.” How ironic, for him to
remember that when the thought’s crossing my mind.
“…There was something I’d heard from
someone coming in from the western frontier, that a few years ago he’d killed
several priests during the plague in that province…” …Right.
That. Of course the reports only
mention my killings, not anything else about the incident. “…you don’t think…”
There’s something in the shading of
the sense of nervous doubt with just a tinge of fear that...
They are not going there.
The pistol’s next to the sutra,
within easy reach without getting either wet; I pick it up. “If he’s not the legitimate heir…do you
think…” They’re
going there. I pull the hammer back with a distinct metal click. “Did you hear something?”
They’re just close enough that I can
get a clear feel for where they are from their auras, clear enough to aim so
the two shots through the screen only come close without actually hitting
either of them. There’s
two cries and total panic fits, followed by a very satisfying terrified dead
silence as they’re realizing who the only person in the monastery that carries
a gun is.
“I think that if you two inconsiderate
twits want to gossip, you should do it the fuck away from me where I don’t have
to listen to it.”, I snarl, and shut the water off, drying and dressing
hastily. “And if you really want to
speculate about how I got my position, you can bloody well check the damn
records instead of running off at the mouth like a couple of brainless barnyard
hens, unless you really want to test whether or not I’m willing to kill other
monks!”
There’s a thin, quiet whimper of
“…m-many apologies…Honored Sanzo…” as I pull the robe on; I drape the sutra
over my shoulders and put the gun in the holster hidden in the sleeve as I
storm out without even looking back.
Every day I stay here is another
tick added to the probability of a homicide.
----------------------------
----------------------------
….Technically….some of the other ranked people around the
temple DO have names…Sanzo just keeps deciding not to
use them. I’d threaten him over it, but
I think I’d get my ass kicked.