Hakkai's head turns. His eyes are open. Sometimes he sleeps like that, but his mind is behind his eyes, this time. "Yes?"

"Can I ask something?"

"Of course."

It's going to sound stupid to say aloud. "What's it like to die?"

"... What's it like to-?"

"I figure you've done it --" Gojyo counts on his fingers. "What, three times already?"

Hakkai's lips curl a little. "Why ask me? You've 'done it' once, haven't you?"

Mother mother god it's okay just kill me you'll be happy then won't you stop crying. Just please. stop crying. Mother it's okay I'll do this for you. Just kill me it's all right. I promise. It's all right. I'm here for you however you need me. Just, please

"Nah, not really," Gojyo says. "Maybe I was never alive to start with, or maybe I didn't have a chance to actually die." He sighs. "Besides, I'm serious."

"About dying. What brings this on?"

"You don't have to answer," he says, and knows he means the opposite.

Hakkai is silent a long moment. "It's like," he says, thoughtfully. "Like everything in the world slowly drains away. Things come down to one precise moment full of little details. The fall of hair. The way blood flows."

Gojyo thinks: I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I.

"Eventually that fades. You can't handle it," he says, calmly. "We're not meant to, I think, really handle death like that, however much we touch it. Instead, we get nothing."

"Nothing."

"Mm. Those horrible fixations, they fade as well, until there's nothing but you. It's not that it feels good," he clarifies. "It's not contentment. But you're alone with that moment and there are no real implications to it."

"You smiled," Gojyo says.

"Just now?"

"Then."

"Which death," Hakkai asks, with careful calmness.

Gojyo looks away. "The one I saw," he says.

"Did I," Hakkai muses. "I don't really remember."

"What do you remember?"

"Which death?"

"Hakkai."

Hakkai smiles faintly. "They're all very different," he says. "I remember thinking that it was a shame."

"A shame."

"To be seen when I should be alone."

Hakkai's never said quite as much but Gojyo knows suddenly with complete, perfect realization: You watched her die. He says, "Then what?"

"Nothingness," Hakkai says. "I believe in an afterlife, of course, but there's a moment in death of pure nothing that stretches on into infinity."

"Ah."

"A very long way," he says. "You can't leave it behind you, even if you live on after death. Sometimes, you will turn around and nothingness, the void, will be standing behind you, staring back at you."

It explains something about Hakkai's expressions, maybe. "You see that a lot?"

Hakkai shrugs. "I can't really say," he says. "It's nothing. You don't exactly see it. It just lives in the dead parts."

The night air seems chilled. "You're creepy," Gojyo tells him.

Hakkai laughs softly. "Yes, it rather must seem that way, mustn't it."

"The dead parts?"

"You want more of a horror story before bed, Gojyo?"

"Hakkai."

"Maybe some part of you has already moved on to the next life," he says, consideringly. "Or maybe it clings to you like a rotted limb -- ah, but not outside. Inside."

"Like you were saying about living dragging your past around with you."

"Something like that."

"You got rid of him."

"Whether you keep a withered limb or lose it, you're down a limb, Gojyo. Have you heard of phantom pain?"

Gojyo says, "Yeah."

"Yes?"

In you, Gojyo doesn't say. He stubs out his cigarette. "Not completely uneducated."

Hakkai sounds embarrassed. "I didn't mean to imply that."

"I know." Gojyo reaches out, touches his forehead. "You're alive in there too."

"Oh yes," Hakkai says, and smiles up at him, the expression strange, for a moment. Gojyo identifies its oddity a moment later: honesty.

He smiles back. "Good."

"Yes," Hakkai agrees. "I rather like it."

"Oi." Sanzo is eyeing them, still not having moved. "If you two idiots are going to talk all night, do it elsewhere. Trying to sleep."

"Ahh, don't want to disturb Sanzo-sama's beauty sleep," Gojyo drawls, and ducks as Sanzo flings the fan at him.

Hakkai chuckles. "Go to sleep, Gojyo," he says, fondly. "Alive or dead, I'll be here in the morning."

He's struck with the sudden mental image of waking up to find Hakkai dead there, and makes a face. "You're still creepy."

"I know," Hakkai says, contentedly, and doesn't complain when Gojyo lays out his own blankets next to Hakkai's.