TITLE: Seven Sinners
AUTHOR: Eyes of Shinigami
PAIRINGS: None
TIMELINE: None, really.
RATING: PG-13
WARNINGS: Dark, angst, general not happy. Perhaps a bit disjointed as well.
SUMMARY: Brief character drabbles sung to the tune of the seven deadly sins. Reading Dante’s The Divine Comedy got me thinking about how each of our wonderful boys could very easily represent a sin. Each is no more than three hundred words, which was a challenge to myself.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Saiyuki, for I am not Kazuya Minekura. If I were, I would be very rich and very cool, but alas I am not. I am a humble college student, so I own nothing but this story.
-----
How fitting, to be a demon wrapped in a human skin without even knowing it. The vice of pride so thick around you, wearing it like a favored cloak to cover the frail existence beneath the scowl. You have lived your entire life swimming in the sea of your own ego, spitting it coldly into the faces of others around you. Perhaps it is the influence of your sins after all.
That vanity is what keeps you going, after all, it’s what you live for. It’s what shuts your heart and closes your eyes, tunneling your vision to a single purpose. You toss aside everything in vain, believing that you are fully justified in your actions. The blood staining false pristine hands out of superiority. How tragic. A singular driving force that makes you seek that which was stolen from you. What right do they have to take what belongs to you? How dare they? It is a question that you demand an answer for, no matter what the cost.
Even your appearance is the very epitome of a proud and fallen hero. A face that so arrogantly appears to be otherworldly, demonstrating your immodesty to the world. You hide behind smug eyes, using them as a blade to cut down the wills of others. You feed on their pain, like a drugged rush. It reminds you just how much better than them you are. Chosen to be the highest of them all. Does this assuage your pride now? Does it swell and tremble, like a perversity of men? You are perverse in your conceit, taking such pleasure in what it brings you. That is the religion that you carry, the true word of the gods that you harbor.
You are the Sin of Pride.
-----
Never ending, never ceasing. Constantly needing to be filled and reaffirmed. They watch in morbid awe as you keep going, until you feel as though you are going to burst. It doesn’t matter, for you are insatiable. They always remind you, over and over. Stemming from the need to fill, consuming the emptiness that still haunts you to this day.
Voracity is how you live your life, to the excess of everything. You know no other way, since you make up for how you went without for so very, very long. Where would you be without your ravenous being? Both sides are equally guilty, hungering for everything and anything that can be devoured. The swell of your belly is equal to the swell of your validity, is it not?
Even your eyes display your need to devour everything, no matter what skin you wear. Blood, food, fun, games, friends-it doesn’t really matter, since you pine for them all. They satiate the need inside you, feeding the demons that beg from within. Constant struggle to keep them pacified, silencing them in the only way you know how.
Guzzling down life as though it were a fine wine, meant to be sipped and taken in increments. You do not know the meaning of such things, taking your fill and more to feel complete. Without your vices, you would be an empty canvas, an incomplete being with no where to go and nothing but yourself. But oh, you spent far too long in such a state, how could they dare ask for that again? Utilizing control would be too painful a reminder, a constant prod at time you spent under lock and key. So, you continue to consume and ravage, keeping the memories at bay.
You are the Sin of Gluttony.
-----
Skin against skin, breath against breath, slick-sliding into one sinful act after another. You feed from love, no matter how false or hollow it may be. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, whether it will last until the morning after. Such things are nothing more than an afterthought.
You wear red as a marker for your libidinous proclivities, to put yourself on display for the next willing consumer of your passion. You ooze it from every pore like an incubus, attracting those who can fill the hole in your heart with moans and groans of pleasure. You make them ache for you, pine for you, and wish for you a second time. But, a second time is far too telling, no matter how much they crave that special gift you have given them. They must live with the yearning, just as you have for so very long
The skin of your hands tingles with an itch that can never be satisfied, not until that white space inside disappears. Smooth like a lover’s, receptive and attentive to anything that will send that impossible high even higher, to make the drug even stronger. The game’s no fun if the stakes aren’t high.
Desire throbs in your veins like a burning pain, purging your disease in the willing body beneath you over and over until you feel clean and whole again. Convoluted longing for something else hidden beneath your show of fire and spark, though your sinner’s lips would never tell the secrets of your polluted soul. Instead, they only smile with dirty promises.
You are the Sin of Lust.
----
You are no stranger to rage and hatred, flowing through your veins as easily as the blood that pounds inside of you. Taint boils deep inside, festering like a child in the womb of its mother. But you love it, cherish it, nurse it on more of the same until atrocities are born from it.
A mask of a man hides the churning fury inside, kept at bay by control that even the gods could envy. Or, so it would seem. Always, it heats the surface of your skin and inflames the need inside you to let it out. Rage is an old shirt, fitting easily against corrupted ideals that always need an outlet. If only you could destroy, it would ease the pain inside.
You smile so pristinely despite it all, like a doll with a painted face that hides what is really inside. Hiding the incensed part of you that hungers for revenge and darkness, swallowing like a bitter medicine over again and again. It riles you, reminds you that you are alive. Your lips are tainted with it, sick with it, living only to provoke so you can feed on it.
Ire is your friend, it is your God. You speak in prayers with your tainted lips, offering it all to your suffering and lividness. Was it worth it? Was it worth the false smiles and torrid plague that grew within the very depths of your being? Of course, without it, you would have been weak. Weakness is your enemy, strive as you might to hide it behind the painted face of virtue you wear in mocking of your former self.
You are the Sin of Wrath.
-----
Wanting, wanting, always wanting-like a twisted carousel ride that you can not get off of. It spins you constantly in a swirl of jealousy that you swallow like a jagged pill over and over. It is never far from your mind, the very reason that you existed for all these long and lonely years.
Covetous and resentful, you gaze upon what others have and wish it for your own. Never seeing past it, you are trapped in a web of longing. So empty from all those times of being cast aside, you have learned to live by begrudging everything and everyone. Like a spoiled child who cannot have their way, still you demand it. It is your right, after all.
Mismatched eyes shaded in a vivid green, desperate to be better. You will show them all, won’t you? When you possess the world, possess everything that you have ever been denied. Who needs love when you can have it all? You cannot decide what it is you seek, over and over, and you will want until the day you die.
You are embittered beyond all reason, consuming what little of you that could have been your saving grace. But you don’t care about that, do you? All you want, all you need, is to be the one they begrudge for your good fortune. It’s about time you’ve had your way, indulging in what that would mean for you. As long as you possess, that is all that matters in the end.
You are the Sin of Envy.
-----
Almost as though you are a statue, you idle until it is far too late. Watchful eyes and protective glances couldn’t make up for your indolence, even as you strive to atone for what you have done. You pick up your feet to move, to act, but you stay still and cannot will your body to take a step, even as your mind screams for it.
Caught in slow motion, you watch as the world spins wildly around you, unable to keep in time with the rhythm of the one you love so dearly. Now, they are a shadow of your dawdling, a symbolic afterthought that drives you slowly forward. You follow blindly now, lethargic in your apologies for what you have done.
Your body moves at the speed of nothing, languor like weights on your shoulders to keep you from what you must do. There is no pity, for you stood still when the blanket of sluggishness covered your hapless body and let it envelop you. You are your judge, jury, and your ultimate executioner.
Pinpricks of memory fuel the need that you cannot fulfill, trapped in a gradual circle that will never end as long as you keep breathing. Each breath is a struggle, for your slowly pumping heart cannot handle the strain of wasting energy on such a futile thing like living. So very, very tiresome.
You are the Sin of Sloth.
-----
You swim in a sea of materialism, desperate to obtain all that you possibly can to make up for what you lack. Harboring death and destruction to you like a full coin purse, stingy and unwilling to share in what it brings you. If anyone dares take it from you, you snarl and hiss like an angry dog with a bone.
A miser in your own right, you seek to attain to fill the loss that you were given, no matter who it takes down with you. Avarice is your best friend, giving you justification in your journey of acquisition. The more the gun shots sound, the more ungenerous you are with your mercy. There is none, for you keep it close to your empty heart.
Your arms are open, but not to welcome anything other than what you can own and control. You hunger for it, covetous for screams and pain that can balance the scale of your own. How carefully you spend your time weighing until it sits right, and only then can you appreciate what you have.
You cradle your stinginess to you like a babe, soft and supple and waiting to be shaped into something bigger, something more. You wait for the big prize at the end, hoping that it will be the ultimate alleviator of your desperate and hungry soul. It is why you grasp your earnings so tightly, crossing your fingers for the gold at the end of a rainbow that isn’t really there.
You are the Sin of Greed.
-END-
Did you figure out who was who? Sanzo was Pride, Goku was Gluttony, Gojyo was Lust, Hakkai was Wrath, Homura was Envy, Shien was Sloth, and Zenon was Greed/Avarice.