—and the branch could not hold his weight, and when it snapped, the ground rushed to meet him—

—or was he flying to greet it?—

—and when he hit, the pain that spiked through him despite the softness of the forest loam drove the breath from his body.

In that moment before darkness grabbed him, he saw how the red pulsing behind his eyes was the same shade as the sweat-soaked hair curtaining his face, but then another curtain dropped and everything went black.

When he came back to his senses, the stabbing pain was so intense he was sure one of the youkai they’d been fighting had managed to pin him to the ground with a sword through his hip. Except none of them had been using swords so that didn’t make any sense.

The sound of battle seemed far away, but still, he better get his shit together, get back on his feet, and pull his weight in the fight. He tried to move but agony pressed him down and pulled an inadvertent scream from his throat.

“Gojyo!” Hakkai’s voice in response to his mindless wail was sharp with something like panic. “Hang on!”

Goku now, nearby, as the monkey positioned himself between Gojyo and any threats. “Right here, Hakkai! I’ve got him.”

Gojyo tried to roll over, take the pressure off where it hurt so bad; but his head spun and stomach churned and he threw up instead.

“Fuck.” The report of the Smith & Wesson, colorful unholy profanity, the thud of a few more falling bodies, but judging by all the angry howls there were still more maddened youkai than only three of them could handle. The gunfire stopped, and Gojyo thought that Sanzo might have been reloading, but instead he next heard a mumbled chant that stirred the leaves on the trees; he felt the wind’s electric charge, and then the sutra was uncoiling and flapping through the forest clearing and all the screams and howls fell silent, save for his own.

“Gojyo!” and Hakkai, white-faced and grim, was dropping to his knees beside him, warm hands already aglow with chi skimming over Gojyo’s body. “No blood,” Hakkai said half to himself, “I don’t see any blood, something’s broken, I think….”

He wanted to joke away that awful look on Hakkai’s face, say something smart-ass and rude that would make Hakkai’s mouth quirk, pull a chastisement—“Now, now, Gojyo”—out of him, but Gojyo’s throat was raw from the puking and if he opened his mouth he might scream again anyway, plus now he couldn’t stop shaking.

A tug at his left foot, then his right, and that second tug sent a bolt of anguish right through him again, and he really didn’t have to open his mouth to scream after all. For a moment he glimpsed Goku’s guilty face as the monkey resettled himself beside Hakkai, telling him, “I got his boots off.”

“Thank you, Goku,” Hakkai replied absently. His hands were hovering now over Gojyo’s torso, brushing against his side then shifting lower, toward his pelvis. Now it was starting to hurt where Hakkai was touching him, kind of like poking stubbornly at an old bruise just to see how much it still ached “No ruptures,” Hakkai pronounced, “no internal injuries as far as I can tell…”

Sanzo suddenly crouched by Gojyo’s head, dispassion on his face, but the usual twist to his lip wasn’t accented by a cigarette. Their eyes met accidentally; Sanzo immediately looked away, muttering, “Idiot kappa, what were you doing in the tree anyway?”, but not before Gojyo thought he saw a glint of concern in that cool violet gaze.

The pain must have been making him hallucinate.

“It’s his hip,” Hakkai finally diagnosed. “It’s badly dislocated.” His fingers were for once all business as he tugged at Gojyo’s zipper and then shoved Gojyo’s pants down to his knees, out of the way. For a second—longer than, probably—Gojyo couldn’t breathe, it hurt so much trying to strip away that heavy fabric.

”Is that dangerous?” Goku asked, golden eyes wide with worry.

“Very,” Hakkai said flatly, “if what’s out of place compresses his nerves—there could be permanent damage to more than just his leg if it’s left too long. Plus the longer you wait to reduce the dislocation, the harder it is to reset.” Hakkai stopped poking long enough to swipe his hands over his tunic. “We must put it back now.”

“Like hell,” Gojyo tried to say, but it came out like more like a choked groan.

Hakkai was giving orders now like Gojyo wasn’t even there. “Sanzo, please get a good grip on his upper body.” Sanzo made a disgusted face but obeyed, catching Gojyo under the arms, digging his fingers in against the slickness of Gojyo’s sweaty skin.

Gojyo managed through clenched teeth, voice still shaking, “Bet you’re glad I had a shower this morning, aren’t you, Sanzo-sama?”

”Shut up or I’ll put you out of everyone’s misery. And stop squirming.”

“Goku,” Hakkai went on, flexing his fingers, “I need you to take his right ankle—use both hands, please, and make sure not to twist his leg.”

“Okay.” Those careful, calloused hands as they fastened around his ankle jarred Gojyo into another half-suffocated yelp.

“Now, when I say ‘pull’—”

“We know.” Sanzo’s voice sounded grimmer than usual.

“The directions are for Goku, Sanzo.”

“I get it! Geez, Hakkai, trust me, willya?”

A pause, then Hakkai repeated, very softly, “When I say ‘pull’, you know what to do.”

Gojyo set his teeth. The heat of chi soaked into his throbbing hip as Hakkai’s warm fingers moved over that bare flesh, manipulating, kneading, massaging, those touches altering and aiding—but sometimes, somehow, even exacerbating—the pain. He tried to ride the flow, knowing that it was supposed to be helping him, but still, he couldn’t help whimpering with every press of those fingers. He screwed his eyes shut and tried not to watch; reopened them when he couldn’t bear not seeing what was happening.

Even so, when Hakkai suddenly shouted “Pull!” it took him by surprise.

Pain arced through him and he tried to fight it, tried to contort and somehow compress himself against the traction because for gods’ sake they were all tearing him apart, not putting him back together, but Goku and Sanzo were too damn strong for any feeble resistance he could muster.

The heat and pressure from Hakkai’s hands worked muscle and tendons and joints and hard hard bone, and then suddenly as it all came together there was some give to his body, and with a harsh grating snap! everything slid violently back into place.

And the world grayed out on him and vanished again—