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Tides


It was late afternoon when they reached the clearing. High rocky mountain ranges had at last given way to more fertile ground and sparse woods, and these in turn transformed into roadless, labyrinthal forest. Everyone was so used to the blur of green and brown that it took a moment for the change in terrain to register.

This week had been one of the longest in recent memory. When shit rained, it poured. Everyone was tired and aching and sorely sick of fighting, breathing, living in the face of what had become their reality. Youkai attacks, one after another, and washed out roads, and rockslides, and detours, and desolate villages full of plague dead, and..

It had been a long week.

Therefore, no one took any special notice of the clearing when they first broke past the forest. There was only the muted, peripheral impression of oh look, no more trees.

Jiipu ground to a halt, even the machinery of its gears sounding exhausted. Numbly, Hakkai told his hands very firmly to let go of the steering wheel, and frowned in vague irritation when they refused to obey. Let. Go.

“...are we stopped?” Gojyo sounded half asleep, which he was, enough so that the confusion in his voice seemed justified when otherwise any idiot should have been able to tell the obvious.

Hakkai gave his rebellious hands a very stern look and repeated his mental command. Still they did not listen. He gave up. “We are. And I think we should stay that way for a bit,” the healer admitted.

“..kay.” Gojyo could have been agreeing to rice for dinner, instead of camping out in the wilds when their supplies were down to the last dregs. A muffled squall went up from the back as the halfbreed tried, and failed, to drag himself to a standing position and hop out of the Jeep. Instead, he ended up falling sideways into Goku, who’d been until that point asleep. “Fuck.”

They were definitely staying here tonight.

“We’re not staying here tonight.”

Hakkai blinked slowly. Were his thoughts supposed to have negative echoes that sounded suspiciously like bitchy monks?

Sanzo was staring straight ahead, posture unnaturally rigid. Hakkai could have sworn the man had been as sound asleep as his pet only moments ago.

“Er,” said the healer intelligently. “But....”

“We are not,” and Sanzo’s glare was pure diamond ice on him as the monk repeated adamantly, “staying here tonight.”

“Why the fuck not?” Gojyo voiced Hakkai’s thoughts, shaking his head to wake up.

“Because.”

Hakkai was looking at the map. “There’s no town for miles in any direction. We’ll have to camp out at some point anyway.

Sanzo gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to shoot them both. “We need to keep going.”

Gojyo scowled, irritation dispelling the last of sleep fog from his head. “What the hell for? We’re not exactly making great time in this condition, so one goddamn night isn’t going to make any difference in how fast we get to Tenjiku. Hell, it’ll probably speed things up if Hakuryuu gets a chance for a decent rest.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Then why?

Sanzo’s mouth set in a harsh line. He didn’t answer.

Hakkai started to say something, exasperated enough to take Gojyo’s side against the monk and his irrationality because Sanzo was just as in need of a respite as they were, probably more even if he wouldn’t admit it, since any physical activity that could drain a youkai’s strength to trembling muscle and blurred sight had to have been devastating for a weaker human. Before he could even begin to point any of this out, however, Jiipu let out an irate squeak and transformed out from under them all, casting his vote on the issue.

There came the unpleasant sound of four bodies hitting the unyielding forest floor, followed by an explosion of profanity from resident acid tongued priest.

If Gojyo hadn’t been sprawling on the ground with a rock gouging him in the spine, he would have grinned in victory. One could argue with an adamant Sanzo and it was like trying to persuade a brick wall, but there was always the option of cracking the man over his stubborn head with a blunt object and overriding him that way. One could argue with an adamant Hakkai and it was like inviting karmic retribution, but there was always the option of walking off anyway and doing what you wanted because Hakkai didn’t shoot people in the back (he’d just make life miserable afterwards in punishment). But when it got down to it, there really wasn’t much one could do to argue with an adamant Jeep.

Sanzo hauled himself up to glare at the little dragon, and must have figured this last out for himself, because he settled finally for hissing viciously that if they were going to do this stupid thing, then they might as well get it done and over with.

The kappa didn’t know what Sanzo had against roughing it for an afternoon and a night (after all, when there wasn’t anything more civilized available, wasn’t a hot meal over a fire better than a cold one on the go, and a sleeping bag in a tent better than trying to sleep in the Jeep?) and quite frankly didn’t care. Sanzo was probably just being contrary on principle, the asshole.

Gojyo kicked Goku in the shoulder to wake him, as apparently impacting the ground hadn’t disturbed the monkey’s sleep at all, and after eliciting an indignant yowl stomped off to join Hakkai in rummaging through their sad, nearly empty packs.

“Ero kappa!,” the brat squalled, jerking up and rubbing at his shoulder. “What was that for, huh?!”

“Camping time, saru,” Gojyo announced, too drained to use more than only a mildly insulting tone. “Faster we get things set up, faster we can eat and go to sleep.”

Goku was looking around, golden eyes wide and ignoring him. “Where are we?”

“A forest.”

“I know that. Why are we stopping here?”

Hakkai put on his best Please Allow For the Inconvenience smile, because this was a Goku still addled from napping that was questioning his judgement rather than an irate Sanzo, and thus didn’t merit the Get Over It version smile that Hakkai had been trading with said irate Sanzo’s glare. “Sanzo didn’t want to either, but I’m afraid the nearest town is still at least three days away. Not to mention,” and he gestured at the dragon not so much perched but draped on his left shoulder, all limp wings and lusterless ruby eyes, “Hakuryuu can’t go any further without some rest.”

A snort from Sanzo, who had his back to them all. Hakuryuu hissed softly at the priest before tucking his tiny head in against Hakkai’s collar.

It was good enough explanation for Goku, who went scampering off for firewood while Gojyo and Hakkai staked the tent. Sanzo didn’t help. Sanzo never helped. Sanzo instead went off a little ways until he was far enough to stay out of their conversation but close enough to boomerang a harisen off empty kappa skull if the need for it arose. The sky above the surrounding tree tops held only white puffs, but a few in the distance were building themselves into thunderheads, and there was an ominous heaviness in the air. It had been warm enough today to bring a storm in by nightfall or next day. Rainclouds close enough to scent, and they would drop heavily when they came. Tents were useful things in such weather.

If they had kept going, they might have been able to outrun the storm until they’d reached civilization. But that wasn’t really why Sanzo wanted to leave this place well behind him.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. The pressure of the trees closing in around them, maybe. They’d been driving through forest for days on end. No surprise he’d start feeling claustrophobic. Or perhaps it was the scent of rain heavy in the air. But rain followed him everywhere. There was no getting away from it. The greengray muted light, then. The stillness of this particular patch of woods, because there was birdsong and the rustle of small creatures, but none in the precise, immediate area. The inviting sweep of ankle deep grass, looking like soft, windblown waves.

It had his back up, though, whatever it was. The faintest discord, but it hummed behind his eyes, in his bones.

He was frazzled and worn, he knew, could admit it to himself even if he wouldn’t admit it to the others. Combat tension wound his nerves tighter than harpstrings. Over the past few days his innate paranoia had him taking unintentional shots at particularly loud birds before his mind registered they weren’t threats. So there was a great chance that all this discomfort was the simple product of stress and exhaustion, and Sanzo would have indeed shrugged his feelings of unease off as just that, but…

Violet eyes lingered warily on the shadows that the trees threw. Something about them…something about their pooling blackness on the grass…

....on dark waves….

This place reminded him of something and he didn’t know what it was. Only that he didn’t trust it.

“Sanzo?”

The monk bit his tongue to confine the yelp that wanted to escape, and turned to glare murderously at Hakkai.

Hakkai had an odd expression on his face. “What?” Sanzo snapped.

The youkai’s gaze drifted to Sanzo’s right hand, and Sanzo looked down to discover, with some surprise, that the Smith&Wesson was out and cocked, ready to fire, within his clenched fist.

Sanzo scowled and shoved the gun back into his robe, clicking the safety on once more. Hakkai eyed him steadily for a second, then looked out at the surrounding area, scanning the same expanse Sanzo had been only moments ago.

“Youkai?” The healer sounded casual enough, but there was tension underneath the question. They’d been ambushed enough times to teach harsh lessons in perpetual readiness, and in trusting others’ gut instincts of impending danger in addition to one’s own.

An exhaled breath. “No. No, just….” Sanzo didn’t have the words for it. He shook his head. “Nothing. Not that.”

“You haven’t eaten anything today,” Hakkai reminded him, politely offering an excuse for the unfocused perception, no matter how flimsy. There was a healing bruise across the side of the brunette’s face, spreading shadow under his cheekbone. Idiot hadn’t the sense to cure his own injuries, Sanzo thought distantly, unless someone sat him down and forced him to do so, and yet he could remember when Sanzo’s last meal had been and probably what it had consisted of. Stupid youkai.

“I wasn’t about to fight with idiots over the last bit of trail ration,” he grumbled.

The pleasant, empty smile returned, but the eyes were still searching on his own. “I’m sure we can get better fare for tonight. Gojyo’s promised to head down to the river to fish as soon as….”

“What river?”

Hakkai blinked, once, slowly. “Ah. The one…over there?” He pointed.

The blond turned to look. There was nothing to see, hidden by a slightly inclined slope and long grass, but there indeed came the faint, distant sound of running water from the direction Hakkai was indicating. He hadn’t heard it, nor seen any trace of it in the forest when there should have been a clear break in the trees to accommodate its path. Why hadn’t he heard it?

“There wasn’t a river on the map.”

“It’s not a very large one, and I don’t think this area is well traveled. We haven’t had a road to follow for a good while.” All very true. It might merely have been an oversight.

“Ch’.”

This was getting ridiculous. Sanzo stalked off without another word to the healer, heading back for the rudimentary campsite that had been set up in his absence. He wanted a cigarette. Maybe that would calm his irrationally jangling nerves.

Dinner was a subdued affair. Goku chomped away noisily, too intent on stuffing himself with coney (he and Hakkai had gotten lucky with a batch of young, stupid, last year’s babies) to even needle Gojyo about his rotten luck. “No goddamn fish in that stupid river,” the halfbreed bitched. Sanzo pretended not to listen and nibbled only half heartedly on his share, trying not to focus on the warm, moisture laden breezes that were blowing a storm to them. He was not looking forward to a night spent in forced close quarters, and especially not a night almost assured to be plagued by nightmares. Hakkai was equally withdrawn, thinking of the same things, tired and aching with more scars than those that had been sustained in recent battle.

But the promised tempest did not come. The shadows lengthened, the sun coursed lower in the bloody sky, but it did not rain.

Sanzo seriously considered the prospect of picking up sedatives at the next town, so this would never be an issue again, because he was really not looking forward to trying to sleep out here. Now that Hakkai had pointed it out, the sound of the river echoed softly and continuously in his ears, undermining the conversation of the others when he bothered making the effort to listen and inexorably drawing his thoughts to uncomfortable depths. Not all his nightmares were of blood and rain. Some, the ones he dismissed the fastest when he awoke, were of drowning. Of endless, overwhelming currents of dark water. Of the invisible rush and pull under the surface, and the absolute black that waited at the bottom.

He shivered involuntarily, despite the heat of the fire.

No one else seemed to notice. Warm, fed, and relatively protected, the other three (well, two, Hakkai was surely not enjoying anticipation of the rain either) had put their minds to unwinding as much as possible before the Journey got back underway. He couldn’t really blame them, except for the fact that they were managing to relax while he sat there and brooded and got more annoyed with the universe in general by the second.

Sleeping pills would have been nice. Liquor would have been nice. Both at the same time would have been paradise, and maybe a soft bed and an accommodatingly drunk Gojyo or similarly desperate Hakkai to go with it, to keep himself occupied and have warm at his back when exhaustion finally won out over memory. Too bad they were stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. By unspoken consent the three ‘adults’ (using that term loosely, of course, when it came to the idiot kappa) kept that sort of thing limited to towns, where doors had locks and Goku wasn’t liable to find out something he didn’t need to know yet. Not that any of them except Hakkai made a particular effort to stand out as a role model, but there was still something uncomfortable about the thought of exposing a child, even a five hundred year old one, to such things until …well, later. Way later. Goku wasn’t stupid, just unfocused, and the Journey was steadily wearing that down into something resembling maturity, slowly but surely. He’d get it eventually on his own, and it would be better than Sanzo having to try and explain anything.

Didn’t help matters much now, though.

…that damnable noise. That. Noise.

He couldn’t close his eyes without it getting louder, without picturing swift running black water and ripples of turbulence. Which was ridiculous, because there was still a good chunk of light left, and no trees where Hakkai had said the river was to throw shadows, so the water wouldn’t be that color. Wouldn’t look like..

…black sea…

Goku noticed the chill that gripped him this time. Flicked golden eyes at a Hakkai apparently mesmerized by the dancing flames and a Gojyo occupied with carefully cleaning and oiling his weapon. The boy who was not a boy edged over to Sanzo, who glared automatically at the approach but said nothing. Goku didn’t quite seem to know what to do with himself now that he’d relocated, only certain with that odd sense of his concerning Sanzo that something needed to be done because his guardian was unsettled. So he drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, not looking at Sanzo, but close enough to be nearly touching the monk. And stayed that way when Sanzo accepted the proximity without complaint.

After nearly forty-five minutes of silence Sanzo gave up trying to pretend he wasn’t disturbed. “Oi, saru.”

“Nh?” Evidently Goku had been dozing off. No wonder he’d been so quiet.

“…..go to sleep if you’re that tired.” It wasn’t what Sanzo had been planning on saying.

Goku yawned. “Nah. ‘m…. ‘m fine here, not sleepy…”

“Bullshit.”

Goku nodded at last, conceding the victory. “It’s the water.”

Sanzo froze. “What?”

“….tired, y’know…the sound of it? It’s just…” he yawned again. “Makes me tired.”

This from Goku, who rarely ever got tired before the sun went down. This from Goku who, although admittedly as strained as everyone from the recent trials, bounced back quicker than any of them. And the monkey had already slept most of the day away in the Jeep. By all rights he should have been up and careening around with some food in him.

Whatever. Sanzo lit a cigarette and dismissed it.

Gojyo soon admitted similar fatigue and announced he was turning in. The sun was inching ever closer to the horizon and already the clearing was full of spooling shadows. Still no rain. Hakkai stirred enough to glance blearily at the redhead’s declaration of intent to retreat. “It isn’t even dark yet.”

Gojyo shrugged. “Close enough.” Goku voiced sleepy agreement. They headed off to do the things that a Gojyo and a Goku did before disappearing into the tent.

Leaving Sanzo alone with the fire, and Hakkai.

Neither of which appeared inclined to conversation, a shame when Sanzo, for once, was sorely missing the usual chatter of his companions because it might drown out the sound of the river in his ears. His cigarette burned low, and he tossed it aside. Took out the shourejuu and began reloading it, one sanctified bullet at a time.

But Gojyo and Goku were discussing something in the tent, apparently. Every now and then he could hear snatches of near inaudible murmuring, for the most part incomprehensible when completing with the wind rustling the leaves on the trees and the high droning of insects. He’d catch maybe one or two words out of a sentence.

“…….–here…”

Amazing that they weren’t arguing, Sanzo reflected distantly, watching the fire. Gojyo rarely maintained civil conversations with Goku unless the monkey was angsting. Like after a bout with the Seiten Taisei. Gojyo had all kinds of gruff-big-brother-but-you-know-I-love-you conversations with Goku then, and Sanzo wondered wearily if Gojyo would ever get over Jien and the Jien sized hole in his life.

A knot in one of the logs popped, and the noise ricocheted through the clearing like a gunshot. The birds went silent. The wind did. Hakkai’s eyes were closed.

“……shouldn’t….”

Exasperation rose at the continued murmuring. Stupid gossiping morons. What happened to them being so damn sleepy that they didn’t even wait for the sun to go down, huh? He was this close to going over there and telling them to shut the fuck up.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice whispered quite audibly in his ear.

Sanzo jerked awake, one hand already going for his gun. From the other side of the fire Hakkai met his wild eyed gaze with a look of faint surprise.

“What’s….”

“Did you hear it?” Sanzo demanded, cutting the youkai off, his eyes darting. Nothing had changed. The campsite was exactly how it had been. When had he fallen asleep?

“Hear what?” Hakkai now looked absolutely confused.

Sanzo took a breath. Then another. He’d fallen asleep. He’d been dreaming, if Hakkai had not heard anything. Hakkai was a full youkai and could hear and see and scent things that Sanzo’s dull human senses couldn’t even begin to pick up.

“…nothing.” He sat back slowly, pretending his heart wasn’t racing. “Nothing. I was…dreaming.”

“Sanzo?”

Hakkai stood and moved to him, casting a surreptitious glance at the quiet tent and its ostensibly sleeping occupants before kneeling down in front of the priest. Sanzo was staring in incomprehension at his hands holding the gun in his lap. They were shaking, ever so slightly.

“It’s just the rain,” the youkai said quietly. “You’re exhausted. We all are. Ne?”

Warm fingers closed over Sanzo’s, steadying their trembling.

The blond closed his eyes, bowing his head fractionally in what might have been a nod of assent. Just the rain. Just the rain making him edgy. That was all.

“You should get some rest.” Hakkai’s lips brushed once over his forehead, gentler than the kiss of butterfly wings and then gone, back to tending the fire and taking his precious bodyheat with him. Sanzo restrained with greatest difficulty the urge to pull the man back.

Stupid youkai. Stupid rain. Stupid clearing. Stupid everything. Where the fuck was a bar when he wanted to drink himself unconscious.

Miles and miles away, that was where. And Sanzo stuck here with rain and rivers.

His mouth tightened.

Hakkai looked up when he stood.

“I’ll be back.” He shifted his weight reluctantly. The brunette nodded slowly, politely not inquiring as to where the monk thought he was going. Hakkai would have willingly tagged along if Sanzo had made the request, but Sanzo didn’t, because Sanzo wouldn’t stoop to admitting that he wanted someone else around for anything. So he said nothing, and left Hakkai there to guard the camp.

The long grass pulled at his robes as he waded through it. Wind sighed through it like voices, ruffling his bangs and making the edges of the sutra flutter. He scowled, irrationally wanting to kick something. Thunder growled lazily somewhere in the far distance, and he scowled harder. Great. Just fucking perfect.

He reached the top of the gentle incline and stopped. The river lay below him. The rush of it was clear, pervasive, steady over the noise of insects. Ringing in his ears.

There was a sudden dryness in Sanzo’s throat that he couldn’t explain. His shadow stretched long on the grass before him, just barely touching the bank edge, and he found himself wanting to step back so it would not. It took him several tries to move forward instead.

He descended the slope more carefully than its angle warranted, unable to shake the feeling that if he lost his footing, he’d go sliding right down the hill and wouldn’t be able to stop before falling in. He half turned at one point, trying to see if he could hear the crackling of the fire and accompanying sounds of life from the campsite, which wasn’t really that far away, but there was nothing. Wind in the grass and distant birdsong, and the steady flow of the river.

Sanzo thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and whipped his head back around to face the water. Nothing. Meadowgrass waving in the breeze. The edge of the clearing on the far side of the river lost in shadow. Nothing at all.

The exhalation wasn’t quite an explosion of held breath, because he hadn’t been holding his breath. Hadn’t. Had not.

Maybe Hakkai was right. He was tired. Tired and distracted and obviously delusional, since now he was seeing things in addition to hearing them.

He edged closer to the bank, trying not to think about how far back it might be undercut. How little pressure it would take for malleable earth to disintegrate from under his feet.

The river was barely wide enough to be classified above a stream, but too wide for even a youkai’s heightened abilities to clear with a jump. Quiet, too, without much of the expected turbulence of rocks or other objects jutting up from the bottom. Which meant it was deep. And very murky. He peered distrustfully at the surface but there was nothing to see, even close to the shore. The grass had overgrown the bank, so there was no visible precise edge where water met sand. Not like the other rushing whitewater rivers of the mountains, strewn with boulders. This was deep, quiet, and endless.

And other than that, nothing. Not dangerous. Not warranting the steady buzzing of his nerves. There was nothing about the scene he could put his finger on and say ‘that isn’t right.’

…but it wasn’t right.

He set his jaw and started to follow the current downstream, keeping well clear of the edge. He had no idea what he was looking for. The wind murmured in a language he didn’t understand and the river answered, low, steady, and ominous. There was an absence of noise from the usual abundance of small creatures that made their living around rivers and streams; insects, amphibians, whatever. No frogs and no fish, if one was to believe Gojyo’s whining.

Not more than two minutes later he came upon a section of the bank where the grass had been crushed down, as if something heavy had tried to drag itself up from the water. Broken and bent stalks waved lazily in the current.

It could have been from Gojyo, he rationalized, pretending that his stomach muscles hadn’t clenched on first catching sight of the anomaly. Gojyo in his heavy boots when he’d come down earlier to fish. Maybe this was the spot he’d picked. Maybe this was where he’d pushed aside bank grass to clear a place for his line. This where he’d paced back and forth in annoyance when nothing took the bait. The halfbreed was dumb enough to tromp around and not realize he was scaring off the fish with the vibrations. It could have been entirely Gojyo’s fault. A mundane explanation. Perfectly logical.

Right. And Sanzo was the Emperor of Japan.

Sanzo nerved himself to approach, wishing he’d thought to bring along a stick. Poking around in a place where something, anything could easily spring for him from cover was one of those stupid ideas worthy of production from a simian brain. Goku would surely have had no fear in kneeling down right next to the water and brushing aside greenery to see what was underneath. Goku probably would have had no fear in sticking his entire arm right into the brown water and feeling around for ….whatever happened to be down there.

As much as it galled him to admit it, Sanzo just wasn’t up to doing the same. Not here. Not now. And maybe he could justify it as due caution. After all, Sanzo wasn’t a legendary immortal youkai powerful enough to have been imprisoned by Heaven. Sanzo had far more cause to worry about being dragged under by something lurking and drowning than the damn indestructible monkey.

Okay, so that thought really didn’t make him want to go any closer to the bank.

This was ridiculous, the monk told himself sternly. Genjyo Sanzo, losing his nerve over some fucking puddle in the fucking middle of nowhere. He’d faced youkai and spiders and scorpions and war gods and psychotic former disciples and possessed demon princes and vengeful doll spirits and Buddha knew what else without flinching. This. Was. Ridiculous.

He gritted his teeth. Pulled out the Smith&Wesson and released the safety, keeping the weapon trained on the slow rush of water only a few feet away. Edged nearer with cat footed stealth that might have been comical under other circumstances, one step at a time, until he was close enough to toe aside a mat of trampled grass.

So much for his fishing Gojyo theory. There were no tracks left in the soft, muddy earth. No imprints at all save for the striations left from weeds. Nothing to indicate what had been here. What might still be here.

And no trace of youki. Sanzo didn’t like it. Didn’t trust it. Just because you couldn’t see anything didn’t mean something wasn’t there, as the saying went. He sensed nothing and the absence made him edgier than definite hostile presence would have.

A flash of white from the water. Sanzo jerked both gaze and gun towards it, resisting his first wild impulse to throw himself backwards out of pouncing range.

It had come from the edge of the weed mass floating on the water. He squinted, not wanting to go any closer to see. It happened again, a shape small, white, and without recognizable form floating up just under the surface but not breaking it, then subsiding back down into the murk. Again, and again, in regular pattern as he watched. Something caught on the edge of the grass, he realized. It was maybe three or four feet out.

For the briefest second of icy horror, he thought it might be Hakuryuu. But that was absurd. Hakuryuu was up by the fire with Hakkai, warm and comfortable and probably draped across the man’s lap getting fed tidbits. Even if the little dragon had taken it into his head to fly down here, Sanzo surely would have seen him. Would have heard some sort of ruckus if there’d been trouble. And Hakuryuu was by no means a defenseless, stupid creature with only animal instincts to dictate his actions. Sanzo had seen the Jeep mow down youkai with as much gusto and ability as any of the ikkou. Hakkai, of course, would have such a creepy pet.

The thing in the water floated up again to flash its white belly, or whatever portion of itself that was, and Sanzo admitted against his will that he’d already made up his mind to retrieve it to get a better look.

Not by the obvious, though. No way. Sanzo wasn’t doing something so monumentally stupid as leaning out over the water to try and snag it. Nor was he going to wade. Not a chance in hell.

He looked around. Located the nearest bunch of trees and trudged towards them, muttering all the way. Thunder rumbled, closer than it had been before, and the breeze was definitely picking up. He muttered more. He reached the trees and broke himself off a nice, long branch, and then stalked back down to the river edge in foul temper.

Was it his imagination, or did the water look darker than before? The floating reeds and grass more haphazardly arranged, as if they’d been stirred by something moving through them in his brief absence?

No, he told himself firmly, locking up and gagging his deranged imagination. No, no, and no. No.

The white object floated up invitingly. The branch was more than long enough to reach it. In the process of getting the tip out far enough, though, Sanzo miscalculated and felt it sink, and unconsciously prepared himself for the vibration of it hitting the bottom.

Nothing happened. He was surprised enough to let it slip further, and still there was no impact. The blond swallowed with some difficulty over the dryness in his throat, tightening his muscles to pull the stick back up to where it was supposed to be. Just how deep was that water anyway?

He hauled the dripping white thing up and promptly forgot about how deep the water was.

Fuck. Fuck. It was a sealing charm. Or a ward. The ink was so run and the parchment so near to disintegration he couldn’t tell. Either way, it was a Bad Thing.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’

Sanzo agreed wholeheartedly. Look what had happened the last time he’d run into something involving binding spells.

He let the sodden paper drop, and winced when it splashed on impact. It sank out of sight immediately. He hauled the stick back, for some reason not wanting to leave any evidence of his having …

meddled in what you should not

.. been here at all. There were no waterplants clinging to the branch either, although surely Sanzo must have swept it right through prime aquatic weed territory. No plants, no frogs, no fish. Like the river itself was dead.

.. cold, lifeless, this far down below the surface without light …

He shook his head, pretending he wasn’t scaring himself, pretending that all he had to do was walk off and things would be okay again. His ears were ringing and the current flow had taken on a sonorous, echoing cadence, like the sound of an aquatic body much larger.

… black waves on a blacker shore …

He flung the branch from him and made it two steps away from the river before the first wave of dizziness hit. Vertigo assaulted his senses violently and he nearly staggered sideways, the ground seeming to shift traitorously under his feet when in fact it was his own balance that rebelled. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t….

There was a figure standing on the opposite shore, watching him.

The Smith&Wesson clicked futilely on an empty chamber. Sanzo stood, shaking, his aim wavering all over the place, in utter shock over his own carelessness in not having reloaded (hadn’t he? Hadn’t he reloaded earlier? Had he been dreaming even then?). The revolver’s muzzle was pointed directly and uselessly across the water at …

…nothing. Nothing on the empty shore. Oxygen rasped in Sanzo’s lungs and he forgot to feel ashamed of its harshness, the admission of weakness in it, because the iron bar contracting his lungs had let up and that was what mattered. The dizziness was gone like it had never been. He could focus now, and concentrated on forcing discipline over the heaving of his chest. Slowly. In and out. Slowly. The hand holding the gun fell slowly back to his side.

Nothing on the empty shore but shadows.

It was too much. He closed his eyes and hoped the world would go away for just a little bit while he tried not to panic.

“Sanzo!”

Too much to ask for, evidently. Now there were fucking auditory hallucinations screeching his name.

“SanZO!”

…auditory hallucinations that sounded a hell of a lot like Goku.

He opened his eyes in time to not avoid said Goku tackling him. They both went down in a tangle like a ton of bricks.

Sanzo opened his mouth to express his violent indignation at being treated so, but something was in the way, soft warmth pressed fiercely against his lips and preventing articulate speech. Goku. Goku was kissing him.

“You called me,” the itan gasped out, breathless, and desperate with a fear as real and raw as Sanzo’s had been moments ago with the dizziness and suffocation. “You called me and you sounded like you were dying Sanzo, Sanzo, I could hear you screaming in my head and I thought, I thought…” He broke off, breath hitching suspiciously.

Sanzo knew very well what he’d thought. Damn that insidious mental connection of theirs. Even sound asleep Goku had picked up on the vertigo and panic thing and come running, convinced his precious guardian was getting his ass murdered somewhere.

….the monkey had fucking KISSED him.

He was so pissed off, so completely consumed by rage, that he didn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t decide what sort of terrible, terrible punishment he was capable of on such short notice to fit a crime of this scope.

So he settled for kissing the boy back, and for a moment there was no rain, no river, no sealing charm, no terror. Only solid warmth and life against him, wiry arms wrapped tightly around his torso and clinging with the pure strength of devotion. Maybe it was inevitable that things would come to this, someday. Inevitable as the tide and the change of seasons.

Tide. Sanzo shoved Goku off him. “I’m not dead. Keep your mouth to yourself, retard.” The priest would have added a deliberately misaimed gunshot for emphasis, but he was conveniently out of bullets.

Goku sat back on his haunches, eyes wide with what he’d done. “I….”

“Fuck off.” Sanzo was not up to dealing with this right now and, aiming a murderous glare at the gods above for dumping it on him, caught sight of the gathering storm in the process. Thunder mocked him. A drop of rain smacked him right in the eye. He swore and looked away, blinking furiously.

Okay. Goku could handle dropping the subject and pretending it hadn’t happened for the moment. He was just a little shocked at himself, truth be told. So he voiced the other Big Obvious Question, that being the reason Sanzo had been freaking out in the first place. “What happened?”

Sanzo stopped digging the heel of his palm into the victimized eye and opened his mouth to answer. Shut it. “…I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But we have a problem.”

“Fight?” Goku asked in the exact same tone as Hakkai had said ‘youkai’ earlier, golden eyes surveying terrain with identical ready tension.

“I don’t know,” Sanzo growled, frustrated. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong or what’s at work. Only that….it’s here. In this place.”

“What is?”

The monk glared. “Just go get Hakkai and Gojyo.”

Goku hesitated for only a second. “Will you…will you be alright by yourself?”

“GO!”

Goku eeped and skittered. “Going!”

Sanzo waited until the brat had disappeared over the crest of the hill before sinking to his knees, one hand over his mouth and quite possibly trembling. Shit. Shit. Why this, why now? What was wrong with him? Bad enough the things he’d done with Hakkai and Gojyo, although he knew they could take care of themselves, but to give into this with Goku, of all people …

..he’s going to get hurt ..

Yes, Sanzo agreed moodily. He settled down on the ground more comfortably and forced his hands to move and go about the old, familiar ritual of reloading his gun. That happened to those who tried to love him. Inevitable, like the tide and the change of seasons.

He stared dully at the river, wishing Goku would hurry the hell up and get back here with reinforcements. Sanzo could use some reinforcing. But he didn’t want to get up and follow, because that would mean turning his back on the water. And the something inside him that told him to always keep his eyes on a dangerous enemy was warning him now not to turn away.

Dead rivers. Storms. Seals, broken or not broken. He didn’t want to deal with any of it. Always a crisis. Always a disaster. Why couldn’t things just exist and not tangle themselves up into knots that required other people, people like him, to sort them out?

Why couldn’t he find peace anywhere …?

“Because of who you are. What you were, and what you’ll become.”

“Sanzo….”


Sanzo woke to the cold splatter of raindrops on his face and the words still echoing in his ears, one voice unfamiliar, one the quiet sigh of someone he’d known for years but at the same time couldn’t name. Because, for a moment, he had absolutely no idea where he was, and he clutched at the gun in unavoidable panic, eyes darting frantically. What had… how …

He stared. He’d fallen asleep. He’d fallen asleep on a grassy hill with a storm breaking overhead and a creepy, unnatural, possibly dangerous river not meters from him and the others …

..and the others hadn’t come to get him. Ice slipped into his gut like a knife. He scrambled up, ready to pelt back to the campsite with all dignity shoved aside by the dread that pulsed next to his heart, and nearly missed the quiet swish of waves against shoreline. Nearly missed the cold wind that lingered at the nape of his neck. He did not miss, however, the sudden unmistakable, overwhelming surge of Presence.

He froze.

It was right behind him. It was standing right behind him. He had turned his back on the river and it had come up from the black waters and it was standing right behind him.

Cold, cold wind. He couldn’t move, could not make himself so much as twitch, not to raise the revolver, not to chant his ultimate weapon. Surely he was unconsciously panicking again. But no Goku appeared at the top of the hill. No savior from whatever was watching, waiting, readying itself to strike.

He was alone.

Then, the strangest sound in the distance, the battle scream of …of …a wild horse, his mind supplied, though Sanzo had no reason to know what that would sound like and then the words dropped like bells into the silence …

“…never that, nikkou …”

Some small spark of warmth shot through his frozen fingers, and Sanzo squeezed his eyes shut and whirled, pulling the trigger in blind but point blank, accurate aim between the eyes of the thing that reached for him. The gunshot shattered the air like a cannon roar.

Violet eyes slit open carefully to see … nothing. Again. Fuck.

Sanzo backed up a step, keeping the gun up and aimed. Backed up another. Turned and then ran like hell up the incline. He could hear the river behind him laughing.

There was a light rain falling. Sanzo didn’t even notice his robes getting soaked, or the golden bangs plastered to his forehead. He was too busy being stricken at the sight before him.

Empty campsite. All supplies still there, no sign of struggle, no Hakuryuu, no Hakkai, no Gojyo, no Goku. Tent still up. Stack of firewood still there, a dish, a metal cup. The fire itself had gone out, was cold and had been for some time. How long had he been asleep?

He wanted to scream, but he didn’t. Wanted to rage at the uncaring storm and demand to know where they were, but he didn’t. He didn’t need to. He already knew.

It was the river.

The calm that settled over him would have been frightening in other circumstances. Like someone sleep walking he turned and went back to the hill, sloshing unheedingly through wet grass and puddles of muddy earth. His breath steamed slightly in the storm chilled air. Lightning broke above his head, turning the world into a flash negative, but he did not blink.

He came to the place where the water, stirred by breeze and rain, lapped hungrily at broken grass, and stopped. There was turbulence in the surface now, moreso than should have been even with the stormwind. One spot in particular, out in the middle, unmoving and humped beneath the wavelets, lurking just out of sight in the murky depths.

“I challenge you,” Sanzo said simply.

The dead river gave off no steam, though normally surface water is warmer than rainfall. It ran its course as it had for centuries, and the thing in the water continued to sit there and create little pockets of whirlpool behind it, and there was no answer made.

Sanzo stepped into the river. His first move forward brought the water up to his knees. The second nearly up to his waist. It was deep. So deep, and so cold. The rain was warm on his skin compared to it. His lips moved, but there no sound.

His heart about stopped when the first feathery touch brushed his hands. Just plants, he told himself frantically. Just plants in the water.

But there were no plants in the dead river.

It felt like hair. Silken waves of hair.

Oh fuck. Oh. Fuck. He tried to take another step and couldn’t.

Just plants in the water.

More brushes. It was closer. He steeled himself, spreading his hands slowly to grab ahold and yank it up ….

Now.

In one great rush it came at him, and he knotted his hands and pulled, and as they cleared the water he saw in sickening realization that it was long black human hair and …

He let the final syllable of the Makai Tenjyo go like a death sigh, and the world exploded in light and water.

Sanzo opened his eyes. It was gone.

Had he….?

Water swishing against shore. No. He hadn’t gotten it. Behind him. He clenched his teeth and drew the revolver in one swift motion, swinging around with a snarl of purest rage to face …

She.

Her wide, staring Eye.


The hand that erupted from the water behind him to clamp around his mouth and drag him under met little resistance, because Sanzo was far too busy going into shock. Or dying. He wasn’t sure which, under Her gaze. Then the river closed over his head and he didn’t bother to struggle, watching the silver bubbles escape his parted lips, watching with vague interest the pale, pale fingers that thrust into the water to claw after him and noted that they had no fingernails.

He was drowning, he supposed. He didn’t much care. Sanzo had wanted peace and he had it, now.

He passed out.







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