Road’s End
By sf

Rating : PG

And where do we go from here? A quick take on the end of the road for the Journey to the West.

--

"Sanzo? Sanzo?" the words bounced off broken stone and whipped through empty corridors, echoing strangely. "Sanzo, are you coming?" There was the sound of someone making his way quickly across uneven ground, not paying particular attention to his footing. "Sanzo..... ow!"

There was a brief exclaimation of pain, coupled with the sound of someone slipping and falling onto a large pile of rubble.

Genjo Sanzo wasn’t paying attention to the voice. He’d long since perfected the art of tuning it out when it grew bothersome and irrelevant to matters at hand.

There was the sound of someone making his way rather more cautiously through the ruins. A softer voice : "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," the first voice grumbled. "But I’m starving! Can’t we get a move on? It’s all over, after all, and I’m hungry."

Worlds could be built, Sanzo reflected, and empires could fall... but Goku would always be hungry. He prodded at the rubble with his foot. Gravel and sand gave way to reveal a flash of color. He knelt to inspect it more closely, dusting at dirt with his fingers.

The waning light of the evening sun revealed Gyuumao’s crest, carved into the floor and painted in hues of red and gold. Sanzo regarded it for a moment, then stood and dusted himself off. His abrupt movement caused the rubble to move, and stone and sand shifted to bury the insignia once more.

"But why can’t we go?" the voice was whining again. "What’s he looking for?"

Sanzo snorted gently, and continued down the corridor. Around him, Gyuumao’s legacy was being slowly buried as the castle caved in on itself. There were things here that many would kill to get their hands on -- treasure, gold, magical artifacts. At the rate things were going, these were going to be buried beyond recall in short order. Sanzo paid them no heed as he strode past. He couldn’t care less about them -- but he did care about one thing in this castle, and he had yet to find it.

Gyokumen was dead, and her minions with her. Even if ‘never’ was too presumptive a word, one could safely assume that Gyuumao would not be revived in a hurry. The Three Aspects’ mission, after three long years, had finally been accomplished. His own mission, on the otherhand, was yet as incomplete as it had been when he’d first set foot from Chou An.

"Sanzo, you’d better hurry!" Goku yelled. "The place is coming down around our ears!"

More gravel fell at that, and Sanzo winced. He glanced back, and caught Hakkai’s eye. Hakkai shot him an understanding smile, and spoke something to Goku that he couldn’t hear.

"Oh." It was still loud, but already markedly softer.

Sanzo continued past ruined banks of equipment, some still with youkai corpses sprawled over them. He hadn’t really expected them to win... but then again, he’d never entertained any thoughts about losing either. And in the end...

...he brushed aside idle thoughts as he continued his search.

He found it at last, half buried. A telltale green corner gave it away, the only flash of color in a world of grays and black. Stooping, feeling the breath freeze in his lungs in some combination of relief and anticipation, he pried the debris aside and fished it gently out.

It was the Seiten Sutra, torn, tattered, and mostly burnt away. It was shredded, wellnigh unreadable, and the knowledge within lost beyond recall. But it was the Seiten Sutra, the one object that had guided his path and life since leaving Kinzan temple... a course that had taken him sixteen years and across the world.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, tracing the remaining words and recalling that fateful night years ago -- the last time he’d seen the sutra.

"Why do you have two sutras?" he’d asked, curious.

Then there had been one. And for as long as he’d been a Sanzo, there had only been one.

Remember that you are not only the guardian of the Seiten sutra... you are also the guardian of the Maten sutra, the Three Aspects had told him.

He ran a finger right to the ragged edge of the sutra, blackened where the fire had consumed the other half. His lips moved silently, reciting the half remembered words.

The Seiten sutra had never been his, certainly not like the Maten sutra had been. It had always been his master’s lost sutra, despite his brave words as a newly minted Sanzo to the abbot of Kinzan temple. And even as he held it in his hand, he realized that it was as lost to him as it had always been.

A thing of the past, he reflected. An object whose time passed after its guardian’s death...

When he returned to the entrance, the sun had set completely. Somewhere in the depths of the castle, a fire had sprung up, and the light and smoke obscured the stars.

Strains of conversation drifted to him. "...that’s disappointing. I thought Kanzeon was going to appear in a huge flash of light and give us a huge pot of gold. Or something."

"But we already have Sanzo’s gold card..."

"...Yeah, but how long’s that going to last? After we hightail it back to Chou An, I doubt Mister High Priest is going to take us out to breakfast, lunch and dinner... I missed three good years of employment here, and I demand compensation."

"You weren’t exactly employed, Gojyo."

"It’s the principle of the thing--" he paused, sighting Sanzo. "Finally! We thought you were going to take all night. What on earth were you doing?"

"None of your business," Sanzo told him, and stepped into the passenger seat of the Jeep. "Let’s go."

"Yeah, before we all get burnt to death!" Goku seconded.

Hakkai was staring at the ruined castle, watching the flames dance against the dark sky. It wasn’t hard to guess at what he was thinking -- something involving another youkai castle, six years ago, which had been razed to the ground.

They took the only road out of the valley. It was uncharacteristically silent in the Jeep, with Goku asleep and the rest lost in their own thoughts. As they left the burning ruins behind, the stars came out. The brightest ones appeared first, one by one, then the rest seemed to burst out at once, covering the sky from horizon to horizon with twinkling lights. Hakkai glanced up, and his smile seemed to grow a little wider.

"Stop here," Sanzo told Hakkai quietly, when they reached the edge of the valley. He stepped out of the Jeep. Hakkai glanced up. "Going somewhere?"

"I have something to do. Wait for me here."

"Will you be all right? We’re still in danger of being attacked by youkai," Hakkai said.

"I won’t be long." He stepped swiftly between the trees and was gone.

Hakkai glanced at the backseat. Thank goodness both of them are sleeping...

Sanzo had seen the river on the way in, and he wasn’t sure why he remembered it... or why he’d thought of this at all. But an end by fire had seemed inappropriate.

He followed the remnants of the Seiten sutra as it drifted downstream. Fragments broke off and sank beneath the surface, and before long, water shimmered over the rest.

Something in him sank with the sutra. For the first time in more than a decade, there was nothing to drive him -- no order, no mission, no purpose. He toyed briefly with the idea of leaping into that river to see where it would take him, and perhaps some part of him did, because it finally hit him -- that he was free. Free from any obligation to the gods and free from the shackles of the past and his master’s legacy.

What is freedom? his master had asked him. Even the birds may curse their wings if they do not have a branch to return to ...

And yet they head south for the winter, he noted. Perhaps it is not the branch that matters, but any branch that will house them...

He waited until the last fragments disappeared entirely beneath the water’s surface. The river would bring the sutra to the sea, and it would find its final resting place far away. Perhaps it would even make its way, by currents along the coast, or by tributaries -- if such existed -- back to the river by Kinzan temple.

"I doubt it," he muttered. So long as it’s lost and destroyed.

He turned, and came face to face with Hakkai. There was an uncomfortable pause. "I thought I told you to wait."

"You didn’t say not to follow," Hakkai countered gently. "Besides, you were gone rather long. I was worried."

Sanzo shook his head and started back. "If you don’t mind me asking," Hakkai said, as he fell in step beside him, "Why come this far just to throw it away at the end?"

Sanzo paused, half turning to stare at the silvered ripples winding away into the distance. There was nothing to be seen now, of course, just the flickering reflection of the trees and the sky. A dozen answers and more flashed through his mind. Finally, he shrugged. "Non-attachment."

They came back to the Jeep to find the remaining occupants wide awake and squabbling. Goku saw them first, and practically tumbled out of the Jeep in his haste. "Hey, where did you guys go?! Why didn’t you tell us?"

"Sanzo had something to take care of," Hakkai replied, when the priest showed no signs of replying. They boarded the Jeep, but not before Sanzo took the fan to Gojyo’s head -- several times -- for various lewd comments on two men vanishing into the forest in the middle of the night.

"So, Sanzo..." Hakkai said, staring at the road ahead. It forked neatly, one road heading West, the other... East. "Which way do we go?"

Sanzo started to reply, then fell silent.

"Back, of course!" Gojyo said loudly. "We’re done, aren’t we?"

"And I’m hungry," Goku wailed. "Do you know how hungry fighting makes me? We’ve been fighting the whole day and then some!"

"So... Eastward, Sanzo?" Hakkai asked.

Eastward. Back to Chou An, back to Shayouten, and back to their own life. He glanced at the other occupants of the Jeep. "It took us three years to get here."

"I’m sure the return trip will be faster," Goku said. "I mean... look at all the delays we had along the way."

"No thanks to you," Gojyo said.

"Hey!"

"I didn’t say anything about how long it’ll take to get back," Sanzo cut them short. "I was talking about how long it took to get here."

There was a pause, as various parties pondered his words.

Gojyo was the first to speak. "If you didn’t want to go back, you could’ve just said."

"Is there anything to go back to?" Sanzo replied.

Another pause, as they recalled rusty memories. A temple, bounded by ritual and detached from the world. An old, rundown house on the edge of town, deserted for three years.

"It’s probably collapsed under its own weight, hasn’t it?" Gojyo asked Hakkai.

"Actually, someone’s probably taken it over by now..."

"I don’t know," Gojyo said, with a tiny sigh. "I somehow always thought that we’d be heading home after all this was over."

Hakkai thought a while before replying. "Depends on what you define as ‘home’."

A soft chuckle met that. "It does, doesn’t it? But a bed and real meals would be good."

"In which case, home is where an inn is. And we didn’t precisely have real meals back there... instant ramen doesn’t count."

Sanzo was silent, staring off into the distance.

"Well..." Gojyo leaned back. "Monk’s got a point there."

"What point?" Goku asked.

"You know... Chou An only serves vegetarian cuisine, remember?" Gojyo said, feigning nonchalance.

"Oh, damn! I’d forgotten about that! Ne, Sanzo, I don’t really want to go back... Sanzo, are you listening?"

"Well, that seems to settle it," Hakkai said with a chuckle. "After all, we’ve been going West for so long... it would feel a little strange to turn back. What do you say, Sanzo?" he asked. "Shall we head out? It’s a long road and we don’t have a map."

Sanzo turned to him with the tiniest hint of a smirk. "It’s up to you."

Hakkai stepped on the gas. "West it is."

***
The End
***

[1] Inspired by the Sanzo-centric flashback scene in ‘Burial’. Probably the main reason why he agreed to go West was because of the Seiten sutra, after all.

[2] In reality, the sutras are supposedly indestructible. At least you know this fic will never come to pass ^_^.

[3] Once, after watching the first second and before watching the second, I read a fic about the end of the journey. I was traumatized, because I thought it was real. Just so you know, this fic is entirely of my imagination, and I’m sure that Minekura has something else planned.

[4] The idea, if it wasn’t explicitly clear, is to keep moving. Non-attachment.

[5] All cookies and feedback welcomed. This is likely to be the last update for a while - blame it on college orientation. Cookies will be especially welcomed if they stop my gut from hurting.

sf, July 31 2003.