Lullaby

Silver bullets.

The raindrops were silver bullets, speeding down from Heaven to Earth, massacring all in their path. Harmless to some, deadly to others. Vicious in their apparent harmlessness.

Wash of imagined cold against his skin as he leaned against the window pane, listening to their dull thud. A flash of lightning that turned the distant trees into advancing ranks of monsters. Toothed and fanged, their growls the peels of thunder.

He knew what came next, a hapless player in a script rehashed too many times. Red to wash the clear. A mentor to fall, a pupil to live. A Sanzo to be minted on razor edge of a lightning bolt, between light and darkness.

He denied it. Fought against it, pitting every ounce of will into the effort. Small hands searching suddenly unfamiliar robes for a gun that was not there. Lips mouthing the chant, but the sutra around his shoulders was gone.

Too young. Too weak. Too slow.

And the youkai came, pouring endlessly through the shattered doors.

He moved. Oshou-sama moved. And then--

--light in the darkness.

A warm hand on his forehead.

A soft voice.

A word.

"Okinahare."

He grabbed at the hand hard enough to yank its owner off balance. The gun was there this time, its familiar grip resting against his calluses before he even realized that he had it.

Lightning flashed. Illuminated silver hair and wide eyes that might have been blue in the gloom. Glanced off the barrel of the revolver jammed against the Foreigner's forehead.

The scene remained frozen for heartbeats, and the only sound was Sanzo's harsh breaths punctuating the murmur of rain across the roof. Another wash of seconds before Sanzo's vocal chords could work, grating the words out. "What are you doing here?"

The other lowered his eyes briefly, tension leaking away, just slightly. "You were having a nightmare. I thought it best to wake you up."

"What the fuck are you doing in my room, asshole?" Heart beating too fast, nerves still raw from the proximity of the nightmare. And this presumptuous bastard, to come in, to shake him out of sleep and force a confrontation on this of all nights, this of all times...

"I beg your pardon, Sanzo-han, but you are in my room." Hazel eased his hand from Sanzo's suddenly slack grip. "You must have mistaken the room after consuming a large quantity of sake or beer," he said gently, "For when I arrived you were asleep on the bed."

It would have been a mercy to be able to call the man on a lie, but Sanzo's sleep-fogged brain had begun to notice the slight differences that marked this room as disparate from his own. The layout. The cape, hung on door of a cupboard that his room didn't sport. Two books on a side table that was positioned away from the window rather than against it.

He stowed the gun in silence, rising. Unsteady on his feet, the swirls of residue alcohol still spinning in his head. He was due and more than due for a hangover the next day. Hazel had been kind in his assessment -- it had been an excessive quantity of sake and beer. All to drown out the falling patter of the rain. All in an attempt to dive into stupor so deep that he would be able to avoid the dreams. All futile.

Hazel rose in silence as well. Absent the cape, his vestments blended into the gloom, and the eye was drawn naturally to the shock of sleep-mussed silver hair. Where had he been sleeping? Surely not on the floor. Surely not in the same bed. The very thought was abhorrent.

The presumption of the bastard, to try and awaken him from dreams. To pull him away from what was rightfully his alone. To stand there with misplaced concern written clear upon his face.

"I don't need your help," Sanzo hissed.

Hazel inclined his head. "I understand the nightmares. I too--"

Sanzo blinked back the sudden surge of jealous fury, and then his hands were on the slighter man's shoulders, shoving him up against the wall. "Don't presume to pity me, you bastard." You don't understand. You could never understand. Whoever your mentor was, he was not Oshou-sama. And oshou-sama was perfect--

--"I apologize. I did not mean to insult you," Hazel was saying.

A Genjo Sanzo on a clear night might have dropped his hands and walked away, embarrassed. A Genjo Sanzo under the light of day might have muttered an apology, however insincere. A Genjo Sanzo caught in the haze of alcohol, nerve wracked by the lightning that broke overhead, exhausted and tense in the aftermath of days of heavy cloud and threatened rain... dug his fingers in, nails biting into the fabric. Wanting, needing to see some reflection of the jangled discord in his own heart on that too-composed, too-knowing face. Wanting to tear the pain in his chest out and inflict it on someone else.

You could never understand.

"Sanzo-han--"

"Shut up."

Hazel's eyes narrowed slightly. "It would be best if--"

"Shut UP." Both hands moved, from shoulders to neck, to tighten around that pale throat. Sick satisfaction as the other gasped for breath, words choked off, fingers clawing uselessly at his own, trying and failing to summon his shikigami.

Sudden pain exploded in his gut. He doubled backwards, dropping hands to clutch around his stomach where the bishop must have kneed him. Nausea churned violently, slaughtering his balance. He hit the side of the bed as he fell. Dimly, he saw Hazel staggering away to collapse weakly against that side table, gasping for breath. Retching dryly, even as Sanzo himself fought against vicious contractions of his stomach.

A sudden thought, slicing through the haze. What did I do?

Sudden pain in his chest. Sudden crash of darkness at the edges of his vision as the rain doubled. Hammering down like silver bullets silver streaks of death as he curled in on the pain. Old scars torn open with every strike. Emotional pain so intense that it transcended into physical: old, old pain that never really went away. He bled from his eyes, twin streaks of clear tears that welled up and fell away. As unstoppable as the flood of red that gushed from the massive wound across oshou-sama's chest.

"Sanzo-han?" a soft voice. A familiar voice, but rough and broken around the edges.

He bit in on the pain, trying to draw breath around the sobs.

"Do not apologize," a rustle as someone knelt by his side, evidently speaking in response to something he must have said. "There is nothing to be sorry for."

He caught the elusive breath then, a gush of air into burning lungs. Cool, clear air that swept through his limbs and his mind. Another cleared the cobwebs and banished the ghosts of the past back to their closet.

Moisture cling stubbornly to his eyelashes as he blinked to clear his vision. Hazel was beside him, and his face was a closed book. No small smile to turn up the corners of his mouth, no matching glimmer in his eyes. Just an impassive stare, neither forgiving nor condemning, as if nothing had happened at all.

Nothing. Never that.

Sanzo's hand moved of its own accord, fingers ghosting along the edge of the rumpled collar, tracing the forming bruises. There were hidden buttons that he found, which he moved instinctively to unfasten.

A hand on his wrist, gentle but firm. "You had best return to your own room." And then Hazel was pushing him away, preparing to stand.

And the part of Sanzo that was awake on this night of cold rain called out. "Stay," a quiet request by one not gifted with the eloquence when he so badly needed it. Unable to voice what he wanted. Unable to say that he needed. Untrained and unlearned in this most simple of skills, for when had there ever been a time when he had asked and been given?

"Stay?" Hazel asked, clearly perplexed.

He could not say it again. Words too long unsaid, desires too long denied. Want was not a word in his dictionary; he had put it aside a long time ago. He did not want. He did not love. Both were hideous traps.

And yet half of him reached out, stretching for what he did not know, just a hand to saving him from the drowning tide--

--Hazel's hand met his halfway, warm and ungloved, real and firm in its grasp. And returned his hand to his lap, to leave it lying there.

"Sleep, Sanzo-han."

He could have growled in frustration. Instead, he reached out again, quickly before second thoughts could break his conviction. Fingers entwined with fingers, gripping with light desperation. A wordless tug towards himself, a silent plea. One hand around the back of Hazel's neck to draw him close.

Just desperation, he told himself. An indulgence as much as the sake, just an attempt to drown out the pouring rain, because there was nothing else between them, because there could be nothing else between them, never mind the echoes of another soul who might finally resonate.

Hazel's face so close to his that Sanzo could feel his breath across a still-damp cheek.

Hazel looked away. "No." And slipped from his grasp, softly and silently. Suddenly the Foreigner was standing, several paces away, and Sanzo could not recall having seen him move.

"No," Hazel repeated. "I apologize, Sanzo-han. I cannot do this."

"Why not?" Dark anger. Bitter anger.

"My faith forbids it. And you will thank me for it in the morning."

Sanzo found his feet, and through sheer stubbornness forced the world to stop swaying. "An excuse." For he could see it, clear as if it had been written in shining letters. Just a convenient shield to hide behind, because Hazel was a man of faith as much as he himself was. The core existed, and all else could be taken or discarded. Words, all just words. "That's just a bloody excuse."

"Perhaps." And yet he stood there and did not leave, his collar still unbuttoned, and something bleak in his eyes.

Something crumpled. Some shred of resolve, or pride maybe. "...I do not understand," Sanzo said at last, defeated. Teach me. Show me. Because somehow you did it, somehow you survived and learnt to go on surviving...

"By allowing the pain to come, and to pass. For all things pass, in their own time," Hazel replied, and Sanzo realized that he must have spoken aloud. Something distant flickered across his face. "For you cannot conquer that which you hold at bay. Victory is gleaned only by facing down your enemy."

"But you're holding back. Hiding behind your excuse of a religion." He could not mellow the words. He did not know how. This was a night for truth, for plain words. If the other could not understand that, then he could never hope to...

"How can I reach out, Sanzo, if you do not reach out to me?" Hazel asked quietly. "What you want is nothing more than distraction. Oblivion." And a pained look in his eyes. And I will not betray my faith for something so trivial.

"No strings attached means no scars to tend to later." Words almost bitten off, a weakness that he thought he would never admit to anyone.

Hazel bowed his head briefly. "It is the wound that pains. But wounds heal, and I would bear those scars and account myself blessed." He looked up. "For not all pain is evil."

Sanzo shook his head, unable to understand.

A breath of air then, the quiet shifting of movement in the dark. Arms around his shoulders, a warmth against his cheek, and whispered words in his ear. "Dismiss skepticism. Let me show you."

He wanted to pull away. Something in him screamed to break that contact, to walk out, back to the cold corridor where the ghosts that he had to face were the old familiar ones.

And yet he stood there and did not leave.

"You have nothing to fear but fear itself," Hazel said quietly.

"I fear nothing."

He sensed rather than saw the smile. "Then prove it."

And there was no way he could resist that challenge.

In the morning he would find Hazel's back to his as the other man dozed. In the early hours before the sun rose he would listen to cadence of the rain as it gradually slowed, and the pillow against his cheek would still be slightly damp where he had bled out old emotional wound until it was dry.

And he would be given the chance to leave, and return to the world he had known. Or to stay, and embrace some new, uncertain future.

And when he awoke in the same bed again to the feel of fingers running gently through his hair, he would find that the sun had risen. The pillow would be dry, the last of the poison in that wound finally removed so that it could start the long delayed process of healing.

And he would find that the rain had stopped.