by Princess of Pain

NOTES: Once again, this contains spoilers--this time as regards Gojyo's brother, Jien. If you have no idea who he is beyond some shadowy figure in Gojyo's memories, you shouldn't read this.

This was one of three fics that I wrote, in which I was trying to write about Gojyo without writing him as the narrator. In other words, forcing myself to get other characters' perspectives on him. His brother seemed a likely candidate. The others--"The Thing Beneath the Stair" and "Hunting For Wild Hanyo"--do the same thing with Gojyo's mother and the people in the village he lived when he met Cho Gonou, respectively.

*~*~*

I’m just a simple youkai, not given to philosophical babbling, or to writing.   But I have something I need to record, and probably after that, something to burn.  So here I am, making a clean slate by filling up pages with my past.  And here I go.

Sometimes, I think I understand what my mother saw in Gojyo, and why she hated him so very much.

Now, you understand why that’s not something I’d ever admit to anyone.  Not Kou, and certainly not Gojyo himself.   The guy’s been through enough.  It’d be cruel of me to walk up to him–maybe on one of the many encounters Kou designs, the ones that never turn out right–and say, “Hey, man, I know why Ma hated you so much, and it’s because more often than not, I hated you too.”  I think he’s been through enough, don’t you?

I don’t like hatred.  It’s base.  It’s crude.  It’s the caveman’s club of the vast array of emotions that humans (and, yes, youkai) feel.  But… I just couldn’t help it.

You probably wouldn’t have been able to, either.  I loved my mother, and sometimes, it seemed like Gojyo was the one who ruined her.  She was fine, before… I guess you could have called her obsessive over Dad, but hey, name me a woman in love who isn’t.

Gojyo was one of those little kids who just got under your skin.  I guess he got under mine for the same reason that he got under Mom’s, and it’s not his fault: he just happened to favor his mother.  The woman, the human that Dad decided to have a fling with.  The human who died and dropped her child on us like one of Yaone’s bombs.  Really, can you imagine having to care for the child of your dearest love and the woman he’d been having on the side?  It was insult to injury.  It was like being robbed, and instead of getting the robber and our valuables back, having to pay him for damages or something.

I was usually the one who’d separate them before Mom got a chance to actually kill him, or do too much damage–though once, she broke his arm before I got a hold of her.  I liked to tell myself at the time that it was always because of him, you know?  I was playing the heroic knight in proverbial shining armor.  Right.  Sure.  And never once did I charge through the house at the sound of her shrieking and him screaming in agony, thinking not about what was being done to him, but worrying about what might be done to my Ma if she killed him.

Everyone in our town hated Gojyo like fire, and it’s possible that even if she had, nothing might have come of it.   Maybe she wouldn’t even have gone to Hell–the gods despise hanyos, so I’m told.  But maybe there would have been an attempt at justice… just for show.  But all the same, I couldn’t let my Ma go to jail.  Not for a little brat whom, she was fond of saying, was not worth the flesh he was printed on.

And maybe… maybe sometimes, I thought that he was just as worthless.  Like I said, I hated him a little, too.  I’d look at him, and sometimes, it was like I’d stolen my mother’s eyes.  I saw parts of him which were Dad’s contributions to his making: his hands, mostly, and the shape of his face.  And the smile.   Everything else, though, was like he’d been cloned from his mother.  I only figured it because of the differences between him, Ma and I: his build is slender, the shape of his mouth is too soft, he easily tans… little things like that.  And when I saw all those little differences, I’d think, I lost my parents, and what did I get in return?  I got a screaming banshee with my mother’s face who smells of booze and anguish... and I got a little brat who made her that way.

I’d wonder what right he had to come into my life and ruin everything.  Didn’t it ever occur to him that we were HAPPY?   I remember being happy as a child, when my parents still loved each other, and there was no such thing as a little redheaded child who broke my heart with his tears.  And Gojyo very neatly took all that away.

So I never did enough.  I ran too slowly–quick enough to keep Ma from getting into trouble, slow enough to ensure that he’d get a beating.  I’d tell kids at school to keep away from him, but when they started in on one of their rock-throwing rings, the same thing happened.

And you want to know what the bitch of it was?  As if all that wasn’t enough?

Every time I felt that familiar flare of hate rise up in my heart against him, the little bastard did something to make me hate myself for ever feeling it!

Like I said, Gojyo had a talent for getting under people’s skins.  (Probably still does, from what I’ve seen of his teammates.)  Anything that went wrong in town was Gojyo’s fault, even if there was no conceivable way for him to have done it.  I remember when he was seven–there was a drought.  That wasn't uncommon in our area of the world.  It’s not quite a desert, but it’s certainly dry, and droughts happened once every few years.  Only this one was a real monster of a dry spell.  Everything that bothered to take root would push up out of the hardpan, feel the broiling sun, and give up and die right there.

No way that could have been his fault, right?  Except that he’s a hanyo, and we all know that hanyos–just by being alive–bring bad fortune to everyone around them.  All the farmers told their children that the “little sonofawhorin hanyo” was responsible for the drought.   And one day, a bunch of clodhopper’s kids beat the living bejesus out of him.   I’d timed my heroic rescue like normal, but there was about three times as many kids than usual.  He was one giant bruise by the time I could clear them all off him… a giant bruise with countless cuts and a broken rib, if I remember correctly.

I looked down at him, feeling that odd disgust at his complete inability to defend himself and the sight of the blood.  There were only two clean places on his body: the two trails of tears running from his eyes.  I reached down to pick him up, but he (and it must have taken all the strength he had) actually smacked me a good one across the knuckles.

I jerked back my hand with a hiss.  “What was that for?” I snapped.  I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it.  It hurt like hell.  “I just saved you, Gojyo!”

He was silent.  I found myself looking at him–not as the reason why my happiness was destroyed, or something that had to be kept alive to keep Ma out of trouble, or as an inconvenient little brat who had to be saved.  I didn’t even see him as I did whenever Ma wasn’t around: as my little half-brother, a confused but all-right kid.

Now that I’ve fought him, I think I know what I was seeing: the man he was going to become.

“I’m going to walk home on my own two feet,” he said.  He sounded like he was talking through a mouthful of mud, but I heard him clearly enough.  “And when we get there, after you help me bandage myself up, you are going to teach me how to fight.”

I gaped.  In the entire time I’d known the little squirt, he’d never said anything so surely before.  “Fight?  Don’t you know?  Fighting them will make it worse.”

Slowly–I’m sure it pained him–he shook his head.  “They’re bullies.  Bullies are mean and weak.  I’ll fight back, and they’ll back off.”  He tried to smile; the action broke my heart.  “You won’t be able to save me forever.”

I couldn’t gainsay that.  He allowed me to help him up, but not to carry him home.  It took us half an hour to walk a distance that we could have normally covered in five minutes, but he did it on his own two feet.  And after I helped him bind his wounds (and snuck him a small knock of whisky to help with the pain), I took him out back and started teaching him the basics.

Do you see what I mean now?  Most kids at seven, if they get picked on, they become cowards.  They run and hide as best they can, and dream up revenge from the tops of the trees they clamor up to escape.  Especially kids who were getting picked on like he was… but he used it to make himself stronger.  He not only learned something that profound, he taught it to me... and I was twice his age!

But what killed me was that he’d had to learn such a thing in the first place.  I hated myself for letting it happen, for not defending him and for forcing him to defend himself.  And I felt like shooting myself when, after the lesson was over, he gave me a hug and a smile.   I tried to smile back, but the blood on his teeth was a hard thing to grin at, if you know what I mean.

I loved my mother.  But in the end, I loved him, too, no matter how much I hated him.

So I had to defend him, that once.  When she put those scars on his face… I knew that she wasn’t fucking around that time, that she really was going to kill him if I didn’t stop her right then.  And pulling her back to her room, talking to her, brushing her hair… none of that would soothe her.  She wanted blood.

And I gave it to her.

We can never be brothers again, or even half-brothers… we both knew that when we looked at each other through our tears, looking over my mother’s and his tormentor’s body.

But… I will never hate him again.  We might be enemies now, but that’s just for show–we both know the truth, on the inside.  We can’t be brothers, but we can be comrades.  And that’s not so bad.  I’ve seen him with his companions, and the way they act around each other.  He loves them like his blood ran in their veins, and theirs in his.  In a way, I guess it does–haven’t they shed it around each other enough times?

I think that being Gojyo’s friend would be one of the highest honors a simple youkai like me could ever expect to receive.

~Owari~