The secret voice in Sanzo’s head had fallen
silent, after a wave of uncharacteristic, unbearable sadness had exploded in
the blonde’s mind. He did not like to think what Goku had felt, to send such a
strong burst of emotion across their special bond. The brunette youth was
unresponsive to even the monk’s calls.

The king could not be contained, and one by
one the royal guardsmen were flung to the ground. Kougaiji’s screams were
primal. Raw.

Sanzo, remembering the profound loss and
anger he had felt looking at his murdered master, suddenly recalled what a
terrible price the king had paid for victory.

With a quickness that had allowed him to
survive thousands of youkai attacks, the monk avoided two blows and smacked the
king sharply on the side of the head with the butt of his gun, plunging
Kougaiji into unconsciousness.

The royal guardsmen gaped in horror.

“Kou!” Doku had arrived on the scene. He
dropped to his knees beside his now prone lover. “What did you do?”

Sanzo glared back at the yelled enquiry,
forgiving it because he saw and understood the concern on the handsome youkai’s
face, “Given him some relief from the poison. Work fast, get the cure in him
before he gets trapped in his mind and loses himself.”

Yaone was only moments behind the tall
youkai. She knelt beside the destroyed robot and lifted it carefully. The
pharmacist would examine the poison from the sting in the lab, and formulate
the neutraliser from there.

“Sanzo! Goku!”

The two other members of the Sanzo-ikkou
came running. Hakkai was in his pyjamas and Gojyo was shirtless. Both were red
and puffing, obviously not from the sprint here. Houtou Castle was big, but
these two barely broke a sweat fighting hundreds of youkai at once.

Sanzo guessed immediately what their
current shared flushed, breathless state meant. “Tch. Disgusting!” he griped,
lighting a cigarette. It would have been amusing, in an irritating sort of way,
if Goku weren’t in such danger.

******

“Looks like Nii left us a nasty parting
gift,” Hakkai said.

He sat down next to Sanzo on the couch that
faced Goku’s bed. The youth was curled up tightly, lost in deep sadness made
all the more awful by the silence with which he bravely endured his pain. The
only sounds he made were periodic, soft, wordless whimpers, when the bursts of
agony racked his smallish frame and made his limbs shake.

“With Yaone’s medicine, the poison will
eventually leave his body. And I’ve already closed the wound caused by the
sting,” the brunette said quietly, knowing that the monk was worried, but would
not ask after Goku.

“However, it’s not the physical damage that
we should worry about, and I think you know that. The poison’s power lies in
its ability to force the victim to relive his greatest pain, and distort
reality so that the grief becomes all-consuming,” Hakkai continued. “He might
not be able to snap out of the dark mood even after the poison leaves his
blood, unless we do something…”

The friends shared a moment of silence,
both acknowledging the gravity of the situation.

“Goku’s too stupid to stay sad for long,”
the monk said, after awhile. If there was one thing that characterised the
youth, it was his irrepressible optimism.

“As long as he knows that he has you, he is
happy, Sanzo,” the green-eyed youkai said.

The blonde gave Hakkai a hard stare that
would have terrified brave men into silence. Nobody else would dare raise this
subject with the hard-arsed, hot-tempered monk, but the brunette knew that he
had Sanzo’s trust, that he was the closest thing the prickly personality had to
a best friend.

And now, more than ever, he had to exercise
that right and probe the place where angels and gods dare not tread: Sanzo’s
heart. “May I speak plainly?” Hakkai asked with a polite smile.

“Have I ever been able to stop you?” the
monk grunted, his ill temper obvious. His friend was going to nag him for being
such an insufferable pain, he knew it, but maybe it was time for another of
these well-meaning lectures.

“When I was closing his wound, Goku called
out to you, very softly. He said, ‘Sanzo, why do you despise me? Why do you
hate me?’” the emerald eyes filled with sad emotion, even as the gentle smile
stayed on the familiar lips.

The monk turned away abruptly, and for a
moment Hakkai worried that this important conversation would be cut short by a
spectacular burst of bad temper. Tense moments passed. But then, finally, Sanzo
exclaimed, “I never said that I hated him!”

The brunette was touched by the surprise
and restraint in that voice. He calmly and gently addressed the back of his
friend’s head. “It is easier for Gojyo and I to take the hard words, and to
look beyond them. We know that we can trust in your friendship because we see
your true intent and emotion in your actions, and do not take what you say to
heart. But Goku can’t always tell the difference, and sometimes when you push
him away or call him annoying, or stupid, it hurts him very deeply. Not only
because he’s young, Sanzo, but because you’re everything to him. I know that he
cares about me and Gojyo more than most people ever care about anyone else in
their lives, but that pales in comparison to the world of love that he feels
for you.”

“If that is how he feels, he can tell me
himself. It’s infuriating that you are speaking to me about this,” Sanzo
hissed. But even as he put on this hard, uncaring front, he recalled in his
mind how beautiful it had been to be kissed by the youth, and to hear the rush
of love and desire in that secret voice that whispered so constantly in his
mind.

“But you never let him speak to you!
Honestly, you’re difficult most days and impossible the rest! Even I know that
I’m risking my life by talking to you like this, but seriously, Sanzo, Goku is
beyond anybody else’s help; the only thing that will save him now is if you let
him know that you care,” Hakkai said.

“I don’t want something that I have to
protect. Let the bakazaru manage his own business,” the monk grated out.

“Na, Sanzo, I know you don’t mean that.
There is nothing more I can say, only that I wouldn’t wish the pain of having
nothing precious enough to protect on anyone, especially not my friend. Please
do what you can for Goku,” Hakkai smiled gently before leaving the room and
closing the door in his polite, unobtrusive way.

Sanzo cursed. He hated the way Hakkai
reminded him so much of his master, always so gentle and kind, and completely
right, of course. It made him feel like an insensitive, bad mannered kid again.
Although, even he had to concede, he very often acted like one.

Goku whimpered again and Sanzo rose to his
feet in concern. The annoying voice had fallen silent in his mind these past
hours, and although he loathed admitting it, it was far more irksome when it
was absent.

“Goku,” he said.

Sanzo clicked, mortified, as the youth’s
hands flew instinctively to the top of his head, as if warding off a blow from
the fan.

He refused to say anything sweet or tender
to the troublesome monkey! What the hell did Hakkai expect him to do? Then,
tentatively, because he was unused to touching someone with the sincere desire
to comfort, he placed a hand on the youth’s head.

Nothing. No secret voice. The cold fingers
did not even move at his touch.

Sanzo sat down next to the youth on the
bed. He cursed Nii in strong language under his breath. And then he waited. He
never expected to feel the absence of Goku’s voice in his mind so acutely.

He wondered when the thing, so unwanted, so
annoying, so inconvenient when he first heard it, had become something
precious.

Something worth protecting.

******

He let her die.

He had been her only comfort, her only
hope.

His brave promises had been the empty
boasts of a worthless son.

He was weak.

He was unworthy of the crown.

He was unworthy of love.

After the battle, he had seen her shattered
body, lying on the floor. Like so much refuse. He wondered how it was you could
live when your heart broke. He felt as though his soul and his breath had been
torn from his body.

He screamed, he fought, but somehow he
could not move from this spot, could not close his eyes. Could not turn back
Time.

He was unworthy of life.

In the distance he could hear voices
calling him. Dokugakuji. Before it would have been enough to give him a reason
to go back. But how could he face his lover, when he was such a failure, so
full of such pain and doubt, so devoid of strength?

So weak! He was contemptible!

Rage flared in his veins, and the torturous
cycle of grief, despair and self-loathing began again. The poison had been
neutralised, but it trusted to his own mind to destroy him.

******

“Onii-chan!”

“Lirin-sama! Don’t come in here,”
Dokugakuji sprang to his feet. It was killing him seeing Kou suffering so
badly, and not being able to help or call him back to reality. After the blow
from Sanzo, the king had been unconscious long enough to be carried to his bedchambers.
However, the moment he awakened, his eyes had immediately glazed over and he
had withdrawn somewhere into the shadows of his mind. The dark haired youkai
did not know which was worse, the agonised screaming from before, or the
terrible, silent suffering now.

It would traumatise the princess to see her
beloved brother like this. Where was she, anyway?

Lirin, ever resourceful, had evaded her
guards and zoomed into the air vent system. When they had appeared at her
bedroom door, she knew something important was happening, if not Yaone would
have come get her herself. The young princess’s worst fears were confirmed
when, from her hiding place, she found guards outside her brother’s bedroom
door, with Yaone, Hakkai and Gojyo coming and going with urgent haste to the
next suite of rooms, where baldie Sanzo was housed. She hadn’t seen her new
friend Goku all night.

“He’s my brother, I have a right to be
here,” she complained, frowning fiercely at Doku.

“She’s up there! In the air vent,” Gojyo
said to his brother. He chuckled, amused at her resourcefulness.

The redhead had been urged by Hakkai to
keep his brother company while the latter watched over Kougaiji. Of course they
both knew it was to keep him far away from Sanzo, whom he tended to rub the
wrong way, so that the monk could figure out how to best help Goku.

“Come down, Lirin, it’s not safe up there,”
Doku said.

“Aw, you nag too much. Promise you won’t
make me leave if I come down?” the princess grinned.

The dark haired youkai was wondering how to
reply, when a small groaning sound was heard.

A second later, the ceiling gave way,
sending a startled Lirin tumbling down on to her prone brother!

******

Kougaiji felt a sickeningly large force
slam into him, and the terrified scream of his little sister. The acute
physical pain, and the sudden cry for help, awakened in him an instinctive need
to take action, which was so primal that it overrode his guilt and grief over
his mother’s death. 

The king sat up, grabbing his head. He
blinked to clear his vision.

Dokugakuji and Lirin were digging
frantically under a large pile of rubble, comprising wooden ceiling planks and
the heavy grille that shut the air vent.

It was where his bed used to be.

“Were we attacked?” Kougaiji asked, rising
stiffly.

Much to his surprise, Lirin burst into
tears and hung her head.

From beneath the rubble, a stream of strong
language issued.

With Doku’s help, a bruised and
embarrassed, but otherwise physically sound Gojyo emerged.

“Na, don’t cry, I’m alive,” Gojyo drawled
as he dusted himself off. He could not bear to see a girl sob.

His brother waved the guards off. They had
charged in upon hearing the commotion.

“I’m always causing trouble. I can’t do
anything right,” Lirin wailed. Kougaiji put his hands on the heaving shoulders.
So small, still, although even as an overprotective older brother he was
beginning to recognise the undeniable strength there.

“I don’t blame you for thinking that I’m
useless,” she sobbed.

“Lirin, I don’t think any such thing!” the
king said, shocked to see his usually ebullient baby sister so distressed.

“But you’ve been so sad, and just now you
were hurt really bad, and I wanted to come rescue you, but you never want me
around when you’re in trouble. You never trust me enough to tell me what you’re
thinking…but I guess I am always making a mess. I don’t mean to, it’s just that
I really, really want to help,” her voice was thick with misery.

“Lirin, don’t cry. You are a comfort to me,
and you do help. Sometimes, I don’t say what’s troubling me because…” he
flicked his eyes towards his lover, silent and hesitant to intrude on this
sensitive family discussion.

How many times had he asked Kougaiji to
talk to him, to open up? How many times had the king pushed him away? Did he
feel the way Lirin did?

“I don’t want to burden you with my
weakness,” the redhead continued. “I have to be strong enough for all of us,
all the time, if I am to be worthy of this crown, of your love. Do you
understand, Lirin?”

Doku lowered his gaze. It was awful the way
Kougaiji kept shutting out comfort and love. He was becoming hard and cold,
when there was no need to.

“Being strong doesn’t mean you have to push
away love honestly offered. You really want to make your sister feel better?
Let her comfort you, and share your grief with her. Being worthy of love means
letting others feel worthy enough to love you, all of you, even the flawed
parts, because we’d have to be gods to be so perfectly strong all the time.
Strive too hard for perfect, fully independent strength and you’re going to end
up like Sanzo, so damn cold he hurts those who love him the most by shutting
them out. And you’re too good for that, you are all to good for that,” Gojyo
said quietly.

His emotions had always lived close to the
surface, and he always spoke honestly, showed concern without fear of
rejection, because he, more than anyone, understood how frail the human heart
could be. Because he had known so much contempt and hatred growing up, although
never having committed any wrong, he knew more than most how to value love, how
to care.

He understood how important it was to have
someone you love look at you as a protector, as someone worth trusting, worth
opening up to, worth loving. In allowing Gojyo to save him, Hakkai became the
hanyou’s salvation.

Gojyo had a heart as deep red as his hair,
and sometimes it meant that he was the first to go look for Goku when the youth
ran away in hurt. Sometimes it meant offering to drive when his body was in no
shape for it because he knew Hakkai wasn’t strong enough to carry on, sometimes
it meant saving Sanzo from himself and having to bear insults and beatings for
his pains.

Sometimes it meant speaking out of turn to
a king, so that what his brother needed to say, but couldn’t, could be
heard. 

******

Yaone started as the door to the medical
lab was flung open.

“Onii-chan woke up, he’s fine!” crowed
Lirin.

“Thank the Gods! After administering the
neutraliser to Goku, I’ve been trying to formulate a medicine that would jolt
the mind without damaging the body so that they could be startled out of their
coma, once the poison passed out of their blood. I’m glad that we don’t need to
try another experimental concoction in the same day,” the pharmacist smiled.
“Lirin-sama, did you all do anything special to rouse him? Because I think Goku
is still trapped in his mind.”

Lirin hesitated, and then spoke
reluctantly, “I fell through the ceiling — I was hiding from the guards in the
air vents -- and Gojyo pushed him right off the bed to save him from being crushed
by the rubble. After he fell on to the floor, onii-chan woke up…”

“Lirin-sama!” Yaone’s hands flew to her
mouth in horror.

“But nobody was hurt! And onii-chan said
that I saved him, and in future he would talk to me more about what he was
feeling so that I can comfort him. And he would stop trying to handle
everything by himself, and be more open, because he doesn’t want to end up like
baldie Sanzo and hurt the people he cares about with coldness,” the fiery
princess looked toward the ceiling. She didn’t really understand the last part
of what her onii-chan had said, and was speaking from memory. But this was a
good decision, because Dokugakuji had hugged the king after that and Gojyo had
blushed and looked away.

“He needs to renovate the castle anyway,
it’s getting really old. Dokugakuji sent me to tell you the good news, he and
Gojyo are going to try throwing Goku out of bed to see if he wakes up,” the
princess said in a hurry. Yaone was speechless and the princess did not want to
exasperate her after such a tiring day.

Mustering her cutest smile, Lirin asked,
“I’m hungry, can we eat?”

“Well, I don’t see why not. The chef will
be asleep, but I’ll fix you a late night snack,” the fair youkai smiled. Only
her restless charge could have performed such a miraculous and dramatic cure!

******

Kougaiji sighed as he sat on Dokugakuji’s
bed. His champion’s rooms would have to do while the royal bedchamber ceiling
was being repaired. He liked this bed, it brought back delicious memories of
their first time together.

The redhead was deeply sad that dumping
Goku from bed with varying degrees of force had not helped in rousing the youth
at all. The king had mentioned that, in addition to the rush of shocking
physical pain, he had come to because Lirin’s scream of terror had struck a
very primal chord. He responded to that even more strongly than the haunting
grief and guilt that he felt over his mother’s passing. It was more the latter
which had spurred him to action.

Gojyo’s suggestion that Sanzo could perhaps
try screaming in a terrified manner had resulted in gunshots that banished the
irreverent redhead, Hakkai, king and champion from the room. The soft-spoken
brunette had then suggested making Goku’s favourite meat buns, food being the
one thing that might appeal to the youth on a level primal enough to distract
him from grieving about what he believed to be Sanzo’s contempt for him. All
they needed was to break the powerful grip of painful memories for only a
moment. Once Goku regained consciousness, the monk could comfort and reassure
him, so that he would not sink into the cycle of despair and self-loathing
again.

The likelihood of Sanzo doing any such
thing was remote in the extreme, but they had to try.

“Tired, Kou? Why don’t you get some rest,
it’s only three hours till dawn. I’ll wake you for breakfast,” Doku said.

The king smiled, thinking that there were
better ways to unwind than to sleep.

“You know, about what Gojyo said earlier,
I’m sorry if I hurt you. I never meant to shut you out. It’s just that…I’m not
sure you’ll love me when you get a good look at all that’s in here. I’m not a
strong person, and some days…” the young king sighed, at a loss for words.

“Kou, you’re everything to me. Nothing will
make me stop loving you. Trust me,” Doku sat beside him and smiled gently.

“I do, you know that. It will take me some
time…to fully open up my heart, and to share my feelings. I was raised to
believe that a king must be strong enough to stand on his own. But I don’t want
to push you away ever again,” Kougaiji said, earnestly.

Doku kissed him, not trusting words at that
moment. It was perhaps the hardest admission the king had had to make, and
there would be many more difficult decisions and trials to endure in the
future. But now the royal champion could trust that Kougaiji would not try to
manage all of it alone in his usual foolhardy manner.

He had been invited into his lover’s heart,
a place forbidden to him in a way the young king’s body never was, and having a
claim on both made him more complete, and more acutely alive, than he ever
imagined he could be.

Surely this was heaven on earth, and he
would protect it with all his might, all that he had to give, and all that he
was.