by Princess of Pain

Hold on to nothing.

Nothing, but the heavy press of metal.

The great and mighty Genjo Sanzo had been learning that lesson for his entire life. He often had difficulty in deciding which bit of wisdom that Koumyo Sanzo passed down to him might be considered the 'only' wisdom that mattered. Sometimes, it seemed to him that the lesson of murdering Buddha was most important. Sometimes, it was the nature of orange paper planes cruising through blue skies. Sometimes, all that mattered to him--in the small, cold lump of stones that the gods had used to fashion his heart--was the dry, herbal smell of the bluish smoke that drifted from the tip of Koumyo's pipe, the stars in his eyes, the smile on his face.

If his master had learned nothing else as a Sanzo (and often, his master could be heard to say that he had learned nothing at all), it was a complete contentment. A sureness, a simple and unfettered knowledge of the way that things should be. Koumyo understood exactly where he stood in the nebulous, seething realms of karma, and he probably could have walked to nirvana blindfolded if he had so chosen. He was a better bodhisattva--one of those ethereal beings who had attained enlightenment, yet remained behind with the mortals to help others along the way--than se could ever hope to be.

The only time that Sanzo hated his master was when he thought about how content he was with life.

Hold on to nothing, but this.

It mattered not to Koumyo--seasons, weather, the turning of the earth. Other monks complained of the rain drowning the flowers; Koumyo would smile and comment on the electric-violet quality of the rain-clouds' undersides, like the swollen bellies of angry sky-animals. The sun would bake until the sacrificial fruits began to rot upon the trees; Koumyo would laugh, and talk about the overabundance of jasmine, and how its night scent overwhelmed that of the fruits. He dressed exactly the same in every season, and no wind seemed to do more than lightly ruffle his hair, as if the earth itself did not quite dare to interfere with his eternally demi-meditative state.

Sanzo recalled a near-wind-storm that had ripped through the compound, denuding trees of their leaves and flowers from the earth. His own short robes had whipped and lashed against his scrawny, pale legs, and his mop of pale blonde hair had nearly sliced up his eyes. Koumyo Sanzo had stood in the courtyard, watching the other monks run about to try and stem the damage. The wind destroyed the strong-smelling smoke from his pipe the instant that it appeared out of the golden mouth at its end; yet his fine, well-groomed chestnut locks had barely stirred.

The false priest cleared his throat. He felt like there was something obstructing it.

Nothing but this. The press of slowly warming metal. Focus.

Yes, that contentment that Genjo Sanzo, the failed pupil, could never grasp. He was supposed to be better than the idiot monks in their orange pajamas and bald heads, the fools who dedicated everything they were to muttering sutras, as if mere words would stave off karma's inexorable pull. The children hobbling about in old men's bodies, claiming a divine authority because of how long the gods had mistakenly permitted them to live.

Koumyo had died incredibly young, especially for a Sanzo-houshi, and he was more holy than any other man that Sanzo had ever known.

And Sanzo was supposed to be his star student, his bright and shining pupil. The one who was the master of his body, his mind, and his fate. No one but his master jerked him around, and no one taught him anything.

Sanzo shut his eyes, violet cutting itself off cleanly from the world.

None of that was true, though, was it? Whatever had made Koumyo so content with everything--however he'd been enlightened--it still eluded Sanzo. The false monk had done everything in his power, exerting every inch of his considerable will, to ferret out where this inner well of peace had sprung--to see if it was connected to some outer ocean--a place that Sanzo could reach--not lost forever in a pool of blood and gore, bleeding out along with his master's life. Because he wasn't supposed to hold on to this, to his master, he was supposed to kill his master as surely as he was supposed to kill the jolly fat god or the slender beautiful god, whichever version of Buddha he met, Chinese or Thai or Indian, or Koumyo. But he couldn't, not the man he had loved as his father, he hadn't been able to just let go and move on with his life, and still he could not move on and grow into something other than a scrawny, short, frightened little murdering boy.

No, this isn't what you need to do. Focus, god damn you.

But he couldn't. Focus was not his strong suit. He was eternally in two places at once--wherever his body stood, and twelve years in the past, crouched in Koumyo Sanzo's blood, weeping openly, muttering the words that summed up his damnation: "I couldn't protect him."

He was not the master of his fate. The Sanbutsushin had commanded him, always commanded him, and like a good dog, he went. He was not the master of his mind, for it always wandered down paths he didn't want it to go--especially when it was raining, but really, that was only when he'd have a good excuse to glower.

And he was not the master of his body.

No. I refuse. I decline. Stop it, you fucker--focus--

--the hard, hot press of steel--

No, not the master of his body. He gave in to its wants. He craved rich food; he was fed. He craved the poisonous, insidious feel of his lungs blackening from the assault of smoke; he lit a cigarette. He was exhausted; he slept. He did not want to fight; he left his battles for the others to tidy up. And there were nights when he was lonely, so unutterably and painfully lonely, not just when it rained but often enough that was when it happened, nights when he couldn't just stand in the wind and let contentment keep even his hair from rustling, nights when he was the exact fucking opposite of his master. Exact and fucking opposite, wasn't that the truth?

Nights when the sky opened up like a sickened mouth and vomited meters of water out onto the offending earth, washing away small plants, softening and toppling ancient trees, drowning helpless animals, knocking down flimsy homes. When everyone hunkered down in meager shelters and prayed for the monsoon to let up, when even the moon was strangled in the clouds. Nights when he would pace through his room, smoking more than he normally did, until he was doubled over with rasping coughs that worried him whenever he let himself think about it. Until the door to his hotel room opened, and he'd stopped turning to look to see who it was because it was always the same person there, never knocking, always knowing that he was free to enter whenever he wanted to, whether Sanzo liked it or not. Standing there, hair a nightmare pitch that only reflected slight tones of mahogany, his skin as blue as a corpse in the scant, rained-through light, and yet somehow no matter how dark it was Sanzo could never miss the green of those eyes, the bright and healing and insidious shade of verdant that never failed to sum up how empty the man who bore them believed himself to be.

Standing there, and then he'd walk in, whispering that he didn't like the rainy nights any more than Sanzo, that Gojyo and Goku were already asleep like twin logs in their respective hotel rooms, and as his loose, shielding clothing would slip off (always either covered with countless layers, or too amorphous and shapeless to be seen, that was Hakkai's style), he would sit on the edge of the bed, body carved in an ethereal blue, full lips curved into that smile.

Stop it. Please, stop it, focus, the steel--the--

And he was content, always so content, and that wasn't fucking right, because if any of them had a right to be heartbroken and gloomy every second of every minute of every hour of every day, it would have to be Hakkai. He was content when Sanzo was gentle and when Sanzo was rough, when he kissed and when he bit, when he was fast and careless and when he was slow and methodical, when he bit back Hakkai's name when his soulless orgasm racked him from hair follicles to bone marrow, and when he deliberately called out someone else's name.

Content. Laughing at him? No, just happy, no matter what.

And still, no matter how many times they'd fallen together like that, the selfish bastard would never say why he could smile so prettily, why his eternally green eyes were so bright and happy, the bastard knew the same thing that Koumyo had, the thing that Sanzo had never been able to reach, and no matter how hard or how often they did, Sanzo had never been able to fuck an answer out of him, or directions on how to reach that place that both Hakkai and Koumyo had reached. Only once, he had said something, some obscure Buddhist reference, about how one overcame a miser by giving, or something. Some bullshit, gods, he hated--

This is the limit.

Genjo Sanzo pulled back the hammer. It creaked beneath his thumb, rubbing against the gun-callous that had formed there after repeating this action thousands of times before. It clicked into place. He pressed the pistol a little harder against his forehead, the barrel deliberately placed against the chakra he didn't deserve. The pistol had not been particularly deadly before; now, a slight depression of the trigger would paint the walls with his brains in false ideograms, the last testament he'd ever write. His finger rested at home, on the trigger.

This was his control. This was how he ruled his body, his mind, his heart. Typically, regardless of their respective paths, his own iron will could whip them all back to where he wanted them to be. But when his own nature got to be the better of his goals, what he wanted--there was always this.

Whenever he mediated, or thought deeply, he only could get anything done with his pistol resting firmly against his skull. By threatening himself.

"It's just the right size... for me to hold it against my head and put a bullet in my skull at any time."

Sanzo--the Sanzo who needed no one, the Sanzo who would sooner shoot himself than give in to himself--felt his mind go blank. He emptied out. The buried lust, the rage, the regret, the hatred--all drained away, like the wind falling down to a breeze, or the rain pouring off to a light sprinkling. His body stopped trembling, and his half-stock retreated entirely. The sweat dried.

He could only ever get something like that blindfold to nirvana, that overwhelming calm and placidness, whenever he was moments away from dying.

For a moment, he thought about pulling the trigger. No. That was a fool's way to die. He wasn't going to give in. If he died now, he would be doing so without knowing what it was that made Koumyo die trying to protect him (as if that was his job). Or what could make a man who had killed over a thousand beings ever feel he had the right to smile and laugh again. And until he knew...

Hold on to nothing. Nothing but this.

He agreed, and gave himself over.

~Owari~

"Overcome anger with love, overcome evil by good. Overcome the miser with giving, overcome the liar with truth." - the Buddha