Three days since they’d beaten Homura, and already things were different.

It wasn’t anything Hakkai could name, really. Just a sense. Something he saw, when looking at Sanzo’s eyes when the priest was looking at Goku...

There was something there, now, that hadn’t been there before. A certain kind of new respect, there was that, but there was also... something. Something else. Something he couldn’t quite name, though he knew he should’ve been able to.

So he sat at the table, covertly watching Sanzo covertly (and yet pointedly) not watch Goku, and he wondered. Whatever this thing was that he saw, it made him uncomfortable. That look in Sanzo’s eyes... something about it just wasn’t quite right.

He bit his lip, a nervous habit he thought he’d dropped in childhood. When he realized he was doing it (which took only a minute; a lot longer than it should have), he released the — thankfully unmarked — lip from between his teeth and smiled sunnily at no one.

In place of worrying his lips raw, he’d taught himself to smile. At everything. No matter how he felt inside.

He was so good at it by now, sometimes it took slip-ups like this to remind him that it was all fake.

He felt a suspicious gaze fall on him, and he smiled at Sanzo with all the enthusiasm he could muster — it wasn’t much, really, but too much would be just as suspect as too little...

“Something bothering you, Sanzo?” he asked with a carefully designed casualness he didn’t even come close to feeling, a carefully constructed mask slipping over his features like a second skin. The blonde looked at him, for a long moment.

Finally, and without a word, he just turned away.

Inwardly, Hakkai breathed a sigh of relief. Until he knew exactly what was bothering him, he couldn’t do anything about it — couldn’t talk, or question, or badger Sanzo into knocking whatever it was he wasn’t actually doing off.

Until he knew, he couldn’t do anything at all. And the helplessness of that galled him.

He dreamed that night, of red (blood) and gold — but not of Kanan. Which was strange — whenever he had his violet — no, violent, blood-filled dreams, she was at the center...

But not this time. This time, he dreamed of (remembered?) lilacs dripping purple petals all over a blood-drenched ground, golden eyes sparkling with tears, and the swish of dark robes as a candle was blown out by lips that were mottled and raw...

Dreams. Kanan had believed in them, thought that if you understood them you might find within them the keys to better understanding yourself. Hakkai (Gonou) had teased her about that, about how she thought there might be significance in her dreaming of a white-haired, white-skinned, red-eyed man with a fierce face turning into some kind of strange, smallish animal... An animal with wings...

Kanan thought dreams were gifts from the gods, kernels of inner teachings just waiting to be unfolded.

Gonou then — and Hakkai now — thought dreams were just...

Dreams.

It was another scorcher of a day. Giving in to the bickering and complaining (whining) from the backseat — that not even Sanzo’s unerring fan-hitting abilities or constant and increasing death threats could curb — Hakkai sent them just a tiny bit off course, so they would reach a closer town than the one he’d initially been aiming for, which was farther away but closer to their ultimate goal of India by maybe half a mile.

He neglected to mention this little change to Sanzo (who would not have approved, even though he was hot and miserable too). And if Sanzo never asked about it, well, then why should Hakkai even bother mentioning it? He hated to waste Sanzo’s time with trivial matters.

Rationalizations out of the way, he drove them into town just a little after midday.

Normally they wouldn’t stop, having reached this place so quickly (and without incident, no less; their luck must’ve been improving), but Hakkai had taken a calculated risk — everyone was starving, tired, achy, and hot (and in Sanzo’s case, irritable as hell because of those things), everyone needed rest...

And Sanzo needed cigarettes. They would stop here for the day.

When Sanzo grudgingly agreed (not even the prospect of more smokes could improve his foul temper at this point), Hakkai smiled to himself. It was so easy to read the game when you knew all the players.

He caught just a split-second glimpse of Sanzo’s eyes latching and holding onto Goku, and frowned deeply; not on his face, but in his heart, where it counted.

Maybe he didn’t know the players in this game at all.

Dinnertime was a remarkably quiet affair — though perhaps Hakkai was just too distracted to notice exactly how frequent (or infrequent) Goku and Gojyo’s fighting was. He had more important things on his mind, this night, than keeping Sanzo from shooting them if they decided to push him that far.

Sanzo seemed in a remarkably patient mood, though, especially considering the aggravations of the day. He managed to ignore their antics, for the most part.

Or maybe Sanzo was distracted by his own thoughts, too. He certainly seemed to be more ‘elsewhere’ than here.

Hakkai wasn’t the only one to notice. Having successfully wrestled the last spring roll from Gojyo and stuffed it in his mouth, Goku swallowed quickly (my, Hakkai wondered, does he even bother to chew anymore?) and waved a hand in front of Sanzo’s face, looking concerned.

“Hey, Sanzo, you there?”

Sanzo’s eyes narrowed as he looked sideways at Goku; the look would’ve been enough to ward off anyone else, no matter how brave. But Goku just smiled up at him.

Sanzo looked for another moment, just looked, a hesitation few but Hakkai would’ve noticed. Only too soon he was swatting at Goku with his fan, Goku whining and Gojyo teasing him about how ‘you should’ve known better than to bother the prissy monk before he has his nicotine fix, monkey-boy’ (a line that managed to get both the ‘prissy monk’ and the ‘monkey-boy’ mad at him, even though everyone at the table knew Gojyo had only been speaking the plain truth).

But Hakkai stared blindly at them all, seeing only Goku’s innocent, laughing grin and the surprisingly lit, newly alive violet eyes that flickered over him just a little too often.

Hakkai knew, now, what the problem was. He knew.

And he felt sick.