He didn't turn to watch them go, but he didn't need to. Their expressions were burnt into his memory like a flare off the sun. Goku, confused, hurt, as if he was being abandoned for no good reason. Sanzo, grim, accepting, annoyed. He wouldn't have done the same, but in a strange way he respected Hakkai for doing it.
And Gojyo.
Gojyo… That look.
They left without saying goodbye, but that was allright; goodbyes were for people who were beaten, and they weren't that, not yet. Still, as he faced the youkai undead and his hand rose, he couldn't banish that look, that last look, even if he refused to think about it. Somehow it…hurt. Somehow he felt incomplete, recalling it, as if there had been a moment, a chance for something that would have changed things, only he had missed it and suddenly he wanted to stop, to call them back, to say whatever it was he should have said. He didn't want to regret anything, never again…
But his hand already had its purpose. He felt cold steel brush his fingertips and something snapped through him, faint yet compelling, and he smiled.
"Hajimeshooka…"++++++++++++++++++
"Hajimeshooka…"
It was like fire in his brain, scorching his senses until he saw nothing but red, nothing but blood and a part of him knew he had changed, that he was different than he had been a moment ago.
That was the part that was laughing.
It felt good, felt real. Who had he been, that this wild, hungry joy was so alien to him? Where had he been? He breathed in, and the scent of red reached him, thick in the air around him, old and stale. He stared at the beings gathered around him and could see from where the scent came. They were like him, yet they were not. There was something unnatural about them that outraged him right down to his bones and he knew that no matter what he had wanted a moment ago, or thought he wanted, there was only one thing he was interested in now.
He wanted the red to be fresh.
They only hesitated a moment, his enemies. They were too stupid to know the danger they faced, and he was too excited by the opportunity of facing them to bother with any pointless warnings. His breath came quickly, easily, and the fire in his head fed molten liquid into his limbs. So good, it felt so utterly, unspeakably good…
He would kill them all. He would leave nothing but pieces.
Out of the corner of his eye, one of them moved, made a gesture that he took to be command. That one, that was the one he would take his time over, the one he would savour. He would teach it the meaning of pain, of regret and finally of loss. He would teach it his meaning. He hated them, hated them all for taking her, the only good thing, the only light in his life. He wasn't sure his body, even suffused with delirious, violent power, could contain the pain of it and he wanted to hurt, to kill…
The world became nothing but red and screams and heat in his blood. It became what he wanted, and he felt free, finally, of the things that weighted down his soul, that kept him trapped in a half life of which he was only half aware. Here he was utterly, unforgivingly alone; so alone and he gloried in the pain it brought. It broke his heart into splinters even as he groaned in the abandon of punishment he dealt the creatures that reached him. The intimacy of it was almost more than he could bear. They gave him soft and wet in which to re-sheathe his impotent hands, gave up the jealous secrets of their bodies to him with screams of defeat as he devoured every last drop of what passed as life in them and yet it made no difference. Even when he finally had their leader by its throat and was opening its chest while it still struggled, even while he was pulling out what he found inside, piece by piece by piece, it made no difference at all and he laughed out loud at the sheer, rending irony of it all.
He could not empty them to fill the emptiness in himself. He finally knew it, even while he dropped what was left of the leader to the floor and turned away, unsteady, drained and despaired, stumbled to his knees a few steps away, barely even noticing.
He was nothing without her, nothing, his hands, bloody and empty and useless all over again. He could not save her with such hands...
"Kanaaan…" The name was torn from him like something was reaching down his throat, right to the place where his heart once beat, dragging out what remained of it and as he stared at his hands, at the way the nails tapered out into razor points, the blood and gore that clung to them, the clarity with which he suddenly understood it all was appalling. He was dead after all. He had become everything she had hated, everything she had fled from! What was he doing? What had he become? Something worse than a murderer, worse than a man driven by revenge, and worse even then the lowliest youkai blinded and made bestial by even the most irresistible impulse.
He had become his own darkness, willingly, and he knew that he was smiling.
And he couldn't seem to stop.
But he knew a way. The only way.
His hand began rising again, this time towards his face, a dim memory of something else, some other life, a task incomplete, swelling to fill the distant corners of his consciousness. It was all that was left, to join her, to become what he should have been all along.
Gone.
But before the claws could penetrate his flesh, his hand paused, his body tensed suddenly to danger before he realised he had heard anything.
He listened, and it came again. It was…Not here. Coming from somewhere beyond.
And then he heard it clearly, a scream, rebellious and angry and the clash of steel skittering across stone. It ran like lightning across his consciousness, searing his weeping loneliness. So familiar! The anger in that voice, the bloody-minded defiance, he…knew it. It was someone he knew. Not Kanan. He could not remember her raising her voice ever, and besides, she was dead and this was now and she wasn't here, couldn't be here. No, this voice was real, lower, louder, and something about it reminded him of red…
Hair, eyes, scars. Smile. A face swam in his memory, but it seemed too ephemeral to grasp.
"Gojyo."
The sound seemed as involuntary as speaking Kanan's name had been, pitching him onto his hands on the floor as the unfamiliar word shuddered through him. It was...important to him, wasn't it? He said it again, gasping, forcing his vocal chords to work past his inability to voice nothing but brutal loneliness and his too futile agony. The sound was harsh and guttural, but he managed it, and then managed it again and again until it was almost a panting litany that he felt was about to open some door in him, some memory he didn't even know he possessed, that reminded him of who he -
His hands splayed in front of him on the slick stones suddenly encountered something small and cold and sharp and his eyes snapped open with an involuntary growl. The world in front of his vision was awash with red and there, in the centre of it, three bright stars, their brilliance undiminished by the gore in which they lay, power emanating from them in sickening, subtle, irresistible waves. His hand shrank from them even as he touched them and he felt a snarl curling in his throat, pulling his face into a grimace of distaste.
Limiters. Spirit Shackles. He spat in disgust, defiance. He wanted to destroy them, but a part of him; the less instinctive, thoughtless part told him that the attempt would be pointless.
And then the scream sounded again, and this time, there was pain in it. And he felt it, actually felt it. It stabbed into his chest and made him gasp to feel it, when nothing else had been able to reach him, this one sound…
"No." he heard himself utter once, and then again, louder, stronger. "No." He found his hand reaching for the limiters, almost without his instruction. It shook as he scooped up the first one and began fingering it on to the shell of his ear. There was something he had to go back for, something he couldn't leave. He forced the limiter on, fighting the desire to throw it away, far away. He could still hear the screaming and it seemed to be reaching into his chest and squeezing something he thought long, long dead…
Dead. He's dead. No. He's going to. Die. I can't-
He wasn't entirely sure what that meant, who 'he' was. He panted through clenched teeth, trying to focus on that sound, on the sense of familiarity and…fear the sound evoked in him.
The first limiter snapped on viciously and something vastly alien rippled through him, making him feel nauseous, making the world shudder violently, a death rattle in his head.
He made himself reach for the next.
He probably doesn't even…care. Selfish, arrogant…Damn it, Kenren…The thought was wild, unanchored, like it belonged to someone else, but it held so much…attachment he suddenly found he was shaking not with the effort of forcing the second limiter onto his ear, but with the effort of keeping his emotions from spiralling out of control. He couldn't lose him, not again. He'd sworn; he was sure he recalled it, a blood oath borne in pain and a death that had been almost…sacred. He would not lose this person a second time. Nothing could part them, not death, not Heaven, not even his own foolish pride that had refused so long to believe in anything like-
The second cuff snapped into place beside the first, cutting the thoughts down like wheat under a scythe. The nausea became dizzying, an almost-blackness. Blindly he fumbled the last cuff, desperate he stay conscious until he could get it on. The voice he knew screamed in muffled pain and rage and he gasped in a breath, forcing his hand to steady.
You're not leaving me! I refuse to let you leave me!
The third limiter snapped into place on the lobe of his ear and suddenly the red, red world went dark.