Moths and Red Letters
Sanzo doesn't disbelieve in the gods. He just doesn't care about them. They exist. That's all there is to it, in this life. Go your own way? Yes, yes, he will.
But sometimes, when the storm has lifted and the smell of rain- no, the smell after rain curls in his mouth, and he feels calm, reprieved-
Genjo Sanzo meditates.
He has a set of prayer beads taken from a drying monastery in a desert and a sutra made from such thin paper that a soft haze of red seems to dull every character, and it's enough. For now. The others are gone away, somewhere over the hill, down in the city streets, and he is alone. He takes the first bead.
He's never been good at this. Never able to sit still and quiet and calm for long, because calmness is not something that follows in his wake. Sometimes he envies Hakkai eternal, impersonal, immutable calm. Then he realises what he's doing, and the anger rises like a moth with wings of ash and flame, hot and bitter in his mouth.
The beads…round and hard and cool in his hand, and they- help, in some indefinable way, as though all of his worries and anger and pain are drawn into the chain, and only calmness is left behind. The same for the sutra. A thread of suffering for every line. And so, beads in one hand and sutra in the other, Genzo Sanzo meditates.
It's not easy. He is not a man who can stop thinking very quickly. But everything takes time. Everything. He closes his eyes. His breathing slows. Time. Calm. The smell after rain. Deserts and red letters and moths.
Nothingness.
All is nothingness, nothing is permanent, nothing is kind, nothing is real.
The universe drops away. The world is just a shape in the hand of the Buddha (what's in the other hand?). Nothingness. Nothing. Void.
And when the others return, laden with groceries and cigarettes and newspapers and casual chatter, Sanzo barely notices. Calm. He has not seen them. He hasn't. They're not there- he reaches for his paper fan, but the prayer beads are hard and sharp and cold in his hand, and it calms him.
Finally, the calm softly ebbs away, and Sanzo sighs softly, startling the others. They look somewhat bemused as he slips the beads back into his robe, the sutra around his neck, and reaches for the nearest box of cigarettes. He taps one out, puts it to his lips, lights it.
"Ne, Sanzo?"
Goku's high voice is almost an irritation, but between the tobacco and the meditation, Sanzo barely feels the almost perpetual frustration.
"What?"
"Were you actually- um, meditating there?"
Sanzo closes his eyes again as he breathes smoke out through his nose and tips his head back, not bothering to reply. The calm is a shallow, fragile raft in an ocean of anger, easy to break.
He never understood how Koumyo could be so serene all the time. Maybe now, he's beginning to grasp it.
Goku leaned over his shoulder, moving it close and warm. Sanzo puts the cigarette in his mouth to leave his hands free. The paper fan is just inside his robe. Calmness comes from many different places.
Thud.
…Or maybe it's called satisfaction.