Earth-Mother's Embrace
by Portrait of a Scribe
Date: 2009-7-19.
Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Characters: Seiten Taisei Son Goku, Genjyo Sanzo
Pairings: None.
Summary: Because really, being buried in a mudslide was kind of like being in his mother's embrace. Son Goku has an encounter with two entities, and reaches an understanding before he comes out a better man.
I don't particularly remember how this one came about. I might write something that elaborates on this, though... I think it's an interesting concept. It can be seen as a semi-sequel to Salt of the Earth, if you want to see it as such.
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Earth-Mother's Embrace
By Portrait of a Scribe
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There was a reason why half of the Sanzo ikkou hated the rain. Really, really hated the rain.
It had been raining for three consecutive days, and they had not passed through a town or even come near one in almost a week. It was the longest stretch of camping that they had had, yet, and half of it had been spent soaking wet, sheltered either under trees or hunkered down in the Jeep against the wind. They had been moving through the mountains since yesterday, and today was the first day that the sun had decided to show its face. Unfortunately, they had made it to a stretch of track that was too rocky for Jeep to traverse, so they were hoofing it. So to speak.
There had been almost no warning.
Just the sudden, ominous, hair-raising, blood-chilling groaning from high above them to their right. Then their hearts had leapt into their throats when the whole cliff side had begun to give way.
Goku was the closest to the hillside when it had begun to collapse, and he was walking next to Sanzo. Hakuryu, Hakkai, and Gojyo had been slightly farther away, closer to the trees that lined the path to their left. They had shouted a shocked warning and jumped to the relative safety of the nearest branches.
But there had been no time for Goku and Sanzo to get clear of the impending disaster.
Goku had seen that they would be crushed. Knowing that he could never live without his Sun, Goku had grabbed Sanzo around the waist. Ignoring the monk's exclamations of 'What the fuck are you doing, bakazaru?!' and the like, Goku had used his immense strength to bodily throw Sanzo toward Hakkai and Gojyo.
"Catch!" Goku had shouted.
The others could only watch in shell-shocked horror as the youngest member of their group had been buried beneath several tons of debris and mud with a sickening splat and rumble. Then they were distracted, holding on for dear life as the mudslide crashed against their perch, attempting to pull them along its course.
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Welcome back...
...Huh? ...Who are you...?
Do not worry, just relax... I will take care of you, now...
...But... who are you...? ...Where am I...?
You are home.
The presence was pressing against him from all sides. It was beginning to become difficult to breathe. Everything hurt.
Who...?
It hurt enough to blind him, to make it difficult to think. But the comforting embrace around him was almost warm, and... and he allowed himself to think, for just a second, that maybe this is what a mother's embrace feels like.
Rest, my child... You are safe.
Who... Who am I...? Who... are you...?
I am the earth, and you are my child. Seiten Taisei... I am so proud of you.
'Seiten Taisei'... Is that... Is that me...?
The name was as familiar as his own skin, as his own eyes, as the very breath in his body, but at the same time, it seemed alien, as though it belonged to a different person, a different time.
Sleep, my child... Just sleep... I will protect you...
The voice was fading, and he gradually became aware of another presence in the area. It felt like it was right in front of him, and yet inside of him, at the same time. It was a comforting feeling. He felt... safe.
Who are you?
I am you.
But... how can you be me?
Golden eyes glinted as fangs grinned at him. Long, pointed ears jutted back from his face.
We have always been the same. They just sealed me away from you.
The voice was a purr, and the cold touch against his cheek was inviting.
Join me. We were meant to be together, to be one, to be the same being.
But... Then I won't be me, anymore, will I?
Yes, you will. You will just have my power and memories.
But... But my memories are who I am!
You won't lose them.
It was so tempting... The touch was growing warm.
If I give in... what will happen?
We will unite. You can use your diadem to look like a human, like our friend does.
Will I go... insane?
No, I promise you won't. You'll just need time to adjust, but most of that will be spent asleep.
...
It was becoming harder and harder to breathe. He felt like he was being crushed.
Make a decision, aibou. Our friends are waiting.
...Okay. Just...
"Just" what, aibou?
Don't... Don't let me hurt them. Please...
We won't, aibou.
Something bright flooded into his eyes. The last thought he had before he slipped into oblivion in the safety of his earth-mother's embrace was that the sun was rising.
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His first thought upon becoming aware again was that he felt whole. For the first time in a long, long time, he felt complete; the empty, yawning chasm in his chest was gone. In its place was a familiar strength, and a calm that he had not experienced in over five centuries.
Slitted golden orbs opened to the world.
The second thing that he noticed was that he felt revitalized, and that his fangs felt weird against the inside of his mouth, and that his claws had punctured ten tiny holes in the sheets he was lying under. His hearing, exceptional even by youkai standards, caught the sound of soft, rhythmic breathing from the room around him, as well as the sounds of the marketplace outside. Far off in the distance, he heard the flapping of wings, and the rustling of trees, and the words of his earth-mother.
He almost missed her enveloping embrace.
His vision was filled with heat, and light, and color. Each color was a myriad of other colors inside of it, but each was purely itself at the same time. A slight thought, instinctive and unconsciously done, and his sight tuned itself into the energy signatures of the subjects and objects around him. The body to his left was slouched over the side of the bed. It was shown in varying shades of dark green and red and black, down to a tenth of a degree. A tiny, white shape was curled on top of a black mass; it was a little dragon, which was the hottest thing in the room. Slumped at the table were two tall figures. One was colored in tones of yellow and dark blue and black, and the other was colored in hues of violet and light green and black.
It only took him a second to figure out who was who, judging by his new vision.
Sha Gojyo, once known as Kenren, yes, that was the name of the tall one in violet and light green. The violet signified an aloof, cool personality, while the green was representative of romance or lust.
Cho Hakkai, formerly called Tenpou, was the other one at the table. The yellow hue to his body meant that he was nervous, and the dark blue, contradictory to the yellow, meant that he was calm.
The tiny white shape was obviously Hakuryu, the dragon.
The last one, the one slumped, asleep, over the side of the bed, was Genjyo Sanzo, who had once been Konzen Douji. His shades of dark green and red alerted the observer to the fact that he was feeling mixed emotions and fear, respectively.
The black that they all shared signified that they were all stressed.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself into a sitting position. The breath brought with it the smells of his companions, as well as the scent of the fresh breeze coming in from the window and the stale stench of the burnt-out cigarettes in the ashtray on the table.
Another thought and a tiny flexing of the muscles in his eyes brought his vision back to normal. One clawed hand came up to brush a lock of mud-brown hair out of slitted gold eyes.
His mental assessment revealed to him that the merge had been complete.
But which one was he? Was he Seiten Taisei, or was he Son Goku? The memories that he had possessed before his long imprisonment swirled around his head, thoughts of blood chasing scenes of laughter and gunshots in circles until he thought he was going to get a headache.
Then, suddenly, it was over, and they had settled themselves into an order that made sense. He made peace with the guilt that had plagued his subconscious for so long. The stabbing pain in his chest subsided, and the tears that had welled in his eyes from the crushing, maddening grief trickled down his cheeks to drip onto the bedsheets. They did not reappear.
The two lives became one, the two personalities merged, and a split soul became whole, again.
Seiten Taisei Son Goku was fully healed.
With a thought, he created his golden diadem, feeling its heavy weight drop into his palm. Inwardly, he debated on whether or not to put it on, just yet. After all, he could feel his earth-mother's strength coursing through his limbs, his heart. His very blood hummed with the newly rediscovered power and knowledge.
Oh, the things he could do! He was ambitious, he was wise, he had strength equal to heaven, as human as a Buddhist priest, as skilled as a demon, and held the potential to surpass all of them. He was better than all, beholden to none. He could do as he wished, go where he pleased, and nobody would be able to stop him.
But then his gaze landed upon the blond head that was laid on black-covered arms on the side of the bed. His gaze took in the mottling of bruises along the strong shoulders, the bandages wrapped around the deft hands, and then he remembered the worry that he had read in the man's aura.
That was what made him decide to put on the diadem again.
With a sigh, Seiten Taisei Son Goku became simply Son Goku, again, until the time when his power would be needed. The next time he took off his diadem, he would be able to defend his friends without the added consequences of his grief making him insane again.
Now that he was whole again, Goku would always be able to protect his friends for as long as they lived.
Then the energy drained out of him, heading into the diadem as it was repressed, and a gnawing hunger erupted in his belly. Son Goku needed refueling.
Reaching out, Goku laid a gentle hand upon Sanzo's shoulder and shook.
The blond monk's features scrunched slightly before those amazing violet eyes opened and blinked blearily at the bedspread before traveling up to Goku's face. Then they widened, and he shot up into a sitting position fast enough that Goku's wrist started to ache from being flung off.
"Goku!" Sanzo exclaimed. Goku could read the relief etched into every tense line of the frown that dominated his friend's face.
"Sanzo?" Goku questioned, blinking up at Sanzo with wide, golden eyes. The younger man's stomach gave a rumble. "I'm hungry."
Sanzo stared at Goku for a second.
"Tch," he finally snorted. He reached toward Goku, and the boy-who-was-a-man flinched, awaiting a hit from that absurd, abhorred harisen. He was surprised when the monk drew him into a gentle, one-armed embrace, his other hand coming up to rest upon the younger man's mud-brown hair.
"Bakazaru," Sanzo murmured. It almost sounded affectionate. Goku stared up at his best friend from under his hand, and smiled in understanding.
Then the monk left the monkey to wake up the other two, and soon all hell broke loose again. But there was one fundamental difference in the group.
The Monkey King was whole, again.
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Sitting underneath a tree, one hand behind his head and the other buried between the soft blades of grass, golden eyes were closed against the sight of the world as he listened to everything and nothing all at once.
Welcome back, my child, whispered the damp earth beneath him.
Glad to be home, he replied calmly. Thank you... Earth-Mother.
Peace was all he felt as he laid there in his Earth-Mother's embrace.
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Owari.
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And there it is. Hope you liked it. If the ending was a little ambiguous, I apologise, and I hope it wasn't very confusing.
By the way, the part in the middle was when Goku was buried in the mudslide, before the others dug him out. He was having a little bit of a hallucination. (Poor boy.) Sorry if Sanzo was a little OOC in the end, but I think it's understandable.
You might hear more from me soon... And please tell me how I did, whether you liked it or not, and if there were any points you thought I could improve upon. Thank you!
-Portrait of a Scribe