Title: Night Goblin (Tengu no Yoru)
Series: Saiyuki AU
Rating: M-for violence
AN: Part two of the Tobacco Road arc. Listen to Locking up the Sun by Poets of the Fall.
Ch. 1-
"But San~zo~!!!"
"No! Now shut the hell up! I swear, one more word out of you and I really will shoot you!"
Goku quieted down and slumped in his chair across from Sanzo's desk. The golden-haired monk noticed with growing agitation that he was equally pissed at Goku and himself. Quite frankly the whole situation pissed him off.
"What about tomorrow?"
"What the hell did I just say?!" he roared.
"But Hakkai said they have the shop all up and running now. I wanna see the kids, and Gojyo running around in a waiters outfit, we gotta see that! Come on Sanzo! I promise I'll be good the entire time we're there." Goku tried the puppy-eyes tactic, which always worked on Sanzo, even when he had the gun pointed at him, like now.
"Sit down and shut the HELL up now! We're not going to drive for three days just to see that dickwad cockroach!"
Goku was about to quip back that Hakkai and the kids would be there too, but something dark slipped behind Sanzo's eyes making him clamp his lips shut and swallow his retort.
He sat back in his chair as Sanzo slipped the banishing gun back into his sleeve and dropped his head, eyes surreptiously sliding over the monk's features. Lately he'd noticed Sanzo was becoming easier to anger, harder to calm down, and increasingly concerned with where and what Goku was doing almost 24/7. They'd even started sleeping in the same room, much to the other monks' annoyance.
Not that he was complaining about that part. He'd been trying to convince Sanzo to sleep with him for months, but nothing. It was actually starting to get really painful, being so close to him and yet still having that cold line between them. It really sucked.
The whole damn problem started right after Sanzo had gone with Hakkai and Gojyo up to the Sanbutsushin's temple a few months back. The two demons had come back full of smiles, but Sanzo hadn't come home until real late, way past nightfall. He'd been sitting up with Hakkai waiting when he'd finally come in, dead on his feet with dark smudges under his eyes. He'd looked like he'd just been hit.
Goku was about to run over to him when Hakkai had placed a warning hand on his shoulder and shook his head. Goku knew enough not to press the matter and left out the back way through the window and down across the garden. He'd been curled up in their bed when sometime around midnight Sanzo had slipped in.
He didn't lay beside him though, just stood over him in the shadows looking. Goku had pretended to be asleep when he'd walked in, and something about the soft sounds and quiet movements he was making made him stay that way, eyes screwed shut, body trembling he was trying to stay still so hard.
After a few minutes Sanzo sat heavily on the edge of the bed and ran a calloused finger across his forehead and through his hair, lightly fingering the golden diadem enmeshed in his chestnut brown hair. There was a slight catching sound, a choked off exclamation that was so faint he wasn't sure if he'd actually heard it or not, and then Sanzo was leaning over him, lips pressed lightly to his, hot, salty drops dripping on him from above.
And still he didn't move.
He wanted to. He was dying here, letting the man cry in front of him without doing anything, but he knew Sanzo, and he wasn't one to appreciate having others see him being 'weak', so he stayed still. When the priest had finally come to bed Goku shifted in his fiend sleep and curled around him, pressing in impossibly close, trying to comfort him without being obvious. As Sanzo's arms came around him and clung to him through the darkness of the night he let himself breathe, maybe it worked then. Maybe.
Since then every time he went somewhere Sanzo had asked where he was going. Eventually Goku had just started prefacing everything with, "Okay, I'm gonna go get something to eat in the kitchen, you want anything?" or "Gotta hit the head, be back in a minute." or "The weather looks nice, I think I'm gonna go sit in the Sakura tree." Anything to make the shadows dancing behind Sanzo's eyes fade just a bit.
But it was hard. Laying there at night trying to sleep and not being able to because Sanzo either clung so tightly it hurt, or he refused to touch him. Goku was starting to get so upset about it that he'd started skipping meals; he was down to only two or three a day instead of his usual nine.
He'd been laying in the shade under the Sakura tree when he felt it. He wasn't sure what it was exactly, but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, like a cold wind was blowing over him, even though there was no breeze that day. He sat up, or tried to anyways. Noticing an odd shifting he realized the entire garden was silent. And it smelled funny. Not bad, just, off.
The light shifted and everything was tinged in gold. Shadows moved closer towards him as he scrambled up onto his feet.
"Stay."
The word reverberated through the garden and his entire body trembled with the power behind it. Finding himself unable to move, he ground out between clenched teeth, "Who are you?"
"I am you. The you that is still growing." A talk golden demon came materialized out of the shadows. Golden eyes and diadem glittered in the sunlight as soft white cherry blossom petals drifted lazily from overhead.
"Seiten Taisei Son Goku." he breathed.
"Yes. The you from before, the one who has been left sleeping, waiting until you are ready, or I am needed."
"I don't need you. I'm fine by myself." he pouted, lower lip pushed out defiantly.
"You don't have a choice. Eventually you will become me and this persona will fade into memories and dust."
"Why?! I have friends here, family! Why can't you leave and I stay, why does it have to be me?" Goku was shaking in frustration, he remembered the past, the reasons he was kicked out of heaven for, twice.
The Great Sage kneeled beside his younger self and ran a clawed hand over his shaggy mop of hair.
"This you and this me cannot exist at the same point in time, it is hard, and it is painful, but that is the way of things."
"So I have to die?" he was sniffling now, like he'd just been told his favorite pet had died.
"No, we will become one, that is the truth of this body, when we are both needed, when there is a point where your consciousness and heart needs my mind and powers, then we will have to become one, I do not know what will cause that, and I do not know which of us will become the dominant personality, but we will have to be strong to survive it." he smiled, though it looked more menacing coming from him for some reason, maybe it was all the fangs.
Goku looked up at him as he rose to leave, "When it comes time, will I remember everything? Will you?"
"When it is time, the whole of the universe will be made open to us. That is the other truth, we will become what we were meant to be, the truth of our birth, Bastard Child of Heaven and Earth, more powerful than either, protector of both."
The shadows rose up to swallow him then, dark hands that brought him back into their fold, caressing and protecting him as he slid back into the darker sections of Goku's mind and soul. He was left staring out over the garden as the gold faded to the normal light of midday. He remembered this time. Since he'd come back with everyone from heaven he remembered all the times he'd been the powerful demon, and it terrified him.
Sometimes, if he was woken from a dream or a noise, he'd look at his hands and see claws dripping with blood and flesh, stringing mats of torn muscle and skin, an oozing pile of tattered soft tissue laying underneath him and he'd remember that it'd been Sanzo's body and his hands, and he'd scream into the night until Sanzo would shake or slap him back into consciousness. He'd cry then, clinging to Sanzo and refusing to let go or answer the questions that were way too kind for him to want to hear. He didn't want to remember some things.
***
Ch. 2-