Wake Up Heart
by Solitaire
Pairings: Gojyo/Hakkai, Sanzo/Goku
Rating: M, for language, violence, and sexual content
Disclaimer: Saiyuki and all associated characters are the intellectual property of Kazuya Minekura. I just write them for the sex. :d
Summary: Sanzo is heavily injured, setting off a chain of events no one was prepared to anticipate. Amidst madmen bent on immortality, surfacing desires of the flesh, and an affront against the Gods, it will take a combination of Heaven and Hell to save the world.
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Chapter One: The Desire to Protect
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"--ku!"
Rip apart. The tear of flesh, crunch of bone.
"Goku!"
Nyoi-bo is a blur of movement, a reassuring weight in his hands, so heavy--and he brings it down on another of his opponents, reducing the body to little more than a gory pulp. His blood rushes in his ears, drowning out the sounds of their screams they deserved it the soundofhisownscreams...
"Goku, please stop this!!"
With a gasp, he sat straight up in bed, a hand shooting to his diadem reflexively. It felt as if his skull would split in two. His heart pounded so fiercely, he was sure he would be sick. The world seemed to lurch on its axis for a moment, and he lay back down before he could lose the contents of his stomach.
What... happened?
Blood everywhere it wasn't enough it wouldn't make up for what they'd done why, why? and he screamed and screamed and
His head ached and he was too tired to form a coherent thought, but as he sank into the comfort of darkness once more, he still heard that question echoing in his mind, raw with pain.
Why?
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Hakkai was grinding the pills the town doctor had given them with an almost frightening intensity, pausing in his work only long enough to occasionally check on the kettle he'd rigged over the fireplace to boil. Whatever it was, Gojyo thought, it smelled god-awful.
"Is that for Sanzo, or Goku?" he asked, not because it made a difference to him, but because it was better than sitting here in the tense silence, worrying and watching Hakkai work. Not that he worried about the chain-smoking, abuse-slinging monk. That bastard would outlive them all, he was sure, if only out of spite.
"Sanzo," the brunet answered shortly, but Gojyo didn't take it personally. He knew Sanzo wasn't really what worried Hakkai, either. With a weary sigh, the man set down the pestle and removed his monocle to rub the bridge of his nose. "Whether by luck or skill on Sanzo's part, it's a miracle there were no internal injuries aside from broken bones. If that spear had been on target--"
The half-demon shuddered. "Stop, you're giving me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it. (Damn, when I saw him, I thought for sure...)"
"The greatest damage sustained was probably psychological, but I can't--" Cutting himself short, Hakkai scrubbed at his face wearily. "I wouldn't dare presume."
"Hey, at least he had the good fortune of being unconscious towards the end." Grimacing, Gojyo ran a hand through his hair with affected annoyance. "Man, he's gonna be impossible to live with, when he finally comes around."
'If he comes around,' seemed to hang in the air between them, but neither was going to voice it. Sanzo wouldn't suffer dying just yet--he probably didn't trust them to complete this stupid journey without him.
"But Goku..." Hakkai began with reluctance, putting an end to their dancing around the subject, and Gojyo released a long column of smoke towards the ceiling.
"How is he, anyway?"
Hakkai turned his attention to the kettle and stirred the contents thoughtfully with a frown. "Still sleeping. I went in to check on him a while ago, to see if I'd need to administer more sedatives, but from what I could tell, he was sleeping soundly enough." Removing the kettle from the flames, he set it on the table to cool. "I checked his diadem, too, just to be sure--"
Gojyo waited, and Hakkai shook his head with a grave look.
"It wasn't even cracked."
"That so?" The cigarette had lost its appeal, and he ground it out into the ashtray before lighting another. The ashtray was overflowing, but Hakkai hadn't spared a word to nag him about it all night. Gojyo almost wished he would.
Hakuryuu, seeing his master taking a break, flapped his way across the room to settle himself lightly on Hakkai's shoulder. The brunet raised an absent-minded hand to the dragon's back.
"I'd be lying," he admitted after a moment, "if I were to say the Minus Wave never crossed my mind."
"No!" Gojyo protested vehemently, sitting up straighter in his chair. "If it was that, we'd know, we would'a felt it, too."
"Yes," Hakkai agreed as he pushed himself to his feet, grabbing the kettle and the pills he'd made a fine powder of, "but isn't the alternative worse?"
Gojyo's teeth clenched around the filter of his cigarette, but he could think of no response for that. He didn't like it; he didn't like it, and didn't people sometimes do crazy, horrible things when they--when they cared for someone that much?
Exhaustion was exuded by the brunet's every movement as he headed for the door and Gojyo didn't like that, either. He disliked it even more when Hakkai turned to eye him knowingly before he disappeared from sight.
"There are some sacrifices no one would want made in his, or her, name."
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"Sanzo..." Goku protested unhappily, leaning forward slightly in his seat.
"You won't finish that sentence, if you want to keep breathing."
"But your arm still doesn't work! If there's trouble--"
The blond shot him a death glare, and Goku immediately shut up, though he wasn't happy about it.
"Well, that's why he's got two arms, see?" Gojyo piped up from the back seat. "So when one of em goes dead, he's got a spare." He just barely managed to dodge the bullet Sanzo sent his way. "(Way to prove me right, you shitty priest!)"
"Now, now," Hakkai interjected in an attempt to keep the peace. "Sanzo insisted he'd be able to heal just as well, on the road, as he could have being forced to stay at the inn for an indeterminable amount of time." With a smile at no one in particular, he added, "Though he really is the worst patient I've ever seen."
"Look," Sanzo snapped, "we're on a tight schedule. We don't have time to sit around on our asses, waiting for something that'll happen on its own. The arm is fine. Drop it."
Frowning, Goku wrapped his arms around his upraised knees and rested his chin atop them. He watched as Sanzo attempted unobtrusively to flex his right hand. The action was sluggish, and the monk grabbed his injured arm with a soft "Tch!" Goku's jaw clenched.
"Oi." Gojyo prodded him with the toe of his boot, and Goku's head whipped around as he prepared to fend off another fight. "Don't worry about it. After the size'a that last group of youkai, it'll probably take em at least a few days to regroup." He grinned. "Hey, we may even make it to the next town before then."
"It's a good-sized one, according to the map," Hakkai agreed.
"Great," Sanzo snorted. "Then they've probably heard of us."
"Ooh, that mean we'll be 'incognito' again?" the redhead quipped. "That's awesome, I just love walking around in a blanket and sunglasses in broad daylight like some kinda vampire..."
"You'll do it," the priest threatened, "or you can go find your own room and board."
"Anyone ever tell you you've got some serious control issues, Sanzo-sama?"
Goku fisted his hands tightly. Gojyo could joke about it all he wanted, but the teen couldn't shake the nagging sense of dread that had settled in the pit of his stomach.
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"Full house." Gojyo sighed. "Why does it seem I can only win when you're not paying the least bit of attention to the game?"
"Hmm?" Blinking, Hakkai's gaze landed on the redhead sitting across from him. "I'm sorry, I was..."
"Staring at Sanzo, yeah, I got that." He plucked the cards from Hakkai's hand and covered it with his own. "You're gonna drive yourself crazy with worry. Go. Go take a bath, get something to eat, anything, but don't sit here beating yourself up."
"Gojyo--"
Ignoring the half-hearted protest, Gojyo leaned over the table and pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of the brunet's mouth. "You haven't slept in over twenty-four hours. Please."
Hakkai's eyes slid shut and Gojyo almost smirked, to see the man's defenses crumbling so easily at a little kiss and a 'please.'
"I'll keep an eye on Master and his Pet," he promised, "and I'll call you right away if it looks like something's wrong."
"...Alright," Hakkai finally conceded, and it was a good thing, too. The bone-deep weariness rolled off him in nearly palpable waves, and Gojyo would hate to have to sucker-punch the guy, just to get him unconscious for a few hours.
"But if anything happens, if there's any change at all--"
"I'll send for you immediately, via homing dragon," the half-demon assured him with a mock salute. From the foot of Sanzo's bed, Hakuryuu kyuued his assent.
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"Shit," Sanzo swore. "We've got company."
Goku immediately sat up straighter in the back seat. He couldn't even smell them yet, but he trusted Sanzo's ability to sense qi before any of the rest of them could; it had given them a crucial few moments' warning on more than one occasion.
"Damnit, Gojyo, I thought you said we wouldn't get attacked again so soon!" he accused as Jeep skidded to a halt and they all climbed out.
"What're you blaming me for? I said 'probably'!"
"This does seem amazingly resilient of them, doesn't it?" Hakkai inquired. "And only two days after such a large-scale attack." He politely pretended not to notice Sanzo's wince as the man pulled his right arm from the make-shift sling the three of them had bullied him into wearing.
"Everyone's just begging to die," the blond growled, and flicked the safety off his gun.
"Sanzo, I still think--"
"And that's the problem right there, isn't it, you stupid monkey?"
Goku shut his mouth with a snap and silently fumed. Fine. Let Sanzo see who would come to his rescue, when he was getting his ass-and-one-working-arm kicked.
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Half an hour of solitaire. Check on monkey-boy. Go to the can. Sneak to the kitchen to grab a beer (or six). More solitaire. Peek in on Hakkai--damn straight, he'd better be sleeping. Back to Sanzo to change his bandages, because it was a rare opportunity for a free show, and it beat the hell out of waiting 'til he was awake and could fight it tooth and nail. More fucking solitaire, and that boring-ass book Hakkai had been reading was actually starting to look pretty good.
When Sanzo woke, shooting up in bed with a harsh gasp like that of a drowning man, it scared the shit out of him. Abandoning his cards, Gojyo stood from the table so quickly, he almost sent his chair toppling.
"Goku," the priest rasped, and it didn't sound like he was fully awake, he was fumbling with the sheet that covered him as he tried to get out of bed. "Where's...fucking animal, I'll--" He didn't seem to realize where he was, but had managed to push himself into a sitting position despite the obvious pain he was in, because Sanzo was just that stubborn.
"Whoa, whoa there." Gojyo was across the room in a second, and shoved the blond back down with a hand in the center of his chest. Sanzo struggled against him, grabbing his wrist with a surprisingly tight grip for a man who'd been near-comatose for the better part of three days.
"Goku," he tried again, his voice raspy from disuse, "his limiter--he was...goddamn bloodbath." His eyes clearing somewhat, he glared up at the redhead. "Let me the fuck up." Sanzo jerked at the arm holding him down, but Gojyo wouldn't budge. "What happened? Did Goku lose it? The limiter, I need to--"
"No," Gojyo started to explain uncomfortably, "it never broke, Sanzo. Hakkai--"
"Hakkai put it back on," came Goku's voice suddenly from the doorway, and both men turned to stare at him. "It just got knocked off, but Hakkai grabbed it and was able to get it back on."
Confused, Gojyo released Sanzo and took a step back from the bed with a frown as Goku quickly bounded over. "What the hell? That's not--"
"It's fine now," Goku insisted, and Gojyo might have classified the look he got as threatening, if the kid hadn't looked so scared and desperate at the same time. "It's fine, see?" he repeated, dropping to his knees at Sanzo's bedside and pushing back his hair to reveal the golden diadem, clearly intact. "I'm really, really sorry, but it's fine, now, Sanzo, honest--"
The priest lifted a pale hand and set it atop the boy's head with a sigh, and if Gojyo didn't know any better, he'd swear Sanzo's expression was one of visible relief. Except no one had any reason to be relieved, Goku had not lost his limiter and was lying about it, and if he'd gone ape-shit once that meant it could happen again, didn't it? It meant any of them could, maybe.
"Where's Hakkai?" Sanzo asked, and Goku definitely flinched.
Dragging a hand through his hair, Gojyo jerked a thumb next door. "Sleeping. But I'm not gonna--"
"Forget it," the monk told him, "it can wait," and Goku's shoulders un-tensed slightly. "I feel like shit. He'd better have left some painkillers."
Goku's eyes were glued to the splinted fingers of Sanzo's left hand as it slid from his hair to rest on the mattress.
"Um, yeah," Gojyo said, snapping out of his thoughts. "Hold on, I'll get em..."
"You really are a moron," he heard Sanzo berate the kid quietly, once his back was turned. "Your limiter was 'knocked off?' Tch. They weren't even assassins, just a bunch of riled-up perverts looking for a convenient outlet. And you--"
"I know," Goku murmured with chagrin, and that much, Gojyo figured as he held the bottle of pills in his fist and listened while pretending he wasn't, was genuine. "I messed up, I let my guard down and one of em must've snuck up on me an'--"
"No shit, you screwed up," the priest told him coldly. "You're of no use to me if you allow yourself to get distracted every goddamn time you think I'm in danger! I never asked you to protect me."
"Sanzo--"
"What would you have done, if Hakkai hadn't been able to stop you? I won't always be around to clean up every fucking mess you make."
Gojyo returned with the pills and a glass of water, before this conversation had a chance to really get ugly. "Here," he said, thrusting them at the blond. "And for Chrissake, cut the kid some slack."
Psychological damage, Hakkai had suggested. If Sanzo remembered any of it, he was playing it off like a Grade A bitch. But that scream, when they had finally-- Gojyo shuddered at the memory of it.
"Mind your own goddamn business," Sanzo snarled, and Gojyo only managed to keep from really giving him a piece of his mind by reminding himself how pathetic the bastard was right now, all bruised and beaten up. 'Extremely defensive' was an understatement.
With a scowl--because Sanzo would never suffer others worrying about him--Gojyo turned his back. "C'mon, Goku. We can come back when he's slept off most of the bitchiness. Let's get you something to eat, huh?"
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This was wrong.
It had felt wrong from the beginning. There was an intent to kill here, yes, but it didn't seem driven by the madness that often resulted from the Minus Wave. They were...terrified for their lives, which didn't make sense.
The force was well-organized, but smaller than those which were usually sent after their party, and the constituency wasn't normal, either. Usually the groups of youkai they came up against, the ones sent from India, consisted of the general 'cannon fodder,' as he'd once put it to Sanzo. Occasionally, these were led by one youkai with specially developed powers: summon-able qi weapons, commonly, or hypnotism, or illusion. But this force... There was so much ambient qi floating around, it was difficult for Hakkai to pinpoint, but surely they couldn't all possess such powerful--
"Shit!" Gojyo cursed behind him, dodging the razor-sharp edge of a staff thrust recklessly in his direction. "These guys sure get points for effort. Killing em's almost too easy, but they just keep comin' back for more!"
He raised Shakujou over his head in a sharp arc and let the chain reel out, the crescent blade chopping limbs and the closely surrounding trees indiscriminately. A shower of small qi projectiles like firecrackers hit him from his left, and Gojyo held up his arms to shield himself, even as Hakkai erected a barrier.
'Almost too easy,' Hakkai thought, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
"Gojyo," he murmured anxiously over his shoulder when the redhead pressed to him, back to back, "don't you think there were many more attackers, earlier?"
"Well, we killed a lot." Shakujou's blade sang through the air.
"But we've no idea where Goku and Sanzo are. They've separated us."
"They can't be far," Gojyo reasoned. "Just a little while ago, I heard a couple of em ranting about fellow demons siding with a youkai-killing priest. Morons," Gojyo spat vehemently. He sent a kick to one attacker's chest, and Hakkai buried an elbow in the face of another who'd moved in when the man was distracted.
"But I haven't heard even one of them mention the sutra. And listen. Do you still hear Sanzo's gun?"
Straining his ears, Gojyo listened for it over the sounds of the cursing and howling. "No. (Fuck!)"
"They're not trying to kill us, they're just keeping us busy! I think we made a terrible mistake. We have to find the others before--"
A scream ripped through the air, making the hairs at the back of Hakkai's neck stand on end. He met Gojyo's eyes, and they were wide and horrified.
It had been Sanzo's voice.
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When Goku snuck back to the room an hour later, Sanzo was asleep again, which was good. Hakkai always said your body did its best healing when you were asleep and Sanzo...had a lot of healing to do.
As quietly as possible, he grabbed one of the chairs from the table and set it beside the bed, so he could watch over Sanzo.
He and Gojyo had eaten in the third room, the one that had been for him when he was recovering, and it had been really quiet and awkward, but it was better than sitting down in the dining room with all the people.
The town wasn't all that friendly towards youkai, Gojyo had explained--tensions ran high with an all-youkai town so close, one that could potentially go kill-happy any day--so Hakkai had given the story that they were humans traveling through the area when they were attacked by territorial youkai. It probably didn't help much, playing off the bad blood between the two towns, but they hadn't had a choice. Sanzo was in serious need of professional medial attention, and there was nowhere else they could get it.
"What happened back there..." Gojyo had started, and Goku slowly set down his chopsticks, staring into his bowl but not really seeing it.
"I don't know," Goku whispered. "You saw what they did to Sanzo. I just...I couldn't let them get away with it." He fisted his hands under the tabletop. "Sanzo never did anything to deserve that," he growled, and told himself not to remember it, not to picture it in his head. "Sanzo's a Sanzo! That means he's really, really special, and they--" He was cutting crescent-shaped marks into his palms, and tried to take a deep breath.
"I don't know that I'm in much of a position to say who deserves what," Gojyo finally drawled, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling as he took a deep pull off his cigarette. "Maybe we were wrong, maybe those guys were--probably both--but if it had been me..." With a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair and laughed a little, darkly. "I'da done the same goddamn thing."
Goku took Sanzo's hand, mindful of his broken fingers, and curled his own around it. Sanzo didn't wake, which was also good, cause he was extra nasty when he was hurt, like he had to make up for the fact that his body wasn't working properly or something. The desire to touch Sanzo's hair, to push it from his face and reassure himself that everything would be okay, was a physical ache like a knot in his chest, but Goku didn't want to push his luck.
Instead, he tightened his hand marginally around Sanzo's and let his head rest on his own arm, propped over the back of the chair.
Because everything would be okay. He wasn't a monster.
He wasn't.
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Damnit.
Goku sent another of his attackers skidding through the dirt, having knocked him unconscious, but not killing him. Sanzo and Gojyo would pitch a fit, he knew, but something about this group of youkai seemed...off. They didn't seem crazy--well, anyone who took them on with such low-level powers was crazy--but they weren't "crazy" crazy, at least Goku didn't think so.
Six of them had closed around him in a loose circle, and every so often one would charge at him, or shoot some kind of qi weapon at him, but other than that they weren't really doing anything, except yelling at him and calling him a traitor, and Goku had heard it all before.
"Blah blah blah, don't you guys ever stop whinin'?!"
Sansekkon snapped back into place as Nyoi-bo and he jammed one end against the hard packed dirt, figuring he'd vault over the bunch of them. He had a bad feeling about this fight and he wanted to find Sanzo or Hakkai, because they could probably feel it, too, and would know what to do.
Leaping into the air, he sailed over them, and because he was struck so strangely by the desperate determination, the despair in their faces when they lifted them to watch him, Goku didn't notice the qi barrier until it threw him back.
"!!"
He went crashing toward the ground and turned it into a roll--he hadn't thought anyone could do that but Hakkai!--landing on his feet and 'scff'ing backwards through the dirt with the momentum of it until he slid to a stop. He saw now that a few of them were working together to create the barrier, it didn't look easy, and another youkai stepped into the center of the circle, drawing a qi-arrow through his summoned bow.
"Just stay right where you are!" the youkai shouted at him, his voice trembling with emotion as he drew his arrow back further, and his hand was shaking so badly, Goku had to wonder at the fact that he didn't drop it. "We'll kill you if we have to, so just be still! Soon enough you'll be free, we'll all be free, and we'll be able to live without fearing each day will be our last--!"
Goku scowled. "What th' heck're you talking--"
To his left, about a hundred meters away, a section of the forest suddenly exploded in light.
The pierce of the qi-arrows that sunk deep into his thigh and arm as he turned to race towards Sanzo were hardly felt, like splinters.
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He waited until the monkey was dead asleep--which was so easy, it was almost a crime, once he'd let the boy climb into the bed with him, given the provision "Stay on your own side or I'll kill you"--and until he heard the kappa leave.
Gojyo had probably left to buy more cigarettes, if the stench of that inferior brand coming off of him when he had been in the room was any indication.
Easing himself off the mattress carefully, Sanzo hissed as his various wounds stretched and burned. On the bed, Goku's face twisted into a frown in his sleep but thankfully, he didn't wake.
"Fuck," Sanzo swore softly, then laughed mirthlessly at the irony. Yeah, fuck was right. And it was almost funny, until he tried to stand, and his legs immediately gave under his weight, sending him crashing to the floor, nearly blinded with pain.
His knee; he vaguely remembered the bastards stomping on it while he was down. In addition to dislocating his shoulder, breaking a few ribs and all the fingers of his left hand, using a knife to flay the insides of his--Sanzo decided he didn't want to remember any of this right now. It was lame that Hakkai sucked at healing broken bones.
And he was naked, he realized now with annoyance. Great. He supposed it only made sense, those youkai had made such a fucking mess of him, there probably hadn't been much left of his clothes, anyway, and anything remaining would've had to have been removed so Hakkai or a doctor could treat his injuries.
A flash of anger, fierce and red-hot, burned through him suddenly, then was gone nearly as quickly. So everyone had to know his business, big fucking deal. There was nothing he could do about it, now, and all of the youkai were dead, so it didn't matter either way.
Sanzo slowly and laboriously pulled himself to his feet again with the help of one of the wooden chairs at the table and grabbed his robe, pulling it around him--which proved a difficulty in itself when he could only move one arm, and not so well at that. He figured he'd stick close to the wall and sort of hop his way to the bathroom so he could take a piss and decide from there if he felt up to rousting Hakkai so he could get some goddamn answers.
Except that this hurt like hell, too, but it beat dragging himself across the floor on his fucking elbows, so he grit his teeth and bore it.
It took him ten minutes just to make it across the room, and he'd never been more thankful for an in-suite bathroom. Once he was in there he had a bad flashback and nearly threw up, but his body was just being stupid--probably rebelling against all the stress he was putting on it, so soon--because there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. Through the wall, he heard the door to the next room over open, then shut, and knew Gojyo had returned.
Fine. It was harder for them to lie to him together, anyway. The idiots never could get their stories to corroborate.
The look on Gojyo's face when he shoved the door open and just about fell into the room was shocked and a little defensive, and Sanzo figured it had something to do with the way the redhead had been sitting over Hakkai, holding his hand like that as the qi-healer slept.
Even so, Gojyo was fast enough that Sanzo didn't actually hit the floor, and by the time Gojyo was prodding the door shut with his foot, Hakkai was struggling into a sitting position and fumbling for his monocle.
"Sanzo? What in the--?"
Before he knew it, the two of them were maneuvering him into the recently vacated bed like a fucking invalid, and he shoved their hands from him, irritated.
"I want to know what happened," he managed to ground out, despite the screaming ache in just about every one of his muscles, "and I want to know now."
Gojyo and Hakkai exchanged a look.
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"Don't touch him!!" Goku screamed when he found the group of them gathered around what could only be Sanzo. Half of them were tangled in the coils of the sutra, partially restrained, but it wasn't disintegrating them, why wasn't it working?!
And of course it had all been for show, because there were at least a dozen of them over Sanzo, grabbing and clutching and scratching, even as Sanzo cursed them and fought against them.
"Sanzo!" he yelled fearfully, but before he could take a step towards his guardian, the five he'd left behind caught up to him and knocked him to the ground.
"Hold him!" one of them shouted, and though Goku flung them off with ease, they were slowing him down, they were keeping him from Sanzo!
"Bastards!" Sanzo spat, and the curse was followed by the sharp smack of fist on flesh.
"We'll teach you to come looking for trouble in our homes," one of the youkai hissed. "We won't forgive you!"
It was the rip of cloth, and Sanzo's renewed grunts of pain, which spurred Goku to throw off the last of his captors, and he swung Nyoi-bo in a circle above his head until there were five bodies on the ground.
"Stop it!" he yelled again, and he punched and kicked his way to the center, and then Sanzo was there on the ground, bleeding and bruised and just out of reach because they were trying to hold him back, now, and the two youkai holding Sanzo's legs apart glared up at him, terrified yet defiant, another one of them was holding a staff--no, a spear--and he drew back his arm and
"No!" he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by Sanzo's scream.
Goku's world went red.
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"They were just trying to protect their homes, their families," Hakkai explained. "I'm not excusing what they did, but if history has taught us anything, it's the desire to protect something which can bring out both the best and worst in us."
Gojyo scrubbed at his face with his hands, clasped them with nervous agitation, and pressed his forehead against them.
"I suppose they'd heard we were coming west, as much as anyone else has. We're not exactly low-profile." With a weary sigh, Hakkai reached up to finger his limiters. "At one point, the town had been much like any other, before the resurrection attempts set off the Minus Wave: humans and youkai living together. When the wave hit...some of them lost their minds, and the rest of the youkai made the difficult decision to take care of the problem, themselves."
With the scrape of wood, Gojyo got up from his chair and went to stand at the window across the room. Sanzo glared at his back disapprovingly but didn't say anything, thankfully. Hakkai continued.
"However, it wasn't enough for the humans, they wanted all youkai out of the town, and there were lynchings. The youkai fought back, but there were the obvious physiological advantages of demon anatomy, and soon the humans were in the minority. Those that weren't killed were run out of town, or fled on their own. This was about a year and a half ago, and since then, other sane youkai from nearby have escaped there for sanctuary. They've managed to exist together peacefully, they claim."
Gojyo was pacing now, and Sanzo wished he'd just sit the fuck down, or leave, or something; it was making him nauseous. He finally spoke up.
"So let me guess: when they heard the youkai-killing priest and his cohort were coming, they flipped."
Looking down at his clasped hands in his lap, Hakkai sighed again. "They must have decided they had no choice but to fight. The strongest and most powerful of them volunteered for what they probably knew was a suicide mission, and--"
"And you know all this how?"
Hakkai's eyes flicked briefly in the half-demon's direction. "We managed to piece together the story based on what the town surgeon told us, and what we were able to drag from the single surviving one of our attackers."
"Fucking morons," Sanzo muttered, and he'd never wanted a cigarette so badly in his life. "If they'd just talked, instead of trying to make a goddamn shish kebob of me--"
"How were they supposed to know we would listen to reason?" Gojyo suddenly exploded, smacking his palm against the wall. "If you ask any youkai, we are the bad guys! Christ..."
The monk made as if to lever himself from the bed with a grimace of pain. "Don't you dare start with your bleeding heart shit--"
"Stop it!" Hakkai commanded, standing suddenly from his chair, and with a glare like that, even Sanzo was slightly taken aback. "What happened, happened. Regretting it or not, it won't turn back time. The most important thing now is deciding what should be done, if anything, about Goku."
"I'll tell you what that heartless bastard's gonna want to do," Gojyo retorted, furious, "he'd rather just put a bullet through Goku's brain and be done with it, wouldn't you, you sonova--"
Sanzo lunged from the bed, though it was more distance than he could hope to cover to the other side of the room, the state he was in.
"Sanzo!" Hakkai admonished, even as he reached out to restrain the man.
"What would you know about obligations?!" the blond snarled, struggling against Hakkai's grasp and making new blossoms of red seep through his robes. "You've run away from every fucking thing in your life you couldn't handle--"
It was difficult to tell who was surprised more by the slap, Sanzo or Gojyo, but the look on Hakkai's face promised he would do it again in a heartbeat.
"Please," Hakkai told the priest politely with cold fire in his eyes, "keep your opinions regarding other people's lives to yourself."
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By the time they arrived, it was already a massacre. The air was heavy with the stench of blood.
Goku's limiter, was Hakkai's first thought when his eyes landed on Sanzo, unconscious and spread eagle on the ground, frighteningly pale, clothed in more crimson than white. At his right, Gojyo stumbled towards a nearby tree for support and retched.
"I need to get in there and try to stop Sanzo's bleeding as best I can," he told the redhead worriedly when he returned to his side, his hands shaking, "but Goku will never let me near him, the state he's in now."
Summoning Shakujou, Gojyo seemed to get a hold on himself by sheer force of will alone. "Well, we'd better fucking try."
And then Gojyo was stepping forward, ready to serve as a distraction, and hopefully live long enough that Hakkai could keep Sanzo from kicking it.
Goku had turned on him in an instant, splattered from head to toe with his enemies' blood, and Gojyo would have sworn he had a feral animal's eyes, when he stopped screaming long enough to drag in a ragged breath and Jesus Christ, there was recognition there.
"Guys," the kid croaked, his voice raw, and Hakkai froze in his tracks where'd he'd been cautiously approaching from the other side, "you gotta--you gotta heal Sanzo, you gotta--!" He cut himself off, bearing his teeth in a snarl, and swung Nyoi-bo around behind him hard enough to send the youkai sneaking up on him crashing into the trees with what had to be a shattered ribcage and a broken spine because, shit, bodies weren't supposed to bend that way.
Hakkai moved in quickly, Goku stepped aside to give him more room, and Gojyo was just starting to hope things might be over, that any of their opponents left alive would have the sense to run as far and fast as they fucking could, when Goku suddenly went completely still, cocking his head as if listening and his ears weren't elongated, and the blood on his hands wasn't dripping from razor-sharp claws, it wasn't, Gojyo reminded himself, but it didn't really lessen the fear.
"Goku," he began warily, "what're you--"
"One's getting away," the brunet growled, and the kid was so fast these days, Gojyo might never have caught im, if he hadn't already suspected he was going to take off after whoever it was.
Shakujou's chain snapped around Goku, pinning his arms to his sides.
"No!" Goku howled. "Let me go! He's getting away, I won't let him--he's getting away!"
Gojyo had to dig his heels in and pull with all his strength just to keep the stupid monkey from tearing the last youkai apart with his bare hands and shit, he was glad Goku didn't quite possess the power he did in his demon form, because then they'd all be screwed.
"Cut it out, you moron!" he grunted, straining with effort. "It's over! You slaughtered just about every one of em!" He didn't know how much longer he could hold the kid, and if Goku was even semi-coherent, he had to at least attempt to appeal to his sense of logic. "If one got away, then he'll tell any others what a fucking bloodbath this was, and none of em'll ever try it again!"
Goku went slack against the chain so fast, Gojyo stumbled back a few steps before he could regain his balance.
"Yeah..." Goku agreed, falling to his knees, "you're right." He wavered there, his eyes losing focus, and Nyoi-bo dropped from his fingers. "Hey, Hakkai. Make sure Sanzo doesn't die...kay?" And Goku fell forward into the dirt, unconscious.
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"Marry me."
Fatigue had made his hands unsteady as it was, so he very nearly dropped the tea pot at that. "Excuse me??"
"That was awesome," Gojyo sighed appreciatively, and he had the glazed look to his eyes of a man lost in fond memory.
"As gratifying as taking Sanzo down a peg may have been," Hakkai admonished wryly, "I hardly think it merits a marriage proposal." Pouring himself a mug of tea, he poured one more, and nudged aside Gojyo's empties meaningfully as he pushed it towards the man.
"Yeah, but the look on his face..."
"I shouldn't have done that. Sanzo will have out, in the end," the brunet warned with a shake of his head.
"Well, I still say someone had to do it." Dropping into the chair across the table, Gojyo reached good-naturedly for the mug, but only to warm his hands. He wasn't big on tea, but constantly reminding Hakkai of this for the past four years had seemed to have little effect. Gojyo had given up, and had even started to learn some of the names of the different kinds--completely unintentionally, he maintained.
"Don't you think it was a bit odd, though: Sanzo's behavior?" Hakkai suggested thoughtfully, staring over the rim of his mug at the door Sanzo had dragged himself through, stubbornly refusing help. The two of them had been angry enough to let him do it.
At the redhead's incredulous expression, Hakkai elaborated. "Sanzo has started healing extraordinarily quickly."
Gojyo leaned heavily over the table on his elbows. "Uh, in case you didn't catch it back there, the dude can hardly walk," he reminded their qi healer, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder.
"With the extent of the injuries he sustained, he shouldn't have even been able to get out of that bed," Hakkai insisted. "And the worst of the bruising has already faded from his face."
"I'm certain the great Sanzo-sama will be happy to hear that."
"Gojyo, I'm serious."
"So am I. That guy's vainer than I am. He's just more secretive about it. ...Look," he added sotto voce when Hakkai didn't seem to want to drop it. "I know what you're thinking, so stop it." Reaching across the table, he laid a hand over the brunet's wrist. "It wasn't like we had much of a choice. Our options were pretty--"
"A choice about what?" Goku demanded from the doorway, and from the grim set of his mouth, it was clear he'd heard the whole thing.
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"It's bad," the town surgeon told him bluntly, but then, Hakkai had already known as much. From the corner of his good eye, he could see Gojyo pacing back and forth in front of the window, and the redhead's fingers kept making aborted movements toward the breast pocket of his jacket and his cigarettes.
"We did what we could," Hakkai ventured, "but the bleeding--"
"Femoral artery was sliced on both sides," the older man interrupted, gesturing to the angry scars with a brown, weathered hand. "You were smart to heal those up first, but there's a lot of soft tissue damage."
Hakkai nodded, struggling against exhaustion and the migraine threatening to split his head in two in order to pay attention. He'd worked fast to patch up the most severe of Sanzo's injuries with his qi, but by that time he had already wasted a fair amount of it on the youkai sent to distract them.
He should have caught on faster, damnit. Looking back now, it was so painfully obvious.
"Those bastards sure gave his kneecap hell. He's lucky there was no fracturing or dislocation," the doctor continued gruffly. "Two cracked ribs, at least one more probably bruised; six broken fingers, left shoulder dislocated--which you did a nice job of setting. There's also blunt force trauma to the back of the skull, so you'll have to look for signs of a concussion, if he manages to pull through." The man shook his head. "I'll be honest, though. At this point, it doesn't look good."
Pressing his lips into a thin line grimly, Hakkai was glad Goku was not awake to hear the conversation. Across the room, Gojyo violently kicked over one of the wooden chairs, and he winced inwardly.
Hakkai watched the shallow, labored rise and fall of Sanzo's chest, then glanced toward Goku where the teen lay on a small cot across the room. He hesitated, fearing he already knew the answer to what he was about to ask.
"What do we have to do?"
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tbc...