Title: Violets Fade Quickly
Author: silrayn silverwolf
Disclaimer: Saiyuki is Kazuya Minekura's.
Warnings: PG13 to be safe, hints of shounen ai
Teaser: Hakkai muses about his stay in the Sanzo-ikkou, after a few hundred years have passed, nothing graphic yet...
Inspired by: sf-sama's call for angst fic and an email conversation with her...
Prologue - Beginning of the End
"Violets fade quickly
In the noonday sun..."
Childish voices rose and fell in the clear morning air, reading through the age-old verses. Eager young faces were bent over their books as the children sat on tree roots and rocks, unaware of what the verses evoked in their teacher. The poem "Legends Passing" always made him think of those days...
And truly, the Sanzo-ikkou is nothing but a legend now... How long has it been...? A few hundred years...
A few hundred years to a youkai was very little time. To humans, they spanned generations.
I never thought of that then...
He didn't thought of it at all, caught for much of the time between fighting and melancholy of Kanan's death. Looking back, he now knew that he had been content then.
Yes, life wasn't assured and everyday brought new challenges but...
Somehow, there had been that strange sense of community running through it all, a subtle sense of belonging.
We were a bunch of misfits, but we belonged...maybe it was the common tie of Purpose, or the common bond of outcasts but we got along quite well in those days...
Gojyo and Goku bickered in the backseat...Sanzo brooding in the front...
Those were the days that seemed to stretch onto forever. One day come to mind...one conversation...
They had been in enemy territory then but somehow, throughout the long years hed come to treasure it as one of the most serene moments of his life.
He had entered Sanzo's room then because he had been anxious of the strange welcome they had gotten
"Excuse me." Hakkai said, opening the door as he did so.
"I don't remember saying you may come in." The blond had his gun in hand pointing at the door. Hakkai could see that he was brooding. One hand held a cigarette absently. Sitting on the bed with his arms crossed over a knee.
"But I've come in already." Hakkai said with his arms upraised in a placating position. The Three Aspects had said that all of them were necessary to the mission but one can never be certain about the temperamental monk.
"Hn." The gun was put down in grudging concession.
Hakkai knew well enough not to push his luck so he just closed the door.
Sanzo puffed a plume of smoke as he got a chair on the foot of the bed, close enough to judge the monk's mood but far enough not to press on the blond's temper. It was foul enough already judging from how long the stream of smoke the man had exhaled.
"How do you feel about this place? This room... There's something strange about this setup..."
And that was understatement...
Generations echoed in the hallways. Something flickered just at the edge of sight, making one whip about though there was nothing there. One would expect a place this large to be teeming with life. Servants should be silently moving about their business, guards quietly prowling the grounds and most of all children and animals romping about. It wasn't that late when they'd come in. Dusk had just fallen when they started the chase, they wouldn't have arrived too late in the evening.
And even then there would be servants tending to the lamps...
That's it!
Hakkai now pinpointed what had bothered him. It was the lack of other people. He was about to voice that thought when he was rudely interrupted.
"That discovery is too late. There's nothing that can be done about it." Sanzo said facing him and putting his cigarette down and continued.
"Although I really wanted to comment on it before, I don't really have the right to say it." Hakkai backtracked, watching the shadows. Things were definitely not right but he felt an arrogant assurance in the blond's statement despite its rudeness. It grounded him.
Whatever it is, we can handle it. Said that voice and it soothed all his doubts away.
Much like a lullaby of a mother can calm a fretting child. Though I have outgrown such things...
"Is that so? I felt it much earlier on that you were already uneasy." The blond's face was so hard to read.
"It's a full moon today, isn't it?" Hakkai asked, seemingly to change the subject but both of them knew better.
It was the lack of the moon...that makes this place more ominous...as well as other things... Things that said all was not well here... This reminds me too much of the estate house of the Thousand-Eyed Demon after the massacreNo-after I slaughtered everyone in that ill-fortuned house...there was also no moon at that time... Clouds threatened rain hanging down the horizon...
It seemed like another person now, he hardly remembered any of that time. All of his actions were blurred under a desperate anger and need to rescue Kanan. He had slashed his way into the castle like a madman. He didn't know how he might have survived except that his desperation must have taken the place of fighting skill, letting him take on the guards and anyone else who stood in his way. What he did was the awful stillness that came after... Stillness so deep, it seemed to echo down a horrible crevice. He could almost hear his innocence fall like a stone fall down that deep, deep darkness, irredeemably lost. More than ever, he felt the burning need to find Kanan and leave that accusing stillness.
That was how I nearly got killed by Chin Issou... I was so intent on finding Kanan...and lead her out of there...
But those memories were better left in the past. He was most grateful when Sanzo interrupted his thoughts.
"Yes, it is."
"Do you remember when it began?" He asked, more to make conversation and chase away the shadows for a while, shadows he'd thought he'd put to rest. He didn't want to leave the room yet. The monk was a comforting solid presence, the odd blond hair sparkled under candlelight seemed like a charm to ward away the dark and all that it entailed.
Sanzo always had this effect on Hakkai. The blond was so sure, so confident of everything that Hakkai felt soothed by the man's presence.
"Can't recall now..." Sanzo trailed off pensively, watching the thin plume of smoke weave its way to the ceiling.
"I remember when we entered the forest, I could still see the moon."
"You mean when the woman and the strange bird showed up...we were already getting into this game?" It was very possible.
"Perhaps it's more right to say that it was earlier than that."
"If it's the work of Gyuma Ou's people. What's your view?"
"Perhaps."
Hakkai looked at Sanzo searchingly. It wasn't like the monk to be uncertain.
"No matter what, the other side must be the enemy."
"Enemy...is it really the enemy?" Hakkai often wondered at his companion's philosophy.
The man wasn't easy to get along with but Hakkai always felt at peace when he was with him. That was why he was still here, to find that peace in the face of the memory.
Though no doubt Sanzo would have an aneurysm if he ever heard himself describe that way...
Hakkai had his own inner struggles for all his serene smiles. They all had.
"Blocking our way" Sanzo said almost lazily, with eyes closed. Then he stared at Hakkai directly in the eyes.
"That is the enemy."
Another long exhalation of smoke...
"Should we carry on like this? You are not calling up everyone together? I think we should think of a counter plan." It would not do to let Gojyo or Goku blunder into traps.
"Spare me. I don't want to see the idiots again. Moreover..." Sanzo pulled his cigarette back to his mouth.
"I like this place very much."
The loaded silence continued a while and Hakkai was content to let it go that way. It was a peaceful quiet that he loathed to destroy.
And we overcame much longer odds than this...
"I'm going to sleep. I don't want to hear big theories of life." Sanzo put his cigarette down with a gesture of finality.
"I understand." Hakkai took that as his signal to go, knowing that serene quiet or not, the blond wasn't the type to tolerate his company more than necessary. He started to stand up from where he was perched.
Not when he's in this mood...
"I give my warning now. No matter what, before daybreak, don't wake me up. Whoever, whatever comes into the room, I'll kill."
He'll do it, too.. .
The thought was almost amused.
"I know that, good night." Hakkai said as turned to go to the sound of gun cocking.
Look at me maundering over "the good old days..." like some granther...
...Which he wasn't... Not when a youkai lifetime was considered.
A twitter of a bird just above him, a sparrow his mind automatically corrected, jolted him out of his reverie.
And doing it when you should be doing your job...
As a small village teacher, he earned a modest salary for teaching a dozen or so children of various ages.
I'd better rounds just to be sure...
Hakkai looked about guiltily and started to pace the small school yard where he held classes whenever he could and saw with some relief that all his charges where too preoccupied to be up to mischief. There were days when it was rather hard to get one or two settled into their learning activities. There was always one or two in a lot of children, he'd noticed.
But they're well behaved today...
Those who were too young to read were busying themselves with drawing on scraps of paper. Well, at least most of them. One pair of eyes was trained at him with an inscrutable look, purple eyes that looked back down on the pages of a well-worn book.
He's another reminder...so very like Sanzo in his temperament...as well as looks...
The youngling in question was a slight, willowy teenager with an unruly thatch of rare blond hair. Hakkai had very little to complain of him except that he seemed to be very aloof from his age-mates. He was very bright, acing all his lessons, and respectful of his Cho-sensei. His name was Shin Kouryu, supposedly, seventeen or so years old. Hakkai rather suspected that the age was a bald-faced lie.
Youkai rarely develop as fast as humans do... He must be at least over seven hundred years old...
Not that Hakkai was an expert at such things, he only knew from personal experience with Lirin that youkai tend to mature very slowly compared to humans.
Wasn't she about five hundred years old and still thought like a child of twelve?
There were a lot of things Hakkai didn't know of youkai despite being one. He was just a murderer, after all, who had slain a thousand youkai and, thus, been doomed to be one. He did know that while the boy didn't radiate of youki, the child was wearing far too many jewelry for his age or quiet temperament, two thin copper bangles and a copper drop earring. They were subtle things, barely a glint when the boy moved now and then but...
They're limiters...they can be nothing else...
In older, better times, the green-eyed youkai would have called in the lie but, nowadays, he knew that deception had become necessary. He himself hadn't unveiled his youkai self for more than a century and, even then. It had been done in great peril of his life.
Hero or not, human memory is so short when it comes to favors and wretchedly long when it comes to grudges...
The social climate had chilled for considerably after the celebrations had died down after the Sanzo-ikkou had gotten rid of Gyuma Ou. People were constantly reminded of their losses to youkai attacks during the Zero Wave. Absence of loved ones and the number of orphans in the streets was hardly easy to put out of mind when one has to live with them everyday. It was easier to forget that at least two of their so-called heroes had youkai blood.
After all, we weren't always in front of them to remind them of the fact&or present in their daily lives...
The backlash was long in coming. Even when they deified the Sanzo-ikkou, there had been whispers of youkai who'd turned up missing or dead, of lynching and tortures. The monks in the temples had tried their best to halt the swelling flood of recrimination and persecution but they had been woefully inadequate. It didn't help that the Sanzo-ikkou had broken up three years after the mythic journey. What the impetus of the mission had not accomplished, the inertia of boredom had managed. In fact, Hakkai had been the first to go.
What was the use of staying around when the tie binding was slowly dissolving from sheer lack of purpose?
The moments before the journey was a wistful memory of four strangers meeting on the road and for a moment touching profoundly, the epiphany would have passed quickly if not for the Journey. When they had been on the road fighting youkai, they had grim unity of born survivors in a dangerous situation. After...after was different.
So very different...
"I ought to leave all this tedious paperwork behind me. I don't need this...crap." Sanzo said for the nth time that month. It was just another visit to the temple, as memorable as the first. Sanzo always said that when they came in and would add the usual...
"I should just leave it and go back to Kinzan." The blond monk said irritably as he rose from his desk and got ready to join them in the morning sunshine.
Ah of course and here comes Gojyo...
"Now Sanzo-houshi-sama, what's paperwork? Not when it entails an unlimited Gold Card and our charming company."
And Goku...
"Ne, ne, Sanzo, there aren't better restaurants than here in Choung An. Where are we eating today, by the way?"
"Baka zaru! Baka no kappa!" Two slaps of the paper fan silenced both questions.
The same old round every time...
Hakkai knew that they should have by rights broken up the first month since the Journey with this routine. Every time they were together it played out the same way. They'd eat at the restaurant and two would squabble over the food until Sanzo whapped them into silence with his fan. Then they would have a stroll around the town. All this time, Hakkai was a silence presence beside the blond monk, like the good old days. It was getting old like marriage except that there was no sex involved in their relationships.
Getting tedious and wearisome...
It was long past time to sever the curious tie that bound them together. Long past the time bid farewell to a way of life that had ceased to have any use to any of them.
But no one seem to have the inclination to end it so...
"I am leaving the city by the end of this moon." Hakkai announced in the drowsy afternoon noise.
"Hakkai? You don't mean that. Don't you old buddy? If it's Sanzo, he didn't mean anything by it..." Gojyo exclaimed.
"Hakkai, why don't you want to be with us anymore?" Goku said.
And there went the afternoon.
It had been easier than I thought it would...
Gojyo and Goku were loud in their protests then and in the days that followed but he found it easy to ignore, easy to ignore the hurt in their voices. He had anticipated and prepared for them.
Why? Because the "Sanzo-ikkou" has been dead with the Journey...that's why... Dead and rotting and if we had any decency left we'd bury the corpse before it starts to stink too much...
Sanzo...well, this isn't about Sanzo at all...though we've been holding him down...
What he did have a hard time accepting had been Sanzo's silence. He hadn't counted on the blond keeping silent, to take it all in a stride as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
But what did I expect him to do anyway? No chains, no attachments...
"Any final words for my departure, Sanzo?" Hakkai asked as he got the blond monk alone for the moment. The other two had rushed onward into the restaurant they were going to eat dinner in while they had lagged behind to savor their quiet companionship.
I wouldn't deny that I would miss it but for the rest of it...
Hakkai admitted to himself that there had been good times in the Journey and that there were still some times after that were worth keeping but...
They are getting fewer and fewer between...
He was tired of being part of the fabled four, the Journey. He was tired of picking up after Gojyo and Goku. Especially after Gojyo, the redhead had gone back to his gambling life. The kappa had refused to live on the reward the temple had given them and continued to patronize the same bars and gambling houses.
Besides, it's an opportunity for him to find the girls he adores so much...
Hakkai ended up with all the housework, more often than not.
And cleaning up is no fun, especially when your partner refuses to even show a modicum of orderly behavior&picking up a shirt off the floor is so tiresome when you know you are about to repeat the same futile action tomorrow...
He felt so useless, just an idol for the monks at the temple to deify.
No wonder the gods get bored by this treatment...they, themselves, aren't perfect...
"No oath is keeping you here." Sanzo rudely interjected.
It was something Sanzo would say yet the words were like a slap, snapping Hakkai out of his reverie. It shattered the comfortable stillness leaving some unnamed tension in the air.
Somehow, Id expect something more from him...
The sudden thought threw Hakkais mind into a maelstrom of feelings, feelings he refuse to name. The tension was still there, though, demanding response...but all he said was.
"Aa." And the moment passed them on. They entered the restaurant as if nothing had happened.
A most dangerous moment that was...
Hakkai could still remember Sanzos expression when hed said those words. There was no reproach in the purple eyes. And that was harder than anything else...because Hakkai realized, realized now that some things never changed. Sanzo was still his sun as much as the man was the sun of their little group. He had wanted something then. Something he still couldn't name. Some acknowledgement, perhaps...
Something than "No oath is keeping you here." That maddening man...
He didn't know what he'd expected but whatever it was... He didn't get it.
And I'm still smarting over it...
He often wondered how what could have happened had he not walked away, had he stayed in the capital, had he forced the issue. But he hadnt. He had walked away without knowing.
Coward!
The accusation rang in his mind and stayed there. There was nothing he could say to refute it anyway. He did leave.
"Daijoubu, Cho-sensei?" Asked Kouryu as Hakkai passed him absently.
"Daijoubu, Shin-kun." Hakkai said absently.
Suddenly, the surroundings dimmed. Hakkai looked up and saw that a single gray cloud had obscured the sun.
We might have to take lessons indoors tomorrow...tomorrow was supposed to be the day we're to identify plants...hmm...
It had been too nice a spring day to be cooped up in the small schoolhouse. Hakkai's mind jumped into the task of reworking his lessons for the next day, gloomy thoughts forgotten.
Author's Notes:
The revisions were done on Tritorella's suggestion, it just took me a long time to act on them... I had to watch the movie and transcribe it. The canon scene came from a fansubbed version of the Saiyuki movie.