"Beyond All Limits"
by Princess of Pain
Part VII: Schisms
NOTES: Spoilers here are limited to the "it ain't nothing you haven't seen before", regarding this whole arc. Another thing about formatting: italics are used both to indicate specific thoughts, and to indicate flashbacks. If a thought, I've done my best to preface it with "He thought, '...'." If a flashback, it'll be a free-standing sentence with no such qualifiers. Just to try and avoid confusion.
Gojyo did not wake up until they reached town, and were not far away from their hotel. The ragged band carried his unconscious ass most of the way--Hakkai walking backwards and hooking his arms around Gojyo's armpits, and Sanzo and Goku each taking a leg. Carrying the comatose hanyo was like hauling a wooden statue about, and the wet heat of the day only made the experience that much more pleasant.
Goku was the first one to notice that Gojyo had awakened. Both Hakkai and Sanzo were borderline arguing, over whether or not the monk should be permitted to murder the hotel manager when they went inside. Hakkai was artfully dancing through the conversation, attempting to placate Sanzo, who would have none of it. He wanted blood. Goku, who had only the dimmest idea of what the manager might have done to piss Sanzo off so royally, happened to glance down and meet--rather than a slack, dirty face and a slight line of drool edging out of Gojyo's mouth--a pair of fiery, confused eyes.
Goku gave his master a nudge. "Hey, Sanzo? Gojyo's awake."
"Finally." The monk released Gojyo's leg; Goku followed Sanzo's motion, depositing Gojyo's ass quite firmly onto the earth. Hakkai quickly turned him loose and took a few steps back, as if he wasn't sure whether or not Gojyo would explode on contact with the ground.
The hanyo made a pained, hissing noise. "Fuckin' shit, Sanzo! What the hell's the matter with you?! Dumping my ass in the dirt--" He bestowed a glare upon Sanzo that promised certain doom.
"Are you done? I'm ready to get out of here, personally."
"When are we gonna EAT?" Goku added helpfully. "I wanna--"
"It'll have to wait. Thanks to Gojyo, we lost most of a day of travel. We need to make up for lost time and head out now."
"Thanks to..." Gojyo looked rather bamboozled. "What'd I do? You trying to blame your shortcomings on me, you stinking monk?"
"Sanzo, don't--" Hakkai started.
"You," Sanzo said, his eyes like suns, "have tried to kill me entirely too many times in the past day. You almost killed Goku, and you've done worse than that to Hakkai. I don't need to blame whatever nonexistent flaws you think I have on you. You've got plenty of your own, you perverted kappa."
The redhead began to speak, then cut himself off. He looked up at the three of them rather stupidly, as if he was suddenly incapable of understanding their language. Goku guessed that Gojyo didn't have any memory of what he'd done--it was the only reason why he'd look so utterly nonplussed about what Sanzo was talking about.
In any case, the moment spun out tense and awkward, with Hakkai still looking at Gojyo with a wariness that had never been there before, and Sanzo looking at him like the hanyo was a dab of dogshit on his robes. Goku didn't like it. And, as most often happened when such moments occurred, he concluded that it was time for him to act out.
He pounced onto Gojyo, his small fists pummeling his adversary's belly and head, bellowing some nonsense about how if Gojyo ever tried such a stupid sneak attack again, Goku would rip off his head and shit down his neck-pipe. Gojyo--screaming about how once again, the monkey broke the unwritten rules of combat with a sneak attack of his own--had him in a death-grip in seconds flat, planting Goku's face squarely in the hanyo's armpit, and telling him that if he ever touched Gojyo's hair again, this would be the last sensation he'd have on Earth. Given that Gojyo hadn't bathed in over a day, the damp reek of spent adrenaline, blood and sweat was unholy.
But still and all, it was better than that nasty tension that had gripped the air between them and turned it to steel walls, breaking everything apart.
-----
Sanzo stood in the doorway of the hotel. He felt like the star of a bad Western, at the door of a saloon, commanding the local Jack of all Ass to a shoot-out at high noon. He gave a glare to his mortal enemy.
The manager sat behind his desk, prim and proper. Hakuryu was curled up on the desk before him, being thoroughly petted and sweet-talked. That turncoat. The tiny dragon's belly was slightly distended--from, Sanzo could presume, the bits of chocolate that were being fed to him. The manager glanced up mid-coo, his eyes like chips of ice once they focused on Sanzo. "Oh. You're back. I didn't think you'd be returning."
"Hakuryu!" Hakkai cried out from behind him.
The dragon looked up and voiced an amiable 'kyuu'.
"Quit feeding my car chocolate before I shoot you, fuckmook," Sanzo growled. His trigger finger itched.
"With your pistol or your gun?" The manager held up the tiny dragon. "I thought you were all skipping out without paying your considerable bill, so I liberated the objects that you'd left behind in your haste as a reward. He's quite a cutie. I'll be sad to let him go, but yen is the currency I work with, not dragons."
Hakuryu sailed out of his hands and past Sanzo's head, towards his relieved master.
"Now, then. We accept credit cards and cash, but personal checks are out of the question. How will you be paying--" he looked down at his ledger, which of course was laid out not far from where Hakuryu had been "--40,000 yen?"
Sanzo felt a muscle spasm below his eye. "The rooms were to cost 5,000 yen."
"And I'm charging you for moving you to another room," he said easily, "plus for the window. Or had you forgotten? Cash or credit card?"
"I'LL--" Suddenly, Sanzo appeared to calm down entirely. He didn't smile, precisely, although the corners of his mouth turned up the slightest bit. He elbowed Hakkai, who--still listening in--obediently handed him the blessed credit card he'd ginked for his drinking binge. Sanzo walked up to the counter and clapped the small rectangle of plastic down atop the ledger.
"I've heard of Amex," the manager said coolly, looking down at the card before picking it up. "Do they have a good line?"
He glanced up as the barrel of Sanzo's pistol whip-cracked him bang between the eyes. A small trickle of blood ran from the new cut there, as he dropped to the floor, utterly stunned.
"S-sanzo!" Hakkai exclaimed.
"The monk wants to be a pirate," Gojyo said, a wondering tone in his voice.
Sanzo picked the card back up and tucked it into his pocket, then hurried behind the counter, and collected what they'd left behind--Goku's bloody clothes, Hakkai's shredded shirts, his own stained robes--and gave the manager a swift kick in the ribs for good measure. "Fuckin' hentai!" he spat, then nimbly leapt over the countertop. "We need to get out of here now, before he wakes up and calls the police."
With a whispered word from his master, Hakuryu turned into Jeepu, and the Sanzo-ikkou gladly piled in and headed out.
-----
This was going to suck.
Gojyo stood outside of the hotel room, glaring at its smoothly painted surface, as if it were the reason why he was in this mess in the first place. He was still out of cigarettes--and Sanzo had beaten the shit out of him with that stupid paper fan for stealing his, when he was crazy. Going without for too long made everything have a cast of unreality, like he was walking around in a dream from which he couldn't wake, but that wasn't the excuse for what he was feeling here.
No one had wanted to share a hotel room with him, once they'd stopped at this new town. There were only two rooms to be had. Sanzo had nearly thrown a fit and declared that he'd rather rape himself with his pistol than be anywhere near Gojyo, and Goku (not without a bit of panic in his eye) had claimed that he snored too much and that he still stank. Hakkai had been silent, and that was what hurt the most: the silence was rejection so obvious that it didn't need to be pointed out.
When the bickering got to epic proportions, Gojyo had volunteered to camp out for the night. It wouldn't have mattered much to him either way. He'd been on his own for so long, when he was far too young to pay rent on anything but a cardboard box. He was used to shitty sleep conditions. And he was used to sleeping with one eye open. No big deal. Except that when he'd said it, Hakkai's eyes had darkened, with fear or with sadness, and quietly stated: "That won't be necessary."
The stinking monk had snorted and muttered something beneath his breath about being surrounded by idiots. Then he and his monkey went off to their room--to gripe, to fight, to fuck, whatever it was they did when they were actually alone. Gojyo wouldn't know.
He knew that Hakkai was afraid of him. That knowledge made him hate himself.
Gojyo opened the door.
The room was no different than the dozens they'd stayed in over the course of their journey West--two beds, night-stand table, wash-tub, tiny bathroom, postage-stamp window. It could have been his room at home, if it'd been a bit messier. Hakkai was sitting on the bed he'd claimed for the night. A lamp on the night-stand was turned up full blast, illuminating the youkai with a sun-like light. He was sewing the delicate clasps on his shirt back into place. Beside him were Goku's clothes--still dirty but stitched whole--and his other shirt, which was also fully doctored.
Something in Gojyo's heart collapsed at the sight of that.
The youkai looked up at him casually, not missing a stitch. The light from the lamp gleamed off his monocle and his youryoku limiters. "I was wondering why you were taking so long. You said you'd only be stepping out for a minute."
He'd lied. He'd only stepped out of the hotel room, and only to stand there, transfixed and glaring at the door, trying to figure out how in blue fuck he was going to express what was wrong with him without losing Hakkai. That hadn't worked too well. "I got distracted."
"I see." He looked back down at his needlework.
Gojyo, his lank frame moving with his usual sly grace, loped over to his own bed and laid down. He kept a clear girth of Hakkai as he walked. He instinctively reached in his pocket for a cigarette, and uttered a soft "ch'" when that familiar paper box did not magically appear in his hand.
"You should let me have your shirt," Hakkai said. "It still has bloodstains and holes in it. You can wear your jacket until I get the worst of the blood out."
Gojyo looked down. Two gaping, bloodstained holes stared back at him. If Hakkai hadn't been there to close his self-inflicted wounds, he would have died. Maybe Hakkai shouldn't have been there, he thought, not just a little bitter and self-piteous.
"We need to talk," the hanyo said. Words which made anyone in any relationship, friendship or otherwise, quake in their souls.
The youkai glanced up from his work. His eyes were as bright and empty as the sun reflecting off a sheet of green glass. "Yes?"
"I." What would he say? Was there any way to explain, other than flat-out stating what was going on? Probably not. "I remember everything."
Hakkai's eyes widened. He set down his shirt and the needle, and rotated on the bed, giving Gojyo his full attention. "... then why did you behave as--"
"Because if Sanzo knew, he'd kill me. And if Goku knew... well, fuck." Gojyo absently raked his fingers through his hair, giving the ends a slight tug. "The kid's been through enough shit. I don't want him to know. It's better for them to think that I was possessed, you know?"
"Are you trying to say that you weren't? You heard Sanzo's side of the story. What he described sounded like telepathic possession to me."
"It wasn't. It..." His nervousness, his self-loathing, and his lack of education left him grappling for words. "It's like... okay. You know how annoying Goku gets."
"I understand how easily he gets under your skin, yes."
"Whatever." Gojyo felt uneasy under Hakkai's scrutiny. It certainly did not make his life any easier at the moment. "So Goku gets really annoying, and he's driving me up the wall. And I get pissed. I beat the crap out of him, but I'd never kill him or anything. Because you get it grilled into you from childhood that murder is bad. And you understand that you're just angry, that you're not angry over anything special, and that you don't really want to kill anybody that's not outright attacking you. Right?"
"Are you talking about your conscience, Gojyo?"
He shook his head. "No, no. It's not like that. It's like... a wall in your mind. Keeps you from doing things you shouldn't do. Starts with an 'i'? Inny something?"
Hakkai's brow furrowed for a moment. "Inhibitions?"
"That's it." Gojyo reached for a cigarette, and was once again disappointed. He chewed on his lip instead. God, he needed a tobacco fix. "Inhibitions. Only with what she was doing, she wouldn't let me stop. She didn't let them work. If they're walls, she knocked them all down. So when Goku wandered up and started apologizing, I thought about how annoying he was, and how I'd like to beat the shit out of him. Then I thought about how I'd like to kill him, and the murder thought got stronger, until I wanted to kill him, and so I tried."
He decided that he wanted to kill him.
"Gojyo."
"So when I tried to kill Sanzo, it was because I really wanted him dead."
"I think that I'll kill you."
"I tied up Hakuryu because I couldn't stop myself."
"What I wanted was just to pet it. It's so damn cute. But it wouldn't let me pet it, so I tied it up what good."
"And, and--"
"Gojyo, stop."
He couldn't; his mouth was on a bullet train of thought that mere calming words would not cease. "I tried to rape you. I really can't believe I did that. God, the last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt you. But I didn't do it because I wanted to violate you or beat you down or tear you up. I did it because. Well, I like you. A fuck of a lot. And I didn't understand that that's not something you would want, not really. I just didn't get it. I..."
He decided that he wanted to love him.
"You ffffffffucking tease! You can't look as good as you and not know it. You know but you think you're too fucking good for me. I know you."
"I love you so fucking much."
Hakkai uttered a trembling sigh. His best friend had paled considerably as he spoke; he looked like he'd been scrubbing his skin with rice-milk. He picked up his shirt and his needle, and slowly (but without any quavering hands to betray the slightest thought) began to stitch once more. "I see."
Gojyo wanted to scream. He understood that this was just how Hakkai kept his shit together when something happened that he had difficulty handling, but that made it no less frustrating. "Can't you say something else? I don't know, something that might let me think that you were actually listening?"
The glare he got would have been more at home on Sanzo's face than in Hakkai's. He could see the reproach and the warning signs without Hakkai having to say anything, but his idiot mouth never let such things stop him. "I'm trying really hard to get something across here, and, you know, it'd be a lot easier if you weren't sitting pretty like you didn't give a shit."
Hakkai snapped. He wasn't angry--at least, not nearly as angry as Gojyo knew he could get--but he was probably about as pissed as he'd let himself be. "Gojyo, all of my actions hinged on the belief that you were not in control of what you were doing. Goku and Sanzo acted under the same assumption. How am I supposed to react when you tell me that you did those things because you wanted to? Were you expecting a congratulatory word? A pat on the back? Celebratory sex?"
"Hakkai!"
The converted youkai's hands moved ever faster in their binding stitches. "What were you expecting? No one likes hearing that they're the target of murderous desires. Or that the man they believed to be their best friend would ever seriously consider raping them--"
"I didn't say that!"
"Why did you tell me this?" His eyes were as flat and expressionless as an endless field of asphalt. "I was happier not knowing. I was happier thinking that this could be buried. I just wanted to forget that it ever happened, I wanted to look you in the eye and not panic, I wanted to be able to see you smile and not think about the way you grinned when you, you--"
Hakkai jabbed himself good and hard with the needle, the slender drive of metal slipping up under his fingernail. He viciously swore (did he actually hear Hakkai swear?) and pulled it out, then put his finger in his mouth instinctively. His eyes never left Gojyo's. They glared at him, plainly communicating without words that...
"It's all my fault." The hanyo stood, somehow, even though his legs felt like cooked ramen. He couldn't look Hakkai in the eye, not when his friend was looking at him as if he'd never seen him before. Hakkai had never looked at him that way, not even on the night they'd met. That smile in the rain had been one of familiarity and welcoming, calling him back to where he didn't know he belonged, to what he'd been looking for his entire fucking life.
Idly, Gojyo wondered whether or not being a hanyo had anything to do with this. It seemed to have everything to do with everything else in his life--every punch and kick he'd ever taken from his mother, the incessant creaking of her bed (and the moans, they both made noise, Jien sounding like a rabbit caught in a trap). The empty doorway and the corpse left behind by his brother. Perhaps, he thought, digging into his own pain a bit more, hanyo really were destined for bringing misery, not just owning it.
His fingers unconsciously traced over the holes in his shirt, stiff with dried blood. No, that wasn't right. There were limits in everyone's mind that kept them from crossing over boundaries that were clearly laid out. There were places where no one was supposed to go, not without some serious consequences, in every friendship and relationship. He'd been unable to stop himself from doing some horrible shit, and that wasn't the same as wanting to do it.
It was not until he glanced back over at Hakkai that he realized that he'd spoken that last thought aloud. Not knowing if he'd dig his grave any deeper for the effort, he did what came naturally, and began to babble once more. "When I started to get more control of myself, when that dirty bitch had been split between her body and mine, because Sanzo got too close for her comfort--that was when Kaiya tried to force me to kill you. Before that, she just let me run wild, and I managed to fuck up things plenty on my own. Like usual. But she wasn't holding down all of my walls anymore. She couldn't... she actually had to try to trick me into doing it. And I decided that what I wanted was to die. If it came between killing you and killing myself, I'd rather be the one to punch out. I just didn't want to cause anymore pain."
"I thought it was okay for Mom to kill me... as long as it would make her stop crying."
Gojyo lightly scratched his cheek, where the raised, dark scars lay like brands against his tanned skin, for time and all eternity. They felt almost crinkly and rough beneath his fingertips. His other hand reached once more for the pack of cigarettes that wasn't there. "Hakkai, I am... well, you know. I'm sorry. I don't apologize too easily. But I am. Sorry, I mean. If I could take it back, I think I'd give up a whole hell of a lot to make it happen. What do you... what do you want me to say?"
The youkai--he stopped himself short of mentally addressing Hakkai as his friend--looked like he'd been punched in the face by a stranger. He'd completed the repairs on his shirt; it and the needle were resting indifferently at his side. When he spoke, he kept his head lowered, staring directly at the floor, shielding his eyes behind his monocle and a sealed eyelid. "I want you to make one thing perfectly clear. Tell me that your inhibitions kept you from even considering what you did last night under any other circumstances."
"Yes." Utter certainty turned his voice to steel.
"And, what she did was actually making you do things you normally wouldn't."
"Yes."
"Based off of things that you would normally do, only taken to negative extremes."
"Well, yes." The temper of his steel words was apparently cheap. "I mean, I guess."
"Explain."
A glib, smartass response popped out before he could stop it, something that he blamed on his utter lack of cigarettes: "If I was going to seduce you, I'd start out with dinner and a chick flick. Get you weepy and pliant."
The instant he stopped speaking, Gojyo closed his eyes. His stomach tensed up, like a washboard made of iron slats. His jaw locked. He would never be able to admit it to himself or to anyone else, but the knee-jerk reaction of his brain was to prepare himself for a shit-rain of hard-fisted punches. Not that Hakkai would ever do such a thing. Old habits died hard and miserable, that was all.
What he got, instead of a fist slamming into him with the force of a torpedo, was a slightly smothered mumble. It almost sounded like Hakkai was about to cry. The thought made him open his sunset-red eyes quickly--he'd never known the youkai, no matter how darkly depressed, to give in to tears.
Hakkai was smiling. Not his plasticine grin, or his shield, or his fury... just a beautifully innocent smile. He made another of those odd, smothered noises, and placed one of his hands over his lips, covering his honesty. It occurred to Gojyo that Hakkai was attempting to smother a giggle. Well, thank the gods for that. At least he'd gotten the joke.
After killing a few more chortles, the youkai picked up the mended clothes and automatically began to fold them. The smile was still on his face. "At least now there's little doubt that you could be anything but normal, Gojyo."
Gojyo promised his soul to whatever gods or devils might be in the vicinity--to whichever one might make a cigarette appear in his pocket first. Apparently, the soul of a hanyo wasn't worth a few dried tobacco leaves. "My normal hot-blooded self, yeah."
"Who is no more tactful in his typical state of mind than in any other." Hakkai rose from his bed, the immaculately-folded clothes in his arms, and moved them to the night-stand. Almost absently, he pulled open the small drawer set into its front. Gojyo leaned in to get a look at what was inside. A copy of the Gideon, whatever that was, and of the basic sutra; a notepad and a cheap, stubby pencil; a dusty box of condoms; a dog-eared deck of cards.
Verdant met vermillion.
This hadn't gone at all like Gojyo had intended, something that made him--in the writhing mass of emotions that he referred to as his heart--both furious and hurt. All he'd wanted was to explain everything to Hakkai, get him to understand. He'd gotten good at hiding things from the priest and the monkey, but his best friend? Not a chance in hell. The only thing he'd managed to hide was so obvious that Hakkai simply hadn't seen it, and was still refusing to see it--probably on the grounds that it would save his sanity to not consider it very deeply.
"I did it because. Well, I like you. A fuck of a lot."
There was nothing he hated more than leaving that undone--it felt like the cracks that had formed in the foundation of their friendship were only widening with every second that something about it went unsaid. But if Hakkai wanted to ignore it, or deal with it later, he would. Gojyo had laid a lot on him in the last twenty minutes or so. Maybe he was thinking it over. Or maybe he didn't care--whether because Gojyo was his friend, a guy, or whatever. Or, just maybe, Gojyo was over-interpreting things, and acting far too much like a woman for his own tastes, and needed to have the shit smacked out of him. The part of his brain that had cringed from an anticipated blow was now telling him that, more important than resolution, they needed to achieve some sort of peace, and as before, he listened.
"You get the sake and the cigarettes," he said easily, his voice like accented smoke. "Sanzo'd be more likely to give his credit card to the saru than to me at this point. And when you come back, you bastard, you'd better get ready to lose."
-----
Sanzo woke up feeling like someone had stolen his brains in the night, and replaced them with steel wool. He had one bitch of a headache from Goku's ridiculously-loud snoring. Not to mention from when he'd tried to punch his own lights out, to avoid having to hear anymore slobbery, grating breath...
He got untold satisfaction out of putting on his sandals, then using the sharpest edge of the wood to kick Goku's bony butt out of the bed. The monkey actually flew a few feet in the air before landing in a tangled heap on the hardwood floor. The ensuing clattering thump brought a smile to Sanzo's face.
"Aiii, Sanzooooooo!" the broken pile of Goku whined.
"We're going!" he snapped, then purposefully clacked out of the room. The odds were good that Hakkai was awake, and that he'd have woken up the perverted redhead, but Sanzo was going to make damn sure that they were both awake. Not to mention that Hakkai had bought those cartons of Marlboro Reds he'd commanded him to purchase.
He tried the door to their room, and found it unlocked, a fact that surprised him in his heart of hearts. Normally, they had more sense than.
Sanzo stared.
Gojyo and Hakkai were both still sound asleep. On the floor. Surrounded by at least six bottles of what looked like that extremely-pricey sake that Hakkai preferred. And three ashtrays filled with smoked butts. And greasy-looking playing cards. And two piles of yen--one near the ashtrays, and one near most of the bottles. The second pile was significantly larger than the other, and since Sanzo knew for a fact that neither of them had any money to their names, he had a good idea that Hakkai had utilized that new "cash back" option he'd seen popping up on his credit card slips recently.
Hanyo and youkai were both sitting in the middle of this sea of celebratory remains, their backs resting against one of the beds, both off in La-la Land. In his sleep, Gojyo had leaned over, and was resting his head against Hakkai's shoulder. The brunette had tilted his head to reciprocate. They looked like they were nuzzling--
The monk cut off that thought before it could be fully birthed in his mind. He pulled out the paper fan from the same dimensional pocket where Gojyo stored his shakujou, glared at the two sleepers, and smiled. Three smackdowns in as many minutes? The gods normally weren't this generous.
It was going to be a beautiful day for Sanzo. Oh, yes.
-end-
AFTERNOTES: I first got the idea for "BaL" about two years ago. I was flipping through a friend's copy of Brian Froud's "Good Fairy/Bad Fairy" book. One of the bad fairies was Lily, a water sprite who would lure men into her lakes, have sex with them, and drown them with her seaweed hair. I'd just started watching Saiyuki, and thought to myself that if there were a youkai equivalent, Gojyo would get snagged by it easily.
Obviously, that's not what happened here. ; Idea led to idea, and before I knew it, I had a huge tangled mass of concepts. One or two holes still remained, though, so I decided--rather than fuck the entire thing up and hate myself for it--that I wouldn't write a word on it until I figured everything out.
Everything's since been figured out, and thus, this is here.
The sequel arc is titled "Running Hot and Cold", but you should read "Split Horizons" first. Thank you for reading, and especially for reviewing. .
