Title: For the record

Fandom: Saiyuki

Pairing: 85, 39

Theme: #3: photograph

Summary: the journey was all very well…what came after was far, far worse. A realistic look at the aftermath of the journey. Not to be taken terribly seriously.

There were official photos afterwards, of course, for all the major newspapers – and Sanzo nearly gave them up entirely for a month afterwards, saying that he only read them to escape from the idiots around him, and the last thing he wanted was to find them in there too.

There were reporters, too; hanging around them, asking questions on the street, ambushing them on the way to the baths, snapping pictures from trees – Hakkai, who was arguably the most private of the four, had been forced to (in his words) be 'quite firm' with some of them, and those journalists had left town shortly afterwards. Still, new journalists replaced the old, all eager to gain the 'definitive' interview or the most 'candid' shots of the Sanzo-ikkou.

The trouble was, Gojyo realised, that they had spent so long in such close quarters that their vices had stopped being so, well, noticeable. Sanzo swore and drank and killed, and Gojyo gambled and lied (though not too well) and chased anything that moved (or had, until Hakkai had very firmly Put An End To All That), and they both smoked like factory chimneys, and Goku and Hakkai were just really nice guys who just occasionally went nuts and killed a couple hundred people or so. After five or six years, they were quite blasé about the whole thing, really.

Now, when they were suddenly expected to morph into the virtuous, pious heroes everyone insisted on believing they were…it became disorientingly obvious how closed-in they had become over their journey, how…accustomed, to each others' presence, their quirks, their silent understanding, to not having to explain their numerous eccentricities. Now they had to adjust to the rest of the world again.

And, Gojyo decided regretfully, the trouble wasn't worth the free drinks.

But they were adaptable, after all, and they reacted in their own ways. Hakkai found himself a large library and vanished entirely; Sanzo smoked pack after pack of cigarettes in the privacy of his rooms at the temple, and snarled at any hapless monk who interrupted him; Goku and Gojyo were left to handle the spotlight, which suited them both just fine. For a couple of weeks, anyway, after which Goku took to running when he saw anyone he recognised and Gojyo sought refuge with Hakkai, who had Firmly Established Himself as one Not To Be Disturbed; the fact that people had finally connected the stories of Cho Gonou and Cho Hakkai helped greatly – even the most dedicated interview-seeker quails at the thought of incurring the wrath of a mass-murderer.

It was the request for a set of 'official photographs' by the temple itself that proved to be the last straw.

Goku insisted on draping his arms over Sanzo's shoulders for all of them, which scandalised all the gathered monks, unnerved the photographer (especially when he saw how, er, low Goku's hands were going on one of them) and made Gojyo snicker not-so-discreetly until Hakkai stepped on his foot.

That particular picture (as well as the strategic leaking of a certain photo of the two of them Lirin had snapped of the night after the battle at Houtou) smoothed the way for Sanzo's abdication rather better than formal speeches and applications could have done, and nobody who knew him took his grumblings about what he was going to do to the aspiring voyeur too seriously.

The big-time journalists, sensing that their paragon of virtue was becoming something of a poster-boy for the opposite, quickly abandoned Sanzo and Goku. For a few days the tabloids persisted, interested in rather more lurid details, but Sanzo drilled his point home (literally, through a kneecap and another bicep) rather forcefully, and they wisely desisted.

A story was a story, but an arm was an arm.

Gojyo, seeing Sanzo's success, persuaded Hakkai to try for a similar performance (with kappa-induced excesses, of course) leading to a whole generation of parents coaxing their sons not to become professional adventures since it seemed (although it was only whispered hastily and never quite said aloud) that it turned them, ah, a little on the wrong side.

With this, the Sanzo-ikkou were able to retire into a comfortable sort of oblivion, while China said things to the effect of "Lalala, this never happened" and paid them the same courtesy most true heroes were paid, which was to leave them well enough alone and get on with its life.

Twelve years later, once they were sure the whole fiasco was well buried, the temple published an official account of the journey.

In their version, Sanzo was bald (thus, in fiction at least, did the monks avenge the principle that first Koumyou and then his disciple had disgraced) and virtuous, Hakkai was the gambler (and he was saddled with all their vices, since he was a criminal anyway) and Goku was the tactician, and Gojyo didn't do much in particular (in fact, he didn't do women or men, which was what they were most interested in proving), and their more interesting adventures had been edited, censored or excised entirely, and had been replaced with the kind of cardboard battles every half-baked hero claimed to have fought and survived.

Which was a small price to pay for privacy, Sanzo commented wryly, and the others agreed heartily.