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Please visit my poll; it will help me know what kind of fic to feed you next! For anyone who, like me, didn't know where to find them, they're on the profile pages right under the person's name before it says Feed Send Message et cetra. As far as I know replies are anonymous. I don't mind if people vote more than once to indicate their strength of feeling as long as they're prepared to back it up with reviews. ;) Basically I have some Slayers and some HP stuff I think is pretty good that I could post, but don't really have the emotional energy to post into a void. There's also some Saiyuki stuff, but to be honest, it's all much older and much shorter. I haven't written in this fandom for quite some time.

To Jien's amusement, the orphanage suffered through about ten days of poorly chopped meat and badly mixed dumplings before Gonou hit his stride. He didn't suffer much, himself; Jien could eat anything. Anyway, the difference in his student was so pronounced he wouldn't have cared even if food had been important to him.

It had taken about five minutes after Gonou saw people eating the buns he'd helped prepare before his shoulders dropped a millimeter or so. And a couple of days later, when he saw them shooting pleased looks at their plates, his chin lifted so far up from its usual place halfway down his neck that his eyes almost looked like they were behind his glasses instead of on top of them. Before long he was getting through more pews with only the occasional petulant kick to the bottom of the pulpit, and both his running and his exercises smoothed out.

"You like cooking a lot, huh?" Jien asked, smiling into the window he was polishing and watching the kid's reflection.

"It's not that," Gonou said, lifting one shoulder briefly as he swept. "I could do anything in there."

"It's good to make people smile," he said, his own lips curling up.

"It's not that," Gonou repeated, his miniature brow furrowing. "I could do anything. I could burn the food, or put something in it. I might be caught, I might have only one chance, but if I decided to, I could do it. If they're smiling, I allow it."

Jien sighed.

Gonou was still talking. "And it helps more, because... when I help you, it doesn't make anything happen. Nobody really cleaned the pews before you came, and they may like it now, but if you stopped it wouldn't matter. If nobody cooked, it would matter, and if someone else did it it would be different."

"So it's a power thing."

For the first time since Jien had met him, the kid looked almost abashed. "It doesn't sound very good if you say it like that, does it?" he admitted with a sour little smile that twisted ruefully up one side of his mouth.

"Depends," Jien said, and jumped down from the ladder. He drew his sword. "Now, I-"

"Where did that come from?" Gonou asked, fascinated, his eyes wide with the ruthless curiosity of a little boy who'd turn over any rock, reach into any pocket, or tear apart any universe to find out why the sky was blue. Jien wouldn't have pegged him for the type, somehow, but, well...

There were guys who looked good frowning. Jien had seen plenty of girls look right through his smile to a scowl and a swagger, and being an easygoing type had just shrugged it off. He'd understood perfectly, and sometimes he'd returned the favor and looked through theirs.

Even on an angry person a scowl could be natural and attractive, could be magnetic in its attitude or in its passion, but Gonou wasn't like that. He scared the other kids because his fury froze his face to an unnatural vacuum. This was what looked right on him; this was his fire. No wonder school didn't help him-no matter how hard he worked at it or how much he excelled, being spoonfed answers was against his nature.

The best learner. The worst student.

"It's a youkai thing," Jien said dismissively, refusing the tempting spoon-handle. "Instinctive. You wanna go study qi use in history at university, be my guest. Trying to make a point here."

Gonou looked up at him impatiently, pressed his lips together, and settled back on his palms.

"Right, so this is power right here, right? Big heavy pointy thing, comes when I call it and comes sharp every time, can't be used by anyone but me. Even if I couldn't use it well, it's a Useful Object."

Green eyes flickered at him. If not amused, the brat was at least tolerant.

"Now, I can do a couple good things with this. I can cut myself wood with it, and then I'm self-reliant. I can kill my enemies and I'm strong, I can kill my nation's enemies and I'm righteous. I can knock people out with the flat, or make a big show out of not using it, and that makes me benevolent. I can use it to till the earth, and you could call that virtuous. I can defend a village, and that's generous." He could use a sword to defend his family with, and what do you call that, Mother? "What do you think is the best way to use it?"

"You want me to say not at all," Gonou said flatly, looking bored again.

"Now he's a mind-reader, too," Jien announced to no-one in particular, widening his eyes as a man impressed. Gonou looked annoyed and he grinned, reaching down to ruffle the kid's hair. The kid looked more annoyed yet and dodged a little, but didn't actually punch him. "Not at all? I'd call that 'virtuous.' Capital V. A little obnoxious, you think?"

"A little," Gonou agreed blandly, his expression pointing out that he'd never seen Jien use it.

"Now, see, what'd be really obnoxious'd be if I made a big point of having and not using it. Then I don't know whether it'd be more obnoxious if, suppose the nunnery was attacked, if I did fight with it or I didn't."

"Would you?" he asked, not as though he cared about the answer.

"Bet your a-uh, ears I would," Jien said, his emphasis suffering a little. "A tool's made to be used. I've cut the grass with it, too."

Long hours in the sun, grainy golden stalks to his knee, dodging and blocking the scythe-on-a-stick as someone got frustrated with wading hip-deep and scooping up the seedy heads, got competitive. A big job for a little squirt-

Here and now.

"Anyway, that's my answer. How you can apply it, I don't know. But I do know this-when I hear you talk about controlling whether people smile... I gotta say, kid, that makes me nervous. That's the benevolence of the tyrant."

"How is it different," Gonou asked coldly, "from that?"

Jien followed his finger to the playground, from where four girls were pretty obviously browbeating someone-he couldn't see through their backs to who it was. He could get up and do something about it, but those didn't look like any of the girls who would take his interference as a reproach rather than a postponement of their fun by an interfering adult. Whoever it was would have to act on their own before they could be helped.

"Well, first of all, it's a different kind of power," he said. "When you have a skill-that's not something anyone can take away from you. It may not get you respect, depending on what it is, but use it right, sell it right and you can survive. Learn from Cook and you'll never need to waste money on takeout. Learn from me and your wife'll never hate you 'cause you don't do your share around the house."

Gonou lifted a skeptical, prepubescant eyebrow at him.

"This time next year," Jien promised him with a slinky grin, "believe it or not, girls will rock your world. And if not next year, the year after that."

The other eyebrow lifted, more skeptically yet.

"Fine, don't believe it. Just don't say I didn't warn you. But what that is, is someone who has no skills and can't survive, convincing the world otherwise through sheer force of will. You think those girls have power?"

"They do. Here."

"Maybe, but only because you kids give it to them. Well-maybe not you. You think they're anything without that?"

"To be honest," Gonou said in a chilly and careless tone, "I don't think much of them at all. Except that I notice you're still over here."

"I could stop it now, sure," Jien said. "I can't stop anything once they get inside. Better they should do whatever they're going to do in front of witnesses they want to keep looking clean for. If I interfered now, that girl would get it in the teeth later."

Gonou considered that. After a minute or so, his shoulders dropped a little, relaxing. Jien had the feeling he'd just dodged a bullet. "Do you think they're, uh, 'anything'?"

"Couldn't tell you," he shrugged. "I don't know 'em that well. But I can tell you for sure, they don't think they are, or they wouldn't need to act like that. I mean, look at you. You're a nasty sonofa-uh-a gun when you want to be and I know for a fact you hate half those kids' guts."

"Half?" his brat asked dryly.

Grinning, he decided not to touch that one. "But you don't do that. Why?"

"It's pointless."

"It's pointless. Yeah. For you it's pointless. You already know you're worth more than that. Why play, when you already know you've won?"

"Pointless," Gonou repeated, looking as though he thought he understood something.

"Not if the game's worth something," Jien said, sighing. "I hope you find that out sometime."

"You mean, if there's a stake in it?"

"Goal-oriented," Jien mourned. "That's it; enough lolling around. Do me some laps before we get started. And this time, I want you to write a poem."

Gonou gaped.

"Yeah, you. About, uh, something you see while you're running. And don't think I won't check with your teacher to see if it's a real poem, either!"

Snapping his mouth shut, Gonou gave Jien an annoyed look, now, and said on a grownups-are-dumb sort of sigh, "Doku-sensei. Once I've made it, it will be real."

[tbc]

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