Our Peaceful Days
Summary: Thirty-nine prompts for the 39 pairing. Six years before the Journey started, Sanzo does his begrudging best at keeping his newfound pet properly fed and taken care of, and little Goku tries his eager best at making his newfound owner happy.
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A/N: Here's my take on that picture Minekura-sensei drew of a peaceful-looking Seiten Taisei playing the pipa.
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XXV. Music
Sanzo awakes to a sound he has only heard from the restaurants, and other times, the streets.
He rises from his bed and drapes his priestly robes, and exits his room.
In the garden, he sees a figure sitting atop one of the flat stones under the blanket of the dawn sky, and Sanzo almost berates the familiar figure when the sound plays again.
Only then has Sanzo noticed that Goku is holding something in his hand. Cradled to his left shoulder is a long, wooden neck ending in a circle on top. Sanzo squints, tries to see under the still dark sky—
The small hand moves along the neck, the fingers gliding and plucking and vibrating on the four strings—
Sanzo, lost in his thought, sits on the floor, his gaze now trained on the nimble fingers plucking the strings of the pipa—
Goku turns his head, and continues to play, the notes bending in trills with each press of the fingers on the strings. Unaware of his solitary audience, Goku shifts to a milder, yet shriller tone, and his lips part as a tear falls from his eye.
Sanzo almost moves from where he sits, but stops when Goku looks to the sky, and Sanzo blinks at the sight of Goku's golden coronet looking thinner, rounder—
He blinks again, and the thin coronet is gone—and in its place, Goku's normal, thicker limiter sits around his head. Sanzo wonders, as Goku continues to play a song of love and lament, if what he has seen had been a trick of the light, an illusion—
The song stops, and golden eyes meet violet ones.
The pipa falls to the ground, and Sanzo swoops in just in time to catch Goku in his arms.
He wipes the remnants of tears from the boy's face, and under the slow rising of the sun, he sees a glimpse of narrowed, cat-like eyes.
The demon child goes limp in his arms, and mutters Sanzo's name.
The monk looks around, at a loss of what to do, when he sees the discarded pipa on the grass, and narrows his eyes at it. "...Seiten Taisei, isn't it...?"
Goku stirs, breathes deeply for a few moments, and opens his eyes, "Sanzo, wha—?"
"You sleepwalked. You remember anything?" Sanzo grumbles out, and Goku shakes his head, wide eyes showing complete confusion. Sighing, the monk carries Goku to his room. "Don't creep up on me like that again," he hisses, glancing a moment too long at the abandoned pipa.
Goku apologizes, and Sanzo says nothing more.
The song that he has heard minutes ago echo in Sanzo's mind, and he fights back a smile, etching the soothing tune in his memory.
Needless to say, Sanzo has discovered Goku's hidden talent, even if Goku is still unaware of it.