A/N: So here we are at the last Chapter! My favourite if you ask me…just because I get to torture Sanzo both psychologically and emotionally, which are far worse than physical torture!!! Thanks to any one that has reviewed!! What would I be with out you, guys? Your comments have been a great help to me both for continuing this fanfic and for improving my writing skills on the whole!!! I will continue updating When Boy meets Girl on www.animespiral.com under the same pen name and I will soon upload my next fic Free Of Lust which tells the story of Gojyo's parents but I don't know which site I'm uploading it on yet. Which reminds me…does anyone have a clue what Gojyo's father was called or did Kazuya Minekura leave him nameless? And he was a demon, right?
Any reviews will be answered by email if this is available or I will just review one of your fics and explain what I have to say in a little P.S. under my name. This last chapter has no yaoi by the way.
So, I hope you enjoy this last chapter!
Love ya all!!
Kenren Taishou
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Chapter 4: The End of Death*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was not hard to find him. His aura was unmistakable: troubled even in the most peaceful of surroundings. She looked at her prey and his companions: an ever smiling brunette with a monocle and an invisible darker side, a youth with her same eyes and many unanswered questions probing his mind and a half breed with rubies for eyes and deep childhood scars in his soul. Her attention fixed on the latter and a voice resonated in her mind: features as gentle as the petals from a Sakura Tree…It was him! Though he wore his hair longer and his spirit, like his face, was badly marked by the rough course of life, there was no mistaking whom he was. She suddenly felt a new surge of hate spring from her heart. She hated this being like she hated the gentleness of her face. No better words could have been chosen to describe what she was no longer and no better person could have been chosen as the first victim for her revenge.
It was sudden; unexplainable to the other three how their friend had fallen ill. Doctors and medicines were of no use; the fever would not go down. Slowly the hope of recovery was lost. As he lay on his deathbed, the eyes of the other three fixed upon him, their hearts, exhausted by the pain of loss, wishing that they had voiced what they always took for granted while they were still in time. But it was too late now. The brunette, his heart heavy with such sorrow as he had only once felt before, could not bare to look at his friend: the person that had saved his life, not just that one time when he found him in the rain but countless other times. The youth, with whom he always fought, cried at his bedside; cursing himself for all the time lost in bickering instead of appreciating his friend like the elder brother that he was to him. And the monk, with his icy indifferent exterior, simply stared defeated at the figure in agony.
It was then that it seemed to him that he heard the rustle of fine silk and it seemed to him, again, that he could smell, faintly, the trace of a woman's perfume in the air. It was then that he saw her, materializing in front of him, the feint shadows growing more solid as he stared harder at the Angel of Death. He couldn't understand. Had he not freed her from her duties that night? Had she not vanished into nothingness? How was it that she was now staring at him so coldly in the eyes? There was a change in her. There was no sorrow; all he could sense about this mystical vision was anger and hatred. A deep hatred for him? Again, though her lips never moved, her voice reached him: she hated him. He had betrayed her when he showed her how she could never be rid of who she was; how she could never achieve the freedom and happiness she longed for; how he had added on to her pain by bringing her so close to her dreams only to let her see them shattered just as she was about to touch them.
It was then that he realised how foolish he had been. How vain his attempt had been. How could he have hoped to give Death itself the peace only she could give? But he had realized his mistake too late. He had turned the gentleness of Death into wrath and an implacable desire for revenge. Only then did he understand what she had in mind, as he saw her encircling his friend's bed, teasingly playing with crimson strands of his hair. She was going to take them away from him. Her voice reached him once again: "How does it feel, Genjo Sanzo, to suffer so much? To watch the ones you hold dear being taken away from you? It hurts, doesn't it? Do you feel your heart aching and drowning in helplessness? Now you know what you've forced me to go through. Yes. This is how I will get my revenge and his death is nothing more than the beginning!"
He saw her leaving his bedside, moving closer to the brunette standing next to him, placing her weightless arms on his shoulder and letting her head rest on them. "After I am done with that one, I will take this one…Oh yes, you will suffer if you lose this one! Who understands you better than him? What would you do without his serene expression and his gentle ways?" Her eyes focused upon the youth still crying at the other's bedside and as she left the brunette's shoulder his heart leapt with fear. Not him! Don't let it be him! She gently stroked his brown hair, "Or perhaps should I take the little one? So sweet and lively, isn't he? It pains you to see him in this state. So pure at heart and innocent! You do care for him, don't you? My beloved Sanzo. You'd go mad without the sound of his voice. You'd lose yourself in your own darkness. You'd have nothing left!" She let out an evil laugh, "You won't be able to save them, not this time!"
He felt his soul being pervaded by a sense of helplessness he had only once felt before. He couldn't let it happen again. He couldn't afford to lose one more time. He signaled to the brunette to take the younger one out. For a few brief moments, the other looked at him confused but being too shaken up by the events and sorrow he did not argue and he chaperoned the younger one out of the room.
He looked at Death, pleading her with his eyes to take him rather than the others for they had no say in this matter…for in reality, they were too dear to him and he couldn't afford to lose a loved one. She shook her head and smiled. She wanted him to suffer; she would not spare him the pain by bestowing death upon him. She wanted to reach out to his soul and delve deeper into his heart just to cause more pain by making the memories of the good times spent with these friends she would soon take away from him resurface. But when she did so all she found in his heart was anger, sorrow and helplessness, which slowly gave way to callousness and numbness. All she could see in his mind was blood. A small child covered in blood, a great sense of loss and a figure: a master and a father figure lying dead on the ground. She felt herself turn cold as she remembered the look in that child's eyes the night she carried that soul away. She had cried, heartbroken, at the cruelty of Destiny. That person had so much unfinished business, that person was everything to that child and by taking him away she had turned him into nothing. It was only then that she understood how much he had already suffered. How he too had been disillusioned in life and how badly this had betrayed him. At a young age he was still open to the possibility that love was a beautiful thing but after he had lost that person, he realized that love only brought pain; that by loving, you only stand to lose and this was why he now only wanted things he didn't need to protect. It was then that she understood how wrong she had been. How truly similar they were: both cold and hurt by death and disillusioned by life. He had only wanted to help her that night: to give her the peace and freedom he could not have himself because he knew the meaning of suffering. A tear streamed down her cheek. Once again he had understood her and this time he had saved her from something far worse than the life she was trapped in – he had saved her from the evil she had let into her heart.
It was in that brief instance, when she let her defenses down, that two figures appeared out of the nothingness by her side. They looked at him, unsure, as if trying to decide whether they knew him or not. Chains appeared around her wrists. A feint memory seemed to stir somewhere in his mind and then as suddenly as they had appeared the two figures, whom he recognized as gods from the unmistakable charkas on the forehead, vanished with Death and his recollection of a time and life long forgotten by him.
The punishment she was to receive for her crime was harsh. She did not resist the guards as they accompanied her to the dungeons. At dawn she was to be stripped of her title of goddess and she was to be transmigrated, reincarnated as a human – a lesser being – on Earth. As she felt her soul leaving her body, all she had left to do was to ask forgiveness, if the gods could grant it to her, for all the evil she had done. Any other time she would have asked for understanding but that was not necessary now, someone had understood her and she could now have the life and freedom she had always longed for. Death was a blessing and she smiled as her soul left her and the Heavens forever.
In the world below, the cry of a newborn echoed – another of the many miracles of life. Her eyes focused on the woman holding her…Mother, a symbol of love, tenderness and security. She nestled in her loving arms, the golden rays of the sun gently caressing her soft skin. The sun…it reminded her of something…or was it someone? Just as warm but just as distant as the sun itself? Golden hair…an angel? Yes, an angel with golden hair and paper wings flapping…or was it something else? She couldn't remember; she was too tired. Her angel had started to move away from her, his image getting smaller and smaller until he was no more. She fell into a deep sleep, undisturbed even by the sweetest of dreams and when her eyes reopened again, it was as if he had never been.
*~*~*~THE END~*~*~*
There always is Hope!
A/N: Now you understand, I hope, that my Angel was not evil. It is only because she was angry and hurt that she acted the way she did! And this is the only reason why Sanzo understood her- only a troubled heart can ease the pain of another, because it knows exactly what it is going through!