RESPICE FINEM
Chapter 3 - Emerald Horizon
You go there you're gone forever
I go there I lose my way,
There was the darkness.
There was always the darkness, and he had been a fool not to realize that it had been there all along. It had followed him, through brighter years, careful to hide, careful to stay out of sight. He had only fooled himself into believing that it was gone when it was really out of sight for the moment. Lurking in the little crevices of his heart, as much a part of him as the smile he wore.
He killed all that he touched, he tainted all that he touched, he took life and gave none back.
Half a village. One thousand youkai. Kanan.
He could not afford to touch any more life, he could not afford to drag them down into the darkness with him. He would remedy that, he would remove his taint from the world once and for all, and the ghosts of the past would finally be laid to rest.
He had prolonged this life for far too long.
No one saw it coming; no one saw it coming or they would have tried to stop it. No one saw anything but the splash of blood across the shifting silver screen of rain, no one heard anything but the strangled curse, no one felt anything but the breath of air and the sudden chill that struck their bones.
The Smith and Wesson barked once, and fell to the ground.
"SANZO!"
Goku leapt to his companion's side, a mere meter and a hundred eternities too far to save the one who mattered the most to him. He caught the priest as he collapsed to the floor, his back a bloodied mess and blood leaking from where the claws had run straight through internal organs to emerge on the other side.
Sheer panic seized him, fear of a kind far too familiar to him these day. That fear paralyzed him, froze time to a moment, as he watched the blood fall in a bloody drizzle to splash across the cracked ground. The earth thirsted, it soaked up blood and water in equal abandon. The earth did not discrimate between the two, not in this dusty, barren, lifeless region, bordered by the mountains and the desert. This was a place of desperation and struggle, fears and shadows, madness and death. Life had thrived here, once, and moved on long since.
He missed Gojyo screaming his name, he missed the attack from behind, he missed everything that happened next, until the world exploded in pain, and he was flying, flying, flying....
The ground rushed up to meet him, and his vision supernovaed into a brilliant, blinding kaleidoscope of pain and color and overwhelming brightness. Then darkness embraced him, more gently and more welcomed, drawing him away from the light.
***
Gojyo's heart missed a beat when Sanzo fell, and wellnigh stopped when Goku, Goku, missed Hakkai's attack. The kid was light enough to go flying, blood tracing an arc across the sky.
The stench of blood was everywhere. A sickening miasma that clawed down the nostrils and caught in the windpipe.
"HAKKAI!" The cry echoed through the trees, a cry of despair and fury and disbelief. Gojyo glared around, trying to spot the youkai, his knuckles white around his staff. "Hakkai! Get out here, you idiot!"
There was a shimmer of movement, and Hakkai was in front of him, the green eyes slitted like a cat, the pupils opening on twin wells of darkness and insanity.
"Damn you! Get your act together!" Gojyo railed, sparing no thought on wondering why Hakkai was not attacking him. "I know you can! You're not an idiot like the ape!"
Rain dripped off the strands of Hakkai's fringe, poured off the shoulder length hair, as the wind sprang up, whipping them into a frenzy. Gojyo shuddered... by all the gods, it was cold tonight.
"You will be dead soon." A whisper from the entity across from him, an emotionless observation.
"Yeah, and so will you." Gojyo's eyes sifted through the gloom to spot the tear in Hakkai's shoulder where Sanzo's bullet had punched through.
There was no reply to that, not that he'd expected one. Just the rising howl of the wind through the trees, driving the rain into their eyes and obscuring their vision.
Ah, damnit, Gojyo thought to himself. He could not win against Hakkai, so he would have to find those limiters, preferably before all of them perished. Keeping a watchful eye on Hakkai, who, damn him, was still standing there, he took a cautious step in the direction of the fallen limiters. They had to be here somewhere, the undergrowth was too sparse to provide ample cover...
One step, and Hakkai remained motionless, the emerald eyes tracking him.
Another step, and there was still no response.
A third, and, as if he'd cut some hidden tripwire, Hakkai stirred and vanished from sight in a splash of water. Gojyo flung up his staff out of sheer, blind reflex, and was rewarded by the clang of claws against metal. Hakkai sprang back, cat-like, falling into a crouch. There was a breathless moment of inaction, then he attacked once more. Again Gojyo countered, and heard a hiss of frustration, then of pain, as he swung the blade around to scour a wound across his opponent's arm.
Abruptly, the strain on injured muscles hit him, along with the growing weakness from a loss of blood that he'd be feeling for the past few minutes. His knees gave out, oh, such a bad, bad time to do so, and Hakkai was there and--
--and jerked backwards as the bullet slammed into his back, a low growl of pain escaping.
Trust the monk to be too tough to die, Gojyo thought crazily, as Hakkai spun, abandoning one target for the newer threat. He took a painful breath, trying to regain his feet and his balance.
"Distract him, damn kappa!" Sanzo's voice cut through the storm to reach his ringing ears.
"I'm trying," Gojyo mumbled, but the world seemed to be caught on a rough sea, going up and down and up and down, and vision was racing through a dark tunnel centered around a single pinprick of light.
I'm trying.
But his body had different ideas, it seemed.
Sanzo muttered an oath under his breath as Gojyo lost the fight against consciousness. He was in worse than bad shape, coughing up blood and choking on it, barely capable of staying on his own two feet without the support of the tree behind. If the kappa had just stayed still and bought him enough time...
But once again, it was up to him to save the world again. Oh joy.
"Come, damn idiot," he snarled at Hakkai, holding the gun unsteadily between shaking hands.
And Hakkai struck, far too fast for his wearied and dulled reflexes to cope with. For a solid, shaking moment, he saw the silvered and bloodied claws raised to strike, knowing with a solid certainty that this was his last breath...
When another shape, moving even faster, blurred into view to superimpose itself cross the fearsome visage of Hakkai's youkai form...
Claws met the solid metal staff of Nyoibou as Goku intervened. "Hakkai! Pull yourself together!" he cried, a desperate plea to Hakkai's roving sanity. A roll of thunder crashed on his words, and the wind whipped them away, to be lost in the night and the rainfall.
Goku glanced backwards to check on his companion, and nearly missed the counterstrike from Hakkai. He flung up an arm to parry, earning three long gashes. Instinct clouded judgement for a moment, and he struck back. The force of the blow, augmented by his weapon, caught Hakkai straight on and sent him crashing back into the darkness. Goku gasped, and rushed forward, dread seeping into his conscience... Oh my god, what if I've killed him... oh my god...
Fears were allayed by a different kind of dread when Hakkai pushed himself to his feet, madness burning so intensely through his eyes that it was almost palpable. It was a look, a blank, crazed look that he had seen before, but always on other youkai, those who had succumbed to the Minus Wave. He had never expected or wished to see it on the face of someone he called a friend.
"Keep him there, Goku!" a familiar voice rasped from behind, the words torn by coughing and wheezing.
"Sanz--"
"Pay attention, you fool!"
The warning came just in time for Goku to evade another attack by Hakkai. As the youkai passed him, overextending himself in the strike, Goku whirled and aimed a sound blow across the back of his head, a blow that missed completely as he slipped on the treacherously slick ground.
There was a burning sensation as claws connecting with the back of his neck, poised to drive themselves through the base of the skull into the brain--
--when the world came alive with a flash of light and the vision of weaving lengths of sutra. The shimmering coils swept past him, latching onto Hakkai. Goku rolled out of the way and glanced back.
Sanzo stood some distance away, leaning heavily against a tree, his eyes shadowed by his hair, plastered flat by the rain.
"Restore his limiter, Sanzo," Gojyo's voice sounded from somewhere off to the side.
"Don't... know... if it'll work." The reply was hesistant and strained. Sanzo glanced up, lips moving silently in a chant. Vaguely, Goku was aware of Gojyo moving forward, one hand clasped over the wound that Hakkai had rent. He struggled to his feet, conscious of the flaring pain along his arm and his back, as Sanzo limped forward to press his palm against Hakkai's forehead.
A silver glow seeped through his fingers, a glow that grew to form a solid band that coalesced around Hakkai's forehead. Hakkai jerked back in shock as the new limiter slipped into place, a circlet of silver to match Goku's golden one. The sutras relinquished their hold, returning to their places on Sanzo's shoulders.
And the light faded. For a long moment, there was silence and stillness. The rain had thinned to a drizzle, and the wind was gone.
Then the pointed ears shrank, returning to their normal, human semblance. The fangs shimmered and shortened back to bluntness, as the matted hair returned to its usual length. Hakkai gasped and fell abruptly to his knees, even as Gojyo rushed to his side.
Goku was the first to break the silence. "It worked, Sanzo!"
The priest did not reply, his eyes narrowed in contemplation.
"Ah, this doesn't suit you, Hakkai. We'll have to find those old limiters, won't we?" Gojyo said, placing a companionable arm around Hakkai's shoulder. "At least you don't fall asleep like the bakazaru does. Comeon, let's get you back to civilization."
Hakkai glanced up. His eyes had returned to their usual shade of green, the pupils widened to roundness. The monocle had been lost too, presumably during the fight. But the look in those eyes caught Gojyo by surprise. It was not the calm and intelligent gaze that he was accustomed to; it was far from the sparkling, smiling look that Hakkai usually wore, it was a look he'd never seen, throughout their three years of friendship.
It was the look of someone completely, and utterly lost.
"Hakkai... Hakkai, what's wrong?"
Hesistantly, the Hakkai raised a hand to the newly installed limiter, fingers tracing its length in exploration, leaving bloody streaks across the freshly formed surface.
"It's a limiter," Sanzo said flatly.
Hakkai's gaze turned slowly to meet his, and there was another long, tense silence, broken only by the splash of drops from the leaves to the ground. Even the light drizzle had let up, and now there was only the damp and the chilling cold that sank straight to the bones.
"It's okay," Goku injected. "We'll all survive. It's not that bad."
Hakkai's eyes never left Sanzo.
"Don't tear yourself up in guilt over it," Gojyo added, disturbed by this uncharacteristic behavior of his best friend. "Come on, we're all losing blood here."
"Why..." the word tumbled out, as lost as its speaker.
"Why what?" Goku asked. "We--" the rest of the sentence was cut off as Sanzo waved him to silence.
"Why... did you do this?" Hakkai asked, his fingers resting on the limiter. "Why?" His voice was gaining strength.
"What the hell do you mean 'why'?" Sanzo growled, blood seeping out of the corner of his mouth. He swiped it away with one finger. "This is why."
Hakkai shoved Gojyo's arm away and staggered to his feet. "Why did you have to come after me?" his voice echoed into the night, sharp and accusing and furious. "Why did you stop me?" Each word streaked through the air like a bullet, hard and deadly. Hakkai's companions were silent in the face of this ultimatum, the expressions on their faces ranging from shock to disbelief to unreadable.
Hakkai surged forward, to catch Sanzo by the collar of his robe. Sanzo shoved his hand away and staggered backwards, and Goku tensed. "Because we had to, you bastard," the priest snarled, suppressing a coughing fit by sheer willpower.
Hakkai glanced down at his bloodstained hands and flexed his fingers, staring in horror at the blood and gore caught under the nails.
"Why didn't you just let me die?!"
I walk to the horizon, and there I find another...