RESPICE FINEM
Chapter 4 - White Lilies

Dedicated to Lux, who always makes me smile.

To see no more the country half my own,
Nor hear the half familiar speech,
Amen, I say; I turn to that bleak North
Whence I came forth --
The South lies out of reach.

-- Italia, Io Ti Saluto, Christina Rossetti

Stillness.
Darkness.

Cessation of thought. Cessation of feeling.

Here, behind shuttered eyelids, I am afforded a sanctuary from my private Hell, a limbo close enough to death to calm a raging soul.

Here is existence, the essence of Now, away from futures that cannot hold and choices that cannot be made.

There is time in this place, time to breathe and time to reflect, and my mind plunges through memory like a ray of light, to raise the ghosts of yesteryear.

I do not remember how I received the limiters. I remember a blackness, singed by flickers of pain from the gut wound. Cold stone at my back and what might have been stars in the sky above, but there are no stars underground. And the roaring of the rain, always, rushing past my ears.

I do not remember how long it was -- it might have been a second or an eternity, there in the basement of a lifeless castle, surrounded by bodies of those that I had killed, and one who had taken her life with my blade. But there came a voice, speaking words that elude my memory. There was sound and light and the touch of weight on my ear that I would come to recognize. And the light led me out of the darkness, back into the world.

The limiters are gone, the last gift from the gods, the last pardon for sin heaped upon sin.

The longer one spends without the limiters, the closer one stands to that abyss of madness that has engulfed so many youkai before me. Tonight, I fear, I may have tread too close to the edge.

There is blood on my hands again. The blood of a thousand youkai. The blood of my beloved. The blood of my friends.

I came within a hair's breadth of killing them tonight. I fear, given everything - the new limiters, the growing insanity - that they will not be so fortunate the next time.

***

Hakkai straightened. Wordlessly, he stepped past Sanzo, heading further into the forest.

"You're going in the wrong direction," Sanzo said.

"No, I don't think so."

"And where do you think you're going?" Gojyo demanded.

"Away." The answer came back strong and clear. "There's no place for me here, I'm afraid."

"There'll always be a place here!" Goku protested. "How about Hakuryuu? Who's going to drive? And why are you leaving?"

"To save you. From the likes of me."

"Idiot," Gojyo growled, blocking his path. "You owe us, big time, and you're going to run off without paying the debt?"

"I'm sorry," he replied, feeling strangely light headed, as if the new limiter wasn't quite right.

"Nothing to be sorry about, bud. If Goku can do it, so can you."

"No," Hakkai shook his head adamantly. Was it his imagination or was the limiter slipping? He glanced at Sanzo. "You once told me that I was free to go. Are you going to renege on that now?"

Sanzo did not reply.

"You didn't answer Goku's question," Gojyo was saying. "What about Hakuryuu?"

"Hakuryuu..." Hakkai glanced around, his hand rising unsteadily to the silver band as a crack raced around its edge. "Gojyo, is something wrong...?"

It came crashing down in a wave: Despair, utter, complete despair that there was no life and no light and no cause worth dragging oneself from day to day for... There was no salvation, only further sin, the road of his life mapped by a bloody trail of corpses, friend, foe, all alike...

He shook it off with an effort, clutching his head as if he could claw those vicious thoughts out of them with his bare hands. Gojyo took a step forward, concern etched upon his features.

It is of no use. All will succumb in the end. Your presence here is nothing but a danger to them. You, who have looked into the abyss and found... yourself staring back at you.

I have to leave.

"Hakkai?"

I have to go.

"Hakkai?"

Every moment I tarry spells certain doom for these three. There is something wrong, something horribly wrong...

"Hakkai?"

"Stay away from me!"

Hands. Hands on his shoulder, trying to restrain him, trying to get him to stay...

He lashed out in sheer panic. There was a cry from somewhere in the blood-dimmed haze before his eyes, and the pressure was gone, leaving him free to run, free to distance himself before the madness could take hold of him--

But there was another figure in front of him, another one blocking his path. He could not afford delay, he could not afford to be held back.

Kill him. Be rid of him. Then you will be free at last.

Light gathered between his fingertips as he gathered his ki, a motion as natural as breathing and completely unconscious. The trees ahead and the desert beyond beckoned to him, a sanctuary where the world would be safe from his presence, where the world would be safe from his madness...

Kill him.

Goku watched in horror as Hakkai punched Gojyo away from him, sending him crashing into the ground some distance away. Then Sanzo was there, bringing the Smith and Wesson to bear and cocking the hammer...

He saw Hakkai readying the attack.

Instinct and blind panic overrode thought, and all there was in his mind was the desperation to keep Hakkai from launching that attack, that blast that meant certain death for Sanzo if it hit...

Blood splashed across his vision.

He paused, the panic subsiding long enough for him to gather his wits. Nyoibou was in his hands, although he could not recall having summoned it. Sanzo was still standing across from him, his eyes shadowed. And Hakkai... Hakkai was a bloodied heap at his feet, and there was blood on Nyoibou, trickling down to trace trajectories across his fingers.

Goku dropped his staff in horror. "I ... I didn't..."

He fell to his knees. "Hakkai..."

Green eyes blinked once, twice, then slowly focused on him. "Goku..."

Relief broke like a flood through the dam, sweeping over him and leaving him grinning in its wake. "You're okay... thank goodness you're okay..." I'd never forgive myself if I killed him, but he was going after Sanzo and I hit him without even realizing it...

But it's okay. Because he's talking. Which means he'll survive. Which means we can all go back and it'll all be okay.

Right?

"Hakkai."

The word was crystal, cutting through the darkness in a single, clean stroke. Thoughts were silenced by its passage, his eyes cleared; he could see. Slowly, Hakkai turned his head as Sanzo limped over to stand by him.

"You owe me a debt," the priest told him. "Back in Chou'An, when I pleaded for clemency on your behalf."

He nodded, a slight inclination of the head.

"I call you to repay that debt now. I ask you to stay."

It made him smile, it really did. He smiled, and something loosened in him, as if by smiling, he broke the hold of the madness, chased away the shadows and the voices and returned, if only for a moment, to whom he had been before.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to Sanzo. "But it's too late."

"No!" but the voice was Goku's, Goku's golden eyes and golden limiter hovering in front of him. Goku said that Sanzo was the sun, but it struck him then that Goku was a sun too, in his own way, a shining star of innocence and joy, a light to show the way when all others went out. "You can't! You can't die!"

"It's not your fault, Goku," he replied, wishing that he could find a way to lift the agony from the youth's face. "Be strong..."

And then it really was too late, as the sky seemed to expand in his vision and the quiet sound of his breathing seemed to come from further and further away. It was too late, if he could almost smell the flowers of a different world, could almost see a second horizon looming before his eyes, could almost hear Kanan's voice, calling to him...

Red called him back, a wash of red across his vision. Red hair, red eyes, the color of blood...

"It's never too late." Gojyo's voice, echoing down the dark tunnel to him. "What's with the damn death wish?"

"Oh, but it's all so clear now," Hakkai told the voice, "So wonderfully clear..."

It was clear, in a brilliant, dazzling way, but his thoughts were becoming harder to keep together, running away like water through his fingers. But he wasn't worried, because he would be able to find the answer again, and it seemed that the sun was rising, because it was growing brighter and brighter.

"What's clear?"

He tried to find the words to explain it, the words to tell Gojyo about the sudden feeling of whole-complete-home at last, but they persisted in eluding his grasp, as if there was no way that simple speech could encompass everything that he wanted to say. And perhaps things would be easier to explain if he walked a little closer to that glow that he saw. So he settled for closing his eyes and diving into the light.

"I'll tell you when I wake up..."