Sanzo didn't know if he should be concerned about Gojyo's fading in and out of consciousness, or satisfied that he was waking up at all. At first he hadn't been sure he would get that much. After he had gotten the fire going, stripped Gojyo of his freezing clothes and piled all the blankets and tarps in their packs over him, the damn kappa had still just lain there, fish-cold to the touch but not shivering, obstinately refusing to open his eyes no matter how forcefully he was ordered to.

Even when Sanzo burrowed under the covers with him, drew him close to share their body heat, hissing at the icy skin pressed again his, Gojyo didn't twitch. His breathing was so shallow that Sanzo half-expected it to stop after every wheeze, found himself holding his own breath and not exhaling until his companion had, as if he could keep his lungs working by sympathetic magic.

At last he had started to shiver, like a warm-blooded creature should, had finally opened his eyes and made it clear that the bundle of hormones and impulses he called a brain was still intact, if not functioning at even its limited capacity. And Sanzo had wanted to smack him for taking so long about it, but it wasn't really Gojyo's fault, directly, anyway. His rambling equally could not be held against him, so Sanzo ignored it, or tried to.

Since then, the half-youkai had slipped between dreams and waking with no clear difference between states, mumbling nonsense in both. Then he had gone silent, and Sanzo was considering shaking him awake, when like that, Gojyo opened his eyes, sat up, and said, "Where's Hakkai? Where's Goku?"

His red eyes were clear, not glazed, and his voice was weak but steady. "Where are they?" he asked again, looking around the cave as if they might be hiding behind a pebble.

"Outside, somewhere," Sanzo told him. "They haven't made it here."

"And you haven't done anything to find them?"

"What did you expect me to do?" Sanzo withdrew a cigarette from an almost empty pack, but not his lighter. The hunter's shelter had a vent in the stone above the firepit, a primitive sort of chimney which drew most of the smoke away, but he doubted adding tobacco to their air would be best for Gojyo's health. Especially since the half-youkai was probably craving a smoke anyway. Sanzo didn't need Hakkai around to tell him that wasn't a great idea. "They're better off in this weather than either of us, anyway."

"Something might've happened to them--" Gojyo made to stand, only to collapse back on the blankets. He glowered at Sanzo from where he lay. "You could've at least tried to look for them."

Sanzo forbore to point out the obvious, that their comrades were strong enough to take care of themselves, that he would have likely only lost himself in the blizzard, that he had been otherwise occupied. Instead he cocked his ear to the wind outside. "The storm's lessening."

Gojyo listened, shuddered. "Doesn't sound it."

"You didn't hear it before."

"It's like..." Gojyo closed his eyes, the better to listen to the shrieking beyond their stone refuge. "Sound like there's something out there, trying to break in. I've never heard a storm..." His eyes opened again, and Sanzo saw sudden comprehension light in his face. "It's not just a storm, is it? There is something out there. A youkai?"

"Almost definitely."

"A youkai's trap, and we walked right into it. Didn't have a clue..." He stopped, narrowed scarlet eyes at Sanzo.

"The innkeeper's accent." At Gojyo's suspicious stare, Sanzo sighed, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. "He was from the north. He would've known the difference between flurries and a blizzard. Usually it only snows every other winter here, if that. The cause had to be unnatural."

"You knew," Gojyo accused. "You knew this was a youkai, and you made us take the pass anyway."

Sanzo declined to answer.

Gojyo shoved himself up on trembling arms to glare at him. "How many times do we have to tell you, we're not heroes? After we're done, we let the bards make us the stars. In the stories we'll rescue all the ladies and slay all the monsters. But right now we got only one mission, and that's to survive this damn journey."

Screw it. Sanzo lit the cigarette, grimacing at how his lighter sputtered--almost out of fuel--and took a long drag. The burning tip was a miniature of the hellfire in Gojyo's eyes. And the bastard kappa was still ranting, "But no, that's not enough for the great and magnificent Genjo Sanzo. You're such a fucking liar."

At that Sanzo's eyebrows went up. "A liar?"

"You say you don't want to save anybody. It's true, isn't it. It's true, you don't want to save anybody--you want to save everybody. You'd save the whole damn world, if it means you won't have to think about saving yourself."

"Shut up."

"And we don't count, do we? Me, Hakkai, Goku--we're part of you, aren't we, Sanzo-sama? We're so fucking close that saving us is like saving yourself, and that's the one thing you can't do. We'd follow you off a cliff, damn all of us, we'd follow you into hell, and you'd let us, because otherwise it means something. You can't treat us special, because that'd mean we're worth something, we're important somehow. And if we're important, then you can't ignore that we see something in you. Whatever the hell it is. If our beliefs matter, then our belief in you must matter, and you couldn't have that."

"Go back to sleep, idiot," Sanzo said, wearily. "You're not making any sense."

"But you didn't let me drown." Gojyo was sliding back down the wall, his eyes closing against his will. There was still force in his voice, but the words were running together, dropping to a mumble. "Fucking terrible monk. You couldn't let me die. Or is that just because I'm nobody? I'm everybody, I'm everyone who needs saving, who doesn't matter except that you can save them, and it doesn't mean anything...if I'd been Goku you'd have had to let me die..."

"Damn kappa." Gojyo didn't reply, didn't move except for the rise and fall of his chest. Sanzo flicked ash from his cigarette, put his other hand to the half-youkai's forehead. His skin was, finally, warm to the touch. Too warm? Could hypothermia launch directly into a fever? He had no idea. Hakkai would know, but Hakkai wasn't here, was he? Which had really been the point of that ranting. Gojyo worried, all the time, more than Hakkai, even, and thought he hid it. He could be such a kid sometimes, worse than Goku.

I'm everyone...who doesn't matter except that you can save them, and it doesn't mean anything... "You really are stupid," Sanzo said aloud, and wasn't sure who he was talking to. When the cigarette had burned down to his fingers he tossed it into the far corner of the cave, took out another and lit it.

By the time he had emptied the pack, the wind outside had died completely, so that the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and Gojyo's snoring. Sanzo finished the last cigarette, stood and tested his twisted ankle. It hurt, but not so much that he couldn't ignore it. He crossed the cave, added a couple logs to the fire. Gojyo didn't stir when Sanzo felt his forehead again. It didn't seem any hotter, and his repose seemed more like honest sleep than his earlier immobility.

Wrapping his robes tightly around himself, Sanzo put his shoulder to the logs and slid aside the door. A cold draft cut his cheeks, but the only flakes were blown off the rocks around him. Otherwise the air was clear, the moonlit clouds in the sky casting a faint blue glow over the mountain's white slope. The drifts were piled two, three, four feet deep, and no trace remained of their passage to here only hours before. The snow had completely covered the logs, so the door looked like just another side of the mountain. Sanzo brushed enough away to reveal the dark bark, obvious against the white, unless more fell.

Gusts still shrieked through the mountain peaks high above, echoes muffled by the snow. There was laughter carried in that wind, faint and high and spiteful. He wondered if Goku and Hakkai could hear it from wherever they were. Wondered if they would guess what it meant, and know that the storm's end meant nothing. It would be hours yet until dawn.

Making sure his gun was in his sleeve and the sutras were secure around his neck, Sanzo drew a breath of bracing, biting air, and stepped into the night.

* * *

Sheltered only by an oiled tarp, Hakkai listened to the wind moan. Its howls were fading, and the coming quiet was like a grave. Curled up against his friend, Goku snored softly, drooling a little on Hakkai's sash. He slept so easily. Hakkai could barely remember a time when he had been able to drop off with such trusting abandon. Three years, at least. Another life ago.

He still was cold, but it had nothing to do with the temperature. The couple blankets and his own youkai nature protected him from the worst of it, and he had found he could be entirely comfortable by adjusting his aura to counter the climate. It was a simple trick, more effortless than fighting or healing, though those also came easier with practice. It had occurred to him before that both Gojyo and Sanzo could be taught the basics of his style; after all, every living thing had potential energy to channel. Goku had little need for or interest in learning tricks, but the human and the half-youkai could benefit from an unexpected trump card. Gojyo in particular, whose aura he knew well enough to suspect he might have talents Hakkai couldn't even imagine...he had always meant to bring it up, but somehow never had...

And would he ever have the chance, now? He fingered the scratchy wool of the hat in his hands. His hat, that he had thrust onto Gojyo's stubborn head only hours before. It might have only been a coincidence, that he had found it scant feet from that broken ice, a hole large enough to drop two men into the water. The river's current would have dragged them under the ice in seconds.

It might be coincidence, but Hakkai knew fate too well to hope for that. Even if they hadn't fallen prey to the river, if they had never found shelter, exposure could have killed them just as surely. The best he could do was to assume nothing at all, just to carry on the search. But he had to brace himself, for when he did find the truth. If they were truly lost...

Sanzo, who trusted him, who swore a faith in him that Hakkai had no choice but to live up to, and thus he lived. And Gojyo...there were no words for that. He was there, and that was everything. That Gojyo had taken him in, those few years past, that Gojyo stayed by his side, all of it was only a hint of something Hakkai didn't understand, but believed in as surely as he had felt anything in any life.

If they were gone, he didn't know what he would do, and that frightened him as deeply as the possibility of their loss. He had to prepare himself for it, and still, that might not be enough. It wasn't a case of control, or losing control; what he was could not be contained the way Goku was checked by his diadem. Everything Hakkai did, he chose to do, but what he chose when angry, or stricken by grief...

And there was Goku, of course. Hakkai's arms tightened around the smaller youkai. He should have told him his suspicions, as soon as he found the hat; he knew Goku hadn't been fooled by his non-answers. Goku was strong in nearly every way, mature enough now to hold onto himself. Hakkai did him no favors, hiding what he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to say his fears aloud. And he needed Goku's absolute confidence, selfishly depended on his younger friend's spirit as much as he relied on Sanzo's trust and Gojyo's presence.

"Kyuu," came faintly from the jeep's hood, and Hakkai smiled a little, genuinely. And Hakuryuu, of course, always Hakuryuu's loyalty. "I'm all right," he told the dragon, patting the dashboard. "How are you doing?" The emergency lights were flashing, in case Gojyo and Sanzo might be able to see them through the storm. It was a drain of power but Goku had insisted, and Hakuryuu hadn't complained, though Hakkai knew the dragon was as exhausted as they. "Can you make it a little longer?"

He had only whispered, and Goku usually slept like a rock, but now the golden eyes snapped open. "Hakkai," he said, sitting up. "Are they..." But he found the answer just by looking, paused instead for a moment. Then he wrenched the tarp off the jeep's frame, scattering snow and opening them to a cold, clear night. "The storm," he said, "it's stopped."

"For now, apparently," Hakkai agreed, glancing up through the branches at the clouds overhead.

Instantly Goku was up and out of the jeep. "We have to look for them now. Before it starts again."

"Goku..." He hadn't forgotten what the boy had said before, about the evil in the storm's violence. When he tried he could sense it too, and knew as well as Goku what that meant. A magical attack, either a youkai, or another of their enemies. The storm's end might mean capitulation, or it could be prelude to another assault. Until they knew, hiding might be their safest option. "Perhaps we should wait here--"

"Hakkai, what's wrong with you?" Goku demanded, hands on his hips. "You don't just give up! Wherever they are, we have to get to them, before something worse happens."

He had no choice. "Goku," Hakkai said, "I don't know if we can find them." He held up the hat. "I gave this to Gojyo, he'd lost his own. We found it right where the ice was broken. I think there's a good chance--"

"No," said Goku.

"I don't know for sure, and don't want to believe it, but it's very possible that they drowned," Hakkai said relentlessly. "Even if they didn't, the blizzard--"

"No," Goku said again. "Sanzo's alive."

"I want him to be as much as you, but--"

"Hakkai," Goku said, as patiently as if he were five hundred years older in mind as well as time. "I'd know if something happened to Sanzo."

Spine-tingling...but when she was in danger, I felt nothing, knew nothing, only continued playing with my students... Hakkai spoke through numb lips, "You might think--"

"I do."

"You don't even know where he is."

"No." Goku shook his head. "I don't know where he is, or what's going on with him, but if he were in real trouble, or if he'd died...I'd know." He waved up at the clouds above. "It's night now, but you know when the sun's in the sky, don't you? Even when there's clouds covering it up. Sanzo's all right. And Gojyo is, too, because Sanzo wouldn't let anything happen to him. But we've got to find them now, before something really does."

"Goku..."

"So let's go!"

Hakkai smiled, and could tell Goku knew it was real, from the grin that spread over the boy's own face. "All right," the older youkai said, and folding the tarp and blankets to stow them away in their packs, he called for Hakuryuu. The jeep shrank into the dragon, which glided to him happily and took his accustomed perch on his shoulder, and they set out of the pine grove.

They were passing the last trees when Goku stopped dead in his tracks, as if he had hit an unseen wall. "Goku?" Hakkai asked, familiar with his friend's finely tuned perception. He listened for something approaching, but heard only the trees fighting against the wind. That rustle, and something else, a rumbling like a distant, powerful engine, and growing.

"Sanzo!" Goku hollered, without warning, and then he sprang up, straight into the air like a panther into the upper branches of the closet pine.

"Goku?" Hakkai demanded, staring up into the tree. Through the darkness he could see Goku climbing like the wind, the black silhouette of his head turning against the charcoal sky as he looked around from his heightened vantage point. "What do you see?" The rumbling was becoming louder, until the ground was shaking under him.

"Hakkai!" Goku shouted down, "watch out!"

Too late, Hakkai turned. In the darkness, the white and gray rushing toward him looked like nothing so much as the mountainside itself, rising up to strike him. Without the time to concentrate and summon a barrier, he leapt after Goku, but before he could grab the lowest branch the avalanche swept over him, pummeling him down with a giant fist of snow.

"Hakkai!" he heard Goku scream over the deafening roar, and then he was buried.

to be continued...

Meant to post this Friday, but ff.net...intervened. My apologies! Glad folks liked the Sanzo-Gojyo interaction in the last chapter; I have fun writing those two. And big hugs and nikuman to all my reviewers - I wouldn't be posting this fast without such wonderful encouragement.