The first few rays of sunshine peek over the horizon, spilling out endless streams of colored light upon the land. Sitting atop the highest mountain he could find, Sanzo has a clear, breathtaking view of this phenomenon, but he does not find its beauty inspiring or miraculous. His amethyst gaze is far too distant to pick up on the sight before him.
Seated with his arms resting over his knees, he would almost appear to be informally meditating with such a constant, focused line of sight. What he is actually seeing, however, is no more a moment of enlightenment than it is the sunrise. In his mind, he finds himself brought back many years into the past...
---
"You will make a fine monk someday, Kouryuu." Koumyo Sanzo smiles down at his charge.
The pair is standing in the garden of their temple home, completely alone save the occasional bird flying overhead, or the rare sight of one of the other monks passing by a window inside.
Young Kouryuu, the future Genjo Sanzo, appears troubled by his master's words, and plays absently with a loose thread on his sleeve. As much as he respects and cares for the man beside him, the only father he has ever known, he still fears letting the older man know of his worries.
"Ano...I'm not so sure about that, Master." the young boy speaks softly, staring down at the grass at his feet.
"Oh?"
Kouryuu clears his throat, tugging hard on that loose thread. "I...don't agree with everything I'm supposed to follow. How can I be a monk if I go against the teachings?"
Since Kouryuu's eyes are cast down, it is impossible for him to see his master's face, but the older monk smiles to himself anyway, admiring his apprentice's honesty. "Everyone is different, Kouryuu. There are different truths for different people. As long as you listen to your heart, you will be following YOUR way, and that is the only way that matters."
Oddly distraught and unable to comprehend receiving the very answer he had hoped for but never imagined he would get, Kouryuu lifts his slightly bent head and flicks his violet eyes hesitantly towards his master's face.
Koumyo's smile always takes him by surprise.
"But...wouldn't that be going against what the great Buddha taught us?"
"Perhaps." Koumyo agrees, placing a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder and bending down as if to reveal a well-kept secret. "However...if I told you any differently...I'd be lying."
Kouryuu eyes his master's pleased grin warily, and finds himself blushing at the feel of the older man's breath on his face, and that warm hand on his shoulder. "You are a very unconventional monk, Master."
The monk in question stands up straight, laughing outright at the comment. Then, with a swift tug, he pulls Koryuu in close against his side, slipping the arm that had been on the boy's shoulder to wrap around the other as well. "Thank you." he grins, giving the young blonde a small wink as he taps him playfully on the nose like a teasing, older brother. "Some day, I hope you will be, too."
---
Sanzo mulls over that well-remembered incident, just as he has been since early the evening before.
Without so much as a goodbye, he had thrown his gun to the ground and stormed out into the night. Now, far from that little town and his companions, he feels he can honestly look at the problems at hand. His answers, however, keep coming up the same, no matter how many times he reworks them.
"I promised myself I would never again love someone so much...that losing them would hurt as much as...losing him." Sanzo speaks aloud, still staring hard at the horizon without seeing it at all. "I know he would never condemn me for loving another man, or for any of the...unconventional things I do. But...what does it matter? How can I even think I have the right to accept someone's love again...?"
"Oh, for goodness' sake, must you always play the martyr?"
Sanzo spins around, nearly toppling over from his awkward seat on the mountain top, and finds himself staring up at a rather voluptuous and beautiful woman, well-dressed and draped in fine jewelry.
The invaded monk scowls, righting himself as he stands menacingly to confront this unwelcome guest.
"What do you want?" he seethes.
The unmoving goddess, Kanzeon Bosatsu, smirks wickedly, placing a graceful hand on her well-shaped hip. "Me? Just thought I'd pop in to offer you a bit of friendly advice, Konzen darling, that's all."
"Bullshit. This mess is all YOUR doing, isn't it?"
Kanzeon brings a hand in mock injury to her chest, flicking a stray curl out of her eyes with the other. "Whatever do you mean? If you're talking about dear Goku, he bumped his adorable, little head, remember? I had nothing to do with that."
Refusing to answer the goddess' evasiveness, Sanzo crosses his arms in front of him and stares her down, giving new meaning to the phrase, 'if looks could kill...'
"All right, maybe I had a little to do with it." she concedes, crossing her arms to match his. "I was just so sick and tired of waiting for one of you four to make a move. Honestly, one would think you boys have NO libido."
Sanzo produces a sound much like a growl combined with a very angry, cat-like hiss. "You had no right to meddle in our lives."
"Oh please. You're the ones who were trying to deny what your own souls long ago accepted."
"Don't feed me that past-life shit." Sanzo argues. "My life is here and now, not some god's from 200 years ago."
Kanzeon raises a humored eyebrow at this. "Actually, it was 500 years ago."
His arms flying back to his sides, Sanzo's hands instantly form into very determined fists. "Even more to the point, you ugly hag! I'm not Konzen! I'm Kouryuu!!"
Chilling pause. The moment that name falls from his lips, Sanzo freezes, taking a small, fearful step back. Despising the little smirk Kanzeon offers him over this, however, he quickly pulls himself back together as if he hasn't slipped up at all.
"I'm Sanzo." he mends. "Sanzo..."
Smirking even more at such a lame attempt to save face, Kanzeon takes a step of her own, bringing them within a foot of one another, and leans in to reduce the space between them even more. "You...are Kouryuu, AND Sanzo, AND Konzen, AND...all the other little lives in between." she expresses, eyeing him closely, up and down, in assessment of her accusation, finding her words perfectly fitting and true. "However...you are quite right. This is YOUR life now. Truth be told, though, whether you believe you are influenced by your past life or not, who you are now loves that boy just as much as Konzen did."
Sanzo has no rebuttal, and finds himself drained of the strength to step back and escape her overbearing presence. "Why are you doing all this?" he whispers, struggling to maintain his venomous nature.
Regarding Sanzo with an almost maternal expression, momentarily devoid of her characteristic, holier-than-thou smirk, Kanzeon sighs deeply with a shimmering shake of her head. "I put that boy under your charge in the hopes of somehow lightening you up. I never imagined you would fall in love with each other, but it was by far the best thing that could have ever happened to you. Finally, after 500 years, all four of you are together again, and while Kenren and Tenpou are busy rediscovering their romance, you're sulking up here talking to me."
"I'd rather be up here NOT talking to you." Sanzo counters, highly uncomfortable with her treating him with such intimate familiarity.
"Konzen--"
"Sanzo! My name is Genjo Sanzo!!" he barks back, seething for a moment with renewed animosity, though quickly deflating under the force of her pitying stare. He swallows, casting his gaze to a spot on the ground that has suddenly become remarkably interesting. "I can't love him...don't you understand?"
"Why not?"
"Because I can't, okay! I can't lose him!"
Kanzeon's lips twitch into a slight smile, and she leans in as she had before, capturing Sanzo's gaze even as he is desperately trying to avoid her. "Lose him?" she repeats, almost teasingly.
Somehow, Sanzo hadn't even noticed that second slip of the tongue. "Love him." he corrects, narrowing his brow. "I can't love him."
"Uh, uh, uh, you said 'lose', and that is the problem spinning around inside your oblivious, blonde head." She leans back, planting both hands on her hips in a gesture of imminent victory. "Grow up, Sanzo. People die. People get hurt. People get over it and love other people anyway. Take it from your fellow man and ACT like a man, already!"
Violet eyes blazing, Sanzo instinctively opens his mouth to dispute her argument, but loses his words the moment he is about to speak them.
All his steam is gone, all his anger and resentment. And all that remains is the knowledge of something he cannot push aside.
"...I...don't deserve him..." he breathes at last, staring straight into Kanzeon's triumphant face. "I don't. You've had your damn, omnipotent eye on us since the beginning, watching him grow up just as I have. You've seen every act of bravery and devotion right along with me. His smile, his optimism, his eyes...God, those eyes...and even...even the way he always ends up back at my side...no matter how cruelly I treat him." Sanzo almost smiles at the thought, but such an expression easily crumbles, caught somewhere between impossibility and regret. "Damn monkey. He always comes back."
The goddess' powerful sense of victory wanes and vanishes, gone completely by the time Sanzo's final word is left to hang thickly in the air. Kanzeon leaves her smile and smug demeanor behind for a moment.
They aren't necessary right now.
"You know as well as I do, honey, this time he won't be coming back unless you give him a reason. Do you really want to spend your life alone?" she adds, all her mocking long forgotten. "And don't you dare talk about the risk. Afraid you'll lose him? Fine. BE afraid. But let yourself love him. Even hopeless fools like you deserve a little happiness, and whether you believe me or not, I have been fighting for the right to give you back that happiness since the day they cast you out of Heaven."
Sanzo's eyes widen; it isn't everyday you discover you have a goddess on your side, even if most of this particular goddess' meddling proves only to piss Sanzo off.
"Think on it, Konzen darling." Kanzeon coos, easing back into her customary smirk. "And remember, you're the one who decides when Goku gets his memories back."
Just as swiftly as they had widened, Sanzo's eyes narrow. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Turning on her impossibly high heels, Kanzeon peers back over her shoulder with a wink. "You'll figure it out. Ciao." she smiles, and in a grand display of smoke and colored lights, she is gone, leaving Sanzo to think about what she has said.
Scowling darkly at where the goddess had so recently been standing, Sanzo huffs. "Bitch." comes his automatic reply to the encounter, though it doesn't seem to hold nearly as much hostility as one would expect.
Sanzo has been given much to consider, and despite his better judgment, he cannot stop himself from considering the impossible. There are risks and there are rewards in submitting to one's true feelings. The question remains: is Sanzo man enough to give into his?
-----
Trudging through the town's nearby woods, the remaining members of the Sanzo-ikkou are rapidly making their way in the only direction they think possible for their lost leader to have gone, hopeful that they will discover him before a new night approaches.
After having attempted to get some sleep instead of just setting out in the dead of night, they had all come to realize just how impossible sleep would be while preoccupied with Sanzo's whereabouts. So, naturally, long before sunrise, Hakkai, Gojyo, and Goku abandoned their cottage and headed out to find their friend.
"Damn, self-serving, son-of-a...urrg! I can't believe the nerve of that fucking monk!!"
"Don't get so worked-up, Gojyo." Hakkai gently reprimand's his companion, smiling softly as they continue along the forest path, side by side. "I'm sure we'll find him."
Gojyo practically stops dead in his tracks. "Don't get so worked-up?! What am I supposed to do, grin and bear it like you?!"
Injured by those coarse words, Hakkai's ever-present smile wavers, barely holding itself in place. "Hn. I guess you have a point. Forgive me for being so insensitive."
Gojyo instantly regrets his unthinking, uncaring tone, and recognizes the malevolence in Hakkai's response. "Look...I didn't mean that. I'm just pissed, okay?"
As always, Hakkai's smile returns with a vengeance, and he eagerly accepts the apology. "Don't worry about it. Besides...I'm more worried about him."
Following Hakkai's gaze as the brunette turns to look behind them discreetly, Gojyo takes in the sight of the pitiful figure trailing behind them. Goku has barely spoken since Sanzo's unexpected disappearance, and with his head bowed, his feet drag along the ground as he makes his way along the path with the others.
Neither Hakkai's gentle reassurances nor Gojyo's crude humor seem capable of lifting the younger man's melancholy. His heart is breaking, and his mind is that of a younger self, one that cannot grasp why the love of his long life refuses to see him as anything but a nuisance.
"I'm going to kill that monk for this." Gojyo vows intently, turning back to the expanse of trees in front of him with a glare.
Hakkai finds it difficult to repress the true smile slipping into his placid expression. "You really care about Goku, don't you?"
For once, Gojyo doesn't even bother denying such a truth, though the slightest blush of color rises to his cheeks. "What can I say, he's the little brother I never had, and never wanted, for that matter." he grins. "So...yeah, of course I care. He doesn't deserve to be treated like this."
Indeed, a rare, real smile spreads the length of Hakkai's beautiful face, and he brings a caring hand up to Gojyo's shoulder, giving it a much needed squeeze. The pair pauses in their step, content to share a quiet moment.
Before they can speak, or at the very least, continue their trek through the woods, the sudden sound of snapping brush alerts their attention to a point in front of them.
Hakkai and Gojyo immediately position themselves in preparation for an attack, only slightly caught off guard when an oblivious Goku walks right into them from behind. Without a word, Gojyo sweeps the monkey between and slightly behind himself and Hakkai, before calling into the thick of trees.
"You can come on out; we know you're there!" he challenges. "You must have one damn, strong death wish if you think you can get the jump on us!"
In reply, the group is met with another rustle of branches, and an easily recognized figure soon appears from within the line of trees, stepping out onto the path steady and unafraid.
Goku's mouth falls open, and he absentmindedly speaks beneath his breath. "...Konzen..."
Though it is highly unlikely Sanzo heard Goku's whispered mistake in identity, the blonde monk glares back at the group with a characteristic scowl.
Their guards already dropped, Hakkai and Gojyo gawk in disbelief.
"What are you staring at?" Sanzo demands, walking up to the group that is still so closely huddled together. "We're behind schedule, ne? I want to get to the next town by nightfall."
No response. The others merely stare, occasionally casting a glance to one another, and unable to believe the ease and luck of this encounter.
Huffing in annoyance, Sanzo stomps over to Hakkai and impatiently holds out his hand. "Gun." he grunts, somehow knowing the wise brunette would be the one to hold on to it.
Silently, Hakkai produces it and holds it out for Sanzo to take.
Snatching it roughly, the blonde tucks it back into his robes where it belongs. "Let's go."
Pushing Gojyo and Hakkai aside, Sanzo begins to walk forward. After barely two steps, however, he finds himself parallel with Goku, and pauses. Without looking down into those pleading, golden eyes, he speaks, deeply strained with each spoken word.
"I was out of line." he admits slowly, forcing himself to be honest. "I'm not taking back what I said. But..." His voice hitches and trails off. Taking a quick breath, he forces out one final word, speaking it as swiftly as his tongue will allow. "Gomen." And then, he continues on, back down the path towards the town they have left behind.
Goku stands positively dumbfounded, but after only a brief moment of frozen disbelief, he happily bounds after his guardian, knowing to keep a safe distance, but feeling a million times more at peace.
Before following their companions, Hakkai and Gojyo share a knowing glance, and then, with mirrored smirks, they, too, begin the journey back along what seems to be a brand new path.
tbc...
A/N: No, this is not the end. There is so much more to tell. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. I had so much fun with Kanzeon! Still, I think the next chapter is going to be one of my faves. I've already started it, and...I love it! Please, keep reading and REVIEWING so I know what you guys think, and thanks again for all the reviews so far. :-) ja!
Crim