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Chapter 4
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By the third day we had fallen in to a sort of routine. We drove and drove, stopped for lunch, and continued driving.
It was too quiet in the car. The lack of constant moaning and whining, which normally grated at my nerves, left a sudden emptiness, a stillness in the atmosphere that served only to increase the tension.
Those two idiots were mad at me. They hated me, most probably. Well perhaps I'm over dramatizing. Gojyo never really liked me in the first place. And Hakkai… you never know with him.
Why do I call them idiots? Because they are. I could sense even though they were angry, that soon they'd forgive me, perhaps even turn their wrath to you. How amusingly simple-minded of them. Not that they knew any better.
Some demons attacked us shortly before we stopped for the night. Another useless horde of demons. We dispatched them easily. I wondered how you would have felt, knowing we could survive without you. I remember wondering if you could survive without us, without me…
I was all you had ever known. All you had had to cling on to. And now you had nothing. I wondered how it felt, to lose everything you had once owned. I, for one, didn't know. I had made sure from the beginning to have nothing to lose other than my own life. And I knew I would take my own life before I'd let someone else steal it from me.
But thinking back on it, I did know what it felt to lose what was precious to me. My master, the only man I will ever truly call Sanzo, the only one that ever deserved the title… And you.
So when the demons came, I threw myself recklessly in to fighting. Fighting helped to fill that empty void inside of me, helped me free myself of all my anger and hatred. I should have known not to depend on you to understand me; you were a demon after all. What else could I have expected?
After that, Hakkai and Gojyo were even more worried about me than usual, though they tried hard not to show it. I wished that they would just piss off and leave me alone. I didn't need them; I didn't need anyone. I would have been able to complete the journey by myself, easily, without a bunch of useless idiots to drag around.
I had thought you were… beautiful. Even now I hesitate to give you that adjective, and yet handsome is just too rough for your looks. I can't believe how easily you tricked me in to believing you were exactly what you looked like; innocent, loyal, happy… Underneath, I had found a completely different person. That's why I forced you, to make the real you come out. To prove to myself that you were not what you appeared to be.
I idly crushed the cigarette under my heels and nodded in satisfaction. That was why I had done it, not for that foolish reason I had spouted not so long ago. I hadn't been thinking before. I had actually thought that for a second, I had been in the wrong. But no, you were wrong. You were false. And you hadn't been able to fool me forever.
To Be Continued...