A/N: Lots of exposition in this chapter, mostly from Gojyo about his past. (Warning: Involves child abuse, physical and sexual) The Triads are the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Yakuza or the Italian Mafia. Also, while Gojyo still can't swim in my AU, he's not so panicked over being in water. He is a kappa after all, even if he's only a half-breed.
Blades of Ice, terrorcotta, Wind Wanderer: You wanted more? Here ya go!
Kath: Will Gonou become Hakkai? Hmmm...
MoMo-kun: I figured Sanzo's investigative skills went beyond stuffing a gun in someone's face, and pendulum dowsing is a very old method. I tried to give Sanzo a pair of Feng-Shui monks to assist him last chapter, but he insisted on doing it himself.
UltraM2000: I did mean Lian, Gojyo speaks about her in this chapter (she is an OC from the past I handed him). My sympathies on that 8-hour ordeal. Unruly children are bad enough, but when you can't escape (and tranking them with a dart gun isn't an option) that's a friggin nightmare!
Lizalou42: Danke! Sanzo and Goku only have a brief appearance in this chapter, but I'm glad you like how I'm writing the resident blonde. They'll be back for the next installment, never fear!
Disclaimer: The only part of Saiyuki I own are the six DVDs, one album, two Reload mangas, and the wall hanging of Sanzo in my computer room.
________________________________________________
Gojyo could not believe how difficult it had been just to get to the stream. It wasn't very far, he'd been able to hear the water from camp, but every step pulled on his healing shoulder, sending streaks of pain through his body. Twice he'd had to stop, leaning heavily on Gonou, waiting until the grayness that clouded his one remaining eye receded and the pain subsided. For his part, Gonou simply drifted silently alongside, stopping when Gojyo stopped, and moving when Gojyo was ready to go on. But finally they made it, and Gojyo waded in, tugging Gonou along with him.
The stream wasn't very wide and it only came up to his thighs, but he the water was clean and cool, with just enough current to carry the fresh stains of blood and dirt away. With a sigh, Gojyo let his tired legs fold, plunging him completely under the water. Soft, wet tendrils eddied under his sleeveless shirt, caressing his torso like a tender lover, plunging liquid fingers through sweat soaked hair, fanning the strands out in a crimson cascade, swirling over his lips with a cool kiss. The water tugged at his sling and eye patch, penetrating the protective layers to stroke the damaged areas underneath. Tension flowed away with the current, sweeping away the detritus of the morning and leaving renewed strength. *Welcome home, Gojyo.*
A hand reached for him, gripping his good shoulder, pulling him back to the surface to meet worried green eyes. "Gojyo? What are you doing? Why are we... in the river... I..." Gojyo watched as both memory and sanity returned in a rush to Gonou, and hastily gripped the arm that held him.
"Welcome back from bugga-bugga land, no don't!" Gojyo firmed his grip as Gonou tried to pull away from him, horror and self-loathing blooming in the brunette's face. "Listen to me. You are going to clean yourself up, then we are going to sit over there in the sun, and you are going to listen while I talk, understand?"
"How can you even stand to look at me? After what I did?" Gonou looked as if he was expecting condemnation to fall from Gojyo's lips at any moment.
"Let me throw that right back at you. How can you look at me, knowing what happened and who I am?" Gojyo released Gonou and drifted backwards in the water. "Don't answer that right now, just get clean. You've got wolf bits all over you." With that, Gojyo slipped back under the surface, allowing himself to drift to the bottom. *One thing I always did do well, sink like a frigging rock.*
Gojyo watched from under the surface, as Gonou stood silently for a minute, then finally started cleaning himself. Gojyo finally began to feel the need for air, and pushed back up to the surface just as Gonou ducked under it, looking for him. With the limiters back in place over his ear it was almost as if the river had washed away the demon and left the human behind.
"You were under a long time. I was... I was getting worried."
"My old man was from a river clan. I can't stay under indefinitely like a full-blood, but I can last longer than humans can. Can't swim a lick though. Shallow place like this is safe enough."
"Didn't your father teach you how to swim?" A tentative question, Gojyo could feel Gonou straining to keep the conversation neutral.
"My father? Hell, no. He dumped his little bastard-born onto his wife and ten year-old son and vanished. Never heard from him again, and Mom threw out all his pictures. I don't even know what he looks like, or my birth mother either." Gojyo saw Gonou blanch in embarrassment at Gojyo's frank reply. "Jien, my half-brother, tried to teach me to swim, but I'm just not built for it. Glub, glub, down goes the little freak. But my amazing lack of swimming abilities isn't what I want to talk about. Think you're cleaned up yet?"
Gonou looked down at himself, at the water now running clear around him, "Yes. It's all gone. Washed away."
"Water's good for that sort of thing." Gojyo splashed back to the bank, and started to slide the sling off in order to remove his soaked shirt.
Gonou was by his side in an instant. "Let me." His gentle hands carefully maneuvered the shirt off without jostling the right shoulder. "You really shouldn't have gotten this wet. I don't have any more gauze."
"Pull it off and let it dry then. Think you're up to a few questions while you work on me?"
Gonou went still, his eyes dropping to his hands still holding Gojyo's shirt. "Putting it off any longer really won't make it any easier." He said quietly.
"Very true. Looking back, and knowing everything that you know now, is there anything you would have done differently? You can't change what anyone else did, only your own actions." Gojyo watched as Gonou slowly worked at the bandages holding his right hand to the splint.
"No." It came out in a quiet sigh. "I would have still done it all again to save my Kanan." A tiny sad smile quirked briefly at his lips. "Perhaps I would have left my knife behind when I found her, so she would not have taken it, but that's all."
"OK, that's pretty much what I thought. Once a guy like you makes something yours, you never let go." Gojyo grunted as his hand slid free of the splint, the fingers were numb and unresponsive. "And it's pretty clear that if anyone tries to mess with what's yours, you hand them their head on a platter. Literally."
Gonou fussed with the wrappings, setting them carefully out to dry, and muttered a quiet, "I'm not sure. I never had anything taken from me before. I don't remember when my parents died, I do remember missing someone, but I didn't know it was Kanan until after I found her again."
"Of course not." Gojyo said. "You grew up in one of those sheltered orphanages, didn't you?"
"A missionary orphanage. What does that have..."
"Yeah, completely sheltered." Gojyo interrupted. "They turned out a nice, clean-cut young man who didn't have a damned clue about how evil and nasty the rest of the world really was, and let me guess, your Kanan was raised the same way?" A brief flicker in Gonou's eyes was all the confirmation Gojyo needed. "Thought so. She just couldn't bear it, and took what she thought was the only option out."
Gonou was shaking now, his head turned away from Gojyo. "And I suppose you would have known what she had to bear? You would have been able to stop her?"
Gojyo leaned forward, resting his head on his knees, looping his left arm across his shins. Damp hair slid across his face, obscuring his vision in a curtain of red. For several minutes, no words were spoken between them. "Pay attention Gonou, I'm never going to say any of this again."
"I knew she wasn't my real mother, but she was the only one I had. She couldn't stand to look at me, and anything could set her off. Black and blue and red all over, that was me." Memories of being backhanded into a door flickered past Gojyo's mind. A heavy belt crashing into his thin shoulders from tracking in a little dirt. Jien pulling Mother into the bedroom with a desperate, haunted look in his face to "calm her down".
"Jien did his best to protect me, he did a lot of things a teenaged boy shouldn't have to do." He could tell Gonou was listening now, turning back towards him. "When I was ten, it finally all fell apart. I brought in some flowers that day, thinking it might make Mom happy, but she took one look at them, at me and just snapped. Hit me so hard I flew across the room, slammed me into the wall. Ripped my face wide open." A touch against his wrist, and Gojyo could feel Gonou gently manipulating the stiffened fingers on his hand.
"I sat there against the wall, just trying to breathe again, when Mom came back at me. She had an ax in her hands, and she was crying, crying so hard. I knew then, that it was all over, that it was finally going to end, and Mom wouldn't be crying anymore. And you know what? I was OK with that, because I didn't want her to cry. I just closed my eyes and waited for the ax to fall. She made a noise then, just a soft sigh, and the ax hit the ground. And then she hit the ground, right there at my feet. I looked, and she wasn't crying anymore, wasn't breathing anymore either. There was all this blood, spilling right from her heart, and standing behind her was Jien. Holding a sword that had belonged to our father, coated in Mother's blood. He was crying. Just before everything went black on me, the last time I ever saw his face, I knew that I had done this. I had killed my mother and made my brother cry."
Gojyo tilted his head to watch as Gonou rubbed life back into his fingers, they were starting to tingle and twitch. Looking at hands was easier than seeing the expression on Gonou's face, letting Gonou see the expression on his. "I woke up after it was dark, Mom still in front of me, and Jien was gone. I took off too, something inside me knew that when Mom was found the clan would finish the job she started. I thought maybe if I ran fast enough, I could find Jien." Tearing blindly through the woods, burning with wound-fever, a thousand "I'm sorrys" falling from raw, cracked lips.
"I'm not sure how long I was wandering, days I think, but eventually I stumbled on a caravan camp. Saw the fires, and went right in, a skinny little kid with his face torn open, delirious from hunger and exhaustion, fell right into their laps. A little bit of drugs in the stew they handed me, and I woke up two days later, shackled in a closed up cart with three other kids." Dirty, secret little side trade. A few coins made sure no customs official ever looked inside, ignored the small sounds that whimpered through. "Turned out that one of the caravaners had recognized me for what I was, and that made me exotic enough to make a profit off of despite the damage to my face. In fact, I was so exotic that they dragged me all the way to Nanjing and sold my virgin half-breed ass to the Triads for real gold."
"Could I have stopped Kanan from committing suicide? I don't know, but I would have tried, just like you would have. Known what she went through? I understand rape all too well, my friend. I know what it does to your mind, your soul. How you end up huddled in a corner, sobbing your heart out to an uncaring world, wondering what you did to deserve this pain. Thinking that if you could only just die, it would all be over. But they won't let you, instead they just use you. Over and over and over. You can't fight it either. They'll take you however they can, threats, violence, drugs, eventually they have you. Oh yes, I know exactly what she went through."
Gonou finished massaging the battered hand, and Gojyo flexed it thoughtfully, feeling the pull of stiffened tendons and still bruised flesh. The silent brunette moved around behind the half-breed, and started working on his shoulder. Gojyo was glad of the silence, it was difficult enough saying these things that he had tried to keep buried for five years, but he had to continue.
"I spent four years in a house that catered to perverts with *refined* tastes. They went through a lot of kids there, the only one that lasted anywhere near as long as I did was Lian, 'cause she was just as rare as me. Her skin was darker than river mud, and her hair curled so tightly. From the far West, that's where she said she was from. She and I were irreplaceable, and very expensive. We learned that they'd never let us go." Ying and Lian, the cherry and the lotus. Gojyo still remembered her real name that she had whispered to him in the dark, long after she had forgotten. Kiya. "For a little while, we managed to cling together, supported each other, but she finally gave up, and became exactly what they wanted her to be." Gojyo stopped and gave a hiss as Gonou peeled the damp gauze off his shoulder.
"I apologize." The soft words barely reached Gojyo's ears, and he knew that it wasn't about the brief discomfort to the injury.
"S'OK, Gonou. After Lian faded out on me, I knew that I wasn't going to last much longer either. Boys don't usually live past puberty, and I was getting close. I had one trick though, one thing they had forgotten. The Triads kept their stock docile through drugs, and they had me on a pretty steady dose like all the other kids, but they forgot I wasn't human. Fixes that spaced everyone else out I had already adapted to, I wasn't as doped up as they thought. All I needed was one careless moment on their part, and when I was fourteen, I got it. I had spent my whole life believing I was weaker than everyone else around me, but that night I learned how strong I really was. That I didn't have to accept what life threw at me, I could throw it right back. Was doing pretty well too, until those boys you met shot me in the back while I was gambling. Shoulda known that holding a two pair of black Aces and Eights was bad luck."
*****
Far away in the Heavens, Kanzeon Bousatsu arched an eyebrow. "Sorry Kenren, but a Dead Man's Hand was too good to pass up, and you needed to be there for Tenpou. Improvise, adapt and overcome my dear general, you are so good at that."
*****
Gojyo was through talking. Gonou could feel the subtle tension in the lean muscles underneath his hands as he carefully examined the raw flesh on Gojyo's shoulder. It was still suppurating, but there was no sign of infection. There would be a long, ropy scar arcing over the shoulder, but Gonou hoped that Gojyo would eventually be able to fully use the arm again.
*How can you stand to look at me?* Gonou recalled the words flung at Gojyo. *What do you know of what she had to bear?* How terribly naïve he felt now.
"How did you get over all that? How did you go on?" Gonou felt Gojyo twist and look directly at him. The lone red eye was full of remembered pain.
"Get over it? I didn't Gonou. I didn't." A sudden flash of memory, Gojyo twisting fitfully in his sleep, incoherent mumbles tumbling past his lips. Not just the discomfort of his wounds, but fever-dreams of a life that provided rich soil for nightmares. "How do I go on? Because every day that I continue to live, is a victory against all those who think that I shouldn't exist. And I super hate to lose."
"So, I guess that means you won't be playing cards with me again any time soon."
A slow, sleepy smile emerged from the crimson fall of hair drifting across the half-demon's face. "Not until I figure out how the hell you were reading my deck."
Gonou watched as Gojyo slipped into a light doze, curled on the mossy bank of the stream, then rose to his feet. *Life is a victory? Go on despite the pain? To spite the pain?*
"I don't know if I'm that strong Gojyo. I don't know if I can bear this."
*****
The priest and his retainer were leaving. The entire town knew by now that he was hunting for Cho Gonou, and many came to watch as he ordered the barge captain to his new destination. The captain's small protest of lost profit for diverting from his standard trade was brushed aside as a golden card was negligently flashed. Several new sailors had come aboard to assist with the lesser-known route, and all of them had agreed on the true purpose of this voyage. If the Sanzo priest was looking for Cho Gonou, then they would follow him to exact their own revenge.
Blades of Ice, terrorcotta, Wind Wanderer: You wanted more? Here ya go!
Kath: Will Gonou become Hakkai? Hmmm...
MoMo-kun: I figured Sanzo's investigative skills went beyond stuffing a gun in someone's face, and pendulum dowsing is a very old method. I tried to give Sanzo a pair of Feng-Shui monks to assist him last chapter, but he insisted on doing it himself.
UltraM2000: I did mean Lian, Gojyo speaks about her in this chapter (she is an OC from the past I handed him). My sympathies on that 8-hour ordeal. Unruly children are bad enough, but when you can't escape (and tranking them with a dart gun isn't an option) that's a friggin nightmare!
Lizalou42: Danke! Sanzo and Goku only have a brief appearance in this chapter, but I'm glad you like how I'm writing the resident blonde. They'll be back for the next installment, never fear!
Disclaimer: The only part of Saiyuki I own are the six DVDs, one album, two Reload mangas, and the wall hanging of Sanzo in my computer room.
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Gojyo could not believe how difficult it had been just to get to the stream. It wasn't very far, he'd been able to hear the water from camp, but every step pulled on his healing shoulder, sending streaks of pain through his body. Twice he'd had to stop, leaning heavily on Gonou, waiting until the grayness that clouded his one remaining eye receded and the pain subsided. For his part, Gonou simply drifted silently alongside, stopping when Gojyo stopped, and moving when Gojyo was ready to go on. But finally they made it, and Gojyo waded in, tugging Gonou along with him.
The stream wasn't very wide and it only came up to his thighs, but he the water was clean and cool, with just enough current to carry the fresh stains of blood and dirt away. With a sigh, Gojyo let his tired legs fold, plunging him completely under the water. Soft, wet tendrils eddied under his sleeveless shirt, caressing his torso like a tender lover, plunging liquid fingers through sweat soaked hair, fanning the strands out in a crimson cascade, swirling over his lips with a cool kiss. The water tugged at his sling and eye patch, penetrating the protective layers to stroke the damaged areas underneath. Tension flowed away with the current, sweeping away the detritus of the morning and leaving renewed strength. *Welcome home, Gojyo.*
A hand reached for him, gripping his good shoulder, pulling him back to the surface to meet worried green eyes. "Gojyo? What are you doing? Why are we... in the river... I..." Gojyo watched as both memory and sanity returned in a rush to Gonou, and hastily gripped the arm that held him.
"Welcome back from bugga-bugga land, no don't!" Gojyo firmed his grip as Gonou tried to pull away from him, horror and self-loathing blooming in the brunette's face. "Listen to me. You are going to clean yourself up, then we are going to sit over there in the sun, and you are going to listen while I talk, understand?"
"How can you even stand to look at me? After what I did?" Gonou looked as if he was expecting condemnation to fall from Gojyo's lips at any moment.
"Let me throw that right back at you. How can you look at me, knowing what happened and who I am?" Gojyo released Gonou and drifted backwards in the water. "Don't answer that right now, just get clean. You've got wolf bits all over you." With that, Gojyo slipped back under the surface, allowing himself to drift to the bottom. *One thing I always did do well, sink like a frigging rock.*
Gojyo watched from under the surface, as Gonou stood silently for a minute, then finally started cleaning himself. Gojyo finally began to feel the need for air, and pushed back up to the surface just as Gonou ducked under it, looking for him. With the limiters back in place over his ear it was almost as if the river had washed away the demon and left the human behind.
"You were under a long time. I was... I was getting worried."
"My old man was from a river clan. I can't stay under indefinitely like a full-blood, but I can last longer than humans can. Can't swim a lick though. Shallow place like this is safe enough."
"Didn't your father teach you how to swim?" A tentative question, Gojyo could feel Gonou straining to keep the conversation neutral.
"My father? Hell, no. He dumped his little bastard-born onto his wife and ten year-old son and vanished. Never heard from him again, and Mom threw out all his pictures. I don't even know what he looks like, or my birth mother either." Gojyo saw Gonou blanch in embarrassment at Gojyo's frank reply. "Jien, my half-brother, tried to teach me to swim, but I'm just not built for it. Glub, glub, down goes the little freak. But my amazing lack of swimming abilities isn't what I want to talk about. Think you're cleaned up yet?"
Gonou looked down at himself, at the water now running clear around him, "Yes. It's all gone. Washed away."
"Water's good for that sort of thing." Gojyo splashed back to the bank, and started to slide the sling off in order to remove his soaked shirt.
Gonou was by his side in an instant. "Let me." His gentle hands carefully maneuvered the shirt off without jostling the right shoulder. "You really shouldn't have gotten this wet. I don't have any more gauze."
"Pull it off and let it dry then. Think you're up to a few questions while you work on me?"
Gonou went still, his eyes dropping to his hands still holding Gojyo's shirt. "Putting it off any longer really won't make it any easier." He said quietly.
"Very true. Looking back, and knowing everything that you know now, is there anything you would have done differently? You can't change what anyone else did, only your own actions." Gojyo watched as Gonou slowly worked at the bandages holding his right hand to the splint.
"No." It came out in a quiet sigh. "I would have still done it all again to save my Kanan." A tiny sad smile quirked briefly at his lips. "Perhaps I would have left my knife behind when I found her, so she would not have taken it, but that's all."
"OK, that's pretty much what I thought. Once a guy like you makes something yours, you never let go." Gojyo grunted as his hand slid free of the splint, the fingers were numb and unresponsive. "And it's pretty clear that if anyone tries to mess with what's yours, you hand them their head on a platter. Literally."
Gonou fussed with the wrappings, setting them carefully out to dry, and muttered a quiet, "I'm not sure. I never had anything taken from me before. I don't remember when my parents died, I do remember missing someone, but I didn't know it was Kanan until after I found her again."
"Of course not." Gojyo said. "You grew up in one of those sheltered orphanages, didn't you?"
"A missionary orphanage. What does that have..."
"Yeah, completely sheltered." Gojyo interrupted. "They turned out a nice, clean-cut young man who didn't have a damned clue about how evil and nasty the rest of the world really was, and let me guess, your Kanan was raised the same way?" A brief flicker in Gonou's eyes was all the confirmation Gojyo needed. "Thought so. She just couldn't bear it, and took what she thought was the only option out."
Gonou was shaking now, his head turned away from Gojyo. "And I suppose you would have known what she had to bear? You would have been able to stop her?"
Gojyo leaned forward, resting his head on his knees, looping his left arm across his shins. Damp hair slid across his face, obscuring his vision in a curtain of red. For several minutes, no words were spoken between them. "Pay attention Gonou, I'm never going to say any of this again."
"I knew she wasn't my real mother, but she was the only one I had. She couldn't stand to look at me, and anything could set her off. Black and blue and red all over, that was me." Memories of being backhanded into a door flickered past Gojyo's mind. A heavy belt crashing into his thin shoulders from tracking in a little dirt. Jien pulling Mother into the bedroom with a desperate, haunted look in his face to "calm her down".
"Jien did his best to protect me, he did a lot of things a teenaged boy shouldn't have to do." He could tell Gonou was listening now, turning back towards him. "When I was ten, it finally all fell apart. I brought in some flowers that day, thinking it might make Mom happy, but she took one look at them, at me and just snapped. Hit me so hard I flew across the room, slammed me into the wall. Ripped my face wide open." A touch against his wrist, and Gojyo could feel Gonou gently manipulating the stiffened fingers on his hand.
"I sat there against the wall, just trying to breathe again, when Mom came back at me. She had an ax in her hands, and she was crying, crying so hard. I knew then, that it was all over, that it was finally going to end, and Mom wouldn't be crying anymore. And you know what? I was OK with that, because I didn't want her to cry. I just closed my eyes and waited for the ax to fall. She made a noise then, just a soft sigh, and the ax hit the ground. And then she hit the ground, right there at my feet. I looked, and she wasn't crying anymore, wasn't breathing anymore either. There was all this blood, spilling right from her heart, and standing behind her was Jien. Holding a sword that had belonged to our father, coated in Mother's blood. He was crying. Just before everything went black on me, the last time I ever saw his face, I knew that I had done this. I had killed my mother and made my brother cry."
Gojyo tilted his head to watch as Gonou rubbed life back into his fingers, they were starting to tingle and twitch. Looking at hands was easier than seeing the expression on Gonou's face, letting Gonou see the expression on his. "I woke up after it was dark, Mom still in front of me, and Jien was gone. I took off too, something inside me knew that when Mom was found the clan would finish the job she started. I thought maybe if I ran fast enough, I could find Jien." Tearing blindly through the woods, burning with wound-fever, a thousand "I'm sorrys" falling from raw, cracked lips.
"I'm not sure how long I was wandering, days I think, but eventually I stumbled on a caravan camp. Saw the fires, and went right in, a skinny little kid with his face torn open, delirious from hunger and exhaustion, fell right into their laps. A little bit of drugs in the stew they handed me, and I woke up two days later, shackled in a closed up cart with three other kids." Dirty, secret little side trade. A few coins made sure no customs official ever looked inside, ignored the small sounds that whimpered through. "Turned out that one of the caravaners had recognized me for what I was, and that made me exotic enough to make a profit off of despite the damage to my face. In fact, I was so exotic that they dragged me all the way to Nanjing and sold my virgin half-breed ass to the Triads for real gold."
"Could I have stopped Kanan from committing suicide? I don't know, but I would have tried, just like you would have. Known what she went through? I understand rape all too well, my friend. I know what it does to your mind, your soul. How you end up huddled in a corner, sobbing your heart out to an uncaring world, wondering what you did to deserve this pain. Thinking that if you could only just die, it would all be over. But they won't let you, instead they just use you. Over and over and over. You can't fight it either. They'll take you however they can, threats, violence, drugs, eventually they have you. Oh yes, I know exactly what she went through."
Gonou finished massaging the battered hand, and Gojyo flexed it thoughtfully, feeling the pull of stiffened tendons and still bruised flesh. The silent brunette moved around behind the half-breed, and started working on his shoulder. Gojyo was glad of the silence, it was difficult enough saying these things that he had tried to keep buried for five years, but he had to continue.
"I spent four years in a house that catered to perverts with *refined* tastes. They went through a lot of kids there, the only one that lasted anywhere near as long as I did was Lian, 'cause she was just as rare as me. Her skin was darker than river mud, and her hair curled so tightly. From the far West, that's where she said she was from. She and I were irreplaceable, and very expensive. We learned that they'd never let us go." Ying and Lian, the cherry and the lotus. Gojyo still remembered her real name that she had whispered to him in the dark, long after she had forgotten. Kiya. "For a little while, we managed to cling together, supported each other, but she finally gave up, and became exactly what they wanted her to be." Gojyo stopped and gave a hiss as Gonou peeled the damp gauze off his shoulder.
"I apologize." The soft words barely reached Gojyo's ears, and he knew that it wasn't about the brief discomfort to the injury.
"S'OK, Gonou. After Lian faded out on me, I knew that I wasn't going to last much longer either. Boys don't usually live past puberty, and I was getting close. I had one trick though, one thing they had forgotten. The Triads kept their stock docile through drugs, and they had me on a pretty steady dose like all the other kids, but they forgot I wasn't human. Fixes that spaced everyone else out I had already adapted to, I wasn't as doped up as they thought. All I needed was one careless moment on their part, and when I was fourteen, I got it. I had spent my whole life believing I was weaker than everyone else around me, but that night I learned how strong I really was. That I didn't have to accept what life threw at me, I could throw it right back. Was doing pretty well too, until those boys you met shot me in the back while I was gambling. Shoulda known that holding a two pair of black Aces and Eights was bad luck."
*****
Far away in the Heavens, Kanzeon Bousatsu arched an eyebrow. "Sorry Kenren, but a Dead Man's Hand was too good to pass up, and you needed to be there for Tenpou. Improvise, adapt and overcome my dear general, you are so good at that."
*****
Gojyo was through talking. Gonou could feel the subtle tension in the lean muscles underneath his hands as he carefully examined the raw flesh on Gojyo's shoulder. It was still suppurating, but there was no sign of infection. There would be a long, ropy scar arcing over the shoulder, but Gonou hoped that Gojyo would eventually be able to fully use the arm again.
*How can you stand to look at me?* Gonou recalled the words flung at Gojyo. *What do you know of what she had to bear?* How terribly naïve he felt now.
"How did you get over all that? How did you go on?" Gonou felt Gojyo twist and look directly at him. The lone red eye was full of remembered pain.
"Get over it? I didn't Gonou. I didn't." A sudden flash of memory, Gojyo twisting fitfully in his sleep, incoherent mumbles tumbling past his lips. Not just the discomfort of his wounds, but fever-dreams of a life that provided rich soil for nightmares. "How do I go on? Because every day that I continue to live, is a victory against all those who think that I shouldn't exist. And I super hate to lose."
"So, I guess that means you won't be playing cards with me again any time soon."
A slow, sleepy smile emerged from the crimson fall of hair drifting across the half-demon's face. "Not until I figure out how the hell you were reading my deck."
Gonou watched as Gojyo slipped into a light doze, curled on the mossy bank of the stream, then rose to his feet. *Life is a victory? Go on despite the pain? To spite the pain?*
"I don't know if I'm that strong Gojyo. I don't know if I can bear this."
*****
The priest and his retainer were leaving. The entire town knew by now that he was hunting for Cho Gonou, and many came to watch as he ordered the barge captain to his new destination. The captain's small protest of lost profit for diverting from his standard trade was brushed aside as a golden card was negligently flashed. Several new sailors had come aboard to assist with the lesser-known route, and all of them had agreed on the true purpose of this voyage. If the Sanzo priest was looking for Cho Gonou, then they would follow him to exact their own revenge.