Disclaimer: The Sanzo-ikkou are not mine; but my buddy Kazuya Minekura was feeling extra-nice and let me borrow them for 700 words.
Warning: The mildest dash of shounen-ai is present in this fic. If you sneezed you'd probably miss it.
A/N: I felt bad for dropping off the face of the earth for two and a half weeks, but hadn't gotten sufficiently inspired to write another chapter of Damsel, so this is the result. A bit on the naturalistic side, except that there are no maggots (and I know precisely what I mean, let me assure you).
-Selfishness-
Before you die, you go to a room, just for you. It is a grey room with blank walls, a bare floor, and no windows. There you have something resembling twenty minutes to contemplate whatever thoughts those twenty minutes may provide. Whether or not this room actually exists, and whether or not the amount of time you have is really twenty minutes is a matter of perspective and could very well be a lie. But the grey walls are certainly no less solid than any other wall that has surrounded you, that you have surrounded yourself with. So if one is not real, then neither is any of it, and twenty minutes does not afford enough time to fully process the concept of one's entire life being a slippery work of fiction.
-o-
The error is minor, fatal, and probably not-so-accidental, as it is on the part of a certain Dr. Nii Jenyi. There is a wave of heat before the explosion, allowing the eyes of Goku, Hakkai, Gojyo and Sanzo to fill with surprise, certainty, annoyance, and apathy, respectively. Then the stampede of raging fire rips through their bodies like a primordial animal let loose, and the world is over.
They all go together. That is something, at least.
-o-
Gojyo leans casually into the comfortless crook of the grey corner and raises his fingers to his lips. No cigarette is lit between them, but the motion is habitual and Gojyo figures that he can pretend to do whatever the hell he wants right now. It's not as if anyone can see him trying to smoke something that isn't there.
He wishes he could do something really obscene in these last twenty minutes (for he is instinctively aware of the time he has), like jack off in front of the gods or something. But there is nothing here to feed an arousal that would provide the opportunity, and Gojyo feels rather cut off from the world, as if he is deep underground, so he guesses that all that crap about seeing the gods when you die is a bunch of bullshit.
So, rather than go out offensively, Gojyo sits slumped in the corner, pitifully bringing his non-existent cigarette to his mouth again and again.
-o-
With a sigh, Hakkai surveys his barren confines. In a bitter, gruesomely self-deprecating way which has always lurked inside him, he rather likes it. It is clean and not-quite-cold. Sterilely heartless. Probably the absolute worst way for a person like him to spend the last twenty minutes of his...existence? Consciousness, at any rate.
He smiles grimly at the time constraint. It is perfect. Long enough to rehash every terrible thing you have ever thought, to wonder about all the questions you have never known the answers to, and short enough to leave with nothing resolved.
Emptiness. The perfect motivation for self-imposed torture. Such punishment is only fitting for a murderer, furthermore, a murderer who actually believed that he could start a new life. Hakkai chuckles, a dark sound that would go well with a glinting monocle to complete the sinister image. But there is no discernable source of light to reflect against the glass, and through it his right eye remains perfectly visible for no one to see.
-o-
Goku's stomach growls a bit like a puppy having a bad dream. Goku looks up at the blank ceiling and thinks of that puppy that he brought to the temple that one time. It was really cute and warm, but Goku is having trouble remembering exactly what 'warm' is, so he lets it go and thinks back to food.
It'd be nice to eat right now. He really likes food. It's hot and tasty and filling, and even though those adjectives are starting to fail him and leave him sort of shaking his head uncertainly, he can distinctly remember the best part abut food. Food is the best distraction ever. Dark caves and too-familiar chains and having no one but himself, who can't do very much because he's stuck in a cave for something he can't remember doing but probably would hate himself for, all of those things are too hard to concentrate on when wriggling noodles and fleshy meat dumplings are smothering his senses. Food is the best way to forget, and that is probably why he likes it so much.
But there is no food here, and Goku begins to scratch at his wrists, growing increasingly desperate. That familiar weight is suffocating them; Goku can feel it scraping all the way to his bones, and while fighting off tears that smell like the dreaded metal, he drags his nails feverishly over his redenning skin, fettered by nothing but his mind.
-o-
Of all of them, Sanzo should be the calm one. When he had turned to face the stinking heat of the explosion, there had been no fear, no happiness, nothing in his eyes. Bound by nothing...
Now his mantras of asceticism have deserted him, and a scurrying insanity is tearing about in his head, gnashing and rolling his brain around between its unclean molars. Sweat is pooling like tears in the creases beneath his eyes, and he is lying on the floor twitching like a dying insect, ragged gurgling and the erratic hiss of his breathing being swallowed up by the stagnant air of the impartial room.
Sanzo is drowning, drowning in the blood that won't stop flowing from his master's head, drowning in the river, that damned river that he had tried to erase, the one that had wrecked his body for weeks and earned him that awful nickname and god, he does not want to be Koryu at the very end, that small, sorry little river orphan that someone had thought too worthless to bother keeping and thrown into the dark water.
He is Sanzo.
Genjyo Sanzo, he is Genjyo Sanzo. He is not Koryu. Sanzo Sanzo Sanzo Genyo Sanzo he is he is Koryu he is not Koryu not Sanzo, he is Sanzo, goddammit, he is not Koryu!
Sanzo.
Sanzo.
Sanzo!
His head thuds repeatedly against the hard floor as he shakes it back and forth, trying to fling Koryu from its contents.
-o-
When the last second drops, none of them think of eachother.
Gojyo does not look back at having someone finally cook for him and best him in cards, and Hakkai does not remember crimson hair that kept him grounded and later taught him how to live again. Goku does not think about the day the sun was no longer painful for him to see, and Sanzo does not dwell upon an irritation in the back of his head that he could always fall back on.
None of them wonder what the other is thinking of. None of them remember that they had once saved each other. When the grey washes over everything, their solitary despair unites them.
They all go alone. And that is something, at least.
-fin-
A/N: That got progressively darker as I went. I started out going for introspection and got twitching. Oh well, that's the downside of writing on a whim, I suppose. So, pleasant day, all.