Generic Disclaimer: Gensomaden Saiyuki and the characters contained within don't belong to me, much as I wish they did. sigh...

Wow. This took a long time to bring out, and I'm sorry for the wait. I got writer's block at the very beginning of the chapter – I wanted to write it from Hakkai's point of view, but he just didn't want to work with me. I ended up deleting everything in order to write it from Gojyo's point of view, and I'm... not quite sure I'm happy with it. Apologies again for letting myself get side-tracked with Good Enough (which you can read on my aff .net account, if you like... a yummy 39 fic that I freely admit is my first smut. I'm quite happy with it. :3!), but with a little kick in the ass from keistje I should be finishing this story within three or four more chapters. This chapter, and the next, will be for all those 58 lovers – just don't blink or you might miss it. Got a little bit of something for everyone.

R for blood and violence and Gojyo's potty mouth. I'm not sure I described the fight scene accurately enough, but I guess it will do for now. Major spoilers for Hakkai's past. Fear Itself now falls only one hundred and twenty-seven words short of a thirty-thousand word story (according to MS Word). Wow! This is by far the longest story I have ever written, and I've enjoyed every second of it! Hope the ride's just as good for the rest of you!

Review comments and author notes on the bottom.

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italics indicate emphasis, internal dialogue, and dialogue that has occurred in the past/memories.

FEAR ITSELF

"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address – March 4, 1933

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SECTION SEVEN

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There were thirty steps all together. Thirty short steps into oblivion – short steps that, when measured against the number of times his heart had beaten and the number of times he had inhaled and exhaled, seemed to take an eternity.

He was used to death; he had killed countless demons to date, and the blood of many of them stained his hands. There was no graceful way to kill, after all, and sometimes the only thing one could do was get in there and start busting open heads and snapping necks. The one thing that was quickest to wake him from a dead sleep was the sound of vertebra cracking (or at least a suitable facsimile of that sound), and afterwards he would usually lay awake for hours, the nerves in his palms remembering what it felt like to have muscles ripping and bones breaking beneath them.

He hadn't slept well after he'd killed his first man, or his second, or his third. He never had nightmares about killing until he'd killed his first woman – that had brought up some relatively unpleasant memories, all right. But it wasn't as if he hadn't seen his fair share (okay, so it was way more than his fair share) of blood and guts and death. He knew what kind of burden it was to make the decision to kill, rather than to maim.

Truth was he had started out keeping count of all the deaths he had caused, but... eventually the number grew too large to keep track of. Not when ten or twenty demons were going for his throat at the same time, and thinking too deeply only got in the way. Times like that you could only rely on instinct and the memory built into muscle and hope it'd carry you through to the end. Thinking was left for the time after the battle, when you could finally look at the blood on your hands and try to wash it off.

The blood on the walls, the shattered corpses, the stink of death – it was nothing new to him. Nothing new at all. He had faced it down and sneered at it and lit a cigarette to chase the smell out of his nostrils a hundred times before. He knew he'd do the same thing a hundred times more before he got to his destination.

Then why were the palms of his hands so sweaty? He had wiped them off against the fabric of his jeans at least twice in going down those stairs, shifting his weapon from one hand to another, carefully feeling forward so he wouldn't miss a step or try to step through the floor. Why did the sight of those dead demons, and not even a very large number of dead demons, make his gag instinct kick in? The last time he had gagged at the smell of anything was the time Sanzo had attempted to boil eggs and managed to burn them. Good god had that been a bad idea. But why now, when these things had never bothered him before, and why here, when what he saw and smelt wasn't even real?

Maybe it was because these memories were so tainted to begin with; maybe it was because the dreamer looked back on these memories with such disgust and self-hatred, and those emotions were filtering through to the unwilling occupant of those memories. He didn't know. He wasn't a psychologist, and he didn't know anything about how the mind worked behind the scenes. He was just a man standing in front of a wooden door studded with iron, staring at the smears of blood on its surface and reminding himself that none of it was real. He was just a man on a mission, a guy who was only trying to pull his best friend out of the clutches of a killer weed from hell. And he wasn't even talking about the good kind of weed.

Gojyo swallowed and tightened his grip on the shakujou, at least mildly comforted by its presence. Maybe his unease – he refused to label it fear – rose from the fact that the man he knew didn't seem capable of doing the things he had done. Cho Hakkai loved children, and would never raise a hand to hurt one if he could help it. Cho Gonou had loved children as well, and had lovingly murdered them in their sleep as he swept through Hyakuganmaoh's castle like a ghost from their nightmares. Cho Hakkai would willingly allow an enemy to flee if they laid down their arms in a battle. Cho Gonou had apparently being willing to allow an enemy to flee only through death. Hakkai was mercy through life, and Gonou mercy through death. The person Hakkai was now and the person he had been as Gonou, if only for two short months, were such distinct polar opposites that not fearing the man the Sanbutsushin had put to death over three years ago would probably be suicidal.

The fire had burnt out by the time Gojyo had found the ex-school teacher half-dead in a puddle of mud. The only thing he had wanted to do after that point was give his lover a proper funeral and then follow her in death. Whatever insanity that drove Cho Gonou to kill all those people, demon and otherwise, was gone by the time Gojyo had stumbled over his body.

He had lived with Hakkai for three years, nagged him about the way he stacked the glasses in the cabinets, nagged by him in return for the way the red-head used beer cans and random plates for ashtrays and how he couldn't match his socks if his life depended on it. That didn't mean he knew the man – Gojyo knew the way he moved, knew the way he spoke when he was in pain, knew when he was sleeping or staring at the ceiling just by the way he breathed – but that didn't mean that he understood the way Hakkai's mind worked.

Hakkai had walled himself off with cheerful smiles, and for years Gojyo had carefully chipped away at the facsimile, wanting to be let in but respecting Hakkai's need for space. Both Goku and Sanzo had insinuated over the years that only Gojyo really understood the enigmatic human-turned-demon, but the truth was that he didn't. He wanted to, sometimes desperately so, but he didn't. His best friend was, in many ways, a complete stranger.

The half-demon didn't know what he was going to find on the other side of this door. He didn't know if he was going to find his friend or a stranger who wore his friend's face, smiled with his friend's lips. Killed with his friend's hands. Gojyo didn't know what he was going to find or how he was going to deal with it. But going forward was his only option now – going forward and dealing with things as they came. So he did.

The door, heavy as it appeared, opened easily and without sound, the hinges well-balanced and well-oiled. Flickering torchlight from beyond the threshold caught him in a square of illumination, making him squint his eyes at the sudden change in brightness. The blood on the door sparkled in the firelight, but he forced his attention away from it, towards the iron bars that stood across from him on the other side of the room he stood outside of.

There was a demon lying in a congealing mass of his own intestines between Gojyo and the iron cell, his face mercifully turned away. Nothing moved except for the flame topping the torch that was bracketed to a brick wall separating this cell from the one beside it. The cell itself was empty.

The red-head dared a step forward, shifting his shakujou to a more battle-ready position. His footstep was the only sound he heard, save for his breath, save for the fire that lit his way. Nothing else dared to breathe down here, not where the air was thick with the stench of blood and piss and fear. Nothing that was smart, anyways. And he had never been one to hold his own mental capacities in high esteem.

So he took another step, and another, until he stood just on the other side of that threshold, with the blood-smeared door behind him and the blood-smeared cell block before him. There were more demons dead besides the one he was almost standing on, but fewer than he had anticipated. Only three, two of which were hidden in the shadows to his right, the only thing giving them away being the bright red and wet black that clashed sharply against the stone walls and their pale skin. The torches that had been lit on that side of the dungeon had been put out, either on purpose or through the splattering of blood, but the lack of light wasn't enough to keep him from seeing that the few barred chambers in that direction were empty as well. More cells continued on to his left, mostly unoccupied; cold stone walls surrounding them, designed to seal life away from three sides, vertical iron bars letting life in through small measured gaps on the fourth side. Gaps that were too narrow to slip through, and too wide to pretend that what was happening on the other side wasn't real.

Cho Gonou was kneeling in front of one of those cells, his long-fingered, graceful hands wrapped so tightly around the confining bars that Gojyo could see how white his knuckles were under the stain of the dried and flaking and still-wet blood.

His hair was longer – something Gojyo remembered easily from those first weeks spent with a nameless stranger that he gave his bed up for – bedraggled and uncombed and brushing against the collar of his shirt. It wasn't long enough to hide his profile, or the single eye that the half-demon could see, blankly staring forward into the cell, with the glazed intensity of a man that knew what he was seeing but refused to accept it as truth. It wasn't long enough to hide the speckling of blood on one curved cheek that had gone too long without shaving (something Gojyo had never seen once Hakkai recovered from that brutal gut injury; five o'clock shadow on that meticulous man? Never!), or the way one muscle jumped spasmodically beneath the skin of that same cheek. The tousled brown locks were not long enough to hide the one thing that Gojyo wanted to see more often but had only the occasion to see once – the rounded cartilage of an ear unadorned by the three silver limiters that were usually mistaken as a fashion statement.

Gojyo froze and held his breath, unable to tell if Gonou registered his presence or not. The silence stretched out, unbroken, and he realized that he couldn't hear Gonou breathing, either. Everything had stopped; the world stood still, unable to move again until... what, exactly? Until he woke Hakkai from this god-awful dream? Until Kanan reopened her eyes and said, "Everything's going to be okay," in which case the world would never start again?

I can't let this control me, he told himself, although it wasn't the firmest he had ever been. This thing already has Hakkai in its grasp. Standing here in uncertainty like an idiot is as good as letting the damn plant win. I've got to get moving and end this.

But he didn't want to move. He honestly, truthfully, did not want to move. There were no limiters on the ear he could see, and that meant Hakkai – Gonou – had not yet killed his thousandth demon. He was not yet cursed with the legend that no one had proved true in several hundred years. Somewhere in Gojyo's stomach bloomed the idea that, being here, he was allowing himself to be Gonou's thousandth kill, letting himself be the catalyst to that hideous transformation, because how likely was he to defend himself from a man who had just slain a whole castle full of demons? It was a stupid, ridiculous, completely unfathomable idea, because he wasn't here, here was just a dream, and since he was only half-demon wouldn't he only count as half a kill? The legend called for a thousand demons, not nine hundred ninety-nine and a half, or would Heaven not really give a damn and choose to round up on the matter?

Idiot, he could almost hear Sanzo say in the silence of the dungeon, and he knew it was the truth. That was a retarded idea, and he was being retarded by contemplating it. He was allowing his uncertainties to get the better of him, and he realized that was out of character for him. But he couldn't... after seeing his mother in that dream, it felt so real and he... he felt weak. Incapable of making a difference. If he couldn't save himself from himself, how was he going to save Hakkai? He was almost tempted to say this was a matter better suited to Sanzo and his ice-cold temperament.

...no. He couldn't think that. Gojyo refused to think that. Admitting that the stuck-up priest could out-do him was impossible to do, even to himself. Because it wasn't true. He could do this. He had saved Hakkai once, sewed him up and healed him and brought him back from the brink of death, even when the doctor thought it might not be possible. He could do the same again. He just had to stop thinking about his mother. He had to stop thinking about how weak he was.

Hakkai needed him, and that was all that mattered.

Before the indecision could close in and smother his thoughts again, Gojyo took three quick steps forward, towards the man kneeling in front of a dirty and dank cell, refused to look at the stained and torn blue fabric that entered the corner of his vision and hissed, "Hakkai, you need to – "

But that was as far as he got, because the instant his voice broke the silence, the world started to move again. Gonou blurred into motion with the scrape of shoes on concrete, surging towards Gojyo with a speed that would have been surprising even coming from Hakkai. Instinct took over from there, and he countered the blows as quickly as he could see them: blocking the hit to his stomach with the pole of the shakujou to the inside of Gonou's wrist; lurching backward from the stiffened fingers aiming to crush his trachea; catching the sweeping kick with one hand and dropping his weapon in order to snap the knee and –

Gonou let his twisting momentum carry him through the sweep, using Gojyo as a brace so he could bring his other foot up and smash the well-worn shoe into the half-demon's face. Gojyo's own strike was aborted and he was forced to let go in order to keep from being knocked down, reeling from the pain of a nearly-dislocated jaw and the surprise that Hakkai – Gonou – had executed a move he thought only Goku was flexible and fast enough to do successfully. The other man was not so agile as to land on his feet, hitting the ground on his hip with only the faintest grunt of pain; he rolled away and up to his feet and moved in to attack again without any sign of hesitation.

The red-head did his best to keep from being distracted, but the look in those piercing eyes did more than just make him fumble at his blocks; it disturbed him, upset him, to have those eyes look at him and through him as though he was just another impediment to an ultimate destination. They were empty and cold and heartless. He had seen Hakkai's eyes come close to that same look, once or twice, but it was more the arch of the brow and the narrowing of the eyes – never had he seen them so empty before. Alien. And it was those eyes, more than the ferocity behind the strikes and the utter lack of hesitation to go for the killing sweet spots, that made him miss the hook in the gut that ultimately brought him to his knees.

Twice in the same night, he groaned inwardly, feeling sorry for his poor sternum, and reached out to grab Gonou's ankle and twist in order to keep from being kicked in the face as well. The man went down, hitting the ground hard on his left elbow, but this did not stop him from striking out with his opposite foot and scoring another hit on Gojyo's temple. The blow made his head reel in pain and disorientation, and the bitter tang of blood in his mouth indicated he had bitten the inside of his cheek. Even that small hesitation cost him, and in an instant he found himself flat on his back, one foot twisted awkwardly beneath him, unable to breathe from the punch to his chest and the once-mild-mannered school teacher pinning him to the ground.

Gonou was ready to strike with the heel of his right hand, slender fingers curled back into the palm, the blade of his left hand cutting off the red-head's air. In that painfully quick instant before a move was made, Gojyo could see exactly what the other man would do: a single, lightning quick hit to the nose, designed to break the fragile cartilage and drive the fragments into the brain. Not necessary a fatal wound, but a debilitating one – and what, exactly, would happen to him if such a strike was successful? Would he remain trapped in this nightmare until the kudzu vine sucked up the last of Hakkai's chi, or would he actually... die?

He didn't want to find out. He really, really didn't want to find out. Desperately he grabbed the wrist of the hand that cut off his air, dug both his thumbs into the tense tendons, sucked in a shallow breath and hissed, "Hakkai, wake up!"

There was no sign of recognition in the eye that was visible to him, the other obscured by a veil of hair and blood. Nothing changed in that terribly blank expression of finality, and when the hand began to move forward Gojyo thought for certain that he would not be getting out of this situation.

Adrenaline levels spiked upward; he could barely discern one heartbeat from the next in his ears. The half-breed squeezed his eyes shut and all but screamed, "Gonou, stop it!"

Nothing happened.

Gojyo felt the blow of air on his face, but no strike came. There was no pain, and no sound save for the ragged breathing of two men. His heart thundered in his chest, beating so hard he thought his ribcage might split.

And then, hoarsely: "How do you know my name?"

The red-head risked squinting open one eye. Above him loomed Gonou, one knee pressed painfully into his stomach, with that same hand only inches away from his face. Past the bloody knuckles he could see one green eye, narrowed not in fierce determination to kill, but in curiosity and anger and frustration. Emotion had returned to those emerald depths, and the relief that surged through Gojyo's veins – because finally he had gotten through – kept him from answering right away.

The lack of response did not please the other man, and he grabbed the lapels of Gojyo's vest and hauled his shoulders off the ground, which was quite painful considering the knee in the half-breed's stomach. Anger dilated the pupil in the one eye that was not hidden and colored the voice that sounded rusty and not-often used. "How the hell do you know my name?!"

"Because... " Gojyo wheezed, keeping both hands wrapped around one of those wiry wrists, "...because this has already happened!"

Thin lips turned downward in an annoyed frown, and the voice turned to deadly frost. "You speak nonsense. No one else in this castle knows who I am, I certainly do not know you, and this event has most assuredly not occurred before. Now explain yourself: how do you know my name?"

"I know who you are because you told me about this," Gojyo responded desperately. Had this dream taken such deep root in his mind that Hakkai honestly thought he was in the past? Could he truly not remember the man he had lived with for over three years? "The men of the village gave up their women to the Crow Clan in order to save themselves, and you came after Kanan in order to save her, but Hyakuganmaoh raped and impregnated her, and she took your knife to kill herself – "

Fury transformed the blood-smeared face before him, the single green eye sparkling in repressed rage, and in that face Gojyo could see the man that had killed a thousand demons and a few hundred humans without any remorse or hesitation. It was a frightening visage that contrasted so sharply with the Hakkai he knew that a thread of doubt whispered through his mind, asking: Is this really the man you know?

"Shut up!" Gonou hissed, "Don't you dare say her name!"

But this was the man he knew – this was Hakkai, this was the man he had fought with and fought for and bled for and fucking given up his bed and cigarettes for, he just had to reach out and bring him back.

" – she killed herself," the red-head continued, raising his voice to speak over the furious words of the other man, "Kanan is dead, she died over three years ago, and you're not Cho Gonou anymore, you're Cho Hakkai Cho Hakkai! And this isn't real, Hakkai, this is a fucking dream! You're caught up in a nightmare, that's all; you've just got to wake up to get out of this!"

Silence greeted his attempts to break through; the other man continued to stare at him as though he were a bug under microscope, his eye gone blank again, all the emotion sucked dry and gone where once there was at least anger. Even furious, righteous anger was better than this critical emptiness. But at least the grip on his shirt had lessened – he could feel the tendons beneath his thumbs relaxing, and there was less weight on his stomach now as Gonou leaned back. What he wanted, though, was belief. Recognition. How could he make recognition flare back in those green eyes?

Gonou blinked suddenly, breaking eye contact and glancing off to the side, as though unwilling to continue this silent battle of wills. "How - ?"

"Believe me, Hakkai," he pressed, pulling one hand away to push himself up onto his elbow. "I don't know how this thing works. Somehow this plant, that kudzu vine, it gets into our heads and makes us relive our painful memories. This is your painful memory, not a reality. You've got to remember – this happened only a few days before I found you in the road, bleeding to death. And then a month later that conceited priest and his pet monkey came to take you back to Chang'An. And – "

Gonou shook his head, slowly at first, then harder, his visible eye closing and his brows furrowing in a look of pain. "Shut up," he whispered, but there was no force behind the order this time.

"Sanzo took you back to Chang'An on the orders of the Sanbutsushin, remember?" Gojyo continued, unwilling to stop now. "They 'killed' Cho Gonou and let you live on as Cho Hakkai. Hakkai – that is your name. How many times do I have to say it to make you remember?"

How many times do you think he'll say my name before he remembers it?

"Eight times," Gonou whispered.

He pulled his hands away from Gojyo's vest, and the half-demon released his death grip on the slender wrist. With what sounded like a jarring thud, Gonou rolled off the man he was pinning down, scooting backwards until his shoulders hit the blood-stained bars of the cell. Gojyo pushed himself upwards, back into a seated position, and watched as the green-eyed man lifted his hands palm-up and stared at them. They were shaking, almost uncontrollably.

"Gojyo," he said thickly. "What... how..."

Relief spun through the red-head's veins, and he felt almost weak for it. He had finally gotten through. He had gotten through Gonou and pulled Hakkai back out. Now they just had to –

"My, my," a low voice drawled out, disturbing the silence. "Isn't this just precious."

Both he and Hakkai startled at the unexpected sound, twisting around to find out who had entered this bloody dream.

Chin Isou smiled at them from the doorway of the prison.

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A/N: Just as a note: Hakkai, in Japanese, actually means "eight times". When Hakkai reunites with Gojyo in the series, and they take the apples and go see Goku and Sanzo, Goku starts repeating Hakkai's name in order to remember it. In the Japanese version, Hakkai asks Sanzo, "How many times do you think he'll say my name before he remembers it?" and Sanzo replies dryly, "Eight times." In this chapter, Gojyo says Hakkai's name exactly eight times out loud before Hakkai remembers him.

keistje: How is it you always manage to be the first to review after I put up a new chapter? :p! I enjoyed that conversation with you, and I've thought up at least three sequels to Good Enough since then. XD! You're so evil! The plot bunnies are raping my brain! How can you expect me to actually get enough sleep to write all these things down? -flails in futility!- Oh well. I'll manage somehow. Now all I have to do is bug you enough to get you to finish the first chapter of this jealous!Sanzo story you're working on. :3

Eat A Peach: A healthy dose of Chin Isou just for you. What? Fourty-five words of Chin Isou isn't enough? Well, I suppose I'll just have to write more of him into the next chapter.... -grins evilly- And trust me, I'm thankful for every review I receive that isn't "Yor rihtin is so gud, writ more plzkthx". Oh, and I promise Goku-torture and Sanzo-angst in their respective chapters. You'll definitely get a healthy (or more than healthy) dose of that. :3

Haruka Hana: I love you! That name you came up with, kyuuseishin, is just perfect! I'm definitely going to use it. You soooo made my night when I got that review! Our boys definitely do have tangled relationships – Gojyo cares a good deal more for Sanzo than he lets on, even to himself; it was odd, in episode 44, how he was screaming for Sanzo instead of Goku when Homura attacked... whoops, little bit of a spoiler there. :P Guess little things like that fuel the fire of 53 fanatics, eh? I can guarantee that Hakkai will not die in his dream, but I cannot guarantee that neither of them will remain unhurt... hehheh.

Blades of Ice: Sorry that I laid another cliffhanger on you, and that nothing has really happened in Hakkai's dream yet. :( I promise to make up for my transgressions in the next chapter. I was planning on writing this through to the end, but I had gone so long without updating that I decided to just split the dream into two chapters. Hope that doesn't disappoint you too much.

Merf: I'm glad you like this so much! The kudzu plant really does exist; it was originally brought to America by the Japanese way back in the day, to celebrate America's 100th anniversary. It was brought over first in a garden, then was used to help stop erosion in the south. But because the kudzu's natural enemies were not brought with it, it completely took over the landscape, growing as much as a foot a day during summer months. This earned it the nickname "mile-a-minute vine", "foot-a-night vine", and "the vine that ate the South". James Dickey even wrote a poem about it: "In Georgia, the legend says/ That you must close your windows/ At night to keep it out of the house./ The glass is tinged with green, even so..." However, it isn't carnivorous. We'd sure need help if it was!

Me-Nuriko: Thanks for leaving the comments! Homura's intentions are, of course, solely based on making Goku stronger. This is supposed to take place before episode 44, after all. I'm glad that I got Sanzo and Gojyo's interactions just right, and that I managed to make another fan squeal. Hope you enjoy this chapter as well!