Well, even if you haven't been reading Here Lies Gonou which's ahead of me by several chapters, you had to know things couldn't stay quite that peaceful for long. (in other words - "Now back to our regularly scheduled tests of Sanzo's sanity!")

Slightly belated note to Althea - I know I haven't said it, but like its "partner", this fic's not going to be a pairing; too many mental twitches on both sides, and especially the way I've handled Sanzo's little sixth sense, weelll…there's an object demonstration in this chapter how that really doesn't help with Sanzo's whole "don't touch me" act. That and good ol' stubborn Sanzo's struggling to keep being set in his ways enough that it'll be a while after this incident's little tacnuke strike on his denial over caring before he'll probably even be able to admit it out loud without a nervous breakdown of some kind or level involved. He's kind-of a spazz that way.

Technically I shouldn't be posting right now (portfolio due tomorrow), but I've been poking at this for sanity breaks (funny that, how the fics with the least sanity are the ones I work on to save MY sanity), and today it decided to bug me until I finished this chapter.

Hell freezes over, too - Isil and I have another "identical in timeline/events" chapter break as of the end of this chapter.


My ward finds me for dinner, reading in an alcove of the back garden; it passes quietly besides Goku making an appearance. The groundskeeper finds me the next morning after breakfast, half pleading and half ranting for me to do something about Goku's off and on hobby of causing chaos; I tell the old man I'll talk to him, but he doesn't seem to notice that I don't specify about what. My ward seems to've fallen into a pattern as quiet and social as my own, and the librarian comments a couple times on him being a common presence. One of us always seems to track the other down for meals, and he eats better than do, granted that's not hard. I take the librarian's advice and find out of the way places in gardens or attics to read. A couple times we end up finding the same hiding spot, passing time both reading without much fuss. Goku breezes through occasionally, keeping me updated on what's going on around the temple, some of Chang'An, and a hundred other meaningless details. I end up dodging a couple messengers and the head of the temple himself, once.

It's after two days have passed that one of Goku's rambles in the north wing attic one night actually draws my attention away from what I'm reading - he rattles on as usual, but keeps skipping bits or stopping, then goes quiet before dropping one question and waiting for an answer.

"Hey...has he gotten hurt?"

The question sinks in; there's only really one person he's started habitually referring to just with pronouns. "Not that I know of, why?"

"I dunno. He still smells like blood, an' I still dunno if that's normal for him or not, but lately he also smells a little sickish. I asked doc if maybe something didn't heal right, but he said everything healed up clean, so he's either getting sick or he's gotten hurt and isn't taking care of it. You sure nothing's happened?"

"If something has, he hasn't told me." I lay the paper-scrap marking my place, and slowly close the book.

"Well...he might just be coming down with a cold..." He stirs the dust on the ground with one finger, and doesn't seem to really believe that.

"I'll have to ask him about it."

"Well...I think I'm going to bed...g'night...you'll let me know what's going on, right?"

"Yeah."

He leaves through the round window, letting it latch itself behind him; I stare at the dustmotes in the darkness after he leaves, then douse the candle and walk downstairs to put the book away in my room.

I stare out the window, then leave the room. He's probably asleep by now, so I'll probably not get much done, but I'm going to at least check on him.

The area of the acolyte's cells is dead quiet, all the lights out; I open his door cautiously, so as not to wake him.

The blanket on the cot isn't even disturbed, and he's not there.

Something chokes in my throat before I catch it, remembering the shaking panic he'd avoided explaining when we'd brought him inside. Whatever had driven him outside before probably just happened again, and he's probably right in that same forgotten little alcove; I just need to remind him to come inside, before the night gets too cold. Hell, if it's just him coming down with the flu, this's probably why. I shut the door and head out for the back garden.

The halls are empty, the back gardens silent except for a few insects. It stays a calm, cool night, quiet until I get near the little forgotten thorn garden.

I almost stumble at a muffled, cut off sound of pain, accompanied by a dry snapping rattle I can't identify at first.

My first reflex is the paranoid one - tense to move, almost take off running, but there's no other aura there whatsoever besides his, no sense of outside hostility. I freeze momentarily, the scrape of my sandal seeming too loud to my ears, but there's no glimmer of notice. There's another cracking rattle and gasp; his aura around the corner is a dark, thick, jagged, knotted roil, devouring itself from the inside out, a bloody inward coil of pain and loathing.

Every time Goku's made a reference to him smelling like blood comes forward in my mind, every little offhand time he'd said it that I hadn't paid attention to. It's self-inflicted. When did this start? When was the first time Goku mentioned that he still smelled like blood? It had to've been not long after he was healed, there wasn't enough time for Goku to realize that the blood-scent wasn't just normal for him.

Another lash; I stop myself just short of dashing in there, snatching whatever he's flaying himself with away, I can't risk this turning into a struggle where one or both of us might get hurt. I lean back against the vine-covered wall, for stability, feeling less steady every second I'm not doing something; the thorns and bits of dead leaves catch in my robes and hair, tugging on the sutra. I have to say something - what? 'What the Hell do you think you're doing!', 'Idiot - stop hurting yourself!'? I can't say anything that'd give any more momentum to the self-destructive spiral; I've fed it far too much already, but every thought of acting is to catch and stop, force and confrontation. If I do something right this moment, I'm going to make things worse.

I swallow the lump in my throat and start putting one foot in front of the other to walk away, clenching my hands into fists in my sleeves. The longer I stay in that spot, the more likely I am to act without thinking and do more harm than good. I can't let this go on, but losing control won't help anyone. I need to go back inside, go back to my room, and calm down until I can think of a way to confront him about this without it turning into a fight or me snapping and saying things I shouldn't.

The silence of the temple only makes the echoes of what I'm walking away from louder in my mind. I'm still trying to banish it enough to calm down by the time I reach my room. I lock the door behind myself, then notice that I've visibly deepened the crescent indents in the palms of my gloves from my fingernails. I pace first to the dresser, digging through the drawers to confirm that no cigarettes have magically returned there, then to the desk; there's one of the ceramic bottles on the desk - I'd forgotten to put it away, and my room's been cleaned between when I had it out and now.

They must've gotten him cleaning my room; Goku'd never do it, and he's the only one that wouldn't throw out the alcohol.

I pick it up and get the stopper halfway off before I stop myself; this was brought in so I'd be able to eat, I'm not sure when I'll be able to get more, and if I open it now, I'm liable to empty it. I restopper it, hiss through my teeth at myself, and lock it in the drawer with the other two he'd gone to the trouble of talking past the gate guards and risking his life, wittingly or unwittingly, to get. In the end, it makes the internal tic over what's going on worse; he's putting himself out to look after me and I'm here fretting myself into a knot of nerves because I don't have the first clue how to stop him from destroying himself.

If there's one thing worse than watching someone I've admitted to caring about fall apart or losing them, it's having it happen when they've been putting their time into taking care of me.

Bloody fucking Hell. I start pacing a tight, sharp line across the room. My bloody fucking name is a title for something that's supposed to be there to support others, and once again not only am I barely able to take care of myself, but I'm too much of a twitch case to keep a level head and take care of someone I'm supposed to be responsible for. This is why I quit trying to live up to the name in the first place; every time I do, everything falls apart, and the people I care about or have taken responsibility for are the ones that get hurt. Why the Hell do I keep letting myself get roped into taking responsibility for people when I know I'm going to fuck up and it's all going to go to Hell anyway? I'm not sure I'd trust myself with a goldfish if I were really thinking straight, why do I keep trying to trust myself with causes like this one that I knew were falling apart when I first saw them, instead of trying to find someone that might actually be able to do something with them? Fucking stupid stubborn pride thinking I can handle things, shitty luck that I'm not sure there's anyone else I could trust even if I did admit what a screwup I was long enough to delegate.

That's when I realize I've been less wringing my hands and more fingering the long, continuous scar that goes across the palm side of all four fingers on my left hand, just below the fingertips, and come to a stop in my pacing.

That's a bad old pattern to fall back into. That scar and the other two that go with it, hidden under my gloves, are reminders of just where that train of thought ends up eventually, and that'd definitely not help him.

I sit on the side of my bed, and start forcing myself to breathe slowly and evenly. Both hands on the blanket, bury any temptation to fidget; block out anything else I might be picking up on, and try to find some quiet place inside to match the quiet that looms over the temple. Refuse any thought that might lead to my temper being involved in a confrontation, refuse any thought that'd fall back into my own traps; there's insects outside, a cold wind coming in, that're much better to focus on than tripping over what's going on; I put all my energy into listening to them, until I can take a couple breaths without tripping over a snatch of an image or a stray thought. Avoid distracting details, ignore all the bits and pieces that're drawing toward losing control over this or myself, just find what the core problem is.

My ward is hurting himself.

The core problem drags with it all the other images, senses, bits of what's going on, so that I have to go right back to step one and start over three or four times.

My ward his hurting himself; I have to do something about it, and that does not include panicking over what to do.

Shit.

Back to the beginning.

Somewhere before I've realized it, things blur out enough that in between fighting off the inner doubts for quiet, and focusing on what I need to deal with, the "what do I need to deal with" never quite forms. It all sort of dissolves into a fitful clump of shadows and rattling, nagging, uncertain things coalescing in the shadows of the corners of the room and taking on enough life to creep about on the edge of my awareness while electric-white prickles blur through in an almost painful crackle of light, as if the sutra were itself a living thing answering the shadows.

Then there's a knock on the door.

I start awake, the morning sun coming in the shutters. There's a pause, then another uncertain knock. "Sanzo?"

Of course, the routine we've fallen into; I slept through the breakfast bell, so he's bringing food to my room.

I shrug off the sutra and drape my outer robe over the bed next to it, mostly just to make it less obvious that I fell asleep sitting up and fully dressed, then open the door.

If I hadn't heard it last night, I wouldn't have any guess what he was doing; there's absolutely no visible sign of the self-abuse besides a small, almost imperceptible unnerved flinch when I pause to study him. "I brought you breakfast.", he offers, and holds the plate out.

The whole calm, polite, outwardly content attitude is one huge lie of omission.

I take the plate and he bows; no idea is offering itself to confront him without making a scene that'll attract the attention of half the temple, and he's not volunteering anything. He backs off and leaves, with me still standing in the doorway.

I unlock the drawer and take the bottle out for breakfast, drinking a little more than I'd intended. I'm almost tempted to chalk up the memory of the night before to some warped nightmare; it does seem like the sutra amplifies whatever dreams I have when I fall asleep wearing it, so that dozing off with it when I'm agitated is an ordeal, except that the memory is the reason why I was agitated.

I take the plate back, flattening into a doorway just outside the kitchen while the head of the temple passes by the hallway nearby; I can hear him asking Goku where I am, and Goku claiming ignorance, that he hasn't seen me since last night and I'm probably still in bed. That rules out going back to my room for a while, although I can tell from here that Goku was shading the truth pretty heavily; he knows I'm here, probably by smell. Once the high abbot stalks off muttering, I slip in and hand the plate over; Goku's waiting. He follows me silently until we're a bit out of the way of anyone else.

"So…is he sick?" He's walking beside me, looking up sharply, prodding; he doesn't really believe that it's just a cold.

"No."

"Then what is it? Is he hurting himself again, or did something happen to him?" Goku's not on one of his usual cheerful rambles, he's worried, almost angry.

"I'll deal with it."

"What the Hell! You said -" He looks both ways, then lowers his voice, ranting through his teeth, "You said you'd tell me when you knew what was going on!"

"And I will - later." I keep walking, looking straight ahead.

He grabs my wrist and stops, digging in his heels, so I can't go any further. "Damnit Sanzo, if he's hurt and he's not taking care of it, he could - this could get a lot worse! Why aren't you doing something? Why don't you want me to know what's going on?"

I take a breath, and remind myself that even if this turns into a scene, it'd be very bad to draw the attention of the rest of the temple. Then I twist my hand around to catch his wrist and pull, catching him slightly off guard so he almost stumbles; he's stronger, but I'm abusing height advantage to make it hard for him to get his footing back, holding him up. I keep my voice to a low growl, where anyone trying to listen in would have to come where I could see them to hear. "Listen, Monkey, if you go barging through this like a bull in a room of glass, you're going to make things worse - I told you I would tell you, and I will tell you, but for now I need you to just trust me and keep out of this."

We have a staredown, then he lets go of my wrist and pulls his hand back, glowering. "Why don't you trust me?"

"Right now, I have my reasons. Why don't you trust me?"

He glares back at me, then hunches his shoulders and drops his eyes.

"I'll tell you later. Let me handle this, and stay out of it."

Goku storms off toward the outside, muttering.

The rest of the day goes by in the routine we've fallen into; I spend the first part of the day out by a small fountain-garden in a back corner of the outer walls, half just sitting by it and half cleaning dead leaves out of the fountain shelves so it flows again when I get the temptation to fret again. I run into him on my way back in when the lunch bell rings; the meal passes in silence, then I take the risk of snatching one of the books from my room before retreating to another often-forgotten cranny to bury my head in foreign mythology. The language difference ensures that I have to concentrate to read, enough that I don't spend the day twitching inside.

He finds me for dinner, and that goes by in my room so I can get a drink; I mull over how to call him on what he's been doing, but before any workable ideas come together, we've finished, and he takes the plates and leaves.

I find another nook-garden near the thorned one, and settle in to wait until after most of the temple's asleep; if he's made a routine of this, I should have an opportunity.

I wait until around when I'd come out last night, and head for the thorn garden, running over what needs to be done and trying not to fall into everything that goes with it.

The first dry rattle of whatever he's lashing himself with reduces that to shambles.

The more I try not to pay attention to the inward rending of his aura, the smell of blood over the night blooming plants, or the tangled mess of my own doubts, the more all of it drowns out whatever thread of an idea I had left. I spend maybe twenty minutes pressing back into the wall, listening, with the thorns catching again while I try to find my balance and my voice again. Finally a conscious flicker squeaks through that this isn't going anywhere, and I pace back to my room again.

I fight the urge to pace again, lifting the pillow to set the gun and the sutra side by side under it. I drape my robe over the chair and settle into bed. If I'm going to brood myself to sleep, I may as well be prepared this time.

I run back through the same exercises as the night before; I manage to corner the problem somewhat easier. Catching him in the act isn't getting anywhere; I'm going to need to corner him another time, when the immediacy of it won't shred my train of thought.

I fall asleep trying to plot out and prepare for the trap.

He wakes me up with breakfast; this time the brief flicker of an unnerved flinch is just slightly more noticeable. He drops off the food and leaves.

As I eat and sneak the dishes down, I start on the how of this. It's going to have to be literally cornering him; I don't want him even having the option to leave and avoid the issue. That means indoors, somewhere. For both that and ensuring that nobody walks in, I need to be able to latch my door. I'm going to need to make sure I have however long it might take, also.

My room - I can lock the door without raising suspicions. He's there normally for meals, but taking the dishes back would be too convenient an excuse; it'll have to be between meals, when we usually scatter.

Before lunch, I actually go out looking for Goku; it doesn't take long, he's sitting in the water-tree at the koi pond below my window. When I walk up, he perks and hops out of it, the one branch springing back with a snap that'd make the groundskeeper cringe.

"So what's going on?"

"I'll explain tomorrow morning. I need you to keep away from my room for the rest of the day, and if you hear anyone thinking about disturbing me, distract them." He grimaces at the delay, then brightens at the directions and their implications.

"No problem! Any specific distractions?"

"I don't care, as long as they're not getting in my way."

The grin gets a bit more wicked; when I turn to go back inside, he runs off cackling.

When the lunch bell rings, I make sure I'm in my room waiting. True to form, my ward comes up with lunch, and stays to eat. While I'm thinking over how to set the bait, he keeps pausing and glancing over, his premeditated calm fraying at the edges; not enough to be much, just enough to be recognizable when watched and compared to his normal patterns of late.

He picks up the dishes to leave; it's now or never. "Hey."

He starts, one hand on the door, then recovers his composure fast, looking over one shoulder. "Yes?"

"You go to the library and read after dinner, don't you?" The question is purely rhetorical; he's getting predictable. He nods slowly. "Why don't you just bring your book back here before dinner and take your time?" Think friendly, think pleasant, think good-natured, stop running up the 'trap' flags. "You need to relax more." It came out about as friendly as a coiled rattlesnake rolled in sugar, but he doesn't catch it or doesn't care; some of the nerves bleed away in real relief.

"I will." He bows on his way out.

I spend the time between the end of lunch and the dinner bell either sitting at the table waiting, or pacing the length of the room, watching the door. There's nothing else to do but lie in wait, and I don't think I could concentrate on something else right now if I tried without lapsing back into fretting.

Not long after the dinner bell rings, he knocks on the door.

I almost move to open it, then stop, and just wait by the wall beside the hinge. There's a minute pause, then he tests the door handle, slips in unaware of me, and sets his book on the table. Before he turns around I reach out with one hand to push the door shut and lock it.

He starts and turns fast, realizing that I'm there. "Sanzo?" The calm smile he's been practicing is stuck half-formed, and there's a nervous jump in his voice.

"Show me your back." I keep my voice carefully flat.

"Ah…I can see you're not feeling well. I'll just let you be this evening." He's talking a bit faster than usual as he heads for the door; I sidestep in front of it. He stops in mid-step and mid-reach for the handle, ticking toward panic and intent on being elsewhere.

"Show me your back."

A moment of the fake smile disappearing further, scrabbling for a way out. "San-"

His aura freezes to match the rest of him at the revolver's cold click as I level it. "Show me your back. You're not getting out of this." The coils fall into a minor state of chaos, but he's no longer intent on escape. He turns slowly, fumbling with the ties of the robe; the scrambling twisting in his aura intensifies, and he starts shaking like he had a few days ago when I'd told him not to sleep outside. After a few minutes of fighting with the ties and shifting, the top part of the robe falls open.

His back is a criss-cross of thin red lines, newer ones barely scabbing over crossing older ones that are starting to form layers of skin; many of the older lines are swollen, sick white filling in the red with the infection draining in places where the newer lash-marks have cut across them. There almost isn't any untouched skin, just shreds where new shreds are made whenever something begins to heal. There's places where the red lines thicken, where one set of lines crossing another tore an entire patch of skin off.

"Why are you doing this?"

The trembling gets worse, as he has to draw in a few breaths to choke the scrabbling coils into submission. "Because…I deserve it." The chaos pulls in again, and he takes another breath, forcing it down on an act of will, the control in his voice failing. "I'm atoning for my sins." The calculated lie-of-omission attitude's in pieces.

"You're already atoning…you don't need to do this." The words have dropped from flat to hollow.

"Yes, I do. I deserve to suffer." I think if he had more strength to put into the words, he'd have snapped them, as he wraps his arms around himself, shaking. The roiling spiral's spiking in storms, still all directed inward, refusing to interrupt the self-destructive pattern; even if I can stop him from continuing in this, there's nothing I can do to change that.

"Not like this…this isn't necessary."

"Then what is!" He drops to his knees, curling over to cover the scar over his stomach, and the spiral sneaks a few flickers toward lashing back at me for interrupting the worthlessness and meaninglessness. "Tell me what I should do, if you have all the answers!" He's trying to hold still, shaking in the breeze from the window.

If I have all the answers. As if I even had a clue what I was doing with my own life, much less someone else's. The roil's holding in an expectant pause, barbs waiting my direction attentively like the heralds of how thoroughly this is trying to turn into another loss. "At least try to live."

He doesn't move, but the coils collapse into chaos, then recoil away from even that flicker of targeting me, back inward. "Why?" It's taking a conscious struggle for him to form words and keep what little composure he has left. "What reason do I have to live, what did you save me for?"

It had to come down to the one I've been trying to figure out myself. "I didn't -" I didn't know for sure - I cut that off as my voice drops down, mumbling through to find something I can tell him. "I couldn't leave you like that…" I drop my eyes to the floor; I know bloody well why I couldn't leave him, and it's something I haven't mentioned to anyone almost since I made it to Koumyou, not even Goku. "I made a promise…not to walk away…"

He's still shaking, breathing hard, but the roiling spiral seems to calm slightly - not on its own, there's an act of intent pulling it into order.

Then there's a knock on the door, and it's not Goku.

My gun is still in my hand as I turn to open the door, and I'm seriously tempted to use it; it's got to be one of the High Abbot's messengers trying to chase me down for his little attempt at being a petty tyrant. As the latch clicks and I can hear my ward hastily pulling the robe back up, an idea occurs to me that's the only thing saving the monk at the door.

I only open the door enough to look out, blocking it from opening any further, and start making demands before they can even open their mouths. "I need healer's salve - the stuff for some of the worse scrapes and cuts - the whole jar, and I need it now." I snap the last word with the finality of An Order.

"But-" I add the click of the gun cocking yet again and a snap of "Do it!" to the command. The monk squeaks and darts off to get what I'd asked for. I shut the door, pull a chair over, and sit right in front of it to wait. My ward is still dragging the twitching spiral into submission in the few intervening minutes until the monk returns, tapping on the door meekly. I open it just enough to snatch the salve jar and bandages from him, then shut it in his face and lock it again; I catch a moment outside the door where he's thinking about knocking again, then a flicker of a too-bright aura off down the hall, a I barely hear a "Hey, you!" in the monkey's "Official Sanzo Business" voice that makes me very thankful for Goku.

I set the jar of salve down next to him, and kneel behind him. He's shaking less, and his breathing's returned to something normal, until I pull the robe draped over his back off to take care of the injuries; he jumps and moves to get up as the spiral spikes into a full panic. I catch his shoulder with my right hand, pulling him back and holding him still, the coils already prickling into me. "Don't move.", I growl at him, and he freezes still.

The salve is a mix of painkillers, herbs to encourage wounds to heal, and a few other things for killing infections; it's strong stuff. I keep holding him still in case the panic rises again, carefully spreading it over the injuries; most of the infected areas are draining through the newer cuts, while the parts under intact skin haven't healed enough to keep it from draining out with a little pressure. Even trying to block out his aura as much as I can, the skin-to-skin contact makes it impossible; the edged tendrils creep up my arms almost physically painfully, individual threads howling clearly where I'd usually only pick them out as general blurs. There's the overwhelming panic of being cornered and exposed in this; another is threads of bloody guilt with patchy images of blood on castle-stone, blood-scent, rain droning outside, close with ignorance-guilt of not being there to protect Kanan. A newer guilt-thread recoils from me, as if somehow his existence is detrimental to me and that's reason for guilt, that one's edged with the word "failure" and tangles in with the edged-inward hollow coils, worthlessness, meaninglessness, self-loathing, a complete lack of reason to be living that drags along reasons he shouldn't be alive, stitched to a thread that clings to me as the only reason he's still in this world, giving me a kind of absolute slavish authority that more than all the rest, forces me to fight the temptation to pull my hands away and out of the spiral just to refuse it. There's disappointment that grows the longer I'm working, as if the painkillers are taking away the only other reason he had to exist, that feeds the whole tangled complex and gives it strength.

"Why are you doing this?" His voice in plaintive, lost; there's nothing of his groomed false composure left.

I force my voice to keep level, disconnected from the mess I'm Hearing. "I didn't save your life only to have you end it."

"But…" He stumbles over the word at first. "they're not life-threatening-" My hand on his shoulder manages to be the whole of my visible reaction, cutting him off in mid-sentence by latching into a claw; not life threatening until one of the infections turns to blood poisoning, or some other illness creeps in through the shredded remains of his back.

"Never. Do anything like this. Ever. Again." I fight as much of the snarl out of my voice as I can, trying to strangle the bit of anger that's crept in; I don't want to do anything else to make him think I have any hostility, not after what my words at the trial did.

"Why-" Whatever he was about to say dissolves; the word choked out as almost a sob before he forces the breaking edge of the panic/guilt/worthlessness away from falling apart entirely. I finish with the salve, and pull my hands away slowly, feeling the coils of the barbed spiral tug and pull as they let go of me; there's a bruise forming under where my thumb had been on his shoulder. I put the lid on the salve and set it on the table mechanically, then walk over to kneel in front of him. He's still curled over holding his arms over his scar, eyes closed, struggling with the twisting spiral; on his shoulder, where my hand had been, there's four angry bruises where my fingers had dug in. After all that preparing and struggling to make sure I didn't do any harm with this, I had to go and find some way to screw that up and hurt him anyway. I carefully brush a finger over the marks, trying not to get the spiral tangled around my hands again; there's indents in each of the bruises, where if my grip had been only slightly tighter, my nails would've drawn blood. He opens his eyes, and blank surprise the only thing allowed out. I have to kill my own echo of panic at meeting his eyes, stuck with where I'd managed to mess up again.

"I'm sorry.", I mumble, and look away, at the table leg beside him.

The spiral contorts suddenly, recoiling in confusion with all the various threads tangling up and breaking whatever control he had over them. He buries his face in his hands, breaking down to tears as it defies any attempt at fighting them off. "Why…why do you care so much…if I live or die?" He chokes the question out weakly.

I want to blame my inner flinch on the time spent with the spiral getting its barbs into me, to call it just a case of echoing back what bled into me, but the feeling of my own little bleeding shreds as they're drug out, confronted, and rejected is too old and familiar; I don't have an answer worth giving him. "I can't…" can't answer, can't just watch things fall to pieces like this, can't tell him that even in the forced whisper that's threatening to get away from me. "…won't lose anyone else…" More than threatening. "…not anymore." Not another grave, no more lists of names to hold accountability for, not another broken promise or case where I proved how much I can't live up to this name.

"You…need me to live…" It's less erratically forced this time, pulled out by some glimmer of a realization.

"If you die now…then I will have failed at everything important I have tried to accomplish in my life." Everything I've committed to that seriously needed it has fallen apart, gone nowhere, and often ended with whoever I tried to help dead or worse; Goku's not even much of an argument against it, since he takes care of himself already, he proved the week after I let him out of the mountain that he doesn't actually need me, he just hangs around.

The spiral shatters out into something flat and still; not a healthy calm, but something broken. His hands fall back down to his lap; he's not moving even to look up. "My entire life has been a failure. If you save a failure, is it still a success?" His voice is as dull and flat as the ruins where the spiral just was. As much as I know it's a bad sign, it drains out enough of the tension for me to start pulling my voice back to something approaching normal, and at least there's some vague option in the words that there might be an option besides "complete disaster".

"Feh. I've already gone this far…made myself responsible for what happens to you." There's a spike of one of the guilt-threads struggling out of the ruins briefly before falling back into its grave; I'd have to be in physical contact to tell which one, although my guess is the one that kept pulling away from me specifically. I take a breath, enough composure returning to bring back the careful calm. "The theory is that by giving you a new name, you are given the chance to be something else."

The ruin crumbles back into the coils that I should've known wouldn't stay dead for long, redoubling their efforts at tearing inward through the flat, broken calm. "No matter what I do or what name I bear, the weight of my failure and my sins will never leave me."

Deep breath and grind my teeth at the irony, or perhaps the cracked honesty of his whisper, the return to rejecting anything but pain and death; my own little bloody shreds may as well be right in the path of his barbed spiral. "Even so, you still have a chance. Please don't throw it away…"

Something catches in the roiling darkness, as if something back past the coils and barbs had noticed something. He looks up and the cold, hollow, bloody part capable of methodically tearing through two entire clans of youkai has put the spiral on hold to pin me down; it's like I just walked into the path of a cobra. "What about you?" It's almost not even a lash back, so much as a calculated observation, a statement of having caught on to my own doubts and old wounds.

I'm still scrambling to find a train of thought in the shock and remembering to breathe when the rest of him catches up to the foreground, with a renewed effort from the guilt-related-to-me. "Sanzo…" he flinches his gaze away from me.

"As long as I'm still alive, you have to live, too." The statement drags out of that disoriented place where I'm still wondering how much, exactly, he's figured out about me.

Somehow, that gives the spiral back the strength to redouble its tearing inward, and he falls apart again, eyes downcast, tears running down his face in pre-emptive guilt for things that haven't happened yet.

"Promise me."

He wavers, then something in the spiral admits defeat. "I promise."