.a.n.: Ehehe, it's been a while. A long long while. This really does get updated faster on my LJ, but not by much. -shame- But since it's summer now...maybe I can churn these out faster, yeah? Anyway, here's chapter two, three will be up in a few days, esp. if I get spammed for it. XD Hope you enjoy, please take good care of me!
.d.i.s.c.l.a.i.m.e.r.: I just watched GUNLOCK and I wish I wish I WISH it were mine. -cries-
"The farther I leave the past, the closer I am to forgiving my own character."
- Isabelle Eberhardt
chapter two : teardrop on fire
5/1 7:39 PM
It took a while for Sanzo to traverse the few hundred feet to his desk and chair, but he made it eventually. There were prisoner files in the drawers, he remembered – what if an inmate escaped, or even worse, misbehaved? – though he didn't really need them. Convicted five years ago and sentenced under a biased jury and thirsty American public, Cho Gonou had been the O.J. Simpson of his time – sans trial, wife, and lawyer.
Perhaps things would've gone better in another era. As it were, Cho had chosen a bad time to commit felony. In a moment six months before Gonou's offense, a man named William Stevenson had killed his pregnant wife, to put it mildly. "Pulled a Caligula," the papers screamed, "cut open her belly, ate her child, all while she watched in pain." And while Sanzo remained distrustful of the sensationalized press, murder was murder, cold and slick. Stevenson v. Levine appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
Legal arguments sucked up five months, but the entire matter eventually wrapped up – in the worst way possible. On August 12th, the defense lawyer's plead of mental instability bought Stevenson a spot in the nation's number one asylum.
The masses were outraged – and rightfully so. All evidence had pointed to Stevenson's guilt (incomplete data, the criminal lawyer claimed) and the wife's family hadn't received anything by way of compensation. It hadn't helped that Stevenson escaped the institution one week later, leaving perfect red holes in the heads of a nearby neighborhood before turning the Colt .45 mm on his own eyes.
So when Cho Gonou was discovered in quiet little Albuquerque six months later, surrounded by bodies and bathed in blood, he went straight to the Supreme Court. In a series of faux trials, Cho was charged with the murder of his then fiancée (lover and familial relation? the periodicals speculated) and "disturbing the peace." The criminal defense lawyer had tried (as much as an intern could) to plead insane, guilty, religion; but several choice slips he made in the courtroom revealed that he cared for Cho as much as the other side did. New Mexico had hired the top prosecution and they'd appealed their way – post haste – through the district and federal courts. Finally, Cho was declared guilty after a forty-five minute review by the Supreme Court. His sentence would be immediate death via lethal injection.
The American public, fickle ingrates, Sanzo snorted, had immediately settled down, sated and ready to watch Bollywood once again. Cho's execution was pushed back by international treatises, a presidential scandal, a recount; until finally, it'd been waiting five years out of a now indeterminate amount.
Sanzo pushed the facts into the pack of his mind – they'd only been important when he was nineteen and still in law school. Since then, things had only gone downhill: he'd plunged from being a defender of the law to serving as its enforcer, he spent a year face to face with China's biggest hills, and he was playing nanny to the most prolific mass-murderer of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, he dug Cho Gonou's file from the depths (an oxymoron, he thought, with more than a pinch of annoyance) of his creaking desk, opening the coffee-ring stained, burnt folder. He obviously hadn't been the only officer intrigued – spooked – by this particular convict.
Name:, he read, Cho Gonou.
...Sex: M
...Age: 23 (he raised an eyebrow)
...Height: 6'1"
...Weight: 152 lbs
...Eye color: Green
...Hair color: Brown
...Blood Type: AB
...Offense: Genocide
...Sentence: Death by lethal injection
The file went on to elaborate, even quote from some more popular headlines between the smudges and ink marks left by previous wardens. Nothing of interest, Sanzo decided, and nothing he didn't know already. The blood of one female and at least a hundred gang-males on his long, thin fingers, and none on his green green eyes.
The man's whispered conversation jerked him back into consciousness.
"Rounds," Sanzo muttered, getting up to walk another. The repetitive circles were dizzying, as he'd told Koumyou before collapsing on the sofa that morning. The old monk had patted his head knowingly, making Sanzo feel five again, before pouring a cup of tea and enquiring further.
"The people?" Koumyou had asked, staring out the window.
"Whores." Sanzo mumbled into the cushion, "Convicts. Bastards."
Koumyou's smile only grew wider, "The food?"
"Whore." Sanzo repeated, "Serves food."
"How about Gonou?"
Sanzo had shot into the air, fixing the obviously-pleased monk with a glare – surprised, but accusing. "You didn't warn me," he grated, but it came out more sulky than he'd intended.
"You don't need an answer to that," Koumyou teased, and of course it'd been Sanzo's fault for not asking.
"He's..." Sanzo had gone back to his cushion, "...different."
"Most murderers are," Koumyou replied breezily.
"From what the papers said," Sanzo had snapped, irritable, "from what I thought he'd be."
Koumyou nodded, sage before he sent an airplane in Sanzo's direction. "The headlines," he sing-songed, "for what they're worth."
Sanzo felt the crumpled ball in his pocket as he finished his first circuit, managing not to look cell three in the eye. "And then, if you add just a pinch of ginger..." Cho's voice followed him, heavy for all its light conversation, "you'll get the perfect taste..."
Cho Gonou was still rattling on about curry when Sanzo did his second round, twenty minutes later, and his third round, another twenty after that. What deathly silence had permeated the block earlier had all but dissipated, and most of the prisoners were nodding slowly in cadence with Cho's lilt. Though he couldn't help but feel Cho was testing him in some way, Sanzo waited, between breaths, for the next word, and the next. Something about the tone, the sound. Or perhaps, just the voice.
"Ne, xian sheng," Cho stopped in mid-sentence, stopping him in mid-round. "Excuse me."
Sanzo turned around, wary for all his guns and chains.
"Xian sheng..." Cho continued, "Have you been to China recently?"
Sanzo nodded slowly, dumbly.
"Where?" Cho asked, smile forming and eyes closing, "Northwest?"
Sanzo nodded again, and Cho chuckled.
"What was it you were doing, so far away from home?" Cho sounded a bit wistful, to his pounding ears.
"Work," Sanzo rasped, turning back around.
"Work?" Cho repeated, "In such a beautiful country? Did you not enjoy the hills?"
"Hated them," Sanzo said, back still turned.
Cho pressed himself closer to the bars and Sanzo smelt crisped hair, turned around to watch small shocks of electricity play through the convict's hair, over a hidden eye. Cho just smiled at him (so like Koumyou, his subconscious whispered) and closed his eye in concentration. Then, he took a deep breath.
Sanzo stood and watched Cho breathe, confused, annoyed, and utterly bewitched.
"You smell like China," Cho spoke, eye still closed, "Spices, medicine. Hills, gutters. Cigarettes. Apples. Pigs." And hummed, an old ditty Sanzo recognized as native to the country he'd just returned from.
He probably would've stared longer, but the block door burst open.
"Mr. Genjyo?" a man stuck his head in (slim, pressed, Sanzo noted, bureaucratic wimp), "I have a letter for..." he consulted the envelope in his hand, "Taylor Warren."
There was a sizzle and the man in cell two yelped before scrambling back to his shadows.
Sanzo took the letter in two quick strides, leaving the visitor to show himself out. Cell block two might as well be empty, Sanzo's brow furrowed, moody from the preceding events and interruption of said occurrings. He held up his gun, ready to shoot the prisoner out.
"Sanzo." The man was gone, and the voice (not tone) was far too familiar. "Sanzo."
Cho, he realized, turning to face the all-too-clear eye and serious face, was calling him. Except...
"Give me the letter."
...Cho didn't know him...know his last name, much less his first...know his age, his status, know him. Yet Cho...
"The letter, Sanzo."
...was talking to him as only Koumyou dared, ordering without ordering, asking without asking, and his hand was moving and all of a sudden Cho had the letter and was opening it reading it hungrily.
Sanzo shook out of his daze when Cho nudged him with the crisp white paper, eye a bit sad and mouth even more so.
"Cho Gonou..." he breathed, because he hadn't exhaled for he couldn't remember how long.
"Hakkai." Cho said absently, "Now, Sanzo, if you would please go back to your desk. I'll inform Taylor, and we'll take it from there."
Sanzo walked back to his desk, dazed for the second time in just as many days, and read the letter.
He decided it'd been very right for Cho to handle it.
Mr. Taylor Warren –
This letter is to inform you that your execution has been set for 9:00 AM on May 4th. Please inform your guard of any and all things you may require – priest, will, phone call, etc. You will be escorted to the grounds at 8:00 AM. Please be ready. Thank you.
Sincerely.
xian sheng: Chinese term for "sir"
Song: "Teardrop" by Massive Attack
.a.n.: And because I forgot, the song for the last chapter was "Somewhere In-between" by Lifehouse. Each title is either a song title or a line from a song, so yesh. Yosh 2 out of 30 chapters done. -dies- Hope it wasn't too painful, until next time!