For warnings and disclaimers, see first chapter.

Installment Three

In Which the Past is Revealed

OR

In Which the Author Realizes That She Hates Writing Titles That are Set Up Like This

Gojyo had been driving for about four minutes before he burst out laughing. Surprised, Hakkai turned a questioning glance onto his friend and room-mate.

"Man, your cousin is going to be so pssd when he realizes we took the car," he said, still chuckling. "You said he had somewhere to go today, right?" Hakkai laughed too, simply because he liked the notion of laughing. Truth be told, he did not think that a furious Sanzo waiting for the two of them when they got home to be particularly funny.

"Gojyo?" Hakkai asked a few minutes later. "Have you filled the gas tank recently?"

"No, I don't think so. Why?" Gojyo asked obliviously, running his eye casually over the dial. He jerked abruptly to the side of the road when he noticed the black needle reading dangerously close to the large, red E. Hakkai placed his head in his hands as Gojyo quickly muttered every relevant (and a few that weren't) swear word under the sun.

"Are we close to a gas station?" Hakkai finally asked, glancing up and down the suburban street. "Sometimes they do have one in the village square." Gojyo sighed, muttered something that was most likely obscene under his breath, then replied,

"I guess we'd better find out." Gojyo gave the key a vicious twist as he restarted the car. The engine coughed, spluttered, and that having used up all remaining fuel, promptly died.

"Sht," Gojyo muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. Hakkai glanced down at his watch and laughed dryly.

"Well, it hardly matters now how much time we take. Even if I do show up I won't get paid for the day."

"Might as well start walking," Gojyo muttered, raking a hand through his hair and hopping out onto the tree-lined boulevard. "The downtown area can't be that far away."

Luckily, Hakkai, having passed through the area several times on his way to work knew the general direction of the village square, and they reached it after only about a half hour and with little mishap.

"What time is it?" Hakkai asked, glancing longingly at a fast-food chain as they wandered down the streets of the village square. Given the time of day it was nearly deserted, except for the occasional housewife who threw the two of them a curious glance before continuing on with her errands. Gojyo looked up, followed Hakkai's gaze, and smiled.

"You hungry?" he asked. Hakkai opened his mouth, probably to protest that he was fine, when his stomach rumbling loudly caused him to shut his mouth and blush slightly.

"I could eat," he said in a small voice, still rather embarrassed.

"Then it's time for lunch," Gojyo said firmly, leading him into the restaurant.

Hakkai was rather surprised when Gojyo ordered the food carryout, and even more surprised when he led him into a small, quiet park. Hakkai looked a question, and Gojyo answered, almost seeming slightly flustered that he had noticed the park earlier and thought that it would be more pleasant than eating in the greasy fast-food restaurant. Hakkai nodded his understanding and took a seat at the single solitary picnic table.

"This is kind of nice park, isn't it?" Hakkai asked after several moments of silence, gazing at the scenic view.

"Yeah, it is," Gojyo muttered, a faraway look in his eyes. "Hakkai," he asked suddenly, and the tone of his voice made Hakkai put down his food. "I've been thinking. Why did you invite your cousin to live with us?" Hakkai slowly swallowed his final bite, pondering Gojyo's motives behind asking that question. Hakkai had long since given up on giving anyone a straight answer for anything. Instead, he tried to find out a person's reasons for wanting the information from him, and answered the question as clearly or as elusively accordingly. However, in this case he was stumped. Cautiously he asked,

"Aren't the two of you getting along now?" Gojyo answered with an exasperated grin, knowing Hakkai's answer was just a delay tactic until he could divine the real question beneath the first.

"We're getting along fine," Gojyo said lightly, determined to give Hakkai straight answers even if Hakkai would not give him any. "Thick as thieves, the pair of us. But what does that have to do with my question?" Gojyo asked innocently, quietly throwing Hakkai's tactics into the open.

Hakkai rolled his eyes at his friend's feigned innocence and complete lack of shame, and finally decided to throw diplomacy out the window. "Why do you ask, Gojyo?" he asked quietly. Gojyo was silent for a long moment, as if it were hard for him to put his thoughts to words.

"I just think it's rather odd," he began carefully, giving Hakkai a piercing look, as if ready to stop mid-sentence as soon as his words began to give offense, "that you're so close to your self-proclaimed 'cousin' when you told me not long ago that you were estranged from all of your family. Especially since no familial tie has been brought up." Hakkai was silent a long moment.

"Ah," was his only reply as he stared off vaguely into the distance. "I am going to assume," he began finally, "from the peculiar stress you placed on the word 'cousin', that you rather doubt we are blood relatives." Gojyo looked slightly guilty, but nodded just the same. "And if this be the case," Hakkai continued, "then why would I ask him to come live with me." Gojyo nodded again. Throughout Hakkai's statement he had carefully been staring off into space. Now he turned toward Gojyo, who was startled to see a peculiar light in his eyes.

"Sanzo really is my cousin, Gojyo," Hakkai said, his voice almost beseeching. "His mother is my father's sister. We really are blood related."

"Didn't stop you with Kanaan," Gojyo pointed out after a time, even though he hated himself for doing so. He couldn't stand the pained, closed look his friend got after her name was mentioned. The look did appear, but it did not stop Hakkai from answering somberly,

"No, I suppose it did not. However, I wasn't the one who invited him to come live with us, anyway. He sent me a letter a couple months ago saying his job had been transferred and asking whether I had a room to spare. Considering he's, in essence, our landlord I could hardly refuse."

"That's all?" Gojyo asked.

"That's all." Hakkai answered firmly.

"Honest to God?" Gojyo asked.

"Honest to God," Hakkai replied laughing, a note of finality in his voice.

"Good," Gojyo said, and Hakkai was surprised to hear some relief in his own. A fear that he had been harboring for almost two weeks suddenly looked far more likely. Wrenching his attention away from his own inner thoughts he turned to Gojyo and said as light heartedly as possible,

"Now I suppose we'd best find a trash bin."

"And then a gas station.

Hakkai laughed. "Yes, and then a gas station."

Sanzo had been home for two hours when there was a slight commotion on the outside landing, and first Hakkai and then Gojyo entered the flat, looking tired, uncomfortable, and smelling faintly of gasoline. Sanzo raised an eyebrow at Hakkai, who promptly answered,

"The jeep ran out of gas half way there. By the time we found a gas station we realized we might as well just come home again." Sanzo nodded almost imperceptibly and prepared to turn back to his paper, but something stopped him. In growing horror he watched Gojyo make a quiet joke to Hakkai and then disappear down the hallway, Hakkai smiling after him for some time.

Sanzo had only seen that look on Hakkai's face once before, and he did not like it any more now then he had then. Sanzo listened carefully, and after hearing Gojyo slam the door to his room got up and stood next to his cousin.

"So," Sanzo said finally. Hakkai looked questioningly up at him. Sanzo sighed and turned to face the window, lazily lighting a cigarette. "You never told me you were a fg," Sanzo said finally, turning back to Hakkai. Hakkai's eyes hardened, but his voice remained deceptively pleasant.

"Do you think less of me?" Sanzo took a long drag of his cigarette before answering.

"No… I don't suppose I do," he muttered, sighing heavily. "I didn't turn on you and Kanaan before. Why should I turn on you now?" Sanzo saw Hakkai relax, but only a tiny bit. He doubted that there were few people who would even be able to notice the change.

"I do appreciate that, you know," Hakkai said, suddenly, flopping onto the sofa and staring up at the ceiling. "You not turning on the two of us when the family found out," he clarified, still keeping his eyes carefully on the ceiling. "That always… that always did mean a lot to us…" Hakkai trailed off.

"Hakkai," Sanzo suddenly asked, leaning on the back of a chair. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Sanzo's voice was surprisingly soft, almost all of the roughness had left it. Hakkai looked at his cousin in surprise. He had only heard that happen once before in his entire life. "What happened to Kanaan? Did the family take her away?" Hakkai took a sharp intake of breath, a pained expression on his voice. Sanzo realized in a moment that he had said the wrong thing. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Hakkai lifted a hand, effectively silencing him.

He was silent a long moment, and when he finally answered his voice sounded like it was coming from a long way away.

"No, the family didn't take her away… they disowned me. They pretended I didn't exist. The didn't take my Kanaan from me…" he trailed off into silence again, but this time when he continued talking his voice was louder, harsher, full of anger that had been suppressed for almost three and a half years. "I never should have done it. I should have known what would happen. But it was my first big college assignment, and I was too preoccupied to worry about her."

"What happened?" Sanzo asked finally, a compassionate look on his face.

"It was late and I had run out of something I needed… I think my pen had run out of ink. I asked her if she could run down to the seven-eleven for me and pick some more up." He was silent again. Just when Sanzo was about to prod him along in some way he continued, "She was gone a long time. At first I was too preoccupied to worry much about her, but after forty-five minutes I went out looking. I finally found her in a back alley…" The look of pain and torment on Hakkai's face was so strong that Sanzo actually had to fight the urge to flinch.

"She died a few hours later. Her throat had been cut, but the cut missed the major arteries. I found her not long after, and for a while the doctors thought that she would pull through… but… she didn't. The doctor told me that right before she passed she asked them to tell me that she was sorry. The autopsy showed that she had been raped."

"And you blame yourself." It wasn't a question. Sanzo knew his cousin far too well for there to be any uncertainty in the matter.

"Who else can I blame?" he asked bitterly.

"The man who raped and killed her?" Sanzo asked in exasperation, but he knew that his words had fallen on deaf ears. "Does the family know?" Sanzo asked finally, quietly, rationally. Hakkai's face twisted for a moment before he answered,

"No, they don't. At first I didn't want to tell them, but one of the doctors advised me that it would be best. But I couldn't get a hold of them. They burn every letter I send them, they have caller ID so they don't pick up when I call. If I traveled there they'd close the door in my face." Sanzo nodded silently.

"Minnie should be told," Sanzo said finally. Hakkai looked up, met Sanzo's eyes and looked down again. Minnie was three years younger then Hakkai, and also his aunt. He, Kanaan, and Minnie had been very close as children. Hakkai believed that Minnie had guessed about his and his sister's relationship a full year before the rest of the family got wind of it.

"It never did hold well with Minnie what the family did to us, did it," Hakkai said, little emotion in his voice.

"No, it never did," Sanzo agreed. "She's spent the better part of these few years trying to convince her sister and brother-in-law to let her contact you."

"And I assume that she's made no head-way," Hakkai commented drily.

"I think that by now Aunt Naoko and Uncle Ben have actually mostly convinced themselves that Kanaan was their only child and that she went off to college. I even saw Aunt Naoko looking at Kanaan's portrait and muttering 'any day now, any day now,' to herself." Hakkai shook his head.

"I think that it hit mother hard," Hakkai said. "She always used to brag about how we had the perfect family. I think that realizing that we didn't really shocked her."

"She needed to learn that nothing is perfect," Sanzo said suddenly.

"No," Hakkai agreed. "Nothing is."

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