Part Seven

Revelations had a funny effect on people. After all the shocks and trauma of this day, the utterly staggering information that his father was not his father and some other guy he didn't even know was his father, there was only one coherent thing running through Kougaiji's head.

At least I'll keep my looks when I'm old, he thought somewhat inanely, as Gyumaoh was one fugly sonuvabitch in his increasing age and Shuyin still looked bishie enough to be Kou's senior by a score of years instead of centuries.

Lirin was freaking out that her brother wasn't her brother until Dokugakuji pointed out that Rasetsunyo wasn't her mother either, and it hadn't stopped Lirin from hanging all over her and acting like she was.

"It's no different," he told her. "The people you love are your family, no matter the blood connections or lack of them."

She considered this.

"Then...then I won't call her mom anymore," Lirin announced after a moment, a scarily solemn expression on her face. "Because she doesn't love me, so she can't be family."

No one had to ask who the 'her' in question was. No one had actually thought to inform Lirin of Gyokumen Kyushu's death, although it was pretty obvious from the ravaged remains of the castle that not a whole lot had survived.

The youkai girl looked over at the fallen Gyumaoh. "An' I wasn't even born until after he was asleep, so he can't love me." She bit her lip. "He doesn't even know me. So….so he can't be my father."

Concerned and a bit guilty, Kougaiji went to her and knelt down, shaking off his own familial discomforts. He remembered Gyumaoh enough from before the sealing to not mourn his passing. He hadn't even thought of what he was supposed to tell Lirin about the death of both her parents. "Lirin…."

Lirin let him gather her close but did not respond in kind right away. Instead, she reached out slowly to touch the markings on his cheek that mirrored hers, as if she'd never seen them before. "It's okay," she whispered, and again, stronger, when Kougaiji pulled back to look at her. She smiled, and then threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Her words came out muffled but still audible. "It's okay, nii-chan. Goku-chan doesn't have a mother or a father either, but he has a family, and so do I. So it's okay."

'Goku-chan' might have had a fit about being called so, and by a girl no less. Sanzo choked on his unconscious behalf. Since when did Goku rate a 'chan' from little...

...okay, so Lirin wasn't that much of a little girl. Granted, she often acted more immature than her real age, but growing up in the court of Gyokumen Kyushu, who could blame her for hanging on with tooth and nail to the innocence of childhood? Forced maturity did no favors for the state of one's heart. Look what it had done to Sanzo.

Shuyin cocked his head to one side as if listening to something. He turned, and dropped into a kneeling position before a dancing mote of light that expanded into everyone's favorite bodhisattiva.

"Well well," se said, surveying the handiwork of hir servants, i.e. the burning castle and Gyumaoh laid out senseless on the ground. "Not too shabby, for a bunch of deviants. I'd congratulate you people if I weren't so busy trying to figure out how to fix the mess you've caused."

Sanzo's eyes narrowed. "We stopped the experiments to revive Gyumaoh. The Minus Wave is gone. What the fuck are you talking about, the mess we caused?"

"You've thrown everything off again!" se snapped, jabbing a finger in his direction. "Seven hundred years it took to balance the mistakes of the past. Seven. Hundred. Years. This was supposed to be the last piece to fall into place and return karma to equilibrium, but noooooo, you morons had to take shortcuts. Had to find a way out of the pattern. Had to..." se stopped.

Shuyin was snickering from his place on the ground. Kanzeon reached down to grab the convenient braid and painfully hauled the man to his feet by it. "Something funny?"

He smiled sunnily despite the pain from his scalp. "Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and karma..."

"You're fired." Se shoved him away, noting with some disgust that the shit eating grin on his face had only gotten wider. "The Design has changed. But it will run its course without your meddling, from now on."

The itan saluted, still grinning. "I can live with that." His smile suddenly faded a bit, and he looked at hir in faint trepidation. "Um. Can't I?"

"We'll see." Se turned her attention back to Sanzo and eyed the unconscious boy in the monk's arms. "How close is he to waking up?"

"Try another day or so."

Kanzeon glared at Shuyin. "Can't you do anything right?"

"What else was I supposed to do with him, if not restore his limiter?" Shuyin demanded defensively. "Sit on him until you showed up?"

Se chose not to dignify that with a reply. Mostly because at that moment, a shudder rippled through Gyumaoh, and the demon king came roaring back to consciousness with all the fury of a hurricane.

"Back off, all of you," Kanzeon commanded. They did without argument, except for Shuyin, who was eyeing Gyumaoh and grimly sliding the Buster Sword free once more, and Sanzo, who se gestured to come closer. "Bring him to me."

Sanzo did so warily. He didn't trust Kanzeon. He really didn't trust Kanzeon when it came to Goku. For all he knew, se'd been the bitch who'd sealed the monkey in the first place and made him Sanzo's problem five hundred years later.

The golden coronet melted away at Kanzeon's touch. The Seiten Taisei twitched in his sleep, and to his credit Sanzo did no more than pale just a bit over the Destroyer still held fast in his arms.

"This is not your last trial, nor your greatest. But you have come this far," the bodhisattiva said softly. "Repay now your debt and regain that which you have lost, Great Sage Equal to Heaven."

"Wake."

Gold slitted eyes opened, focused.

And the Seiten Taisei surged up from Sanzo's hold, shoving the priest backwards in his haste to attack his closest target, the 'woman' standing before him.

With a bored expression, Kanzeon let him get close enough to kiss before kneeing him in the balls. Down went the hell monkey. All males present winced in sympathy.

"That way, retard." Se grabbed him by the back of the neck, ignoring his yowls, and pitched him in the general direction of Gyumaoh. The Seiten Taisei regained his feet instantly and hissed like a wet cat at Kanzeon.

Gyumaoh conveniently expedited things by choosing that moment to try and smash the Destroyer with his sword. For whatever reason the youkai king had some sort of grudge against Goku, or what his zombified memories identified Goku as. Distracted, the Seiten Taisei leapt easily aside, snarling, and sufficiently motivated for retaliation, darted up the length of Gyumaoh's gigantic blade to take the fight face to face.

Everyone watching tried not to look ill when pieces started coming off. Kougaiji grimly turned Lirin away, and found ironically that Rasetsunyo had interposed herself between him and view of the messy fight as well. The remaining youkai soldiers, not as used to frontline gore as our heroes were, bravely held their ground until someone got squished by a falling eye the size of a cannonball, and Chen choked out something about 'just being over there if anyone needs us' before he and his men took off for a less scenic location.

Sanzo lit a cigarette unconcernedly. "When this is done, I'm retiring, just so you know."

"Oh no you're not," Kanzeon returned absently, watching the show. "That option was negated when you started with the shortcuts. Thanks to the new imbalance, Karma's got new plans for you, dear nephew."

A tic started up underneath Sanzo's eye. "Explain that."

"I don't think so."

"Hag…."

"Get over yourself. You made the choice, now live with the consequences." Something that might have been amusement tugged at the edge of hir mouth. "Though why you've chosen the path you did is beyond me. But, at this point, there isn't anything you can't do anything about it anyway."

"I can do something about you," he grated, hand groping for a gun that wasn't there.

Se gave him a look full of thinly veiled, malicious amusement. "Like what? Throw a rock at me?"

Shuyin snickered and obligingly clapped a hand over his mouth when Sanzo shot him a glare. Hakkai arched a questioning brow.

Kanzeon clucked. "Not a very traditional method, I admit, but effective. I'm sure it will go down in all the histories and epics as an inspiration of tactical genius."

The eye tic got worse.

Se smiled.

Gyumoah croaked and for the most part everyone didn't notice, because they were watching the far more interesting spectacle of one Genjyo Sanzo, face down in the dirt, struggling uselessly to move with a triumphantly leering bodhisattiva sitting on his back, one well manicured hand easily pinning both Sanzo's arms over his head at the wrist and generally ignoring his futile squirming. Without gun available for bullying, Sanzo had tried the more direct approach. Bad idea. Baaaaaaaad idea.

"Sit still," se scolded, tossing back dark hair. "You spend enough time on your face between Gensui, Taishou, and the monkey, so don't pretend this is a huge imposition." Se paused, considering. "Or is it on your back? I haven't been keeping track lately."

"You WATCHED!" Hakkai yelped, and even Gojyo had a shocked, scandalized expression on his face. Voyeurism was all well and good in his book, but only when Gojyo was the one who got to watch. Sanzo went frighteningly still.

The bodhisattiva gave hir servants a serene smile. "No HBO in Heaven, boys. You don't want to be marked as interesting people, don't do anything interesting."

Hakkai looked ready to pass out. Identical scandalized expressions marked the Kougaiji-tachi, except for Rasetsunyo, who looked speculative.

Gyumaoh's corpse crashing to the ground forestalled further conversation, much to the relief of two youkai and one priest.

"Took you long enough," Kanzeon groused, not bothering to remove hirself from hir perch atop Sanzo as the Seiten Taisei hopped unconcernedly off his former opponent. If there was an inch of him not covered in blood, no one present could see it. He stalked forward, claws dripping and very pointedly eyeing Kanzeon.

The bodhisattiva reached down to grab a fistful of Sanzo's hair and pulled his head up, a grin curving hir full lips as both he and the Seiten Taisei snarled at the action.

"Want this back, do you?" se drawled. The berserker hissed softly, golden gaze promising murder and mayhem.

"In a minute. I've got something else for you." Se flickered out of existence, leaving Sanzo to scramble to his feet with a curse, and reappeared a second later behind the Seiten Taisei. He tried for a vicious backhand but se caught the wrist and twisted it, forcing him down on one knee.

"Now," se leaned down to breathe in his ear. "Now, Heaven repays its debts." Hir other hand came to his cheek, and his furious yowl was lost in an explosion of light. A limiter took shape on his brow and he reeled, clutching at his temples, before finally falling forward on hands and knees. For whatever reason Goku remained conscious this time, and there were very uncharitable words intermingled with his harsh gasps for air.

Crimson gleamed at his forehead. The limiter he wore was marked with a pattern of blood red stones, increasing in size until they met in the center.

"That's new," Gojyo ventured, not sure why it made him uneasy. Kanzeon favored him with an uncomfortably sweet smile.

"He'll get used to it. But you three might not."

"What's that supposed to mean– " He broke off as Goku flinched, reacting to the sound of his voice. Irritation over Kanzeon's cryptic bullshit dissipated as the feeling of unease in his gut increased.

Goku had dragged himself back up to his knees, moving with a slow, pained deliberation that bespoke injury or absolute exhaustion. More likely the latter. The transformation took a lot out of him, and he'd been forced back and forth between it twice already today. Gold eyes oddly vacant, he looked up at Gojyo without seeing him.

Disturbed, the halfbreed took a step forward. "Oi, saru …."

Something resembling recognition slowly took shape in the boy's expression, but his voice was dazed and a bit slurred when he answered, as though he were having a hard time forming the words.

"…….Ken …nii-chan…?"

Gojyo froze. Stared.

Goku stared back, pupils so dilated that he probably wasn't seeing much of anything. Then his expression twisted, caught somewhere between pain and shock, and one hand curled around the side of the new limiter as if he wanted to pull it off but couldn't quite find the strength.

That name. That. Name. It hit Gojyo like a sucker punch to the gut, the jarring familiarity and equally certain wrongness. It felt like what happened when the idiot rebel gods tried to call him Kenren Taishou, or when Kanzeon did. Not his name. Not his name but something in him responded to it. And Goku saying it like a nickname ….

"Your hair is red," Goku murmured, gaze still transfixed, like the very idea was some sort of huge revelation. Given the current blank shock in the kid's expression, maybe it was.

Ever present smile tinged with concern, Hakkai stepped up next to Gojyo. "Goku, are you alright…?"

The brunette's only answer was a vague tracking of glazed eyes from Gojyo's face to his, and Goku's brow knit.

"…both of you look…why …" The boy shook his head, and the scarlet gems winked with the motion. "I don't understand," he managed finally, expression plaintive.

Sanzo didn't bother asking stupid questions of an idiot who obviously wasn't lucid enough to answer. He rounded on Kanzeon instead. "The fuck did you do to him?"

This earned him a contemptuous glance that in no way interfered with the bitch's self congratulatory expression. "I only gave back what was taken," se informed him. "Heaven repays its debts."

"His memories, nikkou," Shuyin supplied softly, when the light of comprehension failed to dawn in Sanzo's irate gaze. "He's fought hard enough to be entitled to …. certain compensation. Recollection of his past being only part of it." This last said with a significant Look at Kanzeon.

"Paperwork," se stated flatly, refusing to take responsibility.

"Six hundred years," Shuyin reminded hir implacably.

"Oh, sod off."

Sanzo was about to interrupt this charming little snarkfest, wanting more details on what the rest of said 'compensation' entailed, precisely, when the feeling of someone staring at him made him turn his head.

"What, you stupid – " he began to snap, knowing with utter certainty the identity of the watcher and ready to dress the idiot down, until his eyes actually met Goku's.

The world stopped. Tilted.

:Konzen.:

It brushed at the back of his mind like moth wings. :Konzen: he heard again, an incredulous whisper. :KonzenKonzen.:

:My name isn't Konzen: he snarled back instinctively, finding it hard to breath for some reason. He didn't realize until a few seconds later that he hadn't actually opened his mouth to say the words.

"KONZEN!"

The weight hit him dead center in his chest and he went down. Again. With a crying, wriggling, blood covered monkey trying his damndest get as close as possible, hands flickering desperately over skin and fabric, trying to assure himself that the glaring man pinned underneath him was real and not a fever dream.

"KonzenKonzenKonzen— " The words were lost between frantic kisses, and as much as Sanzo wanted to pull away and curse, his head had gone all funny and dizzy with that voice that wasn't a voice echoing every word that he heard aloud. His ears rang with it. The compulsion in it was utterly beyond his current ability to resist.

"Shut ..up …" he managed weakly, close to overwhelmed and hating it, but somewhere along the way his lungs had shrunk and he couldn't get the air in to continue any further with his protest. Couldn't draw breath at all, in fact, unless he stole it from those desperate lips. Couldn't silence the need in Goku's ragged mantra unless he answered it with equal intensity. Equal honesty.

:Konzen …:

The flowers on his desk were yellow. Always yellow. The brat had an unholy fascination with his hair and anything approximating the color. He pretended not to notice the small blossoms were even present, figuring that it would be admitting too much if he exhibited interest enough to move or mention them. Everyone else pretended not to notice the quiet softening of his perpetual scowl that occurred when his eyes strayed to them anyway.

:I ….:

Like clockwork, every night the tiny bed next to his would empty. Like clockwork, the soft rustle of fabric and clinking of chains would herald the arrival of an intruder into his own personal space. The child never asked. He would stand at the side of the bed, waiting, shivering from cold or nightmare or whatever excuse his tiny little mind had come up with to justify the fact that he couldn't sleep alone, and he would stay there until a space was made for him. The small body fit against his like no being had a right to, like it belonged there, warm and curled and too much at peace for his own half awake mind to think of any proper objection.

And Goku still curled when he slept, Sanzo realized dimly.

:Konzen.:

"I'm here," he said, or thought he did, through the drowning insanity that had become his thoughts and memories. "I'm right here."

He could taste salt on Goku's skin, feel the hitch between breaths. Tears built up over five hundred years. The boy clung to him, whispering a name that wasn't his between sobs, and when he finally pushed back the shaking frame to try and sit up himself, it shocked him to the core to see his ward's expression. Devastation. Goku didn't know the meaning of the word, at least not in the emotional sense. Terror, anger, sadness, but not true and utter loss. But this …this wasn't Goku. This was someone who had been alive for centuries, suffering and alone, who had been torn from everything he loved ….

As soon as he thought it Sanzo knew it was true. Didn't explain how he knew it. It had just come to him with all the absolute surety of certain of unshakeable facts of history. His dreams were full of scenes that felt the same way.

"Stop it," he muttered through the dizziness invading his senses, a little shocked at the both of them. "Stop …stop crying."

:I lost you …: That voice had to be purely internal to be so clear, because Goku was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. His hands clenched tight on Sanzo's shoulders, and probably couldn't have been pryed off with a crowbar.

"And you goddamn well found me again. So stop it. I …"

There was no help for it. Damn noisy, invasive, incorrigible monkey.

"I'm right here," he whispered into chocolate hair, pulling that trembling body to him and shielding it with his own, offering the protection, offering comfort. He was five hundred years too late for the gesture to mean anything, but he did it anyway.

Goku buried his face against Sanzo's neck and cried as though his world were ending. In a way, it was.

Gojyo sidled over to Hakkai, pretending his eyes weren't bugging out at the sight of Sanzo being so …accomodating to someone else's crisis, and also pretending that he was over the idea of Goku getting his memories returned just like that. "Um. Should we …"

Rasetsunyo answered for Hakkai, who was doing only a slightly better job at handling the concept of cuddly, compassionate Sanzo. "I would say let them alone," the Empress offered softly, "but one or the other or both is probably going to pass out in a moment." She, being the other 'parent' of the group (and definitely the more competent at the job), knew when naptime/recess was called for among restive children. "I think maybe we all need a little time to recover." She wasn't looking at Shuyin.

Shuyin took the hint anyway. Coughed. Elbowed Kanzeon, who grumbled. "Fine, fine, I'm just here to perform miracles."

"Compensation," Shuyin said sunnily. "A night and a place to spend it would be good."

Kanzeon muttered something uncomplimentary, but obligingly snapped hir fingers. The world blurred in a teleport, and the entire lot of them, Chen's company included, found themselves standing in the middle of the only undemolished structure left in the area. One of the outlying castle …things, a good distance from the main fortress itself, which was probably why it was still intact. Although completely deserted, the place was equipped with all sorts of wonderful amenities like showers and kitchens and beds.

And not a moment too soon. As predicted, Goku lost his battle with unconsciousness once everyone had made it inside, and without fanfare crumpled quietly into Sanzo's waiting arms. The priest didn't look in much better shape himself, shaken more than he would admit even to himself by the trauma wreaking havoc inside Goku's mind. The link between them resonated with it like the after shocks of an earthquake.

Sanzo was not a man prone to admitting weakness. Much less admitting that someone else's weakness was messing with his head enough to make him want to give up his wavering hold on reality and follow that said someone else into oblivion. He gritted his teeth and pretended his temples weren't pounding from unnatural migraine and tried, quite valiantly, to walk in a straight line while shoring up a passed out monkey. His efforts were met with less than successful results. He braced himself against the wall for a moment, snarling in the general direction of someone's tentative offer of aid in carrying Goku.

"Don't fight with it," Kanzeon's voice came to him distantly, as if se were speaking from the other side of a tunnel, though the bodhisattiva was probably talking normally. It was his own senses that betrayed him.

"It's a natural reaction to the process of adaptation, and there's less strain put on the psyche while asleep. You'll be feeling the echoes of it, I imagine. Try and keep him under as much as you can until morning. And remember, he probably won't stay there unless you join him."

Probably true. But Sanzo didn't want to then, just to be contrary. Like he would jump at that bitch's command. He could handle this and stay perfectly lucid. They were Goku's memories anyway, not his, even if they were leaking into his head by way of that annoying mental connection.

His body, however, had other notions. His body thought that sleep sounded like an absolutely fabulous idea and was willing to go to great lengths to enforce its demand for rest. Like simply shut down here in the hallway and to hell with Sanzo's dignity.

Thus, before that could happen, he grudgingly allowed Shuyin take Goku from him without protest, so long as the boy was close by, and only managed a silent glare when Hakkai deftly inserted himself under an arm and steadied his distinctly listing gait. Hakkai was apparently over his little grudge about the shooting Gojyo and leaving him behind thing, or else Sanzo must have looked bad off enough to warrant some sympathy. With his head feeling as it did, like shit crammed into a blender, the latter was probably more accurate than the former.

"I can walk," he tried to assert, but even to his own ears the protest sounded pathetically defensive rather than confident. Hakkai didn't bother acknowledging it, especially not when Goku let out a strangled noise, unconsciously clutching at Shuyin, and something resonated through the mental channel that drowned out reality and made Sanzo's vision go gray. He was only dimly aware of the fact that he staggered, nearly tripping Hakkai. Dimly aware of his knees buckling and the floor coming rushing up to meet him, his arm sliding from the healer's shoulders.

"Sanzo --!"

Hakkai looked up at the bodhisattiva, kneeling by the unconscious man's side and accusation on his lips. "He's …

Kanzeon appeared unfazed and even a little amused. "He'll be prone to that for a while, yes. Don't look so shocked. Just think of it as having a temporary narcolepsy condition."

Gojyo choked at the thought, momentary concern instantly displaced by the image of Sanzo suddenly falling over dead asleep while in the middle of one the bitch rants he was so fond of. He tried without much success to keep away the smirk that wanted to form. Uncharitable, to be sure, but Sanzo had shot him in the throat today.

Hakkai, having the better poker face, was able to keep all such thoughts from influencing his expression. "But ..the cause …"

"Oh, spillover trauma from the monkey, I imagine, and I doubt he's used to handling the linking at full strength. Don't worry, he'll adjust."

Hakkai still sounded dubious, thinking to himself that the blond might indeed adjust to …whatever mental thing there was between him and Goku becoming stronger, but he probably wouldn't adjust well, being Sanzo and Sanzo being such a misanthropist. Then again, it was Goku, and maybe that would be the only thing making it bearable. How disturbing could Goku's mind be, anyway? "If you say so."

"I do, Marshal. He'll be fine."

Long used to handling Sanzo's dead weight between them (monk had always been an injury magnet), Gojyo took up Sanzo's other side as Hakkai re-shouldered a limp arm, and this time they made it to one of the empty bedrooms without further mishap. Sanzo came to for just a moment, disoriented and driven by a pain that went far beyond physical, and he lashed out wildly until Hakkai caught his fist.

"Wait, Sanzo--"

"Hakkai ..?" Violet eyes struggled to focus and failed spectacularly.

The healer nodded, wondering if it would be safe to sedate either priest or monkey for the duration of this whole mess. "It's alright. Calm down."

"Saru's right here too, bouzo," Gojyo added, correctly guessing at and forestalling the next question. Even unconscious and drowning in a whirlwind of memory Goku gravitated to his savior, and one hand was already reaching out blindly for Sanzo before Shuyin could get him settled next to the monk.

Goku's presence seemed to be a better deterrent to further violence than any of Hakkai or Gojyo's reassurances, since Sanzo started to relax back as the boy curled at his side.

Started to. And just as abruptly, his jaw clenched.

"You."

Hakkai blinked, taken aback at the hissed word. Sanzo wasn't looking at him, was looking at something beyond his shoulder, fuzziness receding from the blond's gaze as he stared in …shock? anger? pain?

Gojyo looked back and forth, mystified, between a very pale former Toushin Taishi and a Sanzo gone rigid.

"You lied to me," Sanzo said quite clearly into the silence, violet eyes locked on gold ones, before awareness slid from him like a wave and he slumped.

For a second no one spoke. Hakkai and Gojyo turned to eye Shuyin, one with puzzlement and the other with suspicion, both equally as confused as to what the hell that had been all about.

Shuyin backed away in the face of their scrutiny, still looking like he'd seen a ghost. Before either of them could demand an explanation, he stammered something about needing to talk to Kanzeon and bolted like a panicked rabbit.

"……what is it with War Gods?" Gojyo grumbled finally, hauling himself to his feet. "Do they have a prerequisite mental disorder that makes them act like freaks or something?"

Hakkai was still looking at the doorway from where Shuyin had made his escape, nonplussed. "I have no idea. But their lot seems to make a habit of withholding information."

"Whatever." Gojyo was suddenly very tired and not up to pursuing stupid mysteries. It had been a fucking long day. He wanted a shower and a meal and some booze, and then a nap. Sanzo and Goku had the right idea with the whole unconsciousness thing. "We can beat it out of him later or something, I guess, when Sanzo's awake to hear."

Hakkai's mouth twitched, distracted from his own contemplation of the puzzle. "I somehow doubt a few lowly mortals like ourselves would have the ability to even bruise him, unless we're enlisting Goku. Even then, he's stronger than Homura, apparently."

Gojyo shrugged. "So we get Kougaiji's hottie mom to do it for us."

A note of exasperation entered the healer's voice. "Gojyo. It's discourteous to refer to an Empress as a 'hottie.' Show some respect."

"I am! I'm showing respect for the fact that she's a major fox!"

Hakkai sighed.

Five minutes later, back down in the main hall, Gojyo and Hakkai found what looked to be a full fledged riot in process over who got first dibs on what domestic amenities offered by the castle. Chen and his soldiers had hastily excused themselves from the sortie by fleeing for the lower level servant quarters. Kanzeon, who Shuyin had been in whispered conversation with before breaking away guiltily at Hakkai and Gojyo's re-appearance, flickered out just before the arguments turned physical, snickering about being back in the morning to check for survivors. Therefore, se wasn't present to witness the end of the conflict; namely, the fireball that blew out the side of the castle.

"Er." Rasetsunyo bit her lip. "Not what I was aiming for. Sorry."

Gojyo peered out the massive smoking hole to the ground far, far below. A crispy fried Shuyin lay sprawled among the wreckage. "No, no, you got him all right." So much for trying to interrogate the bastard.

"Adds new meaning to the phrase 'domestic dispute,' doesn't it?" Doku said under his breath, and Yaone had to hide a snicker at the absolutely stricken expression (again) on Kougaiji's face. His dearest mother, who he'd worked so hard to rescue, who he'd held as an ideal in his mind for over five hundred years ….was sort of a psycho lady. Oh, she was kind and beautiful and regal and other Empress-like things when she put her mind to it, but the woman herself, not the Empress of Tenjiku but Rasetsu, had faults and eccentricities like everyone else. One of these being the tendency to hurl pyrokinetics at her extramarital lover, perhaps because she knew he could take it. Rough love indeed.

Kougaiji's poor abused mind settled only on the conclusion that he was never getting married, if this was supposed to be an example of wedded (or not) bliss.

"Well, in light of certain structural deficiencies in the area," Hakkai began, discretely tugging a gawking Lirin back from the edge before she tumbled off the precipice. "I suggest we relocate …?"

They all agreed this was a good idea. Once resettled in the opposite wing, they also all agreed that it would be more productive to draw cards for luxury of choice. There were only so many sides of a building that could be destroyed before the whole thing collapsed, after all.

Evening found the raging fires at Houtou burned down to nothing, while another one blazed up under the darkening sky. Gyumaoh's funeral pyre, courtesy of his wife-now-widow, who stood watching the inferno quietly. She had waited until her son and the others were settled before slipping out and back to the battle scene. Kougaiji hadn't seen her go. Kougaiji probably wasn't going to be happy about being apart from her (he seemed to have picked up a disturbing codependent habit somewhere along the way while she'd been sleeping) but there were things a person just had to do alone. Cremation of departed zombie spouses was one of these things.

There were no tears to shed for the former Emperor. Their beginnings had been cordial enough, but polite civility between two newlyweds who really didn't know each other very well hadn't lasted long. They hadn't been for good for each other. Or to each other. Both of them were, first and foremost, only a means to an end for the other. He had a beautiful, elegant, and intelligent trophy wife to parade around, who would surely throw a healthy child to be made heir, and he kept to his concubines for affection. He didn't care that she didn't love him. She was grateful to him only for the elevation in status. As Empress, she'd suddenly been in a position to help her people recover from years of incessant warfare. It was only thanks to her that Gyumaoh had even held onto the throne as long as he had, because all the warring factions settled their bloodlust into dormancy when it became apparent that someone in the ruling hierarchy was interested in the good of the land. Her husband might have won the throne through strength of arms, but he had kept it only by Rasetsunyo's humanitarianism.

They were not good for each other. Every word spoken between them, every forced act of civility, had been one of necessity or expediency. It was like a part time job, playing the role of his wife.

She'd have gone insane long ago trying to keep up the pretense if not for Shuyin's presence in her life. And then, Kougaiji's. It wasn't fair for her to have pushed him so young into such a position, a lifeline to sanity, but near the end, when everything else was falling apart, there was nothing else to live for except for the light in his young eyes.

He had grown up, she had to remind herself. There were shadows and guilt in those eyes now, things that she wanted to pretend weren't there. Pain and sorrow and burden she wanted to pretend he hadn't become intimately acquainted with as Gyokumen's unwilling puppet, but she couldn't deny the maturity those experiences had given him. He was already older than she'd been when she married. Old enough to have a spouse or a lover or even children of his own …

"Rasetsu-okasaaaaaaaaan!"

A Lirin shaped missile nearly sent the Empress sprawling, but she managed to keep her feet. Huge green eyes flashed at her. "What're you doing out here all by yourself? There might be more zombie things, or …or …"

The quiet purple haired girl, Yaone, came running up, her expression a mixture of horrified apology and exasperation. "Rasetsunyo-sama, forgive me, she heard Kougaiji-sama wonder where you were and just took off— "

"Nii-chan and Lirin-chan were worried about you!" A tug on her waist. "Come back inside, ne?"

"Alright. It's alright," Rasetsunyo heard herself say, meeting Yaone's gaze with a smile. "I was just about to head back anyway." There was hardly any danger of the crematory fire spreading on barren rock and sand.

Shuyin had told her once that being a parent was the both the best and worst thing for a person. The best, because there was no feeling that could equal bringing life into existence, holding it, loving it, and knowing that it loved you back to the best of its poor ability. The worst, because when your children were grown enough to seek that same path, you had nothing to fall back on until …

..until they start a family of their own.

Yaone seemed like a polite young woman. Good looks. Sensible. Rasetsunyo wondered idly if Kougaiji had asked her to bear his heir yet.

Lirin tugged on her again, and Rasetsunyo, bemused, allowed herself to be pulled along. Amazing that any get of Gyokumen's would be so pure hearted. Amazing Lirin had been raised as any sort of decent person at all, in the court of a murderous, scheming bitch. Kougaiji'd had a hand in it, she didn't doubt. Yaone too. And that bondsman, Doku. Not a stereotypical family unit, but something had gone right, if they'd kept Lirin from ending up like the immoral trash that made up her genetic family.

She would have to make discrete inquiries as to which one, alchemist or swordsman, her son was bedding. Or if it was both, since he obviously cared for both. That was hardly a shock. No surprise at all, really, that any son of Shuyin's would turn his head for like gender as well as the fairer sex.

If he did happen to be sleeping with both, however …. by traditional law the Emperor could have only one official consort, but the great thing about being Emperor was the ability to change traditional law to suit one's whims, so long as it didn't interfere with the stability of the realm. Moreover, Rasetsunyo had no intention of pushing Kougaiji into the position of Emperor where he might have to make such choices until he felt ready to take up the burden.

First things first. She smiled deviously. So she'd lost her son to adulthood. Life went on. Now she had in-laws (or unofficial ones, at least) to meddle with.

As soon as they got back inside she descended like the wrath of Heaven on a startled (and sashless, earringless) Shuyin, who had been involved with something obviously nefarious with all the empty bottles of liquor on the table and playing cards arranged for poker and the guilty expressions on the faces of everyone in the room. Gambling or a drinking game or both, the idiot. She quite forgot to scold him for it, already over her previous irritation, and eager now to drag him off and talk of weddings and plans for the future and …other things. Somewhere along the line her train of thought got sidetracked, and she discovered that whatever he'd been drinking tasted a lot like absinthe, and discussion quickly became a lost cause after that.

Gojyo refrained from voicing the myriad lewd (and jealous) comments that the Empress and Shuyin's conspicuous absences brought to mind, and everyone else was too polite to mention them. Five hundred years was a long time to go without the basic necessities of life, Kougaiji supposed, pointedly ignoring Lirin's questions about where her newly adopted mom had gone in such a hurry as Yaone ushered her off to bed. Still, it was a very disturbing thought.

Half an hour later, he stopped brooding about the whole thing when Gojyo won another hand, alcohol dimmed attention successfully diverted. There'd been a rather nice assortment of liquor squirreled away in the cellar that the boys, en masse, decided to make it their mission to put a sizeable dent in by morning.

"….no way." He stared at the cards that had been smacked triumphantly down on the table, then up at Gojyo's shit eating smirk. "No way," he repeated, caught somewhere between anger and mortification.

"Loser loses another piece," the halfbreed reminded him, scarlet eyes glittering with vicious amusement over another's predicament. "Off with the pants, Red Boy."

"Whose bloody idea was it to play strip poker anyway?" Kougaiji groused as he fumbled with his belt. He'd been lucky enough to avoid baring skin for most of the game, as each piece of jewelry counted as an individual article and Kou had smugly divested himself of all ornamentation first before actually taking anything incriminating off.

"Shuyin's," Doku muttered, looking disgruntled. He was down to one boot and trousers. Gojyo was sprawled quite comfortably across a fully dressed Hakkai (save for his sash ribbon thing) in only socks and boxers, and no one thought for a moment that it wasn't deliberate that Gojyo had lost that much clothing.

Kougaiji blinked. "But Shuyin ..isn't .."

"Around to suffer the consequences?" Hakkai added dryly, idly flicking Gojyo's ponytail with the hand that wasn't holding his cup of sake. "I'm beginning to wonder if that wasn't the idea. Is he really your father?"

The prince shrugged, eeling out of his pants with far more grace than Gojyo had previously exhibited in doing the same. It wasn't everyday one saw a kappa hopping around on one foot, swearing at the inexplicable snag of material that wouldn't let him kick the rest of it off. Hakkai, knowing Gojyo's usual proficiency at getting himself (and others) out of clothing, chalked it up to the quality alcohol and added Jien factor. Gojyo wasn't precisely himself around Jien.

"My mother seems fairly sure, and she would know." It was easier to ignore the fact and treat the man like …well, his mother's boyfriend. Kougaiji certainly didn't remember Shuyin during his childhood. And he was too old now to accept so easily a new father figure in his life, when he had such awful memories of Gyumaoh botching the job. Better to treat the former Toushin Taishi like a stranger, an ally, an equal, rather than a paternal authority figure. Because really, what sort of responsible father initiated a strip poker game?

"I suppose."

Yaone wandered back into the room with a harried expression and made a beeline for the nearest bottle, ignoring her pantless lord and savior standing there like an idiot.

"I had to dose Lirin to get her to sleep," she announced to the room at large after snagging a full, unopened container and rendering it otherwise. There was a certain edge to her normally soft voice. "After sixty minutes of explaining why 'Kougaiji nii-chan' gets to stay up and she doesn't and why 'baldy Sanzo and Goku-chan' went off together hours ago and why 'Rasetsu okasan' and braid boy did the same and why ….." She stopped. Took a breath. Took a drink. Her voice was much calmer when she started again. "You get the idea. So anyone who wants to argue with me being here and drinking myself unconscious can kindly go to Hell."

Kougaiji had the good grace to look guilty. "Uh."

"Oh don't worry about it. I love your sister. I just sometimes want to permanently damage her vocal chords." She blinked, focusing on the present redheads' lack of pants. "Wait, why are you three all …."

"Strip poker," Gojyo said brightly, too obviously comfortable draped all over Hakkai to even pretend to flirt with a girl and not look moronic. "Wanna play?"

"That might be somewhat inappropriate…" Hakkai began, slightly flustered on Yaone's behalf, until she waved him off.

"In this crowd? Like any of you care." Yaone had actually snagged herself a glass or eight of liquor before heading back to what had been dubbed the common room, having a spectacular migraine after dealing with Lirin. Said migraine was now pleasantly drowned and fuzzy, so too were her normal painfully polite manners.

"I care!" came the chorus from half siblings and one prince.

"Most of the time," Gojyo added as an afterthought, sliding a hand surreptitiously up Hakkai's thigh. The action was born with good grace, although the brunette's fingers tightened in Gojyo's ponytail. "Not right now, though."

"We noticed. No, I'll just watch, thanks." Miss Mouse was a lot less prim and proper and damn near impossible to faze after a decent buzz.

"Hakkai's already won anyway," Kougaiji said hastily, dark skin hiding most of the blush threatening to burn his face off. "There's no point in dragging out the inevitable." So saying, he exited the room with pants in hand and some empty liquor bottles in the other, on pretext of tossing some of the used glassware.

Doku nearly choked when he thought he heard Yaone mutter "Spoilsport" under her breath.

And meanwhile, In a Certain Bedroom

"Rasetsu dearest, you're going to set the sheets on fire again if you don't – "

"Shut. Up."

"Shutting up."

What, you wanted outtakes? This whole thing is one giant outtake that oughta be cut.