Part Eight
Sanzo woke up in a dark room with a splitting headache and the familiar feeling of dead exhaustion weighing down his body. This was not unusual. Nor was it unusual for him to wake with his arm going numb because some stupid idiot was laying on it and cutting off his circulation.
With some difficulty he brought his other arm across to shove a …Goku, he realized dimly, off the tingling limb, so he could go back to sleep in peace with full bloodflow restored.
Except touching Goku brought memory rushing back with all the subtlety of a speeding train.
Firebloodwhitewallsscreamingragefearfloweryellowbookswordblackleathertrustlovelosspainpainpain--
Dammit, the room was spinning again. Not all those memories were his. He snarled silently, hating both the vertigo and the fact that he couldn't stop the bedroom from wavering before his eyes, images running like wet paint before melting into something else entirely. Another bedroom, familiar, though Sanzo was certain he'd never seen it in this life. Another shadowed ceiling. Another shuttered window. A darkness cloaking them that wasn't so deep as the one he'd just been looking at, because everything was muted like that in Heaven. The sound of someone else's breathing hadn't changed, though the warmth at his side was a lot more unobtrusive before the growth spurt.
It's not real, he told himself even as all five senses tried to convince him otherwise. None of this is real.
It wanted to be real. It felt real. The sheets under him were softer, the air sweeter with the faintest hint of sakura and incense, and if he turned his head to look at the child nestled neatly in the space between arm and torso, it would be the same stupid monkey that he'd rescued from a stone prison. The same open, unguarded expression. The same long hair and rounded cheeks of prepubescent youth. The same deceptive frailty of build that somehow bore up the heavy clanking weight of his manacles. Chains made Goku look too young, as did bonds of any kind, which was why Sanzo never used any on him in their games even if Goku would insist that he didn't mind, that he wouldn't panic so long as Sanzo was the one tying him down.
The dream rippled. There. Think of what hadn't happened five hundred years ago because Goku had still been a child. Think of what Sanzo hadn't meant to happen at all, because Goku was boisterous and annoying and it had been an accident, a mistake that Sanzo berated himself for ever allowing to occur. Not because it wasn't good. Not because Goku wasn't good, to him and for him. Merely because tumbling the monkey was infinitely more dangerous than using Hakkai or Gojyo. He could always tell Hakkai or Gojyo to fuck off and that would be it between them if he wanted to end things. Easy.
Goku with his eyes slitted gold in desperate hunger and a feverish blush rising on his cheeks as he panted, thighs spread invitingly and Sanzo's name purred deep in his throat, was a lot harder to dismiss. A hell of a lot harder.
Reality grudgingly re-arranged itself in proper order once more, having no chance against more immediate memories like the cradle of pressure and fire that was Goku letting him inside. Like the noise the boy made when he reached climax, and the marks he left behind because the itan, for all his adamant personal code that he would never, ever hurt his sun, could turn into an uncontrolled creature who bit and writhed and clung finally, sweet submission, while Sanzo drove him slowly out of his mind.
The room came back into focus, Heaven giving up on trying to rival Sanzo's less than divine train of thought. Score.
Pain, however, greeted him through the mental link as soon as he was (somewhat) back in his right mind and derailed the pleasant distraction of reminiscence. Fuck.
Goku shifted, making a noise that sounded far too much like a agonized whimper for Sanzo's comfort, and curled tighter in on himself, pressing his forehead against the older man's shoulder. Seeking assurance. Possibly picking up on Sanzo's own state of awake. Too weary and disoriented to be his normal heartless bastard self, the priest obliged and let the boy hide in the circle of his arms, pulling him close and tucking a dark head under his chin. The tension in that wiry body eased but did not disappear completely, indicating a state far from the contentment of deep sleep. Dreaming. Dreaming of Heaven and gods, white walls and blood and the scent of sakura petals.
It was going to be a long night. Sanzo shut his eyes and reached futilely for the calm of meditation, knowing he wouldn't be able to settle his thoughts enough to find it, because he was dealing with the monkey's internal chaos as well as his own. This prediction turned out to be quite accurate. He lay awake, listening to Goku's labored breathing and barely even noticing the unconscious movements of his right hand, stroking the boy's back in a futile attempt to soothe.
There was no comfort. No escape from the images in his head. In their heads. And he had no warning five minutes later, other than a sudden tensing of muscles, when Goku finally jerked awake with a dead man's name on his lips and a grief so deep and black welling in his thoughts that it drowned them both.
:He'sdeadhe'sdeadohgodhe'sdeadIlosthim—:
The rest degenerated into incoherent hysterics. Awake, Goku's mind through their link was hardly more rational than it was in berserker form, and Sanzo, caught quite unprepared by the storm, was swept off his metaphorical feet by the mental onslaught of crushing despair. He might have blacked out again. A child's voice, distant and terrified and wailing for someone named Konzen, was the last thing he heard.
Let it never be said that Sanzo wasn't a hardy, resilient bastard, however. He broke the waters of consciousness not a minute later and fought his way back to full awareness. He would not tolerate being plowed under by the strength of some idiot's angst alone.
Goku was still crying. Still distraught and lost and caught between his memory nightmare and waking world. Steeling himself this time for the backlash, Sanzo called his ward tentatively with thought alone. Brat probably wouldn't hear him over the noise of his own grief if he tried to say it aloud. :Goku.:
The response was weak, thready, but definitely there. A pause, a hitch in breath. :…..Kon ..zen …:
:Here.:
Disbelief. Realization slow to come, mired in the deep murk of history. :You …you're ..:
:Not dead. Here. I'm here.:
Giving the boy something tangible to focus on seemed to help. There were marks left where Goku clutched at him too fiercely, but Sanzo wasn't about to complain about a bruise or two if it brought the monkey back or just closer to something resembling sanity.
Slowly, too slowly, the wracking, uncontrollable sobs died down into occasional hitches of breath. Slowly, too slowly, the iron tension eased away until Goku lay quiet in his arms, limp and unresisting and utterly drained. Sanzo was feeling much the same way. His brain felt as though it had been run through a meatgrinder. Bad enough he had to be witness to the hysteria, the sensememory leaking through their bond just had to go ahead and give him the first person experience of it, too.
He hoped fervently that the worst was over. He didn't think either of them could take much more. At least the brat was awake now, or something approximating. Dark hair brushed softly against his cheek as Goku settled closer. The clean shirt Kanzeon had conjured for him was wet at the shoulder with salt misery.
The return of lost memories should have been a blessing. Goku had certainly seemed to want them back. Now though, witnessing their aftermath, Sanzo wondered if the boy was regretting that seal being lifted.
He certainly was. The mental connection that bound them had flared from the little tiny thread it normally was to a river, flooding two ways between them, and his head ached with thoughts and emotions that weren't his own. Whatever Goku was seeing in his memories, it called up something equally buried and painful in Sanzo. Blood kept seeping into the edges of the scenes playing out in his mind that were beyond his ability to comprehend, not knowing who the people in them were or why it mattered so much that he didn't know. He could grasp only the dim sense of catastrophe, of violence and pain and dissolving faith, and the flashes of loss that told him there, a life had been snuffed out, an important life, gone like a candleflame and swallowed up by the night. Goku had been the only one left, somehow. Watching, screaming, crying, as his world collapsed around him.
..so much blood ...
Goku trembled, and it made own throat tighten in shared grief even as his ward choked down another sob. This was just the sort of 'compensation' he ought to have expected from the hag. The saru was obviously not up to dealing with his history and it was tearing him apart trying to cope with it. Not to mention, dragging Sanzo down with him.
They were both going insane.
:Konzen ...:
Not the least because Sanzo was hearing voices. Or rather, a voice.
He'd always been able to hear it. Always had some uncanny ability of perception that let him pick up on things that weren't being said aloud. Take the whole possessed Kougaiji mess, for instance. And Goku's incessant calling for him so many years ago.
But it had never been like this. Never this close. Never this clear, like someone was whispering in his ear. And never, ever this perceptive, as if the saru (even barely coherent) were responding to his very thoughts.
:I'm not Konzen: he tried to insist.
The voice faltered, and Goku shuddered in his arms. "It .." Broken, raspy, throat scratchy from the waterworks.
: ..hurts ...Konzen ...:
He was at a loss, driven by the despair in that unspoken plea to act but completely without any notion of just what he was supposed to do. The re-alignment of someone's head was surely a painful process. He tried not to flinch as another flicker of sense memory escaped through their link, drowning him for a moment in remembrance of coldemptylonging trapped inside a stone prison. Goku had slept through a great deal of his confinement, when time meant nothing and his thoughts drifted aimlessly even when his eyes stayed open. It was not unlike what Kougaiji had endured, sealed half in dreaming at Houtou Castle. Most of the experience was a hazy blur for Goku, with bouts of lucidity only returning to him during the last hundred years or so. Each of those, however, was a knife twisting in Sanzo's gut now.
He needed to sleep. They needed to sleep. Kanzeon had been very adamant about that, since the re-structuring of a mind was a delicate business, and adapting to it a very dangerous process if things were ...rushed. Se'd probably meant dangerous only to Goku, but Sanzo wasn't feeling so stable himself anymore with their link raw and unprotected and projecting the way it was.
:Calm down: he tried, unconsciously echoing Hakkai and aiming for soothing. Something which, admittedly, he didn't do very well, but he was reaching the end of his endurance. Another episode of upset and he was going to find the nearest sharp object to ram into his temples. Or Goku's. Or first Goku's and then his own. :Stop thinking about it. The hag said ...said you need to sleep and let it sink in that way.:
:Can't sleep: was all he got in reply, not that he was expecting much else. Were their positions reversed, Sanzo would have snarled at how the fuck anyone could be expected to sleep when the mother of all supernatural migraines was tearing through one's brain, slowly reforming it as it went along.
Maybe if he went to that apothocary chick. She might have something convenient and pill sized to induce unconsciousness. Or Hakkai might. In fact, if Hakkai had been intelligent …
He nearly knocked over one of the glasses of water that was sitting on the bedside table, and even managed a triumphant twist of lips when he found the two accompanying pills. Oh, joy of joys and happy day. Hakkai was getting nominated for sainthood. Hakkai was getting lots of ohgodthankyousomuch sex as soon as Sanzo's head was straightened out enough that he could sit up without the dizziness knocking him flat again.
Goku wasn't much on coherence, still halfway between dreaming and waking, but he picked up on what Sanzo wanted him to do readily enough, and obediently swallowed down the bitter sedative. The projections slipping through their link blurred, slowed, and finally died away altogether as Goku's mind gradually shut down.
Leaving Sanzo mercifully, blissfully alone in his. He paused in reaching for the second pill, wanting to savor the feeling of not having any more intrusive presences in his skull…
Gold eyes. Shock and betrayal. "You lied to me."
….except for the sensememories that had already managed to leak through and anchor themselves. He growled. Stupid fucking memories that weren't his own. Stupid fucking monkey for giving them to him. Stupid fucking hag for facilitating this in the first place. Stupid, fucking, goddamn mental link that neither knew how to control.
But it wouldn't go away now. The flash of recognition and anger, and the sense of satisfaction he'd gotten in seeing the other man flinch at his accusation. He had no idea why he'd said it. He only knew that it was true, which meant a certain ex-Toushin Taishi had some explaining to do.
Stewing over this was a lot less distracting than an out of control telepathic channel. His body, while incessantly whining about how lethargic and tired it was, now took the opportunity also to remind Sanzo that he was a heavy smoker, and that discontinuing the trend so suddenly as he had would result in very, very bad things if the habit was not fed and fed soon. As an afterthought, his stomach added that it wouldn't mind being fed either.
Oh, cigarettes. His mouth actually started watering at the thought. Goku was so deeply asleep Sanzo could hardly register him even being alive through their link, so there was little chance of him waking up with further hysterics if Sanzo just took five minutes to slip off and indulge…
Tired, his body tried to remind him when he contemplated the act of sitting up. Sanzo ignored it. It wasn't physical exhaustion that made him lethargic, it was mental, because judging by the lack of light he'd already gotten an evening and probably half a night of uninterrupted sleep. More than he was used to, really.
After have extricated himself from Goku and the tangle of warm sheets, he paused at the door, hesitating.
Whatever. Like the monkey could even hear him. But a hint of gold winked from the bedside table where a certain pagan's pendant lay, and Sanzo grudgingly recalled some sort of internal decision made in a blood soaked castle to be more honest. With himself and others.
"I'll be right back," he said, only a tad surly. Goku didn't even twitch. Bastard.
He was already out in the hallway before the intangible mothwing sensation of someone else's thoughts brushing his own came, and knew that, on some level, he had been heard.
-
Basic necessities of survival seen to, Sanzo was feeling a lot better (but not enough to warrant a good mood, because his head still ached and it was still some ungodly hour of the pre-dawn morning) when he ran into Rasetsunyo.
She looked about as tired as he felt. There were shadows under her eyes that he didn't remember noticing before, as well as rigid lines of tension in her face and in the set of her shoulders. 'Death warmed over' was too strong a description, but certainly nearing the end of endurance.
He neglected to mention any of this. Stress was only to be expected, after all, putting up with his pack of idiots as well as her own.
Her hair was wet, what little of it that hadn't been hidden up under a towel, and the lack of earrings or proper clothing besides a fluffy robe indicated just what she had been doing at this unholy time of morning instead of sleeping like a sane person.
Then again, given what she'd mentioned of her history, perhaps she was used to waking up so early in order to kick a certain someone out of her bed before the rest of the world roused and discovered her little affair.
The paradoxical image of him up and about and lurking in the hallway didn't seem to be registering well with her. "Sanzo-sama," she said blankly. "You're awake."
"Not willingly." Sanzo was faintly disgusted with himself at not being able to put off the issue of memory until a more decent hour.
One could almost see the mental shake she gave herself, and that taken aback expression melted from her face into one of suspicion. A faintly accusing, very mom-like note entered her voice. "Did you take the medicine? That god …woman …thing ..said you had to take the medicine if you woke up, and Hakkai agreed to make sure you did."
"Later," he said shortly, wondering at what point the Empress had gotten to a first name basis with Hakkai, or where she got off acting like his health was any of her concern. "I have a few things to take care of before that."
Her expression was still vaguely disapproving. "I know it's been three days, and you're surely feeling better, but still …" She stopped at the look on his face. "What?"
Sanzo was staring. "It's been …." He stopped. Tried to get his brain in order enough to process the illogic of that statement, and failed. "That's impossible. It can't have been that long."
She gave him an odd look before repeating herself, more carefully this time. "You've been asleep for three days. Goku as well."
He continued to stare. Three days he'd lost. No wonder he felt like so much shit crammed into a blender.
"Why didn't someone wake me up!"
"Kannon-sama told us not to try and wake either of you before you were ready."
He glared, still not willing to concede his point even against what amounted to a divine decree. They should have known better. There were things needing to be done, and no time to waste dicking around here. Fuckit, Hakkai should have known better.
"He's just down the hall if you'd like to bitch," Rasetsunyo offered wryly, in no way apologetic (moms were long used to the frustration of sick children over their own impotence), and Sanzo realized he must have said that last aloud.
"If he's even awake I'm sure he's busy. And I've got better things to do than interrupt him and the cockroach," he snapped, figuring that if it had been three days stuck in relatively close quarters, Rasetsunyo ought to have already discerned for herself that Hakkai and Gojyo could not be trusted alone with each other.
One fine red eyebrow arched. "He's awake. But not busy, I'm sure. Gojyo took a room back down the opposite hall after …um." She broke off abruptly.
Sanzo's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "After ….?"
"Um." Her gaze slid away from his in distinctly shifty fashion. Empress or not, imperial diplomacy was a skill it took several cups of strong coffee to work up to in the pre-dawn morning.
"You should go talk to Hakkai," she suggested with false brightness, recovering, before adding on (with a flicker of recalled matronly admonishment): "If you're positive you won't go back to sleep, that is."
"I'm not going back to sleep," he growled, disgusted both at her evasions and the mere suggestion of him giving in so easily. "Apparently the rest of the world can't handle my absence. We must be in the middle of a disaster by now, after three days without me."
There was something very ominous in the silence that suddenly fell.
Bloody fuck. He shouldn't have opened his mouth. "What happened."
Rasetsunyo met his gaze steadily but did not explain. After a moment she said slowly, "I think, given the state of things, you might want to speak to your allies first before hearing anything from me. And I don't have time to give the full explanation right now."
He was unimpressed by her sudden attack of Grim and Somber. "Are you being deliberately evasive just to annoy me, or is it a personality defect?"
"I have a family to look after, Sanzo-sama," she informed him with quiet dignity, refusing to rise to the bait. "Not to mention a dynasty. Forgive me if I'm a little pre-occupied."
"What's that supposed to – "
He shut up when Rasetsunyo pulled back a drawn curtain on the closest window, so he had a clear view of the shimmering, unmistakable lights of campfires numbering in the thousands scattered as far as the eye could see around the castle.
Sanzo had seen enough military encampments to recognize an army settled into siege.
"Um," he echoed intelligently.
She was already knocking on Hakkai's door when he caught up to her and said flatly, "There's an army outside."
"Yes," she replied serenely.
"There's an army outside. Encamped."
"Yes, Sanzo-sama."
"In siege formation."
"Yes, Sanzo-sama."
"Outside this castle."
"Yes, Sanzo-sama."
The door opened and Rasetsunyo was spared any further inane repetitions. Sanzo took one look, turned an alarming shade of white and did a fabulous encore performance of his earlier passionate embrace with the floor.
Goujun looked down with a faintly puzzled expression at the monk sprawled senseless at his boots. "It's for you, Tenpou."
Hakkai sighed.
-
Sanzo woke up in a dark room with a splitting headache and the familiar feeling of dead exhaustion weighing down his body. This seemed to be a popular state of affairs for him lately.
"Sanzo?"
"No," he retorted acidly without opening his eyes. He didn't have to see Hakkai's polite, slightly strained, oh-honestly smile to know it was there. Which was better than the worried-but-trying-to-hide-it smile that had been there moments before, evidenced by the particular tone in his voice when he'd said Sanzo's name.
Opening his eyes and forcing them to focus took more effort than he wanted to admit. Two blurred shapes hovering over him resolved into one green, slightly less blurred Hakkai and one white, slightly less blurred —
Sanzo passed out again.
"Maybe you should stand somewhere where he can't see you," Hakkai suggested at last, somewhat nettled.
Goujun grumbled about weak pathetic mortals and moved over to the wall.
-
For the third time Sanzo woke up in a dark room with a splitting headache and the familiar feeling of dead exhaustion weighing down his body. "Hakkai."
"Yes, Sanzo?"
"He's not supposed to be here." There was no need to indicate who the 'he' in question was.
"Well, technically he's been here all along, but Kanzeon granted him the license to return to his true form when se came back yesterday. Some part of the recompense Heaven owes us, I believe."
"But he's dead." Goku's memories told him so.
"He was reincarnated into this life, as were we all."
The blond shook off Hakkai's hand as he sat up, trying to rise to his feet and opting instead to remain seated on the edge of the bed when vertigo started to pull at his senses. His suspicious gaze remained pinned on the intruder leaning against the wall, however. "Reincarnated as what? It's only been the four of us— "
Sanzo stopped. Glared suspiciously at the white clad Dragon King of the Western Ocean.
Goujun glared right back. "Has no one ever told you that it is impolite to put out cigarettes on the upholstery of someone else's vehicle?"
Sanzo made an untranslatable noise and started cursing. The word "Jiipu" could be discerned (barely) in the middle of all the obscenities.
Hakkai eyed his teammate with frowning disapproval. "Did you really, Sanzo? I told Gojyo I'd skin him alive if I ever caught him doing that again."
"I might have gotten scars if the damage didn't disappear after shifting between forms." Goujun added unhelpfully, sounding aggrieved. "Not to mention the mental trauma, which –didn't- disappear after shifting between forms." He directed a significant Look at Hakkai, who looked briefly alarmed before blushing furiously.
In between more profanity (and blushing a bit himself), Sanzo ground out, "It was his idea to try it on the hood."
Betrayed, Hakkai countered that it had been Sanzo's idea to try it in the backseat.
"And whose idea was it to try it while driving?" Goujun asked from between gritted teeth. Fangs. Whatever it was that dragons had.
Hakkai and Sanzo pointed at each other simultaneously. Then Sanzo realized he had no recollection of that whatsoever.
"Wait, no, that was Gojyo," Hakkai admitted.
Sanzo stared at him askance. "And where was I?"
Hakkai flashed a falsely bright smile. "You were asleep."
"In the seat right next to you!"
"We were quiet."
Goujun muttered darkly, "No you weren't."
Hakkai's smile cracked a bit around the edges.
Sanzo cradled his aching head in his hands and wished fervently that he had stayed in bed.
"If your head still hurts, you should have stayed in bed." Hakkai even had the balls to sound reproving.
The monk stopped headaching and started glaring. "There's a goddamn army encamped outside that none of you retards saw fit to inform me about. I'm not going back to bed."
"Oh yes. That."
"Yes. That. What the fuck happened?"
"Youkai democracy in action," Goujun remarked cryptically, pushing himself off the wall. "Which I trust you'll have no difficulty in explaining without my aid, Marshal," and he nodded to Hakkai in a very military way, "so I'll just be somewhere else." He was out the door before the brunette's soft, startled 'alright' had even faded.
Sanzo watched the door click shut and opened his mouth.
"Don't. Just. Don't." One could nearly see Hakkai's patient civility draining away as he sank down into a chair. "I've heard enough from Gojyo already and, sick man or not, I will be forced to take measures if I hear it from you."
"Screw that." Sanzo didn't have to ask to know that Gojyo and Hakkai had been fighting (Hakkai had that wounded hate-you-love-you Gonou Look in his eyes again). Nor did he have to ask to know that the halfbreed was probably off somewhere being jealous/depressed/furious because a former suitor of Tenpou's (or at least that's what Sanzo thought he was picking up from Goku's memories) had been reincarnated as Hakkai's beloved pet and was now, to put it bluntly, back in form to pick things up where they'd been left off. Gojyo was so predictable, and Sanzo certainly wasn't going to follow his example by bitching about omg wtf had Hakkai been doing with the newly restored Goujun in his room at such an unholy hour. Sanzo didn't care. Really. Not a bit.
Okay, so Sanzo would care later. Right now he wanted to know why they were under seige.
Hakkai studied the ceiling. He looked harried and exhausted as well, the blond noted with distinct displeasure, and found his mood souring further by the second. Whatever was going on, Sanzo had a huge hunch that it wasn't anything non-Tenjiku dwellers needed to involve themselves in, and a stressed Hakkai smacked heavily of involvement.
"Is Goku alright?" the human-turned-youkai asked at last, rather than offering any useful information.
"Yes. And if you don't answer my question I'll throttle you," Sanzo promised.
"…I guess I don't need to ask if you're alright, then, if you're up to making death threats."
"I'm up to making good on them, too."
"No doubt." Hakkai rubbed at his temple. "I'm afraid we may have gotten into something very nasty," he admitted. "Granted, my knowledge of politics extends only to history texts, but from what I've been hearing over the past few days, Tenjiku stands on the brink of civil war and we're going to get caught right in the middle of it."
Progress, but still didn't explain the siege. Sanzo raised a brow imperiously and silently demanded more details.
Hakkai complied. "The Empress mentioned that before Gyumaoh, there were a great many factions vying for power in this land. Petty kings and lords, each with their own individual territories and fighting forces. Gyumaoh united them and forced them into submission, and although I doubt his motivations had anything to do with altriusm, it was indeed for the good of the realm that he did so. Tenjiku was tearing itself apart. Some of the factions even recognized the disaster in progress, and that revelation swayed their decisions to bow to a central authority."
"Hakkai," Sanzo said impatiently, "that was over five hundred years ago."
"And it has direct relevance to what's going on now," Hakkai replied in his best don't-interrupt-the-teacher voice. "The authority of Gyumaoh's throne, and this included his heirs, was the only authority the petty lords were willing to bow to. He and his Empress transformed Tenjiku from a war-torn patchwork of divided loyalties into a strong nation able to stand up to the constant raids on their borders. So, after the incident with Nataku, even though there were several attempts to take power made by faction heads, not one of them was successful. Half the aristocrats and nearly all of the common people refused to accept any but a legitimate successor. Gyokumen Kyushu only managed to weasel her way in by awakening and manipulating Kougaiji." He paused, a sudden thought occurring.
Sanzo said it for him. "And no one, in the span of hundreds of years, had thought of doing that before she came along."
Hakkai shrugged. "She was there at the time of the sealing. Perhaps she knew something others didn't about how to undo it. Anyway, her reign by proxy quickly turned into a dictatorship and everyone knew it, and the old rumblings of dissent started up again. There had been huge inroads made into the border territories by long time rival powers, and when she did nothing to stop the erosion or reclaim what had been lost, the people living there decided they'd been abandoned and threw their lot in with the new management." He gestured vaguely at the wall to indicate outside. "That's part of the complications. We have, outside right now: armies of local factions that resented Gyokumen's oppression but don't want Kougaiji to take her place, and armies of foreign lords that don't give a damn about Gyokumen and want the throne for themselves. They've been content to fight amongst each other for the moment, but that will last only until they find a common target in the royalists who will surely rally to the cause."
"Let me guess. Those who want Kougaiji or someone of the legitimate line in power."
A nod.
Sanzo mulled all of this over. "Three way war."
Another nod.
"Not our problem."
"Sanzo."
Sanzo matched exasperated looks with the healer. "I mean it. This is none of our concern."
"We are rather physically stuck in the middle of it, if you hadn't noticed," Hakkai pointed out dryly.
"That doesn't mean we need to do anything about it. We came, we completed our mission, we're done. Let Kougaiji and his bunch deal with the rest of this crap."
"They're badly outnumbered."
"Then they should use some common sense and withdraw from a hopeless battle. They don't have to stay here and fight. Let someone else run the country."
"Civil war, Sanzo. Decades of it. Hundreds of years have not changed the attitudes of the people towards the kingship, or else Gyokumen would not have needed Kougaiji."
"We don't owe these people anything. They brought their troubles--"
"—on themselves?" Hakkai pinned him with a Look. "You can't tell me that any of this would have happened if we had not been involved. They have no government because of us."
Sanzo was skeptical.
Hakkai was inexorable. "Gyokumen is dead because of us. Things would be different if there were no existing legitimate claimants to the throne, fine, we could go home and let the factions duke it out amongst themselves over who ought to try for the crown, but that isn't what happened. We changed everything. Kougaiji, Rasetsunyo and Lirin are still alive, and in all probability, only remained that way because we were involved."
"We did not come here to play heroes, goddammit, or to uphold some fucking moral high ground or ideal of justice."
"We died in Heaven doing just that."
The monk stilled. Something that might have been betrayal or even pain flashed across his face.
Hakkai continued quietly, without apology. "Goujun remembers. I ..asked. I thought it might be prudent to know what happened. Better to know and be prepared …if only because of you and Goku …"
"That was …different," Sanzo managed, not wanting to hear anymore. Not wanting to think on it anymore. There was a great pressure on his chest for some reason. "That doesn't have anything to do with this."
Hakkai rose from his chair, and though barely perceptible unless one knew him well (and Sanzo did, to his occasional regret), the set of his shoulders had changed. Sanzo almost expected him to pull out a cigarette, because only Tenpou in one of his deadly serious moods could stalk towards someone like that. He resisted the urge to fall back, no, lash out, because Konzen and Sanzo had differing opinions on what to do with intruders in their personal space as hands settled firmly on his shoulders so he could not look away.
The dark jade of those eyes had not changed. The quiet richness of that voice had not changed. God, man and demon, but his words were and had always been the traps of a master tactician.
"That was challenging the authority of Heaven. That was defying a system that we had no chance of changing, for the sake of two children. Tell me that was not fighting a hopeless battle in the name of a moral high ground. Tell me we did not die in the name of justice." He leaned in a bit, just to threaten, and said very, very softly, "I won't ask you to admit that it was for love."
With no escape, Sanzo simply refused to answer. Or maybe it was that he couldn't answer. His temples were throbbing again in time with his pulse. Pointedly avoiding the youkai's gaze, he kept his eyes on some spot over Hakkai's shoulder and tried to ignore the way the walls kept shifting between white painted and shadowed gray.
"Will you at least look at me when I'm talking to you, Konzen?" Hakkai, or maybe it wasn't Hakkai at all, asked after the silence had gone on too long.
He got a tensing of muscles and a harsh, strained whisper in response. "Don't call me that. And back off."
"Make me."
Of its own accord, Sanzo's fixed glare slipped to meet his eyes, but other than that, nothing.
He tried again. "We risked everything trying to save something worth protecting. We have something here, again, worth protecting. Worth saving."
"I refuse."
"Somehow I don't think you will."
"I am not anyone's savior."
"You were ours, Konzen."
There was a flicker of real anguish this time at the name; old, deep, and raw. "Don't."
The brunette was already leaning in, intention unmistakable and his voice a mere whisper of breath. "What are you so afraid of?"
The blond was already tilted up slightly to meet him, defiant and conceding at the same time. Any verbal response, if there even was one, got lost somewhere in the familiar tangle of mouth and tongue. Familiar and unfamiliar, although neither could say why. There were no ink or nicotine stains on the fingers that fell away from bare shoulders, but the gentleness in them was the same when they cupped pale cheeks just now heating to blush. Sanzo never blushed over something so simple as a kiss.
Except perhaps Sanzo wasn't here right now. Or rather, Sanzo wasn't the only one here. His headache was back in full force. So too was the dizziness, the sensation of falling without moving. Whispers or echoes ringing in his ears. Wet paint running, shifting, changing reality into what it wasn't.
Tenpou pulled back far too early for his liking, quiet scholar's voice murmuring something that didn't quite register. He ignored it, ignored the way the Marshal sounded as though he were speaking from somewhere far away, ignored the world that was muted and gray around him. His head hurt and he didn't know why. He was shaking, inexplicably cold, and his chest ached with something that had no name. Tenpou was both too close alive and too far away alive, taunting with his warmth, his solidity.
He reached out carefully, hesitantly, to draw the other kami back down to him, because this was Kenren's territory (jealously guarded) and an extended privilege, not a right, but he was so cold, so aching cold, and if Tenpou would only ….
ah
Worlds collided in the meeting of their lips. He melted into it, ceding control, because that was how this game was played and he had neither the will nor Kenren's experience to change the rules.
The air trapped between them smelled of sakura.
Tenpou was being awfully subdued today, he noted when they finally parted for breath. Normally at this point he would have been flat on his back with Tenpou's weight pressing him down into the mattress and Tenpou's mouth not allowing much more than a second long window of respite to gasp for oxygen. Perhaps something had happened. If he and Kenren were fighting again, so help him…
"Sanzo!"
His head snapped to the side with the force of the blow. Hakkai stood back, breathing just a little too fast and looking stricken, hand still upraised.
Sanzo blinked. Blinked again. The guilty red mark on his cheek throbbed painfully as the room slowly came back into focus.
"I'm sorry," Hakkai said stupidly.
There was silence as they stared at each other.
"You … just …..you slapped me, you fuck." The monk was incredulous. That wouldn't last. That would give way to overcompensating fury shortly, to hide the growing sense of unease and unraveling control.
Hakkai felt a bit rattled himself. The world had slipped for him as well, just for a moment there, when he'd called Sanzo's name and gotten no response. When violet eyes holding nothing mortal in them met his own, and the person that looked like Sanzo and tasted like Sanzo had touched him, had kissed him with a gentle, almost shy sweetness that Sanzo just didn't possess.
"I don't think," he said slowly after a moment, with great reluctance, "that it was you I struck."
He had the dubious pleasure of seeing the last bit of color wash out of Sanzo's already pale face.
There was more silence as they stopped staring and started avoiding each other's gazes, neither wanting to find a dead lover lingering in violet or green eyes.
"Fuck," Sanzo said finally. It might have been an admission.
"Perhaps you shouldn't be up," the healer suggested carefully, more than a little alarmed and regretting now not shooing Sanzo back to bed when he'd first shown up. Kanzeon had mentioned side effects. Kanzeon had not mentioned mental breakdowns and involuntary regression into past lives.
"Civil war, remember?" Sanzo was angry now. Shaken. Trying to hide it and not succeeding. His knuckles were white where his hands clenched at the edge of the bed.
"They aren't going to attack until Kougaiji's made his intent not to surrender clear. They're expecting his answer by sun zenith. But until then, there's still time to – "
"I don't need time to recover," Sanzo growled. "I'm not sick. Don't treat me like I'm goddamned sick."
"But…"
"Shut up."
Hakkai set his jaw. "Konzen."
The monk flinched as though he'd been bitchslapped again. And then glared.
The proving of one's point was a hollow victory in this case, but Hakkai wasn't about to apologize.
"Go to bed."
"Fuck you."
"Given what just happened, I believe it was the other way around. Although Goujun never mentioned any of that so I can't be quite sure."
Sanzo presented him with his best Eat Shit and Die glare. Hakkai in doctor mode was immune.
"If you won't go willingly, I'll knock you out."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Try me." The healer was deadly serious. "This is not something I can fix, Sanzo, and evidently a lot more serious than any of us knew."
"I'm fine."
"You're not. The mind is infinitely more delicate than the physical body. Any false move, any unnecessary stress, any further …incidents….I don't know what might happen. We have only what Kanzeon said to go on, and that was for you to stay asleep."
"Tell me how I'm to avoid unnecessary stress with a war breaking out over our heads."
Hakkai regretted bringing up that whole thing at all. "As you said, it's not our problem."
The monk wasn't going to let him off that easily. "And the people here?" he asked scathingly. "And peace? Your 'something worth saving?'"
"Are all important. But not, at the moment, more important."
"Selfish idiot," Sanzo snapped; paradoxically angry, worried, and maybe possibly oh-let's-be-honest-since-no-one-else-will-ever-know, a tiny bit flattered.
"Yes," agreed the genocide unflinchingly.
"Do something moronic and I'll kill you." Read: 'do –anything- in the interest of protecting me and I'll kill you.' Sanzo was all too aware of what Hakkai was capable of in the interest of protecting someone.
A mass murderer's smile shouldn't look so harmless.
"Che." Sanzo got up and headed for the door. This discussion was going nowhere. More than that, the room was too small. Too hot, too full of Hakkai's scent and Hakkai's concern and Hakkai's damnable perception. He needed space to breathe.
Hakkai had a parting shot ready, however, and it was delivered with a bland, pleasant tone that only the brunette could achieve while giving what was effectively an order (or emotional blackmail). "I trust you're not going anywhere except back to Goku. I'm sure he isn't dealing well with this without you."
Dead in the black. Sanzo stiffened, then snarled and stalked out into the hallway, nearly hitting Goujun with the door as it banged open.
The Dragon King fixed Sanzo with an evil look, but otherwise offered no comment.
"Sanzo?" Hakkai came to the doorway.
Sanzo paused in the corridor, not turning around. "You said noon. So I'll have a decision at noon."
"You don't have to--- "
"I do. And I will."
"Fine." The healer gave up. "And?"
"And what?"
"And in the meantime…?" One could almost imagine the ball of paralyzing chi energy being readied.
Sanzo gritted his teeth and told Hakkai what he wanted to hear. "And in the meantime, I'll be with Goku."
"Resting."
"Yes."
"Actually resting."
"….yes."
"Not brooding or poking at the memories."
"Yes, Hakkai, for fuck's sake."
"Forgive my skepticism, but you've proven a very unreliable patient."
Sanzo said something unkind that was very likely anatomically impossible. Not loud enough for Hakkai to hear, however.
Goujun heard it. Muttered a quiet "Excuse me," to Hakkai, and then shut the door in the man's face so that he and Sanzo might be 'alone' in the hallway.
A very ominous silence came from behind the solid wood frame before Hakkai's voice grumbled something unkind and very likely anatomically impossible (maybe he had heard Sanzo after all) and moved off.
Goujun turned to face the monk, who was watching all of this with high suspicion.
"What?" Sanzo growled, feeling too much like crap to even attempt civility. "Don't tell me you're going to get on my case on his behalf."
"I would never presume to order around a member of the Lotus family," Goujun replied coldly.
"Good. Then sod off." He started to turn his back.
"Konzen Douji."
Sanzo whirled, ready to lash out at the use of that name, but Goujun's next words stopped him cold.
"I have a message for you." The Dragon King's unreadable ruby eyes bored into him. "From the Merciful Goddess."
"……….."
"Your Journey is not yet over. The true nightmare of the Minus Wave is only just beginning. So don't get lazy." Goujun even managed to emulate Kanzeon's superior, I-know-something-you-don't-and-you-can't-do-anything-about-it tone.
"Is that it?" Sanzo fought for calm.
"That's it."
"Ch.' Damn hag." The monk spun on his heel and stalked off. Goujun watched him go, making no move to follow.
Which was a good thing, because as soon as Sanzo rounded a corner and was safely out of earshot, his treacherous body betrayed him, and he staggered sideways into the wall.
Goddamn. The pain in his head was killing him. Begun the moment Hakkai had confronted him with a Marshal of Heaven's implacable resolution, the migraine had continued to build into the stabbing agony it was now. One hand clutched at his forehead, the other scrabbling uselessly over stone and mortar, and he finally resorted to putting his back to the wall and sinking down along it before his knees gave out from under him.
His vision was doing strange melting things again. Vertigo washed over him, and he wondered if he was going to pass out again as the hallway bucked and swam without moving. The ringing in his ears was louder, deafening, and he tried to block out the sounds with his fists but –
-- it wouldn't stop make it stop –
"Konzen."
Voices. He could hear voices in the shadows of the hallway. Hushed murmurs, some distant and echoing, some as close and intimate as though the speaker were skin to skin with him. He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see, not wanting the invasion, not wanting the déjà vu, but there were images to accompany the voices and he knew all of them.
A smile, a scream, a whispered name in the dark. Glasses. Green eyes. A tender press of fingers, a stolen sword. Black leather, black hair, a black ruffian's grin. The unguarded expression that lingered, just for a moment, after Tenpou had turned away. A room with white walls. A soldier's rigid formality.
He would have been cursing, but his breath came too short for it. The beats of pain came too close together, rushing in his blood and thundering with his pulse. Faster. Harder. The whispers rose around him, and he heard his own voice answer back, but it couldn't have been him because he had no breath to speak nor strength to force the words …
Someone called his name --
-- and he opened his eyes.
The world existed in shades of gray. Funny, how different everything looked, when nothing had in fact changed. He was the one who had changed.
Heaven's walls would never be white to him again. They were red, and the floor was red, and all through it flowed rivers of shadow.
Tenpou lay in one of these, the darkness stealing softly across his too pale skin, across the burned and bloody remains of his labcoat, across the scarlet gleaming sword still gripped loosely in one hand.
He fell to his knees. All the breath seemed to rush out of him at once, but the exhalation of a name was barely above a fainting whisper.
It wasn't the blood, although there was too much of that. It wasn't the stillness of the body, or the silence unbroken by the gasping breath of a living creature. More than anything else, it was the crack in the glasses, the tiny spiderwebbing line that ran through the left lens, that told him Tenpou was dead.
"Bastard." He didn't recognize his own voice, choked and ragged. "You…..bastard. How could you— " He clutched at the dead kami's shoulders, bent double with the desperation of it all. "You promised me ….you …."
Alone. He was alone. Tenpou had promised him, but he was alone and they were all going to die and –
He was cursing, using words he didn't even know the meanings of to damn Tenpou, to berate him for breaking his word, for being so inconsiderate, for making Kenren worry, for having the sheer audacity to do something stupid like this when they were people who needed him.
Thus occupied, he was not prepared for the 'corpse' to ask, quite mildly, if Konzen would mind not shaking him like that.
Shocked violet eyes shot open to meet tired green ones. Tenpou might have been smiling ruefully, painfully, but the expression faded quickly into one of quiet astonishment.
The hand that lifted to his face was very gentle, as incredulous and disbelieving as the words were. "Are you crying?"
He tried to muster the ire to say something scalding (in negative, of course), but somewhere between thought and action the words went dead, and when he opened his mouth it was to receive Tenpou's. Proof of life and all that. It was something to hold onto, when the world was ending around them in blood and fire and misery.
When Kenren finally found them, staggering like a drunk and laughing just a tad hysterically at the ridiculous amount of PAIN his body kept broadcasting to his senses, he stopped. Stared. Took a moment to process what he was seeing and cracked a smart remark about cheating wives and missed opportunities for voyeurism. (He didn't say anything about missed opportunities for participation, because he hadn't. Tenpou was devious, and Konzen made an amiable drunk, and far be it from Kenren to reject a miracle landing in his lap.)
Then he fell quite gracelessly on his face.
He was already smiling when he came back, looking up into two worried faces and laughing at the sheer lunacy of everything. The uniform he wore was more red than black.
"You're both idiots," Konzen informed them flatly, which only set Kenren off again and brought a wry twist to Tenpou's mouth.
"But… it's good company, ne?" The General hauled himself up with a wince and slung an arm around Tenpou's shoulders, closing his eyes and burying his face in the kami's neck to hide the shudders as a fresh tide of crimson spilled over futile bandages. "Sorry," he mumbled when he could breathe again, sheepish over Konzen's horrified expression.
There was an admission about the severity of his wounds in that apology. Kenren rarely apologized (and meant it, anyway) because that indicated he had done something he actually regretted. Tenpou knew what it meant. Konzen did as well, though he tried very hard to misunderstand.
Gods do not know death. Soldiers understand it shadows their every move. All living things run, hide, and shrink from it as the greatest unknown.
Konzen held onto them both when it came for him, promising back what they pledged to him, and did not flinch at the end because they were together, would stay that way, and they would find each other again when the darkness receded. They had sworn it on too many levels to doubt each other.
But he had found Goku first.
Someone called his name –
-- and he opened his eyes.
The visions were gone. The voices in his head were gone. He lay slumped on his side in the dark, cheek against the cool stone floor, staring uncomprehendingly at the closed door directly opposite him across the room.
Relief hit him so hard it stole his breath. A dream. Just a …
Well, not a dream. A memory. And not one of Goku's either, but Konzen's. His own and not his own at the same time. One he rather wished never to experience again, as the phantom pain of fatal wounds was slow to fade. The phantom grief of believing someone he trusted to be dead was even slower.
He sat up gingerly when he had a little better control of himself. Only belatedly did he recognize the telltale ache in his temples, and only belatedly did fingertips rise to dazedly trace the trail of wet down his cheek. Tears. Tears shed in another life, for another's loss.
Irrationally furious, he scrubbed them away. Whoever the hell Konzen had been, he was a bad influence. Weak, pathetic, easily manipulated by those who knew him best. On his knees in a pool of blood and leaning over a corpse, not even aware that he was crying silently. A child's weakness, for all that the idiot was supposed to have been a god. Kouryuu's weakness.
But Kouryuu had survived and Konzen had not. And five hundred years later, Genjyo Sanzo had taken up Konzen's failed guardianship of a noisy, annoying monkey. Five hundred years later, he'd been the one to find all of them and bring them back together.
He was nothing like Konzen.
Removing the heel of his palm where it had been jammed against his left eye, the monk stopped thinking about a dead man when he got his first good look at his surroundings.
He was in a room, shadow painted and silent. Spacious. The ceiling lost in darkness overhead. A window to his right provided some dull illumination, but he could see neither moon nor stars. A single closed door faced him.
This was not where he'd been. This wasn't what he remembered before passing out or whatever had just happened. That hallway had no doors or rooms, only windows until further down. His gaze darted and found nothing recognizable. Had he been sleepwalking during the delusions? Or was he still dreaming, caught in the middle of another memory without knowing?
The door looked to be the only way in or out of the room. He didn't remember going through a door.
There was nothing to be done for it. He could either try the window or the door, and he already knew which he'd prefer to use as his exit. This castle wasn't as high as Houtou but it was still a damn long way to the ground and he wasn't much up to scaling tower walls right now.
Standing up was an ordeal, he was ashamed to discover. Clawing himself upright like a cripple, he leaned heavily against the wall for support and waited for his breath to return to normal. This weakness had to stop. The headache wasn't going to go away and he would just have to accept that, but the physical weakness that made him pant and shake after any sort of activity like a man in the grip of fever had to stop.
God DAMN that stupid hag and the monkey for fucking up his mind like this.
Silently and liberally applying terms of 'endearment' to their meddling behinds, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to move forward, ignoring the way that every step set his head to pounding, ignoring the way the door kept blurring in and out of focus.
He stopped when he heard the noise.
Shffft
For a brief moment he thought he'd only imagined it. He stilled, cocking his head. It came again.
Shffft
Something was moving on the other side of the door. Something that made quiet, barely audible sounds like a low murmuring, or maybe fabric shifting.
Survival instinct told him to backpedal and do it in a hurry. He had no idea what lay beyond the thin barricade of wood without any sense of youkai aura, but Genjyo Sanzo hadn't lived this long by taking stupid risks (well, they weren't stupid risks in his mind, anyway). Very slowly, noiselessly, he reached down for …
… his very conveniently missing gun.
This was beyond stupid. Really.
He made a mental note to talk to someone about getting an indestructible weapon, preferably one of divine origin.
Just as soon as he got out of this mess.
Shfft
There was nowhere to retreat to, logically, if he wanted out he'd have to use the available exits. Even if that meant letting ….whatever it was, in, or having to fight to get past it.
A cautious step forward. The murmuring grew louder, as if in response. Scrabbling sounds--
like fingers scratching at the door
--and then, movement. There at the space between the ground and the bottom of the door. Fuck.
It was the only way in or out. There was no other choice, unless he wanted to climb out the window. He told his sense of equilibrium very sternly to quit going ballistic and, not quite holding his breath, reached out for the handle –
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you. You're not ready yet."
-- and someone called his name, and he opened his eyes.
He was back in the hallway. Slumped over on his side in the dark, cheek against the cool stone floor, staring uncomprehendingly at the blank wall directly opposite him. No door. No scratching noises. No nothing.
What. The. Hell.
This had to stop. He had to stop hallucinating, or dreaming, or remembering, or whatever it was that was causing him to see these things that weren't real. It was pathetic, carrying on like this. Undignified. Degrading. Irritating. Quite possibly dangerous if it persisted. And absolutely, utterly out of the question. Genjyo Sanzo was not honestly going to be expected to try and live with what amounted to a narcoleptic condition, that made him randomly pass out in hallways to accommodate hallucinations, and nightmares, and other peoples' goddamn angst just because some fucker up in Heaven thought it would be cute for Goku to have the rest of his brain back.
What kind of reward system was that anyway? They do Heaven's dirty work, succeed against impossible odds, and the only thing they get in return was the return of an idiot's memories which only made everyone suffer more?
He should have let Homura destroy Heaven. Except for the fact that any new world created by a cretin would inevitably turn out as bad as the one it was supposed to be replacing.
Sitting up, when he got around to it, was an adventure in itself. Standing up even more of one as he cursed and snarled and dragged himself up, again (again?) having to hold onto the wall for support. The shaky weakness remained, but the headache precursor to hallucination thing seemed to have given up pulsing like war drums behind his temples, satisfied that it already inflicted as much damage to his sanity (not to mention his pride) as possible for the moment. No voices either, just blessed silence in his brain.
Still he quivered with adrenaline and battle tension. His body, at least, completely convinced that it had just escaped a brush with death, even if the door and the thing beyond it had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination. Nothing more than a dream.
And it had been. Just a dream.
……hadn't it?
He eyed the blank wall with extreme suspicion.
"You wouldn't think it would make such a difference."
Sanzo pretended he hadn't just nearly bitten through his tongue restraining an indignified yelp.
Very seriously entertaining the notion that he was still asleep, the blond turned his head slowly to eye the speaker not three feet away from him. Whose presence he had, somehow, completely not noticed.
Ko Shuyin leaned against the wall casually, as if he'd merely been waiting for Sanzo to acknowledge him rather than waiting for Sanzo to wake up from a hallucination. Gold eyes fixed on the point on the opposite wall where the door would have been. As if he had seen. As if he knew.
"Memory, I mean," he added unnecessarily when Sanzo didn't respond.
Sanzo was too busy being silently thankful that it wasn't Hakkai who'd found him sprawled on his face in the hallway, because that would've proven Hakkai Right and when Hakkai was Right he never let a body forget it. Ever.
"I'm sorry it had to come back to you like this," the War God was saying, almost nervously. "I'm sure it feels overwhelming at times…"
"What was behind that door?" Sanzo interrupted bluntly, putting two and two together and getting another unanswered question that, finally, someone was at hand to force an answer out of. It had been Shuyin's voice he'd heard telling him not to try the handle in his 'dream.'
If it had been a dream.
"What door?" The itan's tone was just a little too light, and Sanzo didn't buy the innocent act for a second.
"Cut the crap. You know what door. What was behind it?"
Heretic eyes caught the moonlight as the other shifted uncomfortably, for a moment reflecting gold like a tiger's. Sanzo wondered irrelevantly why he'd never seen Goku's do the same. More relevantly wondered why the man was stalling.
"It isn't for you, nikkou," the ex-Toushin Taishi said quietly, after a moment of silence. "Not yet. Perhaps not ever."
That damn nickname again. Combined with the irritation of the non-answer to his question, his general aching feeling of unwellness, and the whole fucked up mess that was his head right now; Sanzo's last nerve snapped. "And why the hell do you keep calling me that! Do I know you?"
Shuyin gave him a long, searching look. "Do you?"
Sanzo opened his mouth, automatic denial stinging on his lips. Shut it when he found he couldn't give voice to that denial.
He wasn't sure. Logic was telling him that he'd never seen the asshole before in his entire life, and even Konzen's or Goku's memories or whatever the hell they were told him the same, though that was hardly reliable. But something else still told him that saying "no" was the wrong answer.
And he remembered his own accusation, remembered that it had felt real and Shuyin's reaction to it had been real. He just didn't know why.
"Who are you?" he asked instead, warily.
He got an apologetic smile that should have been warning enough for its resemblance to Hakkai's. But Sanzo wasn't up to par with his warning instincts at the moment. He missed the tiny pfft of light around a triple petal symbol nearly obscured by auburn bangs. He missed the subtle shift of air as the ambient energy stirred.
He did not miss the way meeting Shuyin's gaze directly made him suddenly very tired, and very incapable of staying upright any longer. The hallway tilted and he realized he was falling, the same as earlier and again he couldn't do anything about it but curse, his own voice distant and fuzzy, as the asshole who'd just somehow tricked him caught him easily.
"Bastard…."
"You always say that," Shuyin remarked unconcernedly before sweeping the semi-conscious (and fading rapidly) monk up fully into his arms. Sanzo's weight was almost pathetically negligible to the strength of an itan. "Old habit, just like this one, I guess."
"What …are you …babbling about?" The words were so weak they didn't even come out as defensive, much less furious. For that matter, he found himself unable even to work up a decent level of alarm about his position. Being at the mercy of a stranger, and a very powerful one to have dealt so easily with the Seiten Taisei, should have had all his insides screaming danger and distrust.
It didn't.
It was comfortable, Shuyin's voice and his touch, though he couldn't say how or why. Comfortable and Familiar, not familiar but Familiar, tying back into his fucked up head and its new secrets to the point where he wanted to scream in frustration, because every goddamn weird thing that happened to him was started to feel like this. Familiar. Déjà vu didn't even come close to describing it. Knowing people he didn't know. Relating to incidents that hadn't happened. Feeling what he shouldn't feel, because it wasn't him it hadn't been him…
Familiar. His temple resting against a broad armored (armored?) shoulder. Strength he couldn't even imagine gentled to hold him up, to protect him when he couldn't protect himself. Blue sky and falling leaves above, fading into black when he let his eyes slide closed, and a voice above his head telling him to go back to sleep.
Genjyo Sanzo did, but not without a final muttered death threat concerning manipulative bastards.
Shuyin's low, rich chuckle in response was the last thing he heard.