Disclaimer: I don't own Saiyuki.

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Hold nothing.

If you meet Buddha

Kill him.

If you meet the patriarchs

Kill them.

Free of all

Bound by nothing

You live your life simply as it is.

…

Sanzo said that.

It was the one thing he lived by.

It kept him alive.

It kept his sanity intact.

…

Then, he met them.

At first, nothing changed.

Muichi-motsu held strong.

He could tell himself he didn't care, and mean it.

…

But things changed.

He didn't know when it happened.

But when he went to repeat it, it didn't work.

The teaching that had sustained him for years felt…

Empty.

Oh, yes, he still felt unattached to most everyone. Even the wound in his heart, from when his master had died, had healed.

However, deep down, he felt a bond to his companions. A bond muichi-motsu couldn't break.

Hakkai was his equal. The smile was for the most part false, but his heart was good, and amply made up for it. He was intelligent and strong, only having enough weakness to prove he was still human, despite it all. He could hold nothing from Sanzo, and Sanzo could hold nothing from him.

Gojyo was his brother. Irritating and perverted, yes, but he had a brand of logic that held the group steady in hard times and his rough ways could bully them in right way. He didn't know everything about Sanzo, but he didn't need to. His heart led him better than knowledge ever could.

And Goku… Goku was difficult to categorize. He was stupid and far too cheerful to be safe. He knew practically nothing about Sanzo, and even if he did, he wouldn't understand it. But somehow, he could see what was truly important. That was his strength.

…

He couldn't escape them. He could travel to the ends of the universe, but they would follow him. He could kill them, but they would still nag at him.

He was trapped.

Part of him, the so-called "rational" part, hated this. It saw the bond as a weakness, a weight that would pull him down until he drowned. It hung onto the teaching, the way a shipwreck survivor hangs onto a piece of wood.

But another part of him, a part that was muffled under the ash of his old hopes, welcomed this. It loved the happiness they brought, even if it was shadowed slightly by the fact that it might not last.

These two sides waged a war, albeit a war no one, not even Sanzo, was aware of. The victor would be the one to guide Sanzo's actions and mold his fate.

But would either side win? Would the battle ever end?

"Sanzo?"

Sanzo looked up from his newspaper. From the look on Hakkai's face, he knew he was going to wish he had bought those earplugs he had seen at the last town.

"Goku and Gojyo are drunk, fighting, and demolishing the inn." Sanzo could hear, quite clearly now, what sounded like nuclear holocaust taking place behind Hakkai.

Rationality demanded he head out and kill them both.

Hope wanted him to let them have their fun.

Sanzo got up, smacked them both upside the head, yelled at them to shut the hell up or things would get messy, and went back to his newspaper, leaving behind two now very sober members of the Sanzo gang.

the end.

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Author's Note: Compromise is good.

This is an opinion fic, so I don't want to see any flames saying, "That's not right! Sanzo isn't like that!" It's how I feel based on what I've absorbed from the manga and various fanfics.

Edit: Yeah... Looking back, this is horribly outdated. At the time, I had only read up to manga Volume 4, so the idea of Sanzo ever admitting he was wrong with the normal translation of "muichi-motsu" hadn't occurred to me. Upon reading Volumes 6 and 9, I was a bit embarrassed, and seriously considered taking this off. However, thanks to my two awesome reviewers, you have to put up with my ignorance.

Read and review, please!