AN: Sorry for taking a while to update. Hopefully I will be able to get a couple more chapters up in the next little while. Fingers crossed.
As Hakkai left the building he couldn't help but feel a little lost in the world. He didn't know what to do. He felt like he should take some comfort in knowing that Gojyo was alive, but he couldn't see how he would be able to ever get him back. Also, there were no guarantees that once he had Gojyo back he wouldn't be taken again or even remember who he was.
Hakkai sat in his car fiddling with the leather wrist band that Gojyo had given back to him. He wanted to throw it away and try to forget everything to do with Gojyo, but at the same time he wanted to hold onto the fragment he had left of him. Maybe one day he would be able to give it back to him, if he was lucky. But luck didn't seem to be on his side right now. Eventually, Hakkai just put the leather band around his wrist like Gojyo used to and drove off.
He didn't know where he was going; he was just driving. Driving helped to clear his mind, because he had to concentrate on the road. It was a good distraction from all of the whirling thoughts in his head. He found himself thinking to that fateful night, the one where everything had gone to hell.
He had been running late. He was supposed to pick Gojyo up at the shop where he was working on his car. Gojyo was changing the body; it was the last thing that he needed to do before his car was finished. Hakkai had promised Gojyo up for the week that he was working on the car.
Hakkai had texted Gojyo to let him know that he was running a little late, but he never received a reply. At first, he had just thought that Gojyo hadn't heard his cell go off, since Gojyo liked to play music a little too loud in the shop. But after a little while he started to get a bad feeling about Gojyo not responding. He had known that he should have called, that he should have made more of an effort to get there on time. He didn't even know if it would have made any difference in keeping Gojyo safe.
When he did manage to get to the shop about half an hour late, there had been no sign of Gojyo. His cell had been sitting on the front seat of the car and the music had still been playing, and, like normal, it was too loud. Gojyo still would have heard his cell if Hakkai had called, though. Hakkai had looked around for Gojyo, but there hadn't been any sign of him. When Hakkai had looked at Gojyo's cell, his text message hadn't even been read.
Hakkai had called their home number to see if Gojyo had already gone home and forgotten his cell. But there had been no answer. Now he had started to panic a little. Hakkai had gone out back to see if Gojyo had been having a smoke, and he hadn't been there either. Now Hakkai hadn't had any choice but to call the shop owner, as much as he detested the man. The owner might have convinced Gojyo to go for a drink with him because, after all, they were friends.
Hakkai had had to go through Gojyo's cell to get the owner's number, but when he called him there had been no answer. He had left a message in hopes that the owner would get back to him quickly. However, it wasn't until the next day that the man returned his call. By that point it had been too late.
Next he had called Sanzo's place to find out the last time that Sanzo had heard from Gojyo. He had struck out there as well. Sanzo hadn't seen Gojyo since the weekend. There had been no point in talking to Goku. The kid had been in school all day, and with Sanzo the remainder of the time. It would only have gotten him worked up and he hadn't needed that at the moment.
At that point he hadn't known who else to call. He'd known that Gojyo had a habit of leaving for a couple of days at a time, but he hadn't done that since Hakkai had moved in. He couldn't see that happening anymore, but that would be something the police would say to him. With a history like Gojyo's it would mean that they would postpone the investigation for a couple of days, that is if Gojyo really was missing.
He had called the police knowing that they might not do anything. He would have liked this to be an unnecessary cal,l but there had been something about this situation that just hadn't felt right. He had waited for the police to arrive, but they had taken their sweet time getting to the shop, and then he had spent most of the evening trying to convince them to open a case. They might have only agreed to open one because Hakkai hadn't dropped it until they had given in.
That night, like this night, he drove home on autopilot. He was so out of it that when he pulled into his parking space, he was shocked to see that he was actually home. He wasn't sure that he wanted to be here, but he didn't know where he should go. He knew that their home would feel emptier knowing that Gojyo was somewhere else, with that woman. He had never thought that he would hate someone so much, without knowing who she was or what she did. But he was feeling hatred towards this unknown woman
He didn't know if she'd had her life stolen like Gojyo, or if she was working with the people who had made Gojyo think he was a different person. He wished this woman a paindful death for destroying his world. If he was completely honest with himself, he would love to be the one to cause her a painful death.
Opening the door to a place that had once held so much happiness, and seeing everything just the same as it had been that fateful night, he thought again that he should change the place around or move. He had stayed there just in case Gojyo came back home, and whenever someone would buzz to be let in he was always disappointed to hear someone else's voice.
There would be times when Hakkai would walk around the apartment talking to himself and imagining what Gojyo's responses would be. At points he almost convinced himself that the conversations were real and that Gojyo had actually been right there with him. It wasn't until he finished a conversation that he realised that none of it was real. He had never told anyone about the conversations, and he was sure that things would end badly for him if he didn't stop having them. He knew that he needed Gojyo back before things got too bad, but he just didn't know how to get him back.
Hakkai lay down on the bed, which he found too big, empty, and cold without Gojyo. He tried to think of any way he could get Gojyo back and have him know again who he was. Nothing came to him. His mind was blank and he felt totally useless.
He didn't sleep too well that night, and when he woke up the next morning he wasn't sure how he was going to function at work. All he knew was that it was going to be a long day. He wanted to call in sick and spend the day trying to think of how he could try and find Gojyo, but that would be abusing his position. He knew that he should call Sanzo and Goku, but he didn't know what kind of help they would be. And besides he wasn't sure if he really wanted them to know about this strange encounter with Gojyo yet. He wasn't going to tell the police because they had already given up and refused to do anything more. He was sure that they would only give him heck for trying to do things on his own.
By the time he had gotten ready for work, he was already behind his normal morning schedule. He made it to work just on time. He knew it was bad form to get to work just as they started, but at the moment he couldn't really care.
He knew that he didn't have too many appointments today, so he was going to have a lot of time to think. Technically he should really try to concentrate on his other work in between appointments, but he figured that no one would mind. It was doubtful that anyone would ask why he wasn't really doing his work; everyone knew that Gojyo was missing, and they would most likely just pass it off as something to do with that. Hakkai knew that he would have to maintain a certain level of work to keep his job. He'd worked so hard to get where he was, and it would be a waste to just give up now. Besides, Gojyo would never forgive him if he lost his job, especially after all of the effort he had put in to get where he was now.
No one had expected him to climb so quickly in the company after graduating from University. They hadn't thought that he would be able to do what was required of him, since he was a couple of years younger than all of his fellow classmates. The company had hired him just for an internship, and they had expected him to quit like every other intern they'd previously hired
What no one predicted was that he would throw himself into his work to forget what had happened to his adoptive parents and his sister. They had died in a house fire at Christmas because they had forgotten to unplug the lights on the tree. At the time he had been spending the night at Gojyo's. They had known each other for about a year back then and were only friends, but after the fire Hakkai ended up just staying at Gojyo's. He felt more comfortable there and somehow kept him grounded.
Hakkai was home-schooled so he was able to finish his remaining two years in less than a year. It was easier for him to tackle his school work than try to deal with the loss of the people who had raised him. To keep himself distracted he applied and was accepted to a university for a degree in computer programming.
As a child Hakkai had always been playing with computers, so for him it was only natural to go further. He would always find his way into the software's programming code and mess around with it. Hakkai would try to make it run faster or change its functions. After a short time he started to teach himself how to write his own programs. With these skills he was able to challenge most of the first year classes. All of the classes he did take would only hold his interest for a little while, and he would often work on his own and finish everything before the end of the semester.
When he was offered the internship he took it without any hesitation. It made it easier for him to get even further ahead in his classes. And by the end of each semester he would spend more and more time at work because there was nothing he would be able to do in his classes.
After he graduated there was only a short meeting with his employers, who asked him if he wanted to stay - even though the company owners did not think he would last very long. They thought he was going to burn himself out, but what they didn't know, and what he wouldn't tell them, was that Gojyo brought him back down to earth and made it possible for him to work as hard as he did.
During that long day at work all of the appointments were almost too quick. Hakkai half-wished that the appointments could have been longer. He needed to try to figure out what to do, but like the night before, he couldn't think of anything. Everything he did manage to think of would require things to happen by chance; none of them were real plans. He knew he needed to get a different perspective on this, but with his state of mind there was no way he was going to achieve that on his own. The only way he would get a different perspective was to talk to someone else, and the only person he felt he could talk to about this was Sanzo. Eventually, Hakkai decided he would call Sanzo once he got home or shortly after. He wasn't going to call him up while they both were at work.
Once he was home he tossed his car keys into the bowl on the little table next to the door. Hakkai resisted the urge to call out for Gojyo like he had done many times over the past six months. He knew that if he started to call out, it would be the start of another conversation that would only end when he realised he was having a conversation with himself.
Hakkai sat on the couch and pulled out his cell to call Sanzo. He wasn't really sure how much help it really was going to be, but he was out of ideas. He dialled the number and listened to the phone ring, hoping that Sanzo would pick up. It rang and rang, and eventually all he got was Sanzo's voicemail. Hakkai just hung up without even bothering to leave a message for Sanzo. He leaned back, defeated.
"Why does this have to be so hard? There should be an easy way to do all of this," he said aloud to himself while rubbing his forehead.
"You already know what you should do," came the all-too-familiar voice from the doorway.
Hakkai didn't turn around. "No, not again. You're not really there. You've never really been there, so what is going to make this time any different?" But he would entertain the idea for a little while; it did help him feel better for a short time, at least.
"If you know I'm not real, than why do you always start a conversation and want an answer?" Hakkai turned to look where he thought the voice was coming from. He thought he was hallucinating this time, because there was the redhead, leaning nonchalantly against the door frame to the living room. He took another look, and saw that all of the changes he had seen the day before had also taken place on the man leaning against the door frame.
"No. You aren't really there, are you?" Hakkai asked.
"Is there anything I could do to prove that I am here? I could say I'm here, but I don't think you would just believe that would you?"
"No, I wouldn't believe you if you just said that. Everything that you could possibly say would never prove it, because I know that you aren't really there." He couldn't turn back on the man behind him. There was no way Hakkai was going to believe the image of Gojyo was real, not after yesterday. It just couldn't be this easy, because if it was then Gojyo would have somehow been able to get out on his own.
"How can you tell if I'm real or not, if you're just gonna sit on the couch and not come and see for yourself?"
That got Hakkai to turn around to look at the man at the door. There was the familiar smile that played on Gojyo's face whenever he was trying to get some attention from him. Hakkai resisted the urge to leave the couch. He would have, if he'd only known that the man was real. He didn't want to get his hopes up.
"If you were real, you wouldn't be standing at the door. You'd be over here on the couch trying to convince me that you are real. Also, you would have something more to say about what happened yesterday, but this conversation isn't really getting us anywhere. You aren't really there, are you?" He knew he was really talking to himself. He knew that this wasn't going to help, that all it was doing was making him feel like he wasn't alone, a feeling that would only last until the conversation ended and he would end up feeling worse than before.
"No, I'm not really here, but you already know what you have to do. You already have an idea of what's going on. You've had it all along, just listen to it. It is the only way you will be able to get the real me back. Once you do, I will disappear. But until then you are gonna want me here to help you."
Hakkai fell shakily back onto the couch. He wanted to cry, but he had told himself that he wasn't going to do that again. It didn't do anything. "You've got a point," he said softly to himself. He knew that he had to believe in himself. It was the only way that he was going to get Gojyo back.