Chapter Six

Your Name, My Mantra

It was a stray thought that Goku did not even registered at the time. That light he had first reached out to in that closet, and which had taken him from the Inn… I finally caught it.

"Holy hell." Goku let go of his 'hostage' and stumbled back a pace. "You're… you're a guy! You're that guy. The guy from–"

There was a gunshot that rent through the air. Goku snapped his head to the side, willing it to be Sanzo… the right Sanzo. It wasn't. The black haired Gojyo had fired one of his dueling riffle and the bullet had just missed his ear.

"Alright, just back away from him nice and easy," the man growled in Gojyo's voice. Their eyes met. It was the strangest thing in the world, seeing Gojyo without his crimson eyes. Gojyo was defined by his being a half-breed and here, seeing a full-bred-god of a Gojyo was…bizarre.

Apparently, Goku was not the only one who found something to marvel at in the eye contact. The gun lowered a fraction. "What the– gold…Goku?" Goku did not say anything. His forehead creased in confusion. The man who was not Gojyo knew his name. He knew his name.

He… was cracking up.

For a moment, the man's lips twitched. Then they twitched again. Then, like a badly made folding chair, he snapped in half as a howl of laughter racked him up and down and down again. "HE THOUGHT YOU WERE A GIRL! HA! HE THOUGHT, OH JEEZ, HE THOUGHT YOU WERE A GIRL! MOUTH OF THE GOD DAMN BABE!" Before Goku could do anything, before he could so much a step back, this non-Gojyo was at his side and leaning an arm on his shoulder. "MAN!" he yelled, practically taking out an eardrum. "Look at him! He's so tall!" Goku felt his head being forced down as a heavy hand came to rest on his head, before rising steadily to make the one-foot difference between their height.

As Goku felt that hand on his head… he could not help but remember Gojyo, and how he had tousled Goku's hair when he had thought Goku to be asleep in the Jeep. He had not been asleep.

"Easy General, you're going to scare him." Despite his words, that man who was not Hakkai did not seem in any hurry to pull the man who was not Gojyo off Goku. He just walked a little closer, sheathing his sword, folded his arms, and smiled a very motherly-Hakkai smile.

Goku was a clingy person and he knew it. Five hundred years without companionship of any sort did that. But right now, he was overwhelmed and more than a little in need of breathing space. Everything was happening just too quickly, and he didn't even know what was happening! There was this Gojyo-like guy who was acting way too much like the Gojyo that Goku shared the back seat with. And there was this Hakkai-like guy, guilty of the same crime. And there between them… Goku forced his head up to look at the guy who smelled like flowers and ink and parchment. Everything slowed down and, for a moment, Goku actually felt alright with these weirdos. He was just as gorgeous as Sanzo, but his face was a little softer, and more than ever Goku could see how shinning and bright his hair was. …His hair…

It was only when Goku was running the tip of the ponytail through his nervous fingers that he realized he'd reached for it at all.

It was then that he reflected back to that first stray thought. The light…the sun… "…Sun…" In horror, he felt the last word scratch its way up his throat and out of his mouth. Idiot! "–that guy," he hurried said, trying to finish his previous statement. Their eyes met. They were the same as Sanzo's. Exactly the same. The shock nearly made Goku pull out some of the poor man's hair, but he didn't. He didn't want to repeat that mistake again. …Again? "You're that guy I saw in my dreams."

He felt the weight from his shoulder left. "…No." The man who was not Gojyo was now peering into his face. Too close. Too close. "You really... don't remember us?"

Out of the corner of his eye Goku saw the man who was not Hakkai sigh. "I did suspect as much, given the state of your mind. I suppose we should start off… with explanation."

Goku heard a voice coming out of his own mouth. "That'd be nice." He could still feel those strands of hair between his fingers.

"I'll put the kettle on?"

"Dude, do you even know where it is?"

"…"

"Exactly. I'll come help."

And then Goku was alone with the man with golden hair and violet eyes, that lock of golden hair still between them. Binding them. Nervously, Goku broke the eye contact. With his gaze now on the floor, he realized that he must be in the office of some mad haphazard bookworm. It was like they were in a little oasis of free floor, surrounded by a desert of haphazardly thrown books – through which the non-Hakkai and the non-Gojyo had waded to locate the kettle. He could still hear there, just on the other side of a particularly tall mountain of papers and scrolls.

Goku let go of the man's hair a last. It slipped from between his fingers.

"I suppose I ought to introduce myself." It was Sanzo's voice. Goku was sure that it was Sanzo's voice. But there was something more raw and more openly vulnerable to it than Goku had ever heard come from Sanzo's mouth. There was no way that this man could mask that these words he said now caused him pain. This introduction caused him pain. "My name is Konzen Douji."

"It's to meet you," Goku did his best to smile. "My name's Goku."

"Yeah, I know." Not just pain. It was not just an unfamiliar, vulnerable pain that Goku heard in the voice knew to be Sanzo's. But was not Sanzo's. It was also an unfamiliar, vulnerable joy. It was hope. It was quiet. "I'm the one who named you."

...

If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.

If you meet your father, kill your father.

Free of everything you are bound by nothing.

Live the life that is given to you.

He had held to that belief for years. With the death of his master and his own inauguration as a Sanzo, that verse of wisdom had ingrained itself into his soul. Over the years it had been tested. Not by any great temptations or epic moral decisions, no. He had gotten over any qualms about killing those who got in his way. No… It had been tested by a little runt of a monkey he had found in a cave when he was seventeen.

But, in the end, he realized that even the wisdom he had been living with was, itself, holding him down. Kami-sama had shown him that. As that very same monkey had once said, "We have our own way of doing things." And so, they did. And so, Sanzo came to terms with the irksome feelings he had developed for the monkey and the two other idiots with whom he had to waste his life, and said no more about it.

Sanzo loaded his gun slowly, deliberating over every movement. Perhaps this way he could fool himself into thinking that his hands were not even tempted to shake.

He reflected on the day that Koumyou Sanzo died.

Master…He gave me something that day, something that I wanted to protect…and when it was taken from me I learned how small I was. I vowed to never again care for someone so much. …I couldn't bear to lose them.

That had been his mindset when they had all set out on this little road trip. Indeed, if anything, the Three Aspects had only made him more wary of making any attachments to these three reprobates. They had told him that on this Journey he might come to 'see with the eyes of his heart.'That had been all the warning he had needed to beat the two idiots in the backseat with a particularly vicious fan hand.

He thought back to Shuei, the friend he could not save, who had become Rikudo.

That day, when you struck at me, Shuei, my dear old friend, it wasn't Goku I was trying to protect. It was another wound… that has yet to heal… Willing to die for no one… living for no one except myself… vowing to never again care for someone so much I couldn't bear to lose them… This… is my mantra.

He nestled the gun within his robes.

So, when I protected Goku from Shuei's staff… and every time that I have stuck my neck out for one of those bastards since then… it has been to protect my mantra. If they were to die I might have to deal with the shit that came after it. I live only for myself, and I watch out for them because the idea of feeling small again… weak… It was insufferable.

I once overheard Hakkai telling Goku that the most he could do was become strong… and not die. Well, that more or less summed it up.

Live and don't die, so that no one else need get hurt when you do. Live for yourself and protect no one because there is nothing as painful as watching someone you care for die… protecting you, and being left behind. So live, and by doing that, protect those around you. But live for no one except yourself…

…so that, by doing so, you might protect everyone.

Sanzo slipped the Maten Scripture around his shoulders, and turned to the monkey who lay still as Death on his bed. Here was another who had left him behind. Sanzo had felt hatred at Koumyou Sanzo's death. However, the hatred had been directed at himself. Now, however, the hatred was directed at Goku.

Hadn't the monkey promised not to die before Sanzo did?

And was I really stupid enough to find some warped, morbid comfort in that? Some stupid, pathetic, childish, vomit-worthy comfort in being 'taken care of?'

He was almost too revolted to even touch the little shit. Gritting his teeth, Sanzo took hold of the brat as he had done on many previous occasions. There had been times, back in the monetary, when Goku had gotten so exhausted after a day of running, laughing, crying, eating and wholly living for the first time in centuries, that he would fall asleep right underneath Sanzo's desk, under the man's feet. On those occasions Sanzo had no choice but to carry the little pest back to his own bed. Such occasions had also proved to be useful in making sure that the monkey had enough warm blankets, and that the novices hadn't messed with his clothes or few personal belongings. Goku had always been very annoying in that sense. He could bother Sanzo from dawn to dusk – and sometimes through the night – about food and other trivia, but he could never rat out on someone else.

The memory gave an extra burst of anger to the monk, and he heaved the overgrown ape over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. With that, he stalked over to the door and slammed it shut behind him as he went out of the room, almost hoping that he could leave the foul memory of his unwelcome godly guests and misgivings within its musty, dingy and thoroughly inhospitable walls.

...

This was my interpretation of Sanzo's mantra.