FicWad

Author's Note:
I can’t even remember now how Triyune and I first became friends, what in particular brought us together beyond our fondness for Saiyuki and our specific devotion to the pairing of the kappa and the mad monk. Over the past several months we have developed what I think is safe to say is a great fondness for each other, despite the fact that we both are basically very Sanzo-esque in our natures, we don’t form attachments lightly, and the fact that I am coff more than twice her age coff.


Somehow despite my own crusty and typically pessimistic nature I frequently find myself in our conversations encouraging her that life isn’t quite as bleak and meaningless as it seems from the standpoint of being a dark-natured, perceptive, and extremely intelligent 19 or 20 year old. I say this to her not only from the vantage point of having been that kind of younger person myself, but also from having helped get my 28-year old daughter Cami through those same years, same issues, and we both somehow survived it all, partly by the skin of our teeth. and partly just because of an innate stubbornness we both share. And while in some ways it never does really get any easier… most days I maintain that it is, all in all I guess, worth sticking around to see what surprises life has in store for us.

This link is to the picture that inspired the story:

http://triyune.deviantart.com/art/Saiyuki-and-The-Sacred-Hoop-79360615


Chapter One

The Spring day was rainy and warm, and the wet gusts blew the damp petals off the sakura trees like wafer-thin sheets of pale pink glue, which instantly adhered to any surface in their windy path. The shelter near the Temple of Kanzeon Bosatsu provided a welcome respite for the older man, each weekly trip seeming a little more arduous than the last. He found his weary legs did not serve him nearly as well these days as they had in the past when he had traveled far and wide on his famous journey with his three companions. He settled comfortably on the familiar long stone bench, lighting a cigarette, another bad habit from his past he had never been able to shake. He smiled as he exhaled slowly and remembered those days of glory and struggle, and surveyed the familiar landscape of craggy trees and small wildflower gardens surrounded by mossy rocks. This temple was not nearly as cultured and well-tended as some of the other Buddhist shrines he could have selected for his weekly sojourn for solitude and meditation, but the wild unspoiled nature of this place appealed to him, somehow reminding him of his own days before he was confined and “civilized”, and he could always count on it to be free of an excess of visitors due to its secluded upland location.

He had had many, many good times in those years: they had accomplished their mission, and he had found his one true love on that journey. So, in general, he supposed the trip had truly been worth all the pain and suffering it had involved, including the loss of the one he had started the journey with from the very beginning, his young charge, who they had lost through his heroic actions in that horrendous climactic battle. But he had learned as he had aged that all losses, like all gains, were only temporary, and that his young friend was truly as indestructible as the earth he was made from. He shook his head slightly and a small smile played across his face when he thought about how very young and callow all of them had in fact been then – “insolent and defiant” had been their own self-description at one point near the end, carrying it proudly like an army’s banner. So much responsibility the Sanbutsushin had entrusted him with at the tender age of only twenty-three.

His mouth quirked again into a small ironic smile as he remembered how rainy days like this had tormented his soul back then, always reminding him of the loss of his beloved Master, what he had considered to be Koumyuu’s horrendous and untimely death, the full responsibility for which he had assumed on his young and tender soul. How many rain-streaked windows had he stared out of, torturing himself with blind stupid regret, feeling, sometimes weeping, that if not for his failures his beloved Koumyuu would still be with him still, the blood clouding his vision, always there in his head, waiting to strangle his reason at any opportunity… Now he knew that day had simply been Koumyuu’s day to die, and now he was better able to remember the beatific serene expression his Master had worn as he had left this world for the next in his arms, how he had smiled up at him, his eyes shining and calm. There was no struggle at that moment, no reflection of the sudden and unfair nature of the senseless bloody attack behind his death, only a composed surrender, a happy uniting with a natural inevitability like a warm summer tide.

As he ground out his smoke he looked up from his reverie and noticed a young man slowly trudging up the stone-stepped path to the temple. His head was down, and he wore an air of dejection like a funeral shroud. His blonde hair was dark with rain and was shaggy and spiky like the older man had worn his back before he had grown his out long. His own hair was well to his waist now, and while it didn’t have the bright gold highlights it had picked up when he was young and ridden in the sun day-in and day-out, it now was streaked with a silver-gray that seemed to be encroaching with increasing speed.

The younger man had deep black circles around his drooping violet eyes, adding to his particularly haunted look. He was surprised to see that the robes he wore seemed to be those of another Sanzo priest like himself, although it was hard to tell, given the strange modifications the younger monk had made. He wore a black leather collar, and instead of the sleeveless garment and sleeves that the older man wore under his robes and breastplate, this young man had tied his belt and dropped his soaking robes from the waist, and wore a strange garment on his chest of widely spaced black leather webbing, very tight and constricting, which looked extremely uncomfortable to the older man, and contributed further to the younger monk’s overall dark and tortured appearance.

The older man was immediately wary when he saw that the younger apparently possessed the same kind of gun as he did, but instead of carrying it secreted safely away in his robes, the younger man was carrying his gun in his right hand, and was thumbing the hammer nervously as he walked, mumbling to himself grimly as he climbed the long shallow steps towards the temple.

Yare, yare, he thought to himself, I know this troubled look, remember it all too well, perhaps an old man may be of some assistance.

“Oi, pilgrim,” he shouted, “what brings you so far to this isolated temple of Her Merciful Goddess this rainy day? Come sit here with me and take shelter from the wind and rain!”

The young man’s head jerked up in his direction, looking alarmed. He had not expected there to be anyone here in this remote Temple on this foul, foul day, much less a priest, much less another Sanzo priest like himself. His eyes narrowed as he studied the man for a brief moment before grudgingly coming under the shelter. He sat - as far away as he could sit and still be on the same bench - next to the older man, who casually lit another cigarette. The younger man took out and attempted to light one of his own, but both his smokes and his lighter were so damp from his journey in the rain, he was having no luck at all. The older priest suppressed a smile and wordlessly handed him one of his smokes, then lit it for him, noting to himself that they smoked the same brand.

“Hard habit to break, ne?” he said companionably as they sat smoking and the damp gusts carried away their wispy gray plumes.

“Tch. Guess so,” growled the younger.

“You’ve come far?” It was actually more of a statement than a question.

“Hn.”

He persevered despite his companion’s taciturnity. Seeing the young man was obviously not in a mood for small talk, he decided he would cut to the chase. “Nice gun. Got it out for a reason? Anything I should know?”

The young man looked up at him, somewhat taken aback. He was used to people being morons and idiots. He was used to people being indirect and vague. He wasn’t used to someone being as direct and confrontational as he was. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“No point. Why bother? You have a gun out. Either you plan on killing somebody else, or yourself. Which is it?”

“Tch. I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

“It is now. You’re sitting four feet away from me. I have a gun too. If somebody is gonna start shooting at you any minute, I’d like to have mine ready.”

“Hn…. You’re safe.”


Chapter Two


The older man sat quietly, smoking and studying the younger priest surreptitiously. He looked very road-weary. The hem of his garment was completely bedraggled and spattered with blood, as if he had been on the road, involved in battles, and not able to make many stops for niceties like laundry. His eyes were deep set, violet and down-turned like his own, and very, very tired. They darted about nervously, the gaze of someone who has been besieged by enemies from all sides, most especially inside, for far too long – it was a look the older man remembered far too well.

He remembered the first few years after the journey, how hard it had been… Never a good sleeper, he had almost stopped sleeping entirely, and when he had slept, the nightmares had been brutal. Crucifixions, tortures, vivisections… all were part of his dreamtime menu. Before long he decided it was better to face the mind-numbing fatigue from no sleep than deal with the terrifying things that happened when he did, and the way the dreams haunted him for days afterwards.

The one saving grace had been his lover… always patient and kind, he would awaken when he heard the priest whimpering and moaning in his sleep, and gently rouse him. He would always ask him to tell him the dream so he could purge himself of the horror, and hold him, often while he cried, rocking him like a child, petting his head gently until he calmed and either slid back into fitful sleep or the morning mercifully came.

They had all had their healing to do. His partner had tried to be the strong one, but many times he had caught him staring off into space, his gem-colored eyes glassy and cold, and he knew that some ghastly battle was being relived, some atrocity was being remembered and cataloged and processed, a process they all had to go through, bit-by-bit, slowly over time as they healed.

They had learned a lot about themselves on that trip in some ways, vast quantities actually: they had learned to bond with each other despite the tribulations of their troubled youths, to be the family for each other that all of them had lacked in their early years, essentially to become a small tribe unto themselves over time. They had learned to fight relentlessly, ruthlessly, to kill in cold blood over and over, and to turn off their feelings as they coolly dispatched hundreds and hundreds of youkai, not to ponder whether or not had souls, at least not until the encounter with that infernal Bishop from the West, who had only complicated matters even more than they already were. They had to completely compartmentalize their hearts, and think only of the journey, the goal, the “greater good.” They learned to function seamlessly as one unit, the four of them, and when the journey ended, and one of them was suddenly taken away at the end, it was like a huge chunk of their own souls was carved out without anesthetic. Sure, they were celebrated as heroes for a while when they returned, but they felt like they had only come home from the journey to be put immediately put up on shelves like old trophies, there to molder and decay with no balm for their wounds and no cure for the pain they felt so very deep inside.

But time passed, as it always does, and slowly, inevitably, human beings being what they are, they continued to heal. And when they were healed enough, they became restless, and the Sanbutsushin gave the remaining three a new mission. This was a kinder gentler mission. They were assigned to go to visit the native tribes in the New World and gather information. The Talking Heads were interested in their beliefs, wanted to know what the tribal religions were like, before they were completely wiped out or corrupted by the encroachment of Western culture. They wanted Sanzo, as a Scripture holder, to represent them, and were sending the other two along to protect him and help ensure his safe return. It seemed like a vacation compared to their original journey, and they jumped at the chance.

And a long, strange, and fascinating journey it was. This time they returned minus one companion as well, but for a much happier reason. One of the group became greatly enamored of the native children, and the entire culture, and chose to stay behind and to try to work with the orphanages and schools for the native children, hoping in his work he could discourage the priests from totally substituting their culture for the children’s own quite as thoroughly as he saw them doing all too often. He was also staying because he had found developed a strong and growing bond with their interpreter, a young half-Lakota man from Canada. The young man had explained that “two-spirit” men such as himself that found love with their own gender were not usually dishonored in Native American cultures, but typically were considered special, and accorded extreme respect. By the end of the journey the two were deeply in love, and there was no question that their friend, while he would miss his life in the Old World, had found his true calling as well as his heart in the New World.

The years on this journey changed Sanzo. Seeing the other cultures, and getting some distance from his own had given him a perspective he had sorely needed in his life. Strangely, he found a resonance between many of the New World native’s spiritual beliefs and his own that ended up leading him to a level of comfort with his own spirituality he had never had before. He developed a profound sense of the beauty of Buddhism, and the Scripture that he wore every day took on real meaning for him. He saw it all of one piece as a sacred continuum, the sutra, the Indian’s pipe, the medicine wheel, the Torah, the Koran …. he began to want to get back to the temple and study, something he had never really had the time or inclination to do. Not just Buddhist texts, which there were so many of, going back in such a rich heritage for thousands of years, but the texts of other religions, and the philosophies of Europe… He began to crave learning almost like a physical hunger - as he aged, in some ways Sanzo felt like his mind was just beginning to wake up.

He scanned the blood and dirt caking the younger monk’s robes and boots, and the battered grip of his gun as he hefted it in his hand. He noticed small fresh wounds on the man’s upper body, some still with dried blood now running down his skin in tiny dark rivulets from the rain, some freshly scarred over. He studied the wounds and their locations, and wondered if some of them were self-inflicted, battle-scars from the wars internal. “Looks like you’ve seen some action,” he ventured.

“You could say that…” the younger man responded distractedly.

“Anything you care to talk about?” He tried to sound cheerful but not annoying, hoping to draw the other man out a bit, perhaps get at what was eating him.

The young one glowered at his elder counterpart, hoping to cut off the conversation, “not really, no.”

“I’ve seen more than my share of battles,” the older monk mused, “traveled all over to hell and gone with my friends in a fuckin’ dragon that turned into a jeep. Damnedest thing!” He smiled, remembering jippu fondly.

The dark damp head snapped around, violet eyes met violet. “You what?! Say that again?”

“Yeah – four of us in this jippu that turned into a little white flying dragon when we weren’t using it – I know it sounds crazy, but….”

“No, ahhh… you’d be surprised,” interrupted the younger man, as he began to eye the elder a bit suspiciously.

“Yeah, we had this damned mission… never understand why the hell they picked me… and, well, it got pretty bad before it was over with… ” He trailed off as the memory swept over him and caused a painful knot in his throat, as it always seemed to do. He turned his head so the younger man hopefully couldn’t see the tears threatening to overspill his amethyst eyes now, and coughed and tried to cover up the sudden rush of emotion.

When he turned his head back around the younger man was studying him intensely, making him acutely aware of his wrinkled brow and seamed cheeks as he faced the young man’s smooth unblemished porcelain skin. He felt like the old warhorse facing the young thoroughbred, except this thoroughbred looked like he had suffered more than his share of abuse as well, and had perhaps gone an unusual number of rough miles for one so young. He couldn’t decide if the overall effect when he studied the young man’s face was more tragic or angry, and he decided it simply had to be a mixture of both. And he knew he recognized it because he remembered seeing it in the mirror all those years ago – it was like seeing an old friend you thought had, hoped had, long since moved away and left you in peace.

“Old man, did somebody somehow send you here to stop me from doing this?” the young blonde snarled suspiciously.

“What?…No! Hell, no… I come here to meditate once a week – one of my favorite places. The Merciful Goddess and I were related once upon a time. Or so they tell me. She’s a powerful one - She certainly has her ways, I can testify to that…” He chuckled to himself, remembering the first time he had encountered Kanzeon Bosatsu. It had involved a much-needed blood transfusion for him, and She had both obtained and delivered the blood in a manner that he had come to realize was quite typical of the unconventional and unpredictable actions one could expect from the Her Mercifulness. And his reaction when she had delivered it to him had been quite typical of his attitude to just about everything at point in his life, especially intimate contact with another being, even a Divine one. To make a long story short, She had kissed and sucked a couple of “prime pints,” as she called it, out of the kappa, delivered them by the same method to Sanzo, and he had promptly slapped the shit out of Her.

Now the young monk was beginning to think the old man was just crazed and raving, as he sat there chuckling to himself. “Look… I don’t know what your story is, but it would be better for both of us if you would just toddle off on your way – I have business here, and I don’t think you are going to like it…”

“Tch. You think one little suicide scares me? Hn. I could tell you stories about youkai and Crow warriors both that would keep you up at night for months.”

“Look I don’t need to hear your little bird stories, and as for youkai…”

“Not Crow birds, you moron, Crow Indians – Absaroke – fierce warriors, Lakota people too. They’re the Crow’s mortal enemies. Those two tribes did things in battle that would make you wanna call out for your mommy.”

“Hn. Not likely, never knew my mother.”

“Hm. Strange. Me neither. Anyway. These Indian people are some kinda fierce, I’ll tell you that. They ride full tilt into the middle of a pitched battle totally unarmed, just to touch their enemy with this stick – just to shame ‘em. They call it counting coups.”

The younger one started to immediately make a smart remark and then considered the older man’s words, and was intrigued for a moment, raising his eyebrow. He shook it off, and straightened in his seat. “Look… ‘sir’,” he said archly, “I need to get on with my… business… here.”

The address of respect grated on him, when normally he would have said “look, asshole” or at the very least ”look, mac… or buddy…” or something like that. But there was something about this guy… he couldn’t bring himself to be quite as rude and surly to his face as he normally might.

The elder Sanzo coolly lit another cigarette. “Tch. Go ahead. I’m not stopping you.” He surveyed the skies, “looks like the rain might let up in a little while.”

He was getting more frustrated now, “wouldn’t you rather …just.. leave first?”

“Nope. Too early. Not time.” He smiled calmly at the younger man. He reached under the bench and brought out a small haversack and began taking out some wrapped items and a thermos. “Got more than enough for two, why don’t you join me? My friend always gives me way too much food. Always saying I’m too thin,” he laughed softly, “still.” He patted his small tummy under his bamboo breastplate, and grinned. “No point meeting your maker on an empty stomach.”

“Tch. No thanks…”

“Hell, why not? Life is short… oops, sorry,” he grinned mischievously.

“Ok, you did that on purpose.”

“Yup. I find I can find something to laugh about in just about anything nowadays,” the elder man stated firmly. “Truthfully I can’t think of too many things I can’t find some element of humor in somewhere… Maybe hurting helpless animals… got no use for people that do that, and can’t see anything to laugh in at that. And I guess destroying the planet… that one’s pretty damned sad. But and in a way we have to even laugh at that, we’re such bloody fools, we humans – only animal on the planet that is so fucking dumb that it fouls its own nest up so badly. Just too damned bad we take all the other species down with us.”

He handed the younger man a cup of hot tea from the thermos, and the younger and took the cup automatically and started sipping, he was so distracted by the conversation.

“You’re quite the philosopher, aren’t you?”

“I know you’re being sarcastic but it’s actually funny you should say that … Been looking into that kind of thing lately – some of those Western philosophers … smart men, real smart. Little bit of physics too, that Einstein fellow, and some of that stuff. Pretty interesting business. Some of the physicists now say the further they get into it, the closer they get to finding evidence for some kind of Supreme Being. Pretty deep shit. You know it all ends up tying in with the stuff they taught us in the temple.“

“Hn. Sounds like mental masturbation to me.” He took the thick slices of homemade bread and cheese the elder man handed him, absent-mindedly slipping the gun in the pocket of his robe as he did.

“No, truly, it all ends up making sense, and the more you look the more it all starts fitting together into one beautiful piece if you look at it long enough. Indians call it the Sacred Hoop. The Lakota People – one of the Indian tribes over there – they have a saying I like- mitakuye oyasin. ‘We are all related’ is as close as you can get to a translation in our language. But you see they don’t just mean we as in us,” he pointed to his chest, and continued, ”they mean ‘we’ as in the ‘cosmic we’: all the living beings, all the plants, the rocks, and so on – they believe they all have spirits, a lot like the Shinto ‘kami,’ and that we are all family – it’s really very Buddhist in nature.”

“Hn…” The younger man absent-mindedly picked at the bread and cheese he had been given, placing a few bits in his mouth. After a few moments he looked up at the older man, mildly surprised, “this is good. Really good.” He continued eating.

The older man laughed. “I’ll tell the folks back home. My …partner makes the bread. Wanted a hobby and just tried it one day. Says he likes kneading the bread – reminds him of girls tits. He’s a scandal. Always will be. Seems he has a real knack for baking, though. Now he makes bread for the whole monastery, all our friends in town, too. Cheese comes from a dairy nearby. Young friend of ours works there, runs it actually. Does a damn good job, when he isn’t eating up all the profits. He loves the animals, treats them likes royalty. I think they are all so damn happy, it shows in the cheese.”

The younger man was flat out staring at the older priest now. The parallels were really starting to disturb him, and he was torn between the belief that he was being toyed with by someone, most likely the Old Hag, and deciding he had completely and totally slipped his gears now. It was no secret that he had been sliding deeper and deeper into depression since way before the end of the journey, but the final couple of months had been especially brutal. First there had beenall the crap with that bastard Hazel, then almost losing Goku right there on the street to the shots from that bastard Nii, then months later the tumultuous final battle and losing Goku at the end of it all… it was enough to make anybody feel like they were at the end of their rope, and losing their grip on that…


Chapter Three


Sanzo had never been able to clear his head of that image of Goku’s face as he leapt between himself and Nii in that final moment, not only saving Sanzo, but buying him just enough time to get several clear shots at Nii with the banishing gun. Gojyo had been by his side and, at his command, had moved quick as lightning to strip Nii of his Sutra, giving Sanzo just long enough to chant the necessary phrases ending in the Makai Tenjyo to finish the evil Sanzo priest off once and for all with the Maten Scripture. It had been no small satisfaction to see the surprise in Nii’s dark evil eyes as the loops of scripture tightened around him, knowing he was seeing his last moments of light in this or any world, and that his long days of endless chaos, manipulation, and seduction were at an end at last. Nii’s long attraction to the Seiten Taisei had proved a fatal one, he had pursued Goku, he had attempted before to kill him and failed, he had attempted this time and succeeded, but this time it had cost him the ultimate price.

So, their long journey was finally over, they had at long last succeeded in vanquishing the force ultimately behind the whole Minus Wave, and put it all to rights, but the cost had been the life of the youngest and - they had thought - most indestructible of their party. By the time Sanzo and Gojyo got to Hakkai as he kneeled over their fallen comrade, he had already removed Goku’s golden circlet in a last-ditch attempt to revive him, but to no avail. This time the damage was too great even for the Great Sage Equaling Heaven.

Hakkai gently closed Goku’s great golden eyes, and looked up at Sanzo, his own green eyes dark with tears for the first time since the death of his own dear Kanan. “I’m sorry Sanzo… I…I’ve done all I can… Nii just did too much damage this time…I’m so sorry...” The healer’s head hung between his shoulders as his slender frame shook with quiet sobs. The small dragon flew to his side and wrapped around him protectively, sensing his pain. He moved as on automatic pilot to get water and cloth from the supplies and began cleaning the body.

Sanzo stood frozen, mute and stunned, his brain reeling as he tried to process what had just happened. As the carnage and violence of the battle they had just endured receded and dimmed in his vision, suddenly he felt his knees give way and his stomach gave a huge heave. He stumbled as far away from the others as he could and was violently ill for several seconds. Prior to this, since one astonished heartbeat after Hakkai had pronounced Goku’s demise, Gojyo had been lost in a terrifying mode of anger and destruction, his shakujou a gleaming blur in the midday sun as he unleashed a flurry of furious blows on corpses, trees, earthworks, anything that was in his path, along with a steady string of invective that would have made any sailor or longshoreman blush. He was all wrath and adrenalin until the moment he saw Sanzo flagging and ill, and in an instant his weapon vanished and he was at his lover’s side, holding him up with one hand and steadying his head with the other, all the while cooing and crooning to him in a gentle way he surely never learned from his own harpy of a mother.

Arm in arm the two staggered back to a very pale Hakkai, who now stood over Goku, lying now on the earth that he came from with his limbs and clothing all as straight and neatly-arranged as possible under the circumstances. They all stood silently for a few minutes, and eventually it dawned on Sanzo, to his amazement, that the other two were looking to him for guidance as to what to do next. He forced himself to think logically in this most illogical and unacceptable of situations. He asked Hakkai to get their best blanket from the supplies, and they worked together to gently wrap their young friend up in it. Sanzo informed them that he intended to say a sutra for him, but he wanted to give him as close as possible to a traditional sky burial, not leave him there on that horrid battlefield.

They carefully placed Goku in the back of the jeep for one final ride, and went as far as they could go by road to the top of the nearest mountaintop, then carried his body up the trail the rest of the way to the top. There was a breathtaking three hundred and sixty degree view from the isolated spot they choose. They laid him carefully on a large flat rock, his head facing west, and while Gojyo and Hakkai collected a small assortment of rocks to make a small cairn beside him, Sanzo sat next to his young charge for one last time and prepared to chant the sutra for him, to help escort the old soul of the Great Sage Equaling Heaven once again to Tenkai.

If you had asked Hakkai or Gojyo about that day on that mountainside, they would have told you how beautiful Sanzo’s face was as he chanted the sutra, and how comforting they found it as the radiant words of prayer wafted out in bell-like tones, resonating from deep in his chest and mixing with the swift cool mountain winds, and how sure they were that Goku’s spirit hovered high over their heads. They were certain he was dancing off on the musical words from his Sun, thrilling in the exquisite words of prayer the priest was chanting, just for him, confident of their being reunited somehow, somewhere, just because they had always been together somehow, had always found each other somewhere.

But if you had asked Sanzo how he felt about that day, he would have revealed that he felt his words rang hollow and empty, that he was a fraud, and he only marveled that they couldn’t see through it, since they knew him so well. He was overwhelmed by a profound sense of failure, and it was a feeling he was all too familiar with … It didn’t matter a whit that they had accomplished their mission, because he had once again lost the person he was supposed to be closest to, he was most responsible for… It was Koumyuu all over again, only this time he had the added irony of having to chant the sutra to guide the soul he had failed to protect on its journey into the next world, he couldn’t just leave like he could after Koumyuu died, going off to seek his vengeance… That would be so much easier than this.

He felt like such a sham, he expected them to stop him any minute, to be appalled, to rage at him… Hell, he would feel better if they just hit him. Anything to deal with the guilt, the failure, the fury at it happening again… the only small comfort this time was that the culprit behind it all was finally vanquished, disappeared into the null space created by the Maten Sutra, turned into a puff of whatever it was that evil such as Nii turned into when it was surrounded and destroyed by the powers of the sutra.

But that was small comfort when he heard his words jangling out into the wind on that mountaintop, mangled and useless, and he faced the small blanket-wrapped bundle in front of him on that cold hard rock. And even less help against the gorge that rose in his throat when he thought of what lay in store for his young friend’s body as it suffered the inevitable – and intended- results of a sky burial. The devout Buddhist believes the soul has gone on to its next incarnation or to Nirvana, and the fleshly incorporation, now a useless husk, is best returned to the earth through the workings of swirling winds and scavenging birds. Had he been a devout Buddhist, that might have worked for him... as it was Sanzo shuddered and tried to banish the gory images plaguing his mind as he continued to chant the meaningless words from rote.

Their hearts were all heavy as they went down the mountain – no matter what you believed, it was incredibly hard to leave a comrade behind, and the space in the backseat loomed large. The trip back to the Chang-An was swift, uncomfortably quiet, and mercifully uneventful. It was on the trip back that Gojyo and Sanzo’s involvement changed from a flirtation with semi-regular fucks, useful for both of them to beat back the death, darkness, and sometimes even the boredom, into something substantially more. As Sanzo started to slide into the deep and persistent depression, Gojyo’s lion-like loyalty and his truly empathic nature took over. In addition to being finally being able to act freely on the feelings he had for the priest on all along anyway, caring for his lover now gave Gojyo something to focus on, and a way to feel less useless while he processed his own grief at the saru’s death. Hakkai, as well, took to nurturing their endangered leader as much as the grieving monk would tolerate. They both felt Sanzo’s very soul was slipping away from them - he was retreating inside himself, into his pain, his deep ancient well of guilt, his personal hell, a cold lonely place where he was in real danger of being unreachable by both of them, and if not them, who?

The thought of the priest being in real danger of sliding beyond depression into madness, or of him slipping away from them one day and succeeding in taking his life, was more than either Gojyo or Hakkai could bear, and they became hyper-vigilant nursemaids, monitoring his mental well-being like stockbrokers watching tickertapes. Hakkai studied him constantly during the day, surreptitiously taking his psychological temperature while he drove, and Gojyo watched him like a hawk at night, holding him, making gentle sweet love to him, stroking him, and never really sleeping soundly, ever wakeful, worried Sanzo should rise from their bed and escape his vigilant eye. He would sleep while Hakkai drove to make up for the lost hours of rest - it helped keep him from thinking about how empty the backseat was, and how desperately he missed Goku and all their good-natured scrapping and sniping.

Both Hakkai and Gojyo became constantly watchful for the gleam of the banishing gun, and heard the smooth click of its cylinders sliding into place in their sleep, imagining Sanzo pressing the barrel to his temple, or placing it in his mouth, and closing his eyes as he pulled the hammer back and let go. Who would chant the sutra for Sanzo, if he succeeded? The threat was constantly in his eyes, even though he never said it, in his stooped shoulders, and his shuffling gait. It was in the anger that tinged his speech –there was a tincture of bitterness now that had not been there before, even when he had spoken, which he rarely did, of the death of Koumyuu… Sanzo was a broken man, and they both knew he saw only one real way of fixing the anguish that ate away at his soul, day and night.

Gojyo tried to love him away from it, Hakkai tried to heal him back from it, but their best efforts were not enough to pull him from the edge of that precipice that called him closer, day by day. The priest stopped wearing his sutra, choosing to stow both of them securely in a lockbox in jippu by day, and entrusting them to Hakkai by night, but he refused to add the Maten scripture to his robes when he dressed each morning. In fact as the trip home wore on, he tried to get out of wearing his robes at all, and when Gojyo and Hakkai insisted he wear his vestments, he took to modifying his look, wearing a leather collar and a tormenting bondage garment he picked up in some sex shop instead of his black silk sleeveless top.

His pale skin was abraded and cut by the leather lattice thongs of the garment, and shock would register in the eyes of passers-by when he wore his robes belted and carelessly dropped from the waist, as he often did now, and they saw the strange effect of the combination of the priest’s robes and the odd new additions to his attire. He refused to let Hakkai wash Goku’s blood off of the robe he had been wearing when the saru had been killed, and became fixated on wearing that garment daily, only occasionally rinsing it himself in the sink when it became so disreputable looking that his companions forced him to. The effect was that it was now hopelessly threadbare, stained, and worn.

Gojyo mourned the loss of his beautiful lover in his former priestly glory when he looked at him now, paler than pale, skeletally thin, and looking like some sadomasochistic sacred beggar. He remembered the startling beauty of his tanned face against the gleaming crown and blinding white robes, the way the black undergarment and sleeves would show off his sleek muscles, now wasted and wan. He remembered the cocky arrogant stride Sanzo would get when he was in a rare good mood, usually after they had one of their furtive mad thundersex sessions. He thought he would pay any price, sacrifice anything, to see that quirked smile, that purposeful stride in his walk just once more. He fought back the urge to tell Sanzo to just get it the fuck over with and take him with him if this was what he was going to have to deal with for the rest of his days.

It was almost more than Gojyo could take, but the innate nurturer and the optimistic survivor in him hung on, and the penance-payer in Hakkai wouldn’t let go either. The reformed youkai would forever feel he owed his life to Genjyo Sanzo as well as Sha Gojyo, and as long as there was breath left in his scarred body, he would do all he could to help preserve Sanzo’s life, especially now that he felt he had failed after the battle to help Goku cling to his. So somehow, one day at a time, and some days, one hour at a time, they made it home, with Sanzo intact, in body if not entirely in soul.

The monks at the temple, the officials, and even the Sanbutsushin themselves seemed puzzled at the unsubtle differences between the Genjyo Sanzo they had dispatched and the one they got back, and the general lack of compassion and understanding angered Hakkai and Gojyo, especially Gojyo. But the healer tried to calm his friend, gently and patiently, as he reminded him how could anyone else possibly understand even a fraction of what they had been through on their journey, much less the impact that losing their friend had on them. Some things could not be explained, no matter how one tried, they simply had to be shared experience to be truly understood. And when he could sit calmly and listen to Hakkai, Gojyo saw the wisdom of his words, and even teased him, asking him just when and how he had gotten so goddamn smart all of a sudden.

And so they began their long slow healing process, living in the monastery, spending their days roaming the gardens, reading, talking, just sitting quietly together, and occasionally taking rides in the countryside in jippu when the confinement began to get to them and they just had to get away. But always just over their heads, threatening the healing calm, the monsters loomed, the deaths, the gore, the terrors… the horrible terrible loss… But they soldiered on, because that was just what they did. They supported each other, because it had become habit, but more importantly, because it had become what they had learned they needed to survive, like breathing, like clean water, like nourishment for their battered souls.

Even Sanzo eventually seemed to slowly begin to improve. He convinced them he was beginning to feel somewhat better, and that they could let him out of their eyesight now for short periods without fearing his imminent demise. He even stopped wearing his ratty robes and odd garments, and went back to his traditional Sanzo priest vestments most days, or at the least clean jeans and t-shirts Hakkai provided him the rest of the time. Even though it was not normal attire for a Sanzo Priest, that, like so many of Genjyo Sanzo’s idiosyncrasies, was tolerated or ignored because of a combination of fear and awe he inspired in both the Buddhist clergy and the general populace since the journey. He had a reputation now as a fearsome, quirky, reclusive hero, and while people wouldn’t cross the street to avoid him, they would certainly bow and step out of his way when they saw him coming, and would go to considerable lengths to avoid crossing him, even the leaders of the temple.

And so it happened that one rainy Spring morning, when the petals were just starting to fall from the Sakura trees in the monastery gardens, Sanzo slipped out from under Gojyo’s protective arm in their bed, kissed his forehead and smoothed the red silk away from his sleeping face one last time, gathered a ragged bundle he had stashed in the closet, and stole quietly from the room. He stepped into a small storeroom for a moment, and came out in his old familiar outfit from his lowest of low days, ragged bloody robe and all. He slipped a map and a small dagger in one pocket of his robe, and his gun in the other. He was a man with a mission once again, and there was a grim determination on his face as he stole out of the monastery gates that rainy dawn.

He walked swiftly into the mountainous woods to the east, not bothering to look for trails, not caring when the briars and brambles cut and tore at his exposed arms and hands. He only stopped to seek out shelter in caves or tight copses now and then to smoke his cigarettes and, very occasionally, to consult his map, seeking some landmark to ensure him he was still headed in the right direction as he strove for his goal. He found a few streams for water, and stole a few hours of sleep occasionally when he simply could go no further, but other than that he drove himself relentlessly on.

One long cold sleepless night, stuck in a cave with nothing but his darkest of thoughts, he took the dagger out and somehow his idle toying with it progessed quickly to a series of slow scarring cuts on his arms, his mouth a grim rictus of mixed pleasure and pain as he felt the blood welling and running down his flesh. He imagined it carrying away his sins, his faults, his multitude of failings and shortcomings in the small dark red rivers, so he could somehow carry out his plan with a lighter cleaner soul, even though if someone had asked him, he would have stated unequivocally that he was sure - beyond all question - that there was no such thing as a soul in a human being, most especially him.

He had selected this particular temple as his destination more than one reason. It was very isolated, and he was fairly sure it would be a safe place for him to carry out his plan unimpeded by random pilgrims or tourists. He had an old grudge against the so-called “Merciful Goddess” for several reasons, having felt victimized by Her since their first meeting, and feeling that Her name alone was a sham. He had never known Her to be either Merciful or much of a Goddess, other than when She had helped get the circlet back on Goku, and on many occasions he had been able to do that himself – did that make him a god? Where had She been on that last fateful day when they really could have used a little Divine intervention… As far as he was concerned, if She had been able to make the appearances in their lives that She had made earlier, and work the “miracles” She had pulled off then, and if She was truly merciful, Goku would still be with them. He definitely nursed a grudge, and he planned to carry it out by showing Her what he thought of Her by using Her temple as a site for his self-execution.


Chapter Four


The rain slowly began to ease off, just as the elder monk had predicted, and they sat silently for a while eating the most excellent bread and cheese and drinking the warm sweet green tea. (Neither of them could ever taste the crisp taste of green tea without seeing the emerald green eyes of a certain youkai.) As the sun slowly came out from behind the clouds, the elder man dusted the crumbs off of his bamboo breastplate and lit two cigarettes, automatically handing one to the younger, who took it just as automatically. The younger man noticed how their moments had quickly fallen into a sort of synchronized rhythm, as if each knew what the other was going to do, and once again, he found himself looking at the older man surreptitiously with an incredulous, unbelieving eye.

“So,” the elder priest said, with a long satisfied exhale, ”you feeling any better? Sometimes a good meal helps. Rain going away can’t hurt either.”

The young blonde raked his fingers through his drying hair in frustration… this was just getting too weird, and he had seen a lot of weird shit in his travels. “Goddamnit. Look, old man… I don’t know who the fuck sent you… Can’t you just go back to wherever you came from and leave me be? This is really none of your business...”

“ ‘No man is an island, Entire of itself,… Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind.’ That’s from a Western poet name of John Donne. See, the way I look at it, it is my business. We are related, you and I. Mitakuye oyasin. Tch. What kind of a guy would I be if I walked off and let one of my own relatives do himself in?”

Heavy sigh. “You’re a stubborn old fart, you know that?”

The elder monk raised one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth quirked up. The crinkles around his eyes deepened and his violet eyes danced as he pictured his lover back home, and what he would have to say about that. “So I have been told.”

The older man shifted on his seat, noting to himself that the stone bench was seeming harder and colder on his old bony ass these days than it used to, and he needed to start including a pillow of some sort in his haversack on these trips. As he moved, he surveyed the landscape and noticed a figure at the base of the stone steps. It appeared to be a very young man or perhaps a child, in simple clothes, walking purposefully up the steps. The elder man nudged the younger with the toe of his boot, saying casually, “I think we have company - if you want to do this thing in privacy, better move fast.”

He looked in the direction the older gentleman was pointing and saw the small figure coming steadily up the steps. As the figure approached it was obvious that it was a youth of around 8 or 9 years old, small, with long shaggy brown hair, and he had obviously been on the road for quite some time.

“Oh fucking hell. Perfect…” Sigh. “Look, old man, he’s obviously an orphan kid or something come to beg … I’ll give him what money I have and you give him your leftover food and we can send him on his merry way, ok?”

The elder nodded calmly. “Hey, I’ve never been all that big on kids… gotta admit it’s not really my thing. Let’s just see what he does when he gets here. Hell, maybe the poor kid really wants to pray. Stranger things have happened.”

They both studied the boy as he approached them…their eyes widened when they both saw that, despite his simple clothes, around his neck he wore what was obviously some sort of large golden torc with a shape and design suspiciously similar to a golden diadem familiar to both of them. Other than that, his clothes were plain and worn, and it was apparent his recent life had been woefully short of tending, bathing, haircuts, and meals.

As he got to the steps closest to the two men, he stopped and stood and looked at them, his gold eyes large and liquid. The gold eyes and facial similarity to Goku unnerved both of them, but they both kept it to themselves.

“Oi, son, what can we do for you?” the elder priest asked him. The young man did not reply. “Did you come here to pray at the Merciful Goddess’s temple?” he pressed. The young boy looked up at the temple and shook his head. OK, that established that he understood them, but didn’t resolve much else beyond that. “Are you hungry, son?” That received a quite energetic nod.

The elder man patted the bench between himself and the younger priest and the young boy sat down quickly. The younger priest pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes shut, again sighing heavily in frustration. The elder pulled out the leftover food and tea from his pack and handed it to the child, who fell on it ravenously, as if he had not eaten for quite some time. He looked up at both of them and smiled hugely, his mouth surrounded by sticky crumbs, as he ate.

The elder man looked at the younger priest over the child’s head as the boy was studiously collecting the last crumbs of bread with the tip of a moistened finger. “Ya gotta admit, he is pretty damn cute...” he said in quiet bemusement.

“Like hell I do… A goddamn kid here is the LAST thing I need…”

”IT IS YOU!!” The minute he spoke, the boy’s head whipped up towards the younger man, his eyes blazing into him as if he was looking straight into his soul. “You’re THE ONE!!!” He hurled himself at the young priest and threw his arms around his neck, holding onto him for dear life, and broke into sobs that shook his small frame.

The young priest was dumbstruck for the first moment, and then there was an instant where a combination of familiarity, warmth, and raw mutual need made his chest constrict and his adrenalin surge, leaving a coppery tang in his mouth. But his habitual discomfort returned quickly, and he pushed the child away to hold him at arm’s length as the child sniffled and rubbed his nose with his sleeve.

“The hell?…” He shifted around, re-adjusting his worn garments and looking at the child with an accusatory expression. “What in the world are you doing, kid? You don’t know me! You can’t throw yourself on people like that! What the fuck do you think you are doing??”

His tone was so sharp and his words sounded – to the child’s ear – so mean, that the boy immediately burst into tears again, and stood there before them, sobbing and bereft.

“Oh, fuck me dead…” the young man groaned, his head in his hands.

The older man quickly gathered the child into his arms and held him, soothing him and stroking his head until he stopped weeping. “Now, son, have another cup of tea and sit here between us and tell us your story, ok? Why don’t you start with your name?”

The child took a deep breath and stared at the ground as he sipped the tea. “Don’t have one. Or at least don’t remember.”

The two older men looked at each other. “Ok, how did you get here?” the older one prodded patiently.

The child looked at the elder like he was simple, and had to be indulged. “I walked.”

He chuckled at his failure to phrase his questions adequately. “So you did. And why did you walk here? For what purpose?”

He stared off into space and swung his short legs where they just missed reaching the ground, obviously trying to formulate a good answer to that more complicated question. “Uhmm, I was trying to find somebody. I was trying to find the voice.”

The two men looked at each other over his head again, each raising an eyebrow. The younger man spoke this time. “What do you mean, trying to find the voice?”

The child looked up at the young man, the gold eyes beseeching again, asking for some ineffable something. “I heard a voice when I woke up. Your voice. The nice lady told me to start walking and follow the voice and keep going till I found you. She said I would find you. She was right!” He beamed as he looked at the younger man.

A small knowing smile danced across the elder man’s face and he chuckled quietly to himself. He turned to the younger man and nodded slightly as he took the empty tea cup from the child, “I believe I’ll let you pursue this line of questioning from here, counselor.”

The younger priest turned the child slightly on the bench so they were facing each other. He was again slightly unnerved as he looked directly into the large gold eyes, seeing so much there that seemed so ageless and familiar. “What do you mean, ‘when you woke up?’”

The boy knitted his brow. “Uhm… Well, I guess I had been asleep.. or sick… or something, I don’t remember. I just remember waking up in this high place. I could see real far. There were big birds flying around. Most of the time the sun was warm, but the wind was scary sometimes, and this big rock underneath me was cold. I was lonely and hungry, and after a while, I was crying…” His face got long, and his eyes started to tear up.

The elder man scruffed the boy’s hair and gently patted his back. “It’s ok, son, you’re not alone now, you don’t ever have to be alone again. We promise.”

The younger priest shot him daggers with his eyes for making any such promises to the child, and continued his questioning once the boy calmed again a bit. “Ok… you were lonely and hungry, then what happened?”

“Well…Then the nice lady showed up. She was pretty and shiny and all in white. She said she heard my crying and she wanted to help me. She said the first thing was I had to wear this thing all the time – that it would keep me safe.” He pointed to his limiter, the golden torc around his neck, running his fingers over it respectfully.

“Then she told me to close my eyes and listen and see if I heard a voice calling me. And I did. And she said if I followed the voice I would find somebody who would take care of me, and they would make sure I was never lonely again.”

He took a deep breath and looked hopefully between the two men, his eyes coming to rest on the younger since that was obviously whose voice he had heard.

The young priest took a deep breath himself, the memories flooding back in spite of himself of all the time he spent roaming the mountains on the fringes of Togenkyo with Goku’s voice echoing relentlessly in his head…

Knowing what he himself had been through, it was almost impossible for him to disbelieve the child’s word. He summoned his nerve, and asked the inevitable question. “And the voice?”

“It’s you! The nice lady gave me some clothes, and showed me the trail down from the mountain, and I followed the sound of the voice from there. And here I am – and here you are!” He smiled widely at the younger man again as if there were no other possible questions they could want to ask, and there could be no question but that the younger man would take him in and immediately give him the home and life and identity that he lacked.

“This ‘nice lady’… did she tell you your name, by any chance?”

“Uhmm… She said you would know when I found you. Ohh... she said to tell you something when I found you… oh, what was it…” His brow furrowed as he strained to recall. “Oh yeah!” The boy smiled, “I remember, she made me say it over and over so I wouldn’t forget – she said it was really important.”

“What was it, Goku?!” both priests asked simultaneously.

The young boy looked up at both of them, back and forth, with a smile that would light up Tenkai. “Goku! That IS my name, isn’t it?! Cool!”

His spontaneous joy at hearing his name elicited grins from both priests – including a real smile – the first one in a very long time – from the younger man.

“Ok… here’s what she said to tell you: ‘We are all related.’ Dunno what it means…“ Message delivered, he relaxed completely and leaned against the younger priest casually, wrapping the end of the black belt from his robe around his stubby finger over and over again, and sighing contentedly.

As the sun was setting, the elder priest shouldered his haversack and began heading down the stone steps to begin the familiar path back to his lover and their small but comfortable home together. He took one last glance back at the Temple of Kanzeon Bosatsu, and saw his young counterpart and his new companion where they were resting together in the shelter of the Temple. They were comfortably ensconced on the floor together under one of the ornamental archways; the younger man sat leaning back against the faded teak boards of the wall, his legs stretched out and crossed in front of him. The child was in a small, relaxed heap, lying stretched out next to him, his arms wrapped around his new friend’s legs and his head in his lap. The long tendrils of chestnut hair were splayed out across them both where the young priest had obviously been stroking the boy’s hair as he went to sleep. The priest’s head was nodded forward slightly in a relaxed attitude of sleep as well, his hand resting lightly on the boy’s head, and a look of sublime contentment on his face. It looked to the older man like the dark circles were already fading from under his eyes.

The older man shook his head and smiled, turned, and was on his way. He was looking forward to the smell of fresh-baked bread that would greet him as he entered the house when he returned, to the fine curves of his lover’s ass under his hands in their warm bed that night, and to the long letter relaying this strange tale that he would have to compose tomorrow to send to their old friend in the New World. He craned his neck and smiled as he surveyed the heavens - with a little luck, he would have a clear sky and good stargazing almost all the way home.

~owari~

____
Postscript: As I wrote this story I was sure there were going to be some skeptics out there who thought surely the part about the Sanbutsushin sending Sanzo and company to investigate the New World Indians was a totally spurious fabrication on my part, included solely to suit my purposes due to my interest in Native American culture. To a certain extent that accusation may be justified, but I have read in several sources of “legends” of groups of Buddhist scholars being sent to the Americas, particularly during some upheavals in Japanese Buddhism in the 13th century.


I also encountered this quote from Padmasambhava, the eighth-century guru of Tibetan Buddhism, with an eerie prophesy that seems to be quite obviously about Buddhism and the New World:

“When the iron bird flies, and horses run on rails, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the world, and the Dharma will come to the land of the Red Man.”*

So you just never freaking know.

(*Walt Anderson, Open Secrets: A Western Guide to Tibetan Buddhism.Viking Press, 1979)