In My Father's House

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Last Beat
Day 0

It was turning into a nice day.

Granted, with his present fatigue, he probably couldn't manage to make it much else. But even still, it seemed like cheating when the sky was making such a nice effort on its own account.

Kougaiji walked down the slope of the crater, mindful of the loose rubble, the rocks that clattered like some sort of baby rattle as he descended. He held his head with one hand when the dizziness got too great. The headache would pass eventually, he knew that, but in the mean time it felt like a hard night of drinking had snuck in there somehow.

Down at ground zero, a bunch of aural threads were swirling about in apparent confusion, errant lines that had gotten separated from the net somehow. Kougaiji flicked a wrist and edged them back into place. No sense having gone through all that effort to destroy things and then have poltergeists haunting the land afterward.

He was seeing the aural network with far greater clarity than Kouryuu had, he knew. Kouryuu had barely touched the realm of sight needed to view it, and it had appeared dull and dim and inconstant in his mind's eye. But now Kougaiji's head was swimming through it, and it was a thick as the English Channel. And it went everywhere. This was going to take some getting used to.

Whatever. He could see to that tomorrow. Right now he sort of wanted to go to sleep.

Here on ground level where the field was strongest he sensed before saw the priest sitting alone against a fallen pillar, and automatically started toward him.

Sanzo sat a little hunched forward, borrowed robes just a bit too big on him and not very white now, splattered with mud and ash and various people's blood. He'd found a sash to tie it with somewhere, but hadn't had Kougaiji's luck with shoes. And he wore the maten sutra around his shoulders. Presumably, if the magic threads were right, he had the other four in his possession as well, but Kougaiji didn't know where he was keeping them. Probably tucked into his sleeves. He had a habit of that.

Presently, Sanzo was lighting a cigarette. Or trying to. His fingers weren't really working right, and had lost all of their callous from all that time in suspension. His hair was still an awful mess.

Kougaiji sat down beside him.

They watched the ground for a while. The remains of the castle were scattered everywhere, most broken to pieces no larger than a fist. Occasionally there was movement in the rubble but it would only turn out to be some critter, a lizard or a cockroach that had survived the explosion. Gojyo would be proud.

Beside him, Sanzo got the lighter to spark successfully, and lit his first cigarette as a free man.

Something nudged Kougaiji's arm. He glanced over to see the cigarette pack being offered to him, while Sanzo smoked and kept watching the horizon.

"No thanks."

"Suit yourself," the priest mumbled, stuffing it back into a sleeve. He really did make a bad habit of that.

Then, perhaps he sucked too hard or maybe the smoke hit his throat the wrong way, but he pitched forward, coughing.

Kougaiji waited until it had subsided to say, "Maybe you shouldn't be doing that right now."

"I'm fine, thanks."

"All right."

Silence again. It couldn't even rightly be called a gap in conversation. It was like a black hole into which any thought to express, any gesture to make, any anything, was trapped and crushed.

It was Sanzo, finally, that wrestled free of it.

"You know--"

Kougaiji looked up at him.

"...I'd forgotten what your voice sounded like."

The King of Demons smiled a little. "Do you mind it?"

"It's all right."

Sanzo unfolded his arms a little, and Kougaiji recognized the movement and stood up just as he did, in what was quite nearly unison. Sanzo didn't look surprised.

"I wish we had more to talk about," Kougaiji admitted finally. "But we seem to have covered everything."

"A few times over," the priest agreed. Another cough started coming up, but he stifled it. And seemed to think of something. "But I'm still getting back to you about that quantum physics theory..."

"No, I'm telling you, it's solid."

"Look, the cat can't be both alive and dead."

"But if the results are unobservable--"

"No such thing."

"--I just can't argue quantum with a holy man, can I?"

For a moment, those eyes nearly flared, like he was about to take issue with the remark. But he said nothing.

Neither said much of anything, until the cigarette had dwindled down to nothing and Sanzo flicked it off into the rubble. There was nothing it could burn. The devastation had been quite total like that.

Kougaiji figured his mother would have something to say about that, once she'd slept off the last of the spell. It sort of left the rest of the royal family without a home now, with the way they'd done things. Not that any of them had had room to think of ramnifications at the time. You could even argue it was for the best that the whole thing had been destroyed. It meant a clean slate for everything.

Clean slate. Sounded like a really good idea.

It was over now, that much was certain. If nothing else, there was at least that. Sanzo had correctly predicted everything. Minus the things he hadn't, anyway. The ones that had nearly gotten them all killed. Still.

"Kouryuu--" he began, before he was able to stop himself.

Sanzo snapped his head around at him, eyes wide like he'd just received some sort of electric shock.

Kougaiji lost all nerve.

"--Sanzo," he amended himself lamely.

He relaxed a little, but his lips were still pressed together apprehensively. Kougaiji couldn't discern whether he was acknowledging this retreat back to formalities, or if he was trying to indicate he couldn't care either way. Which meant Sanzo probably didn't know himself. But at the moment, Kougaiji wasn't going to risk it.

"...So what are you going to do now?"

"I'd meant to ask you that."

"I don't really know. I never figured it'd get to this point."

"It's simple, isn't it?"

"What, ruling? I'm not so sure I'm so cut out for it."

"Which is why it's to your benefit that you don't have much of a choice," Sanzo said, smirking at nothing. "Don't worry; you only have about an eternity to get it right."

"Gee, thanks. And what about yourself?"

"Me?"

"No, the other priest."

"Back to the monastery, I guess."

"You guess? It used to be a certainty."

"Yeah. Well." For a moment the human almost looked bashful, as if sidling around some sort of secret, before he mustered up some characteristic bitterness and said, "How long did it take us to get here? It'll take twice as long to get back, I'll bet, with those idiots wanting to stop in on all the places we drove past on the way."

"And you'll let them, of course."

"Never," Sanzo growled. "I feel like I've spent half my life in that damn jeep." Which was nearly the case.

"We could lend you some of our drag-- Oh. Well, I guess we can't," Kougaiji said, looking around guiltily. "But I could magic some up for you..."

Sanzo waved a hand quickly. "That's fine. We'll drive."

"...You just don't like flying, do you?"

He got an eyebrow arched at him.

Kougaiji waited politely.

Sanzo conceded defeat. "...Can't put much past you in the end, can I, Kou?--" he froze, quickly tacked on, "--gaiji--" and noted his aura and mumbled toward the ground, "--sama."

The youkai king laughed.

"We're pathetic, aren't we?"

He caught the twinge of a smirk on Sanzo's face before he could dispel it. And, so latched on that visage, it occured to Kougaiji suddenly that there was nothing in the damn world, not even averted Apocalypse, that could make him any less beautiful.

And deep down he knew it was probably purely aesthetic, like how he might feel about a painting or a flower, but that didn't change anything about it. And in the circle of ground zero, under a deep violet sky with all the clouds pushed to the horizon and the sun shining down, he nearly glowed.

And, knowing he was going to regret things more if he didn't, Kougaiji turned, touched a hand to Sanzo's cheek, and quickly, briefly, fleetingly kissed him.

When it was over, he politely turned back away and kept his gaze on nothing. He cleared his throat. And he knew Sanzo's eyes were on him, he could feel it, and he wished he could chance to see what his expression was.

The silence lasted only seconds, but they ticked out into an eternity before,

"You realize," the priest said, the deja vu creeping up on both of them before he could stop himself, "you only got away with that because you're you."

Kougaiji managed to stop only at a grin.

"That's fine."

"And I hope that's out of your system. Because you've still got something to say to Doku, you know."

The king shot him a glance. "Aren't you the surprise romantic. If you want to hold me to that, I expect you to say it to someone yourself someday."

"Not altogether likely."

"Make an effort."

"You first."

"Stubborn bastard."

This time when silence fell in, it wasn't awkward. There was no communication inside their heads now, but there didn't mean to be. It was fine just like this. They watched the storm clouds on the eastern horizon a while, clouds that had been driven back with the explosion, that had left the air above them clean and blank but for the sun and the half-moon.

Eventually, Kougaiji noticed Sanzo fingering his hair. He pulled at a lock of it, glared at how it stuck up when he released his grip. Beauty or not, his hair was still a godsawful mess.

"...I need a shower."

Who knew who was listening right then. Some deity, or the hivelike aural network, or some part of Kougaiji's brain that magicked without consent, or maybe just pure and simple nature doing what nature was intent on doing anyway.

A fat water drop splattered on his hand.

A moment later, another fell on a rock beside them.

A pair of them hit Kougaiji's ear.

And then, with the dark storm clouds on the horizons, under a clear violet sky, it began to rain.

It was not a drizzle. It wasn't even moderate. It was a sudden, drenching downpour, all the force of a heavy storm coming down and soaking everything through in seconds, including them, as they shielded their eyes and watched it fall on them in pure astonishment. The rain that Sanzo had dreaded for half his life, the rain that haunted him and signified every bad thing in the world, somehow lost all power. To be falling like this, without a single cloud overhead, with the sun shining brightly, with every goddamned last thing in the world singing optimistically for the days to come, it was all, suddenly, inexplicably... perfect.

"Ha!" Kougaiji shouted against the rain, grinning madly. "What do you think of that?"

And then he heard something, not for the first time ever but for the first time physically, for his ears to hear. Sanzo started to laugh. A true, human laugh.

Through the rainfall they heard shouts on the side of the cliff leading to the crater, turned to see their two combined groups calling and waving. Dokugakuji, and Goku, and Lirin and all the rest of them, all happy and alive and calling out to them to join them.

They waved back.

"I guess we better get going," Kougaiji said to his friend.

"Yeah," Sanzo answered.

Kougaiji's hand froze in the air for a moment. "...Wasn't there something I was supposed to do for you?"

"Hm?"

"Something I was supposed to say. Recite. I can't remember. Some words."

Sanzo clucked his tongue. "It's probably not important."

"No. Probably not."

And they went to rejoin the others.

Although Goku met them halfway.

~*~

The end.