Title: Longing 3: The Sunset Road - Chapter
7
Author: Befanini
Website: http://www.fanfiction.net/~befanini
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no rights
whatsoever. For melancholy daydreaming purposes only.
Rating: T for language. Shounen-ai.
Summary: "All I have are the ashes… one small spark from your glow."
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Chapter 7
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"The heart is the only broken instrument that works." –
T E Kalem
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XxXxX
Shit.
You think I
blew my brains out?
Hah. I wish.
If only I could have…
But I made a
promise, dammit, and I'm keeping it if it kills me. I've kept it. I can
do no less for him… him, who was all to me. He still is.
Nah… I fired
overhead, straight up into the cerulean blue sky. I flipped my third finger to
Tenkai, so to speak. FUCK YOU. Heh. Yeah… Damn all the gods anyway. All they do
is watch.
I suppose it
was another thing as well – a tribute from a soldier to his general, if I may
say so.
O
Captain, my Captain…
You know, more
of that cornball bullshit, the pointless private ritual I carried out, and
tried to comfort myself with that day that I surrendered my corrupt monk to the
earth.
But I'm still
here. Seventy years later. I'm still here, dammit all… damn bouzu must have set
an army of guardian angels to watch over me and make sure I keep my promise.
Because, heck
– I absolutely went wild for a while, after he was gone. I was a walking
deathwish. I smoked like a chimney, I drank myself to the gutter, woke up, and
drank some more. I picked fights in bars, relishing the brawls I always
started… But somehow I just couldn't seem to die. Heh. It figures – court
the Grim Reaper like an obsessed, passionate lover and he shuns you. Run away
and He'll give chase like all hell.
Or maybe it
really IS tough to kill a stupid cockroach… I dunno… what do you think?
In those early
years, I barely kept my second promise to Sanzo, but I somehow managed to drag
myself up the damn mountains to make sure the monkey hadn't gone ape-shit.
Ironically… the bakazaru somehow ended up taking care of me when I
showed up every few weeks – bruised, battered, and hungover like hell.
Let me tell
you, it was a damn dark world for a while.
Eventually
though… slowly… I got used to it. I learned not to expect the flash of
cream-gold robes, the blinding dazzle of sunkissed hair and cool amethyst eyes
waiting to greet me. I learned to live without his voice cursing me… without
his eyes caressing me… without his soul reaching out to me from piercing purple
depths.
I learned,
somehow, to stop crying myself to sleep every night… with that voice… that
voice beautiful enough to embrace… echoing in my head, in my heart, in my soul.
Aishiteru…
I think maybe
if he hadn't said it, if I hadn't said it, I would have gone mad. I
would have ceased to breathe at the same moment. I would have died with him
that day.
But I do
have that… He gave me his declaration, and gave me permission to make my own,
and I finally got to finish my sentence, after all. Hell – he finished it for
me, didn't he? My Sanzo…
It's been
seventy years like I've said, and the longing is still there, would you
believe… But now I feed it with memories. I quench it with occasional drunken
visits to 'our spot'. Can you blame me? I no longer have the bittersweet option
of my tortured visits to Kinzan.
In fact I lost
all heart to return to the blasted Temple, not five years after Sanzo passed
away, promises or no promises. So I guess it was a gift from Heaven that I didn't
need to, anymore, after a while.
Because by
this time I had moved in with Hakkai, Sakura having died a year and a half
after Sanzo. It was painful for Hakkai, as you might expect; and he declared,
during one of our drinking sessions at my apartment, that he was never going to
get married again. He'd had two loves in his life, and he'd been granted the
chance to marry one of them and live his life with her and have children with her…
It was enough for him.
Shortly after
Hakkai left their family home to his youngest, I gave up my small bachelor pad,
and we moved in together, just like the old times. Hakkai instead focused his
life on his children and grandkids, and on his lifelong dream – and he
established an orphanage. Goku moved in with us soon after.
Yes indeed –
at first, after we had completed the Divine Mission, all four of us were
scattered like leaves to the wind, as we each sought our own places in the sun.
And yet, when the sun faded… when the captain of our ikkou passed away, we the
remaining three gathered together, after all. It was like our foundation had
been shattered… the force that kept us strong collapsed, and we sought each
other in the end to somehow try to make sense of it… to somehow give each other
the strength to survive, to go on… to find meaning again after that dazzling
light that had been our anchor and our guide had faded away.
And so Hakkai
had his orphanage, and Goku had his travels – it's a damn miracle how the gold
card continues without conking out on its limit. And me… well.
You can
probably guess there was one promise I just couldn't keep.
Not that I
didn't try, mind you, after a while… when I felt somehow that I had gathered
back enough of myself to try again. I mean – a man's got to have reason
to go on living… a reason to get up in the morning, a reason for sleep and rest
to be sweet at night.
Yeah right…
The loneliness drove me back to my bachelor ways, all right. Make no mistake –
Sha Gojyo has always been, and will always be, the heartbreaker. I could
have had my pick of any number of "nice young women"… and some
not-so-nice ones. Heh.
Only problem
was, although I could offer them my body… lose myself in a pair of warm arms
for a while… I just didn't have a heart left to give.
Pathetic, huh?
But that's the way it is… My heart rests someplace in a woods, under the
shade of a great tree. It's waiting for me.
And I'll tell
you something else. It's almost time for me to go.
By human
standards, I would be around fifty or so. As far as I know I'm supposed to have
another seventy years, by the lifespan of a halfbreed. But lately it's been
getting harder and harder to get up in the morning. It's been getting harder
and harder to summon up the will to face another day. All I want to do is
sleep.
Green Eyes has
noticed, and is worrying his butt off, but I refuse to see a doctor. What would
be the point in prolonging it? And it doesn't matter whatever the diagnosis is,
anyway. Cancer? A strange half-breed disease? It doesn't matter. I don't want
the extra year, or the few months. I've lived my life, the way I chose, and I
was happy, for whatever it was worth. I'm happy.
Because my
best friend has found fulfillment and meaning and joy beyond his wildest
dreams… in stark contrast to the empty, bleeding, gutted shell I almost
stumbled over, that rainy night that we met.
Because the
bakazaru is enjoying himself with his never-ending travels, and has kept the
Seiten Taisei in control, after all. Goku has kept his innocence intact, and
his hope is so pure that I almost find myself hoping too…
Because I was
part of the Divine Mission, the legendary "Journey To The West", and
I take pride in the invaluable part I played in that drama, for what it now
means to the world that I love.
I am happy
because I have had wine, and women, and song… and cigarettes and sake with my
hage bouzu… Hell, yeah – I'm happy.
I'm happy to
have held my corrupt monk in my arms, to have made love to him, to have kissed
those harsh cynical lips, to have stroked that golden, shimmering hair, to have
caressed that milky white skin, to have gazed into those amazing violet eyes…
and at the last to have heard that beautiful, beautiful voice telling me what I
had waited sixty years, my whole lifetime to hear… Aishiteru.
You have to
admit, I've been a blessed kappa…. one hell of a lucky sonuvademon, so to
speak.
Did I ever talk
to Hakkai? Nah. But then I don't think I ever needed to, anyway. That guy gets
me. He always did. Sometimes I think he knows what I'm thinking even before I've
thought it. I have no doubt about it, my best friend knows.
All that is
left now is to tell him where to scatter my ashes to help the wildflowers grow…
and where to bury the small urn and the miniature.
So what else
is left to say? Just that all these years, seventy long, exhausting years, not
a day went by that I didn't miss him. I miss him still. I long for him still. I
ache for him with every breath I take. I dream of him almost every night.
It's true.
Death had no power over it. The longing still consumes me, my yearning for him
eats me up inside. I pine for him. Sanzo. God, how I still love him.
And soon… we
will be together, side by side in the cold, dark earth. Together forever. I can't
wait.
But before I
go, let me tell you a secret… something that my corrupt monk told me long ago,
when I was sobbing like a fool on his lap. He stroked my hair oh-so-gently, and
he whispered: "Do not fear death. If we do not fear it, it casts its
eye on us gently and guides us to infinity."
And that's
enough for me.
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XxXxX
"We loved with a love that was more than love." – Edgar
Allan Poe
XxXxX
Epilogue
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"True love stories never have endings." – Richard Bach
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XxXxX
I've
missed you. God how I've missed you…
What
the fuck took you so long?
Aishiteru,
Beautiful… I love you so…
'Ch… I
love you more.
XxXxX
---
Across the years I will walk with you
In deep green forests, on shores of sand
And when our time on earth is through
In Heaven, too, you will have my hand.
Robert Sexton
XxXxX
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-owari-
---
Japanese mini-glossary:
Aishiteru: I
love you
Arigatou
Gozaimasu: Thank you very much
Atooishinjuu:
lover's suicide
Bouzu: monk
Bakazaru:
stupid monkey
Baka: idiot,
moron, stupid
Daijobou: Are
you alright
Damare: Shut
up/ Be quiet
Erogappa:
Horny water imp
Hage bouzu:
bald monk
Hai: Yes
Iie: No
Jamatane: see
you soon
Kanzeon
Bosatsu: Goddess of Mercy
K'so: Japanese
swear word
Nani: What
Urusei: shut
up
Sankyuu: "Thank
you", literally
Sensei:
teacher, master
Seiten Taisei:
Great Sage Equal to Heaven (Goku's true form)
Sonna: (in
this context): "No way!"
Sumimasen: I'm
sorry/excuse me
Yamero: Stop
it
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