Challenge #4: All the way to the beginning (Sanzo/Goku)
All the way to the beginning
Prompt #4: Opposites
Author: macavitykitsune
Pairings: 39.
Warnings: Sanzo’s Mouth.
Summary: there’s a voice in Goku’s head this time, and the circle’s closing at last.
A/N: overshot the time limit by fifteen minutes on this one, because the bunnies multiplied halfway through.
There was a voice in his head.
At first, he thought it was just Sanzo. Goku didn’t make it common knowledge, but he was acutely sensitive to the blond’s mind, and Sanzo didn’t call for him nearly that often but when he did, it was an unsubtle tug like fingers tangling in his hair and yanking.
This voice had a completely different quality. It was soft, tentative, wounded somehow, cringing away as if it was unsure it would be heard. Unlike Sanzo, who made it damn clear he was calling him when he did call him, it had an uncertain quality to it.
It took him a little while to realise what it was, and that, more than anything, probably demonstrated how far he’d come from the gnawing insecurity and fear of his childhood; he had sounded like that in the cave, calling and expecting no one to answer but calling because there was nothing else he could do and something in him was still clawing for freedom with desperate helpless ferocity.
That decided him, and he asked Sanzo about it.
Sanzo gave him a skeptical look and then said, ‘How long have you been hearing it?’
‘Almost six months now.’ Since the end of the Minus Wave, the end of their quest.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Sanzo said, ‘but I always knew…your voice had a direction.’ He sounded a little embarrassed to be talking about it, and Goku knew he should finish asking his questions before the embarrassment became acute enough that he started laying into him with his fan. ‘It took me straight to that mountain.’
Goku shook his head. ‘I can’t feel any sort of direction. I mean, I usually know where you are, y’know? This isn’t…like that. I can’t feel a place it comes from.’
To his credit, Sanzo didn’t say anything mocking. Instead, he paused thoughtfully. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘maybe it’s not here at all, that voice.’
‘Someone dead?’ Goku asked. That was a creepy idea, enough to make him cringe a little. There were an awful lot of dead people who might have called him and he wasn’t really interested in meeting too many of them. They’d killed a lot of youkai on the journey, after all.
Sanzo blew a smoke ring and eyed it with some satisfaction. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sanzooooo!’
‘Fine, fine.’ Sanzo shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Goku nodded, and hugged him. Sanzo’s arms came around him and he hugged him back a little awkwardly; touch was one thing he was never going to be completely easy with.
‘Goku.’
‘Yeah?’
‘If it’s another brat, you’re raising him yourself.’
Goku smiled, eyes bright. ‘Sure!’
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In the end, it turned out that Sanzo didn’t have to work too hard to find out, because the information came looking for them that night.
‘Hello, boys,’ Kanzeon said in all her transparent glory as she teleported into their bedroom.
‘Fuck!’ Sanzo snapped as he dove for the covers, which had been kicked off the bed earlier. Goku grabbed a convenient pillow.
‘Oh, there’s no need for that,’ Kanzeon said, waving a nonchalant hand. ‘It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.’
Goku was turning red. Sanzo had skipped that stage entirely and gone straight to purple with rage, clamping down on the urge to shoot her - it wouldn’t do that much good anyway. ‘What,’ he began dangerously, ‘do you-’
‘The voice you’ve been hearing,’ she said, pinning Goku with her sharp gaze. ‘Would you like to know who it is?’
They both stilled, startled out of mortification and fury.
‘What?’ Goku asked slowly.
‘I know whose voice you’re hearing,’ Kanzeon said impatiently. ‘Do you want to find him?’
‘Yes,’ Goku answered without hesitation.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Goku said quietly. ‘Because he sounds like me. And he’s calling. I’ve got to find him, haven’t I?’
Kanzeon eyed him for a moment. Then she nodded and smiled. ‘I knew you were a rare one, Goku,’ she purred. ‘Well, then. I suppose I’ll have to take you to him, since you can’t travel that path yourself. Tomorrow evening, at this time. Be ready.’
She left before they could say another word.
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She returned at exactly the same time the next day. ‘Son Goku,’ she said formally. ‘Are you ready?’
Goku nodded. He had nyoibou out and ready, and his eyes were hard with determination. It was a look that always reassured Sanzo on some level, that absolute certainty and tremendous strength, and it settled his wariness today. ‘I’m ready.’
‘All right, then,’ Kanzeon said, and the world dissolved around them.
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Returning to consciousness was painful, and Sanzo’s first impulse was to throw up. It felt as if all his internal organs had been scrambled and put together by a less than knowledgeable person, and he wobbled as he stood up.
Goku was beside him, equally wobbly. ‘Hey,’ he said faintly as he sniffed the air. ‘This place. It doesn’t smell like anything.’
‘That’s because it isn’t exactly anywhere,’ Kanzeon said. She looked absolutely unruffled, the bitch. Sanzo would have wagered a significant amount that the pain he was in wasn’t entirely necessary. ‘You’re in Heaven.’
Sanzo snorted. ‘Ha.’ Then the overpowering divine aura of the place assaulted his senses all at once, and he reconsidered. ‘What the hell,’ he said blankly.
‘Can you feel him now, little one?’ Kanzeon asked almost kindly.
Goku’s brow was creased in concentration. ‘Yeahhh,’ he murmured. ‘Over…there…’
They walked through deserted corridors, ornate and unaesthetic - the glitter was intended to impress, not decorate. It reeked of the superficiality Sanzo had grown to detest from the temples, and he sniffed in distaste as Goku led them, still fiercely focused, to somewhere Sanzo sincerely hoped wasn’t going to take too much killing to get them out of.
In the end, though, it was just a large apartment. Goku stepped into it without the slightest hesitation, and through another room to a large open space with a large lotus pond in the centre. As he entered the open room, Goku drew in a sharp breath. Sanzo followed his gaze to a large chair in a corner, where someone lay sleeping. He stepped forward, drawing his gun just in case, but Kanzeon caught his arm in a bone-cracking grip.
‘It’s not your place to interfere, Konzen,’ she murmured. ‘This is his journey.’
Sanzo shook himself free of her grip but stayed still.
There was a hush in the air, deeper than silence, closer to death. Goku went over to the person in the chair - a boy, Sanzo saw, young, asleep.
‘Hey,’ he said awkwardly, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder. ‘You awake?’
The boy slept on.
‘As I thought,’ Kanzeon murmured. She huffed and crossed the room to stand next to Goku. ‘Have you slipped so far in these years that you can’t even recognise him anymore? Honestly, you’re so stubborn at times. All right, then, Nataku. If this is what it takes-’
Casually, she reached forward and slipped the limiter off Goku’s head.
Goku cried out in pain and shock, reaching out for the limiter as it fell to the floor, but the change had already overtaken him. The Goku-presence in his mind winked out briefly before roaring through it like a flood, overpowering his thought until Sanzo forced it down as he had so many times before. Power sizzled through the air, an electric deadly aura that never failed to chill Sanzo’s blood no matter how many times he felt it prickle against his skin-
Sanzo’s breath stopped.
Something was different.
Goku - no, Seiten Taisei - was still, silent. He was looking down at the boy, and Sanzo could feel something different in his mind. For the first time, the raging destructive aura that the Sage exuded was calm; still angry, still dark, but restrained by something.
Slowly, a clawed hand stretched out to touch the boy on the forehead.
‘Nataku,’ Seiten Taisei said slowly, voice hoarse with emotion and disuse. Sanzo hadn’t heard him speak since that first time, when he’d wept and asked Sanzo why he’d been left alone. Again. ‘Nataku. Nataku.’
And then everything went white as an explosion of power slammed through the room.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
When his vision cleared, everything was still the same. Seiten Taisei, Nataku, Kanzeon, the lotus pond, the elaborately decorated room.
Nataku stirred.
‘Nataku,’ Seiten Taisei said, and his claws stroked through the boy’s hair, fingers bent back delicately to not damage the skin. Sanzo struggled with a brief flare of fear which subsided when he saw the look in those cat-slit pupils.
Pure joy.
Nataku opened his eyes. ‘Go…ku?’ he said, eyes wide with clear recognition. He sounded even more rusty than Seiten Taisei did.
Seiten Taisei smiled, and Sanzo could see Goku in there somewhere, the pure bright soul shining through that broken, furious, lonely wreck of a heretic. Fangs, yes, but he smiled so sweetly that Sanzo couldn’t help the smile that tugged on his face.
‘It’s me,’ Seiten Taisei whispered, and then hugged him tightly, crushingly tight. It would have broken Sanzo’s ribs if he’d been hugged like that, but Nataku didn’t even seem to notice the strength of the grip as he slowly moved his arms, hugging him back.
‘Well,’ Kanzeon said, satisfied, ‘that wraps it up, then.’ With one smooth move, the limiter was back on Goku’s head. ‘Can’t have you straining your power, now.’ Goku’s eyes rolled up in his head and he fell forward on the throne in a mess of limbs.
Sanzo wasn’t even aware he was moving until he picked Goku up with one arm and slung it over his shoulders. Goku was dead weight against his side, sprawling gracelessly, the idiot. ‘You didn’t have to do that to him, you old hag,’ he snapped at Kanzeon.
‘Oh, it was necessary,’ she shrugged. ‘You didn’t want him to stay divided forever, did you?’
And he really hated it when she knew what she was talking about.
‘All right,’ he said crisply, ‘take us home.’
Nataku’s eyes were wide, vulnerable, and he clutched Goku’s other arm as if he’d tear it off before he let go. ‘No,’ he said desperately. He couldn’t quite stand yet, but he struggled half-upright, still holding Goku. ‘No, you won’t take him from me again!’ He looked furious, resolved, hurt, lonely. It was a look Sanzo recognised, an eerie echo of Goku’s, as if they were brothers of the soul.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said curtly, and reached out to Nataku with his other hand. ‘I’m not leaving you behind.’
‘Wh-what?’ Nataku stammered.
Sanzo jerked his chin at Goku’s limp form. ‘He called you, didn’t he? You’re coming back with us.’
Nataku’s eyes closed for a second, and then they flew open and he smiled. That smile - it was like Goku’s, too. Unexpectedly joyful, artless, shining with all the warmth of the sun, and as helplessly as with Goku’s, Sanzo felt his mouth quirk upwards. He hauled Nataku upright and half supported him as Nataku steadied himself with an arm around his waist and Sanzo’s arm around his shoulder.
‘Hey,’ Sanzo said.
‘Yes?’ Nataku looked up at him, anxious again.
‘You don’t happen to like peaches, do you?’
Nataku looked utterly bewildered. ‘What? Well, sure.’
Sanzo sighed. ‘Great. Another one.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Kanzeon said helpfully. ‘But don’t tell the monks. I enjoy their squawking.’
‘You’re a sadist,’ Sanzo accused.
The smile slid into a leer, but Sanzo was spared whatever reply she wanted to make when Nataku said, ‘Thank you, Merciful Goddess.’
Kanzeon smiled. ‘It’s time, isn’t it, Nataku? For you to learn what it is to live.’
Nataku half bowed. Polite, Sanzo thought with a snort. At least he was better than Goku.
‘Well,’ she said and clapped her hands. ‘Go on, then.’
Beside him, Nataku began to laugh, and then the spell caught, and they were going home.
All three of them.
A/N: I was hoping to try to bring out different sets of opposites in this fic - Heaven/earth, memory/amnesia, and the differences between Sanzo and Goku, Goku and Nataku and Seiten Taisei and Goku. I don’t know how well that came through, though. Ah well.
Prompt #4: Opposites
Author: macavitykitsune
Pairings: 39.
Warnings: Sanzo’s Mouth.
Summary: there’s a voice in Goku’s head this time, and the circle’s closing at last.
A/N: overshot the time limit by fifteen minutes on this one, because the bunnies multiplied halfway through.
There was a voice in his head.
At first, he thought it was just Sanzo. Goku didn’t make it common knowledge, but he was acutely sensitive to the blond’s mind, and Sanzo didn’t call for him nearly that often but when he did, it was an unsubtle tug like fingers tangling in his hair and yanking.
This voice had a completely different quality. It was soft, tentative, wounded somehow, cringing away as if it was unsure it would be heard. Unlike Sanzo, who made it damn clear he was calling him when he did call him, it had an uncertain quality to it.
It took him a little while to realise what it was, and that, more than anything, probably demonstrated how far he’d come from the gnawing insecurity and fear of his childhood; he had sounded like that in the cave, calling and expecting no one to answer but calling because there was nothing else he could do and something in him was still clawing for freedom with desperate helpless ferocity.
That decided him, and he asked Sanzo about it.
Sanzo gave him a skeptical look and then said, ‘How long have you been hearing it?’
‘Almost six months now.’ Since the end of the Minus Wave, the end of their quest.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Sanzo said, ‘but I always knew…your voice had a direction.’ He sounded a little embarrassed to be talking about it, and Goku knew he should finish asking his questions before the embarrassment became acute enough that he started laying into him with his fan. ‘It took me straight to that mountain.’
Goku shook his head. ‘I can’t feel any sort of direction. I mean, I usually know where you are, y’know? This isn’t…like that. I can’t feel a place it comes from.’
To his credit, Sanzo didn’t say anything mocking. Instead, he paused thoughtfully. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘maybe it’s not here at all, that voice.’
‘Someone dead?’ Goku asked. That was a creepy idea, enough to make him cringe a little. There were an awful lot of dead people who might have called him and he wasn’t really interested in meeting too many of them. They’d killed a lot of youkai on the journey, after all.
Sanzo blew a smoke ring and eyed it with some satisfaction. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sanzooooo!’
‘Fine, fine.’ Sanzo shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Goku nodded, and hugged him. Sanzo’s arms came around him and he hugged him back a little awkwardly; touch was one thing he was never going to be completely easy with.
‘Goku.’
‘Yeah?’
‘If it’s another brat, you’re raising him yourself.’
Goku smiled, eyes bright. ‘Sure!’
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In the end, it turned out that Sanzo didn’t have to work too hard to find out, because the information came looking for them that night.
‘Hello, boys,’ Kanzeon said in all her transparent glory as she teleported into their bedroom.
‘Fuck!’ Sanzo snapped as he dove for the covers, which had been kicked off the bed earlier. Goku grabbed a convenient pillow.
‘Oh, there’s no need for that,’ Kanzeon said, waving a nonchalant hand. ‘It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.’
Goku was turning red. Sanzo had skipped that stage entirely and gone straight to purple with rage, clamping down on the urge to shoot her - it wouldn’t do that much good anyway. ‘What,’ he began dangerously, ‘do you-’
‘The voice you’ve been hearing,’ she said, pinning Goku with her sharp gaze. ‘Would you like to know who it is?’
They both stilled, startled out of mortification and fury.
‘What?’ Goku asked slowly.
‘I know whose voice you’re hearing,’ Kanzeon said impatiently. ‘Do you want to find him?’
‘Yes,’ Goku answered without hesitation.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Goku said quietly. ‘Because he sounds like me. And he’s calling. I’ve got to find him, haven’t I?’
Kanzeon eyed him for a moment. Then she nodded and smiled. ‘I knew you were a rare one, Goku,’ she purred. ‘Well, then. I suppose I’ll have to take you to him, since you can’t travel that path yourself. Tomorrow evening, at this time. Be ready.’
She left before they could say another word.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She returned at exactly the same time the next day. ‘Son Goku,’ she said formally. ‘Are you ready?’
Goku nodded. He had nyoibou out and ready, and his eyes were hard with determination. It was a look that always reassured Sanzo on some level, that absolute certainty and tremendous strength, and it settled his wariness today. ‘I’m ready.’
‘All right, then,’ Kanzeon said, and the world dissolved around them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Returning to consciousness was painful, and Sanzo’s first impulse was to throw up. It felt as if all his internal organs had been scrambled and put together by a less than knowledgeable person, and he wobbled as he stood up.
Goku was beside him, equally wobbly. ‘Hey,’ he said faintly as he sniffed the air. ‘This place. It doesn’t smell like anything.’
‘That’s because it isn’t exactly anywhere,’ Kanzeon said. She looked absolutely unruffled, the bitch. Sanzo would have wagered a significant amount that the pain he was in wasn’t entirely necessary. ‘You’re in Heaven.’
Sanzo snorted. ‘Ha.’ Then the overpowering divine aura of the place assaulted his senses all at once, and he reconsidered. ‘What the hell,’ he said blankly.
‘Can you feel him now, little one?’ Kanzeon asked almost kindly.
Goku’s brow was creased in concentration. ‘Yeahhh,’ he murmured. ‘Over…there…’
They walked through deserted corridors, ornate and unaesthetic - the glitter was intended to impress, not decorate. It reeked of the superficiality Sanzo had grown to detest from the temples, and he sniffed in distaste as Goku led them, still fiercely focused, to somewhere Sanzo sincerely hoped wasn’t going to take too much killing to get them out of.
In the end, though, it was just a large apartment. Goku stepped into it without the slightest hesitation, and through another room to a large open space with a large lotus pond in the centre. As he entered the open room, Goku drew in a sharp breath. Sanzo followed his gaze to a large chair in a corner, where someone lay sleeping. He stepped forward, drawing his gun just in case, but Kanzeon caught his arm in a bone-cracking grip.
‘It’s not your place to interfere, Konzen,’ she murmured. ‘This is his journey.’
Sanzo shook himself free of her grip but stayed still.
There was a hush in the air, deeper than silence, closer to death. Goku went over to the person in the chair - a boy, Sanzo saw, young, asleep.
‘Hey,’ he said awkwardly, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder. ‘You awake?’
The boy slept on.
‘As I thought,’ Kanzeon murmured. She huffed and crossed the room to stand next to Goku. ‘Have you slipped so far in these years that you can’t even recognise him anymore? Honestly, you’re so stubborn at times. All right, then, Nataku. If this is what it takes-’
Casually, she reached forward and slipped the limiter off Goku’s head.
Goku cried out in pain and shock, reaching out for the limiter as it fell to the floor, but the change had already overtaken him. The Goku-presence in his mind winked out briefly before roaring through it like a flood, overpowering his thought until Sanzo forced it down as he had so many times before. Power sizzled through the air, an electric deadly aura that never failed to chill Sanzo’s blood no matter how many times he felt it prickle against his skin-
Sanzo’s breath stopped.
Something was different.
Goku - no, Seiten Taisei - was still, silent. He was looking down at the boy, and Sanzo could feel something different in his mind. For the first time, the raging destructive aura that the Sage exuded was calm; still angry, still dark, but restrained by something.
Slowly, a clawed hand stretched out to touch the boy on the forehead.
‘Nataku,’ Seiten Taisei said slowly, voice hoarse with emotion and disuse. Sanzo hadn’t heard him speak since that first time, when he’d wept and asked Sanzo why he’d been left alone. Again. ‘Nataku. Nataku.’
And then everything went white as an explosion of power slammed through the room.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
When his vision cleared, everything was still the same. Seiten Taisei, Nataku, Kanzeon, the lotus pond, the elaborately decorated room.
Nataku stirred.
‘Nataku,’ Seiten Taisei said, and his claws stroked through the boy’s hair, fingers bent back delicately to not damage the skin. Sanzo struggled with a brief flare of fear which subsided when he saw the look in those cat-slit pupils.
Pure joy.
Nataku opened his eyes. ‘Go…ku?’ he said, eyes wide with clear recognition. He sounded even more rusty than Seiten Taisei did.
Seiten Taisei smiled, and Sanzo could see Goku in there somewhere, the pure bright soul shining through that broken, furious, lonely wreck of a heretic. Fangs, yes, but he smiled so sweetly that Sanzo couldn’t help the smile that tugged on his face.
‘It’s me,’ Seiten Taisei whispered, and then hugged him tightly, crushingly tight. It would have broken Sanzo’s ribs if he’d been hugged like that, but Nataku didn’t even seem to notice the strength of the grip as he slowly moved his arms, hugging him back.
‘Well,’ Kanzeon said, satisfied, ‘that wraps it up, then.’ With one smooth move, the limiter was back on Goku’s head. ‘Can’t have you straining your power, now.’ Goku’s eyes rolled up in his head and he fell forward on the throne in a mess of limbs.
Sanzo wasn’t even aware he was moving until he picked Goku up with one arm and slung it over his shoulders. Goku was dead weight against his side, sprawling gracelessly, the idiot. ‘You didn’t have to do that to him, you old hag,’ he snapped at Kanzeon.
‘Oh, it was necessary,’ she shrugged. ‘You didn’t want him to stay divided forever, did you?’
And he really hated it when she knew what she was talking about.
‘All right,’ he said crisply, ‘take us home.’
Nataku’s eyes were wide, vulnerable, and he clutched Goku’s other arm as if he’d tear it off before he let go. ‘No,’ he said desperately. He couldn’t quite stand yet, but he struggled half-upright, still holding Goku. ‘No, you won’t take him from me again!’ He looked furious, resolved, hurt, lonely. It was a look Sanzo recognised, an eerie echo of Goku’s, as if they were brothers of the soul.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said curtly, and reached out to Nataku with his other hand. ‘I’m not leaving you behind.’
‘Wh-what?’ Nataku stammered.
Sanzo jerked his chin at Goku’s limp form. ‘He called you, didn’t he? You’re coming back with us.’
Nataku’s eyes closed for a second, and then they flew open and he smiled. That smile - it was like Goku’s, too. Unexpectedly joyful, artless, shining with all the warmth of the sun, and as helplessly as with Goku’s, Sanzo felt his mouth quirk upwards. He hauled Nataku upright and half supported him as Nataku steadied himself with an arm around his waist and Sanzo’s arm around his shoulder.
‘Hey,’ Sanzo said.
‘Yes?’ Nataku looked up at him, anxious again.
‘You don’t happen to like peaches, do you?’
Nataku looked utterly bewildered. ‘What? Well, sure.’
Sanzo sighed. ‘Great. Another one.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Kanzeon said helpfully. ‘But don’t tell the monks. I enjoy their squawking.’
‘You’re a sadist,’ Sanzo accused.
The smile slid into a leer, but Sanzo was spared whatever reply she wanted to make when Nataku said, ‘Thank you, Merciful Goddess.’
Kanzeon smiled. ‘It’s time, isn’t it, Nataku? For you to learn what it is to live.’
Nataku half bowed. Polite, Sanzo thought with a snort. At least he was better than Goku.
‘Well,’ she said and clapped her hands. ‘Go on, then.’
Beside him, Nataku began to laugh, and then the spell caught, and they were going home.
All three of them.
A/N: I was hoping to try to bring out different sets of opposites in this fic - Heaven/earth, memory/amnesia, and the differences between Sanzo and Goku, Goku and Nataku and Seiten Taisei and Goku. I don’t know how well that came through, though. Ah well.