Tale as Old as Time, 2/4
Title: Tale as Old as Time
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Saiyuki
Pairing: Sanzo/Goku
Rating: NC-17, in general. You know, eventually.
Disclaimer: <----
Notes: Chapter two.
Back to chapter one.
"What the hell is up with this place?" Kouryuu groaned to his closed eyelids. He was met with only an echoing, watery silence. The baths were more like pools, deep and wide. Goku the hyperactive super-chimp made an unholy tempest of them, although it did keep him from smelling too much like a dead frog all the time.
It was late now, though. Kouryuu was floating towards the hot end, trying to boil his thoughts into a new order.
"That was a question." Kouryuu opened his eyes to scowl at the lamp.
"I'm sure I don't know anything useful; most of that I remember is the wall across from that alcove."
Kouryuu splashed upright, more determinedly frustrated now.
"You were with Koumyou in that room, weren't you? The one the monkey won't let me get near."
"I hardly see how a simple lamp could be knowledgeable enough to accurately describe anything a Sanzo priest would do," the lamp replied primly.
Kouryuu growled. Same fucking bullshit, always. "What's got you scared?"
No answer.
Lying back in the water, he let the breath trickle out his lungs until they were no longer buoyant enough to keep him from drifting under. (Okay, so maybe he could stand to fatten up a bit. Asceticism was one part of Buddhist practice he'd never had trouble with.)
Kouryuu looked up through the water, seeing nothing. A month of this, already. Damn but he needed something to shoot.
Nothing to shoot here. No animals. No bugs; not even the birds flew directly overhead. Ever. Only the weather touched this place.
And yet. Yet. The thought of leaving never once occurred to him. The thought that he might not be able to should have bothered him much more.
Now that his indignation at having been bartered off to some fat mountain-demon (it was not, after all, quite the case) had mostly passed, Kouryuu was determined to accomplish whatever it was his master had in mind. But there was something else, something that felt a little too much like the way his lungs burned for air, only it didn't subside when he breached the surface and inhaled.
"Kouryuu! Kouryuu!"
Kouryuu lay back, enjoying the sun since Goku refused to allow him to stay inside, and tried to ignore the caterwauling. It had definitely been a mistake to teach the monkey his name. But he'd seemed more...focussed lately.
"Kouryuu!" Kouryuu sighed and dragged his eyes open to watch whatever it was Goku was doing now.
The monkey sprang gleefully from greening tree to slate shingles and back again. It seemed he was finally getting the idea that Kouryuu was interactive. Having Goku bounce around in front of him was, at least marginally, better than having him bounce around behind, which made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up in some not-altogether-unreasonable predator-prey response.
Kouryuu flipped over onto his stomach, letting his hair fall over his eyes. Working was difficult while Goku was around. Ergo, he had taken to spending his nights in the library with its frustratingly jumbled scrolls while the monkey slept, allowing himself to be dragged outside to doze. As a result, he was getting noticeably browner. Also perhaps a bit immodest, but even at this altitude, the spring days were getting warmer and warmer, and it wasn't like the monkey cared.
Kouryuu woke with the evening chill as the sun dipped below the castle wall. Goku was curled up beside him, his strange golden eyes wide open, staring at Kouryuu like he was a puzzle. It was a look Kouryuu had caught on that board, open face more than once in the past several days.
"What do you want, you stupid chimp?" Kouryuu grumbled softly.
Goku blinked at him. The gentle wind ruffling his hair drew Kouryuu's attention to the metallic gleam of his power-limiter. Brushing Goku's hair out of the way, Kouryuu took a closer look at the circlet.
What had been as thin as a blade of grass was now almost as wide as Kouryuu's finger. Kouryuu narrowed his eyes, his mind racing.
"The fuck is going on here?" Kouryuu asked the silent wind.
Goku pressed his head into Kouryuu's touch; Kouryuu pulled his hand back with what was maybe a little tousle.
"The fuck am I supposed to do with you?" he asked Goku plaintively.
Goku blinked at him again. Then his stomach growled.
Kouryuu rolled onto his back and groaned. "Idiot monkey."
Just how much Goku was changing became evident in the days that followed. Kouryuu walked into the kitchen one evening, Goku zipping electron-like somewhere in his radius.
Opening the fridge, Kouryuu pulled out a stack of dishes. The stir-fry was hot. Kouryuu had come to accept that it was less like a refrigerator and more like the world's fastest chef. Kouryuu didn't glare too much and it provided him with food: it was an arrangement he could live with.
To Kouryuu's surprise, instead of immediately slamming the refrigerator closed so he could drag out a dripping hunk of dead animal, Goku caught the door and pulled out a gigantic bowl of shrimp tempura. With a determined expression on his face, he extracted a pair of chopsticks from the drawer that usually provided them for Kouryuu and sat down at the kitchen table.
Slightly bemused, Kouryuu sat down across from him and started to eat, watching out of the corner of his eye. Goku was having a bit of trouble with the proper positioning of chopsticks. He was clever with his hands, though. Now for the tempura. God, but that bowl was large enough to swim in. That was one. Two tries. Three, and the monkey was getting impatient now. Four-
Crack. Kouryuu looked up to see an expression of bewilderment on Goku's face.
Goku stumped around the table to the magic drawer, pulled out another pair of chopsticks, and stumped back, planted himself determinedly behind the bowl.
One. Two-
Crack. His fingers must have been too strong for the brittle wood. Glancing warily at Kouryuu, Goku carefully laid the snapped bits on the table by the first pair and got up again.
Goku sat looking mournfully at his food, third pair of chopsticks in hand. Kouryuu shook his head.
"Goku."
Bright eyes instantly on his, barraging him with a welter of jumbled and confused emotion. Kouryuu raised his chopsticks and then, very deliberately, laid them on the table. He picked up a chunk of chicken with his fingers and popped it into his mouth for emphasis.
Goku's face blinked incredulously for a moment, then broke into a blinding grin. He impaled a shrimp on one of his claws and ate it. His eyes went wide. Kouryuu found himself smiling back.
The tempura disappeared very, very quickly.
That week, Kouryuu decided to press his luck. Something was happening, and Goku was much more lucid now than he'd been the last time Kouryuu had tried the tower. Maybe he could persuade the monkey not to freak out.
Goku fidgeted more the closer they came, sniffing the air and ranging progressively closer to Kouryuu. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through regularly spaced windows to brighten the dreary granite corridor in slices.
Kouryuu walked steadily forward. Goku started whining unhappily, a high, unpleasant, nasal sound. When Kouryuu swiped at him with his fan, he skittered out of the way. His steps grew increasingly reluctant the closer the door came until finally he stopped, wild-eyed and almost quivering.
Kouryuu took another step. He was brought up short by a hand on his arm. The grip was light, almost imploring, but Goku's fingers were strong.
"Let me go, monkey," Kouryuu turned to glare him down. "I need to do this."
"Kouryuu," Goku said, but Kouryuu stood firm against the unfamiliar twinge in his chest and tugged his hand away.
"I never asked you to come along. Either be quiet or get out of my face."
Goku met Kouryuu's eyes belligerently.
"I'm. Going," said Kouryuu. Suiting actions to words, he turned and resumed his advance on the tower door.
Nothing stopped him this time. After a few paces, Goku caught up with him, a sulking shadow in the corner of his eye.
Kouryuu halted. Here it was. Tall, plain wood bound and hinged with iron, identical to every other door in the castle. Here was hoping it wasn't something nastier that Goku was supposed to be guarding. One hand on the butt of his gun, Kouryuu reached for the handle.
"No." Suddenly, Goku was in front of him, holding the door closed.
"Get out of my way," Kouryuu told him.
"No." A great furrow of concern and consternation creased his brow. "Don't go in there, Kouryuu."
"Why not? What's in there?"
"You shouldn't! You can't! I don't like it!" Goku wailed.
Kouryuu narrowed his eyes, bristling. "Sadly for you, I don't give a shit. Move."
"No!"
Kouryuu pressed his gun against Goku's forehead, just below the limiter. "Move."
A brown hand knocked the gun away with enough force to make Kouryuu's hand numb.
"Motherf-" There was no sunlight in the hall now.
"Stop it, Kouryuu!"
"Whatever's in there, my master wanted me to find it. I'm not here to be your goddamn playmate!"
"Leave it alone! Why do you need to? Why can't you just stop?"
"Get out of my way, you stupid monkey!"
"Kouryuu, don't make me-!"
"It's none of your fucking business, Goku. Now get out of my way!"
Kouryuu yanked at the doorknob, which he'd kept hold of even with Goku snarling and planted in front of it, all sharp teeth and tense muscle. The reaction was nothing like he'd expected. Goku exploded at him with a shout that might have been, I won't let you, Konzen!
Kouryuu hit the wall dazed and barely had time to register the feeling of the floor beneath him before he was yanked up roughly and lifted over a bony shoulder that quickly propelled itself out a window, the noise of glass breaking oddly muted.
The sound of the first clash of thunder had been lost in Goku's roar. It rumbled with the voice of a waterfall now. Rain hit Kouryuu like fists as he sailed through the air, pounded him into the sudden mud of the ground once they landed. He was vaguely aware of Goku's bare, callused foot by his face and a voice, slightly out of sync, saying, They can't have you back!
Kouryuu lay stunned and overloaded outside time, his perceptions gradually leaching back into his head. The rain is Goku's, he thought, and watched him hurl himself over the fortress walls, illuminated by lightning, throwing his rage against some invisible barrier two hundred feet in the air. Both the storm and Goku's furious assault lasted for days. Limping slightly, Kouryuu staggered inside.
This had happened often before his arrival, Kouryuu knew instinctively. He had never been very sensitive, psychically speaking, except for Goku's constant calling (it had to have been Goku; it had stopped as soon as he walked through the thrice-damned gate, after all); but he could feel the power in this storm. It was more than just the outburst of an animal rattling the bars of its cage, Kouryuu thought, sitting on the deep sill of a window in an empty room after he had mustered himself to wash and change back into his master's cast-offs. This was a railing against the unfairness of the universe, deep and complex with hurt so potent Kouryuu could barely sleep. His dreams were haunted by watching eyes, their regard grown less frightening and more disturbing. With a growl, Kouryuu abandoned his vantage-point. The rain gained nothing from his witness.
Kouryuu wandered back downstairs, as unquiet as the gutted heavens. He opened a drawer in the kitchen and it offered him a pack of cigarettes. He slammed it closed with a growl.
A few of his ribs felt bruised, and his shoulder felt somewhat strained. He carried the lamp in his other hand and went resolutely back to the tower. Kouryuu refused to be intimidated by Goku's self-indulgent tantrum; and besides, he needed to retrieve his gun.
There was no need for worry; Goku was entirely oblivious to Kouryuu's presence near the forbidden tower. Kouryuu stooped to pick up his Smith and Wesson.
The door opened grudgingly under his hand, as though even whatever oiled the rest of the doors in the castle so they pivoted effortlessly on their hinges was afraid to touch it. The rusty creak almost made him jump.
Foolishness. Kouryuu let the door grate closed behind him. The silence was startling, an abrupt absence of the constant stormy racket backgrounding the past few days.
Walking over to a table standing in front of an eerily quiet, hail-pounded window, Kouryuu saw a hand of poker laid out on it. Hold'em, Koumyou's preferred game.
The dealer's chip was a petal from a cherry blossom, still somehow fresh and soft under his fingers. The pot had been swept to the other side.
The first two cards of the flop were kings: the king of diamonds and the king of spades.
"Rich deck," Kouryuu murmured, and the hush was so absolute his voice sounded like an echo. A chill ran up his back. No, he wasn't psychic, but this was giving him the creeps.
There was a diamond on the king of spades' forehead. Dark hair and dark robe fanned out as he tuned to strike, a spray of blood flying from where his right eye had been. His beard was flecked with foam. Next to him, the king of diamonds was a sober, greying man. He stood tall and motionless, clad in robes of practically funereal splendour. His pin-prick eyes seemed almost sad, in contrast to the mad glint of the spade-king's. Kouryuu was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
The last flop card was the queen of hearts. Her hair dripped red with blood as it spilled over the cushions of her divan to leak onto the transverse image. Smoke curled lazily from a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She held her asymmetrical heart in her hands as if to consider it, the red edges of her wound only barely visible in profile. The image was framed, Kouryuu noted, with long, furled scrolls.
Kouryuu's eyes followed the course of the game automatically. There was a space, and then the turn, the queen of clubs. Feathery hair half-hid her face. She stood on a flight of stairs in a monochrome portrait; only one eye was visible, a startling green. There were other flashes of colour: on the bloody end of the scroll she held in one hand, as well as in a darker string that was a spill of intestines connecting the two-sided figure. In a curious synchronicity, the card's border was a filmy, wavering band of smoke.
The river card, the king of hearts, was skewed towards the winning side of the table, as though someone had pulled it over to take a closer look. Its stylised face had some serious gender-identity issues, leering out from a frame of tumbling black curls. A large, sun-shaped pendant hung on his breast.
Each player's hole cards were turned face-up. The dealer had held two aces: the ace of hearts and the ace of spades. There was a bullet hole drawn through the single heart. The ace of spades was depicted, as had been the king, in the original style, which were spades in name only. A sword crossed the card's textured whiteness, blood clearly dripping down the blade from the hilt.
Kouryuu's eyes tracked across the table to see the winning hand, expecting a flush. What he saw instead were two jokers. Those aren't supposed to be in there.
The black joker was sinister, dark and smirking and entwined in a wreath of helixed ladders and familiar billows of paper; but the red joker was what stopped his breath. Even stylised and stilted, he knew that face. Those golden eyes increasingly frequently unsettled him with their regard. He held a staff and there was a symbol Kouryuu hadn't seen before on his chest. Blood spattered his manacled hands and angular face. There was something inexplicably empty in the sharp-edged depiction of his expression, and Kouryuu thought of his voice in the hall before he'd gone postal.
Kouryuu could see the story laid out on the table. The cards read almost more like tarot than poker. The king of hearts lay like an accusation where its model had left it. He felt an odd lurch when he glanced again at the ace of hearts. His certainty was growing with the momentum of colliding trains.
There were three violent cards: the king of spades, the red joker, and the ace of spades which had been revealed between them in the sequence of events. The sword, which had been bloodied from the hilt down. There was a potent relevance to the decorum with which the king of diamonds was laid out, a heavy weight. The carnage surrounding the interlinked queens spoke of tragedy.
The king of hearts, laying pristine between the king of spades and ace of hearts, did nothing to break the flow of violence. The sword seemed the real dividing line, on the near side death, then beyond it Goku, and beyond Goku the dark Joker. Kouryuu couldn't help noticing which side the king of hearts was on.
Kouryuu left the room and shut the door behind him. He walked down the stairs, along the corridor, and out the south garden door, leaving the lamp on the floor inside.
On to chapter three.
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Saiyuki
Pairing: Sanzo/Goku
Rating: NC-17, in general. You know, eventually.
Disclaimer: <----
Notes: Chapter two.
Back to chapter one.
"What the hell is up with this place?" Kouryuu groaned to his closed eyelids. He was met with only an echoing, watery silence. The baths were more like pools, deep and wide. Goku the hyperactive super-chimp made an unholy tempest of them, although it did keep him from smelling too much like a dead frog all the time.
It was late now, though. Kouryuu was floating towards the hot end, trying to boil his thoughts into a new order.
"That was a question." Kouryuu opened his eyes to scowl at the lamp.
"I'm sure I don't know anything useful; most of that I remember is the wall across from that alcove."
Kouryuu splashed upright, more determinedly frustrated now.
"You were with Koumyou in that room, weren't you? The one the monkey won't let me get near."
"I hardly see how a simple lamp could be knowledgeable enough to accurately describe anything a Sanzo priest would do," the lamp replied primly.
Kouryuu growled. Same fucking bullshit, always. "What's got you scared?"
No answer.
Lying back in the water, he let the breath trickle out his lungs until they were no longer buoyant enough to keep him from drifting under. (Okay, so maybe he could stand to fatten up a bit. Asceticism was one part of Buddhist practice he'd never had trouble with.)
Kouryuu looked up through the water, seeing nothing. A month of this, already. Damn but he needed something to shoot.
Nothing to shoot here. No animals. No bugs; not even the birds flew directly overhead. Ever. Only the weather touched this place.
And yet. Yet. The thought of leaving never once occurred to him. The thought that he might not be able to should have bothered him much more.
Now that his indignation at having been bartered off to some fat mountain-demon (it was not, after all, quite the case) had mostly passed, Kouryuu was determined to accomplish whatever it was his master had in mind. But there was something else, something that felt a little too much like the way his lungs burned for air, only it didn't subside when he breached the surface and inhaled.
"Kouryuu! Kouryuu!"
Kouryuu lay back, enjoying the sun since Goku refused to allow him to stay inside, and tried to ignore the caterwauling. It had definitely been a mistake to teach the monkey his name. But he'd seemed more...focussed lately.
"Kouryuu!" Kouryuu sighed and dragged his eyes open to watch whatever it was Goku was doing now.
The monkey sprang gleefully from greening tree to slate shingles and back again. It seemed he was finally getting the idea that Kouryuu was interactive. Having Goku bounce around in front of him was, at least marginally, better than having him bounce around behind, which made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up in some not-altogether-unreasonable predator-prey response.
Kouryuu flipped over onto his stomach, letting his hair fall over his eyes. Working was difficult while Goku was around. Ergo, he had taken to spending his nights in the library with its frustratingly jumbled scrolls while the monkey slept, allowing himself to be dragged outside to doze. As a result, he was getting noticeably browner. Also perhaps a bit immodest, but even at this altitude, the spring days were getting warmer and warmer, and it wasn't like the monkey cared.
Kouryuu woke with the evening chill as the sun dipped below the castle wall. Goku was curled up beside him, his strange golden eyes wide open, staring at Kouryuu like he was a puzzle. It was a look Kouryuu had caught on that board, open face more than once in the past several days.
"What do you want, you stupid chimp?" Kouryuu grumbled softly.
Goku blinked at him. The gentle wind ruffling his hair drew Kouryuu's attention to the metallic gleam of his power-limiter. Brushing Goku's hair out of the way, Kouryuu took a closer look at the circlet.
What had been as thin as a blade of grass was now almost as wide as Kouryuu's finger. Kouryuu narrowed his eyes, his mind racing.
"The fuck is going on here?" Kouryuu asked the silent wind.
Goku pressed his head into Kouryuu's touch; Kouryuu pulled his hand back with what was maybe a little tousle.
"The fuck am I supposed to do with you?" he asked Goku plaintively.
Goku blinked at him again. Then his stomach growled.
Kouryuu rolled onto his back and groaned. "Idiot monkey."
Just how much Goku was changing became evident in the days that followed. Kouryuu walked into the kitchen one evening, Goku zipping electron-like somewhere in his radius.
Opening the fridge, Kouryuu pulled out a stack of dishes. The stir-fry was hot. Kouryuu had come to accept that it was less like a refrigerator and more like the world's fastest chef. Kouryuu didn't glare too much and it provided him with food: it was an arrangement he could live with.
To Kouryuu's surprise, instead of immediately slamming the refrigerator closed so he could drag out a dripping hunk of dead animal, Goku caught the door and pulled out a gigantic bowl of shrimp tempura. With a determined expression on his face, he extracted a pair of chopsticks from the drawer that usually provided them for Kouryuu and sat down at the kitchen table.
Slightly bemused, Kouryuu sat down across from him and started to eat, watching out of the corner of his eye. Goku was having a bit of trouble with the proper positioning of chopsticks. He was clever with his hands, though. Now for the tempura. God, but that bowl was large enough to swim in. That was one. Two tries. Three, and the monkey was getting impatient now. Four-
Crack. Kouryuu looked up to see an expression of bewilderment on Goku's face.
Goku stumped around the table to the magic drawer, pulled out another pair of chopsticks, and stumped back, planted himself determinedly behind the bowl.
One. Two-
Crack. His fingers must have been too strong for the brittle wood. Glancing warily at Kouryuu, Goku carefully laid the snapped bits on the table by the first pair and got up again.
Goku sat looking mournfully at his food, third pair of chopsticks in hand. Kouryuu shook his head.
"Goku."
Bright eyes instantly on his, barraging him with a welter of jumbled and confused emotion. Kouryuu raised his chopsticks and then, very deliberately, laid them on the table. He picked up a chunk of chicken with his fingers and popped it into his mouth for emphasis.
Goku's face blinked incredulously for a moment, then broke into a blinding grin. He impaled a shrimp on one of his claws and ate it. His eyes went wide. Kouryuu found himself smiling back.
The tempura disappeared very, very quickly.
That week, Kouryuu decided to press his luck. Something was happening, and Goku was much more lucid now than he'd been the last time Kouryuu had tried the tower. Maybe he could persuade the monkey not to freak out.
Goku fidgeted more the closer they came, sniffing the air and ranging progressively closer to Kouryuu. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through regularly spaced windows to brighten the dreary granite corridor in slices.
Kouryuu walked steadily forward. Goku started whining unhappily, a high, unpleasant, nasal sound. When Kouryuu swiped at him with his fan, he skittered out of the way. His steps grew increasingly reluctant the closer the door came until finally he stopped, wild-eyed and almost quivering.
Kouryuu took another step. He was brought up short by a hand on his arm. The grip was light, almost imploring, but Goku's fingers were strong.
"Let me go, monkey," Kouryuu turned to glare him down. "I need to do this."
"Kouryuu," Goku said, but Kouryuu stood firm against the unfamiliar twinge in his chest and tugged his hand away.
"I never asked you to come along. Either be quiet or get out of my face."
Goku met Kouryuu's eyes belligerently.
"I'm. Going," said Kouryuu. Suiting actions to words, he turned and resumed his advance on the tower door.
Nothing stopped him this time. After a few paces, Goku caught up with him, a sulking shadow in the corner of his eye.
Kouryuu halted. Here it was. Tall, plain wood bound and hinged with iron, identical to every other door in the castle. Here was hoping it wasn't something nastier that Goku was supposed to be guarding. One hand on the butt of his gun, Kouryuu reached for the handle.
"No." Suddenly, Goku was in front of him, holding the door closed.
"Get out of my way," Kouryuu told him.
"No." A great furrow of concern and consternation creased his brow. "Don't go in there, Kouryuu."
"Why not? What's in there?"
"You shouldn't! You can't! I don't like it!" Goku wailed.
Kouryuu narrowed his eyes, bristling. "Sadly for you, I don't give a shit. Move."
"No!"
Kouryuu pressed his gun against Goku's forehead, just below the limiter. "Move."
A brown hand knocked the gun away with enough force to make Kouryuu's hand numb.
"Motherf-" There was no sunlight in the hall now.
"Stop it, Kouryuu!"
"Whatever's in there, my master wanted me to find it. I'm not here to be your goddamn playmate!"
"Leave it alone! Why do you need to? Why can't you just stop?"
"Get out of my way, you stupid monkey!"
"Kouryuu, don't make me-!"
"It's none of your fucking business, Goku. Now get out of my way!"
Kouryuu yanked at the doorknob, which he'd kept hold of even with Goku snarling and planted in front of it, all sharp teeth and tense muscle. The reaction was nothing like he'd expected. Goku exploded at him with a shout that might have been, I won't let you, Konzen!
Kouryuu hit the wall dazed and barely had time to register the feeling of the floor beneath him before he was yanked up roughly and lifted over a bony shoulder that quickly propelled itself out a window, the noise of glass breaking oddly muted.
The sound of the first clash of thunder had been lost in Goku's roar. It rumbled with the voice of a waterfall now. Rain hit Kouryuu like fists as he sailed through the air, pounded him into the sudden mud of the ground once they landed. He was vaguely aware of Goku's bare, callused foot by his face and a voice, slightly out of sync, saying, They can't have you back!
Kouryuu lay stunned and overloaded outside time, his perceptions gradually leaching back into his head. The rain is Goku's, he thought, and watched him hurl himself over the fortress walls, illuminated by lightning, throwing his rage against some invisible barrier two hundred feet in the air. Both the storm and Goku's furious assault lasted for days. Limping slightly, Kouryuu staggered inside.
This had happened often before his arrival, Kouryuu knew instinctively. He had never been very sensitive, psychically speaking, except for Goku's constant calling (it had to have been Goku; it had stopped as soon as he walked through the thrice-damned gate, after all); but he could feel the power in this storm. It was more than just the outburst of an animal rattling the bars of its cage, Kouryuu thought, sitting on the deep sill of a window in an empty room after he had mustered himself to wash and change back into his master's cast-offs. This was a railing against the unfairness of the universe, deep and complex with hurt so potent Kouryuu could barely sleep. His dreams were haunted by watching eyes, their regard grown less frightening and more disturbing. With a growl, Kouryuu abandoned his vantage-point. The rain gained nothing from his witness.
Kouryuu wandered back downstairs, as unquiet as the gutted heavens. He opened a drawer in the kitchen and it offered him a pack of cigarettes. He slammed it closed with a growl.
A few of his ribs felt bruised, and his shoulder felt somewhat strained. He carried the lamp in his other hand and went resolutely back to the tower. Kouryuu refused to be intimidated by Goku's self-indulgent tantrum; and besides, he needed to retrieve his gun.
There was no need for worry; Goku was entirely oblivious to Kouryuu's presence near the forbidden tower. Kouryuu stooped to pick up his Smith and Wesson.
The door opened grudgingly under his hand, as though even whatever oiled the rest of the doors in the castle so they pivoted effortlessly on their hinges was afraid to touch it. The rusty creak almost made him jump.
Foolishness. Kouryuu let the door grate closed behind him. The silence was startling, an abrupt absence of the constant stormy racket backgrounding the past few days.
Walking over to a table standing in front of an eerily quiet, hail-pounded window, Kouryuu saw a hand of poker laid out on it. Hold'em, Koumyou's preferred game.
The dealer's chip was a petal from a cherry blossom, still somehow fresh and soft under his fingers. The pot had been swept to the other side.
The first two cards of the flop were kings: the king of diamonds and the king of spades.
"Rich deck," Kouryuu murmured, and the hush was so absolute his voice sounded like an echo. A chill ran up his back. No, he wasn't psychic, but this was giving him the creeps.
There was a diamond on the king of spades' forehead. Dark hair and dark robe fanned out as he tuned to strike, a spray of blood flying from where his right eye had been. His beard was flecked with foam. Next to him, the king of diamonds was a sober, greying man. He stood tall and motionless, clad in robes of practically funereal splendour. His pin-prick eyes seemed almost sad, in contrast to the mad glint of the spade-king's. Kouryuu was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
The last flop card was the queen of hearts. Her hair dripped red with blood as it spilled over the cushions of her divan to leak onto the transverse image. Smoke curled lazily from a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. She held her asymmetrical heart in her hands as if to consider it, the red edges of her wound only barely visible in profile. The image was framed, Kouryuu noted, with long, furled scrolls.
Kouryuu's eyes followed the course of the game automatically. There was a space, and then the turn, the queen of clubs. Feathery hair half-hid her face. She stood on a flight of stairs in a monochrome portrait; only one eye was visible, a startling green. There were other flashes of colour: on the bloody end of the scroll she held in one hand, as well as in a darker string that was a spill of intestines connecting the two-sided figure. In a curious synchronicity, the card's border was a filmy, wavering band of smoke.
The river card, the king of hearts, was skewed towards the winning side of the table, as though someone had pulled it over to take a closer look. Its stylised face had some serious gender-identity issues, leering out from a frame of tumbling black curls. A large, sun-shaped pendant hung on his breast.
Each player's hole cards were turned face-up. The dealer had held two aces: the ace of hearts and the ace of spades. There was a bullet hole drawn through the single heart. The ace of spades was depicted, as had been the king, in the original style, which were spades in name only. A sword crossed the card's textured whiteness, blood clearly dripping down the blade from the hilt.
Kouryuu's eyes tracked across the table to see the winning hand, expecting a flush. What he saw instead were two jokers. Those aren't supposed to be in there.
The black joker was sinister, dark and smirking and entwined in a wreath of helixed ladders and familiar billows of paper; but the red joker was what stopped his breath. Even stylised and stilted, he knew that face. Those golden eyes increasingly frequently unsettled him with their regard. He held a staff and there was a symbol Kouryuu hadn't seen before on his chest. Blood spattered his manacled hands and angular face. There was something inexplicably empty in the sharp-edged depiction of his expression, and Kouryuu thought of his voice in the hall before he'd gone postal.
Kouryuu could see the story laid out on the table. The cards read almost more like tarot than poker. The king of hearts lay like an accusation where its model had left it. He felt an odd lurch when he glanced again at the ace of hearts. His certainty was growing with the momentum of colliding trains.
There were three violent cards: the king of spades, the red joker, and the ace of spades which had been revealed between them in the sequence of events. The sword, which had been bloodied from the hilt down. There was a potent relevance to the decorum with which the king of diamonds was laid out, a heavy weight. The carnage surrounding the interlinked queens spoke of tragedy.
The king of hearts, laying pristine between the king of spades and ace of hearts, did nothing to break the flow of violence. The sword seemed the real dividing line, on the near side death, then beyond it Goku, and beyond Goku the dark Joker. Kouryuu couldn't help noticing which side the king of hearts was on.
Kouryuu left the room and shut the door behind him. He walked down the stairs, along the corridor, and out the south garden door, leaving the lamp on the floor inside.
On to chapter three.