"The handwriting's too neat to be yours. Too much flourish to be your dickhead general's."
The message was never delivered to Tentei.
He felt like a petty detective instead of a high military man. One disappearance. No witnesses. Two contradicting reports. Needless to say, Kenren's version was the more reliable one.
Strange times indeed.
Tenpou squinted harder at the lettering, comparing one note with another, then with another and yet another, until...
"Dammit Tenpou!" Lately, 'dammit' seemed to be his first name.
"Yes General?"
Kenren stood with his arms crossed at the study's entrance, puffing angrily at a newly lit cigarette. "I thought told you to stay put."
"I'm staying put." replied Tenpou matter-of-factly.
"I meant in bed."
The marshal smiled as sweetly as he could manage at that point. "I thought you didn't like frigid partners." But this time Kenren wasn't amused.
"I don't. I just don't want to take you while you're injured. So until you're better..."
"I'm not injured. Meandering in dank, dark castles is just a cold waiting to happen."
"Sick? Gods shouldn't get sick."
"Kenren," Tenpou interrupted softly, his smile slowly dying. "We're immortal, not invincible."
That statement seemed to take all the air out of Kenren's lungs and he slouched against the door, uncertain about how to respond. So he just resorted to smoking. The marshal chuckled softly and put the papers back in his drawer, taking care to lock it.
"What the hell are you laughing at? I'm just pissed that you ain't thinking about what happened. The most dangerous man in heaven, and you're knocked unconscious for two days by a fucking piece of furniture!"
"That was quality furniture, General, and you shouldn't have destroyed..." He stopped. The humming in the back of his mind was back again. It doesn't mean that you didn't lover her enough...But Kenren never said... "What in the world are talking about Kenren? Didn't love who enough?" His eyesight grew hazy and he stumbled, only to be caught by a pair of strong arms.
"Hey, hey. Easy now. You just woke up," Kenren soothed, bringing Tenpou back onto his feet and leading him to the bedroom. "What happened in there anyway? Must have been some freaky stuff that messed with your ears because now you're hearing things."
Tenpou shrugged and sat on the soft mattress, shedding the lab coat and fiddling uselessly with the buttons of his shirt. His hands were shaking and for a while, he thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him as well. Was that his lifeline shrinking?
"You weren't too far from the truth," he admitted, then looked grudgingly at his own hands. They just couldn't keep still, as if the ground were shaking. "General, could you do me a fav-"
But he was cut off with a kiss as Kenren gently pushed him flat on the bed and started undoing his shirt buttons, pushing past the fabric and grazing his mouth against the skin underneath. "Did you just admit I was right, Tenpou?"
"Part of your compensation, General. If you want the rest, I advise you to stop talking," Tenpou answered, slipping his cold hands against Kenren's cheeks and guiding him up until the general's shadow hovered over his face. Tenpou knew this wasn't fair, but he needed this, and it was right here, warm and close and offering.
Kenren understood well enough that this probably the worst way to solve the problem, but it was the quickest and most agreeable way for both of them. Tenpou would never tell him anything, he knew that. You can sleep with a man carrying a thousand hidden secrets for a thousand nights and not learn a thing, but for Kenren it was enough that he could slip around these secrets, nestle into the cracks and wait for the walls to fall.
It wasn't as if he loved him or anything like that. Kenren wasn't stupid. He knew his...their...limits.
They were sharing a room again and as Hakkai slid blissfully under the soft bed sheets, he stretched contentedly and looked over to Sanzo who was cursing by the window.
"Sanzo, it's only snow. Be thankful it isn't rain." He tried to be comforting, but it was hard when you were already half asleep.
"Let the damn rain come. At least it doesn't stick," the priest replied bitterly.
"Ah."
And so the silence reigned between them, not that either minded. Waiting for the sleep to come, Hakkai stared at the dark ceiling. They sat in the dark, the two of them, pierced only by the whitish glow of a street lamp reflecting off a two foot bed of snow. The harsh winds ratted the window pane.
"Sanzo."
"I thought you were asleep." He was more subdued this time, his irritation minutely soothed by a cigarette whose pale smoke seemed ghostlike from Sanzo's position near the window.
"I'm not."
"I can fucking see that. What do you want? That flame headed idiot of yours is skirt-chasing downstairs. I ain't getting him and I ain't switching rooms either. If I hear that bakasaru's voice one more time tonight..."
Suddenly, a gentle laugh wafted through the room. "No, no. I wasn't going to ask something so futile. I was going to say: Was I fair?"
"Clarify."
"Sanzo..."
"Fine."
Sanzo already knew what he was talking about. The way Hakkai had defeated Shien...his gentle voice whipping out taunt after taunt until the god's concentration was broken, a whip snapping from too much pull. Hakkai was never one for psychological warfare...exploiting on the weakness of the enemy's mind because he knew his own mind was still in shambles.
Dishonorable, to say the least. But not something Sanzo wouldn't do.
"Take out anybody in our way, Hakkai. Shien's no different from the rest."
But somehow he was. They all were. Homura, Shien, and Zenon.
"But what they wanted wasn't necessarily bad, was it? A better heaven..."
"What the hell was wrong with the first one?" Sanzo spat out.
"That is something I would like to know..."
"Well you don't know and I don't know, so stop pushing it."
Their adventures with Homura were a touchy subject for the priest. Enemies who were enemies, but not really. Otherwise, why would Goku have mourned Homura's death? Why was Sanzo content in letting Homura have the death he wanted? Their demeanor...their passion for this new heaven...and they made it feel so justified.
And they made it seem that something was truly wrong with the gods. Not just the ones forsaken by heaven, but all of them. Which meant things were wrong with everything. Sanzo worked for the gods. This entire journey was ordered by the gods. All for what? To save the world? Yes, fine. Who else? Heaven? Perhaps. And gods who couldn't give a damn what happened down here as long as Gyuumao wasn't alive to threaten that world up there.
"Maybe..." Sanzo started, startling Hakkai who expected the man not to go any further with the subject. "It was just too boring."
He smiled. "Good reasoning. Definitely your reasoning."
"Hakkai."
"Yes, Sanzo?" Hakkai replied...or thought he replied.
"Go to sleep. You're forgetting your company."
"It's only you."
"But you just called me Konzen."
Chapter 3: A Better Man
The gods save no one. I can believe it now. They don't see the blood we shed. They don't see the tears we cry. They are incapable; as are we. Doomed to live in anarchy we shake our fists to the skies and damn them down and damn them down. Share the hell and destroy the world. Make the new resurface and pray for a better reality.
I believe that I hate their heaven. And as such, I have always felt...even as a child...that heaven hated me. But what can they do to punish me? Kill my love? Murder by the thousands? Take away my humanity? They are incapable. Those were my own doings.
And so I ask nothing of them.
Man is a god in ruins. Drowned in blood and sweat. Empty of tears. And infinitely more perfect...we destroy our world over and over. Build new walls. Break them down. And we have an eternity of death and rebirth. Perfecting, unperfecting. Perfecting, and failing. That is why we aren't weak, if we aren't strong.
The gods are incapable. An eternity of passive death. An oppressive stillness. They sit and watch and rot.
That is why I died. I think. So that I could live.
***
There must be a better man for this job. Tenpou was sure there was someone more deserving. He had un-deserved himself of the honor. And if the general ever found out why, Kenren would kill him. Most definitely. Kill him, instead of embracing Tenpou in his sleep like he was doing now.
There was blood on his hands, he just knew it. After years of sorting through intelligence reports and discreetly directing every division of the Western Army in order to avoid non accidental "accidents," something like this just had to come along right under his nose.
God, he was selfish.
Kenren stirred, mumbled a few curses to himself about a meeting in the morning or something like that and pushed himself off the bed. He himself knew it was just an excuse to leave because Tenpou preferred to wake up alone. And as the general lazily picked around the room for wherever his clothes may be, his superior was staring out the window. Snow, but considering his earlier hallucinations, he didn't care.
It was just an anonymous note, for heaven's sake. A note that he found somewhere in his path saying that something bad was going to happen to Kenren Taishou's regiment at such and such time during such and such surveillance round headed by aforementioned general.
Planted, no doubt.
And if Tenpou had pulled the reins on such a routine mission, it would have been obvious to everyone from heaven to hell that he knew more about what was happening in the bureaucracy than he really should. It was just too early to do anything. Being discovered at this stage was just too dangerous for words. Anyway, it was /just/ an anonymous note. He found them all the time. None of them ever proved themselves to be real threats (Tenpou himself was on the field to see that they weren't).
So he did the only thing he thought was right to do: Nothing.
Well.../almost/ nothing.
This time, the situation just felt...how would you call it...spine tingling?
So he did the only thing he knew was wrong to do: He reassigned the general elsewhere then played the ignorant when it happened, just like he was feigning sleep now. It was hard to be passive and selfish at the same time.
Now thirty men are gone. And now his general is thirty men short without any idea why.
Thirty soldiers. Sacrificed for the sake of discretion. For the sake of their marshal's obsession with secrecy. For the sake of their general's life.
Tenpou heard the soft scuffle of boots heading towards the door. Heard it stop and hesitate, then go back...must have forgotten something.
Surely, had Kenren been there, things might have turned out differently. Or they might have not. Kenren could have saved them or could have disappeared as well. And that wouldn't have been good because Tenpou needed him...politically of course.
And Tenpou was selfish.
And not a better man.
And because Tenpou was selfish and not a better man, he was starting to wish there was a better man for this job.
He felt Kenren's presence by the bed. Quiet. He was staring again...
Someone with the compassion to love this hell hole more than his own life.
Because Tenpou, despite his love of war, hated death...and so...thirty...
Relaxing his muscles, the marshal tried not to cringe when he felt the warm kiss at the nape of his neck. Felt it retreat with the footsteps, growing cold on his skin with each passing second.
God, Kenren was going kill him.
The door opened...
A laugh. "Tenpou, I know you're awake."
...then closed. And after that, Tenpou didn't remember much, except for the snow and the fact that the room was getting colder and colder.
***
Did they return yet?"
"Yes, Litouten-sama. Two days ago."
The bureaucrat smiled over his papers, steepling his hands. "And?"
"Tenpou Gensui was unconscious when they arrived."
"Good. And the mirror?"
"Broken, sir. By the general."
"Excellent."
"Why so, sir?"
"A body without a soul can't live very long. He'll never wake up."
***
"Kanzeon-sama, what do you find so amusing that you laugh out of the blue?" demanded Jiroshin while quizzically looking from Kanzeon to the lily pond, from the lily pond, back to the Goddess of Mercy.
Another all-knowing malicious smile snuck its way onto her lips as she replied, "Strange times, Jiroshin. But good times."
"What in the world do you mean by that?"
Silence and a shrug. The smile faded and Kanzeon leaned boredly back into her throne. "I believe that the Marshal with have a temporary substitute standing in for him sometime soon."
"Why? Is he going somewhere?"
"Yes he is."
"And who is this substitute?"
The boddhisvata grinned again as she took a sip from her cup of tea. "A better man, I believe. A better man."
Jiroshin seemed ready to ask for a clarification, but Kanzeon immediately stuck the cup in his face and demanded, "Please change it. The drink is tepid. And boil the water well this time."
"You'll burn your tongue Kanzeon-sama!"
"But I like tea. Those who like tea shouldn't mind the heat, wouldn't you say? And those who do mind it, shouldn't drink it."
***
Life was strange. First you start hearing things while driving. Then you start seeing things. Yes, and then you wake up and you're naked in a room that you are dead sure is not your hotel room.
Kinda makes you want to think things through a bit, but Hakkai wasn't even given that luxury when he heard a bellowing voice he could have sworn was Gojyo's yelling out, "Tenpouuuuu! Rise n' shine!"
Then said voice was proceeded by a sturdy kick to the door and a raven-haired man garbed all in black pranced into the room, throwing a heap of freshly smelling clothes in his face. That's. Not. Gojyo.
