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Eleventh Beat
Day 20
The palace fields, back in the days when the valley that surrounded their castle was not just dry wasteland. When the crops waved in hot late summer breeze, and the sky was a deep violet.
"You know..."
Walking, the dry grass nearly up to their waists, clasped hands swinging between them.
"I wish it could just stay like this."
"Nn."
"Can it?"
"I don't know. We could see."
Pale little hand wrapped in his, with the brown skin and the blunted claws he was still afraid might cut if he wasn't careful. White and golden glow in the corner of his vision. Soft and nearly melodious young voice in his ears, a voice untarnished by a whole lifetime's worth of pain and suffering, unmarred by black cynicism or a fear masked as anger.
A voice that smiled.
"I sort of like being around you, Genjo," he said to him. "I wish we really could have known each other when we were kids. Even if it's impossible. I'd give anything if I could do it all over that way."
"But that would change lots of other things."
"I know."
"Things you would miss. Things I would miss. Still..."
"Hm?"
"...It might have been nice."
"I think so too. Actually... I think it makes sense that things got this way. For whatever else has happened. Don't you think, Genjo?"
"Nn. But... Who's Genjo?"
He slowed a little. "That's your name, isn't it?"
"No."
"What is it?"
"D'you want to know? I'll tell you."
He looked over, with the sunlight on that golden hair so bright it was blinding, and for that last moment Kougaiji could only see that true, honest, contented smile on the boy's face.
"My name is..."
~*~
"...Kouryuu."
He opened his eyes.
The hum of computer fans returned. So did the sickness.
Head still numb, Kougaiji sat up until tugging discouraged his movement, and fumbled with stiff arms to detach the wires and various cables. He pulled them off his forearms, his chest, his neck. Ripped them from his temples and winced as the blood started trickling but did it anyway. Couldn't stand the itching in his skin, the creeping tingling that stemmed from far more than the mere presence of a few needles.
Outside his cell, someone tsked.
Kougaiji only stared at the wall for a long time, trying to judge the hour by the square of light smearing on it. "How long was I--"
"Two or three hours. A record for you lately," Nii said, without waiting for the whole question. "Did you decide to take care of a whole life's sleep in one go? Your body seems to be physically fighting it now. At least that's what we saw," he noted, "before you so kindly pulled off all those wires."
There was a smell he could detect now, with his senses working. He wondered for a moment why it was oddly familiar, and realized he was recognizing burning tobacco.
And worse, a part of his brain not strictly his was saying it was the cheap stuff.
"I don't remember giving you permission to turn me into another guinea pig," he said, curling fingers against someone else's nicotine addiction responding to the smell.
"Permission implies you are in a position to give or withhold informed consent," the human countered, with that slight sing-song of recitation. "Recall that the clinically insane do not fall into that category."
"You've got this all insulated for yourself, don't you? Well played."
"Such a compliment, highness."
Kougaiji finally permitted himself to glance over, because the cigarette smell was driving him just so slightly mad. It was the first thing he saw, turning to look, the crooked doggend between smirking lips.
Nii noticed.
"It's odd how you've chosen to accomodate him," he remarked casually, reclining a little in his chair, bunny doll over crossed lap. "Indulge his addictions, his clothing preferences, even his phobias and mannerisms. Is it symbiotic or merely him taking over?" A hand crunched over a plush paw at the final words.
Kougaiji's own hand twitched. He stopped it.
"I know what you're trying to do," he told Nii with strained calm. "And it's got as much chance for success as anything else. I've told you before. I can't control it."
"But can he?"
For a long, slow moment, their eyes locked. And Kougaiji could do nothing but glare back with fullest force, lips pressed into a thin line.
"Let me see," Nii said, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward in his seat, doll tucked in an arm. "Can it be you are still unquestioningly taking his holiness's side, that his intentions are to your mutual benefit? Whose word do you have other than his that he is working toward your interests at all?
"On the contrary-- I would think destroying your health and reputation, driving you to bad decisions, to repercussions, to your inevitable death, only to forward his own agenda is strictly parasitic. If anything, I suspect that any psychic strong enough to achieve full possession of another body would have found a way to mask thoughts from you. How sure are you that the priest is not using you as means to an end? That he is keeping secrets from you, holding power over you, making you an unwitting servant and host instead of an ally?"
"What difference does it make to you?"
The cigarette was pulled from Nii's mouth, and crushed out under a foot. Kougaiji noticed there were several more littered around the chair.
"Because what we would have would be the difference between a polite fiction --that is, you lie to yourself and others that you are supporting the right cause, because you have no means by which to resist-- and a genuine insurrection against the crown. Which is one of the points Gyokumen-sama wanted cleared up."
Kougaiji smiled, but it was the thin, sardonic kind.
"You know what? It took a few years and a human in my head before it sunk in. Anyone backing this revival is more of a fool than I'll ever manage."
"Only for some. Yourself, for instance."
"You want to talk polite fiction? How about this bullshit you feed to yourself. Do you really believe you'll be left untouched? You forget who you are." And for the briefest moment he relished the cold, totally serious look on Dr. Nii's face. "No matter what you've done for him, to my father you're just another human. Nothing Gyokumen tries is going to save you."
For a moment, for just the briefest flicker of a half-second, Kougaiji swore he saw something flit across Nii Jianyi's face that it wasn't prepared to express.
Then it was gone, and the scrape of the metal chair against stone rang jarring in the cell block, as the human stood up. Conscientiously propped the bunny doll against the back of the chair, facing Kougaiji with almost a strange, knowing look.
"Since we're on the subject," he said, approaching the bars, and Kougaiji found himself climbing to his feet as well, just to stay more or less level with the man, "quite the polite fiction we've erected for ourselves here, don't you agree? You and that Yaone girl."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
And he knew saying it allayed nothing, and he knew Nii saw it, the way he was keeping eyes on him, didn't even blink with the sound of bolts sliding back in the lock.
"I mean what gave you away. I realize you might not be particularly well-versed in these areas, prince, but there's something of a difference between bedding a woman--" a sound, solid clank, as the cell door swung shut behind him "--and, say, a man."
A sudden realization washed over sharp and siezing like an avalanche, as Kougaiji saw what had happened to the space between them. That barrier that he hadn't really acknowledged as important before quite abruptly gone, and he was already backed up to the wall.
With only the single window as light, the line of Nii's glasses glowed as he spoke. "Really, your highness. You surprise even me sometimes."
He'd heard that tone from him before. The man still tried it sometimes, when they found themselves alone and seemed to find now was a good time to get a bit of well-intentioned harassment in. Kougaiji thought he'd built up a resistance to it by now. He was sure he had.
Sanzo hadn't.
Nii smirked with approval, feeling the panicked pulse under his fingers, as his hand framed the prince's jaw line. And slowly, almost imperceptively, stroked.
"Of course I couldn't expect much else," he was murmuring, his voice just barely on the cusp of hearing such that it seemed almost as though the vibration of his breath carried most of the words. Heady, smoke-tainted breath. Smoke that clung to his hair and his clothes, to everything. "Long hair and your mother's earrings, your inability to properly associate with females, frequent emotional instability. You make a pathetic male of the species."
He made it sound like, just for the moment, it was a compliment.
Kougaiji's throat contracted painfully, as Nii traced a thumb down a line of that flesh. Traced it lovingly the way only Dokugakuji had ever been allowed to.
Heart pounded in his head, in his chest, in his ears, rattled every bone. Begged his eyes to tear away from that smirking gaze, eyes all but level with his own but could have glared down at him from a great height for the power they weilded. Silently screamed at his hands to come up and rip those fingers away from his face, and demanding to know what made them lock.
"I wonder," the scientist said, whispering in an ear, "is it your fear you're feeling now, or his? I've done a bit of research on that priest. Do you know the kind of early life he led? The kind of trouble his pretty face got him into? Probably quite similar to the kind of trouble you've faced yourself. Although I might hazard you've developed a bit more of a liking for it..."
He tried to speak. Felt his lungs somehow compressed, collapsed in on themselves. Breath came in uneven gasps.
Another hand was travelling downward. Kougaiji couldn't even squirm against the invasion.
"And you might fight, I think. But I wouldn't advise it. Not in your state. And I wouldn't suggest calling for help, either. Unless you'd care to be taken by one of those inbred peasant boys instead. I wonder," Nii added, in dark, honest curiosity, words coming out faster and faster now, "what would go through that priest's body, to feel someone else taken by force and feel it as his own rape? Would that finally destroy him, in ways nothing we've done ever could? There will be people there on duty right now, watching. Would he pantomime your movements? Would he echo all your screams?"
Something broke, snapped. The air itself, so suddenly that Kougaiji stared at nothing for a moment, dazed, as the door at the end of the cell block swung open and, in a single instant, Nii put a good foot of distance between them.
"Doctor Nii," an assistant's voice called out at the end of the hall, "your presence is requested in the primary lab."
"What is it?" Nii demanded, irritated. From this angle, he probably could not be seen from the door, or else the interrupting figure might have seen the distinct frustration crossing the scientist's face before he was able to stop himself.
"Some critical computer meltdown, sir. We're thinking we had a power surge somewhere. It's an awful mess, sir," the assistant stressed, emphasizing the urgency in her voice.
Nii rumbled something that was very nearly a growl. "I'll be right there."
A creak, as ancient hinges swung a door open, and back closed. Jangle of keys in the lock. Nii came back into Kougaiji's frozen view almost out of frame, and very out of focus, collecting up clipboard and notes and, absently, the bunny doll, that was still staring directly at him.
His eyes refocused into sharp clarity again, as Nii spoke up once more, saying brightly, "I believe we've made definite progress today, highness. Do have a good afternoon."
One last smirk, and he walked briskly out of Kougaiji's field of vision.
The cell row door slammed.
The shaking started first, grew in magnitude until he felt every bone vibrating, his lungs rattling with the labor of breath. And with the shaking his legs finally gave out from under him, and he slid, back against the cold stone wall, slid and slid what seemed a hundred miles before collapsing in a crumpled heap on the floor. Balled himself up, head ducked, arms around his knees. And still he shook. And couldn't shake the jarring, dizzying thought that in that moment that the door had opened, he had wished with every fiber of his being that it had been Dokugakuji come to save him.
I guess you were right, priest, he thought ruefully, running trembling fingers through hair, over an aching scalp. You were fucking right.
Centering yourself might be useful, Sanzo managed.
No. No more meditation. None of that.
If you don't you're only going to break down, the human said, in almost a cry. The desperation filling in the rest, the hint that Sanzo himself wasn't faring much better. The clear pleading that if Kougaiji didn't, they were both going to be in trouble. Just... just breathing exercises. Or something. Please.
I...
When he looked up again, it was into shocking violet eyes.
The adrenaline crash had sent him from breathing exercises over the edge into a dream state. Not entirely there, partially awake, but mostly unconscious. Unconscious enough to form a dreamscape now, for Sanzo to appear standing rigid, lips pursed, eyes unreadable, with Kougaiji clinging, hanging on his arms.
It was a lot of things right then. It was Nii, it was the cigarettes, it was Dokugakuji, it was the entrapment, the revival, his mother, Lirin, his own pathetic self, anything and everything. That made Kougaiji's eyes sting and well up without his control or consent, burying his head against Sanzo's chest before the tears could fall for him to see.
"Kouryuu. Kouryuu, Kouryuu, Kouryuu..."
Felt the name and let it spill out of him before he could hold back. Needing to say it in ways he couldn't understand, as though the utterance could be some salve on its own.
He felt Sanzo stiffen under his embrace. "That's not my name anymore."
"Then I don't know what is."
Sanzo fell to silence, as Kougaiji pressed against him, sobbing violently, silently, all the sound gone out of him.
He let him. For many minutes, maybe hours, maybe an eternity for all it felt like, before he all but begged Kougaiji to stop and forced him upright and held him steady by the shoulders, matched their gaze eye to eye.
The tug was there, some sensation Kougaiji had only rarely felt and always supressed and never understood. That he couldn't stop himself from feeling now, wouldn't unless he confessed it.
"I love you."
No flinch this time, no violent reaction. He merely frowned and supressed a sigh.
"'Said it to the wrong person," he said. There was something approaching anger in his voice.
Kougaiji's expression fell. "But I--"
"No. Stop," the priest ordered, taking his hands from Kougaiji's shoulders and pulling out of the youkai's own embrace, stepping back. "Don't you presume for a second that this me-you thing is even in the same league as you and him. Don't say that to me just because I'm easier to say it to, do you understand? It's cowardly."
For a moment, it was all Kougaiji could do to stare in thorough befuddlement. And shock.
"What... What's good enough for you?" he demanded finally. "How many people are you going to keep on pushing away?"
"This isn't about that," Sanzo snapped back. "This is about us being on the eve of all our deaths as we know it and you wasting time in a comfort zone because anything else scares you."
"Scares me? What the hell do you know? You shot relationships down before they even got off the ground because you're so fucking terrified of things!"
Now Sanzo was baring his teeth. "I have every goddamn right to!"
"Maybe so do I, did you ever think about that? You can't sit around in my head being a little cheerleader when you can't bring yourself to admit a few things."
"I'm making sure you don't fuck things up like I did!" the priest shouted, air rattling with the simulated voice.
And then it died away, and there was nothing but radio silence, as Kougaiji stood frozen and Sanzo calmed and straightened his imagined robes a little.
"Kouryuu..."
Sanzo only shook his head. "Wake up."
~*~
It had taken considerable persuasion to convince the guards to let them through. The kind of persuasion Yaone always felt horribly embarrassed having to engage in. No matter what kind of good it served.
Eventually they made it to the final door to the cell block, and a harried human scientist was cautioning them that now really wasn't the best time for a visit, that his highness was exhibiting hysteria, that they shouldn't believe anything the prince should happen to say, and so on. They pretended to listen only as long as the door remained closed. Once it opened, and they were through, nothing else mattered.
It really didn't matter when the two servants came in view of their master's cell. In the near-darkness, all that they could see at first was a huddled shape against the wall. It was only upon cautious approach that they even saw that he was awake, and watching them.
There was a chair but neither one had the idea to sit in it. They knelt on the floor instead until their knees ached from the cold, then shifted into cross-legged sitting instead. And even after that, it was considerable time before Kougaiji spoke.
"What are you doing here?"
Not the warmest reception, though there wasn't really any callousness in the question. They reacted anyway, Yaone's mouth falling open before she could cover herself, and Dokugakuji shifting his shoulders back a little.
"We would have come sooner," Dokugakuji explained, "but there was trouble. Your mother's safe," he added quickly, as Kougaiji started to lift his head; "I just meant for us. We're running out of friends. But I got in with this one guard the right way and I think I might be able to make it outside the castle tonight."
There was a pause, which seemed to be composed of Kougaiji staring with widening eyes as his brain adjusted to several things at once.
"You're still going?"
"I promised, didn't I?"
"You don't think I'm--"
"No," Yaone said strenuously. "Not at all, my lord. We believe you."
The two servants knew it was a common expression, worry melting away. But for the life of them it seemed to be precisely what happened then, to Kougaiji's body. They could all but literally see the anxiety radiating off and away from his body, muscles untensing under loose robes. He let his arms fall from around his knees, shifted toward them, fell into cross-legged seating in imitation of their own.
"Do they have you on anything?" Dokugakuji asked. It was a general question they had planned to ask anyway, but the strangeness of Kougaiji's movement illicited it a lot sooner than they'd anticipated. It was somewhat akin to watching a child getting coaxed out of a corner.
"They do, but I don't know what it is. I tear out the IVs and they're back the next time I wake up."
"Did you catch any names at all?" Yaone pressed, with the inflection she hoped reminded him that she did have a good store of alchemical knowledge under her obi.
"Nothing I'd remember. Some human stuff. Long names. I'm fine, though," he added, to the expressions deepening on their faces. "It doesn't matter much now anyway."
"Don't talk like that," Dokugakuji said, jaw hardening. "Let me ask you: if you got everything you needed, would the plan you had before still work?"
Kougaiji blinked first, in surprise. Then he tilted his head and went still for a moment. "Yes," he said, after a pause.
They saw it, both of them. What had been a conversation between three people had now become a conversation with four.
"He's awake, is he?" his bodyguard asked, realizing too late he hadn't quite eliminated that hint of disconcert in his voice.
"We don't sleep much."
We.
"Lord Kougaiji," Yaone said cautiously. "May we... speak with Lord Sanzo?"
She squirmed a little under that gaze, some mixture of astonishment and exasperation.
"I can't bring him out. I don't know how much I have to tell everyone that. It's not in my control," he insisted, seeming to strain to keep his voice level.
"If you could try..." Dokugakuji persisted.
"No! There's nothing to try, it was a complete fluke, I don't even know if it really happened! I wish everyone would just shut up about--"
And then he stopped.
Twitched.
And fell forward, spasming.
"LORD KOUGAIJI!"
"Kou!"
They were on their knees in a second, pushing up against the bars, squeezing their arms through the gaps, clawing at the air in the effort to reach their master as he lay shaking with increasingly powerful convulsions, coughing with a timbre and roughness he had never possessed, rasping for breath as though his throat was suddenly unfamiliar to him.
And then, quite abruptly, the shaking upsided, and through his still violent, lung-shredding coughs, Kougaiji slowly pushed himself back up.
Except it wasn't Kougaiji now.
"You fucking morons," the creature growled, in a voice very not their master's. It was Kougaiji's throat producing the sounds, but the inflection could never be his, the gravel quality suggesting many years of tobacco abuse and callous tones, and not used to a slightly genetically different vocal chord set. "You'd damn well better have a point to all this or I'll..."
Plus, it was speaking Chinese.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dokugakuji said desperately, holding up his hands as he struggled back into a language that had fallen unfamiliar with disuse. "Hold on a second. You've been speaking Mandarin with him this whole time?"
The thing that was until recently Kougaiji tilted his head a little. "Wasn't he?"
"Of course not; he'd be thinking in Tamil, wouldn't he? Kind of hard not to."
"Never noticed."
"Huh."
"Perhaps minds have an automatic translator?" Yaone suggested weakly.
"Got me," the creature growled, resting back a little, bringing up a hand to brush hair out of his eyes-- and jerking abruptly, ripping the hand far away from his face and staring astonishment at claws he hadn't until recently possessed.
"Well--" Dokugakuji tried, as the thing in Kougaiji's body tried to smooth over this little slip-up in composure, "since you asked, we wanted to talk to you about your intentions."
"Kou's sure," the thing answered casually. He started hunting around in the folds of his robes for something. "You might as well be."
"But why is he sure?"
"He's faced between annihilation and maybe living long enough to get something out of life. Which would you choose?" the creature reasoned. He growled, something that nearly bordered on animal. "Where the hell are the..."
He stopped, finding Dokugakuji's hand extended with a fresh pack offered up to him. This had been a begrudging agreement between the two servants, who might not have known much about the priest, but knew enough that he'd appreciate a peace offering.
Dokugakuji didn't even flinch when Kougaiji's claws cut through his skin, as the hand snatched up the provided items without the present hand's owner taking caution into consideration until too late. He withdrew the hand quickly and pressed the bleeding gashes to the hem of his robe while the body of Kougaiji ripped open the cigarette pack and started to light up with a practiced fluidity he shouldn't have had.
"I can't believe you do this to him," Dokugakuji told the creature angrily, before he or Yaone could hold him back. "It's bad enough you trash your own body with that shit without making someone else do it too."
"'Each their own."
"He's a warrior. How's it going to be in a couple years when he can't fight for bending over hacking up a lung the whole time? I'm all fine for you doing it," he added, hinting quite strenuously that he'd be sure to seize the opportunity if Sanzo happened to fall to the predicament he just described.
"I'm not forcing Kou into anything," the Kougaiji-Sanzo shot back in almost defiance, trying on the third attempt to get the lighter to work successfully. He proceeded to take a long, familiar drag-- and then fell into a fit of coughing again. "Don't-- hkk-- force your agenda on-- hakkkk-- me, would you? Baby him on your own time."
"Don't say his name so casually," Dokugakuji said coldly.
"Why not?" the creature challenged. He took another defiant puff. "With the close quarters I've had to put up with, I'd say I'm about due it."
"You'll say you're close or something?"
"Actually, close doesn't sort of cut it. More like overlapping," he suggested. "Which is something I think you can have some idea of, so if you have the right to call him whatever you like, that more than extends to me."
Dokugakuji caught Yaone's expression out of the corner of his eye and coughed. "That's... sort of not appropriate right now."
Sanzo-Kougaiji shrugged. "You're the boss, chief."
"Can-- Can Lord Kougaiji hear us right now?" Yaone said, in a desperate bid to get vaguely back on track.
"No. And he won't remember any of this."
"When he said he couldn't control the change-over--"
"He was wrong. I told him before how he could do it, it just didn't seem to click with him at the time. He was sort of drugged. Alprazolam, incidentally," he added directly to Yaone. "It's a sedative-hypnotic you can get at a human chemist's, but either they overdosed or Kou's system couldn't hack it or both. It was bad."
"...Oh my..."
"Is it my turn to ask questions yet?" the creature asked brightly.
Dokugakuji scowled at him. "Don't get too comfortable in there."
The face of Kougaiji smirked at him in a vicious sardonic way that Kougaiji never would, and Dokugakuji had to wonder what it was about Sanzo that just riled him like a cat. He'd never been a big fan of the man, granted, but nothing before this stuff with Kougaiji had actually had him bristling. It was the damn look in those eyes, very much Sanzo's eyes and not his master's at all at the moment, that said quite clearly that he could read Dokugakuji like a book for the specific reason that Kougaiji could, and that he could as easily get away with calling him nicknames, and probably knew everything about what he did in bed with greater detail than he'd like divulged.
Good gods. It was like dealing with women all over again. The girls themselves had been great, but there were always their best friends hanging conveniently around with that 'you're not going to cause our girl any trouble, are you?' edge to their smiles. The best friends that didn't trust you as far as they could throw you, that had that gut feeling that you were up to no good, and were going to keep harassing you until they were proven right.
And then, suddenly, before he could even realize it happening, jealousy was sneaking in too. Because here was a man that had superceded all of his efforts and gotten all of his hard-won prize without breaking a sweat, had actually gotten up inside Kougaiji's head and might just know it more intimately than Dokugakuji would ever manage.
But more than anything, his stomach twisted for the look on Kougaiji's face that wasn't Kougaiji's expression at all. Something darker and far more malevolent, something that tugged lips into a grin that made his canines all too prominent, made the lines stand out on his face, made his eyes pale and luminous and ever so slightly feral.
Kougaiji was not a threatening individual. He might have some more extreme features that, on anyone else, would succeed in creating a sufficiently intimidating figure, but the prince's countenance was --sometimes to his displeasure-- completely discredited by his passive and slightly naive personality. The boy was too sweet and gentle to ever seem truly dangerous to his servants.
Conversely, Sanzo often struck the youkai as simply endearing, like, say, a barking chihuahua. He might have enough venom to kill a horse dead with a glare, and a violent streak definitely worth duck and covering for... but... well... he was a human. High priest or not, there came a point when all that rolling black rage just looked silly on him.
But Sanzo in Kougaiji. That was something. That was pure demonic intent in eyes forged from that bond.
Dokugakuji shivered.
"Don't get your panties in a twist. It's not a walk in a park to do this," the creature said, flicking off ash from the cigarette on to the floor. "You know I don't belong in this body. I know it. We're not the only ones. Know how a body fends off sickness? It knows I'm not supposed to be here. It's fighting right now, and soon I'm either gonna have to back off or get kicked out, and if I do that then I'll never get back in."
"You want to get back."
"Yeah. This could be useful for some things."
"If you--"
"HEY," Sanzo-Kougaiji snapped. "I'm not a fucking criminal. I told you I'm not doing anything without his consent. Don't you get that I wouldn't even be here unless he agreed?"
Dokugakuji frowned, the violent change-over too recent to easily dismiss. "Just 'cause Kou gives in easily doesn't mean you should exploit that. I said don't get too comfortable in there. It's dangerous. I can see who's the stronger one here and don't you dare take advantage of that. Both of you might get in over your heads. However strong this link of yours gets--"
"That's the thing."
The warrior stopped. Because the grin was gone from the creature's face now.
"That's the thing I'm worrying too. Don't you dare tell him, either of you, do you understand?" the thing in Kougaiji's body said, with complete, cold, black seriousness. He waited until he received a couple apprehensive nods, and then his expression worsened. "That's the thing he doesn't understand and I can't tell him. And you two have to pull him back from that if it ever gets that far. He wants to lose himself and you can't let him. Do you understand? Because-- yes, the link's strong. It's so strong that if this all continues, all of this?" He waved a clawed hand, cigarette smoke going in a wave by his head. "Possession? I won't need to do it. It won't exist. It'll just be. Do you get it?"
The silence that followed stung the air.
"You've got a delicate balance struck here," Dokugakuji said eventually.
"You're going to see your brother tonight?"
"But I don't know how I'm gonna convince him. I mean--" He tried and failed to say anything, sufficing to spread his hands before flopping them down in his lap again. "It's not one of those things you just tell people. We need some sort of proof."
Kougaiji-Sanzo burned to the end of his cigarette, then stabbed it out, easing back a little. "I dunno. I can't think of anything. Ask Kou when he wakes up."
Dokugakuji started. "You're leaving?"
"Losing battle, here. Host brain's winning out. But before I go, let me get in my brownie points for the day. Since Kou's a chicken and you're too dense to get it on cues: he has something to say to you sometime. Be sure to ask him about it."
The warrior's brow furrowed. "What--?"
"It'd be a helluva lot nicer if you could go ahead without it ever needing to be said, but hey, each their own." He leaned back farther, obviously preparing to depart, but then brought himself back again. "And since I'll kick myself if I don't say it, you'll have to forgive if this seems completely fucking uncharacteristic, but--" He fixed Dokugakuji with Kougaiji's eyes "--don't screw this one up."
And then it ended.
It was no dramatic convulsion, not even a minute twitch, no smoke or flash or ominous thunder. Just, suddenly, a flicker, almost imperceptible, that they wouldn't have noticed at all but for how well they knew their master, the way every muscle and bone in his body suddenly shifted back to its normal posture, the way his eyes softened. And then all but closed, as he fell back until he hit a wall.
"Nnn?" he murmured, holding his head as his two servants started calling out his name again. He pulled himself up and steadied himself, sniffed around awkwardly at the lingering tobacco smell and probably wondering. And then really wondering, as he sniffed and looked at his claws dried in someone else's blood. "...What the hell did he do?"
Without waiting for an answer, he scooted toward the bars, gently but firmly snatched up Dokugakuji's damaged hand before he had time to pull it away.
"It was nothing," Dokugakuji insisted, squirming under this unaccustomed forwardness as Kougaiji examined his palm. As if he hadn't already had a lot of strange moments today. "Just wasn't used to them.
"Kou," he said heavily, and the prince's head snapped up, indigo eyes lacking that frightening edge of bloodlust. Just clear and deep and way too fucking beautiful.
He lost all nerve right then. To warn him about danger, or ask what Sanzo had meant by having something to say to him. Could do nothing that might drag him back into that hypnotized fascination that had no place here and now with everything else going on, and Yaone already put through too many upsetting things today. No, he swallowed with a dry throat, and resolved the only thing he could bring himself to do was business.
"Sanzo said to ask you what to do to convince Gojyo and them we're for real. Any ideas?"
If he considered the question, it was only for a second.
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