Window Seats

Written for LiveJournal saiyuki_time Comm challenge- Theme:Addiction. Time allowed: 30 mins. 653 words.

There was the seductive pull of the familiar as Sanzo settled himself into those window seats to stare glumly out of the rain-streaked windows. Truth be told, the rainy days eventually just became excuses to spend long, luxurious lengths of time alone with the pain that had tormented him so relentlessly since Koumyuu’s death. His dread of these days become somewhat of a charade, he almost craved them. They were his private time to throw his arms open wide and dare all the small devils that poked at his side with their tiny tridents, pricking and tearing at his flesh, to come on and face him head on, to let him take them all on at once and revel in the full impact of their fury. It was almost a relief to be able to let his defenses against if all down, to stop fighting to keep his gargantuan guard up constantly and just surrender to the multi-layered grief that made him ache and kept him so weary deep down in his bones.

He wondered if he ever would be rid of this ache, this pain, this grief, this anger at the world that he felt for taking from him so unreasonably the one and only boon that life had ever seen fit to grant him. He thought about that a lot, and would fantasize about what it would be like to be like Goku, to be able to skip, and to just think about where his next meatbun was coming from. The closest he ever was able to come to that kind of total escape was in the arms of the kappa, in those final moments of oblivion, and the quiet time after when the stubborn hanyou would refuse to release him and would hold him close. Sometimes, if he was lucky, in those moments, the sweetness and pleasure would wash away the grief and pain, leaving him feeling like a wave-washed beach, smooth and flat and clean inside as he slipped off to sleep. But then when he awoke in the morning the pokes inside were back, the devils were there with their sharp sticks… they never left him long. And there was always something in the outside world to stir them up – some asshole, some fresh hell, some new-made horror, to stir them up if ever they got lazy and left him alone.

As he spent more time with the kappa, as his restless driven spirit gradually, reluctantly stopped fighting being loved by the hanyou’s generous heart, Sanzo began to wonder what he would have left if his demons actually left him… He had dined on their anger and fear and resentment for so long, he wondered if he would know who he was if they became too quiet, and it began to niggle at him, and made him push the kappa away even harder. But the hanyou had trust in him even when he didn’t, and said he was willing to wait. And Sanzo tried to chip away at his demons one by one as he sat in the rainy windows now, although he would never admit to it. He remembered a story his Master had told him when he was young and was once faced with an overwhelming task of some sort. What the task was he had long ago forgotten, but the advice Koumyuu had given him had always stayed with him, and still made him smile, as deceptively simple as it was.

“Kouryuu,” he had said, with his usual patient smile, “when one is faced with a task as large and daunting as consuming an entire elephant, how can one take on this task?”

“I don’t know, Master,” the young boy had replied impatiently, fearful that he would fail.


“There is only one way one can successfully consume the elephant, my sweet Kouryuu. One bite at a time, my dear child. One bite at a time.”

~owari~