SAIYUKI FANFICTION:
Blood and Water
(Chapter 2 - Hakkai)

by Sherry Marie (click here to see more of this author's work)

The first vivid memory that I hold is of myself crying. Details, settings, other impressions of that moment are vague at best, although I'm sure it occurred near the time when I had first entered the orphanage. I couldn't even name what exactly caused the tears to streak my face with their bitter warmth, but the tears themselves I remember with aching clarity, and I sometimes imagine even now if I were to stretch out my tongue just a little from the corner of my upturned mouth, salty moisture would reach out and touch the tip. And sometimes, mostly when my jaw half-aches from holding a smile too long, I feel a phantom pain behind the white and black and green of my eyes.

My next memory is of when I stopped crying. Listening to the sounds of my own sobbing as it filled the room, stretching out around me, as far as it could go, until its echo sat deep deep in the dusty corner. The sound sat in the corner because it had nowhere else to go, there were no ears to capture the choking coughs of my tears, because people preferred to let you cry alone, people preferred not to be around so much pain as it only served as a reminder of their own pain and past and unshed tears.

It was my loneliness that pulled the tears back into my body with a vicious grab, and I'll always remember, even when I have forgotten everything else in my life, the horrendous pain of that moment, because nothing hurts more than a tear that is denied its fall.

After my face was dry and smooth, people were no longer afraid to be near me. I remember thinking that this was so much better than crying out to a dusty corner, and it was then that I doned my first mask, a mask of indifference. And people felt safe around me then, comfortable with my expressionless face that showed neither joy nor sorrow, an inivitaion, really, for others to draw whichever conclusions of my mood that they desired.

I was alone, but not, and that seemed good enough at the time.

But one day someone saw me, saw past the unassuming counterance that I wore on my face, somehow saw the unshed tears that still lived locked inside me like prisoners pacing in a cell hidden far away from the kiss of freedom. Saw me, and didn't turn away.

"Are you all right?"

I looked up and saw the forest of my own eyes, but lit honestly with life and concern. The fact that the concern was for me was the most startling thing of all. But reflexes, being what they were, formed my response.

I told her I was fine. I looked into the first eyes that saw me, really saw me, and lied my signature lie.

She didn't believe me, and I knew this as hurt intruded onto the perfect lines of her young face. I couldn't stand that she was hurt, I couldn't bear that I had hurt her, this stranger that had only ever spoken four words to me. I felt my blankness slip and I could not stop it, my unvarying mask was sliding from my face and all I could do was drop my eyes in shame for hurting this girl who I did not know, but who seemed to know me so well.

I felt the tender touch of her hand on the top of my head and I forgot how to breathe, because that was the first time that I could ever remember being touched like that, being touched with meaning and on purpose. Her soft hand smoothed down and around the curve of my face until her fingers rested underneath my chin and lifted, very kindly with gentle insistence, until I found myself meeting the mirror green in her eyes. She held out her hand while the blush of her lips curved into a smile, a real smile, one rich with honesty and beauty, and I took her hand because she had offered it, and no one had ever really offered me anything before.

It was the first time that I had ever tasted life without loneliness. The memories of the time I spent with Kannan, the unfairly short but incredibly cherished time we had together, are memories so precious that they are tied tight and kept away, securely and with great care as one keeps valuable treasures, kept somewhere in me near the hidden place of my captive tears.

My tears remained absent during that time, even though I had no reason to upkeep deception, even though Kannan wanted to see me cry, at least once, for the final proof that I had found all that I needed with her. But she never asked, because it was not her way, and I never offered, telling myself that now I refrained from crying simply because this woman had found me. She had looked at me and replaced mimicked emotions with real ones, giving me my first smiles, but never a reason to cry.

They took her way. They took my Kannan away from me when they had no right to do so, they took her away to save themselves, they took her away.

I was playing with my students smiling the smiles that she had given to me, and they were hurting her.

I was laughing while she was screaming.

I was not there when she needed me, I was not there to give her protection, the only thing that she had ever needed from me, when she had always given me so much, she had given me everything that I was, and I was not there to give her that one thing.

And then my memory stalls, growing so dim that it can barely be seen, but I remember this next thing clearly.

I remember my hand reaching out with a sharp sharp knife slashing through an exposed shocked throat. I remember feeling warm liquid pouring over me. I remember how good it felt, this running slick wet heat that was coating my hand, and it was so close to feeling like what I remembered tears to feel like, that I went on and on, reaching out again and again to slice into that fluid, wanting to drown in it, because they had taken Kannan away, they had taken her and I had done nothing to stop them, and there wasn't anything in my life that had ever screamed more loudly for tears than that, and if I couldn't make them myself, I would keep reaching out with my knife until I was soaked.

She was sitting in that cell when I found her, her voice calling out to me, pulling me from that dim place where I was trying so hard to drown. I did not really expect to see her there. I had thought that she was already dead. I did not think it was possible that I could have been living as I had been in the warm wet state of nothing while my Kannan still lived in this world.

But she was there, and she called out to me. She was there, and I knelt down before her on the other side of the cold metal bars of her cell. She was there, and she stepped away from me pulling the sharp knife from my belt.

I wish I knew for certain that I had cried for her at that moment, finally showing the tears that she had silently asked for. I had failed her in all things, but I wish I could remember if I was at least able to give her that.

But no matter how hard I try and remember, my memory won't tell me if it was blood or tears that I felt running down my face, because Kannan had pulled my knife across her lovely throat during a time when I could not distinguish blood from water.

She was gone, and nothing really mattered any more. She was gone, and the youkai had me, cutting into my body, dripping his blood on me in a taunt. She was gone, and I changed, shifted, became something else, and reached out not with the knife that had slit her throat, but with claws that tore and slashed and killed.

I left that place, I left Kannan lying there, I left. I did not know where I was going; because Kannan was dead, and there was no place worth going to in a world that she was not in.

My hand went to my belly and felt the warm liquid pouring out, and I thought finally, this must be the tears that I had locked away, the tears that I had halted from leaking from my eyes, so here they were, escaping through my belly.

I fell.

Something, I don't remember what, made me look up and see him. I saw, for the first time since Kannan was taken, a color break through the dimness. It was red; a beautiful red that touched the wet clumps of his hanging hair and sat in the scarlet of his eyes as he looked at me. It was red, and red was the color of blood.

I knew then what I had been drowning in, and that knowledge pulled me the rest of the way from my dimness and I was glad. I understood that my body had been soaked in blood, as rich in color as this man's hair and eyes. I understood myself to be a murderer, a bather in blood, and I knew then that I was going to hell. There was nowhere for me to go in this world now that Kannan was gone, but this man, who was the color of blood, had shown me that there was still one place left for me to go.

I smiled, my last real smile, and closed my eyes to wait.

When I woke up I was not in hell. I was dry and warm, and the man with the blood-colored eyes and hair was with me. He had not known that there was no place left for me to go in a world without Kannan. Or perhaps he did know, and that was why he decided to take me to his home, so I would have a place to go in this world after all.

I stayed with him, just the two of us, for over a month. I think that I would have enjoyed his company during that time if I were anything other than what I was, if I wasn't one of the walking dead. My life had ended with that knife splitting Kannan's throat. I knew this, but the man, Gojyo, did not. I thought that I should tell him, but I was grateful for what he tried to do. Pulling someone from a bloody puddle and taking them to your home to get better was a very selfless thing to do, and I did not want to cheapen his kindness by letting him know that his effort was wasted on a man that had died before he had been found.

I had one more thing left to do, and then I would let my body die along with my soul. But in the end, I was denied even that.

I was brought to the temple to answer for my sins, but my sentence had already been executed before I stepped through the entrance. They were gods, so of course they could see a dead man walking.

I was not handed death in that temple, but instead, I was handed a new life, a new life that I had not asked for, but had been given anyway.

I left a short while later with my new life and new name. For a moment, standing outside those gates, I had no idea where I was going to go. So I went to Gojyo's home, the only place in the world that I could understand how to get to.

Since then, I have left that home to go on a journey, but he left with me.

Each day I am learning more and more how to be Cho Hakkai, the person I am now that Cho Gounou is dead. And although I do not know everything, I know that I belong to Gojyo, because I only know that there are places in this world for me to go, as long as I know that he will come with me.

And he wants things from me, many things that are reflected, unspoken, deep within the scarlet of his eyes. Things that I want to be able to give to him, but I don't know if I can, because I don't know if the things that he wants are things that I have left to give.

But if I do, then I will find a way to give them all to him, everything that he needs, and they will be given within the drop of a tear.

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