aquabean | Shut up creative ideas! I need sleep! (Reply)

Okay, yeah. I was going to go to bed ages ago. I'd even turned Diego off all the way. When, Bam! This hits. A Saiyuki fic for you all to enjoy.

(Please note: this fic was inspired many moons ago by a very brief conversation with...well, I can't remember who right now, but we were talking about the way these boys lend themselves to metaphor, and so, whoever you were -- this fic's for you.)

[Edit: One line has been deleated from the original post because

permetaform is better at science than I am. (also,

chaosd noticed too.) Way to go smart girls!]

Title: Like water
Author: rune*
Characters: Goku, Hakkai, Sanzo (hints of 38)
Summary: We learn something new every day.

“...and that is what makes water special.” Hakkai’s smile broadened. He’d always enjoyed these impromptu teaching sessions with Goku, mostly because the times he could get the young man to sit still long enough to complete a lesson were few and far between.

“But...” Goku trailed off, his gazed focused far off in the distance, hands playing idly with the edge of the rug on which he and Hakkai sat.

“Yes?” Hakkai always prompted him, always encouraged the not-quite-asked questions, a thing that Sanzo, for his part, could never understand. From his chair near the window he frowned even as he, turned ever so slightly, toward the other two. Goku wasn’t the only one who found Hakkai’s lessons interesting, even if he was the only one who’d ever admit it.

“Well, it’s just...water can’t be the only thing that does that. What about people?” Goku’s eyes, wide and serious, stopped the laugh, long before it left Hakkai’s mouth. “I mean...” And again he trailed off.

“Yes?” And again, Hakkai prompted, the easy voice gentle and soothing. Sanzo for his part remained silent, but already found himself mulling over the boy’s words. Like water, how?

“Okay. It’s just. Well.”

“Just spit it out.” Sanzo’s words weren’t ever anywhere near as patient as Hakkai’s but they brought about the same results.

“We’re here and we’re solid, right?” Goku looked to the other two for confirmation and received a thoughtful nod and a brisk, “Obviously,” in response. “Well, it’s just that, what about when we die?”

He sat, waiting expectantly for a understanding, but received only vaguely confused stares.

“I’m not sure I --”

“It’s all a waste of --”

But Goku was sure this time, and cut the others off.

“No. Hakkai you said that when water is ice and it gets real hot real fast, or whatever, it turns right into smoke,right?”

“Well, steam. But, yes, that’s essentially right, yes.”

“And then it goes up,” Here Goku gestured vaguely with his hand, the motion encompassing the room, it’s occupants, the world outside, “and gets to be with all the rest of the water, up there, as a cloud, right?”

“Yes, exactly.” Hakkai nodded, obviously pleased with how much of the lesson the monkey king had managed to retain.

“Right. And after it’s clouds,” Again a sweep of his hand, “it turns into rain, and it falls back down and gets turned into water in the ocean or the a river or whatever, and then someday it’ll be ice again.”

Sanzo stared at the Goku. A slow understanding crept up on him, and he turned towards Hakkai, only to find the man regarding the boy seriously.

“I still don’t think that I’m fully grasping what it is you mean.” Hakkai’s voice was serious, one scholar speaking to another. A moment passed in which Goku preened, if only briefly, that Hakkai would treat him as an adult, an equal.

“It’s just, at first I felt bad for the water. It’s got to be a shock to go from being here,” and he pressed the palms of his hands down against the floor boards beneath him, “to just sort of ‘being’.” He paused, as if gathering his thoughts, “But then I thought about how after a while, and maybe to the water it is a long while, it gets to come back, and be water, or ice, or whatever again. It’s back. Back with all the other water. And even while it was clouds, it wasn’t really away from water, it was just with another kind of water, you know?”

He looked again to Sanzo, but the monk was watching Hakkai with a kind of intensity that they rarely saw. Hakkai, for his part, was looking at Goku, on his face an expression of barely concealed wonder.

Goku, continued, “And with people, well, it seems to me, it might be the same way, you know? We’re here,” and this time he placed his palm against Hakkai’s knee, “and when we die we’re, I don’t know clouds or whatever, but then,” the pause this time wasn’t to gather thoughts, but for emphasis, “we come back. And we get to be with people again. Maybe even the same people. Like the way that you said water can go really far from where it started, and fall and travel down rivers and through oceans and all of that, but before it goes to be clouds again it ends up in the place it started. But with people...maybe it’s that it isn’t about ending up where you started like with water, but ending up...ending up with the same other people. Ending up with the same water that you started with.”

Outside, a child shrieked and laughed, and an adult voice called out after it. There was a thump in the hall outside, as another of the inn’s occupants closed their bedroom door. Hakkai shifted, his eyes meeting Sanzo’s unwavering stare.

“I think the monkey may have gotten it right for once.” And neither Sanzo, nor Hakkai looked away.

Goku, stood and moved toward the window as he glance over his shoulder at the two men behind him, neither of them blinking. He looked back out through the open shutters, so they wouldn’t see his smile.

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