Ooooh, child, things are gonna get easier

[erogappa]

Who: Gojyo and Sharak and Hakkai and guns and the rooster
What: Reunion shenanigans
When: /shrug
Where: Temple Aditi
Warnings: Violence, threats, poor life choices, probably graphic descriptions of amputation


Mind made up, Gojyo finds a temple and transports himself back to heaven.

It's been a chaotic couple of days, that's for damn sure. He holds his right arm -- or what's left of it -- carefully against his side. The end of the stump has been professional sutured and heavily bandaged, but he's still cautious about anything or anyone touching it. It hurts. A lot. The doc had tried to give him pain killers -- fat white pills in mismatched bottles, at least one of which had had a horse silhouette on the label -- but he'd refused. He needed to be sober while dealing with the mess in Japan, and he sure as hell wants to be sober when dealing with the mess here.

There's no goddamn way he's going to be loopy when facing Sharak.

Rounding the bend in the road, the temple slowly comes into view, and something in his chest eases. He'd called this place home back a thousand years ago, and it's still true. Home is where you go when you've got nowhere else to turn, home is where they yell at you because they care for you. Home is where your responsibilities lie.

His step gets lighter -- it's the middle of the night, he's exhausted and in pain, but things are about to get better -- and he mentally begins rehearsing what he'll tell Sharak. Assuming she lets him get a word in edgewise, he mentally chuckles. She might just chew him out, and that'll be fine. He deserves it. But once she's done being mad, he can't wait to talk to her about his new plan. About his new path.

They have the ability to make life better for so many people out in the living world, and not just in the way heaven wants them to. Ayakashi are bad, sure, but so are so many humans -- they can really make a difference, if they want to. And he wants to. He'll tell her about the kids he met, and the men who were making their living forcing the kids to steal and fight and worse things. Those men are dead now, but there's thousands of men like them still out there. Together, they can fix that.

Things are going to be okay.

Comments

[bussounoshima]

[As soon as someone passes through the barrier, Sharak's eyes snap open. As she sits up in bed, she quickly identifies who it is and smiles, just slightly and just for a second. Good. He's back. Before she even had to go chasing after him to drag him back, which makes for a pleasant surprise.

She gets out of bed quietly, pulling her white robe on as she sneaks out of the temple. No need to wake Hakkai or Celty at this hour, but she knows she won't fall asleep again now. She may as well say hello to the idiot first. She walks around the outside of the temple to end up at the top of the hill looking down on the approaching Gojyo. She crosses her arms and glares intimidatingly down at him.]

What'd I say, about making me wait up?

[Well, she has to scold him a little, that's only right- Sharak's act falters for a moment, as she frowns to peer at Gojyo a little better in the dark. Something isn't right.]

[erogappa]

[ Whenever I feel like it is probably going to be far too early, but that's fine. He'll pretend to be put out about that in the morning. For now, he's just going to stumble down the hall, kick off his boots...

...okay, his boot laces aren't coming untied without assistance, but that's fine too. He's slept in his shoes -- and his jeans -- a couple nights already. One more night won't hurt anything. And then tomorrow there will be pain killers, and breakfast, and two showers, and he and Sharak (and maybe Celty?) will sit down and talk about how they're going to wipe out the mob. And then he'll go see Tsuzuki, and have a long talk with that fool about being a responsible alcoholic, and he's got some things he needs to say to Doku, too, and then--

And then there's somebody in his bed. Gojyo freezes in the doorway, one foot comically posed mid-step. That's definitely a body -- a full grown adult body, not a kid -- breathing gently on his mattress, under his blankets.

Goddamn Sharak rented his room out to another stray, didn't she?

He'd laugh if he weren't so tired. She picked up another homeless shinki and brought them home, but then put them in his room for some unknown reason. Probably to teach him a lesson about calling when he was going to be late or something. That seems like the petty kind of thing that she'd do.

So where the hell is he going to sleep?

With a sigh, he turns back to the main room. There's plenty of cushions and blankets out there. He'll manage on the floor for one night, and then in the morning he can confront Sharak – and his new roommate – and see about finding this new dude another place to sleep. ]

Enjoy it while you can, whoever you are [ --he murmurs. ] I'm kickin' your ass out in the morning.

The next morning, at Kinyobi

[erogappa]

[ Thankfully, he makes it to the bar long after Tsuzuki has closed up for the night. The nap futon (frequently the “I’ve drunk too much and now have the spins” futon, but in the end it’s the same thing) in the back room is clean enough, the tattered blanket adequately warm, and, with a couple eight or so beers in his belly (just to help him get to sleep), it’s as homey as he deserves.

Just before dawn Gojyo pitches over onto the lumpy bed and passes out, dead to the world. ]

Two days later

[erogappa]

[ He's not there the next morning, when she returns. He's not there that evening either. It's not until shortly after noon the following day that Gojyo strolls up the walkway toward the temple... for a given definition of strolls that has a decided list. He found some good mortal world painkillers, and he took them, and life is now much softer at the edges. ]

There you are. [ He's slurring gently -- not badly enough that a stranger would notice, but there's a definite lack of effort being put into his enunciation. ] I'm done with this. Unname me.