thenearshore | Enthusiasm (n.), orig. the state of having a god within

Entry tags:

Enthusiasm (n.), orig. the state of having a god within

Who: Gojyo (

erogappa), Kurama (

ivegotasword)
What: Retrieving a missing god
When: Forward-dated to the afternoon of May 11th
Where: Starting in Sapporo, Near Shore
Warnings: Overblown drama, suicide attempt

Sapporo, Japan

It wasn't the right restaurant. He knows his shrine, the special spot, the door to heaven, and it's in a Greek restaurant. He can't read Japanese -- not on his best day, and today is far from that -- but he knows the smell of the place by now. After this last week, he'll never get the smell of Greek food out of his nose ever again.

He shudders, leaning heavily against the chilly cement side of a towering office building. The cold shocks him awake, but it's only a temporary reprieve. Sleep is hard on his heels, sleep and him and his army -- they're lurking in every shadow, behind every corner, ready to spring the instant Gojyo closes his eyes. He can't close his eyes. Not until he's safe.

But it was the wrong restaurant. He tricked him, made him think he was in Japan, in Tokyo, on the right street the right town the right planet the right universe, but he's not. This isn't where he's supposed to be.

His foot slips out from under him, exhausted muscles failing. Without any forethought he punches the side of the building, hard enough to split the skin on his knuckles and leave a brillint red smear on the mottled grey wall. The pain helps, until it doesn't. He stumbles on.

He needs to find the restaurant. He can't go home without the restaurant, but if he heads right for it, then he will know where it is. He will learn Gojyo's secrets. If he gets to heaven, then he'll kill everyone. Gojyo tucks his bleeding hand into his stomach. It hurts. He can't remember why -- he must have been fighting. They keep trying to catch him, drag him back. He won't let that happen.

The wind whispers as it zips through the city streets, airy voices that promise a failed hunt and a swift and brutal recapture. He has to run, but running is impossible. Walking is impossible; he stumbles, catching himself on the edge of a dumpster. He can't keep going.

He'll rest then, okay. Just for a few minutes. In the alleyway behind a Layton Station, Gojyo tucks himself into a ball and tries desperately not to fall asleep.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gojyo's rambling and pleading: it's more than just uncomfortable to listen to, and Hakkai's glad that in his dash to meet Kurama he hasn't heard too many of those words too clearly. I'm begging you, don't--

Where has he been?

Hakkai reaches out to lay a hand against Gojyo's unscarred cheek, hoping that the touch will help to reassure him. His cheek is almost all the skin visible to touch, with vines trussing the rest of his body like a parcel. He must have fought.

"Gojyo. You're home. You won't be hurt."

Hakkai glances up at Kurama, keeping his tone soft and reassuring despite the cold fury lurking in his eyes, and murmurs, "Where did you find him?"

Somebody touches him, and Gojyo jerks back as much as he's able, a broken string of no no no under his breath. But the figure standing next to him is familiar -- maybe it's the god/shinki bond, maybe it's that gentle touch, or maybe it's just that Gojyo will always know Hakkai, always, in this life and every one after -- and Gojyo heart leaps into his throat.

"Hakkai?" He's saved. He's delivered, Hakkai's here, it's okay! But he's still restrained, and the bloody-headed demon is still there, trembling and gesturing in the corner of his eye. Frantic, Gojyo turns his face to Hakkai.

"Run." He's never meant a word more. "Don't let them take you, put you inside people, they'll make you do bad bad bad things, run, please."

Kurama suddenly feels quite distinctly like he's intruding, but there's not much to be done about it when he's got half of this tender reunion tied up. At the very least it's more sweet than awkward, seeing Hakkai all ready to rampage on Gojyo's behalf, and Kurama's own blank expression softens.

"He was hiding in an alley in Sapporo, over on the Near Shore." There's more to be said--it seems Gojyo's doing some of the saying already--but that can wait a moment. "Would you like to take him? It might calm him down a little."

"Yes," Hakkai says. "You can let him go." Untying him might help to dispel whatever nightmare he's seeing -- and, Hakkai's certain, even if Gojyo tries to run or fight again, he's in no shape to give Hakkai trouble like this.

Sapporo. Near his shrine? He looks down at Gojyo's frantic, vague-eyed face. He'd checked there. He'd checked more than once, but from what he's saying (inside people?) perhaps he wouldn't have even if that were whatever area he'd been in.

"We don't need to run," he said quietly to Gojyo, and let a little bit of that protective chill seep from his expression into his voice. "No one is taking either of us anywhere."

Hakkai thinks he can fight. Gojyo groans, and struggles against the vines. He'd tried to fight. "I fought." He'd fought so hard -- his exhaustion brings the worst of that back in brilliant technicolor hallucinations, faces twisted and pleading for mercy, for help, for him to stop hurting them. He squeezes his eyes tight, but he can still see them. Kurama is forgotten for the moment as his memories scream at him. "I fought. I did."

Kurama sets Gojyo's feet on the ground and begins retracting the vines, feet and legs and head and body in turn so he can find his own footing again and so there's room for Hakkai to take over supporting him before Gojyo is free to move about the temple.

"Do you have a sedative you can give him, or should I make something?"

"Do you think he'll need one?" Hakkai slips his arm around Gojyo's shoulders as the vines slide away with snakelike fluidity. "I'd like to let this get out of his system first."

His grip tightens, just a little, half to support Gojyo and half protectively. It's clear he's hallucinating. More drugs aren't likely to solve that. Sleeping it off in his own room seems more helpful.

He's sure Gojyo did fight. After all, even in this condition, Gojyo had gotten free on his own in the end, he thinks, and hopes for his captor's sake that Gojyo had killed them in the escape. If he hadn't, what Hakkai is going to do to them will not be quick.

Hakkai's grip on him tightens, pulling him out of the coils of the snake, lifting him out and out of the sticky climbing clawing bog that had trapped him for so long. Gojyo clings back, hands knotted in Hakkai's clothes and face buried in the crook of Hakkai's neck.

"Are you real?" he murmurs softly, fatigue adding a childish lilt to his voice. "I don't know what's..." He trails off, then his grip tightens.

"Don't let me sleep."

"I wouldn't make anything stronger than a gentle nudge, but if you'd rather convince him to sleep on his own instead, I won't interfere." Not that he thinks it'll work, given the state Gojyo's in, but Hakkai's not his shinki so Kurama's not about to try ordering him around. (The fact that Hakkai is a grown man and a demon currently operating on a hair trigger are considerably less important.)

"Thank you," Hakkai says politely, and inclines his head very slightly to Kurama (slightly, so as not to startle Gojyo, whose breath is warm against his neck.) "I think I can manage him."

He shifts his grip on Gojyo's shoulders, from supportive to something a little more like a comforting embrace, and he strokes his hand along Gojyo's sweat-matted hair. His glance at Kurama is bland.

"Yes," he says softly to Gojyo. "I'm real. You should rest, Gojyo..."

Gojyo doesn't answer. His grip on Hakkai's shirt hasn't relaxed one bit, but he's fallen asleep right where he's standing.

Putting Gojyo to bed hadn't turned out nearly as challenging as Hakkai had feared. Leaving him there to sleep off whatever was affecting him, though, had been harder. It was only midafternoon, but he'd found himself checking in at the door every few minutes, or pausing to focus on the hint of youki on the other side of the temple. Shinki didn't know when their gods were distressed or hurt. The bond only worked in one direction, and he hadn't noticed when Gojyo was taken from the temple before.

He'd found his phone, though, and made tea, and brought that with a pitcher of water and a glass upstairs just in case Gojyo woke up thirsty.

Then, giving up, he'd settled into the armchair in the corner of the bedroom to watch Gojyo sleep and pass the word that he'd returned to the handful of other gods and shinki who'd been helping to look. He wasn't sure exactly when he'd fallen asleep too, relief combining with several days of bad sleep to ambush him as his initial outrage slowly faded.

Those first few hours of sleep, Gojyo was dead to the world. He didn't wake up when Hakkai brought him inside, and didn't so much as turn over between one visit and the next, his breathing deep and slow. But his sleep could only be dreamless for so long.

Around the time the sun begins to set, changing the light in the room to a cooler, darker blue, Gojyo's sleep stops being quite so restful. His movements are small at first -- a muscle in his arm jumps, there's a quick hiss of indrawn breath -- but as the nightmare progresses his responses become more agitated. The sheets tangle around his legs, and in his unconscious attempts to free himself he falls right out of the bed, hitting the floor with a crash.

The crash of Gojyo hitting the floor brings Hakkai out of the chair to his feet, ready to lash out before he even remembers where he is. The light's almost gone, twilight gloom settling heavily across the tangled sheets and bulking furniture. They must have been asleep for hours.

"Gojyo?" He stoops, reaching out for Gojyo's shoulder among the welter of sheets that had followed him to the floor. A nightmare? Or had he woken in the same confusion he'd gone to sleep in?

And what had they done to him -- Hakkai's mind supplies a thousand dark what-ifs, breathing a chill down his neck, and his expression closes blankly down. No, he's not thinking about any of that until Gojyo's recovered enough to hint at who was responsible.

More to lighten his own mood than Gojyo's, he adds, "You didn't fall on your head, I hope? It's only just healed from last time."

Still half-asleep, Gojyo fights frantically with the sheets, yanking them from his body and kicking hard until he's free. Only then do his surroundings register.

"Hakkai?" He clamps his own hand over Hakkai's on his shoulder, staring hard at the man's face, waiting for it to shift into another nightmare vision. But it seems real enough. The room he's in... this is his room in the temple. "How did I get here?"

Gojyo's eyes focus as though he's seeing Hakkai, and not whatever hallucinations had tormented him before. Relief wells up into a small, reassuring smile, and Hakkai frees his hand from Gojyo's shoulder, holding it out in a silent offer to help him up.

"Kurama found you in Sapporo," he says. There's a part of him that wants to stay there on the floor, curl up around Gojyo like a climbing vine restored to its trellis, and soothe him back to sleep from the nightmare. It's outvoted, slightly, by an uneasy coalition of pride and practical concern about how much both of their backs would hurt in the morning from sleeping on the floor.

Gently, instead, he suggests, "You should rest."

He takes Hakkai's hand automatically, before his brain even catches up to the intent behind the action. Oh -- he should stand. Okay. He tightens his grip on Hakkai's hand and pulls himself unsteadily up. He's not physically injured -- he's not even physically exhausted -- but getting his arms and legs and everything to coordinate enough to stand takes more effort than it should.

He definitely needs more rest.

But he shakes his head. "I'm good." If it turns out that this is just a dream -- or a spell -- then he thinks he might actually go mad. The only way to be sure is to stay awake and in the moment, and make sure that what he's seeing is real.

He might not want to sleep, but he definitely needs to rest. He's more than a little wobbly. "Gonna sit down, though," he chuckles, dropping back heavily onto the bed. He doesn't seem to realize that he's still holding Hakkai's hand.

Gojyo's hand is still clasped firmly around his own, and Hakkai considers the awkwardness of standing next to his bed holding his hand for a few seconds before settling down on the edge of the mattress next to him. He doesn't make any effort to free his fingers. The grip is obscurely reassuring.

Not wholly reassuring, though, when he still has no idea how Gojyo might have been spirited away. When he doesn't know, he doesn't know how to stop it from happening again.

Into the silence, he murmurs, "Do you remember what happened?"

Please think about what happened to you all over again, and say it out loud so everyone can know how weak you are and what you were forced to do, Hakkai asks, and Gojyo closes his eyes. He's right. It needs to be said.

"It was an old wizard," he offers at last, opening his eyes again and fixing them on a point on the far wall. "A priest, I think. He wanted to call down a god to, I don't know. Bless his town or something." At least, that's what he gathered in the few minutes the old man had remained alive. "But he was too old, his body wouldn't bear the strain, so he summoned me to possess his grandson instead."

He can't hide his disgust at the memory of the grandson; his grip on Hakkai's hand tightens to a point where it's got to hurt. "The grandson wasn't exactly civic minded."

The shadows in the room aren't enough to soften the way Gojyo's face twists at the memories. Hakkai doesn't flinch as his grip goes from comfortable to bone-grindingly tight, watching his face instead. So it was some sort of spell. The summoning of a god, by a mortal priest -- into the body of some man who used Gojyo's power for his own ends...?

Slowly, he nods, and looks away from Gojyo's face, at that same vague area of the opposite wall that's absorbing the other man's attention. The emotion on Gojyo's face is too raw to continue intruding on, and even if Hakkai has one more question, he wants to offer that little sliver of privacy.

"Are either of them still alive?"

The power to summon a god into someone else's body, he thinks, is the kind of power it's better no mortal retain. If there's someone still living who does know how to do it, he's quite willing to solve that particular problem himself.

Gojyo doesn't need to be troubled with it.

Hakkai might have only one more question -- Gojyo shakes his head, glancning at Hakkai briefly but then looking down and away again -- but there's more that has to be said.

"It was like we were the same person." It's easier to tell this part of the story to the far wall, his face fully turned away from Hakkai's. He'd like to curse himself for a coward, but he's got too many reasons to be damned that have to come first. "I saw out of his eyes, when his arm moved mine did too. I kept forgetting it wasn't me doing those things."

And those things are the main reason he's not asleep. They're the reason he's not going to sleep much for the next several days. "He... I... we killed people. And worse." So very much worse. He can't keep holding on to Hakkai when he confesses this, not now that his hands are this filthy. "I still see them."

Gojyo lets go as he speaks, looking away, as if drawing into himself, and Hakkai's gaze shifts back to his face.

Very deliberately, he reaches over to take Gojyo's hand again.

"You didn't kill them," he says. His voice is quiet, but utterly certain. Gojyo didn't kill them; Gojyo didn't do worse to them. "You were the weapon."

He's never been forced to kill against his will -- he's never had a god who wasn't trustworthy, and a shinki can sting to defend their own conscience -- but he knows that sense of helplessness. He's been forced not to act, before, against his will. It's not as bad. It's not nearly as bad, but he still knows, in his bones, exactly why Gojyo is not to blame.

Gojyo looks down at Hakkai's hand wrapped around his own, a confused frown sketched broadly across his face. "You don't understand," he murmurs. But how can he? How can anyone really understand? He'd fought at first, sure, but only at first. How can you fight against your own hands, your own body? After those first few days, after he'd grown too tired to fight anymore, after the drugs and the sleep deprivation had started putting flickers in the corners of his/their eyes... after he had grown bored with granting quick deaths... after he'd begun to forget that they weren't one person, it had gotten easier. "It was still me." Sometimes, he'd even enjoyed it. Sometimes, he'd...

He can't stay still. Tearing himself off the bed, Gojyo paces the length of the room, hands knotting in his hair as he yanks it out of his face. He's got to have cigarettes in here somewhere, right? In a table drawer, behind the clock? Somewhere. "I need a goddamn cigarette."

"I might not understand, but I know you didn't choose to do it." Hakkai leans over to pull open the bedstand drawer. He'd found a half-empty pack crumpled in the kitchen and put it away there a few days ago. In case.

Matches he doesn't have, but he tosses the pack underhand to Gojyo regardless.

This doesn't seem like the moment to make a fuss about smoking indoors.

He snatches the pack out of midair, but he doesn't have any matches either. All his lighters have disappeared, there's none on any of the surfaces he can see... he shoves a pile of crap off the endtable, and takeout menus from a double dozen places go flying, but there's no lighter in there. There's nothing.

He spins on his heel -- fuck, he can't even manage to light a damn cigarette, how much more worthless can you get? -- and his back hits the wall. He slams his fist back into it, hard enough that the plaster creaks, and slides down into a crouch, face buried in his hands, trying to catch his breath.

Enthusiasm (n.), orig. the state of having a god within

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

[timeskip - May 12th]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)