Disclaimer : not mine. And wouldn’t exist either without reading Incandescens’ « gaiden with a difference » and Mitsima’s « through the looking glass », OF COURSE. Warning : not my language.   oOoOoOo Interlude : « The Eyes Of The Beholder… »   Some people say the universe could be contained in a nut shell. It’s not the truth. The whole world lays in a dragon’s mind. Not only the world in which you believe you live. But the one in which you will live, the one in which you may have lived, the one you wish for, the one who has been realized but has been destroyed…Because dragon’s memory is so vast… A so big a memory, so large, so broad… Ageless. Timeless. That equals karma’s laws and reincarnation’s fluctuations… Because karma needed beholders to exist. Neither judge nor party.Silent spectators. Four of them were sufficient to bear the burden, one at a time…East, North, South and West, standing like still sentinels… Older than Paradise and strangers to it: dragons are. Already being before its birth and surviving after it crumbles.   That’s why a few people only can bear to look at a dragon in the eyes. Even among gods. So afraid of the color of their eternal soul that shines through unblinking pupils. So afraid of the immortality of this existence that looks at them through gold and ruby…Alien (gold) and bound to no law (red): this is the root of their essence. Not that they are like gorgons whose stare could turn you into stone. Their reptilian irises just reminds you how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things.   How foolish are they all, Goujun often thought, by looking at the vain gods. Thinking in terms of before and after, causes and consequences. How naive, to think of reincarnation as a cycle to a human or even a divine scale! So much greater than them all and so unfathomable it is… Karma isn’t a flow like a river. Punishement isn’t always coming after the sin…And future can sometimes precede past. The conceit of timeline is invention. Do they really think karma knows direction? Karma is like dragons. It is. That’s all. There were no boundaries and every single soul was lost and sailing aimlessly in a large sea only dragons could behold…This sea which was their kingdom.   And not involved the four king dragons remained, if they were wise enough… But Goujun was the youngest in spite of his impassive appearance… And four bright drops of color in the wild ocean of life had caught his eyes, once, beckoning like beacons (gold, violet, red, and green: they shine, they pulse, too free. Too… alive.). He put the word dangerous on them, labeled them so, but still kept following them from the corner of his reptilian unblinking gaze.  He forgot dragons were meant to see and not to watch…   The white dragon looks into the pond, and between the everlasting balancing water lilies, he sees… It’s been centuries he thinks of resigning his burden to one of his brothers for a time, maybe recess in another body to bring stillness in his heart after the death of three souls, and the exile of an itanchild…Then, he feels the raising of the storm. And after the tempest, he knows the ocean of time will still be there, clear, whole. And be different, somehow. And he only will remember.   And, indeed, the dragon remembers…   oOoOoOo (The dragon remembers…) The red-eyed child woke up. Wished he wouldn’t have, or not here. But he smothered the thought. A matter of his own survival. And it was important to forget the dream he just had, this glimpse of a safe place. Yearning for something you can’t have? It was just hopeless. And useless. Tomorrow was already a hard task. And looking at the dead woman on the floor still hurt. The door of the little house was still wide open. Just like Jien had left it by leaving. The fall’s wind engulfing the room, already held the hint of the winter to come. He shivered. He felt cold. He was alive. Wishing he wasn’t would a be treason of the tears his brother had shed.   The child stands here for a while, his mind still numb. That’s good, it means no tears left. His fingers twitch a little, he knows what they’re looking for. There’s no wrong in beginning with little things.   Jien didn’t like smoking that much, Gojyo remembers. Most of the time, he used it as a social call with his acquaintances in the village. In fact he hardly smoked. Though, his little brother knows where he hid the cigarettes, in the lowest drawer in his bedroom…Sometimes, Gojyo had already stolen some while Jien and his mother weren’t « busy » in that room. Gojyo didn’t like smoking that much either, before. But it gave him something to put his mind on, any time he wanted so badly be elsewhere (anywhere else) than his little room, back slouched against the wall which conveyed the vibrations of the sweaty dance in the next bedroom. It had already helped him bearing the sound of the creaking mattress through the wall, late at night.    Letting himself fall on his bed, against the same damn wall as always, the child fought a few seconds with the lighter and lit one of the little tubes. The first intake of smoke tasted like… Paradise. He closed his eyes in pleasure. He spent the whole night smoking and thinking of what he would do and how he would live from now on. He hadn’t much of a choice.    The next day, he left the house after burying his stepmother in the garden. The dead woman hadn’t flinched from his touch as she usually did when she had been alive, when he carried her outside. He had left red flowers on the anonymous grave. A tiny gesture speaking of a love that wasn’t dead in the same time that this woman. Red flowers.  It was the first time the woman in the grave would be compelled to accept them…   He shrugged while standing for the last time on the doorway.It was so much a bother to live and even more bothersome to die… Where to go? He could as well decide at heads or tails, for all he cared.   (…a child that has existed or will never exist…)   oOoOoOo (The dragon remembers…) It’s raining. The gambler doesn’t mind. That way, he knows none of the girls in the bar is going to follow him to share his bed tonight. He is not in the mood any more, anyway. He walks. He thinks of redness. Beautiful hair, hu? You’ve gotta be kidding… Even blood is easier to wash off than this redness of his…So Sha Gojyo keeps walking and doesn’t care much about the world around him, but the world has the bad habit to unexpectedly stand in his way. No, sprawl in his way… Really, this is not his day…   « Oy, you dead? » he asks in mild annoyance to the corpse. He doesn’t really care. Yet.   (Maybe was it the sight of a long haired Kenren that made Tenpou gensuigrin?)   The sight of the green eyes triggered a long buried memory Sha Gojyo couldn’t entirely grasp. Or maybe the memory of a long-faded dream. And this smile…He couldn’t make it out, hidden behind the strangers arms, but somehow he saw the reflection of it in the way these eyes squinted slightly while looking at him. While almost recognizing him.   And Sha Gojyo stared. Maybe he would remember if given the occasion to see that smile again. So, not really understanding why, he hailed the limp body on his shoulder and started walking him towards his little home.   « You wanted to die? Too bad. I wished I could die, once, too. And somebody else decided for me I shouldn’t, » he muttered near the face of that man who couldn’t hear him…   (…a meeting that has happened or will never happen…)   oOoOoOo (The dragon remembers…) « Kenren, fiery Kenren… Goku, innocent Goku… Konzen, shining Konzen… Forgive me... I should have seen what would happen... I should have known... I should have killed Litouten when I had the opportunity, instead of waiting for him to make the first move... » hadsaid an awakened soul…   It was a complaint uttered in a fleeting second of impossibility…   (Paroles which will have no reason to be…)   « Listen to me, Kenren taishou, » says a genderless voice addressing a child…   « You have to destroy this present I made. You have to save your past. I’ll will tell you a story. Listen. »   It was the wildest wish of the bodhitsattva whose desires knew no limits…  

(Paroles which hold the power that makes the time shift…)

  « Isn’t that a funny dream? » the taishoueventually asked of a marshal…   And the green-eyed god listens. Stupid, stupid, he thinks again and again…A rational man, a soldier, a strategist doesn’t believe in dreams. Stupid. But he has already met a god with a chil in his eyes.   (But the water mirror of the ocean of Time seems troubled, here…)   The said marshal is talented for dissimulation. Quick to make a decision. More lethal than is demeanor usually lets show. It is his task to recognize danger when he sees it and to act according to his intuition. There are things that really, really matter to him. More precious than integrity. The marshal knows it: things he can’t afford to lose, even if it makes a fool of him.   (…And crime is like a faint ripple in deep water, nothing more…)   Some day, the god called Litouten simply vanished from Tenkai. Nobody, not even the touchin taishi could find him. And life… went on.   Goujun can’t lie to himself, he has always known the man was dangerous (for a split second, he wonders whether he is referring to the marshal or the minister…). The corpse, the marshal sealed in a cavern in Mount Gogyo, the dragon knows. But he doesn’t interfere. It is not his role…   Kenren taishou can’t lie to himself either. When he barged into the library, with the tidings of the mysterious disappearance, Tenpou didn’t blink, didn’t look the tiniest bit surprised. The green gaze was hard. Almost challenging him to guess. Maybe vaguely pleading for approval, but he wouldn’t bet on it. And Kenren taishou knows. The idea had brushed him, too, to act. The general thinks it should have been his deed. He was the one who had been warned, after all…He feels miserable. And says nothing more.   (…a crime that made a whole timeline disappear in the recesses of a dragon’s mind…)   oOoOoOo                    &nb sp;                         &nb sp;                (The dragon remembers…) This was a rare sight: a bodhisattva standing in the pouring of the rain… The icy drops looked like they were avoiding hir skin as if feeling ashamed of marring such a divine beauty. Once again, se had changed hir mind. Se wanted to see it, actually. This meeting after half a millenary between these two souls, hir marshal and hir general.  Kanzeon bosatsu was waiting. Waiting for people se hoped wouldn’t show up. It was hir only chance to know. Something had to happen. Se had changed something, it couldn’t be otherwise…   Hir eagerness made hir aura pulse like a beating mortal’s heart. Who knows? Maybe was it this faint light that drew Cho Gonou in this deserted forest as he tried to run away from his sins? The first silhouette who appeared, however, so wrapped in his own distressed, didn’t see hir, inches close, as he limped past hir. And he collapsed almost at hir feet.   Kanzeon bosatsutook another step back into the shadows of low branches. Hir fists tightened. Expectancy was building in hir chest.   Somebody else came. A lanky silhouette whose long red hair were still flaring in spite of the semi-darkness. Steps that stop before the man laying in the mud.   « Oy, you dead? »   Kanzeon bosatsu knew the words. Se heard them through the maddening rumor of rain. Hir nails dug deep in the divine ivory flesh of hir palms.   No surprise in seeing the two men departing together.   Nothing. Nothing had happened, nothing had changed. No marchal, no general. They were still dead, since Sha Gojyo and Cho Gonou were here.   Se sighed. Se smiled.   Well, they had found each other, at least. It wasn’t that bad. Now, se had to tell the Sanbutsushin where to send Konzen-or-whatever-be-his-name-now to find them. He would have to go. Se had said so.   But a faint shudder deep in the ground made hir almost lose hir footing. The chill crawled in the small of hir back. The whole world reeled madly, as if the wheel of time was spinning. It took hir breath away. Was the whole world dissolving under hir eyes or was se hirself dissipating in the mist of the downpour? And after foggy rain, in the blink of an eye, it was divine sun. Paradise after Earth. Even the air tasted different.   (…The dead silence before or after the tempest…)   oOoOoOo The dragon is. (the Here and the Now) The bodhitsattva felt a stare on hir back and met golden red eyes throughout the distance. Se broke eye-contact… How come the omniscience of deities never taught hir how to challenge this gaze? Goujun, king of the Western Sea came closer. Kanzeon wondered idly what was the matter of the high-ranked military with hir…   The dragon spoke. At last.   « They acted. But you did it. The change… » Not even a question…A knowing gaze, that’s all.   A glint in the dark eyes of the bodhisattva, as only answer. Anticipation of the words to come. The change, he had said…   And the dragon kept talking. The opportunity was unique to make someone understand who his kind really were.   « This is our burden. We know. Most of the time we try not to remember. And when it’s too hard, we can forget the world and our sense of self for a while. And find refuge in the body of a lesser creature which lets himself flowing by on the waves… »   « Waves? » The question sounds stupid. Inadequate. This is not that matters, but the bodhisattva still can’t think totally clearly…   « Did you think, that we, dragons, are called the four kings of the seas because we live underwater? » And there is no hint of amusement in the words. « Existence is the Ocean whose guardian we are and whose currents you call karma. »   A few seconds, he lets the words sink in.   « But there is a law. A karmic law. The only one. There is NO LAW. If you destroy the world, it doesn’t mean the one you’re wishing for shall arise…» Goujun unexpectedly warns.    But the bodhisattva laughs.   I did it, I DID IT…   The feeling of hir triumph was thrilling as se took the first sight of hir new paradise…   Sudden sight of gleeful golden eyes and a whirlwind of color. The itanchild runs, and brushes past the bodhisattva, and as he vanishes at the corner of the terrace, the faint echo of his shrill laughter still lingers in the air behind him…He looks a bit older, Kanzeon absentmindedly notices, and se can’t really explain why…Beings such as him aren’t suppose to age in Paradise. A few seconds after only, a taller silhouette appears. Shining golden hair flapping like the tail of an angry cat against a straight back clad in silky material. Searching violet eyes are peering about him. Before Kanzeon can say a word, « No time, K’so baba, » he snaps…   The moody god has already spotted people in the other side of the large basin. In the distance, hir beautiful nephew crosses eyes with the marshal and the general quietly talking together. Their shoulders are brushing one against the other as they lean on the red wooden rail before the lotus pond. There is like a bubble of privacy about them, only faltering a little with the brief exchange of gazes above still water and aquatic flowers. The marshal points obligingly to Konzen the path he has seen from afar the child has taken, and the taishou’s smirk is clearly mocking the bureaucrat unable to keep pace with his charge…   The bodhitsattva is laughing, because years have flied and during these five hundred years, never an itan child got banned from Paradise… Se laughs until se hirself forgets how much of a miracle it is, as a new paradise’s karma’s last details settle right and brush mercilessly any other different reality off hir memories…   And in his head, the dragon screams…   He shouldn’t feel the pang of loss for beings not meant to live any more…

The truth is, Genjo Sanzo, Sha Gojyo, and Cho Hakkai are not. Where he stands, now, they can’t exist.

  oOoOo to be continued oOoOo   (on hiatus for a while : I could have ended the story here, but I think will wildly jump into AU from here to have the pleasure to work with some of the characs of GS  I don’t use much usually… Be kind to me,  suggestions welcomed even if I have already a plot… I have the global idea of the following chapters but I need a little more time to write and I have the end of RA’s sequel to finish / translate too… All of you take care !)