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When he was a young child, Gonou had a lot of questions.
Why were his parents dead? Why had they taken his sister to another orphanage? Was there a God? He thought probably not. At least not one that gave a damn about people, because it didn't seem like that.
Why am I alive?
He asked them, even, a few times, but never got any satisfying answers, so eventually he stopped. It seemed a more reliable method to look for the answers to his questions himself. However, his own heart seemed to have little to say on the matter, beyond a wordless, sorrowful anger. Listening to that didn't seem to lead anywhere, so Gonou turned to books instead. And while they didn’t answer his questions either, they did provide cleaner cut and simple questions to seek answers to.
It was not happiness, but as close to contentment as he could find.
Later, he found his sister, and started listening to his heart again. He wondered, later, if it was inexperience with feeling anything that made him go too far, deaf to the voice of reason altogether.
Do I deserve to live?
Sanzo shrugged.
"Your life, your job to find out," he said, not even looking at Hakkai.
He was smoking, the smoke drifting out and bleeding into the grey sky over the monastery.
"What if I can't?"
"Tch," Sanzo huffed, his brows crinkling in annoyance.
Hakkai kept looking at him blankly. He already knew Sanzo had little patience with complaints, no matter the reason. But then Hakkai wouldn't have spoken with him if he wished to be comforted.
Sanzo gave him a sharp, piercing look, eyes narrowed in study.
"One thing I do know, dying is easy. If I were you, I'd ask myself whether I deserve to do that. But it's your choice." he said abruptly, voice blank and unsympathetic.
His eyes looked very old at that moment, Hakkai thought.
What is there to live for?
Gojyo told him about his childhood one evening, over a game of cards. Neither of their attention was really on the game by the end of it. Gojyo was shuffling the deck automatically, clearly just to have something to occupy his hands and eyes.
Hakkai was still, holding his own deck in unmoving fingers. Then he closed the neat fan of cards carefully and placed it on the table, and placed his hands on it. He found he had a desire to reach out and push away the hair that had fallen into Gojyo's face. Strange, Hakkai had never considered himself a tactile person. Gojyo was, though. Perhaps it had rubbed off on him... oh, but he was digressing.
He was... not exactly surprised, he supposed.
While all of his friend’s scars weren’t as visible as the ones marring his cheek, their presence could still be sensed by one who knew what to look for. Or cared to. He wondered if that was the reason Gojyo tended to surround himself with people who tended not to.
He had known him long enough, by then, to have seen how he reacted to anyone bringing attention to his hair, or those aforementioned scars. The way he’d gone cold suddenly, smile dying for a moment before returning sharp edged and fake. Indeed, Gojyo did not wish to remember his past.
“Why did you tell this to me?” Hakkai asked, genuinely curious.
Gojyo shrugged.
“Figured it was only fair, huh?” he said glibly. “Besides you never know. Something might come up.”
Then he resumed the game of cards, with more concentration than before.
“Ah, of course. I hope no more surprise visits such as Mr. Banri,” Hakkai replied smoothly.
Gojyo let out a short bark of a laugh.
“Yeah, don’t think so! Even Banri knows better than to show his face round here too soon,” he said, without much malice. Hakkai wondered if Gojyo himself would have even welcomed him back… ah, but of course he couldn’t have, he’d have been dead.
“That’s good, I’d hate to have to clean the mess…” Hakkai said softly.
Gojyo raised an eyebrow at him, and then smiled, just one corner of his mouth turning up. Accepting the sentiment, implied threat and all.
It was only then that Hakkai realized what he’d been saying earlier. You should know this, since you’ll be staying around, right? Oh. He glanced up, but Gojyo seemed to be inspecting his cards, with his usual careless poker face.
Well, he supposed it was true, in any case.
Will I be allowed to live, after all I've done?
Slowly, slowly the reasons to live started piling up, like dust to those corners one can never quite get clean. Like on top of the cabinet where you forget to wipe.
There was Gojyo, whose idea of adequate hygiene was throwing things out when they started creating new life forms… and then only if said life forms physically attacked him. There was Goku, who needed someone to teach him reading and writing and basic mathematics, for which Sanzo had far too little patience. Sanzo himself, who had personally promised to the three aspects that Hakkai was his responsibility.
Don’t thank me, I expect you not to need babysitting. Sanzo had told him afterwards, and Hakkai had agreed, bemused. He hadn’t known him as well as he did now, back then.
Without quite meaning to, he found he’d made himself… if not necessary, at least expected. That to leave would leave the others unbalanced, with an empty place in their lives where they expected a Hakkai.
It was new, and almost unsettling. Perhaps most unsettling for not seeming more so.
For the first time he remembered the woman and her prediction. For the first time he was worried. Certainly the others could go on without him, if necessary, but…well, it would be a rather big inconvenience, wouldn’t it?
Even if he could have done that, left his companions to deal with the mission on their own, of course when his past dredged itself out of the grave once again, dead and rotted but not dead enough in the form of Chin Iisou, it didn’t come for him alone, but for his companions.
That was karma for you, Hakkai thought with dark humour.
They survived that time. But it was close, too close. He still didn’t fear death all that much, Hakkai told himself as he stared at his palm, at the lifeline that was a faint, short groove. But he could not bear to lose the place he’d gained, not again.
And then there was Goku, the permanent marker a shock of cold as it drew a thick, bold dash over the lifeline, drowning it in pitch black ink.
Life is what you make of it. it said, sure and simple. Very like Goku, to be the wisest when he said nothing.