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A clear evening, cool, and quiet. A cigarette, and solitude.
I really don't ask for much, you know, thought Sanzo.
It had seemed within reach, too, until a sobbing whirlwind burst into Sanzo's room and grabbed his robes, vocalizing incoherently. Sanzo dropped his cigarette and grabbed the kid - mostly in self-defense. He looked around for a handkerchief and finally snatched a damp towel. With the rivers of tears Goku was crying, it seemed a logical enough choice, anyway. He mopped what face he could reach around the open mouth, waited a few minutes, and finally cuffed the monkey across the back of his very hard head.
"Goku - take a breath, dammit! I can't understand a thing you're saying." Finally, words began to form out of the whimpers and sniffling: "... don't take me ... won't go back ... not there!"
"I'm not planning to, even though you tempt me sometimes," said Sanzo, exasperated. "It's far too late for that, baka. Who said I was going to?"
A story gradually emerged. Goku had been playing with some of the youngest novices, and the novice master had come to herd them into bed. Goku had insisted on staying with them, and not unexpectedly, had completely disrupted the other boys' evening routine. Novice Master Sadaji had not been amused.
"And ... and he said, it didn't matter how little cash you paid for me, I wasn't any kind of a bargain. And then ... then he said he was gonna tell you to take me back where you found me."
Sanzo found a facecloth, a clean one, and dampened it from his water jug. "Here. Wipe yourself up. And stay put for once." And then he strode from the room, his head buzzing and burning.
A minute later, he was knocking at Sadaji's door. The novice master's surprised face appeared in the doorway a moment later. Sanzo crossed his arms and leaned on the doorjamb, his face uncomfortably close to the older man's.
"I understand that you have some ideas about the proper disposition of my monkey."
He was surprised to hear the steel in his own voice. The man blinked and backed up half step - but, to his credit, he didn't try to pretend he was ignorant of what Sanzo meant. "It was just a joke, Priest Sanzo."
"Even a normal child of that size could take something like that to heart, let alone one who spent as much time by himself as this one did. I'll tell you what, Sadaji - if you have so much goddamn energy left after chasing our beginners all day that you feel a need to worry about my monkey, I'll see what other duties Master Tu might have for you! I'm sure he could use some help keeping this pile of boards together and in good shape. In the meantime, stop adding things to my pile! It's more than big enough already!"
Sadaji was beginning to look wilted under Sanzo's vehemence. "I - I understand, Priest Sanzo!"
Sanzo drew in a long breath, but discovered he didn't have anything else to say - or at least, nothing at all polite or suitable for the young ears that might be listening from the dormitory. "Huh." He pushed off from the doorway, turned in a swirl of robes, and stalked back the way he had come.
Back in his own quarters, the monkey was fast asleep in the middle of the bed, his face pushed into the comforter right where Sanzo usually had it pulled up under his chin. It figured. Luckily the cigarette he'd dropped had gone out after scorching the floor boards slightly. He lit a fresh one and perched on the windowsill, moodily staring at the sleeping form of his most physical burden. He couldn't figure out why he'd been so angry. Except that Goku was his business, and handling him was enough of a chore without interference from others. No one had trained him with the idea of being some kid's foster father at the tender age of 18 ... no, that wasn't quite it, either.
When the cigarette was finished, Sanzo tried to shift the boy to his own little bed in the alcove of Sanzo's office, but at the first shift, the kid whimpered, and his face clenched as though he were about to start crying again. Sanzo gave it up. He changed out of his robes, pulled out the second quilt that he almost never used, snuffed out the lamp, and lay down beside the child.
Even now, Goku wasn't properly asleep. He kept twitching and whining. Sanzo, now wretchedly tired, tried to get his anger to catch hold about this uncomfortable invasion of his rest time, but it was like trying to light a fire with damp tinder. A memory was teasing at his mind, and he knew he was too tired to evade it indefinitely. For a moment he entered that strange twilight place between sleeping and waking: A blond child tosses and turns on a bed, whimpering, and the fair-haired man in the priest's robes rubs his back, and hums a monotonous little tune ... .
Sanzo awoke with a snort. How banal. It figures. He remembered now: he'd been six, and cutting his back teeth. Goku was much older than that, even after subtracting the hundreds of years under enchantment. Still ... .
Sanzo rolled over and pressed one hand self-consciously to the sleeping boy's back. For a moment, he couldn't remember the tune Koumyou had hummed - it went with some cradle song about a bamboo flute, he recalled, and he'd heard the actual words for the first time only a couple of years ago - but then it came back to him. His own soft, sweetly husky voice filled his ears as his fingers traced out the slow rhythym between the child's shoulderblades:
Lu, lu, li la loo ... .
It was a clear evening, cool, and quiet, and the boy slept peacefully at last, lulled by the sound of his master's voice.