Saiyuki: Five Incarnations that Never Happened, Part I: Three
I'm back! Did you all miss me?
Author's note: I've been pretty busy, so it might be a while before the other four are up.
Since this is an AU, there are no spoilers for anything. It's rated G, or at any rate there's no sex. I fail at smut. You'll see why when you read it.
No one would play with him.
Half-breed. (That was the older kids.)
Tomato Head. (That was the younger ones.)
When the boys taunted him, he’d lay into them with all his gawky half-youkai strength, which you’d think would have taught them not to mess with him. If you’re an adult, you’d think that; if you’re an adult who doesn’t remember being a kid, or was on the other side of that line. Gojyo would bloody one boy’s nose, give another a black eye, maybe yank off his belt and swing the buckle to lay a third boy’s cheek open. And then the rest- we’re talking twenty of them- would pile on him. And who’d get in trouble? Gojyo would.
With the girls he was different. He’d stand there and take it, or walk away if it got too bad. He never hit back. It wasn’t because girls can’t hit hard. The orphanage only takes them up to the age of twelve. Girls are as big as boys at that age, and a lot of them are bigger. One tall girl knocked him down, then bent over him and raked her fingernails down his cheek. She left scars. Gojyo never even put up his hands to protect his face. I never figured out whether he liked girls, or he was scared of them.
And so it went. We could step in when it got too violent, but we couldn’t police them 24-7. And the philosophy was that the kids needed to learn how to handle their own problems. I thought that if they were here in the first place they’d already had enough of being on their own, but I was outnumbered by the non-interference crowd.
So that was Gojyo, the outcast, the charity case, the only half-youkai in the orphanage. For six months he was the orphanage scapegoat, and the only reason it wasn’t seven was that six months after his father died and his step-mother dumped him on us, the twins arrived.
We got other new kids in those six months, but the rest fit in OK. Some of them might have become targets if Gojyo hadn’t been there as a distraction. But when the twins showed up, their strangeness was strong enough to ping everyone’s radar. You could feel the attention of the orphanage shift.
They could have been popular, those two. Kids care about looks, and they were pretty. She was a sweet-faced blonde with chubby little hands, and her brother’s eyes were green as well water. They arrived clinging to each other, literally. We had to pry them apart. I'm not sure if it was a twin thing, or if it had to do with how their parents died. Not that most kids come in with happy stories of how they were orphaned, but usually the worst is some accident that took them both out at once. Not “my mother was kidnapped and eaten by centipede youkai, and my father was ripped to pieces in front of us when he tried to protect her.”
So it was more than usually cruel for Hiro to welcome them to the orphanage by dropping a centipede down Kanan’s dress. If Gonou had stopped after he punched Hiro a couple times, no one would have thought anything of it. But even under the circumstances, a normal boy does not have his sister hold his enemy down while he rummages around in the supply closet, looking for… well, obviously we stopped him before he found anything. One of the kids who’d come running to get us said he was looking for pliers. Another said it was bleach. I don’t think any of us wanted to know.
After that, it was the same as with Gojyo. Kanan wasn’t much of a fighter, and the kids made sure Gonou never caught them alone.
Maybe we should have let Gonou have his way with the pliers. Kids have to learn how to deal with their own problems, after all.
A couple months later, I was in my office when I heard a scream from the schoolyard. Five of the boys had Kanan backed up against a wall. I was debating between sticking my head out the window and yelling at them to cut it out, or going outside with my ruler to dispense a little instant karma, when I saw Gojyo sneaking up behind them. For a moment I thought he had a whip, but then I saw that it was a length of chain. God knows where he’d gotten it from.
I wasn’t sure at first if he meant to join the boys, but then I saw Kanan look past her tormentors and smile. So I sat back down and kept quiet.
Turns out a chain is a much more effective weapon than a belt.
I watched Gojyo and Kanan through the window, once all the boys had fled bleeding and screaming. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I saw her touch his cheek. I thought at first he’d been cut in the melee, but then I realized it was the side with the scars. Then he put his arm around her, and she let him.
That was when Gonou came tearing out of the main building with something shiny in his hand. I guess he heard his sister scream, but it took him a few minutes to collect whatever weapon he was clutching and then get to her. By the time he arrived, it was all over.
The look on his face when he saw no enemies and the half-breed kid with his arm around his sister might have been funny on some other boy. That was when I stood up again, afraid that Gonou might do some real damage with whatever it was he was holding. But Kanan started talking and pointing to the chain. Gonou listened, and then he lifted Kanan’s hand. I think he was just making sure she wasn’t hurt, but for a moment the three of them looked like dancers doing a partner exchange.
Then all three let go of each other. Gonou put the shiny thing in his pocket. I’m not sure what Gojyo did with the chain- the only thing I can figure out is that he wound it around his waist and under his shirt when I wasn’t looking, because it was too big to go anywhere else and he didn’t leave it on the ground. At any rate, it disappeared. They stood looking at each other for a while, not speaking, and it all might have gone differently if Kanan hadn’t taken a step forward, then turned back and beckoned. Both boys automatically stepped toward her.
And the three of them walked off together.
Who know how long that’ll last. Kids can be fickle, and any of them could get jealous. But they walked away like a shield wall of three. They walked away like forever.
Author's note: I've been pretty busy, so it might be a while before the other four are up.
Since this is an AU, there are no spoilers for anything. It's rated G, or at any rate there's no sex. I fail at smut. You'll see why when you read it.
No one would play with him.
Half-breed. (That was the older kids.)
Tomato Head. (That was the younger ones.)
When the boys taunted him, he’d lay into them with all his gawky half-youkai strength, which you’d think would have taught them not to mess with him. If you’re an adult, you’d think that; if you’re an adult who doesn’t remember being a kid, or was on the other side of that line. Gojyo would bloody one boy’s nose, give another a black eye, maybe yank off his belt and swing the buckle to lay a third boy’s cheek open. And then the rest- we’re talking twenty of them- would pile on him. And who’d get in trouble? Gojyo would.
With the girls he was different. He’d stand there and take it, or walk away if it got too bad. He never hit back. It wasn’t because girls can’t hit hard. The orphanage only takes them up to the age of twelve. Girls are as big as boys at that age, and a lot of them are bigger. One tall girl knocked him down, then bent over him and raked her fingernails down his cheek. She left scars. Gojyo never even put up his hands to protect his face. I never figured out whether he liked girls, or he was scared of them.
And so it went. We could step in when it got too violent, but we couldn’t police them 24-7. And the philosophy was that the kids needed to learn how to handle their own problems. I thought that if they were here in the first place they’d already had enough of being on their own, but I was outnumbered by the non-interference crowd.
So that was Gojyo, the outcast, the charity case, the only half-youkai in the orphanage. For six months he was the orphanage scapegoat, and the only reason it wasn’t seven was that six months after his father died and his step-mother dumped him on us, the twins arrived.
We got other new kids in those six months, but the rest fit in OK. Some of them might have become targets if Gojyo hadn’t been there as a distraction. But when the twins showed up, their strangeness was strong enough to ping everyone’s radar. You could feel the attention of the orphanage shift.
They could have been popular, those two. Kids care about looks, and they were pretty. She was a sweet-faced blonde with chubby little hands, and her brother’s eyes were green as well water. They arrived clinging to each other, literally. We had to pry them apart. I'm not sure if it was a twin thing, or if it had to do with how their parents died. Not that most kids come in with happy stories of how they were orphaned, but usually the worst is some accident that took them both out at once. Not “my mother was kidnapped and eaten by centipede youkai, and my father was ripped to pieces in front of us when he tried to protect her.”
So it was more than usually cruel for Hiro to welcome them to the orphanage by dropping a centipede down Kanan’s dress. If Gonou had stopped after he punched Hiro a couple times, no one would have thought anything of it. But even under the circumstances, a normal boy does not have his sister hold his enemy down while he rummages around in the supply closet, looking for… well, obviously we stopped him before he found anything. One of the kids who’d come running to get us said he was looking for pliers. Another said it was bleach. I don’t think any of us wanted to know.
After that, it was the same as with Gojyo. Kanan wasn’t much of a fighter, and the kids made sure Gonou never caught them alone.
Maybe we should have let Gonou have his way with the pliers. Kids have to learn how to deal with their own problems, after all.
A couple months later, I was in my office when I heard a scream from the schoolyard. Five of the boys had Kanan backed up against a wall. I was debating between sticking my head out the window and yelling at them to cut it out, or going outside with my ruler to dispense a little instant karma, when I saw Gojyo sneaking up behind them. For a moment I thought he had a whip, but then I saw that it was a length of chain. God knows where he’d gotten it from.
I wasn’t sure at first if he meant to join the boys, but then I saw Kanan look past her tormentors and smile. So I sat back down and kept quiet.
Turns out a chain is a much more effective weapon than a belt.
I watched Gojyo and Kanan through the window, once all the boys had fled bleeding and screaming. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I saw her touch his cheek. I thought at first he’d been cut in the melee, but then I realized it was the side with the scars. Then he put his arm around her, and she let him.
That was when Gonou came tearing out of the main building with something shiny in his hand. I guess he heard his sister scream, but it took him a few minutes to collect whatever weapon he was clutching and then get to her. By the time he arrived, it was all over.
The look on his face when he saw no enemies and the half-breed kid with his arm around his sister might have been funny on some other boy. That was when I stood up again, afraid that Gonou might do some real damage with whatever it was he was holding. But Kanan started talking and pointing to the chain. Gonou listened, and then he lifted Kanan’s hand. I think he was just making sure she wasn’t hurt, but for a moment the three of them looked like dancers doing a partner exchange.
Then all three let go of each other. Gonou put the shiny thing in his pocket. I’m not sure what Gojyo did with the chain- the only thing I can figure out is that he wound it around his waist and under his shirt when I wasn’t looking, because it was too big to go anywhere else and he didn’t leave it on the ground. At any rate, it disappeared. They stood looking at each other for a while, not speaking, and it all might have gone differently if Kanan hadn’t taken a step forward, then turned back and beckoned. Both boys automatically stepped toward her.
And the three of them walked off together.
Who know how long that’ll last. Kids can be fickle, and any of them could get jealous. But they walked away like a shield wall of three. They walked away like forever.