Current mood:	indescribable
Entry tags:	fanfiction, kougaiji, saiyuki

This is not a story, this is life, where stories are woven from.
[FANFICTION]

Walking on Spiderwebs
Fandom: Saiyuki
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Kougaiji; gen
Genre: General, with recurring bits of angst and sap
Rating: G
Warnings: None (wow)
Spoilers: Saiyuki manga volumes 2, 3, 4, 6, 8; Saiyuki Reload manga volume 3; Saiyuki Gaiden manga volume 1
Disclaimer: The characters and situations this fanfic was based on belong to me not and are making me none the richer.
Word count: 1,895
Writing format: Non-continuous prose (50 often unrelated sentences)
Story format: One-shot
Summary: Everyone has a past, a present and, for however short a timeframe, a future. But of these, few are naturally story-shaped, as life itself is not story-shaped, tending to be inconsistent, vague on important details and inconclusive in ending instead. Thus, not every life has a story, but if this were a story, it would focus on the nature of the ties life weaves, as fascinating as spider webs.

Notes: For 1character, theme set delta, an exploration on a character whose mind is so different to those of my usual favorites but whom I love inexplicably.


Walking On Spiderwebs

one. Blend
He was a fusion of blood, mindsets and conventions, and life was a challenge of finding the balance between the two that suited best.

two. Stain
On his first assassination assignment, Kougaiji killed his first person at the age of fourteen and one particular drop of blood never washed out of his jacket, a permanent reminder that the past was real.

three. Island
The first time his father really looked him was just after killing a human child, a sharp, measuring look dawning on his face as he saw that his son’s indifference to humans was not on the level of what he had always assumed.

four. Apple
For Kougaiji, he paid the price before gaining any sort of wisdom (he never stopped seeing his childhood playmate’s face in every corpse), but if the dead bodies he could have but didn’t generate were any indication, something must have come out of it.

five. Paper
According to the official records and genealogies, Lirin had nothing to do with him, but by the end of an afternoon spent trying to pry her away from all the breakable valuables in the castle, it only felt right to hear her call him “Onii-chan”.

six. Relax
When that monumental moment in which he warily entered a pact with Gyokumen Koushu passed, it did so quickly, with no room for regrets or thoughts about repercussions, only the conviction that if anyone was going to be sacrificed, it wouldn’t be his mother.

seven. Leaves
It was an afternoon in late autumn that Nataku, the heaven-sent God of War appeared in, though at the time, Kougaiji had no concept of divine retribution and only remembered that when the fires started, the fallen leaves burned brilliantly.

eight. Proof
Dizzy and unused to moving about, he banged his right shoulder into the same stone pillar for days after his seal was broken, each time finding the pain spreading along his side as wondrous evidence of being alive.

nine. Ugly
On a bad day at the castle, he had to pass the revival laboratory several times, the disgusting wrongness of it all never failing to disturb him jarringly.

ten. Book
There was an old tradition of placing an array of items (scriptures for academics, arrow for athleticism, orchid for artistry, grains of rice for agriculture) before a child on his first birthday and letting him choose his “calling”; he had heard that he had apparently ignored them all.

eleven. Brood
It was nine months after Dokugakuji arrived and two months after Yaone joined them and Kougaiji realized with internal scowling that he had never been so absorbed in feeling tense and snappish, nor had so many three-way verbal clashes.

twelve. Mesh
However, it was surprisingly easy to disregard their terse arguments on assignments for Gyokumen Koushu, when all three cooperated and complemented the others smoothly, their attacks on a common enemy fitting together naturally like puzzle pieces.

thirteen. Soft
No matter what rescuing Yaone implied about his nature to the other youkai, they both knew it wasn’t done out of something as demeaning as pity.

fourteen. Shelf
After his seal was broken, his title of ‘Prince’ was no longer anything but a figurehead position, a fragile ornament to be left somewhere out of reach, which actually came as a relief, since he’d never learned how to conduct royal duties anyway.

fifteen. Alone
It was fourteen months after Dokugakuji arrived and seven months after Yaone joined them when Kougaiji realized that he would have to be spectacularly self-absorbed to feel truly alone again.

sixteen. Fall
And an unusually windy autumn it had been, when all sorts of rumors had blown into their secluded niche during the day and his mother had slept fitfully at night, murmuring phrases like “how soon”, “their tolerance thinning” and “no warning useful”.

seventeen. Knot
Being born to a mother whose caring transcended unwritten laws and a father whose distaste extended to his kin alone, Kougaiji grew up aware of but not fully comprehending the importance of blood, finding it rather relative and better that way.

eighteen. Crowd
Several glimpses were required to confirm the identity of Sanzo and his cohort, but only one was needed to see that they were no more extraordinary than the crowd of selfish, charismatic, jaded humans and perhaps that was their most useful attribute.

nineteen. Denial
“How could you do that?!” he shouted and saw, with blazing anger, the triumph lighting in Gyokumen Koushu’s face at successfully pushing him into raising his voice again.

twenty. Train
Every time he parted from the Sanzo-ikkou after fighting, regardless of the outcome, it was with the frustration of not quite understanding the unknown factor driving them to get stronger and the powerless knowledge that all he could do was keep training and wait.

twenty-one. Fur
The same sense of foreboding his mother must have experienced crept into his mind that winter, the expectancy that Houtou Castle’s actions would not go unnoticed by Heaven much longer, itchy like the fur coats brought out for the unusually cold weather, but impatient, if anything, not fearful.

twenty-two. Chrome
So Kougaiji wasn’t surprised when the Sanzo-ikkou had shown up, the notable monochromatic contrast between them and himself being that while he funneled all his frustration and willpower into concrete aims, they seem determined to live without expectations.

twenty-three. Heart
After he realized that to choose his important people over the pursuit of some ambition was in fact the greatest strength attainable, life became more difficult to get through but easier to live.

twenty-four. Intention
But while he knew that those precious to him could always be used against him successfully, he had no plans of letting anyone be capable of doing it.

twenty-five. Push
That Ni considered him strong enough to bother experimenting on had to be a compliment of sorts; it was this thought that sustained him during his escape attempt from the laboratory.

twenty-six. Look
If Kougaiji weren’t so familiar with every uneven edge, the sight of Houtou Castle, surrounded by serpent-like jagged mountains leaping towards it would astound him profoundly at each glance; it still managed to catch him off-guard sometimes.

twenty-seven. Weight
“I trust your decisions,” Dokugakuji told him simply and he knew it was the greatest compliment ever bestowed, but couldn’t help smile at the thought Now I’ll never be free to think selfishly again.

twenty-eight. Spider
Like the graceful creatures waiting in webs in each doorway corner, Ni Jianyi exuberated an air of watchful patience, confident in the knowledge that victims would blunder into his sticky grip all too easily.

twenty-nine. Robe
“Don’t bother,” he bluntly informed several bodyguards of Gyokumen Koushu he’d overheard plotting to consume the immortality-granting flesh of Genjyo Sanzo, “He’s not virtuous enough to warrant a one-minute addition to your lifespan, if anything, you’ll be lucky to not die on the spot.”

thirty. Umbrella
Only through Lirin and Dokugakuji’s lives did he glimpse first-handedly the inescapable chains blood wove and understand that no philosophy on blood ties could -should- be all-encompassing.

thirty-one. Surface
The interval between Goku removing his diadem and his youkai form surfacing was roughly three seconds, during which Kougaiji experienced enough dazzling fear to forget about all the things that he stood to lose here.

thirty-two. Idea
It was probably a good thing that he was too focused on his objectives to waste precious time regretting or assigning useless blame to himself and an even better thing that this observation seldom cropped up.

thirty-three. Diamond
At age seven, he had stolen a pair of his mother’s favorite earrings, now he was older, less impulsive and unable to recall why he had done it but still grateful to his younger self all the same.

thirty-four. Blind
Living as a mindless puppet was like being in the grasp of a blurry but insistent dream, unable to awaken, nothing like the muffled, stifled sensation of being sealed, and Kougaiji couldn’t decide which brand of helplessness was worse.

thirty-five. Flow
From the east-facing balcony of the castle, a tiny ribbon of river was visible between the dramatic, rugged landscape, forever rushing towards an invisible, inevitable destination.

thirty-six. Movement
Frustrated by all the setbacks and his inability to prevent them, he thirsted for any means to progress closer to the goal and that was why he challenged Goku to such a savage bet in the first place.

thirty-seven. More
He wasn’t too sure what was going on, but he was fine, reassured a foggy presence in his head, everything was fine, his body was going through all the motions of living nicely and there was nothing to worry about, nothing else he needed-

thirty-eight. Honey
Yet the sugary coating wasn’t quite sweet enough to overwhelm the bitter taste of an unshakable impression that a desperate voice was screaming Onii-chan and that it should mean something.

thirty-nine. Weather
It was curious how regardless of the violence surrounding the history of each one, the Tenchi Kaigen sutras weathered the ages undamaged and untainted by the blood spilt for them; perhaps they lent an element of their own durability to the revival.

forty. Blue
After Goku virtually clawed out his insides and then lost interest in the now-immobile prey, there was a moment when Kougaiji hovered on the edge of consciousness and watched the azure desert sky devour him, all the while painfully unaware of the extent of the damage this defeat would bring.

forty-one. Double
But he supposed that after he’d demanded Dokugakuji’s loyalties by not questioning them even on their first meeting, Dokugakuji had the right to do the same.

forty-two. Braid
In Lirin’s eyes was steely, stubborn patience even as she fought to keep them open, so Kougaiji let her lean against his back and twist messy strands of his hair together until exhaustion finally caught up with her.

forty-three. Thread
Gyokumen Koushu had the his loyalty through shackles, but Lirin could lead him anywhere by a single strand of hair and it was from her that he learned about the strongest of the ties that bind.

forty-four. Angles
From a certain perspective, a desire to kill that was not fueled by hatred could be seen as a noble, responsible thing, but Kougaiji had always been bothered by how coldly clinical his resolution made something that should have been passionate.

forty-five. Daydream
His earliest memories of Goku and his motley crew always came with the unshakable, deadpan impression that God had to have a twisted sense of humor to choose them.

forty-six. Nightmare
When he learned from Hakkai that yes, that was more or less the case, even though God didn’t actually exist per se, it didn’t do anything for his peace of mind.

forty-seven. Honor
“You can choose to die for someone else or kill for someone else, but never live for anyone but yourself.”

forty-eight. Palm
“As if I don’t already know that, how do you think I managed to take my life into my own hands?”

forty-nine. Screen
As the smoke cleared around Yaone and Dokugakuji’s words (“We have you…That’s all we need.”), Kougaiji felt some kind of mental screen flicker in and out of translucence like he was seeing something he hadn’t in a long time.

fifty. Warmth
Afterwards, there was light that evaporated the screen, the familiar heat radiated by his summoning technique and still another kind of warmth.

.end


Credits:
#19 - "How could you do that?!" [Saiyuki volume 6] is what Kou said to Gyokumen upon finding out that the insanity of the youkai was created intentionally, though, really, it's generic enough to have been said at any point.
#44 - a desire to kill that was not fueled by hatred [Saiyuki volume 2], almost directly quoting Sanzo.
#47 - “You can choose to die for someone else or kill for someone else, but never live for anyone but yourself.” This is actually taken from the title of my lj at 0sweet_tart0, "Die for another, kill for another, but live for yourself", which is my own intellectual property (hahaha, I’ve always wanted to say that).
#49 - “We have you…That’s all we need.” [Saiyuki Reload volume 3] What Yaone and/or Dokugakuji (I honestly can't tell which one of them) says to possessed!Kougaiji as they're fighting Sanzo, etc. It's what cut through to him and enables him to "go back to normal", as Ni put it.

End Notes: *looking up* That’s a rather long list of citations. Now I feel as if I’ve been stealing, oh great.

Since the days when I first watched snatches of the Gensoumaden Saiyuki anime, I’ve developed an attachment to Kougaiji but with that, frustration at his character’s undeveloped state when compared to Sanzo, Goku, Hakkai or Gojyo. Hell, even Ni has more depth in his portrayal. Kougaiji has so much potential (I mean, the riveting, tragic past and leather wardrobe are there already!) and I want to see him become more than just a handy punching bag to show how madly strong Seiten Taisei is or a medium through which Ni can be creepy while proving the selfishness of human nature or something.

And hence I went and wrote lots of speculation based on little concrete evidence and tried to pass it off as “in character”^^. I’m not anywhere close to being satisfied with this fic, it feels like the essence of his personality got lost and there’s still so much substance I could have included – but maybe there will be a next time. I’m more of a canon fanatic (as opposed to fandom) when it comes to Saiyuki, but we shall see.

Feedback me?^^