That Night: Hakkai's Dream

So I wasn't going to add any to the oneshot, but I was thinking again about how the heck Hakkai got his limiters, and this happened. I'm not sure how I feel about it, overall, but I figured I'd share it, anyhow…
The worst part of this for me was actually writing Gojou and Hakkai's lines in English, because while typing I can so hear Ishida Akira and Hirata Hiraoki voicing them in my head in Japanese...xD


He had thought that silence was terrible but this, this was worse.

A shriek of anguish resonated in the stone-walled chamber, a roar that was not human, nor fully beast, and steeped in pain. It was the voice of the slain, crying out for vengeance,or the tears of a loved one lying bleeding on the floor, knife still clasped between her cooling fingers. It was the sound of Hell's minions coming to take away his soul.

It took a moment for him to realise that it was he who was screaming.

Everyone else was dead.

Before him, on the ground, lay the ripped apart corpse of his final victim. Unlike the others, who had been slashed with the blade of that same cursed knife, this one had truly been torn open, vital organs shredded and tossed onto the floor as though a wild animal had taken him for his prey.

Had he done this?

He couldn't remember. Time and space seemed disjointed, seconds separated only by the rhythm of his racing heart.

Where was he? What was he doing here? Hadn't he come to rescue someone? All thoughts and feelings had been sucked away into the darkness, leaving only a hollow emptiness and the nagging sense that he had lost something, but could not work out what.

He had begun to scream again, without even realising it. Had he ever stopped? It was hard to be sure. The sound rattled raw through his vocal chords, jarring his chest and suddenly choking off in the middle by a coughing fit, as blood and bile surged up through his oesophagus and into his mouth. He retched and choked again, feeling as though for a moment he was drowning. The slick red liquid trickled down the corner of his mouth, as his air passages cleared, not fully, but just enough for him to resume a rasping, uneven inhale.

Had he been hurt then? Tentatively he moved his right hand towards his midriff, searching for damage. A demon's claw lunged suddenly towards his stomach, and he flinched back, the instincts of a wild animal to protect himself from attack kicking in before he realised that it was his own hand, not that of an attacker. His fingers seemed longer than he remembered, and as he touched them gingerly against his wound, the jagged edge of a long nail raked through the torn skin, causing him to yelp.

Yes, there was blood. He drew his hand away, staring at it in detached consternation. The blood did not repulse him, rather he felt compelled to put the talons to his lips, tasting the salt against his tongue. The sickly sweet scent so close to his nostrils caused his pulse to skip in sudden excitement. He took a sharp intake of breath, pain for the first time beginning to register as bit by bit his senses returned.

His senses? Was that what they were?

He drew back the hand, noticing for the first time a winding leaf pattern that twisted itself like prison chains against his pale skin. Brushing the talons of the other hand against it, he saw that it too was similarly branded and, as he touched the edges of the leaves, they moved slightly, as though they were not simply a tattoo, but a living organism, feeding off his aura and evolving across his body in search of more prey. A tendril of the vine began to snake speculatively up his index finger, and he drew the hands apart hurriedly, feeling the tug as the dissatisfied entity bored its way back in between the wafer thin layers of his skin. He rubbed at it frantically, but it did not fade or even wither. It had become a part of him, and more, he could feel its malevolent energy beneath his touch.

He shifted his gaze away, no longer wanting to contemplate what had taken root within his body, and as he did so, he registered with graphic clarity the scene of death and devastation that surrounded him. Slowly it began to dawn on him that this had been his work, and every single life he had snuffed out. His hands were shaking now, his fingers twitching with anger and with fear. His whole body was rippling and trembling with energy and hatred unlike that he had ever known before, a curdling bloodlust that demanded vengeance, but there was nobody left here on whom to sate it, and little by little, his sanity had begun to return.

San...ity?

No. It was not sanity. A man who had killed so many people did not possess such a thing. A man who was no longer a man, in fact, but a monster - a monster, soaked in the blood of his victims.

The vine that had patterned his wrists was spreading, now. He could feel it, moving up his arms and across his torso, down towards his wounded stomach and below, to his legs and feet. It was feeding from him, he realised dully, nourished by the blood of the thousand demons he had slain and brought fully to life by that of the last, a demon whose name he didn't know, but whose soul's presence he could still feel burning a curse against his skin. Was that the root of the vine, then? Was the encroaching weed that, bit by bit was imprisoning him from head to toe the last sadistic legacy of that sneering individual, whose drops of blood had sizzled like poison against his wounds, dulling pain and heightening everything else in an explosion of killing lust.

Yes, he knew now, what he was.

He was an abomination, mutated by his own guilt and rage, whose body had twisted into this grotesque form as punishment for his deeds. The thousand demon souls screeched out for vengeance and blood within him, knotted together by that of the last, the only one who had given his blood willingly, that mocking, icy smirk on his sallow face. Even as a corpse, that expression had not gone. He could not look at it. He did not want to remember what a thousand dead demon souls could do to a human body and mind.

Slowly and unsteadily he dragged himself to his feet, staggering a few steps towards the cage bars where Kan'an's cooling body lay. For a moment he stared at her, but, although he knew that as he was now he could break through into her prison and take her in his arms, he could not bear to sully her body with his touch. He could not see that rampant vine wind itself across her delicate skin, spreading across and scarring the beautiful face that had always given him so much hope and joy. No human could commit the sins he had committed to come here, and he was human no more. He was not like her, now. He was like them...the ones who had taken her, hurt her, raped her and forced her into such despair that she had taken her own life. How could he touch her? How could he even go near her, in such a state as he was now? He had not protected her from them, but at least, he would protect her from him.

Without realising it, he had begun to back away, the loss of blood making him light-headed as he stumbled towards the door. There was silence, now, instead of the screams, punctuated only by the gasps of his breathing as the pain in his stomach became more and more intense.

His body felt unnatural and heavy, difficult to move and assaulted with wave upon wave of rage and guilt. The fiery red mist that had descended upon him on hearing of Kan'an's abduction had been replaced by the murky darkness of self-destructive despair that still threatened to swallow him up whole.

It was raining outside, the slick droplets washing some of the blood from his damaged body. The ice coolness only made the pain worse, but he forced himself on, step after step, until he could walk no more.

He sank to the ground, talons digging deep into the earth. Tendrils of hungry vine seeped out from his body into the ground, preventing him from getting up again, but he didn't care. He had become a monster. As a monster, he should die. Like the monsters he had slain, one after another, without a second thought. He was not worthy of anything, not now. He had not saved Kan'an and he had become one of them, and like them, he would die.

His gaze caught sight of his reflection in a nearby puddle, and despite how weak he felt, he flinched back at what he saw. Long, pointed ears jutted out from either side of his head. His hair was a messy tangle across his brow, whilst the vine had spread even this far, covering his nose and cheeks like a cruel scar.

As he met his gaze in the water, he saw reptilian gold eyes staring back at him, making his face even more like a stranger's. His heart ached as he remembered how Kan'an had loved his green eyes. Maybe that was why they too had been taken from him, he reflected bitterly, turning his head away.

I do not want to die like this.

Little by little, the thought began to stir in the depths of his mind. At first it was barely more than a whisper, but as it gathered pace, it echoed into the empty forest around him, until he realised that he had spoken them out loud. He repeated them, once, then again, and again and again until they became a feverish mantra, over and over as though somehow, by pure will alone, he could turn back time. He was still bleeding, the blood from his injuries seeping into the puddles and staining the ground around him a deep crimson. His consciousness was starting to blur at the edges, but he did not relent, the words coming from his lips louder and louder as his grief surged inside of him.

Something split the sky above his head, a crash and burst of light so bright that he felt certain that, in the heavens, a storm had come to join the rain. The light had blinded him, making the whole forest nothing but a cloud of lights before his eyes, and then, as it began to fade, his body fell slack against the ground, his arms longer having the strength to hold him up.

The forest was silent now. His lips moved slightly, but he could not make the words any more. In that moment of light, the last of his energy had failed him. Death and darkness awaited him, but he was, somehow, at peace. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the edge of his hand, bloodstained and muddy but no longer wrapped in the tendril of the vine. The claws that had dug deep into the earth were gone, as though they had been no more than a hallucination or a bad dream.

He had killed people, many people, and he would die here. But he was not a monster after all. He was a man...a man called Cho Gonou, and he was ready to go.

Hell's messengers always knew how to find sinners. He would wait for them here, till the dark and cold no longer bothered him, and he could no longer feel the pain in his gut.

As he shifted his head slightly against the ground, he felt something cold and hard pressing against his ear. As he pondered what the strange sensation might be, he felt the last of his consciousness seep out of him, and he slumped forward into the black.

"Hey, you dead?"

The voice pierced through the gloom, the faintest glimmer of light breaking up the shadow. Something hard nudged against his damaged stomach, sending dulled signals of pain through his abused body, and he groaned, twitching slightly as though trying to escape from the discomfort that was bringing him back towards the surface.

"Huh? Guess you're alive..."

The voice sounded surprised, and there was a soft rustle, as though someone was bending over him.

Gonou's eyes opened very slightly, but it was not possible for him to make out clearly who or what was speaking to him. A demon? A human? Friend? Foe?

Whatever it was, it was cloaked in crimson.

Hell's...messenger?

A faint smile twitched at his lips, resignation and satisfaction glittering in his green eyes. He could not make out the gaze of the other so close to him, but the red comforted him.

Something else in this world was as stained with blood as he was. It was right this way.

It was time to go.

Goodbye, Kan'an.

Gonou closed his eyes, his limp body falling forward once more into the mud.


Gonou opened his eyes. The room was small and square, littered with empty beer cans, fast food boxes and cigarette butts, some of which had clearly been tossed into ashtrays from a considerable distance. The light was electric, but the bulb was cheap and it flickered at odd intervals, a fly buzzing drunkenly around the unstable glow. The air smelt slightly of stale smoke, coupled with something that reminded Gonou of the pollution of the city streets, and a thin, rough blanket was pulled up over his body, its surface coarse against his skin.

Hell..?

He blinked, struggling to absorb the surreal normality of his surroundings.

"Hell...really is a plain kind of place,"

The words slipped from his lips, and at their sound, he heard the squeak of a chair leg against a bare wood floor.

The next minute, a face was pushed into his, the long crimson tail of hair that fell down over the stranger's shoulder matched in blood hue only by the irritated shade of the other man's eyes.

"Sorry, I'm sure, for being plain."

The voice was blunt, the syllables lazy and ill-formed, and Gonou felt a sense of uncertainty creep over him.

That red...

Kan'an.

He closed his eyes briefly, remembering the splash of blood as his partner had taken her own life.

Well, I guess I'm still here. I guess I won't go without seeing you off properly, Kan'an. Wait for me. I'll come back for you.

And then, when it's done...maybe I'll see you on the other side.