Fic: Diverging Paths (Saiyuki)

Kouryuu gets unwelcome news.

Kouryuu read over the mail as if it would somehow change. His application for permanent guardianship of Goku had been refused again, but the Department of Children's Affairs was happy to renew his fosterage licence for another six months. He felt ill. Sooner rather than later someone would finally sift through all the remaining genetic samples on the stricken colony world and realise that nothing had been turned in for Goku and no one could ever find his putative relatives. He needed legal guardianship before that happened, so that no one would come sniffing around and just whisk the monkey away.

There was a crash in the bathroom. That was probably the most recent tumbler to hold their toothbrushes. Perhaps having Goku whisked away would be peaceful –

He scrubbed his face with his hands.

"Guardianship," he muttered. "And adoption the moment you're twenty-one and no one can stop you. There's nothing illegal in adopting cross-category."

"Who are you talking to?"

He looked up as Goku flopped onto another chair, winding a long arm around the back and looking quizzically at him. The kid was so much lankier these days since his growth spurt. And ate so goddam much. Puberty hadn't made him a furnace for calories, had it?

"Myself. Only way to get a decent conversation."

"Ha ha, Sanzo."

Kouryuu rolled his eyes. "Could you cool it with the sanzo stuff, at home at least? I need to get to class; let's say our prayers and hit the road."

Goku didn't need to stand on a stool to put incense on the shrine brazier any longer. He also didn't look like he was actually saying his prayers, just sort of opening and closing his mouth.

"Are you going through some sort of fucking rebellious teen phase? Because you do that shit elsewhere than in front of Koumyou's picture."

"Would he have cared?" Goku said with interest.

Kouryuu sighed. "No. But I'm trying to make you a decent member of society. Which is an impossible task. I want people to look at you, Goku, and only think, There's a perfectly normal guy. OK? It'll make life easier for you."

Goku made a rude noise, but rattled through the prayers obediently. Kouryuu was ready to go, with Goku ready and waiting by the time Hakkai showed up – it was mildly galling to think he'd started thinking of Cho as "Hakkai" – and then he was free to run out to his own adult life.

"Bye, Sanzo!" Goku called.

"Whatever!"

He fretted all through the advanced Sanskrit texts seminar he took with faculty members, through the beginners Sanskrit language he taught – good God what was wrong with the undergrads that morning? – and through hour after hour of his own research.

"Nice work, Rin," another student said, laughing over his shoulder.

"Go fuck yourself," Kouryuu muttered, shuffling his data pad, his notebooks and the loose leaves of paper together to hide the fact that he'd mostly been sketching very bad images of Goku.

"Don't bother transferring to Fine Art," the other student sniffed. "You're pretty shit."

"Hey, hold up, Nill."

"What, so you can tell me to fuck off some more?"

"I need a coffee and a smoke, and I want to rant at an audience."

"This is why you don't actually have any friends," Nill said, rolling his eyes. "You can buy me a coffee."

By the time they were half way through their coffees and he'd smoked two of his preferred cigarettes, Kouryuu was feeling more like himself, especially when Nill was nodding and making the right noises at how ridiculous it was that here they were a full nine fucking weeks into the semester and the beginners Sanskrit class was still full of people who couldn't read one single fucking word.

"I mean, I'm not asking them to even understand, just fucking sound it out phonetically, Kouryuu said vehemently. "Pathetic!"

"Absolutely," Nill said. "Can I have a cigarette?" Once he'd safely got it lit he added. "When did you start learning?"

Kouryuu paused, frowning. He couldn't remember a time before he could read, and now that he thought about it, was sure that he couldn't remember a time before he could read at least three scripts.

"Sort of young," he said grudgingly. "I'm still covering the bare basics in my class!"

"I'm sure. I bet you make that foster kid of yours do more. I can't believe he hasn't applied to go back to the orphanage."

"Buy your own cigarettes in future."

"So why are you drawing terrible portraits of the kid anyway?"

Kouryuu shrugged. "Apparently I'm still too young to be given legal guardianship of him, but not too young to foster him. I don't like the idea that some fucking social worker can come and poke around my life at any moment."

"It's better for you, fostering him, isn't it? If things get too much the republic'll step in. you have your own life to live, Rin. Your dissertation to finish – I'd ask how it's going but you might ask about mine, and I really don't want that." Nill looked glum.

"Give up your social life," Kouryuu said. It worked for me."

"Did you have one to give up?"

"That's beside the point. You have to dedicate yourself to the work."

"Fine, you ascetic wannabe. Let's get back to our desks."

Kouryuu waved him off at the stairs. Ascetic wannabee? He snorted. He was the real deal. Minus the hair style and robes. University and Goku, that was his whole life. Thinking of Goku just made him fret again. If those bastards took the brat away – Damn it; he tried buying himself in obscure religious legal judgements as a distraction.

* * *

"This is a very thorough study," Kouryuu's supervisor said, paging down through the chapter draft. "But don't you think it's a little long?"

"I wanted to marshal as much evidence as possible. These monasteries have been using the law within the last century, Professor Jikaku! You can see how lay personnel took on temporary vows in each of these case studies –"

"Kouryuu," Jikaku said. "I'm not arguing against your evidence, although I think that some might – I'm just suggesting that you don't want your third chapter to overbalance the others. Perhaps concentrate on one of these monasteries? Or on more centrally located ones and refer to these?"

"I researched it, it's going in," Kouryuu snapped.

Jikaku massaged his forehead. "Every student says that. At least don’t put it in the footnotes, that's incredibly annoying. A colleague in the Faculty of Bioengineering had to deal with a doctoral candidate who wouldn't accept that his dissertation was almost two and half times over the word limit. It we eventually submitted with one hundred and fifty thousand words of the dissertation in the footnotes. I'm hoping you're not that passive-aggressive." He paused. "Or just plain aggressive." He grinned at Kouryuu's unwilling smile.

"Maybe some of it can go into an appendix. Or two."

"Publish some of it as articles now. It's solid work, Kouryuu, it just needs to be shaped properly."

Kouryuu nodded, glad not to have been wasting his time. The more obscure highways and byways of religious law were out of fashion as topics of theological research, but he felt at home in them. It was almost like waking up in his childhood bedroom and being in an old-fashioned monastery again. Jikaku held up a finger.

"I found something for you. It's shamefully old technology, so I don't know if it'll match up with your fancy new stuff –" He pulled out an old communicator and fiddled with it. "I found this in a drawer. It barely holds a charge – let me plug it in –" He opened a file of images and passed it over.

Kouryuu took it and kept his face expressionless as he looked at each image in turn. A fair haired man, barely older than him, laughing so much he was almost crying. A tall, dark haired man with long hair, looking mildly embarrassed. A small, Cat-B man looking fondly at both of them. He went on through the images. The fair haired man – his hair short enough in the pictures to only swing below his chin – teasing his friends. All three of them in novices robes. The Cat-B man pictured in action, a short video of him moving fast as a blur, the flat of his foot splintering a massively thick piece of wood. Then what he'd been hoping for: a video of the fair haired young man, sparring with his tall friend. Only one of them was taking it seriously as the smaller, slighter man dodged and spun lie he was at a dance, a massive grin on his face the whole time. Kouryuu paused it and zoomed in on his father's happy face. He wasn't sure how long he sat there before he cleared his throat and looked up.

"I don't think this will interface with my tech, you're right. Do you know how to upload it for me?"

"No," Jikaku said. "Do you?"

"May I?"

"Of course. Whatever images you want. There's a nice one at the end of him newly ordained. You know those other two reprobates, I'm assuming?"

Kouryuu nodded, uploading the whole file.

"My best students," Jikaku sighed. "Excluding you. Do me a favour, Kouryuu. Try not to be violently killed. I don't think I could bear another one of my students dying like that."

"Academia isn't as dangerous," he said. "Isn't that why you took up a position here?"

"You've never been to a faculty committee meeting," Jikaku said in amusement. "The knives come out in plenty. When do you think you'll have the revisions to your chapter?"

Kouryuu shrugged. "I have some family stuff going on."

"Koumyou or Goku?"

Kouryuu bristled. Jikaku was about the only person who could get away with that sort of question, because if his connection with Koumyou, and the way he'd backed Kouryuu over the years.

"Goku," he said at last. "My guardianship was denied again. I can foster him and get myself psych evaled every six months, but I can't have him permanently. I'm too young. I don't have an approved career."

"You do have an income and a home."

"That doesn't count, apparently."

Jikaku took up the ancient communicator and flicked on to the image of Koumyou, Goudai and Tenkai all in their sanzo's robes. He looked at them, an immensely sad expression on his face.

"You know that there's one immediate way out of any such problems," he said.

"No," Kouryuu said at once.

"Koumyou wanted you to follow him."

"I know. I know. But –"

Jikaku looked at him.

He hadn't lived in a monastery since he was thirteen. His last memory of one had been the aftermath of the murder. He'd only realised after leaving that it was possible to live outside a monastery. He wasn't sure he ever wanted to set foot in one again other than in his dreams, where his father was alive and he was a child.

"Secular law doesn't apply to a priest of the rank of sanzo," Jikaku said. "Do you think Koumyou ever bothered with any of that where you were concerned?"

"I know he didn't. The social workers were driven crazy."

"And yet they could still do nothing because his will protected you. If you were ordained you could do the same for Goku. If you really won't take up the position – Kouryuu, you know there's still controversy about Koumyou folding Genkai's lineage into his own."

"But Genkai wanted that," Kouryuu said. "Dad – I mean, Koumyou Sanzo said."

"And devotees of Genkai point out that traditionally it's been a Cat-B lineage and while Koumyou was an exemplary caretaker, it's time to find a new holder for the position and sutra," Jikaku said. "I don't think anyone would argue if Koumyou's son and successor took it on and was visibly raising his successor, a Cat-B monk, to hold the position after him."

"And what about Koumyou's lineage?" Kouryuu said. "The Seiten sutra's never been found, it's never come to light on antiquities markets – the police think it was stolen to order."

"I don't train candidates for the sanzohood any longer," Jikaku said. He looked Kouryuu in the eye. "but either Koumyou's lineage is already extinguished or you're the last generation. Your academic work is a good and dignified part of its history, Kouryuu. Its legal status could help you at the moment."

"I'll think about it," Kouryuu muttered. "I'll have the revisions in as quickly as I can."

He took his leave and went home to find Goku and Hakkai had a pot of tea ready and waiting, and Goku was eager to impress him with random facts from his lessons. He felt something inside him turn over at the thought of anyone saying he couldn't keep Goku, and knew he'd storm any government office it took to prevent that every happening. He knew what it was like to be ripped from home and those you loved.

He'd storm Heaven itself.