Saiyuki Reincarnation Fic - The Wheel
Jul. 30th, 2005 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
new_kateTitle: The Wheel
Author: Newkate
Fandom: Saiyuki
Rating: R for language, blood and violence to NC-17 for m/m smut later
General notes and warnings: Reincarnation fic. There shall be implied het, impied and explicit m/m, multiple pairings, 1st person POV. Completed. In four parts.
Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hibem for awesome beta and invaluable moral support, chaosd and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
runefallstar for all the help and advice
Part One: Shift (Ch.2)
Ch.1
“Well, have you decided?” I asked Constantine straight away, locking my office door behind him.
The Head of Surgery office was huge, with sculpted flowery ornaments running up the walls and around the massive dusty chandelier. It should have had a large, heavy oak desk, spacious enough to keep in and out piles right on it for reference, as well as allow for organised storage of essential stationery, but all the good furniture got burned during the war, and now I had a small folding table with metal legs for doing my paperwork, which was, of course, still sufficient, but not satisfactory. The chairs were creaky and rickety, so we sat on the windowsill, as usually.
“We’ll probably end up fighting about it,” he said. “Before we do, I should remind you that this Saturday is Lydia’s birthday party. I expect you both to attend.”
“You actually throwing a kiddie birthday party? Wait, you actually want me to go to a kiddie birthday party?”
“You know she adores you. It’s important to her that you come, Alexander. It’s only for an hour or so, until we cut the cake, and then the kids will run off to play outside and we will open a bottle or two and spend some time as a family.”
“Did you say cake?” Monkey would love a cake, and I myself wouldn’t mind some for a change, but how was it even possible?
“Oh yes. Me and Dima, eh, sergeant Ozerov, have been saving our ration cards. I’m baking a birthday cake just like Mother used to make.”
“Hm. Who else will be there?”
“Apart from some kids from Lydia’s school, only me, you, Sophia, sergeant Ozerov, Yana…”
Yana was their next-door neighbour, a quiet, sensible girl with long black braids and a fantastic rack. She worked at a pharmacy while taking a correspondence course in Chemistry, and she and Constantine got along so well that ever since moving here I expected to be dragged into the living horror of wedding preparations at any moment. But it’s been two years, and they didn’t seem to have gotten any further.
“Who is that sergeant Ozerov, anyway? Is he that huge guy you had over for New Year party?”
“Yes,” said Constantine, blinking and turning pink.
“Is he Yana’s boyfriend?”
“N-no. He’s my colleague and good friend. Anyway, about that case. I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been up all night thinking about it, and…”
“Seriously? You don’t look it. Why is it I always look like shit if I had less than four hours of sleep, and you are all bright-eyed and fresh?”
“Well, have you tried brewed tea leaves? When they cool down, wrap them in a bit of a gauze, put them over your eyes and relax for… Hey, stop staring at me like that! Mother taught me all those women tricks when she was ill, so I could teach Lydia when she’s old enough, and if you think it’s fun, I can share some choice points that will put you off food for days.”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said coldly, remembering Sophia’s first period and all the diagrams I drew trying to explain to her what was happening. She just wouldn’t stop crying no matter how much I stressed that the menstrual cycle was perfectly natural and will stop anyway in forty years or so. “So what do you say?”
“What you propose to do… It’s wrong.”
“How’s that?” I asked, dully, already bored. He was a stubborn idealistic blockhead; talking to him was useless. He came to strange unexpected revelations from time to time wholly on his own, but those were the only times he ever changed his mind about anything.
“Not because sparing that man would be violating justice. That already happened when I let the rape slide.”
“You? Where do you get these delusions of grandeur from anyway? The district prosecutor ordered you to bury that case.”
He chilled me with his iciest, haughtiest glare: “No delusions, Alexander. He wouldn’t have gotten his way so easily without my cooperation. I could have made it difficult for him.”
“And then he would have eaten you - and everyone you care about - for breakfast.”
“Still, I could have stood my ground. I didn’t. My fault, something I need to make amends for. But two wrongs won’t make a right. If we let the murderer go, we perpetrate the injustice, and that is a cycle just as vicious as hate and vengeance.”
“Never understood why you have such a boner for justice.”
“Because you have to believe in something,” he said almost under his breath.
“What for? Ideals are just like religion, opium for the masses. I always do what I feel like, and that’s why I am never, ever wrong. Bet you’re jealous.”
He smiled from under the lip of his uniform hat: “Maybe a little. You know, sometimes even believing in higher ideals doesn’t give you any answers. If I obey the law and turn him in, they’ll probably, as you said, make it all about what he is, there will be unrest, innocent people will suffer, and that’s exactly what the law is here to prevent. Damn, it was so simple in the beginning. Do everything clean, by the book, work hard, and you’ll succeed. Now I don’t know what makes me break more rules – pressure from above or my own conscience. Do you ever get that?”
“I’m just sick of painstakingly patching people up only to see them thrown back into the meat grinder and mowed down by bullets. The war is supposed to be over. We should have all we were fighting for: peace, freedom; what grandfather was fighting for: power to the people.”
“Including the power to pass judgement? Do you really think you are qualified?”
“Fuck yes. If you don’t trust your own judgement, how can you trust others to do better? That’s simply cowardice and shirking the responsibility. ”
It all almost felt like one of our usual pointless, deeply philosophical chats in his communal kitchen over the second bottle of vodka, and he was relaxed and still smiling, looking me straight in the face with his strange eyes the colour of faded ink, just like mine. That was pretty much all grandfather left to us, these weird eyes and his name, possibly the only things we really had in common.
“What will you do if I refuse to help you?” he asked levelly.
I had no specific plan at the time, so I answered in generic terms: “I’ll treat you as an obstacle.”
He nodded: “I think you would. No choice then, I guess. But really, doesn’t it bother you that he’s almost certainly a murderer? ”
“No. Why should it? I’m a murderer too. And so are you.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head violently. “No. That was war. We didn’t choose to do what we did, and that’s where the difference is. He chose, on his own. He might again. The blood will be on you.”
There is certain something about really lame jokes that makes them impossible to resist. I smoothed over the front of my scrubs covered in dark brown spots of today’s blood, underlayed by beige and orange of old stains that defied the bleaching, and said: “So? Drop in the ocean.”
He rolled his eyes, kicked me in the shin: “This arrogance will cost you one day. Luck does run out, you know, and you used a lot during the war. That last time, with Sophia, was a miracle. You have to stop doing this.”
“I’ll do what I fucking feel like, thank you. And it seems to me, your principles are flexible like rubber.”
“There is more to it, actually,” he said. “I was thinking about Lydia. She’ll be walking late at night through that park one day, and if I were honest with myself – yes, if something happened to her I would kill too, with my bare hands and teeth, in pure, pointless vengeance. And yes, I’m grateful to Haim for making the world a better place for my sister. But really, it was that girl, Marina. She loves him so much, without any hope, without any reward. She reminds me of someone very dear, and I won’t let her heart be broken.”
“And the scary bit – it’s not even the sappiest thing I ever heard you say.”
“Shut it, Alexander,” he said, blushing again. The life of a redhead was a tough one. Not only did he blush like a bride at a drop of the hat, he was also tormented with freckles. They were starting to pop out now, like they did every spring: there was a line of them, same brick-red colour as his hair and eyebrows, marring his cheek where the uniform hat didn’t shadow it from the sun, like a small Milky Way across his face. “Need I remind you…”
“Don’t. So, have you thought up the plan yet?”
He was quiet for a long time, enough for me to figure out that he had a plan he didn’t like one bit.
“We can’t hide the murder, of course. We’re hoping to try and take down a gang soon; if we kill anybody during arrest, there might be a chance to pin the corpses on them. The only one who can make a connection between the victims and Haim would be the district prosecutor. Nobody else even knows he had a motive.”
District prosecutor was a variable: strange, off-putting and unpredictable. The victims were among his “connections”, that’s why he protected them in the first place, but it was hard to tell if he would care about avenging them once they were no longer of any use.
“Well,” I said. “If he makes his move, we will hint to him, very subtly, that the fascinating story about him, the emergency room and a bunny doll can be all over town as fast as my big-mouth nurses can run to the phone.”
“That’s a nice one,” nodded Constantine, smirking. He was in a good mood for days after I told him about that incident. “But I have better blackmail material. I can prove he’s a deviant.”
“A – a deviant?”
“Well, you know. A deviant. A pervert. With unnatural tastes.”
“Oh, that. Wait, is he really? I’d never have thought. But how do you…” my brain caught up, and I bit my tongue, almost gagging on suddenly vivid mental images.
“Don’t,” said Constantine with his eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t ask any questions. Just trust me on this. I think we can scare him with that. Anyone can do what they like with bunny dolls, this is a free country, but a man with another man – that’s a crime, that’s five years in prison.”
“Right,” I said carefully. “Sounds good, but won’t you get in trouble as well?”
He threw his head back and looked distinctly down on me, despite the fact that we were exactly the same height: “I can’t believe that’s what you’d think of me. I wouldn’t – not with anyone like him, not in a million years! He tried… Look, forget I said anything, just let me handle all this.”
I nodded in agreement. It was really no concern of mine, and he would probably blurt everything out during our next drinking session anyway. We talked out the details, I walked him out and went back to the recovery room to check if Haim was well enough for visitors.
Next chapter
Author: Newkate
Fandom: Saiyuki
Rating: R for language, blood and violence to NC-17 for m/m smut later
General notes and warnings: Reincarnation fic. There shall be implied het, impied and explicit m/m, multiple pairings, 1st person POV. Completed. In four parts.
Many thanks to
hibem for awesome beta and invaluable moral support, chaosd and runefallstar for all the help and advicePart One: Shift (Ch.2)
Ch.1
“Well, have you decided?” I asked Constantine straight away, locking my office door behind him.
The Head of Surgery office was huge, with sculpted flowery ornaments running up the walls and around the massive dusty chandelier. It should have had a large, heavy oak desk, spacious enough to keep in and out piles right on it for reference, as well as allow for organised storage of essential stationery, but all the good furniture got burned during the war, and now I had a small folding table with metal legs for doing my paperwork, which was, of course, still sufficient, but not satisfactory. The chairs were creaky and rickety, so we sat on the windowsill, as usually.
“We’ll probably end up fighting about it,” he said. “Before we do, I should remind you that this Saturday is Lydia’s birthday party. I expect you both to attend.”
“You actually throwing a kiddie birthday party? Wait, you actually want me to go to a kiddie birthday party?”
“You know she adores you. It’s important to her that you come, Alexander. It’s only for an hour or so, until we cut the cake, and then the kids will run off to play outside and we will open a bottle or two and spend some time as a family.”
“Did you say cake?” Monkey would love a cake, and I myself wouldn’t mind some for a change, but how was it even possible?
“Oh yes. Me and Dima, eh, sergeant Ozerov, have been saving our ration cards. I’m baking a birthday cake just like Mother used to make.”
“Hm. Who else will be there?”
“Apart from some kids from Lydia’s school, only me, you, Sophia, sergeant Ozerov, Yana…”
Yana was their next-door neighbour, a quiet, sensible girl with long black braids and a fantastic rack. She worked at a pharmacy while taking a correspondence course in Chemistry, and she and Constantine got along so well that ever since moving here I expected to be dragged into the living horror of wedding preparations at any moment. But it’s been two years, and they didn’t seem to have gotten any further.
“Who is that sergeant Ozerov, anyway? Is he that huge guy you had over for New Year party?”
“Yes,” said Constantine, blinking and turning pink.
“Is he Yana’s boyfriend?”
“N-no. He’s my colleague and good friend. Anyway, about that case. I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been up all night thinking about it, and…”
“Seriously? You don’t look it. Why is it I always look like shit if I had less than four hours of sleep, and you are all bright-eyed and fresh?”
“Well, have you tried brewed tea leaves? When they cool down, wrap them in a bit of a gauze, put them over your eyes and relax for… Hey, stop staring at me like that! Mother taught me all those women tricks when she was ill, so I could teach Lydia when she’s old enough, and if you think it’s fun, I can share some choice points that will put you off food for days.”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said coldly, remembering Sophia’s first period and all the diagrams I drew trying to explain to her what was happening. She just wouldn’t stop crying no matter how much I stressed that the menstrual cycle was perfectly natural and will stop anyway in forty years or so. “So what do you say?”
“What you propose to do… It’s wrong.”
“How’s that?” I asked, dully, already bored. He was a stubborn idealistic blockhead; talking to him was useless. He came to strange unexpected revelations from time to time wholly on his own, but those were the only times he ever changed his mind about anything.
“Not because sparing that man would be violating justice. That already happened when I let the rape slide.”
“You? Where do you get these delusions of grandeur from anyway? The district prosecutor ordered you to bury that case.”
He chilled me with his iciest, haughtiest glare: “No delusions, Alexander. He wouldn’t have gotten his way so easily without my cooperation. I could have made it difficult for him.”
“And then he would have eaten you - and everyone you care about - for breakfast.”
“Still, I could have stood my ground. I didn’t. My fault, something I need to make amends for. But two wrongs won’t make a right. If we let the murderer go, we perpetrate the injustice, and that is a cycle just as vicious as hate and vengeance.”
“Never understood why you have such a boner for justice.”
“Because you have to believe in something,” he said almost under his breath.
“What for? Ideals are just like religion, opium for the masses. I always do what I feel like, and that’s why I am never, ever wrong. Bet you’re jealous.”
He smiled from under the lip of his uniform hat: “Maybe a little. You know, sometimes even believing in higher ideals doesn’t give you any answers. If I obey the law and turn him in, they’ll probably, as you said, make it all about what he is, there will be unrest, innocent people will suffer, and that’s exactly what the law is here to prevent. Damn, it was so simple in the beginning. Do everything clean, by the book, work hard, and you’ll succeed. Now I don’t know what makes me break more rules – pressure from above or my own conscience. Do you ever get that?”
“I’m just sick of painstakingly patching people up only to see them thrown back into the meat grinder and mowed down by bullets. The war is supposed to be over. We should have all we were fighting for: peace, freedom; what grandfather was fighting for: power to the people.”
“Including the power to pass judgement? Do you really think you are qualified?”
“Fuck yes. If you don’t trust your own judgement, how can you trust others to do better? That’s simply cowardice and shirking the responsibility. ”
It all almost felt like one of our usual pointless, deeply philosophical chats in his communal kitchen over the second bottle of vodka, and he was relaxed and still smiling, looking me straight in the face with his strange eyes the colour of faded ink, just like mine. That was pretty much all grandfather left to us, these weird eyes and his name, possibly the only things we really had in common.
“What will you do if I refuse to help you?” he asked levelly.
I had no specific plan at the time, so I answered in generic terms: “I’ll treat you as an obstacle.”
He nodded: “I think you would. No choice then, I guess. But really, doesn’t it bother you that he’s almost certainly a murderer? ”
“No. Why should it? I’m a murderer too. And so are you.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head violently. “No. That was war. We didn’t choose to do what we did, and that’s where the difference is. He chose, on his own. He might again. The blood will be on you.”
There is certain something about really lame jokes that makes them impossible to resist. I smoothed over the front of my scrubs covered in dark brown spots of today’s blood, underlayed by beige and orange of old stains that defied the bleaching, and said: “So? Drop in the ocean.”
He rolled his eyes, kicked me in the shin: “This arrogance will cost you one day. Luck does run out, you know, and you used a lot during the war. That last time, with Sophia, was a miracle. You have to stop doing this.”
“I’ll do what I fucking feel like, thank you. And it seems to me, your principles are flexible like rubber.”
“There is more to it, actually,” he said. “I was thinking about Lydia. She’ll be walking late at night through that park one day, and if I were honest with myself – yes, if something happened to her I would kill too, with my bare hands and teeth, in pure, pointless vengeance. And yes, I’m grateful to Haim for making the world a better place for my sister. But really, it was that girl, Marina. She loves him so much, without any hope, without any reward. She reminds me of someone very dear, and I won’t let her heart be broken.”
“And the scary bit – it’s not even the sappiest thing I ever heard you say.”
“Shut it, Alexander,” he said, blushing again. The life of a redhead was a tough one. Not only did he blush like a bride at a drop of the hat, he was also tormented with freckles. They were starting to pop out now, like they did every spring: there was a line of them, same brick-red colour as his hair and eyebrows, marring his cheek where the uniform hat didn’t shadow it from the sun, like a small Milky Way across his face. “Need I remind you…”
“Don’t. So, have you thought up the plan yet?”
He was quiet for a long time, enough for me to figure out that he had a plan he didn’t like one bit.
“We can’t hide the murder, of course. We’re hoping to try and take down a gang soon; if we kill anybody during arrest, there might be a chance to pin the corpses on them. The only one who can make a connection between the victims and Haim would be the district prosecutor. Nobody else even knows he had a motive.”
District prosecutor was a variable: strange, off-putting and unpredictable. The victims were among his “connections”, that’s why he protected them in the first place, but it was hard to tell if he would care about avenging them once they were no longer of any use.
“Well,” I said. “If he makes his move, we will hint to him, very subtly, that the fascinating story about him, the emergency room and a bunny doll can be all over town as fast as my big-mouth nurses can run to the phone.”
“That’s a nice one,” nodded Constantine, smirking. He was in a good mood for days after I told him about that incident. “But I have better blackmail material. I can prove he’s a deviant.”
“A – a deviant?”
“Well, you know. A deviant. A pervert. With unnatural tastes.”
“Oh, that. Wait, is he really? I’d never have thought. But how do you…” my brain caught up, and I bit my tongue, almost gagging on suddenly vivid mental images.
“Don’t,” said Constantine with his eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t ask any questions. Just trust me on this. I think we can scare him with that. Anyone can do what they like with bunny dolls, this is a free country, but a man with another man – that’s a crime, that’s five years in prison.”
“Right,” I said carefully. “Sounds good, but won’t you get in trouble as well?”
He threw his head back and looked distinctly down on me, despite the fact that we were exactly the same height: “I can’t believe that’s what you’d think of me. I wouldn’t – not with anyone like him, not in a million years! He tried… Look, forget I said anything, just let me handle all this.”
I nodded in agreement. It was really no concern of mine, and he would probably blurt everything out during our next drinking session anyway. We talked out the details, I walked him out and went back to the recovery room to check if Haim was well enough for visitors.
Next chapter
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-30 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 10:04 am (UTC)Sanzo's POV is pretty hard for me to write, this part went through four rewrites and is still half the size of other parts. Now Gojyo's POV pretty much writes itself. And causes much porn.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-30 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 10:12 am (UTC)(I get the feeling I should put the size of this fic in the warning. Cause it's 57 000 words. Well, all four parts are more or less self-contained.)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-02 04:50 pm (UTC)*spasms*
*revives*
This is my MAD RABU!! FOR YOU! OMFG!!!!
Gojyo as a Doctor?!!! Kou as his brother?!! And his ex-brother as Kou's lover?!!! And the mental image of Alex explaining the whole period thing to a FEMALE Goku is brain-breaking. As for Ni and his bunny... omfg! Brained!
Yet despite all the crack elements it isn't crack. The issues dealt here are serious, and I can imagine the post-war2 setting in such explicit details (studied way too much history). You caught the atmosphere. And to know both of them where involved in the war *gestures like a mad person* SO MUCH LOVE!!!
*runs to read the last chapter.*
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 07:35 am (UTC)And yeah, a young doctor would most definitely have been drafted, and I think Kou would volunteer if he was exempt from draft what with being a cop, so they would both fight.
And it's crack, of course, heee, but I'm passionate about it. ^_^
Grr, I still havent'd gotten the charas quite right! See, feedback is totally invaluable! *hugs* Need to fix this, so it's more transparent who is who. Mmmm, editing. Is it weird to like editing so much?
no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-24 08:35 pm (UTC)Though, sadly, with my leanings, I keep hoping they'll get a bit more than cousins andHeee, Constantine. Love the line about easily-blushing redheads especially, couldn't tell you why.I note this now, because it must be said: I love the natural introduction of setting details. Being Ignorant American #180091101, it's been a while since I've read of post-WW2 Europe, so this slow steady immersion is just brilliant.
...And reinc!Sanzo trying to talk a daughter through menstrual periods. You own my soul.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-25 12:29 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed writing them - though I can't say I didn't see the pairing before "In my Father's House", like some people, because to me it's So There in Volume Two when they first meet. And that Sanzo's "I'm not very good with people"... *spazzes out*
no subject
Date: 2005-08-26 12:30 am (UTC)