August Flowers

Part 6: A Step in the Right Direction

I should be sleeping. Sanzo climbed out of the taxi behind Goku into the first light of dawn in the slumbering city. 

Less than an hour ago, they had paused at a 24-hr dive for some caffeine and Calories while Sanzo made a call to the temple. Axel, the temple nightwatchman, had sounded upset and harried; he'd just received a call from Cho Hakkai with a location and plea for help. 

The taxi let them out downtown near a large intersection teeming lightly with the beginnings of morning traffic. There was a phone booth. Deep shadows. Crunch of concrete under their shoes. 

Goku cupped his mouth. "Gojyoooo! Hakkaaaai!" 

Bent at the taxi driver's window, Sanzo offered him a folded bill and asked him to stick around. 

Goku continued to wail: "WHERE ARE YOU GUUUUYS!" 

"A little quieter, Goku, please." A delicate chuckle came from seemingly nowhere. "Have mercy on my headache." 

They spotted him at the same time. A figure in the darkness of a narrow alleyway. A short crop of black hair and a feeble smile in a ghostly face. 

Sanzo was taken aback.   

"Hakkai!" Goku tackled Hakkai with a hug that almost floored him as easily as if he was a paper doll. 

Hanging back for a moment, Sanzo scanned the street with iced lavender eyes. Checked sidewalks, unattended vehicles, anything that moved. No one sketchy was hanging around. No one was lurking. Whoever had attacked the guys at their house hadn't followed them there.  

Hakkai hugged Goku back, warmly. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you," he breathed, beginning to sink to the ground.

Sanzo sidestepped into the narrow alleyway with them as Goku helped Hakkai sit on the dirty, damp ground. 

Hakkai's skin was pasty and pale. Whiter than white. Groggy and drained. He may have been in the worst state Sanzo had ever seen him as he shivered violently and, despite the cool night, his forehead was bathed in sweat. A sliver away from passing out. 

It felt pointless to ask but Sanzo did anyway. "Are you okay?" 

Hakkai couldn't catch his breath. "Not in the least." He gestured. "Gojyo's over there. I did my best to heal him, but... he hasn't woken up yet." 

Sanzo didn't see anything in the darkness.  

"I see him," said Goku. "I'll get Gojyo. Stay with Hakkai." 

Sanzo knelt as Goku pushed Hakkai toward him and hurried farther down the alley to a large dark lump on the ground. Goku squatted to inspect it. Poked it. Then beamed. "It's Gojyo! His clothes are all ripped up..." 

Ripped up? 

Sanzo looked down at Hakkai leaning into him. His friend's clothes were singed and bloody but intact.  

If all that blood back by the house was Gojyo's, he thought with a sinking feeling in his gut, then this idiot must've pushed himself to save him. Sanzo adjusted the way Hakkai was propped against him when he started to slip. "You're an idiot, you know that?" 

Chin tucked to his chest, Hakkai's eyes were drooping closed. "I'm aware, thank you..." 

"Goku, grab Gojyo." Sanzo hoisted Hakkai to his feet---he was light, had he always been that light?---and scooped him into a fireman's carry. "We're taking them back to the temple."  

"Not to a hospital?" 

Not until we know more about what's going on.