10-Jan-2002
Walk in the Dark - a Saiyuki AU Outing
By the Bonne-Von Project
Contact: bonnejeanne@yahoo.com & vonceia@yahoo.com
Series: Genso Maden Saiyuki
Warnings: Spoilers, Implied NC, Dark, Alternate Universe, Yaoi lemon in later parts? Bet yer ass.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Saiyuki characters and universe are the property of the copyright owners. Our stuff is ours. No money being made here.
As with all our fics, while our goal is to stay as in character as possible, any discrepancies are our mistakes.
Feedback: Any and all comments welcome, be they short or long
This is an Alternate version of the Saiyuki universe. The characters and much of their history and relationships are based firmly on the original, with a lot of different window dressing (inlcuding different names). This doesn't really have a direction yet, I'm just wandering around in my mind.
Prolog
Eyes narrowing, Priest turned his head sharply, seeking the source of the soft cry that seemed to come from just behind him. His hand materialized from the deep pocket of his long leather coat, holding the large-caliber automatic that was his trademark - but he could not locate a target.
Walking through the streets of hell on earth, beautiful features schooled into a cold mask, few inhabitants of the dark purgatory, whether human or mutated New Strain were foolish, suicidal or crazy enough to mess with Gen Priest. The cry had startled him - though his expression never betrayed it. But, turning in a slow 360 degree turn, he saw no person, being, mech or creature closer that twenty yards.
Slowly replacing the gun back into the deep coat pocket, Priest took a step, resuming his journey. And stopped, as the cry was repeated. The wordless, throbbing depth of sheer emotion in the first sound was what had startled him. The second somehow vibrated with even more. It was such pure, unclouded loss, as if the first creature ever created had lost the only thing it ever cherished. No consciousness of self, simply a raw, unrestrained pouring of hurt, tinted with an isolation beyond description.
Unable to stop himself, Priest looked around again. No one. Nothing.
His eyes raked across the tall, dark buildings that lined the street. Worn with age and neglect, they stared back mutely, offering no answers. His glance sought further, cataloging each structure and its current use or status from his encyclopedic knowledge of the endless slum. Down a cross street, a few blocks away, his eyes skipped distastefully over the Stone Palace, known by reputation even though he'd never passed this way before. Reputed to be one of the ancients' defense structures, it had long been annexed by a local master of slaves and vice, who boasted that he could supply any request, for the right price. Though far from free of prurient needs, Priest kept his baser habits to those he could fulfill himself. Having no need or desire to pass that way, and no curiosity - he knew more than enough about the capabilities of human and New Strain to elaborate on sin - nothing would have drawn his attention there.
Nothing... save a flicker of light from a high window. Blessed with exceptionally keen vision, he picked out the bars across the opening, the faint reflection of gray dawn light across a pale face, impossibly wide eyes, the illusion of a momentary glitter, then the impression of the face being pulled - rather than moving - back and away, leaving the barred opening empty.
Standing immobile for a long moment, Priest frowned, his attractive mouth pressing into a thin line. When he resumed walking, his steps turned down the street towards the Stone Palace.
Boy choked slightly as the heavy metal collar around his neck was pulled by its chain. For a moment he yearned forward towards the small window, ignoring the discomfort, but the pulleys gathered both collar and wrist manacle chains with mechanical relentlessness so that only his eyes could seek the barred opening. Had he truly put his back into it, he could have jammed the pulleys, he'd managed it before, but the unknown alloy of the chains would never break, just like the metal alloy bars had never yielded in all the time he could remember.
Muscles slacking, he slid backwards and to a stop. A rough grip fisted in his thick brown hair, pulling his head up so a brutish countenance could stare into his face.
"I paid half a year in street take to enjoy myself with the wild Beast Boy," the voice was as rough as the hands and Boy gave up remembering what the words meant. His pulse hammered against the thin gold-hued band that circled his temples, the only piece of metal that appeared to be pure decoration, and the only one that truly kept him here. Unable to remember why it was there or whether it had ever not been, he protested wordlessly but audibly, the sounds appearing to offer some malicious satisfaction to the current source of his punishment.
"What's up there?" Priest asked coldly, ignoring the slave master's gloating expression over having lured someone of his apparent caliber to an interest in his wares.
"You've got expensive tastes," the crafty old human replied. "Word of mouth brought ya here, hmmm? It's unique... one of a kind sort of freak. Never see another like it. Risky - dangerous strong but we have the means to keep it in place, if you're tough enough. Can take anything you can deliver without dyin'. Anything... see what I mean? Not for everyone... but the beast is not ugly to look at, just mindless... You got the nerve? And the price..."
The bored coldness of his expression only seemed to get colder. Keeping one hand deep in his pocket and tight around the gun, Priest lifted the other and moved back his coat fractionally, showing a glimpse of the iridium medallion around his neck. Rarer than techno-mage hardware, the medallion was one of a handful only rumored to exist, and the sight of it boggled the slave-master's small mind.
"I want to see before I pay," Priest growled deliberately.
Greed fanned to ridiculous proportions by the brief sight of the fabled pendant, the slave-master bobbed his head obsequiously. Leading the way to the private lift in the back of the office, he punched the safe code on an aged panel that must have been Pre-Release in vintage. As was reputed to be the case, the older the technology, the better it seemed to stand up to time, and the lift rose smoothly.
Unable to keep his nervous tongue still, the slave master babbled with morbid humor. "And it figures," he muttered gleefully. "One a' the fabled Ai Zen deacons would have a taste for the sickest pleasures..."
Jaw clenching, Priest squeezed the comforting grip of his weapon without twitching an outward muscle. The atmosphere of the Stone Palace seemed to crawl along his skin under his clothes and coat his nostrils and throat with a salt/sweet effusion of decay. Underlying it, his trained senses could detect the astringent tang that seemed to cling to the special facilities of the ancients.
"How did you acquire... it?" Priest asked through stiff lips as the lift stopped near the top level of the structure.
The slave-master's mirth was self-aggrandizing. "By taking the Palace," he answered easily. "It was here when I broke the code key to the building's systems. Wanna hear the funniest thing? It doesn't even cost to feed..."
Stepping out of the lift, he led Priest down a short, dimly lit hall and through another security lock. Beyond, an anteroom to something like a vault. Around it, large holes where equipment had been removed, who could guess how long before.
A slightly shortened step was Priest's only reaction to the sudden ringing in his mind of a new cry, this one as thoughtless as the first two, the repetitive, purposeless protest of an animal, or child, in unrelieved distress it can only endure. "Shut up!" he muttered, the words forcing themselves past his lips. The slave-master looked around, with no apparent sign of having heard anything else. Shrugging, devoid of instincts of privacy, the slave-master slid the vault-like door back, revealing the room beyond.
Priest barely saw the details of the room's surroundings, walls and floor worn smooth by some agency, paths like wide grooves eroded in the floor along odd lines, the single window, empty frames set for a missing plexi-steel airless double casement, redundant bars having survived the action of time. His gaze locked to a large, hunched figure moving over a smaller form, past a massive shoulder the briefest glimpse of impossibly wide, impossibly golden eyes the color of summers that would probably never be seen again...
The dull, gray-blue shine of link after link of one of the ancients' adamant alloys...
"Now about the price," the slave-master began, his eyes gleaming with avarice. He opened his mouth to say something else and swallowed one of Priest's special caliber shells. As the top of his head exploded in a red, gooey mess, a second shell entered the back of the larger figure beyond the vault door. This one proved to be a New Strain, from the way his body disintegrated in the moment after contact.
At the sudden absence of weight, the smaller figure rose to his knees, looking around curiously.
"Shut up," Priest said, stepping into the room with his gun leveled.
"Huh?" Boy answered, blinking. He looked at the black-coated figure pointing the muzzle of a gun at him. His eyes drifted from the gun to the fine features, downset amethyst eyes under hair the color of butter. Unconsciously, Boy smiled. There seemed to be an aura of light around the person standing there.
"I said shut up," Priest repeated, stepping closer until he was standing above the kneeling figure. He slowly returned the gun to his pocket.
"Okay," Boy said obediently. The bright person looked at him, and he waited quietly, a small bubble of wonder starting to grow inside him.
Taking a breath, Priest brushed his fingers over the hidden medallion around his neck, then softly spoke the words of Direction to the molecular valances of the gray metal locked around the wide-eyed boy's limbs.
Stepping away, he crossed to the door and then looked back. "Come on," he said quietly.
Tilting his head, Boy knew he couldn't go as far as the door. Shrugging, he stood up and walked forward. Pieces of heavy metal broke apart and fell to the floor around his feet. He walked all the way up to the door as if expecting the now-shattered tethers to stop him. Reaching an oddly light hand to touch an oddly bare neck, he blinked again. The bubble of wonder grew huge in a moment and burst around him like an explosion of warm, invisible light.
A hand presented itself to him, palm up. Lifting his own hand, Boy closed his fingers around the other.
"We'll find some clothes for you downstairs," Priest said, leading the naked boy to the lift.
"Sanzo," the wide-eyed boy said in a language that had been extinct for a century. Priest looked at him sharply, lifting his chin to look into those golden eyes.
"What?"
The boy shrugged and smiled a little sheepishly. "Don't remember," he said.
Amethyst eyes narrowing briefly, Priest gazed at the open face, eyes pausing to study the gold band that peeked from between locks of wild brown hair.
"Priest," he instructed as the lift moved down. "You can call me Priest."
"Okay," Boy answered happily.
The lift stopped, and Priest dropped his hand back into his pocket to remove the automatic. As the lift doors opened, Boy tugged on his hand. Fortunately none of the slave-master's minions were in the office beyond.
"What?" Priest snapped.
"Food?" Boy asked, fortified to extreme daring by the bubble of wonder. "I'm hungry..."
A door opened and two New Strain bouncers entered the office. Looking around they saw no slave-master. Then they saw Priest. And Boy. Not rocket scientists, they nevertheless realized something was very wrong and jumped for Priest, claws out.
The automatic spoke and one disintegrated with a howl. As fast as his reflexes were, Priest was unable to sight on the second target. A blur had intervened and the large creature flew across the room and impacted the wall hard to enough to explode into pieces that flew apart and dispersed. Looking back over his shoulder, Boy dropped his fist and waited for an answer to his question, for about two seconds before repeating, "Food?"
With a muffled curse, Priest scowled, taking a moment to break open the slave-master's desk and remove several things he found there. Breaking into another cabinet, he pulled out some garments and threw them at the kid. "After we get out of here in one piece," he growled, to forestall another repetition of the question.
Boy sighed and then nodded. "Okay," he said. Clothed after a fashion, he waited for orders or direction. With a jerk of his head, Priest moved to one of the doors, gun ready.
Boy's eyes flickered once to the lift and back to Priest. "Sankyuu," he whispered to the leather-clad back. Then he scrambled up to join him at the door, peering around his side curiously.
The automatic spoke several more times before they reached the street. Half as many as if he'd been alone, Priest admitted, but then if he'd been alone he wouldn't have been there in the first place. Ignoring the expectant face turned to him, he moved quickly down the block, resuming the course that had been interrupted. The steps beside, behind or around him were light and energetic, teasing at his awareness and disrupting his concentration.
What the fuck have I done, he thought with a silent groan.
End of Prolog