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The lake was still, quiet, its silvered surface unmarred by even the smallest ripple.
Like Chichiri's face.
The monk perched cross-legged on a rock above the shore, long since lost to the existence of the fishing rod in his hands. I wondered if he was thinking hard, or just as lost as I was.
"I know you're there no da," he said suddenly, his voice mild. But this was Chichiri; he was always mild. "Sit down won't you. You're scaring away all the fish no da."
"Chichiri," I protested even as I complied. "you have been sitting on that same fucking rock now for hours. There are NO FUCKING FISH in that lake." And he knew that as well as I did. My pacing was getting to him. I could respect that . So I sat down.
He shrugged vaguely, still staring out over the water. It hadn't moved; not even the breeze had stirred it.
"Fuck!" My frustrated exclamation drew a glance from Chichiri, but nothing more. My head dropped into my hands, so I could stare at the blurred outline of my own fingers. "What--what are we supposed to do now?"
At last he looked at me, really looked, but the expression on his scarred face wasn't comforting. Not this time. Hie shoulders moved in what was barely a shrug, and he sighed. "I--I don't know."
It was not the most reassuring thing I'd ever heard. Chichiri was the wises of all of us, the one who understood the most. He was supposed to offer some unexpectedly brilliant insight at this moment, something that would strip away my anger and loneliness and make everything fall into place.
And here all he really had to offer was the same confusion I felt.
Some heroes.
"We knew, we all knew," Chichiri said, so softly I had to strain to hear him, "that if we were going to win, there'd have to be something after. No da." The accustomed phrase was almost an afterthought, as if this time it pained him to say.
"I know," I answered, words finally swarming into my head to match the thoughts there. Uneloquent as those words might be. "But shit, I mean, we all thought there'd be an afterward together!"
It would have been all right, then. I missed them all horribly. I missed Miaka's silly girly whining, and the bruises I traded with Tamahome. I missed cute little Chiriko; quiet, faithful Mitsukake; glorious, noble Hotohori. I missed Nuriko so much it hurt. I wasn't ready to abandon them, even if they were dead. Chichiri was the only one left who understood, the only piece of them I had left to cling to. I was not ready to strike out on my own.
"At least," Chichiri, responded quietly, "we hoped there would be." Without his mask, there was no false optimism in his face. He missed them too.
As much as I'd always admired Chichiri for that mask, and the way he so smoothly hid all his pain from the world, I was always completely amazed by him without it. Those were the times when everything small and inconsequential was stripped away, when it was just him, alone and blazing stronger than we could ever have thought possible, throwing all the power he had into protecting us. In some secret part of my soul, I wanted to be like him. In an even more secret part, I knew I never could be.
"The thing to do," he said slowly, "is to go over your options, and then choose one." Logical and simplistic. This was the Chichiri that I was used to, the one I needed.
The problem was--"I don't have any fucking options!" I growled, controlling the urge to get up and start pacing again.
"Of course you have options no da!" Chichiri countered, and I spent a brief moment wondering why he never felt the need to fidget. He'd barely even shifted this entire time. "You can go home--"
"Forget it." I didn't let that thought proceed any further.
"All right." Chichiri didn't even blink. "You could go back to Mt. Reikaku. They'd probably still let you be the boss no da. Especially now."
I held that one a little longer. It's what I had always planned to do, but now? "I don't know...it seems unfair, really. Not just because I can take on normal people with both hands tied behind my back, either. But after all we just went through to save these people, it doesn't seem right to go back to robbing 'em, you know?"
Chichri just nodded. His one good eye glittered with what I could swear was approval.
"What about you?" I asked him. "What are you going to do?"
It was a long moment before he answered, maybe because he was still deciding what to say. Finally he shrugged, the first motion I'd seem from him since he sat down. "I told you, I don't really know. I'm done saving the world no da--but I think I might have finally made up for my mistakes." He smiled--he knew as well as I did that he hadn't answered the question. "Go back to wandering, I guess. I'm done hunting for Seishi, but I think there are other things out there worth looking for." His eyebrow cocked up over his eye, and he added, "Maybe even something that'll make you happy, Tasuki."
I grinned. "Ya think so? Then I'll come with you."
I had expected protest--I don't know why--but Chichiri just nodded as if he had known that all along. "I'm glad." he fell silent and looked back at the lake. He really was just as lonely as me.
"Chichiri?"
"Yes?" Still he stared at the water.
"Can we go?" I stumbled to my feet, sending a footfall's worth of pebbles into the water below. For the first time, it stirred. "We both know there's not one damn fish in there."
Me and my big mouth. Chichiri turned to me, his mouth open, about to speak, w hen the pole almost ripped out of his hand. The water thrashed and sprayed us both, and I missed the rest of the fight while I was shaking water out of my clothes. When I looked back at him, he lay the silvery fish at my feet.
"There's always something there," he said. I wasn't sure if he was teaching me right then or not--so many times when he goes all serious, I don't understand. On the other hand, I wasn't going anywhere for a while. I had plenty of time left to learn.
