Ficlet: Night Life, Crawford/Sanzo

[louiselux]

Ficlet for daegaer, who asked for: Crawford/Sanzo, big guns.

Night Life,

He'd looked sane enough in the bar, tempting, even; a minor challenge in scruffy low cut jeans and a wall of bad attitude that began at least three feet from his body. He'd smiled, low and mean-looking. Crawford hadn't smiled back, but then he hadn't needed to. Three minutes later they were in the alley, pressed into a dark corner, and the promise held in that sullen mouth blasted all other thoughts away.

Crawford didn't know his name, but that wasn't a problem. The problem was the gun that was jabbing against his stomach, its silver mouth biting into his skin through his shirt. He pulled his hands away and held them up, showing them to be empty and harmless. Something was deeply wrong. His palms washed cold with sweat: the future was blank, closed off. The door had slammed shut for the first time he could ever remember.

'You're making a mistake,' he said, voice calm because his training wouldn't let it be anything else.

He just couldn't see and the shock of being abandoned into this single moment almost sent him reeling. He'd learned to compensate for the distraction of foresight, like a man battling against a high wind, but all he could see now was dirty gold hair and violet eyes in a too-pretty face, pale as a china doll. Skinny but strong, he judged. Crawford wondered if he was quick enough to reach his own gun before he got shot.

'No, I don't think I am. You have to die. I know that,' he nodded, as if to himself, then he turned his empty eyes up to Crawford's.

'How do you know?' Crawford asked, skin crawling now. He wondered if stalling was going to save him or deliver him a messy gut wound.

Sometimes it paid to ask the stupid questions. Besides, he had a professional interest in this kind of thing. He could imagine how much Schuldig would laugh at that. He wished Schuldig could appear right now, but unfortunately his talents had never stretched in that direction.

'I've always known,' the other said, as if Crawford should've know that too. 'This is getting tedious. Let's get it over. It'll be quick.'

'No,' he said. He couldn't just die. Not like this, without knowing.

The safety clicked off, the man was backing off, bracing his arm and Crawford saw he could kick up, just enough to get his aim off, when there were frantic footsteps, a lot of yelling and they were both barrelled over, hard.

Crawford leapt up. A young man with long brown hair was wrestling the other down, pinning his waist with his knees and grabbing both wrists to keep his arms still. He did it easily and the gun clattered onto the concrete. 'No, no, no,' he said, almost chanting. 'You can't do this. Please, not again.'

'Get off me. I have to.'

'Please,' the young man, sounding like he was close to crying. 'You go away,' he said to Crawford, not even bothering to look over his shoulder. 'Now.'

The compulsion to leave was strong and not all his own. As he backed away he realised he could go now, turn left out of the alley and there would be a taxi free. At home the others were waiting. He wasn't going to die. Schuldig would be impatient but wouldn't ask any awkward questions about his evening out.

He looked back and saw them crouched together, blond head bowed and hidden and a pair of gold eyes staring after him. There was a mystery there, one that didn't suit him. He left.

Comments

[trensaddiction.livejournal.com]

I like the way you manipulate the reader's mood - make me as uncertain as Crawford: Is this reincarnation (because it does have that feel) of Sanzo insane? Does he still feel compelled to kill demons (like Crawford) after all this time, without knowing the reason why? Does he see someone else reflected in Crawford's? Someone he knew? Even as Crawford is reeling from the blindness of his foresight, the reader is reeling from the mystery of details I feel I should know, given my knowledge of this character. It's very well done and adds an urgency to the piece which I truly enjoyed.

Of course...I could just be missing references (*eep*), but if I am, it worked for me. Great ficlet. =)

[nekonexus.livejournal.com]

*seconds all of that*

definitely leaves me wanting to know more. ^__^

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Yay! Mission accomplished. Thank you. XD

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thank so very much! No, there are no references in this, and in fact you picked up on exactly everything I had in my head while writing it. I'm really pleased and very glad it worked. =)

[kintail.livejournal.com]

I third Treneka's comment because it says pretty much everything I wanted to say but much more coherently than I could manage by the end of it. Very very impressive. Great writing.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. =)

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

Your Goku, is so good. I like the style of writing here too, it's clean and elegant.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

[emungere.livejournal.com]

Oh, how cool! I like the way we're all pushed into the middle of the action without having anymore idea what's going on than Crawford does. Also, pg. 13 suggests many more pages... *g*

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

*snerk* I changed that now... although I was tempted to leave it. ;D

Glad you liked it - and that it wasn't too confusing.

[toscas-kiss.livejournal.com]

Very cool! :-)

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Yay! Very glad you thought so.

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Eee! So cool. Like everyone else said, I love all the implied stuff, and how we're blindly shoved into the action not knowing what is going on. And I never really thought about what it would be like for a precognitive to realize they're going to die because they can't see their own future. Very scary. I like this a lot.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

This is why I love feedback: precognitive to realize they're going to die because they can't see their own future

I never intended that meaning, but am so glad you saw it and pointed it out because it makes the story about 100 times better.

Thank you so much! *g*

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Hee! Accidental genius is best kind of of all!

[lisa-bee.livejournal.com]

Also going to say that trensaddiction has summed up just about everything I would want to say.

And that the "Not again" almost broke my heart.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! As far as reincarnations go, I don't think this one is a good one for them.

[cygny.livejournal.com]

I didn't comment on this when I read it first because I was sure I was missing references, being as confused as Crawford was. But now that I see that it was meant to be that way, I'm glad it wasn't just me. I truly enjoyed it and it also leaves me wanting to know a lot more about this universe they are in!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thank you =) I'm glad it worked in the end. It is meant to be confusing, although maybe not quite so much as that, so I obviously need to fix something, somewhere. Thanks for the feedback - it's really helpful.

[cygny.livejournal.com]

Erm, didn't mean to make it sound bad. I mean, I got it was Sanzo (obviously), but had no idea why he was doing what he was doing. And why didn't Crawford have any premonitions at that time? If that's supposed to be clear in the story, well, I don't get it :P If that's going to be explained in some future sequel, all the better ^_^

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

No worries - it didn't sound bad. None of that stuff is supposed to be clear, really. Partly on purpose and partly because maybe I don't know the answers. ;D

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Oh, brilliant! Thank you! This Sanzo is so crazy and eerie, and Crawford's terror at being precipitated into the normal present is wonderful, as is his incomprehension that he could die without knowing what he wants to know. I really like the line about his voice being calm because his training wouldn't allow anything else - there's so much right there. Just marvellous.

Incidentally, I have a little problem counting in Japanese - "five" is "go" and "six" is "roku" - I always want to say "goku" for five! . . . and someone else in the class also has that tic, though he hasn't admitted to being a manga fan . . .

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

No questions- he's a manga fan. Hee!

Yay! I'm very very pleased you liked it. I would think that for someone like Crawford, *not knowing* might be the most terrifying thing, and Sanzo here acts as a sort of interference.

One thing I'm not sure about is if Crawford's precognition is a full time thing or only comes in bursts. Is it ever gone into in detail in canon? Either way he must have developed interesting techniques to be able to be unaffected by it and to be able to use it effectively - he's the definition of someone able to think on their feet.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. He asked me about whether I'd seen Howl's Moving Castle, too. I really have to see it!

I think the only thing explicitly said about Crawford's precognition is when he and Farfarello fight Aya in the scene when Aya thinks he's ambushed Takatori. Crawford says he knew the ambush would take place, and so Mr Takatori is not present - Aya then thinks a bit (the wheels turn almost visibly!) and says something like "Visions of the future!" at which Crawford gets his well, duh smile and says something like "Only little bits of the future - but you could call it that." So I suppose he could continually be seeing flashes from the future, or it might be more sporadic. It has to be reliable enough to allow him to fight the way he does, and shows him the future at least far enough ahead to allow him to do things like change Takatori's schedule to avoid ambush (that particular scene seems to me to need precognition of at least twenty minutes), and also in minute detail for very close-future events, such as the scene where he punches away Yohji's wire.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

God. So sad.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[ennui-demorte.livejournal.com]

Oh, I missed this before, but I'm here from the Gay Stories for Girls - fic review for 2005. Better late then never, right?

I love it!! And all I can see is Crawford being Nii's reincarnation--giving Sanzo so many reasons to instinctively want him dead. Nii and Crawford are alike in say many ways--I'm just glad that Nii isn't a precog himself--can you just imagine the damage he could wreak with that power?

I also love Goku ariving just in time to stop Sanzo and wrestle him down. Oh, and Crawford wanting Schuldig to just appear is so funny and so horribly ironic.

I would like to think that Crawford couldn't see the future when confronted with Sanzo and his gun--not because he was facing his death, which is an absolutely fabulous idea--but because Sanzo is just such a force of nature, only doing things his way and not even the gods could predict what Sanzo would do, so why should a measly human like Crawford be able to see?

Crawford should just thank his lucky stars that he didn't hurt Sanzo in any way or else he would have seen his own death, reflected in two golden eyes.

Great piece!

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

Hi :) I'm a long-time lurker for the GO-fic, I'm just getting into Saiyuki thanks to Forbidden Planet's current special offer, adn it's so nice to find a handy stash of fic waiting to be read...

I love this, for all the reasons everyone else has said, and also because I've been wondering about WK / Saiyuki crossovers for a week or two. I keep seeing Crawford as being outmaneuvred, as well :)