Finding him didn't take too long- a permanent frown etched into perfect white marble that made the snow around him hide in shame. His eyes were closed, painfully so, as if he were forcing himself farther and farther into his meditation like it was some closet to hide in. As he stepped closer, a twig broke beneath Tenpou's feet. He froze. The other flinched, then stilled himself, a murmur barely audible on his lips. "...come back."

Tenpou dared to speak. "Sanzo." One violet eye cracked open to give a well-aimed glare tailored perfectly for the marshal, accompanied by a well aimed gun.

"I thought I said that I wanted to be alone."

Tenpou didn't flinch, but held out a meat bun in his right hand. "You've been alone for five hours. You've been fasting for fifteen. Not smoking for ten. I'm surprised you're still alive."

His hand was graciously swatted away. "Don't try to be my fucking nursemaid."

But Tenpou wasn't at all ready to leave. As if he had expected the initial rejection, his left hand offered an opened packet of cigarettes. Sanzo was about to repeat the gesture, accompanying it with more colorful epithets, then reconsidered. So he took a cigarette, evoking a light smile from the other man who tapped the bottom of the pack with the comfort only a well practiced smoker would have until a cigarette popped up neatly from the rest.

Sanzo wasn't at all surprised as he lit up and threw the lighter at Tenpou's feet. "My thanks." the marshal said, as picked it up and brought burning life to end of his cigarette. It felt good, that first drag in a good long time...his mind liked it, but his body began to cough and choke like the beginner it was. It took a few shorter puffs for him to get accustomed, but when it felt more comfortable, Tenpou leaned himself against a tree, closing his eyes. "Just this once, so he won't get addicted."

"So you decided to cut the crap."

"Yes, well, we both have eyes for bad acting, hm?" He grinned again then flicked his ashes onto the snow, blown cold by the northern winds before it even reached the ground. The winds haven't stopped since that first attack. They both knew it. "That's them, you know, and they're still hungry."

"There's no food here."

"Some villagers have decided to stay."

"Then that's their problem, not ours." Sanzo said tersely, not looking at the stranger in front of him. "And definitely not yours. All you do is cause us trouble with your selfish little wants...not caring who gets trampled along the way. You and the rest of you, all the same- whether its for this heaven or that heaven, all the crap got thrown down here."

"Like Goku, perhaps?" Tenpou said, wryly prodding the monk to defend his ward.

Sanzo only snarled, putting out his cigarette with more violence then necessary, the quiet hissing adding a greater dimension of irritation to his mood. "And I should hope that you weren't responsible for chaining him up in that fucking cave, alone, for five hundred fucking years so that five hundred fucking years after he got put there, *I* had to fucking take care of him."

Tenpou opened his mouth to disagree, then silenced himself, his face growing still and his eyes narrowing in subtle contempt- more for himself than anything else. Why was Goku...he didn't know this. Nobody had told him, but it was a glance into an inevitable fate he didn't want to accept...still couldn't accept...but he had to now: he was going to lose everything regardless of what he did. And everything he had so wished for Heaven would never...and it would be nothing glorious. No Renaissance. That's what he wanted, a true renaissance, like the ones he'd read about- a golden age of true change instead of a rotting, tepid one...he had so wished...

But it was a human desire incompatible with a nonhuman world- like trying to light a match in the vacuum of space...

Looking past the end of his cigarette, he saw the image of Konzen at his desk, superimposed on this unruly, smoking monk. Had Tenpou been in Konzen's office this very minute instead of some freezing wood with Sanzo, he absently and futilly mused, Konzen would have said something like, "Go back to your books and quit distracting me." if he really didn't want to be disturbed. But if he really didn't mind Tenpou's presence, it would be something in the range of, "You're still here."

"You're still here." Sanzo said, dully.

"Yes I am." he agreed, a better mood returning to him. "The youkai..."

"It's not your problem."

But motivated by a growing sense of vanity, Tenpou decided not to scuttle away with his tail between his legs like a kicked dog on some dirty sidestreet. Nobody had the right...no, not even a Sanzo because he was...and *he* was...is...

"It's not for you to decide which problems are mine, Genjo Sanzo, emissary of the *gods*. " Tenpou retorted, rubbing it in, delighting in that look of abject shock that flashed across Sanzo's apathetic face just then, and feeling more like himself and deciding that he was himself, only in different skin- human, youkai, or not- and that he was still marshal.