Author's Note

I had a part of this written since early last year, then had no clue what to do with it. Originally, I planned it to be a oneshot, but now I've decided to expand it a bit and make it into a multi-chaptered story, so here's the prologue. And since it's the prologue, it's kinda short. The chapters themselves will be way longer.

Updates may be kinda slow, but we'll see how things go.

So please enjoy, and tell me what you think.

Guiltless

He wasn't as heartless as he seemed. But the others didn't see that. So when they go too far in their guilt tripping, they push him beyond the brink of sanity. And perhaps redemption, where only a past long gone can save him from evil again...

Ken I

Prologue

He stared expressionlessly at the two battling digimon in front of him. One was his own partner, Stingmon. The other, a custom control spire created one, courtesy of the white haired lady, of whom Ken was yet to know more about.

She was a threat to him. More so than to the other digidestinds. He had tried to atone his past sins, more for a peace of mind than he truly felt sorry for it. It's not that he wasn't, it was just that he was merely incapable of fully realising. He was too detached from his soul to be able to muster up and indulge in such deep and complex emotions. And so he settled for expressionless, masking the inner turmoil of his soul, unable to discern anything specific from it.

The other digidestinds didn't see that though. They still saw him as the heartless Digimon Emperor. And in all honestly, who could blame them, when all they had seen was his mask, even during his last moments of power.

They had not seen the broken boy who had stumbled, half-dead into his home days later, barely functioning due to lack of food and sleep, and hardly aware of his surroundings. In fact, it was a miracle that he had made it home at all, something that was enhanced due to the fact that he collapsed the minute he passed through the door. They hadn't seen the boy whose tears and guilt had racked his frame as he tried to right the wrongs of his past.

And they had not seen what had made him the monster he had become, what had moulded him from the sweet kind boy who adorned his brother and his digimon partner into a being of evil where his very innate personality was completely obliterated. A personality, which he was still trying to re-establish.

Nothing was as straight forward as it seemed, and it seemed that no-one really knew the full story. He himself was probably the only one who could have, only it appeared as though his descent into evil and the resulting trauma had left damage which ran far deeper than the chains of remorse.

He looked up, seeing the spire disintegrate with a final, well aimed kick. The control spires, created by his own hands and now used as tools of destruction. The spires he made, and yet did not understand.

He jerked slightly as the disintegrating pieces rained down, some falling too close for comfort. Even from such small fragments he could feel evil radiating from it.

Which then made him wander how he could have initially overlooked it.

'Ken?'

And here this lady was resurrecting their power.

'Ken?'

He glanced down, seeing that Stingmon had dedigivolved into his rookie stage and hooked himself onto his pant leg some time during his contemplations.

'Shall we go Ken?' he asked, looking up rather cutely to his digidestind partner.

He let a small smile grace his face.

'Of course Wormmon,' he said, kneeling down and holding out an arm so the worm like creature could crawl up his arm and settle comfortably on his shoulder.

Once the green digimon was secure, he stood again, seeing the sun dip is head in the distant horizon, before watching the scattered remains of the control spires be blown away by the gentle breeze, as if the world itself felt the evil that stemmed from it.

And somehow he knew, beginning to walk, that this was far from over.

And that white-haired lady still had a large role to play. As did the control spires.

And then there was the matter of the other digidestinds. After all, with all he'd done...did he have a right to ask their forgiveness?

And even if he did...would they forgive him?