Title: Clean Slate
Author: NemKess
Fandom: Saiyuki
Characters: Nataku, Goku
Notes: I don't know the particulars on how things went down in heaven. I'm making this shit up as I go along by taking what we were given and trying to fill in the holes. This started out as a response to the drabble challenge "Colors"... on 100Roadtrips, I think... and just... mutated.

Nataku may not have been a pure god, but he was still a god. His body healed readily enough. He awoke to find the heaven he returned to was not the heaven he'd left.

Blood had not just been spilt in heaven; it had flooded.

Chaos and death had run rampant and left it's mark on everything and everyone.

Chaos and death in the form of the small boy who hung in the main square awaiting his punishment. He'd heard from a guard that it had taken the power of all the highest ranking Kami to finally subdue Seiten Taisen and even then it had come at a heavy cost and only because time had finally worn the beast down a little.

You'd never have known it to look at Son Goku, though. Once his diadem had been replaced the Kami had wasted little time in binding the criminal with every ward and chain they dig up.

Overkill, as far as Nataku was concerned. Once the demon had been sealed back up, the boy had already been beaten. One had only to look at him to know that.

Glassy eyes dulled to a muddy yellowish brown stared at nothing and limp hair was still plastered with rusty colored clumps of dried blood. In those dull eyes, Nataku could see the knowledge. The remembrance. The guilt and the pain. Goku remembered every death he'd dealt, every heart he'd ripped out, every body he'd torn apart.

And worse….

Goku remembered their deaths.

Seiten Taisen had dealt out more death in heaven than even Nataku with all his father's war planning could have ever imagined- including Nataku's own father.

In one savage blow he'd both taken the most important thing in Nataku's world from him…. And freed him of chains he hadn't even realized were suffocating the life from him. The war prince both hated and loved him for that.

But the dull yellow eyes told him one thing.

The demon might have been the bringer of death, but Goku wished only to be the recipient of it.

The kami would not grant his wish, Nataku knew. There'd already been talk of permanent confinement. The very thought made him cringe. It was far too cruel a punishment and even though he knew Kanzeon Bosatsu wouldn't allow it to truly be permanent, he also knew it wouldn't be enough.

Goku would go mad all over again.

Death was probably the kindest thing but Nataku could no more kill his friend now than he'd been able to in the beginning of the whole mess.

Ignoring the disapproving looks of the guards, he knelt in front of his friend and gently cupped Goku's face. "Forgive me, my friend, for not being able to grant you true peace."

There was no change in Goku's heartbreakingly expressionless face to indicate that he even heard.

Nataku sighed and pressed a chaste kiss against the other boy's forehead.

He stood and glared at the guards, silently daring them to say anything before turning and stalking off to find Kanzeon.

He couldn't kill Goku.

But the Merciful Goddess could at least give him a clean slate to start over with when Konzen and the other's found him again.