This chapter is dedicated to Titangirl1161, writer of the Saiyuki story Lost Lives, whose encouragements and reviews of every chapter have made Heretic Memories what it is.

…

Chapter Seven

Blood and Bone

"Hey, Hakkai." Gojyo looked out their window at the mundane view of the the drugstore across the street. From here he could see a grey little wretch of a cat pawing at a discarded bag of potato chips. Do cats even eat potato chips?

"Hm? You ready?"

"Yeah. Just getting in my morning smoke." Hell, Hakkai didn't need to tell him. He knew that they weren't going to have breakfast. Oh, how the monkey would have complained. He coughed from the smoke. He hadn't done that for a while. "…Hakkai?"

"What?" It was sharper than usual.

Gojyo blew the thin stream of smoke out of the window before continuing. "That Goddess chick said that the state Goku was in wasn't bad for him, yeah?"

"…Yes. I suppose that is some small reassurance."

Gojyo smirked. "Is it?" He crushed his cigarette along the window frame and turned back to Hakkai, even thought he knew the damn fear was probably shining bright as day from his eyes. "If it's okay for him to stay there, what's to keep him from not coming back?"

…

"…"

Silently he and Gojyo made their way down the hall and down the stairs. Without a word, they went outside and clambered into Jeep. They waited for Sanzo and when he came out Hakkai only vaguely wondered what the management must have thought when he had appeared before them with Goku tossed over his shoulder.

Unceremoniously – indeed, almost brutally – he threw Goku into the back seat and Gojyo let out something of a muffled yelp when the heap landed on top of him. Sanzo took no notice. In those three days that Sanzo had kept to his and Goku's room, Hakkai had thought that, when they did set out again, Sanzo would want to sit in the back with Goku. He had even begun devising several different ways to discreetly change the seating arrangement without embarrassing the monk. It had been a way to pass the monotony. But Sanzo now took his usual seat next to Hakkai in the front. All this was done without a single word. They left the town in the cool morning, just before dawn. It was going to be a very long day.

Ukoku smiled as he heard a Jeep's engines roar to life, and then fade further and further into the distance. The whiskey had been quite good.

…

"Merciful Goddess?"

"Hm?" She was sitting with her legs in the water, gently disturbing her pond's surface. There was nothing to see right now anyway, except for a group of brooding men, among whom was the distraught reincarnation of her nephew.

No… nothing to see. The real show was in a place she couldn't reach. She turned a little and looked back at the elegant thrown that had been shoved back against one of her walls – out of the way, just like the little pale haired boy who sat in a comatose state atop it. Just as he had been sitting for the last five hundred years. "… Isn't it curious, Jiroushin? Nataku ran a sword through his own body to get away from Goku. It was the only way the little idiot could think of to avoid the order that his father had given him to kill his best friend." She kicked her feet about the water idly, looking across to those ever open, ever vacant, golden eyes. The eyes of a heretic. She smiled a little. "…You know… I'm beginning to think that no one can bear to keep away from that little monkey for more than half a millennium…"

"…Are you…alright?"

She clucked her tongue in irritation. She hated making Jiroushin worry. However, it wasn't as if she could help it. He knew her too well. He was the only one in the Heavens, but he knew her much too well. "I was just thinking… about something I said a while back," she smiled, running her fingers along the petal of a lily floating in the water, "when I erased that boy's memory…"

She closed her eyes. She was not going to cry. Certainly not. She did not cry then and she would not cry now. Then again… she felt the corners of her mouth quirking upward in a way that wasn't cynical or sarcastic. She had let herself smile at the little monk like that a few times the pervious night. …It's all so strange and enthralling and alive. Why shouldn't I cry? She licked her lips, and whispered words that she had last said five hundred years before, to the audience of one unconscious little chimp.

"…The next time you wake, little monkey, you will have forgotten everything." She swallowed hard, even at the memory. "…About the days you spent in Heaven… and even about those that you met." She felt her voice crack on the last word, but cleared her throat. Her audience had grown since then – Jiroushin, the lilies, and Nataku were her listeners now. "…Even so…the memories that are carved into your soul will never disappear." She outright grinned. "They will become your blood and bone, and give you the strength to live." She opened her eyes a little, careful not to let the tears spill over and out. She kicked the water idly. "…So, for now, just sleep." She looked up at Jiroushin who was ever standing by her side. "Embrace in your heart that seed of hope."

The water sloshed against the sides of her pool. In the quiet she noticed how similar Nataku's steady breathing sounded to Goku's from the previous evening. She'd had Nataku with her for so long that she had gotten used to the sound. Jiroushin knelt down next to her and she couldn't help but laugh when he pulled from his armored uniform plates a white silk handkerchief. Her eyes had run after all. She just smiled up at him as he gently wiped the tears off her cheeks. Goodness, how long had it been since she'd cried?

She slid a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him forward into a kiss. Her world had never 'crumbled' the ways humans' did. It had simply evaporated over the millennia. Jiroushin was the only thing solid and steady that was left to her and, in her own self acknowledged 'strange way,' she loved him for it.

…

He gave me my name. 'Goku.'

Goku clambered through the swamp of books, doing his utmost not to step on any rolled up scrolls. It was a wonder even to him that he had managed to swipe the Scripture off of Sanzo. He felt like he had two left feet now. It wasn't even that large of an office. The couches that the man named 'Konzen' was directing him towards were no more than ten feet away. Or rather what was visible of the couches. Goku bent his knees. Better to jump for it than spend the next ten minutes wading through this mess.

"GAH!" He had stepped atop a sturdy pile of books to lift himself over the wall of literature that was blocking his path. Apparently the one small but thick book that was in the pile was at the very bottom, offsetting all the wide and thick books onto, offsetting the lanky and nervous monkey on top of them, and sending him teetering backward into the abyss and with three nasty book-corners to be wedged into his back.

Goku squeezed his eyes shut, ready for the pain, when his fall came to an abrupt stop and a pain zapped up his right arm instead. "Gah," he said again, opening his eyes. Konzen had grabbed hold of his hand and had wedged one foot into the stack of books to keep them from spilling apart any further. They made something of a human seesaw.

"Um, thanks," Goku said, getting himself back onto even ground – or as even as it seemed to get in the Marshal's office.

"Tish. You may have sprouted up some two feet but you're still as clumsy as ever, aren't you?" Konzen half smirked, setting himself back on both legs as well. Booby traps in the forms of bookends were everywhere! He gripped Goku's hand for a moment longer before letting go, turning around, and walking onward.

Goku stared after him for a moment, flexing his fingers. It had been almost as if he'd been making certain that Goku was really there. Without meaning to, Goku thoughts shifted back to how Sanzo's hand had reached through the bars of his prison seven years before. He had hauled Goku to his feet without any warning, bits of chain and rock crumbling about them. He had freed Goku then. And he had never withdrawn that hand.

A fresher memory washed over him. One from mere months before. One of Sanzo's bloodcurdling scream as Ukoku threatened to erase him from existence. Then, just as before, he had reached out his hand. And Goku had been there to grasp it. Only that time… it had been Goku who pulled Sanzo from the brink of oblivion.

Goku shook his head. Why was he thinking about heavy stuff like that now? It was true, this guy really did look so much like Sanzo that it was unnerving… And he says he named me…

"Hey!" Goku sprinted after him, spilling piles over piles of books as he went. "I am not clumsy!"

"Good job Tiny Monkey! That only took you fifty-six seconds to sort out in your brain! Hell, was your body the only thing that grew?!"

'Tiny'…monkey? For how long… have you known me?

…

Konzen sat on the couch next to a child that was no longer a child. Goku. It was really Goku.

He tried to just stare ahead. His muscles working just to swallow, his jaw ridged. The boy was probably freaked out as it was. But it was hard. He kept glancing to the side. He had grown, even bulked up. Though Konzen could hardly imagine Goku being stronger than he already had been as a child. There was only so much one could improve on infinite stamina. Again, he pulled his glance away. Fortunately, Goku did not see him staring. He was too preoccupied with taking in all his surroundings.

And though it stung to see the kid looking around Tenpou's office as though he hadn't spent hours upon end perusing the shelves and eating snacks on this very couch – Konzen could not deny that the look of mild horror on his face was pretty hilarious.

In truth, the aura of 'The Apocalypse Hath Come,' that resonated from this office was one that only ever subsided when Kenren got around to cleaning it. Tenpou was a brilliant Marshal, but what a mess of a man… Konzen looked back at Goku just in time to catch his once-charge staring at him.

They both looked away quickly. Konzen swallowed.

…His hair is shorter. His face doesn't have so much of the baby fat any more. …He still has that birthmark on the nap of his neck. Konzen balled his hands into fists, remembering how he'd reached out to grab Goku when almost fell off the pile of books a few minutes before, and remembering how that once baby-soft hand had felt. Calluses. He's a fighter now. The little flower-picker is an actual fighter now… He remembered how Goku had taken hold of his hair. Again. As if for the first time. He called me the "sun." He blinked. But for Goku, it had been the first time. He doesn't remember me. He knows nothing about me and I… I know nothing about him either.

There was a clatter of dishes somewhere in the undergrowth of books, followed swiftly by a clatter of laughter, and then again by a clatter of nervous laughter. It sounded as though Kenren and Tenpou were using Tenpou's desk as their station of operations. In silence, Konzen and Goku awaited their tea.

…

The man who bore the face of Hakkai took a sip of his tea. Goku nestled his own cup in his hands, not drinking it but letting the scent waft up into his nose. The Marshal and the General had made themselves comfortable on the couch on the other side of the coffee table, across from him and Konzen. Their tea smelled different from Goku's. Whiskey.

"So…before I explain where you are, my name… my name is Tenpou." He set his cup down on the table, though not before the man who was not Gojyo slipped a coaster underneath the cup at the speed of lightning. …The similarities undercut by the differences between these men and his companions were making Goku's head spin. However, 'Tenpou' hardly seemed to notice. Goku could see the strain in his smile that had come over Hakkai's face so often. "I am a Field Marshal in the Heavenly Western Army, and an old friend."

Western Army? Funny how some things just kept turning up.

The guy…Tenpou… nodded at the seemingly far neater version of Gojyo.

The black-haired man cleared his throat, and met Goku's gaze. "Right, I'm…" his forehead creased, and he looked away with a string of expletives. "I can't do this. This is just ridiculous." The General got up.

"Kenren–" Tenpou warned.

"Come off it, Tenpou! It's weird introducing myself to the pipsqueak as if we've never met!"

"It can't be avoided Kenren. He doesn't remember." That set a thickness into the air.

The man who was not Gojyo – Kenren – sighed and pinched the rim of his nose. "Right," again he met Goku's eyes. "I'm Kenren. I am– I was– a General and…yeah." Whatever steam the man had gathered for this introduction, he had now spent. There was a moment of silence, before Kenren blurted out again. "Okay. No. Never mind. Don't call me Kenren. That in itself is going to sound weird as hell, and after everything–"

"Kenren, don't overwhelm–"

Kenren, however, directed his attention to Goku again, with newfound resolve. "Okay," he repeated. "He's Ten-chan, for crying out loud," he said, jerking a thumb at Tenpou, "and I'm just not answering to anything other than Ken-nii-chan at this point. So there!" He again slumped back into the couch, arms folded defensively.

…Ten-chan? … Goku blinked. He really must have been a kid. Just a kid. Goku blinked. And Ken-nii-chan… Nii-chan… 'Big brother'… Well, it made sense, sort of. Gojyo had always been his unofficial brother. But neither of them had ever admitted as much to each other. It was so… weird to hear the confession outright. So bizarre. I really must have been just a kid. Goku nodded mutely. "Sounds good to me… I guess."

But I wonder… His eyes darted momentarily to Konzen… What did I call him?

"Right then, on with the explanation."

Goku's eyes snapped back to Tenpou. This was going to take some getting used to. Ten-chan? …Really?

"Goku, if my guess is correct, you are within your own Self right now."

"…eh?"

Tenpou now leaned forward to Goku. Goku, who had pulled his feet up onto the rim of the couch, leaned forward as well. He rather sensed than saw Konzen tension next to him, ready to catch him the instant he overbalanced and fell into the table. As if.

"You haven't actually traveled anywhere. You've sort of… regressed into yourself. If I had to guess, your body is still wherever you left it when you entered into this state. …Only asleep."

It was a beautiful relief to see that Kenren was just as slow as Gojyo, and that he, Goku, was not the only one with a blank look on his face. It was also a relief to see that Tenpou was just as good as Hakkai at noticing this without any commentary.

"Alright. When you have a dream, the dream takes you to different places, right?"

Goku nodded slowly, his mind on many a fantasized restraint.

"But your body remains in your bed, correct?"

"…Yeeaah…" he agreed uncertainly.

"Well, this is very much the same process."

"…You guys expect me to believe that I'm dreaming?" Goku quirked an eyebrow.

"No," Tenpou smiled. "You're not dreaming. But your consciousness is elsewhere right now. Inside you. With us. You see, we're not actual people, Goku."

"Eh!?" Now it was Kenren's turn to take the lime-light of looking utterly stumped. Tenpou, however, just plowed on.

"I believe, given your present state of mind – that being, not remembering us – that we are simply… a part of you. Not distinct memories but… part of what makes you… you. We are a now subconscious influence from your past that made you the person you are today."

"Now hold on!" Kenren interrupted. "I feel perfectly whole as a person, thanks very much!"

"As do I," Tenpou shot back impatiently. "But does it not strike you as strange that some of the people in the palace have more distinct faces than others, while others still are utterly two-dimensional in character? How some hallways are clear and crisp while others fade to nothing? How the only memories you can actually voice allowed are memories from three seconds before Goku was pushed into the room?"

Kenren stared at him. "Man, that's just creepy."

Tenpou re-directed his attention back to Goku, "You may have forgotten us as people, but the influence could not be erased. It was engraved on your character. We were engraved on your character. And so, rather than being memories, we are the physical forms of that influence. …Do you follow me?"

Goku blinked. "…You guy's exist inside me?" An echo of what he had said to Tenjin reverberated in his mind. 'But whatever's waiting on the other side, wherever our loved ones go once we've said our last goodbyes, they're still with us in a way. In our hearts. So as long as their memory's alive, they're not lost.' Goku swallowed, his throat unbearably tight. They were still inside him. They were still with him. Even though he did not have his memories… They were not lost. They were not lost to him completely.

Tenpou nodded.

"So," Goku finally continued, his voice hoarse, looking away from all present, not trusting himself to make eye contact with any of them. "You're what, my Conscience?"

Tenpou smirked a little. "We're part of the reason you are who you are so… yes. In a manner of speaking."

Finally, Goku looked up – from Tenpou, to Kenren, to Konzen, and back to Tenpou. "So, I'm screwed." He smiled wryly.

Kenren's howl of laughter completely drowned out Tenpou's polite chuckle. Konzen smiled off to the side. This could actually be fun.

…

"…The next time you wake, little monkey, you will have forgotten everything. …About the days you spent in heaven… and even about those that you met. …Even so…the memories that are carved into your soul will never disappear. They will become your blood and bone, and give you the strength to live. …So, for now, just sleep. Embrace in your heart that seed of hope."