It starts like this:

Joe has always been busy, busy, busy. But reliable, of course. Old reliable Joe. So when Joe misses the sixth anniversary of the digi-destined group without so much as a phone-call, it raises a little alarm.

He's very apologetic, of course, when Matt and Izzy show up to his house, Motimon and Tsunomon ready for action. He explains that he has been studying very hard for a test – Joe always has a test in something coming up – and he must have forgotten. Strange. But also understandable. Joe is reliable, but he is also easy to frazzle, and always has his head in the clouds.

"You need to lighten up a little, Joe," Matt complains as he accompanies them to the digital world for a proper gathering. "You're too young to be this stressed."

"I'm eighteen," Joe points out, annoyed. "I need to prepare! I'm headed to University in the fall!"

"All the more reason to enjoy what little time you have left."

Joe is the oldest. Everyone is aware of this. Everyone is aware of this because Joe makes them aware of it, through both words and actions. Even at the age of twelve, when he was first appointed keeper of the emergency supplies at summer-camp, it could be said that he had an old soul. But he was, in the end, still a child. Still frightened, still fearful, and still full of awe. Still ready to be molded by the wonders of the digital world.

Joe is not a child any longer. He sits with Gomamon, leaning up against a random (metallic) sofa in the digital-forest as he watches Patamon and Hawkmon play keep-away with a frustrated Veemon. Gomamon hums, tapping Joe's knee absently.

"Why don't you join in?" Joe asks.

Gomamon, uncharacteristically, is silent for a long moment. He observes the game awhile. "I guess I'm just tired," he says finally.

"You ate enough, didn't you?"

"Sure I did. Joe?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think digimon get old?"

"I don't know. Wouldn't you be the one to know?"

"I've never heard of it. Some digimon have been around forever and ever. But I... they look so young," Gomamon says.

Joe feels something slither down, cold and tight, to settle around his spine. "...Well," he tells Gomamon. "Maybe you had some bad fish."

Though he isn't much of an outdoor person, Joe likes to go down to the pier on warm days. He can feel the spray of salt in his face, and sometimes he'll take pictures and send them back to Gomamon. Gomamon likes those pictures, tiny, foreign images of creatures so different from digi-fish. "I didn't get to spend enough time in your water," he'd complained once. "When I wasn't fighting, I mean."

Today, Joe starts his usual walk down to the pier. But once he gets there he stops short, puzzled and shivering, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell of stinking fish.

He's forgotten something.

He paces by the wharf awhile, until a worker snaps at him. Then he begins the slow trudge home, wondering why he'd left at all, on a day like this, when he could be studying.

Pieces flake away like bad plaster; but Joe is Joe, for better or worse, and no one realizes for a long while.

"Agumon says hi," Tai adds as he ends a call, and Joe doesn't have a chance to ask what this means.

"Palmon would love it here," Mimi says in a letter, but Mimi says so many incomprehensible things he doesn't even notice.

Then, around Christmas time, he gets an invite. It's for the annual Ichijouji family party, and everyone is going. Even Joe doesn't have classes over Christmas. So he goes.

And he doesn't want to be rude, he really doesn't, but -

"What is that?" he demands at the door, flinching back from Ken, who is holding a huge, squirming worm.

The teen – who had been smiling – looks at him blankly. "What?" Ken asks. The boy glances around, puzzled.

The worm looks around, too.

"That! In your arms!" Joe exclaims.

Ken looks down.

Looks up at Joe.

"Oh, no," the worm says.

Joe remembers in time. He always remembers in time, he realizes eventually; he's just never fully understood that he forgot.

Ken, who is still a genius, suggests numerous ailments that makes Joe's hypochondriac brain panic more with every passing breath. But for once, it's Davis who offers an insight both simple and strangely (frightfully, terribly) useful:

"Hey," he muses, when the initial panic has died down: " - Have you ever forgotten anything besides digimon?"

Once it's determined that Joe is, in fact, only selectively losing his mind, determination sets in.

Clearly, his memories are being targeted. There must be an enemy. A dark force at work. Something. This is almost reassuring: the digi-destined know how to work against enemies.

The others do, anyway. Joe is a little unsure, these days.

"Do you want us to get Gomamon while we talk?" Kari asks him.

Joe nods 'yes' because she seems to expect this, and also because he doesn't want to admit he doesn't remember that name. He turns out to be grateful for the gesture, anyway.

Gomamon is worried. Jim and his father are worried, too, which is understandable. So they stay around him constantly, and ramble about digimon whenever he seems to forget things (even when he hasn't really forgotten anything.) Joe isn't sure how helpful this is, but it's nice to have Gomamon around.

The thing is, he does remember – after the fact – how Gomamon reacts every time Joe turns around and exclaims, in shock, "What are you!" at the sight of him. How he reacts every time it takes just a little, little bit longer for Joe to recover his memories.

Gomamon doesn't laugh much, these days.

"You said you always wanted to spend time in the water," Joe says.

"Yeah," Gomamon agrees. He doesn't step away from Joe.

"Aren't you going to get in?"

Gomamon looks up at him. No digimon should have eyes that aged. "Will you be here when I get back?"

Joe opens his mouth to say, of course, of course he will. He's old reliable Joe.

Then he stops himself.

His partner turns away. Taps a fin against the water, and sighs. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

Gomamon goes back to the digi-world, just for a day, to rest.

Joe tries to follow, with Yolei's help.

He can't.

Everyone tries to act like this is normal. Maybe they think Joe is going stupid, too, or maybe they just assume he's forgotten what normal is like. But this isn't normal.

"They're taking everything," Joe realizes. He's never felt so vulnerable, not for years. Not since finding Gomamon. "Everything."

"Yeah," Yolei says. "But who are 'they'?"

No one in the digital world is any help. The younger digi-destined relate Gennai's words: "There haven't been any Chosen Children for a long, long while. You're the first. I don't really know what's normal, any longer... Some things you have to learn yourselves."

And, also, worryingly: "Your destinies are fulfilled. Your time is your own. If that means this... Then, I am sorry."

Izzy makes theories. "It doesn't really make sense," he tells Joe. "We know that adults can be aware of digimon just fine. I can understand being unable to go to the digital world, but not forgetting about it entirely."

"I haven't forgotten about it entirely! Let's not jump to conclusions!" Joe exclaims.

"Sorry," Izzy consoles. "I didn't mean it like that. Anyway, how often have you tried to go through the digi-port?"

Joe stares at him blankly.

"Joe?"

"A what?"

" - To go to the digital world?"

"...to where?" Joe asks.

"Joe? Joe!"

Joe starts, waking up and tilting his head to look at TK.

"Are you okay? That looked like a bad dream."

"Oh – I guess. I just..."

"What?"

"I just had an awful dream about vampires. Vampires! Isn't that strange?"

"Yeah," TK agrees. " - Real weird."

"Hey, is your throat still bothering you, TK, you sound a little - "

"It's fine."

"A bug! A bug!" Joe cries.

Izzy shakes his head. He stays slumped in his chair, tap, tap, tapping at his ever-present computer. "Joe..."

"Why aren't you doing anything! Izzy, can't you see it? Can't you see it?"

"Can't you?" asks the giant bug mournfully.

Joe wakes up one night, and makes a phone-call to the first person he thinks of.

"Tell me everything," he begs.

So Sora starts to talk. She talks about Joe's panicky flailing when he first saw Bukamon. "It's a good thing that guy is so hard to offend," she says, and it takes him a while to connect Bukamon and Gomamon and remember digivolving. She talks about how he was so, so brave – this might be a lie, but it sounds nice – when everyone was so scared, and so alone, and how he tried to keep the group together whenever Tai and Matt started fighting in the first cold nights in the digital world.

"You saved my life, once," Sora says.

A thread of panic. "I don't really remember that."

"That's okay," Sora tells him. "That's because we all save each other, all the time. It's what friends do."

"I think we might, actually, be a little strange in that regard."

Sora laughs at him.

In that moment, he deeply, fiercely misses her.

Art is, unfortunately, a requirement in Joe's program. He doesn't know why. But he pairs himself with a girl named Kila, who is extremely enthusiastic about everything, so usually he gets along okay. But this – a tour through an art museum in downtown Tokyo – is threatening to bore Joe past his limit.

Joe's not a fan of art, in general. This isn't his fault. He has a strict, logical mind, and he always has. Art is just – not his thing. Especially this sort of art, all fantastical impossible imagery. Nothing real. How is he supposed to relate to this?

Kila tugs him to a stop in front of a picture, humming her appreciation. Joe looks up.

It's a dark, gothic piece – a forbidding unicorn back-dropped against a storm, posed strikingly on the side of a mountain. Kila nods her approval.

"I hate it when people make unicorns fluffy and froopy," she decides. "In legend, they were often very fierce, you know? I like this. What do you think?"

Joe looks at the picture. It calls images to mind, quickly, strongly. Makes him feel something: anger. Desperation. Hope. Exhilaration. For once, he has an opinion about art.

"That guy isn't so tough," he says.

Some parts of Japan go crazy with speculation over old monster-sightings. Conspiracy theories abound.

Joe thinks the whole thing is just plain silly, if you ask him.

And he really, really disapproves of Jim's choice of profession – doesn't understand why his father tolerates it – but Jim always smiles, oddly bitter, at Joe's lofty remarks. Never gets mad.

It always makes Joe feel a little ashamed of himself, for being so judgmental. And a little annoyed, too.

Like he's the silly one. Like he's missing something.

In early summer, Tai shows up at Joe's door with a crazed air about him.

"We're going out," he says.

He drags Joe around. "Here?" he might ask. "Here? Here?" And he'll point to a building, a tree, a park. They go all over the city. A lot of the buildings have been recently built, remodeled, or fixed, Joe notes – all within the past few years - but he can see no other similarities. He doesn't understand what Tai wants from him.

Tai's face scrunches when he says as much.

"That's why I'm doing this, Joe," he explains fiercely.

"I don't understand."

"But you need to. You have to."

"I don't..."

"You're one of us, Joe."

Joe stares.

Tai points at a water tower. "What about that?" he asks.

Joe meets with his friend Matt one day for lunch. He's a little out of his depth – he doesn't quite understand why Matt even likes to talk to him, they're so different. A doctor-in-training, and a rock star? It doesn't even make sense.

But Matt's brother TK joins them, too, which makes things a little less awkward. TK is impossible not to like. Until, part way through the lunch, TK stops and stares at him.

" - Are you okay?" Joe asks.

"I think I get it," TK says. "What confused Izzy, I mean."

"What?"

Matt straightens, looking at TK sharply. Like he understands.

"It's not that you're an adult," TK says. "That's fine. It's because..." TK looks over to a bookshelf. There's an ugly, strange stuffed animal lying there, light pink, with stubby legs and long wavy antennae. "It's because you can't go back. Can't see him again, maybe ever. And it would be cruel, to stop you, and make you remember."

Matt stares at TK.

Then, quietly, the younger brother adds: "...I don't think I could do it."

Matt reaches out, touching his sibling's shoulder. Joe is startled. Is he insane, or are there tears in the cold rock-icon's eyes?

"But that can't be why," Matt whispers. "Because that would mean..."

TK just turns away.

Mimi comes back for a Very Serious Discussion, and all the original digi-destined gather.

There are a few main topics. Izzy gives a long list of theories. Tai summarizes them succinctly with, "You've got nothing, have you?"

"...No," Izzy admits.

Matt averts his gaze.

The talk gets considerably more gloomy, after that. It becomes, without anyone wanting to say it, a last get-together.

A farewell.

The shake starts slowly, gathering up his arm, then his chest, until his whole body is wracked with it. The group grows quiet.

"Joe?" prompts Sora, slowly.

"I can't do this," he gasps. "I can't. I can't. It's too much."

Matt closes his eyes.

Tai clenches his hand.

"We'll keep looking," Izzy says.

"But you'll be gone, completely. I don't want to forget you guys, any of you," Joe tries to explain. "And I will – I will. It's not just the digimon. It's all of you."

"We'll always be your friends, Joe," Mimi promises.

"You wouldn't have been my friends without digimon," Joe says, and knows it's true. "I don't think you'll want to be, after - " He's stricken. "Maybe I won't even want you to be."

No one knows quite what to say, after that.

"Bukamon is sick," Izzy calls to tell Joe.

It's three in the morning. Joe stares up at his ceiling, clutching the phone, wondering if fatigue, insanity, or something else is stopping him from understanding what must be an important call. Because there's no way Izzy called him up to babble nonsense.

"I don't understand," he says finally.

There's a brief hiss. Over the line, he hears Tai's voice - "Damn it, Izzy, what did you really think - " and then the phone goes dead with a faint clunk.

Joe stares at the ceiling a little longer, then rolls over and goes to sleep.

Jim frequently stops by to ask Joe if he's 'feeling alright', lately.

Joe feels fine. Great. Perfect.

He wishes people would stop asking.

Joe's old friends – he thinks of them as the summer-camp ones, because this is relevant, somehow – come over a lot. They just invite themselves, or maybe Jim calls them over. It feels strangely like a conspiracy, like Joe is the only one left out of some great secret. It should almost, almost feel malicious, but that's not the sense he gets.

One day Sora, Matt and Tai visit together. They want Joe to know that they're available, just if he wants to talk. If he's upset. Joe doesn't know why people expect him to be upset. He's recently been accepted to a fantastic university, in fact, so he's in a pretty great mood. Or he would be, if all these people would quit barging into his house.

Joe wonders, for far from the first time, why he's friends with these people at all. Why he's only friends with these people.

Then everything is quiet, and awkward, and Sora and Tai and Matt stare at him for awhile. Until Joe starts to feel uncomfortable, then a little angry. No; perhaps angry isn't the right word. Upset, indeed.

"It's like a dream," he bursts out.

"Sorry?" Sora asks.

He feels silly, but he keeps talking. It's hard to stop, when he's nervous. And the way they keep staring, like they expect him to say something, to be something - "It's like when you wake up from a dream, and you know you've forgotten something but there isn't – it's gone. Forever. That's it, the end, game over, and there isn't anything – no matter how hard you try, trying just makes it worse, do you understand? It never works. You can never remember, and the dream – it never comes back."

Joe hopes this makes sense. He's forgotten what connects him and these strange people from a summercamp six years back. But when he looks up, he doesn't see understanding; he sees hope.

"Joe, do you remember?" Tai asks urgently.

"Remember? Were you even listening to me?"

"Do you remember Gomamon?" Sora asks.

Joe frowns.

And, beside Sora, a little dazed, Matt frowns too.

"Who?" they both ask.

When Joe goes to University, he has a list.

On this list is a series of names, and next to them, phone numbers and email addresses. "You can always come to us," Sora had said. " - Always. Even if you don't remember why, if you need help, just come to us, okay?"

Joe doesn't like it when people cry, which is the only reason he'd said yes. And when he'd walked away, quietly, a boy named Cody had pulled him aside;

"If you need any of us," he'd said, " - You should probably contact me first."

Of all his old strange friends, Joe likes Cody the best. He reminds Joe, strangely, of himself.

Joe doesn't talk to them, now. He gets emails from those friends, sometimes – mostly the young ones, TK and Kari, sometimes Cody, Yolei, Davis, Ken... It seems strange, because he knows they were all so close, once, but people change.

So he's not sure how he feels about the list, but he puts it up in his student apartment, anyway, because the list is a nice gesture and there's no reason to be rude. He's just finished unpacking, in fact, when his new roommate arrives.

The guy looks around. "Wow," he says absently. "You sure don't waste time, do you?"

Joe smiles politely, and on an impulse he decides an old picture – one of the summer-camp group - needs a little straightening. "Well," he says. Outside the window, a gust of wind blows in. He can smell salt from the sea, and for some reason his throat feels tight. "Just call me Ol' Reliable."