Dreams Deferred
Author's Notes: Wow, another one in just two days, I'm feeling very productive. This takes place in 01 when the children are going back to the digital world for the second time.
Masaharu Ishida (37) – Yamato's/Takeru's fatherNatsuko Takaishi (36) – Yamato's/Takeru's mother
Ryou Yagami (35) – Taichi's/Kari's father
Yuriko Yagami (35) – Taichi's/Kari's mother
Disclaimer: I don't own them, so please don't sue. If I did, a whole lot a different people would be married in episode 50.
***
We watched our children as they went back to the digital world. I could see Natsuko starting up at them as they waved back at us. TK looked happy to be going back, while Yamato looked lost. He was feeling the keen pain of knowing that you can't shelter those that you love, the same pain Natsuko and I were feeling as we saw our children being taken away from us.
After they were gone, the crowd started to dissipate, as parents went home to worry over their children in private. I took Natsuko's arm and motioned over to where Ryou and Yuriko were standing.
"We really should talk with them."
"Do you really think now is the time to?" She was still a bit distraught.
"Yamato will do everything that he can to make sure TK is ok... we have to talk about what happened... before."
She made a nonverbal sound of agreement and we both walked over to where the Yamagi were standing.
"Ryou, Yuriko."
"Masaharu." His voice was choked with heavy emotion, and for a moment we were back in that cloying jungle again, he and I and the taste of strawberries picked fresh from the trees.
Yuriko was about to start berating us before Natsuko cut her off and said that we all perhaps should go a café and sit comfortably before we have a conversation that would be hard for all of us. She looked ready to protest, before Ryou agreed, and we were off to my beleaguered van.
The atmosphere in the car was chilly, as it was sometimes between us. I concentrated on driving the debris strewn streets, while the others contemplated the destruction of the city around us. None of us would have anything to say, and our group would descend into a vacuum of silence. Unlike the current group, we didn't have a gifted conversationalist in the bunch of us.
I had to drive out of Odaiba before I could find an open coffee house, and considering the late hour we were its sole patrons. The phantom image of the digital world still hung heavily in the sky above us and I looked wistfully at it for a moment before walking in.
The women excused themselves to go to the restroom, which left me and Ryou ordering the coffees. As we sat at the table, he once again gazed out the window, and I had a moment to study him without his scrutiny.
He still held the youthful features he had 20 years ago, when he was a headstrong boy of only 15. Our children may think themselves the first group of digidestined, but 20 years ago when the internet as it is today was only a glimmer in someone's mind, 4 children were sent to the precursor to the digital world.
Ryou was still handsome, and I remembered our sticky-sweet desire, a secret shared between us under the canopies of the digital jungle, protected from the rest of the world. I had buried the memories in the hope that I would be able to forget, but sometimes late at night, when it was just the hum of the air conditioner reminding me I was still at the office, and I could barely keep my eyes open, I would remember.
Yamato may have wondered how I knew of Gabumon's existence, but I was the one who was surprised to come home and find a Gabumon so reminiscent of the partner I had so many years ago, sleeping soundly with Yamato. I revisited memories that had become mere dreams with time.
How Natsuko would constantly clash with Ryou, and how I tried to constantly keep the peace, taking my crest to heart. As I was the oldest, it should have been me providing the voice of reason, but I always sided with Ryou. Natsuko knew; she knew that I was too biased to be of any help to her.
Natsuko and Yuriko came back from the restroom, and the coffee arrived, and we all tried futilely to ward off the chill of the night with caffeine. Yuriko was the first to speak.
"We should have stayed! We should have finished what we started, so that our children wouldn't have to go through what we went through."
"But we didn't. We couldn't have. Ryou was hurt, and all we could do was seal Piedmon away for a time. Who knew that our children would be called up to complete the job?" Natsuko had held the crest of knowledge.
"He told us there would be consequences! Gennai told us that there would be repercussions. And it felt wrong to just leave like that... even if Ryou was hurt." Yuriko, always trusting in her emotions and feelings, held the crest of love. Though it did lead her to do some unscrupulous things in the name of her crest.
I held Ryou's injured body on the battlefield as Yuriko and Natsuko flanked us, and our 4 fully evolved Digimon tried to once and for all erase Piedmon. Ryou condition was rapidly deteriorating, and he lapsed into unconsciousness when, suddenly, Gennai had appeared out of nowhere, and told us that we had a choice to make. Seal Piedmon away now and leave the digital world, or continue fighting to an almost assured, but protracted victory. Yuriko wished to stay and fight to the end, forever banishing the threat; Natsuko stayed silent, but I could see in her eyes that she wanted to stay. I took one look out at where War Greymon, Metal Garurumom, Magna Angemon, and Angewoman were fighting, it was obvious that they were getting the upper hand, but the virus Digimon clearly had the energy to draw the fight out.
I looked down at Ryou's blood splattered face, and I knew what I would have to do. "We're going to go."
"What!?"
"This isn't the time to argue Yuriko, Ryou's life is at stake here." Natsuko wisely choose to hold her tongue. I was in no mood to be argued with.
"Now that you've decided to seal him, hold your digivices out towards Piedmon, and activate them."
We held them out, and all we could see was a bright flash, and then he was gone, and we were back in the real world. We rushed Ryou to a hospital, and he was immediately taken to surgery. Afterwards, they still weren't sure if he was going to recover.
Day and night I sat with him in that small hospital room, praying and crying over his still body. About 2 weeks after he was brought in, Yuriko had come to visit, and I asked her to sit with him while I got something to eat.
When I came back and opened the door to his room, I could hear him speaking to Yuriko. He was at last awake.
"Yuriko... I felt that someone was with me the whole time..." He smiled at her, and she smiled back, not bothering to tell him that it was me who had sat with him. After Ryou had fallen back into a deep sleep, she sat with him for a while longer before she left.
Afterwards, I stood over his body and I told him everything. I knew he was asleep, but some small part of my mind wished that he wasn't, that he was awake to hear my desperately whispered admission. If he was, he never spoke of it.
Six years later, they were married. All I could remember was giving a speech, and drinking wine that tasted of poison.
"...but we wouldn't even have children if we didn't get out of there!" Natsuko was starting to get riled up.
"That's enough, what's past, has past. We can't change what we choose before, as much as we would like to. Our kids will be fine. Remember, we could have defeated Piedmon with only our four Digimon, they have those 4, plus 4 more that are almost as powerful."
"But isn't there anything that we can do to help?" Ryou fingered his crest, still on a necklace after all these years. His was the crest of courage.
My hand automatically went to my own crest, the crest of friendship. How ironic it was that our eldest child each possessed the crest that their father did, stuck in much the same predicament that we were.
We took out our original digivices, none of us surprised that the others always kept them at hand, and saw that they were all inactive. It was up to our children to care for the two worlds.
"It certainly doesn't look like we can do anything, except pray for the safety of our children."
The table was silent again, but this time it was a comfortable one. We remembered our brief time in the digital world and how it changed us. I always wondered if Ryou ever regretted the choices that he made.
Before I could get too mired in my thoughts, our coffee was gone, and the mood was broken. It was late, we all should have been going home. After I dropped the Yagami off, Natsuko asked, "Do you ever regret what happened that one summer, Masaharu?"
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and told her, "No. Never."
"I could remember you from before. You were always so friendly and outgoing Masaharu... after that summer, you were different. Closed mouthed, never one to freely speak your mind."
"No one ever said change was always for the better Natsuko."
By the time we got to her apartment, it was extremely late, but Natsuko invited me in anyways. She curled up on the couch, while I sat in the armchair. Leaning back and closing my eyes, I wondered why she invited me in. I had almost fallen asleep before she spoke again.
"Do you think that it'll work out for them?"
"Who?"
"Yamato and Taichi." I couldn't see her, I kept my eyes closed.
"Aa, I hope so."
"How do you think Ryou would react?"
"Disown Taichi maybe, I don't know anymore." He was the one to start it, not me. I could not bear to risk our friendship.
"But..."
"Uh ah, this is now, that was then." Natsuko was always such a strong woman, though a bit idealistic.
"I certainly hope it works out… Yamato is in-"
"Don't say it. Don't say it Natsuko, neither of us would be able to stand it."
"What do you mean don't say it!? We both knew you were always his!" She was getting angry again, I could deal with an angry Natsuko, with the fire blazing in her, but never a sullen one. I suppose it was why we got divorced, or so that's what I tell myself.
"I loved you and I still do love you, but in the end, as much as I tried to change it, he was first."
It was late and she really didn't have her heart into fighting with me, "It couldn't work for you two, it couldn't work for us... I just pray our children will know lasting happiness."
Again, the room was nearly silent, with only the noise of the night there to fill the vacuum. "What happened Masaharu, what happened to that outgoing boy that I used to know?"
It was then I slipped into the land of the nod. I could vaguely remember Natsuko putting an afghan on me. After that, it was just me and my dreams.
***
End notes: Trippy no? I don't know where this came from... it just popped into my head one day.