Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Digimon Adventure 02
Title: Not So Happy Anniversary
Characters: Daisuke, Ken
Word Count: 3,798||Status: One-shot||Chapters: 1/1
Genre: Friendship, Angst||Rated: PG
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section G44, fic that explores meaning of friendship; Written for the One Character Boot Camp, #29, savvy; Written for the Snakes & Ladders Challenge, prompt: "There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up." John Holmes; Word Count Set Boot Camp, #2, 3,798; Friendship Diversity Boot Camp, #48, trust; Advent 2015, day #13, post something new
Challenge Location: Diversity Writing, One Character Boot Camp, Snakes & Ladders Challenge, Word Count Set Boot Camp, Friendship Diversity Boot Camp, & Advent 2015 are all located at Digimon Challenge Forum on .
Summary: Most anniversaries are occasions to rejoice. Technically that's true for the defeat of the Digimon Kaiser. Technically...
Daisuke stared at his phone, which steadfastly refused to ring. His D-Terminal remained in the same stubborn state. No matter how much he glared at them both, along with the occasional check on his computer, he didn't get what he wanted: a message from Ken.
Something wasn't right. It wasn't the kind of wrong where he thought Ken needed him to come swooping in Lighdramon and save the day, but wrong all the same.
"V-mon?" He didn't look up when he spoke, but he could see V-mon looking at him out of the corner of his eye. "Have you heard from Wormmon today?"
V-mon shook his head, more than a little confused himself. "Nope. You think something's up?"
"Yeah. I just don't know what." Daisuke shook his D-Terminal as if that would get some kind of answers out of it. There weren't any and that made him even more annoyed.
All right, if he won't call me, then I'll call him. Daisuke believed in talking, second only to actually doing something. At least in this case, talking was doing something, so that made it doubly all right.
The problem with calling was that he didn't get an answer. The phone just kept ringing and ringing, until finally the answering machine clicked on.
"This is Ichijouji Ken," his partner's recorded voice unwound. "I'm very busy at the moment but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
This wasn't the first time Daisuke heard Ken's answering message by a long shot, but it was the first time that he heard it and wanted to smack something. Or someone. Preferably Ken.
"Ken, this is me. If I don't hear from you in another hour, and if there's not a really good explanation for why you're not answering me, and I mean something like you've been kidnapped and gagged so you can't talk or maybe you got decapitated or something like that, then I'm gonna be really upset. Got it? Good."
He clunked the phone back down and stared at it some more. He wanted Ken to talk to him. He didn't like that Ken hadn't; it didn't feel right. There were days when their schedules conflicted and the two of them couldn't get in touch, but they didn't give the same kind of feel that this did. He couldn't place it, and a small tingle in the very back of his head told him that he should, and yet he couldn't.
Daisuke leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to figure out where all of this began. As near as he could tell, just the day before, everything had been absolutely perfect. No one was overwhelmed with school projects. There wasn't anything strange going on in the Digital World… well, anything stranger than usual, anyway. Everything in the human world trundled along just the way that it should.
They hadn't had any real plans for today, either. No promises broken that could've set off Daisuke's internal 'something is wrong with my best friend and I need to take care of putting things back in order' alarms.
But they rang anyway and he hated that feeling that something wasn't right and he didn't know what it was but he still had to do what he could to set things right.
"Daisuke?" V-mon prodded at him and Daisuke rolled his head around to take a look at him. "I think I know what the problem is."
"Huh?" Daisuke blinked and then shot up a little straighter. "Well, don't keep it to yourself! What is it?"
"Have you looked at the calendar today?"
That got another blink. Daisuke stared at the one on the far wall of his bedroom, trying to figure out what V-mon wanted to tell him. Why his partner couldn't just spit it out baffled him.
Middle of August? 2007? All right, what about it? Something did ring familiar about the date, but he couldn't put the pieces together, not just yet. It must be an anniversary of some kind, but what? What would shake Ken up to the point that he didn't talk to anyone? Or at least not to Daisuke. For all Daisuke knew he was talking to everyone else…
In one moment it all fell into place. Daisuke drew in a stunningly deep breath, fingers clenching together until they turned white. He should've remembered. He should've guessed.
But Daisuke wasn't at all the type to sit and groan over what had happened or didn't happen. Doubly so when someone needed him and if there was ever a point in his life that Ken needed Daisuke, then today would be one of those points.
"Let's go! We're going to Tamachi!" Daisuke snapped, grabbing his jacket and heading for the door, V-mon only a step or two behind him.
His mind raced even faster than his feet as he made his way to the subway station. Ken would be glooming about this. He'd come such a long way but there were always times that struck him in the wrong – or right – ways and sent him back just a little bit. This would be one of those. It didn't always happen, but the time or two that it had, they'd always been distracted by something else, and if Ken gloomed up about it, he'd gotten over it quickly enough that Daisuke hadn't noticed a thing.
Only now he had noticed, and now he was going to do something about it, and Ken would just have to deal with the fact he had a best friend who'd stand by him no matter what. He'd made that point time and again over the last five years and if he had to do it again, then he would. He'd do it until Ken knew it down in his bones, to the point where he wouldn't question it for so much as a second, the way Daisuke already knew it.
If he'd had the extra time, and Daisuke decided that he didn't, even though Ken clearly wouldn't be expecting him, he would've made some ramen. Ramen could help make anything better.
Well, he'd make some later. Ken always kept materials for ramen in his kitchen, once Daisuke started making his own. There'd been more than one time when they'd studied together or come back from a battle in the Digital World and Daisuke wanted to make ramen for any number of reasons. So Ken kept some there and they didn't have to worry about going to get some.
Though in this case, it might require a lot of ramen to smooth things out. But Daisuke would make as much as he needed. He'd dealt with Ken and his tendency to gloom and doom a lot of times over the years, and he had a pretty good idea of how much it would take to settle him down.
Still going to glare at him, though. Ken knew better than to try to forge his way through all of this alone. They were friends. Daisuke sometimes wondered what he would have to do in order to whack that into Ken's head on the permanent basis he wanted.
Well, whatever it took, he'd do it. For now, all he did was make certain he got on the right train and didn't sink so much into mental griping at Ken that he missed his stop.
Ken lay on his couch and stared at the ceiling. Wormmon lay on his stomach, as quiet as a leaf. Neither of them really wanted to move a lot that day, not once Ken realized what the day was.
Sometimes he missed it. It slid by him without intruding on his awareness until days later, and by then it didn't feel like he should do anything.
But this year it dawned on him just the day before, when he didn't have anything else to do and nothing to distract him from the day it was.
He should've been happy. He was, sort of. If wanting to scream at himself until he couldn't talk at all anymore meant happy.
Daisuke's going to be furious at me. If the message he'd received earlier meant anything, then he already was, or at least worried. Ken would have to explain it to him, sooner or later. Probably later. Tomorrow sounded good. Daisuke wouldn't likely realize what today was and he'd get distracted by something else soon enough, even with his dramatic declarations of Ken possibly having been beheaded.
The doorbell rang, followed a heartbeat later by Daisuke's familiar knocking. Ken would've recognized that anywhere. He lifted his head up enough to stare at the door in confusion.
His parents weren't around, which meant that if he didn't answer the door, Daisuke would stand outside there ringing and knocking until either someone from one of the other apartments came out annoyed with him or Ken answered it.
No, he wouldn't be that patient. Ken winced; Daisuke might've taken the train to get here, but if he didn't get let in, he'd let himself in, the Chosen Child way: bouncing to the Digital World via his laptop and coming in through Ken's own.
Koushirou discovered how they could do that and it made keeping in touch with each other a lot easier, but right now, when he wanted only to brood on his past sins, Ken wanted to just slide into the Digital World himself and vanish into the wilds until at least the next day.
That would make it worse. He'd be able to track me down there.
One thing he'd long since learned: Daisuke couldn't be stopped when it was something that he really wanted at stake. Ken wouldn't put it past him to rise from the grave if need be.
Well, with that morbid thought… Ken forced himself to his feet, sliding Wormmon under his arm as he did. His partner peeked up at him.
"You knew he'd come," Wormmon murmured, almost too soft for Ken to hear. Ken let out the tiniest of sighs and nodded.
"I should've just told him I wasn't feeling well." It wouldn't have been a lie at all. Wormmon shook his head.
"He would've brought ramen over."
Yes. Daisuke's solution to every problem. There were times when Ken wondered why Daisuke hadn't offered it to him… earlier. Ken doubted he would've accepted it in those days, but the question still lurked and loomed in the back of his head on occasion.
This wasn't getting the door answered, though. He made his way over there, Wormmon comfortably wriggling up his side until he reached the crook of Ken's neck and settling in there. With his awareness of what today was, Ken didn't like not having Wormmon where he could touch him whenever he wanted. Once or twice he'd dreamed that Wormmon wasn't there, never came back at all…
He steeled himself. That hadn't happened. Remembering the reality offered pain enough; he didn't need to make more.
Getting himself as calm as he could, he swung the door open to see Daisuke and V-mon there, Daisuke's hand raised to rap on the door once again. The moment Daisuke realized he'd opened it, Daisuke set his hands on his hips and glared at him.
"Ken. Wormmon." There wasn't any anger in his voice. Frustration, yes. Worry, without a doubt. But no anger.
"Daisuke. V-mon." Ken stepped to the side and let them in, padding his way back to the couch. He sat down on it instead of stretching out this time, since he had company.
Daisuke followed, sliding off his shoes and into a pair of guest slippers. Ever since befriending the Chosen, he kept a small collection of them there, on the off chance that they'd all visit at once. It had actually happened a couple of times, but now it was just the two of them.
Ken struggled for a few words, something to crack open the conversation with. Daisuke beat him to it.
"You're feeling out of it because it was five years ago today that we beat the Digimon Kaiser."
Ken's jaw dropped, mouth working without anything genuinely intelligent coming out of it. Then he shook his head and got himself together, as much as he could at the moment, and tried to at least convince himself that he wasn't a complete idiot.
He could usually manage it, but today did tend to be a little difficult on him.
Daisuke didn't wait for him to say anything else still. He just made his way over to the couch and flopped down on it, V-mon next to him.
"It's all right, Ken. I mean, I didn't figure it out until V-mon reminded me what day it was, but you sitting around here being upset? It's okay." He flashed his usual warm grin, the one that made anyone who saw it feel like the world was just a little bit better than perhaps it was. Ken hadn't ever been so happy to see that grin in his life. It reminded him of those days when the guilt clawed into him fresh and strong every morning and he'd sometimes had to convince himself that he really did need to get out of bed and do something.
"How can you say that?" He managed to ask the question but he wasn't even sure of what he meant. He just wanted to say something instead of standing there as if all of his intelligence had been smacked out of him.
Again that smile, brilliant and sunny and full of a life that he'd never imagined anyone could have. "Why wouldn't you be upset? I mean, we really trounced you hard that day. You found out what you thought was real wasn't… I mean, what you thought wasn't real was." Daisuke rubbed the back of his head a bit. "You know, I'm not even sure which it was."
Ken's lips twitched the tiniest bit, though there wasn't that much humor in the memories. "I would say both." He made his way to the seat next to the couch, settling in and letting Wormmon get comfortable in his lap.
"I guess." Daisuke nestled his head in his arms and tilted back so he could examine the ceiling. "I know you're not really upset about us beating you."
For a moment Ken almost wished Daisuke couldn't read him the way that he could. He didn't think Daisuke even knew that he was reading him so well. Or knew that so very few people could do it. He tried so hard not to let people in, even now. His friends knew more about him than most people, but there were times…
"You're right," he murmured. He couldn't have tried keeping it from Daisuke even if he'd wanted to. "It's not that you beat me." He picked his words with care for truth. "It's that I needed it in the first place."
He'd hurt. He could never forget those days after Osamu's funeral, when he'd been allowed to spend more time on what he thought of even then as Osamu's computer, learning his way around it, that jealousy and grief still smoldering deep inside, where he'd thought it would eventually fizzle out. It was just because of what happened because of Osamu being gone, wasn't it? He would heal. He would get over it.
Sometimes his head ached back then, in a way that he guessed now were because of the Spore. Not active then, but becoming that way, fueled by everything inside of him.
He tried hard not to feel like that anymore. There were things he didn't want to do. Or that he did want to do, and kept himself from doing because he knew that he couldn't anymore…
"Ken." Daisuke gave him a faint glare from underneath his eyebrows. "Everyone screws up. How many times do I have to tell you this?"
"It's not just that." Ken tried to get his thoughts together and knew that he still wasn't doing a very good job of it. "Other people make mistakes. Other people lose people they care about and don't decide the best reaction is to conquer an entire world. Whether I thought it was real or not doesn't matter. I made one of the stupidest mistakes ever and I wish I never had."
Daisuke rolled his head around and glared at him. Daisuke didn't glare a lot at people and Ken seemed to be one of his favorite targets, especially when days like this rolled around.
"You know why you did that? Because you're Ichijouji Ken. Because that's how you think and you didn't have anyone else around then to tell you differently."
Ken began to open his mouth and this time Wormmon cut him off. "I could have."
Now V-mon sat up and gave a glare of his own toward the caterpillar Digimon. "Maybe you could and maybe you couldn't. I bet if you tried, that Spore thing would've just made him ignore you anyway. Right?"
Both Ken and Wormmon flinched at that. It was nothing more nor less than the truth. All the times that Ken lashed out at Wormmon proved it so.
"You're Ken. You were Chosen, just like we were, and you wouldn't be you if you didn't do the things that you did." Daisuke waved his hands around. "I don't know how much of us being Chosen is destiny or meant to be or what, but we won in the long run because you're you. Because we're all us and if things were different, you wouldn't be you and we might not have won. Maybe."
Ken's mouth dropped again. He wanted, for a few moments, to follow that line of thought and try to find out the arguments, that if he hadn't done those things, they might have won against their enemies anyway. But then he dropped back against the chair and closed his eyes.
"You're not going to let me win this argument, are you?"
"Nope."
Ken let his head fall back against the chair and didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry or scream. He couldn't say that he knew Daisuke was right, and he didn't think he was wrong. But it was today and the guilt that set its claws and fangs so deep into him just wouldn't relent more than the tiniest bit.
He could feel another of Daisuke's looks, and a heartbeat later, he felt Daisuke's hand in his, tugging him to his feet.
"Come on," Daisuke said, and Ken gave him a very curious look. "We're going to the Digital World."
Ken's mouth made noises that weren't all that coherent, but he didn't put up a resistance as Daisuke tugged him over to the laptop and brought up the gateway. They landed in the Digital World a few moments later, their arrival point set in a sun-dappled glade without any Digimon around. Wormmon and V-mon got back on their feet – or pods – in a heartbeat, sniffing the air.
"No one's around," V-mon reported, turning back to Daisuke. "Where did you want to go?"
Daisuke looked all around before he turned to Ken. "Well, where do you want to go?"
Ken blinked a few times, rubbing the back of his head. He hadn't thought at all about it, since he hadn't even considered going to the Digital World on today of all days. Somewhere in the back of his thoughts there still lurked the memory of the day he'd left this world once, his heart broken, his soul shredded, the memory of Wormmon's tiny form shattering in his arms only minutes old…
Wormmon nudged the side of his leg and Ken bent down to scoop him up without thinking about it. "There's a lake that way," his partner reported, turning his head to the left. "I could smell it. We could go there?"
"All right," Ken agreed. He wasn't really in the mood to argue about it, no matter how much effort Daisuke put into cheering him up.
It wasn't a long trip; a walk of about ten minutes put them right there. The lake spread out in front of them, clear and clean water sparkling in the light of the digital sun, a few movements out there betokening the presence of a few water Digimon. He thought he recognized a Betamon on the far side, but it paid them no attention, going on about its own business.
This is how the Digital World should be. Not someone's kingdom, but just a world where Digimon live in peace.
Daisuke flopped himself on a rock, stretched out, head nestled on his hands, and grinned up at the flawless sky above. For all that Ken could tell, he didn't have a single worry in two worlds. Granted, Daisuke tended to look like that all the time.
That's his secret weapon, anyway, Ken mused. It was one that worked well, too. He'd seen it from both sides of a battlefield and much preferred it when that carefree attitude worked toward helping him.
"I should've invited you here today anyway. It's too nice of a day to spend inside." He moved one hand just enough so he could wave Ken and Wormmon over to where he and V-mon now spread themselves out. "Wanna spend the night here? I don't have anything else I need to do. And I bet you don't either."
Words hovered on Ken's lips but he couldn't have said just what they were. He did have one or two assignments that he could stand to finish, but they weren't due for several more days. He had plenty of time to take care of them. He still preferred getting as much work done as quickly as he could, but for reasons that weren't 'give himself enough time to try to take over or save the world'. He could afford to give up one evening, especially when he hadn't really planned to do anything with this evening aside from cuddle Wormmon and hope that his sleep wasn't filled with nightmares.
He pressed his lips together, glanced down at Wormmon, and saw the hope shining in his partner's bright blue eyes. He could never have let Wormmon down once he saw that, not in the last handful of years.
"All right." It didn't matter that they hadn't brought any spare clothes with them. If they really wanted to, they could dart back to Earth for a change. But that could come later.
He made his way over to sit next to Daisuke, breathing in the moist air and enjoying the bright touch of sun and wind on his cheeks. This really wasn't turning out to be the day that he'd expected it to and he thought he could get used to that.
The End
Note: Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the story. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.