A/N: Oh look, more things are appearing. Go me! Okay, quick backstory. I had this idea... a while ago, don't really remember when it came up in my head. But... here it is for remi's randomAU! contest. The AU was relationship!AU, where a relationship exists where it didn't in canon, and vice versa, or a different relationship occurs between two canon characters. It's kind of fun. I'm not sure if this has been explored in the FFN fics but if it has, oops. Oh well, running for it anyway. Let me know what you think guys!
Also, this is a bit of a slow-going fic. I challenged myself to not breach three thousand words per chapter, just to spread things out a little. Anyway, here goes! Let me know how you feel! Even the criticism!
[01 AU] In the end, it was a painful accident. They never crossed in time as friends, so now they meet as enemies. The mage and the familiar are opposed and yet the life has still been given, whether either of them know it or not.
Without a Familiar
Chapter One: Random Tears
She didn't save his life.
She might have meant to, at one time, but she did not. And perhaps that was the biggest mistake of all.
She didn't heal him, and perhaps she ought to have done that. Instead now, he looked down upon her, staring at her with stone eyes and a heartless little smile on sewn lips.
This was a man who had no mercy. This was a man who had nothing left to lose.
Perhaps this was her fault. She should have been more observant. But she wasn't. And now she had no one, and nothing.
Not even a master. Her master didn't need her anymore.
She should have been scared, horrified at being abandoned. But that was a sensation she had known since the day her egg had hatched. A horrible, heart-rending loneliness. And it didn't hurt as much as it could, and she did not hate her master as she should. Because now she was strong, and she could defend herself from him and those like him.
Now she was strong, and her heart was locked up tight.
No one could open this box.
Much like no one could save Wizarmon from himself.
They could have been friends, but now they weren't.
That was just the way it was.
Tailmon had nothing to regret, because what could have been, she would never know.
She could still be hurt by his whispers, however, almost believe in his lies. But then she would snap out of it and run.
The only thing she had left to lose was her life, and no matter how much sadness touched her, she wasn't ready to give it up.
…
She didn't know why she was crying, today.
Hikari rarely cried for herself. Not because she did not think it was good and healthy, but she had a very happy life, and thus, hardly saddened herself enough to be well and truly needing of a good cry. Except at homework assignments but no one could be blamed for that.
Today, however, she felt absolutely chilly, like the time her brother had been caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of soccer practice and they couldn't go home because the streets had been so awful. He had to make her sit at the bus stop while he flailed his arms for a taxi. By the end of it, they had both been a couple of sniveling messes for their parents and every time lightning had struck outside the windows they had each cried for a good five minutes the whole ride home.
It felt just like that, only somehow much bigger, and emptier, like her stomach had been replaced with an organ made of pure ice.
She cried in silence, pretending it was a part of the unusual summer cold that had lowered her spirits so. She was the best at lies, or misdirection. One had to be, when they were crazy.
And she was. She was most certainly crazy. Had to be, saw things on the TV no one else did, heard voices while walking from school to home and back again, now that it was safe enough to do it alone. She managed to remember things that her brother couldn't, which was odd because he was so much bigger than she.
That was what crazy people were like. They had to be like that, or people wouldn't look at her so funny.
Not that this bothered her too much. It was like being bothered by random tears. Sometimes you could just be sad and couldn't help yourself. Or you were just sad for someone else. Well, as long as her parents weren't worried about leaving her here like this, she supposed it could be fine. It wasn't like her friends would come over, or Onii-chan would be here to worry. That was good.
That said... she was still crying... but if she closed her eyes, maybe she could think about the crying and... well, not stop it, but make it easier. Hikari had done it before, so it should work now. It had to. If it didn't, well, she didn't know what she would do, but she would think of something.
She was little. Sometimes these things just... happened, according to Onii-chan. But she was eight. That wasn't very little anymore, now was it? Or perhaps it was. How did you define little, anyway?
She did not wipe the tears away, nor did she cry out at the sudden pain in her chest. No one would hear it, so it would be silly to make noise. Or maybe someone would. She didn't think so, though. She was quiet so the voices would keep talking most of the time. Understanding what they said was important in her mind because knowing what they planned to do would make it easier to adjust to them. Knowing their thoughts and feelings, and thus, knowing the source of the sadness, would help her to bear with the sadness of the other.
For Hikari, in all her eight-year-old worldly wisdom, realized she was simply sad for someone else. Knowing this made it all the easier for her to close her eyes and imagine the cold pit in her stomach becoming bigger, quite like an ocean wave that would swallow her and make the tears blend with the sea. Knowing this allowed her to smile a little and sit up straight in her bed, and banish the sensation of cold pajamas and sweaty skin (she was still sick after all) to think of that cold water.
It was easy then, to feel that coldness, to let it be slippery like a frog's outside on her hands. The tears began to taper away, replaced with a sensation that could be like floating in the sky. Well, that could be fun. She always did want to fly.
Or maybe this wasn't flying. Maybe this was running fast enough to fly. Was there a difference? She was insane, what did she know?
The cold wasn't going away, which meant that the sadness and the cold had to be from a person, which meant... the best thing to do now was...
"Hello!"
It was only polite to greet someone you couldn't see after all.