A/N: Hello, I'm Kuruk, new to the Digimon fandom.

Let me warn you that this fic contains yaoi, drug use, self harm, suicide and language. If you don't like, kindly don't read.

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing.

Hope you enjoy.

Spitting Image

Chapter One

My big brother's name is Yamato Ishida. He's seventeen and he likes playing guitar. He has a girlfriend named Sora. He plays really loud music when he's angry. He has a best friend named Taichi. He's my big brother.

And he's dead.

I don't know how exactly, or when. I just know that my big brother's dead.

And for some reason I can't bring myself to care that much.

When my dad called on the phone to tell us-- my mom and me, I mean, because they're divorced and don't live together anymore for obvious reasons, my mom started screaming. That was nothing new, I mean, even though my parents are divorced my mom still talks enough to my dad to scream at him everyday so it doesn't really feel like they're divorced.

But this time, instead of cursing him out or lapsing into one of their stupid, pointless arguments they used to have when the four of us still lived together, she started wailing. Seriously, I mean, her voice was all frantic and disbelieving and it got really, really high-pitched. She called my dad a liar and then she started crying and screaming even more.

It gave me a headache, so I went to my room and shut the door.

And for some reason I had this urge to tell someone about it.

At first I thought maybe I could tell Matt, which is one of my brother's nicknames, but then I remembered he was dead so that was out of the question. Then I thought maybe I could tell my best friend Daisuke, but he's probably at soccer practice now so I can't do that...

Am I really that alone?

Suddenly I'm really, really tired so I laid my head down on my pillow, trying to sleep despite my mom's shrieking and wailing...

Next thing I know it's the day of the funeral. I'd kept myself locked in my room for a couple of days and I'd heard snatches of conversations between my parents. That's right-- plural. My dad arrived the day after he and my mom had a shriek-fest over the phone and he hasn't left since. It's weird, you know, having my parents back together since they've been divorced since I was six. So weird, having them together again, not fighting but crying...

It's almost as weird thinking that my brother's dead.

Well, point is that while I stayed in my room to stay away from my parents' crying and sobbing, they talked a lot. About Matt and how he died.

Turns out he took a knife to his wrists. Suicide. My mother shrieked about how Matt was the happiest kid alive and I suppressed the urge to scream that she never saw him anymore because he lived with dad and she hates dad and dad hates her so she never saw him except on holidays and birthdays or when he would sometimes stop by for no reason at all.

Well, anyway. Matt killed himself. He was at his best friend Tai's house when it happened, and Tai was with him when he did it, so my parents have come to the conclusion since Matt was such a happy, perfect kid, that Tai was the one that cut Matt's wrists and left him to die in his bathroom.

I don't care, really... but since my mom's gone crazy and after hearing dad ranting about how the cops insisted that Matt had been the one to cut his wrists and not Tai, I guess I can give him the benefit of the doubt.

Kinda.

I don't know what to think except that mom and dad hate him so maybe I should too even though he was Matt's best friend and in order to be best friends you need to actually like each other like Daisuke and I do so maybe I shouldn't hate him.

My head hurts while I get dressed in this black suit I haven't worn since my grandpa died when I was eleven. It's super tight and my ankles are showing and I can barely move in it but mom and dad were too busy arguing and crying and shouting to buy another one that fit so I don't have a choice.

I looked at myself in the mirror, running a hand through my dull blonde hair.

I don't know how long I just stare at myself until I hear the front door opening and I guess that my mom and dad are leaving so I get out of my room and follow them out taking my place in the backseat as dad turns the car on and he and mom start arguing again. I just stare out the window.

I didn't know we had this much family.

Really, there are so many cousins and aunts and uncles and stuff the lawn is packed with people. Mom and dad are at the front and so is Sora, Matt's girlfriend. She and Matt grew up together-- actually, a lot of Matt's real close friends were all part of the same group growing up. Sora is pretty, but I wouldn't know since Daisuke always tells me I have really bad taste in girls... but I think she's pretty even though her face is all red and puffy and she's crying just as hard as my mom is, her arm wrapped around my mom's trembling figure.

They're holding each other towards the front and I'm lost somewhere towards the back, watching all this apathetically.

A lot of people turned out.

Not counting family, I mean.

Death freaks people out so I wouldn't think any of Matt's friends would show up, but there's a good number here. I recognize that American girl Mimi standing by Sora, crying into a handkerchief with those weird guys Joe and Izzy standing awkwardly around her.

There's also some kids in my own grade, like that perverted chick Yolei crying in between my fat, perverted uncle and his just as fat wife. There's also that small kid Cody standing by her, crying a little himself.

It makes me mad. I mean, these kids aren't even in Matt's class but they still show up and cry like they knew him. I mean, I never saw Matt hang out with them whenever I saw him around... why the hell are they here? For Matt? They didn't know him that well and yet they're still here?

It's because he's perfect and everyone loved him.

Obviously.

I bet they wouldn't show up if I was the one in the box, being lowered into the hole in the ground. They wouldn't care if it was me because I'm imperfect-- imperfect, weird Takeru.

It's raining a little and I'm feeling weird and really hot and I want to leave... so I almost do when I see someone else standing a little further away.

I recognize the big brown hair anywhere.

It's Tai and next to him is the smaller figure of his kid sister, Hikari.

I can see that Kari is crying, but Tai isn't. He's just staring at the hole and the box, his eyes big and empty, like he's staring at the end of the world or something.

It's right then that it dawns on me that my brother's inside that box... that's being lowered into the ground.

Suddenly the suit gets itchier than usual and I run away, not even thinking what my mom would do when she saw Tai there, the guy that had murdered her precious son.

I stop running and the big blob of black is far away now. I sit on the wet ground, not caring if I get my ass wet and lean up against a tombstone, hoping that a lightning bolt won't hit me because I'm disrespecting this dead person... whose dead and can't really hurt me.

Like my brother, right?

I look down at the green grass, thinking about how ironic it is that the grass is so green and alive in a place full of dead people when I hear the soft sound of footsteps.

I look up and see Tai, staring down at me, chocolate brown eyes empty. I stare back.

"Tai," it's Kari pulling at his arm. Tai looks away, but not before something flashes in those dead eyes. Sadness? Recognition? Anger? All I really know is that a tear fell from his eye as Kari pulled at him, "Let's go," she said, looking at me in a really sad way.

Tai nods and walks off towards the parking lot while Kari stays and looks at me, a lot of weird emotions passing through her eyes. I just stare up at her just as emptily as Tai did to me, hoping that she'd leave already.

The way she looked at me would always freak me out.

"I-I'm... sorry for your loss, Takeru," she says, voice breaking a little. She bows low, gives me one last look and runs off after Tai, black dress swishing a little as she does.

I stare after them-- him... until I hear more footsteps and the big black blob of people is heading right towards me and I know I'm going to have to be invisible again. But does it really matter?

I sigh, get up and dissolve into the crowd, leaving my big brother behind.

I don't know why, but no matter how many times I repeated to myself that I would never see him again, I couldn't feel a thing...

A/N: Well, that's the end of chapter one. I hope that you liked it.

I'm not sure about an update schedule, but I have up until chapter five written. And should I forget to mention this the pairings are (or at least the main ones...): Takeru/Taichi, ever-present Taichi/Yamato onesided along with a few side-pairings of Hikari/Takeru onesided, Daisuke/Hikari in later chapters, Sora/Yamato, Miyako/Ken and so on.

I hope you enjoyed this and please review, I appreciate feedback and really, it keeps me going. :)