A/N: This is a little weird, but the first five paragraphs came to me and I had to write them immediately. Of course, I didn't know what the ending would be, so that's why it's great in the beginning and sort of gets sappy and stupid towards the end...but oh well. Not really any couplings...unless you see Jyoushirou. O.o' More like a Jyou + Kou + Yama friendship fic. A screwed-up friendship fic, but friendship all the same.

Note about the setting: The Digidestined are in the Digital World, but they're almost adults now. No, I don't know what they're doing there...

Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon or any of the characters I'm using.

When Jyou Kido died, Koushirou went nuts. Well, he didn't really go nuts. It was more like coming down from a vicious high. You hit the dirt too hard and it disorients you. It was more like that.

I remember sitting there, watching as Koushirou carefully propped Jyou up against the telephone pole, sitting up straight and stiff, eyes open but not seeing anything. They weren't glazed over with death like dead eyes get in books, they were just half-open and blank. It looked as if he was staring off into space, so concentrated on his daydreaming that he'd stopped breathing. My eyes were drawn to the strange smile on his face. It looked out of place because Jyou never smiled, even in life. I stared at him and the first thing that popped into my head was that he didn't look scared anymore. I guess, after you're done living, there's nothing to be scared of anymore. I imagined dying was a very good thing for him. He didn't have to live in fear like some cracked-up hypochondriac.

Koushirou took Jyou's hand and kissed the back of it. My lips suddenly felt cold, as if my lips were the ones planted on the back of a dead man's hand, instead of Koushirou's. Koushirou started whispering and then crying, sad noises muffled by Jyou's hand. His shoulders shook up and down and his eyes shut hard.

I felt like the odd man out at the most fucked up tea party in the world. I felt like Alice must have felt when she was sitting and staring at the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, missing out on all of the private jokes and secret smiles and mad chemistry passing between them, feeling like a third wheel. Uninvited. Nobody invited her.

Koushirou finally dropped Jyou's hand and it fell like dead weight to the floor. It didn't fall gently, easing down onto the ground, where it would mesh with the dirt and become a part of the earth. It fell like a bird shot out of the sky. It didn't look right on Jyou. He was always extra-careful, tip-toeing around as if he was afraid to step on a covered mine. Everyone always talked about how graceful he was, and I always thought it was funny, because he was really just a fucking paranoid coward afraid of accidentally setting off a bomb just by moving.

I watched as Koushirou stood up and wiped his eyes. He looked around, hands on his hips, careful to keep his eyes level with the horizon and away from the ground.

"The others should be by soon," he said. He sniffled slightly. "I'll contact them on my Digivice just in case." But he never did, so I pulled mine out to do it for him.

For a minute, I tried to imagine Koushirou gunning down every fucking Leomon in the Digital World. He might even kill the friendly one that helped us out when we were little kids. I wondered if maybe the Leomon that had stuck a claw through Jyou's skull a half-hour ago was the same one that had saved our asses years ago. I thought about irony, and not knowing what the fuck it was in the ninth grade. I thought about a lot of things. Koushirou stared at the horizon and tried to think about nothing.

Soon, I convinced him to move away from the body, and we sat hunched over on a large rock, the setting sun making Koushirou's hair look wickedly bright red, like the blood was when it first burst out of the dam of Jyou's skull. I glanced at him every so often, wondering if he was okay, then thinking that had to be the stupidest question in the world.

He looked up at me, eyes squinting against the light.

"Did you see his smile? He was smiling. He died smiling."

I stared at him. He looked confused.

"Why the fuck was he smiling?" His voice cracked on the word "smiling." "Why, Yamato?"

I shook my head slowly. "He could finally stop being scared."

Koushirou gazed at me. He sniffed again, looking away, grabbing his own left shoulder.

"You're an asshole, Matt."

I kept my eyes trained on him. A tear had slipped out of the corner of his eye. I watched as he bent his head lower and his shoulders started shaking again.

"Yeah," I said. "I am."

I looked at the sunset again, and when I glanced at Koushirou once more, I saw he was watching it, too. When I glanced back over my shoulder at Jyou, he was staring in the direction of the sunset as well. He was smiling at the sunset. I had a feeling the sunset was smiling right back at him. I turned back around and tried a smile of my very own.

The three of us watched the sun go down that day. The sun didn't drop like a bird shot out of the sky. It slid down the sky inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter, taking its sweet time to die. I wondered if it was better to die slowly but nicely, like the sunset, or quickly but with a final smile of true contentment, like Jyou.

When the others found us, all they saw was three friends watching a sunset, two smiling and one looking lost, though the one looking lost seem to be finding his way back already. I slid an arm around Koushirou's shoulders and he rested his head down on my knee, grabbing my leg and crying out. I looked back to smile sadly at Jyou and gave him a wink.

I'll take care of him, don't you worry, I said.

Jyou winked back and I stroked Koushirou's damp, blood-red hair, laughing to myself because I knew Jyou knew no fear in death and that's the way it should be.