Disclaimer: Digimon belongs to me… oh, look

Disclaimer: Digimon belongs to me… oh, look! I just saw a pig flying! No, wait, figment of my imagination.

Childhood Memories

I, Black Rose, have five words for you before we begin. Note that these words are in bold print and are meant to be heeded.

Read at your own risk.

Despite the nice sounding stuff, it's still a wonderfully perfect idea to beware. I mean, read my author profile. It's obviously not going to be too wonderful, eh?

This story is told from Jyou's POV. Sometime after 02 but before he is old enough to move out.

Everybody has those childhood memories. Sometimes it's the first loose tooth that you have and the hundred yen that the tooth fairy brings you. Other times it's the first time you rode the bike without training wheels or somebody to hold the handles. Or perhaps that time you had a fragile butterfly fly on your nose, beating its gentle wings of color and walking around aimlessly. And you laugh because the feel of the butterfly on your nose tickles.

Of course, memories aren't all good. It's like accidentally trying to pet the butterfly, but you are too young to know how fragile it is, and when you touch it too hard, it falls to pieces so that you're standing there and wondering what did you do. I'm sure that Yamato and Takeru's childhood memories include the divorce, having their family torn apart. Maybe it's somebody finding out that they're adopted, like Koushiro did. It may possibly be that time when the mangy, homeless dog stole your favorite stuffed animal and ripped it to pieces while you cried for your mommy.

So there's a mix of good memories and bad memories. Your first friend. Your first time getting beat up by the neighborhood bully. Your first pet. Your first witness to a death. Your first time venturing into the unknown world, which may sometimes unfortunately turn out to be your first glance into a world that you don't like.

It happens.

One of my first childhood memories is when I was at the age of four. Now, everybody has nightmares, and I certainly was not an exception to that. I don't exactly recall what the nightmare was about, but I do remember that I was scared. Who could not be? You're a four year old kid, already sleeping in his own huge room that is only lit by a tiny little nightlight that you can barely see, and you just had a nightmare. The shadows are suddenly weapons to inflict pain, the pictures haunting ghosts, and the furniture monsters. After all, you're four. You don't know any better than to know that these things don't change at night. And it certainly didn't help that my parents (or really my father) thought I was too old for a nightlight, so you wake up to a completely dark room. Pitch black. You're only four, and it feels like you just woke up to find out that you're in the realm of the dead.

I was alone in this vast empty space. And I was afraid.

Bravery was never my forte, but sometimes you let go of your cowardliness in desperality to get as far away as possible from the horrible darkness. Which was the case here. I was desperate to get away from my pitch black room and the fears that accompany it, like a package deal.

Being the brave little four year old I was, I grabbed my baby blanket and the baseball bat that my uncle got for me (for some extremely unknown reason) and walked bravely to my door. I set the bat down and made a beeline for… no, not my parent's room, but my brother's room. Shin. Why Shin? you might ask. Well, it's because that Shin was always the parental figure to me. What my father would not do for me, what my mother could not do for me, he always did. That's probably why I went to him first.

I don't think he was too surprised to see me outside his door. Instead of yelling at me like my father would, telling me to go back to my own room, he ushered me in, baby blanket and all.

So I spent the night huddled under the blankets, comforted by the warmth of the sheets and the presence of my brother, a combination of feelings and emotions that made me calm and able to fall asleep at once.

I didn't have anymore nightmares that night. Although it wasn't the last time that I found myself screaming in the middle of the night and running over to my brother's room, baby blanket clutched in hand. He comforted me, made sure I got to sleep all right. Like an older brother should.

Of course, most people grow out of sleeping with their parents, or in my case, my older brother. That's the way of life. You outgrow, you mature, you simply grow up, leaving Never-Never land and entering the world of, heaven forbid, adults.

And one day, you're thrust from your happy memories into a world that you don't want to be in, a world that you wish you never had to enter. You depart from remembering about that time you had a nightmare and huddled into your brother's bed because he was the only one there to comfort you, and then one day, you have to wonder.

Why am I still here? When I'm already old enough not to need his comforting? When I don't really want it anymore, although the memories are still pleasant?

I can't help but shiver as I feel his breath on my neck, which is throbbing slightly from where he grabbed me once. The bruises are starting to show, each one a small pain, and I'm bleeding in an area that I didn't know could bleed, but then again, this has never happened either.

As his arms wrap around my bare chest, rekindling the memories of the previous moments when he subjected me to something that was quite different from those pleasant childhood memories, I start to cry silently into the pillow. Each silent sob only seems to make the pain worse, both in mind and body. The inside of me feels torn apart, a hole that has been forcibly ripped. His presence isn't the soothing catalyst that it used to be, but another reminder of humiliation of when he suddenly grabbed me by the wrist when I was studying tonight, dragging me into his room, stripping me of my clothes and last shred of dignity (that had not yet been torn to pieces by my father) before forcing himself into me.

Right now, he's pressing himself against my naked body, the waves of pain still slowly washing against the sandy beach and beating slowly at the rocks. I wonder vaguely if he feels the wracking convulsions that each sob brings, but I also decide that I really don't care.

As I lay here, sleeping with my brother although it is now against my wishes and only for his lustful need, I realize that this is a definite turn away from all the pleasant childhood memories. The grassy green meadow where the butterfly tickled a little boy's nose has been overgrown with thorns that dig deep into the soil and jut cruelly out into the air, each blossoming black rose a symbol for every cruel and dark memory from this day forth.

If you didn't figure it out, Shin raped Jyou. *shrugs* I felt like being depressing. Told you to beware. Basically, what happened was that I was extremely bored, and I wanted to do something where it seems happy, but then I really twist it around. I ended up with this. Of course, I believe that the R rating gave it away, as well as the fact that this is not under my usual profile. Hopefully, I've been straightforward enough with all of you. I really don't want to deal with flames from people who were too careless to read the warnings.

I apologize to all you Shin lovers… the reason why I chose him except for Jyou's dad is because I didn't really think that Jyou would be going to his dad if he had a nightmare. Again, sorry to all the Shin lovers.

Reviewing is not customary. It's just nice.

Black Rose