Warnings: past character death, PTSD, depression, implied past violence, child soldiers, learning disorders, swearing, humanoid characters

Arc One: To Be Restless

Chapter One: That Which is Seen With Love

I always told Annie that my first memory was of a flashlight beam. That was a lie. To be honest, I think she knew. She wouldn't have kept asking if she didn't. My first memory was of light, though. Gentle golden light, eternal spring grass in my toes, and a child, telling me my name.

With a small, heavy sigh, Sayo entered another sequence into her laptop computer. The utensils in her kitchen drawers floated into a box, followed by the pots and pans in another. A little white orb floated to watch, spinning and swirling in place. Her food stuffs vanished bit by bit,sent to the nearest food pantry. The waves rolled over beneath the gentle sand at her bare feet. Behind her, boxes vanished one by one, zipping into her Digivice.

It had taken almost a year and a half for her actions to come back and bite her in the ass. For her saving DigitalCITY to have real consequences. (Because the loss wasn't enough, the promotion, the repairs, the extra work wasn't enough.) No, the bodies that had assisted in the refinement, if you could call it that, of the home she had been in since she was very small, had decided for her to pay for the destruction of Sunshine, for attacking both of her commanders, and for breaking protocol and going off on her own on a likely suicidal mission. For all of those things, and probably for what happened after, she had to pay. There was no way to fine her (It would just be fining themselves) and they had enough trouble jailing her mother. It was more trouble than it was worth, and she knew it.

That first memory is always there, in the back of my mind with the whispers of pain. I can never see the child all the way. It's too dark, and the stars and the moons don't shed enough light. But their hair is a shade of mine, and unruly with tattered knife cuts. They are smiling.

Or at least that's what it looks like to me.

Sayo heard her Digivice beep, but she paid it no mind. She simply keyed in more and more code, the only language she could write fluently anymore, of any kind. It would just be the same crappy message anyway:

"To Tsukino Sayo,

Due to the Chrono Core Incident and its effects upon DigitalCITY, your Tamer Union license, ranked Platinum Tamer as of March fifteenth, has been suspended. You must return your Union regulated Digivice to the supervisor of your rank until further notice. Thank you for your service to the worlds. It has been noted and appreciated."

There was no signature, but she knew who had written this notice. It was the Holy Beasts, back from their time observing on Earth to check on the pet project they loathed. Their biggest black mark.

Which she wouldn't have made darker if it weren't for them wallowing. Then again, she couldn't talk. She had driven it into the paper her damn self. Just like they had, to be honest.

Her Digivice rang again, rapid tones of nagging clangs. Sayo let out a sigh. "Accept call," she ordered, brushing her nearly-waist length purple hair more smoothly under the brim of her cat-eared old battered thing had seen better days, but she still touched its ears with gentle, fond fingertip strokes, feeling what twitched beneath the wool. She didn't know if she could ever get rid of it. There was too much clinging to it. Like static. Like home.

A young, still slightly chubby face framed in white hair materialized in a projected screen above the top port, followed by a torso clothed in bright pastel. The hologram of her little sister waved, smile sretched a bit thin at the edges. "Sis, you could have picked up the phone ages ago, you know that?"

"I thought it was Union," Sayo mumbled, olive cheeks darkening. "Leave me alone."

"Nooooo~!" Sayo didn't look up, resisting the well-honed sibling instincts at the sound of a voice pouting. She wasn't quite sure how it worked, but she was certain Yuki had it down to a science. "Coach is stuck in paperwork hell so he asked me to call you instead."

Sayo managed a snort. "You're not supposed to swear."

She could see Yuki huffing out of the corner of her eye, the hologram filling with static for a moment at the gesture. "Papa's not here to tell me I can't!"

"I'm boss in place of dad and you know it," she retorted, lips quirking in a grin. Dad still fussed at her over her own mouth, not even because she was a girl, because her dad was cool like that, but because she was already digging a ditch, no need to make it worse on herself. Not that her dad was in Digital at the moment to scold her, so she was pretty much home free, all things considered. Still, she was trying to be better about it. It was the right thing to do. She brushed her hair back again, catching it in the sea breeze.

Yuki made another noise and then tapped her fingers against her arm. "Are the big jerks emailing you again?" The white orb made a noise, which went ignored. Yuki couldn't even see it.

"Mmhm." She typed in another line and her FARM islands began to shift and squirm, turning from their tamer home training worlds into the relaxing fields of residental islands. Some people did raise Digimon at home for a living, and it sure would earn her some cash while she was off of work. "I have an escort coming today for me to meet the highest level of authority."

Yuki sneered. It was an expression that had been more and more common for her face since Sayo had brought her home. Since the Chrono Core and the flashes of light and death everywhere.

It was really hard not to think about it anymore.

Some weeks she would play with me every day, that child, or months would go by without a word. Sometimes I felt stronger the longer she was gone, like there was more of me. And sometimes there was less of her.

One day she said she'd would come back and she didn't.

"Just gonna rub it in, aren't they?"

Sayo laughed grimly. "Probably not. They're not that stupid. I hope. I've never even met them." That I remember.

"Well, we never know." Yuki lowered her hands for a moment, petting something off screen. Likely one of her Digimon. "They could do it, since they're spending more time on Earth with their pet projects than regulating this place."

"True enough." She sighed and Phascomon waddled in, or at the very least, waddled to the top of the ladder from his little nesting area. He hated ladders.

"Sayo-chi!" he said through a mouthful of what was probably pudding. He could never have enough pudding. "Escort's here. Can I let him in?"

Sayo was half-tempted to say no, but the pout on Yuki's face was too much to handle at this point by herself. "Yeah, sure. Thanks,"

"Course." His normally bubbly, sleepy voice was tinged with sadness. "I'm your Navi-Digimon after all."

Sayo pretended he hadn't just twisted her heart into another complicated set of pretzel knots and went to climb the ladder to reach him. She went over to the platform and let him hop down, catching him in her arms. Her lazy, playful Digimon, the first Digimon Julia had given her, to balance out her high strung paranoia, which had not been good for a child suffering from hallucinations and anxiety coupled with panic attacks, to put it simply. She hadn't asked him to lately, but at the time, he had been the closest thing to security she had constantly had by his side. The least she could do was give him another hug, she supposed.

"You sure you don't wanna come with?" she asked him. He would be welcome, she knew that. He shook his naturally battered head.

"You won't be gone that long," he said simply. "Just until the legal nonsense and your therapy gets settled and they deem you fit for work again. You can't stay away."

Sayo pet him, fingers curling as she scratched behind one torn ear. "Yeah, I guess so." She didn't think 'fit for work' was a good descriptor for her, period.

With clear reluctance, he left her arms, returning to his typical perch. "I'm gonna go let the escort in."

Sayo nodded, dropping her arms slowly before returning to her call. "You wanna stay on the line?"

Yuki shrugged, messing with the pixels again. "Well, I won't get to call you again for another three weeks, so I'll enjoy the time I've got."

Sayo forced her face to keep its neutral sort of smile and turned to the blue light of the teleport pad as it lit up. The person who formed there swept their brown hair back under the slight containment of the eggshell white goggle strap, gray eyes blinking out the artificial sunlight as they moved off. They patted down their pants and grinned at her.

'Lo," he said, sounding as relaxed as he ever did. He even looked similar to the last time they'd seen each other, five years ago with her in her first, scratchy Union uniform and him apologizing for not being able to see her final exam. She had punched him hard on the arm for that, like it really had been some sort of big deal.

"Kudo Taiki," she said, and her lips quirked. "Thought you were dead."

"Worse." He grinned ruefully, scratching his head and the mass of messy hair. "I was being a secret agent, for Earth."

Sayo wrinkled her nose by playful reflex and led him inside. She didn't have as much resentment as most families here did, though she arguably should. Earth, and thinking about it, just made her tired. "I thought they hated you."

"Are you saying that they don't?" He shrugged his lanky shoulders and dipped his head politely in Yuki's general direction. "Seen one half-human, seen 'em all. They almost didn't catch on on the first mission, but you know me. Luck runs out."

Sayo tilted her head thoughtfully, patting the bed next to her. Yuki waved excitedly at him from her projection and the little white light that stuck around the place spun about in its own puzzled way. Yuki had always liked Taiki, for whatever reason. Probably because of all the people who Sayo didn't remember, he seemed like he had the calmest head on his shoulders. Or maybe it was because he didn't act like Sayo was glass. She wasn't entirely sure. "And?" she prompted, now well and truly curious. It wasn't like she had to be stripped of all proper rank and dignity at a specific time. Being distracted was always a good time killer.

"And space time crap happened," he answered with a grimace. "Not gonna say any more than that. Who knows what that'll do?"

Phascomon jumped down with a tea tray balanced on his plush head, somehow not spilling any. Taiki gratefully took a cup and the plate of cookies. Sayo took the other cup as Phascomon tittered. "Lots of things, Taiki-kun," he chirped. "Good and bad."

Taiki scratched behind a worn ear. "No offense, buddy, but I'd rather not risk the 'bad' as much, you know?"

Sayo chortled before she could stop herself. "Where's your sense of adventure?" The words rang hollow in her own ears.

Taiki only smiled at her again. "With your sense of self-preservation probably."

She almost laughed and out of the corner of her eye, saw Yuki grinning from ear to ear. She looked away from her and grinned at Taiki, who was just munching politely on a cookie. "Good, huh?"

"Mmhm." He licked his fingers free of crumbs and adjusted to sit cross-legged on the bed. He looked around her Tamer Home, watching the waves as they moved. Sayo let him, closing her eyes.

It was a very lonely time. I wandered and wandered and she never appeared. But someone did. A broken spirit man did. He was vaguely familiar to me. I didn't like that because I hadn't met many people. He had said things to me, things my mind hadn't understood, but it doesn't matter, because I don't know what happens after that.

Durante and Roni, and all her other FARM kids, they were already where they needed to be, ie, not in her Digivice. It was the first time since her childhood that she hadn't heard the sound of Digimon this close, and she didn't even remember that

"i'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that you feel like utter garbage and don't really want to talk about it."

Taiki's bluntness was surprising to anyone who had never been around him for under an hour at a time when he was worried. All of his filters tended to drop and his worry came out in full force. It had been a while since Sayo had been hit with such violent expression of concern, but her family was often thinking about her so she was starting to get used to it.

If only she deserved it. After everything-

I'd like to think I'm a good person, sometimes. When I smile and give people what they want, I tend to be a good person. But when I watch them die, when they die because of something I've done, well, I'm really awful then. And I know which of the two tends to happen more and more.

All I did was lay there, horrified and scared, even though I've already been through plenty. I could have killed that thing, saved that thing, without them around. If I had just dug deeper into what I was, instead of not remembering, not even trying to remember because it gave me such a headache and all of these nightmares. If I had just been a bit braver and faced it, at least they would be here.

Luna though? I think she was doomed from the start. Since the day she showed up at my apartment when I was a kid, she was probably dead.

-"I don't know how to feel anymore." Yuki's silence caused Sayo to forget she was on the line for a minute. "I just..." She raised her hands helplessly and shrugged. "I don't know how to… anything… anymore."

Taiki didn't offer any soothing words or any remote pithy comments. He just smiled very sadly and said. "Yeah. That's how it is, isn't it?"

The week after that final fight with Chrono Core had ended, she would have yelled at him for saying that. All she really did now was nod, and wipe at tears she wasn't actually shedding. She'd probably run out. It was fitting to be honest.

For a while, they just sat there, quietly, amicably. They could do that. Even Yuki had busied herself with something off-screen. Then Sayo sighed. "You're my escort, huh?"

"One of the only perks of working directly for the Union Command." Taiki's voice was as dry as sandpaper. "I get all of the cushy jobs."

Sayo laughed, and the sound reminded her of bland mashed potatoes. "I'm almost looking forward to leaving this place."

"You don't get to stop fighting."

"I can pretend." Her voice cracked at last. "I'm good at that."

"We're all a bunch of clowns in a circus," he agreed, looking now at the fake sky. "I'm working on changing this ruling."

Sayo frowned, picking up another cookie. "Why? I did all of those things I was found guilty for."

"You were found guilty without trial and based on intentionally unbiased reports." Taiki shook his head. "You were found guilty for doing your job as a Union Tamer, a job none of us were meant to even have, with less resources and funds than you deserved. You were found guilty for keeping our home from falling out of the sky and paid a cost for it." He smiled bitterly. "I'm not saying you need a parade or anything. That's the last thing a hero actually needs. But this should be a vacation, a paid-for chance to get something into your life, not some exile."

"But we're all living in exile." Yuki was so quiet, and so smart sometimes. "We're all here because we are their mistakes. We are the people that they didn't want."

The 'they' was so vague it was specific. Because there were a few important 'they's in the creation of this faraway CITY. And like this, anyone could refer to one or two and it would be the same thing. The same ache and loss and pain from everyone. Even the children who were born here knew it because it was in everything that the citizens had built and lost and made. It was in the history books, short as they were.

And if they didn't read their textbooks, there was the graveyard set alongside the nearest way to the Digital Sea, full of graves that weren't from old age or illness. Each of them was marked with bone-white stone.

CITY was a ragtime bunch of ruffians and criminals and children, and it built up too soon, too fast. She knew a lot of people who lived and died to do it. Everyone did. The world was young.

Taiki nodded, lifting his hands up. "Still. I'm going to get this sentence overturned, even if you never put on a Union uniform again. You should have peace, and if I don't, if no one does anything, they can drag you in and scapegoat you for whatever reason they did this. So don't tell me no on this one."

Sayo took her hat into her hands, revealing the twitching purple and white that had made her hat move. "I don't think I ever could."

Taiki reached over and touched her shoulder and didn't shift when she flinched. He never backed down and sometimes that hurt all the more. "Yeah. You can. But you trust me."

"That's a bad habit of mine." She tried to grin as she spoke.

Taiki scratched his head. "I wouldn't necessarily say that's bad..." Then again, his own was worse. He trailed off, eyes catching sight of the glimmering light now by her empty laundry basked. "By the way, who's your little spirit friend?"

Sayo looked up and held out her hands to it instead of answering him. The ball of light spun awkwardly and floated down, landing on her lap as much as a spirit could. It shifted and swirled, forming into the body of a young child, who stared up at him with beady black eyes.

"The Chrono Core," she replied, and pretended her heart didn't just thud like it always did.

A/N: And we are here! Happy New Year's Day! Thanks for waiting! It's time for the sequel, the fic I've been waiting to write since I saw the first videos of Cyber Sleuth in Japanese with the Sayo DLC. That was really what started it all to be honest. Anyway, if you clicked this and did not read the sequel, please go look for it! I'm pretty proud of it. For now, I'll keep this story rated 'T' but I may have to bump it to 'M' eventually. We will have to see. Until then, please review! It really helps me out as a writer, you see. Thanks so much!

Also, why is Taiki there? The Super Xros Wars games are a part of the Digimon Story series, therefore the Xros Wars cast, like the Savers cast, can also be considered a part of the games. Which is fun. Anyway, please review!

Challenges: AU Diversity Boot Camp - prompt: violet (contextual reassignment!AU), Gameverse Boot Camp prompt: utter, What If Challenge, DFC Love Buckets Write-A-Thon, Epic Masterclass Challenge Story/World List Season Remix Tapes (season rewrite), Season Rewrite Boot Camp prompt 'living', New Years Long Haul, 100 Prompts, 100 MCs prompt 'wishful thinking' and Diversity Writing (Game/Gen) M18.