As Flowers Bloom and Fall
Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon LOL
AN: This is based on own head canons of how each kid would die, morbid I know but it happens when you work hospice. Anyways, end of winter/start of spring is usually when we have the most deaths for some reason and it's always been a melancholy season for me (hence all the angst-sorry guys, once the weather starts getting warmer I'll be back to my other stories, although I've been rather uninspired of late :T) Also, if you are easily disturbed, please don't read. Thanks!
It was a strange spring, the spring he turned 34. The year she passed.
One March day was a brilliantly warm eighty degrees followed by a sudden cold front that brought snow and ice and miserably shrill winds.
Taichi remembered all the cherry blossoms had frozen with the drop in temperatures, falling off the branches in small icy chunks. The ordinarily bright and cheery forsythia bushes had leaned heavily towards the ground from the weight of the dense wet snow, the blooms trampled and bruised.
And the cold had carried on, far longer than was usual. All the beautiful buds that should have flowered had instead withered and died by winter's extended stay.
It was a flowerless spring.
Grey, wet, and gloomy.
Taichi remembered how indignant he had been towards the weather. Why couldn't it have been sunny and warm and beautiful? Why couldn't the world have been bathed in the soft pinks and pastels of the season she loved?
It was the only thing she had looked forward to while suffering through an annoyingly cold winter, where the temperature was not cold enough to snow but not warm enough to be pleasant.
And it had rained every single goddamned day. Every. Single. Day.
Day after day, she had sat by the window wasting away and watching as the grey sheets of rain fell depressingly onto the streets. The chilling dampness seemed to permeate through the windows and Taichi swore it left every inch of her soul aching.
What had driven him crazier was the fact that everything was out of his hands. He had raged and willed and pleaded with the weather to give her one beautifully sunny week but Mother Nature had been one unmerciful bitch.
He had been prepared since the very beginning when she'd received that awful diagnosis to do whatever was in his power to cure her and keep her happy. Even if it meant giving up all of his vital organs so she could stay alive, he would have been more than willing to do it for her.
So he'd arranged for spring to come to her when it became increasingly apparent that spring would be skipped entirely that year.
Roses, peonies, lilies, orchids-whatever plant he could name and then some, he had ordered through Sora's mother's shop.
A trailer filled to bursting with the delicate flowers waited outside her building while he argued with Jyou, her doctor, who insisted the flowers would devastate the immunocompromised Mimi.
Eventually, the navy haired man had assented. And he and a few of their friends spent an afternoon filling the once brunette's apartment with all the flowers she could ever want.
It had been mid April by then.
He would forever remember her smile, the taste of blood from her dry, cracked lips, and despite all the treatments and medications the hint of sweetness in her scent and the tingly warmth across his core as she held him gratefully.
She had been so thin, so frail that one could see her ribs expand and contract with every painful breath beneath the thin blue hospital gowns.
Her once thick rosy brown curls had fallen off in frightening clumps with the start of chemotherapy and the radiation treatments had made her complexion pale and waxy with a slight purplish hue.
And yet Taichi had found her so terrifyingly beautiful that he actually ached physically to think of her in pain (she had denied being in pain all the way to the end but Taichi knew).
He's always been fiercely protective of their group, ever since that one fateful day in summer camp.
But this, this illness-this goddamn, fucking illness-was trying him in ways he hadn't thought conceivable.
Suddenly he wasn't the one making the calls, he wasn't the one saving her, he couldn't even shield her from any of this invisible enemy's attacks. And whatever they did to help her seemed to kill her a little bit from within.
And it killed him to see the spark dull from her eyes.
Frustration had bubbled away beneath his chest and he tried to blame the disease, the doctors, hell even her parents for giving her shitty breast cancer genes to begin with-but Taichi could tell his aggression negatively impacted her.
With her, he had been only rainbows and sunshine and loving support.
When he was alone or with close friends? Truth be told, he had been an angry monster.
The anger he felt towards the whole situation often left him feeling incredibly small, too small to contain the billowing tower of rage and he'd throw himself into hours of research.
He remembered how shocked and surprised his sister and Sora had been to find him holed up in his room furiously reading medical studies and published clinical trials whilst chewing on the end of his worn yellow highlighter.
He remembered how impressed Jyou had been with the research. He also remembered the ever present anger and desperation when Jyou gently told him the reasoning why Mimi's cancer would not respond to these new drugs and therapies. Jyou that fucking pessimist.
(Poor Jyou had borne the brunt of his frustrations as her attending physician.)
He remembered venting to an annoyingly stoic Yamato as they shared a bottle of scotch.
Yelling at Koushiro to come back from wherever the fuck he was-the idiot had just kept saying he'd said his goodbyes already and was therefore no longer obligated and that Mimi understood.
Sora was his main confidant but she too worried for him, told him it was unhealthy and that he was in denial. Taichi had detested the defeat already evident in Sora's eyes but was grateful, nonetheless, for her support.
Hikari had been matter of fact, dealing with Mimi's digression with a resigned calm and occasionally reminding her brother of Mimi's inevitable prognosis which he'd flippantly ignore.
Takeru was surprisingly his most avid supporter in his quest for Mimi's remission and the two used their considerable fame and power to raise funds for research, gritted their teeth and attended boring medical conventions just to get her a consult with some of the best oncologists in the world and even ran in the Susan B Komen Walk for Breast Cancer in New York.
Mimi herself seemed to go along with his shenanigans, if only to appease his hopeful heart. He had practically moved into her apartment when she had her double mastectomy, taking an extended leave of absence from his appointment as Digital World Dignitary and Ambassador to the UN.
In a way, he wondered if perhaps the cancer helped them together. He highly doubted he'd have put a pause to his career otherwise and he'd never have known his incredibly sublime beautiful childhood friend.
Taichi was thoroughly consumed by the brunette, he loved her beyond what he'd even thought imaginable. (It was Taichi's firm belief that there was no love as intense as having to bed bathe a loved one after a induced diarrhea accident while said loved one is moaning in pain at two in the morning while their own pajamas were soiled. And yet, if he had to clean Mimi up everyday for the rest of his life, he'd gladly do it if it meant she'd be there with him.)
By the end of April, the weather had started to warm up but the flowers had been skipped entirely.
And by then, one year after being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer with bone, liver and lung involvement, Mimi was so ill she was not able to sit in a conventional wheelchair.
Panic and denial had gripped his emotional core so tightly that Jyou had recommended he spend some time off for himself while handing him a script for a low dose as needed ativan. While no one had spoken of hospice in front of him, Taichi knew it was the next par for course.
Mimi had taken to resting more throughout the day and her energy had waned. When she smiled, it no longer reached her eyes and her kisses were light and usually interrupted by gasps for air.
She no longer spoke of the future.
In a last ditch effort, Taichi had paid thousands of dollars to have her transported via stretcher and then into a geri-chair so that she could enjoy the weather in a privately owned estate for a week in early May. By then, even he could see she had little time left.
The first two days had been wonderful. Taichi, Sora, Hikari, Takeru, and her father (her mother passed away from the same diagnosis ten years earlier) spent the days soaking in the sunshine and she had seemed to be doing a little better.
She had been more energetic, actually able to sit up and engage in cheerful (well she was cheerful until almost the very end) conversation. Color returned to her cheeks and the fuzzy caramel halo of her hair growing back lent her an otherworldly look.
Her appetite increased though she wasn't able to eat solid food, and her breathing no longer sounded like she was drowning (although she still needed her oxygen via nasal cannula every so often).
Taichi had been hopeful and wondered why he hadn't thought of this earlier. That second evening, when everyone else had retired for the night, he had stayed up with her, cuddled under blankets.
He had been riding off the high of her good spirits, basking in the wonderful feeling of being alive and in love when he heard her sniffle.
Don't you dare let me die.
Her voice had been so soft yet desperate.
Never, he had whispered back, trying to get her to turn around and face him.
When she resisted, he had opted to draw as close to her as possible, nuzzling the back of her thin shoulder and gently kissing her neck, all while she had laid there silently crying.
Taichi had bit down so hard on his lip to keep from crying that he would later need 8 stitches to close up the wound in his mouth. It hadn't worked anyways and he had leaked large angry tears from his determined eyes and a steady stream of snot from his nose. Coupled with the bleeding from his mouth, he had been a hot, mucusy wet mess but he had struggled to keep it to himself and remain composed and strong for her.
Let's get married when you go into remission, we'll have a big fancy wedding and we'll live out here in the country.
Taichi…
And we'll have a lot of kids-I've always wanted my own soccer team-
Taichi, I wouldn't be able to have kids even if I go into remission.
Then we'll adopt when you go into remission. I don't care, we'll be the new Jolie-Pitts. We'll travel the world and I'll take care of you. I love you Mimi. Please, I love you.
Taichi…
Yamato had known Taichi would have trouble coming to terms with Mimi's disease.
After all, he's always been very protective of the brunette.
However Yamato had not anticipated the intensity with which his friend would involve himself.
Taichi was the man who told Yamato that getting a divorce would be like any other breakup, the same person who told him to suck it up over a bottle of scotch when his life with Sora just...imploded for lack of a better word..
It had been very evident very early on that he would not be like that with Mimi. (They had been together when Jyou broke the news to them. Jyou had sported a busted left cheek and a bruised ego for weeks after he'd told them that her cancer was end stage and that her prognosis was poor).
Taichi's obsession with finding a cure along with his overnight infatuation with their friend had left Yamato worried.
He'd visited her the day after her surgery and had been both pleasantly surprised and saddened by how easy the conversation flowed between them.
They had once been a tight group of friends, maintaining their friendships despite heading off to different universities and career paths. The closest they've ever been was the summer he and Sora tied the knot, right before Jyou went off to Medical School.
Yamato's throat tightened as he remembered how things had quickly soured. They had been too young and not quite mature enough to handle all the strains and burdens of married life and after a tiring year of trying to make their marriage work and another year of bitter fighting, the two separated and finally divorced a year after that.
Their close knit group had unravelled as the fighting started and it was only now, ten goddamn years later that they had started to reach out to each other tentatively.
He knew now that love was not strong enough to conquer all things and that sometimes circumstances beyond one's reasonable control could rip apart the most loving relationships like a soggy sheet of paper caught in a hurricane.
Lingering bitterness towards Sora (who happened to always fucking be there to take care of Mimi) and an aching sense of being cheated of the last ten years had haunted Yamato the first couple of times he had visited Mimi.
Mimi had taken everything in stride, her lilting voice never losing its cheer, her sharp sense of humor never failing to make him smile. They had so much in common, she was so intelligent and kind and beautiful-god, why did he ever shut her out of his life?
He could understand why Taichi had been so aggressive with his approach to her disease, why he had let it consume him. Taichi had been trying to make up for lost time and to get ahead of the time.
An unfamiliar sense of envy had pervaded Yamato as he watched his best friend and Mimi fool around and generally be in love. Any feelings he harbored for the brunette he had kept strictly hidden and he had kept his distance.
It had been a self imposed punishment for breaking the group apart. It had been a defense mechanism set up to protect himself from the inevitable.
For two agonizing months, he'd kept himself busy with work, trying to forget that Mimi was amazing, that she was dying and that he couldn't have her even if he could be man enough to admit his feelings for her.
But her pull had been more magnetizing than all the gravitational pulls of any black hole and he had found himself seeking out her company. She had been happy to see him that first time back in sixty three days, pulling him into a tight hug and not letting go until he had relaxed his tensed frame.
And as he relaxed into her arms, he felt all the defensive barriers built around his psyche wither away with the strength of her warmth and tenderness. He never knew he had such a propensity to cry and he had cried into her thin shoulder, ashamed and relieved and more bereaved than he had believed himself to be.
She'd tell him things he knew she could never tell Sora or Taichi or even Jyou. In a way, their absence of close history had facilitated their adult friendship and it was something for which Yamato would be eternally grateful.
She had been afraid, terrified of death. She hadn't been able to decide which was worse, to lay in the ground and slowly spend decades decaying or to be cremated in a fiery furnace, so hot her limbs would groan and twist and contract before combusting into a little pile of ash.
She had been bitter to know she'd miss out on all the clichéd milestones of life. No hope of ever bearing children even if she should go into remission which was unlikely at her stage. She wouldn't even get the chance to see herself grow old.
And with him, she had been able to cry and grieve for all the missed sunsets and snow days. She had been haunted by an immense disappointment to live up to her own expectations for herself and also to her father for leaving him behind alone.
Yamato had never been a man of comforting words and tender affections. And so he'd sit there with her, silently handing her a tissue and holding her close.
With Taichi, it had been one grand gesture after another, even managing to get the famed Anna Netrebko and the Metropolitan Opera to perform Mimi's favorite La Boheme on a makeshift stage in the hospital's lobby.
(In retrospect, Yamato wondered if a different Opera would have been more suited as the main character of La Boheme-ironically named Mimi- dies at the end in the arms of her lover. But hey, Mimi had loved it and he could still see her snuggled against Taichi and radiating happiness when he closed his eyes.)
But Yamato had taken care of the little things that he knew Taichi in his ambitious view would miss.
So they had traveled vicariously together through tv shows and BBC programs while she lay hooked up to chemotherapy infusions.
Yamato had gone out of his way to bring back foods from all over the world even though by that point everything tasted strangely medicinal and sour to her.
And he would grit his teeth and spend hours with her and Sora as they wrote down recipes, notes, cards and went through her possessions one by one.
Days before she slipped into a coma from which she'd never awaken, she had complained of a heaviness on her chest.
Jyou had ordered her an anti-anxiety med as well as morphine and dilaudid around the clock to keep her comfortable but the heaviness persisted.
Yamato had known the medications would prove ineffective.
Mimi had been worried for her father and Taichi, who had both been struggling to accept her decision to go on hospice.
Taichi had accused her doctors of giving up and became embarrassingly desperate, begging her to try everything from ginseng extract to high dose vitamin infusions to a mythical mushroom he'd read about on the internet.
Keisuke had turned to alcohol, drinking far more than was socially acceptable, drunkenly weeping at her bedside and splintering Mimi's already dying heart.
On one rare occasion when Keisuke had left to take a shower and Taichi had gone with Sora to pick up some food, Yamato had taken the time to sit next to her.
Stroking her wispy soft hair, he had promised he'd take care of them both after she'd passed. He'd told her it was ok to go to sleep if she was tired.
Yamato hadn't been sure if she had heard him, the medications had the tendency to put her in a daze.
But her eyes had brightened with tears and he felt her lightly squeeze his hand in appreciation.
I love you, he had whispered as he had kissed her forehead and she'd nodded once ever so faintly, the corners of her lips hinting at a smile.
He sat next to her, holding her one hand with both of his as he fought back a swell of tears. He had wanted to sing for her so badly but had refrained from the fear that he'd start crying and wouldn't be able to stop.
By the time Taichi and Sora returned, Mimi had fallen asleep.
He left soon thereafter. He'd said his goodbyes already and hadn't returned, turning again towards work to provide a distraction.
And he remembered receiving a call from Sora a couple days later informing him that she'd passed away in her sleep, peacefully and without pain.
He'd been expecting the news so when it finally came, Yamato couldn't understand why he had felt such overwhelming pain.
Grief is a terrible monster of its own league and Yamato had learned it was not something that would go away of its own accord given enough time.
It was something he had to learn through watching the heartbreaking descent of Keisuke's fragile psyche. After the funeral everyone went back to their lives more or less and Yamato would stop in to see her father as promised. He'd be appalled by the state of the home, the constant stink of cigarettes and alcohol-Keisuke Tachikawa had been an immaculately composed person, much like his daughter.
The grief of losing his wife and daughter tore the man apart until he'd become a shadow of his former self. It did not surprise anyone that Keisuke developed cirrhosis of the liver and chronic pancreatitis.
Taichi became thoroughly immersed in his work, attending a summit meeting the day after Mimi's memorial and never stopping the whirlwind of trips, meetings, conferences and conventions. He'd mastered the perfect poker face and while he could fool the whole world into thinking he had come to terms with Mimi's passing, no amount of Taichi's bullshit could fool Yamato into thinking he was no longer mourning.
Even years later, there had been a certain softness that would pass through Taichi's eyes whenever they'd pass under a cherry tree in full bloom, a penchant for lingering in bakeries or cafes, a tightness in his jaw at the sight of happy couples…
But in the end, Yamato wondered if he had used Keisuke and Taichi's mourning to hide the fact that he too was experiencing a horrible loss. Because long after Keisuke cleaned up his life and moved to America and after Taichi had started to see new people again, Yamato found himself thinking of her and missing her all the same.
He'd started taking sleeping pills at night to help him get through the nights when he'd lay there, filled with regret. He wanted to be able to hear her voice without hurting and he wanted to see more than just a photo or video of times past. All the bullshit people told him about her being alive in his memories had done nothing to comfort him.
He became resigned to the fact that he'd miss her until he joined her in death. When he suddenly realized he could no longer remember her scent, Yamato decided it would be better to be in pain and remember than to forget the little things he had loved about her altogether.
In a way, he had been glad that spring had been so unseasonably cold. Otherwise Yamato wasn't sure he would be able to bear the season.
It was a strange spring, the year he turned 34. The year she passed.
Thanks for reading! Please a review :)