Disclaimer: I don't own it, I didn't create the characters, and I'm not profiting from it. The poem "To One in Paradise" was written by Edgar Allen Poe, not me. The other poems are mine. For obvious reasons, I'm not worried about anyone stealing them.
Note: This story takes place after Ken found Wormmon and before he joined the digidestined.
Among Nightmares
Death—it began with death. Evil crept around the edges.
"Don't leave me! You're my best friend!"
Pain. A million swords stabbing his heart.
"Goodbye...Ken."
Ken awoke. The pain that never gave him a moment of peace still reverberated through his soul.
"Are you okay, Ken?"
Ken rolled over and faced his digimon. "Wormmon. I had a bad dream...I forgot that I found you. I dreamed about your death."
Wormmon cuddled closer. "I'm still here, Ken. I'm never leaving you again."
"Are you sure? You know I can never go back to the digital world."
"I'm sure, Ken."
The boy closed his eyes, tried to block out the sorrow and guilt enough to allow sleep, and whispered goodnight.
Every night would be different. Each nightmare would deliver a new kind of terror, horrible and cruel in its freshness.
Ken's mother set breakfast before him. "Did you sleep well last night?" she asked in a tone that parodied cheerfulness.
"Not really." He didn't elaborate. It had been weeks since his world had crumbled around him, his soul shattered, and his mind turned to bore into itself, revealing an evil almost unimaginable, a full realization of the horrors committed by a genius stripped of any hint of ethics or compassion.
"Do you feel well enough to go back to school?" she inquired.
"I think so," he lied.
He was distracted. He couldn't concentrate on the lessons his first day back at school. Everyone welcomed him and wished him well, but by lunchtime he didn't want to see anyone, or be seen. He wasn't hungry anyway. He went to the library instead of lunch. He looked at a psychology book, but nothing in it seemed to pertain to him, so he put it back and wandered aimlessly among the gloomy shelves, suffocating in deep thought, until one lonely, dusty volume caught his eye. Its spine was dark red, and too worn to read the book's name. He opened to the title page: Poetry of the World. He thumbed past random pages without consciously reading them, until he came to one by Poe, Edgar A. "To One in Paradise:"
Thou wast all that to me, Love,
For which my soul did pine:
A green isle in the sea, Love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream to bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the future cries
"On! On!" - but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sand upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy gray eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
The words tore at his heart. He read a few other poems: a couple more by Poe, a few by the Chinese poet Po Chu-I, but the bell rang, and he had to return to class.
They surrounded him. Digimon. All the digimon he ever hurt.
"Your death will be sweet," they said to him. "Slow, bloody...you will scream. You will beg for the mercy you denied us."
Ken awoke with a shout of panic. He squirmed around in his covers, not yet comprehending he was awake, and that cloth and not his own skin bound him.
"Did you have a nightmare?" He hadn't heard his mother enter, but she was there standing over him, trying to calm him with a touch of her hand.
Ken sat up and took a rasping breath. "Yes." He could say no more. His mother hugged him as he wept. She didn't ask what she knew her son didn't want to tell her.
The mother's murmured comforts seemed to sooth him back to sleep, but after she left Ken's eyes opened. "Wormmon?" he begged.
The little digimon emerged from his hiding place. "I knew she would come when you screamed like that," he explained.
Ken stared at him. His mind was so clouded by the pain that he only barely registered his surroundings.
"I had a nightmare, too," Wormmon confessed.
Concern for his digimon roused Ken from his pit of self-hatred. "What about?"
"I dreamed you were the Emperor again. I'm sorry I dreamed that."
"You shouldn't be sorry," Ken said. "You can't be blamed for your worst fear."
"That's not my worst fear."
"What is your worst fear, Wormmon?"
"Losing you."
Ken stood on his balcony, his back pressed against the door. He didn't dare go near the edge; he didn't know what he would do if he were close enough to see over it.
The throbbing pain in his soul that always threatened to spill over and consume him seemed to mock the golden sunset that heralded the coming night, and the accompanying dark dreams.
"Are you okay, Ken?" Wormmon asked.
"Never." The tears began to flow. "I've never been okay, and I never will be. All I want is for the pain to stop!"
A worried frown came to Wormmon's eyes.
"I dreamed you wouldn't stop calling me Master," Ken explained after one of his nightmares woke them both. He never slept through the whole night.
"These things are just your fears; they're not real. Please, try to get some sleep."
Ken closed his eyes again, dreading the next nightmare.
A cliff in front of him beckoned invitingly. He edged toward it, but hesitated. The Presence again. In each dream, it grew stronger.
"Don't."
It had never spoken before. It didn't speak now, exactly, but Ken sensed its meaning. He ignored it, and inched closer to the ledge.
"Don't destroy us both. You don't know your future."
He leaped off, felt the air rush past him, felt the rocks below grow closer, felt them smash through his body...
Then he awoke, knowing for sure (and not entirely happy about the fact) it was a myth that if you die in your dreams you die in reality.
School was miserable. He couldn't focus, couldn't force himself to care about his studies. In class the next day, his notebook was open in front of him, but he couldn't stand to take notes. But he had to write something, or the teacher would ask him what was wrong...
He touched the tip of his pen to the paper, and words seemed to form on their own:
Blacker than hatred,
More sour than sin,
A heart expended...
The ice is thin,
That separates me,
A soul tempest-tossed,
From that cold Sea,
Where such souls are lost.
What was it this time?" Wormmon asked in the middle of the night.
"The digidestined were in danger. I tried to warn them, but they didn't believe me."
"You care about them?" Wormmon inquired with irrepressible surprise.
"They're the best human beings I've ever met. They stopped me. They..." Ken was going to say they saved him, but for what? Was he really saved?
He was alone. Alone in the world, only his pain for company. His pain and her. He sensed the Presence was female, though he had never seen her. No matter where he looked, she was always somewhere just behind him.
"Give up your torment. You're destroying us. Both of us. I don't share your guilt, and I want life."
"I can't live," Ken said. "It hurts too much. The pain won't fade. I deserve death."
"Don't you remember what you said?"
Ken saw the day he'd found Leafmon. "The things I did will never leave me, but I gotta move on with my life!"
"I can't," he said.
Ken sat at his desk in his room. He was supposed to be doing homework, but he couldn't. Instead, he took out a small notebook and applied his pen. "I went to the market with Mom today," he wrote. "I saw people. People buying groceries, people trying to decide which squash to buy or whether to indulge in a treat, people crossing their lives with other people's lives for a moment. I've never looked at people like that. It was beautiful. I would give anything to feel that normal."
He re-read the previous entry in his notebook:
Bloodstained shards of glass,
These things were once my past.
It's hard to cry
From sleepless eyes.
The nights reveal
I will never heal.
Seduced, enticed
By evil Ice.
Frigid, they come
But I'm too numb
To see my fate,
And now it's too late...
They were in danger. The Destined. They faced something monstrous and powerful. They were losing. With all he possessed—his love, his kindness, his pain, his dark powers—Ken reached out and somehow gave them the Golden Digiegg.
"You love your enemies," the shadow woman observed.
"I like them more than I like myself," Ken said. "I don't have room in my heart for love."
She became angry. "You do! You have love! Just look at Wormmon and tell me you don't love!"
Ken wept. "You're right. I do love. I love Wormmon, I love my parents. I love the Digidestined I tried to destroy. Love brings me no peace!"
He saw a flicker of shadow, like black silk moving in wind, then he held a stone in his hand.
"Do you know its name?" the Presence asked.
He observed it: a cluster of white crystal with violet tips. "Amethyst."
"Its name is You Will Smile Again."
Amethyst…the name came from the Greek for "not drunken," for the belief that wine drunk from an amethyst cup wouldn't intoxicate the drinker. Ken recalled a Bible verse: "How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee."
Even in his dream, Ken wondered why he made that connection.
He awoke. It was still dark. The Digidestined...were they really in danger, or was that just another nightmare?
"Wormmon?" he whispered.
"Yes?"
"How did Veemon digivolve to Magnamon? Do you know?"
For an instant, Wormmon stared at him as if he expected him to sprout a cape and whip. Ken saw this look, and Wormmon saw the pained expression on Ken's face, and felt sorry that he had thought Ken would turn evil again, even for a second. "Your power source," he said. "It turned into a Golden Digiegg when Davis touched it. Did you have another nightmare?"
Ken sighed and flopped his head back on the pillow. "I hope so."
And all my days are trances/And all my nightly dreams...
Ken stood in the middle of his balcony, equal distance from the door and the railing. Everything still dripped with the recent rain. A rainbow arched across the city skyline.
Wormmon walked out to Ken. "You didn't wake up last night. Did you have a good dream?"
"No," Ken said. "I actually did wake up, but I chose not to wake you."
Wormmon's eyes shook as he struggled to hold back tears. When would Ken be well again? "I hope you stop having nightmares soon."
Ken's face softened into an expression as close to a smile as he ever came those days. "So do I."
His mother called him in for dinner. He made his parents smile by asking for half a second helping that night.
"Someone came," he told Psyche. "A woman. She appeared in my room. I think she might be a digimon, but I don't know how she could have appeared in my world."
"Frightening," Psyche commiserated. "What are you going to do?"
"What can I do? I can't go back to the digital world."
Psyche floated in front of him. All Ken could distinguish of her was a feminine form of ethereal black, a lambent shadow. "Perhaps you must," she suggested.
Ken peered at her as well as he could. "Who are you?" He asked. He had never thought to ask her before.
"I am you."
"Am I going insane?"
"Do you feel insane?" she retorted with a hint of amusement.
"Actually, I've never felt saner. Is sanity pain?"
"Is pain all you care about? No. Sanity isn't pain. I couldn't live with your pain; it was driving me away. If I left you, you would go insane."
"I see..." He remembered a part of Poe's poem 'Ulalume,' which he spoke aloud: "'Here once, through an alley titanic/Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—of cypress, with Psyche, my soul...' That's what Poe was talking about, isn't it? Psyche comes from the ancient Greek word for 'soul'. Carl Jung believed every man has a female spirit called the anima within him, and every woman has a male spirit, the animus—one contains the other, like the Yin Yang. Anima is the Latin word for 'soul'. That's who you are. And I think I understand why, in ancient Greek mythology, Psyche was the wife of Eros, the God of Love..."
"You're mixing etymology, psychology, mythology, and literary commentary. You are remarkable, you know. When you are happy enough for me to stand you, I will once again become an integrated part of you, and you won't even notice I'm there. I hope that happens sooner, rather than later."
"Me too."
Ken never told anyone about Psyche, not even Wormmon. She made sleep possible and nightmares tolerable.
Not long after venturing into the digital world in search of the mysterious white-haired woman, and having an awkward encounter with the digidestined, Davis paid him a visit in the physical world. He delivered an offer of friendship, which Ken couldn't accept. The visit was confusing, and made his heart ache. He didn't yet realize it was the pain of his heart thawing.
Later, the Destined called on him for help. He watched Aquilamon and Stingmon work together to destroy a control-spire digimon. He took the opportunity to deliver a heartfelt apology, though he couldn't say all he felt. He wanted to leave quickly, but one of the digidestined sent him a message. Yolei told him she couldn't wait for him to join them. For a moment his eyes met hers. He saw her soul. It was warm and welcoming like sunlight. He felt the pain decrease one tiny increment.
"Ken, what is it?"
Tears gleamed on the beautiful boy's face in the midnight gloom. "It was terrible...I saw Yolei...She had a bruise on her cheek. I was angry; I demanded to know who did that to her. She looked right at me and said 'Don't you remember? You gave me this.'"
"Well at least it wasn't as bad as the dream you had that you pushed Davis off the bridge," Wormmon reasoned.
Ken winced. "You had to remind me about that?"
"I'm sorry," Wormmon said. "But these dreams are your fears, Ken, not your wishes, not what you want to do."
It was true, but Ken was very, very afraid. "I couldn't stand to hurt them," he said. "I hope I never see them again."
But he would see them again. They called on his help, and he couldn't refuse. When Veemon and Wormmon DNA digivolved, for a moment Ken felt a connection to Davis; he felt friendship. For a moment...
"I'm afraid," he told Psyche. "I'm terrified of somehow putting them in danger. But I have to help them if I can. The control spires are my creation; I have a responsibility to stop the evil I helped make."
"How do you feel?" Psyche asked. Ken knew she wasn't really changing the subject.
He closed his eyes and examined his heart. "I want..." he said, "I want to feel something besides pain. I want what I've never had. I want friends. I want peace. I want hope."
The shadow whispered in his ear. "If these are what you want, then take them."
"I can't..." He looked at the ground. One single green weed grew between the grey pebbles. "Or maybe I can."
"How was your day at school?" Mrs. Ichijouji asked.
"Fine."
She looked at her son. She missed seeing him smile. Of course, he had never really smiled much, but now he never did.
Ken wanted to smile. He had forgotten how. He didn't even remember what a smile felt like.
"It's Friday," his mother continued. "Would you like to do something this weekend? Go somewhere?"
"No thanks, Mom. There are a few things I have to do."
"Oh. Okay." She tried to hide her disappointment.
Ken put his bowl in the sink. "Thank you for the delicious soup," he said politely.
"You're welcome." She fought back tears and didn't look at her son.
Ken paused at the door to his room and turned back. His face contracted into something that came very close to being a smile. "I love you, Mom."
"I love you, too," she called after him as he vanished into his room The tears spilled over, but now they were tears of joy.
An Ocean of sorrow,
A mountain of pain;
But the Sun brings a rainbow
To scatter the rain.
There is a road
To peace divine,
In from the Cold...
And I see the sign.
Ken knew the poem wasn't very good, but it felt good to write. How stupid of the Emperor that he never liked poetry. When Ken thought of the Emperor now, he felt more pity than guilt.
He went out on the balcony, walked to the edge, leaned against the railing, and admired the view of the city lights at dusk.
Wormmon came out to him. "We're going to the digiworld to destroy control spires tomorrow, right?"
"Yes," Ken replied. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling in his heart--the pain wasn't gone, but it was less acute. "Let's go to bed, Wormmon. Maybe I'll have a good dream tonight."