A/N: Hi! This is for the non-flash bingo challenge and is another little side story to the Light of the Sun series, or the Eclipseverse. If you don't want to go uncover that story right now, the only thing that's really important about that canon is that Hikari and Taichi are ageswapped. Nothing else major comes up. This is for number 136 - item: goggles. Also my first entry into the Female Character Appreciation Competition.
Enjoy and let me know what you think!
As a baby, Hikari had been obsessed with music and photography.
And obsessed was defined back then as teething on photo frames and staring dazedly at the radio for hours on end.
It was the thought that had counted, at least, she thought it had.
But her parents claimed she had never been an ordinary child, and Hikari believed them. Mostly too quiet, making noises that Taichi hadn't when he was her age. She was tempted to consider them exaggerating, her mother had a few dramatic moments of her own to think about.
But surviving a truck accident while suffering from a flu did seem unnatural.
It still didn't explain the goggles.
Nothing explained those.
They were just there.
They were just a thing that she had become aware of like her father's drinking habit on weekends that he didn't have to go into the office, or her mother's odd obsession with the number four. Like how Miko tended to climb up the bunk and flop on her to say her brother had wet himself during the night and how Taichi would wake up mom and dad in tears because she had a nightmare.
They were just a thing.
But she didn't like the goggles.
She had gotten them the year her brother was born.
It was nothing personal, but they didn't... they didn't fit her face. That was the only way to explain it when she held them in her hands. She couldn't say this aloud, not to her smiling grandfather when he had placed them over her tiny palms, and reminded her of the importance of courage.
The man would die in a few more years. She could smell it on him, a perfume of flowers and liquid metal and some scent that didn't have any real clarification. Her brain didn't know the words to say this, and the thought of it made her cry. So she held the goggles in her hands and thanked him like she was taught to do. Hikari remembered his hand on her head, caught between baby soft and earth calloused, and his fond smile while looking at her mother.
"Those will give someone strength. Hold onto them until then."
She wished she had been a wise person like her grandfather back then, because she had had no idea what that could mean, no idea if it should mean something. She stared at them when no one was looking, and wore them around her neck. There were pokes and prods and a few teasing comments, but Hikari didn't really mind them. True, she hadn't wanted them, but they were a gift from grandpa, and they would be important someday.
When her brother had been brought home from the hospital, the first thing he had done when in the vicinity of the goggles was drool on them.
It was kind of disgusting, but funny too, in its own, confusing way.
She had an idea of who the goggles were meant for then, but kept them anyway, Just to be safe.
He never failed to prod them, or fidget them on Hikari's neck, or try to steal them. Hikari sometimes pushed him over so he wouldn't tickle her chin.
But she never handed them over. The time simply wasn't right.
The next time she saw her grandfather, Hikari let him pet her head and adjust the goggles and grin at the sad look on her face and the possessive way she gripped her whistle.
"You know what to do, Hikari-chan. You always have, and always will."
She did know. Hikari walked over and placed them over her brother massive fluff of hair and pulled down the strap until the mess looked more contained than it had five minutes ago and smiled.
Yes. That was where they belonged. In a much better spot than her neck.
Her grandfather had mussed her hair one more time and Hikari stayed by his side and listened to him talk of a sad time before her parents were born and heard Taichi coo nonsense to his toy dinosaur about the goggles on his head and how he was going to fly over his sister's head like an annoying bird.
The next day Hikari bought a small camera.
Her neck was cold.