Disclaimer: If I owned the show it'd be aired opposite Will and Grace and would require one of those "depicts alternate lifestyles" disclaimers. Seeing as it's aired on Fox kids, I clearly don't, so please don't sue.
Author's Notes: Ahhh! This is what happens when Kit tries to write an angsty Takeru, while his friend babbles to him about Nietzsche. It started as a one sided Takedai fic, and became this. Oh yeah, it's got a side dish of meta-fiction too. Within are (takes a deep breath): takedai, kensuke (gasp!), taishiro, and yamachi!
***
"The eternal hourglass of existence is
turned over and over, and you with it,
a grain of dust."
–Friedrich Nietzsche
Numbness. Complete and total numbness was all that he could feel. He had been blind-sighted by a five ton truck and all he could was stand there and stare at Daisuke stupidly. The emotions swirling around inside him didn't quite register yet, and all his mind could do was flashback to a time when he thought that perhaps they were special.
***
It was the hesitant and almost shy why that Daisuke walked up to Takeru that told him something was up. Those adjectives were something that he didn't associate with the red haired boy; they seemed out of character for someone who always was so energetic and exuberant.
"Hey... uh TK, do ya want to go out for a pizza… like after school or something?" The invitation was issued with almost no preamble.
Takeru, who always came when opportunity knocked, didn't hesitate to smile at Daisuke before he answered, "Yeah sure."
"Cool." And with that the boy ran off to his first class of the day.
Perhaps the anticlimactic way that the two began their romantic relationship should have signaled to the blond boy that this was just a normal, although queer, high school relationship. Nothing spectacular happened, there were no storms, no illnesses, no emergencies in the digital world, on the contrary, everything was just peachy.
Takeru always thought that when you met your true love something spectacular happened... perhaps this one time there was an exception.
***
The rain came down in sheets as the storm rocked the city of Odaiba. A blond boy walked through the lonely, rain soaked streets with not a care for his health. He didn't even know where he was going.
I never had him. The chorus rang in his head.
I never had any claim on him. The voice inside wouldn't stop.
He didn't love me. The cold hard fact of it hit him.
He saw that he had reached a bridge. What little traffic there was below zoomed by at a dizzying pace. He looked up into the darkened and stormy sky, and asked, "Why?"
"Couldn't you have given me a little solace? Haven't I done enough?!" He yelled at the heavens, "All I wanted was a little happiness!" At that he broke down and sobbed into the uncaring night.
The blond haired boy leaned over the edge and saw the dazzling tail and headlights of the cars going by and he chuckled. He thought if perhaps their relationship had started here, on a dark and stormy night, the heavens expressing their displeasure with the world, maybe they might have had a chance.
He could have imagined it now, he, the blond angel leaning over the edge of the bridge, on the brink of taking his own life. His knight in shining armor coming at the last possible moment and telling him not to jump, grasping on to his arm, as a flash of lightning illuminated their faces.
It was pathetic of him to think of things like that at that point in time. They were done. Over with.
Never again would he experience the soft, warm comfort of the burgundy haired boy's arms. He would never see that boyish face poised in that one ephemeral moment before climax ever again. All he had left were his memories.
The theater let out a flood of people into the hot, muggy night as the immensely popular action film finished. Despite the fact that the full moon was well up in the sky, the weather was still warm, uncomfortably so with the humidity.
Daisuke talked on to a silent, but smiling Takeru. He was content simply to listen to what his love had to say. As the goggled boy became silent, Takeru looked over and found himself confronted with a sparkling pair of chocolate brown eyes. And in that one shining moment he thought he saw something in Daisuke's eyes. The edges of his vision blurred and the uncomfortable weather was merely reduced to warm weather.
Takeru shook his head to clear the memory. He was wrong, he was horribly wrong. There was never any spark and the weather that night was incredibly unbearable and they had disagreed about the movie, and, and, and... The bearer of hope could not even trust his memories.
Of the two years that the two had together, the chosen child could keep nothing. All that he had was tainted by the underlying truth that his deep and undying affection had never been returned in the same fashion. That someone else, someone else, held that position in Daisuke's own heart.
The boy backed away from the bridge and started to aimlessly wander the city, not caring where he ended up. It was perhaps ingrained memory that found him to the doorstep of Yamato and his father.
It was the sudden and overwhelming need not to feel alone that made him ring the doorbell at that late of an hour. Takeru could always count on his brother in his times of need to lend him an ear, or just a shoulder to cry on.
He could imagine what he looked like to Yamato as he opened his front door; standing there looking like a drowned rat, the storm pouring down behind him, and a look of immense heartbreak on his face.
As Yamato got one good look at his brother he bit immediately led Takeru into the living room and sat him down on the couch.
"What's wrong?" Yamato got directly to the point.
"Dai... Daisuke... we, we broke up" Takeru wiped his nose with his sleeve, and in that moment he looked so agonizingly young and forlorn, the bearer of friendship could not help but feel anger at the boy that broke his brother's heart.
"Ah… come here." Yamato pulled his younger brother towards him, and held him gently as he cried his grief out against his brother's shoulder.
The musician whispered, "Do you want to talk about it?" He could feel his brother's head nod against his shoulder in agreement.
"I w-was walking to Daisuke's to..."
***
The young Takaishi boy looked up at the clouds which shielded the city from the hot sun, and thought to himself that it was a welcome respite from the scorching weather they had of late.
Today was going to be a happy day. The weather was good, he had no homework, and he was going to see Daisuke, just because. Takeru's thoughts of his goggled boyfriend put a smile on his lips, and he couldn't help but speed up his pace to Daisuke's apartment.
He reached the familiar building and trotted up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, walking right to the brass plate proclaiming 1235. The blond boy knocked politely on the door, humming a tune softly to himself. When he didn't receive an answer he tried the knob, finding it uncharacteristically unlocked.
"I don't think he'd mind me letting myself in... He probably has the stereo on too loud to hear the doorbell anyways..." Takeru remarked to himself as the swung the wooden door open.
He was completely unprepared to find his boyfriend engaging Ken Ichijouji in what appeared to be a passionate kiss. The two were pressed up against one arm of the couch, and both their eyes were closed. With some sense of irony, Takeru realized that Daisuke was still wearing the silver bracelet that he gave him.
As Takeru slumped against the wall of the Motimiya living room, all he could manage to choke out was a strangled cry of "Daisuke..."
That snapped Daisuke out of the daze he was in with Ken, and the burgundy haired boy looked over the couch to see his boyfriend, soon to be ex, looking over at him with the expression of a kicked puppy. The two boys entangled on the couch gave each other a look, and they both turned simultaneously to Takeru.
He could feel the icy tendrils of despair wind their way across his body, and in an apartment blocks away, a small crest on a chain broke into two.
Daisuke got up from the couch and tried to say something to Takeru, who had faded into his memories for a moment, before snapping back to attention, and hushing Daisuke.
"Ah... just try to be h-happy, ok?" Takeru held back tears as he ran out the apartment, slamming the door behind him...
***
"...and I sat there! I sat there, outside his door for half an hour, waiting, hoping that he would come out after me!" Takeru was sobbing at that point in his narrative.
"And he never came out! I was going to take him back, I love him more than anything else, I just wanted him back! Oh god... I'm so pathetic."
Yamato responded to the distress in his little brother's voice, and tried to console him.
"Hey, TK, you can't let this thing eat at your soul... you have to learn to move on."
Takeru looked up and stared at his brother with bloodshot eyes.
"Or at least learn to live with the pain." Takeru could clearly see the anguish in his brother's eyes that he carried with him as a constant reminder that he perhaps should have taken a chance. Yamato smiled a bitter smile.
"Happiness doesn't seem to come easy to those in our family." Takeru observed.
"No... that's not true, we just need to go out and find it."
The younger of the two stared at his hands as if they held the answers to his problems.
"I don't know what tell you Takeru, I would go over there right now and beat-up Daisuke if I thought it would help, but it wouldn't. It was a rotten thing that he did to you, cheating like that with Ken, but you can't let him have this much power over your life, it's not healthy." Yamato realized the hypocrisy in his statement, but he hoped that his brother had not.
"Don't give me that brother. You know as well as I do that that's crap. You've been, what, pining over that boy for something like 4 years now? Don't you give me this."
"It's different... you don't understand."
"What's different about it!? You two have more chemistry then he and Koushiro ever had! Why can't you take happiness when it's offered?" Takeru asked angrily of his brother.
"Because I don't want to be the bad guy! Ok!? I don't want to be that dirty little secret, feeling like I have to sneak around. And if I try to win him from Koushiro it would be ugly, and he would always have that little doubt in his mind. I love him TK, I can wait for him."
"Then if you're so sure, why do you have that look in your eyes?" He was referring to that slight sheen of pain constantly in Yamato's eyes.
"I... I was going to do it after the internet battle. Our digimon had DNA digivolved..." Takeru looked down at his hands again, "...and I had felt so close to him. But there was no time after diaborimon had been destroyed, and by the time we got back from grandma's... he and Koushiro… I missed my chance, and I'm paying for it."
"I thought Daisuke was the one..." Takeru buried his head in his brother's shoulder. And all Yamato could do to comfort the lovelorn boy was to give him a shoulder to cry on.
***
"Are you sure this is what you want to do Takeru?" Yamato asked of his brother as they stood in the large terminal in Narita International Airport.
Takeru shoved the satchel back on his shoulder, "It's a bit too late to reconsider now isn't it?" His luggage had already been loaded into the belly of a large 747-400.
"I suppose." He paused for a moment, "But if you don't want to go through with this, I'm sure we can..."
"This is what I need to do, brother."
"Alright." Yamato grudgingly conceded. They had gone over the arguments time and time again. Takeru was set in what he was going to do.
It had come to a surprise to the other digidestined that Takeru had decided to attend college in America. When they had all asked why he was going overseas instead of staying in Japan, he gave some explanation about seeing the world, and broadening his experiences. There had been no awkward questions from the group, none of the others had known about the clandestine relationship between their leader and the child of hope; none had known how he was running because of a broken heart. None except that is, for Daisuke himself.
Takeru remembered how Daisuke had approached him after his little announcement and tried to speak with him, and how he coldly brushed him off.
"Do you understand Yamato? I need… time and space, if not to get over him, at least to learn to live with it, do you understand?" Takeru asked of his brother.
"You have friendship, you need to stay close to him, but I, I need hope, and I can't have any while I'm here." Takeru took one last look at Yamato, his parents, Kari, and Taichi, and walked ahead, into his future.