It's for friends like these
That sparrows fly
That songbirds sing
And breezes sigh
Friends Like These
By Meow
Yolei sighed and set her chin on her hand, peering at her worksheet with a frown. "I just don't get it," she said.
Kari, who sat at the Kamiyas' kitchen table with her friends, glanced over at Yolei and smiled sympethetically. "Having trouble?" she asked. As Yolei nodded Kari glanced down at her friends homework. "You've almost got the hang of it. . ." she said, and started helping the glum girl.
Davis sighed from the other side of the table. "If you guys are going to talk can you go do it in another room?" he asked rudely.
Yolei glanced up. "Chill, Davis," she said. "She's just helping me with my homework."
Davis glared at her. "Do you have to be so loud?"
Yolei lifted an angry eyebrow, but before she could shoot back an angry reply, TK turned and glanced at Davis.
"Maybe you should take a break, Davis," he said. "I don't know why you're taking English this early on but you're getting really stressed out. And it all seems really advanced."
Davis grabbed his three books and stood. "I'm going home," he said coldly, and left.
Kari winced as the door slammed shut behind him. "What's the matter with him?" she asked TK and Yolei.
Yolei and TK exchanged glances. "It probably has to do with Ken," Yolei said.
"You mean. . .what Sora told us?" Kari asked. "I thought she wasn't sure about it though."
TK shook his head. "She's not," he said, glancing at Davis' vacanted seat. "But it's the only thing that makes since. Ken can speak English, too, and Davis probably wants a way to talk to him without his family eavesdropping on them."
Yolei sighed. "I feel so bad for him," she burst out suddenly. "Everytime I hear someone making some stupid gay remark it makes me so mad I could just hit them."
Kari nodded. "I know," she said. "I don't think that there's anything we can do for him, though."
Gatmon leapt on the table, her long tail swishing in the air. "I think we should stop talking about Davis," she said. "It's not polite."
TK glanced at the little cat digimon. "We know it's not polite, Gatomon," he said. "But if there's a way to help him then we have to figure out what it is."
"Them," Yolei said. "If there's a way to help them both. Ken has to be confused about the whole thing as well."
Kari looked suprised. "I don't think Ken's messed up about it," she said.
Gatomon sighed. "Guys. . ."
"We know, Gatomon," Yolei replied. "It's not polite."
Gatomon sighed again. "Fine then," she said snippily. She jumped off the table and flounced to Kari's room, crawling under the bed and curling up.
So what if they were determined to meddle themselves in an affair that Ken and Davis wished to keep secret? Gatomon, for one, knew that Davis was gay, because she'd heard it from Veemon. But she wasn't going to nose into the humans lives if they didn't want her to.
Humans were so puzzling. Gatomon thought about Patamon and Veemon. Okay, so maybe digimon were puzzling too. But humans were cruel, and even other humans admitted to that much. Gatomon had spent much of her early life wandering, lost, about the digital world, friendless and alone. But even then, when she was just the right size for a hungry digital moster or being tricked and manipulated into service with Myotismon, she had never seen the depths of cruelty that humans had.
Digimon didn't drive one another to death. Gatomon remembered when Kari had come home a few weeeks ago and told Gatomon, tearfully, that a girl at school had killed herself. After watching the news, Gatomon had discovered that the girl had left a note for her parents in which she blamed them for hating her, and she blamed her father most of all, for all the things that he had done to her.
No digimon could ever hate, truly hate, hate with enough passion that there was no minscule speck of mercy, none of them could ever hate a child to drive that child to a painful death. The girl had hung herself.
Gatomon shivered. In spite of herself she could almost see Kari coming home one day, sitting on the couch, and crying, saying that Davis was dead, Davis was gone. Gatomon could see the trauma that would etch itself into Veemon's familiar features.
No. It will never happen.
She left her safe haven and went to the window. Outside, Patamon was asleep in a tree. Gatomon jumped and landed on a brach beside him. He woke up as the entire limb shook unsteadily.
"Whoa-oa!" he said, hovering an inch or so in the air till the rocking stopped. "What's the matter, Gatomon?"
Gatomon sighed. "What do you think of humans?"
Patamon looked suprised. "Humans? Well, I suppose they're all right. TK is human, after all."
"TK and the others are the exception, not the rule, Patamon," Gatomon said. "Don't you ever watch the news?"
Patamon shook his head. "Why should I? It's always the same stuff."
Gatomon nodded. "That's it! It's always the same. Humans never stop."
Patamon glanced at Gatomon's downturned face. "What's the matter? Did something bad happen?"
"So do you think humans are rotten too?" Gatomon pressed, ignoring Patamon's question.
Patamon shook his head. "Of course not!"
"Patamon!"
"Shhhhh, someone's going to hear us."
"I don't care!" Gatomon was angry. "How can you say that they're all right? Don't you know what they do to each other? For no reason at all!"
Patamon sighed and glanced up at his friend. "Can I tell you a story, Gatomon?"
Gatomon blinked. This was unexpected. "All right."
"You have a part in the story, but you don't even know it. Right before we found Kari as the eighth digi-destined, TK and all of us were brought into this world. I would watch TV with TK when his mom was at work a lot. And I thought the same thing that you do, that humans are awful and wicked and everything.
"But then something changed. It was during the fight with VenomMyotismon. Right when Kari and TK told us that we had to shoot Matt and Tai with our arrows."
Gatomon nodded as she remembered those panic filled moments.
"And then it happened." Patamon's voice took on a note of wonder. "I was looking down at Matt, and he was looking up at me, and he was afraid. I could see all the doubt and fear in his eyes. And then -" Patamon smiled. "And then Tai said something, and they linked hands. And then when Matt glanced back up at me, he wasn't afraid anymore."
Gatomon felt tingly. "But what does that have to do with anything?"
"That miracle that Gennai told us about; it happened right then. Humans might seem terrible, but underneath it all, they're really incredibly strong."
"That doesn't make up for what they do," Gatomon whispered.
"No, it doesn't. But as long as there are friends like Matt and Tai, and all the others in this world, then someday all the bad things in the world will be replaced by good things. We just have to believe in our friends." Patamon's voice dropped to a whispered. "Just like Matt and Tai, all we have to do is believe."
It's for friends like these
That duty calls
That angels fly
And angels fall
(So. . .how'd ya like it? Please reveiw it! It's hard to get up the energy to keep writing when it seems like no one likes your work! ---Meow)