A/N:Hi! Still working on WIPs, a bit slowly, I'll admit, but I am working on them. So, I'm fulfilling challenges at the same time. This is for today's prompt at the RLt Green Room, Write a fanfic trope,and I chose the trope gender flip. Monday's prompt will be up soon. Like, once I load it onto the doc manager soon. XD Not Digimon, but there will be another Digimon thing up sooner or later, like Ours. Might be busy Friday but I'll make a serious effort to post it. I also dedicate this fic to reminiscent-afterthought because Remi is awesome! Go Remi!
Side note: Saki, in a different canon, will show up again, just not in this. This was just me playing with character ideas.
-She's a girl, and that's okay, because Akari knows her friend will mean well no matter what they are or what they wear. AU, transgender character, pairing hints, manga canon
her pretty, pretty music
Akari knew it the day they met.
They were little, but her clothes weren't very baggy and her modesty was too high and she didn't smell like any of her brothers.
So when she asked Taiki, because she was still Taiki then, "Are you a girl?" she had gotten a relieved smile and that was about all.
That was all Akari had really needed as an answer, because they were five and six and the simple things were okay.
She had to pretend it wasn't okay of course, or they would both get clobbered.
Girls weren't allowed to be like Taiki was then, all contradictions and angles and rough patches of finding yourself. It wasn't normal. It wasn't a boy thing, though, now was it?
Most boys didn't play the violin with an intensity equal to sports either. Unless they were soft boys, and those got hit.
Taiki didn't get hit.
She fought back. And that said it all.
To the rest of the world, she was a boy.
Akari knew better. She decided to protect her friend from the stupid world. Because people didn't understand the pretty music she had.
And that was enough of a reason, for a seven-year old.
She liked the violin.
Even though she was flighty, Taiki liked it a lot. Adventures and music were the two things to associate with her, because if she wasn't pulling people to run, she was guiding people to sit and singing to no person in particular. She liked everybody and running behind her, it was difficult to not do the same.
Though despite all that, Akari thought she didn't seem to like herself all that much. She was never satisfied with what dream was in her head at the time and it was rather funny sometimes to see the ways she would make it more grand, more ridiculous.
Even if it gave Akari a heart attack once in a while, the fact that she could laugh about it later was the best.
No one ever noticed that these adventures were lead by a woman.
Akari hated that.
Taiki didn't care.
"Doesn't matter if it's all fun, right?"
Akari mostly disagreed, because if she did, Taiki would pout at her and she could pretend to sulk right back and get a song. Songs were nicer than people.
They also told a better lie.
People were fascinated by her.
Akari didn't see the point. A girl that walked with her head held high despite looking nothing like what she would be, because the surgery and the changes took time, and until that time, this sort of thing didn't matter.
But perhaps they heard the thing that she knew existed. Perhaps they heard the music.
It didn't matter. Taiki did manly things anyway, because they were expected of her to be done.
Her mother didn't care, since she wasn't one of those people who worried about those kinds of things. She just worried about her child's happiness and their determination and their health. As far as Taiki's mother is concerned, that is what matters.
To Taiki, that was all the more reason in the world to go through with it.
Until she made friends... and it wasn't.
Until Tatsuya was hurt... and suddenly she wouldn't talk about it anymore.
Because that was a secret, special dream and Akari knew seeing someone hurt like that for something as simple as running together was the world's way of saying how badly she would hurt people by wishing to be herself and it was best to give up now.
The trouble was, even though things were so simple at this moment, Akari didn't know how to tell her she was wrong.
Because maybe she wasn't. Because people wouldn't approve and life would be hard and scary and she did not wish that pain on her friend who never wished pain on anybody else, even when she disliked them.
Despite that fact, Akari would still stay over, and still call her a she when the two of them were alone and when the room was quiet but for the sound of the recording of a violin that Taiki had stopped playing, Akari would whisper "Saki" like a prayer.
Whisper her name and hope, someday, she would be able to answer to it.
Akari hated Nene.
Because Nene was everything Saki wanted to be (and now she thinks her name is Saki, even though it would never be acknowledged) and now Taiki was just left there staring with confusion and clear envy and dismay because now she was regretting being so weak. She would never say so, but she did have regrets and fears and sad moments because she felt her dream was wrong.
Hmph.
Saki was better than that. She could still sing like a bird.
And she wasn't alone.
Akari could easily sense that Nene was alone. Had accepted that she was alone.
It was a pitying thought, but not enough to not hate her.
Saki hated no one, except herself.
Which was stupid.
Stupid Nene.
Stupid Shoutmon, for calling them here in the first place.
Stupid Saki, for giving up.
Everyone was a bunch of idiots.
Kiriha was a fool.
Bravery was the hardest thing to have.
Power was easy.
A kid with a squirt gun could have power.
But the courage to accept it was something else.
It wasn't easy to have that. Not for Saki, who had dreamed a lot of dreams that she had realized hurt so many without them noticing. Not for Nene, who had been buried under the weight of her one dream so much that it had crushed her.
They would be brave someday.
Kiriha didn't see that. She would make him see it.
So he and Saki could stop fighting already.
"Taiki-shan, are you a girl?"
The others gape, but Akari laughed behind her head. Saki had glanced at the younger child, who was all tomboy innocence and cloudless skies.
It wasn't the weighing options look. It was a dreamer's look.
She smiled a moment later, nodded, and said nothing.
And Kotone sat back on her Mushmon stool and looked pleased with herself, while Zenjirou and Kiriha both stared in open-mouthed disbelief and Akari laughed at their faces. Kotone was amused as well, but probably for a different reason.
"Thought so," she said, and Saki raised an eyebrow. "You look like you aren't you yet."
Saki, puzzled, nodded again. When thinking of herself, Saki spoke less and thought more. It was just how things were with her, or how things had become with her over time.
Shoutmon only shrugged. "Makes no difference. Still gonna rock."
Saki agreed.
So did Akari.
Boy or girl, there was still the pretty music.
But she wanted to be a girl, and that was all that mattered to Akari.
Passion was not a pink color, unless it was the flush of cheeks and love and lack of modesty. Passion was red and bloody and full of fire and it was what filled Saki's songs when she thought of them, what created golden hope as bright as the sun.
That was why Akari was able to be brave. They had done all this for one Digimon's dream and to try and dream their own. She wasn't sure what her own was... but she wanted to see her friend succeed.
To give her confidence in her own, whatever that may be.
She wanted a future, and that was enough of a thing to desire.
She would see it in bright red and gold and rainbow bursting from a prism, and everything would be all right.
No matter what.
In the end, music filled the worlds up with hope and years later, when there was nothing to stop them from dreaming, she had dreamed so much that there was now a girl at her side frowning at her hairpin.
"It won't stay in your hair."
"Then put it in yours," she huffed.
"It will look horrible."
"I'm not trusting your fashion sense."
Pouting, because girls just pouted, was enough to make Akari sigh. "Give it here." The plastic flower was relinquished and Akari fiddled irritably. "Still taking care of you..."
"No more death wrestling moves," Saki would inevitably beg of her and Akari would laugh and laugh until they saw Tatsuya and Zenjirou and the others.
Tatsuya would complain that they were competing separately now and Kotone would laugh at Zenjirou because his antics never got old and Nene would wrap Kiriha about her little finger and laugh about it.
And Saki would push her into Tatsuya's way and laugh at them like they were the only ones who didn't know and give a look that was too many years of male for their taste.
And the song would play, over and over, until their hearts repeated it just the same way.