A/N: Hihi! Tis an Aiko and remi, reporting in with a new oneshot! Because we cannot resist the suffering.
Warnings: death, somewhat graphic violence, implied underage drinking, unhappy decisions, etc. Please leave a review on if the rating is well deserved! As well as anything else!
For - New Year's Mini-Advent: Roll a dice three times. The first is your minimum. The second is your maximum. The third is how many zeroes you add to your min and max. (Advent Calendar 2015) (2,5,3 = 2,000-5,000), The Sinnoh League Challenge - general version, Verity lakefront Part 1.1 - write about something happening that the character is not prepared for, Diversity Writing Challenge, f28 - fic that is M rated, and (Digimon Dawn Remake Challenge, registration task - write about a male character)
Different Kinds of Yellow
It was the rose that was doing it.
As his own wilted and rotted off of his chest, the roots began to burrow deeper into the flesh of Kudo Taiki, suckling at every bit of his life like a leech instead of a fake isn't green anymore, but puke-yellow, and darkening by the second. Taiki's face remained placid in sleep, even as the roots continued to expand.
He shouldn't be afraid. After all, he wouldn't really die. His account would just get deleted and Taiki would wake up in the Human World, safe and sound. That was the truth. It was the only way for him to win.
So then why was his now free heart pounding painfully in its cage?
That was the pain that came with reality. He knew it. He recognised it - the hammering when their grandmother had been on her deathbed, her lungs baby rattles shaking in rhythm with the monitors. There'd been a lot of things, and a lot of wires to measure them: heart rate, rhythm, blood pressure, oxygen saturation - and of course the oxygen saturation was the worst because she was pretty much choking on her air instead of taking it slowly in… And he was choking on his victory now, was he? Choking because that rose was now digging its roots deep and sucking the life out like a vampire or the reaper of dreams. And then the strings will cut and Taiki will be taken out of the game like he should never have been in the first place, and that would be the end of this long and painful fight -
And yet it still hurt. It should be the painless, seamless, portion of the fight: the victory grog. Or maybe that was why they drunk at festives: those adults who forgot children had their own grief to feel. Maybe that was why they cut the necks and hollowed out the skulls and left the brain pierced on the battlement and then stuffed the skull with sake so strong they'd be comatose till mid-morning.
His fingers and throat both itched for his father's secret stash.
The wheeze behind him startled Yuu from one morbid thought and into another. He turned to see decay. He turned and saw Damemon slumped against a wall, trying to smile through blood. He wants to be encouraging but all Yuu can see from him is pain. Why try to be strong? Why now?
"Damemon," he croaks. His voice is already swelling with blood tears and he thinks his head might burst from holding it all in. "He lied to me, didn't he? This isn't a game."
Damemon's smile widened,somehow still pearly white. "Oh, Yuu-sama," he sighed, voice heavy and wan. "You know the answer to that."
His throat was parched.
"But maybe…" His friend stumbled for the words. "Maybe you can still be a hero."
"How?" he wondered, despairingly loud. There were sharp intakes of breath that danced in the darkened space: his opponents who were scattered ash now that their leader had fallen. But if it wasn't a game, where would they wind up? And where would Taiki wind up, with that rose leaching each and every drop of life from his form.
It was so beautiful in the world of the game. Now it was nightmarish: a leech he longed to stomp into non-existence.
The Digimon let out a breathless sigh. It was the sound of an open balloon on its last spin. Yuu's lungs briefly considered catching fire. "You have to choose." Damemon lifted himself onto stubby feet. "You can see this, Yuu-sama, no, Yuu. You can see that we're both dy-"
"No!" A feeble cry, but it was loud enough for Yuu to hope it made the truth not what it was.
"We are dying, Yuu." Damemon's voice and eyes were firm, despite the clear lines of exhaustion in his face. "I am not sure which one of us is going much faster than the other, but you can't save both of us in this place. You need to get one of us to the portal SkullKnightmon is opening. You have to choose. Your friends are busy covering us, aren't they?"
Friends. Kiriha-san. Nee-san. His friends. Right…. Why were they wasting their time with him when Taiki-san was wasting away behind them. Of course, he held the key. He'd always held the key: to leave through that hole - but if he had that key, why couldn't he use it for everyone! Or no-one, or just however many people he chose… It wasn't fair. Games were fair. This wasn't.
Why had they accepted the game in the first place if they'd known it wasn't one? If they'd known it would end like this? Why?
And why had he believed so easily it was a game? Why? He wouldn't have been able to come this far without that belief. He shouldn't have even had to. How many times had Nee-san cried for him. Screamed after him. And Taiki-san and Kiriha-san as well.
Even if it was a game, how could he have made his Nee-san cry like that?
"Aww, don't cry, Yuu-san."
He looked up at the voice, at the sweet, blood-curdled taste of it. He hadn't noticed it before now, just how ruined the sweetness was. It made him nauseous. Once it would have been a comfort. "SkullKnightmon."
"Indeed. Don't you know, Yuu?" The knight could not smile, which honestly made his voice worse. "True heroes, they have to make impossible choices sometimes. You're moving forward. Now you just have to choose."
Damemon glared. "I know… I know what choice you would prefer."
The knight waved his lance hands. "For me, either would be satisfactory, so long as our General can continue fighting to save the world. Isn't that what is most important?"
Save the world? Why did those words sound so sinister, so cutting, now? Why was he holding a cutlass when he'd been holding the hero's staff before? Where had the game gone wrong, that he became the villain who'd killed the hero instead of the hero who defeated the evil at the top of the world. Why why why - Hot tears scalded his cheeks and he wanted to bubble, pop and cry.
"No." Damemon was moving. That yellow blur was moving, and Yuu's breath was choking him suddenly because he was crumbling but still moving.
"Stop!" The words burst from his lips, and why did he even care? Damemon was always watching him. Teasing, sometimes. Advising, sometimes. Listening, always. But Yuu had SkullKnightmon. Yuu hadn't needed that yellow blob who couldn't fight. Except he did. He really did. It was SkullKnightmon he didn't need: the witch in a prince's gown that had led him into the swamp.
True heroes needed to make impossible choices. Maybe that was true. Maybe all of what SkullKnightmon said was true but it was all dizzyingly wrong now, because this wasn't the hero's victory scene, this wasn't a game and that was the biggest thing he'd been lied to about, the biggest lie he'd believed.
It wasn't a game and everyone was going to be crushed in hell because he'd locked them there.
"No."
Damemon, what are you saying "no" to? But, of course, Damemon could not read his mind, his spiralling despair. He was talking to SkullKnightmon. That question he'd almost forgotten about, and hadn't been directed to him anyway. "Yuu's happiness is the most important thing." And the blob was at his feet, hugging his ankle, gazing up at him but Yuu couldn't make out his eyes through the blur of tears. "Don't cry, Yuu."
"I'm not." Except, of course he was. He was always crying really, so pathetic of him. Heroes don't cry. Heroes wipe their tears and fight. But heroes didn't fight for their own happiness. Then maybe he shouldn't be one because the answer of who was right was obvious and he didn't want to take it.
What was easy was Damemon. With Damemon perhaps they could make a new beginning from underground, stop Bagramon in a grandiose last stand that would go down in Digital World history in the new world.
What was right was Taiki-san, who had bested him this whole game and gone after him with unwavering strength and poise. He was the real hero, the selfish one who won despite the game being rigged. But they were both dying. Damemon could still move. Wouldn't he be better?
Yuu didn't know how to answer himself. He was a monster for thinking about it like this. Damemon shouldn't touch him with his earnest loyal hands.
"He seems to believe otherwise," SkullKnightmon mused. "Don't you, Yuu?"
He wanted the world to stop spinning so much, but it refused. This wasn't a ride you could get off of. It wasn't a game you could start over, but reality and reality couldn't be conveniently tossed away or rewritten.
"Yuu, please…" Please what? Save Damemon. He'd lost the question somewhere. There was another question: who to save, and that one burned at his mind and why was that choice with him anyway? Was that the price for victory? And why could he only have one? He'd won. He should have whatever he wanted as the prize and he would stamp his foot and scream at the unfairness of it all if reality didn't have its noose around his neck and wasn't choking him.
"What will make you happy?" And Yuu stared sharply at Damemon because how could Damemon be asking such a thing when he was falling apart? But there was SkullKnightmon behind him, his face twisting into annoyance, then anger, then a lance driving towards his foot and then a snake biting it and shoving it aside.
"Yuu!" That was his sister. Why was she helping him now, when she'd seen what he'd done: killed a human being and wasn't that a very bad thing to do? So why was she helping him. "You - stay away from him!" And she threw herself and her digimon at SkullKnightmon, and Damemon's grip on his ankle slipped.
Yuu caught him, realising only then he'd crouched down to cover him. When had he done that? Why?
Damemon smiled. He could see that, even though the film of tears. "Thank you, Yuu."
"What… what are you talking about?" Thanking him? What was he thanking him for? What had Yuu actually done in the end that was useful?
"You've done your best, Yuu," his friend said. "You've been really smart, and a good friend to me. You've cared so much."
Don't lie. I've been so selfish and you know that.
"You've done things that are no good, but this is your chance to make a bit of it right. You just can't do what I know you want to do right now."
Yuu swallowed. Damemon knew. There wasn't a choice and he knew it. He wanted to pretend he had one, like the texts in the choose-your-own-adventure novels. The real world didn't work that way. It couldn't. But he didn't want to do this, couldn't that be enough?
There was no sound now except his noisy breathing and that wasn't fair, was it? Where was Nene, screaming at SkullKnightmon. Where was Taiki-san, clinging to his last breaths - or was it already too late? Of course it was. No choices. No choices at all. Even the illusion that he could save one of them had been a farce. He laughed.
Someone grabbed him by the shoulders and he hung limply, holding onto Damemon like a rag doll as he was shook. 'You idiot!'
There was a noise from Nene now (and he knew his sister so well he'd pick out her voice with any sort of voice modifier), something that sounded like it was strangled between indignation and resigned acceptance. Did she think her friend shaking him would get all the stuffing in his brain and heart out, and put the rightful organs back in? He wasn't the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz that could be stuffed again with money and made richer from the experience of it. He was just a stupid little kid and the train of the world had run away and into the muck.
Taiki-san was dead. Damemon was dying and refused to be saved. The rest of them were trapped, to be swallowed by eternal hell and the only winner was SkullKnightmon, sneering at them from the shadows that were like a protective shroud.
It was over. Everything was over. Even if he pretended to choose now, none of it would matter. Not when there was no one with the heart to save anyone or anything.
"Hey, answer me, will you?" The person shaking him went back at it again, and it made him open his eyes. Aonuma Kiriha, blue so much darker, so much stronger than his own, stared back at him. Yuu looked away without thinking and was jostled back again. "Are you just giving up now?"
Yuu didn't want to speak, not ugly words, not the truth. How could they all still believe there was a chance? How, with their main hero, the protagonist, lying dead, right there? "What are we supposed to do?"
"Fight on, obviously!" Kiriha shook him again, more than he needed to really, Yuu's brain was already jelly at best. "We haven't all died yet. There's still something we can do!"
"That won't bring back Taiki-san." The sulk in his voice would have been slapped out at any other time.
"D-Doesn't have to." Taiki's voice was a croak, so ready to just pop out of the vocal chords. "I'm still alive…"
What? How? The rose was still there. The rose was still sucking him into death. What was the point of gathering hope back after all of this, after nothing can save him. Nothing but Yuu's own choice.
That was what Damemon wanted, wasn't it? That was the right thing to do: he had to save the world. He was the hero, wasn't he? Or he was just a washed-up villain on a redemption arc, and clearly failing it?
"Yuu," Damemon said in a whisper. Taiki didn't speak at all, only shut his eyes and breathed slow, gentle puffs. He was trying to save his air.
Yuu's eyes watered. He wanted to find his father's cabinet, now more than ever. "We-We have to save Taiki-san," he heard himself say. And he hated it.
Damemon wearily took his hand and smiled."It's all right, Yuu."
No, it wasn't.
Rose petals dusted the pair of them. Taiki-san's rose, setting him free from the slow death he'd earned. Covering them instead, and turning white like ash. The ashes of a funeral pyre he'd lit under Damemon's feet.
"Goodbye." He was still smiling. Happy - and happy for what?
Yuu didn't tell him goodbye back. He didn't deserve to. He cried instead, until the ash coloured petals dispersed into the drops. Until Damemon had dispersed as well.
Arms were around him, suddenly. And when had Kiriha-san let him go? They were Nee-san's hands. How she'd held him when their grandmother died. How she'd held him every time he cried. She didn't say he'll be back. He didn't say she'll be back. Yuu knew that much at least: the dead stayed dead.
'Here's the end of the Hell Field.' And SkullKnightmon slowly clapped. The end of a tragic tale where the hero came out on top in the end, and no-one would remember his failure after: why Damemon was gone, why Taiki-san had almost died, why his top button had come off because Kiriha-san had grabbed him too roughly, how everyone had tear stains on their faces. Things were as they should be, how Damemon had wanted them, how, in a way, Yuu had wanted them too...but now he knew he hadn't wanted to lose Damemon too. That was just the price for his foolishness, for playing the wretched game.