a/n: I didn't intend for this chapter to turn out so long, but at least now it's at a decent stopping point. Hurray!
ALSO—if Ken's thoughts toward Ryo in this chapter seem a little...uh, bizarre to you, don't worry, they're not really his. After this, the creepy-weirdness-brainwhatever goes away for a long, long time, I think, so don't worry about it for now. It'll all make sense eventually.
I hope.
Ken knew he wasn't supposed to go into his brother's room.
Technically speaking, he wasn't even supposed leave his bed. His parents had finally taken him to the family physician a few days ago, roughly a week after his return from the Digital World—long enough for them to notice he wasn't acting right. They might've done it sooner, if they'd been paying closer attention, but they never paid that close attention to Ken. Only Osamu, the perfect son, had their parents' undivided attention for his model behavior. Osamu had scoffed openly at Ken when he saw his younger brother's subdued attitude, in the days following the incident with the Digivice upon his return home. Osamu thought Ken was only acting moody because of the scolding he'd gotten, for touching his brother's belongings without permission.
He's just sulking, Osamu had said dismissively, not at all caring who heard, inscrutable behind his glasses. Leave him be. We already settled the matter amongst ourselves; Ken will get over it whenever he's ready to behave.
However, it became obvious quickly enough that Osamu had, for once, been wrong in his assumptions. While it was no exaggeration to say that Ken was upset, maybe even heartbroken, that Osamu had yelled at him for touching his Digivice, that alone didn't explain the near-constant agony that now stabbed at the back of Ken's neck. Or the fact that Ken was always dead exhausted, even before he got out of bed in the morning. Or the reason why he was having traumatic, horrific nightmares every evening without fail, complete with screams awoke the entire Ichijouji household, or the disturbing weight loss he'd suffered in the span of just a few short days.
Ken didn't know what to tell the rest of his family, or the doctor for that matter. He didn't think it would make any of them feel better, to hear about how he had already spent weeks recovering in the Digital World under the care of Wormmon and Gennai. Or how he was actually MUCH better now than he'd been before, directly after Millenniummon's final attack left him horribly sick and injured to the point of debilitation—or that, at one point during his recovery, everyone present at his bedside had been truly afraid that Ken was going to die.
Already, he was beginning to question to himself, as to whether or not his adventure in the Digital World had even actually happened. The memories were growing more and more indistinct each passing day. Only Wormmon's face still shone clearly in his mind, during those times when he strained himself to remember.
Despite his uncertainty, however, something had woken Ken up from his fitful nap today and disturbed the bed rest he'd been prescribed by the family physician. As soon as his eyes opened, Ken felt a lurching, exhilarated sensation in his chest and the back of his neck, a feeling that resembled nothing he'd ever experienced before. Something was calling him, in the direction of Osamu's room. It had to do with the other world. The Digital World. He knew he shouldn't go into Osamu's room. Last time, Osamu had yelled at him, even hit him. Ken wanted to be a good boy like his brother told him. But the urge to investigate the bizarre feeling was simply overpowering.
Ken lay wide-eyed in bed another moment before slowly sitting up, gathering the energy to move. Immediately he regretted it, as a distant pounding began at his temple from the blood rushing into his head.
"Ngnn…" he moaned wearily, struggling to pull his thin blankets off. With some effort, he staggered out of bed toward the door, walking out into the hallway.
Nobody was home except for him. Ken's parents were both busy at work, and Osamu was taking a placement test at the local university despite the fact that it was still summertime. Ken gritted his teeth in unconscious anger at the thought of his brother's genius, how much better he was, and this resentment banished away the last remains of his doubt.
Recovering some of his strength through sheer force of will, Ken made his way down the hall to Osamu's room, one hand lightly placed against the wall to maintain his balance.
When he got to the door, he tentatively turned the knob and opened it. From the entryway, he could see that Osamu had left his computer on—the light from the screen flickered eerily in the empty room, seeming oddly out of place.
Without warning, the pain in Ken's neck suddenly intensified. He fell heavily against the doorframe, shaking, with a swallowed cry of pain. His head and heart pounded hard with blood and adrenaline, his whole body trembling with shock and anxiety. What had that been for?
Before Ken had time to think on it, a voice suddenly came from the computer, calling him by name:
"Hey! Ichijouji!" the voice said cheerfully, maddeningly familiar yet still somehow unknown. "Ken, it's me—Akiyama Ryo! Is that you?"
Ken's head snapped up. The tingling sensation in his neck suddenly spiked, not with pain but something else, a jolting electric thrill than ran all along the nerves of his body. He pulled himself from the wall at once, feeling more energized than he had in weeks, and the pounding in his head seemed to lessen.
He knew that voice. Ken couldn't remember exactly, but he was certain that the person speaking through the monitor was someone he knew. Someone important to him. Dreamlike, he walked toward the computer, eyes widening as he recognized the face of the person that was lit up behind it. The grinning boy was older than Ken, instantly familiar, and his name hovered uncertainly on the tip of Ken's tongue…but for some reason, Ken found he couldn't place him. The stranger saved him the embarrassment of acknowledging this by speaking up first.
"Hi, Ken," the boy called cheerfully from the monitor, seemingly quite pleased to meet. "There's something I need to tell you, kind of fast..."
Hearing the stranger call him again by name brought Ken's memory flooding back in a rush. He took a step back, dizzy from it. "R-Ryo?" he managed, swaying in place before running up to the desk to grip both sides of the monitor in his hands. "Ryo, oh my gosh—it's you, you're alive! Ryo"
"'Course I'm alive," the older boy said, a faint smirk playing on his lips. Teasing him. "I'm the undefeatable, Legendary Tamer Ryo, remember? No evil digimon could ever be strong enough to kill me."
Ken gaped at him, then caught sight of something else on the screen. "Is that a DigiTama?" he whispered in awe, pointing at the grey-colored egg in Ryo's arms. A torrent of memories flooded his mind from the Digital World. How could he have ever doubted that it was real?
Ryo gave the barest of chuckles. "Yup. Say hello to Monodramon, my latest digimon partner—for real this time. Not just somebody else's on a loan." The older boy's smile quickly faded, and he grew serious. "Listen, Ken. There's something I wanted to talk to you about, but there's not much time."
"What is it, Ryo?" Ken asked him, lost. When he'd woken up from his illness in the Digital World, finally, Gennai had said that Ryo only left Ken's bedside because of a new threat that required his skill as a tamer. But then, none of them had heard from him again when he disappeared. Did Ryo need Ken's help again, fighting another evil digimon?
Ken wasn't supposed to use Osamu's Digivice anymore...
"I'm going to be leaving this world very soon," Ryo said calmly, the words driving all other thoughts from Ken's mind. "The place I'm going isn't the Earth we know, or the Digital World—at least, not ours. It's a lot further than that, and once I'm gone, you won't be able to follow me. Neither will Gennai, or any of the others. I don't really know if I'll ever be able to come back."
Ken stared at him, uncomprehending. Leaving? Ryo was leaving?
Suddenly, a renewed wave of blinding pain shot out from the the back of Ken's neck, making him gasp aloud. Slamming one arm to the desk for balance, the other shot up to grip at the worst part of the injury, clutching at skin that was badly inflamed from weeks of him digging into it. His wide, horrified eyes stared down into nothing below, unseeing.
"You're leaving me again?" he heard himself demanding loudly, the sound frantic and ragged in his own ears. "You're going away? Ryo?"
"It's not like that, Ken," Ryo said quickly, sounding pained. He seemed to have mistaken the younger boy's disproportionate response for grief instead of physical pain. "It's something I have to do, for my own sake. There's nothing left for me here in this world, and it just wouldn't be the same anymore, going home again like nothing ever happened. After all that took place with Millenniummon…you understand why I can't go back, don't you, Ken?"
For a moment, Ken thought, recalling the painful strangeness of this past week with his family. Neither his parents nor Osamu had any idea about the months he'd spent in the Digital World, fighting Millenniummon, though Osamu might have suspected something was amiss about the Digivice. Ken felt a sudden, deep sense of pity and understanding for Ryo. His friend didn't deserve to suffer any more.
An instant later, those empathetic thoughts were driven from his mind, at the onset of another intense burst of pain in the back of his neck. This time Ken couldn't hold his cry of pain, collapsing hard against Osamu's desk. He clutched his head in agony with both hands, try uselessly to control the splitting pain. His eyes and teeth were clenched tightly shut, unable to bear it.
He wasn't sure why, but suddenly he knew there was some element about this—this pain he was feeling, had been feeling for weeks—he knew it had to have something to do with Ryo. With Ryo leaving.
"Ken?" he heard the older demand, as though from far away. "Ken, what happened to you? What's the matter?"
Ken shook so violently he thought he slide from the desk down to the floor. "Please. Please, don't leave," he choked out, not understanding why it was suddenly so important to make Ryo stay, but knowing all the same that it was. He couldn't put the feeling into words. "Please don't leave again, Ryo. You said you were my friend."
"Ken..." Ryo began, sounding uncertain of what to say.
Ken straightened himself with a supreme effort, looked to the older boy pleadingly in the eyes. "Please, Ryo, don't leave again," he begged, one hand gripped on the monitor and the other at his neck. "You're—You're the only one left. Wormmon had to stay in the Digital World with Gennai. Mama and Papa don't even know I'm here half the time, and Osamu...h-he hates me now. He said I'm the worst kind of person, because I used his Digivice without permission."
Ryo, looking uncharacteristically anxious, glancing quickly behind him over at something he could only see from his end of the screen. "Damn," he swore under his breath, probably not meaning for Ken to hear it. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face. "Not much time left, not much time—Ken, did your brother really say that about you? Word for word?"
Ken nodded without hesitation, his hurt and sadness quickly morphing into anger at the memory. "He said only the worst kinds of people take things that don't belong to them," he told Ryo, his voice shaking. "He said that's what I was. A thief. He said I was just distracting him from his studies..."
He curled in on himself a bit, wrapping his arms loosely around his body. Unconsciously, he fingered a mottled yellow bruise on the back of his wrist—a reminder of where Osamu had hit him over a week ago, knocking the borrowed Digivice out of his hand. A slap like that might not have left a mark on another person, but Ken's skin had always been delicate. That was just one more advantage that his beloved, perfect older brother had over him. He was strong. Ken was weak. That was how it always was.
As these thoughts consumed him, it became harder and harder for Ken to distinguish between the pain in his head and the one in his heart. His head hurt so much he could barely think. His whole neck was on fire. Osamu's slap had been nothing compared to this, but there was a raw pain in his chest when he remembered it that wouldn't fade. Only could make it stop, but Ken didn't know how.
In the world outside his mind, Ryo's sharp gaze didn't miss the path Ken's fingers traced unthinkingly over his skin. The older boy's eyes widened, taking in the bruise, then quickly narrowed again in hard suspicion.
"Ken, what is that?" he demanded sharply. "Show me your arm."
Blinking dumbly, Ken stared at him a moment, then stared down at his arm. Only the sight of the bruise itself made him realize what Ryo was getting at. "Oh, that's—that's n-nothing, Ryo, really," he lied, unable to meet his eyes. He didn't want to talk about that memory, not even with his best friend. "I mean, it's not...i-it doesn't hurt. It doesn't. That happened ages ago. I should never have touched his Digivice in the first place..."
Eyes wet, Ken automatically wiped his face with the back of his hand, not realizing that the movement gave Ryo a better glimpse of his bruised wrist. The older boy's face grew uncharacteristically dark, his blue eyes like shards of ice.
"He did that to you. Your older brother," Ryo said harshly, not phrasing it as a question. "I can't believe this. You both found that Digivice together, you told me how it happened. Why did Osamu think it was only his? Did your parents even punish him for hitting you? ...Ken!"
Trapped like a deer in the headlights, Ken opened his mouth, possibly to say something in defense of his older brother. However, no words came out when he tried to speak. Ryo's hardening expression told Ken that no answer was necessary: he'd already read the truth plain on his face. Their parents had never noticed the bruise on Ken's arm to begin with, and even if they had, Osamu wouldn't have been punished for it. The Ichijoujis were far too enamored with their eldest son to ever believe he would intentionally do something like that to harm his younger brother.
Ken closed his mouth and turned bitterly away from Ryo. "I hate Osamu," he said quietly in a sudden fit of rage, feeling a new flood of darkness and pain spreading out from the injury on the back of his neck. "I hate Osamu. I hate him! If he were gone, my life would be perfect! I wish he would just DISAPPEAR!"
Ryo sucked in a hissing breath. Ken looked up at the screen, startled by the sound, and saw that the older boy was glancing back over his shoulder again with a helpless sort of anger. Ken recalled Ryo's words to him from before: Not much time, not much time.
"Ken, listen to me," Ryo finally said quickly, running a hand through his brown hair with an agitated expression. "I know this is your family, not mine, but I don't know if it's a good idea for you to stay here with them. For goodness' sake, you've only been home for a week, and look at you—you're a complete wreck! You never acted like this before. What have these people done to you?"
Ken only took one detail from Ryo's tirade. "You think I'm a failure, too," he murmured, sinking in on himself. He felt crushed somewhere deep inside his chest. "You think I'm bad. Like Osamu."
Always a failure. Never perfect. Never enough like him. A cold, unfamiliar voice made its presence suddenly known in the back of Ken's mind, while his neck blazed with terrible pain. Never good enough. Always the spare.
Unwanted in your own family.
"You know that's not what I meant, Ken!" Ryo was snapping at him from the wold outside Ken's thoughts. The older boy's was voice angry and very impatient.
"What did you mean?" Ken asked him desolately, feeling drained and miserable. Ryo was angry with him to. Ryo hated him. No wonder he wanted to leave.
The older boy hesitated then, a long, drawn-out moment, seeming to grapple with himself over weather or not he should say the words that were weighing on his mind. Ultimately, Ryo caved in, giving a hard sigh before looking Ken squarely in the eyes.
"Listen to me, Ichijouji. Listen very, very carefully," Ryo said, his voice more serious than Ken had ever heard it, making him snap out of his funk a little and pay attention. "I can't make Osamu disappear for you, I'm not a magician. There's not much I can do about him. But, I can make you be the one to disappear—disappear somewhere where you'll never have to see your brother's face again. I want you to come with me. Through the gate, to another world. Let's start over."
Ken's eyes widened, uncomprehending. Make him disappear? Take him to another world? Ryo couldn't mean...
"Never...Never see Osamu again?" he stammered out weakly. "O-Or my parents?"
"I'd take care of you," Ryo said quickly, looking like he was trying to convince himself as much as Ken. "I promise you I would. You're my friend, Ken. Friends look out for each other, right? Just like we did against Millenniummon."
Ken nodded, but inwardly his mind was in chaos. Never see his family again? It sounded promising when Ryo said it, after how mean they had been, yet Ken still couldn't help but recoil a bit at the thought. He knew his parents were far from perfect, never attentive enough, seeming always to be so focused on their eldest son, never Ken...but they loved him too, didn't they? They had told him they did.
And Osamu...Osamu could be cruel, so strict with his words, but...he had shown him how to blow bubbles, too. He had praised Ken for his gentleness. Helped Ken with his homework. Been an older brother to him, in the good sense as well as the bad.
He couldn't decide. He couldn't, he...
But—then came pain. Erasing everything. Ken felt his head suddenly split apart as though driven through by a hammer; the back of his neck burned with a searing, all-consuming fire. Screaming pain lanced along his nerves under his skin, made Ken's vision white out in unfathomable agony before he could summon the air to cry out.
"Wormmon!" he screamed in terror, but the words met empty air. He felt, rather than saw, Osamu's room fade out into nothing all around him. Ryo was gone. He was alone.
The world Ken had occupied melted away to nothing, reforming itself into a shadowy place Ken didn't recognize. He found himself engulfed on all sides by total darkness, an ocean of it, water like ink drowning everything it touched. Grey fog rose up to surround Ken as far as he could see, disappearing into the darkened sky above so seamlessly that the two were nearly blended together. Black water lapped at his knees like ice, threatening to drag him beneath the surface of the waves. He would drown here, if he didn't find his way back.
Panic filled him. He was trapped. He was alone. He needed—
—GO WITH HIM. FOLLOW HIM. RYO.
Ken's neck burned. Fire. Too much. Destroying everything. He screamed in agony, tearing at his own skin unthinkingly with his nails, not stopping until his own blood dripped wetly from his hands.
"Stop it!" he shrieked, unable to stand it any longer. "Stop! Make it stop!"
—RYO. FOLLOW RYO. ENDS OF THE EARTH. ONLY ONE. ALWAYS.
"I'll go!" Ken screamed, blinded by pain, consumed by it. He would have sold his very soul for his suffering to stop, would have sold anyone's "I'll do it! I'll go with him! Please!"
—FOLLOW HIM. ALWAYS. DESTINY. FOREVER.
—Your brother never loved you anyway.
As quickly as it had come, the voice and the dark ocean suddenly disappeared. The pain in Ken's head vanished, like it had never been, slipping dormant into a faint buzz that no longer brought him any discomfort.
Dizzily, he blinked, already forgetting what had happened. He figured he must have been too stunned by Ryo's offer for the moment to say anything. One lingering directive remained at the forefront of his thoughts: follow him.
The conclusion did seem like the most natural decision to make, when Ken thought about it. Ryo was Ken's best friend (human, at least), the only person who never failed to treat him like he was equally deserving of attention and praise as his older brother. Ryo was powerful and brilliant and brave and just; he was probably the strongest digimon tamer who had ever lived. Ken would be lucky to be his companion on another adventure.
His parents would be fine, Ken told himself, solidifying his resolve. They still had their perfect, better-loved Osamu to keep them company. That was all they had wanted in the first place, right? No Ken around, to drag down their perfect family with his uselessness.
And Osamu...well, Osamu had never loved him anyway. He couldn't have. Why else would he have said those ugly things?
"Ken? Are you coming?" Ryo asked urgently from the monitor, breaking the silence of his thoughts. "It's now or never, Ichijouji. You have to pick, me or them. If you're coming, better grab your Digivice from out of the drawer—ENIAC will take care of Wormmon."
The Digivice. Ken felt a sudden, renewed twist of guilt in his chest. He hated taking Osamu's property again without his permission. His brother had gotten so upset last time, made Ken feel like the worst little boy in the world. Could he really do that again, deliberately disobey his brother to get what he wanted?
But then Ryo's words echoed in his mind: me or them. Pain stirred faintly from the back of Ken's neck, barely enough to serve as more than a reminder, but it was enough to steady him without conscious thought.
Ryo would be his brother from now on. Ken didn't need anyone else. He didn't owe anything to Osamu anymore.
—YOU. ONLY YOU. Only always, EVER you. RYO. RYO.
—WORTHY. DESTINY.
—ForeverForeverForeverForeverForeverForev
As quickly and gently as it had come, the pain faded. It didn't bother Ken again. With new resolve, he reached for Osamu's desk drawer with trembling hands, pulling out the Digivice. His Digivice, now—perhaps Osamu had been right, to say that taking it made Ken the worst sort of person imaginable. But he wasn't Osamu's problem anymore.
After this last injustice, Ken reasoned, he would never be around to bother his older brother again. He would never touch Osamu's possessions; never interrupt his important studies with pleas for attention. This was the right decision for everyone.
The Digivice began to glow in his hand. Right on cue, the computer monitor on the desk did so as well. As Ken watched, a familiar, gloved hand reached through the screen to seize his own, the touch bracing and warmly familiar. Ken felt a sudden thrill of genuine excitement, seeing Ryo grin at him through the gate like he always had. The other boy began to pull him through, leaving behind his home of nine years..
"Goodbye," Ken whispered. His eyes fluttered shut of their own accord as he passed the gate.
When he next opened them, it was to the sight of a world he had never seen, with Ryo Akiyama at his side.