blue card hearts

Chapter 2 - Leomon

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Leomon was more than twice his height. Which means he really wasn't going to do well in the private living area.

Before that, Yuuri thought he should ask what a Leomon is doing right in front of him. 'I passed out from blood loss, didn't I?' he asked. Never mind he wasn's not bleeding, as far as he knew. He checked himself over just in case. A few scratches on the pads of his fingertips and palms but nothing oozing. And no deep gauge he'd somehow missed while staring at the apparition of a digimon.

'You don't seem to be bleeding to me,' said the Leomon. 'Nor am I a hallucination, if that's your next thought.'

Yuuri wasn't sure what his expression looked like then, but it was a wobbly smile at best and a grimace at worst. 'It was,' he admitted. 'And I'm running out of explanations save you being a physical digimon. But that stuff only happens to anime heroes… and, well, I'm not an anime character or a hero.'

Leomon stared down at him, and he felt even smaller than usual (and his family were a little shorter than average on the whole). 'Straighten your back,' he said finally. 'It is difficult to converse with you when you appear so timid.'

Yuuri… honestly wasn't sure if he should be insulted or not, by that. But Leomon did have a point. He took a deep breath, and straightened like it was Minako telling him instead, in the middle of the dance floor.

It didn't make much of a difference, considering he still needed to tilt his head back to see the other's mane.

The digimon sighed. 'I wonder why I'm always attracted to these characters.'

And it was said so quietly Yuuri wondered if he'd meant to hear in the first place.

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Yuuri busied himself around the onsen. Part of it was because the onsen actually was busy and needed his help, but it was also because he now had a lion-man digimon sitting in his bedroom and he still didn't know what to make of it.

No matter how much he thought, it simply didn't make sense. From a scientific perspective, digimon were data. Initially they were little pixels on hand-held consoles and then the franchise exploded into anime adaptions and, more recently, the card game.

That reminded him… Leomon was always the wise guardian in the franchise. He was also the one who consistently wound up dead.

'Does my presence bother you?' Leomon asked, when Yuuri finally came up to his room, a bowl of steaming katsudon and green tea that may not be enough for two.

Yuri shook his head, vigorously enough to make his fringe slap his forehead and his glasses hop down his nose. 'Nonono, no it doesn't. It's just me. I'm… well, I'm nothing special. I flopped out of the card tournament. I couldn't care for Vicchan properly. I'm mediocre in all my classes and terrible at team sports and I go to dance class with Minako-sensei but most of the time I'm flopping around like a whale…' He pinched his stomach to prove his point. There was always a bit of fat there, that he couldn't quite shake off.

'You look like a perfectly ordinary teenage boy to me,' Leomon replied, 'and trust me, I've seen my fair share of oddballs. But why do appearances matter? My last partner was a dainty little girl… but she had a lion's heart.'

'A lion's heart, huh,' Yuuri repeated. He pushed his glasses back up and set the tray on his desk. 'I'm not courageous though. I'm the guy who bursts into tears and needs to be rescued.' By Mari at first, then Yuuko in dance class, and then Takeshi warmed up to him, and then Phichit and his friends at school… 'I'm the guy who can't meet people in the eye because I'm terrified of disappointing them, even when I know they don't expect much to begin with –'

'Katsuki Yuuri!' Leomon suddenly boomed.

Yuuri jumped on the spot and turned to meet his eyes. They were a bright, almost scorching, blue. Blue like the Bunsen burner flames sometimes were.

'There,' the digimon said, in a tamer tone this time. 'You've met my eyes. And you've told me your fears and insecurities. Now met me tell you mine'

'Oh-okay,' said Yuuri, who fully expected to be told he wasn't good enough, as he thought.

But that wasn't the case. Or, rather, that wasn't what Leomon had to say. 'You know something about digimon, and that means you're aware of at least some of the worlds out there.' He waits for Yuuri to nod mutely before pressing on. 'I haven't had many human partners, but I've worked alongside the Chosen. Many Chosen. The first were seven children who'd arrived on File Island. Our nemesis was Devimon… and, in and amongst that, I was corrupted by black gears and saved by the light of the Chosen and corrupted again. The cycle continued until Devimon was defeated, and the light from the digivices allowed me to digivolve thereafter. I met the children again, this time facing the Dark Masters. Much to my shame, I died in battle against MetalEtemon, but I learned in another world that the army I'd amassed before that helped them. I'm grateful, at least, to that.'

Yuuri knew all that from the anime, but listening to Leomon made it so much more heartwrenching, more real. It wasn't a story written by a group of people anymore. It was someone's experience, someone's tragedy.

'When digimon die,' Leomon continued. 'We are reconfigured and reborn as a digi-egg. Sometimes, we return to the server we first recall. Sometimes we keep our memories. Sometimes we don't. I awoke in a very different Digital World and I knew of humans, but no specific ones, nor the journeys I had spent with them. I recalled fighting – endless fighting. And digimon I came across shared that: the instinct to fight and grow stronger. So I fought. But there were also digimon who hid, who fled from fighting. So I also learned to avoid fighting near them, to avoid them becoming collateral damage and thus to indirectly protect them.'

At some point, Yuuri had sat down on his bed. He wondered how many worlds Leomon knew of. When his memories had returned. How he dealt with it: the cycle of gaining and losing, of birth and death and rebirth. But he asked none of those questions. He only listened. He could only listen, when Leomon bared his heart for him.

'In that world, humans were tools to make us stronger. I hadn't gone to the human world explicitely looking for a partner, but I wound up there chasing one of the little ones who'd slipped away. I found a girl: cute and frail but passionate. She chased me all over town, saying we were soulmates and fated partners.' Leomon grew red as he said that. The girl he spoke of – Katou Juri – still had a tender place in his heart. 'I didn't think much of her words, but she didn't have a digivice and so I didn't stay. But her passion struck me, and her tears as I left. When we met again, I couldn't look away. And we fought side by side. She gained a digivice in that battle, and we became official partners. We fought further together, and one day she too spoke of her weaknesses, her insecurities. But by then I had seen the strength she possessed inside. She had a lion's heart and I told her so. And when I lay dying, I told her so again.'

'That's someone who learnt to fight so she wouldn't be a bystander,' Yuuri muttered, when it was clear Leomon was going to say no more for the moment. 'Someone who stepped onto the battlefield without a digivice. Who fought even when separated from everyone else. Who found it in the heart to forgive the digimon that had… well, killed you.' He trailed off awkwardly.

'And you said nothing to a child who ridiculed you when he had no cause to, for something you should have been praised for instead.'

'You saw that?' Yuuri looked at his lap again. Yuri Plisetsky yanking his collar down and saying his performance was essentially pathetic… 'Well, I did deserve it. People came looking for fun and intellectual battles. Not the mess I gave them. He deserved a better challenge than that.'

'You may have fought poorly, but you fought while fresh with grief. That's more than most people can say.'

They sat in silence for a bit after that. Yuuri didn't know what Leomon was thinking about, but he himself thought of how much embarrassment and grief he would have spared himself if he hadn't gone through with the tournament after all… or hadn't ever picked up the card game. He liked games too much, though. It was a way he could interact with people without having to strip himself bare, and as long as he won a reasonable number of times, he could continue playing with them. Usually it was smaller matches. In the park after school. Sometimes on the shopping centre roof on weekends or in the community centre. But this was a big event and he'd been on a winning streak. He'd been confident, maybe overconfident. And then, between Vicchan's death and performance anxiety, it all collapsed like a house of cards.

''I brought some katsudon from the kitchen,' Yuuri said finally, when the silence was too much. 'There's always plenty of food around, so let me know if you want more. Or sneak down to the kitchens. Or… is this one of the worlds where others can't see you?'

'We are made from the same basic cellular structures as living organisms in this world,' Leomon replied. I do not understand all the details. It was the basis of Hypnos research but I spent very little time with them, in the end.'

'The anime didn't spent much time, either, explaining the science behind bio-emergence.' Not that it really mattered as far as kids – the intended audience – were concerned. 'You're organic, so you need to eat, sleep, rest and all that, right?' Right, he could handle that. They lived in an inn, after all. The hardest thing was to stay out of the eyes of his family and the patrons. 'I'll give you a tour once everyone's asleep. I can bring more food up if you'd like, before then.'

He turned away at that point, no longer playing host. His walls were far from bare, but right then it was a bare wall he wanted. He closed his eyes. That was good enough. He didn't have to see Leomon's gaze boring into his back, or that of the Viktor's from his many posters boring into his skull.

Leomon said nothing. Instead, Yuuri listened to the comforting clutter of utensils. Something settled in his stomach: some awkward, indescribable feeling. He was partially dreading what else would come, partially excited, partially guilty, partially proud… There were too many emotions, too many possibilities. He could wake up and it would all be a dream, or he could wake up with it as reality. His card reader was now a digivice. Vicchan was gone but now he had a digimon partner he in no way had earned. And Leomon had lifetimes of experience, lifetimes of wisdom to impart… Why here? Why now? Why to him?

Of course it was a dream. The clutter of utensils was just the patrons in the dining room, and his family in the kitchen. Perhaps he'd wake up to Vicchan licking his face like he sometimes liked to. Maybe he'd wake up with his glasses digging into his face because he'd forgotten to take it off. Or maybe he'd wake up to the smell of katsudon gone cold because he's left it on his desk.

'Someone's coming,' Leomon said suddenly, and Yuuri, drifting off, started in surprise. Glasses didn't help with the blurriness of having almost fallen asleep, and by the time the blur was gone, Leomon had tucked himself into the closet.

It was probably the only place in the room that would hide him completely, considering he was taller than Minako.

A sudden rapping on the door startled him, despite the advanced warning. The door opening without him acknowledging the knock wasn't so much of a surprise, because only his family came to the residential area anyway.

Not surprisingly, it was Mari poking her head around the door. Six years older than him and already out of school and seamlessly settling into the life of a hostess… Their looks was where the similarities ended, but that was okay because they complemented each other: two parts of the family whole.

Except when she decided to dye her hair because they looked a little less alike from that point onwards.

'Still brooding in your room?' Mari raised an eyebrow at the empty dish and mug on his desk. 'I'd say come eat with us, but looks like you've already eaten by yourself.'

'Uhh… that was…' And it wasn't that unbelievable that he'd eaten an extra-large bowl of katsudon before dinner. He was prone to over-eating when he was stressed, or upset… and he had every reason to be upset. 'Not really dinner,' he finished awkwardly. Not that it really mattered. It was hard to regulate food in an inn. He snuck back far too often for extras and it showed. But the rest of his family was the same, even Mari who said her cigarettes helped tamper that habit.

But still… Yuuri looked down at himself, where the pale skin of his stomach peeked out from under his shirt. The stretch marks weren't clear in the darkness but he knew they were there. Mari knew they were there too. So did their parents. They just never comment on it.

And even now… Mari just shakes her head in exasperation. 'Come on down then. There's more katsudon.'

The katsudon though doesn't taste the same… or maybe it's Yuuri, and not the katsudon, that's different.

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It was after midnight and Yuuri hadn't slept a bit, but that didn't really matter. He had promised Leomon he'd show him around, even if he hadn't planned to stay up especially to do it. But he had questions, and answers he didn't want to hear, and doubt and katsudon gnawing at his stomach… and all that made for uncomfortable sleeping. That and the impromptu nap he'd taken earlier meant he was still wide awake when midnight came and went.

It also meant that the rest of the inn including his family were asleep, and they could explore with a little care. After all, humans weren't well-oiled machines. There were doubtless others who sleep eluded like him. So Yuuri kept his voice down and his eyes on the ground… or perhaps those were just excuses for him to employ.

Still, he pretended there was a regular guest following him, and not a lion digimon taller than his ballet instructor and stockier than either one of his parents. He pointed out the family quarters, and the guest quarters, and the banquet room that was always empty nowadays with their shrinking town, and the kitchen and the onset (and, more importantly, the rules of the onsen). He snuck out like he often did when he couldn't sleep and showed bits of the town as well: his quiet, favourite spots. He showed them the Nishigori's ice rink, and Minako's ballet studio, and the quiet parks. He showed the bus stop out of town, to where they went to school and the larger shopping districts and the big park where they'd had the tournament. By three in the morning they were sitting there, on either side of that little bench on that little bus stop.

Yuuri didn't know what Leomon was thinking about. At some point, he'd stopped treating him like a guest and had offered a window into his own place in the world. Maybe it was because Leomon had followed like a silent protector, tall and proud in the shadows. Maybe a part of him wanted to prove himself somehow worthy of being a Chosen… even if he didn't think he was worthy, or ready, for such a responsibility. He didn't even know the state of this digital world, or why Leomon had come, or what was going to happen. He hadn't asked any of that.

'I'm sorry,' he said, finally. 'I didn't think about you at all. Why you've come here. What's happened in the Digital World. I just… I don't see why me of all people. I'm not special, and most of me doesn't want to be special. Being special means standing out, means more pressure and responsibility… but it also means feeling like there's a reason I'm here, the reason I'm alive.'

'It makes you feel like you're a fragile but precious life on this planet,' Leomon surmised. 'I've come to see that, in my many lives.'

'… I think,' Yuuri replied, in the silence that settled over them, 'that you understood that all along. You always protected those around you. You always died protecting those around you. You… is that why you're here again?'

'I don't wish to die,' Leomon said evenly, and far quicker than the last time. 'But I wish for a peaceful world and to gain that, I must fight.'

'But why come here?' Yuuri repeated. The words trembled on his lips, but he wasn't going to cry. Not then, not when he still didn't know anything. 'Is the Digital World on the brink of destruction? Is our world in danger?'

'Not on the brink,' said Leomon. He knelt in front of Yuuri, in front of that little town bus stop. 'We're overly cautious, I think, because we remember the past in this life. We remember how unprepared we were. Our desperation as we scrambled for purchase in a dying world. The sacrifices we asked of human children we'd only just met and the way we uprooted their entire way of life and then left a gaping hole when we were gone. And yet the only way we can fight is to forge such bonds. We are preparing for a war, yes, but we are seeking something else as well: something we didn't have in our other lives. And I chose you to be my partner, just like I chose Katou Juri in another life.'

'Are we not Chosen?' Yuuri tilted his head. Wasn't it up to fate, in most of the incarnations of the world as far as media told. God-like figures like Yggdrasil and Homeostasis controlled the selection process and yet it was always the perfect people to save the world from the destruction that someone sought. And, often, they broke away from the unseen hand guiding them, and yet still found a solution that benefited them all. Well written tales was what they'd always thought, but if it was true, then it could be nothing less than fate and a god beyond their worlds foreseeing it all.

But Leomon shook his head and offered a hand: large so that Yuuri's own could be swallowed in it but comfortable and warm when he took it. 'It was I who chose you, Katsuki Yuuri.'

And that's still a heavy weight, but it's warm, unlike the cold lead feeling of having been mistaken by fate.