Hi everyone! Here's chapter two of "Scars of Time", I hope you enjoy it! ;)

I wanna thank you for the reviews, they made me wanna finish the second chapter faster and so I did! I also would like to say that English is not my first language, so please forgive me for any possible mistakes, I'm trying my best!

This chapter may seem a little meaningless, but it's essential to introduce the whole atmosphere that will be the scenery of the plot. Real action will start around the next two chapters and I promise I will do my best to upload the third chapter within next week, although I'm going back to work this week and my time to write will be shorter… Anyway, please keep reading and don't forget to review, I wanna know what you think!

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon or any of it's characters, and I DO NOT own "The Solitude of Prime Numbers" by Paolo Giordano.

Chapter 2 – Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky

("You have your very own number
They dress your cage in its nature
Once you roared now you just grunt lame
Pace around pathetic pound games
Wanna get out won't miss you sensaround
To carry your own dead to swing your tyre tricks
Wanna get out in here you're bred dead quick
For the outside,
The small black flowers that grow in the sky")

"You'll be late again!" yelled Mr. Ishida, smashing the bathroom door. It was the same thing everyday: Yamato would lock himself in the bathroom for several minutes after breakfast just to make his father annoyed. He stood in front of the mirror resting his hands on the sink , beholding his own reflection staring seriously back at him, a few hair locks of his golden blond hair naturally spiky were covering his deep blue eyes, that were usually opaque and cold. Matt thought his reflection made fun of him every morning by showing him the perfect face of a16 year-old boy and concealing the shameful flaw in one of his legs. Yamato looked at himself angrily, and when his father hit the door for the third time he exited the bathroom pulling his right leg, hard and heavy, after him.

Mr. Ishida was waiting in the car with a cigarette between his teeth. When Yamato entered the car, silent and dragging his bad leg, he started the car and they left to his son's school. Matt hated the way his father seemed so self confident, and every now and then he caught himself picturing absurd situations where his father would have some kind of accident that made him cripple too.

Ten years ago, short after the accident, Matt woke up one day and found only his father having breakfast in the kitchen, all alone. Since then, they never mentioned his mother and brother again, and he knew that partly she'd left because she didn't want to take the responsibility of having to take care of a cripple son, and he blamed his father for the accident and for his mother's departure. Mr. Ishida knew that somehow what had happened to his son was actually his fault, he sometimes even blamed himself entirely for the accident, but he never mentioned that aloud or apologized or showed any kind of remorse or compassion for Yamato's situation. Maybe that was the reason why the boy's rage against his father grew a bit more each day while Mr. Ishida drove him to school with his two perfect legs.

In the house of the Yagami family the light rarely entered the place. It was late in the morning but Taichi's mother still lay sleeping on the couch with her mouth slightly open, maybe still under the effect of the many pills she took every night so she could get some sleep. Tai sneaked through the kitchen with his usual silent steps, as if he wanted to avoid being noticed by anyone. He made breakfast by himself and served his father a cup of tea, sitting in front of him without even saying "good morning". Mr. Yagami didn't mind his son not speaking to him as long as he could have him in his sight.

Tai stirred the liquid inside his mug. The movement made several white and long scars on his hands glow in the faint light, some of them reaching his fists, some of them covering all his forearm. The boy stood up without having drunk his tea and said to his dad "I'll wait outside". Then he stormed off the kitchen going passed his mom in the living room with no courage to look at her.

Mr. Yagami breathed deeply and finished his breakfast in silence. Then he grabbed the car keys and went to give his wife a kiss on the cheek, who was already awake but kept silent and still.

"Are you excited about your first day at the new school?" he asked hopefully to his son who was already sitting in the car.

"Hummm" Taichi mutteredstaring ahead. He heard his father take another deep breath before starting the car.

Tai never showed any kind of emotion, he was always wearing a sad expression, his eyes empty and usually very shiny as if he was always in the verge of tears. His messy hair had several knots because he hardly ever combed it, and once in a while his mother would go mad over it and then cut it irregularly with an old scissor. Tai did not care, he would just wait for it to grow again and form new knots. He observed his hair in the mirror and then realized it was almost time that his mom would decide to cut it again, and with that thought he turned back to stare sternly through the window, his eyebrows arched almost together, his mouth shut as if it had been sewed and his forehead glued to the glass window. Mr. Yagami glanced at him and thought he didn't remember having seen a different expression on his son's face in the past ten years.

"Here we are" he said parking the car.

Taichi jumped out of the car holding his backpack and whispered a faint "goodbye" to his father before walking up the stone steps without looking back. He went to the notice board to see where his classroom was and then headed to the first floor. The wide rectangular room was still empty except for a blond boy sitting in the farthest corner of it by the window with his arms crossed over his chest and looking outside. Tai waited by the door until every seat in the room was taken and only one was left for him. The only empty desk that remained was the one right beside the blond haired boy in the back of the room. Tai held his breath and walked towards the empty seat, sitting down silently and staring at some indefinite point ahead. He didn't even notice when the boy on his side stared at him with contained curiosity.

*-*-*

Nobody ever sat beside Yamato in the classroom. Ever since he was a child his classmates made fun of him and called him names because of his bad leg, and he had learned not to approach anyone else and not allow anyone to approach him. But actually he felt like no one wanted to approach him, and he had long ago got used to the fact that he would be rejected for the rest of his life.

When the new boy sat beside him he couldn't help but wonder who the hell was that one who dared entering his one meter long diameter of solitude that no one else had ever bothered to occupy. He looked angrily at the boy and then the anger turned into curiosity and then into indifference.

The lecture went boring as always, Matt tried hard not to fall asleep while the teacher spoke about old books he would never mind reading. By his side, Taichi's hideous arm ran up and down his notebook writing every single word his ears would capture. At some point Matt lost the count of the strophes of a long baroque poetry and he started to follow Tai's arm running through the white paper, wondering what might have happened to him that made his hands look so awful. A strange sensation ran down his spine making him shrug and his bad leg move involuntarily, and he stayed there hypnotized by all those scars on the boy's arm.

Matt didn't use to leave the classroom at break except on times he couldn't pretend his stomach wasn't roaring anymore and then he would go the cafeteria to buy a sandwich that he'd eat all by himself in a hidden corner of the yard before returning hurriedly to the classroom to enjoy his solitude. That day of the new boy's arrival was one of those days, and although Matt tried hard to ignore his roaring stomach, the hunger took the best of him and he left the safety of his solitary seat to go to thecafeteria. He noticed the new boy hadn't left too and was still writing frantically on his notebook. Matt ignored him as well and left the room.

But there were a few people who were pretty hard to ignore even with all the efforts he made, and they were standing right in front of the entrance door. Four tall boys, one of them much bigger than the others, with large shoulders and tiny eyes, and although the others were smaller than him, they all seemed pretty cruel. Yamato knew them; they had attended the same classes ever since he went to that school, short after his accident. Those boys had ruthlessly made fun of Matt, torturing him with insults and bad taste jokes about his injured leg. Once, the biggest of them, Jango, caught him and stick him upside down in a bin, it took Matt almost an hour until someone found him and pulled him out. Nevertheless, physical aggressions had stopped at high school and revertedto only shouting and calling him names, which gave Matt some peace at last.

Yamato walked passed them on his way to the cafeteria and tried not look at any of them. Jango smiled when he saw the blond boy approaching and walked towards him. The other three followed him smiling retarded-like, one of them caressing his own knuckles.

"So, cripple, thought you might go out and exercise a little?" Jango said moving his lips strangely in what Matt presumed to be a smirk, "How's your leg doing?"

Matt didn't answer. He tried to ignore them and just keep walking, but his injured leg didn't allow him to be very quick and the four boys soon were standing right in front of him again, keeping him from going any further.

"What's the hurry cripple?" Jango stepped forward and Matt stepped back in response. One of the boys pushed him to the other and they pushed Matt from one to another for several minutes. He shut his eyes tightly and concentrated in cursing them mentally, once his bad leg made him incapable of being fast enough to defend himself.

The boys laughed aloud and all of a sudden stopped pushing Yamato, making him fall to the ground.

"You're just a useless fuck" Jango teased him smirking before going away with the other boys.

Matt waited until they were out of sight and stood up slowly and with much difficulty, leaning on his hands first and then pulling his leg. It had been a really long time since those boys last touched him at all, and he thought there must be a special reason why they decided to provoke him again. Standing up, Yamato shook the dust from his pants and shirt and then the bell rang. He took a deep breath, concluding that he would have no time to eat before his next class, and then made his way back to the classroom, aware that several pairs of eyes were staring at him, accompanied by quiet laughter and stupid jokes, and even some pitiful looks that were also indifferent enough not to approach him.

He returned silently to his desk by the window and grimragefuaced when his stomach roared again. He suffocated a rage scream that came to his throat and concentrated in mentally cursing everyone and everything until he calmed down. A few minutes later, when he seemed a lot calmer, he almost screamed aloud when a soft voice spoke near him.

"Excuse me?" said Yamato, turning to the boy on the seat beside him, who seemed to be speaking to him absentmindedly while staring at the board on the front of the class.

"Could you lend me your eraser please?" Taichi repeated slowly with the proper tone of voice for someone attending a burial. Matt blinked repeatedly as if to convince himself that the boy was indeed speaking to him. Then he grabbed his eraser and handed it to his neighbor. Tai held it with his dreadful hand and Matt observed him strollit on his notebook carefully, making the scars shine a little. When the same patched-like hand was stretched to hand him back the eraser, Yamato couldn't repress a strange impulse to speak to him.

"I am Ishida Yamato" he said mechanically, and then blushing a little he added "welcome to Odaiba High".

Taichi looked at him and also blinked several times, seeming confused. At first, he decided to ignore the other boy, but on the next second he felt a strong will to speak to him too, and they both shook hands timidly.

"Yagami" he said in the lowest tone of voice, and then a little louder he added "Taichi".

That's it guys, hope you enjoyed it! Tai and Matt have finally met each other and the next chapter will show the development of their friendship and then into something more… be patient with me please, I might take a while to post up the next chapter because I want it to be perfect, I might even post up chapters 3 and 4 at once if everything goes as I planned!

The song at the beginning is "Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky" by Manic Street Preachers.

Please review, it will take you less than a minute! ;)

XoXo