Warnings: Manipulation, unhealthy emotional attachment, subconscious acephobia, Taesuke's trying ya'll but he's an idiot.

IV

Taesuke woke up, not to pandemonium, but to quiet. Peace and quiet aside from the steady beeping of something on his right and steady pages turning on his left. That was a familiar sound, one his parents still had in their house for rainy days and long airport waits.

He opened his eyes to a semi-lit room and his aunt Hikari in the nearby chair. He squinted and saw a familiar jacket over one of the arms. His head twinged as he tugged on his hand. His arm resisted the tug and he gave up.

Aunt Hikari looked up at him. "Welcome back, Taesuke." Her voice was soft in the same places Kei's was, but there was more relief in it. What had happened? "How are you feeling?"

"Like my head hit a desk," he said honestly. For some reason his whole body was sore. What happened to him? Why was he in the hospital? Cause that had to be where this was, nowhere else in the world had this much white.

"Not too far off there," she replied. She closed her book and rose from her seat to move closer beside him. A little too close. Then she sat by his legs. Taesuke felt a little relief at that.

"What happened?" he said, searching for a cup of water with none in sight. "How'd I get here?"

"I…" His aunt looked at him, swallowing and handing him a cup of water. "I'd like to ask you the same question. Why did you attack Kei?"

And suddenly, Taesuke remembered. And he felt sick inside. Sick and angry.

"He…" Taesuke licked his lips, desperate to soothe his dry throat. "He… hurt Kaito's feelings. And I don't know why, it sounded stupid and I just… I didn't think."

"You tend not to."

The words were softly, gently spoken, but still unforgiving, still unrelenting in a way only his aunt had.

"You have a good heart, Tae." And she was still looking at him, even though he had long since looked away from her with his head hidden in the mess of his hair. "But hearts don't think. Hearts feel. I know that. You know that. I wish Kei hadn't hurt you so badly for you to realize it."

Taesuke chewed his bottom lip. "I'm sorry, Auntie."

"No," Hikari said, still in that gentle yet disappointed voice. "You're not, really. You think you were protecting Kaito's heart, his broken heart shattered by his good friend, and you don't know why and you wouldn't have rejected him, you would have embraced him wholeheartedly. Because you love him."

"I…" Every word had left Taesuke shrinking in on himself. Not because they weren't true and he didn't want to say that, but because it was the truth and it was true in a way Hackmon couldn't understand.

He saw Hikari nod through the fringe of his hair. "Hackmon told me." He saw her face twist in apology. "Love is a hard thing, Taesuke. I think, if Kaito knew about it from you, he'd be touched. And he would be hurt as well. Love is like that. It does so much good and so much bad indiscriminately. It touches things it doesn't know not to and decides on things often before you do."

"But he'll never love me," And there it is, out in the open. "Will he?"

"Is that why you did everything?"

"No." Yes. Because doing it for his parents was what Tsu did, doing it for the people was what Kei did, doing it for himself was not what you did in today's society, wasn't Kaito doing all of what he was doing for someone else.

"You're lying." But his auntie still sounds sympathetic and it hurts because by now he remembers everything and now he does feel terrible. And it all sounds very, very small. And it's so annoying. What's wrong with him doing this for Kaito? For Kaito to notice him? For Kaito to acknowledge him and recall him as someone who matters? As someone who can take some of that burden? What's wrong with wanting someone to love him?

"Sometimes loving someone and being with them is not up to us." Auntie rose from her seat. "Sometimes it isn't about right or wrong at all, but on knowing the things we love and what they need from us."

She stopped at the door. "And doing something just for those we love always leads to harm. There is no such thing as only selflessness, Taesuke. Please remember that."

His father came in and said a whole lot of things and most were things Taesuke didn't want to remember. Especially not the last part where his father held him tight and said he loved him. He held him tight and said he was glad Taesuke was okay and Taesuke didn't want to remember that. Didn't want to remember the shame creeping up like vomit and how much it hurt. He didn't want to remember his mother's delicate tracing of bandages too fresh and wrong.

Didn't want to remember hearing his sister shouting across the hallway and Kei shrinking back, looking pathetic and beat down.

Didn't want to remember Kaito slapping her but not looking at her. Looking at him with something raw, something sad, something empty.

Didn't want to remember the chip sitting on his desk at home.

But then Hackmon snatched his digivice and put the chip in there anyway.

Taesuke tried to ignore the steady blue glow of the device, the polite but cheerful voice welcoming him as a member of Union, expecting his arrival the following Tuesday for paperwork.

But it breached all the way to his heart and without wanting to, without meaning to, Taesuke cried hollow tears.

The tears lasted through dinner, at which point he slept again through a twang in his head and a terrible gnawing hunger when he suddenly woke up in the dark.

Hackmon was also awake. He was staring out onto the balcony, where a Digimon sat.

Where Gaomon sat.

"Hello." The sound came through the glass, fogging the window pane despite the dog being by the rail. "You really took a tumble. My Kaito was worried of course, but he's also too angry to come see you. So it is up to me to check up on you."

"You saw," Hackmon spat. "Get outta here."

"Rude." And Taesuke could hear the room get colder, see the digimon get closer. "I thought your boy had some questions."

"None for you. Never for you!"

"Shush you errant little boy." He waved a single paw, eyes narrowing into slits. "I thought he wanted to know. Don't you want to know what makes the boys the monsters that they are? Why he won't look at you? Why you were in the hospital?"

"He'll lie, Tae." And Hackmon leaped on the bed. "He'll lie to you Tae, he lies to everyone. He lied to Kaito, he'll lie to you."

Why would he lie about his own human? Taesuke found the concept silly to his still somewhat sluggish brain. Or to his own human?

"How would you know?" Gaomon was right against the glass, nose touching and breathing mist over it. "Come now, Taesuke. I'll even stay out here in the cursed chill and give you answers. But don't you want to know what everyone's been hiding? I'm sure I can trust you with it."

The word trust melted any doubts away. Today wasn't really his fault. He didn't have all the answers. He couldn't choose. If he knew everything he could choose properly. With this he could act differently. He would make the right choice and the right choice wouldn't change. It was wherever Kaito was surely. That wouldn't change.

Taesuke nodded once. But that once was enough.

A/N: This is a really truncated story that is really about one thing: acknowledgement. A promise for acknowledgement, a promise to get the person you like to notice. It's going to carry over. It kind of has to because I deliberately made this short. But to summarize this fic if this is too much: Taesuke has healthy emotions expressed in unhealthy ways and Taichi and Meiko said a lot less than they honestly thought they did about the way their families worked. Also Kei and Kaito are very good friends and close in a way Taesuke doesn't really have with anyone except Daiki and if you look at A Piece of Peace, those two got some work to do.

Anyway, tldr: Taesuke's a bit of a hot mess that we're only getting snippets of because Taesuke himself doesn't want to talk about half of his life. Anyway, see you guys next time!