A/N: Written for the 10_prompt challenge on lj. Also posted on lj (link to journal in profile).
To Walk Below the Darkened Clouds
Prompt #010: Clouds
It was a murky situation, a murky decision. Kouichi was a minor; his guardians could force the medication upon him and they tried, because they knew cutting into a person's brain was risky business even if it ultimately provided a permanent solution…when successful. But they soon discovered the reasons behind his initial aversions.
Even if were only the children who could really understand the babbling panic and mumbles of a digital world and spirits and digimon and names that not even Kouichi could recall long enough to tell them.
He couldn't live like that; whatever the drugs stole to give him a temporary respite, it was not something he would sacrifice. Not something he could sacrifice, despite what it cost.
It was a silver lining he clung to through the terrors of an incomplete darkness: a darkness without light. And he sought refuge behind another darkness: the one that rode upon the wings of the light.
And he let the light steal it away, because it only took physical risk and pain. Darkness, not his darkness, demanded a different price.
For how could one walk under a cloud with the knowledge no silver lining remained?