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Kia's POV
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I sat quietly, watching the swirls of purple caressing over my bare arms and neck. Cherubimon approached me, I stared directly into his haunting yellow eyes breifly before resuming watch of the mist on my skin. I heard him chuckle as I shivered from the icy haze brushing against my skin. With a huge sweep of his hand, Cherubimon created a breeze that blew the mist away from me, I nodded as thanks for the gesture.
"You will stay with Mercurimon. He will help you." I shook my head, and Cherubimon seemed frustrated. "What?"
"I wanna go back." I said softly. I watched as his ears twitched, and the pacman grin disappeared from cherubimon's spherical head.
I looked at my feet, hoping he wasn't too mad. After all, I didn't need to be a digimon to feel the aura of power surrounding the large rabbit digimon.
"Why? All they ever did was hurt you. They laughed at you, they are going to replace you, they don't think anything of you. How could you want to help them?" Cherubimon said darkly.
"Yea, but I feel so out of place here." I said. "Zoe knows how I feel. She's just like me."
"No. She's angry at you. She believes you're doing this just to play games. She doesn't understand a single thing about you. She can't learn from experience, she has been ostrasized and alienated just as you have, but she continues to force you to continue living in those feelings." Cherubimon countered. "Can't you feel the hate between you both? I can sense it. I see how much you hate them."
"It's not my fault!" I said, bursting into tears. "It's not hate, I'm just a little jealous." I tried reasoning with myself.
"Is that all?" He said, showing an upset face. "Can't you feel the immensity of your own emotions? Don't you understand theirs?"
"I can, and I always feel completely overwhelmed, but I don't understand them at all. I hope their not worried." I mumbled.
"I hope they are." Cherubimon laughed. "Don't they deserve to be worried? To go through how you felt when you thought they had died? Don't you want them to care about you?"
"Yea. I do want them to worry. They don't know the stress. I want them to care!" I yelled, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Look." Cherubimon said, gesturing towards a mirror-like portal. Through it, I saw Kouji, Zoe, JP, Takuya and Tommy. All were searching for me.
"Ugh! Why do we have to keep searching? If she wants to go away, she can stay wherever she is!" Zoe complained.
"Shut up. We're searching because as much as we hate looking, we still need her." Kouji snapped.
"What's your issue Kouji? She's not that big of a deal, is she?" Zoe continued her whining.
"Well, I'm worried about her." Tommy said. I felt my heart lift.
"Well, if I see her, I'm going to beat the crap out of her! Why is she playing these games?" Zoe kept it up.
"Shut up, Zoe." Kouji told her.
"Well, none of us would have to do any of this if she hadn't run off in the first place." She stated matter-of-factly.
"You guys, I think Z has a point." JP backed her up.
"Just shut up." Kouji snapped at them.
"Well geez, Kouji. You don't need to be so grouchy about it. We're searching, and that's all we can d--" Takuya got cut off as Kouji nailed him in the face.
"Well if you shut up, maybe we can actually find something." Kouji said coldly.
"I'm getting kinda tired." Tommy said, rubbing his eyes.
"Then give up and go sit with those two." Kouji said, pointing at JP and Zoe.
"We need to sleep, Kouji, we can hardly see anymore." Takuya said in his whiny voice.
"Whatever." Kouji said quietly, abandoning the search efforts to make a fire. Did they really care that little about whether I was alright or not? Even if I know I'm okay, it hurt to know they didn't want to know it.
"I'm just being selfish." I said quietly. And I believed it, it seemed so much easier to believe when I said it out loud. Surely they must hate me for doing this, but I don't want to do something so bad that they'll hate me even more. I looked up a Cherubimon. "What should I do?"
"Forget about them, they'll only hurt you." Cherubimon had changed his voice, and what was a rough, deep drowl, was now soft and kind, somewhat feminine. It's how I always pictured my Mama's voice to be like.
"Alright. I'll stay with Mercurimon."
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Mercurimon's POV
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"Hush now." I said, trying to relieve the tension growing between them all. "Must you act like animals?"
"Y'all should just shut up and let me see her! How can y'all ever expect me to help you with her, if I can't even see her face, Suga'?" Ranamon argued.
"Calm down, Milady. Thou shalt see the young girl's face at thine own time." I calmed.
"Mercurimon, you are only so calm because you are to be around her so much." Arbormon stated. "You shall see her so much that even now, her face means nothing."
"That be true, Thine girl means nothing to me." I responded, walking away.
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Kouji's POV
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I couldn't sleep. Mind you, it wasn't like I wanted to anyways. I couldn't get her out of my mind. How was she? How come she did this? Why didn't she tell us? How long did she feel like that? I couldn't stop thinking about thousands of questions.
'Why didn't she tell me?' I thought. I bet Takuya knew something that no one else did, after all, why else would he have been so upset? He probably knew more than any of us. Why hasn't he told me? Or any of us, don't we all deserve to know?
I sat up, Takuya was on watch. He turned around at the sound of shuffling feet as I walked towards him and sat down. I decided to skip any shit and get to the point.
"You know something." I said it as a statement, not a question.
"No, why would you think that?" He said pretty apathetically, resuming his stare into the fire. I stared at him, tring to find some hint in his face that he was lying.
"What happened when you went to get Kia?" I said harshly.
"Well, I found her after a day, and then she got mad at me for not coming for her earlier and refused to come back." Takuya said quickly.
"Like hell! I'm not going to believe that. Why the hell did you come back crying?" I spat. I refused to believe that he just left her. "I can't believe the others fell for that. What exactly did she say?" He shook his head, and I grabbed his shirt collar. "Look, I don't give a damn, if I need to take over your watch duty because I punched the crap out of you. So tell me the goddamn truth." Takuya sighed and looked away. I punched him and stood up. "Jackass." I muttered, walking over to where I had been trying to sleep before.
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Kouichi's POV
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I had come up to her, and standing behind her after Cherubimon left, I stared at her back. I was ordered to keep watch over her for a small amount of time. I was pretty sure she didn't know I was there, or she didn't care if I saw her at her weakest.
"Do they really care?" She asked bitterly. I wasn't sure if she had directed the question at me, or if she had meant for it to stay hanging in this dark place. She didn't say anything for about a moment or two, so I figured it must be for me. She jumped when she heard my voice.
"Who?" I asked. To be honest I didn't want to get closer to her. In fact, I really wanted to stay as far away from her as possible. She jumped, but I ignored that fact.
"No one." She answered after a moment's hesitation. "Why are you here?"
"I've been asked to watch over you for now." I replied. I had to keep it strictly business with her, otherwise I could wind up with a connection with her.
"Oh. Alright." She said before turning around. I refused to say anything more to her. I calmed down, not quite sure how I had become so tense in the first place. She took out her music player, turning it to some song, then listening to it.
I soon heard a quiet whimpering noise. Nothing too hard to understand, but not loud enough to be heard without trying.
"Why is it always like this?" She whispered into her arm. She had brought her nees up and now her arms rested upon them, with her whispering into her arms. I quieted down to listen to her quiet mumblings. "I never keep any friends." Her sobs began again. I looked on as she bit her arm to keep from crying. I watched intently no matter what she did, really.
'No. I can't get attached. She's fragile enough to die in the first battle.' I thought. 'And she will die in her first battle.'