Edited on 12/12/2020 for content and grammar.

Hello friends! Thank you for reviews from RogueSummersLover, CartoonPrawn, and Sweet Cari, I swear it keeps me going. I will be addressing the calmness, particularly of Tai to Kari's admission in the next chapter. I promise there is a reason for it, but I totally get that they seemed a little eager to accept it. Hopefully, as the story progresses it feels more fitting.

TW in this chapter for thoughts of suicide.

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon

Chapter 8: I Know Places

Kari

Even though I was already holding the helmet in my hands, actually seeing him about to get on a motorcycle was something I wasn't quite sure what to do with. He handed me his backpack to throw on, he'd quickly tossed a few things in, apparently, he already had a bag at Tai's that they would bring so it wasn't very heavy. He must have noticed the look of unease on my face as he slid the bag into my hands.

"Matt got a new bike last year and asked if I wanted this one."

The look of confusion on my face morphed into a smirk, "Okay, that tracks but how are you at driving this thing?" I asked.

"Do you think I would ever do something that would put you in danger?" He was serious then, and I felt my heart tug. Five years ago there would have been a quip and a smirk. I craved the lightness he'd been able to bring in the past and now that I knew why it was gone, why he was so serious, it broke my heart all over again. I'd triggered all of it. The ocean and me hurting myself drove him to a full-on breakdown and now I was back and I wondered if I was going make it all worse for him?

I nodded and put my helmet on, unable to find any words and needing to hide and have some sort of boundary between us. I got on behind him and he instructed me to hold him around his waist and to make sure I leaned with him on turns, I nodded against his back trying to make sure to remember that. I'd never been on a motorcycle before and running for my life didn't seem like an optimal situation to learn, but I wasn't going to fight it. I took a breath as he started the bike and we began to drive away. It was a little awkward at first driving through the city, and a bit stop and go, but once he got us on the highway I actually found myself enjoying it. It was loud, the wind deafening, and I was able to let it drown out my thoughts for a while. While I could tell he was a safe driver and good at maneuvering the bike it still felt dangerous. Something in me liked it though, it felt like a controllable danger. He could keep us safe on this, but we could also be crushed in an instant if someone else wasn't careful. It was a danger I could handle at the moment, and one I found I craved now that I knew what it was like. It was almost enough stimulation to avoid any thoughts of being so close to him, almost but not enough.

Yes, he was different, but he was also still TK. He was still the boy I'd spent years of my life standing beside in battle. He was still the person I used to text in the middle of the night if I needed someone to talk to. He was still someone I thought may have been falling for me the way I'd been for him. Being against him like this was slightly maddening, and felt almost as dangerous as riding on this thing. We weren't children anymore and leaning my body against his in any fashion pushed my mind much further than my thoughts of kissing him as a teenager. I could feel him breathing, the gentle rise and fall of his back, and found myself syncing up my breath with his own. I let his body lead mine as he leaned into turns. We were a single entity.

It might have been a little over an hour before we got off the highway and were moving on country roads. The sky had started to darken and it was around dusk when I saw one of the signs say we were heading into Hakone. I remember coming as a child with my mother for a day trip but hadn't traveled here since. It finally clicked for me and I realized where we were going, TK's grandmother lived in Hakone.

After a few minutes we pulled down a dirt road and he slowed down the bike as quite a bit of dust from the dry earth was kicked up. When we finally came to a stop we were in front of an old home surrounded by woods. I took off my helmet and looked around, there was a dock to a small lake on our left but no other homes anywhere to be seen, we were totally isolated out here, it was perfect.

"So this is your grandmother's place?" I asked, getting off the bike and taking in the old style Minka home. I didn't see any other vehicles and it looked dark inside.

"Was," he said. I turned back towards him. "She passed about two years back and left it to Matt and me, but he wasn't really interested and knows how much I loved this place, so it's mostly just mine now."

"I'm so sorry," I said, remembering again how little I knew about him and how much we had missed in each other's lives.

"It's okay," he said, a sad smile crossing his face. "She was ready to go and I was here with her."

He quickly changed the topic back to the present. "Your brother and Izzy should be out in a bit, there is a store in town I told them to stop at, it's been a month or so since I was last out here so it's pretty empty food-wise." He rolled the bike up to the side of the house in front of a shed that looked newer than the rest of the property, and I followed him inside. He turned on the lights and I felt myself instantly relax as a faint glow covered the room. One half of the room felt like a traditional tea space while the second half was a cozy living room with an overstuffed cream colored couch and a fireplace. I could see that more of the doors slid open to reveal the forest around us if we wanted to. He walked me through the home and I saw that while it seemed the tea space had remained untouched for years, many of the other areas had been updated. The first room opened up into the kitchen that had a countertop divider with stools around it instead of a kitchen table. The cabinets matched the counter's dark brown wood that stuck out against the bright white of the, clearly new, sink. He walked us past that and down a hallway towards three rooms. The first was a loft-style that he said his brother and him had shared as children, Matt had the top and him the bottom. It was simple, the walls a bright white contrast to the dark wood trim that flowed throughout the house. There was a dresser to match the bed but it was bare other than that. The next room had been his grandmother's, it was clean and tidy and barely touched, but there was a new bed, low to the ground with a fluffy white comforter that I wanted to curl into and sleep for weeks. There was a big comfy armchair near the window, with worn cognac leather that felt like butter as I ran my hand across it. There was also a small dresser and a closet. This would be my room.

He'd explained that he changed everything out over the last two years except for a few pieces of furniture he couldn't bear to part with, the tea table being one, the chair in here, some pictures on the walls, and then some things in his room which we moved too next.

It had the same paint and trim and cleanliness but it was overwhelmingly his own. There were built-in bookshelves that lined one of the walls, most of them filled to the brim with worn books with creased bindings from years of use. There was an old typewriter sitting on one of the shelves along with some photos of his family, plus the one with all of us as kids in the digital world. There was a hoodie casually tossed across the bed from the last time he'd been here. Papers and a notebook covered a desk that sat in front of a big picture window. Unlike the rest of the house, which was cozy but almost too neat, this room had life.

"It was my grandfather's old study," he explained. "I used to sneak in here and pretend to read the books when I was too young to know what the words were. They would go looking for me outside, and then find me in here under his desk. I'd tell them the story I'd made up in my head and they would praise me for being such a good reader. Probably not good for my ego," he laughed.

It made me happy to think of him that way, like when I'd first met him, small and full of imagination and joy. I wondered if he was still there beneath the layers of pain he'd faced. I walked over to the shelf and ran my fingers over a book that was probably older than this house, older than the second World War. We had nothing in my family that was preserved the way things here seemed to be. I never met my father's parents, long gone by the time I was born, but my mother's parents had been around until early high school. When my grandparents were alive they weren't the type to hold on to things. I remember asking for stories once, curious about our family history, but it almost seemed like they were running from something, from a past they'd rather keep locked away. Eventually, I stopped asking. They left nothing behind for me to put on bookshelves, or hide in boxes.

"It suits you," I turned around and met his smile with my own. He had always been a collector of stories. I was happy that he was able to inherit this place. A weight seemed to lift off of him being here, regardless of him living in the city, this was clearly what he considered home. His jaw wasn't so tight and his eyes had softened since we stepped foot in the door. If I'd been younger, I might have thought it was spooky being all the way out here, so far from the city, but now it felt like I could breathe easily surrounded by the thick trees. It felt like protection.

I pointed to the typewriter, with its dark hunter green finish, and aged keys, "Does this still work?" I saw his eyes light up a bit.

"Yea, it sticks a little and I need to give it a good cleaning but it can still type."

"I've never even touched one," I let my fingers trace the keys with their American letters. Japanese typewriters were cumbersome and most people didn't own them. TK's family was mixed-race, French on his mother's side and English and Japanese on his father's side, so he'd grown up learning both languages along with Japanese.

"I used this to write that letter I sent you when we were nine."

I hadn't thought of that in years. We'd been apart for months at that point and I missed him so much. None of my friends at school understood what I'd been through. Tai had Matt, Sora, and Izzy close by, but I was all alone. I was so excited when I got his letter and then wanted to scream when it was in English. He knew I had trouble with the subject and had promised he'd help me, I remember being slightly annoyed that this was how he'd decided to help.

"Yea, it only took me a week to translate it," I scoffed with a smirk.

"Hey, no one else was typing you letters let alone in another language, I knew you couldn't forget about me that way."

"You thought I'd forget about you?"

He sat down at his desk, using his feet to swivel him side to side, an old nervous tik I remembered from high school.

"Everyone else got to be together, I mean Joe was busy and Mimi moved away after a few years but you got to be with everyone else and I felt pretty lonely until we moved to Odaiba."

"I felt the same exact way," I sat down on his bed, pulling my legs up and crossing them in front of me. "Everyone was older than me so it's not like I was with them at all. I missed you a lot. I remember being so excited to get your letter and then even though it was frustrating it almost felt like we were speaking in code. Tai was so bad in other languages when we were young so it wasn't like he could spy on me and read it." I smiled. "I still have it with my things, if I'm ever able to go back to Kyoto I'll have to dig it out."

"So you didn't totally get rid of me?" He looked up through the ends of his hair as they fell into his face, making him look younger and shy.

"No, I mean, it's all in a box," I said sheepishly, "But it's there when I needed it."

"I'm glad," he said getting up. He held out his hand to help me off the bed. "Lemme finish the tour."

He showed me the rest of the house, the bathroom that was across the hall and next to the first room we saw, and then a big sunroom in the back of the house that looked out into the woods. There was older wicker furniture with faded cushions situated around the room facing out towards the woods. I imagined Matt and him as children, sitting on the floor of this room in the morning sun, coloring, or reading. I knew that coming here had been so meaningful to him when they were kids. He'd said once how important it was that he'd been able to be around two people who still loved each other after his parent's divorce. The two boys getting to be here with them was like getting two parents back for a little while. He'd been so heartbroken when his grandfather had died our freshman year of high school and spent a lot of time on holidays with his grandmother that year, not wanting her to be all alone out here.

I followed him back to the front to wait for my brother and Izzy. He put a pot on the stove for some tea while we waited.

"When they get here I need to ward the house, just to be sure it's fully protected."

"You think he'll find us out here?" He asked as he rummaged through cabinets, throwing out things well past their date.

"I assume he could find me anywhere. He found me in Kyoto. Apparently, I'm like a magical homing beacon. Nadia always joked about my name, saying it was too obvious, I'm like a bright light drawing things towards me."

"And you think that's why the ocean was drawn towards you?"

"It's a possibility. I feel like there's still so much I don't know, so much she had left to teach me."

I felt my eyes well up and for once I just let the tears fall. He set two steaming cups down on the table and sat next to me wrapping one of his arms around my shoulder. "I'm really sorry about your friend."

I nodded, wiping my tears away. "You'd have liked her."

"What was she like?"

I took a breath and closed my eyes, picturing her lovely face, and lively eyes. "She was kind, charming, and beautiful. Smart, so damn smart, she could outwit anyone in a debate, she would have given Ken a run for his money." I wrapped my hands around the warm mug, letting it ground me. I let my darker thoughts come out, the ones I'd hidden even from her. "I remember feeling jealous the first few weeks we were friends, at the way she held herself and the way people stared at her like everyone could tell she was otherworldly. She was so patient with me. She was my family. She was all I had left." I said drifting off.

"You still have us," he said, "I'm sorry you ever felt like you were alone."

I let my head fall against his shoulder, letting down a wall, desperate for comfort. I closed my eyes as his head dropped against my own, letting myself take in the woodsy smell of the house and of him. This place suited him and I was happy to be here now and to be seeing this version of him.

"TK?" I moved back a bit so I could look at him and he gave me some space, adjusting a little so he was facing me, nodding at me to continue.

"What did you want to meet that day at the beach about?"

His eyes grew wide and I could tell he was biting on the inside of his cheek. I don't know what prompted me, I'd left it alone back at his place, in the grand scheme of things it felt largely unimportant. Sitting here so close to him though, my mind drifted into other places, and I selfishly wanted to know. While I'd been attracted to Kato for totally different reasons, I had always been drawn to TK. The softness of his features, boyish and charming. His eyes seemed to change with his emotions, blue with grey streaks, that seemed darker depending on his mood. My eyes traveled down his face but I moved my gaze away from his mouth and back to his eyes in an effort to keep my face from turning red. Knowing that he hadn't meant to isolate me opened a door that I thought had closed a long time ago.

We jumped as we heard a door slam and the crunching of leaves, sticks, and earth as Tai and Izzy walked up the path. "It's not important, forget I asked," I said getting up and backing away, trying to keep my voice light so he wouldn't think I was mad. He looked almost in a daze, like the idea of that meeting took him right back to that night, and I hoped I hadn't crossed a line. The guys barged into the house with bags of food, so I busied myself with the distraction of putting it away.

"Holy shit," I turned at the sound of Tai's voice and saw him staring at TK.

The marks on his neck were an angry red color.

"What happened to the two of you?" Izzy added with concern.

"What did you tell them?" I asked, letting go of my task and moving towards them in the main room.

"Just that something happened and we needed to get out of the city, I said I'd explain once they got here."

"And we are here, so explain," Tai said, gesturing for me to sit on the couch. Izzy set his things down on the low tea table and then settled on an old armchair across from me.

I tried my best to recap what had happened in TK's apartment. Trying to explain a Bogie was difficult though.

"So it's a creature, but he couldn't touch it?" Tai looked weary.

"It's an elemental being, they manifest in different ways, sometimes it's in body, sometimes it's ghostly, sometimes you just hear a voice and feel a presence. It depends on the creature and how strong it is."

"So they are always bad or was it corrupted?" Izzy asked, trying to relate it to the Digimon so he could understand it better.

"No it doesn't work like that really, elemental beings don't really fall under good or bad they are much more likely to blur the lines between the two depending on the situation. Some are helpful, some want to stay hidden, some play mean pranks on people, and then some are cruel but normally will avoid you if you don't go disturbing them or trying to call on them."

"So there are more than just this bogie?" Izzy prodded.

"Yea, you have Bogies, Selkies, Hobgoblins, Mermaids, Fae, the Kitsune Inari messengers, those are some of the ones people would be most familiar with."

"Wait, wait, wait, you're telling me mermaids exist too?" Tai looked like his head was about to explode. I knew he wanted this to be false, but the red marks around TK's neck were proof that what I was saying wasn't crazy.

"Not the way you think of them, it's not some children's movie. They look much less human than pop culture would lead you to believe and keep to themselves. Humans are predatory and cruel, the fae have plenty of reasons to avoid us or cause us harm."

"Sounds like you're on their side," Tai said in a huff.

"Tai it's not about sides. Most often these creatures are just trying to exist, and somehow Kato got to the Bogie and encouraged him to mess with TK or forced him to do it. A good enough witch can call on these beings to help them with spells and such."

"So have they always existed in our world?" Izzy moved us back into question and answer territory.

"You said they were both of this world and not of this world?" TK prompted.

"The way it was explained to me was they both exist in this world and don't because they exist differently than us. They live outside of time and can live to be hundreds of years old and flicker between another world that's been lost to time. I only know so much, and a lot of what we know is speculation, so it's hard to pin things down with definitive answers."

"How do we fight things we don't even understand." Tai slammed his hands on the table jolting all of us.

"We figured out how to fight against evil Digimon, time and time again, this is just another puzzle to figure out. If we are talking about other world lines I can look into string theory, similar to the digital world. We know there are at least two out there, this could prove that more exist." There was a spark in Izzy's eyes, his entire reality was being challenged but he loved a challenge.

"We weren't exactly alone were we," my brother said pointedly.

"Sorry I took that away from us." I pushed myself up from the table and moved towards my backpack, grabbing four nails and extra salt I'd gotten at the market. Tai tried getting me to come back, sending apologies, but I was too angry. I ignored him and walked out of the house leaving them to argue about science and whatever they thought was real or not real. I needed air. I knew I was probably being too sensitive, taking the comment too personally, but he had no idea how much I still blamed myself for us losing the Digimon. Who would we be now? Would we still all be close? Would I be a witch on the run from a man who killed my best friend? Would TK have had a mental breakdown? It all led back to me and my connection to the ocean and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

I took a deep breath and got to warding the house, I had to push an iron nail into the ground at the north, south, east, and west around the house, and then go around with salt, murmuring a spell that allowed the ground to swallow it down and hide it just beneath the surface. I felt the air shift and settle once it was complete and felt like I could breathe a little easier. Once I was finished I went back into the house, expecting to be bombarded but found it quiet, everyone had moved to their rooms, save for Izzy who I could hear typing away in the sunroom. I quietly made my way into my own room hoping that a long sleep would help me find a way to face my brother in the morning.

I curled myself into a ball and thought of TK though, of the pain in his eyes as he told me his past, and I felt my chest get tight. All I'd ever wanted for any of us after everything we'd been through was happiness. Even though I'd felt so much despair over losing him I always hoped he was thriving, and knowing that he was hurting made me want to cave in on myself. All the times I looked at my phone wishing he'd call I could have done it. I could have just dialed his number. So much time lost, so much hurt, was it my fault?

TK

I woke up in a panic, gasping for air, feeling my body tense with panic. I rolled onto my side and reached for my backpack, I quickly unzipped it and dug my hands inside, feeling around for my pill bottle. I let out a shaky breath as I found it, popped the top, and grabbed one. I took it with the lukewarm water I had next to my bed and tried to control my breathing. I was safe, in this bed, in this room.

I let my head fall into my hands. I'd dreamed of myself in the past when I was at one of my lowest points after Kari had gone and everyone went off to college except for me. I'd felt like a failure that fall, being tutored to pass tests I should have passed in the spring, doing it in secret so no one would know. My head would spiral back then, anytime I saw something sharp I thought of Kari, and then my thoughts would quickly travel to what it would feel like if I did it to myself. I hated that my brain went there, just a small cut, just a quick motion, just a little blood. I'd come so close at one point. I was so depressed and lonely, it was Cody who helped me then.

My therapist had told me that moving, some form of exercise might help, a way to get rid of the pent up tension in my body. I didn't play basketball anymore so I'd lost the one thing I really did to stay active. Cody asked one day if I wanted to try Kendo or Kenjutsu, both taught by his grandfather, who was somehow still active and just as quick-witted as ever. I was desperate at that point, willing to try anything to help, and it was Kenjutsu that stuck. His grandfather had said to me, "You're not here for the sport you're here for battle, so you'll learn to fight." It seemed a little dramatic at first but he was right. I was at war inside of my own head and I needed a way out. He'd tried to get me to compete but I just wanted it for myself, I didn't want to turn it into something I was good at or bad at.

So I got up and did what I needed to when I couldn't shake the feeling of panic in my body. I tried to be quiet as I pulled clothing out of my drawers and changed into a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. I moved silently through the house. The sliding door glided easily and brought me out into the fresh air. I took a deep breath and let the cool breeze wash over me as I looked out at the lake, still and dark, a reminder of the ocean I wasn't looking for at the moment. I turned and headed towards the shed that I'd turned into a makeshift gym over the past year. It had some free weights off to the side and two heavy bags, one of them old and falling apart while the other was new as of a few months ago. I was there for my Bokuto though.

I grabbed it, let myself get used to the weight of it in my hands before I started moving. Strike, parry, strike, block, thrust. Over and over again I moved around the small room, fighting only the demons inside my own head. I closed my eyes and focused on my footwork as my false blade moved, syncing up my breathing, feeling like I was in control of this right now, and letting it calm me.

"Hey!" Came Tai's startled voice as he backed out of the shed. I stopped mid-swing.

"I didn't see you."

"Clearly," He said, peaking back in to make sure it was safe to enter before he did.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I don't think so. Just restless not being in my own place, it always takes me a day or two to adjust not being home, you know how it is."

I nodded, letting my Bokuto rest against the wall as I grabbed some water and sat on a bench off to the side.

"So you really couldn't even touch it back?" Picking up the conversation that had abruptly ended when Kari stormed out earlier. I'd been so tired I'd used it as an excuse to head to bed. He looked down, away from me, as if he couldn't see the truth then it wouldn't be real.

"No," my hands balled into fists. "How the hell are we supposed to fight something we can't get our hands on? It felt crazy Tai, it's like everything you had a nightmare about as a child is real now. How can we help her if she's the only one with any power to do anything?"

"She didn't use magic through right? Just an object, the iron. So that means we can fight in some fashion it's just knowing how. I'm sure being able to use a Katana isn't going to be a bad thing," he finished by nudging towards the practice sword. "Do you have an actual blade here?"

"Sort of, my grandfather had a Katana but I've never even unsheathed it so I don't know what kind of condition it's in. It might even just be an old decoration. I never thought I'd actually need a blade. I can check it out tomorrow." I thought of the sword that hung in my room, the carved wooden sheath with flames that started at the base and turned into smoke near the tip. The red leather that weaved itself around the handle. I don't know why I'd never looked at it, maybe it was a healthy fear of sharp objects in my own hands, but I shook those thoughts away.

"You two need to talk," I said.

"Coming from you," He said with a huff.

"I told her," I said not meeting his gaze.

"Really?" He looked up in surprise, "How did she take it."

"Well, she's not angry. I just don't want the pity that I could see in her eyes. We seem okay though, hopefully enough to start over."

"I don't think you have to start over TK, you can't ignore ten years of friendship, you just pick it back up differently."

"Ya, know sometimes you actually say the right thing," I said, laughing lightly. "Now you just need to say the right thing to your sister."

"You know I didn't mean it that way, I don't blame her, I never could." He kicked at the dirt on the ground, shoving his hands into his pockets, sulking.

"Tai we were children, something bad happened to her that caused us to change everything. I wasn't given a choice but I would have given my own life to protect hers. She had nothing to give, no way to make a choice except to sacrifice herself, and you know she probably would have. That's why you made it for her, and she had to live with that, and of course, it had an effect on her and left her with scars."

"Damnit," he mumbled. Not angry just truly realizing what it must mean to her, how it must feel. We didn't talk of that night often, ever really. It was too much. I'd never told Tai how angry and hurt her and I had been after it happened, that we didn't get a say. It didn't feel worth it.

"Talk to her," I said.

He nodded and moved towards me and placing a hand on my shoulder, "I'm proud of you for telling her, I know it wasn't easy, but I'm glad you finally did." He reached out his hand to help me stand. "We should get some sleep." I nodded and followed him back inside.

I was thankful that even though my brother wasn't around as much anymore that Tai had stepped into his shoes. There had been moments over the past few years that were incredibly lonely, but once Tai knew the truth it was like this gear shifted from friend to family, specifically when Matt moved. If he didn't hear from me for more than a week he was at my door with takeout or beer. As much as Kari needed Tai growing up, he needed to be needed. We were able to fill a place in the other's life and I was so grateful for it. Cody had eventually left for school as well, so the only one still in Tokyo from our group that knew what happened to me was Tai. I always felt too much shame to tell the others, even Izzy, so we drifted, still in contact but not the way we once were.

As I slid back into bed and closed my eyes I tried to force a better dream into my head. My mind originally went to the beach, the plan I'd had, and Kari. Thoughts drifted to the feel of her against me on my bike but I quickly forced it out and away. I could not go there right now. So I forced my mind back to fighting and I dreamt of sword battles. I dreamt of victory.

Do we think TK's new skill will come in handy? Or is Kari the only one with any power here? Can't wait to see what you have to think. Until next time, please review!