A/N: Because this is what my brain does during downtime on night shifts. :) Enjoy another version of post-fall Kouichi.

Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, e42 - fic that explores memory (either dysfunction or simply someone reminiscing)

Tomorrow's Here to Stay

Their reunion in the real world was overwhelming. That was the only way Kouji could really describe it. Full of colours and tears and babbles he could barely recall, and his brother's breathless voice echoing in the oxygen mask and alive.

And as much as it made his heart weep with joy and absolute relief, he was glad it was one of those things he wouldn't need to repeat anytime soon. Because he got home exhausted, mumbled his way through a well-rehearsed speech and handed his flowers to Satomi, then almost fell asleep into his plate of food at the restaurant.

He would have begged off, he was that tired, but he'd promised to try harder.

And, of course, they noticed: his father and Satomi. They asked. And he was too tired to come up with an excuse so he told the truth.

And they didn't push. They just offered him a ride back to the hospital the next day. A day that hopefully wont be filled with quite as much excitement.

Or so he hoped until they went through their overwhelming reunion all over again.

In retrospect, he should have asked earlier.

In retrospect, he was glad he didn't. It wouldn't have changed, as he learnt the day after, and the day after that. It only distressed the both of them.

That second day, when his brother was reaching for him with shaking hands, drip in one arm and nasal cannula instead of the fogging mask he'd had yesterday, he'd just gone. When Kouichi had cried into his shoulder and mumbled his relief almost ad verbatim to his words the day before, Kouji left him. When he asked about the others, Kouji obliged him. He just followed the other's lead until it was time to go, and then the conversation, the visit, ran through his head in slow motion until the oddity takes over the deja vu and the fatigue.

But maybe things had been too overwhelming for Kouichi to have remembered things clearly.

Yeah, that was it, he thought to himself. Even though part of him suspected it wasn't.

It wasn't that. Day three proceeded along a similar vein at first, until Kouji had frowned too many times and his brother had picked up on it.

'What's wrong?' Kouichi asked.

And wasn't that a loaded question?

'What's wrong?' Kouji echoed. There were still tear tracks on Kouichi's face, so similar to the two days before. 'You're the one crying over being happy to see me three days in a row. Is the hospital really that bad?'

He forces a grin.

Kouichi's lips wobbled instead. 'Three?' he repeated. 'But the digital world was... I mean...' He trails off, looking down at his hands as though they held the answers.

They didn't, and apparently the twins were on two entirely different pages.

'I wasn't physically there,' he said finally, and that wasn't the answer at all but it's something Bokomon told them and not Kouichi, and broke Kouichi's confidence to do so. 'My body was made entirely from data. That's why I just fell apart with Lucemon's attack.' He curled in on himself. 'And I was so scared. Scared that me having wandered into the digital world like that meant I was wandering between life and death. Meant I couldn't come back. But I did. I heard you all calling. And I did.'

'You did,' Kouji agreed, as his brother looks around as though he expected the other to burst out from corners of the hospital room. 'Three days ago.'

'Three?' Kouchi repeated, confused. 'But you're… here.'

The same words. Different tone.

Kouji still didn't understand. Neither did Kouichi. They still weren't on the same page.

'I've come every day.' He was a little hurt. And very confused.

Kouichi shook his head. 'What days?' His voice was almost pleading. And then he whined and clutched his head and Kouji scrambled for the call bell for a nurse.

Anterograde amnesia, the doctor explained later. An effect of the concussion Kouichi was still suffering from. His old memories were fine, but his brain was having trouble forming new memories. He was having trouble concentrating too, which lead to conversations which didn't flow all that smoothly and associations that didn't form all that nicely.

In other words, it made for a conversation that was a mess to the both of them.

That, Kouji understood, and he wished he'd known that before he'd stressed his brother out like he had. He hadn't meant to, and now he at least knew not to.

But it wasn't quite as simple as that, because the visits might be looping in Kouichi's head, but it didn't mean he failed to notice things weren't quite right.

After the headache had settled, they tried again. And this time, Kouichi's 'you're… here' was punctured by confusion and a furrowed brow rather than relieved tears. 'You're…' he repeated, then frowned. 'Why does it feel like…' He trailed off, searching for the word.

'Déjà vu?' Kouji offered. He'd thought that at first, after all.

'…yeah.' But that wasn't a satisfactory explanation, and this time Kouji knew better and didn't offer the rest of it.

That wasn't the end of it, though. Sometimes, Kouichi didn't seem to notice the oddities or the passage of time at all. Other times he would, and his brow would furrow like he was trying to puzzle something out, except the answer was beyond him. Some days, he wouldn't greet him like it was their first real-world meeting all over again, but the confusion, the lack of passing time, would still clearly be there.

Then came the new versions, where he'd insist on an explanation even when Kouji tried to weasel out of it. And those visits ended on slightly sour notes, even though both brothers tried (perhaps too hard) not to snap at each other.

Then, day five, Kouichi asked straight up: 'how many days has it been?'

And Kouji wondered if that meant the amnesia was resolving, but returning from the bathroom started the loop again.

Some days, their visits would be interrupted and Kouji would have to wait. Sometimes, Kouichi would have to go to speech therapy or psychology or rehab, or undergoing some test or other. Day three, he was off getting an MRI scan.

He was learning more about concussions and post-concussion syndrome and brains and brain injuries than he ever thought he would need to know. But all of it reached the same conclusion: no-one knew if it was temporary or permanent, how long it would last, when things would start to improve. And sometimes things looked better, and other times they were exactly the same as those first few days, covered in obliviousness and fog. And Kouji wondered if that wasn't kinder for Kouichi at least, because the holes, the way things didn't join together, frustrated him.

But for the rest of them who left no lasting impressions, it started off hard and got even harder. And the longer it took, the more likely the chances for permanent damage to remain.

'Tomorrow keeps slipping away,' Kouichi said blandly, on day six.

Kouji wasn't sure what made him reach that conclusion, but it was a fairly accurate one.

'Tomorrow's never quite the same as today,' he said, 'even if you play it out step by step the same way.'

'…do I?'

Kouji shook his head. 'Besides, we talk about other stuff too.' Like how his day went, or what the others have been up to, or what mischief his dog has gotten into. Stuff he didn't recant on other days.

'I don't remember.' Kouichi didn't admit that nearly as often as he seemed to realise it. He'd imply it, but he wouldn't admit it.

Kouji wanted to say 'one day', but he didn't know that, not really. Whether the cycle would break at all, or whether it would always be like this, rinsing and repeating and not retaining…

Kouichi had been keeping a journal most of the way through. Kouji had been told to prompt him to write in it when he visited, though it didn't seem to be helping all that much at the time.

It seemed to be comforting, though. The way it hid under the pillow. The way bits and pieces of the stories he'd told were in them. The way they were meticulously dated and numbered. The way the sentences were truncated, as though he'd lost a train of thought or concentration halfway through. The way it looked like a bunch of puzzle pieces missing the frame or any semblance of the whole picture.

But it held on to the hope that, one day, the frame and the whole picture would both be there.

Day seven, Kouji half-expected, would go much the same ways the other days had been. And it started off the same way. A reunion they were repeating all over again. A journal he scribbled in as Kouji spoke. And he'd stop and start when prompted like he normally did, until he suddenly frowned and set the journal down.

Kouji stopped too, and watched him flick through the older pages instead. 'Seven days,' he said, finally. 'Is that why you had that look on your face?'

'What look?' Kouji asked, resigned to the tangential flow of their conversations nowadays.

'You winced when you came in,' Kouichi said.

'I did?' Kouji did a double take. 'Wait, you remember when I came in?'

'Hmm… yeah.' Kouichi didn't seem to register how monumental that was. 'I guess I didn't before.' He looked back at the book in his lap, at the dates, at how things both repeated and left blanks.

That was an understatement, but Kouji wasn't going to say that because he didn't want to jinx it.

Day seven turned out to be the turnaround. Six days completely gone, and the doctors said they wouldn't ever come back. 'The memories never established themselves,' he explained. 'They're not anywhere to recall. Unlike retrograde amnesia, where the pathways are disrupted, and there is a chance to regain them down the road. These pathways don't exist, and neither does their destination.'

So six days, gone, except for scribbles in a notebook and everybody else's memories. And maybe that would blend into future months and years and they'd look back and wonder about that little dot of time, but for now it was six days too many, and marred by other post-concussion syndromes that stuck around.

'It could take months,' the same doctor said apologetically afterwards, to their mother and father and Satomi as well. 'Brain injuries are rather fickle, unfortunately, even when the brain scan appears normal. But most people with PTA – post-traumatic amnesia – under a week recover fully by the end of it.'

And that wasn't a hundred percent reassuring, but it was the best they could ask for. Still, Kouji knocked on his brother's room on day eight with more than a little trepidation. Because if Kouichi had lost – or hadn't formed – those memories again, if they'd crossed into the zone of increasing chances of permanent cognitive impairment, if they had to repeat the same day, the same first meeting, over and over again…

Forgetting was hard – and Kouji would twice-over not begrudge his brother that – but Kouji was rapidly learning that remembering when somebody else forgot was hard as well.

But Kouichi smiled when he came in, eyes tired but clear. 'I didn't forget yesterday,' he said.

And Kouji stuck the tender bits of his heart back together and smiled back. 'Guess that means tomorrow's here to stay.'