Warnings: Implied death, polyamory, trauma, euphemisms. (I'm not tagging underage because nothing actually happened, OCs, secondhand murder because reboot.
Interlude - Colorless 1974-1981
For Wallace, he remembers the beginning, but not how it ends. He's in a field hospital, alone, head wound up with bandages. His partners are nowhere to be found. There's not even an egg.
He is, for the first time since he was four years old and told he would never have a brother or sister, completely alone in a room.
The first thing he does is call his mother. He gets a dial tone in reply from the payphone.
He doesn't quite remember what he does after that but he comes into himself again back in the hospital room, curled on the bed, and Lopmon's ear on his shoulder.
Lopmon. Not Chocomon. It's Lopmon, calm and clear and lucid and not dead. His eyes are very steady and he's smiling a little.
"I snuck in," he says, proudly. "Terriermon's coming, but he was hungry and their vending machines aren't as good, but he's coming." The little rabbit-dog gently presses against his shoulder. "It's okay, Wallace. We're here. It'll be okay."
Wallace lets out a sob and hugs him tight. Because for once, everything feels all right.
The Digital World and human world had been falling apart before, he remembered. He remembered pulling his mother into their basement, chatting frantically to his girlfriend, with her tiny miserable alraumon going into battle. What if she was dead?
Lopmon noses his cheek again, looking all the world like a kicked puppy. "I'm sorry Wallace."
"For what," he gets out. "This stuff isn't your fault."
"No," he says. "But that doesn't mean I'm not sorry it's happening to you anyway. I was always sorry and always hurting you and… well, I just wanted to say it. You know?"
Wallace chokes out another sob and holds his bunny tight. "Yeah. I know."
And they wait together, all alone.
Or at least, they feel alone for a long, long time.
Then, his baggy jacket, little more than a rag with pockets now, glows a soft minty green. Lopmon hops over to get it, examining what's left of a pocket.
"Wallace," Lopmon murmurs. "It's a d-terminal."
"Oh." Wallace remembers those. He could have used those in his travels while running from Chocomon but by that point he hadn't had much time to think about it, or friends to contact. But the other kids had had them, and they usually worked no matter what. "Bring it here."
"How about a please?" cracks his bunny but it is done within a few minutes of waddling, just as Terriermon hops through the window. He has a sack of clearly stolen food and a very stolen sack.
But for them, old habits die hard and the skin under his partner's fur is red raw, so Wallace doesn't say anything as he pops it open. Instantly the mail icon explodes, messages nearly burst on screen.
What's going on?
What happened?
My parents are dead!
Someone lives in my house!
What happened in Japan? It was Japan right?
And finally, one long message from Izumi Koushiro, saying very simply. We apologize for the confusion. Please check this message for further updates. The short version is: Homeostasis, who assisted in creating us all as Chosen Children, was forced to reboot the worlds themselves. One of our group is venturing to the Digital World to search for a way back and ascertain the situation. My apologies, but this is all I know at this time.
That seems like a fat load of crap and most people seem to believe it too. At least until Daisuke, who last Wallace had heard was dead, came on and said, That's what happened now leave us alone! Some of us are recovering from not dying and stuff.
The endless pinging goes quiet, but Wallace can't resist adding, Sleeping Beauty needs his rest, huh.
Daisuke responds to him privately with relish. We can't all look freshly rolled out of the hay Wallace. I happen to take extra care of these gorgeous noodle-making hands every day.
I wouldn't call that gorgeous. He pauses, hesitates, but asks anyway. What happened?
He doesn't get an answer.
The nurse comes in just as Terriermon and Lopmon hide under the bed, check him over, and after some paperwork, let him go with a "someone's looking for you!" sort of deal. He obediently goes where they directed him and pauses at the door.
"Sally," he says.
His girlfriend looks at him with one eye, an arm in bandages, Alraumon on her feet. "Hey," she says.
"Hey yourself," Wallace says, and breaks down crying again. Thinks of his friends, the living and the dead, and mourns them all.
He doesn't remember the end of the world, no one remembers what took them back there but he thinks there's a voice, a girl who is patting his sweat soaked head and smiling before the light comes and pulls.
They end up meeting Mimi, months later. She has no Palmon and she looks worn and drained.
He hugs her. Sally tries to slug her in the gut. He says tries because Mimi, sweet, polite, not-violent Mimi, throws her over her shoulder into the grass.
"Holy shit," Terriermon says.
Mimi stares at them, hollow-eyed and tired and shaking. "I'm sorry," she says, half a squeak, and half a not sorry there. "I just… I won't let anyone stomp on me now. Not like this. Japan was awful."
"Well…" Wallace tries to say. "You're back now." Both girls shoot him a look and he steps back. "It's not wrong."
Mimi sighs. "I need coffee. And cake. With sprinkles."
Lopmon makes a disgusted noise as Terriermon lights up with glee. Sally, however, looks thoughtful.
"I'll trade you shortcake for answers."
Mimi's eyes sparkle. "Deal."
Later, Wallace is torn between wishing she hadn't because there was nothing in the world like hearing your past repeat itself like a terrible film reel, or glad Sally had, because it had been years since he'd gotten to watch Snow White without being considered a massive dweeb.
He's still a dweeb, of course.
School ends, almost for good, and Wallace, a master of roughing it, invites them to travel. Both girls agree without a second thought.
And it's nice. It's fairly busy, and Wallace had never expected to see Mimi light a fire and look fashionable in mud, but well, there you go. Lopmon is often on Mimi somewhere, as if too many years apart and fighting were enough to have to start from zero.
And besides, it stops Mimi from looking at Alraumon and looking away with tears in her eyes.
Yet no matter how hard they try, she won't talk about Japan a second time, not about home, not about her friends. The rare phone calls, the letters, the strange way she fiddles with her cell phone that should be long dead. She just looks sad and tired and worn out when they try.
"It's not my part to say," she tells them.
They meet Michael in Colorado, and find the cabin the man and the Seadramon had built themselves.
"Summer home," he jokes at them and laughs at the look on Sally's face.
Wallace rolls his eyes and takes a picture for the group. The American section lets out cheers and everyone else sleeps through it.
There's a person always on idle in the group chat. Even as they go on three years of no idea what to do and stumbling through life almost all alone, they don't talk. They're constantly online as online can be and they follow most of the chats (thank god for forums) but they never talk, even when they get pinged.
It makes Wallace uneasy, because he knows who it is, and he doesn't like that silence.
They stop at Wallace's home in Summer Memory, Colorado and Wallace swallows at the dust. At the rotted wood and rust on the chains. He cries and Sally squeezes his arm because it hurts all over again.
Terriermon squints at the water pump. "I bet I could pump this by myself now."
Lopmon snorts and it's bitter and tired. "I would hope so."
Wallace laughs. Mimi however, is tapping her chin thoughtfully.
"We could rebuild this," she says. "All of us."
"Do we really need another summer home?" Michael jokes.
Mimi rolls her eyes. "I'm experimenting in yours."
"So it's the home equivalent of the couch?" Sally offers.
They laugh and it hurts.
Wallace looks at his house again, at its decrepit state. Then he exhales. "You know what? Yeah. I'd like to live here again." He glances around. "Maybe with all of you around. I'll think about it."
Sally punches him in the arm with one hand, and pulls out a ring with the other.
"What the hell?" he grumbles, and Mimi whoops and cheers as Michael mimics a piano dirge. It's just embarrassing.
This message gets a low note of congrats bud, I guess.
And Wallace sighs. He hadn't wanted to go that far west.
At least the asshole was talking.
California is their second to last stop because Wallace has the connections they kind of lack, and two of them were supposed to meet them there to talk about Australia, or some other place. Some place equally as cursed.
But they only meet one, one lone girl with hair as blue as the sea that's actually looking at them. And she's weeping and suddenly Wallace feels twelve years old again.
"Ada what happened?" He reaches for her and she jerks back. He stops, remembers, motions to the others to scoot back. She's partnerless and sobbing and cursing his ears blue until the name Julie slips from her mouth. "Cripes, slow down, please you're babbling-"
"Her sister's in the hospital," said someone, cold, nasally, angry. "Because you guys decided to take the god damn scenic route."
And Mimi watches as Wallace's face shutters closed, angry, hollow. "Hi to you too Ricky."
The young man grunts from his chair, sitting with a small red dragon the size of a giant Alaskan Malamute at minimum and sipping a cold tea. "Hi yourself. You could have sent a letter."
"And watch it go unanswered like the last twelve. Forget it." He pats the stranger girl on the back as she sniffles
Mimi glances at Sally, who shrugs and says, "Our fiancee's a man of intrigue."
Michael chokes on a laugh and this gets the attention of the short man, who scowls at them.
"Have some decency a woman's crying," he says to him and Michael raises an eyebrow. He goes ignored and the man (Ricky?) glances at them all with disinterest, until he recognizes Mimi. His eyes widen a smidgen. "Oh, no wonder you're late. You were getting all chummy with the Chosen Ones."
The last bits are a sneer at best.
"Unless your digivice got flushed down the toilet again, you've also got one of those mate," Wallace says, offering Ada a tissue. "Mind not pissing off our only lead on figuring out shit? We've been doing so well at making her like us."
"He makes it sound so dirty," Sally mutters and Mimi snorts and walks up to Ricky with a smile.
"Oh don't do that," he says, voice sullen. "I know who you are. I know what you did. Or, didn't do, rather."
Mimi's smile doesn't die. In fact, it goes up about three hundred watts. "Nice to meet you too," she says and she means it and it stings. "Can we be civil?"
"I thought you were Japanese, Mimi."
"You'd better hope I start acting like it Michael." Her eyes burn.
"You killed my mom," Ricky says in answer to her question.
"She deserved it," Wallace mutters with dedication.
"Then put handcuffs on me and put me in jail," Mimi replies without fear and looking him dead in the eyes. "I promise it won't change a single thing."
Wallace looks up, just in time to see the muscles in the squat man's body twitch. He leans to do something, no idea what, but it's not in time to stop the other's fist from hitting Mimi square in the gut.
She skids backwards and Sally leaps to catch her (when did they get so close?) but Mimi rights herself with her fist, nose and mouth dripping blood, and eyes still set and firm.
"You feel better?" she says.
Ricky doesn't answer, but he doesn't squirm. Anger meets something else. Determination, maybe.
"You want to know what happened?" Mimi continues, unopposed, seemingly unaware of the whispering and pointing fingers and running towards payphones. "You want to know? We had no idea what we were doing. We were caught between two gods and all of the media and four of our friends were missing for months and we could do nothing." Her voice wavers but she clears her throat and goes on. "We met someone who was trying to look after someone they love and they failed. We watched someone die, we watched the world die and we kept going. We keep on going. We have to. And none of you have, and none of you even seem to want to do anything but blame us and look down on and be the very people you're condemning." She breathes sharply and coughs and wipes her face but she refuses to look away from him. "This is not easy. This is hard and I want to curl up in my sleeping bag or be home with my friends but I'm here because we're going to do something if it kills us. What are you going to do, other than hurt people? Because if you're not going to do anything, go somewhere where you will because we don't need more dead bodies. I have seen enough, my friends have seen enough, and our children are going to see more if we don't do something. So I'm doing what I can and I don't care if you approve or not. We're living our lives how we choose. We're just not choosing how everyone else has to."
She turns towards Wallace and Ada and kneels down beside her. "Can you take me to your sister?"
The young woman nods, mutely, surprise burning her face.
Wallace looks at Ricky, who is just sitting there, looking sullen and tired. "I don't know what you thought was going to happen there bud."
"Piss off." But he's back in his seat and there are no police so, cool.
"No," Wallace sat beside him. "I have no idea what you're going through."
"Nothing new there."
"And honestly, I don't care."
"Oh fuck you." Ricky's face is red, darker, under the beard.
"I don't care, man. At least you have your dad and your shitty brother."
"He's not shitty."
"He spends half the time being a grade A piece of work and the other half being a grade C piece of work. Go take a GED class and leave Cali, man. You need to go outside and not punch meal tickets."
Sally smacks him on the head. "Mimi's not a meal ticket."
"No she's a snack."
Thwack. "You both suck."
"Good," Ricky mutters. "Why does she get to flaunt how much this screwed her over?"
"Last I checked you have the influence with god here, not me, not her, not anyone we know." Wallace settles in the free chair. "And, honestly. You were being an ass."
Ricky makes a face. Then he slumps. "Fine, I guess."
"You reserve the right to be pissed, not to hit people. Say sorry to her, she actually wants to fix this shit."
"... Fine."
"Keep behaving and I'll name you godfather to our first kid."
"You all and your talk about childbirth," Ricky wrinkles his nose. "Freaking gross."
"Well we can't all play sega genesis until the cows come home can we?"
Life, as Wallace realizes it must, goes on. Because it has to, and now they have a lot of answers and more problems and no solutions.
And, he knows, their digimon.
He glances at Ricky. "Actually, Asshat McGee, I've got a better idea."
"Riveting."
