Welcome back, It's been a minute. I had to step away from this story for a while but I'm finally back. I am in the process of rewriting and reposting all chapters. There will be some plot changes so you'll probably want to re-read old chapters as I repost. If you're new here, WELCOME! If you've stuck around, I'm grateful you're still here. My plan is to post regularly on Monday afternoons, if that changes I'll post an update.

Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon. Characters outside of those from the show are mine.

TW Will appear before each chapter.

TW: Chapter One Death

Part One

Chapter One - Before, After, and Now

Now

People stared.

It could have been her dark brown hair, which had settled half in and out of a bun. Maybe it was the way her shirt was ripped at the sleeve, showing her tawny skin and the scrape on her shoulder. It may have been the blood on her lip, dried and cracking now, or the bruise around her eye.

It was probably that last part.

Kari found a seat in the corner of the train as other passengers slid away, weary of the disheveled traveler. She reached into her backpack and found a sweatshirt, pulled it on roughly throwing the hood up, wishing to become invisible. Thankfully the people around her were more afraid of trouble than they were curious, so they let her be.

When she was young she remembered the rush that came from a battle, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and the high that came before the crash and exhaustion. It feels different now. There was no excitement, only fear and dread, and panic. Adrenaline came but it didn't make her high it just kept her running long enough to stay alive. Her body quaked and ached and she wish for her bed. She was still on alert, afraid even with the speed of the train that he could somehow still catch her.

She clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. Now that she was sitting and that adrenaline was wearing off she felt dizzy and her face was throbbing. She thought of how glorious an aspirin would be, or straight alcohol, just anything to be less coherent. She wanted to close her eyes and have this day be just another bad dream in the catalog of nightmares she'd endured through the years. That this worn pleather seat would become her bed if she could only wake up. She tried to calculate how cataclysmic this was on the weird trauma scale that was her life, maybe it was her brain's way of trying to keep her safe, convince her she'd been through worse. She'd started to break up time into segments of Before, After, and Now. After always seemed like the worst, but now? She wasn't sure anymore. Maybe if she believed that this was just another moment to overcome she could survive this too. She'd seen death, experienced battle, and war, and lost so much already. It wasn't long though before she ventured into fair territory, but life didn't care about fairness or how good of a person you were, there was just what was true and how you responded to it.

She let her lungs fill up, a reminder that she was safe and alive, at least for now. Home was only a few hours away. The day replayed on a loop inside her head, the morning now felt years away, but the nightmare was closer than ever. She brought her hands inside the sleeves of her hoodie, desperate for warmth, unsure if it was the train that felt frigid or the chill of the ocean flowing through her veins.

Last night she'd awoken to the sound of labored breathing, unaware that it was her own harsh, gasping, breaths. The feeling was almost out of body, she was soaking wet with sweat, but somehow numb from it. Then the cold came, that horrible unrelenting chill. Finally, normal feeling started to return, a tingling in her toes as a reminder that they were still connected to her body and it was, in fact, in her bed.

It was so long ago that she was in that place, and it made her feel like a child again, wishing to peak up into the top bunk to wake her brother or grab her phone to text the preset number for her best friend, so he'd know where to go. Now, she was alone hours away from who she used to be, racing to catch her breath.

She'd crept out of bed, unsteady on her feet, but desperate for some sort of clarity. She fumbled over to her desk and grabbed a worn deck of tarot cards, unwrapped them, and shuffled them with shaking hands.

She drew the Devil.

She kept pulling cards but they all showed her the same picture, over and over again she drew The Devil, even though there's only one in the deck. They fell from her hands and 78 Devils fluttered to the ground, staring up at her, mocking her. She stepped back, horrified at the impossibility of what she was seeing, even though she'd learned long ago that the impossible didn't exist in her life. She pushed herself into a corner, muttering words of protection, hoping something or someone would hear her.

She fell asleep like that, leaning against the wall, and woke with a crick in her neck. She crept back toward the cards, afraid to see, but they were back to normal. Their archetypal images looked back at her as if nothing was amiss. She shuffled them back together, but as she did one fell out, suddenly looking up towards her was The Sun. A vision flashed before her eyes, just for a moment, from her dream the night before. His warm pale hand as it clutched her arm, pulling her away from the shadows and back towards the light, his blue eyes.

She fell into her bed and curled into a tight ball, scared, tired, and alone. She let herself think of him, his warmth, the way it had felt to be close to him, and the hole her life had without him in it. It wasn't fair, but again nothing was. They say it takes half the time of knowing someone to get over them, but almost five years had passed and the thought of him still made her heart ache. She wondered how it was possible to feel so connected to someone you hadn't spoken to in years? Did he look the way she'd remembered or had time changed him? Were they both actually there in the dream or was it nothing but a nightmare?

It was thoughts of him now, on the lonely train ride, that calmed her racing heart. Almost being murdered had a way of putting heartache into perspective. There was nothing left to go back to in Kyoto. Everything she'd built over the past four years had been destroyed in a matter of hours. She felt like the only thing to do now was to return home, back to safety, so she curled her knees into her chest and hoped she was heading in the right direction.

TK hadn't had a nightmare in years. Therapy, and meds, had put an end to his demons a long time ago. Waking last night though was like being shot. He felt hot, there was tightness in his chest, and an empty feeling in his hand where she should have been. Years since he'd dreamed, and years since he'd seen her face so clearly.

She looked different, her face thinner and her hair slightly longer, but he knew it was her. Her deep brown eyes had locked on his for a moment before he woke, and the fear in them made it impossible for his heart to stop racing. The urge to call her was so strong, but the sad truth was that he no longer had her number. She'd changed it long ago when she moved away like so many of the others, probably looking to escape a tragic childhood that some of them never adequately dealt with.

Once the gate closed it was like people couldn't scatter fast enough. He'd always thought more kept the group of friends together than just duty, but he'd been wrong about that, like so much else.

The dream couldn't mean nothing. He knew it wasn't nothing. He laid back in his bed that night and tried to imagine he was there, wherever she was, protecting her from the darkness he thought they'd banished long ago. He felt warm as he drifted off to sleep, fingers tingling, and a sense that he'd done something right, without any clarity on what it could possibly be.

When he woke up in the morning the unsettled feeling returned, having little sleep and the images of the dream from the night before floating through his mind. He knew he needed a second opinion. He tried to put himself together, throwing on a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt, grabbed a backpack, and was out the door. He backtracked passing his normal coffee shop, feeling the need for comfort on what felt like an abnormal day. When he thought back, it felt silly, clinging to some sort of normalcy. He'd be grateful he did though, the coffee would be necessary.

As he walked up the steps to Tai's apartment worry crept into his head, that he was being dramatic or that Tai would think he was losing it. Why after all this time would a dream throw him the way it had. He stood at the door, kicking his sneakers into the old faded red carpet, working up the nerve to knock. It wasn't like it would be weird for him to show up, they'd remained close, probably the closest of everyone. They held on as the rest of them scattered and lived their lives away from the digital world. They continued to grow, went to school, and became adults, but kept the bond that brought them all together. Izzy remained as part of their little trio, not always physically close, but still in constant inquiry about the world that they were spirited away to as children.

There was something about barging in on Tai and trying to explain having a dream about his sister though that kept him hesitating. Tai knew the truth, well most of the truth, about how TK felt before she'd left and why he never told her. It was one thing to know and another to actively talk about it. It felt weird and obsessive and he almost turned around and went home to save himself the awkward conversation.

But why now? Why after all these years? He just couldn't shake it, so he took a breath, knocked on the door, and waited. There was some commotion from the other side, some muffled yelling back and forth before the door opened to a disheveled-looking Tai.

"I was just about to text you, get in here." He grasped onto TK's arm, in the same place he'd held onto Kari's in his dream the night before. There was a flash of it again, his eyes replaced with hers, searching for the clarity that it was actually TK in front of her. Gone. Just as quickly as the flash came and he was back in the room with Tai and was surprised, but not shocked, to find Izzy there as well since he was supposed to be abroad at the moment.

He thought it was like being transported into the past, watching him type away on his computer, not even registering TK's entrance. Tai nervously paced back and forth, leaving him in the hallway with no explanation. Tai's kitchen looked a little worse for wear, the remainder of empty beer bottles, tea bottles, and takeout littered the counter. It looked like they had been up all night working.

"Here!" Izzy sat back while Tai and TK made their way over to him.

"What are we looking at?" TK asked.

"Remember the lines, when our worlds were merging together?" Izzy pointed towards the screen showing what he assumed was their world line, flickering in and out with another line popping into the screen, like subliminal messaging. Blink and you'd miss it.

"Yea, but we closed the gate, how would that be possible?" Tai's voice held a bit of wonder, possibly excitement.

"Because it's not the digital world. It's the ocean." Izzy's voice didn't hold emotion, it was mechanical, just the truth. The weight of it hung over the room.

"Guys, we need to talk." They both looked at TK, finally giving him their full attention, as he started to tell them about his dream from last night.

That morning when Kari finally gained the courage to pull herself from her bed, she texted Nadia, the only one in Kyoto who might be able to understand. She curled herself into her blankets for a moment, wishing to just fall back asleep, but she knew she needed to talk through her nightmare with someone. She rolled out of her bed and walked into the bathroom with the intention of taking a shower, feeling sticky from sweat, but the second the water hit her skin she felt burned. She quickly turned it off and stepped back, reminding herself that she was safe in her apartment, and not in some otherworldly ocean. I'm safe, she thought to herself on a loop. She backed out of the room, the cold tile on her feet exchanged for the warmth of her carpeted bedroom, and it eased her slightly.

She got ready as best she could without a shower. Concealer was dabbed under her eyes and she swiped her lashes with mascara, hoping to impersonate someone who felt at least slightly awake. Her shoulder-length hair was tossed into a messy bun, tangled but out of her face. She put on a pair of high-waisted shorts, and a button-down shirt, and slid her feet into her favorite pair of combat boots before running out of her apartment into the early afternoon sun. She felt lighter once she was outside, grateful for the warm day and the feel of the sun against her skin, skin which still felt too cold.

Nadia was the first, and only real friend she'd made after moving away for school. She was eclectic but sophisticated. She wore black like the color belonged to her, and a piece of crystal quartz always hung from her neck on a silver chain. Her hair was dyed blonde at the ends, perfectly blended into her darker brown roots. She didn't splurge on much, but her hair was the exception, always shining and perfectly placed. Her eyes were hazel and always had an otherworldly look to them, seemingly changing colors with her mood.

She'd walked right up to Kari on that first day of college. "They were not subtle when naming you," her mouth had twitched into a small smile as she spoke, and her eyes danced with the light. Kari was baffled, how she'd even known her name. She was standing in the courtyard with one too many fliers in her hands for clubs and parties, being too polite to turn them down, when all she'd been trying to do was grab her class list.

Nadia smirked when Kari asked if she was her RA and if she could direct her to the right table for said class list. Her eyes had shimmered in delight. She laughed a full belly affair, grabbing the fliers and taking Kari by the hand. She tossed them out and helped her towards the right table. Once Kari was finished all Nadia said was, "come on," and weirdly she'd just followed her without a second thought. Kari had no friends, and her roommate seemed too cool for her, so she followed Nadia.

She followed her that day and every one after it.

Then, Kato appeared a few months ago, as if out of thin air. He was handsome, alarmingly so, with dark eyes and dark hair, his skin a sun-kissed bronze. Unlike Nadia, he was always wearing white, it made him stick out, and the crisp bright color against his darker features made him even more striking. He came to them the same way Nadia came to Kari, a homing beacon she'd called her, and like a moth to the light, he was guided to them.

Kari felt now, all of this pain, this damage, it was all because of her.

When she got to Nadia's apartment the door was already ajar. She paused, knowing the second her hand touched the knob that something was wrong. Clair-sentience, or clear feeling, was Karis's least favorite gift. It was like electricity, a jolt going through your body, sometimes sharp and harsh if something terrible was about to happen. It was a feeling she'd give away if she could, she'd rather be surprised by the disaster. The feelings rarely came with enough time to make any changes, at least for her. She felt a weight go around her like a heavy blanket, and an empty feeling of darkness tugged at her heart. She called out for Nadia but only silence followed. As she eased into her home she saw that everything was in its place, her kitchen counter was covered in jars of herbs, with fresh flowers on the table. As Kari's feet moved from hardwood to carpet her eyes were drawn down towards the floor, where Nadia's necklace lay discarded with a broken chain. She reached for it, the crystal cold in her hands, and as she stood that's when she looked up towards the ceiling. Nadia loved the skylight in her living room, she would lay on the floor during thunderstorms and would curl up on the couch under the sun with tea and a book on her days off. Now her body swayed slightly as she hung from the highest beam, a rope tight around her neck and her body limp.

Kari opened her mouth to scream but it was as if she forgot how to form sound. She stood gaping at Nadia as she backed up into the wall, taking her in and knowing without getting close that she was already gone, already lost to this world. Her eyes were open, looking down, their lovely hazel color looking dull by the bluish tone her skin had taken. Her mouth was opened slightly, gasping for one last breath that would never come.

Take the book, said a voice inside her head. She was desperate for it to be Nadia, but it wasn't her, it was one of the many voices she'd become accustomed to over the past few years. Clairaudience, clear-hearing, had felt like a curse the first time she understood what was happening. The voices that she heard had never been alive, they were of the spirit world, like gods or guides depending on your practice.

Take the book, it said more forcefully, jolting her away from Nadia's body and into her bedroom. Kari closed the door behind her and slid onto the floor, her vision became cloudy and she released a wail as tears streamed down her cheeks in a steady flow. Nadia had been her anchor, her teacher, her family. Some days it felt like she was all Kari had left, and now she was gone.

You have to go, the voice said gently. She shook her head, angry that she was being pushed right now when all she wanted to do was grieve. It's not safe, it startled her then. She took a few breaths and tried to pull herself together. She got up and opened up Nadia's top desk drawer where her book of shadows was hidden, there was a false bottom in the drawer where she hid her most important items. Next to the book was her dagger, which Kari slid into her boot.

As she was closing her bedroom door she heard another voice, Keep your head down, she listened. She let herself be protected from the image of Nadia being further engrained into her mind. She wanted to remember the way she flipped her hair after a joke, the way her eyes would light up while she crafted a new spell, and the way she always smelled of lavender. How could someone so young, so full of life, of joy, just be gone?

She let the door click behind her and she took a seat on the steps, sliding the book into her bag, and then grabbed her phone with shaky hands, and called the police. Part of her felt guilty leaving Nadia alone in there but she couldn't stand to be with her body and not her soul.

When the police arrived they took her statement. They asked if Kari knew that Nadia was depressed and if she'd ever talked about taking her own life or been fascinated by death. Kari told them, no, but they seemed unconvinced. She was sure the items in Nadia's home didn't help this cause. She had a healthy relationship with death, and several books on the topic, but she wasn't seeking it. At one point a neighbor came over and quietly confirmed that Kari had only recently arrived, so if this did turn out to be foul play it seemed that she would not be a suspect.

Once they were satisfied with her they asked if she needed to be taken somewhere, but Kari declined. She told them she just needed air and asked them to let her know if they needed anything else. She pocketed Nadia's necklace, hoping the police didn't notice and hurried back to her apartment. She begged her body to keep moving even though all she wanted to do was collapse, forced her eyes to remain clear, and pushed herself to keep going until she was back inside and safe.

The moment she closed her apartment door she fell to the ground, pounding her fists into the carpet, angry, scared, and confused. She reached for a pillow from her couch and screamed into it. She thought Nadia was not depressed. She was not suicidal. Why would she do this? Why would she leave Kari alone? Her nightmare from earlier felt years away, now that she was truly living inside of one.

Kari grabbed Nadia's book and looked through with blurry eyes, her delicate handwriting covered the pages with all she knew of the craft until it stopped being about that. There were pages and pages in code that Kari didn't understand. She knew some witches coded their books but Nadia hadn't in all the time she'd known her. Some pages were covered with numbers and others in sentences that read like gibberish. She looked to the back to see what her last entry was.

"Kato." Was written as her last entry. It was quick, scratched in, unlike the other carefully written pages. She shut the book tight and shoved it back into her bag feeling sick. Sick because she didn't have to wonder if it was true. The voices in her head were layered over each other saying yes over and over again until she yelled for them to stop.