Author's Note : This is the sequel to "Tarnish," which in turn was a sequel to "Sacrifice," and in turn that was a sequel to "Guilt." I'm sorry if that puts an undue burden on you. You might be able to figure out what's going on without reading the others, but I have gone to no special effort to make this possible. ONCE AGAIN, I had no intention of putting out another one until the next episode aired, but I also have no intention of waiting another two weeks to post something. I've waited long enough, and so have y'all; I apologize in advance if the next episode shreds this, although I will certainly do my best to accommodate canon. Also, Ken's nihilistic realizations are pretty depressing, and not intended to slam anyone else's philosophy or cause anyone to jump off a bridge.

--Irhista Scetare Lhail

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I am alone, locked in my memories
There's nowhere left for me to hide
But I am not real, I've made all I am -
- with lies
 - "Why" by Stabbing Westward

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Ken was daydreaming, which was very unlike him. Normally, he knew, he would be fascinated by whatever the teacher was trying to explain to the class about momentum, but today he just couldn't seem to focus. He looked up at the blackboard, where a diagram of several arrowed lines, representing vectors of force, had been drawn and labeled in a mix of Roman letters and katakana; for once, Ken couldn't seem to decipher it. A half-minute of staring at it, hoping to understand what the teacher was saying, got him nowhere, and he knew he ought to at least copy the diagram so he could sort things out later.

Instead, he glanced moodily down at his notebook and idly doodled an abstract series of curling lines along the margins of the paper, letting his pen wander as his thoughts wandered. Daisuke. He couldn't believe how much he wanted to be with Daisuke. It passed all bounds of rationality, surpassed all reason. Unbidden, the memory of the taste of Daisuke's skin - salt and musk, green grass and sunlight, and something else that was simply Daisuke - tingled along his lips and tongue, and Ken discreetly wiped the back of his hand over his mouth to banish it. Nothing could be done about the other reaction his body undertook except to pray it wasn't noticeable and hope it went away. Resolutely, Ken began to copy down the diagram, putting as much of his concentration into it as he could; vectors and the laws of momentum seemed like just the antidote he needed right then.

For a little while, it seemed to work. Copying down the diagram did help him start to understand what the teacher had been talking about all this time, and this began to edge the unwelcome thoughts of Daisuke out of his mind. Then it backfired, as he was hit rather suddenly with the first nasty revelation of his day. What difference did it make if he learned this subject, really?

School was just a rat race, going from the meaningless start of elementary to the insignificant end of middle school. From there, one moved on to the new, hollow race of high school, and from there, college. Once out of college, one gained the honor of becoming just another faceless gear in the endless machine of the business world, turning and grinding for the sake of a society too abstract to be loved, too vast to be seen, and eventually wearing away into a broken, inevitable death. This stupid course was just another tiny step toward death. Ken's pen scratched to an unpleasant halt as he was stricken into paralysis by these thoughts.

Reflex alone made him stand up when the final bell rang. Habit made him collect his books and tuck them away next to his laptop in his briefcase, and move out of the school. Routine guided his steps along the sidewalk as he walked home. All around him the world moved on in blissful ignorance, happy in its stupidity, its non-realization of the uselessness of it all. Once, Ken would have called them insects; he now observed that that was an apt label, although without the rancor that would once have accompanied the denigration. Like a giant hive of insects, the city buzzed with activity that went nowhere, that served nothing grander than itself. Each member of the hive made up reasons for doing what it had been brainwashed into thinking it needed to do: family, honor, success, prestige. But in the end, they all just died and what use were those things in the grave? Bitterly, Ken wished he were as stupid as the rest of them. Failing that, he wished he were religious, so he could take solace in some sort of afterlife, or reincarnation, some promise that made it all mean something. But his family's half-hearted attempts to introduce him to Shinto and Buddhism had long since been discarded by the practical boy, all the precepts of these faiths ripped into tiny, rational pieces by an intellect that refused to deceive itself.

Self-deception. Ken saw now that self-deception was going to be necessary in order to find any meaning in life. But when he threw off the Kaizer, he had promised himself never to resort to such things again ... look where self-deception had led him last time!

He craned his head back to look up at the buildings. So many people, crammed into so small a space. Millions of them, and Ken would be willing to bet almost none of them knew the futility of life. All of them, moved by the drives programmed into their genes to reproduce, all unknowing of why they undertook any of it. Unknowing of the reasons behind everything, because there was no reason behind anything. Buildings and structures eventually crumbled to dust, just like their builders. Human memory was fickle and limited, and even those few who would be remembered by history wouldn't profit from it. They were just as dead as the forgotten billions. And then, someday, the sun itself would explode and take Earth out entirely, and that would be the end of it. Ken knew that whether he died today or a hundred years from now, it wouldn't matter in the end. It just didn't matter.

His feet took him safely into his apartment building. Ken, not wanting to share close proximity with someone in the elevator, certain that he would be able to smell death on whoever came near him, turned toward the stairs instead. He supposed it was survival instinct that made it all possible. If, in order to live long enough to reproduce, one needed to convince oneself that there was a meaning in life, then most people would do that. It was simple natural selection.

All too soon, Ken found himself on his own floor, and he dragged himself the last few meters home. Once there, however, he got the second disagreeable revelation of his day.

"I'm home, Mama," he called, slipping out of his shoes. He tried to keep the empty despair in his heart out of his voice; his mother didn't need any more worries out of him. After a moment she appeared out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, and the pensive look on her face gradually wormed its way through Ken's black mood. "What's wrong?" he said finally.

"Ken," she said hesitantly, and then let a long pause pass before continuing. "Ken, I heard today that a few days ago you were seen kissing a boy."

Wonderful. Ken hadn't thought his attitude could swing any lower, but he'd been wrong. Something akin to dread clenched an icy claw in his belly, filling the emptiness with something even worse. He walked toward his room with the intention of putting his books and laptop away, which coincidentally took him farther away from his mother. "I wasn't kissing him, Mama. He was kissing me, and I was just standing there." No point in denying it entirely. One of the many, many downsides to fame was that his mother eventually heard about whatever he did.

She followed him into his room, the dishtowel still between her hands, held like a security blanket. "It's true then?"

"It's true that he kissed me, not that I kissed him back." But oh, how hard it had been not to! How Ken had wanted to take Daisuke into his arms and never let go, but instead he'd kept his hands at his sides and closed his eyes to block out the pain in Daisuke's eyes. He may as well have shoved Daisuke away with both hands and given him a few lashes with the whip for good measure. Ken's unwillingness to pursue a relationship with Daisuke had hurt the other boy in ways Ken couldn't even begin to comprehend, but that was turning into a trend now, wasn't it? Seemed like he couldn't get within a kilometer of Daisuke without hurting him. The same old tendencies never quite went away, did they? If Ken was in pain, and Ken was always in pain, then he just had to make sure someone else shared his misery ... wasn't that the way it worked? Sometimes he disgusted himself.

Besides, he understood now how little it all mattered. Daisuke was doomed, just like the rest of the human race and all its works.

"Ken, honey ... you just can't do things like that," his mother said, wringing her hands beneath the dishtowel. "If the tabloid reporters get hold of something like this ..."

With a savagery that Ken didn't intend, but which he couldn't stop, he slammed down his briefcase on his desk and said, "What was I supposed to do, hit him? What do you expect out of me?"

She flinched. Ken instantly felt guilty for his burst of temper and looked away, letting his hair hide his face. He knew that she was trying to protect him, but he also knew that there was more to it than that. He had no doubt whatsoever that when his father got home from work, he'd get yet another lecture. In the past two years or so, they had practically become a family tradition.

In a small voice, his mother said, "You know we love you, Ken. But you have to see all sides of the matter, not just your own."

"I know," said Ken, all anger gone, leaving him feeling deflated and more empty than before. "I'm sorry, I had no right to say that."

She hugged him, and he stood stiffly for it, his face still averted so she wouldn't see how upset he was. His mother said something about dinner that he didn't listen to, and then she took herself and her dishtowel back into the kitchen. Ken shut the door behind her.

As soon as the door was closed, there was movement from the dusty place atop a shelf of books. So that's where Wormmon had gone.

"Ken-chan?" said the Digimon softly.

"Yeah, I'm here." Ken opened his briefcase and started to scatter his homework across his desk. He wondered if he'd be able to find the energy to do it, between his mother's disapproval and knowing as he did now how unimportant it all was.

"Why were you angry? What did your mother say that was bad?"

"Nothing. I don't know why I was angry. I didn't have any right to be." He fell into the computer chair, telling himself that this was true, hoping to make it so. He ran his hand partway through his hair, feeling the urge to tear out a handful. "I'm being irrational," he observed, surprised by how calmly this came out.

Wormmon crept down off the shelf, onto the top of the computer monitor, and thence down to the desk. He looked up at Ken with those soulful eyes that articulated so very much emotion, more than most humans seemed capable of expressing. Right now, they were full of understanding and compassion, and it was suddenly too much for Ken. He pulled Wormmon up into his arms, biting down tears as he buried his face in the top of Wormmon's head.

"It's nothing she said," he whispered. "It's me, it's all me."

"What is?"

"There's something wrong with me. I shouldn't be this way."

The round Digimon body wiggled a little, and two pairs of legs closed around Ken's forearm. It was a weak sort of hug, awkward because of the position Wormmon was in, but it was touching that he would try. The dread shredding Ken's intestines let up slightly, letting the desolation back in. "There's nothing wrong with you," said Wormmon. "You're perfect just the way you are."

"But I'm not perfect, that's the whole problem. I ..." How to explain this to a Digimon, for whom love was the bond between digital partners, and for whom sex was an undefined word? "With humans, boys are supposed to ... like, girls, and vice versa. Because when they grow up, they're supposed to marry each other." Ken frowned at himself. "Like my parents. One boy is supposed to marry and live with one girl, so they can have children together."

He paused, certain that if Wormmon didn't understand, he'd speak up now. Nothing was forthcoming, so Ken plowed on ahead. "But I'm different. I don't like girls that way. I mean, I can be friends with them, but I don't want to marry one."

"Oh," said Wormmon, and although the tone of his voice was uncomprehending, his next words proved that he'd picked up at least part of what Ken was trying to say. "Is this why you were touching Daisuke when he came over that one time?"

"Yes. I shouldn't have done that. Daisuke is a boy like me. Boys aren't supposed to do that to other boys." He held Wormmon tightly, and felt a bit guilty for wishing Wormmon were Daisuke.

"He makes you happy, though. You said you loved him. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. Everything. It's so hard to explain."

He could feel Wormmon's antennae flicking lightly across his damp cheek. "Ken-chan ... don't cry. I'm trying to understand, really."

"I know. It's not you." There was nothing Wormmon could do. As much as the little Digimon might want to help him, Ken knew that there was nothing anybody could do. There was no comfort here, so he may as well stop upsetting his partner. "I'll be all right. Don't worry about me." He gave Wormmon a final hug and set him on the floor.

Without looking, he knew that Wormmon remained there at his feet, gazing up at him, for some time before moving off to a more comfortable perching spot on the bed. He made a show of spreading out his homework and attempting to work on it, although he couldn't concentrate any more than he'd been able to at school.

Daisuke. Daisuke haunted him. If he closed his eyes and allowed himself to think about it, he could recall with perfect clarity the feel of Daisuke's hands on his shoulders, Daisuke's body moving beneath him, the taste of Daisuke's lips. He could conjure up a mental image of Daisuke with little effort, perfect to the last detail, from the confident stance of his feet to the goggles, charming in their ridiculousness, atop his head. He could hear the sound of Daisuke's voice as he spoke Ken's name, sometimes with that fringe of irreverent laughter that edged everything he did, sometimes with an aura of anger.

How often had he watched Daisuke on the monitors back in his fortress, furious that the red-haired boy dared defy him? How often had he worked out intricate, devious plans for revenge, only to drop them when he realized that Daisuke hadn't really done anything yet, realized the foolishness of wasting the time necessary to punish the boy for crimes yet to be committed? He'd never put much thought into the rage he harbored especially for Daisuke, never wondered why Daisuke infuriated him so when the other four Digi-Destined were considered only minor annoyances. They'd all worked together, after all, always been together. So why had he been so much angrier at Daisuke than the others? Without Ken even asking himself this question, it had been answered for him. As the Kaizer, he had raged instinctively against the idea that he needed someone exactly like Daisuke in his life, someone who could brighten the shadows in his soul and lift the dark veil over his emotions. The fact that he was a boy, and that the Kaizer had managed to firmly suppress his unwanted, emerging homosexuality, only made the animosity greater.

He understood himself so much better now. He wished he didn't, but he did. He felt drawn toward Daisuke, and Daisuke was someone he knew he could grow to love deeply. That Daisuke seemed to reciprocate should have made things easier.

Instead, it made things so much worse. If Daisuke had hated him, or refused to forgive him, or even if Daisuke had wanted to be just his friend and nothing more, then Ken could have resorted to a distant longing. He could have hidden his feelings in a small manila folder, and filed them under the heading "Things That Cannot Be." He could have dealt with that, as the latest in a long series of tragedies and disappointments that together defined his life. Ken thought he knew by now how to handle heartache.

Is that it? he wondered, as he stared blankly at his open history textbook. Do I really buy into my parents' wishes, or is it simply that I don't know how to be happy, so I must turn my only chance at happiness into misery? He didn't know, and really wasn't certain he wanted to know, because he suspected he knew the answer already. And that would be just one more fault added onto his character, one more action taken for no good reason, in an existence that ultimately led to nothing in the end.

Sounds in the apartment, the front door opening and closing. His father must have come home from work ... was it that late already? Ken glanced at the clock and saw that it was. The cold claw of dread began to gleefully rip away at Ken's insides again. It was only a matter of time now, and in a way the anticipation was worse than the event he knew was coming.

He jumped when a knock sounded at his door; he'd been expecting it, but with practically every nerve aligned to hear it, it startled him anyway. He scrambled to his feet when the door opened, feeling like he was looking down the barrel of a gun. There was no gun, though. Just his father's face, peering in at him.

"Ken," said his father, "could you come out here? We'd like to talk to you."

Ken had done a lot of difficult things in his life, but walking out to face one of these periodic chats with his parents ranked up there with the worst of them. It bothered him greatly to feel himself starting to go numb inside, as if he'd swallowed a bucket of ice. He recognized this as one of the things he associated with the Kaizer ... this ability to shut down, to stop caring in order to stop hurting. He desperately didn't want to do anything that reminded him of the Kaizer, but at the same time, he didn't want to be emotionally flayed alive.

In this twisted state of indecision, Ken emerged from the hallway and perched on the edge of a chair. His parents looked at one another and didn't say anything at first. Ken distantly guessed that something disturbing must have shown on his face, and he had a moment to hope that they'd give up and leave him alone. No such luck, however.

"You know we love you, son," said his father. The way they always started these little talks. Reassure him that he meant the world to them, just before cutting him apart with their disapproval. "We've tried to go easy on you lately, too. But your mother tells me that you were kissing a boy the other day?"

Ken was quite sure that if he looked in a mirror right then, he'd find himself white as paper. "I wasn't kissing him. He kissed me." It was the truth, and the only defense he had.

His father had the grace to look uncomfortable. "You know this isn't easy for us." Ken had his doubts that it was all that much more difficult on them than it was on him, but he held his peace on this point. "But, Ken ... you're the only son we have left. If Osamu were still here, you know we'd support you in whatever choice you decided to make. It would be his duty to carry on the family name and all that."

"I just want grandchildren, Ken," said his mother, sounding so brokenhearted that it cracked the ice closing around Ken's heart. "Is that too much to ask?"

He just looked at them both, not knowing what to say that he hadn't already said a thousand times before. When would they accept that he wasn't making a choice here? Any more than they had when they'd fallen in love with each other? Never?

There was a long, uneasy silence before his father spoke again. "If Osamu were still here, we wouldn't mind. Really. But he isn't."

And it's your fault he isn't. You owe us. The weight of the unspoken words was terrible, and threatened to demolish what little remained of Ken's self-control. Something of this must have shown in his expression, because his mother suddenly got up and gave him a hug, which of course made complete hash of Ken's restraint.

Clinging to his mother, his face hidden in her shoulder so they wouldn't see the tears in his eyes, he said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't want to be like this! I didn't want him to kiss me, I swear!" Don't mention that the reason he didn't want to be kissed was because he'd been afraid of his resolve being damaged, rather than because he disliked kissing Daisuke. "I never wanted to turn into any of these things!" He could tick them off in his mind like a grocery list of sins ... a torturer, a murderer, a slaver, an evil monster, the thing that gave reborn Digimon nightmares, killer of his brother, breaker of Daisuke's heart, homosexual. Aside from the known last, things he could never tell his parents, things that would make them hate him if they knew. None of these were things he could change. None of them. No matter how much he might want it, no matter how much he might pretend otherwise.

"It's all right if you're not perfect," said his mother soothingly. If she only knew ... "Nobody's quite perfect anyway. It's only one thing we ask, one simple thing." One simple thing that he couldn't provide.

"You haven't seen this boy since then, have you?" asked his father.

Not looking up, Ken shook his head against his mother's shoulder. It felt so good to be held like that, as if he were just a little boy again and Mama would make everything all right. He wished so much that she could make this all right. As much as he used to deny it, as much as he hated himself for it, he wanted his parents' approval. He wanted to make them happy. He wanted them to love him.

Damn, he was so fucked up. He hated himself for this as well. He wished he could be what they wanted him to be, and the fact that this goal was unattainable tore at him so much. He could never be their perfect son. He had already tried once, and failed miserably. At the ripe old age of eleven years old, he was already a miserable failure at everything important.

His mother let him go, smoothed his hair away from his face and gave him a sad little smile. Her hand on his forehead was cool, not warm the way Daisuke's were. "We'll always love you, no matter what."

Then why did they keep making these demands on him? They had said they would stop, but they hadn't. Only the type of demand changed. He still wasn't good enough for them.

"Could I be excused then?" he asked.

His mother glanced at his father, and then nodded. Ken got to his feet and retreated to his room. There, he received the day's third and final nasty revelation.

Wormmon was asleep on the bed, and didn't wake when Ken came in and closed the door. Sinking into the desk chair again, Ken sorted through his homework with the intention of doing at least some of it. The act of sorting, however, felt like enough after he was finished, and he ended up just sitting there, staring at it, unable to force himself to actually do it. After perhaps five minutes, he admitted that he wasn't going to do his homework just yet, and switched on his computer monitor. The computer itself stayed on most of the time.

The last thing he'd been looking at was the old Digiworld battle map, so it was still displayed when the monitor warmed up. The night before, he'd been trying to calculate exactly how many control spires were actually left, taking into account his best guess on how many the Digi-Destined had destroyed, and how many himself and Wormmon had destroyed. Looking at the battle map now, Ken considered taking himself to the digital world; if he was busy fighting, he might actually succeed in not thinking for awhile. Yep, that seemed like a good idea. It might even succeed in making him feel less like the freakish, pointless failure that he was. He sorted through his briefcase for his Digivice, the words that would wake Wormmon and send them on their way on the tip of his tongue.

However, when he actually found the Digivice, he remained silent. It came out of his briefcase as black as ever, resting in his hand like a demon's heart. He could still vaguely remember when it was white and ordinary, and he distinctly recalled the feel of it writhing in his hand as it morphed into this black-and-gray reflection of his own inner self. This had been the source of most of his power, and there had been a certain grim rightness to the fact that his Digivice was so dark while the Digivices belonging to the Digi-Destined were mostly white and brightly colored. Their Digivices were much like the children themselves, designed to shine in the sunlight, while his own was made to conceal itself in shadow. The symbolism had appealed to the Kaizer enormously, and he'd thrown his whole heart into living up to it.

Wormmon's death and rebirth had also been a sort of rebirth for Ken, though, and the day after Ken returned home with Leafmon he had half expected to wake up and find that his Digivice had changed color. It hadn't. He accepted now that it probably never would.

But didn't that mean something?

He knew, then, why he kept turning down Daisuke's offers to join up with the other Digi-Destined. It wasn't, as he had thought before, because it would be too painful to be so close to Daisuke so frequently, when he dared not permit himself to touch. It definitely wasn't the reasons he'd given openly, that he felt it was his responsibility to correct his own mistakes, that he didn't want to cause a schism in the group by his presence. Although all of these were true, the real reason was that he couldn't contaminate their righteous purity with his murdering self. There would always be a part of him that was capable of casual killing, a part that would always take pleasure in the suffering of another.

This is what the Digivice was telling him by its stubborn refusal to change color. Ken knew it told the truth; it wouldn't take very much for him to become the Digimon Kaizer once again, just a little self-deception, a little channeling of sadness and loneliness into anger and hate. He would never fully rid himself of the Kaizer, those aspects of his personality would never go completely away. A cold shudder gripped him, and the darkening room seemed to close in on him, making him feel like a tiny mote in a vast, bleak universe.

Which was all, in the end, that he actually was.

Acknowledgement : Thanks to herongale for proofreading the first draft and offering some excellent insight. I owe you.