A/N: This is the FIRST story I've posted without breaking it up into 3 million chapters! Well, I am, but I'm posting each chapter 4 days apart so I can't stop in the middle. I hope you guys like it, if you do, please leave a review or email (jump4@joymail.com) me! If you don't like it, well do the same. This is a MIMATO, YAMI, MIMI X MATT, so if that ruins the story for you and you plan to flame, just close this window or hit the back key. It saves us both some trouble ^^ There is no Kari in this story, and everybody lives in different cities, pretty far apart. This chapter is kind of drawn out, I'm sorry, but be sure the rest of the story is more..interesting, is that the word I'm looking for? Maybe ^^;
OH MAN! DID ANYONE SEE POPULAR ON 2/23?!?!? SAM TURNED HARRISON DOWN! *sobs* noo...STUPID GEORGE! LKSDJF HIM! actually I really did start crying that episode, but it was because of Nicole.
This is dedicated to RisingPhoenix, who was yelling at me for not dedicating a story to her. Just kidding! She's my IRL fwend. Also Maggie and Kate, even though I don't talk to you guys incessently, you're still two awesome people and great friends ^^
The song of the fic is "The Last Unicorn". I really love it! Anyone with napster, I command you to download "Digimon in a nutshell" by "Ego and Company"! It disses digimon, but its hilarious! I'm think about changing my s/n to pieceofcrapmon, haha...
Although tabloids may inform you otherwise, I don't own digimon. I'm contactable at jump4@joymail.com, joy_fishy@hotmail.com (MSN), 71018292 (ICQ), and sunshinebaba (AIM) ^^
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There was a time when I would say I must be crazy
That I would say this place is looking strange
But now its "I'm kinda lost" and "I just don't remember"
Because things never stay the same...yeah, well I could talk, talk...
-Less Than Jake, "Never Going Back to New Jersey"
I sat on the edge of the bridge, swinging my legs so my toes and heels alternately grazed the top of the water, momentarily disrupting the smooth flow. This place hadn't changed at all since the last time I was here. At least, not so you could tell. The water was different, it wasn't the same clear water that had enchanted me so long ago. Now it was cruel; taunting me with its purity, its light, its perfection. Laughing at me.
-
Mimi Tachikawa was always the happy one, the ditzy one. When we first met, I wondered why she had gotten the crest of Sincerity. I had never met anyone who cared so much about her appearance, or whined so much. She should've had the crest of beauty or something, she was so obsessed with it. But after spending a lot of time with her (not like I had a choice) it became obvious that she wasn't totally superficial. Her not-caring-what- happens-as-long-as-she-gets-home facade was shattered when she saw our digimon friends willingly sacrifice themselves for us, 7 children who didn't even belong to their world, and were supposed to save it. I don't think any of us thought we were going to make it, except maybe TK. Sometimes I would hear him ask Mimi, who he deemed "his new best friend", if we were ever going to go back home. She always scooped him up into a hug, and cheerfully replied that everything would be all right, we would. TK would always be comforted, but I could see her eyes. She was trying to tell herself the same thing. We all were.
After we came home, it didn't take us long to settle back into our old lifestyles. I felt TK drifting from me, depending more and more on my mom. When he had a nightmare, he didn't scream for Matt halfway across the city. He cried for Mommy in the next room. He didn't need me anymore.
The slight openess I had accquired through Gabumon quickly vanished after a week with my dad. Gabumon had perservered with me, and sincerely tried to get me to relax. He wanted me to be happy, because being with me made him happy. I don't think my dad was even happy to see me when I came back.
That's when I discovered the bridge. I later found out it was called sotsuu hashi, or "the bridge of quiet understanding". But to me, it was my bridge. Hidden in the middle of a forest, it arched slightly above a babbling brook. I would sit there for hours, just staring at the stream of water go on and on. It looked like it was going nowhere, but it was actually making its way to the ocean, and someday it would get there.
I couldn't understand why life hated me so much, and I didn't try to. There was probably a really good reason why my parents divorced, my mom loved TK more than me, and my dad hated me. I just didn't know what it was. So sitting on the edge of the bridge, in the middle of that forest, pouring out my heart and soul into my harmonica was the only refuge I had. When people were around me, I would erect my wall of coolness, aloofness, that nobody could penetrate, even if they wanted to. So I was left alone, in more ways than one.
One day, a few years after we came back, I entered the clearing where my bridge was, and somebody else was there. A girl, with chesnut hair, wearing a pink tank top and khaki shorts. She was crying, and her tears splattered into the sunshine filled water, and were carried away. I was frozen. Who could it be? I had been coming here a couple times a week for years, and I had never seen another person. I slowly walked towards the girl. Her head snapped up.
"Oh! I'm...sorry. I didn't know anyone else was here." she jumped up and slowly started to walk off the other edge of the bridge. Looking at her back I felt kind of guilty, so I snatched her hand and spun her around.
"You can stay if you want to. It's public property."
Then I saw her face. She was really pretty. I mean, REALLY pretty. But she was squinting at me like she was trying to see something hidden right underneath my skin. She stopped and cocked her head slightly, but I didn't think it was because of what I said.
"Yamato...Yamato Ishida?" she ventured.
I froze. That voice was so familiar. But why?
She seemed to shrink a little, and the tears looked like they were going to come back. "Sorry, you just look like someone I used to know."
This was creeping me out. "No, I'm Matt. Who are you?"
Her eyes widened, and then she smiled a little even though her eyes remained sad. "You've forgotten already?" she sadly joked, as she pulled out a pendant. A gold pendant. A gold pendant with a green stone inside. A gold pendant with a green stone inside that was ingraved with a teardrop with circles inside. A gold pendant with a green stone inside that was ingraved with a teardrop with circles inside that was the crest of Sincerity.
"...Mimi?"
"Yeah." This was a very un-Mimi like thing. A more Mimi type thing would be to run at me and hug me until I couldn't breathe anymore. But she just stood there, and so did I. I guess she'd changed. Funny, I had always thought of her as the impulsive 11 year old I used to know. Finally, she sat back down on the bridge, and gestured me to do the same. My toes barely touched the top of the water, and her feet were a good 4 inches away.
After a few minutes, I tried to strike up a conversation. "So, I haven't seen you in a while, well that's kind of an understatement *weak smile*...how are you? Why are you here in Kyoto? I thought you lived in Tokyo..." (A/N: I went to both places when I visited Japan, both are pretty cool, but I like Kyoto better ^^)
She lowered her head down again, and I could see a single droplet fall from her eye, making a miniscule splash in the water gurgling underneath us.
"Miserable..." she whispered, answering only my first question before bursting into tears.
I had seen her cry to get what she wanted in the Digiworld, we all knew what those big brown amber eyes and a quivering lip could do. God knows Tai gave into it enough times. But this was different, instead of making me want to smile, she made me want to cry again. Suddenly once again I was 12, falling into a pit. The covering I erected over the hole in my heart had fallen in.
I would've offered her a hankerchief, but I didn't have one. I would've offered words of comfort, but I didn't have any. So I just awkwardly patted her hand as her trickle of tears formed a tributary to the stream underneath us.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she stopped. She didn't lift her head though, she let it hang like she didn't have the strength to hold it up anymore.
"Do you want to talk?" I tentatively extended my offer, not wanting her to cry again but also not being able to take the deafening silence any longer.
She tilted her head towards me, and surprised me by nodding. Whenever somebody asked me if I wanted to talk, I never would've actually done it. Maybe the old Mimi was closer than I thought.
Mimi began to speak in a halting voice.
"When I, we, came back from the Digiworld, I was so happy. The world was saved, I was finally going to be home with my parents, and I didn't have to fight anymore. The reason I whined so much wasn't so much that I was really a brat, it was more I wanted to prevent the inevitable, the fighting, the losing of a friend that always came with victory.
Anyway. When we came home, I tried to settle back into my old lifestyle, but I couldn't. Having responsibility placed on me, and me only, changed me. I fell out of place, and I couldn't stand my friends anymore; everything they talked about seemed totally insignificant. I threw myself into studies and even though my parents were surprised and happy, I knew they worried about me.
Finally, just this year, when I thought I was finally assimilating into my old life, the sky came crashing down on my head. My parents were coming home from a business meeting, and the bullet train went off the track. Everybody on it died.
It wasn't a freak accident, though. The train operator manual overode the system and did it himself. I could understand if as a person he wasn't happy with himself, but why did it he have to take others with him? All those lives, those hopes, dashed in a few seconds because of him. He took my parents and other innocent people down with him. Who gave him the right?
So I was sent here to live with my grandma. I love her, but she's not my parents, and I can't stand this anymore. Every time everything seems okay, life does a 180 on me."
Okay, timeout for Matt. Did I just hear right? Am I dreaming? Did Mimi Tachikawa just say that her parents died?
"At least your parents loved you."
I don't know why I said it, or what exactly it meant. You know how sometimes, when you write you forget you're writing, and when you look down there are words that you never would've written, thoughts that were kind of hiding? Well, that was what happened, except it was my mouth running away without my concious mind.
"What" this was spoken more as a question than the beginning of a setence. "do you mean?" Mimi finished. I could see the question marks written all over her teary eyes.
My unconciousness exploded without my permission.
"You lost your parents, but I never had mine. My Dad hates me, I'm not even part of his life. My mom's taken TK away from me, and given me nothing in return. You know what you had because you lost it, but I've never experienced any love from my parents."
-
Thinking back to it, it was amazing that she didn't slap me right there. That's part of what I loved so much about Mimi; she cared about everyone so much.
I don't remember how she did it, but I found myself pouring everything in me out to her. My hatred, my sadness, the smallest moments that I hadn't remembered til now. The little things, the sticks that broke the camel's back. TK saying that he wished Tai was his brother. My dad skipping Parent's Night to work. Leaving Gabumon. The divorce. And Mimi listened.
When I had finished, it was nightfall. Since it was the summer, the sun still hadn't set, but had begun it's path towards the horizon. The disapparing point, the vortex, where everything vanished.
She scribbled her number down on the palm of my hand in pink gel pen after I walked her to her grandmother's apartment. A few days later, I took her to the movies. One thing led to another, and before you knew it, we were in love. It was at this same bridge that we finally admitted it half a year later. Because we both knew what could happen when you gave part of your heart away. But we were willing to take the risk.
I don't regret taking the chance. Not that my heart gave me a choice, but still. Every minute being with her was a piece of heaven, and every hug and kiss we shared shot me higher than cloud 9.
But Robert Frost was right. Nothing gold can stay. Since Mimi's parents had died, she had this humungous capacity for compassion, especially children. So she volunteered at the Tokyo General Hospital, in the pediatrics section. I usually didn't go with her because all the kid's sick made me miss TK and down for a bit. But we were both there the day the psycho barged in with a gun, and she was shot protecting the children. The day the angel returned to heaven. The day Mimi Tachikawa left me.
I used to love this bridge, because it was where Mimi and I first met (at least, in a way that really counted) and where we would visit occasionally, but now it reminds me of what I really did lose. But I keep coming back, because I'm willing to take the pain of today if I can live in the joy of yesterday.
I slowly got up from his seat on the bridge, blinking a little as my head spun. I slowly plodded home through the dark streets; it was almost midnight. Perking up my ears and not hearing his father's snoring, I knew that Dad has slept over at work once again. I flipped on a lightswitch and flopped onto the sofa with my dog-eared copy of Flowers for Algernon. Although I would never admit it, that book makes me cry. Charly's desperation, and then sad realization hits me in a way I thought I never could be touched because of anybody until, well, I met Mimi.
After reading a few chapters, I hit the lightswitch and fell asleep, tossing and turning on the sofa too short for my build.
I was standing in a place that was all white. I could see in any direction infinitely, or maybe it was only a foot. There was no way to tell the difference. I spun around and around, looking for a way out, but came up with more white. Or maybe it was the same.
"Matt..."
I turned for the ten million time.
No. It couldn't be.
But it was.
Now, that was the most obvious cliffhanger I've ever seen. REVIEW!