For They Shall Be Filled
By: Vain
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Osamu: *looks at the hysterical Vain* Are you going to tell her?
Ken: No. I think I rather enjoy seeing her squirm.
Remy: You're twisted, cher. I t'ink I like dat.
Wormmon: She's in quite a state, you know . . .
Sinister: . . .Vain owns nothing. Read and Review.
Osamu: Alright, but I'm telling you, it is NOT healthy for her to be turning that shade of blue . . .
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~ "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment;
for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse."
-Matthew 9: 16
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Part Twenty-Six
Less Than the Image, But More Than the Lie
Far down the sand covered slope, the base rose impressively out of a tawny colored sea—the torn and gutted skeleton of a once mighty beast laid low. Ken shielded his slanted eyes from the setting sun with one hand and glared at the structure with a critical frown. He felt the others come to halt next to him and look down below.
Stingmon gently set Cody down and laid Davis out on the ground. Gennai bent over to check the boy and then rose to regard their guide. "How long?"
"For what?" Ken asked without looking at him.
"To fix it."
The former dictator snorted. "Fully functional?" His eyes narrowed as he looked at the wreckage and then he turned to the traveler. "A month."
Yolei's glasses flashed in the dying sunlight. "We don't have a month, Ken."
His eyes flickered to her and then back to the base. "How perceptive of you, Inoue." A slender arm raised and gestured downward. "The hole is in the engine room. With Stingmon's help, I can probably have that patched up and functional by early tomorrow morning. Depending on the amount of damage done to the core, there isn't going to be much except for main thrusters and auxiliary power. I can probably do the observation, tracking, and scanning systems by the afternoon." A sigh slid out from between thin lips and Ken ran a hand through his hair. "I have to access the mainframe first, though. I'm not sure how badly the core systems were damaged, and although the dry air wouldn't do much to any exposed equipment, the heat must have reeked havoc on them . . ."
Gennai lifted Davis up in his arms. "Can you have it all done by tomorrow, say about two-ish? In the morning?"
"You don't ask for much, do you, Gennai?" A wry smirk danced across Ken's mouth. He never could resist a challenge. He slid down the slope, leaving the Digidestined and a trail of dust in his wake. "I'd better get crackin', then."
**************
Davis Motomiya flew above the skies of the Digital World, a ghost unable to escape a phantom. Her phantom . . . Her laugh, her smile, her grace . . . Her Light. Goddamn her.
"But how am I supposed to tell Davis that I'd never date him in a million years." . . . "But if your not interested in Davis, you have to tall him so." . . . "I don't want to hurt him, Takeru." . . . "Then tell him the truth." . . . "Thanks TK." . . . "Things are going to be okay." . . . "How am I supposed to tell Davis that I'd never date him in a million years?" . . . "Hope is your area, TK."
How dare she! How dare she toy with him. And how dare he ever think that he had had a chance in hell with the Light. He was nobody. He wasn't anything special. He was just Davis Motomiya—plain, loud, and utterly inglorious. How dare he . . .
Davis?
'Leave me alone!'
You have to go back, Davis. You have to face her.
'The hell I do!'
*sigh* Davis, you must do it!
'Go back to hell, ghost.'
Coward.
The spectral Child of Courage and Friendship halted his flight and turned around to stare at the empty sky. 'What did you just call me?!'
Coward.
'How dare you!' Davis spun around in the air in search of the source of that cold voice. 'Show yourself! How is it that I'm a coward when you won't even let me see you? What the hell do you know about hurting anyway? You're not even real! You're not even really here!'
Do you ever think before you open your mouth, boy? I know more—have caused and received more—pain than your pathetic mind can possibly comprehend. I died over pain, but I never made a choice about it! Yet you world kill yourself over a girl, of all things! Do you have any idea what I would give to be alive? To redo everything and apologize to him and make everything all better again? I can't do that! He is out there alone and the best that I can do is follow him and whisper in his ear and hope to any god who cares that he listens to me! You say that I don't know pain? I know more about pain than you can comprehend! I don't live in pain everyday, I'm dead in pain everyday—and all that I can do is follow the dead living around, a broken phantom stalking a broken spirit!
By the last word, Davis's spiritual guide was screaming in a raw and bleeding voice and with every word, he became a bit more visible. A shadow, a dent in the air, hovered lightly before Davis when the last word was swallowed by the sky, fluttering and fluctuating as the red sunset seeped through it. The living shade stared at the dead one for a long moment, slightly taken aback.
'I . . .'
Spare me, Motomiya. The voice that emerged from the specter sounded tired and ragged as though the sudden temper tantrum had drained him of energy. Are you really so happy to die that this makes for a good excuse?
'I . . . I'm afraid."
An American writer named Mark Twain once said that 'Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.'
'But it hurts.'
. . . I'm sorry, Davis. Believe me, I know that doing the right thing sucks, but what are you going to do about it?
The boy closed his eyes and bowed his head. 'Can I talk to her first?'
Why?
'Because doing the right thing sucks and sometimes bad stuff just happens.'
Yeah, Davis. You can talk to her.
**************
Stingmon stood, patiently holding up a large steal beam as he watched his partner weld a piece of sheet metal onto the hull. They had been hard at work for the past two and a half hours and things were moving more rapidly than either of them had dared hope. The light of the blowtorch illuminated Ken's face in tones of white and vivid blue and a thin black rubber band pulled the boy's indigo hair up off of his neck and out of his eyes so that the blowtorch wouldn't get to it. A pair of goggles hid his eyes from view and he idly sang under his breath as he worked.
"Disarm you with a smile / Cut you like you want me to / Cut that little child / inside of me and such a part of you / Mmm hmm hmm me, it burns—"
"What are you singing, Ken-chan?"
"What?" The boy's head snapped up and he blinked at the Champion in confusion through the plexi-glass eyewear. "I wasn't singing."
Stingmon pressed the beam he held in place so that it could be welded and the platform Ken stood on shivered as he brushed against it. "Yes, you were. You said, 'Disarm you with a smile, cut you like you want me to, something something something.' "
"Was I really singing that?" Ken turned back to the metal.
"Yes. You were doing that the other night on the balcony, too." Stingmon paused and waited for Ken to say something. When only silence was forthcoming, the digimon shifted his position slightly and regarded the flame on the blowtorch intently. "Why do you sing that song, Ken? It sounds terribly sad."
"It was a lullaby."
"Hmm?" Stingmon projected a frown down at the human.
Ken chewed on his lower lip and continued his work. His words were a murmur. " . . . When I was little, I used to have frightmares. They're different than nightmares, worse, but I could never remember what they were about. I used to try and stay awake all night and I'd lay alone in bed shaking. Finally, one night it got so bad that I couldn't take it any longer, so I went into Osamu's room. I must have been standing next to his bed and staring at him for about ten or fifteen minutes before he woke up. When he saw that I was crying, he picked me up and put me in bed with him and sang that song to me over and over until I went to sleep. Eventually, that proved to be the only way to get me to sleep without the dreams coming, so every night, I'd stay up until my parents went to bed and then I'd go climb into Osamu's bed and he'd sing that for me. I did that every night I was home until he died. Then I just stopped sleeping."
The blowtorch went silent for a moment and Ken raised his head, eyes far away. "I remember, I'd sing that when things got real bad, or when I missed him and it got to be too much. He always felt closer then, like he could hear me, or was saying the words with me like when I would crawl in his bed and he'd hold me. I haven't sung it in so long, I had forgotten it. I can't believe I was actually singing it now—that I would remember it after all this time." Suddenly he shook his head violently, tempting his make-shift ponytail to break loose from its binding. "Baka!" he exclaimed in disgust. He started the torch and bent over the welding again, eyes intent on his work. "Dreams, nothing more. The foolish dreams of a silly child."
A rumble moved through Stingmon's chest in reply. "I'm sorry, Ken-chan. I didn't know."
"I know. It's alright."
A small voice startled them both. "I'm sorry, too."
Stingmon nearly dropped the beam in his surprise and the blowtorch fell silent as Ken turned around to stare at Cody with a single uplifted eyebrow. He looked at the serious little boy critically for a moment before turning back to his welding. "Hello, Hida. Where are the others?"
The child shrugged noncommittally. "Trying to avoid touching anything so that you don't yell at them. Kari found the kitchen, so she and Yolei have decided to start dinner."
"Ah. How late is it?"
"You've been down here nearly three hours." Cody looked away from the other boy to the massive machine that occupied the center of the immense room they were in. "Is it running yet?"
"I'm going to replace my Crest as soon as these last few beams are in place. I checked all the piping and the reactor is still online, so it's not as much work as we had feared." Ken turned off the blowtorch and nodded to his digimon. "Thank you, Stingmon. There's not much more for you to do here, so will you please go up and start accessing the core systems in the control room?"
"Of course, Ken." With a nod in Cody's direction, the Champion straightened and stretched a bit, extending his wings with the motion. Then he exited the room and left the two boys alone together.
Ken hopped down from the platform he'd been on and returned his blowtorch to its proper place in the toolbox. He removed a wrench and walked over to the reactor, picking a bolt seemingly at random and carefully tightening it. He moved on to the next one.
Cody silently watched him do three bolts in this fashion before his voice managed to work its way past his lips. "Why?"
Ken didn't look away from his work. "I need to be sure that everything is in the proper condition. If there's even the slightest problem with the reactor—"
Green eyes narrowed. "You know what I meant. Why?"
Ken still didn't look at him. "What not? What difference does it make, anyway? You can't change the past."
A small hand wrapped itself around Ken's free wrist and jerked him around. He looked down at Cody Hida with vague amusement and a hard challenge in his eyes. Cody met him gaze for gaze. "That's not good enough," the smaller boy whispered intensely.
Ken's eyes flickered from indigo, to blue and then to violet and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. "Be satisfied, boy. What do you want me to say? That I wanted to? I did. That I enjoyed it? I did. That, as deplorable and twisted as it was, I still sometimes miss it? I do. That I'm angry and scared and frustrated and lost and so fucked up that I can barely see where I came from, let alone where I'm going? I am. Is that good enough? Does that make you feel better, Hida? Does that validate things in your eyes? There is no justification or validation for what I've done. I screwed up. Deal with it and move on. I sure as hell refuse to linger and pine over it; I've got more than enough problems and things to do without listening to my own pathetic whining."
He yanked his wrist out of Cody's grasp and turned back to the reactor. "I have work to do now."
Cody looked at a stiff, gray-clad back for a moment and his eyes softened considerably. Ken ignored him as the smaller boy turned to leave the room. Then the Child of Knowledge and Reliability stopped at door and turned around. His voice was soft and Ken stilled so that he could hear him.
"It's kinda funny," the child started as he stared at Ken's back, "you're smart, handsome, athletic . . . all that stuff. You once brought an entire world to its knees. By the age of eleven, you built and lost an empire, waged war and conquered, dominated and enslaved, and yet—" he drifted off and shook his head slowly. Ken focused his gaze on the reactor, afraid of what he would see in the other's eyes. Cody sighed. "I feel so sorry for you . . ."
Ken didn't move when he heard the door swish open and close again. He didn't move when he heard the call button chime. He didn't move until he felt a cramp in his hand and a slight tick in his bruised face. Then, with infinite slowness, he stood up, knees popping with the movement. His hands were shaking. Seconds later a short, painfully sharp scream of rage echoed through the chamber followed by a loud crash as a wrench was hurled through the air at a high rate of speed. Then there was silence.
**************
Kari cast Yolei a worried glance through the steam as she carefully stirred the soup. The Child of Love and Sincerity had been very quiet and withdrawn ever since her test and Hawkmon was worried. The digimon in question was currently hunting through the pantry area for spices and plates that had not been reduced to shards during the final battle. Occasionally Gatomon's sharp voice would cut through the bustle with the occasional disparaging remark against the Digimon Emperor, Ken himself, and the boy genius's lineage for the past several centuries.
A smile twitched across Kari's lips and she turned to Yolei. "Do you here her in there?" she asked, cocking her head towards the pantry.
"Yeah." For a minute Yolei said nothing more, simply staring at the pot of noodles she was in charge of. Then she started to cry.
" . . . Oh, Yolei . . ." Kari laid the spoon down on the stovetop and quickly wrapped her arms around the sobbing girl next her. "Shh," she whispered as the other girl leaned into her. "It's okay. I know. It's okay. It's okay."
The shorter girl rocked Yolei back and forth and began to hum offhandly. She snaked a hand around and turned the flames down; then she returned to rubbing the other girl's in smooth comforting circles. The neo Digidestined trembled and the two of them stayed like that for several minutes.
"It wasn't a fair test," Yolei whimpered into her shoulder when she found her voice.
Kari remained silent and let the other girl vent.
"They made me hurt them!" the wine-haired girl explained in a stuttering voice. "I never wanted anyone to get hurt."
"I know, Yolei. I know."
She pulled herself out of those comforting arms, gripped Kari's biceps, and shook the other girl slightly. Her glasses and tears served to enlarge her eyes to unnatural proportions and her face was pale. "But I thought it was real, Kari. I was there. How can you stand it?"
Maroon eyes shifted to avoid enlarged rose quartz ones and Kari studied the ground with a sudden and keen interest. "Because I can't change it, Yolei. I can't make it better or justify it, so I'm just trying to glean what I can from it and move on."
Yolei's brow contorted as she looked at her in confusion. "How can you just forgive it like that?"
The Child of Light shrugged helplessly. "I just . . ." She exhaled hard and looked up in a plea. "What more can I do? They were doing the best they could, right? It was all for the best, wasn't it?"
"I hope so, Kari." Suddenly, Yolei smiled, a tense and forced expression. "C'mon," she said, releasing Kari's arms, "Those boys'll probably be hungry."
The two girls turned away from one another, turned up the flames, and resumed the cooking. The digimon joined them after a few moments with plates, ginger, and two garlic cloves.
"Are you feeling better, Yolei?" Hawkmon asked in his polished, slightly nasal voice.
The tall human looked down at him and smiled. "Yeah, actually I am." She accepted the garlic from him and looked around for a cutting board. A slight frown marred her face and Yolei looked to where Gatomon stood beside Kari. "Was there any parsley?"
The feline glowered. "Why don't you ask Ken?"
Kari cast her partner a sharp look of reproach. "What gotten into you, Gatomon? You've been being snippy ever since we got here."
The little Champion shrugged uncomfortably. "Sorry, Kari. This place makes my fur stand on end." Her large blue eyes looked around as though she expected the Dark Masters, Apocalamon, Myotismon, and the Digimon Emperor to all leap out and attack in force, her body was tense and her tail twitched. "I just keep thinking about all the pain that he caused—and here we are at ground zero."
Kari bent over and pulled the digimon up into a hug. "It's okay. Ken's not the Emperor anymore, Gatomon. He wouldn't hurt us."
"I don't know, Kari." Yolei shook her head dubiously and found the knife she had been looking for. The aroma of garlic filled the room. "Ken may not be the Emperor anymore, but the Emperor is still Ken, and frankly, I don't really see much difference between the two." Her rose colored eyes turned lifted from the cutting board to look at Hawkmon. "The parsley?"
He nodded and flapped off towards the pantry. Gatomon detached herself from her human. "I'll help."
"Can Ah help, too?" a sudden voice drawled from the doorway.
They all turned to see Armadillomon and a rather dejected looking Cody enter the room.
Gatomon shrugged. "The more the merrier. C'mon."
The three 'mons left the room and Gatomon picked up her train of insults again. Kari smiled and turned to Cody. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah." The small boy came over to them and stood on his tiptoes so he could see better. He looked up at the two girls. "Can I help you?"
"Actually, could you take over here for me?" Kari gave him a winning smile. "I want to find TK and check on Davis."
"No problem." Cody accepted the wooden spoon from Kari and took her place at the stove. He had to stretch a bit to reach the pot and Yolei turned a watchful eye to him.
"Thanks," Kari beamed. She turned towards the pantry. "Gatomon? I'm going to the bedroom to find Davis and Gennai."
Gatomon's head appeared around the doorframe. "Do you want company?"
"Nah." She waved the Champion away. "You'll be more help here."
"Okay." She vanished back into the pantry to continue the ongoing quest for the parsley.
"I'll catch you guys later, alright?" Tossing a smile behind her, the Child of Light left the kitchen.
After a few moments of silence Yolei looked down at Cody. "Well?"
He turned to her with solemn green eyes. "Well, what?"
She hid a smile and turned back to the garlic. "You did talk to him, didn't you?"
"Yeah." The boy removed the spoon from the pot and stepped back so that Yolei could dump in some garlic.
"So, what happened?" she demanded as the knife scraped the cutting board clean.
He shrugged and resumed stirring. "Nothing much. I asked. He evaded. I pushed. He pushed back. End of story."
"Oh." She looked away uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, Cody."
"Well, including him, that makes three of us." Cody leaned over the pot and sniffed experimentally. He resumed stirring. "I don't understand him at all."
Yolei checked the noodles. "Well, including him, that probably makes three of us."
**************
The hallways were darkened and shadows pooled in the corners, ready to shift into distorted figments of someone's warped imagination. Kari walked with slow hesitant steps through what Ken had called 'auxiliary lighting.' The former Emperor had instantly cloistered himself, followed by his digimon naturally, in the engine room and set about getting the power on. He gave them directions to his old bedroom, the kitchen, a few storage areas for supplies, and the sick bay. She could still hear his cold, clipped voice as he gave them instructions: "If you don't know what it is, where it goes, or where it came from, do not touch it. In fact, unless it's nailed down to something, don't even look at it. And if it has lights, buttons, or is made of metal, don't so much as breathe on it, understand?"
Kari smiled sadly. She slowly drug a hand along the cold metal wall. Her voice whispered along the edges of the shadows as she spoke. "You're really a piece of work, Ichijouji."
He's not the only one.
Kari whirled around, eyes as wide as dinner plates. Her voice was a shiver. "Who's there?"
Me. What? Yeah. So what? Oh. Um, okay. Well, wait just a sec! Hold on; he says I'm doing it wrong.
"Davis?" The girl's brows contorted in confusion. She turned around in a full circle. "Where are you?"
Here. Sorry about that.
Kari gasped as Davis materialized right before his startled eyes. No, not Davis—a spirit—Davis's spirit. Her Test returned to her with terrifying clarity when she saw the anger in Davis's chocolate brown eyes and she recoiled. How . . ? But somewhere deep behind that anger, she saw a fluid and biting pain. Without knowing how, she knew why it was there. He knew the truth—somehow, some way, he knew. Damnit.
"I'm not dead," the boy said softly. "He says I'm just in limbo. Well, not anymore. He says now I'm an—" here he stopped and looked off to his right, as though seeking help from someone or thing, "—earth-bound spirit. Just for now, though. I wanted—needed—to talk to you first. Before . . ."
Her voice was a whimper. "Davis . . .?"
He looked at her, hurt and reproach bleeding out of his eyes and into his carriage. "Why didn't you just tell me the truth?" he asked.
Kari bit her lip and studied the floor. There was no fear in his eyes; he wanted the answer now, he was ready. "Davis, I . . . I didn't want to hurt you. It just—"
"Just what?" he demanded, still bleeding out that silent plea for closure.
The girl looked up, crying. She wanted to scream. She wanted to turn away. She wanted her voice to be something more than a warbling gasp. "I am so sorry."
"Why can't you love me?"
"Oh, Davis . . . I just . . . don't."
The plea was not appeased. "But you enjoyed it. You used me. You made me a—a—an accessory. A key chain. Lipstick to top off your social make-up job. Why?"
"I don't know." Conflict burned in her normally bright eyes, dulling them to a thick and clouded amber color. "I—I guess it made me feel good."
Sudden understanding blossomed in Davis's brown eyes and his features softened and the plea was appeased. He tilted his head slightly and smiled, an expression that would have been graceful and exquisite on anyone else. But Davis Motomiya wasn't anyone else, he was Davis Motomiya, and he didn't do graceful or exquisite: it just wasn't his style. "It's really funny how I keep meeting all these people who remind me of Ken. Maybe he's not so alone after all. Maybe none of us are."
"I . . . I don't understand."
"It's cool." He waved away the confusion on her face with one gloved hand.
"But—"
"Hey," he stepped forward and moved to put his hand on her shoulders, but they merely passed right through her, so he drew away. It was an awkward moment, but he wasn't at all awkward. The role-reversal was confusing and disconcerting. He continued to smile at her, but it now took on a deliciously bittersweet quality. "It's alright, Kari. Really."
The Child of Light smiled as the tears sliding down her cheeks grew to full blown, body-shaking sobs. "I—Puh, please . . . forgive—"
It took all of Davis's control not to try to touch her again. "Hey, you're my friend, right? There's nothing to forgive."
Kari looked absolutely awful then. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, her face was all red and splotchy, and something suspiciously clear and shiny gleamed under her enflamed nose. The hallway around her looked too big and dark, and she looked small and fragile, as though the sheer volume of the cool, vent pumped air surrounding them would crush her. She had never looked less attractive since Davis had meant her. She was beautiful and he had never loved her more. But it wasn't the deep or passionate love that he had always believed it to be, it was an ascetic love, the way one feels about a painting or the stars. It was a love that was beautiful and reverent, but acceptably out of reach, now and forever. And that was alright.
Davis looked off to the right and nodded. He turned his eyes back to her. "I have to go now, Kari."
"Go?!" The girl looked alarmed at that statement. "Go where?"
Davis smiled. "I can feel my body now. I'm going to go rejoin it." He began to fade from sight. "He says I have to hurry. See ya."
Kari raised her hand towards the living ghost. "See ya."
After a moment of silence passed before she turned to the patch of air that had so concerned Davis. There was nothing there now, but the sensation of a dead spirit was etched into the air, complete with the slight chill. "Thank you, Osamu."
Quickly dashing the last of the tears from her eyes, she turned around to go back to the kitchen. Davis, she knew, was going to be just fine.
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