Eidolon Am I Chapter 4: Who Am I To Blow Against the Wind?, a digimon fanfic

Eidolon Am I

The Revelations Arch: Book 2

~ The future is only a reaction to the past. ~

By: Vain 12/19/2001

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This story is the sequel to "For They Shall Be Filled" and is Book Two of The Revelations Arch.

And, before you panic: NO, this story will not be as long as its predecessor. I think. I hope. Probably . . . Er . . . Maybe . . . Okay, I don't really have the slightest clue how long this will be—I just write what the voices tell me to. *The muses all cheer* They're eeeeeeeevil . . .

If you have not read "For They Shall Be Filled," GO READ IT NOW!!

If you have read "For They Shall Be Filled," good for you!!! My muses and I salute you. You should also have figured out by now that I don't own Digimon, or any of the characters pertaining to it.

I do however—as far as I know—own most of the plot bunnies here, the Four Original Guardians of the Digidestined (Kazunori Saito, Sanghee Kiangtzu, ect.), the concept of the Sacred Triangle, and the Original Nine. Genka Millenniumon is on loan from the gracious Ajora. Special thanks go to Herongale, Dante, Meimi, the Guardian, and Ajora. This wouldn't be possible without all your help. Thank you. ^_~

Enjoy the fic and READ AND REVIEW please!

A/N: I am SO sorry about the massive delay. *hangs her head* BUT~~ my comp is getting fixed now, so hopefully things will be back to normal soon. ^_^V Please don't kill me after this chapter . . .

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Chapter Three Who Am I to Blow Against the Wind

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" 'Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.' "

Genesis 25: 23

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They said that I was a genius because I knew better than to force a square peg into a round hole. They said Ken was "a bit slow" because whenever they shoved a camera in his face his eyes would go wide and he'd hide behind me or bury himself behind Mama's skirts. He was always like that, shying back from the slightest hint of the spotlight, even when fame was a novel word in conjunction with the name Ichijouji and he was too small to grasp the concept.

I once asked him why he hated it so much and he told me that he didn't like the way all those eyes felt on him. Like they were skittering over his skin. I laughed at him, but Mama and Papa didn't say anything at all. I think Mama always thought that Ken was a little bit crazy. I could never tell with her.

Ken took after her more than either of them is willing to admit, but he always leaned more toward the existential. They all said that he wasn't smart. They said that he wouldn't ever be really normal or special like me because he had been born so early. They didn't understand anything. Then again, the same could be said for me.

Of course, I was a child then and as a child I believed them. A part of me still believes them. It gave me a sense of purpose, something much more concrete than smiling at a camera or pretending I held the key to the secrets of the universe.

Ken's eyes would go wide and he's hungrily absorb ever morsel of wisdom I let drop—regardless of whether or not it was true wisdom.

"It's dangerous, Samu," Ryo would say to me. And I'd brush him off like it didn't matter to me—like he didn't matter to me.

"You can't just go playing with people like that. This isn't a game and he's not your toy. He's you're brother, Osamu. You're little brother—"

"That's right MY little BROTHER!" I'd snarl. My answer was always the same and Ryo would always pale slightly and then flush a deep, deep red.

My little brother. Not Ryo's little brother. Not Tsuyoshi and Rika's son. Osamu's little brother. So why should Ryo care for him?

It had been our only argument. Ken was my responsibility—no one else's. And as much as I resented Ken for forcing me into that position, a position I never wanted to begin with, it defined me and I'd fight like hell against anyone who thought they could replace me. Especially Ryo.

And after the digivice incident, it was always Ryo who challenged me. Mother and father were just grateful that Ken was in capable hands and, in their eyes at least, I needed as much maintenance as your average houseplant. But from the moment Ken came tumbling out of my computer screen, everything changed.

If it hadn't been for that we could have been happy. We would have been, of that I am utterly convinced.

But the Idiot Gods sent him the damn thing anyway and I got it and hid it away. I wasn't called a genius for nothing. The minute I picked that thing up I knew it wasn't for me. I knew when I locked it away that I was playing with something much bigger than myself or Ken, or the little machine itself. And I knew that it understood what I was doing and that it didn't like me at all.

Why should that have mattered to me, though? I was Ichijouji Osamu, a god in my own right. I had fought against Death itself and won Ken, why not Fate too? Why not spit in the very face of God, if need be? What did I have to fear—to lose?

My family? I was never extremely attached to Mother and Father, anyway. Oh, I loved them, still do, but we were never a very open or affectionate family. Sometimes I wonder if we all would have turned out this way if we had all just sat down one day and actually talked. If Father had carried Ken on his shoulders or if we had all went to the park. If I had been normal.

My life? No. Death was too immense, too abstract and I was too powerful to know what that meant back then. All I knew about death was tubes and hospital incubators and coincidental miracles where names held the power to save not only a life, but the world itself. Beyond the flawed memories of the child I had been, death did not exist.

And Ken? My Ken?

To be honest, it never occurred to me. It had been an accepted fact in my mind that no one wanted Ken. And I told him as much. I wasn't being cruel or spiteful, I was being what thought was honest. Nothing I ever told him was a lie—not in my mind. I had been so hell-bent on teaching him my bitter, selective truths that I never considered that my way of thinking was wrong or flawed. No one had ever told me I was wrong or flawed.

I had never ever had to compete for Ken. Ken had had to compete for me. It was simply a fact of life. No one would ever—could ever—take Ken from me.

So imagine my surprise when that's exactly what they did. Fate did not like being challenged and it reached out and grabbed Ken and snatched him away before I even knew he was gone. He was only gone for a moment. I had just turned my back for an instant. But when he came back to me, time had passed.

I could see it in his eyes.

And the look of sheer and utter delight, delight without me—ME! To whom he owed his very life!—was absolutely the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life. Because for the first time since his release from the hospital, he had been separated from me. He knew a life without me. And while he told me he had lived a week in that moment, I still had only lived a moment. I had not been granted the liberty of living a week without his constant, clinging presence. I had had no reprieve—no experience that I could remember of living without Ken.

It was at that moment that I struck him, knocking him down onto the ground and sending the evil little device that had introduced such misery sliding across the carpet. Ken had never been struck before. He was a good child, an odd child, but a well-behaved one. He always did what he was told when and how he was told. I could have counted on one hand how often I raised my voice to him before that day. Before that day . . .

Because after that day, a new variable had been entered into the equation. I had never considered the possibility that Ken might stop needing me before I stopped needing him. He came to me for everything. But whatever he had done during that week instilled him with some strange core of strength that I lacked and didn't understand.

My baby brother had outgrown me.

I couldn't allow such a thing to happen. Ken defined me. Made me. Owned me. And on that day I suddenly understood that he had somehow surpassed me at the whim of something as impartial as Fate and it was unbearable. The more he grew and the less I could touch him, the less he would need me. I learned on that day that one day I too would be cast aside, just as Ken had been.

So I fought. I fought Fate and in doing so, fought its vessel: Ken. I excelled even further in school, giving Ken no time to catch up. I suddenly courted attention, craved and longed for it as it was something that Ken didn't have. I monopolized our parents' time, more often than not unintentionally, until I was the only one left.

Ken would have me or he would have nothing at all.

And, being a true genius, I did it all without knowing it or knowing why.

I look back and try to say I didn't understand what I was doing and that I was too young to even imagine the seeds I was sowing, but I had ample warning. I knew that there would be consequences to my actions. I just didn't believe it.

So I hid from myself, telling myself that I knew what was best and alienating my brother even as I bound him to me so tightly that not even in death could we ever be separated again.

I hated him.

I hated him more than there are words for it. I hated him so much that I choked on it every time I breathed. But for every bit of hate, there was twice as much love and I held that to me like a shield that could keep out the world that had so wronged me. I poured all that hatred down his throat until he was sick with it because I couldn't deal with it and no one could ever know it was there. He was so small that it seemed to fit him anyway; a perfect burden for his shoulders to bear as he had caused it and, combined with the burden of loving him, I couldn't possibly move beneath the weight of such intense, conflicting emotion.

He drank it in as he did everything I gave him, too young to know poison when it was handed to him with a smile and a hug.

I spat in the face of Fate. I thought I had won. I thought Ken was mine again. I thought we were safe—I was safe.

And then one day I opened the door and came face to face with Akiyama Ryo and my world fell apart.

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