Dedication (with no Authors Note?! Is that possible!?!?!?): Yeah I gotta say this one's going to archforge, my complete IDOL (people.. read the fic On The Line and you'll know what I mean). It'll never be as good as any of your work, but I can try, hmm?


---

Hanging out my window and over your head.
Stare at your feelings to see where they end.
You're waiting here for someone else to break you from the inside.
You've been so composed, we all know there's..

... always something tearing you apart.
It's always so much longer than you counted on.
And it hits you so much harder than you thought.
But you don't worry, you don't worry...
'Cause you got soul.

You're so heavy, you're so misunderstood.
And I've spent all my wishes wishin' times were good.
When I still could.
Wait around here for someone else to take me past the good side.
You've been here so long now, we all know there's...

... always something tearing you apart.
It's always so much longer than you counted on.
And it hits you so much harder than you thought.
But you don't worry, you don't worry...
'Cause darlin' you got so much soul.
Darlin' you got so much soul.

When there's always something tearing you apart.
It's always so much longer than you counted on.
And it hits you so much harder than you ever thought it would.
But you don't worry, you don't worry..
But you don't worry, you don't worry..
But you don't worry, you don't worry..
'Cause you've got soul.

----- You've Got Soul - Matchbox Twenty -----


== December 18th, 2001 ==

But why? Why was this happening to him of all people? It was bad enough after the entire adventure in the digital world, none of the other tamers would talk to him, because of his relationship to--
Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the reason he was stuck out in the frozen night with nothing but a backpack of clothes over one shoulder, and his younger sister attached to his side.
Only and hour before they were in their warm apartment sitting in front of the TV, pretending not to hear their mother and father talk about the digimon in the kitchen.
That was still a hot topic at the Wong household, considering his mother wanted to know why Takato or Rika didn't come over anymore. It was the digimon thing. They both seemed to have an eternal hatred for Mr. Wong, as if they blamed him for the digimon having to go back to the digital world. Even Jeri, who normally didn't think hostily, frowned at him at school and turned her back to him, and she didn't even lose her digimon that way--
Henry didn't understand what was going on, but he had a feeling he'd figure it out soon enough. All he had to go on at the moment, was a few voices growing a bit too loud in the kitchen, and his mother rushing them out to the car, and dumping them at the mall, telling them to try and find somewhere safe to stay for the night, and leaving, almost as if she wasn't thinking clearly.
They'd been walking for what seemed to Henry like hours, although he knew it hadn't been. Suzy hadn't said a word to him the entire time, almost lost in her own little world of confusion. She clutched the stuffed rabbit she loved to her chest and looked around at the crowds of Christmas shoppers innocently.
The snow had started, that was just great. The mall was miles away from any one of the tamers' homes, and it was almost impossible for any of them to even want him to stay there in their homes in the first place. The entire situation was hopeless, and he still didn't know why he was out there with his baby sister in the cold.
"Henwy... Henwy lookit!" Suzy lifted an almost-frozen hand and pointed to someone in the crowd.
"It's Wika!"
Henry's heart dropped even further. Great, of all the people out there to run into, it had to be Rika.
She seemed to be the one that hated him the most after all the digimon had their data returned to the digital world, and Henry now thinking he was probably homeless unless his mother came back for him, Rika'd look down on him even more than she did before.
He felt a sharp tug at his arm from the small girl. "Henwy? Didn't you hear me?! I said it was Wika!!"
Henry looked towards Rika hesitatingly. She clearly had her mind on other things, with her mother's cellphone against one ear, and her gloved hand over the other to try and hear the person on the other end.
For once in a long while she had her hair down on her shoulders, probably more to protect her face from the cold than anything else, and she could be easily spotted in a crowd with her bright auburn hair amongst the white snow that fell and the dark clothing everyone else wore around her.
Another thing that set her off was her evident higher status than the other people. She wore the high-fashioned cream-colored jacket with a bit of fur around the collar, and everything else seemed to match as well, and Henry figured she had just come out of one of the fashion shoots. As soon as Rika's mother had agreed to let her keep and spend the money she got off of fashion shoots, they seemed to fill her scegule right up, and Rika suddenly wore higher-priced clothing, rode higher-priced bicycles, and used anything else that was higher priced than before.
Suzy tugged harder. "Talk to her!!"
Henry sighed and slipped one of the backpacks he was carrying off his shoulder, handing the small flower-printed one to Suzy. "You go talk to her, I'm going to take a walk in the park.."
Suzy stood with a confused look on her face, until she looked up into her big brother's eyes, seeing he was serious. She nodded slowly, turned, and raced towards the girl.
Henry stood up straight and sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. He turned and headed towards the run-down park that was just a block or two down the road.

Rika closed up the small black phone and attached it to the woven leather belt around her waist. Agents, none of them were worth your time anymore. She understood now why her mother always told Rika to hang up if anyone from the modeling agency called at night.
She sighed, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked around the semi-crowded sidewalk, more at the Christmas displays in the windows than anything else.
It was almost stupid, this holiday everyone was so hyped up over. Christmas at her house was always a tree, some cookies, and getting a bunch of junk from family you barely ever saw on Christmas Day.
Christmas was for the family, puh.. yeah right. Family was never together at Christmas, not where she was anyways. Her mother had extra shoots at Christmas, so she was never home, and her grandmother always attended special classes in the evening for cooking. Sure, Rika's school had some fancy Christmas dance every year, but Rika never attended. She hung up some signs around her neighborhood, it was required of all students to do something or another, after all. Maybe she'd go out to some store and buy a few cheap things for gifts for some 'friends', but that was it.
Rika had been so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn't even see the small girl run up to her, and didn't even notice her presense until there was a soft tug at her jacket.
She looked down, and much to her surprise, was a shivering little girl, wearing a thin pink jacket in the increasing cold. The snow had started up harder in the past few minutes, and even Rika was catching a bit of a chill.
"Suzy?! What are you doing here?" Before she knew what she was doing, she had knelt down in front of the small girl and had picked her up, wrapping a bit of her jacket around the small shivering body.
She had to have compassion on the girl, she looked almost as if she would die from freezing any moment.
Suzy clung to the warmth as if it would go away if she did anything else, and didn't answer for a moment, just mumbled something under her breath about Henry and a park. That was all Rika needed as the black limo she had been waiting for pulled up to the curb, and the automatic door suddenly slid open, and inside was her mother and a boatload of shopping bags.
The woman suddenly looked surprised seeing her daughter standing there holding a small girl tightly to her chest, but her eyes soon softened, recognising the face of the girl.
"Here, Suzy." Rika put the girl down carefully, and pushed her gently towards the limo. "You go in there, I'll get Henry."
Rika's mother didn't argue, just nodded slowly at her daughter's sudden determined look, and motioned for the shivering Suzy to come sit beside her in the warm car.
Without another thought, Suzy had crawled in, and curled up against Rika's mother as if she was her own.
"I'll meet you home." was Rika's last words before the door shut, and she took off for the park amist the steam coming from the exhaust pipe of the limo as it sped away.

"Henry?!"
Henry sat slumped against the cold stone wall of the 'Tamers Headquarters', half-asleep from the cold, with his knees pulled to his chest to try and keep himself warm. In the rush to get out of the house, Henry had only grabbed a coat for Suzy. It was below freezing now, and he was kicking himself for not grabbing his own. It seemed like a distant memory, someone calling his name like that, and in the back of his mind he actually had the thought he might be dying from the cold, until a figure stepped into the moonlight that was pouring through the small doorway.
"Henry!"
Henry groaned inwardly. Great, now he looked like a coward too to her. Rika of all people.. why her?
She sat on her knees in front of him with a puzzeled look on her face. "Henry, are you alright?"
Henry realised the cold had taken his voice away as soon as he had opened his mouth to answer, and Rika had realised his situation at almost the exact moment when she had moved to the side to get a better view of his face.
"Henry! You're going to freeze to death out here!!" she said in the first worried tone he had really heard out of her.
Before he could say a word, she had pulled him out into the cold night air, which, when he thought about it, wasn't too much colder than it had been in the small stone building. She had already started pushing him down the path, towards the rich-end of town. He knew exactly where she was taking him, and found it a bit frustrating that he could fight back verbally, or really even physically from how cold he was.
"Are you people trying to get me in trouble?"
Rika stopped pushing him, but slipped one arm out from her jacket and draped that side over Henry, putting her arm around him to keep him walking.
"I swear, if anything happens to either of you now, it'll be on my head..." she continued to mumble to herself.
Henry barely heard a word of it, he was just glad someone found him alive and was actually offering warmth to him, and... sort of hospitality. Yeah I guess that's what you could call it, even coming out of Rika.
"I want the entire story when we get to my house though... it's not like you to be lugging your little sister around all of Tokyo in this sort of weather, especially when you have no jacket on."
She must've realised he couldn't talk, because she never waited for his answer before continuing on.
"If something happened with your family or something, you can stay at my house, I'm sure. Suzy's already there, I told Mom to take her home with her."
Henry gave a sigh of relief at hearing those words. At least his sister was safe and sound.
"Thank you." he said hoarsely, looking over at her.
Rika shrugged. "Yeah whatever." She never looked him back in the face, and Henry couldn't tell if she was uncomfortable with the situation, or had something else on her mind at the time.
"When we get home, I swear---" she mumbled the rest under her breath, Henry barely catching a thing of it except the word Ryo, which took her a bit longer to say than the rest.
She suddenly was lost in her thoughts, and stopped talking completly, her eyes grew distant-looking.
There were rumors flying around from Jeri and the rest of the girls at school that Rika had been having some relationship problems with Ryo lately, but it was all just a rumor, at least he thought so.
The wind whipped past the two and Henry found himself moving closer to the girl.
She snapped out of her thoughts and looked at him. "Oh, right.." she put her arm around him a bit more and smirked.
"I swear if anyone else finds out about this, I'll just die."
"I won't tell anyone." Henry forced out of his throat, and Rika smirked again.
"Yeah, yeah..."