DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.
Specific notation alert: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.
Author's Note: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. Closer and closer, kiddies. ^.^;v
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P
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8
Towards Deeper Waters

"Honestly Hikari-chan, you should go back."

Sitting on the sand with face in her hands Hikari shook her head hard--it pulled the blistered burns down her neck, made them ache and scream. Without looking she somehow knew her other self, the self with the mad metal eyes and the taunting laughter, was sitting on a log now, legs crossed and leaning back languidly. A log, of all things, and for some bizarre reason Hikari's mind chose to fix on that odd little detail. A log, driftwood, really, that shouldn't be there in the first place because there were no trees on this beach. No trees, no life, no living thing--not on this beach, not in this ocean, not in all this horrible world. Only her on her knees in the monotone sand beneath a monotone sky, only her other self with the small smile so viciously affectionate.

"And why not? They're worried about you, you know. . ."

Hikari shook her head again, trying so hard to ignore the cold burns on her neck; somehow the sand had worked its way into the broken skin, rubbed and scratched within the raw flesh in tiny blades of salt. She wanted to go back. She wanted to go anywhere, anywhere but here. . .

"I'm not going to keep you here, Hikari-chan. Not against your will, oh dear no."

Liar. Her hands moved from her eyes to her ears, trying to block her own voice out. Liar, you'd keep me here forever no matter what I said. You brought me here against my own will; why wouldn't you kee--

"Oh, hush." Her voice was sharper there, snapped off and impatient. "I'm not a liar Hikari, and I'm just not that vicious. You can leave any time you like." Again without looking up from her closed lids or the tedious, terrible sand Hikari saw herself on the log swing her legs down over the edge. She was sitting like a schoolgirl on a bench now, with her knees together and her shoulders forward from the way her hands rest on the wood. "You came in your own sweet time, after all. Brought yourself here, you know."

No. No, I didn't. I would never come back here again; never never never. Hikari shook her head again, kept shaking it just to be doing something. Speaking, somehow, was no more an option than a necessity. Speaking, somehow, would chain her here forever and ever. I would never come back here, not after all this place did to me. Not after all the dreams, all the nightmares. Not after--

"Spare me the theatrics."

Hikari caught the scream in her throat, only jumping faintly when that twisted parody of her voice purred against her ear again. Something of a whimper though--strained and frightened and pleading, lonely and desperate--made its way out when that cold hand came around her from behind, low beneath her ribs and reaching up to grasp her neck again. Something of a whimper that was too small and terrified to become a scream, as the cold lips pressed against the back of her neck again, kissed her and whispered to her softly against her broken skin.

"You're just so dramatic, Hikari. Your words lack a certain. . .honesty. A certain purity. . ." Her other self pulled her back, pulled her back and held her as a mother held a child to their breast in the dark. Beneath the cloth of the other's shirt, Hikari could hear no heartbeat, could feel only empty cold.

"A certain light if you will." A small giggle--girlish and innocent the way Hikari had been when she was small, when she was sick every other day with the heat or with the cold. It made her skin crawl. "And will you, Hikari-chan?"

Held against her own icy chest, held in her own icy arms Hikari felt herself going numb, drifting away into a stuporous sleep. But no, no she couldn't afford to sleep here, not any more than she could afford to speak. This time there was more at stake. . .

The icy hands ran through her hair as they held her close, stroked her cheek softly. "Now now, Hikari-chan. . .be a dear, won't you? Onii-chan will worry about you. Miya and Take, why, they're scared to death. And dearest Kenny. . .he needs all the help he can get." The hands tilted her face up gently, the thumbs stroking softly across her tightly closed lids. "Sweet little light of mine. . ."

She choked--her voice almost from her own mouth this time, her smiling icy lips less than an inch from her own as they spoke. Somehow they were near the water now, she and herself--the waves curled and lapped about her legs, around her waist hungrily. They spoke. . .they laughed and cried and murmured with a hundred thousand voices. Screamed and begged and cried for release, wailed down her spine and nailed her to the ground with desperate pleas but she could still hear herself, that sick vicious whisper that used to be her voice.

"Poor little light, do go back to them. . .who can you trust, if not yourself?"

Hikari did not speak, and she did not think, and she did not leave. A part of her let go right then, just let her closed eyes relax and a tear track down her blistered cheek as that frigid, numb sleep enfolded her here in her arms. Because right now. . . she didn't know.

~~~~


Hikari was crying when the ambulance took her away.

Again and again Miyako kept coming back to that; to the way her tears had retreated when she fell to the floor. To the burns that kept rising and blistering and breaking even as the medics had lifted her onto the stretcher. If Hikari hadn't looked so tired, so worn and beaten Miyako might have thought the sudden relaxation was good, the release of that lonely tear was good. As it was she hunched on her couch, holding Tailmon and Poromon close. Why would Hikari be afraid to cry?

Screw that. More important, why hadn't anyone heard Hikari screaming?

In some ways that was it-- that was what really bothered Miyako about this, the part that really got to her. That horrible endless screaming had drawn no attention, no questions, no worried/nosy/frightened/irate neighbors from their houses--rather, the arrival of the medics had brought them. It still rattled in her skull and, looking at Takeru with his hat pulled down over his face and his hands not shaking but twitching on his lap she knew it was doing the same to him. Looking at Iori sitting on the floor against the wall looking completely lost, a little scared and as always a little angry it had to be doing the same to him. But no one else. . .

"Maybe we are all going crazy. . ." She closed her eyes, murmuring the words out into Poromon's pink fluff of feathers as she snuggled him disconsolately; a frightened child. She was almost surprised to have no answer to that, no scrawl against her eyes in bright archaic script.

She saw instead Takeru picking up the phone and beginning to dial with his jerking hands. She started to ask, and then did not. She knew the number well enough--had it memorized as most people will with their most frequently used numbers. And knowing that she knew just why he would call, and just why he would be so edgy, and just why it was so imperative that it be done now, right now. It had occurred to her, too, but then she supposed she just didn't have the guts to do it.

It might be better for Hikari's family to hear it from her friends first.

~~~~

Now.

Ken was a ways ahead of Teyu when the word came to him; the pale boy crouched down on the ground in front of what looked like a TV stuck in the dirt amongst the trees. He'd been watching Ken but not really watching him, thinking just what a weird-ass place the Overworld was sometimes, all these trees and TVs and nutso crackshit going on; all those crazy critters hanging around all over the place with their binary and bitrates that made his head ache when he started to think about it. Yeah hell, he'd been thinking about how much he hated computers and it popped into his head outta nowhere--it might have been his greasy hitchhiker but with just one whisper he couldn't tell.

Up ahead Ken stood, brushed the dirt from his knees--he seemed desensitized to his shredded hands by now. "Well, it's a way home. . ." turning back to Teyu he shook his head. "Except that I don't have my D-3. . ."

Teyu shook his head, shaking the clinging word from his mind. It fell away but left a haze, a kind of fuzzy mental-dustcloud. "Your Deedoo-wha? Deedlit? Lodoss War? Huh?"

Reaching up to push the dark hair from his face, Ken blinked a few times at Teyu. "Uhm. . .no. My digivice." He sighed. "So I suppose you have an older model, then, and can't open a gate. . ."

"Uh. . ." Teyu blinked again, still shaking his head slowly. Digiwhat? Gate he understood sure, who didn't understand 'Gate,' if they got themselves stuck in the Overworld? Funny name for a Key then. . .or something. "Uh. . . yeah. Yeah, I guess I do, huh?" At Ken's odd look Teyu grinned again, shrugging. "Or. . .maybe I left it at home?"

For a moment Ken said nothing, just continued to give him that odd look, one eye faintly narrowed. ". . .Teyu?"

"Uhm. . .yesken?" That twitchy-jittery shiver was starting to crawl down his spine again; it turned his response to that jumpy one-word question. Now. Now. Now.

". . .Teyu, if your digivice is at home, then how did you get here?"

Now. Now. Now. Do it now. "I. . ." He laughed a little, eyes closing as his jumpy grin twitched wider, and he put a hand behind his neck. "I'm special?"

"Teyu. . ."

"Or. . .I don't know?" Teyu's hand ran forward a little, rubbing at his neck. He was starting to sweat a little now, and maybe it really was that stupid slimeball pulling another trick on him. "I mean. . .shit Ken, I ain't got a clue what you're talking about. The Digi-thingy. . .it's a Gatekey, right?" He continued, eyes open but rolled up to look at the branches. They seemed tighter at the moment then they were a while ago, but hey and hell, maybe he was just getting claustrophobic. "But I don't have a Gatekey, and standard Keys aren't supposed to work around here, and y'know all truth the Aunties never taught me how to work the Lynklanes and the Overworld anyway so I don't see what difference that would make and--"

Ken blinked again, now faintly confused and curious. "Gatekey? Lynklanes? Overworld?" He shook his head. "Teyu, now I'm lost. . .what are you talking about?"

"Eh? We're in the Overworld, Ken. . .I mean, I don't know what part of the Overworld 'cause all I ever heard of was the Lynklanes and this sure as hell ain't it but. . . but you knew that, right? Hell, you're a smart kid. . ."

Teyu's hand dropped from his neck slowly. Ken was staring at him with a sort of bizarre curiosity--the kind someone gets when a person they previously thought sane went schiz-ish. ". . .You. . .really don't know what I'm talking about, do you. . .?" He said it slowly, ever so slowly like the thought had just occurred to him. And. . .yeah, it had. Ken was a smart kid, that much was pretty clear; smart kid and he seemed to know where he was and what he was doing. Hell, smart kid and got a strong signature on his Threads, that was for sure--even Teyu could tell that and Reading wasn't really his strong point, not like that. So how. . .?

Now. Now stupid, do it now.

Ken shook his head a bit, slowly as well. Maybe it had just occurred to him, too, that something was just a little off here. "This is the Digital World, Teyu. I don't. . ." A sigh, and he brought a hand up to rub at his temple. There was blood soaked through the bandages in a few places that Teyu hadn't seen before, and his fingertips left thin crimson streaks on his skin. "I haven't ever heard of this 'Overworld,' or these 'Lynklanes' of yours. . ."

Digital? Teyu put a hand over his eyes--the red lines on Ken's face seemed livid in his vision; too bright and somehow dark at once, garish like paint on the pale skin. Now. Now. Now. No. Good gods and their mothers his head hurt--a dull low throbbing, sick sliding pounding all through his skull. Digital. Binary shiznit, raw fact and static--digital made sense, sure. . . Aw christ why did it hurt so damn much?

"Teyu?"

Now. Now do it now do it now do it now. Fatal sin, Teyu--you got too attached, went and let yourself get attached. You jumped in when you couldn't see the bottom and now you're in deep, now you're feeling the hurt, aren't you? Now, stupid sonofabitch do it now before you really can't, before you really, really fuckin' ain't got a chance. Before you really get hurt, huh, 'cause you aren't the pain-sucker you think you are. Teyu's hands went to his head, and he bit his lip--right then it could have been himself or the shadow; the voice was low and slick but the words were all his.

He opened his eyes to the blurry sight of Ken's hands coming up to steady him--the red streaks on the bandaging snapped across his pounding vision like that bloody, burning whip. Through the berating voice and a fuzz of radio-station static he could hear Ken asking him what was wrong, did he need to sit down, what was going on.

"This is your only chance boy." The red closed over his vision sharply, and Teyu choked--he could taste blood in his mouth again, could feel that essential something inside cracking again. "Your one and only chance. I won't waste supervision. . .I'll just replace you."

The crack was getting wider. The red was sharpening, shifting and hazing into that greasy, thick shadow of purpleblackred again. The Aunties were gonna kill him. The Aunties were gonna fucking kill him, and here he was about to thud out again. Hell. . .Ken was a nice kid, but. . .but sometimes nice kids got in the way, right? No big loss, lots of nice kids in the world, right?

Teyu giggled a little, cracked and delirious as he groped out blindly, caught Ken's bandaged hands so their fingers tangled together. He felt his jaws lock into that broad cheese-eater grin--his mouth burned, his face burned where the blood was seeping from his mouth. "Hey. . ." He wasn't sure if Ken was saying anything now. . .wasn't sure of the look on Ken's face. All he could hear was that greasy, hungry shadow pulling the crack wide, snapping the binds and feeding off the insides. "Hey, no hard feelings, huh Ken?" The angled face came into focus in his bleary sight, the hungry inhuman blue eyes. Just a Spark. . .just a Spark. . .

It could have been the pain. It could have been the exertion, the lethal risk of running Threads in the Overworld. It could have been the shadow draining him. It could have been the huge, the violent and coiling and hateful explosion of raw Void that exploded from kind, worried little Ken's aura when the Spark hit--it was something, it was everything.

The red left Teyu's vision, and his world went black.