Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
AN: Thanks for all the wonderful reviews. There has been a rather major time jump, because I was totally blocked with the first season, so I moved right on to the second season, which I have all planned out. Seven years have passed since the last chapter.
Please keep the reviews up, they were so helpful and inspiring!
Doctors have come, from distant cities,
Just to see me.
Stand over my bed, disbelieving what they're seeing…
People see me; I'm a challenge to your balance
I'm over heads how I confound you
And astound you to know
I must be one of the wonders of God's own creation
And as far as you see you can offer me no explanation.
Oh, I believe Fate smiled and Destiny,
Laughed as she came to my cradle,
Know this child will be able…
Laughed as she came to my mother,
Know this child will not suffer…
Laughed as my body she lifted,
Know this child will be gifted…
With love, with patience, and with faith…
She'll make her way…
"Wonder"
Natalie Merchant
Seven years later…
Kari knew how it should have been.
In her dreams, the Child of Light had seen the other road, seen the dawn of hope. She knew the war should have ended, that, now, at fifteen, she should have seen peace achieved. But it was all wrong… all wrong now.
He wasn't here… sometimes she believed he must be dead, and that they'd be fighting forever. It seemed like they'd been fighting forever as it was. It was times like that when the Dark Ocean loomed before her, with only that layer of golden light between her and it. She always came back from the edge; always lead back though the darkness of her dream by his voice.
But he could never tell her where he was. Oh, she'd made the connection between the boy in her dreams and Ishida-san's missing younger brother. She'd known during the last battle with Myotismon, when the Crest of Hope had activated itself and allowed Garurumon to warp digivolve along with her brother's Greymon. The amber glow had engulfed Ishida-san, and as soon as she'd seen it, she'd known.
It was not the first or the last time the Crest of Hope had activated itself without the presence of its bearer. The Crest would continue to aid them, although without its bearer the Destined had taken years to defeat Peidmon and then Apocalymon. Gennai himself had remarked to her after the last the Dark Masters had fallen, which had happened, by her count, three years later than it should have, that the Crest of Hope seemed to be actively shielding them from finding its bearer. It was as though the Crest was pushing them through to a new destiny, once the original plan had been thrown off course. He said it would reveal the location of its bearer in due time. Kari recalled the meaningful look he had given her, telling her that she must continue to always follow her heart, even if it was against the opinions of her brother.
It hadn't helped that part way through the war with the Dark Masters, Tai and Ishida-san had had a fight… and had not spoken since except to occasionally collaborate on especially difficult battles. They were civil, then, but the line had been drawn, and gradually, through the years, the Chosen had fallen down on either side of it. Mimi and Joe had chosen to side with Ishida-san, preferring to fight only in extremity or defense, while Sora and Izzy had sided with Tai, believing the Darkness should be purged aggressively from the digital world. Both sides assumed that Kari, of course, agreed with her brother.
Not that any of them had ever bothered to ask.
Kari had a better understanding of the Darkness than any of them, though.
She knew that, while repulsive, the Darkness was as much a part of the digital world as the Light. One could not exist without the other.
And so she alone was not surprised by the appearance of the Dark Spires across the digital world. The older Chosen were dispirited by their digimons' inability to help in these battles, gradually drifting away from each other, and so the new destined had formed a third circle, their armor evolutions allowing them to continue fighting.
Sometimes she visited the golden egg that still waited in the cave where she'd found her own. Sometimes she hated him for not fighting harder to get back to them. But then, she dreamed and he was there, and… and Gennai was right.
Hope and Light do go hand in hand.
But as the war stretched on, hope grew thin, and the small issues that had always plagued the Destined began to magnify. Tai and Sora had been dating for years… driving Ishida-san further away as he nursed his broken heart with music and isolation. Kari had noticed that he had stopped wearing the Crest of Hope, and stopped actively looking for his brother, when Sora had chosen Tai. It was though the light had left him… sometimes, when Kari looked at him, she saw him draped in shadow. She'd blink, and the effect would be gone, but it was there. Friendship was failing, slowly; despair eating away at it, and its bearer, like a cancer.
The failing of the Crest of Friendship was subtly rippling out into the rest of the Destined, straining even the most solid friendships. Joe and Izzy got along well, although both had begun to bury themselves in their studies again, and had not truly recovered from the last argument they'd had about Matt—it was hard to call him that, since he'd pulled away—about Matt and Tai. Sora and Mimi's differences had always burdened their friendship, and the divide between Tai and Matt had eventually cooled their friendship to indifference.
The new Destined, for the most part, seemed immune to these effects, although Motomiya Daisuke, or Davis, as he was—ahem—affectionately nicknamed, seemed to be becoming more and more hotheaded and rash as the battles wore on. That is to say, he was growing more and more like her brother every year, which made her feel ever more nauseous as he continued to hit on her daily. Kari had a shrewd idea that Friendship should have been balancing his personality, but in Matt's despair, it was not, curtailing Davis' emotional maturity. Inoue Miyako—or 'Yolei,' her middle name that she preferred—and Hida Iori seemed as yet unaffected by the disintegration of the unity of the Crests.
As for herself, Kari was beginning to see that even if TK were to appear at her doorstep that very moment, the damage already done to the hearts of the Chosen would take a small miracle to undo.
She pulled her knee-high uniform socks off angrily, tossing them into the corner of her room. Her room was, like the room of any adolescent girl, an eclectic mix of things both childish and adult. Her walls were covered in photographs both framed and merely taped up; her shelves filled with novels and stuffed animals. Only, for most young girls, "The Art of War" was not one of their novels, and their photographs weren't reconnaissance photos of enemy territory.
From her bed, the wide blue eyes of Gatomon watched her warily, the feline digimon waiting until her Chosen was done venting before asking what had happened. Not that she didn't already know.
"God, Gato! We knock down a control spire, he builds one somewhere else! We've been fighting back and forth for four years! He's never going to give up!"
Gatomon sat up, stretching carefully, allowing herself to fully indulge in the euphoria of a really, really good stretch in the way that only a cat can. "And we are?" The feline asked, arching an eyebrow at her partner.
She and Kari were having this conversation more and more often of late, as the fracturing of the Destined and the Dark war took its toll on the Child of Light. Kari continued to pace around the room, shedding the more cumbersome articles of her uniform into blandly colored heaps on the floor, until she was climbed into bed, adorned in an oversized t-shirt and shorts. She snuggled into the sheets, stretching out beside Gatomon and scratching the special, not-so-secret place behind her ears.
"Oh… of course not. It's just so… tiring sometimes."
Gatomon did not reply, she knew she wasn't expected to. Instead, she allowed her defenses to fall in the way that only Kari ever saw, closing her eyes and purring softly as her partner unwound from her day. She knew Kari often felt like she was the only person who could see anything, trapped screaming in a crowd that only saw her as the sweet and innocent angel of light, who could no more do wrong than she could make a decision for herself. Kari's unique knowledge of what might have happened only added to her frustration, and her feelings of helplessness.
Gatomon kept purring until she heard Kari's breathing even into the easy rhythms of sleep.
Like a life in detail Such a close up view… From another angle…Like another you.
You thought that happiness was automatic…You were living in the meantime…
It's that feeling again
Do you remember when…
You had it all sewn up…
And then the color ran…
Like a life in detail…
Such a close up view
Like a mirror image
Of another you.
"Life in Detail"
Robert Palmer
Takeru looked up at the Angels shimmering strangely against the flat gray sky, their light absorbing rather than reflecting into the black ocean beneath. She stood beside him, and he was filled with a sense of relief, as if she had been gone or missing and he'd found her. Her hair, bound by its familiar pink barrettes, seemed to shine in the Holy light cast by their companions, standing out against the gloom. Just in the same way that she always seemed to stand against the shadows. She turned to him, a strange look in her warm eyes…
She said something… a question? He replied strangely, but honestly.
"I care about you, Kari."
Kari… it was her name, and as the realization came to him, the dream shifted, darkness and light flashing before his eyes, he could hear her calling out to him.
"TK! Where are you?"
TK… it sounded familiar, but as he reached out for the memory, the golden wall that he had grown to hate flashed before him, and she was on the other side of it, along with everything he thought he knew but could never recall. He beat against the barrier, fury and frustration fueling him, until scarlet blood began to flow down his arms, almost fluorescing in the light of the wall.
"WHY? WHY? Why won't you let me through? Why won't you let me remember?"
Sinking to his knees before the wall of light, he screamed himself hoarse as he had so many times before. Tears of loss and wrath sliding unheeded down his face, he whispered brokenly before the golden presence.
"Why won't you let me help her?"
The voice answered as it always had, as calm and implacable as the earth itself. "You have been given time to heal… your time will come. Your future will come."
Economical, starched sheets, dark with sweat, flew everywhere as Takeru jerked out of his dream, his long adolescent limbs getting tangled in the pristine linen as his violent struggle with the being in the dream sent him tumbling off the bed. He hit the polished, yellow wood of the floor with a thud. He sat on the cool surface for a long moment, collecting himself as cold tears and icy sweat dripped down his face. He wiped his mouth and tasted copper, making him jerk in surprise. Looking down at his shaking fists, he took in his bloody, bruised knuckles with nauseating shock.
Unable to internalize his terror any longer, Takeru jerked towards the small bathroom adjoining his room, tripping out of his soaked sheets, and retched into the toilet until his stomach was empty. Kneeling in the harsh florescent lighting of the small room, he pressed himself against the cool, deep blue tiles and tried to breathe evenly.
Squinting up into the white light, he gasped, "You call this healing?!? God almighty…"
A low whine sounded behind him, and a cold, wet nose sniffed along the back of his neck and his ear, tickling him. A pair of pale blue eyes met his, and he rubbed the Malamute soothingly, pressing his face into the deep, silver-black fur.
"S'okay, Kiu… I'm alright now…"
The seven-year-old female, which he'd so long ago rescued from abandonment, began to wash his face thoroughly, making concerned noises in her throat. Takeru laughed weakly, pulling himself to his feet, flushing the toilet and moving over to the sink. He ignored his pale reflection in the mirror, washing his face and sloshing the cold water over his hair. He shook himself off, sending flashing droplets flying trough the air. He rinsed the blood off his hands, wincing slightly, wiping his hands dry on his flannel pajama pants.
Meanwhile, Kiu had moved out into his bedroom, whining and scratching at the large, heavy oak door to the convent hallway. Sighing deeply, he grabbed a t-shirt to cover his bare chest in case he ran into any of the sisters, and moved to let Kiu out. Since he had reached his adolescent growth spurts, the nuns had been much stricter about his movements through the restricted areas of the sisterhood. This was especially true considering that his last growth spurt had left him taller than every sister except Sister Augustine, and he was likely to scare a sister to an early grave if he came upon one in the night.
Kiu's whines became more urgent, and Takeru sighed exasperatedly. "I'm coming, I'm coming… you pee more than the Sisters pray, I swear…"
Stuffing his feet into his battered brown boots, he hauled the exuberant Kiu back with one hand so he had room to open the door with the other. The door, like all convent doors, swung silent on its well-oiled hinges, and the eager dog bounded into the hallway. To Takeru's dismay, however, she bounded to the left, away from the exit. With a shiver of apprehension, Takeru followed her, hissing quietly at her to turn around, towards the chapel. The one place he would never visit at night, alone. Not even now, in the summer, when the Alaskan sun shone down almost all night, and there was no darkness. Kiu willfully trotted down the stairs, either ignorant of her owner's discomfort, or more likely, ignoring it.
Takeru followed her slowly, trying to overcome his fear with reason. He had no reason to be afraid of the chapel. It was a place of meditation and devotion, and nothing more. There was no reason why he couldn't convert to Christianity like the Sisters wanted.
Except for one reason, that is.
And Kiu was sitting directly beneath it… the statue of the Archangel Michael, sword drawn, wings unfurled, Holy ire written into every careful incision the sculptor had made. The statue that brought images of horror to Takeru every time he saw it, images of blood, feathers, and golden light. The Angel pushing him into the golden light… the same golden light which was keeping him from everything he'd lost, everything he'd never have again.
Family...
Love…
Peace…
Hope.
Kiu was sitting beneath it, her tail wagging and her posture clearly very proud. It was her 'found' pose. Takeru smiled a little as he saw it… Kiu had always been very good at finding things, although her breed wasn't especially known for tracking. Like all dogs, her sense of smell was acute, as was her intelligence. If you told her what to find, and she was familiar with the object, she'd find it… Takeru made it a game when he'd taught it to her, a fun way for a lonely boy to pass the winter hours in a building full of busy adults. He'd hide one of her toys somewhere around the building, and then tell her, "Find bone!" or "Find socks!" and off she'd go, always ready to be pet and praised when she eventually succeeded. When she found the object, she'd sit at attention in front of it until he came, to signify that she'd found it, but like any self-respecting trained dog, was waiting for her master's command before 'killing' it.
She had certainly 'found' something, and she whined a little to get his attention.
Carefully ignoring the looming statue, Takeru stooped down besides the dog, patting her absently. "What is it, girl? Did Timmy fall down into the old well? Again?"
His chuckle faded as he saw what she'd found, glistening slightly in the iridescent light cast by the arctic sun through the stained glass windows. He stood slowly, standing over it and trying to gather his scattered thoughts into some semblance of coherence.
Because… he'd seen it before, but it had been shaped differently, then. More square, and it had been much smaller… yes, much smaller, but the color of the trim was still right… pale green. It was streamlined, now, with a larger screen. It looked almost like one of those palm pilots the tourists carried.
Takeru reached towards it, his hand hesitating in the air, as if time and fate and all the world and paused to focus all its attention on the decision of a fifteen year old boy who would decide that fate of them all. The boy's hand hesitated in the air, because he knew he had seen the object before…
And the memories were those of pain, blood, darkness, and golden light.
AN: Please keep up the reviews!! Thanks for reading!