A/N – Egads. All I can say is I suck and I need to grovel. This chapter is not uber long. It is not uber good. It is full of Daisuke-y goodness and a portrayal of Taichi that I love. But there is no excuse (except that Taichi wouldn't let me write him!). I am a horrible authoress. I'm sorry and I shall go off to cry.

But bear in mind that I will eventually finish this even if it takes me the rest of forever! And a million billion kudos to my beta for this chapter, StrawberryGashes225. Um, yea. Or Kat, cause it's easier. insert grin

Now read.

Begun: late-2003

Finished: September 23, 2005 winces

"Dancing"

Daisuke drummed his fingers on the countertop in time to the pretty redhead across from him. "So what'll it be?" she asked irritably, shooting longing looks behind him at a tan hunk of a football player, all black hair and bright eyes. Daisuke ran his free hand through his unruly locks, hit a kink, and winced in pain.

"Um… rocky road, three scoops… marshmallow, hot fudge, and butterscotch on top – Wait! Make that into a banana split… extra whipped cream." The girl almost gagged, which was typical of nineteen-year-olds trying to watch their weight, and Daisuke could already feel his stomach forming a kick line. Tough. He was depressed, and he wanted ice cream.

Lots of it.

He surveyed the crowd; although the afternoon was unusually warm for October and this was the only outdoor ice cream parlour around left open, there weren't that many people: mostly teenagers laughing with a group of friends, or little children whining and grasping the hands of their mothers, who were telling them that if they didn't behave, darling, no ice cream. The short soccer player felt his lips tug upwards in a grin; he knew they would get their ice cream no matter what: their moms knew, the children knew. It was part of the simple way of life.

"Rocky Road Bomb," the girl drawled, and she held out a perfectly manicured hand for his money; he grinned and flirtatiously dropped the coins into her outstretched palm, letting his fingers linger. Was she smiling now? As she turned to hit the buttons on the register, Daisuke caught sight of her bulging stomach: another pregnant girl out of wedlock. He noticed the rubber band on her ring finger and he was smart enough to know what it stood for.

He almost wished he were stupid again.

The air was warm, and he liked the idea of a stroll down the street, but knew it was impossible with the dripping ice cream he held. A quick scan of the teenagers and he saw a shock of blonde hair peeking out from under a fisher-mans' cap. He sighed; it was Takeru, probably nursing a sad and sorry vanilla dish. Maybe he had whipped cream, or something interesting, but he doubted it. Takeru was always so boring.

"Seat taken?" Takeru shook his head no, and with his eyes dared Daisuke to sit; Daisuke pulled out a wicker chair and dared him back: 'Just try me. Tell me to go.' But Daisuke and Takeru both knew he was too polite. Daisuke almost wished for him to say something, just so he could pick a fight. When he remained quiet, Daisuke jabbed at his dish. "What're you eating?"

"Rocky road, three scoops, marshmallow, extra-extra hot fudge and strawberries, whipped cream… non-traditional banana split." He speared it with his spoon, and Daisuke noticed the revolting mixture, much like his own, was oozing. He almost grinned, but thought better of it.

"And you think you know a guy."

Takeru smiled and took a bite, waited a moment thoughtfully: "Lion King, right? Best movie ever."

Daisuke scowled, shrugged, and swiped Takeru's cherry from the top of his bowl. "Dunno. I liked Peter Pan better." They fell silent. In the two seconds that Takeru sneaked a peek at his watch, Daisuke fished for something to talk about, and he said the first thing that popped into his mind. "Damn, your hair looks so… soft. And clean."

Quiet reined for a moment and Daisuke slapped his forehead; Takeru smiled. "Yeah. Here's a secret; when the shampoo bottle says to wash and repeat, don't repeat. Works wonders." He stared into his melting dish of goo, and looked back up at the other boy he happened to be sitting with. "Gel for you, right?" Daisuke nodded. "Peter would be appalled."

The brunette grimaced at his feeble attempt at a joke. "Yea, but Peter didn't have to try and impress a girl who didn't like him. Wendy was just, like, 'Take me, take me now, Peter!'" Takeru laughed at his high-voiced impression while Daisuke hammed it up, fluttering his eyelids and tucking his folded hands under his chin.

In between giggles Takeru choked, "But I want the mermaids, they don't have that ugly nightdress…"

"And, oh, Tiger Lily!" the other boy finished for him. While Takeru cracked up, Daisuke spooned some more of the boy's ice cream into his dish. He really wished he had gotten himself strawberry topping.

The blonde regained his composure almost as quickly as he had lost it; he frowned at his dish and the lack of topping, but didn't say anything to Daisuke. When he reached out a plastic utensil to Daisuke's dish the goggled boy almost automatically pulled it closer to himself and growled, "My ice cream. No touch."

Takeru smiled. "Some things never change."

And they fell silent again, eating alternating bites of their melting mountains of calories in time to the ding-ding of the cash register and the chuckles of the teen at the counter. Absentmindedly, Daisuke muttered grudgingly, "You know, that's why I like Peter, and his Neverland, and his lost-but-not-wanting-to-be-found boys."

"Huh? Why's that?" Takeru looked up, ready for a serious conversation: Daisuke just scowled and shuddered at the thought. Like he would ever have a real conversation with a dork in a fisherman's hat. As if.

He just shrugged and poked one of his bruised bananas. "Things. Y'know. How they don't ever change."

"Some do."

"I wish they didn't."

"Me too."

End of conversation. The boys hit a lull again, while Takeru compulsively twitched his leg under the table and Daisuke kicked his shin, just hard enough for him to stop. "Sorry. You were moving the table."

"Huh. Sorry."

"No you're not. See this stain?" He pointed to a spot on his shirt and pretended to berate Takeru angrily. "I got this stain from you. And you aren't sorry."

Takeru took a moment; then a slow smile spread across his face. "Yeah. You're right. I'm not sorry."

"Asshole."

"Jerk."

Fingers waggling and plugging his ears, Daisuke stuck out his tongue, singing softly, "I know you are, but what am I?"

The ever-calm Takeru loaded a spoon with as many toppings as he could – strawberry included – and aimed it at Daisuke. His opponent wasted no time in arming himself. For a minute they stared, not relenting, and Daisuke broke the silence with, "Okay. Truce. Where's Hikari and all them?"

"Dunno. The 'baby store', wherever that is. Whatever that is."

Daisuke put in absently, "A gigantic warehouse where girly-girls coo and squeal over pink frilly things?"

"And they answer everything with, 'It's so cute!"

They snorted in tandem and stole from each other's dishes. Taking a moment to reply, Daisuke shoved his words around a mouthful of Rocky Road: "I am so sick of babies. And women. I'm swearing off women."

"You've never even had a woman," his companion pointed out. Daisuke flicked whipped cream at him.

"Don't need one to know that they're all trouble." Takeru lowered his eyes, as if hiding what he had to say. "What? You don't agree?"

He shrugged again. "Nah. Hikari's…"

"Hikari's the biggest trouble of them all, you know. I hate it but…."

"Yeah, she really is," he admitted, looking down into his melting mass and shaking his head. "But I've known her for so long… and I think I love her. She's worth the trouble. I think, anyway. There's something about her laugh, and her smile…."

"Don't tell me, man," Daisuke mumbled grimly, "I fell under the spell too."

Takeru spread his fingertips on the table, pushed aside his dish, and rested his forehead on his outstretched hands, in some bizarre fashion-of-the-blondes: Daisuke guessed it was some weird way of saying 'serenity now' and licked his spoon thoughtfully to see what his friend would say.

For a minute, it was nothing. And when Daisuke thought something was seriously wrong, Takeru picked up his head: and Daisuke saw balls of water clinging to his lashes, eyes tumultuous blue pools. "Yeah, but you didn't truly believe she loved you, somehow. You didn't believe you would get married, and have a million kids and the perfect life with her. You didn't," he said again, insisting.

"No, I didn't. She's beautiful as all hell, and I love her, but I knew things weren't going to happen that way. You should have known, too," he said, jabbing his spoon at Takeru's sky-blue sweater. "We're always going to love her, you know that as well as I do, and nothing's going to happen, because she's just like that. Period. Which is why I swore off women – because I know I can't love anyone else quite like her, and no one deserves that."

"You don't know anything." Funny: Daisuke never pegged Takeru as the defensive type.

"Okay, so maybe I don't. Who has a clue? But I sure as hell know I'm not going to dwell on all this. I'm going to be there for her, and that's it. That's how you should be, too."

Daisuke never made much sense before, and sitting across from Takeru, gulping ice cream but making proclamations as serenely and reliably as any modern-day Rasputin or Nostradamus, Daisuke was pleased to see the other boy at a loss for words. For Takeru it was both amazing and scary all at the same time. Daisuke made more sense than Takeru: yet it seemed too weird to admit it, to tell Daisuke he was right, and that the spiky-headed boy seemed to know Hikari better than he did. Instead, he blurted the first thing that came to his churning, confused mind.

"Well, if you ever decide to not swear off women… I've got the perfect girl for you."

Scraping the bottom of his plastic dish vigorously and shoving leftover banana in his mouth, Daisuke muttered, "Yeah? Who?"

Takeru tossed his bowl into the nearby trash bin – all those nights of basketball practise paid off – and leaned across the table. "French friend of my Grandfather. Catherine."

"Why's she so perfect for me?" Daisuke looked up from his plastic dish, empty of all traces of food.

Takeru smiled. "Her favourite movie's Peter Pan, too."

-

Sora looked critically into the mirror, holding up a button-down shirt on either side of her face. The yellow was so bright, so vigorous that she almost visibly shuddered; the red was fashionable, clingy and thin, and betrayed her hair, made her blend together like one thing, her eyes lost under bangs, tucked away inside her collar. Uncharacteristically, she stuck out a tongue at her reflection and dropped both articles, stepping on them for good measure.

That was regrettable. The red shirt was fine, no damage that she could see. The yellow had a heel-print on the back, showing up most in the light when she moved it, swished it back and forth to better assess her moment of weakness. That was the trouble with the bright ones: they made every little thing seem important, even when you slipped up once in a lifetime and couldn't remember what you had done for the figurative bruise: when you forgot. Even when you just wanted to forget.

She made to throw the yellow shirt aside, and picked up the red. There was a tiny hole in the sleeve from where her heel pierced the fabric, and it wasn't bothering her much: but it was just going to get bigger, create a bigger pull, if she wore it and pretended it wasn't there.

"Damn it." Nothing was ever easy, not even choosing simple clothes for a day of cash-register work. Sighing and sinking onto her bed, she tossed the red shirt beside the yellow.

She wished she had done a wash the night before. That would ultimately fix everything; just rinse her new clothes so she could wear something without minor imperfections. Now she had to choose between a hole that would just gradually get bigger and bigger until she couldn't fix it, or something with outward marks of rejection.

Suddenly, it was all too much, the trivial decisions that she had to make from day to day, the stupid situations that should have been easy; but somehow she always managed to overanalyze things, read in something that shouldn't have been there.

She had to get away.

"Sora?" She could hear her mother calling from the other room, could hear the jingle of her house keys. "I'm leaving. Come by as soon as you get dressed, I need your help today. Okay, Sora?"

Get up: get dressed: be consumed by doors and windows and perspectives like her mother, let the outer world eat you up and spit out your bones and assimilate and annex you into a culture only partially understood, never explained. She couldn't move, and she cast a helpless glance at her clothes.

How many times was she going to make the same decision, do the same thing that she hated? How many times was she going to look disdainfully at her clothes and end up with the latest fashions to go out and sell flowers that stood for hope, beauty, and comfort, to a superficial world that scorned everything she tried so many years ago to believe in?

A pair of old, torn jeans with big cuffs and holey sneakers replaced her planned suede skirt and pumps: she could wear the yellow shirt, if she could find something to go under it. Who cared that there were marks on the outside? She had forgotten all about them, and they didn't seem to matter, anyway.

Pile of abandoned laundry: dig in, rummage through. There was that ruffled blouse, a tank top, some old sequined top of Mimi's… Taichi's t-shirt. She couldn't wear that – it was Taichi's, and it didn't even belong in her room, much less a replacement for her old clothes.

She was over rationalizing again. She'd wear it.

It was unorthodox, and a tribute to her earlier years: this was an outfit that screamed craziness. But it was comfortable, and it was something she was finally doing that didn't conform to the rest of the world.

Without brushing her hair, locking the door, thinking of anything, she let herself fly, a soccer ball tucked under the crook of her right arm her only companion.

There was no sound at five-thirty in the morning; or, at least, no sound that Sora could discern from everything she was so used to hearing: dogs were barking, cars occasionally whizzed by, and her shoes made a steady rhythm, a pat-pat-pat that she had grown accustomed to. She was always running somewhere, that theme music an insincere trademark that followed her like a ghost whenever she made her way from point A to point B, from one crumbing thing in her life to the next. Nothing was as calm as that single sound, and she hated it.

Faster: if she could break the rhythm, perhaps she could break the monotony of nothing ever being monotonous. She wanted stability, and the only thing that was never-wavering was that damn noise her shoes made. It was so stupid.

Faster: and suddenly, it wasn't pat-pat-pat or even pat-patpat-pat, but pat-tap-pat-tap as she was running on air, that unbuttoned yellow shirt streaming like some banner in a parade only she was witness to. She wasn't running anymore: she was gliding, she was coasting. And she could hear it: for the first times in years, she could hear her heart.

Then the wind came to an abrupt halt and rushed in her ears, in her lungs, in her brain. She was lightheaded: lightheaded and stopped in the middle of a soccer field, a field filled with memories of her past that refused to come out, so much like the stains on her shirt. So much like the things that stained her life now… Taichi, and Yamato, and Hikari...

Why was Taichi always first?

Her heart slowed, but she heard it, faintly. She wanted to hold onto her heart, to her identity and herself; that was one thing she didn't want to let go. In a flurry of motion, she dropped her soccer ball and kicked it towards the goal, making pretend passes and chasing something she was missing: and her heart started beating again, loud enough for her to hear it and smile.

It went on and on like that, a single form of the stability she craved. And she laughed to herself, and for once in her life she was perfectly in-control of every move she made, every feint towards the other end of the field and reaches beyond what she imagined.

And somewhere, sometime, in the lightening sky of an October morning filled with bleak hopes, Sora Takenouchi ran around and around a net and an invisible goalie, circled everything in her life that didn't have anyone blocking it: cried when she could imagine the face of an old friend with flyaway brown hair smiling in the mesh past something she couldn't see but thought might have been a mop of blonde infidelities.

As the hours passed, a broken girl in her best friend's shirt and ratty sneakers came to realize that playing with ghosts and memories wasn't as bad as she anticipated it to be.

-

When Taichi was four he had wanted to be a ballet dancer.

His mother was overjoyed. She wanted to get "back in shape" and ballet was on Sunday mornings, at the same time as a mom-and-baby class she could take with Hikari. Armed with the idea of family bonding, Taichi's mother and her two children braved public transit to sign up at Miss Kiki's for the hour long lessons. The night before classes started Taichi excitedly practiced twirling and fell asleep by the front door in his new blue tights.

Sunday dawned, and Taichi tried desperately to pull his mother out the door at five in the morning. She sat him down, calmly explained that Hikari had caught a cold and they wouldn't be going, and made him cinnamon toast with the crusts cut off. Taichi cried into his napkin.

After three hours of listening to non-stop sobbing, Taichi's father appeared from his room in a bathrobe and sneakers, hair disheveled. With a sour glance at his wife, Mr. Yagami took Taichi's arm in one hand, bag in the other, and marched him straight to Miss Kiki's, only fifteen minutes late for the 8 o'clock class.

There were five other children at the barre: four tiny, pig-tailed blondes and a scowling redhead. The blondes looked on in amazement at the boy joining the class and Miss Kiki had him take a place by the redhead. He smiled; she stuck out her tongue.

Taichi ignored her and turned his attention on the teacher.

First position; he turned his feet the wrong way. Second position; he wobbled and caught himself on the barre. Third position; he accidentally spun in a circle and fell at the feet of the redhead. While the other girls tittered she grinned and held out a hand. "I'm Sora. I hate girls, don't you?"

He dazedly nodded and when she asked to use the restroom he followed her lead. For the rest of the morning they laughed and played with a soccer ball she had stowed in her dance bag. Taichi had his mother call Sora's father the minute he got home.

Instead of dancing, the brunette spent the next weekend with Sora burying their tights, and the Sunday after that they were chasing each other on the soccer field, ripping up clumps of dirt and grass with their cleats.

Lying under trees, staring out at the field of spongy green he and Sora used to skim effortlessly, Taichi smiled sadly. He could almost see her smiling; he could almost hear her laughing. When he closed his eyes he could almost feel their first kiss, accidental and sweet, when fourteen-year-old Sora helped him off the ground. Taichi had been tripped, and Sora had been glaring at the other team members as she held out her hand, held out her hand like she always had. And she had turned back to ask if he was all right, and Taichi misjudged the distance, and they had kissed.

Their first kiss. Their only kiss.

It hurt him too much and when he opened his eyes she was there.

He heard the birds overhead and he heard the cars and their horns. Then he tuned everything out and all he heard was the sound of her feet on the grass, the sound of her soccer ball meeting its mark every time. The swish of the net. Her heartbeat.

Taichi's eyes traced her movements, outlined everything she did and strayed behind, admiring her footprints in the dew-stained grass. He noticed how his shirt hung on her, loose and long; he noticed the hairs that stuck in sweaty tendrils to her cheekbones. He noticed all this and still it was her heartbeat that captivated him, the memorization of a rhythm he could barely hear.

And he stood. And he felt the ground under his feet and the sun on his shoulders, darting through his hair – he felt the tremor of courage and he felt the rustle of leaves. He was still listening to her heart and he didn't hear the leaves but maybe she did. Or maybe she just knew, like she always used to know.

It was like she was rooted to the spot. He knew she saw him, but it was like she was looking through him. He felt solidly real, but maybe this really was all a dream and he was dreaming she was blind. Or maybe this was real and she really couldn't see anymore. He wasn't sure, and he didn't dare move.

But then she did, and he knew she knew. Of something. Of anything.

The first fateful step seemed to stretch across the entire field. She commanded the sky and the grass and the wind even with her broken dreams. He felt she could command anything and everything with her simple presence, and movement was too much. This was Sora. His shirt and her sneakers and her wild, flyaway hair. And movement.

And it was too much.

He felt his knees hit the ground and sogginess seep through his jeans. Then she was kneeling in front of him like some kind of reverence, and her hand was dancing patterns and pirouettes across his face. Fingers fluttered – across cheekbones and jaw, his lips and the laugh lines that made him look so much older. He closed his eyes. They were too tired to stay open.

Taichi felt her slap, and he felt her hitting him, on his arms, on his chest. He wanted to tell her to close her fist. She had always made better contact that way. Then he heard her ragged sobs and she let him go.

"If you're real then why won't you say anything? Why aren't you holding me? Doesn't it hurt?" He didn't know what she meant so he said the first thing that came to mind.

"Yea. It hurts. But I won't hold you if it doesn't matter."

When he opened his eyes she was staring at him blankly, and she was truly seeing him. There was nothing to do, but it was his turn to hold out a hand, and so he did, shaky and shy and innocent like that kiss that shouldn't have been but was. She took it, and brought it to her lips, and moved it to her waist. He felt the small of her back and this time she didn't pull away.

"Everything matters, Taichi. Everything."

She moved his head against her chest and held him tight, and suddenly he felt like he was four again.