Disclaimer: I do not and never have owned Digimon.

House of Bats

They entered a dank, nearly pitch black cavern. They could barely see movement above their heads. Then they heard quiet, high-pitched squeaks, which rapidly increased in frequency and volume.

"Oh, great," Gatomon's voice conveyed restrained panic. "Batmon."

The digimon and human dashed along the wall. A deafening wail resonated through the cavern behind them. The wall beside them crumbled to pebbles. A whoosh of leathery wings alerted them that they were being chased.

"Impaling Fang!"

Gatomon twirled around and deflected the attack with her tail ring, then returned her attention to running, only to discover with horror that Ken was no longer ahead of her.

"Ken? Ken!" She kept running, but a giant batmon landed in front of her. She saw it clearly for the first time: larger than a human, covered in dark brown fur, terrible fangs prominently displayed, blood-red eyes…

Gatomon's momentum would have carried her right into the creature's clutches, but just as the batmon dove for her, arms flashed out of the cave wall and grabbed her.

"Gotcha," Ken panted as he pulled Gatomon into a lightless, claustrophobically narrow crevice.

"Thanks. Now I owe you two," she breathed.

"Um, Gatomon?"

"Yes?"

"Could you please take your claws out of my arm?"

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." Gatomon disentangled herself and dropped to the ground. She walked to the mouth of the tunnel, but leaped back when the batmon beat its wings and screeched in fury, trying to squeeze through the narrow opening. Her fur stood on end. Ken had never seen her so nervous.

"Pyromon said the danger will be over when it gets light," he said comfortingly.

"Yeah," Gatomon did a good job of sounding unconcerned. "Thanks again for saving my hide. Really."

"Don't mention it," Ken said dismissively.

"It's just…I feel so helpless without Kari!" Gatomon admitted.

"I know," Ken said. "Without Wormmon…"

Wormmon. Would he ever see him again? Would he and Gatomon ever get back? Sure, they would probably escape the batmon, but what would they face next? Would he die without ever really telling his friends how he felt, how much they meant to him? His gratitude—a constant outpouring of gratitude that he couldn't possibly express in words….would they ever understand?

"Ken? Are you crying?"

Ken flicked tears off his face. "Sorry. I just…"

If he had been able to see Gatomon, he would have recognized a soft expression that he often saw on his mother's face. She conveyed it in her voice. "Don't worry. We'll get back. I miss them too."

She climbed into Ken's lap, and he stroked her fur, much like Kari would have. "Thank you, Gatomon."

"For what?"

"For not telling the others about this little outburst of emotion when we get back, for one thing."

Gatomon chuckled. She took a deep breath and thought for a moment, then decided the time was right to broach a topic she'd wanted to discuss with Ken for a long time, but had never known exactly how to put it in words. "Ken, you're always so sweet and selfless. You're so much like Kari in some ways. But…um…you and I have a lot in common, too."

"Mmhmm," Ken agreed. "From the beginning, I felt like you understood me better than the others. I had no idea why, of course."

"I guess we're kind of comrades, huh?"

Ken almost laughed. "Fellow former evil tools of darkness? We should start a club."

Gatomon snorted. "Yeah, 'Evil Henchmen Anonymous'." Ken rewarded her joke with a small laugh. Gatomon smiled, then frowned. "The others don't really like to talk about it, do they?"

"Not always," Ken said. "I think they're trying to protect our feelings by not reminding us. I'm grateful for it, most of the time."

"Sometimes it almost seems like they're trying to forget about it."

"Sometimes it almost seems like they're succeeding," Ken added.

"Exactly. They act like they'd rather repress it than accept it. But that's part of who we are, and we can't forget about it. No matter how much we might want to sometimes."

"All the time," Ken corrected. "I wish it never happened, the whole trying-to-take-over-the-world portion of my life. But it did happen, no matter how much I try to wish it away. I've learned it's better to accept it and learn from it than try to ignore it, even with all the guilt and regret."

"But we have to remember," Gatomon quickly interjected, "that we were being used by Myotismon, so we can't blame ourselves completely."

"I can," Ken sighed. "That's one thing that's very different about us: you couldn't remember not working for Myotismon, could you. And when you found Kari you turned against him. I had Wormmon before I became evil; I remembered my life before. And even when the digidestined tried to show me the error of my ways, I just went on being evil. I might have been an unwitting pawn, but I wasn't a puppet. Myotismon only recognized the dark spirit that was already in me and exploited it."

"Well, what about your brother?" she asked. "Everyone is vulnerable when someone they love dies, and you were so young!"

"Yes, I was vulnerable," Ken said, "but I wasn't a victim."

"Neither was I," Gatomon insisted. "Even if I was under Myotismon's influence, I did things with my own conscious choice that I had to forgive myself for." She stopped and thought for a moment. "Ken, have you really forgiven yourself? Honestly?"

"Sometimes," he said. "It's a gradual process. It's still hard sometimes. Maybe it will never completely go away. I'm all right with that."

"But the important thing is that we learn from our mistakes and use them to make us stronger, to help us see things more clearly," Gatomon said.

"Yes, but still…I wish I could travel back in time to before I became the emperor and tell myself how much pain it will cause, both for me and for so many others."

Gatomon frowned. "I'm sorry I brought it up."

"Don't be," Ken told her. "It felt good to talk about it. Thank you."

They fell into a contemplative silence, which Gatomon broke. "Ken, why don't you ever talk about your brother?"

"Because it's so painful," he said simply.

"You really loved him a lot."

"Yes. I miss him so much. I think I became the emperor partly so I wouldn't have to feel sad. But that doesn't mean I wasn't."

Flashback

The Digimon Emperor sat at the controls of his base. Wormmon scurried to his master's side. The emperor was complaining about something or other, and Wormmon worked up the guts to interrupt him. "Ken, has it occurred to you that you just feel angry so you don't feel sad?"

"What makes you think that?" the emperor said threateningly.

"Well…has it occurred to you that you're doing all this because of him?"

Ken stood and glared down at his digimon. "Never, ever mention him!" he hissed. His fingers flexed at his whip, but he changed his mind and instead turned and stormed out of the control room. He walked the cold, bare halls of his fortress until he came to a door that opened to a kind of balcony. The sky was a dull, pale twilight blue, and completely empty. The emperor stared at it, willing his heart to be so empty and cold. He had a bottle of bubble solution. He blew bubbles, as big as he could, watched them float over the edge and popped. Suddenly angry, he threw down the bottle and watched contemptuously as the fluid oozed over the floor.

Present

"…I was nothing if not sad."

Gatomon wasn't sure she understood the full extent of Ken's words. "But you can't keep blaming yourself. For being the emperor, maybe, but it would just be wrong to blame yourself for what happened to your brother."

"What makes you think I do?" Ken asked. He couldn't remember saying anything that implied that. "I don't blame myself for that…anymore. But I'll always have regrets. And that's no excuse for taking over the digital world."

"Everyone makes mistakes."

Ken huffed, a little angrily. "True. Everyone makes mistakes, as they keep reminding me, but not everyone tries to enslave an entire world. That's kind of beyond the scope of a simple error in judgment, isn't it?"

Gatomon didn't say anything for a second, then she smiled. "I was right; we do have a lot in common."

"Yes, we do," Ken agreed, and they fell into a comfortable silence.

Eventually, Ken found himself precariously near sleep. The realization roused him to alertness. Something bothered him. At first, he couldn't put his finger on it. Something was just different.

"Gatomon," he whispered.

She opened her drowsy eyes. "What?"

"I don't hear the batmon anymore. Do you think it's light?"

"I can't tell. I'll go check." She jumped off his lap and made her way toward the opening.

Ken lost sight of her in the dark. He heard the patter of her paws hitting the rock, then a rustling, then silence. "What do you see, Gatomon?" he asked. "Is it dawn?"

Silence.

"Gatomon, where did you go?" He became worried when she still didn't answer. He listened carefully. Worry turned to terror when he heard leathery wing beats and a triumphant high-pitched screech. He ran to the entrance in time to see a giant deathbatmon carrying a white kitten digimon out a hole in the top of the cave, through which dark gray-blue sky was visible. The departing deathbatmon was followed by an echoing scream: "GAAAAATOOOOOMONNNNNN!"