A/N: Reviews are nice. Especially if they have suggestions for how I can write better.
Hide and seek.
Yamato is seven years old and sitting in the cupboard over the bed in the spare room. As hiding places go, it's an old favourite, somewhere his Mom would never think to look for him for the first two hours or so and somewhere his Dad has never thought to look for him. It's a tighter squeeze than he remembers; he hadn't taken in to account the fact that he'd grown since he last hid in here. He has played hide and seek with his Mom a lot over the years.
At first it was just a game, one that his Mom would enjoy playing as much as him. Then she had Takeru and Yamato would, whenever Takeru was taking up a lot of Mom's attention (which was often – Yamato is very sure he has never cried as much as Takeru does), hide only to emerge four hours later bored stiff and irate to find that he had only just been missed.
In some of his longer intervals in hiding he took up the harmonica he got for Christmas and play a stray note or two, just to give Mom a clue as to where he was hiding. When this failed he tried playing the few odd tunes that Grandpa showed him.
After several tries Yamato gave up and, with some hesitance and after cajoling from both parents he began to play with Takeru more. Takeru stopped crying quite so much and Yamato stopped hiding altogether and Mom seemed happier. With them, at least.
At four Yamato started school and found it had a similar effect to hiding; Mom and Takeru made a fuss over him when he came back and always seemed happy to see him, even if he'd got his clothes dirty or even had a note from the teacher. School was more fun than hiding, in any case. At school he learnt how to read, and he got to paint and play in the sand. He had friends who were his age and he got to play all sorts of games with them.
They didn't play hide and seek often; they could never find Yamato no matter where they looked. Nobuko-chan would stamp her foot and mutter words that didn't make sense, while Taka-kun would yell and jump up and down on the spot. Yamato often found it difficult not to laugh, but usually managed to stay quiet enough. It is rare their games of hide and seek didn't end with the teacher, impatient to get them inside to start their lesson dragging him out from whatever spot he had chosen so they can go to class (this is what most of the notes were about).
As Yamato turns five he doesn't play it at home much either. Takeru, now two, tended to trail him all over the apartment when he's home, which, besides making it all the more difficult to hide, also means that he would sometimes try and follow Yamato to places, such as this cupboard in the bedroom that he coukdn't get to. He either tried, hurt himself and then cried or gave up and then cried. Yamato had learnt that Mom nagged him less when Takeru doesn't end up crying and so had decided to shelve the game until Takeru was old enough to understand the rules.
However, at six Yamato often found himself hiding in the spare room, the door just open so he can listen, and perhaps work out what Mom and Dad keep fighting about these days. However hard he tried it was no good – he didn't understand what they were talking about and was so tired from staying up trying to work out what's wrong that he fell asleep in class. Twice. He had to bring home another note from the teacher which Mom didn't seem to take in good humour anymore; instead she read it through narrowed eyes and muttered "That's all we need. On top of everything else."
Yamato stopped trying to work out what's wrong after that – the note only made things worse when Dad got home. He now had a new task; how to keep the arguments hidden from Takeru. He had started to notice whenever he wakes up late at night because he needs the toilet or because he's thirsty that Mom and Dad are always shouting.
Just before he turns seven comes the incident – late at night, after their parents' traditional row they woke up to the ground shaking. At first Yamato thought it was an earthquake, like he was taught in school, but Takeru, holding the binoculars up with shaking arms called him to the window. Outside a large Orange dinosaur was fighting with a giant canary. There was a great deal of crashing and the building seems to shake. Suddenly afraid that the ceiling might come down on him Yamato snatched Takeru away from the window and dragged him toward their closet door. Doorframes are strong, teacher said.
However, before he could make it their Dad burst in and carried them out into the hallway, ignoring Yamato's screams about doorframes. They gathered with rest of the building's occupants on a sidewalk two blocks away that had been deemed "safe". When the "terrorist attack", as the adults called it, was over everyone made their way home.
Mom and Dad didn't talk as she carries Takeru (asleep) and he gives Yamato a piggyback despite one or two absent-minded protests that he's too old for that sort of thing now. Yamato rested his chin on Dad's shoulder and mused sleepily on how wrong that seemed. The next day he heard Mom scold Takeru rather harshly about telling lies about giant dinosaurs and birds fighting and say that what happened is not something to make light of. Yamato made a mental note not to mention the dream he had and left the kitchen without the intended glass of milk.
Some months later Dad came home early. Mom didn't say anything about it. Once Mom had put Takeru to bed Dad pulled Yamato on to the sofa next to him. Mom came in and sat the other side of him. They both looked very serious. Yamato wondered what he had done wrong.
They were getting a divorce.
The next few weeks Yamato returned home baring a number of notes from the teacher. He'd started playing hide and seek again. On his own. When he's supposed to be in lessons. Mom got annoyed, but he didn't respond to it the way he used to. He returned to his lessons only when he discovered that whichever parent he and Takeru ended up with he was moving away. He spent the next two months saying a long farewell to Nobuko-chan and Taka-kun.
One recess Taka-kun nudged Yamato and suggested they play hide and seek one last time. Yamato shook his head at first but after meeting with Taka-kun's heavy insistence and Nobuko-chan's quavering protests he agreed. However his heart wasn't in it and for the first time it did not take the whole of recess for his friends to find him.
As summer rolled around things got worse.
They were staying with their Grandma for the moment. Their own little vacation Mom called it. However Yamato learnt from Grandma that it is so they will get to have some quality time together. When Yamato asked her why Grandma sighed and clicked her tongue and told him. Their parents had agreed to "shared custody". This meant, according to Grandma, that he would go with one parent and Takeru with the other.
Upon his Mom's arrival to take them home Yamato confronted her with this information. Mom had a row with Grandma who pointed out that she and Dad should have told Yamato and Takeru about this already, considering they'd already made the decision a while ago.
It is at this point when he knew that things cannot become any worse (without reality taking some kind of side-step) that they did – he and Dad were moving to Odaibah. Mom and Takeru were moving to . They will be eighty miles away from each other. Yamato screamed and shouted and kicked his Mom, telling her that he hates both her and Dad.
It is on this last day in their old apartment that Yamato is hiding in the cupboard above where the bed should be in the spare room. He has managed to bring Takeru up here too. If they can't find them they can't take them away. Unfortunately Takeru, at the sound of his Mom's voice, clambers down on to the boxes that have yet to be removed and waddles toward her voice. Yamato shuts the cupboard door and sits still and quiet, concentrating only on stopping the white hot tears that burn his eyes. Takeru, it seems has just picked up on what's happening and begins to bawl very loudly. While their Mom tries to shut him up their Dad, for the first and last time since Yamato first played hide and seek, thinks to look for him in the cupboard above the bed in the spare room – exactly where he is.
It is something, Yamato decides as his Dad tells him not to be difficult and drags him out, that he can't forgive him for.
Now he comes home everyday to an empty apartment, his Mom and younger brother eighty miles away. He doesn't like his new school much. There are a few people he knows from his old school – that loud, brown-haired kid with the goggles he and Taka-kun could never stand in gym, the auburn, soft voiced girl who Nobuko-chan sometimes played with. The girl says hello to him very occasionally, though she's obviously forgotten who he is. He and boy avoid each other wherever possible.
He still talks to Nobuko-chan and Taka-kun and even meets up with them occasionally. It's not the same.
His Dad is often busy with work but tries to make time for him. Yamato can see that he tries and in return tries not to begrudge him the fact that he isn't as home as much as Yamato wants him to be. Yamato however cannot bring himself not to be angry with his Mom. He feels more betrayed by her for some reason. He tells himself it is not because of the fact that she took Takeru. It makes sense that she did, she'll be able to cope with him much better than Dad could. Yamato sees the logic in that.
She doesn't call as often as she said she would. She's probably busy with Takeru. One day Yamato calls to talk to Takeru. A man answers. He hangs up. He doesn't tell Dad about it and the next few times Mom rings he hangs up on her. Finally She calls to yell at Dad for turning Yamato on her and after about half an hour Dad calls Yamato over and asks him to talk to his mother and tell her why he keeps hanging up on her. Yamato takes the phones and gets rid of dad by telling him something's burning in the kitchen. Mom says he was just a male colleague who'd come over for work purposes. Yamato, mindful of her concealing her and Dad's decision of "shared custody", apologises for hanging up on her, but also tells her curtly that he didn't tell Dad and that she should apologise for yelling at him for the past half-hour. Dad comes back from the kitchen, telling Yamato he shouldn't tell such lies and Yamato passes him the phone, wandering off to his room not caring how the conversation will end.
It would be an epic lie to say that there is not some relief from the bitter arguments and even bitterer silences now. But when Yamato thinks of his younger brother and the years together they will miss out on and of his Mom, who, no matter how badly he thinks of her or how venomously he declares his hatred of her, he still loves and misses harshly, he knows it isn't worth it.
He hides most of himself these days; what he's feeling, what he thinks. All most of the other kids know about him is he can play the harmonica.
So far no-one's seeking.
So far that suits him just fine.
A/N: Lo and behold, my second Digimon fanfic (my first one got deleted 'cause it broke rules). Thank you for reading. Review?