Ken closes his eyes, and Ken dreams. He dreams of the hot desert sun on his back as he treks along sand dunes aimlessly, tear tracks marking pathways down his face until he stumbles and fall right through the sand. The grains cling to him and then they are thousands of spiders, crawling over his skin and they are creeping into his mouth and through his eyes and one of them burrows deeply into the back of his neck and he tries to cry out but widening his mouth only fills it with the cotton mothball stench of old decaying hands that reach in and -
Pink light fills Ken's dream and casts everything away until he is lying in a field of pink grass that sways in the wind underneath a pink sky with clouds that curl in on themselves forming a symbol familiar and alien all at once. He is resting against a body, and two strong arms wrap around him. To comfort. To protect.
"We are far away from one another." A deep voice says, and like the clouds is both known and unknown. It is intangible to his mind. "...I am only a dream to you now, aren't I? We knew this would happen. But even now I will protect you in what ways I can."
Ken closes his eyes every night, and Ken dreams of nightmares. But they never stay that way for long.
In a second, a minute, an hour if they're lucky, Ken will wake up and all of this will vanish. But right now his world is quiet, and he knows he is safe.
oOo
"'Dear Cody, this is yourself. I just need you to remember - you love armadillos and texan accents.' ...What the heck is this?" Joe looked over with a shocked expression, and Cody gave a small shrug. It had been a few days since Tai and Joe had gone up to visit the summer camp, and while the other three members of their little group had already caught up with the findings of Cody's letter before that, Joe had gotten busy with college not too soon after, leaving him to have to find his own time to get together with Cody and get caught up with anything that could be gleamed from the letter.
Cody was blushing and had a strange look on his face.
"I don't know what to think of it, really." The rest of the letter was so far fairly unreadable. There was something about a computer club, a warning not to get rid of the painting he had done when he was seventeen, and the letter ended with a simply signified of 'continue to pursue knowledge, remain reliable, and I will forever miss these days when I was me.' which was vey hearfelt and sorrowful. But nothing could quite beat that opening line.
"I didn't take you for a Texas kind of guy."
"I'm not. ...or I don't think I am." Cody said, feet swinging off the side of the pier where they had decided to sit. Something about the ocean air seemed to sooth both of their nerves, even if marginally, and when Joe had suggested the meeting place Cody had been more than willing to go ahead with it.
"What are the paintings?" Joe asked, choosing to try and go to the less embarassing parts of the letter that were readable. Cody gave a shrug.
"Caligraphic artistic painting of a yellow armadillo. My grandpa helped with me them. That was two years ago, but it feels much longer than that.
"I guess that sort of explains the armadillo part. Well, not really, but at least it connects. The Texas part is still throwing me off. You guys went to the US a couple times, right? Maybe you ran into some accents when you were there."
"Did we?" Cody asked, and the thought of someone forgetting the fact that they had visited an entire other country was so strange to Joe.
"I'm pretty sure you did. At least once. You had a friend there… Izzy's old friend. Geez I don't remember his name, I don't actually even know if we ever met face to face."
"We can bring it up at the next meeting." Cody offered, staring at his hands, face solemn. He opened and closed his mouth a couple times, like a fish gasping for air, fingers tightening. Joe felt his expression soften.
"... is there something you want to say?"
"...no." Cody said. Joe didn't believe that for even a moment.
"You can talk to me. I know we haven't exactly talked a lot in the past couple of years. Okay, longer than a couple, but you know you told me way when I first started college that I could call you whenever I needed to talk about something. I think it's safe to say that's recipricol."
Cody still took a moment after that, and though his face was generally closed off, Joe could see the micro expressions cross his face and sometkind of internal war went on. When had he learned to interpret those small expressions? He knew that he was close to all the others, but being around Cody he had this feeling deep in his gut - an echo of a feeling really - of protectiveness. Responsibility for the boy. It was not a feeling he was familiar with, and the act of comforting someone was foreign to his mind, but his muscles reacted as if they had done it a million times. As if they could recall things that Joe could not.
Perhaps they could.
"...I think I'm angry at you."
Joe hadn't expected that.
"...Oh. Why?"
"Not just you." Cody clarified. "At everyone. Whenever I look at you I can't help but get this… this feeling of anger that rolls over me. And I know it's not right, but I feel betrayed. And this one thought echoes over and over in my head." Joe felt his mouth open even as he felt as though he knew exactly what Cody would say.
"What's the thought?"
"That you all left me behind. That you left me all alone." In the moonlight Joe could see the gleam from the tear tracks on Cody's face. With hesitant hands he reached over and patted the boys back, bringing himself a little closer, close enough to wrap an arm around Cody and feel the way his shoulders shaked with sobs.
Cody turned his face towards Joe.
"I know this anger." Cody whispered between sobs. "I've felt it before. When my dad died. I knew it wasn't his fault, but I was still angry that he would leave me."
Joe looked down at the letter that he still held in his other hand, re-reading that last line.
He thought he understood, just a little bit. Whoever the boy was ten years ago, fifteen years ago, he felt as though he missed being that boy.
oOo
Mimi frowns and stares at the small blue device that sits innocently on the table, conversations with Yolei echoing through her head. The girl had asked her questions she held no answer to, enough of them to the point that Mimi had felt herself start to get angry and upset, a harsh headache coming on. But Yolei sounded so desperate, so near panicked.
"How many times did you come over to Japan back in the day?"
That was the one question that had persisted after the conversation had gotten cut off with Mimi asking, almost pleading, for Yolei to stop with the questions. Because she did have some of those memories intact, that hadn't faded with age. Time and time again being in Odaiba with the others long after she had moved to America. Too often to have had that many plane tickets over. Sometimes visiting for just an afternoon it seemed, her memory lacking anything other than that.
And then Yolei had asked about the device.
Of course she knew what she was talking about, the one that she hid in her drawer and always forgot about until it was too late and suddenly she was staring at it for too long with no memory of how it had arrived but tears falling down her face.
She looked around her room as if she was a stranger, searching for any hint. Her eyes landed on the cactus on her bedside table. The one she could remember buying clear back in middle school. Another cactus next to that. Some succulents. A single lily plant. More cacti in small pots. With a hesitant hand she reached over and rubbed a hand against the succulent. The rubbery texture, it felt… familiar, somehow.
But she couldn't place it.
Her eyes went to the cactus.
She went slowly, carefully, thinking clearly about her intentions. Knowing that it was foolish and made no sense.
Her hand touched it.
Reflexively her hand flinched back.
Mimi grit her teeth and went in again.
The needles bit into her skin, dozens and dozens of them, but she could feel it, right at the edge of her memory, begging her to recall… something. Someone. A voice that was sweet and then deep and then sweet again. She clutched it harder. A friend. A partner. A… a pal.
With a gasp her hand drew back, as if such an inane observation was just too much. The tipping point.
She spent the last of the afternoon with a pair of tweezers held over her hand, meticulously pulling out the small needles, tears streaming down her face.