Author's notes: I'm trying to make the rounds and update everything (consider that my Christmas present, dolls), so sorry if this gets neglected again for a week or two after this update. This is my most planned out story, but it's by far not the oldest, and I really need to tie up those loose ends so that my conscious can rest easy. Yes, I know it's just fanfiction. But I do this for readers, more so than just my own enjoyment sometimes, and therefore I want to deserve the encouraging reviews I get whenever I update.
I tried make this longer, but I couldn't keep writing it. Personal reasons and... other things, I don't know. But hopefully, the really depressing excuse of a cliffhanger won't make everyone twitch. I'll make up for it next update.
On a side note, why does everyone assume that because I'm American, I've only watched the English dub? I've watched the Japanese, both seasons and the movies. And that's the end of that, thank you!
As with all of my A/N's announcing "the end" of a stupid discussion, I have a very sad feeling that I'm going to get a reply concerning this despite that... Sigh.
"Taichi, where's Mom and Dad?"
She never called him Taichi. Hikari never did. It felt like more of a smack to the face than the words, or maybe it was the words and his brain was just too shocked by... everything to be able to figure out what shocked him most. His head hurt. He didn't want to talk about this, not with his sister or Sora or anyone else. He just wanted to go play soccer, kick the ball as hard as he could, through the net...
"Nii-san?"
This time, Taichi raised his dark brown eyes to meet his sister's. When she had said his name – his name, not his title – she had sounded almost angry with him, annoyed that he didn't answer her immediately when she asked. But now, reverting back to "brother", she sounded like a scared little girl, the one he still saw in his memory sometimes when he thought about days when she hadn't been willing to fight her own battles, or had been too weak too. There had been days when she needed him, not just wanted him around for company. That day had come again, and he didn't realize till now just how much he wished those memories could stay in the past.
It was the hardest thing he ever had to do, telling his sister that after her big night, she was the sole survivor. After her parents had driven to her event, they had died. She blamed herself. He saw it in her eyes, the moment he said "They...they didn't, you know, make it..." while his voice trailed off as his mind conjured up images that he was glad Hikari could never, and would never, see. Tears brimmed her eyes, but they didn't fall. Not while he was looking. She told him she was sleepy, and she wanted to ask Takeru something.
" He was on the phone with me. I don't remember what we were talking about," she told him, and although Taichi sincerely doubted that to be the case, he nodded and kissed her forehead. She didn't flinch, but she lowered her eyes. He hadn't done that since she was very little and sick. He thought a tear fell, but it was gone when he did a double take. She was good at that, hiding her tears.
" I'll check in on you in a little bit, okay?" She nodded mutely. He sincerely hoped this wasn't going to become a pattern; he thought he might actually snap if she wouldn't say a word to him without locking up. He needed his little sister, and that just made him angry with himself, because she needed him. He had no business being weak, not when she needed him to be what he'd always been for her.
Takeru was standing right outside the door, leaning against the hallway wall and looking half asleep. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, gazing at the wall opposite him without really seeming to see it. He jumped when Taichi touched his shoulder. Taichi frowned at him thoughtfully; the kid had probably slept about as much as he had, and that wasn't much. There were dark smudges under his eyes, which were red in the corners. When his mother permitted him to spend the night at the hospital, Takeru had been Taichi's silent companion during the off hours when not even Sora could manage to stay awake to keep him company.
But maybe he'd sleep easier tonight, knowing Hikari was going to be okay. Taichi wouldn't, but he'd keep that to himself. He had demons to confront, and he wasn't ready to face his dreams quite yet. His nightmares, the ones that had attacked him that first night when he had dozed in Yamato's car. He still couldn't fathom how he had fallen asleep; Jyou said it was system overload or something like that, his brain going into shock and needing to recover. 'A manly form of fainting', as Taichi thought of it.
"She's askin' for you," Taichi told him, and Takeru straightened up. He looked confused, eyes speaking the question his voice wouldn't ask. Taichi shrugged. "She said it's about the phone call." He didn't need to say that he didn't believe it; Takeru could see that plainly enough. He knew Taichi, knew how he thought. Takeru frowned.
"Should I..." He glanced at the room, and Taichi knew he wanted to run in. He would, if Sora were in there. He wanted to anyway; that was his baby sister. But she had all but dismissed him. She was too nice to say the words, but she didn't want to see him. He understood, even if it hurt. It hurt to look at a constant reminder, but she had to eventually. He had faced it. He had faced his mother in her face, her eyes. She had to look at him one day. Soon. Jyou said that as soon as her head healed up, she would be going home. She'd be at 90% then, Jyou had told Taichi with a sympathetic pat on the back. The other ten percent would be her ribs and her heart, but at least one of those would heal relatively quickly.
Jyou had told him to take care of himself too, but Taichi thought little about that part.
"Yeah. Make sure she gets some rest, 'kay?" Takeru nodded, and Taichi left without another word. He didn't know what else to say. He'd been like that a lot during the past two weeks, so lost in his own head that he couldn't think of what to say to people who knew him better than anyone. He should have been able to talk to them, but it was really hard. It felt like it took so much effort just to listen to them, and to nod, and walk, and do those ordinary things. Talking just felt beyond him; gratefully, nobody had pushed him just yet. Sora would just lean her head on his shoulder, and Yamato wasn't much of a talker in his own right. Koushiro checked in once in a while as official best friend, but he couldn't sit in the hospital forever. Neither could Yamato or Sora, and he knew that. They stayed as long as they could, but they and Takeru had school too, and work and things to take care of. Taichi had school too, and soccer, but he'd called the coach and the school. They said it was fine, take his time, and Hikari could take her time too...
That was probably the last time he had a conversation that consisted of more than a few words on his part, because he had to apologize and explain. He was glad he didn't have to explain to Sora. She understood, and she was there when she could be. But there were a lot of hours in the night and days when he didn't know what to do with himself. He'd become a ghost of the cafeteria, not really eating but poking at soup or a piece of cake anyway, or staring at the television without hearing the program in the lounge. And he sat with Hikari.
But since the last was already taken by Takeru, and by her request, he went to the cafeteria. It wasn't too late; there wasn't a chance Takeru's mother would let him still be there on a school night otherwise. He might not be sleeping, but Takeru still met his curfew. Yamato enforced it in an attempt to retain his newly patched relationship with their mom. Maybe Sora and Yamato would be eating, and he could sit with them. And make things more awkward, he thought to himself. The two barely talked, although they were partners in keeping an eye on him while at the hospital. He hoped they didn't think he hadn't noticed, but they never gave him enough credit. He'd have to be dead himself not to see them watching out of the corners of their eyes, sitting together but not speaking. Sora still felt guilty, breaking up with Yamato, even though she was with Taichi now. Yamato simply didn't wanna screw up something with Sora and Taichi, and the result was a silent mound of awkward that Taichi really didn't care enough to comment on at the moment. He just wanted one of his best friends and his girlfriend and the smell of chocolate, even if he still didn't feel like eating.
He didn't find them in the cafeteria, though. He frowned, but that wasn't anything. So he went to check the lounge, but he couldn't find them there either. That was irritating. If they had left, couldn't they at least tell him? And that confused him too, because Yamato would have taken Takeru. They couldn't have left the hospital, but he didn't know where else they might be. He went outside, because Sora was uncomfortable in hospitals and he had found her sitting on the bus bench a time or two, but the bench was empty.
So Taichi went back inside and flopped on the pleather couch in the lounge, looking thoroughly irritated at the idea of his girlfriend and best friend – coincidentally, her ex – being missing. It irritated him more than he expected it to. Later, he thought that he just wanted to get mad at something he could yell at, something that was normal and familiar to him and everyone. He wanted to be jealous and aggravated, because it was easier than feeling numb and cold and not quite all there, if you know what I mean. But at that moment, it was raw and irrational and he allowed himself to stew in it because the alternative was thinking about Hikari, and that hurt a lot more. That led to think about things that he wasn't sure how to think about yet.
He had to be a father figure. And a mother. And a brother. He was going to have split personalities in his head before he even graduated Uni. He groaned and hit his head against the wall behind his chair. That had been precisely the thought that he was trying to avoid. Irrationally, the anger sparked up again, anger at Yamato and Sora for being nowhere around and Jyou for being one hundred and one other places and Hikari for wanting Takeru over him and Daisuke for expecting him to be oh-fearless leader, and his thoughts stopped really making sense even to him as he let anger at everyone burn like an unwatched fire in his mind, letting it devour every unwanted hurt and feeling until there was nothing but ash and exhaustion.
And that's when Sora peeked her head in the doorway.
About time, Taichi thought, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from saying it out loud. His self control seemed questionable lately. His mind was too tired to filter, something he had been working really hard on since the early days of Sora and his friendship, when they used to bicker all the time because of a lack of said filter. He had no desire to revisit those days, even when inspired by fits of paranoia and overall fear of the dark and unknown. It was kind of laughable actually. The bearer of the crest of courage was shaking in his cleats.
Maybe it had all been in the goggles, he mused humorlessly.
"There you are," Sora breathed, looking relieved. Taichi didn't reply, nor did he really understand. She had been the one to mysteriously up and vanish, he thought, not him. "We looked in Hikari's room, but –"
"She wanted to talk to Takeru. Alone," he added dully, slumping a little in his chair. Geez, he was really tired. Being mad wore you out, he thought. He didn't know how people got angry so often, and so quickly. He couldn't handle it; his brain wasn't made to function on "hate". He had tried hella hard though.
"We saw." She frowned at him, looking as though she were studying his face. Taichi averted his eyes. He wasn't in the mood for one of Sora's 'deep and sensitive' moments. He wanted to be mad, darn it! Or rather, he wanted to sleep. If she'd just sit down, he could use her shoulder as a pillow for a minute... Maybe five, or ten. An hour. Twenty. What did it matter, really?
"Where's Yamato," he asked, and he hoped it was only in his imagination that he heard the dig. Maybe it was, because Sora didn't seem to catch it. The frown disappeared, replaced by an eager smile as she waved to someone behind her – Yamato, obviously, he thought. – which did relatively little to improve Taichi's mood. To be fair though, he couldn't think of anything that would improve his move.
And then Agumon walked in. Or he kinda... well, it wasn't a waddle, but it didn't really resemble a normal walk anyway, and why the hell was he analyzing the way his best friend in all the worlds was walking when he was here, in the hospital where Taichi's own personal hell seemed to be unraveling? He jumped into Taichi's lap, and maybe it was a good thing because Taichi's reflexes were a bit slow from stress and lack of sleep, and his arms took a second to respond to his brain and hug his buddy.
"We thought you might be getting kinda lonely during the day," Yamato said casually, leaning against the door frame. Sora walked towards Taichi, sitting on the couch next to him and leaning against his side. There was a guilty smugness in the back of Taichi's mind; they might have been scheming this together, but they weren't really talking still. More like allies in the moment, not quite friends yet. He shouldn't have felt better because of that, his two best friends being on such awkward footing. But it strangely served to strengthen his own security, and he needed a little boost to his ego when he was doing such a good job of questioning and doubting himself.
"Is this where you two have been? The digital world?" He hugged Agumon, as though he might poof in the next minute too. He couldn't imagine it; even if they went years without seeing each other, he always had known Agumon was okay. Taichi couldn't imagine him... not. But then, he reminded himself bitterly, he still woke up from the occasional catnap expecting to find his mother leaning over Hikari's hospital bed, fretting, their father sitting in the chair next to her with his hands twisting guiltily in his lap the way they did any time he thought Hikari was hurt or sick because of him. Maybe that was where Taichi got it from, that gnawing guilt that he was responsible, that she was this fragile thing that had to be protected at all costs.
"I would have met them," Agumon said, sounding a little disappointed, as though he had lost a race or something. "But I didn't know they were coming. I was watching my area," he told Taichi with wide eyes, like a little kid looking for approval. But he was a seriously kickass little kid. Taichi smiled. It was a little smile, and it felt more than a little sad, but it was a smile. When he was with Agumon, he remembered being ten years old and feeling invincible.
"And doing a really good job, I'm sure," Taichi promised, and Agumon beamed. And then he got serious, and Taichi really hated when Agumon got serious, because it was like Taichi getting serious when he had been ten years old and invincible: it took a lot for that smiling face to straighten out, then frown, and not be joking.
"I'm really sorry, Tai." And Taichi didn't have a doubt as to what Agumon was talking about; it certainly had nothing to do with something in his so-called territory, where there had been nothing more serious than petty spats between the Digimon living there in a long, long time.
"S'okay, buddy." What else was he supposed to say? 'Me too'? It occurred to him. Actually, it was what he opened his mouth to say. But he couldn't say it. It sounded too... he didn't know; the word wasn't in his vocabulary. Maybe Koushiro would have the word in his neverending arsenal of ways to make Taichi look like an idiot, as every best friend since childhood ought. But he couldn't bring himself to say it. Not with Sora's weight leaning on him, and Yamato watching from the doorway, and Agumon looking at him with such sad eyes. They reminded him of a basset hound. He wished he could help. Taichi did too; he wished that Agumon could pepper breath the bastard who did this to his life.
But there wasn't really anyone to blame. No one but the rainy night and his parents for bickering and ruining Hikari's big night, and the big night itself, and he couldn't just... you know, attempt to blow up the world because he was miserable in it at the moment. Too many other people, people who might be indirectly connected with the horrible chain of events that had led to Taichi's present, were content with their load. He wouldn't ruin theirs, even if the idea had occurred to him. And it had, in those fleeting hours between sunset and dawn when he was the only one awake besides the skeleton crew nurses who pat him on the shoulder or offered him something to eat whenever they came in to check on Hikari's vitals. Even in his worst lows, his angriest moments when he let the bitterness rage because it was easier than stifling it with his strained energy resources, he had never been able to seriously consider hating everyone, everything. He didn't hate life. He just hated his, at the moment. No big deal, right?
"No it isn't, Tai," Yamato said from the door way. He didn't move any closer; knowing Yamato, he didn't want to be closer to his ex than he needed to be in the small lounge. But his eyes, cold blue, were staring through Taichi, the brunette would swear to it. It was seriously disconcerting. "I thought you'd at least tell Agumon." He sounded annoyed, not quite disgusted but... frustrated. He didn't like his plan foiling right in front of him. Taichi pursed his lips, but he didn't say anything. It seemed to be the opposite of what Yamato wanted, because the blond looked pretty ticked with him. Even Sora sighed and pulled away from Taichi, pulling her feet up onto the sofa and wrapping her arms around her knees. She did that at home, he noted dimly, when she was upset with her mom. He didn't know she'd ever done it because of him, but he figured it only made sense: he found her last nerve and poked it with a stick a lot.
"Hikari's talking to Takeru. Maybe not about... you know," Sora said lamely, and Taichi couldn't help but find it a little bit funny that they wanted him to talk, but they couldn't find it in themselves to talk about it either. He kept that sick piece of humor to himself though. His sense of humor was getting really twisted up by the lack of sleep, he decided. "But she's talking." Sora reached for his hand, resting hers on top of his, which was still holding Agumon in a lax embrace. "You've barely said anything in weeks, Tai." She lowered her eyes, and he realized her lip was quivering. God, please don't cry. He couldn't handle crying. He really couldn't. He'd never been any good with tears.
"We're worried about ya, man."
Taichi frowned. When Yamato admitted to being worried about anything besides his hair and whether or not his guitar was in tune, then he had to admit that he was a little concerned too. But it was in a detached sort of way, like they were talking about Jyou or Daisuke or Koushiro. Not about him. He didn't worry people.
Except he was. That was the detached part of his brain, the part that saw him as the someone else, some separate entity inside his brain. It was a really bizarre feeling, split by fear and depression and anxiety that Taichi wasn't accustomed to, even in his darkest moments in his life. He'd never felt lost, not in the same way he did now.
"I've talked," was his lame defense. Sora opened her mouth, but Yamato snorted his objection, and she closed it.
"You've asked if Hikari's awake. You've asked if you missed Jyou, if he had anything new to say. You've asked us to keep an eye on her so you could whiz." Because the musician had such a way with words, didn't he? "What about you, Tai? We know how Hikari is. We know she'll be okay." He didn't add physically, or anything else like that. Taichi caught the implication without difficulty. It seemed to be the only thing he could grasp with his sluggish, exhausted mind: He was talking about Hikari. He could get that.
"Talk to me. Talk to us," she amended, and her eyes flitted quickly towards Yamato. But his eyes were still focused on Taichi, as though determined to make him crack. Taichi wouldn't look at him; he was afraid he really would, if he met Yamato's eyes. But the only other place to look was at Agumon, and he had been oddly quiet, and he looked worried, and the image of a misshapen, orange basset hound came to mind again and Taichi wasn't sure if it was a sob or a laugh that tried to escape from his throat, but Sora didn't miss it.
"It's okay, you know," she said quietly, squeezing his hand with hers. "To cry. To be upset. It takes courage to cry, too. To admit you have to cry. To admit you're scared. That's really hard. That takes bravery, Taichi. You're brave."
He wished she hadn't said that. He might not have cracked, he might not have cried, if she hadn't.