Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon.

Chapter Two: Denial
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She was seven, maybe eight. The sun was high in the sky, and the water was beautiful as she looked at it over the side of the boat.

"Meems, come check this out!"

It didn't matter that she had been summoned; she would have run toward that voice either way. In her haste, she failed to see the water on the deck, and only just got her hands out in time to brace herself.

She fell hard. Her hands were pale against the dark carpet, and she didn't understand what part of the boat would be carpeted.

The sound of familiar laughter roused her from her thoughts. She looked around the bedroom and felt dizzy. "You fell off the bed!" her friend announced between giggles. "You're such a ditz!"

She looked down at herself. Her limbs were slim and pale, and her breasts were much smaller. She was thirteen at most. She glanced up at the top bunk, where the hidden voice was coming from. She leapt to her feet and got onto the ladder.

It was more of a climb than she'd expected. She got to the top and it wasn't a bed, it was a waterslide. Her hair was pink and she could recognize the age of sixteen simply by the tingling in her fingertips. She squinted against the sunlight and glanced down into the pool, where the shadow of a person moved underneath the surface of the water. Sora.

She went down the slide and broke through the surface of the water, sinking down until her feet connected with the bottom of the pool. She pushed off hard and was propelled upward.

She was flying through the air, dry as a bone, gasping for breath. All she could see was sky. She felt herself start to come back down and braced herself for the impact, but she hit something springy and flew back into the air.

The sun seemed to have just set and the cool air gave her goose bumps on the back of her neck. People were everywhere, drinking and laughing together in the backyard. She wanted to get off the trampoline, but could not seem to communicate this to the two strangers sharing it with her, and so they continued to jump, sending her back up into the air each time she landed.

A familiar shape moved across the opposite end of the backyard. Mimi had to get to her. She put all of her force into the jump and landed on the grass, far less gracefully than she'd hoped.

And then Sora – beautiful, alive, nineteen-year-old Sora – was right there, standing on the grass looking down at her. She made a movement, and Mimi expected her to reach out a hand to help Mimi up off her butt. But instead, she took her own seat on the grass. Mimi stared; she had no voice. She waved her hand in front of Sora's face, and her friend looked amused.

"You okay?"

Sora's mouth moved but it was Matt's voice, and then Mimi found herself sitting up in the bed of their honeymoon suite, gasping for breath and desperate to hold onto her fading dream.

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The first thing Kari noticed was that her pillow smelled like T.K. She opened her eyes and saw him lying beside her, and for one endless, broken moment, she was seventeen.

She looked around T.K.'s dorm room, lost in the unfamiliar before everything came rushing back to her. She jolted upright, feeling as though she had been sucker punched; if this caused T.K. to stir, he gave no indication.

She stared at him for a moment, or perhaps it was an hour. The previous night came back to her in pieces, and she felt her cheeks colour. Had she really behaved that way in front of everyone at the reception? Had her parents seen her leave with T.K.? Should she try to sneak out before he awoke, or would that only make the situation worse?

It was unsurprising, really, that she found herself in bed with him now. They were broken up, and had been for quite some time, but there was a difference between being single and being available. T.K. was certainly not the latter, and if she was honest with herself, neither was she.

Her eyes ran over him, and for the millionth time they came to rest on the tiny mark on his left shoulder. It looked like someone had put a cigar out on his skin. She wondered how many people had seen it and thought to inquire. She wondered what T.K. told them when they did – if he explained the shooting, the terror, his selfless act; or if he merely gave a shifty smile, cracked a stupid joke, and changed the subject.

He shifted and opened one eye, his face breaking out into a grin when he saw her. "Holy shit," he said, dragging out each syllable. He rubbed a hand over his face and sat up, looking as though he wanted to speak but was unsure of what he could possibly say. Her heart sank, unsure of what he thought last night would mean for them.

"What do you tell them?" she asked quietly.

"Huh?"

Her fingers brushed against his arm. Perhaps the skin was still sensitive, or perhaps he was just overly aware of the mark, but the smile disappeared from his face either way. "When people ask … and I'm sure someone has asked … what do you say?"

"It's not like many people have seen it," he said with an uneasy smile. "I mean, when was the last time I woke up beside a girl?"

Kari didn't know the answer to that. She thought she might like to know, actually, but she also had an overwhelming desire to protect herself from information that would surely keep her up at night.

"A few guys from the basketball team have asked, but I avoid answering and I think they've gotten the hint that I'm not up for talking about it," he continued. "I was hanging out in Matt's room one day and Kenta asked me about it. I wasn't going to answer but then Matt told him I had been shot … it was really awkward. He tried to make a joke about it, told me I should use it as a pick-up line."

Kari faked a smile. She tried to be open-minded about Kenta, Matt's roommate for his remaining three years at university, but she found it impossible to like the boy who had replaced her brother.

Kenta knew, of course. He had to. It took a special kind of idiot to miss the way Kari bit the inside of her cheek every time he spoke, or the way she could barely look at him, or how she'd always made certain that he wasn't around before stopping by Matt's room.

He was one of the few people not from Odaiba who knew about what happened to Tai and Sora. When Kari met new people and they asked about her family, she claimed to be an only child. When they heard she lived in Odaiba and they asked about the shootings, she said she'd gone to a high school on the opposite end of town.

It tore her apart to lie about Tai, to pretend that all the lazy Saturday mornings they had spent watching cartoons as children had not occurred. But it was easier than telling the truth. She wouldn't be able to deal with questions, uncomfortable looks, or sympathy from people she hardly knew. She was not the only person who played this game. T.K., as far as she knew, had never told any of their new friends about that day and his involvement in it. And Mimi did not speak about it at all, not even to those who had lived through it with her.

"It's not my place," T.K. said softly. "If I tell people even the smallest detail about it … then it gets traced back to you, too. And I don't want anyone ever bothering you, asking questions as if they have a right to know what happened and who it happened to."

Kari did not have the words to express how much she truly appreciated T.K., for this and for so many other things. He gave her a reassuring smile and she felt her heart jump into her throat. He really was the best person in her life.

Stop, she told herself. She dug her nails into her wrist and tried to calm herself. What are you doing? Don't start thinking like that again …

She knew what it was to miss someone. Every now and then, she felt homesick for Odaiba – for her parents, for her cat, and for the view from her bedroom window. She missed Tai every moment of every day.

And yet, looking at T.K. now, she was overwhelmed by how easy it was to miss someone who had never left.

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Mimi settled back against the bed and Matt shut his eyes again, too exhausted to realize what was happening to her. She pressed her shaking hands against her forehead and took a deep, steadying breath. How could she expect anyone else to understand her when she couldn't understand herself? It had been more than three years since Sora's death. She was married to a wonderful man and had a terrific group of family and friends. She should be better by now. She should be normal.

But she couldn't balance out her desire to go on with the guilt she had for being able to go on when Sora could not. What kind of grief, what kind of immeasurable sadness could Sora have been feeling? Her best friend had been falling apart at the seams and Mimi hadn't even noticed. She had concerned herself with her new engagement, and she had certainly concerned herself with everything going on with Tai, but how could she have forgotten Sora? If she had been there, if she had just been a proper best friend …

Mimi drew in a breath. She had touched on the very thought that had been lurking around in her mind for years but which she had never previously allowed to bubble to the surface. She pulled it from her mind, dusted it off, held it up high and examined it in the light. It was time to face the truth, and what the truth came down to was this: if Mimi had not failed Sora in so many different ways, Sora would still continue to be.

It would be foolish of her to say there had not been signs. Sora had called Mimi the night before she died, and their conversation had been anything but regular girl talk. She'd been so pessimistic, so unlike the girl Mimi had always known. And then she'd said something that really should have set off even a small alarm: I know you might be a little confused, but I need you to listen really carefully. This is important. Had Sora been trying to tell her something with that speech? Hint at something? What if she had been counting on Mimi to pick up on it and talk her out of it, and when Mimi failed to notice, Sora resigned herself to going through with her suicide?

She was grasping. She knew she was grasping. Most people in her situation would never have been able to guess what was about to happen. She knew that there were normally warning signs, and she was sure if she went back in time and kept an eye out that she would be able to pick up on them. The things Sora had said on the phone that night seemed confusing and almost meaningless. Mimi hadn't understood then what she understood now. But the old saying that hindsight is twenty-twenty existed for reason.

There was nothing like getting that phone call saying her best friend, one of the only people she needed – actually, physically needed – was gone forever, in a way that nobody could really, truly understand. Nothing in the world could ever rival that feeling of absolute destruction, of the knowledge that she could live forever and would never have another friendship like the one she'd had with Sora.

So many people in the world were grieving over the loss of a loved one just as Mimi was and would always continue to do, but there was a difference. Most of those people were victims of situations which could not have been avoided. And then there was Mimi, whose best friend had made one drastic, spontaneous (at least she hoped that was the case, because she couldn't stand the thought of Sora thinking about and planning it for a period of time) decision which had shaken Mimi's life to the core. If Sora had never done what she'd done …

Thinking about this evoked so many emotions, and Mimi was constantly struggling to keep them all at bay. But Mimi had never felt hate; she could not hate Sora for this reason or for any other. Anyone else and it would have been easy to curse them and be furious. Thinking of what Sora had done did not make Mimi angry. Hating Sora was impossible no matter what way she looked at it. Besides, Sora was not to blame for what she had done. Mimi should have looked out for her friend. The idea of hating Sora for something that was not her fault, something that was more Mimi's own fault, made her sad.

She knew that blaming herself was normal, that everyone in this situation did it at one time or another. But she wondered how many people were as justified as she was. She wanted so much to believe that Sora would be with her forever, that the memories they'd shared would last her a lifetime. But if Sora was such a part of her, and always would be, why did she feel so empty? Why did she feel so alone?

Matt turned on the lamp and sat up. "You're upset."

"I'm not."

"Mimi …"

"I'm happy, okay? We got married. Why wouldn't I be happy?"

Matt sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Why won't you just talk to me about it?"

It. Sora's death was something so awful, so unspeakable, that she did not understand how he could refer to the event in the same manner he would a television show.

"You don't understand," she told him. She just wanted him to leave her alone.

Matt spoke so quietly that she almost didn't hear him: "You weren't the only one who lost a best friend."

She turned to look at him, both embarrassed and angered by his words. "It's not the same thing," she said softly, aware that she was minimizing his grief and unable to stop herself.

"Your best friend died," he said, so plainly that Mimi felt herself flinch. "So did mine."

"It's not the same thing," she repeated through clenched teeth.

"How do you figure?"

"Because Tai wasn't the first friend you made at school," she said, and hated the sound of her voice but was spurred on by the knowledge that she was at least a little right. "He wasn't the one who helped you blow out your birthday candles every year. He wasn't the one whose tree house you hid in when you ran away from home." She had to close her eyes against the memories. She could lose hours to them if she wasn't careful. "You can think of a million important moments in your life that didn't include him. You can open up photo albums and not see his face in every picture. I can't do that. That isn't me."

Her vision blurred against unshed tears and she blinked them away. She had not cried over Sora in years and tonight would be no different. Instead, she stared hard at a ring on her right hand. It had been Sora's; Mrs. Takenouchi had given it to Mimi after the funeral. She absently twisted it around her finger and didn't realize that Matt had put on his shoes and left.

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T.K. swallowed hard and tried to see past the lost look in Kari's eyes. He could see what was coming; it was a familiar cycle. Kari would seem fine and well-adjusted for months at a time, and out of nowhere would retreat into herself for days or even weeks. Once she had collected herself again, she would start over and say nothing to T.K. or anyone else about her behaviour. This both annoyed and worried him. He was unsure of whether he had a right to feel either of those emotions, but was unable to control himself.

He remembered the first time he had ever truly considered death. A classmate in the fourth grade had lost his father, and after a week of mourning, had returned to school. T.K. had been shocked by this – if he had ever lost someone close to him, the loss would be devastating and surely he would never recover. The idea of losing Matt, of attending his brother's funeral and watching his coffin being lowered into the ground, seemed unfathomable. T.K. had not thought anyone would be able to return to their normal lives within a week, or several weeks, or even several months.

Then Tai and Sora died. They had not been blood relatives, but T.K. had considered them family for every moment he'd known them. He'd spent the first few days after their death living in a fog. The funeral had been hell. The two weeks following it had been hell. Then school came around, and although he was still relatively distraught, he realized that he could not crawl into a hole and stay there. He went to school, and between friends and basketball and class, he found that he did not think of Tai and Sora quite as often. He found that he could laugh again, and that it became easier every day. His relationship with Kari had begun to fall apart, and T.K. could never be sure, but he suspected part of the reason was because he had succeeded where Kari had not.

There were times he felt just as sad as she did. There were moments where he could close his eyes and be there, back to the days that had almost ruined everything for all of them. But they were few and far between. He loved Tai and Sora and he would miss them forever, but he was not going to mess up his life just because of what had happened to theirs. They wouldn't want that. How could he explain to Kari that the only part of the past that he couldn't let go of was her? And that he was healed when it came to all the other stuff? How could he make her see that he was just as messed up as she in his own right, but he was getting better everyday and he didn't feel guilty about that? He was getting better because he wanted to, because he knew it was what Tai and Sora would want for him. Kari could not seem to understand that healing was not the same thing as forgetting.

As if she was reading his mind and felt uncomfortable with his thoughts, she said, "I should probably go." She got out of bed, taking one of the sheets with her, and disappeared into the bathroom. For the first time since waking, T.K. remembered their situation.

"Oh," said T.K. "Did you – do you think we should talk?"

Kari returned a moment later in the dress she'd worn to the wedding reception. "Talk about what?"

Her question was so random, the confusion so genuine, that his voice caught in his throat. They just woke up together and she didn't think it was worthy of discussion?

"Nothing," he said. He hated himself in that moment, and wondered for the millionth time if he would ever be able to stand up to her. "Do you want me to walk you to your room?"

Kari shrugged. "No thanks. I'm fine."

She shut the door behind herself and T.K. sighed. "You are anything but fine, Kari," he said to himself.

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