December 17, 2009
AN: It took me about two and a half weeks to write this chapter. Lame. But I got it done, so hooray! I quite enjoy it. I think it's just the right amount of ambiguity and clarity that I was aiming for and hopefully you all enjoy. :) As always, I would love to know your thoughts and opinions on it, as well as constructive criticism.
PS. I got a new laptop that does not have Microsoft Word yet, so I am typing this on something that does not have spell check, so I apologize if there are any errors. I proof-read it three times but I still miss things sometimes.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
Chapter 1
He doesn't know it, but she sees him there every day.
She started coming to the ocean after the final battle. The ocean once transported her to a world that she didn't know or understand. Now she lives in a world that she doesn't know or understand and the ocean gives her hope that maybe everything will return to normal one day. One day, maybe, they can fix it.
In all the years that she's seen him there, not once has she talked to him, or even let him see her for that matter. She doesn't know what she would say to him, anyway. He blames her as much as he blames everyone else. And rightfully so, after all. As much as she tries to lie to herself about that day and convince herself that her only crime was not speaking up, she's so very wrong.
He probably wouldn't even want to talk to her. It's hard to believe sometimes that the guy who used to worship the very gravel that touched the bottom of her shoes would so quickly turn against her.
She sees him point his Digivice toward the ocean every morning before school, standing still as a stone statue for sometimes up to twenty minutes, with no results. Sometimes, she's tempted to bring hers to try the same thing, but she just can't. She put hers in a junk shoe box years ago and pushed it far back in a corner under her bed. Sometimes when looking for a missing sock she'll catch sight of that box and even just that makes her feel sick to her stomach. She doesn't have enough personal strength to open that box and look at her abandoned Digivice. The memories that come with it haunt her to her very core.
Maybe if she still had her friends. Thinking about them also makes her stomach lurch with regret. None of them have been able to remain in touch since the battle ended. She couldn't even maintain relationships with her best friend and her brother.
The last time she and T.K. spoke, it was about four months after the end of the battle. Neither of them had been the same since it happened and they had been fighting a fair amount in the weeks leading up to their last interaction, which turned into a massive row.
Her defense mechanism in justifying what had happened was her claiming not to hold any responsibility. She didn't say anything, so it wasn't her fault. That thought is what got her to sleep at night. Of course, her statement was grossly inaccurate and she knew it. Because of this, she became even more distressed and had to find another way to appease herself of responsibility.
And so, she would blame everyone else. T.K. was the first one to speak up when it happened, so he must hold more responsibility than she, right? When she said this to him, something in T.K. snapped. The months of harboring extreme guilt just lashed out against her. Prior to this, she had never been involved in such a horrible screaming match.
She and T.K. never spoke again. They refused to speak to each other during classes and avoided each other during passing periods and lunch. Their friends were shocked, since the two had always been so close. Sure, they had their disagreements lately, but what two people didn't after such a long friendship? But the two never reconciled. About a month after their fight, T.K. and his mom moved back to Kyoto. Their parents weren't stupid; they knew that something happened after the final battle that completely morphed them as people. T.K.'s mom probably thought that if she took her son away from the place where it happened, it would be easier on him. T.K. may have even suggested the move. She doesn't know.
As if losing her best friend wasn't horrible enough, her relationship with her older brother has become seemingly nonexistent. She and her brother used to be as close as two siblings could be. They were each others' closest confidantes. She would go to her brother for advice on everything.
And suddenly, she couldn't talk to him about anything. Every time they would look at each other, the knowledge of what they had participated in lingered. She could no longer look at her brother for the same reasons she couldn't look at her Digivice – it was a constant reminder.
She tried to place the blame on her brother, too. Everyone knew that she looked up to him and always trusted what he had to say. She tried to justify her actions by saying that she had trust that her older brother always knew best. Needless to say, he wasn't happy about that and snapped to her that she had to start owning up to her mistakes.
She and her brother hadn't had a real conversation in years. They lived in the same house but were essentially strangers. Aside from the, "Hi, how are you?" greetings they exchanged and other forced casual talk when their parents were around, they rarely spoke. She found herself counting down to when he would graduate high school and leave for college.
Sighing, she glanced up. Her mind had gotten lost in thought during her excruciatingly boring math class. Her eyes shifted sideways to where Davis was sitting, hunched over. His pencil was positioned over his notebook, but it was not moving. He was thinking about the same things she was.
She and Davis just happened to be in the same math class because both of them had let their schoolwork go over the years and thus were forced to take remedial math to make up for their absymal grades. It's difficult to focus on homework and tests and note-taking when her head is full of thoughts she can't get rid of. Unfortunately, it's even more difficult when she has a class with Davis, because every time she looks at him, she remembers.
Davis is the person she sees the most, aside from her brother. The rest of them are scattered about. T.K. is in Kyoto; Ken is across town, still at his private school; Mimi is in America; Joe graduated high school and went off to a university supposedly very far away; and Sora's family moved, but she's not sure exactly where. Everyone else that still lives in Odaiba just avoids each other at all costs. It's usually easy for her; no one else except Davis is in her same grade. If she can get away from Davis next year, then, with her brother away in college, maybe she'll be free.
He woke up at eleven-thirty in the morning. Groaning, he rolled over and rubbed his throbbing eyes. Once again, he had slept through his alarm clock and missed school. He didn't particularly care, though. School was no longer much of a priority to him. He hadn't been in attendance at all this week and his dad was rarely around for school officials to contact him. He expected to be kicked out soon. Whatever. He might as well drop out.
His head was pounding. His room was pitch black due to his drawn shades, which helped, but his head continued to throb. He sat up, putting a hand to his temple and taking a deep breath, before reaching into the top drawer of his nightstand. He pulled out a small baggie filled with a green herb. He poured a bit of it into multi-colored pipe buried beneath a pile of papers, a dirty paper plate, a few cans of soda, and other shit he had strewn about. Taking a lighter from his sweat pants pocket, he lit the pipe and inhaled deeply. He held his breath, keeping the smoke circulating in his lungs for about thirty seconds, before he exhaled the plume of smoke. A moment later he took another hit. Within minutes, he felt his headache clearing.
He turned on his lamp on the floor near his bed and picked up his acoustic guitar. It had been years since he'd played with a band of any kind, but he still played music every single day. Sometimes he sang, but usually he just strummed. It was hard for him to sing a song that matched his mood, because not many songwriters have been in the same situation he was in. He could always write his own, but if he wrote about it, then he would have to think about it, and he didn't like doing that. It would defeat the purpose of getting high.
As he picked aimlessly at the chords on his guitar, he wondered where he was going to be in a year. Still here, in his dark room, smoking joints as soon as he woke up and playing guitar all day long? It's what he'd been doing for so long, he couldn't imagine anything else.
Sometimes he wished T.K. was still in Odaiba. T.K. had always been the most important person in his life - his younger brother, someone he had to protect and watch out for. Most importantly, T.K. needed him. But not anymore. Not since he had made a horrible decision that surely shattered T.K.'s opinion of him. T.K. used to tell him, "Don't worry so much of what I think about you. I was there, too, and I agreed with you. I made the same awful decision as you. You're not responsible for what I do." But he just couldn't. T.K. may claim that he can make his own decisions, but, as his older brother, he should have taught him better.
T.K. got tired of trying to lift his spirits, so he just gave up completely. He suggested to their mom to move back to Kyoto and she jumped on the opportunity. T.K. just couldn't bear to be in Odaiba any longer, what with the constant reminders. He and T.K. haven't spoken in over a year. His father tries to get him to call T.K.; he always lies and said that he did while his dad was at work.
He wonders what Tai is doing. He doesn't really know what happened to anyone else, besides T.K. Well, and Sora. Sometimes he sees Tai when he goes to school, but they never talk. They used to be best friends, but they have nothing to say to each other anymore. Besides, Tai is the epitome of douchebag-ness. He hangs out with the biggest dicks at their school, bullies underclassmen, and is just overall an asshole. They don't have anything in common anymore.
He and Sora were kind of seeing each other at the time it happened. They weren't technically dating, but if their lives had continued like normal people's lives usually did, they would have dated. Afterwards, though, it became too much. They couldn't talk about anything except what happened. Their experiences together were rooted to the Digital World; those memories were forever tainted and thus so were the relationships formed during that time. They mutually broke off conact after about a month,
While he couldn't be around her one-on-one, he still looked forward to seeing her everyday. Seeing her, while inflicting horrible memories in him, also reminded him of a time where he had been truly happy for the first and only time in his life. He woke up in the morning and went to school every day just to see her. On the outside, she seemed to be normal. She kept her same friends (minus him, Tai, and the others), continued playing tennis, and did well in school. They would speak casually, if they saw each other in the hallways, but that was the extent of it.
Then, one day after summer vacation, she was gone. She wasn't at school for a week and he panicked. He asked one of her friends, who had given him a strange look. She told him that Sora had moved away right after the previous school year ended. Her family moved her two towns over because the school had a better sports program and tennis team. He knew that there was more to it, though - Sora had to get away from it, like T.K. had.
It was too hard to not blame himself. Everyone had a part in it, everyone willingly participated and agreed with it, but he was the one that bore the crest of friendship. He should have been the one to protest it. He shouldn't have let it happen.
He closed his eyes and inhaled. There were too many thoughts spiraling around in his mind and they were causing his head to hurt. He reached over to his pipe again and lit it. He took a hit and held it in for as long as he could before looking up to the his ceiling and blowing out smoke rings.
He placed his guitar back on its stand and stood up, stepping into the sunlight-filled living room. He squinted and shielded his eyes briefly, waiting for his eyes to get used to the light. Playing guitar was making him think too much; he was going to lose himself in television and not think about anything for the rest of the day.
He was always the brains. He was always the one that everyone went to when they needed a solution. He had the computer and the brain that absorbed information like a vacuum. He was the one that figured out what the Digital World was the first time they were there. He had always had an answer.
However, the time they needed one the most was the one time he couldn't come up with one.
He still can't understand what happened. There has always been an answer; they have always been able to rely on him to figure something out. What other use was there for the brainy kid with the ever-present laptop, anyway?
Unfortunately, his laptop was no longer permanently attatched to his back. The laptop that stayed with him through most of his travels in the Digital World was now abandoned and dusty in the far reaches of his closet. He had a new computer, a desktop so he cannot take it anywhere with him. He no longer extensively works on or studies computers. What good was it? They weren't able to help him when it was most important.
For months after everyone else had long given up, he still tried. He would sit in front of his computer all night long, until his vision blurred and his eyeballs ran bloodshot. He would type so swiftly and so long that the letters on the keys began to wear off. He once stayed up for seventy-six straight hours before passing out in the middle of his math class.
He just couldn't do it. His computer did not have the anwers that he was looking for and he didn't know where else to look. He couldn't understand why the portal wouldn't just open. No matter how long he left his Digivice sitting next to his computer, waiting for it to activate, nothing ever worked. The Digivice remained silent and the portal sealed.
After that, he found his faith in himself slipping drastically, like trying to cup liquid in one's hands. He had let everyone down. His grades dropped and he grew distant from his friends. They were all computer geeks and, when he abandoned his computer, the one thing they all had in common changed. He did make new friends, but it was just different. His new friends didn't know what the old him was like.
He wishes that he was still friends with the other Digidestined but it seemed like none of them wanted to be around each other. He couldn't understand why. He felt sick about the entire situation but that didn't mean he didn't want to be around everyone else. They were the only people in the world that knew how he felt. What he thought would happen was they would all become closer - boy, was he wrong.
He and Joe tried. They really did. But Joe preferred to be alone, like everyone else had. Joe broke it to him by skirting around the truth. He told him that if he wanted to go to medical school, he needed to focus and that he didn't really have time. Now he's away at college - all the way on the other side of the country.
He sighed and glanced up. He had arrived at his apartment building after walking home from school. As he adjusted his backpack, he mused at how he never got used to how light it was without the weight of his laptop.
He climbed up the stairs to his floor, wondering how many more times he would have to do it. His parents had been talking about moving to a different town. They, of course, had noticed the change in him and were extremely worried. He had refused going to see a therapist probably thirteen times and never told them what was wrong with him. They would never believe him, anyway. They did know that it was related to the war with the Digital World, though, and they thought that it would be healthy for him to get away. They held the same thought process that he was sure T.K.'s mom and Sora's parents had had when they moved away.
He wasn't sure how he thought about it. He wouldn't really mind moving; maybe if he moved away, he could start over. He could be around people that knew absolutely nothing about him and he could rebuild his life and himself. But at the same time, he had a strong connection with Odaiba and he was afraid that if he left it would symbolize him giving up for good.
She hates everyone.
She hates that she still feels sick about what happened, even four years later. She hates that she lives in America while everyone else is in Japan. She hates that she cried herself to sleep every single night for a year. She hates that no one wanted to talk to her or each other after it happened because they couldn't deal with their own decisions. She hates that she had to go through it all alone.
She just wanted them to be able to help each other. That's what they had always done. Sure, some of them had their disagreements and didn't always get along, but they had always been there for each. They had always been in it together. And suddenly, they weren't. Suddenly, everyone was living separate lives and didn't want anything to do with each other.
She tried to stay close with them. Pretty much all of them told her that they wanted alone time and then never got back to her. Izzy said that he too wished they could all be close again but even he was distant and vague to she gave up on him eventually, too.
She hated them all. For the first year, she would weep and pray as hard as she could that one of them would call her, tell her that it was okay, and just talk to her. She just wanted one of them to say to her that it was a mistake, but that it wasn't so bad because they had all made it together and they all understand. That never happened, though. Instead of supporting each other, they blamed each other. None of them ever called her so she was forced to wallow in her own guilt.
Her sorrow turned to anger after the first year. She grew furious at them all. Some friends they were! The most horrifying and tragic thing to ever happen in all of their lives and they all scattered. No support, no nothing. She couldn't stand thinking about any of it.
She hated throwing stuff away, but she gathered everything that reminded her of her old friends and the DigiWorld and put it in a box that was in the very back corner of her large walk-in closet; the beautiful pink hat Sora got her for her birthday one year; the stuffed flower that Palmon got her to remind her of her; and her Digivice.
She just wanted to forget it all. She wanted to forget about the friends that abandoned her. She wanted to forget about the Digimon that she couldn't seem to figure out how to get back to. It hurt too much remember the good times and to realize that she will never see any of them again. She sometimes wished that a machine like the one in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was real - a machine that could erase a certain event or person from someone's memory. Very late some nights, when she couldn't sleep because her memories kept her awake, she would want so badly to just erase them all and forget everything. No more Digiworld, no more Digidestined, no more Palmon. None of it would have happened.
It was one of those nights. It was two-thirty in the morning and she had school the next day but she was wide awake. She hugged her pillow to her face as tears streamed down her face. She wanted to go back and redo it all. She wished that she could travel back in time and change what happened so that everything could be normal.
And, of course, it would bring him back.