February 12, 2010
AN: I wrote the first half of this in December and the second half today, as I am enjoying a wonderful eight hour bus and train ride home from school. How I love sitting for half of my day! Not. But it's okay, because the train is fairly comfortable and I am able to get some writing done! It's either this or catch up on my five days worth of math homework, study for my math midterm, or do astronomy homework. I think I'll write.
I hope you enjoy this chapter!
The Ultimate Sacrifice
Chapter 2
He should've known that it was too good to be true.
The first time that he had ever had friends, had ever felt accepted and wanted by people that weren't his parents, had been such a high point in his life - but he should have known that it wouldn't last. Good things like that didn't happen to him.
He's glad that he lives across town from everyone. He doesn't have to worry about them seeing them and having to deal with constantly being reminded of what happened.
Besides, he remembers enough anyway. He doesn't get much sleep at night. His head is too full of everything; thoughts, memories, regrets, what could have been. After his sixth time falling asleep in school, his parents took him to the doctor. He had lied and told his doctor that he was just overwhelmed by his studies. The doctor had believed him and told his parents not to worry. He became better at being discrete about his sleeping patterns; instead of sleeping during class, he would hold off until lunch.
His insomnia has faded over the last four years but it is definitely still there. For the first year he got an average of two hours of sleep per night. On weekends he would pass out from exhaustion and then the cycle would repeat itself.
After the first year, he got better at clearing his head so that what was inside of it didn't keep him up all night long. It didn't work all the way, but it helped. He started getting around five hours of sleep at night, which meant that he no longer fell asleep during the school day. It had been so long since he'd been able to sleep through the night like a normal person that he didn't even remember what it was like.
Sometimes, on nights where he knows he won't be able to sleep, he decides to try and at least use his time productively. He'll take out his Digivice, set it next to his computer, and try to find a portal. He's never able to, of course. Izzy Izumi could never find one and if he can't, no one can. But he at least had to try.
Other times, he would try to talk to Wormmon through it. After all, the Digivice was the one thing he had as a link to the Digital World. It may have not lit up in over four years but once upon a time it had. That means that there's always a possibility that it will activate again.
In any case, it never worked. He never opened a portal and he was never able to effectively communicate with Wormmon. He often pretended that he could, though. He could talk to his Digivice as if it was really Wormmon and tell him about his life. He would tell him about how guilty he was over what had happened and how no one was friends anymore; how his times with Wormmon and the other Digidestined in the Digital World were the best times of his life; how he distanced himself from his parents because everyone that he loved in his life seemed to disappear in some way - his brother, his friends - and they could be next. He always felt so foolish after realizing that he had talked to a miniature computer for an hour, but he would always find himself doing it again.
Sometimes he missed the Digital World so much it hurt. Even though much of it was spent fighting, he missed it terribly. Except, of course, the part of it spent when he was evil. That wasn't so great. And what's more, he never thought that something would happen in his life that would make him feel even worse than what he did to the Digital World during that time. Yes, he was awful, but he was also brainwashed and didn't realize what he was doing. With this, he was one-hundred percent liable. He knew exactly what he was doing and what it entailed. They all did. They were all guilty.
He didn't really know what everyone else was up to. For all he knew, they all could have packed up and moved to Europe and he would never know. Odaiba was big and he lived all the way across town. He hadn't seen any of them since the couple weeks after it happened - the last time they had all met at Izzy's to discuss what they were going to do. After that, he heard nothing from anyone.
He missed them a lot. Them and Wormmon - what he wouldn't give for everything to be normal again. His greatest wish is that one morning he would wake up to his phone ringing, a call from Izzy saying they were going back. Even if it was to fight - he would be elated. He would be out the door and to Izzy's in five seconds.
But phone calls never came. His Digivice never activated. A portal never opened. Wormmon never answered him. It would never change.
She always had a short temper, but it had gotten even shorter over the last few years. Her parents and older siblings tread around her now as if she was a bomb about to go off. If they said anything wrong, she would yell at them and usually stay angry for days.
She wasn't really angry at them, though. It was really anger at herself; she just took it out on other people. It's easier to yell at other people than herself. Besides, it worked as a win-win situation. Since people were so afraid that she would explode on them, they tended to leave her alone, which is just what she wanted. She didn't really want to talk to anyone.
At school, she was left alone. When a person snaps at others for just being asked a simple question, that person tends to develop a negative reputation and is thus avoided. Whatever. Who needs them, anyway? She doesn't care if they think she's a freak. It's not like she has anything to talk about with anyone. None of them understand.
One problem with her ever-worsening attitude was that her parents stuck her at work in their family store more and more. Otherwise she was just sitting at home doing nothing, so her parents reasoned that they might as well put her to work. And this was a problem because her convenience store is right near her school and is a popular spot for teenagers to buy snacks for cheap. So while she got to spend all of her school day with people she hated, she had to deal with them buying food from her after school and on weekends too. The best times were Saturday nights when her school was having formal dances and girls would walk in with slutty dresses and five-inch high heels and a suit-wearing boy on their arm and buy gum and giggle at her because she was wearing her uniform and glasses and sitting, very bored, behind the counter.
She wondered what it was like to lead a life where a person never had to think or worry about anything. Sure, her peers would complain that they had to worry about homework and tests and friends, but those weren't real worries. A few years from now they'll look back and remember how stupid they were for caring about these things.
But that's not the same with her. She has real worries. She has real problems. She looks back on her experiences in the DigiWorld and those had been real worries. Fighting to save the world from evil creatures was something that she didn't look back on after a year and laugh about. Maybe some things about it they all would have laughed together about, but the situation as a whole was a serious one.
And then, of course, there was what happened to him.
That was definitely no laughing matter. It was something she will never, ever laugh about. She will be one-hundred and fifteen years old, living in an old home with only nurses to keep her company, and she will still never laugh about what happened four years ago. None of them will.
In fact, she rarely laughs at all anymore. She's usually in such a bad mood at all times that there isn't anything that makes her want to laugh. But if she ever does laugh at something, she immediately thinks of what happens and stops. It doesn't seem fair that she is able to laugh.
The only time she feels something other than anger is when she feels lonely. Sometimes her loneliness completely envelops and she doesn't know what to do. Things would be so different if it had never happened. Maybe she would be one of those girls wearing fancy dresses with a cute boy on her arm as she made her way to a formal dance. Maybe she would be like one of those girls she saw whenever her mother dragged her to the mall, trying on clothes and giggling with friends.
Maybe she wouldn't feel as if she was living an empty existence every single day of her life.
It helps being really far away.
Sometimes he feels bad, because his mom will ask him to please visit for a long weekend or to stay longer than two days in the winter (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) but he doesn't like it. His parents' new apartment is right near the Bay, the site where most of their battles took place. He doesn't like being near it because he doesn't like thinking about it.
When he was in high school, he drowned himself in his schoolwork. He did nothing but study for hours on end. He had no friends to distract him and no hobbies to take up his time. He just studied constantly.
His high school graduation couldn't have come faster. It worked out in his favor that the top pre-medical school in Japan was on the other side of the country; thankfully he got in and he packed up his bags and moved out his house within the week of his graduation. He told his parents that he needed to go down as early as possible to get started on his studies.
Well, this wasn't a total lie.
He's really good at forgetting. He's really good at being able to immerse himself in one thing and allowing that to completely take over his mind. It's why he's always done so well in school. It didn't change when he went to college. His classes were harder and more challenging than he ever could have imagined so he just shut himself in his dorm room or spent hours in the library and he was able to get everything done.
He didn't make friends, he didn't get involved in extracurricular activities – he just studied.
Studying took complete mental ability. When a person is studying, they can't be thinking of anything else. But when a person is hanging out with friends, their minds can wander. When a person is watching a sports game or hanging out at a party, they don't have to focus all of their brainpower on what is going on at that exact moment.
And when his mind wanders, it goes to places that he doesn't want it to go. It goes back four years ago to that day, the day that everything changed: the last day that he was a part of a group; the last day he had friends; the last day that he had a sense of purpose in the world. Sure, he wanted to be a doctor and, based on his grades and work ethics so far, he was going to be a damn good one. But he didn't get the same feeling that he used to get. Being a doctor wasn't what his life was leading up to.
It's not like he can do anything to change it, though. He can never go back. It can never be the same. It can never be undone.
He never thought that he would ever want to leave Odaiba. But then again, he never thought that something so horrific would ever happen that would make his stomach churn just by looking at simple sites throughout the city. It got to the point that he couldn't look at the Bay, his dad's TV station, or even his school. Every day that he went to school, memories came to him that he couldn't deal with.
Then, it became people that he couldn't look at, and, worst of all, those people were his friends. His own brother. The girl he'd loved as more than a best friend. Suddenly, he couldn't look at them.
He didn't last much longer in Odaiba after it happened. It was four, maybe five, months. He couldn't even make it through the rest of the school year. His mom knew something was up – their parents weren't stupid; they knew something had happened. They didn't know what, but they knew that something about the Final Battle had messed with them.
His mom was elated when he suggested they move back to Kyoto. He suspected that she'd wanted to go back as soon as all the fighting began, but she never did because she knew he had to be in Odaiba. When he recommended moving, it was his way of telling her that the fighting was done for forever.
Unfortunately, she didn't realize that is also meant he was going to break off contact from his brother. He and Matt hadn't spoken in probably three years. Every time his mother would tell him to call Matt, he would lie and said he did it while she was at work. After a few months, he knew that she stopped believing him but she couldn't do anything about it.
It was strange being in Kyoto. It was weird no longer having the burden of the world's safety sagging on his shoulders. It was hard to get used to only worrying about schoolwork.
He didn't make friends that easily; he became friends again with the people he'd known from junior high, when he used to live in Kyoto, but he was very different from the person he used to be and the person they used to know. He didn't really make any new ones. He just hung around with his old friends, who didn't care that he was different because they'd known each other for so long. Without them, he'd probably spend more of his time alone.
Even though he was a little different, he kept himself busy. When he wasn't hanging out with his friends, he was exercising at the gym, playing basketball, swimming, biking, or doing something else that kept his mind focused. He even was able to keep his grades fairly high. His mother was delighted at the seemingly positive change in him. She would constantly remark on how the move to Odaiba was a bad choice and that they should never have left Kyoto.
What she doesn't know is that, very slowly, his constant activity was taking its toll on him. He doesn't sleep well at night because he has frequent nightmares. It has nearly gotten to the point where he is subconsciously afraid to go to sleep and his body will keep him awake for as long as possible. When he does sleep, it is not a deep sleep and he is woken up, on average, one to three times every night.
Three years, give or take a few months, of him keeping his busy and mind as busy as possible combined with not getting enough sleep has started to make him feel unwell. He doesn't know what to do about it, though. He can't stop what he's been doing because then he knows he'll sink into a sort of depression. He can't tell his mom about his sleeping patterns because then she'll ask why he gets nightmares, and he can never tell her or anyone else.
He has no choice but to continue with his normal habits. He'll make it. He'll find a way to get by on minimal sleep. He doesn't know what else to do.