February 26, 2010
AN: I think this is the shortest gap between updates so far. Yay! After I wrote chapter 1, I was bored at home for the weekend and I wrote this chapter, chapter 4, and half of chapter 5. It's starting to get good! Next chapter you'll know what The Event is that happened. Hopefully you're not disappointed… :)
The Ultimate Sacrifice
Chapter 3
He never thought he would resent being a leader.
He always thrived on leadership. Being a leader was something that just came naturally to him. He just felt comfortable standing in front of a group of people and telling them what needed to be done. It didn't matter if it was with a group of his friends or a group of strangers. Taking charge was just something he did.
Over his years as being considered one of the leaders of the Digidestined, he'd never really cared about the negatives. Sure, there were problems over time and there were sometimes people who questioned, and even challenged, his leadership, but he didn't mind. He liked a challenge. Usually he was right or, if not, he learned from it. There's always room for improvement.
But he never thought that anything like this would ever happen. This is something that he cannot make right. This is something that never should have happened in the first place. This is something that made him realize he is not worthy of being a leader. A true leader would never have let something like this happen. Everyone has flaws, but a leader was supposed to have more sense than this.
Not a day goes by that he doesn't blame himself. Yes, everyone played a part and everyone made the same mistake, but he held the most blame of all. He was the leader. Everyone looks to leaders to make the right decisions. Like the CEO of a company, he has to take responsibility for what everyone else was involved in.
He doesn't take charge anymore. He has become extremely passive instead of being assertive. He doesn't make decisions for a group of people anymore. In group projects at school, he takes a back seat. When hanging out with his friends, he doesn't make suggestions. He follows what everyone else says and does not hold an opinion. If someone picks a bad movie to go see, everyone blames that person. He never realized how easy it was to stay out of trouble and keep life simple by not being a leader.
Sometimes he has to stop himself. It hasn't always been easy. He still has an instinct inside of him to speak up when something is being done that he thinks is stupid or doesn't agree with. He's gotten pretty good at holding himself back, though. Four years of practice has made him a master.
He's counting down the days until he graduates from high school and finally leaves this place. He can't wait to leave Odaiba behind and not have to deal with what it represents to him. He is ready to leave behind everything he knows, including the people, to start a new life. He'll always love his parents and, of course, his sister, but that doesn't mean he's ready to not see them for a very long time.
It's especially hard to be around Kari. They used to be exceptionally close but now they barely talk. He loves his sister but she's been reacting to what happened in the complete opposite way that he has. While he blames himself completely, she blames everyone else. She tries to blame everyone else for what happened and claim that her silence makes her innocent. It is because of this attitude that she and T.K. don't speak anymore, as well as why he can't stand talking to her.
One thing he misses is soccer. When his grades start going down, his parents forced him to quit – although he had been planning it for a while. He just didn't have the energy to continue with it. He could barely attend school every day. He was just so sick of being in Odaiba that he barely could wake up every morning. He lived for his weekends when he and his friends would go out and rage every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.
He loved alcohol. He loved how it tasted, he loved what it did to him, and he loved how it made him not think about anything important. It was the only thing he did in Odaiba that didn't make him itching to leave. He loved getting drunk with his friends and he knew he would miss those nights – but the wonderful thing about alcohol is that he could drink it anywhere.
She thought that maybe moving to a new place would be easier.
And, well, she was sort of right.
A few months after the Final Battle, she convinced her parents that the high school a couple towns over from Odaiba had a much better tennis program and that she would be happier there. Her parents were confused; she'd always loved Odaiba. She'd grown up there and all of her best friends were there. Her desire to leave had taken them completely by surprise. However, they complied, and once the school year got out they moved.
She was sad for a while. After all, she'd never lived anywhere but Odaiba. As hard as it was for her to be around them, she missed all of her friends, particularly Tai and Matt. They grew apart fairly quickly after the Final Battle, but she still enjoyed seeing them at school every day. The knowledge that she will likely never see either again was hard to accept sometimes.
She tried to commit herself completely to tennis once she moved away from Odaiba. She played constantly and got much better than she ever thought she could get. She keeps herself busy with friends, school, and tennis so much that she doesn't get a time to rest.
Every once in a while, though, she breaks down – probably once every other month. She'll wake up after a horrible nightmare and just won't be able to get out of bed. On these days, she has no control over herself and she has no energy whatsoever. She'll just lie in bed all day, crying on and off, and won't do anything. God forbid she has a tennis competition or a test on those days – she won't go. She just can't.
She hates herself for what happened. She legitimately hates herself. She has the crest of love but she doesn't deserve it. She was right all those years ago when she said that she didn't deserve it. She was stupid for listening to everyone. There was a reason it didn't light up for so long. She was so selfish; she shouldn't have the crest of love.
Her mom worried, but didn't ask questions. Her dad is never around and doesn't really notice anything. Her mom has always been passive. If her mom knows that she doesn't want to talk about something, she won't even ask. Her mom doesn't force her to go to school or to tennis or anything when she's having one of her days. Not that she would go, anyway.
She doesn't know if she will ever be able to forgive herself. She really doesn't. She cannot even imagine one scenario for her life that includes her forgiving herself. Whenever she thinks about her future, she always imagines herself going to college, having a job, getting married, and raising a family – but in the end, she is never completely happy. She is never happy because she can never stop hating herself. She doesn't know how she will be happy to get married because she has trouble just keeping friends. It's hard to love someone else when she can't even love herself.
Sometimes she tries to think of ways to make everything right, but she can never reach a solution. She was never the smart one of the group. Sure, she was smart, but people didn't go to her for answers on things like this. Izzy couldn't figure it out, Joe couldn't figure it out. If they couldn't do it, there was no way she could figure it out. And every time she can't figure it out, it makes her more depressed. It further confirms that nothing will ever change and that she will never be happy again.
She buries her face in her pillow. It's one of those days again. She can't stop thinking about everything and it's making her feel worthless. Everything good that she ever did for the world was completely worthless. None of it mattered anymore. So what if she helped save the world? It didn't matter because he was gone and she didn't do anything to stop it. She let him go and that was the worst thing she ever could have done.
The world might as well have ended.
He sits cross-legged on his bed on a Thursday night, not doing his homework but instead looking through the many notebooks that he has filled up with his thoughts and theories. He has completed three full notebooks worth of ideas and he had begun a fourth. Every night, if he had nothing new to contemplate, he would flip through those notebooks and try to delve deeper into old ideas but nothing ever came out of it. Four years with no success.
He would never give up, though. Everyone else had given up but he never would. Everyone else is too busy feeling sorry for themselves and crying over their mistakes but he wouldn't let himself waste any time. It was even more important for him to find a way to make it right because no one else would. He had to make up for ten people's refusal to help.
He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and stood up, stretching his arms and his cramped legs. He had been sitting on his bed, hunched over his notebooks, as it grew ever darker for hours and he only just realized how uncomfortable he was. He turned on his light and it burned his eyes momentarily. He sat down at his computer and set his Digivice next to the blank, blue screen. It never activated or opened a portal, but he always kept the two next to each other, just in case. He could never be certain that it won't open out of the blue.
He yawned, noticing how late it was. He didn't like sleeping, as it wasted time, but he reasoned that he won't be able to get anything done if he's exhausted. Without changing his clothes, he climbs into his bed and shuts off his light. Closing his eyes, he turns over towards his wall and lets his eyes droop.
"I'm going to save you," he whispered into his room, pitch-black except for the light coming from his computer. "I owe it to you. Don't worry, Cody… I'm going to find you."