A/N: Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).
unchosen
6. in the still tender grey, the whispers from an ocean arose
He switched on his computer. It seemed his entire world now, save the bare necessities of his human frame, demanded it. It hummed lightly, a loud sound in the silence, as it booted. It didn't demand a password. With only the two of them ever using it and it almost always on anyway, it hadn't needed one. Oosamu had had other ways of protecting things he couldn't afford to lose, and Ken had always been careful with his things.
Like they were made from some priceless glass that would become useless when shattered.
The desktop came up, along with two blinking envelopes. Someone had sent him mail. And not one. But two.
Both were emails to his personal account. Surprising, because his personal account was supposed to be just that: personal. He had another for everyday things, and that's the one he'd given to everybody. Only his family had the personal account. And friends. Ken's friends, since Osamu didn't have anyone he could call a friend. But surely Ken's friends knew they would only be getting Osamu on that address now.
It might be hate mail, he thought with some amusement. Or it might be Ken. Or both.
He didn't believe that. Not really. Ken might have, if he'd been the one to survive and Osamu had just been run over like he should have, and like any other idiot freezing in the path of an incoming car would have.
But he hadn't been run over. He'd survived and Ken who'd shoved him with more strength than Osamu had known he'd possessed had ended up dead instead.
He opened the first one, recognising the name. A work associate of his father's. Maybe that was who'd given him it.
But the email was nothing like a father's work associate would be writing to a boy.
His hand was shaking as he got out of it. Digital World… Death… Escape… Ken… Destiny…
His eyes stuck on two particular lines. 'For you, it would have been escape…' and '…with his unfortunate death, now it falls to you to carry out your brother's destiny and continue your own unfortunate existence…'
Unfortunate… Unfortunate existence…
The car was supposed to hit him that day. He was supposed to die and, in doing so, set both himself and his brother free.
He laughed dryly, gripping the edge of his desk. I was supposed to die. I should have died.
Well, he'd always known that.