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).
And that's the end of this little fic. I originally planned it to be longer, but in the process this has become the stepping stone to a more detailed multichip. It'll be a while yet because I can only handle one rewrite of the same season at a time (especially when the other one also involves Osamu instead of Ken). The first main fic will be called The Virus in the Digital World…when it starts being written. :D
unchosen
8. there is a possibility and within it a sacrifice to be made
There had been no contact details, but maybe Oikawa Yukio had known Osamu could easily get those from his father, and he did. He sought out the man who had offered a possibility. He sought that possibility itself.
Sadly, he was to find that the possibility was very slim. But it was there. There was a connection – something those children who had digivices just like Ken's but knew nothing had never known – and with that connection, a road could be built.
And he learned that Oikawa Yukio was another man who wanted to build that road.
They were the same, Oikawa and Osamu. The survivors when they were the worthless ones, the ones who should have died. The mourners, mourning for those who should have continued living on. For Oikawa, it was his best friend. For Osamu, it was his little brother. For both of them, it was the light of their lives they'd lost.
And in each other, there was a sparkle of hope left to be found.
Oikawa had the knowledge, because he'd listened where Osamu had blocked his ears. But he didn't have the skills. Osamu had those: years of honing them – for nothing, he'd thought.
But it wasn't for nothing any more.
He had something to work towards now. Something to hope towards. A gate that he had to open. A world that he had to reach. A puzzle that he had to finish. His brother's puzzle. His brother's life. His brother's destiny.
That digivice was the key, but it was Ken's digivice and it didn't do a thing. Not for Osamu. Not for Oikawa. Not for their despair.
But the secret still lay within it, and Osamu searched and searched.
He forgot about the other children. He forgot about that persona of himself he'd built. That everyone except for Ken had been subjected to. He'd never driven towards anything like he was driving towards this.
And, with the progress Oikawa had made, with where he'd screeched to a halt, there was hope. There was a platform he could work off. Improve. Oikawa had a spider and a mummy as avatars on the other side. It didn't take Osamu long to create his own avatar – a barely cracked egg that he could send through the gate.
That was the extent of Oikawa's progress, but Osamu was there now. He worked on progressing it. Worked in the darkness, with that little bit of light to push him on. Not guide him, because it wasn't bright enough to guide him. But still, push him on.
He pushed and pushed and pushed until one day his brother's digivice turned black and pear-shaped and a gate to somewhere opened.