The trailmon slows. Through the fogged-over windows, the ice plains give way to a great crater that the tracks circle the edge of.

Renamon presses his face to the cold glass to peer at the settlement crowded onto the floor of the crater, where the icy slopes level out to make way for sparse shrubbery and tundra flowers and, beyond those, squat buildings. Series of ropes supporting lifts extend from the top of the ice down to the edge of the town at several points around the crater, including from the train station. A towering structure in the center of the town casts a shadow across the entire settlement.

Even with the gloom from it, the town of Akiba Market is a spot of welcome color after hours of sheer white. Every roof seems painted a different shade, and he doesn't spot a speck of snow on any of them.

"Can we take a break here?"

Duskmon stirs. He zones out sometimes in a way Renamon doesn't think anyone else does – he's not present enough for it to be daydreaming and too quick to recover for it to be sleep, and he never remembers a thought or event from those periods. He didn't even realize it happens until Renamon asked him about it. Renamon's a little jealous; it must make boring stretches of time pass by in a blink.

Undisturbed, Duskmon can last in that state for hours, but it doesn't take much of a commotion to draw him back to awareness. A direct address from a voice he recognizes is always enough.

"Sure," Duskmon answers.

"What?" says Izumi. "There isn't time to waste – "

"I'm tired," Renamon snaps, shoulders hunching. They've slept the past three nights on three different trailmon lines. Before that came four hours spent clinging to Anemoimom's back as she galloped through the air over an expanse of unbroken blue, Renamon speaking over the wind the whole while about any nonsense subject he could think of. (Without giving a reason, Anemoimon asked him to keep talking through the journey, and Duskmon only said, oddly grimly, "If you can, Renamon.") Pacing up and down the train car isn't doing anything for the itch in his legs anymore.

"One day won't make a difference," Duskmon says. In their reflections in the window, Renamon sees Izumi watching Duskmon, expression hard, and Duskmon tilting his head to meet her gaze across the aisle. "No one will stop you from going ahead if you're in that much of a rush."

Izumi agrees like the words are being pried out of her with a knife.

The instant the trailmon stops and the car door slides open, Renamon bounds for the platform.

The cold hits immediately once he crosses the threshold, the wind flattening his fur and snaking up against his skin, but at least it isn't the overbearing tension of the train. Duskmon and Izumi, left in a small room together for five seconds, weigh the atmosphere down enough to suffocate any attempt at producing not just words but any sound at all.

He shifts on his feet while waiting for the other two, trading which paw has contact with the ground whenever the chill begins to set into his bones.

Izumi exits after Duskmon. She pauses on the last stair to look at Renamon, and then she sighs and something about her expression softens, tension relaxing and shadows melting away. Renamon can't read what changed, or why, but, as she steps down to the platform, she looks like a different person than the one who spent most of the last week unhappy.

Outside in the open cold, with the weight of Izumi's and Duskmon's discontent only a memory, he nearly forgets why he wanted to stop here at all. Surely he could have borne another few days until they reached the Continent of Darkness. The quicker they find Izumi's friend, the quicker they can make sure he's safe. He's more important than Renamon's mild annoyance.

Renamon begins quietly, not looking anyone in the eye, "Actually, I think..." But he doesn't know how to say, a minute after exiting the car, Actually, let's just get back on, I was wrong. He sways a step closer to Duskmon and leans against his arm.

Duskmon hasn't wholly recovered. Even though his armor has mostly grown back, the plating around his neck still bears faint dents, and his injured shoulder eye looks a little cloudy under light even though the visible injuries have healed and Renamon can touch it without causing pain. Duskmon said that digimon can heal from anything given long enough, which Renamon will only feel safe believing once he sees it happen.

Izumi sighs again. "It's warmer by the furnace," she says, waving at the looming structure at the center of the crater before carefully wrapping her arms around herself.

She told Renamon that her arm doesn't hurt anymore, and for a few days she went back to moving normally, but afterwards she suddenly started being more cautious with it again. A faint shadow of a bloodstain that she couldn't completely wash out still covers her sleeve, and below that, encircling her arm beneath the shoulder, sits a wide, bumpy growth that Renamon knows exists because it's raised high enough off of the surrounding skin for her shirt to faintly mold around it.

She won't talk about it. He catches her scratching at it sometimes, with a look in her eyes like she would rather tear it off completely.

"Probably a scar," Duskmon said when Renamon brought it up without Izumi present. "Digimon regenerate, but humans need to heal. It's different. She'll have the reminder for the rest of her life. I don't know why she didn't let her Human Spirit take the damage instead."

She and Duskmon aren't trying to kill each other anymore, but they each bear the signs that they did it once and could get back to it at any point. Renamon mostly tries to ignore it, with extremely mixed results.

"You've been here before, neesan?" he asks.

Izumi says, "Yeah. One time. Ranamon's followers stole our things and came to Akiba Market to sell them."

"Ranamon?" he echoes, looking up at Duskmon. The name's vaguely familiar. Still, he hopes it's no one Duskmon knows who did that to Izumi's group. Most digimon types have more than a single member, so it could have been a different ranamon.

But Duskmon answers, "Ranamon of Water. There's only one. If I have my way, you'll never meet her."

"Yeah," says Izumi. While Renamon's struggling to find a place in his worldview for the idea of Izumi and Duskmon agreeing on any point, she continues with strained lightness, "It's almost like all of your allies are terrible people."

"They each have ulterior motives," Duskmon says, which even Renamon can't help noticing isn't a denial.

"Arbormon didn't seem like he did. And I guess you don't, either."

Oh. That's why Renamon couldn't bear staying on the train, he remembers now. If he heard them get into one more barely-civil interaction, he would have crawled out of a window and taken up residence on the roof.

"I want to explore on my own," he declares before Duskmon can provoke Izumi. Again. Leaving the two of them alone together has, to date, achieved no progress whatsoever in convincing them to get along, but that's not even Renamon's goal anymore.

Izumi blinks while Duskmon glances down into the crater that houses the town. Izumi says, "Are you sure that's...?"

"Renamon," Duskmon says, measured, "do you know which way south is?"

Renamon freezes, and then he thinks to look up. The sun rises in the east, and currently it's still morning... he needs a a moment to find the sun, a pale silver glow through a cloud bank not far above the horizon, but once he does he points it out. "That's east."

"That's northeast," says Duskmon.

"...What? But – "

"The sun moves."

"That's cheating!"

Duskmon absently pats Renamon's head as he turns to Izumi. "Hey, do you have a compass?"

"I don't," she says, still watching Renamon with an odd expression. "I've never needed one."

"Renamon, this station is due south of the furnace. Can you find your way back here?"

"I can ask people for directions."

"Will you do that?"

Unbidden, the memory rises of Duskmon's dead weight as Renamon hauled him out of the pit. "I can if I have to." There is a lot, he has discovered, that he can do if he has to.

Duskmon gives a slow nod, but Izumi says, "This doesn't feel like a good idea."

"It's not," Duskmon says.

Renamon didn't expect a decision this straightforward to start a debate. "I'll be fine."

"Yes." Duskmon pauses, considering Renamon while Renamon puts up with the scrutiny with ill grace, and then continues, "Shout if you need me. I'll be there. Otherwise, I'll wait at the bottom of the lift. I'll come find you if you're not back by sundown."

"I don't think I'll take that long." Renamon glances at the lift and hesitates again – before very, very recently, he's never gone far enough that he couldn't hear Duskmon's voice at a normal volume – but then he steels himself and turns away. "See you later."

("You're really letting him go alone?"

"Obviously not. I'm following him."

"...I'm coming, too.")

Recently, whenever Renamon thinks he can do anything, the situation changes just enough that he can't anymore.

He could go off on his own on the island, but there he only needed to navigate terrain, not people, and he never strayed so far that he couldn't return to Duskmon in less than a minute. He can hold a conversation with someone who isn't Duskmon or Cherubimon, but only if that someone is Izumi. Even though Duskmon gave him currency to barter with, he hasn't eaten since getting off of the train because he doesn't know the procedure for approaching a vendor to buy food.

He can get to all kinds of places now that he has legs, but it doesn't matter when he doesn't know where he is or where he's going. Despite having spent his life traveling, he hasn't learned the first thing about navigation or trip planning because Duskmon manages logistics and Renamon has never asked.

In other words, about two hours into the visit he admits to himself that he doesn't want to be alone anymore, tries to find the trailmon station, realizes he was so focused on his anxiety that he forgot to keep track of landmarks while he walked, and spends a mortifying, frustrating amount of time hesitating in the middle of the street as he tries to muster the strength to bother a passerby for directions.

If he tells Duskmon about it later, he thinks Duskmon will answer with something like, None of those people matter. Their opinions don't matter. Do what you have to. Don't think about them.

Maybe Renamon's imaginary Duskmon is right – the real Duskmon usually is – but at the same time he can't be right. Renamon is one of these people too, after all, and Renamon matters.

A local notices and takes pity on him. He took too many turns, she tells him. The reason he can't find the station is because it's on the other side of the furnace, blocked from view. She can show him the way.

Renamon's happy enough to follow her, up until she makes to lead them down what is blatantly a dead end.

"Um," he says, slowing.

"There's a shortcut through here," says PicoDevimon with a smile. "I know it doesn't look like it, but I promise there is."

He can't think of a reason why she would lie to him, and she probably knows the area better than him, but right then he spots another friendly-looking passerby. Renamon just wants to confirm that PicoDevimon actually knows where they're going, so he slinks over to hail the stranger.

"Huh?" When Renamon asks, the digimon nods in the same direction PicoDevimon has been leading Renamon in. Then the stranger frowns up at Renamon. "Are you listening to PicoDevimon's directions?"

"Hey," PicoDevimon snaps, "butt out. This has nothing to do with you."

Renamon glances between the two of them. He doesn't want to get caught up in an argument. He's spent the past week getting caught up in arguments. "I just wanted to check..."

"Good point," the snowman digimon says, ignoring Renamon. "It doesn't." He adjusts his hold on the concerningly heavy-looking crates he's hauling, one over each shoulder, and gets back to walking.

"Do you want help?" Renamon asks. "With carrying those," he clarifies when the digimon shoots him a baffled look.

"No. I don't know you."

It takes Renamon a second to make the connection that the digimon means he might try to steal the boxes.

Meanwhile, PicoDevimon says, "Do you still want me to show you the way or not? I'm taking time out of my day for you."

Renamon wavers. He needs and deeply appreciates the help, but she definitely just tried to head down a dead end. Plus she apparently has a history of offering questionable navigation.

"You don't want to follow her," the other digimon calls over his shoulder, not sounding as if he cares either way.

PicoDevimon squawks. "You just said – !"

"I'm not doing anything."

The digimon's getting farther away. "Thank you for all the help," Renamon tells PicoDevimon hurriedly, "I'll stop bothering you now." He jogs to catch up with the stranger, leaving PicoDevimon behind.

The stranger giggles. "I shouldn't have done that." He composes himself quickly, and he asks, "Why're you following me now?"

"Um." The stranger is heading in the general direction of the station as verified by PicoDevimon. Latching onto him isn't a bad idea. "You seem nice?"

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"I'm Renamon."

"...Guess you are, yep," the stranger says. Renamon's not sure anymore why he thought he might be friendly. Nice, yes, for giving Renamon directions when he didn't need to, but he seems too occupied to be friendly. "What d'you want the train station for?"

"I have to get back there before dark."

"Or else what?"

Duskmon doesn't like it when Renamon talks about him too much. "I, uh" – maybe if Renamon doesn't refer to Duskmon by name – "someone will come looking." The stranger doesn't reply, and after a moment Renamon asks, "Are you sure you don't want help with carrying those?"

"Nope, thanks," the stranger says, side-eyeing Renamon. "Where'd you say you were from? A village with five people in the middle of nowhere?"

Renamon blinks. "I didn't say that. I'm – not from anywhere. I've been to lots of places."

"What, really?" The stranger purses his mouth, then says, "I've only ever lived in Akiba. So, if it's directions you want, you could've always picked worse. Somehow."

He moves to the side of the road, Renamon following, as a monochromon who takes up the entire street trudges by. Something about what the stranger said doesn't ring right.

Renamon asks, "You've never been anywhere else?"

Instead of replying, the stranger pauses under the nearest building's eaves, stacks his crates on the ground, and points at the intersection up ahead. "Okay, for the train station you turn left there and keep going. The furnace has to stay on your right, so make turns that keep it there. The train station's at the top of the ice, you'll probably spot it in twenty minutes if you keep going at the speed you were just now, if you miss it then I don't know how. If you get lost again just ask somebody else. Somebody who's not PicoDevimon. Or yell for your friend, I guess. You seriously need to learn how to do things on your own."

Yeah. Renamon does. "Thank you," he says, but he doesn't move yet. The stranger stoops to retrieve the crates, and Renamon begins, "Um – "

"I can carry these by myself," the stranger interrupts, glancing narrow-eyed up at Renamon.

The boxes still look too heavy for comfort, but Renamon nods – that wasn't what he wanted to ask about anyway – and then blurts, "Do you know the name Izumi?"

"Never heard of it."

"It's a person's name, not a place."

The stranger stalls in the middle of hefting the second crate. "What kind of name is that?"

It is an unusual name. Calling someone without a -mon feels like eating a sandwich with no bread or getting rained on by a storm with no clouds. "It's a human's name, she's not a digimon. But she can turn into a digimon... sometimes. She..."

...had a character on her wrist that looks like the one on your chest, but hers read wind instead of ice.

The words stick in Renamon's throat. He saw that character only one time, between the moons and sea, before Izumi devolved back into a human and blood poured down her arm from a cut Duskmon left.

Renamon doesn't remember that night very well, most of it a vague impression – the thickly salty smell of the ocean, Izumi screaming, Duskmon saying awful things in response – but a few details stick out photo-perfect from the blur. How Izumi looked before she devolved is one.

But he doesn't want to bring any part of that night back into the world by talking about it, especially not to someone uninvolved who's probably happier not knowing any of it.

Evolving and devolving are supposed to shunt injuries onto the form that the person is transitioning out of (or, according to Duskmon, at least into a form other than the one that the person is transitioning into), not let them follow a person into the new form. They can carry over, but only through a conscious decision. When Renamon evolved, he didn't want anything from Wanyamon coming with him, so none of it did.

But, in the moment, he was scared that it would anyway. He had only just watched it happen that way for Izumi.

The stranger is staring at him. "Do you just ask everyone you meet if they know a human named Izumi, or am I special?"

"You look like her," Renamon says weakly, "a little bit." But the stranger has never left Akiba Market, and Izumi lived in the Wind Terminal. Why did Renamon feel like they might have met each other before? It was a stupid assumption.

"...Right," says the stranger.

This time when the stranger goes, Renamon doesn't trail after him. Renamon has directions now. He waits for the other digimon to move farther away, so that he doesn't feel like Renamon is still following him, and then starts finding his path back to the train station.

"He looked like me," Izumi echoes, later, when the three of them are sitting at a small diner for lunch near the lift leading up to the train station.

Renamon nods. "He had ice, like neesan had..."

Duskmon snorts. "Then who was that back on the island?"

"Seadramon," says Izumi tightly, "protector of the digimon who lived there."

"You haven't had a way to contact them," Duskmon says. Renamon has no idea what they're talking about. "That's why they didn't come for you afterwards. Not because you told them to stay away."

"Are you trying to go somewhere with this?" Izumi snaps, and Renamon slowly crosses his arms on the table and buries his head in them. Just until the food arrives. Izumi and Duskmon will stop sniping at each other as soon as they have something else to do with their mouths.

After a pause, Duskmon speaks again. Renamon's ear twitches at his tone: gentleness worn over his words like an ill-fitting sandpaper glove, the way Renamon hasn't heard from him since Renamon was Wanyamon and Duskmon was halfway a stranger. "That lie won't work for you a second time."

Izumi doesn't respond. Instead, she says, "Renamon," and Renamon peeks at her over his arms. "Did Chakmon bring up anyone else? Or tell you what he's been doing?"

"He didn't really want to talk," Renamon says, sitting straighter. "Do you know him?"

"Not like he is now," she answers. Quieter: "And he didn't recognize my name. So, no. I don't."

"I don't know what that means."

"It might be safest if you don't go up to people who have characters like Chakmon's on them," Izumi says. Duskmon doesn't refute her. "They're either going to be on Duskmon's side or... it's just easier if you don't. Takuya's waiting for us and there's not enough time to waste on them."