Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Deep As You Go ❯ Falling Farther In ( Chapter 3 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Disclaimer: True or false: Do any of these characters belong to me? I dunno. What do you think?

Author's Note: Lookie, it's part three! Unfortunately part four may be a long while coming due to that wonderful creation of man known as homework. I have a twenty+ page short story to write for my Creative Writing class, and it's been sapping all my writing energies lately. So enjoy this part while you can.

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The medical building was white and clean. The walls were white. The carpet was white. The entire place was so sterilized that it made Ken want to puke.

He was currently sitting in the waiting room. Only two others were there with him; he barely even glanced at them. No doubt they had their own appointments with the school therapist. Her name was Dr. Masanori, though she told her patients to call her Rika. Ken privately preferred to call her 'that damn woman.'

The door to the therapist's office creaked open and a somber-looking boy trudged out. Ken gritted his teeth and hoped that he wasn't next.

"Ichijouji Ken?"

"Coming." Damn! Ken seethed inwardly. He hated these sessions.

"You want me to come in with you and hold your hand?" The Kaiser taunted behind him, flipping through a magazine.

"I could help you, Ken-chan," put in Wormmon, who was weaving somewhat drunkenly at the Kaiser's feet. The Kaiser laughed and kicked him into the wall.

Ken shut his eyes, shook his head slightly, and walked into the therapist's office.

Dr. Masanori looked up at him over her spectacles. Ken had noticed that she rarely ever looked through the glasses. He was of the opinion that she only wore the spectacles because she thought that all therapists were supposed to.

"Sit down, Ken." She gestured to the couch. Ken sullenly walked over and lay down.

Why can't I just sit in a regular chair for once? he thought bitterly. It would at least make me feel less like I was getting my brain picked.

"I know you haven't had many classes today, but are things going well for you so far?" Dr. Masanori questioned.

"Everything's fine," said Ken in a flat voice.

"Everything?" Ken nodded and the therapist quickly scribbled something down. "How have you been feeling lately? No violent episodes?"

"No. Nothing," Ken lied glibly. There was no way he was going to tell her about the constant illusions that plagued him. She'd send him to a mental institute for certain, or at the very least drag in more doctors to dig about in his psyche. Ken already knew that he was messed up, he didn't need twenty doctors to tell him.

"No delusions or anything of the sort?"

"No."

"Nightmares?"

"No."

"Any dreams at all?"

Ken paused. This was a trick question. If he said no, she might take it as having a bad meaning and start asking other, more intrusive questions. If he said yes, she would expect him to elaborate. Ken's fertile mind quickly brought up a solution.

"I believe so, yes, but when I wake up I have no recollection of them."

"I see." Dr. Masanori chewed on the end of her pencil and then wrote something down. Ken couldn't resist a smile.

Beat her at her own game, he thought triumphantly. I don't want to talk, can't she see that? Stupid cow.

"I heard that one of your friends is home from a year in America. Motomiya Daisuke, wasn't it?"

Ken started. Daisuke! How could she know about Daisuke? I-I'm certain that I never--

"Yes, I can see by your face that I'm correct." Ken cursed mentally and swiftly brought his shields back up. "Your friends mentioned him when I talked to them. Takaishi claims the real change in your behavior came after Daisuke left. Is that correct?"

"I don't know. Why don't you ask Takeru?" Ken's tone was scathing. The therapist had called all his friends in, one by one, in the name of helping him. Ken couldn't help but feel betrayed. He had trusted them, and they had told this harpy almost everything she wanted to know.

They just wanted to help you, a voice uncomfortably like Wormmon's whispered from the deepest recesses of his mind. They were worried.

Then they should have come to me! Ken screamed back. Me, not her! I would have told them whatever they liked. There's no excuse for breaking my trust like that!

"Ken? Are you okay?"

Ken realized with a start that he had been silent too long. His brain scrambled for an explanation.

"I'm a little tired, doctor. I was up late last night."

"Trouble sleeping?" Dr. Masanori questioned.

"I was reading a particularly fascinating book," Ken replied. No need to tell her about his nightmares. No need to tell her he had spent half the night wrapped in the arms of a dangerous lover he had created in his own head.

"Really? About what?"

"I don't see how that question has any relevance as to my mental health, doctor."

Dr. Masanori frowned. Ken was always her most difficult patient. He always answered her in short, clipped sentences, and his face was closed and locked like a safe. He seemed determined not to let her know anything.

"Ken, you know that there's no way I can help you if you don't talk to me," she said to him. Ken sneered.

"Who says I need help?" he asked. "My behavior's been almost impeccable since...."

"Since the incident, I know." Dr. Masanori bobbed her head, still scribbling something on her notepad. "But I have reason to believe that you're still hiding things from me that could be dangerous and unhealthy in the long run. So we will continue these sessions until you stop hiding behind that little mask of yours and actually talk to me, understand?"

"What if I don't want to?" Ken hissed. "Why is it that no one ever seems to think that I can handle my own problems?"

"So you feel that others find you too inadequate to deal with your problems?" the doctor asked. "And this has been bothering you for a while?"

"I didn't say that," Ken said through clenched teeth.

"Have you talked to any of your friends about this?" Dr. Masanori pressed. "Or are they trying to handle your problems as well?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Ken said succinctly, turning over so he wouldn't have to look at her.

"I won't disappear just because you aren't looking at me, Ken," the therapist told him. "There are obviously things that are bothering you. If you continue to keep them bottled up like this, something's bound to give."

"It doesn't matter. It's my choice to do as please."

"It matters when it affects those around you, Ken." The doctor leaned in close. "Stop being obstinate."

"Stop being nosy."

"Ken..." Sighing in exasperation, Dr. Masanori put a hand on Ken's shoulder. He immediately dived away, landing in a defensive crouch on the other side of the couch.

"Don't touch me!" he snapped. The therapist stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, then swiftly wrote something down on her notepad.

"I see."

Ken stared at her with wide violet eyes, his teeth clenched. He wasn't even aware that he was trembling lightly.

"Ken? Would you like to sit back down now?" Dr. Masanori looked at him over her spectacles. Ken stayed in his defensive position a moment longer, then relaxed a bit and sat back down on the couch. In his head he was cursing a blue streak, angered at the reaction that he hadn't been able to control.

The Kaiser could have controlled it, he thought bitterly. When I was the Kaiser I never had to deal with any of this. I didn't have to worry about the inadequacies. I didn't have to deal with my failures staring me in the face. I was perfect. Like a statue carved of marble. Smooth, polished, and cold as stone.

"Was there any reason for that reaction?" Dr. Masanori questioned the silent boy. "Were you afraid that I was going to hurt you?"

"I just don't like to be touched, doctor," Ken said in dangerous tones.

"Indeed. Tell me, Ken, was there any incident, in your childhood perhaps, that could have brought on such a reaction?"

"I know what you're insinuating, and no. Aren't I allowed to just not want to be touched? Does there always have to be a deeper meaning behind it?"

"Ken..." For what had to be the tenth time that session, Dr. Masanori sighed. "All right. I can see that you're in one of your moods today. You can go."

"Thank you, doctor." Ken rose, bowed respectfully to her, and exited.

Dr. Masanori chewed on the end of her pencil and thought. She had learned the hard way how pointless it was to try and drag answers out of Ken by force. If he didn't want to talk, pressing him only made things worse. Still, he had managed to give her one important piece of information. She glanced down at the name written and circled twice on her notepad.

Motomiya Daisuke.

As she prepared for her next patient, Dr. Masanori wrote out a quick reminder to herself to arrange a meeting with Daisuke as soon as possible.

~~~~

Takeru was lying on his back kicking the bottom of Daisuke's bunk when his roommate burst in.

"Takeru!"

The urgency in Daisuke's voice surprised Takeru and he sat up quickly, knocking his head on the upper bunk.

"Ittai..." Rubbing his head, Takeru glared at his friend. "This had better be important, Daisuke."

"I need you to tell me about Ken," Daisuke said seriously, slipping into a chair and staring intently at his roommate.

"He used to the Digimon Kaiser," Takeru said, raising an eyebrow. "He's your jogress partner. He--"

"You know what I mean!" Daisuke said, annoyed. "What happened to him? He was in one of my classes and he completely gave me the cold shoulder! And then I, erm, overheard the teacher talking to him after class, and she said something about him having a therapist and stuff. What happened?"

Takeru sighed and shook his head.

"Well, I figured I'd have to tell you eventually. The problem is, I don't know what to tell you." He glanced up at Daisuke. "The problem is, none of know exactly what happened. You see, by the time you mentioned that you were spending the next year abroad, it was already time to pick out roommates for the next year. I figured that you and Ken would be rooming, so I told my friend Tsuyoshi, from my Literature class, that I'd room with him. When you said you were leaving, Ken had no choice but to let himself get put with a random roommate. And....well, you know Ken, Daisuke. I doubt he really tried to warm up to his new roommate.

Everything seemed okay, at first. We all could tell that Ken missed you, so we tried to keep him from being lonely. And it seemed to work, until the annual Fall Dance. I went with Hikari, and Miyako brought her boyfriend-of-the-moment. But Ken came alone. We talked to him and tried to make sure he was included, but they started playing music and the girls wanted to dance. Ken said it was okay, so we went out onto the dance floor. Sometime between songs, he slipped out and spent the rest of the night, I assume, alone in his dorm.

Things pretty much went like that for the next month or so. Ken started getting more depressed and lonely, and, well, we were all too busy with our own stuff to really notice. Ken's always been quiet anyway, so it was hard to tell that anything was wrong."

"I would've noticed," Daisuke grumbled. Takeru nodded grimly.

"I know. But the rest of us can't read Ken like you can, Daisuke. We're his friends, but he never opened up to us the way he did to you. I mean, after all, you were his first friend. The rest of us just slowly warmed up to him.

Anyway, eventually Ken stopped eating with us at lunch. He would eat alone instead. Miyako, Hikari and I each tried to convince him to come sit with us again, but he argued that he was just putting a damper on our conversation. We thought he might get mad if we pushed him any more, so we let him be." Takeru paused.

"Then what happened?" Daisuke prompted.

"I really don't know," Takeru admitted. "All I can tell you is, one night about a month and a half after you had gone, Ken got in a fight with some other guys. I don't know why or over what, because Ken wouldn't tell us. You see, that night Hikari, Miyako and I managed to drag Ken out of his room to a party on campus. Sometime during the party Ken managed to give us the slip and leave. These guys followed him out, cornered him somewhere out of the way, and tried to beat him up. I don't know the specifics of what happened because Ken wouldn't say, but apparently he just flipped out and started defending himself."

"What's wrong with that?" Daisuke questioned. "I mean, what's the point of being a black belt if you can't use what you learned?"

"This was different, Daisuke," Takeru said. "Ken didn't just flip these guys over his head and knock them out or anything. He pounded them. Campus security heard the noise and found Ken covered in his blood and theirs just beating these guys to a pulp. Everyone, Ken included, had to go to the hospital. The only reason Ken wasn't prosecuted was because it was pretty much in self defense. But he had to get a pysch evaluation before he could come back to school, and he had to make regular sessions with the school therapist.

After that, Ken just...shut down. It was like he stopped caring about anything. You've seen it: it's almost like he's the Digimon Kaiser again. He seemed practically emotionless, until the day before winter break. From what I've heard, Ken called the infirmary saying his roommate needed help. When they arrived, they found his roommate beaten half to a pulp and Ken crouched in a ball in the corner, shaking uncontrollably. He had started to slit his own wrists, but apparently stopped before he could cut too deep.

Ken didn't come back to school until nearly a month after break was over. I heard he was in the hospital for a few days, then he was under psychiatric evaluation for a while after that until he was deemed well enough to come back to school. He was given a new roommate, some kid who worked as a peer counselor and I guess was supposed to keep an eye on him. After the incident with his first roommate, though, Ken's behavior was fine. He didn't freak out or try to harm anyone. But..."

"But he's still not his old self," Daisuke finished.

"I'd say he is his old self," Takeru disagreed. "His old Kaiser self. You've seen his eyes, Daisuke. They're cold. And he barely even talks to Wormmon, who's been worried sick about him. He won't talk to any of us, no matter how hard we try. It's like he wants to be alone."

"He didn't look good," Daisuke said. "He was really pale, even more so than usual....and he looked even thinner than before."

"I think he's starting to unravel," a serious voice said from behind them. Iori stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

"What do you mean?" Daisuke asked.

"You know what I mean," Iori said gravely, walking over to stand near the bed. "I went to see him yesterday, after we picked you up. Before I knocked, I could hear him talking to someone inside his room. But I didn't see anything when he opened the door. I think that everything is catching up with him very quickly, and he may be close to snapping again."

"You think he's gonna go Kaiser on us?" Daisuke asked, surprised.

"No." Iori shook his head. "I don't think he'll do anything. I think he'll just let himself slip into the darkness until it's too late to pull him out of it, and then he'll just self-destruct completely."

"I won't let that happen!" Daisuke leapt to his feet.

"None of us want to see that happen," Takeru added. "Though you probably have the best chance of reaching him, Daisuke. The rest of us certainly haven't had any luck."

"Yeah...." Daisuke sighed. "But I'm not sure if Ken wants me to talk to him or not. I mean, he was acting like he didn't even care that I was in his class at first, and then he started staring at me. It's....weird. I don't know if he wants me to talk to him, or if he doesn't want anything to do with me, or...." His throat constricted. I don't know if he even wants to be my friend anymore.

"In case you haven't noticed, Daisuke, it's not just you," Takeru pointed out. "I don't think Ken wants to talk to anybody. Miyako tried to force him to talk to her about a month before school was out and he wouldn't say a word. Finally he pretty much pushed her out of the room and slammed the door in her face. He's not exactly Mr. Social at the moment."

Daisuke sat in uncharacteristic silence for a moment before nodding decisively.

"I'm gonna talk to him," he stated. "Where's his room?"

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Iori's green eyes regarded him solemnly. "If you push him, he might just close up even more."

"That won't happen," Daisuke said. "Ken and I were--are--best friends. And partners, too. He'll talk to me."

"He doesn't talk to Wormmon," Takeru pointed out.

"This is different! I'm telling you, he'll listen to me. Besides, I thought you wanted me to help him!" Daisuke glared at his two friends.

"I think you should wait for him to come to you," Iori said. "A confrontation won't solve anything. Slowly get closer to him and maybe he'll start opening up to you. After all, it wasn't until your absence that he started acting this way. Your presence might eventually bring him back to his old self."

"I'm not going to wait for that!" Daisuke said. "Now give me his room number or I'll go find it myself!"

Takeru sighed and conceded defeat.

"Room 101, Akai Hall. But I still don't think this is a good idea."

"Hmmph. You'll see." Daisuke hurried out of the room. I'll show them. Ken will listen to me, I know he will. Then things'll be just like before and I'll have my best friend back. Everything will be fine again.

It has to be.

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Another chapter down. I'll try to get the fourth written and posted when I can, but it all depends on school, the bane of my existence ::Sigh::