Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Drifting Pieces ❯ Static ( Chapter 20 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Author's Note: The end is in sight.

I think writing for Koushiro has to be both my favorite and hardest part. There’s so much more I want to do with him. Perhaps another day in another story…

A review is a breath of fresh air while almost drowning. Please review.

Chapter 20: Static

Though Koushiro had not slept at all that night, and honestly felt that he could go at least another day without proper sleep, he was fast approaching what he liked to think of as ‘sleep mode’. He called it this not because he was truly asleep, but because he felt that there was too much work to do to waste it sleeping. In this mode, he did not sleep in the typical sense, but more in the sense that he would close his eyes and let his thoughts flow free so that they could unwind like so many ribbons tangled in the breeze.

To say that Koushiro’s mind tended to run fast was an understatement. Thoughts were connected by pathways that linked everything together, much like wires and signals travelling through space to transmit information. On a boring day, Koushiro’s paths and roads were open and easy to navigate. If he wanted the name of that delicious hot drink his Mother used to make for him just before bedtime, it was just a straight shot to that information. Of course there were side roads that branched off leading to memories of his favorite mug, the way his Mother smiled, the way his Father would mispronounce the drink every single time, the way the house smelled or how the cup warmed his hands almost painfully on cold days. If he had time, he would often travel down those roads and find even more twists and bends leading to even deeper memories and even more obscure information. Before he knew it, he would be accessing the precise boiling point of water or exploring the formula of photosynthesis.

However, on days like today, when the information he needed not only had to be accurate but also fast and with plenty of backup solutions, Koushiro found it necessary to explore every branch in the road. Throughout the day his mind raced down these roads continuously, finding dead-ends, making new connections, locating things that had been long forgotten, and deducing new solutions. The larger and important things were brought to his attention right away while he allowed the smaller things to collect to the side. Now that things were quiet, it was time to call it all back home and see what he had found.

Koushiro powered his computer down and left it to charge on the side table. He eyed the bed where Yamato and Taichi were now sleeping. Sounds of slow and rhythmic breathing, some louder than others, filled the room accompanied by the gentle creak of the bed as the two shifted positions in search for that elusive perfectly comfortable spot.

It was a large bed and despite Taichi’s best efforts to spread out across the whole mattress and Yamato’s best efforts to wrap himself up in all of the blankets, there was still a small space near the edge.

Koushiro smiled as he navigated across the dimly lit room and quickly stole the empty spot before the other two took notice. Curling up, he closed his eyes and prepared himself for the unravel.

It hit hard, as it always did, and flowed wildly from item to item in ways that others might consider chaotic. The day’s events replayed, this time zeroing in on the smaller moments that would have gone easily missed during the larger events. He saw subtle glances, body language, oddities in speech, and the even smaller personality ticks.

At the same time, his mind dug deeper, pulling up the past to compare what he had found. He saw the first time he had met Daisuke. The first time he had seen the Kaiser for himself and the damage that had been done. He saw Ken transformed into a friend that was not yet believed in. Even more, he found his mind going further back to his own time as a chosen child. He saw the painful loss of friends, the moments when others understood their troubles and accepted them, and his own troubled understanding of his true origins with his parents. He relived the first time Gennai had been honest with them and he had seen the story of how their partners had been chosen and raised. He saw his first glimpse of the dark spore, and his last glimpse of Oikawa dispersing into the Digital World.

Even more, Koushiro saw the gates.

The first gate that had swallowed them up and taken them to this strange world. The gate that Taichi had passed through several times. The gates that Myotismon had opened. The gates that Daisuke and his group had used in the computers. The gates that Ken was able to create at a whim and the most important, the gate that Oikawa had opened by mistake in his desperate attempt to find his lost friend.

His mind sped up as it found the connections. Faster and faster as it all unwound before him until the same two pictures came up again and again.

Oikawa and his children, each with the cloned spores in full bloom and each trying to unite their desires to one location as they opened the wrong gate.

Ken opening his own gate to the Dark Ocean, terror holding him back until he let go. One thought and the gate was his to control.

But there was still something missing… Something important that he had never fully understood…

Koushiro’s eyes snapped open and he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so fast that he stumbled forward. “It was then. The divide happened then.”

How could he have been so blind? It was easy to miss; after all they had all missed it. They had thought it was over and dealt with, but the problem was just getting started.

It wasn’t just about the spore anymore. As far as he was concerned, he had solved that mystery first and while doing so, he had overlooked a huge problem.

“It’s Ken. It was always Ken.” He scrambled in the dark room, throwing his clothes back on in a hurry.

A sleep ridden Taichi and Yamato stirred and looked up at him with blurry and heavy lidded eyes.

“What’s going on?” Taichi rubbed at his eyes under the blanket as he fought the urge to roll over and bury his face back into the pillow.

“Koushiro, what time is it? What are you doing still up?” Yamato sat up, more awake than Taichi but hardly capable of rational thought yet.

“It was Ken this whole time!” Koushiro hit the power to his computer impatiently as he waited for it to boot back up. “When they went to that other world with Oikawa. The one that fed off of their greatest desires! Don’t you remember what Ken’s made up world had been like?”

Of course he had not seen it for himself, but Ken had once described it to him briefly during one of their many conversations over tea and chess.

Yamato made a non-committal sound of acknowledgment and Taichi just made a complaintive sound to show that he was listening but not happy about being awoken for it.

Koushiro sighed and tapped his fingers in irritation as his computer came out of sleep mode and his systems slowly started to come back up. “The desert where the Kaiser died. Ken said that he had watched the Kaiser die. It was his greatest desire! He wanted to separate himself from what he had once been so that he could watch it suffer. He wanted to kill it and be free of having to feel such guilt. Don’t you get it?”

“Okay, so it happened for real this time. We already know that. We’ve been dealing with it all day in case you hadn’t noticed.” Yamato was obviously fighting the urge to lay back down and join Taichi under the covers.

“It happened for real that time too!” Koushiro brightened as he at last had access to his computer. “Don’t you get it? The Digimon were able to divide up into their separate evolved forms because Daisuke wished they could be more powerful. It had been assumed that this was just limited to the Digimon, but it wasn’t! That world was capable of creating our greatest desires and making them solid. Perhaps it was all in their minds, or perhaps it was real. There’s no telling just how real everything in that world was. Once they left that world, the manifestations could no longer hold form and disappeared.”

Yamato and Taichi were both starting at him now with identical looks of confusion. Perhaps it was a bit much to ask for them to comprehend after just waking up, but Koushiro persisted.

“Don’t you see? Ken desired to be divided and that world made it happen. When he left that world, it should have faded away like the others did, but Ken had one thing none of the others had.” He waited, but incomprehension was still painfully plastered across their faces. “The spore! When that world split him, it must have split the spore too. The real divide happened there, but when he left that world the manifestation of the other half was unable to be supported. When he returned to the real world, it went back inside of him but never fully healed. Ken’s been dividing everything up ever since. The spore didn’t cause the split, it just made it possible. It sensed that it could take in more energy from two than from one and most likely encouraged the split, but now that it wants to come back together, Ken isn’t letting it!”

Koushiro paused then accessed one of the systems that he had downloaded for later inspection from Ken’s base earlier. Please let me be wrong.

His screen flickered and then filled with static, softly crackling and hissing as it filled the room with an eerie glow.

“Oh no.” He stared at the computer screen with wide eyes. “It’s already happening.”

“What’s happening?” Taichi was sitting up now, looking at the screen in confusion.

The screen flickered and for just a moment, they all caught a glimpse of a barren cliff overlooking a dark ocean with a single silhouette standing near the edge.

“The gates are cut off.” Koushiro looked up at the other two, face ashen in the glow. “We can’t go home.”

--

Hikari had awoken several hours after her nightmare to a very real sensation that not only was something wrong, but that it was already too late.

Once more she slipped from her bed and made her way down the dark hall. She knew she should have stopped to alert the others, but something in her gut was telling her to hurry.

She didn’t have time for caution or fear as she moved ever closer to the familiar presence of a world that had once tried to make her a part of it.

She arrived in time to watch from the doorway as Daisuke slipped into the other world. She could already feel that not only was Kaiser already gone, but Takeru had succumbed to it as well.  

Hikari could hear the waves distantly breaking through the static. Just before Daisuke had fully crossed over, an image came to her of a boy buried in the sand and something told her that this could be the answer to something very important. She called out, letting her intuition speak freely for her, though she herself did not fully understand the message. All she could do was hope that perhaps he would understand and find the answers before it was too late.

To her surprise, Ken did not fade to gray and disappear along with Daisuke. He stood before the monitors, watching the other world flicker across the screens with fascination.

“Have you come to join me after all?” Ken glanced over at her and her nightmare came back to her full force as she noticed a freshly healing cut on the palm of his hand.

She held her ground, refusing to come any further into the room. “Was it a dream?”

He looked at her fully and tilted his head to the side. “You tell me, Hikari. Do you believe it was a dream?”

“I want to. Of course I want to believe that it wasn’t real.” She crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “Who would want to believe that their friend would ever do something so evil?”

“Would it be so wrong to kill him?” Ken turned away from the monitors and slowly ran a hand through his hair. His hand was shaky and lacked fluidity as it moved, brushing the hair out of his face and into disarray. “He’s Kaiser. He has already killed so many. Would I be at such a disadvantage without him?”

“He’s a part of you, Ken. No one should ever kill a part of themselves just because they think it’s for the best.” She longed for someone else to join her as she glanced up at the monitors. She was struggling to keep her fear from taking over as she felt that world calling to her and trying to pull her in.

“Are you going to give me a speech about how everyone needs balance?” Ken sighed. “I’ve heard it all before. ‘You have to live accepting everything inside of you. There is both good and evil in everyone to balance things out’. Everyone is so eager to tell me how I’m supposed to live.”

“You believed it once before. Why not now? What’s changed?” She struggled to remember how Miyako had once helped her overcome her fear of this world just long enough to save her from it. How Takeru had literally road in to rescue her from the dark creatures that wanted to drain the life and light slowly from her.

Ken reached back and gingerly touched the back of his neck absently and Hikari could see it starting to glow. The spore was growing impatient to return home. “Who do you think I am, Hikari?”

“I don’t know.” She pulled her eyes away from the monitors and focused on Ken fully. “We thought we knew… We all thought we knew.”

“You thought I was just the sweet and kind Ken that you all wanted and that he was the cruel and evil Kaiser that should have died years ago. You can’t deny that much even if you wanted to.” He looked down. “Everyone always wants to believe that there are only two sides to everything. Good and evil, black and white, life and death.”

“But you aren’t Ken, are you?” Hikari’s fingers were digging into her upper arms tightly now as she felt the other world’s pull growing. “You aren’t good and he isn’t evil.”

“If you cut down a tree and turn it into a million splinters, can you put them all back together with glue and still call it a tree?” He was clutching at the back of his neck now, the corner of his mouth twitching as he fought back a grimace. “Do you think that I can ever be Ken again?”

It hit her then, looking at this shard of a boy that she used to call friend. “Ken… What have you done?” She glanced up at the monitors, letting her eyes settle on the dark images of a world that frightened her more than she cared to admit. “How many times have you split?”

Ken’s fingers clenched at the back of his neck and she could see his nails starting to dig into the marred flesh. “Just twice, not including myself. It was all I could manage while here. This world is so limiting, but soon I will be free to pull out every part of me if I should so desire.”

“Why?” Hikari felt as if the room around them had suddenly gotten smaller. “Why would you do that to yourself, Ken? You can’t just split yourself like this!”

Kaiser had already taken such a huge chunk away from Ken’s personality that she couldn’t imagine what was left to divide out. If Ken had managed to take more away, what was left?

“Everyone wants to change themselves at some level. How narcissistic would you have to be to not want to change yourself?” Ken’s hand trembled and she winced as she saw a few fresh drops of blood start to well up around the fingernails that were digging into his neck. “What if you just wanted to peel away the layers of yourself that you hated? What if you peel away layer after layer and what you find underneath is worse? Can you imagine hating yourself so much that you just want to peel the layers away until all that’s left is nothing?”

“Ken…” She slowly moved into the room. “You can’t mutilate yourself over mistakes of the past. If all you do is look back, of course all you’ll see is what you hate.”

“We are made by the past, aren’t we?” Ken gave her a cold look. “If your past was erased, would you exist today as the Hikari that we all know?”

“But you can’t just get rid of the parts that you don’t like!” Hikari attempted to reason with him, though she knew it was useless. “We remember the past so that we may draw from it and learn and change. The past is subjective in that we only remember the parts that matter the most and the parts that made us who we are.”

Ken’s face twisted as his anger surfaced without control. “Then how do you undo who we are? What if I don’t want to be this person anymore? How are we supposed to change if what made us is always there?!”

Hikari fell silent as Ken’s voice echoed around them, the pain marring each word.

Ken closed his eyes and took in a slow deep breath. “That’s not so easy to answer, is it? We all know the correct answer. The one they teach you in school and on the television. You’re supposed to learn from the past so you don’t make the same mistakes. You’re supposed to take away different things. Try to understand it and accept it. You’re supposed to look ahead and stay optimistic. To think about the future and be mindful of yourself. You’re in control of your own life and you can decide who you are.”

Ken pulled his hand away and looked at the blood that was now smeared across his fingers and under the nails. “But it’s always there, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how much you change on the outside if it’s still there inside you. It doesn’t matter who I decide I am if I can still feel the pain of what happened in the dead of night just before I close my eyes. It’s always there…”

Ken turned towards the monitors and Hikari struggled to find the right answer. Was there an answer?

Ken closed his eyes for a moment while he composed himself, wiping the blood absently from his hand and onto his pant leg. “Daisuke and Takeru had unfinished business with me. Their inability to let go is what caused them to be sucked in. You have wisely chosen to keep your distance through all of this and I cannot force you to pass through the gate. I want you to think about this very carefully, child of light. Will you witness the end with me?”

Hikari’s hands trembled as they dug into her sleeves. Her mind screamed at her legs to just move forward but she had never felt more rooted to the spot as she stared up at the dark waters that swirled across the screens.

“It would seem you’ve made your choice.” Ken glanced over his shoulder at her and smiled. “Now you just have to find a way to live with it.”

With that, Ken was gone and the screens went black. Panic filled her and at last she moved, rushing forward. “Wait… Ken! Wait!”

Her hands beat on the cold screens as she cried out. “You can’t… You can’t! Ken!”

For the first time, she found herself doubting whether or not she had made the right decision.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she sank to the floor. Takeru… I’m so sorry… I couldn’t be there for you.

--

Miyako woke up to Hawkmon poking her in the side and tugging on her blankets. “Miyako! There’s someone at the door!”

Sitting up, she squinted in the dark as she clumsily pulled her glasses on. “Wh…Who is it?” She yawned and looked around in confusion as she realized Hikari was not there.

“It’s Iori. Is Takeru in there with you?” His raspy voice called out, utterly laced with worry.

Miyako climbed off the bed and flicked on the dim lights before opening the door. “No. Why would he be?”

“I can’t find him.” Patamon flew into the room and landed beside Hawkmon. “Gatomon can’t find Hikari either. She’s out looking right now.”

“What if something bad happened to them?” Iori looked down, his brow heavy with concern. “What if…”

“Now Iori,” Armadillomon reached up and patted his hand comfortingly. “We can’t go assuming the worst. Maybe they couldn’t sleep and they’re just out together working on the base.”

Hawkmon nodded in agreement. “Or taking a walk. The desert is quite charming under the right circumstances at night.”

Iori hardly looked convinced and Patamon’s cheeks puffed in disagreement.

Miyako sighed and looked out into the hall. “I’m sure if something bad happened, we’d know about it. Daisuke is babysitting and Koushiro is most likely still hunched over his computer. That boy never sleeps. If something happened, they’d come and let us know.”

It wasn’t easy to get over her old habits of always assuming the worst and panicking. Even now, her mind was racing with countless ‘what if’ scenarios. Yet the endless patience of Iori and the compassion of Hikari had guided her away from the old days of irrational panic.

“Let’s all go see if anyone else is awake. Maybe they know something.” She adjusted her glasses and for the second time that night, headed out into the hall.

A nagging feeling had slipped in and she struggled not to run down the hall to Koushiro’s room. She had come to depend on Koushiro in so many ways.

She didn’t bother to knock, knowing that he would be awake, as she barged into the room. “Koushiro! We have a…”

Koushiro, Taichi and Yamato were all sitting around the laptop with determined and worried looks on their faces.

“It would seem we’re a little late to the party.” Iori frowned.

Taichi looked up at them, his gaze quickly sliding past them to the empty hall. It was clear from his expression that his fears had been confirmed as he took note of who was not with them.

Miyako bit her lower lip and moved closer. “We don’t know where the others are. Is it safe to assume that this isn’t news to you guys?”

Koushiro glanced up at them, never pausing his fingers as they flew across the keyboard. “The gate is locked. I don’t know what he did, but Ken has completely shut us out. We can’t even open a basic digiport to get back to our world. I assumed that this meant that he had somehow crossed over, but we were unaware that any of the others were missing.”

Miyako couldn’t believe it. The gate was locked? How was that even possible? “You can override it, right?” She looked at Koushiro with the best hopeful smile she could muster. “We aren’t trapped here, right?”

Koushiro stopped typing and looked over his screen towards her. It was all the answer she needed. “Oh god, we’re trapped?! How do we fix it? Can’t we just get Ken back here to undo it? This isn’t permanent, right? I mean, you guys travelled here and back all the time in the past and you couldn’t even open a port at will like we could!” Panic was threatening to overtake her.

“We have to have faith.” Yamato spoke up at last. “Faith that the others are with Ken and that they can bring him back. Faith that Ken isn’t lost out in the darkness alone and that he can find his way home.”

“And if they can’t?” Iori pressed further.

“Then we’ll have bigger things to worry about.” Hikari appeared in the doorway looking tired and scared.

Taichi was visibly relieved to see that his sister had not crossed over. Yamato looked questioningly at Hikari and she shook her head before looking away.

Miyako felt a pang of pity well up inside her as Yamato clenched his hands and looked down. He seemed more disappointed than angry.

Beside him, the computer screen flashed a bright white and whatever program Koushiro had been looking at suddenly disappeared in a wave of static.

Koushiro stared at his screen in fascination, though Miyako knew him well enough to recognize the alarm that was slowly working its way across his features. “I think we have a problem.”

A low rumble, much like the sound of approaching thunder in the distance, slowly welled up until it crashed around them and shook the base before fading away again.

The whole room practically held its breath as Koushiro frantically tried to get his computer going again, trying every trick in the book and looking more and more desperate as each tactic failed. When the hard restart didn’t even register, Koushiro set the machine down and got to his feet. “Okay. We definitely have a problem.”

“What’s happening?” Iori winced as the thunder rolled in again, shaking the base harshly.

“Every gate is closed. I don’t know how it happened, but every single gate to every world is closed!” Koushiro frowned. “I was trying a backdoor. We normally only travel to this world and our own, but in the past we have ventured into other realities, mostly by accident. I thought that perhaps if I could open a door to one of those other realities, we could take a door from there to our own world or at the very least, to the Dark Ocean.”

“Let me guess,” Taichi looked down at the frazzled computer with a frown, “back door isn’t an option?”

“It was working for a moment, but then something must have happened on another level and every single gate closed all at once. It was like they were just all wiped out in one blow.” Koushiro sat on the edge of the bed and slumped back.

Miyako swallowed hard, looking down at the flickering screen. The room was silent as they all reflected on their situation. “I guess we just have to trust that Daisuke and Takeru know what they’re doing.”

Taichi and Yamato exchanged looks then put their faces in their hands. “We’re doomed.”

--

On a nearby dune overlooking the base, watching as the multicolored lights lit up the ever shifting sands, the guardian stood alone in the dark.

The thunder crashed around him, the sands shifting under the force of the shockwaves. It felt like the world was hanging by a thread and he dreaded the idea that Ken was the one pulling it tighter and tighter until it would eventually snap under the pressure.

Grief and regret threatened to tear at him as he thought of the past. He mourned for the loss of the boy he had known, the boy that had died, and the boy that he was losing now.

“Are you growing so pessimistic, Gennai?” A voice cutting through time, soft and weak. “Have you no faith in him?”

Gennai sighed and pulled the hood to his cloak up around him as he turned away from the base. “I don’t know how to save him anymore. How do you save someone that isn’t supposed to be saved? Too many lives have already been lost for his sake. There’s no one left to sacrifice for him.”

The voice on the wind crackled softly as it crossed over fading dimensions and slipped through rapidly closing doorways. “Do you still blame him for what happened? Or are you blaming yourself?”

“I never blamed him for… For what happened.” Gennai’s fists clenched tightly as he fought back the anger. “It wasn’t even supposed to be him…”

The thunder crashed around him and the voice grew fainter, nothing but a whisper at the back of his mind now. “Fate is strange, isn’t it… Two boys, one meant to die so that he could become the next great guardian… How angry the gods of this world must have been when they were cheated out of both a guardian and a chosen.”

Gennai closed his eyes and bowed his head. For the first time he allowed himself to give voice to a suspicion that had long tormented his dreams in the dead of night. “What if… What if it wasn’t supposed to be Ken?  What if that device was really meant for Osamu? What if both boys were meant to be called here? What if Ken was supposed to die and not Osamu?”

“Why would Ken’s life be in question? Osamu took his own life. There was nothing set in stone. There was no illness.”

 The wind blew harshly, covering up the silence as it tore at the guardian with blasts of unforgiving sand.

“It was two potential Guardian and one Chosen.” Gennai at last let the weight on his soul crush in around him. “You were both meant to die, Ryo.”

Gennai didn’t hear the response as the thunder crashed around him and the door between worlds crumbled and faded away.

Once more, he was alone.

A part of him hoped that the world would crumble away. That Ken would pluck that delicate string and watch as he and everything else frayed and blew away like a grain of sand in this harsh desert.

Maybe then he would finally be able to sleep at night. Maybe then, as the world faded to dark and he met that oblivion that had long been denied to him, his sins would finally be forgiven.