Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Strange ❯ Part 4 ( Chapter 4 )

Title: Strange

Rating: R (for language)

Warnings: OOC, angst

Pairings: Kensuke and a sham Kenyako on the side.

Summery: When nature is overruled by nurture the sins of the family can be devastating. Maybe the wrongs can be righted. Maybe Ken and Daisuke can help each other, if they get over their own problems first.

Disclaimer: Digimon and the characters within belong to their respective owners. No profit is being made.

Authors notes: Here's a bit more into how this works. Comments and criticisms are more than welcome. If anyone has further questions about what's going on here, feel free to ask in a review or comment and I'll try to answer it in the next chapter posting or in the story itself. Additional Authors notes can be found after the chapter on my live journal (www.livejournal.com/users/appleqb) Enjoy!

 

Part 4

 

 

Ken caught Daisuke's arm just before he entered his homeroom the next day. His grip was tight enough to make Daisuke flinch.

 

“What?” Daisuke snapped, still pissed off.

 

“Let's go.”

 

“What?” He asked again with a little less anger and a little more confusion.

 

Ken just walked away.

 

“So, we're skipping school now,” Daisuke asked as they were walking down the front steps of the school. He rubbed his arm though he suspected that it was going to bruise no matter what he did.

 

“Yes.”

 

“That's not very—”

 

“Daisuke, you don't care about missing school.”

 

“Oh? As always, you're right. I'm much too pissed off at you to care about school.”

 

“I'm curious. If you're so pissed at me, why are you still following me?”

 

Daisuke was perfectly content to follow Ken to the park, where he knew they were walking, without answering Ken's questions. With all the time he had to think yesterday, he had come to at least one conclusion: he did consider Ken his friend, both sides of him, but that didn't mean he had to like Ken right now.

 

“What's your problem, Daisuke?”

 

“Right now? It seems to be you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why? WHY?! You are such an asshole, you know that? You dragged me to your house. You exposed me to your freak show. You TRICKED me into agreeing to help you with whatever your stupid plan is. Now you…” Daisuke trailed off. Ken had turned around halfway through his rant and had been steadily advancing on his angry companion until Daisuke had back into a wall.

 

“Why? You didn't seem to care so much while it was happening. You didn't have anything better to do, did you?”

 

Ken was standing uncomfortably close; at least he was uncomfortably close in Daisuke's opinion. He was torn by the conflicting emotions of wanting to slug Ken right in the jaw and wanting to slip back into the wall and disappear. Then of course there was the disturbing impulse to step forward and meet Ken head on. At present, however, he found himself, once again, pined by Ken's stare, which had taken on an unnamed quality. Daisuke's mouth went dry and Ken smirked.

 

“Come on, Daisuke. We have some things to talk about.”

 

It took two tries but he finally managed to ask, “Talk about what?”

 

“What I expect of you and what you can expect from me.”

 

“I can tell you what you can expect from me right now, nothing.”

 

“You still have questions.”

 

It wasn't a question but Daisuke still felt the need to respond, “You bet I do.”

 

“This will be an opportunity to accomplish both tasks.”

 

“What are you saying,” Daisuke felt suddenly suspicious of Ken's actions and motivations.

 

“Ask your questions, Daisuke. I will try to answer them, but keep in mind you will have to answer mine as well.”

 

For a long moment Daisuke was stunned into silence. It was as close to a promise as he was ever going to get, a promise to tell the truth. For that moment all those questions that had been plaguing Daisuke since the first time he laid eyes on Ken, disappeared. Of course, it was only a moment.

 

“Where is Ichijouji?”

 

Ken sighed but did not speak right away.

 

They had entered the park but Ken didn't seem to have a specific direction, they were just walking the paths. Daisuke thought it was weird that Ken continued to come here, especially considering what he had said about his history in this park. He thought about that for a few minutes before he realized that Ken had still not answered.

 

“Don't tell me you're going back on your word already,” Daisuke said, knowing it had been too good to be true. “You pretty much admitted you're a schizophrenic yesterday, so why don't you finish the story.”

 

“I never said I had schizophrenia.”

 

“Then what is your problem?”

 

“You're asking me where Ichijouji is like there is a distinction between us.” Ken said with a certain inflection in his voice.

 

“But you're admitting that he is separate from you.” Daisuke said, a little surprise at what he was hearing.

 

Ken paused, then nodded briefly. He said, “I am Ichijouji, but Ichijouji is not me.”

 

“And how does that work?”

 

Ken stopped and glared at him and Daisuke had just enough time to wonder why before Ken answered, “He's weak, Daisuke. He's child. Innocent, untouched. I'm sure you're familiar with the phenomenon.”

 

Daisuke stared at him in shock for a moment while his words sunk in. Just before the tide of anger and fury could wash over him, Ken turned away and started talking again.

 

“I protect him. To do that, I know him, better than he knows himself. I know what he thinks, what he feels, what he says, what he does; I know all of him, but the reverse is not true.”

 

“So,” Daisuke hesitated, previous anger forgotten in favor of trying to make sense of it, “if I saw Ichijouji tomorrow and asked him what he did today?”

 

“He would say he skipped school and hung out with you,” Ken replied smoothly.

 

“And if I asked him what we talked about?”

 

“He would not know.”

 

“Doesn't… doesn't he see that as weird? I mean, that would be a huge lapse in memory.”

 

“Where did you get that jacket from?”

 

The complete change in topic threw Daisuke for a moment, “What?”

 

“Your leather jacket, with the flames. Where did it come from?”

Damn it, he thought, remembering he'd left the jacket in his locker. He doubted he'd get the chance to go back and get it today. It was Friday; he'd be without it the whole weekend.

 

“It was my father's. A member's jacket from some club he belonged to. He left it when he left us, probably hadn't meant to, though. It was about the only decent thing I'd ever gotten from him, and it wasn't even a gift, just some forgotten piece of junk.”

 

“If you hate your father so much, why do you take his jacket with you everywhere?”

 

Daisuke glared at him, “I don't have it with me now.”

 

“But you did have it with you today.”

 

“Where you following me or something today?”

 

“No. I hardly had to see you to know that. Much like Wallace, I've never seen you without it.”

 

“You know you never answered my question.” Daisuke said, trying to change the topic again.

 

“It's not a gap in memory. He knows where he was, he does not remember the specifics because the specifics involved me.”

 

“But that doesn't make any sense. The first time I met you, and the second, and then we spent all that time walking around. Then when I met Ichijouji he didn't know what he was doing or how he got there. He didn't even seem to know me.”

 

Ken turned and looked at Daisuke, just looking. He wasn't staring or glaring like he normally did. It seemed, to Daisuke, that Ken was seeing him for the first time. He wasn't appraising or even seeing something that irritated, angered or amused him, that's what Daisuke was used to seeing in Ken's eyes. This was something entirely different. In that moment Daisuke thought, He has really great eyes.

 

“I've never really looked at you, Daisuke, in all the time I've spent with you,” Ken said, seemingly reading Daisuke's mind. “He had never been introduced to you so he had no reason to think he had been around you. He knew he was in the park and he knew how he had gotten there, but he did not know why he had gone. Everything else he explained away. The park is his favorite place to be, after all, and anytime I had seen you during the day, that was just normal. He had been staring at you a lot, it was what had drawn my attention to you in the first place.” Ken turned away again; this time he started walking.

 

Daisuke felt a fine tremor run though his body and he had to shake himself harder to get his legs to start moving. Weird, he thought as he caught up with Ken. Now that he thought about it, Ken did seem to spend a lot of time looking straight ahead or staring at something just off to the side. It was kind of cool but also really freaky.

“Wait a minute, what do you mean he stares at me a lot?”

 

“The real question you need to ask yourself is what that means for you.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“How did you meet Wallace?”

 

“GAH! Why do you always change the subject like that?!”

 

“Wallace, Daisuke.” Ken was smirking slightly.

 

“Uh,” Daisuke mumbled, thinking back for a moment. “It was like first or second grade and he had just moved around. He had these ugly bright yellow sneakers on; of course I thought they were like the coolest things ever. So I was following him around, trying to ask where he got them and he was all like, `Get a life. These things are so ugly.' So I told him I'd trade and we did. Then we were friends.”

 

Ken remembered the beat up yellow sneakers he had seen peaking out from under the bed in Daisuke's room, “That was before your sister died.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And Wallace was the last person to visit your house before yesterday.”

 

“Yeah. How did you…?” Daisuke snorted. “Never mind. Yeah, it was Wallace. A couple of weeks after all the visitors and well-wishers had stopped coming. He'd been there the day it happened, ya know. We'd been in the living room, if you can call it that, playing catch with one of the ceramic cats. Mom used to let everyone play with them, pick `em up, break `em; she didn't care. Jun, though, Jun used to get a stick up her ass about it. We were waiting for her to come back up stairs, tossing around one of her favorite figures, the ugly calico cat, you might have seen it, it was on the coffee table. Anyway, the screech of tires sort of distracted me and I missed the catch. Heh, the damn this hit the floor and broke clean in half. They usually smash into a million pieces, three or four large pieces and a million little shards; it's impossible to put them back together. Me an' Wallace had a moment of, `Oh shit,' before we realized it was completely fixable. We started laughing at almost the same time the screaming started outside,” Daisuke's face contorted a moment. “Anyway, a couple of months later, I got it in my head that enough time had passed, so I asked him to come over again. You can imagine how well that went over. He walked in the door and one of the first things he said was, `Hey, you fixed that ugly cat,' right in front of my mother, too. It all went down hill from there.

 

“After that I started spend a lot more time over at his house, at least I never had to answer any questions about why. I mean he told his mom all about it so—”

 

“That's enough, Daisuke.”

 

Daisuke looked sideways at him then shrugged, “Whatever.”

 

They continued walking around in silence for a while until a minute later when Daisuke snapped out of the mood he had slipped into. “Why are we still walking around? My legs are tired!”

 

Without comment Ken turned off of the path and sat down under the nearest tree facing an open patch of grass where a couple of children were kicking around a soccer ball.

 

Daisuke sat next to him and nudged Ken gently, “Why do we always come here anyway? I mean, I would think you'd hate this place considering what happened with your brother…”

 

“I have no brother.”

 

“Right,” Daisuke said, doubtfully.

 

“That was not here. That was another park, another city. The park was much larger than this one. The venders like to set up around the lake in the summer.”

 

“Oh,” Daisuke said, looking perplexed.

 

“The Ichijouji's just moved to this town three months ago,” Ken said helpfully.

 

“Oh yeah. But…?”

 

“The apartment with his family will always be a dangerous and oppressive place for him. He associates parks with feeling safe and happy, so I come here often.”

 

“What'd you care if he feels safe and happy? You really don't seem the type.”

 

“I am Ken, Daisuke. This place is also comforting to me. But, more than that, he is easier to control here.”

 

Daisuke's eyebrows rose, “You're controlling him?”

 

“To an extent.”

 

“What extent?”

 

“Right now I am keeping him repressed so that we can finish this conversation.”

 

“Oh. That's weird.”

 

“What happened to your violin?”

 

“Umm, I gave it back to Wallace before he moved. It was his father's old one, I couldn't really afford to buy one on my own.”

 

Ken nodded, thinking, “What would you do if you still had it?”

 

“I'd probably sell it. It's not like I could practice it in my room or anything. Why?” he asked suddenly suspicious of the look on Ken's face.

 

“I was curious.”

 

“I don't believe that. I think you're up to something.” When he didn't get a reaction from Ken he sighed and asked, “Well, what about Miyako?”

 

“What about Miyako?”

 

“Does he like her?”

 

“He already answered that question.”

 

“Yeah, but…”

 

“But what? Are you expecting that the truth is something different from what you've been told? If he secretly despised her would it make you feel better? Why is it that you hate Miyako so much?”

 

“I don't hate her,” he was startled by the reversal.

 

“You called her a bitch and you don't know her. What did she do to you?”

 

“She didn't do anything to me. Why are you drilling me on this? You don't like her either. I saw you that time she came up to you in the hall. You looked ready to kill her for just bothering you.”

 

“That had very little to do with Miyako.”

 

Daisuke opened his mouth and then shut it for a lack of words. He thought that was a very weird thing to say and he had no idea what it meant. Then he remembered that Miyako had flashed something in Ken's face that day, he didn't get mad until after he had read it. “What was on that note?”

 

“It was a letter from an old friend.”

 

“I thought you didn't have friends.”

 

“You're confusing yourself with me. I never said I had no friends.”

 

That stung a little but Daisuke shrugged it off, “So what did it say?”

 

“It doesn't matter.”

 

“If it doesn't matter, why did you get so pissed off when you read it?”

 

“You don't need to know right now, Daisuke, forget it.”

 

He snorted, “Fine. So it had nothing to do with Miyako and you don't hate her. So, do you like her?”

 

“I am Ken.”

 

Daisuke was all set to accept that and move on but, again, there was something about the way he had said it that made Daisuke say, “That's not what I asked.”

 

Ken turned his head to look at him and he smiled.

 

Daisuke glared back, he was back to feeling like a pet that had amused it's owner again.

 

Ken said, “She is just a means to an end.”

 

“What's that supposed to mean?”

 

“I'm using her.”

 

Daisuke rolled his eyes, “Oh, like you're using me.”

 

“Yes.”

 

He jumped up and stood over Ken ominously. He was suddenly angry and not quite sure why. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

 

Daisuke took a step back as Ken rose to his feet in one smooth motion and he began to circle around Daisuke like a shark. “What do you think it means?”

 

He started spinning in place so that he could keep an eye on Ken at all times. He swallowed, “I think it means you're an asshole and I don't know why I'm still bothering with you.” His anger was draining away but his confusion levels were skyrocketing.

 

Ken started advancing on him again and he started to back up until, predictably, his back hit the tree trunk. Shit, Daisuke thought.

 

“But what do you want it to mean, Daisuke?” Ken asked, pinning him with his eyes again.

 

Daisuke opened his mouth to say something then closed it again. Ken was still moving closer, very slowly now, and he could feel his mouth going dry. His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Why do you keep doing this to me?” he whispered.

 

Ken smirked again, putting his hand on the tree trunk to the right of Daisuke's head and leaning in impossibly close to whisper back, “Why do you keep asking me to?”

 

He held his breath, closed his eyes and waited, but, two heartbeats later when he reopened his eyes, Ken was nowhere in sight. He looked down, Ken was sitting again, back against the tree like nothing had happened, or almost happened. Daisuke sighed, though he wasn't quite sure if it was relief or disappointment.

 

“Where you expecting something, Daisuke?”

 

After a moment of introspection he decided to take the plunge, “Yeah, I think I was.”

 

It's curiously disorienting to suddenly find yourself in a completely different position than you had been in less than a blink of an eye. Daisuke was in just the position to know. It was so fast that Daisuke didn't actually know what happened until he took the time to review the event, seconds later. Apparently Ken had somehow swept his feet out from under him and as he fell with his back scraping the bark, before he even hit the ground, Ken's hand was around throat. He had been pinned to the tree forcibly though he remembered something about Ken's eyes, they had been flashing with some sort emotion. Daisuke shuddered right down to his toes just thinking about. And then Ken had said something, what was it?

 

“I've never touched you except to hurt you, Daisuke, and that's not likely to change.”

 

Yep, that was it. And then he had done something, something to Daisuke's ear. He'd either licked it or bit it, but what ever it was Daisuke had liked it very much. Ah Hell.

 

Ken was walking away, he had good ten-yard lead and Daisuke wasn't even following yet, but he was going to follow. He felt an insane little giggle bubble up in his throat and stick there. He hurt; he really hurt. It felt like his back was in ribbons and his ass, where he'd hit the ground, ached. His throat felt bruised and his ear still tingled. And in this little spasm of madness, Daisuke had the perfect view of Ken's entire backside's profile as he walked away and one insane thought rang true through Daisuke's entire being: He could really use a cape.