Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ The Mistakes We Make ❯ Epilogue II - Revelations ( Chapter 10 )

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

EPILOGUE - PART II

The Kaizer's control center was dark and shadowy, and Takeru couldn't hear a damned thing except for the stomach-turning screams that came through the open door on the other side of it, and which echoed weirdly off the steel walls. The hairs on the back of his neck had stood up at the first scream, and they hadn't gone back down yet. Not even by tangling a hand in Pegasusmon's mane could he comfort himself enough to make the tingly feeling leave his skin, or the twisted feeling leave his stomach. Added to the fact that he was sure he was going to trip over something in the darkness here, and this was shaping up to be a downright unpleasant excursion from start to finish.

He was dreading what they would find when they crossed the threshold into the Kaizer's bedroom. The voice was barely recognizable as Daisuke's, and while part of him wanted to rush in there and save his friend from what had to be something really dreadful, the rest of him was hanging back out of fear for what that friend might look like. Had he been hacked to bits? Disemboweled? Anything seemed possible from the desperation in those screams.

It was Iori, oddly enough, who screwed up his courage first and hastened his steps to cross the vast empty darkness of the control room. Blank white eyes stared down at him and reflected off the smooth perfection of his hair as he took the lead away from Takeru; Takeru never bothered to glance at the monitors that formed the crux of the Kaizer's intelligence network. At another time, he might have been interested to see how it all worked, and perhaps sabotage it, but right now that seemed ... considerably less important than the source of the screams. Iori walked right up to the open doorway at the other side of the control center, Digmon on his heels and walking with surprising lightness and grace for such an ungainly-looking Digimon. The small, stocky form of Iori arrived in the doorway, and stopped dead. His expression never changed, but Takeru could tell from the very stiffness of his pose that Iori was shocked.

Takeru, not to be shown up by someone over two years younger than himself, slipped around Digmon then and looked into the room over Iori's head. And he stopped dead as well.

What was happening to Daisuke was blatantly obvious from the very start. His nudity, the way he squirmed and writhed and screamed in agony, the chains that held him to the pole that was obviously causing him so much pain. The exact mechanics by which he was being tortured were not apparent at first glance, but it was sufficient for Takeru to know that he definitely was not undergoing this by choice. In that moment of blank, speechless stunning revelation, Takeru mentally smacked himself for all of his unkind thoughts, all of his doubts. He felt distinctly unclean for ever having had them in the first place.

Daisuke's been here for four months ...

Behind him, he heard Miyako gasp and shriek a little, and the sound spurred Takeru into action. He gave Iori an ungentle shove to get him moving as well.

"Come on, we have to get him loose."

"... Right," said Iori after a moment. "Right. Digmon, come on we need your help."

It was the work of only a moment for Digmon to cut through the chains that bound Daisuke's wrists, and Takeru caught him as he fell forward. It was then that he noticed the phallus that had been forced up inside Daisuke, and he felt sick. After the shackles on Daisuke's ankles had been removed as well, Takeru got Pegasusmon to help him haul Daisuke up and off of the phallus. Daisuke cried against his shoulder while this was done, and went slack, clinging weakly to his neck and whispering softly in Takeru's ear. What he was whispering made Takeru want to wring Ken's neck, and if Ken had walked in at that moment, he probably would have become murderous.

"Thank you, master, thank you ... thank you ... master ..."

He thinks I'm Ken ...

Takeru glanced at Iori to see how the younger boy was taking this, and found that Iori had, in a moment of practicality, ripped the sheets off of Ken's bed and was offering them to Takeru. Wordlessly, Takeru nodded and attempted to get the sheet wrapped around Daisuke. The girls had both vanished from immediate sight, although Takeru spotted Hikari's back through the door, and he could hear Miyako retching in the bathroom attached to the bedroom while Halsemon worriedly inquired after her from the doorway.

"Go see if they're okay," said Takeru to Iori. He wanted nothing more than to go and be sick in the bathroom as well, but someone had to get the task of rescuing Daisuke accomplished. So he continued to wrap the sheet around Daisuke, his mind somewhat numb and refusing to process all of the information that he had gained in the past few minutes in favor of focusing on the mechanical motions of getting Daisuke decently covered so that the girls could help him out.

Iori spoke quietly to Hikari; Takeru guessed that Hikari was undergoing a severe paradigm adjustment. She had always been the one to maintain that, deep down inside, Ken wasn't a bad guy and he just needed a little guidance to get him back on the right track. Takeru was personally prepared at this moment to kill him entirely, and he judged that Hikari was probably going to stop insisting on Ken's innate goodness. Presently, Hikari turned around and came into the room again, one hand riding on Nefertimon's back.

Daisuke chose that moment to open his eyes and really notice what was going on around him. Takeru was happy about this development for about three seconds, as it meant that Daisuke could help get himself up on Pegasusmon's back and he wouldn't have to haul him up bodily. Then Daisuke shakily lifted a hand toward Takeru's face, but stopped short of actually touching him. The dark brown eyes that met Takeru's were deeply confused and almost devoid of life.

"You're not ... who ..." Daisuke blinked, brows furrowing in concentration. This expression would have been charmingly cute on him, if not for the sweat and tears that streaked his face and the blank emptiness in his eyes. "Ta-Takeru?"

Takeru nodded. "It's okay now, we've got you, we're taking you home."

Daisuke's eyes went wide then with terror. "You can't! You have to leave, now! Go away, leave me alone! Please!"

"It'll be okay, we have to hurry but Ken won't be back for a little while yet." Takeru smiled, rather weakly, with the intent to reassure him, but Daisuke was having none of it.

"No, you can't take me away! Please, please, just leave me alone and leave!" Daisuke latched onto Takeru's hand imploringly, his grip surprisingly strong for all that he could barely stand on his own.

This was not the reaction Takeru had anticipated. He looked around for support from the other children, and found the same incomprehension in their faces that he himself felt. Well, except for Miyako, who had just now emerged from the bathroom looking pale and ill and wiping her mouth on a tissue that she had doubtless taken from some personal stash of Ken's.

In fact, everything in here reeked of Ken and the sick, sadistic sort of activities that he had doubtless inflicted upon Daisuke. The table with the chains at the corners and the convenient little drawers in the underside; the pole with its obscene phallus that still sparked and crackled now that it was deprived of Daisuke's flesh; the code that absolutely covered every inch of the walls and which had a purpose that Takeru couldn't even begin to guess; the other table with a few crumbs on the top, as if someone had improperly wiped up the remains of the Kaizer's breakfast, and the bowl of water that rested by one leg. Even the sheet wrapped around Daisuke bore stains that Takeru suspected were composed mostly of semen, and the otherwise innocuous bedside table supported a coil of rope and something that looked a lot like a leash.

No matter what Daisuke said, there was no way Takeru was leaving him here.

"It'll be okay," he said to Daisuke, although he was looking at the other children. He pulled his hand free of Daisuke's grasp and then said, "Miyako, do you think you could help me get him up on Pegasusmon?"

Miyako swallowed and nodded a little, and together they wrestled the weakly protesting, sheet-wrapped Daisuke up onto the orange Digimon's back. Takeru climbed up behind him and held him; he couldn't in good conscience force Daisuke to ride with a leg on either side of Pegasusmon's shoulders, not after what he'd been through already today, and so he had Daisuke sit sideways in front of him and held the shivering boy tightly with one arm.

"Let's go," he said, over Daisuke's increasingly panicky pleas. "Before Ken decides to come back." The other children and Digimon filed quickly out, and Takeru twisted a hand in Pegasusmon's mane as the Digimon clopped rapidly to follow.

"Nooooo," moaned Daisuke in despair, and he clutched Takeru's chest tightly, shutting his eyes as they crossed out into the control room. Takeru felt him stiffen as the Digimon trotted gamely across the control room, and a moment later give a choked cry. He looked down at the top of Daisuke's head, confused, as Daisuke again choked and began to spasm, his arms closing around Takeru's torso with such force that Takeru had difficulty breathing.

By the time the not-so-stealthy little group of Digidestined reached the corridor that lead to the control center, Daisuke was screaming again, thick, liquid screams that ripped Takeru's heart out by inches.

"What's the matter with him?" Miyako demanded. She was on Halsemon's back now, as was Iori, with Armadillomon riding in front of Hikari atop Nefertimon. It had been determined in the past that they would make better time this way, although the flying Digimon tended to become winded more quickly with two riders. The nearest Digiport monitor wasn't too awfully far away, though, and desperation was an effective goad.

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" demanded Takeru back. Daisuke was curled up in his lap, almost in a ball in his agony, and he was difficult to hold onto. As the group flew out of the low exit of the Kaizer's base and into the open air, Takeru gave up his grip on Pegasusmon's mane and clamped his knees around his Digimon's sides instead so that he could hold Daisuke with both arms. He hoped that Pegasusmon wouldn't have to engage in any fancy flying; he and Daisuke might go tumbling off. Both of Daisuke's hands were pressed deeply into his belly, and the cries that emerged from him were broken and quiet, as if he lacked the breath to really put a lot of energy into them. In some ways, this was even more disturbing than the clean screams of pain that had greeted Takeru in the fortress.

"I'm going to email the others," said Miyako, and she suited action to words by pulling out her minicomputer. "I think this is too big for just us."

After a moment's consideration, Takeru nodded, although Miyako was already keying in the message and hadn't waited for his approval. "Maybe Jyou can figure out what's wrong with him. Ask Koushiro too, just to be on the safe side. But maybe we shouldn't spread this around to everybody, you know how ballistic Taichi will go if he finds out."

Miyako stopped and thought about it, then nodded in agreement. "Just Jyou and Koushiro then. I'll ask them not to tell anyone else. Where should I say to meet us?"

"My house," said Takeru, not knowing where else to go. In his arms, Daisuke sobbed silently and writhed in mysterious, crushing pain.

Chibimon met them at the gate point with a story about being chased by the Kaizer and how they had to hurry. Then he realized that the bundle of whimpering pain that Takeru was trying to haul off Pegasusmon's back was Daisuke, and there was no more talk about the Kaizer out of him.

"Daisuke! Daisuke!" Chibimon squealed with glee and pounced on his partner, engaging his shoulder in a full-body hug. When Daisuke failed to respond in the usual manner, Chibimon started to investigate further; by the time all of the children had passed through the Digiport and fallen into the computer lab at school, the small blue Digimon had descended into hysterics again.

"Shit," murmured Takeru, starting to feel harried. It was bad enough that he was now facing the task of moving Daisuke to his home in the condition that he was in. Having a wailing Digimon clinging to him throughout the trip was not calculated to make the group inconspicuous. "Hikari, could you do something about that, please?"

So Hikari took Chibimon up into her arms and cuddled him and shushed him, while Takeru and Miyako together wrapped Daisuke tighter in the sheet and then picked him up. Miyako was still looking wan and pale, but she had pulled herself together surprisingly well. Takeru checked out the window; the early winter dusk had already fallen, and it was dark outside. Good.

By sneaking out of the school building through a side door and taking the back way through the park, the group managed to arrive at Takeru's apartment building without serious incident or being stopped by the police for suspicious behavior. Iori ran interference in the building lobby, although he had an opinion to share as he followed the others afterward.

"I'm not sure we're doing the right thing, here," he said.

"What do you mean?" asked Hikari, for which Takeru was grateful. He didn't have the wind to spare for finding out what the hell Iori was talking about. Daisuke was a lot heavier than he looked, and they had decided to take the stairs, for reasons that had seemed good to Takeru at the time.

"I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to keep this a secret. I don't think this is something we can handle on our own."

"That's why I emailed Jyou and Koushiro," said Miyako. "They'll know what to do."

"I think we should at least tell Daisuke's parents." Iori said this quietly.

"Well, you're welcome to use the phone when we get to my place," said Takeru, breathless. "And after that, why don't you call the Ichijoujis and tell them what their son has been up to."

No more was said after that, and the silence was broken only by Daisuke's disturbing little cries and Chibimon's sobbing.

Takeru's mother was home when they finally managed to straggle in. So was Jyou and Koushiro. The trio of them descended upon Daisuke as soon as the other four children dragged him through the door, and Takeru sighed, feeling as if the weight of this immense responsibility had been lifted from him by the presence of older, more knowledgeable persons.

He retreated to a corner to catch his breath while Jyou knelt over the bundle on the floor. He and Koushiro started to unwrap the sheet that Daisuke was in, and Takeru's mother made a strangled little sound. Takeru, already numb from the horror of it all, looked at Daisuke as if seeing him for the first time, noting the bruises on his wrists and ribs and nipples, the collar around his throat, and when Jyou pulled the sheet down a little farther, the dark lines of the tattoo on his rump.

He put his name on him ... Takeru swallowed hard, feeling like he would very much like to go be ill now, but Jyou was talking to him, so that wasn't an option quite yet.

"How long has he been like this?" asked Jyou. Daisuke sounded like he was starting to have trouble breathing, and looked like he was retching. The collar came off when Jyou unbuckled it to reach Daisuke's throat for an instinctively-taken pulse.

"Since we left the Kaizer's room," said Takeru. "He didn't want to leave, he was terrified of leaving."

"Was he okay before?" Before Takeru could answer Jyou's question, a new sound intruded in on the conversation. They both looked over to find that Hikari and Miyako had put their arms around each other, with Chibimon in the middle, and all three of them looked to be having a collective nervous breakdown. Poromon and Gatomon simply looked lost.

"Well ... sort of," said Takeru. He took off his hat to run his hand through his hair, and only remembered that Patamon was up there when the Digimon complained about this new habit that Takeru was forming.

"What do you mean, sort of?" Jyou gave him a Look.

Koushiro, meanwhile, was examining the tattoo. "I wonder what this means," he mumbled, while doing something on his computer, doubtless trying to decipher it.

"It means he belongs to the Kaizer!" volunteered Patamon. Of all the Digimon, Patamon seemed to be the only one taking all of this in stride, as if this were a holiday outing, and not Daisuke panting in unknowable, whimpering agony on the floor. Perhaps he just failed to comprehend what was going on, but Takeru believed it more likely that Patamon was merely reverting into Happy Mode as his own method of dealing with the miasma of emotions in the air.

"Well ..." said Takeru, as Jyou continued to stare at him for an answer. "He was ..." He glanced around, hesitant to describe the brutal sexual torture that Daisuke had been undergoing when found. Talking about it would make it real, and Takeru was sure that he was going to have nightmares as it was.

Unexpectedly, it was his mother who came to his rescue, although not in a way Takeru would have preferred. "I'm calling an ambulance," she announced, as she picked up the phone.

"What?!" Takeru leaped to grab her arm before she could finish dialing. "Mom, you can't!"

While she looked at him like he'd lost his mind, Jyou sat back on his heels and said, "Yeah. Yeah, let's do that." His voice shook.

Takeru rounded on him next, something akin to betrayal warring with relief in his mind. "We can't! What are we going to tell them!"

"We'll tell them that we need an ambulance," said his mother. She worked her arm free and finished dialing.

This was insane! There was no way anybody was going to believe that Daisuke had been raped and tortured in another dimension by Ichijouji Ken of all people, and no other story was even remotely plausible. Takeru's mind spun. "Jyou, come on ... Koushiro?" He looked desperately over at the redheaded boy who was tapping rapidly across his laptop keyboard as if it were the only thing in the world.

"I'm deferring to Jyou on this one," said Koushiro, without looking up. His voice had gone totally flat, completely emotionless; in a way, this was an eerie echo of the way Iori appeared to be handling things.

"Look, Takeru," said Jyou. "We can't deal with this ourselves."

"But ..." It would take Daisuke off his hands, the responsibility for this would be gone, and he'd be taken care of by people far more qualified than any of them. But still ... "What are we going to tell them?"

"I don't know," said Jyou. "But I know that he's in shock, and he's in pain, and he could die from this. This is serious, Takeru. He needs X-rays, and shit he needs morphine, and about a hundred other things that I just don't have in my pocket."

Takeru's mother spoke in the background, while Daisuke let out a thick moan and spasmed, vomiting up thin, yellow-brown bile across the sheet that he was still half-laying on. Then he twisted around like a fish out of water, gasping for breath. Either Miyako or Hikari made a strange, desperate little sound. Takeru wasn't sure which one.

"So it was only when you walked out of the room with him that this happened?" said Koushiro, typing rapidly. "What was the room like? Was there anything special about it that you could see?"

"Code," said Iori. "There was code everywhere, all over the walls."

"I don't suppose you got a picture of it."

"No. Sorry, I didn't think of that."

Miyako said softly, "I don't know if this is important, but there weren't any mirrors either. Not one."

Takeru's mother hung up then and said, "They'll be here in a few minutes. Takeru, go wet a cloth and bring it here." She knelt down beside Daisuke and stroked his hair gently, while Daisuke gibbered and shook and whimpered. Takeru didn't hesitate to scramble out of the room to obey.

It was only when he was actually in the bathroom that he realized how hot and thick the air was out in the room with Daisuke. Too many people breathing the same air, the stench of sickness and cold sweat, and the same sort of poisonous atmosphere of things better left unknown that had permeated the Kaizer's base. As he wet down a washcloth, he looked at himself in the mirror and repeated softly, "You can handle this. Everything will be all right. I can handle this."

But the Takeru in the mirror didn't look convinced.

Emerging again with the damp washcloth, he handed it to his mother, who wiped off Daisuke's face with it. Looking at his mother, Takeru wondered momentarily what was going through her mind. He hadn't told her a whole lot about the digital world; unless she had somehow found out from Yamato, she didn't know who the Kaizer was, or anything about what was really going on. The gate was open again, he'd had to explain that much when Patamon had suddenly started coming home with him, but beyond that she hadn't seemed very interested. Nor had he been interested in telling her.

Keeping the Digiworld a secret was as natural as breathing to an eleven-year-old boy, with suspicions that he would be forbidden from visiting it if figures of authority really understood what was happening there. Most things that were fun and/or important ended up off-limits to children, Takeru included, and so he was fairly typical in developing an instinct to conceal anything new and different that he discovered. With his mother, who already knew that the digital world existed, it was the details only that were hidden. The first time he'd been drafted into service by the Digiworld, he had nearly been killed multiple times, and so he had kept the exact details of what he was doing this time around to himself. He told himself that he was only protecting her from worrying about him, but moments of honesty admitted that he was trying to protect himself from her worrying as well.

But now it was too late. It was all coming out in the open, and Takeru's slight nausea was being exacerbated by the nervous clenching in his stomach. Ichijouji Ken, the shameful secret of the digital world, the black sheep of the Digidestined who was hidden in the proverbial basement for the "family" to deal with alone, was going to be discovered by the world at large. He just knew it.

Hikari looked ... devastated. She wasn't crying, but she looked like she was on the verge of it, and she was clinging to Miyako's arm in a way that only another girl could manage without making it look scandalous. Takeru noticed this when he glanced at her, and part of him wanted to go over and comfort her. He didn't move, however. He felt dirty, and he didn't want to be touched by anyone.

The gentle ministrations from Takeru's mother didn't seem to be impacting Daisuke's suffering at all. In fact, the cinnamon-haired boy appeared to be living in his own private world of pain at the moment, and the rest of them didn't exist. The sounds he was making had been carefully excluded from Takeru's range of attention, and Takeru's mind shied away from the possibility of listening more closely. He didn't want to hear this. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want this to be happening.

"Well," said Koushiro, breaking the uncomfortable non-silence. "You said there was code all over the walls, surrounding Daisuke completely, and he didn't start ... doing this until you left that area. Whatever the Kaizer has done to him must have been negated by that code. It must have been acting as an antidote of sorts, and only when he was removed from that antidote did this pain kick in."

"What about the code that was tattooed on him?" asked Jyou. "Could that be what's causing this?"

Koushiro shook his head. "Patamon was right, it's just a name tag. So whatever's doing this to him must be inside him. Something complicated enough to do this would be visible otherwise. I'm thinking poison, but it could also be some kind of device."

There was a pounding knock at the door then, and Takeru jumped to answer it, wanting this over. Once he gets to the hospital, everything will be okay. They'll figure out what's wrong with him and fix it. A moment later, the tiny apartment was swarming with paramedics, surrounding Daisuke and removing this situation entirely from Takeru's tenuous control and confusing all of the Digimon present. Once displaced, Takeru's mother came over to him and put her arms around him, and despite his wish to be left alone, he didn't protest. But for the capriciousness of Ken's tastes, that could be him.