A/N: Written for the
Short Oneshot Competition
Mini-Fic Masterclass Challenge (oneshot), Wonderswan #8 – Not-So-Secret Santa (title and summary by Aiko Isari)
Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Silver Task 4 – Write from the perspective of a character who's fallen sick
Diversity Writing Challenge, e36 – fic that explores guilt
bound
Ken may as well be captive: bed bound, neck stiff, head aching with eyes slitted open to let at little of the world in as possible. Ryo's almost one of the excluded ones, but he manages to convince the Ichijoujis to give him this one last chance.
Because he has to leave. And the colourful curtains and the flowers and toys in a neat row on the shelf don't change that this is a hospital room, and Ken is only there because of Ryo. It doesn't matter that the rails aren't up, or there are no restraints save the patient tag on his pale wrist, and no guards save the nurses and doctors and students that crowd the desks and corridors. It's a prison anyway and Ryo has to leave him there.
It's his fault Ken's in that bed to begin with, with what the doctors are calling aseptic meningitis but what Ryo's sure is Milleniummon's fault. Ken wouldn't have pushed him otherwise. Wouldn't have needed to push him.
It's for his own good, but he's still leaving Ken tussled and bound to follow the summons of a digital god.
.
There are other children, but none of them are Ken. Maybe it's because Ken looked up to him while they all look to him and he's the one craning his head to look up at some of them. They're legendary, after all. Yagami Taichi who he's met several times before. Ishida Yamato who's just as infamous but more recluse. Saiba Neo whose reputation Ryo pities – but that boy's got an expression on his face saying he doesn't want or need their pity.
They fight. It's like sparring, except it shouldn't be. Isn't there supposed to be an ulterior motive? And even if there wasn't, who wouldn't want to tame a god?
He doesn't miss that he's the only one with the title of "Tamer" amongst them.
There are other children here, but he's lonely anyway. He's different.
He wishes Ken were along. But look how that turned out last time.
.
He's right, in the end, and wrong. The other children aren't tamers and it is sparring and there is an ulterior motive but it's not to tame a god. Or not the gods he had in mind, anyway.
'No,' he says, because Milleniummon has caused so much trouble for them. Milleniummon hurt Ken, and said such hateful things before. Milleniummon is the reason Ryo's mixed up with any of this to begin with.
Milleniummon's the reason he's different from the Chosen, too.
They know. He can see it on their faces. They've known. They've played along. Turned him into a sacrificial lamb… and he wonders, did Ken know too? He doesn't want to believe that's the case but how can it not be? Every other Chosen knows.
But Ken isn't invited and is it because he's sick or because he doesn't know.
He's leaving. He's leaving again. He needs to chase Milleniummon because this is the cycle they've become trapped in and he'll do it alone. At least he won't lose things there. At least he won't have allies he thinks he can trust but he can't, or ones he doesn't know he can trust.
At least he won't have allies who get hurt on his behalf, he thinks.
Except it's not true. He can forsake the humans all he wants but he needs the digimon.
He needs humans too, but it's too much trouble both ways.
.
He can't get away. The different worlds, the different times… Humans fill them to the brim and Milleniummon is in each and every one of them, surrounded by so many unfamiliar faces.
Sometimes, he sees ones he recognises. Taichi features quite frequently. Yamato does as well. And Mimi. Some of the others aren't so often. Like Saiba Rei. He's seen her maybe once this entire time.
And there's someone he hasn't seen at all. He wonders why. He wonders, too, when he starts to forget the others but that's not as important. Those children are faces of a time that's gone and a time he doesn't care to recall. It doesn't matter if the three brunettes start looking the same such that he can't recall which is Taichi's younger sister anymore.
But that's not important. He doesn't care about them. He simply knows them. Remembers them. There's someone else though. Someone else and he's caught between wanting to remember them at not: caught between missing them dearly and wishing he'd never met them. Both of those are powerful emotions. This person mattered more than the others, was more than a passing acquaintance or a name he'd known more than the face.
He can't remember the name, though. And the face is badly pixelated in his mind like most of his other memories.
He's been between times too long. His own past is fragmenting along the way.
.
He's chasing Milleniummon and he's completely and utterly alone.
There are memories he can't stand to lose and can't stand to recall and so they hover in the middle, indiscernible and like the ones he doesn't care to summon up at all. There are people around him – always people around – but they pass him by and he passes them by as though they exist on separate planes.
Maybe they do.
Or maybe they're all ghosts he can no longer place.
.
Milleniummon is chasing something too, he realises. And it's not him.
That's a surprise, given his obsession with him. But there's something else. Something ahead of both of them. Something Ryo is always missing because it's never there in time for him to catch it.
He doesn't understand. But he does, somehow. There's something Milleniummon doesn't want him to find, amidst this web of things he'd found and discarded or retained.
He remembers little about himself, but in losing all that, he's discovered so much of the world. And that's fine. It's lead to him understanding why he's lost his place in it, why he'd been destined to lose his place in it…
Milleniummon is the only recurrent theme, and that means Milleniummon is his past, present and future.
.
He jumps about the timeline. It's inevitable, he supposes, to sometimes wind up ahead of Milleniummon. He never knows when that happens, though.
Until one time he does.
He's staring at the sea of people, like he does, and something catches his eye. A collar. Dark glasses covering one's eyes. Wild bed-hair a deep shade of blue that nags his mind. Where? Where has he seen those before?
He can't recall, but that's no surprise. He can't recall much in the way of humans beyond Milleniummon. He wonders if, one day, he'll forget he's human too. It seems like the logical progression of things.
But this boy. There's something about him that stands out from the masses. Not the extravagant cloak he wears. Not the whip sometimes in his hands. It's the collar. And the glasses. And that hair and Ryo can't help but think it's supposed to be softer and neater.
He knows this boy. There are things wrong with the picture and he can't recall a name and even the face looks a little different but he knows this boy.
.
Milleniummon drains the boy dry. The cloak and gloves disappear but the collar and glasses stay on until the end, even while the hair settles down.
They collar him. He remembers. He wears all his own clothes and yet he's still got a figurative collar around his neck: an edict to chase Milleniummon, and tame him, and be exiled along with him to this place dances amongst times.
There was another boy with a collar once upon a time, and he remembers walking away.
It's too late now to chase. He can only go after Milleniummon, because Milleniummon he knows.
One day, he'll run into that boy again.
.
He finds him, eventually. Chases after him this time but there's no recognition on the other boy's face, either. No life in those eyes, either, hidden behind shades. Ryo can barely make out the blue in them. He wonders if he's one of those people who are hurt by the sun. Their eyes don't have to be pink… but he thinks he can make out a bit of red, anyway. Or maybe that's fatigue, or pain, or something else.
They're shuttered, in any case. There is no point chasing him when neither of them have anything to offer, except… 'You have an enemy.' Because Milleniummon will wipe him from existence again, no matter how gung-ho he looks.
The boy laughs at him. 'I have many enemies,' he says. 'They're imperfect, and jealous.'
Jealous… He wonders if the boy is right, and Milleniummon is jealous.
.
Milleniummon is jealous. So is Monodramon, the stubborn little thing, but at least Monodramon is manageable. Cyberdramon is until he's had a whiff of battle. Then Ryo can only chase after him again.
At least it's just this world: this lonely primitive world where there are only digimon. And that's fine. But along the way he's forgotten why he doesn't want to interact with them. He's stopped wanting to be away from them.
It's good, then, that he's eventually found by humans. Tamers, they call themselves and that makes him a little happy because he's a Tamer too. They mention Chosen, at one point, and that twinges in his gut. He doesn't like that word. He doesn't remember why and it's not a significant enough word for the others to bring up again.
They go to another world, eventually. Their home world, they say. His home world too but it's vaguely familiar in the way that all worlds will be vaguely familiar. He's traversed them all, after all. But those memories are murky with the passage of time, as well, and the lack of continuity they've had.
Sometimes he remembers: a boy with wild brown hair and an Agumon… and a ghost with a collar and dark frames like a captive but a whip like the gaoler – or perhaps that was his attempt to break out of his cage. Everyone is jealous, he'd said. Maybe he's trapped in expectations and duties too.
Watching Milleniummon is a full-time job, so Ryo can sympathise.
.
They watch Digimon Adventure, eventually, marathoning it at Jenrya's place because they've got it all including the promotional stuff most kids can't afford to get their hands on.
There's a familiar boy on the screen, amidst the other characters. He's wearing a collar, and shades. His eyes are blue beneath them, and his wind-ruffled hair is blue as well: a much darker shade.
No, he thinks, eyes glued to the screen. Its' not wind-ruffled but bed-matted.
He continues watching. The glasses come off eventually. So does the collar. The hair settles to slope gently like it should, and his face…
He remembers a pixelated face from his past and wonders if it's the same boy.
And then, a few episodes later, there's a younger him as well. Towards the end, there's him as well: the small boy pushing him away and being struck instead, and then the pain in his neck that makes him bedridden for weeks… or so they say.
He thinks he remembers that: a bright but dreary place where he leaves a boy for their own good after he's to blame – because Milleniummon was jealous of anyone who got too close and anyone close in that world where he didn't fit was too close.
But Ichijouji Ken is ultimately a Chosen and not a Tamer.
They'd both found the places they belong, in the end. Places where their collars aren't so noticeable, where the sun doesn't hurt so much and where he's not so stiff. It won't go away, though. Milleniummon always lurks: inside Monodramon, inside Cyberdramon, inside Justimon. And the spore will remain forever buried: right there in the brainstem where it can do anything to nothing at all.