A/N: This, along with Memorial Day, is my tribute to the Digimon Anniversary. It's the fourteenth year since 1999. Let's make it count everybody. Present tense, implicit homosexuality, alcohol reference, possible alternate character interpretation, and hints of a crossover. Also, I know it is August 2nd, but I will probably not have the chance to post it ... yeah.

This has no connection to Dreamlike or any of my other fics, advance notice. Officially, this fic starts post the "Summer 2003" and "The Door to Summer" CD dramas, all of which, including Hurricane Touchdown, I take as canon. It goes all the way to the epilogue, which, for the sake of this, is canon. I hear the screaming now and I am really sorry.

EDIT 09-09-13: Minor edits, story split into parts. Please enjoy.

Extra notes at the end, optional as always.

-On August Third, we remember that sacrifice. Post 02, epilogue compliant. Hikari waits, and ages. She grows up, and she lives. She knows they will return to her... her precious friends. Happy Anniversary.

My Sanctuary

I.

"Hikari, I'm... I'm going to go."

"Mm. Take care."

She can send her friend off with a smile, but what she really wants is to go with her. What she really wants is to cry and run after her like a lost child, begging to see the wonders of the world one more time. However, wanting that, and fulfilling that desire... are two very different things now. She is growing up and Tailmon will never be a real child. So instead, she does the painful thing and smiles. It makes Tailmon hesitate, and mentally, Hikari sighs. She is not so helpless anymore, honestly. She does not always need her brother's hand to help her up. She is better with herself now. Journeying without Taichi has seen to that.

"Will you be all right without me?" Tailmon asks this, knowing how Hikari will answer anyway, knowing all of these things because they are partners and sisters and family. Maybe she thinks Hikari will change her mind for her. Maybe she should scold her, for running off on what could be considered on a wild goose chase.

Hikari shakes her head. "I probably won't be, but that doesn't matter. Go, Tailmon. You have to, for both of us." She can't do that, because she wants to believe, almost as much as Tailmon does, that this is the right thing to do, the right thing to believe in.

She gives her the affirmation, because the curiosity will never leave them if one doesn't find the answer.

"Go find him, Tailmon. Bring him home."

She will, and Hikari will wait for them. Both of her silly, ageless friends. it will simply be an time around the block or two, and an endurable state at that. Slowly, the cat turns and leaves and Hikari is torn between letting tears fall or throwing her Digivice away in a fit of childish anger.

In the end, she does neither, and walks back to the Digital Gate with a peaceful smile on her face.

She is used to wearing that expression.

The first few weeks are simply too quiet.

Normally, she would be bent over her homework with Tailmon on her shoulders, inquiring patiently why pi is a number and a food or what the purpose of a ruler with tape served in old time education. The queries were silly, but she appreciated them.

Now, with Tailmon gone, Hikari feels that she took those moments for granted.

She turns up her radio now, even with the others, keeping a headphone in as if it will remove the buzz that is (Tailmon's) empty space about her shoulders or in her arms, listening to teacher lectures and music speaking of despair and love in the same sentence. Those songs were how she had felt in those days, loving her brother and miserable for the state of the world he had left behind.

Loving having her partner, and hating what had been lost to have her.

She doesn't feel that way now. Nothing is so black and white and easy to slice evenly. It is gray, conflicting, confusing. Nothing is the way we think it is.

She finds herself okay with that, these days.

These days without Tailmon are quiet and painful but they are also her days and she has to spend them well. The clock will keep ticking.

The others keep staring at her when she declines to go to the Digital World with them, holding up a textbook as a reason (excuse), as if she should believe otherwise, that she should wait like a statue for everything to go back to the way it was.

Hikari only laughs then, and bends over her latest essay on the importance of discipline in regards to Digimon-human relationships, as per request by Jyou and Koushiro for very different reasons. It is condescending, she knows that, but she knows they don't understand. Nothing gold can stay(1).

Nothing is always white.

Sometimes she still visits the Dark Ocean in her dreams. It never hurts her anymore and she sits there and watches the waves and wonders what she has to fear from it, or if she had to fear anything at all. Even its master is quiet.

Once in a while, they do speak, and Hikari finds him an interesting Digimon. He seems very lonely.

Perhaps that is why they have a truce, because they are both lonely.

One time, he tells her of the day he was born and rose up here, and of the rebellion his servants tried to make her help them perform(2). In return, she tells him of the boy who would be king and his failures in darkness. It seems to amuse him, somewhat.

Demon never sees her there and Hikari never sees fit to look for him. Alone, or even with Tailmon, she wouldn't dare.

He has his own games to play, and Hikari doesn't want to play them.

Being different has its limits and eventually Hikari hopes she will have reached those limits.

With little to do outside of schoolwork, she throws herself into understanding people. To be specific, understanding people with Digimon.

People are appearing more and more with Digimon as the months pass. Frequently, they have no clue what to do with them, other than feed them and let them run around the backyards or the parks so they don't break all of the furniture. However, the relationship is more than that, and she wishes for people to recognize that. They are alive, they think, and they love. Even the scared bite back eventually, as she remembers.

(The pain of loneliness always burns at the thought and sometimes makes it hard to breathe.)

The children are too young to understand and the adults are too old, but Hikari tries anyway, even when she is brushed off. At least the smaller ones listen when the adults pretend not to.

"You are their sanctuary," she tells them over and over again. "They protect you, but you are their home, the one that will always love them. They need you. Not your food, but you."

Sometimes people nod, others, they simply frown and shake their heads. Hikari was discouraged in the beginning, but then she smiles at them over their disdain, and continues teaching anyway.

She loves it, she realizes one night on the train, hurrying to finish a mock test before she gets home for Taichi to look it over. She loves the way their eyes light up when they understand, when they look at their partners with that ever-so-gentle look that she had once been able to give her Tailmon. She loves it and she is happy because this is a difference she is able to make.

She remembers Kawada Noriko-chan(3) and her wish to be a teacher.

She remembers wanting the same once, but having forgotten about it.

Now, it doesn't feel like that matters... because she is already teaching anyway.

What harm would it be to do it for real?

A/N:This is the end of part one!

(1) "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a poem written and published by Robert Frost in 1923. Usually interpreted in about middle school, the poem is featured in The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It was one of the few books and poems I enjoyed reading in school.

(2) The reason I'm making a note of this is because the English dub and the Japanese dub had alternate interpretations of the Hangyomon/Dark Ocean things going after Hikari. In the English dub, they wanted her to become their queen (I don't remember if they wanted her to rule with their god or not). I'm following the Japanese dub where they wanted to mate with her to make new servants in a war against a "new god" (speculation is either the Kaiser or Millenniummon) for the sake of their "former god", who is shown in shadow as Dagomon, a Digimon who is described as the "Sinful Priest of the Ocean Floor". Yeah. I'm not sure that it would want its followers to kidnap Hikari as a bride but who can say?

(3) Kawada Noriko is the Dark Seed child who had her flower bloom early. I'm making the distinction because in the Our War Game there is another character named Noriko who is a friend of Hikari's in the Japanese version. I just thought I should clear that one up.