Memories
Notes: OK... this really took forever to post. This is the sequel to Puddles which I wrote a couple of weeks ago which is here if you missed it. Puddles was supposed to be a short One Shot that I just wrote one day in my Live Journal that I decided to post on the ML. Anyway, someone asked for some more (I think it was Vain actually) so I decided to give it a shot, and here it is. I feel I have to apologize because this is written in Daisuke’s POV and my Daisuke rambles a lot ^_^;; And this is really more of an in between that makes the jump between Puddles and the Next part which is already written and will not take nearly as long to get posted as this. I think the next part is worth it, but while you wait ^_~ here is Memories.
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It took me two weeks to find him. Well, it was more like two weeks of shock and confusion before I decided to take action. Well, Actually, it took two weeks for Jun to get tired of my constantly shocked and confused mood before she forced me to take action… it’s all the same thing.
It didn’t take long to find him; I already knew where he lived. Everyone knows where the great boy wonder lives—the trouble was getting the nerve to show up on his doorstep. See, The reason why there isn’t an hour-long wait in front of his door is because everyone who knows where he lives, knows that Ichijouji Ken does not like uninvited guests. There were some pretty scary stories going around about his reactions to some of those uninvited fans and news crews who tried to catch the genius at his "private residence." Not pretty at all, really. When he disappeared, the news crews camped outside of his apartment building, trying to catch a glimpse of his parents. But they disappeared after all of the hype over him showing up again. And then Things were back to normal, and most of his fan girls,--at least the ones I knew in school,--seemed to think he was taking some down time after whatever had happened and that he would be back to himself in no time. I was one of the few people who knew the truth about what happened; at least I thought I did.
I knew things would never go back to being the same, but after he showed up at my house like that... all bets were off.
So there I was, right in the middle of this freakishly weird situation, standing in front of his building with no idea of what I was doing and nothing but a plate of cookies for help (heh, the cookies were Jun’s idea). I know it’s rude to visit someone without telling them you’re coming first, but I didn’t want him to have time to prepare, after all, I didn’t. Jun’s idea was to take the cookies as an apology. She helped me make them and everything; she’s not completely useless after all. It was also Jun’s idea to give me a push in the right direction when I was frozen in place on the sidewalk, but I’ll never tell her that. Even so, I had plenty of time in the elevator to think about how completely stupid I was being.
At that moment I wished I had brought Veemon with me; I sort of felt like I was going back to see the Kaizer in his fortress without my partner. The elevator made a little ding noise and I was there. It was slightly less evil than I had expected -- a little potted plant in the corner under a window, very clean hallways, plain walls—it was... er... modest. I think I had been expecting spikes or something. There were only three apartments on the floor; the Ichijouji apartment was the furthest down the hall.
Anyway, once I was at the door I was fine, oddly enough. I would have expected to be scared out of my mind by then but I guess not. I knocked on the door and braced myself for anything. A couple seconds later, a small woman opened the door and stared at me, she looked tired and stressed. For a moment I though I was at the wrong door, then I remembered I had seen this woman on TV begging for her son to come back. She was Ken’s mother. Seeing her like that made me feel bad for disturbing her, but at that point there was no way around it.
I bowed, "Good afternoon, Ichijouji-san my name is Motomiya Daisuke and I came to visit Ken. I’m sorry for showing up unannounced but I couldn’t find your number. I brought cookies," then I held out the plate. I had practiced that; I wasn’t supposed to say it that fast.
She stood there for so long that I was sure she was gonna tell me to beat it. But just as I was getting ready to turn around and leave, her eyes filled with tears and a huge grin broke out on her face. Well, it wasn’t exactly huge but I got the feeling it was as huge as she would let herself grin. She pulled me into the apartment and started gushing.
She went on and on about being so happy to meet one of Ken’s friends. I tried to tell her I wasn’t his "friend" but she was talking too much. ‘Sides, I wasn’t sure if it was true or not. Why else would I come all the way here to talk to him if he wasn’t my friend? And I had asked him to join us...
I was starting to confuse myself, and that’s when she took me to Ken. To a closed door in the back of the apartment, she knocked softly and said, "Ken, dear, please open the door."
He was quiet, so quiet that I didn’t even think he was in the room. It would have really sucked if he had decided to go into the Digital World on the day I dropped by his house, but he answered, "I’m a little tired, mama."
She sighed like she was tired and tried again, "But Ken, honey, your friend Motomiya Daisuke is here to see you."
I sort of wished she hadn’t said that.
There was a scuffing noise behind the door. I would have laughed at that; I could perfectly imagine the look on his face when he heard her say that. But it wasn’t funny. I was expecting him to tell me to get lost--anyone else would have--but after a couple of seconds he answered, "All right."
His mother smiled at me again, like she had when she first pulled me in. I wondered if she was always tired and I wanted to say thank you or something like that but she pushed the plate of cookies back into my hands, mumbling something about Ken not eating, and then she wandered off before I could say a word.
I opened the door and stepped in slowly--talk about "The Lion’s Den!" The first thing I saw when I walked in was a desk across the room with the computer on it, the computer was on and it was the only light in the room. The next thing I noticed was Ken sitting on his almost ceiling-high bed, looking down at me. He was watching me and I was watching him. I guess we both expected one of us to attack the other at first. But the more I looked at him the harder it got to see him as the Kaizer; he looked nearly harmless right then.
Standing around and staring at him was getting old so I said, "I brought some cookies, your mom said you haven’t been eating. Would you like some?"
His eyes shifted to the plate of cookies then back to me. He still didn’t speak.
I tried again. "Do you mind if I come up?" He didn’t answer; instead he pulled his legs under himself and made room for me on the bed, so I took that as "yes."
With one hand, cuz the other was holding the cookies, I scrambled up the side ladder and flipped around so my legs were hanging over the side, I had practice with that sort of thing at summer camp. Anyway, I didn’t want to crowd him or anything, it would have been weird, so I was trying to keep a lot of space between us without making it look that way. I dunno if worked cuz he was still just staring. Ya know, he did that all of the last time too only it wasn’t so obvious cuz he was cold and shaking and dripping all over the place.
I broke a cookie over the plate and ate the piece; I didn’t want to get crumbs in his bed. He took a whole cookie off of the plate—(maybe he thought they had been poisoned or something)-- and bit into it; he didn’t make crumbs, figures.
"I hope you like them," I said, "I used my mom’s recipe, well, Jun helped, too. She’s my sister. I guess You sort of met her when you came to my apartment."
His eyes closed. It shut me up cuz he was moving. Then, when he reopened his eyes he was focused on something behind me. I turned to see but there was nothing there but the wall. Then He started talking, he said, "I’m sorry for coming to your house and I’m... sorry for surprising you."
The way he had said "surprising" told me he wasn’t just talking about unexpectedly dropping by my house. If he was talking about what I thought he was talking about, then it was fine he was apologizing. But, since I had spent the last two weeks in shock and confusion trying not to remember the dizzy lightheaded feelings I had gotten when he had kissed me or anything after that, it probably wasn’t a good idea for him to talk about that, while we were together, in his dimly lit room, on his bed, alone.
So I said, "I didn’t come about that. I wanted to see if you were Ok." That wasn’t a complete lie; I really was sort of concerned and I did think we could help him.
I don’t think he believed me cuz he gave me a sidelong look, then turned away and said, "I’m fine."
I said, "I don’t believe you." cuz I didn’t and I wasn’t gonna let him get out of this so easily.
"I am," he said.
So I said, "You’re not. Your mother says you haven’t been eating and you’ve been locked up in your room." Well, she didn’t exactly say all of that, but it was probably still true.
He took another cookie and munched on it, "She’s over reacting. Besides, it isn’t–"
I cut him off there, "Don’t say ‘this isn’t your problem’ because you made it my problem when you got me involved." Damn right.
He said, "I wasn’t going to say ‘It isn’t your problem,’ I was going to say it isn’t what you think, but it isn’t your problem either."
So maybe I had jumped the gun on that, but at least he was smiling so he still had a sense of humor, even if it was at my expense, "Ok then," I said, "what is it that I’m not thinking?"
He shifted. "I need time."
I said, "More than a month and a half?"
He sighed and said, "I’m not ready yet. I did... horrific things that I’m still trying to deal with and I’m... I still need to find who I am."
It would not even describe half of it if I said he had trouble saying those few sentences. I had no idea what he was talking about; I guess it was one of those things you have to go through to understand. But, I could tell he meant what he was talking about, so, I was gonna let it slide. Then, someone sneezed.
Oh yeah, a little "achoo." It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Ken but he froze like a statue and slowly looked up at me. I asked, "What was that?"
I was willing to overlook that whole crap about him saying he was fine, but this was totally different so when he said, "It was nothing. I think you should go now." I didn’t move.
I said his name cuz I had the feeling saying "Bullshit" wasn’t going to have the right effect. He flinched anyway.
He shook his head so I asked again, "Ken, what was that?"
"Don’t," he choked, but he wasn’t talking to me. Behind him a little green puff with a leaf on the end of a twig attached to it hopped out of its hiding place--a digimon. I really wondered if it had been there the whole time and how I had missed it. It bounced around Ken and nestled in his lap, Ken was looking at me again, as if he were afraid I would start screaming. He stroked the digimon gently and said, "This is Leafmon. He’s Wormmon’s baby form."
"Oh," was all I could say at the moment. I was remembering the last time I saw Wormmon, after he led us to the engine room and helped us disable the fortress, and after he gave the last of his energy to Magnamon so he could defeat Chimeramon. It was when I watched him explode into data right in Ken’s arms. "I thought... he was dead."
Then Leafmon said, "Digimon don’t die, they just get reconfigured."
I think I remember hearing that before, but then I was curious. "When did you get him?"
"He hatched from an egg in Primary village about two weeks ago. It was right before..." he stopped. Right, we still weren’t talking about that.
That at least explained what the digimon in the area had been talking about when they said they had seen someone out of place hanging around. That’s why Veemon had been in Primary Village when Ken had decided to drop by… Damn it.
Anyway, they looked... well I don’t wanna say cute, and happy isn’t the right word either... they looked comfortable together. But, they were waiting for me to do something; what it was, I didn’t know but I broke another cookie and handed it to Leafmon and I said, "You should try these, Chibimon loves them."
They both breathed a sigh of relief, so I guess I said the right thing, and then Leafmon attacked the cookie in my hand. I laughed cuz Leafmon was another partner that ate like a monster. But Ken looked really serious and he said my name then he paused like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to call me that, which is stupid cuz I call him Ken all the time. But anyway, I nodded but he still looked like he didn’t know what to say, so it was Leafmon that spoke first.
He mouth was full of another cookie that he had managed to get a hold of without my notice and he said, "Ken doesn’t want you to tell the others," between bites.
I looked back at Ken and asked, "Why not?"
He said, "They might not be quite as forgiving as you and I can’t..." He looked back at Leafmon, who was in the process of destroying the rest of the cookies on the plate, pulled him back and held him.
Since I was watching him hold Leafmon like he was a fragile piece of china and a lifeline at the same time, it didn’t take me long to figure out what he was getting at. "Hey, Ken, listen, I can’t speak for them but I know they wouldn’t do something like that, they wouldn’t take your partner. No one can, really. I’m sure Leafmon would be able to explain this a lot better than I ever could... But if it will make you feel better, I won’t tell them, but they’ll find out eventually."
He nodded and said, "Thank you."
I grinned and said, "No problem."
So that was that, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. Jun wasn’t coming back for an hour and a half -- I later wondered if he noticed that was the exact amount of time he was at my house -- and I had only been there for about a 10 maybe 15 minutes so I had a while, and I told him just that.
He chuckled; he’s got a nice voice. Anyway, he picked up another cookie and said, "Next time you come you should tell your sister not to worry about coming to get you because my mother will want me to walk you home," in an off handed way. Then he broke of a piece of the cookie and gave it to Leafmon who was squirming, but that’s beside the point.
You have no idea how cool it was for me to hear him way that. He had just said he wanted me to come back and it made me feel all goofy inside, but I had to play it cool so I said, "Yeah, but wouldn’t that mean you’d be walking back by yourself? I mean, it’s a long way."
He just shrugged and said, "I remember."
I was suddenly reminded that he showed up at my apartment without shoes. He had run the whole distance, there and back, bare foot in the rain. Yeah, he would remember. I wanted to smack myself cuz I kept almost thinking about... that... so I turned to Leafmon and said, "Hmm next time I come I’ll have to bring Chibimon so you guys can hang out."
Leafmon said, "Really?" and he looked like I just promised him the biggest fudge sundae in the world. I nodded, and he started bouncing around.
In the middle of all I picked up one of the last cookies. It was still warm and gooey because it had been at the bottom of the pile, I took a huge bite of this cookie and it got goo all over my face, figures. Ken and Leafmon started to outright laugh at me while I tried to lick all that goo off of my face but I keep missing this one spot off to the corner of my mouth.
Finally, Ken pulled himself together with one last laugh and said, "Wait, wait, just stop. You’re only smearing it and making it worst, let me help." Then he reached over to wipe it off.
I probably should have wiped it off myself or stopped him. So I have no one but myself to blame it on that when he reached over to wipe the goo off, he touched my face, and I was assaulted by memories.
