Date: 03/02/2013 Time: 15:12
Yuuri felt everyone staring at him and it was like being on stage and he didn’t mind, the irritation swelling like a buzz of bees. He felt Daigo staring as well, his brown eyes wide and hurt and resigned. Yuuri stared at him a moment more. Then he looked back at Takeshi and Yuuko. He did not look at Maki, because he was afraid of what he would see when he looked back at her.
“Daigo has been haunting me since Maki called me. Or around then.” Because there was no point in lying, no point in holding back about this. He was right there. “And he won’t communicate with her, and he won’t talk to me. He’s just here, miserable.” And he wanted to say it was for no reason but it was, it was and he knew it but—
He was still just so angry. At himself, at the digital world, at all of them. At the changing world. That in the span of hours, of days, he was no longer on top of the world but a small speck in the black hole that was his past.
“We might all be able to see him,” Yuuri finished, feeling the puffing in his chest deflate. The feeling of youth and joy and yearning for justice was starting to ebb. “But even if we can’t, he’s here, we’re… we’re all together. And we should have been from the start, I think… for all our sakes. And because that’s his kid out there and she’ll never meet him and—”
“And because I’m here.”
Wanyamon hopped into the room, shutting the door with his tail. (Now that was dexterity, where was that in Paomon?) He kept hopping, past Daigo, onto Maki’s lap and then onto the table. “I’m here and Daigo’s following you. Trying to bring us all together, I want to say. Because he can’t do this alone, none of you can. But most importantly because he doesn’t want to see the obvious.”
Yuuri wanted to say it, he wanted so badly to just blurt it out, but then Maki’s eyes, just once, flicked towards where Daigo sat. Where the blood was spreading.
Yuuri jumped at the sound of Yuuko screaming and for a moment, he didn’t understand why. And then he did.
The blood on Daigo’s stomach was sinking into his pants and onto the tatami. And it just kept spreading, towards her, towards them, in a puddle.
“Fuck,” Takeshi whispered. “What the fuck, Daigo? What happened to you?”
Daigo stared at them all, horrified, too terrified to lie. “A cave in. And an explosion.”
Yuuri dared to glance at Maki now, who hadn’t looked away. She looked back at him. Then Wanyamon coughed.
“Well, now that we’ve established the obvious of, you matter to your friends, you dingle, and that’s why you’re not entirely dead and gone,,” said the cathead. “Can we get back to the part on how you all get your partners back?”
They all looked at the digimon. “I had no idea that was on the agenda,” Yuuko said, managing to sound unimpressed.
Unfortunately, Wanyamon had always been difficult to impress. “It is, fortunately, otherwise I wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be able to help him.” He flicked his tail. ‘And because you all are important to us. And I’d like to think we are important to you. And because it’ll be suspicious if you don’t have them.’ He turned his whole body over to face Yuuri. “Specifically, we need you and your mate, Katsuki.”
“Us?!” Yuuri felt the anger, the familiar buck of “I will be used again” rising hard and fast. It was just enough to Trump the embarrassment of what Wanyamon had just called Viktor.
Wanyamon nodded firmly. “Yes. Homeostasis would rather us all work together and organically form the connections needed and let the worlds and their populations settle themselves. We Holy Beasts disagree. We believe you humans need a final push forward. A sign of our good faith after all the destruction we have caused. Will you help us make that push, Yuuri?”
That night, Yuuri found himself on the ice rink. He drifted alone, pausing to turn and jump once in a while. It was aimless, because anything too complicated would probably cause him to ram his head into the wall and break his face. Which he couldn’t afford to do on a break. It would get so many, so many letters and tweets and he did not need that on top of everything else.
Because how did you handle this really? How did you handle being told you need to be the symbol of the future? Yuuri honestly did not want to. He skated for his own, personal reasons. He didn’t want to, nor need to, in his opinion skate for theirs.
Not even to see Hawkmon?
His mind asked him this, and it was almost pitiful enough that Yuuri believed it was his own voice. But really, it didn’t sound like him at all. It sounded like Yurio in that bathroom, kicking his door and demanding to be heard and acknowledged and wedged so deep into his brain it gave him nausea.
And he couldn’t be firm enough to say, it wasn’t enough to see him. He couldn’t close his eyes and imagine the none-too-kind nips at his ankles and rough feathers covering his eyes to the fire and not think, god, I don’t miss him at all.
His right to see his friend was being held hostage. Like he didn’t deserve it. Like he shouldn’t have his friend around.
Yuuri did leap, couldn’t stop himself. He landed a little too hard and kept on going through the twinges in his ankles, the way his stomach churned. His stamina was his best quality, that and his stubbornness. So he skated through it. At the very least, he wanted to think everything over until he wasn’t thinking anymore and all he had in his head as the steady sound of the music from the old, battered laptop.
And he tried, god’s he tried. But by the time the laptop was at another song, and one he quite disliked, it was like hornets had taken up residence in his head and they stung his feet. Yuuri stopped and slumped back against the edge of the rink. He closed his eyes, turned himself to breathing slowly in and out, trying to stop thinking.
There was a loud huffing sound, a puff of air mixed with a curse word. Yuuri opened his eyes to see Yurio stepping on to the rink. On the other side, wrapped up in a fluffy blanket (looked like one of yuuko’s old ones, it was so patchy), was a giant dandelion head. It blinked large orange eyes at him and let out the most adorable squeak Yuuri had ever heard.
Yurio grumbled at the sound, but it was half-hearted at best. He was won over too, Yuri could see the sheen in his eyes. And it didn’t hurt, nope.
Yurio said nothing to him at first. He merely stepped out onto the ice and took off, looping past and then stepping too light for words. He was still as graceful as ever, perhaps despite or because of the gradual drag of puberty. He didn’t have long before he would have to restart and change himself, everyone knew that.
Yuuri could however, watch Yurio and think it wouldn’t really matter. Yurio would take Viktor’s throne someday, maybe later than he anticipated, but he would never the less. It would be amazing to watch. If and when he got over not getting to himself.
… What was he talking about? He still very well could. That may have been what Wanyamon was banking on but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t. Or couldn’t.
There was a scraping sound as Yurio stopped in front of him, breathing hard. “You weren’t even paying attention to it,” he grunted.
Yuuri frowned. Was he meant to be? “Sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “I was just busy thinking about—”
“Not you” Yuuri grunted his annoyance and pointed to the blanket bundle. “That.” Said dandelion had its eyes firmly shut, and based on the movement of the bundle, was out cold.
Yuuri turned back to him. “Popomon?”
“That what it’s called?” Yurio made a face. ‘Yeah that. It hatched and got she’ll in my breakfast.’ He snorted. “Can’t even talk.”
“Some can.” Yuuri’s face screwed up. “Some babies can’t and grow able to. You’re lucky he doesn’t speak in acid bubble.”
The smaller’s face turned a mixture of sick and fascinated at the idea. “Acid what?”
“Baby Digimon use bubbles to speak and defend themselves,” Yuuri said slowly, trying to remember all of what Hawkmon had said. “They tend to hatch in villages with caretakers, because outside of it, they aren’t very strong. Not all Babies do that, but it affects their growth I think if they don’t. Changes their evolution line.”
Hawkmon had been fascinated at the time about it, about any knowledge he could obtain. When their fight was over, he had confided to Yuuri, he had intended to go traveling to find the reclusive Digimon professor, claimed to know the secret of all things.
I will even allow you to join me, he had proclaimed at the time as they trudged through the desert, clear-eyed and devoted.
At the time, it had been a mix of disheartening and painful. His partner had had a dream that he had been assumed to not be a part of, an after that no one really wanted to admit was real or possible because that meant they knew what they were doing.
Not that it had mattered. In the end, his partner had become a good and he had become a public icon, going their separate ways. And maybe Hawkmon had been talking out of desperation, against an ending he had likely known when none of the others had and he… he had no idea what to do with that information. He just… he had wanted this to be all right.
And what was it now? What was it beyond a ploy to get his name?
Well what else are you going to do with it?
“Katsuki.”
It was rare that Yurio used his name at all, so he took it as what it was and looked over at the smaller teen. “Yeah?”
“What are your plans for next season?”
“I— what?” Yuuri almost literally floundered. Everything fell out of his brain. “This season?! Why would I tell you that?”
Yurio shrugged. “I figured you would have thought about it. Isn’t that Viktor retiring soon anyway? He’d want to go out with a bang now, which means he won’t have as much time to think about yours or do another couple’s thing, right? You have to start thinking about it. You’ve got a few years left.”
Yuuri was torn between gaping at Yurio’s casual dismissal of the end of his career (His rival may have been giving him too much credit as is, he wasn’t exactly in his prime anymore as usually his vent skating was not liable to cause him to hurt himself or pull something.) And lambasting him for assuming he would dare bother Viktor with it. A part of him was wondering how the other could assume he had time to think about it at all.
That was what Wanyamon had asked him to do, to be.
In that light, it didn’t sound so bad, though he had no idea where to start with it.
“I’ve thought about it a little,” he admitted finally, after he swore those blue eyes were burning holes into his forehead. “Not as much as I’ve wanted to do, but it’s only been a few days.”
A long, overwhelming few days but a short time still.
“Che.” Yurio made the sound but did not disagree. He pushed off again.
“I guess you’ve come up with yours?” Yuri asked, voice weak. It was a bit of a stupid question. Yurio had his coach pick, or thought about it during the current event. No matter how competitive and obsessed he was, and he surely was, there were always more competitions. More battlefields, more ice rinks. He had a long, long road ahead of him.
Meanwhile, Yuuri and Viktor had new paths to walk soon, and neither knew where to start.
When you competed in a sport, it was your life. Once you decided to go professional in anything like this, everything was a backseat. Everyone who were educated and took the sport as a scholarship, it was the opporiste. If given the opportunity the sport was the first to go. In that sense, it left pros behind as their careers careened to an end from injuries or lack of favor, or just simply aging out. And you were just left adrift. Sometimes with money but adrift all the same.
And they were in their thirties. Imagining being American football players sounded so much worse.
“I’ve got the basics,” Yurio said blandly, circling past him and going to poke his newfound partner. “No idea what song though. Got no head for fucking sound.”
“Don’t swear in front of the baby.” Yuuri’s voice was absent. Last thing they needed was a baby Digimon yelling fuck for no reason in a silent room or a plane full of babies and impressionable youth.
“It’s not like it’s your kid.”
“Still.” He remembered when Takeshi started cursing. Bakumon had parroted him for a full five minutes while Maki had wrestled him to the floor and buried his face in the water and sand. “You’ll get Yuuko on you.” If he was lucky.
Yurio grumbled but did not repeat it.
Yuuri gave up his skating for today as a bad job and began to make his way to the laptop that was still playing along.
Then the ground shook and he fell. He only had time to look up before the wall exploded.