Chapter Text
"Mom…" Jeri's words echoed softly throughout the hospital room as she gazed upon her mother's unmoving body, her face covered by a small cloth and lit by a single, solitary light.
Dead. Death. Gone. Those words were new to the small girl; words she overheard months ago between her parents, trying to speak to each other privately. She didn't understand them then. Not quite. The idea of someone ceasing to move and closing their eyes to the world forever felt alien to her.
Yet now, here she stood, seeing the reality before her, embodied in her mother. Sleeping, yet not sleeping. There, but at the same time…not.
Where…Where is she? Where did she go if she's here? Where… What…happened to my mom? What…?
"This was her fate."
The voice of her father jarred her out of her thoughts and she looked up at him, not comprehending what he was saying. Fate? What was fate? The way her father sounded when he said the word…
Something…Something was bubbling up inside her. Her eyes burned and pain began to throb in the depths of her throat. Yet, just as before, no sooner did she become aware of it, did something – someone rather – cut into her attention. A doctor. A kindly looking man, yet the way he stood, shrouded in the darkness of the room, glasses shining from the light that illuminated her mother, she found herself shying away from him. It was hard to believe that his kindly appearance was anything but.
"That's right. It's fate," the doctor said as behind him, a nurse drew up as well. Both of their eyes were on hers, seeming to understand that she was confused by what was in front of her.
"Please accept it," the nurse added, and next to her, her father nodded, his voice one of grim resignation.
"Yes," was all he said simply.
That feeling that something was welling up inside of her returned, roaring like a monster now. The adults were all around her, saying something to her; telling her to accept this fate. Whatever this fate was, it felt like a prison. A cage. The adults…all around her… Caging her in…
Giving a sudden cry, she quickly looked for an escape and dashed off, darting between her father and the doctor, the cries of surprise disappearing within the roar of the Fate monster.
"You can't escape…" it felt as though it were laughing at her. "There's no escaping Fate. No escaping…"
Out the door, amidst doctors, nurses, all looking at her in confusion and surprise. She didn't see them though, nor hear them. She just wanted to be out! She wanted to escape Fate before it could…
She stopped. Her body suddenly felt a sharp chill run through her, and her hands rose to her mouth in horror. Before her, stood a man wearing a hospital gown, a tube rising from his arm and into a bag. He was one of the patients in the hospital, and yet…he looked so tired. Just like her mother as her death drew near. Jeri's eyes went to the bag attached to him. It…fed him something. She knew that much, but what she didn't know. IV she thought, but didn't understand the meaning of the word either. What did it feed the patient? Fed them Fate? Was Fate in those bags? Eating them from within?
The voice of Fate laughed at her ignorance and her trembling increased in its intensity.
"They'll sleep soon as well," it seemed to say. "Just like you will one day. Perhaps sooner than you think…"
Backing away from the patient, small gasps of fear left her mouth, barely above a whisper. Yet, when she bumped up against someone, the whisper became a scream, loud and raw. She tried to run once more, but a hand grabbed her and held firm.
"Jeri!" cried out Akihiro Kurata as he bent down and pulled the small girl to her, taken aback – though not surprised – by her scream or her sudden struggles as she attempted to break loose. Clasping her close to him, he held on to her tightly, begging for her to settle down. He was no good with children, and for once he found himself wishing that he had more of his cousin's – Keiko Kurata Katou – natural touch. But he could see as clear as anyone Jeri's distress, and he did what he could to calm her.
Keiko always used to hold Jeri whenever she became upset, he remembered at least, threading his hand behind the girl's head, whispering to her how she was all right, despite knowing full well that the exact opposite was true.
Eventually the tiny girl ceased her struggles and now clung to him, sobbing into his shirt. Feeling somewhat pleased with this accomplishment, he held onto her a moment longer before a shadow fell over him.
"Akihiro," came the gruff voice from behind. Sighing in agitation, Akihiro drew back from the distraught Jeri and turned to face the girl's father.
Tadashi, he frowned. How he hated the man. He reminded him so much of him. That other man left behind in the digital world. Spencer Damon.
"I caught her for you," Akihiro said. Climbing to his feet, he lightly pushed Jeri toward her. "I…" He paused, and felt a bone deep weariness settle over him suddenly as the girl – reluctantly at first – headed over to her father. The man roughly took hold of her hand, keeping her close. Sighing, Akihiro allowed his shoulders to sag. "I understand that my cousin has passed on now."
Tadashi held Akihiro's gaze levelly for a moment, and for a moment he allowed the anger he kept hidden to show itself to the long-faced man who stood across from him.
"Do not even speak her name," he growled, and with that, pulling his frightened daughter with him, he brushed by the long-faced man. As he passed, his voice dropped, yet remained menacing. "And don't even think about coming near Jeri again."
Akihiro winced at that, but he nodded nonetheless. He and his cousin hadn't get along very well due to his stance on digimon. Her passing would not improve his position. After all, they took Keiko from him and the rest of her family.
There were some things about the world of adults that he preferred the daughter of his favorite cousin be left in the dark about.
Better for her to keep what innocence is left to her a little while longer, he thought. Taking off his glasses, he proceeded to clean them, albeit more out of nervous habit than because they were dirty. Tadashi's anger unnerved him a little, recalling bad memories.
Say one little thing and suddenly the whole world turns against you. Slipping his glasses back on, he stepped back in the direction of the room containing his cousin's body and slipped inside. Therein stood a doctor and a nurse, and he nodded to them. The doctor nodded in return, recognizing him from a previous visit.
"I'm sorry," the doctor said, bowing politely. "I wish there was more we could do."
"I as well," Akihiro replied, and he meant it. Unfortunately, the technology Joe and Izzy – two former Digidestined – had still yet to mature, and in either case, it would be difficult to say for sure how it would have affected Keiko. Her condition after all was…unique to say the least.
Approaching her bed, he looked down at her body. In his mind's eye, he saw her not as she was, but as the same young girl as before, who wished to have a bakery and work with pastries. The same young girl who, following the Great War, had ripped into him for his disparaging remarks about digimon and the digital world.
Sensing the doctor and nurse were still behind him, he closed his eyes.
"If I could have a moment alone…?"
"Of course," the doctor said, and moments later came the sound of a door clicking shut, leaving him alone with the darkness, the light, and his cousin.
"Things didn't have to be like this," he said softly to his cousin's unhearing form. "I thought you and I agreed on this. Since you saw the darkness from that cursed place. I saw it too, when I went there. The monsters that roam that place… It is unspeakable, and what they did to you…unforgiveable!"
His hands tightened on the blanket covering his cousin and he clenched his eyes shut briefly for a moment before opening them up once more. Relaxing his grip, he retracted his hands, composing himself.
"Well… You had your ideas, and I have mine. Yours consumed you in the end, but in that end… Your sacrifice won't go to waste."
His gaze hardening, he clenched his fists until his knuckles turned bone white, shaking.
"I'll make sure of that. On this I swear on my life. And on the life of your daughter."
Sniffing loudly, he muttered a curse under his breath in the quiet of the room and left the room. Upon exiting, he found a man wearing a dark suit and black hair. Large of body and muscular. Kurata sniffed again, seeing the long, ferret-like digimon draped over his shoulders. A Kudamon.
"Sampson," he grunted, wiping at his nose. "Somehow I had a feeling they would send you. I trust that you understand your orders?"
The dark-haired man nodded behind his sunglasses. It was clear that he didn't like this. Kurata couldn't blame him. Cleaning up the mess of the Dark Ocean was dirty business after all, and no matter what, it left one feeling…unclean.
"All the arrangements have been made," Sampson replied.
"Even the…item of value? No mishaps with that I trust?"
Sampson grimaced at that, but he nodded. Placing his hands in his pockets, Kurata dipped his head down.
"It shouldn't have been her. I tried to fight the board with regards to her. 'Only sample'or not, it's…wrong."
Shaking his head, he stepped aside and turned down the hall.
"Well, do what you must, and I will do mine."
###
Kurata finally found himself alone in the depths of his laboratory, the door behind him closed and locked, and the lights doused all save for one, illuminating a small, glass cylinder, within which lay an item most precious. Sitting upon a black stem with a crown of bloody crimson packed into a globe of petals, was a flower. A violet light, thin and tight against the flower's body, ebbed and flowed like a tide. He found that imagery appropriate, all things considered.
"You're all that's left of her, Dark Flower," he spoke softly. "I can only hope that saving you isn't the mistake that I think it is."
The dark light pulsed once, as if mocking him.