Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The air was thick with smoke and static, the landscape torn asunder by the latest ambush from the Digimon Emperor’s control towers. Wires slithered through the cracked earth like mechanical vines, corrupting everything they touched. It had been hours since the DigiDestined had split up to try to take down the latest fortress—but none of them expected how quickly everything would go to hell.

Davis Motomiya coughed, blood trickling from his lips as he tried to crawl through the wreckage of the crumbling hilltop. A sharp pain lanced through his body again, worse than any injury he’d felt before. Looking down, his vision blurry, he saw it—metal rebar, jagged and rusted, impaled clean through his abdomen. The world around him spun violently.

“Veemon…?” he croaked out, but no voice answered. His Digivice was gone. His friends were gone. Only the cold silence of the battlefield remained.

He was alone.

High above, the Digimon Emperor stood at the edge of a cliff, his cloak whipping in the wind, his control spire humming behind him like a living thing. Ken Ichijouji—no, the Emperor—watched the scene below with an unreadable expression.

He had been monitoring the battle. Davis’s signal had gone dark almost an hour ago. Most of the time, he’d relish the thought of eliminating one of his enemies, of taking out the irritating leader who constantly stood in the way of progress. But this— this felt different.

Maybe it was because it was Davis.

He shouldn’t have cared. He didn’t care.

And yet…

With a silent command, the Emperor summoned one of his gliders and descended into the smoke. The corrupted data fog curled around him like a living shadow, whispering lies. But he ignored it, laser-focused on the weak, fading signal he was tracking.

Then he saw him.

Davis was half-buried under debris, pale and barely breathing. The rebar pierced through his stomach, blood pooling beneath him in dark red smears. His goggles, cracked. His Digivice, nowhere in sight.

Ken froze.

This was it. This was his chance to end it. To finally rid himself of the thorn in his side.

But his hand wouldn’t move.

He stared at Davis’s face. Despite the pain etched into it, there was still something stubbornly… alive there. Something human.

Ken swallowed thickly and slowly knelt beside him. “You idiot… Why didn’t you run?”

Davis’s eyes fluttered weakly open for just a second. “Ken…?” he whispered.

That was the last thing he said before slipping under.

Ken’s heart jumped in his chest. “Tch,” he muttered, half-angrily, half-panicked. “You really are stupid.”

Carefully, far more gently than he expected of himself, Ken began pulling the debris away. Then came the hardest part—removing the rebar. He hissed as blood gushed out the second it slid free, staining his gloves. Davis’s body convulsed weakly before going limp again.

He was dying.

Ken cursed under his breath and lifted Davis into his arms. “Don’t make me regret this,” he said quietly, pressing a button on his wrist device. Within seconds, his hidden base shimmered into view—his hovering fortress camouflaged in the clouds.

An L-shaped monstrosity of steel and shadow (Author’s Note: You can’t tell me that it ISN’T a literal gigantic L shaped base! Try me, YOU CAN’T!!) Home.

He brought Davis inside.

The Emperor’s quarters were sterile, quiet—like a prison disguised as a throne. Ken laid Davis on the bed, hastily grabbing every medical tool and serum he could find from his private stash. Stitching wounds, disinfecting the impalement site, monitoring vitals—none of this was supposed to be part of his plans.

But neither was this feeling.

Night after night, he sat by Davis’s bedside, watching the boy fight through fever, blood loss, and sepsis. For weeks, he didn’t wake. For weeks, Ken didn’t leave his side.

“You’re an idiot,” he whispered one night, brushing sweaty hair from Davis’s forehead. “But you’re mine now. And I won’t let you die.”

Not yet.

Not until he understood why Davis mattered.

And why, somehow… he mattered back.

To be continued…

:)

Hehehe, I’m not sorry about this chat— >:D

Chapter Text

Dark clouds drifted outside the floating fortress, casting long shadows through the glass dome of the Digimon Emperor’s private chamber. Inside, the steady beep of a heart monitor filled the silence. For the first time in weeks, the rhythm was no longer erratic.

Davis was stable.

Ken—the Emperor, he reminded himself—sat on the edge of the bed, gloves off, bandages stained red across his palms. His violet eyes were sunken from sleepless nights, but he never moved far from the side of his comatose guest… or prisoner… or whatever the hell Davis was now.

He hadn’t told Wormmon. Hadn’t told the control spires (A.N: wait why would you even tell the control spires?? They aren’t even alive??? What the heck was past me even thinking when writing this 7 year old story). Hadn’t told anyone.

The longer Davis remained in the base, the more Ken hated the silence. Not because it was quiet—but because it gave him time to think.

And Ken Ichijouji didn’t want to think. He wanted control.

But every time he looked at Davis—breathing, vulnerable, alive—he felt the control slipping through his fingers like sand.

Davis stirred.

It was small at first. A twitch of his fingers. A soft exhale. Then—

“Ugh… What the hell…” he groaned, throat raw.

Ken stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the tray of medical tools. “You’re awake,” he said quickly, brushing off any hint of concern from his voice. “Finally.”

Davis blinked up at him, dazed, barely able to sit up. “You…” His brow furrowed. “Ken…? Wait… the Digimon Emperor…?”

Ken’s mouth tightened. “Correct. You’re in my base. And you’ve been unconscious for nearly a month.”

Davis’s breath hitched. “A… month?”

“You were impaled. By your own recklessness,” Ken said coldly. “I could’ve left you to die.”

Davis gave a weak, lopsided grin despite the pain. “But you didn’t.”

Ken’s chest twisted.

“No. I didn’t.”

A silence settled between them—fragile, tense, heavy with things unsaid.

Davis broke it first. “Why?”

Ken looked away, jaw clenched. “I don’t know.”

The next few weeks were awkward. Confusing. Uncharted territory for both of them.

Davis wasn’t strong enough to stand for long, so Ken had to help him walk. Feed him. Tend to the wound on his abdomen, which was still healing far too slowly for Ken’s liking. Every time Davis winced, Ken looked away as if it didn’t affect him—except his hands always trembled afterward.

Davis noticed.

He noticed a lot.

Ken wasn’t always cruel. He didn’t yell. He didn’t mock. He just… watched.

And when Davis cracked a joke—something stupid and ridiculous, like “You sure this isn’t Stockholm Syndrome?”—Ken’s lips twitched.

The tiniest smirk.

That was the moment Davis realized something:

He didn’t hate being here.

And that scared him more than any Digimon ever could.

Meanwhile, across the Digital World…

“Still nothing,” Kari said quietly, scanning the treeline with her Digivice.

Veemon’s ears drooped. “It’s been months. I… I should’ve gone after him. I should’ve—!”

“You couldn’t have known, Veemon,” T.K. said, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

Yolei wiped her eyes again. “He’s not gone. I know he’s not. Davis is too stubborn to die.”

They all nodded. No one said what they were really thinking.

But in their hearts, one truth lingered:

If they didn’t find him soon, someone else would.

And they could only pray Davis hadn’t already fallen too deep.

Back at the Emperor’s base, Davis lay staring at the ceiling as Ken adjusted the monitors beside him.

“You didn’t have to take care of me,” Davis said suddenly.

“I know.”

“Then why…?”

Ken paused. He looked down at him, expression unreadable.

“…Because I didn’t want you to die.”

A silence.

Then Davis, with the ghost of a grin: “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me while keeping me in a floating sky prison.”

Ken rolled his eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“You’re the one who kidnapped me, so maybe you’re into that.”

Ken turned, clearly flustered. “Sleep.”

Davis just smiled.

Even in this prison, something unexpected had begun to bloom.

Something real.

To be continued…

Chapter Text

So, as the title of this chapter says, I will be putting this book and all the rest of my books on hiatus due to me being in college now along with other stuff and whatnot. I will not be updating any of my stories with new chapters, if I do then just know that they are already written out and planned a long time ago. They are not newly written chapters but old ones I had written ahead of time a long time ago when I made all of my stories. Kinda like already pre-written that I will only post to my existing stories due to me making them a long time ago. Um, I’m dealing with a lot of stuff irl like me falling behind in my classes, dealing with depression, dealing with anxiety, I’m behind on paying my tuition for my college, I had to go to the ER near my college last month due to me falling off my bike and hitting my head due to it being the first time that I had even rode my bike in like four to five years of it sitting in my parent’s garage ever since my grandma bought it for me and my insurance didn’t cover the cost of the er trip so now I owe the damn hospital $635.52 dollars and I already owe like somewhere close to past a thousand dollars because of my tuition being like $940 or something like that each month (fuck college being so damn expensive) and I don’t have the money to pay any of them off because social security only pays me $400 dollars a month and I can’t get a student loan because apparently none of my parents have a good credit score so they can’t be my co-signer and I can’t be my own co-signer, my aunt is sick and dying because her liver is failing and the DAMN HOSPITAL wont allow her to have a liver transplant all because they don’t “trust her” to be responsible with her hypothetical new liver because they’re afraid that she’ll ruin her hypothetical liver again so she’s basically dying… I’ve basically been losing interest in even using AO3 and even updating any of my fics at all since I’ve been losing motivation and interest and that’s not good at all… My life has gone to hell, and I can’t do shit about it… Yeah I’m dealing with a lot of shit irl right now so that’s why I’m just going on indefinite hiatus for now until my life gets better. So, wish me luck ya’ll! I’ll miss this app a lot! I’m not leaving the website forever, it’ll just be for a long while until I get better and until my life gets better as well. So, cya all later mi amigos! Until we meet again!