Work Text:
When they speak about his real family, Koushiro cries.
He can't tell them why, not when it's something he wants to know but doesn't know. He never met these people that created him, he never could.
He isn't sure he wants to, at this point in time.
He knows the people in front of him.
He knows the people that made him who he is right now.
But still, he realizes he is crying, and he cannot grasp the significance of it.
…
Before this, many years before he had even heard the words he was not supposed to, he remembers being very sad once a year on the same day, even at the same time. It is a clockwork of the body, one he spends staring at the roads outside his window and with a book of computer mechanics in his lap, as though his young eyes are able to understand all of it, or even a fraction of it.
Over the years, he does, but it is all with the taste of too-sweet lemonade on his tongue and tears blurring his vision that are not his own.
Perhaps he picks up on his father's own melancholy and tries to alleviate it, because it is not his own. Or he picks up on the sweet summer rain and his body knows it better than his mind.
Either way, it is incomprehensible to him.
His mother's hugs are understandable. He is sad, and she loves him.
But he does not know why he is sad, and even as a child, he rather thought that she did.
Now, years later, Koushiro wishes he had not thought such a horrible thing.
…
Outside of their place, the others are hurt, their friend is dying, and he knows nothing, but Koushiro does not want to leave this little alcove where his parents are. They both are weeping gently, with more dignity than his reserved nature can even afford and his father's arms are warm and strong.
These are his parents.
And he realizes that he has hurt them all.
Knowing is half the battle.
Koushiro does not understand the other half.
Tentomon, however, does, and he pushes him forward with safe claws and teary, fragmented eyes. Koushiro thinks for a second that a bug should not be capable of crying and wonders how it works.
And then he wonders how his mother can be stroking his hair when she is in front of him.
…
From time to time, Koushiro heard voices as a child.
They were not his own, and they were none he knew. They were not terrifying, or demanding, or loud. He often suspected they were not imaginary. And they were never cruel.
The wind followed them, he had observed after a few times of it. Soft winds where the trees weren't moving and warm breezes when the winter had turned his nose red.
Always whispers, always with few words.
Our boy.
Smart child.
Love.
They were illogical, but they were kind and wistful and proud.
A prank, certainly, but pranksters did not have voices full of love and even Koushiro knew what love tended to look like and sound like.
These were people he did not know, but later would come to meet.
…
The parents he will never meet he will never say goodbye to.
The parents he will never know have never left his side.
The parents who have raised him have loved him just the same.
And the friends who are waiting for him are the brothers and sisters he never knew to want.
His family is a big, beautiful mass of misunderstandings and contradictions and things to learn about.
When they speak about his real family, Koushiro cries.
Because his real family is right here, and he has not known such an obvious thing.