Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family."

"This isn't working."

Ryo's Hyper Colosseum regionals trophy had been smashed to pieces. Gold-painted metal shards ribboned out of the carpet like wicked blades of grass, the plaque with his name on it cracked in half. One half was jammed in smeared cake batter and frosting red as lamb's blood, stuck between the conjoined point where two walls met, while the other half rested beside the corpse of the dinner table.

Cotton fluff from the shredded sofa drifted toward the ground in lazy spirals, shielding then revealing the shocked faces of friends and family members alike in gentle, undulating waves. (He imagined their horror disappearing whenever it obscured them from view. There was a term for it: object permanence.) They resembled feathers. He had read somewhere, once, maybe—memories for him were like a looking glass darkly—that laughter kept birds airborne. No one laughed now.

Nothing good ever happened during birthday parties. As far as Ryo was concerned, the tradition should be abolished entirely. It would save everyone a whole lot of trouble.

His father looked like he wanted to hit him. He often looked that way these days. Ryo wished he would just do it—cross the line fraught with uncertainty to the point of no return, break through the silent hostility with the bone-edge of clenched knuckles. They could confirm at last where each stood instead of remaining trapped forever on the knife's edge. The simplicity of a fight, of clear-cut winners and losers, was appealing. Far more appealing than the alternative.

Until his father spoke; then Ryo knew what needed to be done.

This isn't working.

Cyberdramon stood outside the trashed apartment complex, waiting in a vacant lot. Whether the lot had always been vacant or had just been vacated was a mystery. Cyberdramon often descended into eerie calm after flying into uncontrollable rages. His tattered wings were spread wide, straining against his body's landbound predicament, the snout of his visored countenance pointed heavenward.

Sometimes when Ryo watched Cyberdramon he would lose track of time. The space between blinks stretched from seconds to hours, the solemn expression of a dark-haired boy tattooed against the inside of his eyelids. Another version, another lie layered on lies, another ugly epiphany framed in the golden flecks of ocean eyes while love flowed the wrong way, backwards through the slipstream.

Not for the first time, Ryo wondered if this was karmic retribution. Had he been a tyrannical emperor in his past life? Occasionally it felt like that, or more accurately, as if a multiplicity of lives he might have lived were superimposed over each other, none of them real. Maybe it was a prophecy, the prophecy, not that prophecies existed—here: You will be alone always and then you will die.

"Let's go," Ryo said, "we can't stay here."

Cyberdramon might have been stone-carved. A fabricated gargoyle hewn from zeroes and ones, ready to spring alive when the tip of the sun touched the basin of the horizon. The clink of a shishi-odoshi echoed in Ryo's mind and he tasted river water under his skin. At last, Cyberdramon swung around—moving at his own pace, as ever—utterly opaque, masked behind the metal helmet. Ryo could see his own distorted reflection gazing back at him.

A clawed hand extended toward Ryo. Cyberdramon waited, expectant. Ryo took it. His partner lifted him how a large cat might carry their cub in the private cavern of the mouth, guiding him straight down into hell.

Chapter Text

In the center of the abandoned village stood an octagonal structure. It towered over even Cyberdramon, each facet a cardinal direction, light from the data streams falling across vertical sundials. They lay caught there, trapped within crystalline marble, sparkling pink-bright in the everafter. Engraved symbols hovered upon the frieze above the sundials; they morphed and shifted whenever Ryo blinked.

Ryo placed a hand on the structure. It pulsed beneath his fingertips, millet and liquid both filling the whorls there, cool yet malleable. He half-expected it to give under pressure, let him sink inside, but the strange material held. A plaque at the base had words written in English:

Horologion

a splice of alabaster between our shoulderblades, shrugging

Data packets drifted past. All remained quiet.

The horologion cut a vastly different figure from the village architecture. The rest of the buildings were misshapen metals carpeted in fur growths. Earth sparkled like an ornate jewel in the artificial sky; everything was tinted the color of rust.

"Ryo," Cyberdramon growled. He stood off to the side, a gray shadow in the reddish surroundings. The muscle in his elongated jaw twitched with impatience.

"Calm down, I want to look around more."

Ryo walked into one of the homes. He had to duck at the entrance to avoid banging his head on the frame. The sloped ceiling was badly damaged, dust drifting through the cracks' fragmentary light. Smashed furniture littered the floor, an uncomfortable reminder of why Ryo had to leave home. He swallowed.

The silence was eerie. Moribund. No trace of whoever lived here remained: only material skeletons and faint notions.

Something clattered against Ryo's foot, skittering off to the side. He knelt and picked up the wooden block. It was tattered and worn, the pictures carved on it faded to an unrecognizable degree. No time for play, here. Life had become an eternal striving to prove they had earned the right to exist.

Is this all there is?

Ryo tossed the block up then snatched it out of the air. It was lighter than it looked. After a second inspection, he let the block fall. The thud it made when it struck the floor was oddly muted, almost muffled, swallowed whole. Ryo walked out. Cyberdramon was where Ryo had left him, unmoved by and unmoored from the melancholic tragedy.

"What do you think happened here?" Ryo asked.

A pause. Cyberdramon answered: "Who cares? I sense a strong Digimon nearby."

Cyberdramon had a deep, grave voice that reminded Ryo of cemeteries. Maybe he himself was little more than a reanimated corpse recalled via binary code. Ryo sighed—then nodded. What more was there to say? They left the abandoned village without another word.

Chapter Text

The shadow forest whispered secrets.

There was a great and terrible stillness, for no wind blew here, the trees’ bared branches blackened and broken, twisted like a crown of thorns toward an indifferent horizon. Thus, secrets fell dumbstruck upon the ground in a series of forever unanswered question marks the color of HTML values. They crunched beneath Ryo’s feet like dead leaves in autumn.

He was uneasy; they were interlopers. The forest knew. The forest always knows.

“Are you sure something strong is here?” Ryo asked.

“Yes.” Cyberdramon marched forward, back turned from Ryo.

Always one step ahead, always an impenetrable fortress of serrated claws and rusted steel and tattered wings. Sometimes Ryo would try to see Monodramon in him and consider if Monodramon had only ever been a wistful dream. Every day the dream faded further. Time passed unremarked in the Digital World.

Rebellion slowed Ryo’s step. He placed a gloved hand on one of the trees and pulled away to see the glove covered in soot. The soot floated off his hand and drifted upward in motes of data, rotating around each other in slow revolutions. They glittered in the sky like black diamonds. Every so often, the glimpses of whimsy and wonder lurking even in the darkest glade caught Ryo off guard.

Suddenly, Ryo realized he was alone.

He looked around. But Cyberdramon had vanished, engulfed by the surroundings. Ryo called for him, but the forest engulfed that too. Only whispers had been left behind.

“What big blue eyes you have…”

“The better to see us with?”

“What great large hands you have…”

“The better to grasp us with?”

“What bright white teeth you have…”

“The better to smile at us with?”

“No, no, surely not? To rip and tear, surely? The wolf in sheep’s clothing, surely…?”

Ryo’s hands trembled as he withdrew his D-Power. It flickered to life. The red arrow spun round and round, then pointed to the right. He followed it, and ignored the warning that other digital lifeforms were near.

Out of the shadows stepped the big bad wolf. It stalked toward him, blood red fur coating a rail-thin, lupine figure that undulated like a snake. Ryo’s D-Power flickered again: Fangmon. Its smile was large enough to devour children whole. All teeth and no lips; razor sharp teeth and a long tongue that lolled with unbridled hunger. Ryo stumbled back.

“What are you afraid of, meat computer? Not us? Not us, no?” whispered Fangmon. “We are friends, are we not? Friends? Friends of meat computer? Together we ascend? Ascend to Earth?”

“Leave me alone.” Ryo’s voice cracked, high-pitched and nervous, hoarse from disuse. He felt all his thirteen years then, more than ever before.

“No… no. Meat computer has no friends. Meat computer has no one. But has us now. It will be alright, you will be part of us, you will help us ascend. Be at peace, little one.” Fangmon loomed over him.

Ryo ran.  

The forest writhed around him. Too much movement, the stillness had been defiled, who dared—? Ah, of course, Ryo Akiyama, Legendary Tamer. Who else? Who else, indeed? Foolish child.

Fangmon caught him easily and knocked him to the ground. Ryo rolled around, avoided one of Fangmon’s paws as it attempted to spear him on its long claws, then rolled again to avoid the other. The D-Power clattered off to the side, red arrow still spinning.

Terror lit him from the inside out, incandescent, nerves set aflame with the realization: I don’t want to die. Until that moment, Ryo had not though such a notion even in question. But he knew now, irrevocably, the answer beyond doubt.

A dry wheeze rattled Fangmon’s skeletal frame. It howled with laughter, the mockery insult added to injury. Spittle dripped off its long fangs and flecked his hair, his clothes, his face. Rage threaded through the terror, bright red to accompany the overwhelming gray. Ryo lashed out and punched Fangmon in the jaw. It hurt, but fury overwhelmed pain, and he glared with defiance. Fangmon flinched, more puzzled than harmed, then laughed again.

Cyberdramon descended and grasped Fangmon by either side of its long muzzle. With a tremendous roar, he wrenched and split Fangmon in two. It exploded into a cacophony of blood red data, laughter still echoing long after it died.

The data was ignored. Cyberdramon strode toward Ryo and swept him up in a bridal-style embrace. Ryo clung to Cyberdramon, relieved yet also humiliated. His own helplessness stung like acid. They took off, soaring high into the sky. The shadow forest grew smaller, smaller, smaller until it was but a postage stamp and at last vanished from view.

Chapter Text

Ryo dreamed of moon fires and sun flowers. 

They traced each step he took in the dark. When Ryo looked up, the sky gazed back down, not all that different from the sky back home—except the lights were not stars, they were incandescent and mechanical, and the breeze that blew from heaven shone metallic and false. But still, they were beautiful. The Digital World unfurled before him, each layer overlapping, where one began and the other ended interminable. 

He was being hunted.

A pack of fangmon skulked in the shadows of his steps. Ryo quickened his walk, strides brisk, then broke out into a run. They raced to follow him—as did the moon flame and sun flowers, delicate petals frozen forever on the point of blooming and fires twisted blue crystalline—baying for blood. The fangmon had deep voices, their howls strident as the clarion call and vast as the ocean that drowned the net. 

Ryo ran fast enough to stay ahead of them, but never quite fast enough to lose them. Their howls changed to laughter, vicious and relentless, wild exultations building to a fever pitch. Then Ryo tumbled over the ledge of a cliff, plunging down, down, down, swathed in flora and flames—

He awoke screaming. 

The dream throbbed behind his eyes, so real, realer than anything here, and the terror of it caught in his throat. Ryo screamed. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed again. It was the cry of a cornered animal, torn and ragged and shrill, only rising in pitch the longer it lasted. There was no relief, only insistence that something they had no words for must be born, born amidst sound and fury. It was the truth of the universe as a primal scream.

Ryo was terrified. It swooned over his soul like snow and set his nerves alight with the desire to unleash, to be set free at last, to—

“STOP! BE QUIET! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I SAID, SHUT UP!”

Suddenly Cyberdramon towered over Ryo. He roared, loud enough to drown Ryo’s screams; choke them out and wrestle them into the ground. Ryo stopped, more frightened of Cyberdramon than his own nightmares. In the darkness of night, Cyberdramon’s outline could have been mistaken for a demon. Earth lingered above and behind them, sun and moon both. 

His throat hurt. Ryo could taste dust there, dry and grit-caked, even while his chest heaved and his hands shook with barely suppressed emotion. Cyberdramon stared and Ryo found control once more. It had submerged again, the primal fear, to lay in wait for another dream similar to what he had experienced before. But Ryo would not experience it again if he forgot. 

It doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.

Yes, forget. Forget, forget and trap the terror and the memory of the terror in a box. Then place another box around it, then another, like a series of Russian dolls, before burying it six feet under in the deepest furrows of his mind. It would be easier to move through this world ignorant, more a spectral creature than a person once fashioned from flesh and blood and bone. If Ryo wanted to survive, he must become stronger. He could only become stronger if he forgot all that made him weak.

Cyberdramon watched Ryo stand and survey their camp. After a moment, Ryo spoke:

“I’ll keep watch.” His voice was hoarse yet intelligible. 

The decision to act as though nothing had happened soothed Cyberdramon. He relaxed and turned away. Ryo paced around the perimeter they had established, lost in thought, waiting for time to pass and night to end.

Chapter Text

They were walking through an inverted biome, where the ground was the color of an overcast day, while the sky was the color of dirt. Ryo felt tired, even though in the Digital World, sleep was not strictly necessary. Nothing was needed, yet everything was lacking—the true contradiction of the place could be found at the heart of this discrepancy.

Cyberdramon growled, hackles raised. A digimon must be approaching. Ryo’s D-Power had been lost and they still had not retrieved it. The digimon appeared not long after, over the curve of the horizon, moving at a brisk pace toward them.

“Wait,” Ryo said.

It seemed friendly, or at least, not hostile. Cyberdramon glanced askance at him, briefly, but listened for once. They waited.

As it drew closer, Ryo experienced a sense of déjà vu. He had seen this digimon before—with its four arms and chiseled ashen skin and three faces and hair wreathed in flames—but where he could not recall, exactly. The name came to Ryo unbidden: Asuramon. It bowed low before them.

“You are Ryo Akiyama, Legendary Tamer?” asked Asuramon, voice deep and male.

Ryo nodded.

“I am Asuramon. I have come to fight for the honor of being your partner.”

Ryo was puzzled. It did not feel like an honor to be his partner, truly more of a curse. But Asuramon had a reasonable air to him. Regardless of how the fight went, perhaps they could prevent it from crossing any untoward lines.

Ryo glanced at Cyberdramon. The metal dragon was silent, almost vibrating with the desire to engage Asuramon. Ryo looked between the two of them, then shrugged.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?”

Cyberdramon did not hesitate. Asuramon had begun to bow again, an overexaggerated flourishing motion, caught by surprise when Cyberdramon hurled himself forward. Cyberdramon reached out to separate Asuramon’s three-sided faces from his body, but Asuramon jammed all four arms into Cyberdramon’s chest and propelled himself backward, out of harm's way.

“What is this? Where is your decorum?” Asuramon demanded.

He was ignored. Cyberdramon readied a desolation claw and fired it at Asuramon, forcing the other digimon to fling himself aside in a rather graceless manner. The desolation claw skittered off, leaving a deep wound in the still gray earth.

“If you insist on fighting like a beast, you shall be treated like one!” Asuramon shouted. Cyberdramon closed the distance between them once more, and they were rolling around on the ground in a furious tussle.

Maybe Ryo had been wrong about Asuramon. There was nothing reasonable about violence—certainly nothing honorable. Cyberdramon made that truth abundantly clear. Ryo wished he had retained his D-Power, so he might assist his partner.   

The flames crowning Asuramon’s head and wreathing his body flared to life. There was a sound, containing hundreds of thousands of various cries, as the celestial bonfire enveloped them. Pure gold flames erupted to life, and myriads shapes could be seen within them: unlimited faces and eyes, royal ornaments and a vast tableau of chariot riders wielding divine weapons to slay one another.

An awful heat struck the area as both Cyberdramon and Asuramon shrieked in pain; the scent of sweat-smelling fragrances twined with the flickering contortions of holy flames. Ryo had no choice but to shield his eyes—blinded by the light; blinded by the horrifying nature of it all.

Dark hope thrilled Ryo: maybe Cyberdramon and Asuramon would destroy each other. Maybe he would be free at last from his obligations. Maybe Ryo could finally go home. But it was a cruel hope, so he made himself forget it.

The light faded; the heat abated; the sounds eased; Ryo dropped his arms and lifted his eyes. Cyberdramon stood triumphant over Asuramon, four arms pinned behind its back, body stained with charcoal and still smoking from the fire. Cyberdramon screamed again, a victory cry, and wrenched one arm free from its socket. Asuramon let out a cry too, agonized and stripped of pretenses, a metallic noise that drilled itself into Ryo’s skull.

The arm burst into red data, showering them in rust-colored dust. Cyberdramon reached for another arm and ripped that one out next; it was like watching someone pluck the wings off a fly. Ryo began to feel ill.

“Cyberdramon, that’s enough.”

Cyberdramon snarled but stomped a clawed foot clean through Asuramon’s head. More red data, everywhere, so much like blood and yet nothing like it at all. Asuramon vanished, as if he never even existed. Cyberdramon absorbed the data, red lines glowing along the cracks in his armor and healing him. He shone with the light of blood diamonds. If data was blood, were they vampires?

Smoke curled out of Cyberdramon’s muzzle and drifted heavenward. No, not a vampire. A dragon—and not the benevolent eastern dragons, but the wretched and greedy dragons of the west. All they knew was to seek out gold and hoard it.

“He was weak,” Cyberdramon said, taking Ryo by surprise. “He was not worthy to even make such a request. My true enemy still waits dreaming.”

Then Cyberdramon turned and continued walking, as if nothing had happened.

Chapter Text

The sheer, jagged edges of the crystalline gorge rose around them. They were clear with silvered, almost metallic gleam to them, and caught inside the colors of an aurora borealis shimmered from certain angles. From other angles there was nothing. Out of the cracks and crevices dripped honey, softly golden, clinging like condensation to the vertical surfaces.

Loud screams interspersed with roars filled the air. Cyberdramon stood in the center of a swarm of purple and gold, red scarf whipping about as he lashed out in a blur of claw and fang. Flymon were insect digimon that more closely resembled hornets, their nest disturbed, buzzing furiously as they dive-bombed Cyberdramon.

The welter of noise hurt Ryo’s ears, made his head throb, a slow, dull ache, as he took cover behind a jutting spire and frantically searched for a card to assist his partner. His hands were shaking, fingers even clumsier due to the thick gloves, and Ryo swore when he accidentally dropped several cards, sending them scattering across the flat, cold ground.

One of the Flymon heard Ryo. It turned to face him, then raced toward him, knocking him over. Ryo swore and tried, futile, to wrestle it into submission. A sharp pain ripped through his breast as the Flymon’s stinger grazed him.  

Cyberdramon had already killed so many of the hive, their data was a thick mist hovering ignored upon the stale digital air. The Red Sea parted, brilliant white light of a desolation claw cutting a swath through the furious hive. It only seemed to anger them further, increasing their revolutions and spitting acid at Cyberdramon. Smoke was rising from his hide, tattered wings further eaten away, but he ignored any and all injuries, a demon possessed.

The desolation claw struck the Flymon atop Ryo, beheading it. Its body went slack, dissipate into data, until he was left clutching the ghost of a monster. He felt strangely bereft.  

It’s never going to end.

Ryo lunged for the nearest card. It was the goliath card, limited edition, won from—where had he won it, again, exactly? He could no longer recall, it had been so long ago. He reached for his D-Power and it wasn’t there. Where was it? It, oh. It was still lost somewhere in the woods. Another caterwaul pierced the air and the tide turned, without Ryo’s help. He was unnecessary.

The Flymon now truly resembled gnats, diminished while they flitted uselessly about Cyberdramon. Cyberdramon swatted them away with casual ease, bellowing his triumph. What Flymon remained began to retreat, purple wings frantic as they streaked away.

Cyberdramon reached out a vicious grip and crushed a few, easily. Then he lumbered after those that fled, the earth trembling beneath his confident tread, his roars deeper now, marrow deep, rattling through Ryo’s teeth.

“Cyberdramon stop! Come here, to me!”

Ryo was ignored.

It’ll never end.

The voice, again, shorter and softer, but no less persistent. And it was true, wasn’t it? What was the point of any of this, really? He didn’t trust Cyberdramon and he couldn’t even trust himself, anymore. Everything and everyone was smoke and mirrors.

Ryo could have followed Cyberdramon. He did consider it. His partner was striding away, back turned, having forgotten Ryo entirely.

Another moment more, then Ryo started walking in the opposite direction. He never once looked back.

Chapter Text

Ryo was on the Digital World’s youngest plane. A desert stretched in every direction, and it felt like a mirror to his soul: empty of meaning, to be blown away by wind and sand. Overhead hovered Earth, a gleaming, glittering jewel, mocking him with how out of reach it was from him. Home had never seemed so distant, even as he gazed upon it.

He had found stray data packets for his injury. But his chest still burned from the Flymon’s stinger, an ache of past pain unforgotten. But soon that too would fade. It all faded in time.

Ryo continued to walk forward. His destination was uncertain; he only knew that he needed to keep moving forward. If he stopped to think about it all he would go mad.

Alongside him was a boy. Ryo had known this boy, once. He had dark, shoulder-length hair and sad eyes. The boy kept pace with Ryo, silent for a long time. DigiGnomes began to gather, sparkling like stars, dipping and swooping about the duo. Ryo ignored them too.

“So that’s it then?” asked the boy. “The Legendary Tamer Ryo Akiyama has given up?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Ryo asked. He wanted to snap, to sound angry, but instead the question came out weary and drained.  

“Whatever you want. The choice is yours alone.”

Unhelpful as ever. Ryo wondered if there would ever come a day when someone else made the hard choice instead. It seemed rather unfair. Why couldn’t he just be, and have that be enough?

“Please don’t hate them for this, though, whatever you decide.”

Surprised, Ryo glanced back at the boy. He elaborated:

“A female digger wasp carefully guides her stinger into each ganglion of the prey's central nervous system, so as to paralyze it but not kill it. This way, the meat keeps fresh. It is not known whether the paralysis acts as a general anesthetic, or if it is like curare in just freezing the victim's ability to move. If the latter, the prey might be aware of being eaten alive from inside but unable to move a muscle to do anything about it. This sounds savagely cruel, but nature is not cruel; only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. If you can reconcile this notion, you’ll be much happier here.”

“I don’t think happiness is possible here,” Ryo said, eventually. He was still mulling over the boy’s words. “And maybe I don’t want to be happy. Maybe I just want to know what’s real.”

“You are,” said the boy. He looked different, now. Taller. He wore regal clothes, the sadness replaced by a quiet intensity, a crackle harsh like the snap of a whip. Ryo did not think he liked this version of the boy as much. “You are the Digimon King. This is the domain you were granted sovereignty over. That’s real.”

Now the boy seemed forlorn again. He looked away, diminished.

Around them, the DigiGnomes murmured and shifted and twisted. Noises came from them, sounds like the chimes of bells tinkling upon the air. One approached Ryo and dropped in his hand—his D-Power. He sighed, the weight of it heavy on his palm. When he looked up, the boy was gone.