Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His worst fear happens.

They’re in the middle of a battle, and suddenly, he blanks out. Next thing he knows, his head is fuzzy and Cyberdramon is getting beat. His hands are numb, and when he goes to find a card, he only ends up dropping them all. He curses, and falls to his knees to pick them back up, but rushing isn’t helping when he barely feel anything.

He stops, takes a deep breath, shakes his hands, trying to get some feeling back into them as quickly as possible.

Cyberdramon roars, and he looks up just in time to see Cyberdramon take a monster of a hit. His eyes widen, and he freezes. His digimon is going to get destroyed, all because of him.

He squeezes his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the thoughts and focus. One, two, three. Okay. He opens his eyes and watches his hands carefully, using sight to replace touch. Got one. He swipes the card without looking at it, hoping it’s enough to at least buy him some time to find a better one.

Yes! Sheer luck has him swiping exactly the right card, and Cyberdramon powers up, finally deleting his opponent with one good Erase Claw.

Ryo falls back with a gasp of relief. “That was close,” he slurs--great, even his mouth is slightly numb.

Later, he’s setting up camp for the night, thinking about his utter failure of the day. His hands paused at their task as he remembers the numbness, dropping the cards, unable to do anything more than watch while he recovered so slowly. What if Cyberdramon had been deleted all because of him? And that had only been an absence seizure--what if he had a full tonic-clonic one? He’s been lucky so far, but when there’s something almost daily, it’s only a matter of time until his luck runs out.

Suddenly, he’s falling back as a knife slashes across his arm.

“What the hell!” he shouts, looking up in surprise for the enemy digimon. But there is no enemy, only his own digimon, standing over him and growling. His thoughts catch up to reality as the digimon roars and slashes at him again. “Cyberdramon! Back off!” he orders, burying his fear. That would only make this situation that much worse.

“I need a strong partner,” Cyberdramon growls. “I thought you were the best.”

“I--” Ryo starts, then stops, today flashing through his mind once again.

Cyberdramon senses his hesitation, reaffirming his stance, and charges.

Ryo moves out of the way just in time. What is he supposed to do? His heart is racing in fear, for the second time today, only this time, it’s not Cyberdramon’s life he’s worried about but his own.

“Prove your strength!” Cyberdramon demands. “Or you are just another useless, weak creature.”

He is, though. He is fucking disabled. He suddenly thinks of getting the diagnosis, of falling into convulsions during class, going from being an ordinary kid to the freakshow just like that. He got lost in the digimon card game because it was something he could do, something where he could escape his reality. When he was battling, he wasn’t disabled.

He didn’t set out to become good, it was just something that happened from playing hours on end, from escaping as often as he could. Then he started battling in the tournaments--and winning. He was on TV, and in magazines, and people started calling him the Digimon King. But at school, at home, he was still the freak who had the seizures.

Now, here he was in the digital world, and it was actually worse. Digimon could no longer protect him. Now, he might actually hurt his partner because of his stupid disability.

He was so sick of it!

He stood up angrily, hands in fists. “Okay, fine!” he shouted. “You want me to prove I’m strong, I will!” Tears stung his eyes as he shouted, “I’m not weak! I’m not useless! I am strong! I’ll show you, I’ll show everyone!”

Cyberdramon tilted his head, looking at him curiously, still.

“Come on, then!” Ryo cried out. “Attack! Fight me until there’s no doubt, until you know! I’ll prove it!” He screamed and rushed forward, pounding on the large digimon’s chest blindly, like a child having a tantrum.

Cyberdramon didn’t react to the beating, simply standing and taking it. “Ryo,” he said after a moment. “Ryo, that’s enough.”

“No!” Ryo shouted, blinded by rageful tears by now. “Not until you know it, without a doubt! I can prove it--I can!”

Cyberdramon grabbed his arms in his large claws, stopping him easily. “You have,” he said.

Ryo didn’t look at him, lost in his own emotions, chest heaving in gasping sobs.

“You are my Tamer,” Cyberdramon said, and his gruff voice might have held a note of pride.

Chapter Text

“Ryo,” Cyberdramon growls, stopping.

Ryo knows that tone. Crap. He stops and gives his partner a pained look. “Really?” he says, though he knows it’s stupid to ask.

Kazu and Kenta stop, realizing that Ryo has dropped back. “Hey, what’s up?” Kazu asks.

Ryo sighs. “I was really hoping--” he starts, and then he’s out.

When he comes back, he can see the boy’s standing over him with panicked looks. “How long was I out?” he asks.

“What the heck was that?” Kazu demands.

He starts to sit up, and realizes that it’s not going to happen. “I’m epileptic,” he explains. “I have seizures sometimes. I was probably overdue for one.” He winces and closes his eyes. “I’m probably going to be out of it for a few…”

He wakes up several minutes later. He shakes his head and tries to sit up. A little too optimistic, apparently. “Sorry,” he tells the boys. “It takes a lot out of me.”

“Are you okay?” Kenta asks. “That was pretty freaky.”

“Yeah, just tired. I’ll be okay in a minute.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“The seizures? Depends on what you mean by a lot. Back home, when I take my medicine and don’t have too much stress, it’s not too bad, once a month, maybe. Here, all that prevention goes out the window. Plus, seizures are basically electricity going nuts in my brain, so the digital world is basically against me there.” He looks at Cyberdramon. “A few times a week, maybe? Usually it’s just absence seizures--I’ll space out for a few seconds. But then sometimes there’s the big tonic-clonics--” he flails his arms a moment to explain the term to them. “That’s always fun. It’s been awhile, I should’ve been expecting it.” He shrugs. “But I still always hope it won’t come.”

“How long have you had it?” Kazu wants to know.

“Since I was ten.”

“And then you get knocked out like that every time?”

“Yeah. It takes a lot out of me, so I usually just pass out for a few minutes, and can’t move for awhile. Cyberdramon has to keep an eye on me. He can sense them coming. I’m lucky I haven’t had any tonic-clonics while battling--we’d probably both be dead.”

“Man,” Kazu says with a whistle. “That’s rough.”

“It’s just something I’ve lived with for years, and probably always will. I deal with it.” He’s feeling better and starts to get up. Kazu is immediately there, taking his hand to pull him up. He sways for a second, but manages to keep his feet. The boys are watching him carefully, as though they expect him to fall at any second. He grins and gives them a thumb’s-up. “We’re good.”

He thinks for a moment about telling them the rest--it would probably be a good idea to have someone else keeping an eye on him, and they already know this much. But it wouldn’t do any good--there’s no doctors or emergency centers in the digital world, so if it happens, he’s dead, anyway. Might as well keep the tiny shred of normalcy he could.

Chapter Text

He just found Rika, and they are making their way back to the ark--so of course he gets the warning that a seizure is coming, because they have time for that.

“What are you doing?” Rika demands as Cyberdramon lands and Ryo slides to the ground. “We have to go, before they leave us!”

Ryo looks at her. “There’s something you should know,” he says, and then he’s gone.

He wakes with a start and looks over to Rika, who has dismounted and is watching him with equal parts worry and fury.

“What was that?” she yells in a panicked voice.

He sighs. One more person who’d know--wasn’t he lucky? And this is the last person he would ever have wanted to find out. “I’m epileptic,” he says heavily. He’s really tired. That had been more exhausting than usual. Must be all the data flying around with the Chaos. “I’ll...explain in a few…” He looks up at Cyberdramon. “Keep going,” he instructs. “I’ll be…” and then his eyes drift shut.

“Is he okay?” Calumon asks curiously.

Cyberdramon picks up his partner. “You heard him. Keep going, and he’ll explain when he wakes up.” With nothing more, he takes off.

Rika sighs in irritation. She wants to demand answers, but they’ve already lost more time than they can afford. She mounts Kyubimon again and follows the infuriating Tamer and his equally bad partner.

They continue for several minutes before Ryo stirs and wakes.

His eyes are barely open before Rika’s demanding answers again. “You gonna explain things now?” she asks.

Ryo sighs and leans into Cyberdramon, grateful for the support. He can still barely move, and his hands are numb. “Epileptic,” he explains reluctantly. “I have seizures sometimes. Some are better than others. Ones like that, I’m out of commission for a few minutes--it’s as exhausting as it looks, trust me.”

“It happens a lot? And you decided it would be a good idea to go to the digital world knowing that?”

Ryo frowns at her. “Not like I had a choice. You think with a partner like Cyberdramon, I could stay in the real world?” He shakes his head. “But...it is worse here--I get them several times a week, instead of maybe once a month. Cyberdramon keeps an eye on me, though, and I do the same. I manage.” He hesitates, then looks away and lowers his voice. “I know you’ve got to be loving this--’hero boy’ has a disability, how perfect--but could you do me a favor and not tell the others? It sucks enough without having people pitying me.”

She doesn’t respond to that.

“I see the others,” Kyubimon says, breaking the sudden awkward silence.

Ryo shoots a look at Rika and flexes his hands, making sure he can move again, and then calls out. “Hey! Wait for us!” Keeping his eyes locked on the distant figures of the group ahead, he says, “Please, Rika. Just...don’t.”

After a long moment, he hears a soft, “Whatever.”

He looks back, surprised, but grateful. Maybe he can maintain this optimistic charade a little while longer.

Chapter Text

“What were you thinking? You were gone for months—months! You could have been killed, or what if you had a seizure and died? Did you think about any of that?”

Ryo sighs. “You don’t understand,” he says. He's tired of arguing. Since he was diagnosed, his dad has been like this, constantly worried that he'll fall apart. He's been yelling at Ryo practically since they got back to the real world. Ryo understands every argument, and he didn’t protest when his dad drove them straight to the pharmacy to refill his epilepsy medication or when the man insisted on him swallowing some the instant it was in his hands. To be honest, he’s as relieved as anyone to be back in a world that isn’t constantly trying to kill him. But can’t he get a moment to breathe before jumping into the parental third degree? Hasn't he proven that he can take care of himself, epileptic or not? “I had to go. I’m a Tamer.”

“You can leave the ‘taming’ to the others,” his dad snaps. “I saw the group. They can take care of things just fine without you.”

“That’s not how it works. Monodramon’s my partner. We fight together.” He smiles at the small purple dragon by his side. “He protects me--he protected me the entire time I was in the digital world, and I have to return the favor.”

His father eyes the digimon skeptically. Monodramon grins up at him hopefully.

His father sighs in resignation. “I just worry about you, Ryo,” he says softly. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Ryo starts to respond, then stops when he sees the tears in his father’s eyes. He looks down at his hands. “Yeah, I know,” he says softly. “Sorry.”

It’s not a promise.

Chapter Text

His brain is starting to get fuzzy, but he’s too distracted by the battle going on around him to pay it much attention. He should know better than that by now.

He hears Cyberdramon shout in his head, and he can hear a panic he’s never heard from the digimon before.

“What’s going--” But now Ryo can feel it. Nonono, he thinks in alarm. This can’t be happening. What will happen in their biomerge? Will Cyberdramon--? No. He fights it, and he cries out as it feels like his head explodes, and then he is lost.

“Justimon!” Takato shouts as the other Tamer’s biomerge breaks down and falls apart; Ryo’s body hits the ground and begins to convulse. “Ryo!”

“What’s going on?” Henry asks.

“He’s epileptic!” Rika says without thinking. Screw his ‘don’t tell the others’ crap.

“What?!”

Cyberdramon stands guard over his partner, growling at the D-Reaper agents closing in on them. Megagargomon swoops in to back them up, blasting away at some of the creatures before they can reach the fallen Tamer.

Sakuyamon ends her fight and goes to the boy as his body finally stills. She picks him up and takes off. She knows from the last time that he’ll be out of commission for several minutes at least, and he needs to be in a safe place. Cyberdramon slashes another D-Reaper agent and follows her.

It seemed like this was longer than last time, she thinks. Does that mean anything?

After fifteen long minutes, he finally stirs. "You must love this," he says, looking up at Sakuyamon. "Your turn to save the 'hero boy.'"

“Can you move?” she asks.

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “A little. But it might be better if I don’t stand just yet.” He pauses. “That was a bad one, wasn’t it? Do you know how long?”

She shakes her head, flying them to his house. “Three, four minutes?”

“Three minutes, fifty seconds,” Cyberdramon growls.

“Wow,” Ryo says quietly.

“Is that bad?”

“It’s definitely not great. One or two is normal.” He sighs. “So, I guess you’d better know,” he says with a casualness they can both tell is false, “if it goes to five minutes, or if I have several seizures one right after another, that’s really bad, and I need to go to the hospital immediately. It’s called status epilepticus. It happened once when I was eleven--I was lucky to get out of the hospital more or less okay.”

“Doesn’t sound very lucky to me,” Rika said with a frown.

He shrugged. “I was alive.” He looked at Cyberdramon. “I was worried I was going to take you down with me there. Glad that didn’t happen, at least.”

Probably wasn’t a good idea bio-merging in the first place, he thought. If the digital world caused problems, what made him think actually becoming data wouldn’t? He sighs in frustration. Figures that he would get this cool thing only to have it get screwed. Couldn't he ever get just a bit of normalcy?