EPISODE 25 - WILDER NIGHTS AT HOME
“Wake up, sleepyhead!”
Something pressed down on Ryan’s cheek, and he groaned, lifting a hand up to shove it away. It pushed down again, harder and more forceful this time, and before he could move, another something - heavier and fuller and larger - landed on his chest with a thump. He coughed and forced himself up into a sitting position. Whatever had been on his chest fell off with a squeak and a delayed thump, and - in their own delayed fashion - Ryan’s eyes slowly opened once he realized it had probably been Dare.
A glance over the edge of the bed at the floor, where she lay sprawled out and looking incredibly offended, revealed it to be true.
“You can never let me sleep in, can you,” he mumbled, rubbing his arm across his eyes.
She grinned up at him and hopped back onto the bed, staying at the far end so he couldn’t shove her off again. “Nope! Rise and shine! We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”
Ryan made a sound a mix between a groan and a sigh - a “grigh”, as Dare often called it, which Ryan hated immensely, which only motivated her to say it more - and swung his legs off the side of his bed to face the other one. It was empty; Alex and Castor must have already woken up.
Speaking of.
“She’s right,” Alex said, poking his head around the wall separating the bedroom from the mini bathroom. “This town ain’t big enough for the eighteen of us. At high noon it’ll be time to head on out into the Wild Wild West.”
“Yeehaw,” Dare said annoyingly. “Pardner. Howdy. G’day, mate.”
“Well now you’re just Australian,” Ryan said.
Dare blinked up at him. “I don’t know what that is.”
“We’re heading north,” came Castor’s voice and then himself a moment later, stepping out of the bathroom proper. He turned to face Alex, tail flicking. “Not west. Why did you turn into a cowboy.”
“Just for a bit of fun,” he said, following Castor out of the bathroom. He looked over at Ryan and Dare. “We’re going to go down to get breakfast. You should come with us, unless you want to starve to death.”
Ryan rubbed his face again, still feeling groggy, and by the time he opened his eyes again, Alex and Castor were already on their way out the door. He watched them leave, staring at the back of the door once it closed for a few moments before sliding off the bed and standing up properly. Dare tilted her head at him, but did not say anything as he knelt down to pull fresh (for a given value of fresh - he hadn’t exactly had a way to wash them) clothes out of his backpack and head into the bathroom to, reluctantly, start his day.
He couldn’t help but stare at himself in the mirror as he washed his face at the sink. He didn’t know why. His face looked the same as it always did - messy brown hair, minimally evident eyebags, a few small moles and freckles, dull blue eyes. Very familiar eyes. Tentatively, he placed a hand on his throat, not even caring that it was still dripping wet. He blinked, and furrowed his eyebrows, and then saw his father staring back at him.
Ah. So today was going to be one of those days.
Ryan exhaled through his nose, running his hand through his hair and then shaking his head out. He splashed more water on his face and turned the faucet off, reaching for the nearby towel. He made sure to turn away from the mirror before pulling the towel away from his face and clearing his vision. He didn’t want to look at it again.
Whatever. Today would be the last day he’d see a mirror for a very long while. It would also be the last day he’d sleep on a proper bed, or eat a proper meal, or see a proper civilization for a while, but whatever.
He didn’t say anything to Dare as he walked back into the bedroom and grabbed his digivice off of the nightstand, and she likewise did not speak. At least, not until they reached the elevator and Ryan pushed the button to take them down to the ground floor.
“You okay?”
He didn’t look down at her, keeping his gaze fixed on the door in front of him. “Why do you ask.”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t answer.” She shuffled quietly, her tail brushing up against his leg. “You’ve been acting weird today.”
“I’ve been awake for five minutes. I’m not acting any different than I normally do immediately after I wake up.”
She snorted. “Sure you’re not. And I’m not about to eat two entire stacks of chocolate chip pancakes.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Ryan said. The doors chimed and slid open, and Dare immediately stepped into the lobby, catching sight of a few of the group standing outside the entrance to the hotel restaurant. Ryan followed her, averting his gaze from anyone else’s even as they headed inside the restaurant.
They had to sit at three different tables due to the size of their group. Ryan was seated between Dare and Flip, with Miguel, Harmony, and Ren in the other three chairs across from him. He remained quiet throughout the entire meal, nodding and mumbling along if he was addressed but mostly keeping to himself. At his side, Dare kept giving him slightly concerned glances, but she didn’t say anything, and she provided enough chatter to make up for the lack of his.
And from the other side of the table, Ryan could feel Harmony staring at him the entire time. He wanted to look up and wave her off, or let her know that he was fine, but he couldn’t bring himself to. It was easier to keep his head down and act like he wasn’t there at all.
He could hear the others at their own tables laughing and conversing, talking about what they’d done in the city and anything they’d found out. Alex and Castor were the only ones who’d fought anyone - thankfully - but the fact that they’d fought anyone at all wasn’t reassuring. Even if they’d learned that the Catalyst was most likely another human, it didn’t really seem worth it.
He didn’t say as much out loud, of course.
Dare ordered a truly massive stack of pancakes, which she did indeed eat entirely. She tried to order a second stack once she was finished, but Ryan quickly shut that idea down. Dare insisted that if she didn’t eat it all then they could get a box to go, but Ryan pointed out that he literally did not have enough room in his backpack to carry it, and she begrudgingly relented, but only because Ryan gave her the last few scraps left on his own plate. He was surprised he’d managed to eat anything at all, but he supposed he should just be glad he was able to.
Truth be told, his mind was more than just elsewhere. It was lost entirely. It had been ever since the prior evening, but Ryan felt like sleeping had just made it worse rather than better like he’d hoped it would.
It was just…
Everything Alex had said last night had sort of turned his whole world upside down. Ryan hadn’t ever really had anyone apologize to him for anything bigger than, like, accidentally bumping into him. So the fact Alex had said sorry for punching him was sort of… unexpected? Especially since it had been so long. He’d sort of just accepted the fact that they were both going to act like it had never happened and then try to avoid each other as much as possible to prevent it from happening again.
Not to mention everything else he’d said. It was weird finding out that someone he’d disagreed with so much for so long was almost just like him. And they said sorry for being a dick. Ryan hadn’t. He’d been pretty awful to everyone when they first got here and he hadn’t apologized to anyone. It hadn’t really crossed his mind. Just as he wasn’t used to being apologized to, he wasn’t used to apologizing to others.
It was a hard word for him to say. A hard word for anyone, really, but especially so for him. For a lot of reasons, none of which he wanted to think about right now, especially with how his morning was going.
He couldn’t stop thinking about his reflection.
It wasn’t actually him, he kept telling himself, you just happen to have his eyes and it made you think it was him, but it wasn’t really, it was you. You’re you.
But the other part of his brain, the voice in the back of his mind, was of the opposite opinion. You look like him for a reason. You’re just like him. Maybe Alex was wrong. Maybe you did deserve it. After all, haven’t you wanted to hurt your dad? And if you’re him, then -
“Ryan?”
Ryan blinked, startled back into the present, and looked over at Dare. “What?”
She frowned slightly, and tilted her head. “You ready to go?”
He looked over at the other tables and then the one he was at, finally realizing everyone was finishing up and standing up to leave. “Oh,” he said, pushing himself up from his seat. “Yeah.”
“We’ll meet back up in the lobby in about ten minutes,” Moxie called out, already on her way out with her partner. “Don’t leave anything behind. Especially your digivices.”
Ryan half-subconsciously stuck his hands in his pockets, feeling his digivice resting there with one hand. He blinked a few times, and then squared his shoulders, beckoning Dare along with him as he followed after the group to head back up.
He remained silent as he gathered the few things he had and began to pack up. They were leaving Factorial Town today; no one in the city had heard of or seen the Catalyst, or any human in general. It wasn’t surprising, considering their luck thus far, but it was still disappointing. Ryan couldn’t help but wonder if they’d ever find them.
They would, eventually. He hoped. But how much longer would it take? How much longer could they take?
How much longer until it was too late and they’d failed?
Ryan closed his eyes and paused in his movement, halfway to placing his neatly-folded jacket inside his backpack. He had to stop thinking like that. What was wrong with him today? He’d been fine these past few days and now all of a sudden he was just… not.
He should be great right now. Exceptional, really. But he wasn’t. Even with getting some sense of closure and connection with Alex the prior night, he was still out of it.
It can’t be helped, he tried telling himself, resuming his task of packing. Sometimes we have off days. That’s normal for people.
Maybe not normal for me, but normal for everyone else. And sometimes I act like everyone else. I’m not always me.
And that’s the problem, the other part of his brain said. Why aren’t you you?
Ryan zipped his backpack shut with more aggression than necessary and pushed himself to his feet.
“You got everything?” Alex asked, poking his head up from the other side of his own bed. He stood up as well, hoisting his backpack up and slinging it over his shoulder. At his feet, Castor padded out from behind the bed to look up at Ryan and then Dare, who was sitting on Ryan’s bed surprisingly patiently.
Ryan nodded, not wanting to say anything out loud. He didn’t know what his voice would sound like if he did. Alex’s gaze lingered on him for a moment before he nodded back, gesturing for him and Dare to follow as he and Castor moved to hold the door open.
Ryan could feel Dare’s eyes on his back the entire way down to the lobby, but she didn’t say anything, and he acted like he didn’t notice.
“I have to admit,” Flip said once they were all gathered outside the hotel, “I’m gonna miss being in a proper settlement like this.”
“Aren’t there more villages on the savannah?” Harmony asked. She looked over at Moxie, tilting her head. “It seems weird that there wouldn’t be any… there were so many on our way here.”
“There are some,” Moxie said, and Pop nodded. “But they’re small. They won’t be like this.”
“No more restaurants for a good while,” Damien added, and sighs went up from several in the group. He smiled, pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes. “That’s alright. We stocked up on supplies and we’ve got our resident chef.” He nudged Miguel, and the shorter boy startled, then looked up at Damien, eyes wide.
“Uh,” he said. “Yeah. Right.”
“Are we ready to go?” Moxie cut in, but she was smiling anyways. A round of nods went around, and she clenched a fist, grinning wider. “Alright! Let’s get a move on.”
Slowly the group began to head out, walking in a loose line towards the north edge of the city. They passed a few Digimon along the way who gave them strange looks, but that was normal. That happened wherever they went.
Could they blame them? Maybe not. Wherever they went, trouble followed. It made sense that Digimon would be wary of them.
It didn’t make Ryan feel any better, though.
If the group had been expecting the next stretch of the Innovation Lands to be any different from the first, they would be sorely disappointed. Fortunately, none of them were, and as such they were only mildly disappointed.
The grasslands continued as far as their eyes could see; the region was hillier than before, and with a few more trees in sight. This, specifically, was known as the Gear Savannah, and it was obvious why: large gears were embedded into the ground in various spots, some of them barely sticking out from the earth and some towering over the group as they passed by. They were firmly rooted in the ground, so there wasn’t any worry about them falling over, but even so, they gave them a wide berth.
In the distance, if they strained hard enough, they could almost make out the silhouette of Browser Jungle, their next major destination. It was too far away to see clearly, only a few straggling trees on the outskirts visible from this distance. When they’d gone over the plan after they’d left the city, Damien had said it would likely take a good few days to fully reach it. Alex had asked why they were even bothering to look for the Catalyst in a jungle, but Damien hadn’t responded. (Moxie had said that it was along the way anyways, which was satisfactory enough for him.)
Now, it was shortly after noon, and the group had just finished packing up after their lunch. The sun was beginning to dip lower in the sky, a firm reminder of how long they’d been out here already. They couldn’t rest yet, though; they had more ground to cover before it got dark, and hopefully they’d be able to do so without any distractions.
Speaking of.
“It’s been a while since we’ve walked for so long and so far,” Ryan said, more to himself or, at the very most, Dare than anyone else, but - a few steps ahead of him - Harmony heard him. She looked over her shoulder at him, and he continued, not paying any attention to her. “These past few weeks there’s always been one thing after another happening that interrupts the day.”
“Don’t jinx it!” Harmony said scoldingly, her brow furrowing, but she was smiling. “Now there’s going to be something that comes up. You can’t tempt fate like that.”
Next to her, Ren flicked an ear and looked back at Ryan as well, but he simply shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Just saying.”
Harmony seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if waiting for him to say anything else, but then resumed her attention forward when he didn’t continue.
Down at his feet, though, Dare nudged his leg, and he raised an eyebrow down at her. She gestured with her head for him to fall back and slowed her own pace, and he mimicked her movements, folding his arms and waiting for her to speak.
She didn’t say anything until they were at the back of the group, out of earshot of anyone else, and they picked up their pace again. “What’s going on?” she said quietly, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.
Ryan frowned, confused. “Nothing,” he said. “What’s gotten into you today?”
“What’s gotten into me,” she echoed, obviously amused, and Ryan’s gaze darkened. “You didn’t answer my question earlier in the elevator.”
“The conversation was over.”
“Because the ride was. But that wasn’t an excuse for you to just let it slide.” She tilted her head slightly. “I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re okay and when you’re not. And I think something’s going on with you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ryan muttered.
Dare snorted. “Bullshit you don’t want to talk about it,” she said, staring up at him with a deadpan stare. “You always want to talk.”
“Is this a lying competition now?”
“So you admit you’re lying.”
Ryan didn’t respond. Dare grinned up at him, and he closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
…He could tell her a little bit, he supposed. A half-truth.
“How much of my talk with Alex yesterday did you hear?”
Dare raised her eyebrows, but shrugged. “All of it. Why?”
Ryan frowned to himself, folding his hands in front of his mouth as he searched for the right words - nothing that would give away what was really bothering him, but enough to keep Dare satisfied. He spoke as they came to him, and his words were slightly stilted as a result, but Dare didn’t seem to mind. “I… keep thinking about it. I don’t know why. I should be over it by now, but.”
“It seemed like a good conversation to me, though,” Dare said.
“It was. I think. It’s just…” He shook his head. “No one’s ever apologized to me like that before. For something they did that hurt me. And I haven’t either. I didn’t say sorry to Alex. I was an asshole to him too and I didn’t even say sorry.”
Ryan shook his head again, looking down at his feet. Dare remained silent, waiting for him to continue. He almost wished she’d say something to fill the silence so that he wouldn’t have to speak again, but nothing came. Eventually he resigned himself to his fate and grighed.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t be this bothered by it, but I am. I don’t know how to feel about it.”
Dare nodded pensively. “I mean… I get it. But don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Ryan blinked. “Why not?”
“Why not? If you’re that upset about it, go apologize to him right now!” She swept an arm out at the group ahead of them and then pointed directly at Alex, farther in the distance at the front of the group. She looked up at Ryan. “You could easily erase all these bad feelings just by doing what you need to do. Don’t beat yourself up over something you could easily fix just because you want to feel bad about yourself.”
“That’s not what this is,” he said, already dreading where this was going.
She kept her gaze fixed on him. “Then go do it.”
“No,” he said, crossing his arms. “I’m not going to just go up to him and be like, ‘hey, sorry for being a dick to you, and sorry I didn’t say it last night’. Especially not in front of everyone else. That’s weird.”
“Die then?” Dare shrugged, holding her paws palm-up. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“You’re not exactly being very comforting,” Ryan said, glaring down at her.
She simply tapped the side of her cheek, looking off into the distance. “You don’t need comforting. Just own up to it and apologize. It’s what I’d do. Or what I’d wish someone who hurt me would do.”
“Fine,” he said, a little snappier than he’d intended to. “If it’ll make you happy.”
“Don’t do this for me,” she said, her own voice taking on a serious tone. She turned a piercing gaze upon him. “Put in the effort to make up for what you’ve done.”
Her mouth remained open, but she did not say anything else; her eyes drifted to the side, and slowly she shut her jaw. Ryan stared down at her curiously, no longer impatient and now just confused.
He supposed she was right. No, not supposed. Knew. She was right; she was just saying it in a way that was pissing him off. Which, really, not unusual for her, but this time something about it was… different, sort of?
“Why are you so invested in this,” he said.
She blinked up at him, looking a bit like it was taking some time for her to process his words. “Because I want you to be a good person?” She said it like it was obvious. It wasn’t.
Ryan’s brow furrowed. “Am I not already?”
“That’s not - ugh,” she said, rubbing her snout with a paw. “You know what I mean.”
Yeah, right. “I don’t think I do.”
“You need to start actually doing shit instead of lamenting about how much you wish you could do it. You can. You need to realize that.”
“Why are you getting on my case like this?”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “I just told you why.”
Ryan didn’t budge. “Yeah, but you’ve never done this before.”
“Does that mean I can’t ever do this?”
“But why now?”
She didn’t respond, simply crossed her arms and looked off to the side. Ryan watched her for a few moments, waiting for her to say something, but nothing came. She didn’t speak, didn’t even look over at him. It felt like she was purposefully ignoring him. She probably was.
Did something happen? Nothing had seemed off with her recently. There shouldn’t be any reason for her to be this upset with him. It really wasn’t that big a deal. He was sort of regretting bringing anything up in the first place, but he couldn’t do anything about it now.
Honestly, he almost didn’t want to continue the discussion, but he felt he had an obligation to.
“What’s gotten into you,” he said again, this time actually meaning it.
“Nothing’s ‘gotten into me’,” she replied coolly. She still wasn’t looking at him. “I just think you’re being overdramatic.”
“You’re the one being overdramatic,” Ryan grumbled, near the end of his patience. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Maybe not to you,” she growled, whipping her head around to glare at him, “but it is to me. You’re being ridiculous. Just apologize already and stop wallowing in self-pity.”
“I’m not wallowing,” he snapped back, feeling his entire body stiffen as he entered fight-or-fight mode. “You’re being weird as hell today and it’s pissing me off. You’re getting on my case for something that literally doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me! Doesn’t that count for anything?” Dare’s tail lashed back and forth. “I don’t care if Alex doesn’t care, that’s his prerogative, but you’re being a dick about the whole situation and instead of solving it you’re just going ‘woe is me’!”
Her words struck him like an arrow, piercing his heart, and he gritted his teeth. Fuck, she just had to turn it around on him, didn’t she? Even if she didn’t mean to, even if she didn’t know what it was doing to him, couldn’t she have said anything else?
“Why does it matter to you?” It was all he could manage to say, despite everything else he wanted to say, to ask, to plead and beg with her, to tell her what she was doing was hurting him, but he couldn’t.
“Because -” Her rhythm faltered slightly, but she shook herself out and resumed as if nothing had happened. “Because it’s hitting way too close to home! I’ve been in a situation like this before and I’d think it’s pretty obvious that I wasn’t in your position!”
“You want me to apologize to Alex because it would make you feel better?” Ryan asked. If that would get her off his ass and stop acting like him, then he would gladly do it, even if he had to apologize in front of everyone else in the group - hell, if he had to apologize in front of the entire population of the Digital World, he’d do it. Anything to end the conversation and get her to lower the words she was aiming at him like weapons.
“Not in the damn slightest,” she hissed, and Ryan tensed. “I want you to say sorry for being an asshole because I know how it feels to not have someone apologize for it. And it doesn’t feel good. But that should be obvious enough.”
“You,” Ryan said. “You know how it feels. To not have someone apologize to you for being a dick?” Didn’t everyone? He did! He knew how that felt! Why was she acting like he didn’t? Why was she arguing with him like he didn’t? Why was she staring at him like he couldn’t even comprehend the idea of it?
“If you want to dumb it down, I guess you could say it like that!” she said, her lip curling slightly. “Maybe my experience was more severe than this, but the familiar feeling is still there and it’s - I don’t like being an outsider to the situation! It’s making me wish I’d done something back then to make them say sorry! So that it wouldn’t still be bothering me like this!”
“When we met, you told me you’ve never had friends before me,” Ryan said, and Dare recoiled.
His voice was rising in volume to match hers, he knew, but he couldn’t stop it. He never could, not even when he knew he needed to, when it mattered most. He could feel himself slipping, turning into the person he’d never wanted to be, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“You’ve never even had a family!” He didn’t even want to say what was coming out of his mouth, but he couldn’t stop it. “So who on earth could you possibly need an apology from?”
Is it me?
Dare flared her wings out and curled her claws into fists. “The people who abandoned me over and over again because I wasn’t good enough for them!” she cried.
She was looking up at him like it really was him.
Ryan opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. The two stared each other down for a few more seconds, neither wanting to break the tension, and then Ryan groaned, digging his hands into his hair. They regressed to walking in silence, Ryan trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and how to deal with it and if any of this was actually his fault and if his brain had been right earlier today when it’d tricked him into seeing his father’s face in the mirror.
Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore and shook his head, looking up ahead of them at the rest of the group, and he saw Harmony, looking back over her shoulder, staring at them. Immediately he felt his face heat up and he buried his head in his hands.
“That’s fucking embarrassing,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. Dare narrowed her eyes at him, and then caught sight of Harmony as well and pinned her ears back.
“What, because you yelled at me?” she drawled, tone dry. “That’s embarrassing? Wow. Who would’ve guessed.”
“Don’t be a smartass,” Ryan said, glaring at her.
She shrugged, unperturbed. “I have a right to be.”
They didn’t talk much after that. The conversation was over; nothing good had come of it, and Ryan knew that both of them were wishing it had never started in the first place.
He shouldn’t have brought anything up. He should have just shut his mouth as soon as she told him to apologize and he should have done it and not literally yelled at her, what the hell was wrong with him? Wasn’t he feeling shitty in the first place because he was having another one of his “haha you’re just like your dad” days? And then he turned around and yelled at his partner. Fucking hell.
Great. Now he was going to have two people to apologize to.
He looked over at Dare, wondering if he should say it now, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. She’d slowed her pace a little, walking slightly behind him and simply staring down at her feet as she went, ears flat and tail lashing.
Just great.
They made camp later that evening in a shallow dip in the land, large enough to set up the usual fire and sleeping spot formation they usually went with but small enough to protect them from the wind. One of the large gears was stuck in the ground nearby, and the group was, more or less, warming to the idea that it was not going to fall over on them and kill them. Alex had given it a few good kicks before determining it was probably safe, like 99% safe, and that had been good enough for (most of) the others. Ryan was still a little skeptical, but didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.
They’d stopped earlier than they usually did at night, determining it would be better to stop here in a comfortably safe place than keep walking for a few more hours and potentially not find anywhere good to sleep. As such, the sun was only barely setting, still having quite a ways to go before it would even begin to touch the skyline. The day had been short and easy, so why did they all feel exhausted? Why had it seemed so difficult? Why did Ryan wish he hadn’t woken up at all? Top ten questions that science still can’t answer.
“Because this isn’t our first day,” Azure said when some of the group voiced these concerns (not including Ryan, whose question literally couldn’t be waterboarded out of him). “We’ve been doin’ this for almost two months. Walkin’ for hours on end each day we’ve been here, with only short sporadic breaks, traversing miles of land to find someone we don’t know anythin’ about, while havin’ to fight for our lives while we’re at it. It’s enough to tire anyone.”
But we have to keep going was left unsaid, but was felt by everyone present, Ryan included. That had been their entire driving motivation for the past month. They had to keep going, no matter what it took. No reason why. No clear end in sight. Just the knowledge that they had to keep going in order to save both worlds. No big deal!
The mood was, reasonably, somewhat somber after Azure pointed it out, and especially more so for Ryan once he’d started to dwell on it. Maybe Dare was right; maybe he was wallowing.
But he felt he had a right to, right?
Whatever. He tried to ignore it as best as he could while they ate dinner - something Miguel said was called “overdone meat”, which Ryan originally thought wouldn’t make a good dish, but it turned out that overcooked Digital World meat tasted a lot different (and better) than overcooked human world meat. He and Dare were still avoiding each other, for obvious reasons, but to not draw attention to themselves and their obvious unhappiness with each other, they sat together while they ate. Fortunately, nobody said anything.
Ryan noticed that Harmony kept sneaking glances at him throughout the meal. He ignored her, even when he quite obviously kept catching her eye, shifting his gaze away as quickly as possible to make it look like he hadn’t seen her. Just another thing to ignore.
For once, his mind was quiet as he ate. Even as he tried to think of something, anything to distract him, nothing came. No chiding voice telling him off for being an asshole, no comforting voice telling him that things would be okay and they’d reconcile eventually, no neutral voice simply narrating his thoughts. All he could see in his mind was Dare’s face when she’d looked like it’d been him who’d hurt her.
So that was a lovely mental image to have while he ate his burnt steak and tried to ignore everyone else around him.
When they wrapped up dinner, instead of building up the fire and sitting down to talk, the others divided into smaller groups amongst themselves. It wasn’t dark quite yet; they had a good few hours before they’d need to head to sleep, and it seemed like everyone else was taking the opportunity to talk to some of the others privately (or close enough to private) while they had the chance. Anna and Bunny sat with Damien and Bumble, with Ezra close enough so he could keep an eye on her as he talked with Alex and their partners. Moxie was chatting with Miguel while Pop, Flip, and Ko seemed to be in a heated debate about something unimportant, and Azure, Ren, and Harmony were seated off to the side, Azure scrolling through their phone and explaining something to the other two very emphatically with lots of hand gestures.
Ryan and Dare remained where they were. Ryan pulled out his digivice and switched it on, flicking through the various menus more to distract himself than do anything important with it. He tried not to look over at Dare.
They remained like that for a while; eventually the others split up once again, joining other circles or organizing supplies or claiming their sleeping spots early. Ryan laid back, one hand behind his head and the other shielding his digivice as it lay on his stomach. He didn’t close his eyes, simply stared up at the reddening sky above him.
…The voices were coming back, and he didn’t like it.
So imagine his surprise, and then relief, and then panic when a shadow loomed over his face, revealing Harmony bent over to stare down at him. He blinked, but did not move, and neither did she.
“Are you awake?” she said eventually, her voice little more than a whisper, for some reason.
“Yeah,” he said, also whispering, for an even less evident reason.
“Oh, good,” she said, “because I was afraid you weren’t, which would’ve been weird because your eyes were open, but you didn’t say anything…”
“I expected you to say something,” Ryan said dumbly, realizing all too belatedly that he was still laying down. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, turning around to face Harmony. “What’s up?”
“I want to talk - I mean walk,” she blurted, fidgeting with her hands. “We should go on a walk. If you want to?”
Well, fuck. This was not looking good. Ryan squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled slowly. Harmony had obviously heard a good portion of his argument with Dare earlier, and she’d been looking at him all evening, and now she wanted to go on a walk to talk with him…
This could only go well, he was sure.
“Sure?” he said, accidentally sounding as awkward as she was.
“Great!” Harmony clasped her hands together, then stepped back, giving Ryan room to stand up properly.
Dare peeked up from over her tail at them. “Not inviting me?” she asked, obviously rhetorically.
“Sorry,” Harmony said, sounding like she wasn’t really sorry but didn’t want to be rude. “You looked like you were asleep, and Ren’s not coming either, so…”
“It’s alright,” Dare said, flicking a wing gently. “You two go have fun.” She stared at Ryan extra hard here, practically stabbing him with her eyes.
He very badly wanted to kill her, but had a feeling that it wouldn’t go over well, and managed to restrain himself. Instead he nodded at Harmony and gestured for her to lead the way, which she did.
“Why isn’t Ren here?” Ryan asked after a few minutes, once they were out of earshot of the rest of the group.
Harmony took a moment to process the question, then shrugged sheepishly. “She needed some time to herself. And she wasn’t a fan of the idea of more walking.”
Understandable. Ryan nodded in acknowledgement, and the two of them slipped into a comfortable silence. Or at least something close to comfortable. Ryan was still a little nervous about what Harmony was going to end up asking him or talking to him about.
They walked alongside each other for a short while longer, neither of them breaking the silence that hung over them with anything but their footfalls. Ryan didn’t know what to say, or if he should say something at all, and Harmony looked to be deep in thought; he didn’t want to disturb her.
…We’re walking awfully close together…
Ryan couldn’t take it. He looked up ahead of them, at where they were heading, and, curiously, saw the city just beginning to fade into focus in the far distance. His brow furrowed in confusion.
“We’re heading back the way we came,” he pointed out. Harmony, seemingly startled by his voice, blinked up at him, and then smiled lightly.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I don’t wanna spoil anything for us that we’ll see tomorrow. What if there’s a buried treasure chest up ahead and we find it before everyone else? That would totally ruin the surprise.”
“More treasure for us, then,” Ryan said.
Harmony laughed and put her hands on her hips. “I would forcefully redistribute your wealth amongst the commonfolk.”
He managed to smile, and she grinned back, her face softening as she no doubt noticed how forced his own expression was. He looked down at his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets, and - when she didn’t say anything else - spoke.
“Why’d you take me out here.”
It was flat, but a question, and Harmony took a breath before answering. “I mean, I wasn’t super subtle when I asked you,” she said, rubbing a thumb across the opposite palm. “I wanted to talk to you. Away from everyone else. It’s why I didn’t invite Dare and why Ren… you know.”
Suspicions confirmed. Ryan winced imperceptibly and then sighed, rubbing his temples. “Yeah. Thought as much. How much of it did you hear.”
She looked confused for a moment, and then her face shifted. “That’s not what this is about. I just want to see how you’re doing. How you’ve been feeling.”
“You didn’t answer me,” Ryan said, ignoring everything else she was saying. “You heard it. I know you did, I saw you.” He didn’t want to be having this conversation, but he knew there was nothing he could do to get her back down, so all he could do was damage control. Apologize to her, and then apologize to Dare, and then Alex, and then…
“Ryan…” Harmony shook her head. “I’m serious. This isn’t about that. I’m not here to berate you or tell you off or anything. I’m not even going to tell you that you were wrong, because it seemed like you were both kind of yelling at each other, right?”
Ryan bit his lip. “I started it.”
“And you ended it.”
“That doesn’t -”
“Ryan.” Harmony stopped in her tracks and turned to grab him by the shoulders, having to stand on her tiptoes in order to reach them, and then fixed him with an immobilizing stare. “I’m not here to rip into you. I’m here to talk to you to see what’s wrong because I know something is and I know you won’t talk to anyone else about it.”
How does she know me so well. Ryan shut his eyes and breathed out slowly. Harmony kept her grip on him, and slowly he opened his eyes to look back into hers.
“I’m really just here to talk to you,” she said. “Just you and me, away from everyone else.” She finally let go of him, and then paused, smiling lopsidedly. “Ren’s doing the same thing with Dare back at camp.”
Oh.
Ryan couldn’t help but laugh as the realization hit him, and it was a genuine one, not one born of disdain or frustration. Of course. He should have seen it coming.
“So that’s why she didn’t come,” he said, unsure of what else to say.
She nodded. “Sorry for lying to you. But also not really. I’m sure they’re having a great time.”
“Ren’s such a big fan of Dare,” Ryan agreed, and Harmony giggled.
“Well, she seemed kind of moody,” she said, “which is how Ren is literally all the time, so maybe they’ll find some common ground.”
Ryan smiled, and then Harmony laughed, and then he joined her. They composed themselves quickly enough, clearing their throats and straightening themselves out, though Ryan noticed Harmony was still struggling to hide a grin.
“Well,” she said, finally managing to calm herself. “Let’s have that talk? How are you? I feel like it’s been a while since we got to talk one-on-one. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” Ryan said, entirely reflexively, and then sighed once he realized what he’d done. Fortunately Harmony was patient with him as he reorganized his thoughts. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s… kinda hard to talk about.”
Understatement of the century. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to talk to anyone about what was actually bothering him, in any time or any world. It was just… too much. It had always been too much for anyone he’d tried to talk about it with. Cole was nice, but he couldn’t go to him about this; his mom rarely had the time and he felt guilty whenever he did talk to her about it; Devon was too young; his dad was… well… his dad.
And Dare…
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Harmony said, smiling up at him. “You don’t have to hide anything. We’re friends. If something’s worrying you…”
…Friends?
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Harmony blinked a couple of times, and then tilted her head, giving him a bewildered smile. “Yeah. We’re… we are friends, right?”
She was looking at him with such certainty, and yet with so much hope and wishfulness. Like she knew what his answer would be but was still worried it wouldn’t be what she wanted. Like it wouldn’t be what he wanted.
Because he wanted to say yes, but that was such a difficult thing to say when she was asking him something like this; something he’d only been asked once in his entire life, by someone who turned out to be his soulmate, and before he’d even found that out it had just been so easy to say yes to her, and even though he wanted it to be easy now it wasn’t. He wanted to just say yes and get it over with and be her friend like he so desperately wanted to be, but he wasn’t sure if he could. If he could say it. If he could be her friend. Be good enough for her.
Because that’s what it was, right? He was so worried that he couldn’t be what she wanted him to be, what she saw him as, and that was what had been eating at him for the past two months, like a ravenous snake seizing its prey. He wanted to be good, he wanted to be good for himself and good for Dare and good for the world, but also good for her. And it was so impossible to be good for her because she was perfect, and he was anything but. No matter how hard he tried, even despite his greatest endeavors, at the end of the day he would just see his father staring back at him in the mirror.
Ryan didn’t do friends easily. He’d never been able to. And even despite all of this, all of these doubts and misgivings rushing through his brain, when he looked into Harmony’s eyes he couldn’t think of anything else to say to her but yes.
“Yeah,” he said, which wasn’t exactly it, and couldn’t possibly encompass all of what he was feeling, but it was all he could manage.
“Good,” Harmony said, a tension slipping out of her shoulders that Ryan hadn’t noticed she’d been carrying, “because I consider you a friend, and I was worried you didn’t feel the same.”
“Of course I do,” he said, and he meant to continue, but his throat locked up. He sucked a breath in and then let it go, slowly, fumbling with his hands. “It’s just - it’s hard. For me. I can’t… friends are hard. It’s easy with Dare, but that’s something so different -”
“It’s okay,” Harmony said. “I decided a long time ago that we were friends. You don’t have to do anything. Just go with the flow, yeah?” She grinned, and reached out to still his hands, taking them in hers. Her hands were so warm. So comforting. They felt right, on top of his like that.
…Hm.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but he knew he had to say something. He didn’t move his hands. He wanted to, he knew he should, but he couldn’t. “I, um.”
“It’s okay,” Harmony said again. “I mean… if we’re both being honest, I haven’t been doing super well recently either. After… after Dollie, and my breakdown that day, which… was what led to her, you know… I’ve been feeling really guilty.” She cast her gaze downwards, her fingers twitching slightly, but she didn’t remove her hands. “Like, if I’d just kept it to myself, Ren wouldn’t have taken me into the woods that night and Dollie wouldn’t have followed us. It was… I feel like it was my fault.” Ryan watched as she struggled for words, took shaky breaths in, didn’t look him in the eye. “I know it wasn’t. But I can’t help but feel like it was. And it doesn’t help that… that Ren and I had a really bad argument afterwards. She didn’t… it… I don’t know. It’s still difficult for me.”
She suddenly brightened, smiling up at him like she hadn’t said anything at all. “So. That’s how I’ve been feeling. What’s on your mind?”
…Just like that, she was fine? Everything was fine? How was that so easy for her? How many times had she practiced it?
How many times had she been hiding something like this behind a smile and a cheerful tone?
“Uh,” Ryan said, unsure if he should really go along with the topic change so quickly. “I… yelled at Dare earlier.” Stating the obvious. “And it made me feel really bad. Because I shouldn’t have.” Duh. “She was… I don’t know, we were arguing about something dumb, and I just kept going even when I should have just listened to her and followed her advice. She just wanted to help me.”
She did, didn’t she? And he hadn’t been able to accept that, because he always had to turn everything into an argument. Wasn’t that what Alex had said to him on only their second day here? Maybe…
“That’s alright,” Harmony said, optimistic as always. “You were both upset. You’ll talk to each other and sort it out. Just like you always do. That’s what partners are for, right?”
…Yeah. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a fight with Dare; he remembered the evening in Starwoods, and even before that, back in Mainframe City when they were dealing with Meicoomon. They’d had arguments before, and they’d always resolved them. Sometimes it took a while, and sometimes Ryan wished they could just forget it ever happened and move on with their lives, but things always worked out.
But… this was so much different.
“You’ll sort it out,” Harmony said again. “This isn’t the end of the world, no matter how much it seems like it is.”
“I yelled at her, though,” he said.
Harmony shrugged. “I’ve yelled at Ren. She’s yelled at me. We didn’t mean to, it just happened, and when we realized we’d hurt each other we sorted it out. It’ll be the same for you, too.”
“No, you don’t get it,” he said quietly. Her hands were still on top of his. “I yelled at her. I can’t do that. I can’t turn into that person again. I thought - I thought I’d left it behind, but I hadn’t.”
“But you know you shouldn’t have done it,” she said, tilting her head. “That’s good.”
She finally took her hands off of his, but instead of dropping them back to her side, she reached them up to cup Ryan’s face in them. He tensed slightly, but she squeezed his cheeks lightly and instantly he relaxed.
She looked deep into his eyes, her own hard to read but kind as always. “You’ll figure it out. You’re a good person, Ryan. Dare’s not going to hate you for it. She loves you.”
Does she really?
He wanted to believe her, but when he heard her say those words, all he could think about was what Phelesmon had said to him. That he wanted someone to love him.
Dare’s words, her voice filled with doubt, still rang in his mind.
“What if she doesn’t?” he whispered.
Harmony smiled at him, a bittersweet thing, but with all the sincerity in the world behind it. “She does. I know she does. You’ll both be okay. Trust me. You have Dare, and me, and the rest of the group with you. Everything’s going to be okay.”
She said it with such conviction, like she really believed it, that everything really would be okay. It was hard to imagine that just two weeks ago she’d asked if they actually had to do all this. If it was worth it. If they could do it at all.
He hadn’t even been mad at her for asking, honestly. He’d considered the same thing, time after time. He was the one who didn’t want anything to do with the idea of “destiny” or “saving the world”, and yet here he was, worrying that he’d hurt his soulmate from another world.
It’s funny how much can change in such a short time, he supposed. Two months ago I just wanted to go home. And now here I am, barely considering the possibility, even when I’d rather be anywhere than here.
And yet, there was something else weighing on his mind.
He shouldn’t even be thinking about it. He’d thrown the notion away as soon as he’d recognized it, all those weeks ago, but it still flared up from time to time, taunting him with a scenario that would never be possible.
But when Harmony looked at him like she was looking at him now, it was the only thing that ran through his mind.
More than once he’d noticed the words balanced on the tip of his tongue, sensed his hands curl into fists to brace himself, felt the tension take over his body, but as quickly as he’d realized these he’d shook them off. He couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t ruin what he had, no matter how much he wanted to.
Even now, looking down at Harmony as she held his face in her hands, he couldn’t even entertain the idea.
“Okay,” he said, instead of everything else he wished he could say, and Harmony smiled and let him go.
“Don’t be saying that just because it’s what I want you to say,” she said teasingly, planting her hands on her hips.
Ryan blinked slowly, and forced a small smile onto his face. “I’m not.”
Harmony nodded and opened her mouth to say something else, but didn’t get the chance, cut off by a voice from behind them.
“Hey!”
Ryan and Harmony turned around to see Ren and Dare headed toward them, Dare leading the way as Ren walked a short ways behind her. She raised a paw and a wing to wave at the two of them, though Ryan noticed she was a bit hesitant in doing so. He himself was reluctant to return the greeting, but did so anyway.
Dare reached them first and sat down, craning her neck over her shoulder to watch Ren as she approached. The fox crossed her arms once she came up beside Dare, looking pointedly from Ryan to Harmony. “How was your walk?”
“Good,” Harmony said, clasping her hands behind her and leaning forward slightly. “How was yours?”
“It was alright.” Ren dipped her head to look at Dare, who blinked back, and then looked at Ryan. Ren nudged her gently and Dare rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Ryan said immediately, barely giving Dare a chance to breathe. She tilted her head, and Ryan continued before she could say anything. “I shouldn’t have… done that. I know you were trying to help me. It was just…” He trailed off, rubbing his foot against the grass below him. At his side, Harmony reached a hand over to place on his arm; he closed his eyes, then breathed out and looked at Dare again. “I thought that you were mad at me. So I fought back. I’m sorry.”
There were so much more he wanted, needed, to say to Dare; about why he thought she was mad, about why it scared him so much, about why he had to fight back, about how it was the only way to protect himself, to show that he couldn’t be pushed over and that he wasn’t going to go down so easily -
But he couldn’t. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Harmony and Ren.
“Thank you,” Dare said. She kept her gaze away from his, ears flattened in embarrassment and shame and unease, but she nodded. “I… appreciate you saying that. But I’m sorry for getting so worked up about it, too. I hope… you can understand why I did, but I shouldn’t have yelled at you either.”
She finally looked back up at Ryan, and she smiled - gently, warily, but still smiled. “From now on we will speak only as ‘Australians’ do, and not yell at each other. ‘G’day, mate’, and all that stuff.”
“Yes, Australians are definitely well known for being quiet,” Ryan said, but he smiled back at her, and knelt down to be eye level with her. She blinked, and then Ryan reached forward to pull her into a hug, much like he’d done on the night he’d met her. She melted into his touch, her wings and tail curling around his shoulders, and sat in his embrace, perfectly content, while Ryan breathed deeply and definitely did not have tears welling in his eyes, shut up.
Eventually they parted. Ryan released his partner from his grasp and leaned back on his knees. Dare smiled up at him, and mouthed “we can talk later” under her breath. Ryan nodded and stood back up, looking between Ren and Harmony, the latter of whom had her arms wrapped around the former’s midriff in their own strange sort of hug. Harmony let go of Ren once she noticed Ryan looking at them, and cleared her throat.
Ren looked skyward, and Ryan followed her gaze, noticing for the first time since coming out here that the sky had darkened. The sun was dipping out of view at long last; stars were beginning to speckle the evening sky, and to the east, the moon was rising, a sharp silver crescent against the dark violet night.
“We should head back now,” Ren said, dipping her head, but just as she said it, something washed over the group. Something heavy and suffocating, and smelling very distinctly of burning.
Ryan turned around to look out in the direction of the city, and saw a bright orange glow emanating from not far enough away.
Smoke clogged the air and their lungs, and Ryan coughed, pulling the collar of his shirt up to cover his nose. Beside him, Harmony did the same, her hand trembling.
“What do we do?” she squeaked, voice rasping. She looked at Ryan, then at Ren and Dare, then back out at the fire in the distance. “That’s - that’s a fire, right? And the city’s out that way…”
“Let’s go,” Ren said, and in a flash of blue light, she was Kyubimon. She nodded to Dare and Dare followed suit, evolving to Dorugamon amidst the muffled ramblings of Ryan’s digivice tucked into his pocket. She lowered herself down and gestured for Ryan to climb on, just as Ren scooped Harmony onto her own back.
Once the two humans were situated on their partners’ backs, the Digimon took off, Dare rising to the sky as Ren dashed along the ground beneath her. Ryan dug his fingers into Dare’s mane; he’d flown with her a few times before, but still hadn’t gotten used to it.
And on their way there, he couldn’t help but wonder just why now something had gone wrong. After everything that had happened today already, now there was something else? Something potentially out of their control? What if they couldn’t do anything?
The smoke was rising faster now, and the glow of the flames grew ever brighter as they approached - and, closer to the fire than Ryan had initially thought (and hoped), the outline of the city faded into view. They hadn’t had any time to steel themselves or come up with a plan; for all they knew, they were running directly into a wildfire with no preparation or idea of how they could help - if they could help.
Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a bad idea, but there wasn’t any time to think about that.
Eventually they reached the first smaller flames, and Dare dove to the ground next to where Ren had halted. Ryan jumped off her back and helped Harmony down, turning to assess the situation while Ren and Dare circled the perimeter.
Dozens of Digimon were running around, seemingly aimlessly, stoking the fire and spreading the smoke around. Ryan recognized a few - Greymon, Salamandermon, Lynxmon - but there were more he’d never seen before, flaming chickens and bugs wielding fire and burning boars. They didn’t seem to know what they were doing, or even where they were - continuously they’d crash into each other, falling to the ground, and then right themselves and head in another direction as if nothing had happened.
Perhaps the fact they were all manic explained things - but even so, the manic Digimon they’d come across recently hadn’t been acting like this.
“
The smoke, thick and black and coating the sky a nauseating shade of deep red, obstructed their views and their noses. Ryan coughed, waving a hand in front of his face. He didn’t have anything to cover his face permanently, and he couldn’t sacrifice the use of one of his hands to hold his shirt up; maybe Dare could blow some of the smoke away, but who knows if that would actually help or just make things worse, and -
“Ren has fire attacks,” he realized, speaking the words as they came to him. He looked over at Harmony, covering her own mouth. “Is she going to -”
“Her fire is different,” Harmony said, shaking her head. “It burns, but it doesn’t spread.”
As if to prove her point, a ways away, Ren flared out her tails and tossed her head. “
They were too close to the city - too close for comfort. Ryan chanced a look in its direction, but couldn’t make anything out through the veil of smoke. What the hell had caused this? How were there so many Digimon here? Why had it taken them so long to notice?
“
“Ryan!” Harmony shouted, and the next thing he knew she was shoving him to the ground. He pushed himself up, instinctively reaching toward Harmony and pulling her to her own knees. She looked at him with wild, terrified eyes, and then turned toward the center of the chaos, shrinking backward.
Ryan looked in the same direction and met the eyes of someone very familiar.
“Meicoomon?”
The Digimon - taller than Ryan remembered her, obviously the same Digimon but not the same - laughed, tilting her head back and spreading her arms out. “Not quite!” she giggled, looking back down at the two of them. “It’s Meicrackmon now. I evolved! He granted me this power!” She lifted a paw, examining the long, wickedly sharp claws extending from the brace on her wrist. “Honestly, I didn’t even know if this would work,” she continued, flicking her long barbed tail in the direction of the fire behind her. “But it did! Because you’re all so hopelessly foolish that you couldn’t resist the opportunity to be heroes! I knew a few would come, I knew you wouldn’t turn your backs on this, but I didn’t expect it to be you.”
She looked down at Ryan here, her eyes blindingly white against the red and black haze behind her. She grinned, revealing a mouth full of too many sharp teeth. “It’s good to see you again! Now I can really kill you.”
There simply wasn’t enough time to react to anything she was saying, much less that she was here at all. In a flash she was lunging for Ryan, claws glinting in the light of the flames around her, and Ryan scrambled back to avoid the attack - but she was quickly knocked out of the way by a blur of dark purple, barrelling her to the side.
“
She hissed, crossing her claws together. “
“
“What do we do, what do we do?” Harmony blurted, digging her hands into her hair, and Ryan felt the same question run through his head. Meicrackmon was still eyeing Ryan and Harmony, but she was being held off by Ren; Dare, meanwhile, was doing her best at damage control with the other Digimon running around in the background.
The fire had spread, and the smoke was growing heavier by the moment; it was only a matter of time before they’d have to bail, or at the very least leave the scene while their Digimon stayed behind to deal with it.
Ryan didn’t really want to think about that possibility. He couldn’t leave Dare alone, even if she had Ren with her - dozens of champion level Digimon running around could only be feasibly dealt with if they had the rest of the group, but not under these circumstances, and certainly not while there was a (presumably) ultimate level in the midst of it all.
“We can’t put the fire out,” Harmony continued, gesturing wildly at the scene before them, “and even if we could, they’d all just keep setting more - do we go into the city to get help? Do we call the others?”
Ryan couldn’t even respond, flung to the side by one of the Digimon crashing into him. He inhaled sharply as he landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him. Instantly Harmony was at his side, and he vaguely heard Dare call out an attack nearby.
“I’m fine,” he forced out, sitting up and brushing himself off. He blinked, looking around to regain his senses, and saw Meicrackmon throw Dare to the ground before rounding on Ren.
“
Ryan sucked a breath in, almost choking on the smoke he inhaled. They were fighting a losing battle, and they knew it. The sky was turning darker, the smoke growing heavier, the flames around them burning brighter. The partners couldn’t focus on Meicrackmon and the other manic Digimon at the same time; whenever they could manage to land a hit on Meicrackmon, she’d retaliate with two.
They couldn’t do anything.
Meicrackmon turned her eyes upon Ryan and took a step forward.
“
Dare rammed into Meicrackmon, forcing her backward, and then opened her mouth wide, shooting not one not two but three attacks directly into her chest. Meicrackmon reeled backward and righted herself quickly, turning to face Dare.
“
“Call for backup,” she growled, low and strained, before Meicrackmon picked her up and slammed her back down. She held her effortlessly, as if Dare weighed no more than a feather, and smashed her into the ground as if throwing a rock. Dare cried out and wriggled almost-free of Meicrackmon’s grasp, staring at Ryan with wild, pained eyes. “You have to go, you can’t hold her off -”
“Neither can you!” Ryan shouted, taking a step forward only to immediately feel Harmony grab his arm and tug him back. He chanced a look over his shoulder at her and saw her pleading with him, silently yet desperately, and he didn’t have any choice but to relent.
Only physically, at least. He turned back around to face Dare and cupped a hand around his mouth to yell as the commotion around and behind them grew louder and more chaotic, despite Ren’s best attempts. “We’re not going to leave you behind! I’m not going to leave you behind!”
“Acting like an idiot, what else is new,” Meicrackmon purred, pulling Dare’s head back and pressing a claw against her throat. “The smart thing to do would be to follow her advice. Of course, I’d chase you down and kill you anyways, but you’d at least feel like you tried. And maybe she wouldn’t have to die.”
“Fuck you,” Ryan spat, wrenching his arm free of Harmony. He started toward Meicrackmon again, and though her face morphed into one of confusion when she realized he was approaching, she didn’t react quickly enough to avoid the punch he threw directly in her face.
Immediately, once he’d retracted his arm, he backed up, and good thing he did, because Meicrackmon absolutely freaked out. She yowled - more in surprise and indignation than pain, Ryan would assume - and started slashing out wildly, probably in an attempt to rip Ryan to shreds, but blinded by her rage and shock, she wasn’t able to get a clear lock on anything - nor keep her grip on Dare.
It was only for a second that she let it loosen, but a second was all Dare needed to break free and barrel forth, turning around to stand between Meicrackmon and Ryan. She hissed, baring her teeth at Meicrackmon as a white glow began to overtake her. “You heard him,” she said before she was covered completely. “Fuck you.”
The light burst apart and Dare, now evolved, reared down, spreading her wings out wide. She looked at Ryan out of the corner of her eye and dipped her head, and he smirked up at her, before looking back at Meicrackmon.
He clenched his fists. “We’re getting a little sick and tired of you.”
Meicrackmon snarled, recoiling slightly, and she would have attacked if not for Dare taking the lead on that front. “
Consumed by red energy, Dare charged at Meicrackmon, crashing into her and toppling her over backwards. Meicrackmon clawed at Dare’s chest, pushing her off and scrabbling to the side, dropping to all fours like a feral housecat. Her lip curled and her tail flexed behind her, a clear attempt to ward Dare off.
“If you keep evolving like this it’s just going to get worse for you,” she growled, eyes narrowing. “He’s been going easy on you. For some reason, he still pities you.” She shook her head out, ears flat against her skull. “How many times do we have to tell you that we’re not after you before you give up?
“If you think I’m going to let you kill my partner, you’re deranged,” Dare rumbled.
Meicrackmon rolled her eyes and rose to her full height. “You don’t even know what that word means.
“
Meicrackmon’s energy waves collided with Dare’s cannonball, and the latter burst apart in midair, shards of shrapnel flying everywhere. Ryan and Harmony ducked to avoid the metal raining down, but for some reason it completely avoided them, instead aiming directly at Meicrackmon - and hitting her hard. She fell into one of the fires and yelped, but was up in an instant, whirling on her feet to face Dare again.
She opened her mouth, making to call out an attack, but something hit her from behind and forced her down again. She growled, whipping around to face whatever it was, and revealed Ren standing over her, tails poised and ready to attack once more.
Ren looked up briefly, catching Ryan and Harmony’s eyes, and nodded - and then began to glow white. Next to Ryan, Harmony whispered something under her breath, and then the light faded from Ren.
She nodded once more, this time at Dare, and then manifested a paintbrush, swiping it through the air in front of her to form a symbol. “
The attack rushed toward Meicrackmon and pushed her backward, directly into Dare’s path. Dare straightened herself up and then prepared her own attack, the front half of her body glowing red again. “
She tackled Meicrackmon, shoving her toward the flames, further away from Ryan and Harmony, and Ren dashed toward the two of them. She knelt down, looking specifically at Harmony but flicking an ear toward Ryan as well.
“Call the others,” she said quickly. Behind her, Meicrackmon hurled another attack at Dare, who fell back but recovered swiftly. “Dare and I will hold her off until they arrive.”
Without another word, she spun on her heel and dashed toward Meicrackmon, striking out with her paintbrush and sending her spiraling to the ground. Harmony nodded, going unseen by her partner, and pulled her digivice out while Ryan crept closer to the battle.
With nothing to put them out or contain them, the fires had only grown by this point, and Ryan found it increasingly difficult to follow the three ultimates as they battled. Several times he had to duck a blow from Meicrackmon that got too close to him and then nearly stumbled into a pillar of flame, or vice versa. Things weren’t getting better; even with Dare and Ren’s evolutions, they were barely making more of a dent against Meicrackmon than they had just five minutes ago, and things weren’t looking good on the whole “the savannah is on fire” side of things either.
If backup didn’t arrive soon -
“Got you!”
Meicrackmon hurled herself at Ryan, and though he tried to jump out of the way, he wasn’t quick enough. She pinned him down, raising her tail over him and then stabbing down into his abdomen, not even bothering with a proper attack. Ryan gasped for breath and, somehow, managed to kick her away, fueled by adrenaline and pain. She skidded to a stop and made to move for him again, but Ren shot her flurry of talismans forth, knocking Meicrackmon aside and drawing her attention away from Ryan.
Before he even realized it, Dare was crouching down next to him, gently pushing him down with a paw as he started to stand up. She didn’t say anything, simply gave him a look and then rounded on Meicrackmon, fangs bared and wings spread wide.
“
“Ryan!” came a voice from off to the side, and Ryan looked up to see Harmony running for him. She knelt down in front of him, eyes wide and jaw clenched, her hands fidgeting as she took in the state he was in, clearly unsure of where to start.
Ryan shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, sounding obviously not fine, and he closed his eyes when he realized it. He didn’t say anything else to Harmony, simply turned to look at Dare and Ren as they took blow after blow from Meicrackmon.
No matter what we do, it’s not enough.
Will it ever be?
Wow, he really did not need to be having these thoughts right now, especially not when he was dealing with a gaping stab wound in his side. He noticed, all too belatedly, that Harmony had ripped a chunk of grass out and was working on stemming the blood flow, applying pressure on the injury just as she should.
“I’m fine,” he said again, but Harmony shook her head and frowned. She didn’t say anything, instead simply bit her lip and tore out more grass to replace the bloodied chunk she held in her hand.
None of the rampaging fire Digimon remained, the only trace of their existence being the flames still burning swathes of the savannah. At the very least, they could take solace in that; but the fires themselves were enough to stomp out any cinders of hope that may have otherwise risen - not to mention the fight with Meicrackmon still ongoing.
The focus was quickly drawn back to the battle, as Meicrackmon managed to knock Ren down with a Cursed Claw straight to the chest. Instantly she whipped around and pounced at Dare, who managed to shake her off, but Meicrackmon was undeterred.
“You’re tired of me?” she shouted, swiping out at Dare and sending her spiraling to the ground. Dare grunted, pushing herself up and charging at Meicrackmon, aiming to knock her into some of the nearby flames, but Meicrackmon grabbed her by the wings and swung her around so that she was the one shoved into the fire. Meicrackmon bared her teeth, pushing Dare’s face down into the grass as she writhed in her grip. “I’m the one tired of you! My life would be so much easier if I’d never come across you! You’ve ruined everything for me!”
“You can stop at any time, you know,” Ren said, struggling to stand and even speak. She squeezed an eye shut, using her paintbrush to prop herself up as she got back on her feet. “You don’t have to fight us.”
“But I do,” Meicrackmon growled, and if she’d had any soul left in her eyes it would have drained out of them instantly when she spoke. “You think you know everything about us, about him, but you’ve barely breached the surface. You don’t know how it feels to have someone LIVING IN YOUR HEAD!”
Ren came to a halt, making no move forward; similarly, Dare, still beneath Meicrackmon’s claws, stilled her movements. Breathing heavily, haggardly, Meicrackmon pointed one claw at Ryan, reflections of flames dancing in her eyes.
“I have to do it,” she said. “He’s making me. You know that. I know you know that, because you’ve heard us talk about it before.” She retracted her paw and looked down at it, teeth bared in contempt and disgust, then curled it into a first. “But even if he wasn’t, I’d still do it. If only for a little bit of revenge on you for making my life into hell and doing this to me in the first place!”
Meicrackmon’s head snapped up, and - throwing Dare away - she lunged at Ryan. He didn’t notice it in time, didn’t have any time to react, and Meicrackmon practically grabbed him and somersaulted, rolling to a stop and pinning him down. He struggled against her grasp, but she only tightened it, digging her claws into his ribs and shoulders. He hissed a profanity under his breath and she grinned.
“
Ryan yelled out in pain, his vision going white for a split second before Meicrackmon was suddenly lifted off of him, her claws dislodging from him and tearing out a chunk of the fabric of his shirt (and flesh) and dragging across his face as she went. He hissed to himself, reaching a hand up to press down on his chest; it came away dark red and dripping wet, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Cries of “
He kept his breathing even, kept the pressure on his chest despite how much it hurt, tried to keep himself calm. He only succeeded at the first two. Shit, if his leg had been bad already, then this was going to -
Ryan didn’t get enough time to recover before something slammed into him again. He couldn’t even react, didn’t have the time or energy, until Meicrackmon picked him up, dangling him in the air for a second before an attack from Dare forced her to drop him - directly into one of the still-raging fires.
The good thing was that he landed mostly upright (read: on his ass) and not entirely in the fire. The bad thing was that he broke his fall with his hands, his left one coming directly down on one of the flames, and if the pain from Meicrackmon’s attack had been bad… well, this wasn’t a whole lot worse, but it was still really fucking bad.
This time he didn’t even make a sound, simply retracted his hand as soon as his “ouch too hot” pain receptors kicked in, so quickly that he almost smacked himself in the face. He clenched his teeth so hard he bit his tongue, and he tasted the blood in his mouth, but he couldn’t focus on that right now.
Fuck damnit shit fuck oh fuck damnit shit shit fuck ouch -
Harmony was quick to get to his side again, pressing him down as he struggled to his feet (which he didn’t even realize he was doing, too dazed by the suddenness of everything). “Breathe,” she said, either oblivious to the fact that he already was or just trying to remind him, to keep him grounded and focused on her instead of the pain wracking his body and fogging his mind. She placed both her hands on his shoulders and stared deep into his eyes; the corners of hers were brimming with tears, shiny and bright against her soot-stained cheeks. “You’re gonna be okay. Everything - everything’s gonna be okay.”
Ryan couldn’t respond; he opened his mouth but no sound came out, and when he tried again, all he could manage was a feeble whimper. Harmony shook her head out and grabbed Ryan’s arm, raising it and resting it on his shoulder - getting his hand above his heart to help the blood flow, he realized.
She squeezed her eyes shut and leant forward to wrap her other arm around him.
In front of them, Dare roared, pupils constricted and fangs bared at Meicrackmon. She knelt down, spreading her wings out as a shield between her and Ryan, and pinned her ears back.
“Don’t you fucking dare hurt my partner!”
Meicrackmon didn’t have time to respond or move or act at all before Dare, once more consumed with red energy, charged at her.
“
She slammed her claws down into Meicrackmon, grabbing her and slamming her down into the earth. Meicrackmon spluttered and scrambled for release, but Dare reared her head back and opened her mouth wide, aiming right at Meicrackmon beneath her feet.
“
The meteor shot forth, exploding where it hit and once more sending shards of shrapnel flying through the air aimed at Meicrackmon. The earth shook, and Ryan - still within Harmony’s embrace - reached his good hand out to steady himself on the ground.
When the dust and smoke cleared, Meicrackmon pushed herself up - slowly, wearily. She brushed herself off, still facing Dare, who remained where she stood, breathing heavily.
Meicrackmon’s lip curled. “Is that -”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. From off to the side, Ren shouted “
When she stood up this time, quicker and more hurriedly than before, she took wary steps backward away from the two Digimon, away from the city, away from Ryan and Harmony, still crouched on the ground. She didn’t say anything else before she turned on her heel and fled, crossing the savannah on all fours in bounding leaps, getting as far away as she could from the chaos she had caused.
In two more flashes of light, Ren and Dare devolved, instantly heading to their partners’ sides. Harmony pulled herself away from Ryan, keeping her grasp on his arm, and looked to the two of them. She coughed, wiping the back of her mouth with her sleeve, and slumped down.
Ren knelt down in front of Harmony and began to speak, but her words blurred together in Ryan’s mind. He closed his eyes, taking shallow breaths, in and out and in and out. His hand had gone numb by this point. That was one blessing, he supposed.
Harmony pulled away from Ryan, letting go of his arm to turn toward Ren. Dare stepped closer to him, blinking up at him. Her eyes were… not empty, but full of something Ryan didn’t recognize. Couldn’t recognize. Not with everything else going on.
They stayed there for what could have been hours. Ryan lost track; he lost track of time, of himself, of where he was, of what had happened, of what was going to happen. It was as if he were the only person left in the world. Even if he knew it wasn’t true, he couldn’t convince himself, no matter what he tried.
All he could do was stare at the dying flames around him, hold his hand and partner close to himself, and feel like it was all his fault.