Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Reboot ❯ Pause ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. Toei Animation does.

 

Pause

 

Kari catches him looking at the picture from their first adventure in the Digital World three years ago; the one Andromon had taken in Primary Village where everyone is posing with their digimon and with Ogremon, Centarumon and Gennai riding on Mechanorimon who are standing behind them. She doesn't know where he found it—she thought she had hidden all the photographs containing digimon safely away. For a moment, she panics then dares to hope that some small sliver of a memory comes back to him from the visual.

 

But Tai only hands the picture back to her with a quiet statement of, "It looks like I had fun at this festival. The costumes are incredible."

 

And Kari realizes that if even the sight of Agumon doesn't jar his memory, then nothing might ever will.

 

She watches in horror as her brother plunges through empty space and it's over so quickly, she doesn't even have a chance to scream. Tai lies motionless on the ground so very far below, a tiny rag-doll of a figure, limbs spread out at unnatural angles and a puddle of red liquid pooling around his head. Only then does a heart-wrenching wail tear itself free from her throat.

 

She doesn't know there are so many different forms of amnesia until the doctors try and figure out which type her brother has. They finally diagnose him with Retrograde Post-Traumatic Amnesia, which they explain means that he has lost his pre-existing memories due to a harsh head injury. He will be able to form new memories that occur after the accident, however he will be unable to recall his life from before. The doctors also share with her family that his declarative memory has been impaired, which means that while Tai may have forgotten who he is and personal episodes, his mind still remembers how to do certain skills, hence him being able to play soccer.

 

They are told not be so disheartened, that most amnesia victims suffer only temporary memory loss and that something familiar from the past usually triggers their memories into returning.

 

But it's been four months now and despite all attempts in reacquainting him with his previous life, Tai's lost memories remain as obscure as ever.

 

There is a terrible roaring cry and WarGreymon is falling from the sky in a bright flash of orange light and it is Koromon who plows painfully into the rocky floor and remains unmoving, and everyone is aware of the fact that it is never a good thing for their digimon to de-digivolve in response to their partners.

 

Tai smiles sometimes, but it is not the teasing, lop-sided one full of mischief that she remembers. This one is calmer, more forced, as if he only smiles because he thinks it will make her less sad.

 

Kari wonders if he will still smile when he remembers it is her who slowed him down long enough not to reach the top of the cliff and fall to his ruin. She is always holding him back like that. She is always being a burden to him. That time he had tried to teach her how to play soccer and all she had done was get sick. That time he had tried to hide and protect her from Myotismon who was searching for her, she had let herself be captured. That time when trying to defeat the Dark Masters and she had fallen ill again. She has never been strong enough to help him. She has always been causing him grief and worry. She had thought that this time, with her D-3 and a brand new way of digivolving—finally one thing she can do that her brother can't—that she might be able to prove that she isn't weak.

 

Then she slips that awful day on the cliff.

 

She wants to climb down to him. She wants to climb down and make sure he's alive because he's so alarmingly still. And Koromon is lying only a few feet away and why doesn't he get up and find out if his partner is alright? And there are hands, too many hands restraining her regardless of her struggles to escape and voices that are too loud yet make no sense buzzing around her.

 

And all she can do is emit a long, drawn-out, piercing scream in an effort to block the sound of sinister laughing ringing overhead.

 

Kari finds the sibling roles being reversed. Whereas Tai had always been the one looking out for her, now she is the guardian and he is under her care.

 

She tries to spend as much time with him as she can, whether it is to play a simple board game with him or merely sitting beside him to watch a movie. And though most conversations they have center around homework or how her day was at school, at least they are talking. And sometimes, when he's had a particularly bad day, Tai asks her to tell him a story of an event he can't remember. She tends to stick to tales of when they were little, before the Digital World and rarely mentions the other Digidestined. At least her brother has grown accustomed to her presence that it's become almost normal to converse about absolutely nothing with someone he's seen every day for the past four months and for her to still be a perfect stranger in the end.

 

The digimon who attacked them out of nowhere has fled. She should be worried about allowing such a strong level, clearly psychotic digimon free reign in the Digital World to cause chaos or where it had come from in the first place. She should be concerned about poor Koromon whom the rest of the digimon claim has gone into a Frozen State, but she can't seem to form any rational thoughts other than pleading to anyone who might be listening to please let her brother live.

 

It all comes to a head one day when Tai stumbles upon Gatomon in her room. Kari has sent her digimon to stay over at Yolei's ever since her brother had come home from the hospital. She doesn't want to alarm him or give leeway to questions she can't answer. She doesn't like hiding things from Tai or being separated from Gatomon for so long, but Gatomon solves this problem by visiting her every day in the late afternoon.

 

Tai usually is taking a bath or a nap at that time. Kari and Gatomon are so caught up in their conversation they don't hear the footsteps leading to the door open until it is already opened and Tai is standing there, gaping at the scene in front of him.

 

"We got… another cat?" he asks running an eye over Gatomon's feline features.

 

Gatomon bristles at that. She may have been a cat digimon, but she disliked being put in the same category as those mindless, human house cats. Kari gives her a warning nudge in the back, so biting down her pride she lowers herself on all fours and lets out a very irritated "Meow."

 

Kari thinks the deception is going well and starts to relax until the next words out of her brother's mouth prove that while he may have lost his memories his often-times rash personality is still there buried deep within him.

 

"Did we buy it to breed with Miko and sell their kittens?"

 

And nothing come hell or high water is going to stop Gatomon from replying to that blatant insult.

 

"I WOULDN'T PUT ONE PAW NEAR THAT MINDLESS, FLEA-INFESTED FELINE AND UNLESS IT HAS A DEATH WISH, IT WILL DO THE SAME!!!"

 

"Gatomon!" Kari hisses but the damage has been dealt.

 

"It… talks…" Tai says eyes wide.

 

Kari wonders if he will believe her is she tells him Gatomon is a human-made, highly-advanced creature only available on the market to select people. Well, it is true sort of.

 

But before she can form the words, her brother has stepped over to Gatomon whose fur is ruffled, ears are back and glaring at him… and to her horror does the one thing all cats hate the most.

 

"Is this a real cat? Or is it a toy with a voice box? How do you change its phrases?" Tai inquires curiously yanking on the tufted end of Gatomon's striped tail.

 

Gatomon yowls more out of wounded dignity than actual pain and swipes at him with her claws out of pure instinct, only pulling back at the last second when she remembers he is human, so the end result isn't a deep gash, but more like three fine paper cuts.

 

It is almost comical, Tai's stunned expression, as it dawns on him he has just ticked off a real live cat—a real live, talking cat—and he stands there a moment in shock until tiny beads of blood ooze out from the claw-marks emblazoned across his face.

 

"Gatomon, how could you?!" Kari exclaims, leaping to her feet and rushing over to Tai and dabbing at the lacerations with some tissues from her nightstand.

 

"I'm sorry!" Gatomon cries, looking extremely repentant. "I didn't mean—"

 

"Go to Yolei's now!" Kari orders angrily.

 

Gatomon's ears are laid flat against her head in shame and she turns without another word and leaps out through the open window into the evening.

 

Kari feels immediately guilty. She knows Gatomon hadn't meant to lash out—years of being constantly on guard as Myotismon's henchman is bound to leave its mark in more ways than one. She will phone Yolei's later and apologize. Right now… she has a lot of explaining to do.

 

Tai is still unconscious and Koromon remains in Frozen State, which may be a good thing, because if either one was awake, they would be worrying hysterically for their partner. But Tai needs medical attention and fast, Joe says, and the older Digidestined's digimon promise to look after Koromon, so they return to the real world and Kari is dismayed to see that her brother's injuries have transcended along with them. She had hoped they would simply vanish like Davis, Yolei, and Cody's outfits.

 

And she doesn't rest, not even after the doctors declare his condition has stabilized after all the surgeries, she can't, not until Tai wakes up and says he forgives her. But when he finally opens his eyes, a whole new nightmare begins.

 

Kari finds herself sharing with her brother about digimon, the Digital World, and how they were chosen as Digidestined, their crests and their adventures. She tells him he wasn't hit by a car, but had an accident in the Digital World. She doesn't clarify the circumstances or how it happened though, and Tai doesn't press for more details to which she is extremely thankful. When she is done, she waits, half excited, half dreading his response to her for withholding this vital information for so long, but she never dreams what his next request may be.

 

"Can I go there?" he asks, his tone sounding almost wistful.

 

It's a perfectly logical question and it stands to reason that Tai's memories may return if he is physically present in the world which took them from him, but Kari is seized by a terrible fear that if he goes back to the Digital World, something horrible will happen to him again and this time he might not survive. And she doesn't want to ever know the pain that Ken has undergone of losing a brother.

 

So she shows him his old digivice and her newer model and explains the gate only opens in response to a D-3, and that they only travel to the Digital World when a need to arises (and purposefully leaves out the occasional holidays and picnics they have there).

 

Tai believes her without argument and she leaves him sitting on his bed, running his fingers over his digivice and staring at it utterly entranced. She makes her way over to the phone to call Yolei and resolutely shuts out any shred of hope in her mind that her brother will remember anything simply by being told all these new facts.

 

She can't breathe. Her brother can't remember her and she can't breathe. Someone is ripping away her hold on Tai's gown and the room is spinning. She hears a labored wheezing and dimly realizes it's her and an oxygen mask is being placed over her mouth and she tries to tear it off, because surely, surely if she calls out her name again, Tai will remember her. But someone is pinning her hands to her sides and all she can do is leak helpless tears out the corner of her eyes and be confronted with the cruel reality of how very weak she is.

 

~*~

 

If anyone had dared plucked up the courage to ask Tai what having no memories is like, he would have told them that it is like waking up in a sea of fog and having no sense of direction. All he can do is stumble forward blindly to try and find some way out of it, but no matter where he turns, he is faced with a thick wall of white nothingness.

 

But he thinks the worst part of having no memories isn't that he can't remember anything—it is the people coming up to him and acting like he should know them on sight and greeting him so familiarly. It is embarrassing and stressful especially when they seem to be waiting for him to do something his past self has formed a habit of.

 

It is distorting enough to wake up and realize he has no recollection of who he is, Tai thinks, but it is overwhelming to have someone shouting a name and their relation to him, and then have that example done over a dozen more times after by others.

 

Still, he thinks he has gotten along quite well despite this recently-acquired handicap—after all, if you can't remember anything, then you don't know what you are missing out on—and at least his physical injuries have healed… until the day they go to the soccer field and his body acts of its own volition and something starts pounding away on the inside of his skull struggling to break free and Tai knows he must not allow it to, because whatever it is, it has a sense of fear and dread about it.

 

Then just when he thinks things have gone back to normal, he learns his sister has a talking cat for a friend and apparently has been shielding a part of his past life from him. This story should have been hard to swallow since most of it seemed pretty incredible to be true: being sucked into a different dimension with more talking monsters, saving their world and the real one. But as he can't remember most things, for all he knows, hopping universes may be a perfectly normal occurrence in society, plus there are photographs and the strange device called his digivice as proof. And if he still has any lingering doubts, the visible claw-marks from his close encounter with one of the talking monsters is more than enough to convince him that everything told is true.

 

Kari's been acting rather strangely ever since she has shared this information with him though. He wonders if she is expecting him to suddenly remember everything at any given moment and it makes him uneasy. He hasn't really reacquainted himself with anyone outside his immediate family over the span of the past four months. Those other kids, the rest of the Digidestined it seemed, had tried to strike up a friendship again initially, but their visits had been far and few ever since the day at the soccer field. Tai realizes that they don't care about him per say, the person he is at the present, rather, they want their friend back that they know, his former self which remains ever so elusive, and he feels like a rejected apple thrown back into the barrel. And he hopes Kari hasn't begun to follow their mindset, because so far, she has been the only stable and secure thing in his life.

 

He takes a joy in discovering what he can remember to do. For instance, he knows he is able to play soccer (though he hasn't attempted to since that one time he had kicked the ball). He has to learn the rules of Monopoly and Clue again, but finds that he can play checkers without a hitch. He knows how to make an omelet but has to be shown how to work a microwave. He likes routine and order, they're familiar and unchanging, and he likes knowing that there is something constant in is life. That's why his already fragile world is shattered one day when his parents are still out and Kari comes up to him with a fevered, determined glint in her eye and calmly states:

 

"I'm going back to settle this. I'll make things better, I promise."

 

There's a duffel bag hanging over one shoulder, she's clutching her D-3 in her other hand, and Tai knows without her telling him where she is headed, but doesn't understand her cryptic words. Why is she going there right now? It's almost 4:00, the time when they have their afternoon snacks and Kari has said that she was going to teach him how to make riceballs today. Why is she interrupting the schedule?

 

But he's too dumbfounded to say anything and her arms are wrapping around him in a gentle hug as she whispers her goodbye and then she is gone and he is alone.

 

Alone. Alone. Alone.

 

And he can't be alone because it's an aching realization that he is not needed and what has he done to be deserted like this, to be left all alone? Perhaps if he could only remember, but his memories are gone, they have fled from him as well. And the apartment seems so incredibly large and empty, and the quiet is stifling only broken by the sound of the hanging wind chimes on the balcony resounding dully against each other like a chorus of mournful sighs.

 

A nameless fear brushes at the inside of his head, and all he can do is go to his room and take shelter under the covers like a child hiding from unseen monsters and the shadows that dance eerily around the walls from the darkening clouds outside.

 

To Be Continued…

 

A/N: So yeah, as you can see this fic isn't over yet like I stated before in the last chapter. (sheepish grin) Haha, three parts, what was I thinking? This might end up being five or six. Darn you, Digidestined, why must you angst so much?! The readers want the plot to get on with it! Ah, well, I'm sure you don't really mind. You get more story earlier than expected and I get more reviews to inspire me. *whistles innocently*

 

Before I forget, I better explain Koromon's Frozen State. I invented this. The best way to describe it, I think, is a computer freezing up (don't you just hate it when that happens?), which should make sense since as a digimon, he's built of data. I don't want to give too much away, since I will explain this in more detail next chapter—drat, another hint!—but it was partially brought on by Tai falling off the cliff obviously and the shock of his partner being so grievously wounded. However, there is a deeper factor at stake here that has yet to be revealed. Just think of Koromon's Frozen State sort of like Han Solo encased in carbonite. He's alive and healthy, but frozen and unconscious for however long it takes for someone to reboot his system.

 

Speaking of reboot, I named the fic this to reflect on the overall plot, hence "Reboot", meaning a new start/beginning. Pretty appropriate since it's centered around lost memories, eh? It's not going to change again, I promise (this time for real).

 

Kari was predominantly in this chapter. No Matt this time, boo-hoo. But I hope I ameliorated things by trying to give you some insight into the inner workings of poor, amnesic Tai's mind and how forgetting his memories has shattered his self-confidence. And maybe now, you understand better why Kari feels so guilty? And yes, apparently, somehow she thinks she can make Tai's memories return if she takes care of the digimon who indirectly caused him to fall, oh dear.

 

Thank you for taking time to read this. I'd love to hear your overall thoughts so far as well as the scenes that touched you. So, feel free to review please. And thanks once more for reading, I hoped you enjoyed it.

 

So what's up for the next chapter? On my, we're going to the Digital World! Whatever shall we find?^w~