Chapter 49 : Muffled Lamentations

Koushirou

He was staring out the window, ignoring everything else as if nothing else existed, nothing else mattered. The view from the window looked over the empty streets below; it was a late Monday morning, most people were in school, or at work, or somewhere they were supposed to be. The sky was overcast, not stormy, per se, but there was no blue, just light greys and whites. It was just sort of lonely. Tai's brown eyes just kept glaring intently at the dreary scene, that or his dim reflection in the dirty glass. It really was hard to say. But you know sometimes when you shift focus in your eyes, you can see things you normally neglect. Was it possible to tell what someone was focusing on just by looking at them? Or maybe he wasn't looking at either; maybe he was just lost in thoughts. It's very easy to do, you know.

I sighed and sat on the bed, facing away from him. I wasn't going to be the one to say that Tai was crazy, because I didn't believe that. So what if it'd been three, four, five weeks? Everyone needed time to grieve. He did remind me of Matt, though, and Sora, before they died. Lost and not really in this reality anymore. But hey, wasn't any other reality preferrable to this one? They said we were lucky; we survived; we should be glad we weren't killed. But living with these memories, the knowledge that we had been helpless,...how is this any better? I suppose I was grateful that I was still alive, but sometimes the grief was just too much. It was hard to go on and move on and continue with life when you were so alone. I didn't blame Tai for being the way he was now, no one could; he'd lost everything. If you were pushed down hard enough, it'd take a while for you to stand up again too.

Aymichi and Matt had killed each other. Ripped and slashed and gorged the hell out of each other; both died of massive blood loss. I could remember the scene so perfectly...the lights that the police had set up luminated the entire room, which would have probably been a dingy grey if it had not been for the large puddles of deep red. Their bodies were soaked with it, and it was almost sort of ironic that they died of blood loss. But the red had been in all the wrong places, absent from their veins and organs, instead stained all over their hands and faces and clothes. It was disgusting, and I'd never thought I'd see Matt with so much blood on his hands. How much of it was his own? And how much of it was Aymichi's? I had never imagined him killing; yes, I'm glad he did, I guess; I'm glad that it's finally over, and that the murderer is done with, but I had really been hoping it didn't have to be Yamato to be the one to do it. Maybe I had too much faith in the authorities, or maybe I had just been hoping, but I hadn't wanted Matt to become a killer too.

But I guess I also figured that such a fight would end with one winner and one loser; I hadn't expected them both to die in this conflict. Always one or the other. Everyone lost though. Aymichi lost. He didn't succeed in his demented goal. I wasn't dead. Taichi wasn't dead. But we certainly didn't win either. Eight had become two. Or maybe just one. Because half of Tai wasn't here anymore, and I think I lost a little part of me as well. So half of me, and half of him. One surviving Digidestined. No one won. The detectives didn't get their glory; they didn't solve anything this time. All they got was a string of murders and finally two dead teens in an old warehouse in the middle of the night.

Things just wouldn't be the same anymore, would they? My parents would make me go back to school eventually, and I guess I'd want to go back. There was no sense in hanging around the house all day mourning forever...they were gone. They were all gone, and they weren't coming back. My wasting my own life away wasn't going to change anything. I wouldn't go to say that Matt died so I could live; he was fighting more his brother, not really for me, but still. His fighting Aymichi and dying in the process was what was guaranteeing that I wasn't going to die by Takeru's killer, and I wasn't going to waste that. Not for too much longer anyway. I looked over my shoulder at Tai; I didn't know when he was going to decide to pick himself back up again though. It struck him deep; I couldn't relate to everything he'd gone through. I hadn't lost any siblings. What was Courage without Light? And I hadn't lost my best friend - I'd lost a plural of friends. And I supposed I'd been close to them all; we were a team, but it was nothing like the bond Tai and Matt had shared. What was Courage without Friendship?

A few days after Yamato and Aymichi's deaths, we were called down to the station to look at something the detectives had found when they scourged the old building for clues about the specific happenings. I hadn't really been interested because I had known everything I needed to know. Yamato and Aymichi had killed each other. How it happened and all the gruesome details weren't something I wanted to really know. But that wasn't what they presented us with. No, instead, they handed me a VHS tape. They said that there had been an operating camera in the warehouse, by some freak chance, and it had captured a good chunk of the fight, and whatever lay after. It was hinted that there was something at the end that Taichi and I might want to see. Tai hadn't expressed anything, he just sort of sat in the chair and waited for me to press play; I didn't know what he had expected, nor did I know what I expected. I don't really remember thinking anything as the tape started to roll.

The fight must have started outside, because at first the camera had not captured anything but the blank wall, but I could hear voices in the distant. After a while, there was a loud crash. That must have been the broken window at the scene of the fight, when they entered the building. The fight was hard to figure out. Matt and Aymichi moved in and out of range of the camera, but I could hear everything. Their curses at each other, their heavy breathing and panting as they slashed again and again, trying to kill each other; I could hear it all. The gunfire was particularly loud and sudden. I had jumped slightly in my seat for I had not expected it. And of course...the camera had been in perfect position to capture the horrific pain on Yamato's face when he was shot. I had to turn away. I had never been one for gory movies and all that, and it was my friend on the screen, and I knew that that had really happened. It was just too much for me to look at.

I had looked instead at Tai, whose eyes were wide with horror. He on the other hand, could not seem to peel his eyes away from the screen, and had watched the entire thing to the end. I had sat there watching the goggled one for a long time. I could still hear everything; I could hear Aymichi's last words. Somehow I felt as if I heard him die. The stony silence that followed...that just seemed to say everything. I turned back to the screen then; Yamato was in perfect view of the camera, hands clutching wounds in pain. He stared at us, the camera, for a long time, as if hypnotized by something. The camera perhaps...because then, he started talking.

It was hard to say whether he knew the camera was there or not, but he spoke as if we were there to listen. Maybe he just hoped we could hear, not knowing that we really could. It was weird hearing him talk...hear him apologize...I didn't know what I expected him to say after he started talking, but...I don't know. I think it wouldn't have mattered what he said, I still would have been surprised. It was just so sad...they were his last moments...I knew he was going to die at the end because I knew he was dead...it was so hard to watch. Did he know he was going to die? Was that why he was giving all of those apologies and what seemed painfully like last words? He apologized to the dead; he asked for forgiveness,...and he said sorry a dozen more times to Tai. I had glanced at the leader then. He was crying. Not loudly, not showily, but he was staring at the screen with a half-angry, half-tragic expression and crying. And then Matt started crying on screen. And of course, the parents all around us were shedding tears of their own, and the atmosphere was simply unbearable.

It was just that I've known these people for a long time, you know. And it's been a long time since I've seen anyone of them so emotional. A real long time. Matt and Tai especially. They were never the kind to be moved to tears by sappy and tragic movies, or whatever; neither of them had cried rivers when our friends started getting picked off. And so the fact that they cried then...it only made everything so much worse. I don't remember if I cried. I probably did. But at this point, I just don't even remember anymore. I just didn't want to remember the pain and the hurt and all the sorrowful memories and crap. I wanted to be better, to move on, and yet at the same time, didn't. Moving on didn't mean I would forget them, of course, but...I don't know. I'm still just sort of lost, I guess. It's hard to sort yourself out.

I looked at Taichi. He was still at the window, staring out. What was he thinking? The same things I am? There wasn't anywhere to direct the anger and hate towards anymore; I think that made it harder. What else was there to do but move on? Unlike Yamato, he could not get revenge for the murder of his sister; Aymichi was already dead. I wanted to talk to him, say something to him, but nothing came to mind? 'Everything would be alright'? Who was I to tell him something like that? So instead, I sighed and walked over to him, turning my gaze to the window he was so bitterly staring out of. "They're safe now, at least." I said softly, putting my hand on his shoulder.

The cars zoomed below us; we could see our classmates as they spilled from the school building a block or so down. Lunch time. Taichi remained quiet for a while more, then finally said; "Yeah, I guess. But I miss them, you know?" His voice was stale, like he hadn't spoken in a long time, which was true. I hadn't really expected an answer at all. Perhaps this was a sign that he was getting better? "Yeah. I do too." I was going to add something along the lines of 'But we can't mourn forever and they would have wanted us to move on'. but it sounded way too corny and clichéd in my head, and I didn't think Tai would appreciate an old recycled speech about 'moving on' or whatever. I wouldn't have anyway.

The weeks went on; life moved on, like it always did. It moved on whether you liked it or not, whether you were ready or not, whether you wanted it to or not. Time does no one favors; it just always goes on. So we went back to school; the odd familiarity of school. People avoided us; it was all rather amusing, but appreciated nonetheless. I didn't want to talk about it and neither did Tai. We fell back into step with the old pattern...well, sort of; we were just sort of short four friends...but gradually...I guess I got used to it just being the two of us. I suppose that in time, we'd make new friends, not to replace the dead, but to...I almost wanted to say forget; I almost wanted to say move on, but none of that's true. I'd never forget Sora, or Mimi, or Yamato, or Joe, or TK, or Kari. And I'd never move on past missing them and grieving for them. But I had to keep walking somewhere, didn't I?

Oh yeah...that program I said I was going to figure out if I lived? The one where I would calculate the percentage of a murderer being the reason for waking up some random night at four in the morning? I finished it. Among gas leaks, and fires, and exploding cars, and bombs, and thieves, and a barrage of other fantastical occurrences, the chances of getting murdered in the night was only a fraction of a percent, natural disasters held a much larger piece of the pie, depending on where you lived. But if you factored in the fact that you, for some forever unknown reason, that there was a killer after you and your friends, and if you threw in the slight chances that said murderer may be subdued by police and et cetra, then the chances of you being another tally mark on the wall rose to around ten, maybe fifteen percent. So that one night when I woke up to footsteps on the sidewalk, that one night when it all ended, the chances of me not living through it were three in twenty. Well. Dying by Aymichi anyway. I could have died by earthquake once out of five. But I didn't die.

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© Kiriska