A/N: Hi there everyone, and welcome to the official sequel to Walking in the Dark! This will actually be my first full-on collaboration with my fiancee, S. Walden, not just a series of different companion pieces. I hope our writing styles aren't too jarringly different, but I did my best to make it all flow together!

As this is a sequel to WitD (which, for the longest time, was actually the accumulative end of the headcannon), this will also pull from the rest of our headcannon fics - mostly Bubbly and Angel of the Morning. But I'll do my best to make sure everything is properly explained for all you new readers~

I hope you'll enjoy!

Bury all your secrets in my skin

Come away with innocence, and leave me with my sins

2025

"Hanako, my daughter, is being molested. Please, you need to arrest Matt."

The whole hospital hallway stilled with those words. Ken looked at Sora, the haggard woman steeled against the stunned silence.

"You're... serious...?" Ken whispered, slowly morphing from concerned friend to police officer.

"Yes," Sora sobbed, angry tears streaming down her cheeks. There were still flecks of blood on her fists where she'd fought past the paramedics to beat on her once-dead husband's chest. The sound of the gunshot was still loud in her mind and she screamed over it, "Why do you think he tried to weasel out of it?!"

The hallway was crowded with worried, confused adults. Joe had just emerged from the room behind him. He was dressed in surgical scrubs, still clean, unable to bring himself to operate on his friend, laying prone and unconscious behind him. Tai and Izzy were holding hands, the married couple wondering what had happened to push Matt so far. Mimi was standing against the far wall, a comforting arm wrapped around Kari's shuddering shoulders as TK glowered, grumbling to himself, the Lord's name coming up more often than not.

Tai stepped forward, his ever present cane clicking on the stained tile. He tried to talk like he once had, to bring himself to be in charge of whatever crisis there was. "Sora, did you ask him?"

Sora turned on her old friend, amber eyes flashing with anger. Fear. Determination. "Like he would admit it, stupid!" She wiped away the tears from her eyes, smearing what little make up she wore. She took a shuddering breath, set her jaw and said to the gathered Children, "I've seen the way he looks at our daughter, and I can't keep them apart."

Joe clenched his hands to keep them from shaking, to keep himself from saying what needed to be said. Ken looked at the woman, the terrified wife and mother, and nodded, saying as officially as he could, "Alright, Sora. Let me talk to him first."

"No!" Sora yelped, making the group jump. "Now!"

"Sora," Joe finally said, intervening like he did with every argument. "He's not even conscious yet..."

The woman turned with all the fury of Hell. She had always known about them. Late at night, as her husband slept the tormented sleep of a disgusting sinner, she heard him whispering. Calling out for his poor, sick mother to stop whatever he had made up her doing. Whispering his brother's name in ways she'd never heard him speak to her. Sighing for Joe, murmuring and whimpering before waking up and having to change his underwear while Sora pretended to sleep.

Ever since they were children, they were all she'd ever heard about from Matt. They were his trinity of emotion and, when he was drunk enough to admit it, the only three people in his life that had ever made him feel. And now she had to face the fact, apparently alone, that his ten year old daughter was another of those people. Another victim in his twisted mind.

All that came out as a snapped: "Stay out of this, Joe."

Out of her life. Out of her marriage. Out of her family.

The doctor threw his hands in the air and turned back into the dark room where Matt lay, and Sora bit back the urge to scream. Ken lay a heavy hand on her shoulder and spoke to her.

"Joe is right, you know," he told her and she snorted. "Until Matt is fully conscious, there's nothing we can do."

"But there has to be," Sora demanded. "Can't you at least restrain him so he can't escape?"

"Sora, your husband shot himself in the head," Ken pressed. The group looked up, for the first time knowing why the blonde man was in the hospital. "I don't think he's going anywhere."

Mimi whimpered into Kari's hair, remembering the last time Matt had fallen so low, and the fear of seeing him drunkenly scrambling onto her balcony. Izzy pressed against Tai, already pale face drained of blood. For everything he had gone through with his husband, the thought of suicide had never once crossed his mind. TK, having heard the news from his father beforehand, resisted the urge to spit on the floor and go back to his terminal mother's room.

"Something needs to be done about him!" Sora insisted. "He's a monster!"

"I can suggest," Ken said, almost uneasily, "that you take Hanako to the station. We can set up an interview, get her to talk to an officer, a psychiatrist, or -"

"A rape exam!" Sora interrupted hurriedly. "Like on TV – can't you get one for her? Find all that... stuff... he would have left on her?"

"A rape exam is a very invasive procedure," Ken explained slowly. "It could be very traumatic if nothing happened -"

"But it did! I know it did!" Sora refused the urge to stamp her foot, like a child having a tantrum. She needed to be an adult, no matter who didn't believe her. "He's always with her; he doesn't sleep, he just goes into her room at night – I hear her crying all the time! And this look he gives her... It's like he never wants anyone else to have her. It's absolutely disgusting! I don't care how 'invasive' it is – Hanako needs it to keep Matt away from her!"

"Sora -"

Ken looked up from the nearly-hysterical woman as Malcolm Ishida stormed out of the room, a cigarette already between his lips. The older man paused briefly to look at TK, who turned his head away, before storming down the hallway to the elevator. Just as the door was swinging shut, Joe's voice, normally so calm and gentle, especially at the hospital, screamed, "Matt, gods damn you, this isn't a game!"

Sora made a face, tearing herself away from Ken, and she stormed into the room. She was aware of the other Children following her, but what made her stomach knot in anger was the way Joe was leaning over Matt, the doctor in pristine sea green scrubs, her husband laying in a white hospital gown and unable to lift his shaved and stitched head, like they were a prince and princess in some demented fairy tale. Joe was glaring, ready to yell again, and Matt's hands were shaking beyond his control, a sign of the mild brain damage he had inflicted on himself.

"Are you happy now?" Sora demanded as Joe jumped back, receiving a comforting pat on the back from Izzy. The gunshot echoed in her mind again, followed by her children's screams. "You've scarred the kids for life."

"How low can you sink?" TK hissed at the end of Matt's bed. He felt like a televangelist, ready to reach out and lay hands on his brother to heal him. But Matt didn't deserve divine healing – just to rot in his own personal Hell he'd created. "All this to get out of seeing Mom?"

Matt parted his dry lips and took a harsh breath. He'd had a tube down his throat earlier and Joe hadn't given him anything to drink before he'd started his tirade. "It's not like that..."

Tai held up his cane, trying to get everyone's attention. He wasn't good at peace making, but he tried desperately, "Enough you guys. Let's just be glad -"

"Shut up!" Sora yelled. Tai pulled back with an unsteady step, not expecting the snap and Izzy reached out to still him. She then leaned in close to Matt, just like Joe had been, bracing herself on the rails of his bed so that she could growl at him, "You got your wish, Yamato – I'll sign the damn divorce papers. But you know what? It'll be a cold day in Hell before you see your children. I'll make sure of that."

Matt just twisted his lips into a painful grimace. If he could have, he would have spit at his soon-to-be-ex-wife. "Been there every second I've been with you."

"What the Hell is your problem?" TK finally growled. Joe reached out for him, but the younger blonde jerked away, as though afraid of a homosexual's touch.

Matt looked his little brother in the eye, ignoring the woman still hunched over him. "She's been relentlessly accusing me of hurting my own children, she tricked me into marrying her by lying about her pregnancy, and she's generally been a hateful witch." He paused to take a ragged breath and Sora looked ready to slap him. "Anything else?"

"All I can see," TK began as Sora left her husband to walk over to TK and place a comforting hand on his arm, "is a woman trying to keep her family together. Kind of like Mom before you started spreading lies about her." TK glared at his brother, grabbing Sora's hand and dug his words home with, "I guess you just live to break up families, don't you?"

"TK..." Mat whispered. It hurt every day that TK didn't believe him, a soul-deep pain that overtook any warmth that Gabumon had ever filled him with. He shook away thoughts of the wonderful creature that had once loved him as purely and innocently as noone else had. "Take that back!"

"No!" Sora demanded. She remembered back to what started everything – that Malcolm had told her about Matt's own sexual abuse. And then Cody had been the one to tell her about patterns of abuse. What if Hanako hadn't been Matt's first victim? The shows she watched always told her that the first to come forward was never the first abused.

She swallowed hard as things fell into place – why TK and Matt stopped talking, why Matt was always so close to his little brother, the noises he made in his sleep... "Go on, tell us. Tell us the truth about Matt – he touched you too, didn't he?"

"T-Touched...?" Mimi breathed, Kari holding her comfortingly. The sight of her husband with another woman didn't bother her and, Kari thought with a sigh, she knew TK would only ever come back to her.

The young blonde clenched his jaw, staring into Matt's soul. The older brother was silently pleading, begging TK to deny what Sora was telling the whole room – to tell the truth about everything. But TK just closed his eyes with a weary sigh and Sora sobbed in terror.

"Do you see?!" she demanded of all the stunned Children. "TK's so traumatized he can't even speak!"

"Because you're acting insane!" Tai interjected, finally finding his voice. All the way through, to the very depths of his soul, he knew Matt could never do any of those things. His best friend was troubled, sure, but he'd always been like that. He'd always protected others – the only one Matt would ever hurt was himself. And while Tai had never thought Matt would consider suicide an option, Tai knew his friend only needed support, not crazy accusations and a Jerry Springer-style screaming match.

"He's sick," Sora insisted. She shook her head, glaring the whole while. "Your own brother? As if hurting an innocent child wasn't enough."

Matt made a wailing noise, a horrifying hiccuping sound that could barely be called a laugh and Sora did spit at him. "Fucker!"

Joe finally stood from where he'd collapsed in a chair upon everyone's entrance. He held his hands up like he used to do years ago and said as sternly as Tai ever had, "Enough. Matt needs his rest." He looked at Sora who turned away, wiping the spit from her chin. "If there really is anything you need to say, Ken is still waiting outside."

TK continued to hold Sora's hand as they turned and left the room. Kari bit her tongue as her husband practically shoved her brother to the ground to get him out of his way. Izzy tried to glare, but he wasn't used to the expression, and Tai was thankful he had a third leg to keep himself balanced.

Ken looked up from where he'd been standing guard at the door as the pair emerged. He'd heard the yelling from inside the room, but the emergency button hadn't been pressed, and there was no sounds of physical violence, so he let the group do as they needed.

Sora gave TK a grateful smile before turning to Ken.

"I want Hanako to have that rape exam, now," Sora demanded. "My neighbor can bring her here in ten minutes."

Ken bowed, knowing there was nothing else he could do.

"I'll call my partner and we'll be waiting."