DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.
Specific notation alert: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi and the Batpig Sexgod, one of whomcan be found on Fanfiction.net under the penname 'Batpig Sexgod'. Yeah.
Author's Note: This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the disappearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P
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13
Foundlings

"--Does my voice still make you sigh? Am I still a wound, am I still a fool--"

The voice was male. The voice was loud, and both horribly off-key and out of timing with the tinny scratch of music from beside and behind it. The voice sounded ragged as if from laughter or screaming, or a wound to the neck. The voice was the first thing Mimi heard as her hazy mind drifted towards conciousness, and the voice cut itself off abrubtly in the middle of mauling yet another line of sad and vaguely familiar song when she groaned, and lifted an arm to drape over her face. The voice was unfamiliar, and she wanted no more strangeness today.

"Hey! Hey, lady-girl-m'am-thing?" The music snapped off, and the source of the voice coughed. She had the sense of someone doubling over just beside her as he hacked drily, shaking with the action. She wondered if he was sick, and tried to sit up; forced herself to sit up. Her arm slid from her face, but she still could not see--her eyes refused to open. She tried to ask why, but her throat seemed sealed shut. She whimpered faintly.

"No, ho--" Cut off choking again, but not before he lay his hand over one of hers. The stranger squeezed faintly, and Mimi realized that her hand had been numb only because the action brought a faint tingle of life back to her fingertips. "Hold on. Don't be scared, aight? Have you fixed up in no time. Echak. Oudae."

The words cut, sharp, and with the sounds stabbing into her ears Mimi felt a weight torn from her eyelids, a clamp rip loose from her throat. She gasped, clutching at her neck, almost expecting it to be split open and bleeding, but of course it was not. Slightly swollen, nothing more. Her hand jerked up to her eyes, and these too remained unmarked. They opened to an unfocused haze, now, and a faintly flickering yellow-red light against darkness. In the wake of the stranger's strange words the air crawled with a sensation which was not burning, was not freezing but simply was, and was wrong. In a way it reminded her of biology--of dissection, the feel of flesh waiting to decay but unable to and so simply sick, and dead, and old. Heavy. The stink of blood and burning cloth hung close by, around the blur of the stranger. She gagged, but her system clenched tightly against the action, empty.

Something cool and damp--a bottle, a water bottle--was pressed into her clenched hands, and she took it, fumbling the cap off and drinking greedily. The retching actions had scathed her swollen throat, making her realize how thirsty she was. She felt as if she had run a mile in high summer, sore muscles making themselves known as slowly as her vision cleared itself in the unsteady light. She vaguely heard another voice, behind the stranger, speaking, but it received no reply. Her benefactor was once again bent over coughing. The smell of burning cloth melded into that of flesh, making Mimi's stomach lurch again.

Firelight. That was the flickering yellow-red, that was the soft cracking she could hear somewhere in the lulls between sounds. It must have been behind the stranger, because as he came into focus he was little more than a silhouette with short wild hair and a short-sleeved jacket over dirty clothes; a set of hunched and shuddering shoulders. His eyes were closed tight against the wracking jerk of each gasp, one gloved hand clamped over his mouth. A faint line of smoke trickled out between two of his fingers, a few small spots of blood dripped from the lower line of his hand. The glove was torn--burned--and his skin bubbled faintly where the blood touched, blackened and curled as if struck by acid. The bottle fell from Mimi's hands, water icy but unfelt where it spilled across her lap before falling to the ground, and when she bit her fist to stifle a scream the stranger did not seem to notice. Only kept coughing, choking, burning where blood hissed and bubbled from mouth to hand.

Something gripped her shoulders, and the scream came out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Look--I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare her. Okay?"

It was a large fire. Not a bonfire, to be sure, but a large fire nonetheless, which cast a sizable amount of light and shadow across the small, weary circle of adolescents huddled about its perimeter like refugees. For the most part they seemed unaware of it, though--of its heat, its light, its slow burning death in the center of them all. Some ignored it to stare upward, to watch the sparks fling themselves into the cold sky scattered with myriad stars. Some stared into it, through it, past it. One, despite sitting as close as his friends would allow, huddled deeply into a pile of jackets and shivered, mumbling a name over and over and over again. Glazed brown eyes stared down with heavy lids into his lap, perhaps working through the drugs and perhaps fixating on the mangled and bandage-cloaked mess which had, that morning so many age-long hours ago, been his hand.

Miyako flinched as she her took her eyes from the battered ring of her friends, chosing to favor Daisuke with a tired glare rather than continuing to bandage Mimi's bitten knuckle. Really, Mimi would be alright. It was only a little shock, and a little bite. Like herself and Iori, and Daisuke, Mimi seemed to have come through easily; without pain or shock or the hideous long strings of frostbite and blister marring her skin. She was lucky. They--all three of them--were very, very lucky.

Daisuke shifted, eyes wandering away from Miyako and back to the fire as he rubbed the side of his head gingerly. ". . .I'm just saying you didn't have to hit me."

She watched his eyes move from fire to Taichi once again, and her glare softened. Daisuke had been doing that, she was certain, since he or the older boy had been found--whichever had happened first. Certainly since she and Iori had stumbled upon this clearing he had been doing it, and wringing his hands and running them through his spiky short hair. He had developed the actions as nervous habits over the course of only a few hours. She hadn't really meant to hit him. She hadn't meant to hit him any more than he had meant to frighten Mimi, but it had happened because right now they were all crazy, and tired. None of them would sleep--probably none of them could except for poor Jyou, dozing lightly where he sat after playing impromptu medic to the worst of them and eyes jerking beneath the lids, legs twitching occasionally as if he dreamed of running--but they were. Miyako was glad that whatever had brought them back here so violently was over.

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Words burned into the back of her lids, a memory of the blank monitor and flowing script. Miyako bit her lip, shook her head, looked back down to Mimi's hand to be sure the bandage was secure. She didn't want to think like that. About that. She had seen, in less than twenty-four hours, more than she ever wanted to see again. Ever. She could go blind in this very moment, and she felt that if this was 'nothing' she would not regret the loss of sight.

". . .I forgive you, Daisuke." Mimi, trying to be lighthearted if the cracked lilt to her voice was any indication. "Smile! Be happy."

Daisuke looked at her a little oddly, before his face relaxed into an almost-smile. Miyako envied the two of them their strained senses of gallows humor. She wanted to share it with them so much, to pretend she had forgotten the blank gazes of their closest friends, so close and so far away. That she had forgotten, already, the sliding hiss of that familiar voice and the careless cursive sprawling across the heart monitor. Pretend that it was a dream. She--

Daisuke's response, Miyako's thoughts, were interrupted by a hoarse voice.

"'Cause forgiveness is divine, right?" With a faint grunt, the strange boy who seemed to have pulled together the first puzzled stragglers dropped to a crouch, then a sitting position between Miyako and Daisuke on the ground. From one pocket his portable radio jutted, silent except for a few strainging chords of harsh guitar filtering through the broken headphones tucked next to it. It sounded like some kind of heavy metal, screaming and discordant--such perfect music for the mood; too perfect so that Miyako had to grind out an urge to smash the tiny machine apart on the ground. Oblivious, the stranger pulled a handful of small, pill-shaped objects from a pocket and popped a few into his mouth, chewing reflectively and grimacing when teeth accidentally scraped his bleeding lip. "Yeah. Jellybeans?"

"Uhm. . ."

"Sure thing." Daisuke reached out almost before Miyako seemed to have realized that the word was an offer. It said something about him, she was sure, that even in a crisis he freely took candy from strangers.

She bit her lip to stifle a laugh, and pat Mimi's hand lightly. Maybe she too had a form of humor here--it tasted more like madness when her dry lips split under her teeth. "Good as new."

"Thanks."

Silence again, except for the two boys chewing their candy and the pop of the fire; Taichi's deliriously monotonous mumbling of his sister's name and the wind through the trees, the tinny muffled howl of distorted guitars. It made Miyako want to scream, just to fill the silence with some other sound. Mimi looked as if she felt the same way.

"So you guys. . .you all know each other, huh?"

"Mm-hmn. We're all good friends." Again, the lilt in Mimi's voice. It was, maybe, the same one that had always been there, but now it sounded so mad. So desperate. It was as bad, to Miyako, as the silence. "Been together for years."

The boy nodded, reaching up and shaking his wild bangs--in the darkness and fireglow they seemed to be a shade of vivid purple-blue--from his face. He looked somber behind his smile, with the shadows pooling beneath his eyes, with his lips and chin gouged by burns, stained with blood. "Yeah? Man, crazy stuff. Who'da thought, right?"

"Well." Mimi drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and letting her chin rest thoughtfully on her knees. "It won't be the first time we've popped into the Digital World without warning. Just. . ." She shivered. "A lot scarier this time. Will everyone be okay?"

At the words 'Digital World', the stranger's brows had shot up, and his eyes fixed on Mimi. The look he gave her was strange--not in a bad way, Miyako thought, but simply strange--and when he opened his mouth to speak but clamped it shut around another fistful of candy, it gave her a bad feeling. A chill. Echak. Oudae. He had spoken them like a benediction over her and Iori as well as Mimi--words like knives that left the air crackling and seemed to set his blood afire. What did they mean? The boy rubbed at his throat, then his head.

". . .Crazy stuff," He finally said, the words sounding almost lame. They sounded like a substitute for whatever he had meant to say--something important? Something innane?--and Miyako did not like that idea, that their mysterious new friend might be hiding something. His hand moved to the back of his neck, and he rubbed at that too. "But. . .okay? Shit, I ain't no doctor. The blond kid with the blisters--"

"Takeru," Mimi supplied.

"--Yeah, I guess. He'll be fine. And the redheads, and the tall guy with the glasses. They'll all be fine, outside of the burns and crap. Don't know what's up with those. But the rest, the crazy stuff is just Rimshock, y'know? Breach Gates--I think that's what gotcha here--they'll do that to you, the shock thing, even if you've hopped 'em before. Especially into the Overworld." He nodded, ignoring the glances of confusion the three others cast each other over his head. "Hate the Overworld. And that short kid, went off to what, look for something? He seemed pretty okay. The other one though. . ." A shake of the head, a helpless shrug. He looked as lost as any of them. "I'm no doctor. His hand looked bad."

Sora and Koushiro. Jyou. Iori. Miyako felt her own hands clenching and clasping, and she moved them to cross over her chest, gripping her elbows. Obviously the boy thought she and Daisuke and Mimi were alright, and really they were. She felt as if she shouldn't have let Iori go off on his own, but really he would be alright too. Taichi though. . .she hadn't seen his hand. Maybe Daisuke had, because his head jerked to one side abruptly, and he looked away. It wasn't really his hand that worried her, anyway, and it probably wasn't what worried the others. The thing that she--and everyone else, probably--was really worried about was Taichi. Just Taichi.

And Hikari. And Yamato. And Ken. Because where were they? Had they come into the Digital World as she and Iori had, half-delirious and stumbling from darkness into light, hanging on to each other, to something, anything familiar to maintain a shred of sanity around the roar of static in their ears, the horrible sibilant laughter? Had they come as Sora had been found, screaming and ripping long bloody gashes into blistered skin with broken nails; screaming for silence, screaming until the body would scream no more and only gasp, each breath coloring the lips with blood? Had they come as Koushirou, staring dully ahead with glazed and mindless eyes until touched--the stranger had warned them not to touch him when they arrived and found him gazing into the fire but she had anyway, on accident--when he jerked backward with a shriek

(No, no not lying please don't, please, not again--!)

and then fell silent, to stare again unmoving for hours on end? As Jyou, in a nightmare-muddled sleep, speech slurred and movements stumbling? Were they maybe--and this seemed too much to hope for--still back home in Tokyo, safe and sound? Did they know what was going on?

(People don't just dissapear)

(Hikari-chan's an awful long ways away. . .so much farther than a hospital bed)

No. Miyako closed her eyes, and shivered. No, they weren't safe at home, and no, they did not know what was going on any more than any of the others did. But they knew what was happening. Whatever had brought them here--whatever force, whatever reason--it would not leave those three behind. It had, could have, no reason. And so she wondered where they could be, and how they were faring there, all alone. And she was afraid.

Silence again. The sounds of Daisuke standing, mumbling excuses for something known only to himself; of Mimi getting up to sit by Sora where the other girl sat alone, hands over her ears and eyes lidded. Alone with the stranger, Miyako could hear him shifting, and muttering to himself. "Good kids, damnit. Why d'ya hafta pick the good kids? Such a--ah! Ow, okay! Okay!" Another cough, the faint hiss of blood burning skin and the smell of scorched cloth.

Echak. Oudae.

Have you fixed up in no time.

--just Rimshock, y'know?

Echak. Oudae.

It did not make her feel any better.