11. The Last One Saves All

They won't let her get away. They chased her, down to the banks, and trapped her there. And she turned around and hisssed a warning. A final warning. They didn't heed.

The fight was, in the end, too short and she couldn't bring herself to taunt any more. If any of the three had cared to expect it, they could have. Taichi was fuelled by grief, by hate, by anger - and all of those were very powerful emotions and they spilled into Greymon: Greymon who'd already drowned once in emotions but this time he invited it in because Taichi wasn't wrong, Taichi wasn't wrong to feel that plethoric storm towards Tailmon -

And Tailmon was indifferent, doing what she'd always done: fighting for orders, fighting for survival. She was no match for a rightous brother, and she was no match for the Chosen, either. She'd caught them off guard at the Castle. She was the one off-guard now and it didn't even matter, because she'd long ago known Vamdemon had sent her on a suicide mission, and the best part of it was that she wouldn't suffer a dead by the vampire's hands -

But then there was white in front of her: white mixing into the orange of Taichi's crest which swung free and begged for another evolution.

Killed by a Perfect? That'd be a little overkill when Greymon could stomp her into the embankment. Except Greymon wasn't evolving. She couldn't even see Greymon. Just white. It swallowed her up until she awoke on a couch that smelled of blood with her paws bound, and Taichi's hollow eyes staring at her.

'Why?' he repeated hoarsely, and it was so sad and raw and tender, so different to his earlier question of why that she wondered what had changed and what in the world had she done to earn that (because she deserve the binds, and more).

And then she realised she wasn't on the couch at all, but on someone's lap.