A/N: Written for

Ultimate Sleuth Challenge, Kowloon Level 3 – write a multichap over 10k
Becoming the Tamer King challenge, bronze tamer task 9: write a fic/chapter with a situation where someone is on over their heads, and write a fic/chapter that includes mental degeneration, de-aging or time-travelling
The 100 Prompts, up to 100 MCs Challenge, #019 - inebriate
Diversity Writing Challenge, i32 - write in the angst genre
The Memoir Challenge
The Endurance Challenge, week 23

Faking Redemption
Chapter 1

My head pounded for days after the incident, and that was more than fair – or less than fair, depending on how you looked at it. Taiki-san had to go to the hospital and he didn't deserve that all. All he'd done was save the world two years ago and this was our gratitude, my gratitude –

But I could ask myself how I could do such a thing and it wouldn't matter. I'd done it anyway, like I'd just snapped, like I'd been in a temper and I'd had a brief lapse of control and just struck out –

But that was just Taiki-san. That wasn't his only crime, or even the last of them. He wasted the Brave Snatcher too. Someone with even a little less tenacity than Tagiru would never have pulled it off and what would have happened then? What would have been our fate when Quartzmon rewrote the world? What sort of world would it have been?

I had a glimpse of it, at least. A deserted world, where every neighbour was far from the next and there was no commodore, no relations. Would it have people in it at all? Digimon? Or would the world be filled with those mindless drones of Quartzmon: the ones we'd shot down who knew how many times and yet they felt nothing when their comrades in arms were shot down before their very eyes. They felt no fear, no anger, no desperation. They fought the same if there was one or a hundred or a thousand of them and Astamon had been the same. I'd just never put it all together: all the puzzle pieces only I could see.

I was the only one who could have put it all together. But I didn't. I thought nothing of the fact that there were no hunters at all until a few months after Psychemon and I. I just thought I'd never met them. There were too many Hunters, two years later, after all. Not all of them gathered at the island where Volcdramon was the prize. Not all of them gathered on the final day where it was decided who'd use the Brave Snatcher – and the words I said at that moment… Maybe they were right, or at least half right. Maybe Tagiru was the only person who could have pulled it off or maybe there'd been someone because we barely knew them. We barely knew them and we wrote them off as powerless, as worthless. And Quartzmon too had only sought the digimon that appeared strong at first glance to suck the life out of.

How did I miss that? All the digimon I captured and never used, never glanced at again and never realised when they no longer were at all… Like Metallifekuwagamon, and even then I didn't realise it. The digimon that was there and then not, that was terrified when he looked beyond Tagiru and his friends with the Dobermon and the net and when did Astamon strike, when he'd been behind me the entire time? It was like I blinked out of reality whenever Astamon – Quartzmon – did something he didn't want me to see. But could I put the blame on something I could never prove? Could I even allow it? Accept it?

And if I did, the fact that he cared enough to hide such matters meant I was more of a help to him free, following my own twisted path. And I thought it was a white path, full of roses. I'd become the best hunter and defeat Quartzmon, and then I could surpass the hero who'd glittered red – red roses – in the field that day, who'd first saved the human race when the hand of Bagramon had crashed down.

I was a civilian, then. A civilian who saw the general of the army awash with hope and seize victory and so became emoured. It was a noble goal. Still was, because I'd shared that with Tagiru and we'd wasted all that time dilly-dallying when we could have been friends and friendly rivals instead.

It was too easy to wonder how much of that had been orchestrated by Quartzmon – and then wonder if I wasn't giving him too much credit to alleviate my own position. Because the fact of the matter was most decisions throughout the two years had been mine. I chose to hunt only the strong, and to do it in a way that lengthened my hands that reached for them. I chose to make no bonds with my digimon except the ones that would strengthen Astamon: the ones I used for a digi-xros and no more, when I could have been friends with all my digimon. I chose to stay away from Taiki-san and the hunters that allied themselves with him and chase him from afar, as independent as I could be, instead of cultivating a friendship and learning more closely from him.

And it was far too easy to go around in circles with these thoughts. There was no Airu at the door, saying one of her traps had caught something. There was no Ren, complaining that Tagiru and Taiki and their friends were causing trouble. And I never did tell Tagiru where I lived, did heI And my parents were doing what they always did and that left me to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and swirl with my thoughts and the only interruption would be my own body begging for more material needs.

Part of me wished someone would come – but why would they? My parents were at work. I had no siblings. And my classmates didn't care enough to visit him at home when school was out, and even less so in the past two years when I'd skipped so many days of school and even more outings. And the hunters would all be at the hospital with Taiki, or at their own homes. And I should be there – or shouldn't. I didn't have the right to show my face there, after all, even if the responsibility was mine.

Not even all the hunters knew the responsibility was mine. Just the ones who'd born witness to it – and who knew how fast or sluggishly the news would travel, if it did at all. Or what the consequences would be. Or what they should be. What I should do about it now, when it was too late to do anything at all except meaningless apologies that couldn't bring back what had been lost, and almost lost.

I could only remember, and think, and the memories were still awash, ablur. Part of me wondered if I even wanted to see the clandestine truth because then it would be undeniable: who was to blame, and who was not. Because nothing would absolve my blame and, because of that, how could I place the blame on anyone else?

I could only thank whatever god out there that Tagiru was Tagiru, who could do two roles in one that weren't ever meant to be combined – and, on top of that, he put the broken Brave Snatcher together. Put the pieces of broken hope together when there was no-one to pick him up, no-one to shout their encouragement – and the only people who could depend on him were already swept away and consumed.

Only a day before that, I'd thought we were equals: standing on the same soil and heading for the same goal albeit by slightly different paths. But our paths were always in view of each other, and would always be. But I hadn't imagined, until that point, that Tagiru would ever catch up to me. I had a year's head start, after all. And when the digimon of Xros Wars didn't come back with their generals, I had a chance to catch up to Taiki as well.

Rather, I'd had the chance to completely tear up the world. And all I had to pay for that was a headache that staring unblinking at the ceiling seemed to dull?

And, despite all of that, I still missed him. Psychemon. Astamon. Quartzmon. Whatever and whoever he was, he'd been my partner, my aibou and my first digimon. It was because of him I'd ever had the chance to try and chase Taiki-san at all, to enter that same world, that hunt… To meet Taiki-san face to face, and meet all these other people who'd been involved in the hunt as well. Ren and Airu and had I become their friend and comrade first and foremost because they were useful? But regardless, they were friends now. At least from my perspective. And I owed them too. Something I could never repay. Them, and Tagiru and Yuu, and Taiki-san – and how many other hunters had I crossed in the hunting game that had been more hunt than game, if only I hadn't been so blind as to not notice it sooner.

The ceiling blurred. Finally. Tears put the regret I thought I felt into something tangible. Told me I wasn't just trying to convince myself, wasn't just blinding myself to the truth that lay underneath the dust of my thoughts. Pain was retribution. Tears were the personification of my regret. My parents would notice some days later when my eyes were only slits of red downstairs because the glare of the sun was so strong, but that would be later, when the headache had finally begun to fade, and I couldn't tell them anyway. What would I say? I watched the news the first night, when Quartzmon fell. There was no whisper of what had occurred. No word. Not even a hint that an entire day had faded away into the gloom. My parents hadn't even asked why I'd missed school that day, but I'd missed so much already. They'd tired of it. Accepted I had no interest in it. But that wasn't the truth, either. There'd just been the hunt, instead. More important. Everything. And a lie.