Hey! Request for a darker Sorato story finally done :D Notes: italics have been deleted, depression mentions, speed write.

Hope you like, melia2.

Yamato is physically tired, but mentally exhausted when it happens. The stress of school has finally kicked his butt into a track, where it feels like he can't pick himself up again. If it's not band practice, it's science classes, and if not that, it's Sora's tennis tournaments or Taichi's soccer games- both of which he enjoys wholeheartedly- it's just...it's energy-draining. And of course, then there's his parents who may have fair intentions but meddle too much for his liking, friends just as petty as his enemies, and in general, the war he's fighting to find himself. It's just...hard.

(He's losing.)

5:12. An hour before dinner with Sora. The urge is overwhelming and he succumbs, flopping onto the couch, face tilted towards the inside, breathing in the leather to slow his heartbeat. So he's asleep…

And then he's being taken away; forced out of blank peace, where a mix of colors and things that can't be recalled as of now blur and swirl and drain away. All that remains is this one larger-than-life, solemn, gray painting-

Not a painting, he realizes. Gray the color of sick stretches from cold sky to dull hillside ground to the waters that are dark as obsidian. Water that glimmers unnaturally, water that reaches out as far as the eye can see.

An ocean.

Ice ripples up his spine. It doubletimes the second he hears the first choked gasp, hoarse and...frankly, unhuman-like.

Shit shit shit-

He hasn't closed his eyes for longer than 3 heartbeats since he's got here, albeit their rapid pace, despite the ever increasing need to stagger to a stop, close his eyes, and rest.

Shit shit shit-

The monsters are everywhere. In the forest, slowly trudinging out of the waves. They're all of the same species, all of the same build- terrifying and evil.

Shit shit shit-

He's gonna die here, he knows. Maybe a quick death will be a mercy.

He's all alone.

Suddenly, he can't run anymore. Because the ground underfoot crumples, crumbles into meaningless gravel. He falls.

(And that's how he'll always be.)

At 6:03, Sora knocks on her boyfriend's front door a total of 4 times, quiet but firm. The person that bursts out is none other than Yamato's brother.

"Ah- Takeru," Sora steps back, genuinely startled. "Hi. Is Yamato-"

"Come in," Takeru interrupts tightly. He whirls around and only then does the spiraling fear emanating off of him sink in.

She strides after him, kicking her shoes off quickly, and whispering, "What-" before she sees.

Her boyfriend is lying on the floor, shaking like a prey creature caught by predator or hunted by demons. She runs to kneel beside him, feeling more ill with the increasing clarity to the extent of his condition. His fists are clenched so tightly his knuckles display prominently. He's pale, and cold, so cold, when she brushes her fingers over the bit of skin on his shoulder exposed by his crooked t-shirt.

"Yamato," She tries, but the words won't come.

"He's been like this for the last 10 minutes." Takeru tells her, voice sharp and pained, laced with anxiety, helplessness...This is what fear looks like. "I've called 119, I've called Dad- I've called Joe. None of them know what it is. And I don't know what to do."

Shit, Sora's never been the bravest one. That's always been Taichi or Yamato- someone more confident, more content with themselves. But now that's going to have to change. She reaches for Takeru's hand, feels for clammy and sweat wrecked, and through mild trembling of her own, quietly says, "He'll be alright."

He has to- please, she pleads.

In a flash, a tenth of a hundredth of a second, she and Takeru are no longer crouching besides a boyfriend and a brother, they are standing in the gray of a battlefield that reeks of hurt and pain, run by the very one and only ruler himself, Death, for pure amusement. The world is horrifying.

(Whether this is form of reality or a true nightmare is a confusing question that Sora finds herself dreading the answer to.)

What is most terrifying is beneath the overlooking crest they stand on, is Yamato, huddled between sand, the back of the hill walls- and indescribable creatures that initiate wild fear in Sora so strong, it burns her tongue and sears her flesh, her body in place, slowly closing in on him.

Takeru grabs her hand and they are sprinting, fast and desperate. A mix of hopeful and hopeless.

"Gabumon." It's one struggle to pull the little name from his dizzy, tired mind, another to push out of his dry, cracked lips, and a third one- vain- to calming his damn heart's machinegun pacing. He's been here too long. Nothing of his body is broken- besides him.

"Yamato." Is the answer he gets.. His digimon sits close. The little contact between the fur of Gabumon's arm and the pads of his fingers is the only warmth Yamato can feel in his entire body. His digimon looks small in Yamato's lidded eyes. "Please. Stay awake."

"What for." He answers, so so tired. He can stay awake a day, a week- nothing will help. His life's a mess, he himself is living ruins, and at the end of the day, he's accomplished little to nothing.

What is there to stay awake for.

The other digimon are closing in, just like they did when he tried to run through the forest with trees that loomed ever so tall and thickets full of smart thorns. Gabumon shakes his head and whispers, "Yourself, silly."

Midway through his tired, broken laugh, he regrets it because he knows he is breaking his partner's heart with his own treacherous, callous black heart.

"Yamato!"

A yell, unique to the girl that caught his eye at 10, stole his breath at 12, and asked him to share their hearts with each other as of now, rings through the air, piercing his descendants into is running right at him.

His eyelids flutter open and he'd be frustrated he's not getting what he wants if he wasn't so confused- why and-and how are they here?

There are feathers, the white feathers of Angemon raining down on the gray grains of sand underneath his pants and throughout the coast. The holy digimon's hits wipe out full waves of the monsters that have given him a literal Hell. Similarly, Birdramon flames light the forest above the beach on fire, sending whole trees crashing to the ground with their branches burning with abandon.

"Live for me, dumbass!" Sora shouts, and she sounds angry, but there's a tone that suggests a suppressed sob.

Takeru says, "Live for Gabumon!"

The said digimon perks up and the stripes of black darkening his fur seem to return to a lighter, eased blue. He raises his head and says, "Live for Takeru and your family and your friends!"

Takeru is soaring with Birdramon and when they fly near enough to Yamato, he feels his hair being tugged at with the wind. "I love you, you idiot." Takeru shouts, just before the speed rips away his words.

Sora has finally reached him, is kneeling, is holding a hand out. "Live for the people that love you. The people you love." She ignores the liquid streaming down her face. "And that damn right includes yourself. What else is life supposed to be?"

A lump is swelling in his throat. Sora ran to dimensions beyond Earth to come for him, to save him. So did Takeru. Gabumon has always had his back, and even today, with all of Yamato's lack of will, his partner has never once left his side.

The care of the people that are fighting for him finally reach, brilliant lights piercing through no longer endless shadows. In himself, something glows. He closes his eyes and lets the shine envelop him and his senses.

He, Takeru and Sora are sitting with their partners close by.

Matt doesn't feel so alone.