Prompt: Fly
Soar

It was a split second freefall; she forced herself onto the railing and she leapt. She soared. It would have been any normal girl's death, but with her mother and Mimi's screams echoing like thunder in her ears, piercing, and the chilling, sickening feeling that she was turning her back on them, even without Birdramon there to catch her, she would soar. She had to.

So she did. She leapt from the balcony railing, reached for Birdramon's ankle and thankfully caught it. She looked back, only to see Mimi chased by Bakemon as she rushed to Sora's mother. Seeing them overpowered and forced back into imprisonment was almost more than Sora could bear. Mimi was only ten years old, still an innocent, impressionable little girl. Still in need of guidance. It wasn't right that she was here at all, but then, it wasn't right that anyone was. But least of all, a sweet innocent like Mimi.

She screamed back, would have screamed until her throat was ripped and raw, aching, until her voice was hoarse and then completely gone, would it have done any good. She contented herself with screaming for them, that she would be back, screaming with tears burning in her eyes, holding onto Birdramon for dear life. Seeing Lilymon lay lifeless as a worn-out rag doll, imagining she could hear the echoes of Mimi screaming long after it was possible to do so, lamenting that she finally makes some measure of peace with her mother and it is ruined—but she had to be strong. Crying wasn't going to save her mother and Mimi and Lilymon.

Lilymon's incapacitation was a knife in her heart, because she knew it was a knife in Mimi's. Worse. She remembered how carelessly Palmon was tossed up into the camp bus's overheard cargo hold, while Mimi chatted with her confused fourth-grade friends, and the other Chosen Children and Digimon all sat together. No doubt Mimi remembered it, too. No doubt she felt terrible.

And Sora had no idea what to do for Lilymon. She thought and she thought, as Birdramon soared over the stricken, man-made island in Tokyo Bay, but Vamdemon's attack… he'd never landed it before (with her mind so jumbled, she couldn't even be sure she ever saw him use it). All she could come up with was 'take her to Jou, didn't he say his father was a doctor once…?' But what could Jou know about Vamdemon's attack that she didn't? What was there to know?

She could hear Lilymon breathing, though, and that had to be some kind of good sign. Something to latch onto. So long as she could restore Lilymon, Lilymon would never let Mimi down. Just as Birdramon would never let Sora down.

Just as Sora knew she couldn't let Mimi down.

"Birdramon, keep your eyes open," she said forcefully, fiercely glad her voice was steady and not choked with tears. She tore her eyes from the stricken Lilymon and shifted them towards the ground. "We need to be on the lookout for any of our friends."

"I'm looking, Sora," Birdramon said, the fear Sora felt ringing clearly in her voice. "I'm looking very carefully. Just hang on tight!"

"Yes," Sora muttered. Sparing one last glance at Lilymon, and then tuning her eyes for any sight of Taichi and Agumon, Jou and Gomamon, Yamato and Gabumon, and gripping Birdramon's ankle with all her strength. "I'm holding on."

Just you hold on, Mother, Mimi-chan. I'll find the others and cure Lilymon, and then we really will soar.