Hey, I revised this first chapter, so if you've read it before, read it again. Or not. You don't need to read it to understand what happens next.

I really just made it shorter. Like, a heck of a lot shorter. There was a lot of information that wasn't very necessary, so I nixed it.

This is a rewrite of a story that I wrote when I was eleven or twelve years old. Why rewrite it so many years later? Because I can.

Disclaimer time!

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. 'Nuff said.

It was raining hard, the kind of warm summer downpour that soaks you to the skin within minutes no matter what you're wearing, that clings to and drips from your eyelashes, that makes you feel so alive because the intoxicatingly fresh smell of it clouds your mind.

I hadn't felt alive in years. All I could smell was the sodden earth, and the faded flowers, and the cold tang of the stone that had been driven into the ground.

Kimura, Kouichi

Every time I resolved to live again I would remember the words on that headstone and drop my head and wonder why I couldn't just end it right there. Why I had to live only to have my throat constrict painfully every time I saw the light leaving his eyes.

I shouldn't regret going to the Digital World. After a lifetime of staying under Dad's wing and never having a real say in what happened in my life, the opportunity to truly see what I could do was bracing. No rules, no restrictions, no worried voices telling me something was too dangerous to try. I was in my element. Everything I'd learned in my kendo classes merely chipped the iceberg of what I accomplished in battle after battle.

I shouldn't regret meeting Takuya, and Izumi, and the others, and becoming so close to them like I had. Moving around every year or so made it difficult to hold on to friends, and by then I had stopped trying. In the Digital World, I couldn't help myself; we saved each others' lives so many times and... they were there for me. Even when I tried to desert them, no matter how many times I ran away, they always came after me, because I was their friend. It hurt to drift apart.

I shouldn't regret meeting Kouichi. I don't want to regret meeting my brother, but I tell myself that if I only hadn't, I wouldn't be hurting so badly right now. It's selfish, but it's how I feel. I don't want the memories to unearth themselves over and over again and tear me apart.

I shouldn't regret any of it, but I do. And what I regret most, is how it all ended.

~/~

Before we knew it, we had spilled back into the Real World. Just minutes had gone by; we might have simply gone to the wrong train. Takuya led us to the stairway he'd watched Kouichi going down and... nothing. He wasn't there. One of the staff recognized me because he had seen my brother's face, and he said that he had fallen down a flight of stairs chasing someone. Me, I thought with a painful jolt. He's in the hospital now because he was trying to get to me.

We rushed to the hospital, found the room where doctors scrambled desperately to revive a thin body sprawled on a cold platform. I hesitated. A masked doctor yelled "Clear!" over the rabble and Kouichi's limp body jumped off the table from the jolt of electricity before landing with a heavy thump. My eyes went to the screen displaying the status of his vital signs. A white line checked breathing; flat line. Green was heart rate; nonexistent. Numb, I approached the table. The small frame jerked again from one last try. No response. A nurse tried to keep me away, but I barely heard her.

"Please," my voice cracked, and I could feel the tears gathering, "Please, I'm his brother. Please…" They believed me. Dimly I heard the anxious shuffling of my friends' feet behind me. But they did not exist. All my focus was on the blank blue eyes staring at nothing. All I heard was the single flat tone, like an alarm clock invading a dream, and I wanted desperately to wake up from the nightmare. My breath caught. There was still a tiny glimmer of light, moving ever so slightly as it locked with my gaze. Crazily I thought I heard him try to say something. His eyes glazed over even as I grasped his shoulder to rouse him.

"Call it," someone said somewhere behind me, and I choked in shock. A heavy hand settled on my shoulder. I began shaking. I didn't care who saw me cry. As the tears began to fall I crumpled to my knees next to the table, staring up at Kouichi's still form. Skin unnaturally pale, shaggy hair looking glassy in the sterile hospital light. I buried my face in my hands and screamed. Wake up, wake up, please wake up, Kouichi! My body felt like it was floating; my friends' panicked voices echoed faintly and I fell into darkness.

I woke up in Dad's car, on the way home. In just seconds I remembered everything, but I didn't make a sound. Dad's reflection in the rear-view mirror looked strained. Whether from work or me, I wasn't sure. I didn't want to ask. So I closed my eyes and stayed quiet. When we got home, I stayed limp as Dad carried me into the house and tucked me into bed, so I wouldn't have to talk to him about what had happened.

I lay awake for hours, silent, dry-eyed. I didn't think I could cry again.

I later learned that the hospital had called Dad to come take me home. Nothing life-threatening had made me pass out. Though Dad never mentioned Kouichi to me, something in his eyes told me that he knew. We never talked about it. He didn't know how to bring it up to me, and I didn't want to.

When I went to school the next day I tried to make like nothing had changed, but it was impossible. Nothing could ever be the same again after everything that had happened. I tried to keep in touch with the gang. Then they tried to keep in touch with me, and then I cut them off altogether. I didn't want to, but my depression told me that I had to. It told me that I didn't deserve to eat. It told me that I only deserved the pain of a razor slicing through my skin over and over, blood dripping from my arms and legs until I couldn't feel anything else but sweet pain.

I wound up hospitalized a couple times, and every time they would pump me full of nutrients and psychobabble.

The last time I went there, I nearly died; I hadn't eaten for a week and I'd made myself bleed until I was too dizzy to steer the blade. Nothing mattered to me anymore, I'd told them at one point. Just let me go. I don't want to make it. They were afraid that I wouldn't.

I remember lying in a plane between sleep and wakefulness, staring out the window but seeing nothing. Then, crazy as it sounds, I heard a voice in my head. This can't be the way you want to go. You can't let it end like this. Don't stop fighting yet.

I still don't eat much, but I've recovered most of the weight that I lost. All the scars I have are old.

Everyone called my recovery a miracle.

~/~

The rain came down even harder; I watched someone go by with an umbrella overhead. I took a last look at the headstone. Kimura, Kouichi. I never wanted to read that he was only eleven years old when he died. Hands in my pockets, I turned from the grave and walked out of the cemetery. Time to go home.