Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

32) Glass Masks

Every night was the same, and it had been for a while. 

Ken wasn't even surprised when the images of the Dark Ocean came to the forefront of his mind as he sat up in bed. His stomach muscles had grown stronger than ever before over the course of the past month with how often he shot up in bed late at night as he tried to nurse away the pounding of a headache and the emotional turmoil of a nightmare. It barely even bothered him as he shifted his position so that his knees were pressed against his chest as he leaned against the wall, one hand brushing gently along his temple as he tried to banish the migraine before it could fully fester. 

Ken had grown tragically used to the visions that came to him late at night. Every single night brought with it the same dizzying routine. He was standing in the Dark Ocean within his dreams, and he heard those familiar whispers pressed into his ear. The wind itself seemed to be delivering the sound to him, and there was little he could do to fight back against it. He would search for a source only to find nothing. 

A week and a half had passed since he first saw the outline of Osamu cloaked in shadows in the depths of his nightmares, and the image had resurfaced each night since. Ken couldn't help but think with twisted bitterness about how he was older than Osamu had been at the time of his death by a few years, and he hated how he stood taller than Osamu even in his nightmares. Time was a cruel beast, and he was fully aware of it. His throat felt dry each time that he tried to articulate how dreadful it was to see his brother seemingly haunting him again after all these years. 

July had arrived, and while the month was in its infancy, Ken saw this as one thing only: the days were crawling closer to the most dreadful anniversary that he knew how to name. The day on which Osamu died had been hot and suppressive in its summery haze. It was marked on no calendar, but he knew exactly when it was that his brother had died. He would wake up on the designated morning with a sensation inside of him like a punch to the stomach, as if the world was trying to suffocate him. He didn't even bother to fight back, and the grief consumed him for a few brief hours before sleep became his reprieve. A few times in the past, Ken could have sworn that his brother visited him in his dreams as a way of saying goodbye and to check up on his brother. He had never mentioned the nighttime visions to any other, instead keeping them as one final secret between himself and the last traces of the brother that he had once known many years prior. 

All of that brought a new light to the recent events that had distorted Ken's life. He couldn't help but wish for the dreams of years past in which he was able to reach out and touch a fragmented image of his brother once again. These days, all he ever saw was hate and violence, as if every ounce of love in Osamu's eyes had been sucked out in the name of some harsh brand of cruelty that was trying actively to pull Ken to shreds. Part of him wanted to cry at the idea of seeing his brother turned against him in such a way. He knew deep down that it wasn't Osamu, but at the same time, he couldn't escape the outline of a figure so familiar that he had loved with all of his heart. Everything just felt too complicated and tempestuous for him to even want to come up with an explanation behind it. 

Instead, Ken just allowed his arm to snake out towards Wormmon. His hair was a mess, and a few strands of it were falling into his eyes, but none of that mattered. Wormmon was still sound asleep, curled over himself in his favorite sleeping position. He was close to Ken as always, and his face was so perfectly at peace that it made Ken feel better by association. Wormmon hadn't been showing it openly, but he was struggling with a lack of sleep as well. He always seemed to wake up when he noticed that something was going on with Ken, and that had a negative impact on him as the days rolled by. Ken was glad that his partner was finally able to stay asleep for a short while, and he wasn't going to wake Wormmon up when it was just the same old story on a dizzying loop. Every night felt like some ghastly figure was pressing rewind on an old tape that just wanted to make Ken suffer, and he didn't want to pester Wormmon with the same song and dance for what felt like the thousandth night in a row.