Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

46) Siren of Silence

Takeru reached for his bag where it sat on the sand below before he slung it over his shoulder, slipping his arm through the other strap before making sure that it was sitting evenly on his back. "Alright. Are we ready to go?" he asked of Iori and Armadimon. Patamon came to fly on his head, settling down perfectly on the top of Takeru's hat. 

Iori got his own bag ready before rising to his feet. He and Takeru had taken a brief break to gather their bearings once again, but they were off to meet with the rest of the group once again. They were getting closer to their destination, but there was still quite a way for them to go before everyone would be back together once again. 

"I think so," Iori responded. He glanced down to Armadimon and got a nod in response from his partner. With that said, the four started to move in the direction of the rest of the team. 

Iori did his best to keep his eyes locked on the path ahead. He didn't want to look like he was staring at Takeru regardless of how much he wanted to deep down. He still had quite a few questions about what was going on in the blonde's head, if he was being perfectly honest. Takeru hadn't really done all that much to yield even the slightest thing in terms of clues as to what he was thinking, not that Iori was particularly surprised by this. It seemed that when everything fell apart, Takeru's instinct was to buckle down on hiding everything that he could. 

Takeru had been like this for as long as Iori could remember. There were two different ways in which a person could know Takeru, and it took a long time to reach the more intimate and complete understanding of the blonde. Iori had managed to break through the outer shell of Takeru's emotional guard a long time, but it had taken quite some time for him to understand just what Takeru thought about on a regular basis. 

And just as soon as that understanding had come, it abandoned him when Takeru went back to his old habits, back to the ways of hiding his emotions that he had used back when the team first got together to fight against the Digimon Kaiser three years prior. Iori hated that Takeru was doing so much to restrict himself on a personal level, and he wished that there was more that he could do to help this situation. 

But that was the hard part. When Takeru wanted to hide something, he would make sure that nobody found out about it. Takeru was a professional when it came to keeping his secrets buried, and Iori had ultimately been forced to take rather roundabout pathways in order to find out what kept Takeru up at night. Iori hated that there was a wall between them all over again, forcing him to start over from an earlier checkpoint in a game without a save point or safe spot. 

Iori found himself speaking before he could stop his lips from moving. He already knew what response he was going to get, but that didn't stop him when push came to shove. "Are you alright?" Iori asked of Takeru. He was confident that Takeru was going to respond in the affirmative before deflecting everything that Iori could have wanted to ask him about. 

Takeru nodded. "Of course," he assured Iori, and Iori did his best to pretend that he didn't taste the sensation of a lie on the back of his tongue with those words. Iori valued honesty and integrity above all else, doing what he could to remain true to his ideals no matter what. It was the reason that he had been sent into such a state of struggle after Daisuke was hurt, and it was upsetting him as he tried to figure out what was happening with Takeru at present. 

"Stop it," Iori suddenly said softly, his voice lacking in intensity to soften the blow and lessen the risk of sending everything shattering to pieces with those two words. "You don't have to pretend that you're alright when we both know that isn't the case. You can talk to the rest of us. You can talk to me."

"I could say the same thing to you," Takeru countered, deflecting all attention from his own woes the same way that Iori knew that he would. "You don't have to be the rock of the team, Iori. It's okay if you show some weakness every once in a while. It's not a necessity for you to pretend that you're alright to keep the rest of us from worrying. After all, concern is just part of the package when it comes to the rest of us."