Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

47) Until Day Breaks

No matter how Ken looked at it, he didn't feel like it was nine in the morning. 

He knew exactly why this was the case too. The sky was the same dreary smudge of gray that it always had been, and it wasn't as if there was an easy way to track the passage of time when everything looked the same no matter what time of day it was. The clock in the corner of the D-Terminal's screen was the only real indication Ken had that any time had gone by at all, and it was already starting to mess with his head no matter how he tried to ground himself. 

Still, there were a few positives that he hadn't yet addressed openly. He and Daisuke were getting closer to the destination that they had been seeking, and it was only a matter of time before they met up with at least a few other members of the group. Given how long they had been walking, it didn't even feel real to Ken, but he knew that it was just a matter of time before the team was reunited in full thanks to the progress that they had made. It had been less than a day since they were last together, but it still felt like a decade had passed, and Ken didn't think that he was going to be able to convince himself that time had passed otherwise. 

Daisuke was doing better since they had started taking more frequent breaks. Daisuke seemed to realize that he wasn't going to be able to keep pushing himself to the edge of his own limits if he wanted to be able to meet up with the rest of the group in a timely manner, and as such, he started saying when his wound began to bother him. The injury wouldn't be able to heal if he kept on pushing himself too hard, and Ken made sure that he knew it each time that they stopped. The last thing that Ken wanted was for Daisuke to feel guilty for doing something that would ultimately benefit him, so he was more than ready o say it as many times as he had to in order to make sure that Daisuke believed it. 

The group had been walking for about half an hour since their last break, and Ken couldn't help but wonder just how much this was going to distort his perception of time along with his sleep schedule when he arrived on Earth once again. Staying up so late and then getting up every few hours to keep walking for another handful of hours was hardly helpful for him, and when he got back to Earth, the first thing that he was going to do was collapse onto his bed and lay there until he was forced to get up by some other higher power of the universe. 

"You know, I'm glad that I have you in my life."

Ken was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't even realize Daisuke was going to be saying something until after his companion had spoken up. He perked up and glanced over in the direction of the other boy, his eyes going wide. "What do you mean?" he questioned, the random statement striking something deep inside of Ken that he never could have anticipated. 

"I guess that I was just thinking about the attack that Daemon led on Earth," Daisuke confessed as he looked up at the sky overhead. "I know that I did the right thing, and if I had no other choice, I would do it again. That much I don't think will ever change. But... It just made me think about the fact that I could have lost you back then. We all could have. I don't know what I would do if something like that happened. I don't think that any of us would have known."

Ken could do nothing but stare at Daisuke, and no matter how much he wanted to speak, he wasn't able to convince his body to actually follow his commands to say something that would break through the silence. He wound up opening his mouth before pressing his lips together once again soon afterwards, unable to force himself to pry his mouth apart for long enough for him to gather his thoughts and express them. He hadn't been expecting Daisuke to say much of anything, and he certainly hadn't anticipated all of that. 

Daisuke seemed to notice just how speechless Ken was, and he let out a small laugh as he tucked his arms up behind his head. "It's just me talking randomly, I guess. I don't want anything bad to happen to you or anybody else, and the idea of losing somebody from our team... I really don't know how to handle it," he confessed. "You all mean a lot to me. I could probably say that a thousand times over though, and it probably wouldn't come close to expressing just how much I meant that."