Apex of the World

Extended Friendship

He walked a fine line between the light and the dark.

It was dangerous how close he came to falling to the latter over the course of his summertime adventures. Stability was a faraway dream for Yamato, and he walked close enough to touch it but was never quite able to do so.

Life shook the instant his mother and father sat him down with his younger brother to say their relationship would be no more. They insisted that family still existed outside of those four walls of their Highton View Terrace apartment, but he knew better. He knew pretty words did little to cover up the sickening lie that everything was being torn apart from the seams when he could do nothing to stop it.

Perhaps that was when the darkness took hold of his mind, whispered in his ear that there was no happy ending for him. There were countless frontiers to explore, horizons to expand, but were they truly real so long as everything was fragmented and broken? Did dawn even exist? With how long the night was, he wondered if even the moon was real, because there sure as hell wasn't any light in sight.

Then came the tidal waves, islands, gears, and wars.

Then came a partner who didn't ask for words when actions were enough to convey everything. Then came a bond with the brother he was so sure he had lost when four walls were blown in by the hurricane of divorce. Then came a family different than he could have ever anticipated.

And yet, the darkness lingered out of the corner of his eyes.

It always seemed to pursue him no matter how close he strayed to the sun. In the world of data, it came in the form of a tree with way too much to say about his life. Looking back, Yamato longed to give that damn tree a piece of his mind, but he lacked the means to do so, instead doing his best to make up for actions that he wished he had never carried out in the first place.

He could still remember all of the terrors he had unleashed during his time of turmoil when darkness was so close he could feel it on his skin. He had apologized over and over for the sins he had committed, for leaving behind his family, but it never seemed to be good enough. The darkness still sought him when he shut his eyes, and the world of dreams that rested in his mind never forgot the invisible tears that dripped from his fingers each and every day.

Despite the darkness, there was light to combat it.

Light was the way his little brother smiled as they shared a family for the first time in years. Light was how he discovered the true value of his Friendship and put it to action. Light was the blue written across his chest in an ink that could never be erased.

The truth that shook Yamato's world into disarray was the knowledge that his family would be dispersing. This allowed the darkness to creep into his mind, to sit on his shoulder and whisper things he would never say out loud. It gave his demons a platform to stand on as the weight of the world slowly began to crush him.

What brought him back from such depths? A new family. It was found relations through a series of events involving monsters, combat, hope, freedom, heartbreak, and war. His parents were divided, his blood family left as a shadow of its former self, but blood of the covenant remained thicker than water of the womb. When a thousand evil claws tried to scratch and scrape and scar his life, it was the ties he made that eased him out of his own despair.

Years went by, and even as life swept them up in its tempest, the memories remained. Blue light still shone from his chest in his dreams, chasing away the nightmares that plagued him eternally. The family he had found continued to keep him from letting the darkness mar his consciousness. Friendship, wolves, and ice remained by his side when the world turned against him.

His need to protect his brother faded with time. His need to hold onto the last shred of hope that maybe the family he had been born to would reunite faded with time. Instead, it was replaced with a new urge. He longed to reach out to the people who had been there for him, his fellow children who had charged into the fires of war, and it refused to be quelled as time passed by.

He extended his hand to the people who loved him, leaving behind the past that had kept him anchored down for so long. His Friendship reached out, pulling others in with the swirling power it possessed, and suddenly, he was free. His ankles were no longer tethered to a vision of who he once was that restrained him from becoming who he wanted to be. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he could fly.

He walked a thin line between the darkness and the light, and in the end, he was touched by both.

He was crafted from both sides of the spectrum, made into a young man who had seen hell long enough to want to keep others from slipping as he had. He was made into a young man who fought in honor of the light and those who had gifted it to him. The purity of blue written on his chest told of Friendship and joy, and amidst darkness and light, he found both.

The blood of the covenant was thicker than the water of the womb, but it was only the mixing of the darkness and light that taught him such.

It was a fine line Yamato walked, but he didn't mind, because it had freed him and forged him.

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These are so much fun to do omg

Also I accidentally forgot to post this yesterday so double update

-Digital