Yamato Ishida (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angry_friendship_wolf) wrote2019-01-02 09:26 pm
angry_friendship_wolf) wrote2019-01-02 09:26 pm
[tri OOM] Deserts are not appreciably less deadly than the sea
It takes time -- Yamato has no idea how long -- for him to stop hacking and coughing his lungs out, to get enough strength back in his limbs to clamber to his feet and get a good look at his surroundings. It’s … a desert. Maybe the Server Desert, maybe somewhere completely different, but either way it’s hot, and dry, and there’s sand as far as the eye can see.
His arm feels like someone jabbed a knife through it. Checking, he sees that the bandages have come away, and several of the sutures appear to have been ripped apart, leaving the top part of the wound exposed to the elements. The medical supplies were all on the raft, though, which means they’re now either at the bottom of the ocean or scattered across the Digital World.
He brings his wrist computer up, switching it on, and is surprised to see that it actually still works, despite having been dunked in seawater. With a few flicks of his fingers, he opens Koushiro’s distortion-tracking program, making a few alterations to the algorithm to account for being in an unknown but definitely not File Island location, and lets it run. It takes longer than he’d like, but eventually a map of the world appears, along with fifteen red dots.
The first good news is that he’s in the Server Desert, apparently, albeit a long way away from any town. He skims his eyes over the map, tracking the positions of the red dots.
“Eight in the Server Desert,” he murmurs. He’s fairly sure that he’s the red dot furthest to the south, if the way the map seems to radiate out from it is anything to go by. “Six on a continent to the west, and one lucky person on File Island.”
The map doesn’t list any network points that he could use to contact the others nearby, so instead he sets his gaze on the closest dot. It’s several days walk, at least, and whoever they are, they’ll almost certainly be moving, making finding them unlikely. But it’s the only lead he’s got.
“Let’s go, then,” he mutters to himself, and starts walking.
---
The daylight is scorching, and with only a few bottles of water and a few meal bars in his sylladex, Yamato tries his best to ration them, taking a sip of water only when he absolutely has to, a bite of a meal bar only when he feels hunger making him falter. It doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere: Hours of walking yield only more desert, more sand, with no caves or water sources or towns anywhere.
The night is worse. As the sun falls, the heat turns freezing, accompanied by a chill wind sweeping in from the south. Yamato settles into the shadow of a sand dune to try to escape from the cold wind, and wraps his coat a little more tightly around himself.
His wound is infected -- small ‘i’ infected, luckily, red and hot instead of glitching textures. He thought it might just be irritated at first, that the seawater and sand inflamed it, but the skin around it is streaked with a deep red now, and he can feel a fever making him light-headed.
Briefly, he considers washing the wound with some of his water, except he already doesn’t have enough to last him long, and dehydration will kill him before infection does anyway.
He doesn’t sleep much. It’s too cold, and the fever makes the ground feel like it’s spinning even when he lies down. He sets off again before the sun rises.
---
He reaches the red dot after just over three days, through fierce sunlight and icy nights that all seem to blur together into one indistinguishable mush. He almost doesn’t realise it at first: The fever combined with the heat is making him nearly delirious, he’s almost out of water, and his arm is turning an ugly and unnatural shade. He barely knows how much time has even passed, or how far he’s walked, but he’s here. At his destination.
There is nothing here.
No team member, human or Digimon. No supplies. No lingering remnant of the distortion. Just sand. He chuckles wryly, sinking into the sand for a moment, folding his legs under him and shutting his eyes. He’s so tired.
Focus. You’re suffering from a fever, dehydration, and heat exhaustion. You need to push through it and keep walking.
That is a lot easier thought than done. Still, he makes himself take a knee, and then rise to his feet, opening the distortion-tracking program.
Another distortion opened nearby, on the day when they all landed here. A day’s walk, maybe. But whoever came through that one would have moved as well, and he knows they won’t be there when he gets there. He needs to find a town. Or water. He’s not going to survive if he doesn’t.
He lifts his head, blinking against the light of the sun, scanning the horizon. There, hills. Hills might mean shade, which might mean water, which might mean a town. It’s the only chance he has.
He checks his water. A little under half a bottle left. He takes a gulp of it, then puts it back into his sylladex so that he won’t be tempted to drink any more until he has to.
---
He walks doggedly through the rest of the day, past the point where he runs out of water. He doesn’t even feel the heat beating down on him anymore. It’s just like walking underwater, slowly trying to lever limbs that feel like they’re made of concrete.
He walks, through sunset and into the night, where it’s too dark for him to even see the hills, and he just has to trust that they’re there. He’s aware, distantly, that it’s cold, but it feels completely detached from him.
Just lie down and go to sleep.
The sand is soft, and the cold’s not so bad. Stop walking. Sleep.
The others are gone. You’re not going to find them.
“Shut up,” Yamato mutters. “I just need to …”
You’re not going to find water. There’s no point to all of this. There’s no water that way.
Just let it happen. It’s okay. You won’t even feel it.
It’s fine. You never thought you’d live this long anyway. You could’ve died when you were eight. When you were eleven. When you were twelve. Fourteen. Fifteen.
“That doesn’t mean I plan on -- ...”
Is this how Gabumon felt?
“Shut up! Shut up!” Yamato yells, dragging a hand up to drive his palm into his forehead. This time there’s no response. “It wasn’t …”
He continues loping onwards to the mountain, his legs moving automatically even without him feeling them, until eventually he sees the sun starting to rise.
---
There’s shade in the hills, but no water, or even any plantlife. Just rocky, barren mounds, clustered around what looks like a set of disused train tracks.
Yamato collapses down next to the tracks, settling his back against the rocks. At least there’s shade here. It clears his head, just for a few seconds, enough for him to realise he’s impossibly thirsty, and hungry, and exhausted, and his arm feels like it’s rotting, and everything feels hot and sickly.
But there’s nowhere else to go. There’s just these barren hills, and the track, and the desert beyond.
“You’re dying,” Jureimon says.
“Yeah,” Yamato says, shutting his eyes. “I know.”
“Don’t you want to live?”
Well, there’s a question the real Jureimon sure as hell wouldn’t have ever asked.
“You aren’t even really here. You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Yamato says. “I … I hope the others are okay. Maybe they found a town or something.”
“Are you going to leave them?” It’s Wizarmon’s voice this time, right next to his ear.
“They’ll get over it,” Yamato says. “I’m just glad they aren’t here to see it. I’m kind of a mess, y’know? Talking to people who aren’t there. I don’t want them to see me like this.”
“As you saw Gabumon when he died?” It’s Yukio Oikawa’s deep boom of a voice now. Yamato can practically feel the butterfly wings drifting past him.
“He didn’t even get to say goodbye. Not really. The Infection just … took his mind away. He didn’t even get to die as himself,” Yamato says, relaxing back against the rock. “I let him down. And every time I remember him as that mad animal he was when he died, I’m letting him down again, but it’s the only thing I see when I try to think about him.”
There’s no response. Just the quiet whistling of the wind through the hills. Yamato breathes out. He knows the sun is beating down on him with desert heat, but he just feels cold. Cold and empty and alone.
He thinks he hears a train bell in the distance, like the one from File Island. Just another delusion.
His fingers twitch. He feels coarse mithril fur under them, like tightly packed metal wires, almost sharp enough to cut his fingers. He smiles up at the sun.
“Hey, Gabumon,” he says. “I’ve missed you. Even if you’re back, I still … I still miss you. The you I went on all those adventures with. Hey, remember that time I got pneumonia, and you gave me your fur to warm me up? Or when you nearly ate my old man? D’you remember when you bit my leg? I’ve still got the scar, asshole. And people say that you’re the soft and fuzzy one out of the two of us. What a joke.”
He feels that sharp, bristly fur move against his arm, and across his cheek, and the warm weight of Gabumon’s body curl up against him.
“I guess it’s okay if it’s you. I can live with that.”
There’s that train bell again. It’s closer now, even if it sounds like Yamato’s hearing it from the other end of a swimming pool they’re both submerged in. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a memory of File Island to soothe him to sleep.
Sleep takes him all at once, as soon as he lets it, and the last thing that registers is the feeling of Gabumon’s fur under his hand.
His arm feels like someone jabbed a knife through it. Checking, he sees that the bandages have come away, and several of the sutures appear to have been ripped apart, leaving the top part of the wound exposed to the elements. The medical supplies were all on the raft, though, which means they’re now either at the bottom of the ocean or scattered across the Digital World.
He brings his wrist computer up, switching it on, and is surprised to see that it actually still works, despite having been dunked in seawater. With a few flicks of his fingers, he opens Koushiro’s distortion-tracking program, making a few alterations to the algorithm to account for being in an unknown but definitely not File Island location, and lets it run. It takes longer than he’d like, but eventually a map of the world appears, along with fifteen red dots.
The first good news is that he’s in the Server Desert, apparently, albeit a long way away from any town. He skims his eyes over the map, tracking the positions of the red dots.
“Eight in the Server Desert,” he murmurs. He’s fairly sure that he’s the red dot furthest to the south, if the way the map seems to radiate out from it is anything to go by. “Six on a continent to the west, and one lucky person on File Island.”
The map doesn’t list any network points that he could use to contact the others nearby, so instead he sets his gaze on the closest dot. It’s several days walk, at least, and whoever they are, they’ll almost certainly be moving, making finding them unlikely. But it’s the only lead he’s got.
“Let’s go, then,” he mutters to himself, and starts walking.
The daylight is scorching, and with only a few bottles of water and a few meal bars in his sylladex, Yamato tries his best to ration them, taking a sip of water only when he absolutely has to, a bite of a meal bar only when he feels hunger making him falter. It doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere: Hours of walking yield only more desert, more sand, with no caves or water sources or towns anywhere.
The night is worse. As the sun falls, the heat turns freezing, accompanied by a chill wind sweeping in from the south. Yamato settles into the shadow of a sand dune to try to escape from the cold wind, and wraps his coat a little more tightly around himself.
His wound is infected -- small ‘i’ infected, luckily, red and hot instead of glitching textures. He thought it might just be irritated at first, that the seawater and sand inflamed it, but the skin around it is streaked with a deep red now, and he can feel a fever making him light-headed.
Briefly, he considers washing the wound with some of his water, except he already doesn’t have enough to last him long, and dehydration will kill him before infection does anyway.
He doesn’t sleep much. It’s too cold, and the fever makes the ground feel like it’s spinning even when he lies down. He sets off again before the sun rises.
He reaches the red dot after just over three days, through fierce sunlight and icy nights that all seem to blur together into one indistinguishable mush. He almost doesn’t realise it at first: The fever combined with the heat is making him nearly delirious, he’s almost out of water, and his arm is turning an ugly and unnatural shade. He barely knows how much time has even passed, or how far he’s walked, but he’s here. At his destination.
There is nothing here.
No team member, human or Digimon. No supplies. No lingering remnant of the distortion. Just sand. He chuckles wryly, sinking into the sand for a moment, folding his legs under him and shutting his eyes. He’s so tired.
Focus. You’re suffering from a fever, dehydration, and heat exhaustion. You need to push through it and keep walking.
That is a lot easier thought than done. Still, he makes himself take a knee, and then rise to his feet, opening the distortion-tracking program.
Another distortion opened nearby, on the day when they all landed here. A day’s walk, maybe. But whoever came through that one would have moved as well, and he knows they won’t be there when he gets there. He needs to find a town. Or water. He’s not going to survive if he doesn’t.
He lifts his head, blinking against the light of the sun, scanning the horizon. There, hills. Hills might mean shade, which might mean water, which might mean a town. It’s the only chance he has.
He checks his water. A little under half a bottle left. He takes a gulp of it, then puts it back into his sylladex so that he won’t be tempted to drink any more until he has to.
He walks doggedly through the rest of the day, past the point where he runs out of water. He doesn’t even feel the heat beating down on him anymore. It’s just like walking underwater, slowly trying to lever limbs that feel like they’re made of concrete.
He walks, through sunset and into the night, where it’s too dark for him to even see the hills, and he just has to trust that they’re there. He’s aware, distantly, that it’s cold, but it feels completely detached from him.
Just lie down and go to sleep.
The sand is soft, and the cold’s not so bad. Stop walking. Sleep.
The others are gone. You’re not going to find them.
“Shut up,” Yamato mutters. “I just need to …”
You’re not going to find water. There’s no point to all of this. There’s no water that way.
Just let it happen. It’s okay. You won’t even feel it.
It’s fine. You never thought you’d live this long anyway. You could’ve died when you were eight. When you were eleven. When you were twelve. Fourteen. Fifteen.
“That doesn’t mean I plan on -- ...”
Is this how Gabumon felt?
“Shut up! Shut up!” Yamato yells, dragging a hand up to drive his palm into his forehead. This time there’s no response. “It wasn’t …”
He continues loping onwards to the mountain, his legs moving automatically even without him feeling them, until eventually he sees the sun starting to rise.
There’s shade in the hills, but no water, or even any plantlife. Just rocky, barren mounds, clustered around what looks like a set of disused train tracks.
Yamato collapses down next to the tracks, settling his back against the rocks. At least there’s shade here. It clears his head, just for a few seconds, enough for him to realise he’s impossibly thirsty, and hungry, and exhausted, and his arm feels like it’s rotting, and everything feels hot and sickly.
But there’s nowhere else to go. There’s just these barren hills, and the track, and the desert beyond.
“You’re dying,” Jureimon says.
“Yeah,” Yamato says, shutting his eyes. “I know.”
“Don’t you want to live?”
Well, there’s a question the real Jureimon sure as hell wouldn’t have ever asked.
“You aren’t even really here. You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Yamato says. “I … I hope the others are okay. Maybe they found a town or something.”
“Are you going to leave them?” It’s Wizarmon’s voice this time, right next to his ear.
“They’ll get over it,” Yamato says. “I’m just glad they aren’t here to see it. I’m kind of a mess, y’know? Talking to people who aren’t there. I don’t want them to see me like this.”
“As you saw Gabumon when he died?” It’s Yukio Oikawa’s deep boom of a voice now. Yamato can practically feel the butterfly wings drifting past him.
“He didn’t even get to say goodbye. Not really. The Infection just … took his mind away. He didn’t even get to die as himself,” Yamato says, relaxing back against the rock. “I let him down. And every time I remember him as that mad animal he was when he died, I’m letting him down again, but it’s the only thing I see when I try to think about him.”
There’s no response. Just the quiet whistling of the wind through the hills. Yamato breathes out. He knows the sun is beating down on him with desert heat, but he just feels cold. Cold and empty and alone.
He thinks he hears a train bell in the distance, like the one from File Island. Just another delusion.
His fingers twitch. He feels coarse mithril fur under them, like tightly packed metal wires, almost sharp enough to cut his fingers. He smiles up at the sun.
“Hey, Gabumon,” he says. “I’ve missed you. Even if you’re back, I still … I still miss you. The you I went on all those adventures with. Hey, remember that time I got pneumonia, and you gave me your fur to warm me up? Or when you nearly ate my old man? D’you remember when you bit my leg? I’ve still got the scar, asshole. And people say that you’re the soft and fuzzy one out of the two of us. What a joke.”
He feels that sharp, bristly fur move against his arm, and across his cheek, and the warm weight of Gabumon’s body curl up against him.
“I guess it’s okay if it’s you. I can live with that.”
There’s that train bell again. It’s closer now, even if it sounds like Yamato’s hearing it from the other end of a swimming pool they’re both submerged in. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a memory of File Island to soothe him to sleep.
Sleep takes him all at once, as soon as he lets it, and the last thing that registers is the feeling of Gabumon’s fur under his hand.