Chapter Text
The air was thick with smoke and static, the landscape torn asunder by the latest ambush from the Digimon Emperor’s control towers. Wires slithered through the cracked earth like mechanical vines, corrupting everything they touched. It had been hours since the DigiDestined had split up to try to take down the latest fortress—but none of them expected how quickly everything would go to hell.
Davis Motomiya coughed, blood trickling from his lips as he tried to crawl through the wreckage of the crumbling hilltop. A sharp pain lanced through his body again, worse than any injury he’d felt before. Looking down, his vision blurry, he saw it—metal rebar, jagged and rusted, impaled clean through his abdomen. The world around him spun violently.
“Veemon…?” he croaked out, but no voice answered. His Digivice was gone. His friends were gone. Only the cold silence of the battlefield remained.
He was alone.
High above, the Digimon Emperor stood at the edge of a cliff, his cloak whipping in the wind, his control spire humming behind him like a living thing. Ken Ichijouji—no, the Emperor—watched the scene below with an unreadable expression.
He had been monitoring the battle. Davis’s signal had gone dark almost an hour ago. Most of the time, he’d relish the thought of eliminating one of his enemies, of taking out the irritating leader who constantly stood in the way of progress. But this— this felt different.
Maybe it was because it was Davis.
He shouldn’t have cared. He didn’t care.
And yet…
With a silent command, the Emperor summoned one of his gliders and descended into the smoke. The corrupted data fog curled around him like a living shadow, whispering lies. But he ignored it, laser-focused on the weak, fading signal he was tracking.
Then he saw him.
Davis was half-buried under debris, pale and barely breathing. The rebar pierced through his stomach, blood pooling beneath him in dark red smears. His goggles, cracked. His Digivice, nowhere in sight.
Ken froze.
This was it. This was his chance to end it. To finally rid himself of the thorn in his side.
But his hand wouldn’t move.
He stared at Davis’s face. Despite the pain etched into it, there was still something stubbornly… alive there. Something human.
Ken swallowed thickly and slowly knelt beside him. “You idiot… Why didn’t you run?”
Davis’s eyes fluttered weakly open for just a second. “Ken…?” he whispered.
That was the last thing he said before slipping under.
Ken’s heart jumped in his chest. “Tch,” he muttered, half-angrily, half-panicked. “You really are stupid.”
Carefully, far more gently than he expected of himself, Ken began pulling the debris away. Then came the hardest part—removing the rebar. He hissed as blood gushed out the second it slid free, staining his gloves. Davis’s body convulsed weakly before going limp again.
He was dying.
Ken cursed under his breath and lifted Davis into his arms. “Don’t make me regret this,” he said quietly, pressing a button on his wrist device. Within seconds, his hidden base shimmered into view—his hovering fortress camouflaged in the clouds.
An L-shaped monstrosity of steel and shadow (Author’s Note: You can’t tell me that it ISN’T a literal gigantic L shaped base! Try me, YOU CAN’T!!) Home.
He brought Davis inside.
The Emperor’s quarters were sterile, quiet—like a prison disguised as a throne. Ken laid Davis on the bed, hastily grabbing every medical tool and serum he could find from his private stash. Stitching wounds, disinfecting the impalement site, monitoring vitals—none of this was supposed to be part of his plans.
But neither was this feeling.
Night after night, he sat by Davis’s bedside, watching the boy fight through fever, blood loss, and sepsis. For weeks, he didn’t wake. For weeks, Ken didn’t leave his side.
“You’re an idiot,” he whispered one night, brushing sweaty hair from Davis’s forehead. “But you’re mine now. And I won’t let you die.”
Not yet.
Not until he understood why Davis mattered.
And why, somehow… he mattered back.
To be continued…
:)
Hehehe, I’m not sorry about this chat— >:D