An Unseen Kindness chapter seven

Hyacinths.

I named this chapter Hyacinths after the flower symbolizing forgiveness.  It fits, I think.
So after the first cliffhanger in the whole story ( man I missed cliffhangers) I had some panic. Ken sees Kari. He's been avoiding everyone for a few weeks now, and for good reason. I'd probably avoid them too. But Ken doesn't run. he wants to, but running now would be turning his back on his mission of helping. He sees this as his last chance to help the digidestined. from his perspective, it is. Kari is all that is left. She's in a panic, distraught, and desperate, and Ken makes his choice- even though he want to get away and not speak to her, face her, because he feels unworthy, he stays. To do what he can.

If you notice, we never go into Kari's head in this. there are lots of pauses, but all we get from her are expressions and dialog, no thoughts, not even from the third person. that's because those will be explored in "Lead On", a two part song- story fic that I'll be writing in december.

This is the reveal chapter. From earlier chapters, we know Ken's motivations. We know exactly what and why. but he tells someone. Kari knows, and Ken faces his thoughts. Kari doesn't say much, and he's sure because she agrees- Ken honestly can't comprehend anyone thinking him worthy of being forgiven, worthy of thanks. All he can see is the red in his ledger, to paraphrase Avengers.

I don't ship Ken Kari. I don't. but their friendship is one I wished had been more explored. They have this connection to darkness, Kari because she fights it, Ken because he was drawn in and broke free. If I write another story in this timeline, if I come up with a plot, that's going to be a thing.

also, as I write this post, I'm realizing something i forgot to include again. gosh dangit. I'll work it into a one shot or something. I hope.

It was a small bit of dialog, that doesn't quite fit but that I liked, where Ken talks about how sorry he is and Kari says, 'you didn't know.' as if realizing that for the first time. and then she was going to tell him that she understood. that once a good friend of hers had fought against her, and Ken was going to say something about "I nearly killed you! I...you could have died, and I would have done it. It's not some playground bully, I was a monster, a killer." And Kari would touch Gatomon's egg and say, " so was she." and THEN Kari was going to give that line, the one that rings in Ken's ears and he doesn't understand it.

because how can she say it? This girl- he took from her her best friend, he kidnapped her, he nearly killed her, he nearly killed her best human friend, over and over she and her brother and friends came so close to death, and he's only cursed that they'd survived- how can she of all people, the girl of Light with the Angel digimon, how can she forgive him? But she does.


There's just one more chapter of this, a wrap up. I'm taking a wee break for the rest of the month (sorry) to work on NaNoWriMo, but I'll be fanficcing again come december! see you then!

An Unseen Kindness 6

Chapter 6: Before Dawn.

This was GOING to be one long chapter but I split it up because reasons. reasons like: "I'm sleepy" and "Oh, there's a nice cliffhanger ha ha ha" so yeah. I was pretty happy with how this came out.

I wrote it over a very long weekend, mostly sunday afternoon at the Scottish Highland games in Ventura. T'was pretty awesome.
so, onward.  THIS IS THE NIGHT WHERE STUFF WENT DOWN. everything's going wrong and Ken is on the edges of it.

here is also where Ken sorta breaks a little because everything is so real and he thinks the kids are *dead* and feels so *guilty* poor baby Ken I just want to hug him.

Also tiny cuteness with Joe and Mimi with Joe having fallen protecting her as she protected Palmon. cuties.
 And then of course is the line that was supposed to be in the last chapter, with Ken realizing that this scene- the dead kids- was what he had been trying to do for MONTHS and he feels so awful and wretched and it's ripping him apart.

AND THEN A DREAM YAY DREAMS ARE SUCH FUN.
Seriously. prophetic Voice-dreams for everyone.

And while the Voice spoke to T.K. and Kari to warn, it speaks to Ken to reassure. to comfort. to say, you are not a monster.

because above all that's what Ken needs to know. and there is a last phrase, unfinished, only half heard.
and It'll come up in one of the last two chapters. Promise.

finally, the end scene. Kari falls from the sky. you all will get to find out how she survived! exciting!


I'll try to update soonish.

An Unseen Kindness Chapter 5

so after far too long I finally wrote chapter 5!
first- this chapter has a title. I almost called it "Hyacinths" after the flowers Ken brings. but then I didn't. I'm currently trying to come up with names for the previous chapters.

I wrote this chapter ENTIRELY by hand in about three hours while my mother was at the Mormon Family History Center near where I live. I go to keep her company, and it gets me away from the internet so I'm not distracted.

This was my favorite chapter too write so far, and was one that I'd been planning the longest-  this was the Core of the story. So yeah.
I'm expecting one more chapter and an epilogue. It's a much shorter story than the others, but it's the longest of the companions, so that's something.
I missed Wormmon here, don't worry he'll be in the next chapter. or rather Stingmon will.

So let's dive right in.

It opens in the flowershop. At first, this chapter was too be much shorter, it would be Ken entering Matt's room and just that scene and that would be it and readers would have to look at the blog to see the meaning of the flowers, which I looked up waaaaaay back last year while writing A Fading Hope because look and check, it's the same flowers! I did all the research!! but then I realized that like one person reads the blog ( hi Crestoflight3!) so I decided that it needed to get brought up in the story. and because I was thinking about Sora's mom... well, it happened. Toshiko's Garden is not the real name, I don't think, but it was never given a name in the show so I named it after a local flowershop where I live. The Garden part, not the Toshiko's part. anyway.
It was nice to see Sora's Mom here, less frantic about her daughter.

About the flowers- yes, those are the meanings of the flowers. I found them. I was always really into the meanings of things- rocks, flowers, names- so I thought it'd be really cool to work some symbolism in there. (oh my gosh I'm an English teacher send help)

This was also a REALLY emotional chapter to write. Um, I kinda cried a little. because I got really in character with Ken and all, and it was HARD. One thing about his character is he constantly blames himself for everything, particularly Sam's death. so I added to that guilt because I am a writer and am apparently a terrible person.

Here in the hospital, after Nancy leaves, Ken gets his first- practice, I guess, at saying sorry to the DD. He knows Matt can't hear him, but hey. He wants to say it. He's so sorry. And he feels like this is as close as he will ever get to saying sorry because he can't face the others, can't. They won't listen. they hate him. they ought to, anyway. he can't look them in the eye, he doesn't deserve to. Poor Ken, he's really messed up at this point.
And it spills out- how sorry he is. how much he wishes he could fix. how much he blames himself.
And then come the memories- two sets. the first his his own, of being a child and his brother dying, his brother dead.
the second set is his imagining what it was like for Matt and Nancy and T.K's family to feel the pain he felt- knowing that he might well have killed T.K.
I actually forgot to include a continuation of this thought- even after the near death of TK in A Captive Light, Ken KEEPS TRYING TO KILL THEM.  and he knows now- so many times, he was nearly a murderer, it was only so many miracles that kept the DD alive. The guilt is crushing.

I guess that will happen next chapter!

Then goes another plot point- he sees Matt's jacket, thinks it's Tai's and leaves Kari's necklace in the pocket. Only it's not Tai's, it's Matt's, and it's not just a necklace, it's the Crest of Light.
so yeah. THAT'S HOW TK GOT THE CREST FOLKS! IT WAS KEN!!! MYSTERY = SOLVED.

I feel clever.

lastly, as has happened in pretty much all the stories, this chapter ends with a faint light- but this time it's NOT Kari's Light-Voice-Digital-World-Spirit-Thing.
this is the light of KEN'S CREST GLOWING, in the flowers that he brought.

the next update will be Apt 217 (which I will blog about) probably Friday or Saturday. see you then!

heh

Hey guys.
Soo, bad news.
My computer was old. 6 years old.
and it died. Type MacLaptop is no more.
I've got a replacement, but all my story notes and stuff was on the old one. I'll see what can be recovered when I get home next week (I'm still at school) but I dunno.
so the coming chapters might take a while.
mid august is about when I'll be posting again, I think. Unless I'm inspired on my multi-day road trip. We'll see!
hope you're having a great summer!

Bring Them Home.

Bring Them Home
Song- Bring Him Home from Les Miserables.

This is my first song fic in ages- the first was a companion to my first fic, a terrible mary sue fic oh gosh I'd delete it if it didn't have 60+ reviews.
Neither here nor there.

This was the most emotionally exhausting piece I've written, competing with the Dark Ocean chapters of A Fading Hope and the short story I wrote about being bullied in middle school.
I actually had to stop half way through and go into the living room and watch some mindless destruction AKA Independence Day with my roommates.

So.
First things first, of all the characters in the Digimon franchise, there are dozens who get like a minute of screen time and have names.
Mrs. Ichijouji did not have a first name. She's not on the character list on fanfiction.net. ( maybe we should fix that somehow?)
So I named her Aina, which means Love and Affection and also Vegetables. I thought it fit nicely.
I named her husband Yori, which means Trust.

When I first came up with this idea, I planned it for Izzy's mum and T.K.'s mum, and that was it. But as I started planning it- a month ago? I started thinking I could adapt it, that Ken belonged in there because I love his mother, and then- Sora too, because her mom is the only other one in the group that Knows and Understands and lives with that knowledge that her child is fighting something. Might not come home.

Let's talk about these moms.
I love the moms, I love Moms on a whole- my mom is my best friend, and when I'm away at school I miss her more than anything.

So I enjoy writing about moms.
Ken's mom is the least 'in the know' about her son's activity, but she knows something is wrong, and wishes she could help him. She does what she can, giving him all the love that she, well, didn't show very well as Ken was growing. I don't think it was her fault, exactly. I think that when Sam died, something in her broke, and is only now starting to heal.

Sora's mom is an interesting character, she had a huge, huge, huge impact on Sora's life, and her crest. She is not a soft hug mother, but a lioness, fierce, protective, and... not the best at explaining things? But she loves her daughter so much, and wants to protect her from all the danger. I feel like, of the knowing mothers, she's the least comfortable with it. Part of her wants to take Sora away from it all, but she knows she can't do that. She has to trust her daughter.

T.K's mom is similar to Sora's- she knows that this is something her sons have to do, but that doesn't mean she likes it. She's not very close to Matt, but as of A Fading Hope, I think they are getting closer. He comes over for dinner some nights, she goes to his concerts, but it's a new relationship. She knows the danger of the digiworld best of all, heard T.K. crying out from nightmares in those last few years, saw T.K in the hospital because of it. She's terrified of losing her family.

Izzy's mom has got to be one of my favorite characters. There's a line, a throw away line, never brought up again, that has haunted my thoughts since I was a kid- "we had lost a little boy of our own, you see"  I wanted to know that story. Izzy's mom loves Izzy so much- it hurt when he buried himself in his texts. She's so grateful that the Digiworld, in a way, brought her son, the son of her heart, back to her. At the same time she fears it will take him away forever.


I'd already established that Matt's family was religious. I'm not sure where that came from, probably another fanfiction, but I liked it, so I kept it. Nancy is a religious woman, God has been there for her in her darkest moments so she begs Him to bring her sons back to her.

Aina's sections were as much about her own failure as a mother and trying to make up for it as her missing Ken. She's the odd duck out at this point- she doesn't know what Ken is up against physically. She's thinking about his spirit, his heart- the sorrow inside him, not the demon things without.

Sora's mom, as I said, mostly focuses on wishing she could shield her daughter, take her place. Her daughter, she knows for a fact, is missing and is physically injured, and Toshiko wishes desperately she could protect her daughter- she's always protected Sora, and now she can't.

But it's Yoshie's section that is, if you will, the center piece of the story. I never got an explanation for what happened to that little boy.
Her story was inspired by the story of a friend of mine's sister. Her little boy died at birth, because of the same condition. It was reading her blog and her story that whispered to me- this is the story of the little boy. This is what happened to him.
I named him Eiji- meaning eternity.
It was so hard to write.
Another reason was that I was almost that lost child. I was born 6 weeks early ( a far cry from five months, I know) I was 3 pounds, 1 ounce, and only about a foot long. The doctors said I would die, there was no hope for me. Unlike Eiji and Tiny Baby, I got my miracle.
It was close though, and I will never be normal.

Yoshie clung to Izzy, he was a bright spot, and he was her son, and she loved him, and she's lost so much and as much as she knows he had to go... she was so afraid of losing him. And now, maybe she has.

Then there's the repetition- Come home, come home, come home, come home; Bring him home.
I thought it fit nicely.

I'll TRY to write the next chapter of Unseen Kindness for next week, but I've got two papers due Thursday and Saturday, so that might not happen.

A Fading Hope chapter four

A Fading Hope chapter four

Confession, I wrote this chapter in like... an hour and a half. I didn't put a whole lot of effort into it. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter though :)

But let's talk.
Ken is still very much trapped and hurting, he blames himself for all he did and is still beating himself up over it.

Even after saving Sora's life- twice- he can't face the Digidestined. He just can't. He's terrified of what they'll do, what they'll say. He knows they still hate him, they wish he was dead ( not wholly true) and that they can never see past what he's done. more importantly though, is that KEN can't see past what he's done. These last weeks he's been helping. Rebuilding, destroying spires, protecting digimon...but it's just so that his guilt doesn't get worse. It's not about- "if I do this much good, I'll be redeemed" it's "If I don't do as much good as I can, I'm even worse than I was."

My heart aches for Ken.
Poor duck.

But here we see some of the first tie ins to A Fading Hope. That light that destroyed the gears chasing Sora? Was Ken. Ken sent the email, Ken got the pillar off of her and bandaged her leg.
Pretty awesome, huh?

An Unseen Kindness chapter 3

I wrote this today, yay!

Chapter three.
For a chapter without much action, I liked this. I liked writing it.
I do not like how long it took me to sit my butt down and write it. six weeks! almost seven! bah!
but I did write it, that's what counts.

So Ken is back at it, trying to fix up the digiworld. And at least now he has Stingmon to help, big, strong Stingmon. But Stingmon/Wormmon notices- this is a big job. But Ken can't ask for help- who would help him- he's convinced the other DD hate his guts. Which some probably do. Cody for one, had a hard time forgiving him in the show, and what with nearly killing TK- it just got that much harder. I also think that Matt is going to have a much harder time, and of course TK. because how do you do that, even knowing he didn't understand what it meant- forgiveness is hard. It's a theme in this story, the theme. A Captive light had the theme of undying loyalty, a Fading Hope had the theme of hope and light triumphing over despair. And An Unseen Kindness is about redemption, something Ken is certain he can't obtain.
The thing is, though- he can. He just can't see it.

As I've said, I love Ken's mother. So much. She and Mrs. Izumi are some of the best moms ever. They don't really know what's going on, but they love their sons so much. I'm excited to work with both of them in this story and in Apartment 217.
They really are alike, though Ken's mom is- she doesn't understand the danger half so well as Izzy's. But she makes up for that by experiencing something similar- she lost Ken. she lost him for weeks to the Digital world. At least Izzy's mom only lost him for a day or so thanks to the time lapse, and she knew he had friends looking out for him, that he still does. Ken's mom didn't have that. So she's not worried about Ken coming back hurt, like Izzy's Mom, so much as Ken staying away again.

In any case- Ken gets his stuff together- and leaves.
Keep in mind this is the same night Izzy is captured and Sora attacked.
The next chapter should be fun!