When it started, it felt so random. Like a freak accident: a derailed train or a broken dam. I remember where I was when Sora called me, and exactly what I was doing: washing dishes, and I remember it through the haze of that first day because I dropped a plate, and the noise brought me back to reality, if only for a minute.

"What did you say?"

"Biyomon's not moving, Tai."

"Tai, are you okay?" Kari had asked, regarding the shattered, half-dried plate I'd dropped and then staggered one foot into. "Aren'tcha gonna clean that up?"

"You're bleeding, Tai!" Agumon had said, gingerly picking up pieces of ceramic between his claws.

"I tried and I tried to wake her up and she's not moving, Tai. She's not there," Sora had sobbed, and I squeezed the landline so hard, I felt the plastic shift and pop under my fingers. It wasn't possible, and we both knew that, and that was why she had called me first. I was the leader. I would know what to do.

I didn't, though.

Sora sobbed into the phone. "Tai, I think she's--"

"Don't say it. Please don't say it."

"She's not there."

We had experienced death before, on scales grand and small--family fish, hamsters, worldwide destruction. Somewhere we should have expected this. Such little creatures, full of such vast power, pushed to their limits over the course of several years--yes, of course they would stop moving at some point. Of course they'd stop smiling, lay down so tired, and rest.

"Can you come over?" Sora asked, her voice cracking. "I don't... I don't know what to do."

I didn't want to go. I couldn't move my foot out of the shards of broken dishware, planted firmly in a little pool of blood. The pain felt fake. Not really there.

"Tai?" Sora asked.

"I'm on my way," I promised her.

I don't remember that wintry day very well, besides that call. I know I slapped a bandaid on my wounded foot, put boots on and a coat, and ran out into the city. I had told Kari to keep Agumon behind. I didn't want him to see. I guess I was trying to protect him, and Kari. Gatomon too. I didn't want it to be real, and if we got there, and Biyomon was really...

My memories are so blurry of the rest of the morning, after the phone call. I don't know how I got to Sora's place without being hit by a car, and I don't know what I said to her, just that I held her, and she cried and cried and I couldn't stop looking at Biyomon's body, until it began to vanish into nothing.

None of us were good at saying goodbye. We'd struggled with it as kids, when we'd left the Digital World behind at long last to come home, and even that had just been a temporary farewell, a few years apart. Matt had told me once that his and TK's uncle had passed when they were younger, and they'de gone to the funeral, but I think that was the most serious, up close and personal death any of us had dealt with.

Gabumon's death hit Matt hard. He wasn't next to go; Izzy said goodbye to Tentamon first, and Mimi to Palmon, and it sort of started to reach me that this wasn't going away, it wasn't a fluke, an accident, a freak occurence, a random event, or a mistake on god's behalf. Our Digimon friends were dying, aging and slowing and stopping. Patamon reportedly couldn't fly anymore, too weakened. But Gabumon went first, becoming sluggish and tired, so tired, all the time. I hadn't seen Matt cry in so long, and when I went over to his place on that last day, he still wasn't. He had it together, even if only by a thread connecting frayed edges. He let me in, offered me a drink. Told me TK and Patamon were out on a nice walk. A nice walk on a nice spring day.

"I can't be the one to do it, Tai," he said, as we sipped barley tea. "He needs to go, but I can't do it."

Don't ask me to do that. I couldn't. I couldn't do that for him, and for a moment I was back in my kitchen, phone cracking in my grip, wishing so badly I could just stay and clean up my mess in the kitchen and tell Sora no, I can't come over. I wanted to do nothing, or better yet, to run away, just get up and haul ass out of his family's apartment, jump down every flight of stairs to the bottom and just run run run.

"Please," he said, and his voice wavered, and then he started to cry. "Please, I can't do it."

"Okay," I said.

Gabumon showed his age more than any of them, except maybe poor, wilting Palmon. Maybe it was all imagined, his apparently graying hair and wizened eyes--we knew that Gabumon's fur was just a Garurumon pelt, more like a cosplay than anything, but when I went into Matt's room he looked so tired.

"Hi Tai," he said, and I bit down on my inner cheek so hard it bled.

"Hey, Gabumon," I choked, and he smiled and held a claw out to me.

"Will you let me go to sleep, Tai?" he asked.

I sensed Matt behind me, standing in the hall and not saying anything. For a moment I hated him, like we were kids again, fighting over stupid shit like who got to be leader. How could he push me into this, make me end his Digimon partner's life?

"Yeah buddy," I said instead, and crouched next to Gabumon. "Let's get you tucked in, okay?"

"So sleepy," he said, and closed his eyes.

Matt and I didn't talk for about two months after that. Patamon passed not long after, peacefully, he told me when we started to hang out again. Real peacefully. About two months later, Gomamon was gone, Jo informed us in a group text. Just that, nothing else, but we'd all known it was coming soon. Gatomon was next, and Kari was a wreck for weeks, not crying, not after the first day, just hollow. I could see straight through her eyes that there was nothing left.

And then it was just me and Agumon.

All this time I'd tried so hard to keep death out of his world. I dodged questions, made up stories. I think we all did; I know Kari lied to Gatomon, told her that her Digimon friends were on vacations, trips, sightseeing tours around the world. I think Gatomon knew in the end, though. And I think she forgave.

But in some way, I thought that by not telling Agumon, I could keep him with me forever. If he just didn't know about death, if he just didn't know he could die, he wouldn't. He would stay by my side.

"You're not gonna leave me, right buddy?" I asked him one morning, early summer, on one of the first real hot days.

"Taichi," he said, and I felt my heart sink slowly, so heavy in my chest. "I think it's time for me to go."

"No," I said. Denial. Refusal. If I didn't let him, he couldn't. "No, you can't go."

"I'm tired, Tai. I want to go back and rest."

"No, that's not an option. You're staying with me!"

"It'll be okay, Tai," Agumon said, and I felt such overwhelming guilt at him having to comfort me. "You don't have to cry. I'll still be with you in your heart. Don't cry."

"I'm not," I sobbed. "I'm ok. It's okay. You're gonna be fine."

"Even Digimon don't live forever," Agumon said. His claws found my hand, stroked gently over my knuckles. "But I won't be gone. After all, when Digimon die, we're reborn as babies, remember? All your friends will be waiting for you in the Village of Beginnings. And then you can come find us, and we can all be friends again. Okay?" He smiled, toothy, but tired. "It's gonna be okay. You're strong. You'll be okay."

"I don't wanna be strong," I cried. "Agumon--"

"I'm gonna be reborn, Tai," he said. "Like a caterpillar. I'm turning into a butterfly. That's all it ever is. Not loss. Just changes."

I was having a hard time seeing him through my tears. But as he started to vanish, splitting into pixels and disappearing into data, returning to the digital world, I saw him smile again. Just change. That's all it ever had been.

"Hurry up Jo!" Mimi shouted from the crest of the hill. "Come on! Honestly," she scoffed, turning back to the rest of us, "I know we said we'd wait for him, but he should get a move on!"

Sora stepped nervously from foot to foot, looking over her shoulder at the village to her back. She'd positioned herself specifically so she couldn't see them before the rest of us could, but here she was peeking anyway. Matt was looking that way without hiding it, just staring off towards the baby village like he might just head down there himself and find his partner.

"Hurry or we're gonna go without you," I called down the hill, and Jo scowled and hustled up after us.

"You guys are the worst," Jo complained, "we all had a deal, you know, and--"

Whatever he'd been about to say was forgotten by whatever he saw down in the village. We all turned, all ready to see them again. I was nervous, the weird kind of nervous where you have dreams about failing a test because you studied the wrong things, and then show up to class in your underwear. That kind of nervous. I kept having dreams where I'd go to the village, and try to find him again, and every little Digimon there would be a Zurumon.

But now here we were. And here they were. A cacophony of tiny voices called out to us, crying wordlessly, as excited to see us as we were to see them. I followed the others down towards the village, to the Botamon that I knew was mine.

"Hey, buddy. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

He blew a string of bubbles at me and flung himself into my arms.

"Good to see you too, friend," I said softly, holding him close. "Good to see you too."