Warnings: Death of a parent, murder, guilt, survivor's guilt, past graphic violence. This starts off sad I'm sorry.

prologue – infancy

When Yagami Hikari told him she was pregnant all those years ago, Motomiya Daisuke's mind had gone blank as a sheet of paper.

Miyako used to joke that was his normal state of being, but he honestly never stopped thinking about things like this. About people, about the group that existed, and had only grown. Sometimes, in the dead of night, he just listened to his son snore and think, would any of this had happened without V-mon?

Most people would say, who knows, fate doesn't work that way, or something. Ken would tell him "of course you would be at this point, you're you," which even made Daisuke wince sometimes because Ken wasn't idealistic but he was as loyal and solid as they came, so how could you ruin that? And besides, it felt good to hear from someone who was still one of the best in his business say without hesitation "You've got this."

So when he heard Hikari say those magic words, his mind went blank and confusion laced across his entire being. He did not get this. Hikari-chan was-

Not interested in men. Not sexually anyway. So how-

"It's a long story," she had said, and looked dreadfully, dreadfully exhausted.

And so, Daisuke had drawn on his strength and hadn't asked, had corralled a furious, lovestruck Noriko (and boy wasn't that him?) into his apartment.

It hadn't mattered then. He'd been married for a year and a half and they'd been working together, he and his wife. He'd loved her pretty damn hard, and she him. And it, at the time had been all that mattered. She'd been willing to travel, expose their kid to new things, even as an infant. He'd even been able to help Hikari-chan, financially sure, calls at three in the morning as she wept quietly to not wake Noriko, gathering unsent letters to Tailmon to put into a box.

It wasn't hard now for him to close his eyes and remember her face while she held her son. At least now there was no vice squeezing his heart every time he thought of it, every time he looked at her. That first year he had sat and thought, over new recipes and careless taste testing because Nat-chan - Rhythm- understood him, understood him better than she did herself. Which was ridiculous in its own way so… what could he do about it?

… Nothing now.

"Dad?" His son's voice jolted him out of his thoughts, soft but steady. He stared down at the young boy. He was getting taller, not as tall as Daisuke had been at that age, but he was getting taller. "We need to go."

Daisuke glanced around the apartment, decorated more in flowers and life and things that required the sun than he would have put in the home by himself. "Yeah," he agreed. "Just trying to remember if we watered them or not."

"I did." His son's voice was calmer than it should have been, steady. "They'll be fine dad."

You'll be all right, Daiki, Daisuke, if it's the last thing I do.

And it had been.

V-mon picked up Chibimon from the coffee table. "Let's go, Daisuke."

Daisuke gave the apartment one last look. Then he nodded and held open the door.

"Let's go," he agreed.

The words didn't hold the same lightness they had at the age of eleven. If anything, they were too heavy now. But he said them anyway.

…

His wife had no body to bury. No birth or death certificate, no relatives to mourn her. The relative who could have was the one who had killed her. And Daisuke didn't know what he would do if he found that guy.

It would have been fine if he was just a rabble rouser or something, just one of those people (and digimon) who saw the slowly melding worlds as something bad (after all these incidents, Daisuke wouldn't blame him, he really wouldn't). It would have been fine if he stuck to protesting, to fights in the digital world, to convincing others.

Not trying to kill him. Not trying to kill his son. Not doing- what he had.

And he was still at large. Still running free. Locked out of earth for now, but that was small comfort when everyone was getting digivices. Everyone was getting partners and not everyone was having to train them, not everyone was choosing to. And ideally that was beautiful. That was good. That was free will, that was what they wanted more than anything else…

but now Daisuke wanted to butcher free will and get an army down because if he went out and did this there would probably be nothing left of the fellow and maybe nothing left of V-mon or himself and that would leave Dai with everyone else but not him.

And he shouldn't have those thoughts, he didn't have those thoughts but maybe if he'd had just a few more of them his wife would be here, alive. Laughing off the whole debacle and failing to make the basic strawberry waffles.

He kept stepping forward, feet tingling with numbness. Dai was a step behind him, his Chibimon in his arms. He didn't have to look behind him to see the somber, worn out expression on his face. He couldn't stand seeing that right now. His son needed to smile. He'd… he'd have to work hard at making that happen again.

The Digital World was quiet today. At least this clearing was, a small place full of people in black. His friends and family were standing like soldiers as he walked. He carried her trademark hat, comically small on the outside for anything more than her scalp. He carried it tight in his arms, like when Dai had once fallen onto his head from a large tree and the blood had been all over and-

She had been the one to reassure him then. His eyes blurred. He blinked the water away and took another hard step forward. A song reached his ears from steps behind, soft and old from the trees, the small pond on his other side. And Daisuke ached.

Rhythm, his wife, was dead and gone. And no matter the world, she was never coming back.

"Daisuke-kun."

His name brought him from the reverie, the sound snapping through him like her voice, that matched him bolster for bolster.

But it wasn't her voice at all. The woman facing him was much taller, her forehead reaching his eyes. And she was looking at him with the smallest of knowing smiles.

"Auntie Emi," Dai managed to choke out. He didn't fly towards to, but his legs itched to jump, to leap and crush her with his young, thin arms. But he paused, didn't because-

There was an egg in her arms. A familiar egg, speckled red and colored a strange soft green. His heart jumped in his chest.

"How?" he whispered. Dai went stiff behind him, but his face was creased in a puzzled frown.

"I figured calling and telling you would be in poor taste," Emi admitted before shaking her head. "I don't know, honestly. It just happened this morning. The worlds may be so close together that she just reformed by herself. But…" She exhaled. "It won't be her, Daisuke-kun. There's no way that she could be."

"I… I didn't think so." But miracles could happen. The egg pattern was almost exactly the same. Maybe she would hatch out again and remember him.

But they weren't partners, They would never be partners. It… It might not be the same. And she would be a small creature all over again. Her time passing as an adult human, or a facsimile of one, was gone.

"Still." He made himself smile, like he was bracing for the cold of winter. "Let me know when it hatches, okay?"

Emi smiled, and hers was much more real. "Of course I will."

They spoke quietly together for a few more minutes as they reached the center of the clearing. Then Daisuke felt his son stiffen up beside him.

The next minute, Dai had torn away and tackled one of the mourners standing in line. Seconds flickered by and Dai was howling, Chibimon and V-mon scrambling after him. For a moment, Daisuke felt his heart reach the back of his throat because that was him wasn't it that was that bastard-

"Falcor stop!" The voice cut through the hope, the vision, the bloody red searing past his eyes and he saw one arm yank firmly on orange fur and Daisuke collected himself to go help.

It took himself, V-mon and one good arm to get the furious large cat off of Dai and his shirt was in tatters and streaked in thin red. For a moment, Daisuke felt nothing but concern and anger and he whirled around again because everything was going so fast-

Then he saw Yagami Kei with bruised cheeks and a broken arm, one good eye uncovered and raw red with any free skin bandaged and his best friend helping him keep the giant angry cat still.

"I'm so sorry, Motomiya-san," the teenager wheezed. "She overreacted, I'm so sorry about her-"

And finally the anger came back but maybe it was the wrong target or something. "No," he managed to say. "No, it's all right. That's on Dai."

"Dad!" his son shouted and Daisuke turned on him and he shouldn't have. He should have breathed first but it all hurt so much.

"You attacked him, what did you think she would do, watch?"

Dai flared up, face red as his own and hurt magnifying his eyes to three times their size. "It's all his fault!" and there was spittle flying and pain there and it wasn't right. Dai had been following Kei since his son could crawl he shouldn't look at him like that. "If he'd just talked to us, if he'd been faster, mom would be here!"

Daisuke didn't have to look but he did. He saw the crumpling expression, the guilt and pain and misery and all of that unhappy bundle in Hikari's face, in Kei's face and that was the only thing that caused his fists to unclench.

Kei croaked out something, his voice hoarse and rough and Daisuke breathed this time. Breathed three times, ignored the onlookers.

"It was not his fault," he made himself say because he knew deep down it was true and that was the right, the adult thing to do in this situation. "It was that Digimon's and no one else's. We couldn't even stop what happened. Don't you blame your best friend for doing his job, which was save you."

The meicoomon in front of them was still hissing, even spitting a little.

Kei stumbled over to Dai and hugged him with his good arm. Daisuke couldn't make out what it was, but eventually, finally, his son started to cry, howling with all the strength his lungs had to offer.

Daisuke met Hikari's eyes and she smiled, that sad, knowing look of hers and that familiar flop in his chest spun like a fan on its base.

"I'm sorry," she mouthed at him.

So am I. He didn't say it out loud, but he let the tears fall instead.

There was a tiny shudder by his fingertips, of the egg forced into his hands for a moment so Emi could play healer and peacemaker.

"Yeah," he told it, voice hoarse. "Yeah, that's it."

It shuddered again.

A/N: Happy Belated Birthday Onix! This took a bit but I'm thinking you'll like it! Eventually. I hope so anyway. This is your otp after all! For all confused readers, this is a spinoff. It starts to deviate at a specific, as of yet undiscussed plot point to be shown later in the series. But because it hasn't come up yet, I'm actually super free to play with this. This will however, cover a certain plot point that is definitely a spoiler. So take now, about... arc 2 or 3 of this, if you don't want to know a vital piece of backstory, please save this fic for when Destati shows up. If you don't mind the spoiler... onward! But for now, let us focus on these idiots.

Challenges: Mega Prompts Quote Prompts 190, Song Time Challenge for Landscape by Solidemo, Christmas Advent 2016, write a gift fic, Christmas Advent 2017 day 19, write someone else's otp,