A/N: Written for the Digimon Flash Bingo, #725 - Keisuke Tachikawa.
Watching a Girl Grow Up
He knows his wife wants to keep their baby girl all bundled up in her favourite pink blanket forever, but he also knows the world doesn't work that way. Especially when she comes home from summer camp one day and there's suddenly something...different about her.
He wonders if it's a boyfriend, who's given her some big stuffed teddybear she's embarrased to show in public but can't put down just yet. He doesn't ask, because Mimi will come to them in her own time if that's the case and, in any case, that's the last thing a parent wants to know. Short of some horrible crime or tragedy or something along that vein. Even if she is only ten years old.
But it's not a boyfriend. He realises when he sees what's really been under her arm the whole time, when he's kidnapped and locked up in the convention centre with a bunch of other people, and most of them aren't fortunate enough to be a whole family. The Yagamis are missing both their kids and the Kidos all three, and Takenouchi Sora is missing both parents and a bunch of reporters have misplaced their boss and it's a mess. Except Mimi seems calm. Says something about a secret weapon and there's another voice as well, and he's sure it's not Sora-chan doing that and he's right when he sees the thing under the blanket, when he sort of understands...
And a boyfriend might've been more innocent, and more bearable than another worldy creature, in retrospect, but parents tended to lose control of their kids in the growing up phase and of course he wasn't going to be an exception to that. Though most kids didn't save the world while growing up and he can be proud and worried and reluctant about the fact his daughter did.
And he also knows his wife will try to bundle her even more, now, and forget the incident like a nightmare they'd woken up for - but watching a child grow up was a nightmare and a dream both, and he thinks he can bare with the nightmare part so long as Mimi's back home safe and happy at the end of the day - and the next growth spurt is much much tamer.
