The Lion Saver
2: her Leomon
She meets this Leomon a little after she's learnt that digimon are real and slip into and out of their world and some other kids their age have their own partner digimon, including some of her friends. In fact, she meets Leomon when she decides she doesn't want to be left out of the fun and adventure and the commodore they're building together and she wants one of the visiting digimon to be her partner too.
And then she sees Leomon, and no other partner will do her.
Even though Leomon declines, at first. He's nice to her, and protects her when she's in trouble, but she thinks she must annoy him because he wants to escape her as soon as possible. But later she discovers that's not true. She frightens him instead, because all he knew in the Digital World was fighting and he can't understand why someone would like him and want to be with him over and above any other digimon, especially when he loses in front of her.
But that comes later. That's the moment of their true partnership, when she receives a digivice for her wishes and turns his defeat into a victory.
And maybe she doesn't understand as well. Doesn't understand how a digimon who's only fought can think she's brave when she hardly ever fights, when she's barely even capable of fighting. She makes more of a mess with the first digimon she winds up going solo with, even after all the episodes she's watched, all the cards she's collected and all the digimon handheld games she's played (and she's made it her personal mission after discovering her love for Leomon to raise one in each and every playthrough). And even though Ruki's taught her how to play better than she can manage from the guidebook and she's brought her best deck with her, it's really Takato and Jenrya and Ruki that do the bulk of the fighting and yet Leomon still calls her brave.
They really have different views of themselves than the views they hold of each other – but that helps their understanding blossom and it promises to be a wonderful relationship in which the two of them grow and grow together –
And then it's cut cruelly short, and so suddenly she can't even move to do a think about it.
And she wonders what's the point. Why is she a tamer when Leomon can die so quickly she can't even step in with the only weapons she has that can help him: her cards. And she can't make Leomon digivolve. She has no blue card. And there's no magic cure in all the cards, no death reversal, nothing to stop him as his body crumbles –
And the horror gives way to tears and, for the moment, the two of them struggle within her: her agony, and how useless she is to do anything about it all.
Watching a Leomon die on the television is one thing. Watching her own precious partner die when she's only a few precious steps away is enough to shatter her.
And in the aftermath of that, amidst the glass, she learns what Leomon really meant when he'd said she had a lion's heart. Because there were Leomon crawling everywhere in her mind and not one of them is hers. Like the Leomon in Adventure, dead again. Like one who's turned black with evil and rage and who's fought against again and again when even her Leomon, who'd only known a life of fighting, had still fought against the oppressors and for the weak, had still been inherently good. And others, flickering too fast and starting and ending too far away.
She sees them all, and she can't just stand and watch, again and again.