Swak!
Taichi Yagami- known as Tai to everyone except his mother when she yells at him- raises a hand to his stinging cheek, tears threatening to spill from his eyes. He's never been struck by his mom before, and it hurts more than anything he's felt in his second-grade life.
"I told you she was sick!"
Tai sniffles, but does not cry. He's too big for crying, and he figures his mom and his baby sister have more right to tears right now than him. He waits at home, goes to school, frowns at the empty bottom bunk every night dutifully for three days. He's sadder than he's ever been, because he knows his sister is in the hospital because of him, yet he does not cry.
Finally, his dad carries Kari back into the apartment on the third day. Tai gives him space, though he hovers, more aware than ever how important his role is as Kari's big brother, as her protector.
"Onii-chan."
Tai perks up, attentive and alert for her, and his heart breaks at how shyly Kari peeks at him, her face mostly buried in dad's shoulder.
"I'm sorry I can't kick the ball very well."
Tai freezes. His lower lip trembles, and he realizes he was so very wrong. This hurts the most, knowing that his sister feels guilty because she thinks she let him down, over a stupid ball game she couldn't play with him.
Tai cries, then.
That night, after he's eaten and brushed and gone to the bathroom, he forsakes his favored top bunk mattress. He crawls in beside Kari with his own pillow, rousing her.
"Onii-chan, you'll get sick."
"Nuh-uh," he retorts, grinning and plopping his head down beside her. "Big brothers don't get sick!"
She's too tired still to make any further argument. Tai lets his grin fall, and he watches her fall back to sleep, slipping his hand around her tiny wrist.
For his little sister, he goes without sleep.
"Agumon, it's just the two of us!"
Tai calls out to his self-assigned Digimon partner. The others haven't eaten, can't muster up a single blow against Shellmon. Tai barely knows what he's doing, hasn't been in this world any longer than the other kids with him. Koushiro- better known as 'Izzy' Izumi- may be smarter than the rest of them, and Joe may be the oldest, but Izzy's brain isn't going to persuade a giant monster to not protect his territory. And Joe's barely holding it together.
It comes with being an older brother himself, particularly to a little sister who's often ill. When there's something only he can do, he steps up.
"Hey, ugly! That's right, over here!"
Tai keeps Shellmon's attention on him so Agumon can keep blasting him with fire. He ignores Sora's calls to retreat back to the cliff face. He snatches up a pole from the demolished phone booths and charges the creature's side.
Predictably, his assault on Shellmon's hide is ineffective, but he carries on anyway. He doesn't stop until he's caught by the tendrils on the much larger Digimon's head.
Tai's never been one to let the little guy fight on his own.
To back up his new friend- his partner- Tai goes without hesitation.
"No. I'm not giving up."
Tai takes his glowing crest in hand, staring down the monstrous hybrid Etemon has turned into.
"Let's go, Greymon!"
He races forward, toward danger, toward possible death, Greymon's familiar lumbering tread sounding in his wake by only inches.
Earlier, he'd confronted his newfound- or, newly discovered- mortality in the pyramid. Death took the form of an electric current. Sora had been on the other side, waiting for, expecting him to save her. Because that was who he was, right? He stepped up to do what no one else could.
He was a little more informed, but why should that have changed him?
Agumon had seen his hesitation, offered to go first. Tai had refused, and he had confronted death.
Now, he faces death again. In a different form, a pulsing mass of darkness controlled by a self-centered singing monkey, but Tai recognizes it. And he doesn't back down.
"Hang on, Greymon! Keep fighting!"
His partner topples under Etemon's attack, yet he rises again. In his hand, Tai's crest glows brighter, almost hot in his palm. Even in the relentless sun of the desert, it casts an orange glow over the sand.
"Taichi-!"
The orange light envelopes his partner, bathing him in power so potent that Tai feels it on his skin.
Against Etemon, against everything the Digital World has thrown their way- for Sora, for his friends, for himself- he goes without fear.
"Wait, Agumon-!"
Tai's call for his partner, rising into the vortex in the sky, cuts short. Familiar fingers curl around his arm, warm for all that they are tiny. He can read the plea in them without exchanging any words, knows the state of Kari's heart when she presses her face against his back.
"Hikari…"
He doesn't use his sister's full name often. Typically only when he needs to be especially gentle and soft. He breathes her name quietly, reassurance and comfort and light. There's the undertone of shared secrets, of things only a brother and a sister know, that passes between them. Things not even their mother knows.
His mom… he wants to see her, he wants to see both his parents so badly it hurts. He doesn't want to leave his sister, who saw him only hours ago, who he hasn't seen in months. He loves Kari for racing out of their apartment alone against his wishes to be with him, despite how fragile she is. He hears her silent pleas of Don't go.
He can't stay.
"I'll come back."
He promises, fingers clutched around his Digivice. His partner's already gone. Agumon can't fight alone, and Tai can't leave his friends stranded in the Digital World.
He raises his Digivice skyward. Slowly, his feet lift off the ground.
"Get better soon, okay?"
Familiar words for his sickly sister, a whisper. Not a goodbye, but a promise that he'll be back by the time she's well again.
"Onii-chan..."
Tai lets the upward gravity pull his hand out of Kari's grasping fingers.
To save his friends, he goes without his Hikari.
"Tell Matt, not me."
Tai dismisses his friend's tantrum and stalks off deeper into the forest, Agumon at his side. He understands Matt's frustrations and his confusion, really, he does. Tai wishes things were simpler, too. Insane as it sounds, he wishes they could go back to their early days in the Digital World. When the two of them could sort out their differences with a fight and both come out with a better understanding of things, ready to take care of business.
They don't have that luxury now. There's no time, and they could be attacked by Puppetmon at any moment. WarGreymon's one of only two Digimon on the team who can really fight at that level. Tai can't get distracted, not for anything.
For the sake of the mission, the sake of the team, Tai goes without a fight.
MetalGarurumon blocks his way and stalks menacingly toward them.
Or at least, he tries to.
"Kari, stay back!"
Tai orders his sister to keep to the sidelines. He waits, grits his teeth, and holds on. WarGreymon's pain is his own, a flash of hot red agony opening up with every slash of Piedmon's flying swords.
Tai doesn't seek victory. Not yet. Piedmon's alone, the last remaining Dark Master, but they've only won against the others by presenting a united front. Without everyone together, they won't win.
"Onii-chan!"
"I'm fine!" Tai stands firm, trusting Izzy and Andromon to keep Kari from interfering.
Even as Piedmon blasts the terrain to pieces and Tai's blown backward off his feet, he remains resolute. His partner's on his knees, but he can't give in.
"Tai, let me help, please!"
"Stay back, Izzy! Keep Kari safe!"
He curls down on the ground, making himself small against the force of another blast that threatens to rip him into the air a second time.
"Why won't you let us fight?!"
Tai can't answer. It's one part apology to two parts necessity. Maybe he didn't drive Matt away, but he could've fought harder to make him stay. He still doesn't entirely understand why Joe and Mimi felt they needed to head off on their own. Maybe he's not the best candidate for leader.
None of that matters, though. No one else can endure Piedmon. No one else can hold out until Sora returns with Matt. Until their team is whole again.
Straining, he sits back up, glaring at the red-clad clown. If he goes down, his sister and Izzy will be essentially defenseless. Even fully evolved, on his own Tentomon doesn't have a prayer. And Gatomon just finished a brutal fight of her own. Andromon will step in on their behalf, he's sure, but Piedmon's spent most of his time toying with WarGreymon. Tai can't stand to think what he'll do to two lower-level Digimon.
Tai believes that Matt will show up, and so he holds on with the skin of his teeth.
Even as WarGreymon's armor shatters and he falls backward in slow motion, Tai doesn't succumb until he literally cannot keep his eyes open.
To buy his friends time, to secure the way to win, he goes without support.
"See you later!"
Tai yells out from the trolley as they depart, waving as eagerly as his friends to their partners. The Digimon run parallel to the flying bus as long as they can, calling back and waving and generally making noise. His eyes sting a bit, yet Tai smiles, even as Agumon's bright form shrinks in the distance.
He hadn't volunteered for the job they'd been given. He hadn't set off to summer camp months ago seeking a survival adventure, let alone to save two different worlds from destruction. He didn't even go looking to make friends, let alone five new ones alongside Sora and his sister that, he knows, will remain long after they've become adults.
Nonetheless, it happened. And looking back, Tai is happy that he knows Agumon.
For that reason, he refuses to accept that this is the last time they'll see each other. Despite any proof to the contrary, he knows they'll meet up again.
So that he can someday reunite with his partner, Tai goes without saying goodbye.
"Oh… Matt, huh?"
Tai watches Sora, heart of the original DigiDestined and bearer of the Crest of Love, flush prettily. She nods. He remembers the package of cookies Gabumon just took from her to give Matt, and suddenly the gift takes on a new significance.
He shifts one shoulder in something like a shrug, shakes his head slightly, and smiles.
"S'okay."
Sora, who broke eye contact after professing her wish to spend time with their mutual up-and-coming rockstar friend after the concert, glances up at him shyly.
"You're not mad, Tai?"
Tai plasters a crooked grin on his face. The one he reserves for her, his oldest friend. He knows that anything less will leave her with doubts, and she'll refrain from doing what she wants to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. She loves too much to put herself first.
"Nah," he says, gentle and cheery enough to avoid coming off somber. "Get in there, tell Matt hi for me."
Sora musters up a small smile.
"Thanks, Tai."
He sees her off with a half-hearted wave. At his side, Agumon calls out after her with a plea for cookies of their own. Tai huffs out a chuckle.
"You know," Agumon says. "I'm proud of you, Tai."
Tai looks down at his partner, one eyebrow raised in question.
"You've grown up!"
Tai can't help himself- he snorts.
His first thought
No I haven't.
Because he doesn't feel he's changed at all. He still doesn't know the first thing about tact, hasn't gotten any quieter since becoming a teenager, and he's still selfish in a lot of ways. Even now, standing outside the tent where Matt's practicing, there's a voice in him screaming and kicking up a storm, demanding he goes after what he wants.
Though, after thinking on it a little, he concedes that maybe his partner has a point. Not so long ago, that same voice wouldn't be internalized. His reaction to news of Sora pursuing Matt would've been more knee-jerk and visceral, probably would've led to a fight. He wouldn't have paused, wouldn't have acted with any sort of caution- he knew himself well enough to admit that.
Of course, not too long ago, he wouldn't have had the self-awareness of his own feelings to even consider asking Sora to go to the concert with him in the first place. That renders the whole 'maturity' thing kind of moot in his mind.
Nonetheless, he halfway smiles at Agumon.
Because he is Taichi Yagami.
He is Courage.
For the happiness of his friends, Courage goes without.