A/N: Welcome to the New Year. :D I'm happy to announce this story is almost done. I'm grateful for all of your support, quiet as it was. Thanks guys! Enjoy and read and review! Warning, one use of the f-bomb.

VI.

"Up ya go!"

Kei whoops as she lifts him to the ceiling, giggling and waving his arms as she twirls him up in the air. He's a beautiful boy, bright-eyed and energetic as she spins him about. Hikari is giggling from her lazy chair at them both and Noriko sticks out her tongue before pulling the boy back down. "Come on, he wants to fly. Just look at him zoom."

Hikari only giggles again, writing careful notes in the paper margins. "He needs a safe landing, though."

"Hey, I am the epitome of safety," Noriko protested, spinning the boy again.

"She is until you get her drunk," Terriermon informed Kei, who though had no clue what that meant at the tender age of eleven months, gave a toothless grin anyway. YukimiBotamon, thankfully too young to be repeating sounds yet, still bounced by Terriermon's right floppy ear.

Hikari laughed. "Don't I know it."

Noriko watches her out of the corner of her eye, waiting for the flicker of guilt, the furtive, distant look at Kei. It doesn't happen this time, as it had until three months ago.

The guilt is there, however. Hikari hasn't touched alcohol since before Kei was born or since then either. It's been almost two years. Noriko doesn't feel she has any right to protest this decision, but she has to wonder if it is made out of fear, or self-preservation.

So, while she bounces Kei on her knee, she asks which it is.

Hikari shrugs. "Both."

Noriko doesn't know quite what to say to that.

"I don't understand you sometimes."

Hikari picks up Kei, settling to feed him, and shakes her head. "I don't really understand me either."

Noriko grins. "Just another trait to bind us together." Hikari smiles and rolls her eyes. It's nice that she doesn't disagree at least, though a fight would be nice. Hikari doesn't fight, which is weird. Or maybe it's just a trait of hers, ever the pacifier, ever the sweet-hearted soul. She wishes they would fight; it would at least be normal. Shouting, she knows. Anger, self-hate, stomping out, that's expected of any couple. But it doesn't happen. Any emotions Noriko expels simply get absorbed and squished into a stress ball, and met with a smile.

Somehow, Hikari is scary in this, and maybe pathetic for it too.

But it's not like Noriko knows anything about being brave.

…

"Noriko, wait-"

Stupid, stupid, why are you so angry? The kid's three. Of course he wants to know where his daddy is.

"You can't expect me to be okay with this!"

Hikari adjusts Kei's half-asleep form against her chest and looks at her. Her eyes are suddenly very red, half with tears and half with some smoldering energy that just might be anger. "I'm not expecting you to," she says softly. "But please, don't yell." The bags are heavy under her eyes, "Kei doesn't know."

Noriko shrugs, forcing her jacket over her arms and pulling her hood. "One of us has to yell, since you don't want to. Since you're too afraid to." The venom in her voice is like the snake she first met in the Digital World and almost ate her head. Hikari doesn't look cowed by it, and the anger in her says she should, but as always, Hikari surprises her. Somehow, she looks angry.

Not only angry, protective. Her hand continues to stroke her son's hair, and Noriko mentally cringes at the way the boy's tiny fists are clenched in the cashmere sweater. Hikari smiles, and Noriko really wants to bolt.

At least yelling would make sense, she thinks.

But Hikari doesn't yell. She only smiles and nods. "I am afraid. I don't like yelling. I don't like fights. I don't like silly fights. Is this a silly fight?"

Noriko wants to cry, wants to curl into her ball like she did at the age of twelve. But instead, she is galled by the patience beneath that fury, by the way she seems to look through Noriko instead of at her.

Her father would love Hikari, baby or no.

And somehow, that's the worst part.

"Aren't all fights silly to you?" Noriko spits. "If there was a minotaur between you and me, would you try to talk it out of kill-"

A pale hand slaps her cheek so hard Noriko hears bones crack in the hand.

Hikari takes a deep breath as she steps back. Her small body trembles for a second before she shakes her head, a slow, but vehement gesture.

"No," Hikari whispers, and the anger has burned out the mother bear in her eyes to make way for a great and terrible dragon. "No."

Noriko doesn't touch her cheek. She runs.

...

"You're back again."

"Shut up, Daisuke."

"At least I got to you before the police did."

Noriko grumbles through Terriermon's ears and the red mark on her cheek. "It was one guy."

Chibimon giggles. "It was four." Terriermon raises an eyebrow and an ear and Noriko grabs it, pulling it back down with a scowl. Her head throbs with pain and the alcohol sloshes. "You shouldn't have done that, Noriko."

Noriko rolls her eyes, swearing she can hear them crack. "Yeah, I know. I shouldn't have had a reasonable freak-out and gone off to drink and beat up a few guys."

"As fun as it sounds," Daisuke begins, planting a bowl in front of her that takes her back almost four years and a quiet apartment before a toddler. "No, you shouldn't have. You know how hard it is to make Hikari-chan cry? Let alone slap you? Miyako hasn't even gotten a slap in the past couple of years and she's made a couple of comments about you that I wouldn't repeat in a lunchroom." He glances at the sleeping toddler in the nearby cradle to prove his point.

Somehow that doesn't surprise her. "Hikari listens?" Worse, does she agree?

Daisuke glares. "Long enough to cut into her like a good cut of meat. You're lucky, Noriko." He forces her hands around the chopsticks, scowling all the while. "I haven't seen Hikari so okay with someone's long-term company since Taichi-san and because her kid happens to do a silly kid thing you almost lose it. Are you dumber than me or something?"

Noriko opens her mouth, then closes it. "I know that was bad..."

"Everything else you must have said was worse," Chibimon says, and it's weird to hear him sound so blunt about it with the voice of a kid with helium in his lungs.

Noriko winces. "It... might have been."

"It was," Terriermon adds, rolling his own eyes now. "I've never seen her look scary before."

Daisuke scoffs. "If it weren't for the fact that this isn't worth kicking you out, I'd do it. Believe me, I don't know the full story, but I'm sure of one thing: Hikari-chan would never let anyone die, especially not you, though god knows you might want to." He throws a napkin at her. "Eat your food and sleep. Then, apologize to Kei." Noriko opens her mouth and Daisuke bulldozes her like he does nearly everything. "Hikari-chan has probably already forgiven you. She forgave Ken as fast as I did, even if she didn't trust him. So give Kei an apology, before the kid thinks you hate him."

He goes to the bathroom and Noriko stares miserably at the ramen bowl.

She understands that she was stupid, but that isn't what hurts.

What hurts is that, she realizes, she was picking a fight.

She wanted a fight with someone who loved her so much that it didn't matter to her mere minutes after slapping her.

Because it was normal.

"Damn it," she whispers. "I'm a fucking fool."

Terriermon doesn't titter, but remains around her neck for the rest of the night.