Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His sister is the best person he knows, but she's not brave.

Haru is thirteen and the train whistles by.

oOo

He’s sure he wakes up Yato with his crying, but it’s not like he can help it.

There’s endless grief pouring from the hollow place inside his brain, once meticulously sealed up and now flooding the rest of him. He is a dissolved, flimsy copy of what he once was, and he is a cursed hafuri , and he is dead.

So really there’s nothing he can do about the crying, nothing he can do about the flinches, nothing he can do about the silences. He’s fine and he's dead and he's cold.

And he is scared, and he is angry, and he is beholden to no rules, and he is dead.

He’s sure he wakes up Yato with his crying, but he always escapes before the god has to follow through, anyway, all of the poison leaking from his memories carried with him. He’s sure he can stop crying, eventually, for the person he was and who he could’ve been, for the cracks of his teeth against concrete and his begging, for the cold air of winter and his begging, for the child he'll always be and his begging.

He’s sure he can stop crying, eventually. Less sure about the fear, less sure about the anger.

But it’s not for Yato to deal with. Yato doesn’t owe it to him. Yato buried him and his corpse is rotting and his sister escaped and he didn’t and he’s always so, so deathly cold, and it’s not Yato’s business.

Yato already saved him. Yato already did it all. Yato already stood against heaven for Yukine, and gave him a name that isn't bile and pain, and offered him a coat on the coldest nights. Yato already did it all.

There's being greedy and there's being ungrateful; Yukine's pretty sure he's both of those things, and a little bit murderous too, the kind of rage that's acid and vitriol mixed together and just waiting to explode.

He has violence written in his teeth, blood red like the name on his shoulder, and he doesn't know when it'll overflow. Doesn’t know if it hasn’t already. Sometimes he dreams of the heavens on fire.

He woke from death already ready to cut, and he's never really stopped dreaming of vengeance. He's just a naked blade against the world, and he's shattered twice.

Steel's brittle. If it breaks, it'll never be as strong as it used to be. He used not to remember his broken bones and now he aches. He used not to remember his tragedy and now he hates.

He used to be so brave, and he can’t stop crying.

But he’s sure it'll end, eventually.

oOo

When Haru is six, his sister holds his hand to cross the road.

It’s early morning, too cold for their threadbare clothing. They’re used to it, though, so they just press close together. The school has heating, anyway, which is why they don’t really need coats.

Anyway if they had some, the teachers wouldn’t let them stay together inside during recess. So it’s not that bad.

Haru watches the light go from red to green, the glare of it reflecting on the nearby shops' windows; his feet make a satisfying crunchy nose when he steps on snow and a bit of ice. As he goes to cross, his sister yanks at his hand, yanking him back. “Haru, wait,” she hisses.

The last car slows at the crossroad, motor loud even at rest. Its headlights are an almost violent light in the early morning, revealing glimmering frost on the lampposts and the shards of a broken bottle by the edge of the road.

Yuka glances at the car. The man at the wheel smiles at them, gestures, go on, it’s fine.

Yuka tightens her hold on Haru’s hand. She nods once at the driver, eyes narrowed, and she walks across. Once they’re safely on the sidewalk, she looks at Haru, and she says, “Look both sides before crossing, Haru. It’s dangerous otherwise.”

She sounds just like mom, so Haru wrinkles his nose at her. “I knew he was gonna stop,” he protests. “He was slowing down.”

But even before he’s finished his sentence his sister’s shaking her head vigorously. “You have to make sure,” she says, in her i’m older than you so i know better voice. “What if he was a bad man? What if he wasn’t going to stop? What if he sped down just to trick you?”

In hindsight, Yukine thinks, they were strange children.

oOo

He wishes he couldn’t dream.

He wakes up from them with his heart bruised, tender and too close to the surface. He wakes up from them and he wants to cry, and he never grew enough to learn how not to.

He wishes he couldn’t dream, but more than that he wishes he didn’t have to sleep. More than that, he wishes for it all back; not even mom and Yuka and his stupid, childish dreams, just that moment after the box, with Yato’s arms around him and nothing to shoulder yet.

Wishes are just that. Instead, he digs his nails in his palms, until he bleeds. Instead, he contemplates ripping Amaterasu’s head off. Instead, he sits, and watches the train tracks.

Instead, he avoids his grave.

He used to be so brave, but he remembers rot and decomposing flesh in his mouth, remembers fevered nightmares and mucked-up wings aching. He wakes up out of breath from the memories, hands shaking uncontrollably, and almost bites clean through his tongue, almost shatters the window and grabs a piece of sharp glass so he can cut away darkened, infected flesh that isn’t visible anymore.

It sits under his skin, though, bugs scuttering through his veins, gnawing at his flesh, acid behind his eyeballs, open wounds in his mouth, darkened, weeping pus. You’d think it’s gone but he knows better.

He’s an abomination held up as a blessing, and every time he inhales he expects to exhale through a slit throat.

He used to be so brave, but it’s so easy to die, and it’s so hard to fight it. He used to be so brave, but he’s not even a god and he remembers his last breath.

You’re not supposed to survive it, so it fits that it feels like he didn’t. Nana survived on anger, and Yukine’s deathly afraid of what happens when he runs out of it, and equally afraid of the possibility that he might not; that this might be all there is, and he’ll have to learn to live with the scream lodged halfway through his throat, learn to speak around it, learn to smile around it, and give up on breathing forever.

And maybe that wouldn’t even be enough, to repay him. 

oOo

Haru is ten and his sister shelters him from the flying bottles with her back.

That’s all there is to say.

oOo

“Are you mad at him?” Asks Ebisu, tone neutral. He didn’t even get himself killed to spare Yukine the conversation.

Out of their circle of acquaintances, he’s the only one who could come out and say it, the only one that could confront Yukine without it veering into an uncomfortable conversation. If Bishamon gets within ten steps of Yukine she may yet rip out his spine for hurting Kazuma. It’s 50/50.

But Ebisu just corners him at Kofuku’s house, eyes too old for his face. The evening is young, the neighborhood bustling even in the cold of winter-turning-spring. Yukine sits crossed-legged on the porch of the house, hands numb from the cold, multitudes of failed attempts at origami surrounding him. Daifoku said it would center him, and he was dead, ha, dead wrong.

Yukine scowls at him. He knows it makes him look younger but doesn't school his face back into neutrality; he figures now more than ever he's got to pick his battles.

"You are," confirms Ebisu, face falling a little. Despite being a god he's still, technically, just a child. 

Is Yukine mad? Sure. That's all there is left of him. All the fear and sadness belong to Haru.

"It's fine," he says out loud. Ebisu frowns at him.

"He left you."

There's no part of Yukine that wants to go through the motions of that argument again, despite what everyone around him seems to think. Kazuma he couldn't deck in the face because then Bishamon really would kill him, but Ebisu's not so safe.

He left you, but it was to protect you, everyone tries to tell him. It's well-meaning but he's going to scream.

Ebisu seems displeased with whatever strangled rage has made its way onto Yukine's face. "Sorry," he says, sort of haughty, "but it's true ."

He really is just a spoiled brat.

Yukine swallows the scream. He tries to, at least. "I know that," he manages to get out. "What are you doing here?"

"I want to hire Yato but he can't work without you," Ebisu says. Then, without warning, "You were both manipulated, you know."

Everyone thinks he's angry at Yato for leaving, except Yato, who actually knows better. But of course nobody's bothered to ask him about it, and now Yukine's left fending the others.

"I know," says Yukine, breezy as you please, and not like sometimes he wakes up and still feels the Sorcerer’s hands over his shoulders, digging through his bones for something of worth.

That’s not the point, he wants to say. That’s not the point at all. Instead he braces himself for the fight that’s going to happen when he says, we’re fine.

“But if you know, then…”

“Ebisu.”

Yato’s always hovering these days, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when he shows up out of the blue. It follows that he wouldn’t get close, too. “Leave it,” he just says, tone curt.

Ebisu looks between the two of them, Yato tense and unyielding, Yukine bristling. 

Yukine used to be able to fight his own battles. He used to be able to wander, unsupervised, without people following him, without gods consumed by guilt to come and give him a piece of their mind.

He wants Yato gone. He wants Yato to make all of his problems go away. He’s dead and he’s still gotta figure out all of this, how is that fair?

“It’s fine, Yato,” he says. It’s fine is all he says these days, and it tastes sour, a lingering taste that permeates every other aspect of his life.

There’s a hundred biting responses on the tip of his tongue, all of them too mean, all of them undeserved, all of his silver tongue that has never helped him. When you’re alone with someone bigger than you you’ve gotta take your victories somewhere, when you make them angry it’s proof they’re fallible, but none of them are his enemies. None of them are.

It’s hard to convince himself. Ebisu is a child but he’s a god, and he’s died dozens of times without learning his lesson even once. If you know, then, what? 

It’s no use telling Yukine he was wrong: he has the memories to back it up. It’s no use telling them they were both wrong, no use making them admit something they both know, and it’s none of Ebisu’s business anyway.

When he was alive he used to wish people would help, intervene. Now that they are he wants viciously to be left alone.

“I don’t think you should be fighting, is all,” Ebisu defends himself.

They’re not fighting, it’s just that Yukine can’t even die properly, and now he’s a burden on Yato forever. They’re not fighting, it’s just that Yukine’s shattered right at the center and his rage could fill an entire train wagon full of corpses. They’re not fighting, it’s just that every time Yukine sees Yato he wants to cry and if he starts crying he doesn’t stop.

“We’re not fighting,” says Yato evenly.

“Yukine’s mad at you,” protests Ebisu.

“Who is Yukine not mad at?” Retorts Yato laughingly, except he’s not really laughing and he’s dead right. Who is Yukine not mad at? His sister, or Haru’s sister, it gets complicated. Who is Yukine not mad at? No one, not even himself.

“He’s not mad at me, ” Ebisu argues. Weakly.

“I’m not mad at anyone !” Yells Yukine. “I am fine! I just want the two annoying, noisy gods to argue about me away from me! ”

For good measure he balls up one of the paper sheets and throws it at Yato’s head. It collides with a weak sound. Ebisu has the decency to look chastised. Yato just smiles at Yukine like the stupid outburst is proof that his Yukine isn’t dead and gone.

But he is. If Yukine could pick another name, one that wasn’t Haru or Nagisa, he would bury that one, too, and be done with it. Instead he’s stuck with surviving.

“I was defending your honor!” Protests Yato. He’s still acting carefree while looking worried, and Yukine’s had enough of dichotomies and hypocrisy both. He wants his Yato back, even if he can’t get himself back. “ Our honor!”

“What honor,” murmurs Yukine scathingly, and hates it. Wants to slit his own throat so he could choke on blood and not anger; wants righteous rage and not this rolling, unending grief made sharp.

Yato raises an eyebrow at him, you wanna go there, really?

But he has all of Yukine’s memories, apparently, his great secret that he didn’t manage to keep, so he should know Yukine’s never backed down from a fight he couldn’t win.

“Don’t fight,” Ebisu says weakly. “If neither of you are mad then-”

He interrupts himself there, seems to think better than finishing his question. At times he’s such a god, and at times he’s such a child.

Yukine is distantly aware that he’s not being kind. Yukine is distantly aware that he used to be kinder. The rest of him is two seconds away from telling Yato he’s only useful when he shuts up and kills something.

It is, occasionally, incredibly difficult to remind himself that he owes Yato everything. It is, occasionally, an inhuman effort to remind himself that Yato buried him and saved him and did it all for him.

“We’re not fighting.”

It’s Yukine’s turn to say it, this time. He wrangles his anger into something survivable, into ash inside his lungs instead of a raging wildfire. He grimaces a smile at Ebisu. “Don’t worry, we’re not fighting.”

Ebisu frowns at them. “But you’re mad at him.”

Yukine’s not mad at Yato, and everyone’s convinced otherwise except for Yato, who wakes up to Yukine crying. Yukine’s not mad at Yato, because he and Yato are made of the same thing, it just never killed Yato.

They’re not fighting, it’s just that Yato would have let Yuka step onto the rails and sometimes Yukine thinks the Sorcerer was right .

oOo

When Haru is eleven, Yuka cries into her hands and says, “I want to die."

They’re outside. It’s early spring, early enough that the cherry trees are just full of young buds and no leaves yet, early enough that it’s still bitingly cold in the mornings, the humidity weighing it down. Spring enough that Haru hasn’t started counting the days to summer break worriedly yet, spring enough that Mom hasn’t put away their winter coats yet, saying it’s better not to wear them down.

It makes sense, because they’re almost brand new, and Haru doesn’t want to wear them down either. They’re shiny and warm and even if the sleeves are too long, he uses them to wipe away Yuka’s tears as best he can.

“No,” he protests. “You can’t leave me!”

Haru’s eleven and he’s never lived a single day his sister wasn’t alive.

“But- but- Haru, I’m so tired ,” Yuka sobs, shoulders shaking. Her long blond hair is messy from the wind. There's nobody on the stairs leading up to their apartment, nobody inside probably, but neither of them wants to go home. “I wanna stop, Haru, I’m done, he’s never gonna stop and- and- and-”

She buries her face back into her hands and she starts crying again. Haru hovers by her nervously, hands open but with nothing to give.

“It’s not like that for everyone else,” she whimpers, "it's not like that, they don't have to do it, it's not fair ."

"You can't die," repeats Haru, his voice smaller than he'd like to admit.

Yuka cries easily but he doesn't, not really. He thinks Yuka got all the sadness and he got all the anger, but in the end it doesn't matter because they share everything.

"Yuka," he says. "You can't die."

But she just keeps crying, and she doesn't promise anything.

Maybe Haru got some of the fear, too.

oOo

"Yukine," says Mizuchi, and nothing else.

Instead she looks back to the river longingly. Her clothes are still bloodstained, and her hands pristine, free from blight.

He sits down next to her. Suzuha's tree still stands, barren in winter; the grass under them is covered in a thin layer of frost, iridescent in the morning sun. 

Yukine shivers a little. Late February has dug its frozen claws into the atmosphere, holding on past its death day. Even away from the river, in the city proper, it's bitingly cold; near it, the humidity is pervasive, heavy.

He doesn't offer Mizuchi his coat. Kindness costs: he's out of change.

"Hi," he instead. Behind them a jogger huffs through their daily exercise. "Have you tried to talk to Yato at all?"

She doesn't answer, but her fists tighten against her skirt, wrinkling fabric. She’s sat against the uphill, knees folded a little, hands atop her thighs. Hiyori's uniform makes her look too human, too touchable; dressed in the costume of the dead she looked otherworldly cruel, and now she just looks lost. 

Neither of them will ever die again, and neither of them have survived.

"Okay," he allows in the face of her silence. He hasn't either. He doesn't know which one of them will be brave first.

It's unlikely to be her. Although it's unlikely to be him, too, and in the end the most probable is Yato will come after them, because Yato's never met a lost cause he didn't wanna understand.

And what are the dead if not lost causes?

Mizuchi shifts next to him. Her hands, no longer clutching at her skirt, come to wipe at her eyes. "I don't think he remembers me," she murmurs.

She cries very quietly. Her breath barely hitches, her voice barely wavers: she looks the picture of seen and not heard .

It's easy to be angry at her, and it's easy to be infinitely pitying, too. 

"Yato remembers you."

She shakes her head. He rolls his eyes.

"Yeah he does. You think he doesn't follow me? There's no way he doesn't see me talking to you."

"He doesn't want to see me."

Well, no. "It doesn't matter."

Mizuchi curls in on herself further. "He doesn't want to see me ."

She doesn't look like she used to. If there's anyone that lost, really lost, it was her. Not the Sorcerer, not Heaven, not even Yato- not even him.

If there's anyone that lost, completely and utterly and devastatingly, it's her. The Sorcerer gone and Yato hateful. Two things but it was all her world. 

He doesn't know where she lives, now; if she's on the run from Heaven or if everyone deemed her harmless now that the Sorcerer let her go. He doesn't know if she talks to anyone else, if she does anything other than sit and wait.

It's nothing she hasn't brought onto herself, though.

"Why is he not mad at you?" She cries. She looks monstrous when she's honest, which is why Yukine lies all the time. " You left!"

“He left first, actually,” corrects Yukine lowly. She turns towards him, outraged- “Then you lured me out.”

She goes to snarl at him, but her face falls halfway. Then she winds her arms around herself, ducks her head into her knees, folded all the way up against her chest, and cries silently again.

“It’s not my fault,” she whimpers miserably. “It’s not my fault. I was following Father.”

“That’s why he’s mad at you,” Yukine points out. It’s crueler than it needs to be. She chokes on a sob. 

“He shouldn’t have left! He should have- he just left! I thought- he took awa y my name !"

Of course he did. Of course he did, Yukine asked him to.

Sometimes he wants to ask Yato, how did you do it? How did you leave your sister to die? But it’s a trick question, ‘cause his can’t die, ‘cause his already did. But it’s a trick question, because she’s not a sister she’s a weapon, and she can’t die.

Sometimes he wants to ask Yato, do you think I should have just left her, do you think he wouldn’t have killed her, do you think it was just me-

Do you think it’s unfair that she left me? Do you think it’s unfair she never went after me? I lost on purpose. I want to be alive. Do you think it’s unfair? Do you think it’s unfair? It’s unfair, how do you leave your sister behind and survive it? How do you stop losing on purpose?

But he thinks saying any of those would drive him insane. If he acknowledges any of it the crawling worms and skittering cockroaches might spread to his lungs, until he can feel them burrowing every time he inhales; if he says, why, I don’t understand, what will Yato say, I’m sorry?

He can't sleep through the night without remembering the cold, the numbness, the fear. He can't stop crying. 

I lost on purpose, was it worth it? He used to wear his heart on his sleeve and he probably still does, but inside there's no blood anymore, just gasoline.

She's still crying. He imagines the paint of his name has the same properties as the shrines’ water, imagines he can feel the warmth of it, the sharp sting, there-then-gone, of being ridden of corruption. When he digs his heel into the frozen-over ground, the ice shatters.

"You were his shinki," he says. "Why didn't you follow him?"

She shakes her head almost violently, digging her teeth into her lip. "Father would have been alone."

Yukine scoffs. She snarls at him, suddenly, lunges at him, knocks him to the ground.

He hits it with a dull thud, on his side since they were sitting side by side. His shoulder hurts from where she knocked into it. At first he thinks that's it, she's done- then she digs her nails into his exposed cheek, drags them.

"He left me for you!" She yells. "Because you were supposed to be better, but you're not, you're just as bad, you hate him, you hate everyone!"

She tries to go for his eye next, so he rolls on his back and grabs hold of her wrists. She yanks her hand away almost immediately and then she elbows him in the collarbone, missing his airway narrowly.

Unlike the pain in his cheek, sharp, this one is dull and resonates. It almost catches him off-breath. Still, he has enough energy to throw her off him, get himself upright-

She starts crying again. 

"I don't hate him," says Yukine immediately, like it matters. "I don't even hate you."

She cries and cries and cries, curled up in a ball, looking her age for once. Upon closer inspection, the fabric of her uniform is stained with mud and soot and blood. The dark fabric hides it well.

Yukine goes to wipe the blood on his cheek away, but she didn't break skin. 

"Mizuchi," he says quietly. She gathers herself to sit upright again, stilted and sharp like broken glass, small enough to slip past your notice, dangerous enough to cut your teeth and rip your stomach to shreds when it gets slipped into your food.

He never used to think that. He never used to remember.

"I hate you," she spits while he blinks back tears. Smaller than him and snarling, teeth bared, screaming, "If he hadn't saved you it would have been fine, he wouldn't have left me! He would've come back!"

Yukine grits his teeth. Yukine digs his nails into his palms, thinks, too bad too bad too bad, thinks I lost on purpose, why didn’t you?

Says, “Nobody would ever come back for you.”

It’s crueler than it needs to be. How do you stop losing? How do you hold on to kindness and stop losing? Is it one or the other?

Mizuchi stares at him. For a moment he's certain she'll lunge again, spirit a knife from who-knows-where, dig it into his throat until it comes out the other side- 

Then she shakes her head hollowly and he just feels bad.

If there's anyone that lost, just lost, it's her. If there's anyone that gave it all and offered the skin of her wrists to cut, it's her. If there's anyone that lost when she tried so hard to win-

"But we used to be so happy," she says. "We used to be so happy."

He sits back further away. She blinks back tears. "You could've just followed him," he says, and she shakes her head, again and again and again, crumples, sobs, "Father-"

But their fathers killed them, so there’s that.

oOo

By the time he’s thirteen, he knows.

Yuka looks at the train tracks with longing, badly hidden, wholly terrifying. Her nails are cut short and her hair is, too, uniform neat as she steps towards high school. He didn’t cry when they didn’t walk to school together, didn’t hold her hand. Just said, “Come get me after?”

She’s in high school now. She’s the best person he knows. On Tuesdays, he has club until later than her, and she has to walk home alone. But during the rest of the week he asks that they walk home together.

He’s thirteen and his sister is the best person he knows. He’s thirteen and she’s going to die if he doesn’t do something about it.

He’s thirteen and he thinks it can’t get worse.

In hindsight, Yukine thinks, stepping in front of the blade for Yato felt very familiar.

oOo

One night he stays awake until very, very late, and when Yato sighs and drags himself awake, exasperated and ever-grieving, he whispers, “I just don’t think I was worth it, is all.”

He knows he’s hurt Yato by the sound of his inhale. But he knows it’s not worse than the time he screamed to be released by the way Yato exhales, right after, like steeling himself for battle.

“Yukine,” he says, voice soft. Yato shoulders tragedy too well, Yukine thinks, with steel grey eyes and dirty hands. It’s the amount of practice he has with it.

Yukine curls in on himself. Yato inhales again, cut off, like too much of a sound will break the tenuous peace of the moment. 

“Not worth what?” He asks.

Yukine shivers.

The night is all-encompassing and unyielding, far from comforting with the way it obscures Yato's expressions, the hints his body language could give. It sharpens the rest of his senses, until he is altogether too attuned to the way the silence holds, and holds, and holds.

He shifts against the thin blanket, tangled against him. “Yukine,” says Yato, sharply this time. “Not worth what?”

It’s too late to wish he hadn’t said a thing, but Yukine does it nonetheless. Fear has tasted the same throughout all his lives, and he finds he can recognize the taste of it in the back of his throat even when it is faint. He can’t swallow it back.

“Just- it all,” he answers. Wants to be sharp and painful, a knife, but instead the words come out fragile and hesitant.

Yato sighs. It’s terrible not being able to see him, the way he looks exasperated or grieving; all Yukine can do is imagine, paint in on the memory of the god’s face what emotion he imagines might reside there. “You were worth it,” he says. “Yukine, of course.”

It’s not true. The violence of the lie, the boldfacedness of it hits Yukine square in the jaw, makes him taste blood. The way Yato says it, like it should be obvious, as inevitable as snow in winter, makes it more of a weapon than if he had said, you weren’t.

“I’m not stupid,” he whispers, the force of it undercut by the need to let the night win yet again, softening his sharp edges. “I know-”

“Yukine,” interrupts Yato. This time he sounds like a god, which is Yukine’s least favorite way for Yato to sound. “I said, of course .”

It should be comforting. It should.

But the certainty just sounds disdainful.

“Have you figured out yet why your sister wasn’t, then?”

The words ring angry back at nothing in the silence of the room. Yukine wants an answer, but most of all he wants to not have thought of the question in the first place. He wants Yato to say, she’s different, just as much as he wants him to say, what are you talking about?

But Yato doesn’t say anything. The cold spreads from his fingertips to his hands; he can feel the hair rising on his arms, and he inhales.

“I didn’t know she was your sister,” he lets out to fill the empty air. “Hiyori neither. You could’ve just taken her with you. I would’ve done almost anything to just take her with me. You could’ve just taken her with you, if you’d explained-”

Yato sounds reasonable, when he says, “She would’ve betrayed us. Turned us over to the Sorcerer.”

“What does it matter ,” Yukine whispers. “She was your sister, what does it matter that she would’ve betrayed you, you just left her there! ”

“She didn’t want to leave,” Yato hisses. He moves around but Yukine can’t see it, just imagine it. “She didn’t- she was fine with him. She didn’t understand, she didn’t want to- Mizuchi and me never would’ve made it out! He would’ve never let us both go!”

"You don't know- if you'd tried-"

"I do know, he never- never in a million years, he needed one of us, Yukine, she didn't want to leave! She was happy with him, she wasn't happy with me, she would have gone right back- she did go right back to him!"

"But she's your sister -"

"She trapped me there! It was her fault, I trusted her and she would say it all to him, she never trusted me, it's her own fucking fault!"

The words explode over the room like a blizzard, so harsh it brings tears to his eyes. There’s not a gasp from Yato, not even a movement; like nothing in him regrets what he just said, and all Yukine can see-

All Yukine can see-

“Why would you leave her, ” he gasps out. “Why would you- how could you- your sister. ”

He bends over in half, digs his nails in his palms, realizes late they’ve turned into claws; realizes even later he’s dug grooves into the wood of the attic, only just stops himself from cutting himself open.

He gasps in air like he’s been stabbed. He can’t hear Yato over his own racing heart, the beat of it the accompanying chorus of the monster approaching, regardless that he’s the monster here. His legs hurt from how he sits. His lungs hurt from how he’s not breathing. He feels a drop of sweat roll down his back.

He wants, very abruptly, not to be locked in a room with Yato. 

“I’m sorry,” he adds. “I’m sorry, that’s not- I know it’s not- she couldn’t die, it wasn’t- is she even- I’m- don’t-”

When he traces the borderline, the arc of his fingers is so violent he doesn’t recognize his own hands. 

It glows blue, illuminating the room. He watches, wide-eyed, the tears drip down Yato’s face.

“Yukine,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Yukine swallows.

“Please trust me,” adds Yato, voice small, still crying silently. He looks nothing like a god. He looks nothing like Haru’s father, either.

Yukine inhales. It’s approaching the height of spring, yet the air feels cold as death in his lungs. He chokes back- a whimper? He doesn’t even know, just knows that he can’t make a sound, can’t move. He’s never felt this helpless, except maybe when he was dying, or when he was remembering his death.

The borderline fades. The room goes back to darkness.

Yukine starts crying, too. Soft sobs that he doesn’t know how to quiet, shoulders shaking- he buries his face in his hands, horribly unstable. There’s nothing but fear in his lungs, filling up his throat, until he’s drowning in it, until it permeates the air around him, breathing it in and breathing it out in an endless loop. He doesn’t remember how to be angry.

“I’m sorry,” he hiccups. There’s a shift and he recoils from the movement, Yato’s phone torchlight lighting up just fast enough to catch the tail end of his flinch. “I’m sorry, I do trust you, I just don’t-”

He shakes his head miserably, refusing to face Yato’s eyes.

“I remind you of your father,” completes Yato gently. As gently as he can. Yukine avoids his eyes, tries futily to stop crying.

“No,” he says. “No-”

He wraps his hands around his knees like a kid. He yearns for Nagisa’s distance, for the anger that possessed him, for that certainty, that he was in the right and the world should have bowed down to him. 

There’s nothing steady around him right now; his grief has turned into acid and slowly eaten at the pillars of his sanity. It’s a gaping chasm in the middle of himself that he doesn’t know how to close up.

“I know I do,” repeats Yato. “You don’t have to lie to me. When I attacked you with Kazuma, I could see.”

His tone is halting. Yukine doesn’t dare look up to see if he’s still crying. The torchlight is white and harsh in the room and he focuses it on it through his tears, watches the rays get distorted through lowered eyelashes.

“You don’t remind me of him,” protests Yukine. “It’s just- It’s just- I don’t understand, I don’t see why I was worth it. Just because I died? Just because he killed me?”

There’s movement from in front of him. Sharp, and he flinches, again, but it’s just Yato. It takes effort to remember that it’ll only ever be just Yato.

He’s frozen in getting up onto his knees, an awkward in-between position that looks like it must hurt. He must’ve stopped when Yukine drew back. He looks wild, desperate, when he says, “Yukine, can I see your name?”

Yukine blinks. He stretches the collar of his t-shirt, on auto-pilot. He knows, without seeing it, what will be there: his name, permanently littered with hairline fractures.

Yato lets out a sigh of relief regardless. He sits back on his haunches, ready to jump again, and Yukine uses that time to wipe his eyes on his arm.

“Why do you care so much about Mizuchi?” Asks Yato in the silence that follows. Yukine resists the urge to shake his head no like a child.

“I don’t,” he says, even though it’s not true. “She’s lonely. She’s your sister.”

Yato sighs. His face softens, again, and it hurts: this instant forgiveness, the knife handed back to him again with a smile and laugh, hilt still stained with blood. “ You know she’s not really- it’s complicated.”

“She thinks you’re family, though.”

Yato swallows. “It’s hard,” he says in the silence. “It’s- I’m angry at her. Yukine, why-”

“You can’t be angry at her,” Yukine interrupts. There’s a knot in his throat. He wants to cry again, he doesn’t know why. “It’s not her fault. She was scared. You said it, that the both of you couldn’t have stayed, so what if she stayed for you? If she stayed for you, how could you just leave her?”

Yato sets his jaw. “She did it for herself,” he says quietly, measuring out the length of his words so they fall to the ground with the same rhythm as an executioner’s blade. “For him. She just didn’t want to leave. She would’ve been fine killing for- Yukine, what is this about?”

In truth he doesn’t know. In truth he keeps thinking about it: Yuka, head bowed, long hair tangled, crying. How could you just leave her?

He doesn’t know how to love without ripping himself open, he doesn’t know a love that doesn’t involve some grand betrayal you forgive three times over. He’s just a kid that died for his sister. 

He says, “Would you have saved Yuka?”

It’s so easy to die, and it’s so hard to fight it. He was fourteen when he did, and at his core he’ll always be fourteen somehow, clutching his sister’s letter, waiting for her reply. 

When you’re fourteen and you’re dying, what do you think of? That you’re scared; that you’re cold; that it hurts; that you miss your sister.

He says, “Would you have?”

When you’re dead and still fourteen, what do you think of? That you’re scared; that it hurts; that you miss your sister.

He says, “Would you have just left her there?”

It drops onto the wood and catches on fire, filling the room with smoke.

He doesn’t recognize his tone; it’s made of shards of broken bottles and the weight of a freight train at full speed, barreling down the train tracks, heedless of dangers or obstacles. 

Yato blinks. “Yukine, what-”

“She was going to die,” he says, and his voice breaks.

His voice breaks.

When you’re fourteen and you’re dying, at least your sister is safe. When you’re fourteen and you’re dying, you can’t protect her anymore. “She was going to die. She told me, she was going to.”

“I know- Yukine, that’s not the same.”

“The first thing we ever did together,” Yukine reminds him as all the venom and vitriol finally rise, “the first thing, the very first thing- the very first thing we ever did, a day after you’d seen it all-”

Yato freezes. His eyes widen and his mouth hangs open. He goes to talk again, but it’s too late. It’s been too late. “You don’t want to save them,” spits Yukine. “None of you! If they want to die, they should just go ahead and- ”

Yato takes his hands. Yukine snarls at him, wrenches them back. Fingers together, thumb out: the borderline separates them.

“You would’ve let her die,” he says in the ringing silence.

Yukine’s dead and his sister is the best person he knows.

Yato stares at the borderline uncomprehendingly. He looks lost, ghostly in the shimmering light of the spell, the white one of his phone. Yukine hates him, viscerally. Yukine wants to cry.

“I would’ve saved you both,” whispers Yato, shaking his head.

"You would've let her step forward !" Shouts Yukine. Heedless of Kofuku and Daifoku sleeping downstairs, uncaring of the bother it can cause- he loves Yato enough to shoulder a thousand bleeding betrayals, but not this. Not this.

Yato glances at the place his name rests again. He sets his jaw. He says, "I felt you die. You weren't even angry at her, but she still left you. She didn't even search for you as an adult. She didn't even- you're not even angry at her."

"But that can't be it," Yukine points out. He is simmering embers. He's TNT, two seconds away from detonating. "Because you left Mizuchi behind. So that's not it, because you left her behind. "

"She's not- Yuka left you ! Why are you angry at me for leaving but not at her?"

"I told her to go," he hisses. "And you can't be angry at her for that- you can't use that as a reason- you left your sister behind, you did it, you would've let Yuka die just because she thought she wanted to! "

"'Cause she did!" Yells back Yato, terrible and furious, eyes cold. "'Cause she did, you had to save her! You fought so hard and she would have just- thrown it all away-"

Yukine punches him in the face.

That he never worked up the courage to do with his father.

oOo

When Haru is fourteen-

Well.

oOo

He's shivering when Hiyori finds him, more out of the memory of cold than it really affecting him. It's early morning, the sun barely coloring a timid red the heavy cover of clouds and pollution that hovers over the city. 

He feels numb. It must show on his face. Hiyori approaches him carefully, frowning, and she says, “Yato’scoming too.”

He doesn’t have the energy to tense up so he doesn’t. “Okay,” he says quietly, without looking at her. 

“Yukine,” sighs Hiyori. She comes close, but not too close. “He told me you fought, but I don’t know the rest. Are you okay?”

It’s hard to quantify grief. It’s hard. Okay is a spectrum, a painting or a poem he studied in class, too ancient to be understood properly. Grief is an unending trickle, but the container it flows into depends: some people can contain an ocean of it, but Yukine feels like he chokes on spoonfuls.

Hiyori looks so worried when he glances at her. He can’t keep doing this, swinging between anger and sorrow so wildly; he can’t keep doing this, it’ll kill her. 

“I’m okay,” he says, more because he wants to believe it than because it’s true. “Don’t worry. It was my fault.”

Hiyori shakes her head, frowning. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Okay,” says Yukine. “It was, though.”

She sits down next to him. It’s been a while since they’ve talked, a bit since he’s looked at her and actually took her in. Her hair is frizzy and her white sneakers scuffed. She looks like she’s running on little sleep and no preparation.

In truth, she’s barely older than he was, when he died.

“I know you don’t want to fight,” observes Hiyori. “You never really do.”

He woke from death ready to cut, but he’s afraid of blood. It’s cold. They tore down the house after all, but he can taste the metal in the air, still. 

“I’ll apologize,” he says. “I didn’t mean- he doesn’t really understand, sometimes. I think.”

Hiyori sighs. “He tries,” she agrees, “but it’s not always- they’re gods.”

She says it like an excuse, and in the Sorcerer’s voice it sounded heavy with resentment. Yukine knew where he fell on that scale, once.

“Are you still angry at him?”

Yukine shakes his head. “I can’t.” It’s a nonanswer and he knows it, but it’s the truth regardless: he is angry at Yato. He can’t be.

Hiyori stays silent for a long time. Yukine watches lights flicker off in the apartment building, as people get ready to head out to work. 

"You can be angry, though," she says finally. "I'm angry. At him, at you, at everyone just a bit. We did our best but it was- if he hadn't run off, if you hadn't ran after him- if either of you had told me anything- I'm angry, but it doesn't matter. I don't have to throw it back at you every time. It's not all there is."

But the thought of Yato letting Yuka die is all that matters. He doesn't know how to let it go. There's this enormous chasm between them now, where Yukine threw away his life for Yuka and Yato thinks she didn't deserve it in the first place.

"Think about it," asks Hiyori quietly. "Isn't there more to you both than that last fight?"

The grass is damp under them. It's freezing. The lights turn off, one by one, in the nearby apartments, like so many stars winking out of the night sky.

"I don't know," he answers in kind, barely audible. "I hope so, but I don't know."

Hiyori shoves her hands further in her pockets. Her winter coat is new and made of wool, dyed soft grey. It looks rough but warm, enough to compensate for the threadbare and stained long-sleeve t-shirt Yukine recognizes under it, the one she wears to tidy up.  A sure sign she wasn't planning to go out today, until Yato and him dragged her into their mess again.

"He won't let you go," she says, as his heart aches pointedly for a second. "So you have to talk it out, because he's never leaving you. It has to count for something."

Yukine wants to explain to her, comprehensively, how Yato hates Yuka. How Yato thinks Yuka's weak, 'cause she wanted to die and Yato's strong enough to never have wanted that. He wants to be able to explain the shaking of his sister's shoulders and the way he lost on purpose without it being unnecessarily cruel, full of details that are there only to hurt spectators, sharp knives that deter questions. He wants to lay it all down, methodically, and have someone consider that a life and not a tragedy. He wants to be a person and not a victim. 

Likewise, he wants his sister to be a person and not a weakling. Maybe he wants that more than not being a victim, because after all he is. Maybe he wants everyone to feel everything the way he does, bloody and raw, the empathy that's less sympathetic pain and more open heart surgery done without anesthesia, every single minute of every day. 

He wants not to hurt the people he loves.

"I know he's stuck with me," he says, and dodges narrowly the swat Hiyori aimed at him. "Okay, not stuck, " he corrects hastily. "But I know he wants things to be easy again."

Hiyori huffs. "He wants you happy," she corrects. "He just wants you happy, but Yukine, you've been haunting the place you died for a month now."

He wishes it didn't hurt to hear it, but it does.

"I'm sorry," adds Hiyori quietly. Lets it descend upon them, the apology akin to winter's first snow, unexpected, cold, there-then-gone.

There's a pause again. No doubt Yato is eavesdropping on them right now, waiting for the right moment to insert himself in the conversation. No doubt he's ready to direct it to softer grounds again, too, to spare Hiyori the heartache. To spare all three of them the heartache.

"You don't have to be sorry," finally answers Yukine. "I'm not here- I'm not here about me."

"... you're here about Yuka."

He inhales. It's cold and by all the gods, he's died a thousand times over, in that little apartment complex, he's died a thousand times over by the time he says, "He would've let him die, how could he do that?"

He meant it angry, but unsurprisingly it comes out plaintive. Hiyori startles, like it's not what she expected to hear. He doesn't know what's unfamiliar: the hurt or the words.

"You heard him," he continues nonetheless, picking up steam. "That first job- that first time- two days or less after he'd seen everything I'd done for Yuka- and he would've just let that student step forward, what? 'Cause he was angry on every single shinki's behalf ? We didn't ask him to be. I don't want him in my head, I don't want his stupid crusade for me! His petty little revenge that ends with more people dead!"

"Yukine, what-" Says Hiyori, but he ignores her. The train's started and there's no brake; he's ripped off the bandage and bleeding out. Wouldn't know how to make it stop even if he could, and he can't. His heart on his sleeve has colored the whole of him bloody red.

"I don't care about him leaving me behind," he spits out, through the memory of a dying boy pleading, don't leave .  "I don't care about it all with the Sorcerer, or Kazuma! I don't care that he didn't stay and he didn't trust us, I don't care! But he's such a god and I hate that."

Hiyori blinks. Yukine whirls around, wrenches himself upwards, says, to the empty air, "He forgave me for betraying him a dozen times, I don't understand what makes me special. I don't understand how he could be so kind to me and so terrible to everyone that's like my sister! I don't understand why he thinks they're less - he's such a god and he thinks he's better than them but he doesn't get anything. "

He's not an angry crier but he's crying, cut-off sobs as Hiyori stares at him, wide-eyed. The disappointment aches deep. He's died a thousand times over in that apartment complex and it hurt less, cause he never really expected his father to be better.

"Yukine, don't cry," says Hiyori softly. She rises too, her hands reaching towards him. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize-"

"A day," hiccups Yukine. "A day after." He wipes his eyes furiously, refusing to meet Hiyori's gaze.

"I didn't get it, either," she reasons. "But he's angry for you. About you. About- it's unfair, he thinks it's unfair. That you wanted to live and you didn't get to, and that they could-"

"And that nothing ," cuts in Yukine again, like if he doesn't hear it said out loud it won't hurt. "He didn't die! He didn't, he's never- he can't even die, he's not human, he's a god!"

"But he loves you," counters Hiyori softly. "And he saw you die."

She looks so real, her and her scuffed sneakers. Her and her teary eyes. 

“I know,” he says, fight cut out of him. It’s not his fault he died, and it’s not his fault Yato had to see all of his shinkis die. He could point it out and he would be true, but it would be another fight. 

The disappointment cuts deep, deep, deep. Finding out that Yato looks down on his sister, realizing, is like having given someone your heart for safe-keeping, and finding out they didn’t care enough not to misplace it. Finding out that Hiyori doesn’t understand is much more like he’s watching, removed from himself, as his mother packs up his new winter coat so Yuka can have two.

He doesn’t know a love that doesn’t involve some sort of grand betrayal, forgiven three times over. 

He doesn’t, but he wishes he did.

oOo

Yuka always goes with rock first when they play, and he’s never told her.

He’ll never tell her.

oOo

The train crossing doesn't look different from his memories. There's the same high brick wall, the stripped red-and-white barrier that's automated, the grass growing on the side of the tracks. 

There's the same annoying, all-knowing, all-bullshitting god, too.

“I’m angry at you,” says Yato as he crouches on the telephone pole, eyes narrowed. Yukine levels him with an unimpressed look that he knows must look out of place on his blotchy face.

“Get down from here, you look ridiculous,” he calls. “I’m not having this conversation with an oversized pigeon.”

“ Yukine, ” whines Yato, breaking the air of wrath and foreboding as easily as he breaks promises. He's back in his tracksuit, which Yukine wrinkles his nose at by habit. He assumes Yato ignores him by habit as well. “Didn’t Hiyori tell you to be more understanding?”

Yukine hums in answer and goes to sit on the barrier near the train tracks. Not his best idea: the wood is damp from earlier rain, the water sinking into his clothes uncomfortably as he sits. He puts his hands on either side of his hips to steady himself and grimaces at the feeling of wet wood under his hands.

“Hiyori didn’t tell me anything,” he lies, affecting nonchalance. It's an exercise in balance, too. “I thought you were coming?”

“You didn’t want me at the apartment the past two weeks, I figured it hadn’t changed in a day.”

The hint of derision sharpens into a needle that goes straight through Yukine's teeth to tug at his gums, a sharp, insistent ache somewhere he can't reach, somewhere he can't rip apart without making it worse. Yato's eyes have narrowed back. He must think Yukine's feeling better to pick a fight, or he's just past caring.

He still looks ridiculous perched on his telephone pole, though, pretending to be out of reach. Maybe out of reach for real, this time, all of the distance of divinity and death between them.

Yukine feels himself shrink. It takes effort to spread his shoulders back out, to unclench his fingers from where they clutch at the barrier, to bite back the guilt and the shame that flower in his stomach like poisonous plants. He'd cough up apologies every single second of every day if the rage didn't act as an herbicide.

"I didn't not want you there," he answers. It's only not a lie because it's not Yato specifically he'd been wishing would leave him alone, and more the world at large.

Although he could just lie, now that Yato wouldn't get stung. 

Yato's in the process of rolling his eyes when Yukine adds, "I'm sorry."

It doesn't soften Yato. If anything, the line of his shoulders pulls tighter. "I don't want your sorrys," he says. "I want my guidepost back."

Yukine bites back the first response, and the second, too, and the third. They're all variations of apology, maybe an elegy, for the boy Yato loved. At least a bit of anger slipped in there, too, at least some, something like, shouldn't have left him in the first place, then. But it's not fair and Yato already did it all.

Yato jumps down. He lands in a graceful, prowling crouch. Yukine itches for the call of his name, for the feel of cutting specifically what is meant to be cut, for being iron and brittle instead of human and brittle.

"At the very least, I want to know why you punched me in the face," Yato frowns. He looks disapproving, or disarmed. Yukine wants something to cut , not his own throat but maybe the whole of heaven. He wants to be able to say the words in his mind, the too-sharp too-honest ones. Yukine wants. He wants and wants and wants and he'll want until it kills him, again and again, until it gnaws right through his bones.

He leans forward instead. Looks at the cracked pavement, his sneakers, scuffed just like Hiyori's. Stays silent.

"Yukine," says Yato pointedly. Shoes come into his line of sight, and Yukine straightens again to see Yato, standing before him with both eyebrows raised expectantly. 

"I told you," answers Yukine. "I'm sorry."

Yato sighs. His knees fold, as he sits crossed-legged on the ground. He tilts his head to meet Yukine's gaze, steady.

"I'm not mad," he says. 

"You're never mad at me," points out Yukine roughly. "But I can take it, you know. You didn't even- I shouldn't have trusted the Sorcerer. Mizuchi. I wanted- I don't understand why you keep giving me second chances."

Yato looks sad. "I left," he contradicts. "I left first. If I hadn't left-"

"Okay," interrupts Yukine."With if s I'd still be alive, though. But the purification ritual? That was my fault."

"You didn't realize what it actually meant, the sting," counters Yato, acting like he didn't flinch at the mention of Yukine's death, but he did and it happened. "You were hurting. You're my kid. "

The ache comes back, sharper. The warmth, too; he imagines it feels like that to be buried.

He blinks back tears. Yato still looks up at him, and Yukine hates him, and Yukine loves him.

"How can you do that?" He asks, tone sharper than he intends. "How can you be so kind to me and so awful about it at the same time?"

Yato blinks. Yukine tightens his fist on the barrier, because he can't launch himself upright now that Yato's sitting where he would land. "Yukine, I don't understand," says Yato pleadingly. "Why are you angry at me? What did I do?"

"I don't understand," Yukine repeats back. He feels like his heart is splitting in two. "Yuka wanted to die, and I didn't want to, and I don't get why it makes me special. I don't understand why you want to help more. I don't understand why you won't save them, I don't- You're gods, you're the kindest god I can imagine, you buried me , I don't understand. "

He's so tired of it, and by it, he means, in no particular order, the nightmares, the guilt, the grief, the resentment, the grief, the grief, the grief.

Yato looks so sad. Yukine's so tired of hurting the people he loves, so tired of the heart on his sleeve, gasoline and blood together, acid and hurt together, so tired of it all. He blinks away tears and watches Yato's face fall further. 

It threatens to turn into a familiar song and dance at this point, the one where Yukine is hurt and Yato wants to fix him, with the blood marrow from his bones, with the shards of his own soul, with anything and everything, whatever the cost. Truth is, if Yato knew about the sunk cost fallacy, chances are he still wouldn’t leave: he’s terrible at managing money.

"Don't- don't say sorry," asks Yukine. He sounds worn. He sounds like he feels, a nervous system bared to the air, an electrical fence buzzing out a warning. The water's seeped into his clothes by the time there's a repeated ring, insistent, but he doesn't get off the barrier even as the train whistles by.

The screeching of rails has barely faded into the distance when Yato says, "I am sorry, though."

"Not about the right things," retorts Yukine, and watches, with fascination, as anger gains back ground on Yato's face. Its spread starts with the clenching of his teeth and ends somewhere in the furrow of his brow, but is the most glaringly obvious in the way he straightens and starts to uncross his legs, so he can rise faster.

"Is this about your sister?" Yato asks. "I am angry at her. You can't stop me from doing that. You died to protect her and she never even searched for you. You had to stay behind to protect her, even though you were younger, and she never even visited, never even came back- Never wondered where you were, if she loved you then why did I have to bury you? And even then, she-"

"Stop- stop!" whispers-screams Yukine, his voice a blade of ice turned inwards, the pleading ripped out of his throat. Yato looks at him in surprise, then in concern, starts reaching out and thinks better of it. He's stopped talking but Yukine still begs, "Please stop, don't talk about her like that, don't, not her, not Yuka. She did all she could, don't talk about her like that, how dare you?"

He could take anything, but not this. He could be ripped from limb to limb, he could walk and stay inside a burning building, he'd rather be back in that box for a hundred years than be hearing this. It hurts in a way he can't articulate, an ache that's deep and permanent, a fundamental bruise on the core of his being.

"Yukine," says Yato softly. "I know you love her, but she wasn't- she didn't- you had to save her. From herself . It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair and it killed you."

Yukine wants to cry, so he does. He thinks about Yuka, the same as him, five and seven and ten and twelve and fourteen and sixteen, in that house with him. He thinks of the way she flinched and he never did, he thinks of their mother and the way Yuka would tend to her so he wouldn't have to. He's fourteen and he's never lived a single day his big sister wasn't alive, and he never will- it's a dream come true.

"Stop," he says, voice broken. Nothing breaks him like Yuka. If he died, at least he saved her. He truly believes, wholeheartedly, that's one of the reasons remembering didn't drive him insane. "She lived through the same thing I did, you know, for longer. She had to take care of me, she tried so hard- even if she didn't, why? Why would being older mean she was stronger, it just meant she'd done it longer, it just made you more tired- if you can feel sorry for me why can't you feel sorry for her? Why? Why do I deserve sympathy and she doesn't, she lived through the same thing for longer!"

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. He wants a life that's a life and not a tragedy, but he'll never get that. The most he has are his memories of Yuka.

He can’t let go of the railing without falling, and his tears are on full display. He wants to hide. He wants his sister happy. He wants to stop hurting the people he loves, he wants the people he loves to stop hurting him .

Yato says, “Yukine, I’m sorry,” but he doesn’t mean it. Yukine chokes on it, the apology that’s not meant, just said to ease his pain, because Yato loves him so much but not enough to listen to him on this.

“I don’t want your apologies,” bites Yukine. “I don’t want it when you don’t get it, I didn’t want to see you because of this- you would’ve let her die, you would still let her die-”

“I would save her,” says Yato, intense and honest, almost desperate. “Yukine, you have to know I would. I would- of course I would!” 

“Because she’s my sister.”

“Yes, because she’s your sister! But you would’ve done almost anything for her, you still would, and she left you behind . If Mizuchi had been on my side, I never would have left her, I never would have- she left you, just because you asked her to. ”

Venom and vitriol, his heart his empathy his fucking tears on full display. If the people that love you hurt you, do they love you? If Yukine loved Yato less, would it hurt less?

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

“ You left me behind,” hiccups Yukine. “You left me behind! You left me behind and I ended up dying again, and again, and again in a loop- you left me after I begged you not to !”

Yato flinches. He’s a god of war and blood, calamity and screaming, but he’s so soft in the end. It’s so easy to hurt him. Yukine wants to weep, for the both of them, their sharp edges and the desperate way they want the best for each other, his makeshift family that would save him from anything including himself. 

“I wanted to keep you safe,” Yato argues, near wild. “I should’ve known that he would go after you, but Yukine, you have to believe me, I just wanted you safe.”

“You went away to die,” says Yukine, ripping nerves away, tearing them with his teeth, he’s going numb and it doesn’t matter, “and every day Yuka went away to die, too, except at least she came back. I waited for you, I knew where you were even if I didn’t want to, I had some inkling of what you were doing- you left me behind, I don’t care that you did, but I can’t- I can’t- you could do anything, anything - ” 

He chokes. His stupid vulnerability on full display, his heart that Yato didn’t care to listen to, if the people that you love hurt you doesn’t that just mean they’re still alive?

“I’m sorry,” says Yato. “I’m sorry, I’ll never understand, I’ll never forgive her. She made me watch you die.”

"My father killed me!" Screams Yukine, more a shriek than a scream, something anguished and horrified. "It was him, it wasn't Yuka, it wasn't my mom, it was him, he carried me there, he closed the door, he walked away! Him! He did, not Yuka, it wasn't her fault, how can you even say that?"

Yato shies back when Yukine stands up, trembling. The train tracks, behind them, make for a cruel backdrop for this conversation, the awareness of it a white-hot knife between Yukine's ribs, another ache he can't get rid of.

There's a moment. Yato says, head tilted up, still sitting down, "Yukine, she brought the Ayakashis."

"I hate you," chokes Yukine. It rips out of his throat without him meaning to, it barrels through all of the love, all of the grief, all of the gratefulness. It tears through him with a ferocity akin to that of a forest fire, and he exhales out smoke as he steps forward, forward, kneels in front of Yato, swears, "Say that again- say it again- you'll never see me again."

"Yukine," answers Yato, pained, "you know-"

"Listen to me," begs Yukine. "Stop being a god, stop being such a god! Listen to me, if you can bury me why can't you listen to me?"

"I am a god," says Yato quietly. His right hand comes to rest on Yukine's knees, softly.

"Then stop," pleads Yukine. "For me, for a second, stop thinking you know- stop thinking anything- my father killed me . If Yuka had- if she'd- it would have been his fault, because- because-"

The hand on Yukine's knee tightens. He wants to bury his face in his hands and cry for all of eternity, but if he doesn't finish this conversation now he'll never be able to stomach it again, so he wrestles his breath into control, or tries to.

Eyes stuck on Yato's feet, he takes in unsteady breaths for a long while, the hand on his knee still here.

"Forget the Ayakashis, forget the people you let die, forget it," he whispers, voice raw, refusing to look at Yato's face. "I'll never forgive you for it, I'll never- listen to me on this. I'm your guidepost. I'm human . You need me to explain it to you, you need me to explain things to you, to show you the new things, I'm trying. Just listen to me."

Yato's voice sounds angry when he whispers back, "I am." 

It could be Yukine's poisoned, fractured imagination. Nonetheless, his voice shakes when he says, "There's no purpose. There's no- no- Bishamon's a war god, Ebisu rules over wealth, and as gods you have this- this- this divine mission, that driving force, to kill Ayakashis and save people and make the world good, but it doesn't work like that for human, it doesn't . "

"I know that," agrees Yato. Yukine chances a glance at him, his too-serious face, the road deserted around the both of them. He's still kneeling and the concrete digs into his knees, he's still crying and the grief digs into his throat. Rivulets of blood, he's choking .

"The aim of our life is not to survive, and to survive at- at any cost, and to be glad for it! No matter what happens, no matter the awfulness, the fear, the weight of it. I would have died a thousand times for Yuka to live, why won't you condemn that?"

"Because she was selfish," says Yato immediately. "She wanted to die for her, she didn't think about you-"

"She spent our childhood thinking about me," hisses Yukine. "Don't you dare -"

"You're not objective about her, Yukine," accuses Yato, withdrawing his hand. Yukine feels the loss so keenly it may as well have been the knife, still plugged in the artery, keeping him from bleeding out 'til now.

"That's not the point," he insists, almost desperate. "The point is people who killed themselves didn't fail some fundamental duty, they didn't- you hate Yuka but I knew it, I knew I was gonna die, I lost on purpose, what does that make me?"

"You didn't know," denies Yato. Soft, so soft when seconds earlier he was not. "You didn't know, or you wouldn't have stayed. I know it. I know it's easier to pretend that you knew what you were getting into, but-"

Yukine clenches his fist. "Get out of my head," he says quietly, even though it's too late. It's fifty years too late, even, for him to go back in time and tell himself to be a little less brave.

"I'm sorry," says Yato. He tries to draw Yukine into a hug and Yukine dodges his outstretched hand, feeling cruel, feeling flayed open, feeling the phantom sensations of his sister sobbing into his shoulder. If a ghost can be haunted, what can't? 

"You have to stop being a god," he begs. "You have to try, for a minute, to be kind and not a god. Forget Yuka and whatever vendetta you have against her because you know me- that first day, that first day, you would have let him die!"

Yato blinks. His face hardens the same way a door closes. "I have no intention," he says, words so cool they leave third-degree burns within Yukine's lungs when he inhales, "of helping someone who doesn't want to be saved."

He says it and he means it, he's such a god and Yukine's so angry.

"Nobody wants to be saved!" He yells. "Nobody does, nobody wants to ask for help- that's why the gods exist, that's what you're here for, to be the one to save everyone, what are you doing? "

"I can't save everyone!" Yells back Yato. "I can't, nobody can, I'm not going to waste my time on people that don't even want to be alive in the first place! Not when there are people like you that are still dying!"

"You're not-" God, but it breaks on Yukine's tongue. He is, he is, he's judge, jury and executioner, Yukine's the blade and the hand that stays it. He wants not to be a weapon, but he is; he wants not to feel small, but he does.

He wants Hiyori here, but she's going to be a doctor and she wouldn't disapprove of triage.

"But nobody's trying to save them," he says, mouth filled with the glass shards of his helplessness. "Nobody is."

He's tired of kneeling. He's tired of praying. He's tired, tired, his sister is the best person he knows and Yato did it all.

"You're too kind," says Yato, like it's a lesson someone engraved in his skin, blood red and bloody, like it's a reprimand and a prayer at the same time. "You are. You can't try to save everyone, you'll never succeed, Yukine."

"You don't even try, though. You can't ever succeed if you don't try- nobody tries, you're just leaving them, when we cut the Ayakashis he turned away!"

The flower he replaced in the bottle still stands, but it doesn't have to have been him. It shouldn't have been anyone.

"He'll come back," points out Yato, staring at the flower, too. He looks sad, when he says, "I've seen it. They come back."

"You don't know they will," protests Yukine. "Even if he does, it's not all there is. It's not- we're more than the way we die."

Yato stays silent. Yukine says, through the glass shards, "If you look at me like a victim for the rest of time, I think I would have rather killed myself."

And it's cruel, and Yato hides his flinch. It hurts and he's hurting the people he loves. He's angry and Yato won't understand, he's tired and the people he loves are hurting him. He'll never be rid of it, the grief, the anger, the weight, the fear. He grew up waiting for Yuka not to come back, he grew up waiting for himself to lose the fight. He never gave up anyway.

It's not that the only way out is through: it's that there's no real way out, per say, no light at the end of the tunnel. It's just a postbox and the forgetting. It's just your god and your sister. It's the hurt, it's the love, the love and the dozen grand betrayals, the first of which happened when Yuka said, I want to die .

Mostly it's the love, his bleeding heart and the gasoline it soaks up like a sponge.

"You wouldn't be here if you had," shoots back Yato, sharpness for sharpness. "The Ayakashis would have gotten you."

Earlier, Yukine doesn't add. "'Cause you don't try," he repeats instead. "'Cause they don't have a single chance in death, 'cause there's already Ayakashis on them, that you didn't kill! If you want to be a god, then fine- it's your job to save everyone, you can't pick and choose! And- and just leave them to it, and when they do become corrupted, throw your hands to the air, say, well, that’s just what happens, they never had a chance!"

“They did,” Yato says, sharply. “They had a hundred chances to just turn back. He just had to step away.”

“I hate you,” says Yukine again, drawing back. “You’ll kill people rather than be wrong. You’ll kill my sister rather than be wrong!"

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. It's grief and unfairness, it's the love, the thousand bleeding betrayals, that lost little kid feeling, why aren't they doing anything? Why aren't they helping? If it were me, I would help.

"I'm right-"

"That's not the point! That's not the- the point is they're people, and they have loved ones, and they're dying!"

"And they're choosing to," completes Yato. Steel. He shoulders grief but he has no fucking clue how it feels.

"You say you would've saved me," spits Yukine, "but I never would've prayed to you."

Yato's eyes widen. He's looked hurt throughout their argument, but now he looks like he took a hit he couldn't take. He looks exactly like he did when Yukine woke up and flinched away from him. He's such a god, and he just wants to be a good one.

But it's a thousand bleeding betrayals that have run him dry, so Yukine says, "Release me. If you can't save them I don't want to know you."

"Yukine-"

They've had this conversation before, but that time Yukine felt guilt and now he just feels frigid numbness, spreading through his body. His fingers hurt. This is yet another box he's attempting to claw his way out of, for Yuka.

"I can't be your guidepost, so release me. Find someone else to teach you to be good . I give up."

"What-"

He's so scared to be alone, but he died for Yuka. In comparison, surely it's easier.

He's died for Yato too, technically. 

"If you're just going to pick and choose, and kick the strays out like some kind of egotistic deity, I don't want to be with you! I don't want to be used by a selfish god! I didn't want it then and I don't want it now!"

"I'm not selfish," denies Yato. When he's scared he looks so much like the kid Yukine unhinged his jaw to defend. "I just can't-"

"Then don't! Hiyori's forgiven you but I can't, so just get yourself a brand new shinki that doesn't know anything, a clean one you can be sure won't disagree! But I won't do it, I won't."

" Yukine-"

"I won't," repeats Yukine, trying to get up, trying to run away. Suddenly he can't stand the tears, they feel acidic on his face, suddenly he can't stand the possibility of seeing Yato cry again. It's fifty years too late to be a little less brave, but right now might be the second-best opportunity.

He takes one, two unsteady steps away, dodging Yato's hand again, thinking it'll really happen, it's really the end, the grief-

And then Yato, eyes wild and terrified, calls out, manic, "Sekki!"

oOo

("I'm not letting you go," says Yato, two weeks after Yukine flinched away from him, minutes after Yukine begged to be released. "You're my kid. You can try to run away but you're the first real shinki I had, so I won't let you go."

It's not a promise, but it rings like one all the same.)

oOo

"That's not fair," says Yukine, voice strangled by the tears. "You know that's not fair."

"I had to," answers Yato, hands gripping Yukine's dual hilts so tight he can feel the sweat seeping into the grips. He's so used to it now he doesn't shy away from it. He's steel and bandages in this form, a beast hurting in modern terms, the truest he is, and he can't pretend to run away.

"You're hurting me," pleads Yukine, reduced to a voice and a calling. "By not caring, you're hurting me."

"I'm sorry," says Yato, but still doesn't release Yukine from this form. He's shaky. Yukine sort of wants to promise he'll never leave, ever ever ever, just so Yato will stop feeling so breakable.

"I can't do it," says Yukine. "I can't stand by, I can't do nothing."

"I know."

He can't hug Yato and he'll never get to save Yuka, she saved herself. "I can't do it," he repeats, helpless. "I'll go insane. I can't."

"I know," repeats Yato, softer now.

"I don't understand why you hate them. I understand but it doesn't make sense, I don't want your pity, it happened and it happened. You have to save them though. You have to."

"Yukine-"

"I don't care, you have to save them, we have to save them, no one tries!"

"Yukine," breathes out Yato. He handles grief, but it floods the space they're in too suddenly to dam it. "Yukine, okay. I will. We will. I'm sorry. Don't leave."

It’s not fair either, to use the sword of Damocles hanging over Yato’s head. Yato would save him at any cost, would stand by him even bleeding out, and leveraging his presence to get what he wants feels dirty. He imagines the Sorcerer may have done this– may have said it in less despairing tones, but said it all the same. 

But he can’t. He can’t.

“I won’t leave,” he manages to answer. “Where would I go? But I’ll end up insane, I will, if I can’t do anything. I don’t- you don’t have to- seek them out, or anything. You don’t have to- but I can’t turn a blind eye.”

Yato releases him the same way one lets a held breath go in the wake of a door slamming, carefully and fearful of being too loud. Yukine buries his face in his hands, standing in front of the train tracks, in the clothes Yato bought for him with his stupid five-yen coins.

“I’ll do it if it’s important to you.”

“I don’t want you to do it for me,” he mutters brokenly into the sanctuary of his cupped palms. “I want you to do it because you want to save them. They’re just people making a mistake. It’s a big one, but they’re hurt people making a mistake.”

Silence in front of him. He doesn’t dare open his eye to see Yato disappointed, or Yato crying. He wants the anger back but all that’s left is a hollow sort of defeat, the gasoline circulating through his vein turned antiseptic, ridding him of any sort of life.

“I’m sorry,” he cries. “I don’t want to twist your hand. I didn’t mean- It’s true, I didn’t want you here, this is exactly why I didn’t want you here. You’ve already done so much, you did it all, but I can’t let it go. You’re letting them all die. You’re letting my sister die. I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I don’t want to ask you another thing but-”

Yato’s hands, they must be, come to tug at his elbows. Yukine shakes his head, resists, doesn’t want the safety of his hands over his eyes taken away. “Yukine, look at me,” requests Yato.

His tone is odd. Yukine shakes his head.

There’s a long silence.

“You can ask anything,” says Yato. “Anything, okay? You’re my guidepost, I should’ve listened to you from the start. You know better than me, you’re supposed to teach me new things. I’m sorry. We’ll do it, I shouldn’t have said all that, I know it’s- it’s- Yukine, can you look at me?”

If he starts crying he can’t stop, but it’s not like Yato isn’t used to it anyway. There’s one more tug at his elbows, and he lowers his hands, opens his eyes.

It’s just Yato in front of him, eyes guilty and worried, the bags under them betraying sleepless nights. He wants not to be fourteen and dying, and worried for his sister, and breaking his promise, but he is, he is, he constantly is.

Yato drags him into a hug, and he buries his face against the god’s collarbone, helpless to do anything but shake apart. Hands clutching the sides of the stupid, stupid, stupid tracksuit, crying and crying in a way that would leave him dehydrated if that was still a concern. It’s not an unfamiliar scene, it feels rote by now, the weight of Yato’s arms around him, their minute shaking when Yukine gasps out a particularly loud sob. 

“I’m sorry,” murmurs Yato.

“I don’t want to leave,” Yukine says, heaving shaky breaths. “I don’t want to - don’t make me-”

The arms go tighter. "I'm not," Yato denies. "You're my one and only shinki, I'm not. I told you."

Yukine clings harder. He's fourteen and dying, fourteen and dead, fourteen and scared, fourteen and angry. He's a ghost clinging to a god. He's the executioner's blade, the hand that stays it.

He's crying and he doesn't think he can stop, not when Yato murmurs, "Sorry, sorry, Yukine, sorry, it's alright," his arms the sole barrier Yukine has against the waves of all-encompassing grief lapping at his sanity.

A train barrels down the tracks behind them. Yukine chokes on a wave, swallows the saltwater. Yato holds him.

It goes like that until Yukine stops shaking, and until Yato in turn stops holding him. Yukine sinks to the ground with a shuddery sigh, wiping at his face half-heartedly. Yato follows, in a reverse of their earlier position: him kneeling, Yukine sitting.

He doesn't know how to be brave, here. It was easy enough, then, to offer the steadiness of his hands, the breath in his lungs, his unbroken bones; now that he has none of it, not even a corner of his mind left uncracked, it's harder to dredge up something of worth. 

So it's Yato that says, "I don't want you to just avoid me when you're angry at me."

Two responses fight in his mouth. The crying's left him raw and unchecked, so he says the crueler one first:

"It's not just you I'm angry at."

A beat.

 "I don't want to be angry," he adds belatedly. "I don't, I don't like what it makes me, but you- it's just- it's just, I would've done something. I would've done something, if I was in your shoes, I would've- you're saying you're letting them die for me. For us. But I never asked you to."

The truth, here, dressed in resentment and misery. He doesn't dare look away from Yato, his face twisted up uncomfortably. He doesn't want to hurt the people he loves, but maybe that's just what love is, in the end. 

He doesn't want the hundred, thousands of little betrayals, the piercing words and the guilt, the anger and the crying, but maybe that's just what love is. What it's made of. Maybe it's the fabric of it, maybe love is just a net to throw yourself against, and hope it's strong enough to hold all of yourself and your imminent betrayals back.

Maybe. 

"I know it's not what you want," admits Yato back. "It's unfair, though. It feels unfair. All of you- all of you! You tried so hard. In the memories, you're- you're all so scared."

“It doesn’t matter,” says Yukine, through the bleeding, through the aching fingers, through the broken teeth. Through the gasoline and the antiseptic, mixing together awfully. His voice sounds raw, scraped of anything but exhaustion. “It doesn’t. Letting people commit suicide isn’t going to save me, listen to me, it won’t. You’ll never save me. It’s too late.”

He swallows. 

“It’s too late,” he repeats, quieter, and wonders how he can pronounce the words, even, how the sound of it can cross his lips when he can feel the iron-hot pain of them burning his throat.

“I know,” answers Yato. "I understand that. I just- You're right. You are, it just feels unfair."

Yukine shrugs, too nonchalant a thing for a matter that'll never be solved. "So what?" He asks, pointedly. "Isn't everything you decide supposed to be righteous?"

"...yes," says Yato. "I'm not sure. The people I killed in the past…"

He interrupts himself there and then, seemingly hesitant. Then picks up again:

"By nature, I suppose what I do must be righteous, simply because I'm a god."

He doesn't sound convinced. Yukine doesn't have the energy to argue, but if he did, it'd come out something like that: that sounds like a convenient excuse.

But maybe Yato'll come to that conclusion all on his own. Or maybe Yukine's missing something, maybe the gods are gods, and that's just what they are, and he'll never understand them.

He scrubs at his eyes, gritty, eyelashes stuck together and to his skin. "Regarding me avoiding you, it's mostly just… I  didn't want to fight," he says, steering clear of another minefield. "It wasn't that I don't know that I can be angry at you, it's just… I didn't want to fight. So I kept leaving."

Yato looks devastated again. It's a quiet kind this time: it sits in the creases of his eyes, hides in the shadow of his ribs when he collapses on himself. "I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing," sighs Yukine. "You didn't do anything."

Yato shakes his head, but he doesn't seem to have anything else to say. What happened was the best possible outcome, but it still left Yukine bloodless, and hollow, and skirting the edges of grief. 

He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to be a victim, doesn't want Yato in his head, but if he has to be, if Yato has to be there, shouldn't it at least spare them these fights?

The silence hangs heavy. "Stop apologizing, I mean it," Yukine finally says. "I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to think about what I'm saying."

"Harder to do," comments Yato with a wry smile. "...I do listen to you, Yukine."

"Well keep doing it," Yukine threatens.

Yato laughs, something brittle but hopeful. "Alright," he agrees easily. Quieter: "In exchange, don't leave.'

It hits Yukine in the sternum and stays firmly lodged there through his next three breaths.

"I wouldn't. I told you, where would I go?"

"I don't know. Don't do it anyway."

Yato's smile hurts in a new, peculiar way. Yukine wants to apologize, but mostly he wants the helplessness in his throat to go away, the resignation in Yato's eyes to disappear. He wants to be the good thing in a series of wasted chances, rather than the knife held against one's throat.

"I won't," he promises. "Trust me on this. I won't."

"I do trust you," Yato points out, feeble. "I do. I just want you happy, that's all, and you haven't been."

And maybe, even, love is just that want. When you're fourteen, and dying, and scared, and cold, you still want your sister happy. Happy, alive, safe. Yukine's best approximation of love is that twisted sort of self-sacrifice, the stepping in front of a blade, the losing on purpose. It's cruel in its desperation, maybe.

He never did give Yuka a chance to lose. He just took it upon himself as his duty, as the only possible resort, and maybe it was. But she didn't ask him to do it.

"I'm sorry," says Yukine. He feels, perhaps, shattered. "I want to be happy. I don't want to make you worry. I'm trying. I'm okay. I'm not leaving, I'm- I'm sorry."

"Come home," requests Yato. "Come home and we can save them, I'll take in any stray you or Hiyori point me to, I will. But I need you to do it."

What more is there to it? He used to be a kid, it's true, he used to be a kid. Now he's the executioner's blade and the hand that stays it. What more is there to it, than to be needed, wished well for? Haruka spent every day of his life, past that one early spring afternoon, wishing Yuka would be happier.

In hindsight, stepping in front of that blade for Yato felt very familiar. But he thinks Yato would have rather he'd never done it at all. Once you know someone's willing to die, you never really stop looking over your shoulder.

I need you to do it.

If you take out the last part, it's almost truthful.

oOo

There's a boy near the train tracks.

There's someone with him, too.