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“That’s the first time a person has ever saved me, so thanks.”
Yato had said these words fully expecting Hiyori to forget him, as everyone else eventually did. It was the way of things. It had been oddly touching to have someone notice him on the street, someone who went out of the way to help him. Even though it was completely unnecessary.
Honestly, he was glad she was all right, for his sake as much as hers. He wasn’t worth a young girl dying for him. The guilt would have eaten him alive.
What he had not been expecting was that it would far from the last time Hiyori would save him.
It was only weeks later when she threw her arms around him, crying in relief because she had saved Yato and Yukine with the Ablution.
He tried to tell himself that it had been more for Yukine’s sake than his, he hadn’t even thought Hiyori had liked him all that much. But it was hard to believe she didn’t care for him too when her arms were around him, when she had carried him all the way to Kofuku’s, allowing the blight to spread onto her as well.
Yato was beginning to think that he had come across someone extraordinary. Or rather, that she had come across him. Maybe he should have known that any human who could see him when he wasn’t even doing anything, who had leaped out to save him, would be someone special.
He had been wrong that Hiyori would be like everyone else and forget him. Though it would turn out that Yato was right about one thing, if Hiyori ever got hurt protecting him, the guilt would eat him alive.
***
Yato could barely move. He had fought as hard as he could, with the wrath of heaven against him, but he was injured and exhausted and he could barely move. He could only dimly hear Hiyori and Yukine begging him to get up.
He saw a god lift their sword- their shinki. Ready to strike what Yato was now sure would be the final blow. He tried to will his body to move but he could not. He had failed Yukine and Hiyori and all his strength was gone and all he could do was close his eyes-
He heard Hiyori’s scream before he saw her, before he could cry out and beg her to stop- he wasn’t worth it. She jumped in front of the blow, like she had a thousand times before, and-
***
It didn’t matter how blighted Bishamon was, she wasn’t backing down. Yato fought almost without thinking, she was beyond help, she needed to be stopped. He was still reeling from Yukine’s sacrifice. It was true that he couldn’t wait to brag that he had a hafuri, but he still felt the pain and rage of that moment when he thought he had lost Yukine. When he had thought that Bishamon had taken Yukine from him.
Bishamon was down. He raised his sword, a feeling of awful and familiar calm at the prospect of taking a life overtook him. Later he would remember it and feel cold, and wonder if he had grown past being a god of calamity after all.
But Hiyori arrived with Kazuma. Yato snapped out of it and gaped at her, not believing his eyes. But there she was, standing unafraid in a fight between gods and trying to stop the violence.
He went back home with Hiyori and Yukine, leaving Bishamon to her grief. He was immediately bowled over in a massive group hug. Never in his life had he imagined that so many people would be happy to see him alive and safe.
But maybe Tenjin was right when he said that he should cut his ties with Hiyori. His association with her had already caused her nothing but trouble.
He would have done it- but Hiyori stood before him, almost in tears, begging him not to.
“ Don’t cut the bonds! I want to be with you longer!”
After everything, Yukine sacrificing himself and becoming a Hafuri, everyone being overjoyed to see him come back, it was almost too much. She wanted to stay with him.
In the end, they were her memories. He wasn’t going to cut anyone’s ties when they were begging him to stop. It wasn’t right for him to sever the bonds they shared.
He was, of course, overjoyed and relieved beyond words that she wanted to be with him too. She didn’t want to say goodbye, he wasn’t a nuisance to her.
***
Yato had struck down the god who had hurt Hiyori, his and Yukine’s combined rage and sorrow suddenly giving Yato the strength to fight.
The battle raged on without him now. He and Yukine had dragged Hiyori somewhere safe. No one wanted to touch Yato now that he had shown them why he was once known as a god of calamity.
***
He held the small shrine in his hands. He was unable to tear his eyes away, so he wouldn’t see the bandages covering Hiyori’s hands- the proof of how hard she had worked- for a while. But he didn’t need to see that to know how much care (he was afraid to even think the word love ) went into the shrine. Dimly, he heard Kofuku explaining to Hiyori that a shrine was proof of worshippers’ feelings towards a god.
After all these years, he had given up on his hope of getting a shrine. No one knew who he was, and if they had they would know he did not deserve one. No one would ever build one for him.
But Hiyori, who had quite literally jumped into his life out of nowhere, Hiyori who had already done so much for him… had granted his centuries-old wish. She had already done so much for him, even though he was the god, he was the one who should be granting wishes for her.
He felt tears track down his face. He made no effort to stop them or hide them. With this shrine he could go to heaven on his own. Now that he had this… he would always have a home.
***
Neither of them knew what to do as Hiyori lay unmoving on the ground. They needed to get her soul back to her body, but they didn’t know where it even was.
She stirred feebly and Yato nearly cried at this sign of life.
“Hiyori-” Yato said.
Hiyori didn’t open her eyes, but she was trying to lift her hand, trying to reach for him. In a weak voice she said his name, and nothing else.
***
“Yaboku!”
She called to him in the darkness, and suddenly he was on top of her. He was exhausted and in excruciating pain, but the last thing he remembered was her putting her arms around him before he passed out- welcoming him home.
He awoke in a soft bed. For a moment he panicked, thinking he was still in Yomi, until he realized that he had just been having a nightmare. Sunlight streamed in through a window, illuminating specks of dust floating in the air. He was aching all over, but he was blessedly, miraculously alive. It took him a moment to remember how he had gotten there, why he wasn’t dead .
But then he remembered, Hiyori had called his name. His true name- the name his father had given him. He never would have imagined her saying his name. He couldn’t believe she had figured it out. That she had saved him, yet again, and called him out of Yomi.
When Hiyori and Yukine saw him awake, they hugged him, and they were crying. They were relieved he was alive.
It was not the first time they had looked at him that way, and he wondered how many more times he would make his friends cry with relief, how many times Hiyori would save him when he should have died.
Yet he couldn’t stop the growing sense of shame, the pit at the bottom of his stomach every time he thought of how they knew he had lied to him now. It grew even worse when he was told he hadn’t been able to save Ebisu after all, who was self-sacrificing and good and everything Yato was not.
He knew he had to make a change. He unnamed Hiiro, not without some guilt. She had been by his side since the beginning, but she also kept trying to drag him back to his father. She didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, and she would always lead him back to his worst impulses. He had used her as a fall-back for far too long.
He also had to come clean to Hiyori and Yukine, who had been by his side through everything and deserved the truth. He wasn’t sure if he truly expected them to leave him when learning about him being a god of calamity, but they didn’t even seem to flinch.
Maybe he had already made a change.
***
“-Yato,” Hiyori said, so weakly he almost couldn’t hear it. Her hand dropped and she fell still once more.
“Is-is she-?” Yukine’s panicked, choked voice nearly broke him. But Yato didn’t have the right to break when Hiyori had put everything on the line for him. When she was counting on him to save her.
The battle died down without him noticing, not until a goddess who had never spoken to him before put her hand on his shoulder. He jumped and might have attacked her, even in his weakened state, but she said “That girl needs help if you want her to live.”
He looked around, it wasn’t just his friends who had come to take them away. A few gods and goddesses and their assorted shinki whom he had never seen before had come to help him. He was dumbfounded.
“Why?” Yato asked. They didn’t need to ask what he meant.
“There will be time for that later, we need to go. Now.”
He cradled Hiyori in his arms, he would not allow anyone else to touch her. She seemed so much smaller than she usually did.
***
Hiyori’s soul was corrupted, her family’s hospital was in a state of chaos, and it was all Yato’s fault.
Yato couldn’t even use Yukine. He was too distressed, and Yato worried that he’d accidentally hurt Hiyori.
He couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he did the first thing that came to mind. Hiyori went to attack him and he opened his arms to embrace her. He barely winced as she bit his arm, not wanting to upset her further.
His father wanted him to choose between killing Hiyori, leaving her to this fate, or making her into a shinki, but Yato would never allow Hiyori’s future to be taken away from her. Not by his father, and not by him.
“Take me with you,” Hiyori’s voice was already corrupted by the ayakashi. It wasn’t her, not really.
“I’m sorry, Hiyori, but this is one wish I just can’t grant.”
Hiyori would give so much to the world, there were so many people who would miss her if she was gone. There were so many people she’d miss if she crossed over.
He wasn’t tempted for even an instant to make her his shinki. He wanted her to be at his side forever, but deep down he had always known it was impossible. Faced with the opportunity to do it, he just felt ill at the thought. That was not how he wanted her to stay by his side. She deserved to live a long life, surrounded by friends and family and having achieved all the great things Yato knew she would.
Instead he babbled on, trying to ground her. It was painful to deny her freedom from this sorrow, when they both knew that he could end it instantly. He drew her in close, not caring about the way the blight spread from her and burned through his skin. He barely felt it.
“That’s why… you can’t cross over yet,” he said quietly. “Not until you’re old and grey, Hiyori.”
Somehow, he seemed to have gotten through to her. She gave him a watery smile as the corruption cleared and her soul returned to her body.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been sure that would work, if he was honest with himself he hadn’t even really had a plan. But he was glad that somewhere in Hiyori’s soul, she had trusted him enough to listen to him.
Later, when everyone was safe, he sat up on the roof and stared up at the stars. Yato had always known that his father would never allow him to escape so easily. He had always known that he would want to destroy anyone who had gotten close to him.
He had been praised for saving Hiyori without even using a shinki, but he could not accept it. She wouldn’t have been in danger if not for him, and anyway she had saved him far more times than he had saved her. Or would ever save her.
Yato couldn't even do the one thing Hiyori had prayed to him for, to fix her body so her soul would stop coming out. True, she had stopped asking for it a long time ago, and Yato suspected that she no longer wanted it fixed. But he sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had cut her ties with him like he should have. He would miss her terribly, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself, but wouldn’t she be better off? She’d be living a normal life right now, probably studying to get into medical school and learning how to save people who actually deserved it.
But she had asked him not to cut her ties. And he couldn’t regret listening to Hiyori’s decision. It was her life after all. It was more that he sometimes wished he had figured out how to do it before she got so attached to him, so that she wouldn’t have wanted to stay that way in the first place.
Yato smiled to himself sadly, he really was a pathetic excuse for a god, wasn’t he?
***
They miraculously escaped, they were in Kofuku and Daikoku’s house (because Yato could not think of anywhere else to go), and Hiyori had been placed in a bed. Yato refused to leave her side. Everyone who had come with him had looked her over, but no one seemed to have any solutions.
Hiyori was something no god in all their centuries had ever seen. She was a half-ayakashi- something almost but not quite a living ghost. The connection between her body and soul had become so frayed that she was essentially a corpse possessed by her own spirit.
And Yato was the one who had turned her into this.
The gods who had come with him had told him, quietly so that they wouldn’t disturb Hiyori, that they had seen him stand up against heaven when they sentenced Yukine. That seeing him had been an inspiration and sowed the seed of rebellion in their hearts, that he had shown them that they didn’t have to just go along with things they believed were unjust because Amaterasu willed it so. Seeing Hiyori stand up for him, seeing how valiantly this (somewhat) human girl had fought against the heavens for the god she worshipped, had been the final thing that had pushed them to action.
There was a time when Yato would have accepted their praise, and taken it as proof that he deserved to be in the heavens among much more important gods. Now their words were hollow, salt in the wound. He was a failure of a god whose only follower was lying before him, barely alive and barely human, and it was all his fault.
He knew now that every choice he had made along the way had been wrong. Seeing Hiyori put herself in danger over and over again for his sake had made him feel guiltier each time. He had known he could end it by severing her ties with him, by just leaving her alone until he was inevitably forgotten. But he was selfish and a coward and no matter how many times he knew he should, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
And now she was going to die, and it was all his fault.
***
Yato held Hiyori’s hand. She was so cold, and he could not warm her. Her pulse beat so weakly that a few times Yato panicked, thinking that her heart had stopped beating entirely.
He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Suddenly, he thought back to when his father had corrupted Hiyori and he had managed to talk her down.
Running his thumb over the back of her hand, he started to talk.
***
Hiyori’s dreams were confusing and frightening. The ground opened up beneath her, and she fell for what seemed like an eternity, she was running through a dark tunnel without getting anywhere- invisible hands grabbing at her through the shadows. She tripped, and suddenly she was on the ground, on her hands and knees in front of the entrance to Yomi. She called out for “Yaboku” but it felt like her voice wouldn’t come. The ground was cold and hard and he was trapped down there and he needed her to save him-
The tiny shrine she had made Yato was in pieces in front of her. It was old and dirty and it was her fault because she had dropped it and forgotten it outside and the weather had destroyed it. She was trying to glue it together and it fell apart in her hands.
Yato was in front of her, suddenly. He was covered in blight and she was trying to clean it off but it just kept spreading and he was going to die because she had failed-
She was-
In a soft bed. The bed was warm but for some reason she still felt so cold. She tried to open her eyes but found she couldn’t, tried to move but not even her fingers would twitch.
All her senses were dulled, but somewhere within her she felt a clawing panic. She needed to get out- out of her body.
But her soul wouldn’t leave.
She had experienced this before, but she had never felt such total paralysis. Before, she had at least been able to open her eyes, fall out of bed, or call for help.
It wasn’t until she heard a voice that she was even aware she could hear. She latched onto the sound, desperate for proof that she was alive and could still experience something . It took her a while until she could understand the words.
“-Keep fighting, Hiyori.”
She didn’t know how. Her soul was still trapped like a bird in a cage. She felt some part of her beating wildly against the bars, straining to get out…
“You’ve always been the strongest of all of us-”
Hiyori didn’t feel strong. She wondered vaguely who “us” was, she could not recognize who the voice belonged to. There was something familiar and comforting about it, but she was even more distressed knowing she should know who it belonged to.
“This is all my fault, I should have protected you this whole time. I promise… if you wake up I promise I’ll do a better job. I’ll be the god you deserve.”
God.
Yato.
Everything came rushing to her at once. She remembered everything that had happened to land her in this state. There was a battle, Yato could barely move, and she jumped in front of him without thinking.
Then there had been nothing but darkness.
Relief flooded through her as she realized that, if she was hearing Yato’s voice, then he must be alive. She had saved him.
She became aware of warmth around her hand. Someone was holding it, and it must be Yato, if that was indeed Yato’s voice then he must be the one holding her hand, and she felt her fingers twitch briefly as she tried to grasp his hand back.
“Hiyori, please wake up, I’m so sorry…”
He was blaming himself again. But she wouldn’t have that. She felt some part of her subconscious seeking his voice out. Suddenly, she saw light behind her eyelids, though she still could not open her eyes. It reminded her of her hazy memories of nearly being turned into an ayakashi. When she had chased the light that was his voice to come back to herself.
She prayed that the same thing would work again. Hiyori reached out to the light, she was running like she had in her nightmares, but now she was moving, leaving the grasping hands behind-
Hiyori gasped as though she had been drowning and had finally been pulled from the water. She jerked upright and immediately felt dizzy and collapsed, Yato gave a shout of surprise and Hiyori felt his gentle hands catch her and guide her back to the bed.
Yato was speaking again, but Hiyori found herself unable to comprehend him. It felt like her whole being was protesting at consciousness. Her whole body prickled with a pins and needles sensation, she was so cold, and so tired, and she craved nothing more than to close her eyes and let the darkness take her for good.
No.
She would not let that happen.
With a monumental effort, she turned her head towards Yato and gave him a pathetic smile.
“ Hiyori .” Yato whispered her name like a prayer and grasped her hand in both of his, holding it close to him. Hiyori wanted to cry at the warmth.
“I’m back,” she said.
***
Hiyori was alive- at least, she was no longer dying. She lay pale and weak on the bed, but after a few moments her gaze on him was steady and sure, full of the fire that Yato was used to seeing in her.
“You’re back,” Yato repeated after her, not quite believing it.
Her smile was weak as she said, “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
Yato blinked. He couldn’t believe that after everything, she was the one apologizing to him.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for!” Yato said. “If it weren’t for you I would absolutely be dead right now.” In more ways than one .
Hiyori frowned. “What happened while I was out?”
Yato explained the whole thing, how they had managed to escape with the help of gods who had been moved by her loyalty to the god she “worshipped”. How she had been out for days and none of them knew if she would ever wake up.
“Heaven’s in quite an uproar right now,” Yato said, laughing a bit hollowly. There was a part of him who was proud of Hiyori as much as he was worried about her. Few humans had ever intervened in Heaven’s affairs and lived. He wondered if her name would end up in folklore centuries from now. She would certainly deserve it.
Though he would much rather she have the normal life she deserved.
“Hiyori… I’m so sorry. For everything.”
He couldn’t look her in the eye, but he could feel the sad look she was giving him. The look that he knew all too well, the look that said she didn’t think there was anything to forgive.
“Yato,” she said gently. “None of this is your fault.”
“It is!” Yato said. “Not just this, everything that’s happened to you since you’ve met me… everything is my fault. And now you’re-” he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence with you’re sick, you’re dying .
“What are you talking about?” Hiyori frowned. She seemed genuinely confused that Yato thought there were so many things he blamed himself for.
“Just… everything. You being imprisoned with Kazuma, my father being in your life at all, your family’s hospital. Your- your soul not staying in your body. I don’t even have the right to call myself a god”
“Yato!” Hiyori said, shocked.
“I couldn’t figure out how to get your soul to stop slipping out, and then when Tenjin told me I didn’t do it! You’ve only ever asked me for one thing and I couldn’t even do it!” Yato said in frustration, more at himself than Hiyori. “What good am I if I can’t answer my one follower’s prayers?”
Hiyori looked at him for a moment, stunned into silence. Then said “Well, first of all, you were going to sever my ties to you to fix my soul problem and I begged you not to, so don’t you dare blame yourself for that. Second, I don’t think it was the only wish I’ve ever made to you.”
Yato frowned, unsure of what she was getting at.
“The shrine,” Hiyori said with a soft smile. “I made it as a gift for you. But I think I made it for myself too. I wanted you to know that as long as I was around you’d have somewhere to go home to. And maybe it’s selfish that I want your home to be with me but…” she shrugged, an embarrassed smile on her face. “As long as you keep that shrine with you and accept it, then my wish has been heard loud and clear.”
“I gave it back to you, though!” Yato said. “When I- when I left.”
Hiyori sighed, “I know, but you were doing it to keep it safe and I… I dropped it. I’m sorry, Yato. I tried to fix it.”
“Why do you keep apologizing to me?” Yato asked. “And you’re- you’re just making excuses for me. It’s not like I ever kept the shrine to help you, it was all for me. It always was. I thought that maybe you would remember me enough to keep me alive if I went off and killed my father.”
“Is that so wrong?” Hiyori asked, turning her head to the side.
Yato blinked at her, nonplussed. “Yes?”
She laughed a little. Yato had no idea what was so funny.
“Protecting you is what I want to do Yato, and if you want to put it like that, then it’s just as much for me as for you. How do you think I would feel if something happened to you and I could have stopped it?”
Yato said nothing. He knew very well how it felt when someone you loved was in danger and all you wanted to do was help them. Though he did not think he deserved it, he had to at least acknowledge how Hiyori felt.
“You’re dying,” Yato said simply.
Hiyori’s smile wavered for a moment. She didn’t contradict him. “We’ll think of something.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then I still wouldn’t regret anything,” Hiyori said.
Yato dropped his head. He didn’t want to let Hiyori see him cry, not when she was being so strong and brave. But the tears fell anyway and there was no way she didn’t see him wiping at his eyes.
“I guess I would regret one thing,” Hiyori said, in a voice so quiet that Yato looked back up, worried she was slipping away again. Instead he found that she was sitting up, giving him a steady look.
“What’s that?” Yato asked warily.
Hiyori leaned forward, she lost her balance a little and Yato reached out to catch her. Hiyori looked up at him, and she leaned forward and-
-And she kissed him.
For once, Yato’s mind was blissfully blank, and on instinct he kissed her back. And if her lips were too cold he barely noticed. His mind was caught up in the impossibility of Hiyori loving him back, of finally kissing her like he had always wanted but had never truly allowed himself to imagine was possible.
They broke apart. Hiyori looked tired again, and Yato helped her lie back down comfortably. They were both flushed, pleased and embarrassed at what had just happened.
“Please...let me stay by your side,” Hiyori whispered, looking and sounding unsure for the first time that night.
“If that’s what you want,” Hiyori looked at him and he added. “It’s… it’s what I want too. Of course it is.” He didn’t think it even needed saying.
Still, Hiyori looked relieved as she settled into the pillows.
“You always think you never do anything for me,” Hiyori said finally. “But you do a lot more than you know. You’re the only person who I feel like I could tell anything to. I can’t imagine my life without you.”
“And,” she said, suddenly stern. “I told you ages ago that you’re my god of fortune. And if you want another wish to work on, you can grant my wish by finally believing that.”
Yato nodded numbly. “Your wish has been heard...loud and clear.”
***
It took another week before Hiyori was strong enough to get up. Though Yato had to admit she was certainly looking far better. She had been at death’s door, but the colour was back in her cheeks and her eyes were bright. One of the goddesses that had joined them after the battle and who had taken over a lot of Hiyori’s care assured him that she believed Hiyori was one of the most remarkable humans she had ever come across.
You have no idea , Yato thought privately.
Now that more gods knew about her predicament, it actually gave Yato hope that someone would find out how to save her.
For once, he dared to hope that things might be okay.
He was sitting on the roof, watching as a nearly-full moon made its way across the night sky. It bathed the world in its silvery light and cast harsh shadows on the ground. He had always found something about the moon comforting, no matter how dark the night was.
He heard a window below him open, and didn’t think much of it until he heard Hiyori call his name. “Yato?”
“Hiyori!” Yato said. “You’re up? Are you supposed to be up?!” He scrambled to the side of the roof to see her sticking her head out of the window.
“Well… I’m up anyway,” she said. She held a hand out to him and said, “Lift me up?”
Yato wanted to protest, but he reached down to grab her hands and lift her up, ignoring how light and insubstantial she felt. He never could say no to her.
He kept Hiyori steady as she sat close to him for warmth. He’d noticed she had a small bag with her and she smiled when he saw him looking at it.
“Close your eyes? And hold out your hands.”
He obeyed at once. He felt a familiar weight in his hands, but he didn’t open his eyes until Hiyori said “You can open them now.”
Yato opened his eyes to see the small shrine Hiyori had made for him, what seemed like a lifetime ago. She had repaired it, his eyes widened when he saw the small veins of gold running through the pieces that had shattered.
She smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry I broke it,” she said.
Yato shook his head, saying nothing. He was overwhelmed with just as much emotion as he had been when she first gave him the shrine. He didn’t know how she had gotten this here, or when she had had the time to repair it so well. But he had learned long ago that Hiyori was full of surprises and wonderfully stubborn and capable of everything she set her mind to.
“Th-that’s not real gold,” Hiyori said, blushing slightly. “But it didn’t look right or feel right to just stick everything back together with just plain glue…”
“It’s beautiful,” Yato said. And Hiyori beamed.
Yato only let go of the shrine to give Hiyori his jacket (which she insisted she didn’t need). Spring was well on its way, but the night air held the last of winter’s chill. She rested her head on Yato’s shoulder, and he held the shrine she had made for him twice now, a shrine that was both a prayer and promise. And he believed, in that moment, that he was the god who deserved that shrine. He believed that the shrine was worth protecting, and that he was worth protecting too.