Work Text:
“Take Aoi and get out!” Dearth roared, her hands burning with magic. She clenched her teeth and threw the length of Shimenawa into the air.
The barrier rippled as it split behind the fleeing Yokai and its unwilling human. Ofuda after ofuda flickering away as she swiped her bloody thumb across. Paper talismans slamming against the newly formed barrier, sealing her in.
Flames trickling down from her arms like liquid mercury. The fire stitched painstakingly on the edges of her Chihaya were no longer just decorations.
He would not last. This was the part that Aoi could not, no, could never understand. For he had been a child brought up in a world alone and ignored while Dearth had grown up in a house hammered together by her grandparents.
Each floorboard with its intricate talismans lovingly carved into shape so she would forever remember her grandfather with the crinkle of wood shaving hidden in his beard and rough scars ridden across his hands. The tatami mats with bloody straw threads painstakingly woven by her grandmother whose hands were wrinkled and knuckles swelled with the rain.
She had grown up with her family and their magic burrowed within the marrow of her. Even when they had all scattered, her blood still sang and her body still burnt.
She was but wax to the terrible and consuming flame of magic. She would burn bright. This knowledge of sacrifice, for this was the basis of any bargain. Magic was but a balance, a haggling and a trade and she knew what her life was worth.
Aoi did not.
Even with oceans of power welling beneath his skin, so strong that sometimes Dearth could taste his magic between her teeth. It was banked within the flesh of his skin, a demon he was unwillingly to conquer.
He would have made a terrible Gatekeeper. No matter how fierce he would burn, he would have extinguished long before enough time was bought. Her family had enabled him, letting him hide behind these walls. She was damned if she let him stay contained forever.
A scream, a plea. It came from too far away. Her eyes already set on the teeming, darkening horizon.
She burned, a bonfire stirred into a blaze. The horizon shrieked.
The Long Night has begun.
—-------------------------------
Kiko never really liked Dearth, none of the spirits did. Then again, none of them really liked the Momochi Clan. It was difficult to like a human with their strange moral codes and their inexplicable and incomprehensible strength. They were weird and that’s probably why they had liked Aoi so much because he wasn’t quite human.
He was but a child, banging on their door, a rancid smell of hope and desperation. A child whose powers were strong enough to break the seal that banked them for centuries. It was difficult to dislike him. He had freed them and loved them with such a clinging strength that it was easy.
That’s why when Dearth came, it was easy to dislike her. She was unbearably human and weak in the way the Momochi clan had always been. Yet, there was something in her; almost as if she could flip a switch in her head. Sometimes Kiko swore Dearth understood them far more than Aoi did.
As Kiko dragged Aoi away from the Gates, from the gut-retching stench of evilhellpain, Dearth was illuminated. Dearth whose depth of power would never be as great as Aoi, who lacked the natural aptitude that Aoi had yet she was the one still standing.
Dearth was unbearably human.
Yes, Dearth would be enough.