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If Yu hadn't come to Inaba, Izanami would probably have been satisfied with Adachi.
He would have done nicely. But at the same time, she knew it would have never truly satisfied her. Adachi's Izanagi was the one that had left her in a rage. His Izanagi was full of hatred, anger and rage, just like she was.
Or, just as she had been before she met Yu. He had been Hope, she'd decided. And it was his Izanagi that has been closest to the one she had loved for thousand of years. And with that realization, her heart had begun to change. She suddenly found herself yearning to see him.
So, taking on the form of a student, she began to quietly watch him. She called herself Nami in this form and was careful not to get too close. She didn't want to interfere with his life, after all. But up close, oh, he made her feel things. He was so handsome, with hair of the purest silver, like her own and eyes to match. His eyes reminded her of storm clouds. They could be calm, at times, but other time, so temptetous that it would put anything Susano-O did to shame. He was charismatic and charming and seemed to draw the members of his little group to him.
At some point, she began to wonder when he had started to draw her to him. She started to want to come out of the shadows and approach him. She wanted to see if he was like her Izanagi...even if that would have disrupted everything.
She had started this thing with a plan, after all. She had to see it through. But this young man, this Yu, he had changed her. He didn't even know her name or her face, but she found herself aching for him.
Don't go to him. Her attendants would whisper. Remember, he only has a year...and then he will leave you...just as he did before.
She wanted to listen to them, she truly did. But the longing for Izanagi...for his warmth, for his strength, for his love, had destroyed her senses. It consumed her heart, once as cold and as black as the cave he had abandoned her in and set it ablaze with newfound passion and warmth.
Ignoring her attendants, ignoring her past and more importantly, ignoring her plans, Izanami, disguised as Nami and consumed by curiosity and desire, stepped out if the shadows she hid in and approached Yu. They formed a friendship, even as he tried to find the truth with his friends and their personas. He is going to undo everything, her attendants and her rage told him. Stop seeing him. Don't lose your heart to him.
The warnings went unheeded. It was already too late. Her heart was lost to him and he had, in turn, lost his heart to her.
She stayed by his side after his cousin went missing and was still there once she had been saved. Then, at Christmas, he asked her to come to his house.
The night had been bitterly cold, but Izanami was used to such cold. It didn't bother her. So, she donned her guise and went. He'd purchased a Christmas cake and had brought her a gift. His gift to her was a spider lily comb for her hair.
"I saw this in a shop and I tonight it would be perfect for you. Spider lilies suit you." Yu explained. "Even if they mean..."
Abandonment.
"The meaning is unimportant." She told him. It's beautiful, senpai...thank you."
"Let me put it in your hair" He offered.
She scooted over to the side on his floor to allow him proper access to her head. He carefully arranged her hair into a bun and placed the comb just right.
"Yu..." His name suddenly spilled fourth from her lips.
He held up a mirror. "What do you think?"
The comb did suit her. She loved it, loved him. "It's beautiful."
A moment of silence passed between them. Stormy eyes met crimson ones.
She spoke his name again, without an honorific. "...Yu..."
"Nami..." His fingers brushed her cheek. His hand was warm.
She leaned into his touch before lifting her head and allowing his kiss. His lips felt soft and sweet against her own. He tasted of peaches.
He pulled her close to his body, allowing his warmth to penetrate her. It was a blessed relief from the chill and the cold. She sank her fingers into his hair. The kiss quickly grew in intensity and she found herself pinned against his sofa, his hands inching up her skirt.
Her hand grabbed his.
His eyes flicked up and he drew back, concerned. "What is it?" The concern and affection in his eyes nearly made her come undone. "We can stop..."
"No..I don't want to stop....I just...do you want this? Do you want to go this far?" She didn't need him to ask her that. She was already too far gone. Giving him her body was a trivial matter. But she wanted to know...
Can you give yourself, body and soul, to a god?
He wasn't her Izanagi...not...not entirely. But there was enough of the man she loved in there for her to surrender herself completely to him.
Something in his eyes told her his answer long before he spoke it. "I do, Nami...I want this. I want you."
And then he kissed her again and Izanami, powerful goddess, mother of Japan, came undone.
And a second later, she came even more undone with one word:
Aishiteru
For a second, she thought she was seeing the face of the Izanagi she had never truly stopped loving. But instead, she was greeted by silver hair and storm cloud eyes...a face that she had come to love just as much.
As their fingers entwined, Yu got the impression that he'd done this before...in another life, perhaps. It was strange, but it only served to pull him closer to Nami, closer to her than he had ever been to anyone.
She kissed him again and that felt familiar, too.
Yes. Yes, he can give himself to me. She thought, almost wishing her thoughts could be heard by Yu, almost wishing she could exert her influence on him. Give yourself to me, Yu! Tell me that you love me!
Almost as if he had heard her, he murmured more words of love and affection, of passion and devotion. She whispered them back, meaning every one, wanting to give this man everything she had and in return take everything he was.
The next morning found them entangled on his futon, buried under layers of blankets. This felt perfect. It felt right. Basking in the glow of lovemaking, his skin warm against hers. It was as though nothing had changed...except the world around them. Her attendants were shrieking at her to leave, that she was in far too deep, but Izanami didn’t want to leave his side. She had waited hundreds, no, thousands of years, allowing herself to feel despair and emptiness and a faint flicker of hope that Izanagi would one day return to her. And now, he had…and she never wanted to let him ago. She didn’t want to lose him, even though, deep down, she knew the minute he beheld her rotting form once more, he would flee.
His Persona, Izanagi, spoke to her, in whispers and murmurs. Tell him. Tell him the truth. Don’t deceive him.
In time. She assured him, although she was really talking more to herself, fingernails idly tracing the characters Yu had dug into her skin in the throes of passion. He will learn the truth in time. Isn’t that why you’re here? To help him find the truth?
Izanagi did not answer her. She didn’t expect him to. Covering herself in a blanket, she rose from the bed. She turned to pick up the comb and place it back on the desk, along with the box he had given it to her.
By the time Yu awoke, Izanami had fled. All she left behind was a vague message on his desk, and strange characters on his back. Naoto, upon inspection, had said that they were the name of a goddess.
Izanami-no-Okami
The wife of Izanagi.
Izanami does not see him again until the day she reveals herself to him, the rain nearly washing her out, her voice full of equal parts cold threats and affection. She made that choice consciously, determined to see how things played out between her three chosen champions. But it had long since become clear that it was hope, the last and the youngest, would be the one who decided it all.
His shock is such that she could reach out and touch it. Before the demands come in about how why she lied, why she is doing this, why is she trying to plunge the world into darkness and shadow, he looks vulnerable, sad...almost scared.
"Did you love me...Nami?" He asks. "....or is it Izanami? Was it all a lie? Did you string me along...."
"No." She cuts him off. "It was never a lie. You...you coming here, coming back to me, changed everything. It made me feel things that I have not felt in thousands of year. You washed away the rage, the pain, the anger, the abandonment...You changed me when I thought I could no longer be changed."
There was a pause and she turned from him for a moment, revealing the spider lily comb in her hair. She looked at him over her shoulder. "Do you still love me? Or will you run from me as he did?"
He?
Somewhere in the depths of his mind, Izanagi spoke. Me. She means me.
"I had to tell myself, all this time, that you are not your Persona." Izanami continued. "You are not the god who left me in the depths of Yomi once he saw me rotting away. But, in the same way, it is your Izanagi who is the same as the one I loved for so long. So, now that you know the truth, Narukami Yu, what will you do? Will you fight me? Will you run from me? Or..."
She reached out her hand to him.
He looked at her.
"...will you come with me?"
"If I go with you, will you stop this madness? Will you not kill me and my friends?"
"Your power was so you could find the truth. And now, you have. I am Izanami no Okami, She Who Invites..."
There was a flash of light and she had suddenly become larger, spreading across the vast foggy plane, revealing her true form, which was monstrous, red with blood and decayed flesh. Her hair was more gray than storm clouds, and she had many arms and she regarded him with contempt, noticing how his expression changed.
"Do you remember now?" She bellows, voice hollow. "Do you remember me now, Izanagi? And how you promised you would come back to me? Is your vessel so different?"
Not sure if it was Izanagi who was speaking, or himself, Yu raised his voice. "I was more afraid...now I am no longer."
There was a breathless pause and then it was Yu who was speaking, Yu, the high school student who had accidentally given his heart, his body and now, his soul, to a goddess.
"Izanami, I am not Izanagi. This is true. But what is also the truth, is that I am, for some inexpicable reason, in love with you. Even though I see you for what you truly are, I still am in love with you. Passionately so."
This was not an answer Izanami was expecting. She was not expecting Yu to stand before her, beholding her true form, and declare that he loved her. Her body seemed to recoil..
"I will give everything up to save my friends, to save my world...and to stay with you. I won't run from you Izanami. I...I love you."
Those words were enough to shock her into going back into her disguise, to approach Yu with apprehension.
"Even now that you have seen me for what I truly am?" She asked. She still had the comb in her hair. Spider lilies were falling around them. They were alone in this...well, he wasn't sure where they were, as the world had changed when she changed forms again. "You saw me rotting, deathlike, a skeleton?"
Something told him that the parts of her she had shown to him when before, when she was a student, weren't lies. That was what she was like. The knowledge comforted him.
"I'm just a high school student." Yu told Izanami. "Do you still love me as I am?"
How had it come to this? How had she, a goddess, given her own heart way to a teenage boy? Deep down, she knew the answer. It was not because he was Izanagi, no, Izanagi was merely a face, it was because she had opened herself to him and he to her in a way that she hadn't thought possible.
She kissed him then, pressing herself close to his tall, lanky frame and holding on. She closed her eyes tightly, almost wanting to cry.
"Come with me." She almost begged.
And so...he did.