Ello, ello fandom world!
So, I haven't written anything in a long, long time unfortunately (I really will finish my Hakouoki fics, definitely, probably...). But I'm trying to get back in the swing of things and I've kinda fallen stupidly in love with with Kamisama Kiss (both Manga and Anime) so I thought I'd take a try and getting back into writing with this since I've had some persistent plot bunnies running around in my head for it. The first of which is this fic here :D
A quick note on this story:
This is a bit of an experiment on the "Nanami is the familiar, Tomoe is the god" trope. It's not a straight retelling of the story with their roles switched, though a lot of the elements will be similar I've changed quite a bit, particularly for story lines and character backgrounds.
Another thing to note is that this story should probably be viewed more as a collection of one shots within the same universe. They'll not always been in chronological order, and some chapters may take place either much earlier or much later that those that lead up to them. I'm going to try and keep it from getting too confusing but if there is anything that doesn't make sense please let me know!
Reviews are love and criticism is always welcome! Thank you for reading!
The paper the man in the park had given him led him down a winding path farther and farther from the city with each passing moment. His feet ached from the exercise, blisters forming where his shoes - made to look stylish at the events his father had always been hosting, not for long hikes across the city - rubbed against his feet. It would be worth it though, it had to be worth it, if he could just get to the house that the man had promised him then he'd be alright. Just down the mountain road and then up the steps he found there and -
The last of the hope Tomoe had tucked away for the night - and really, the entirety of his life - shattered completely upon seeing the promised sanctuary the stranger at the park had directed him to.
"'Take my home. You are more worthy of it than I am.'" Tomoe mimicked the man's voice earlier, vitriol in every word as he did, "I can't believe I let myself get played like that." Tomoe muttered to himself as he glared at the decrepit shrine he'd been duped into walking half the length of the city to get to. The creepy old place was a healthy dosage of salt poured into the fresh wound of his father's lies and abandonment earlier that day. "I swear if I ever see that bastard again I'll tie him down and feed him to a pack of wild dogs!"
Furious Tomoe kicked out at a rock in place of the blond man that had sent him there's head and swore loudly as the rock stubbornly remained where it sat and his foot took the brunt of the force. He swore and hopped ungainly on his uninjured foot sending his bags to the ground. The items from his room he was able to grab before the men from bank kicked him out on his ass scattered everywhere, rumpled clothes and school supplies and the few personal items he had wanted to keep spilling out at his feet. Because of course life was not content to allow him even the smallest of dignities at this point.
A small, child-like voice broke through his internal tangent. "Mikage-Sama is that you?"
Tomoe stilled at the sound, squinting into the darkness around him unsure if the creepiness of the shrine was playing tricks on him or if he'd actually heard someone. "Welcome home Mikage-Sama!"
Another child's piping voice chanted. Tomoe had a brief moment to contemplate if the stress of his situation had finally broken his mind before a pair of fireballs blinked into existence right before him, lighting up the shrine grounds like the sun had come early to the mountain.
In the face of finding himself in a shrine apparently haunted by demons made of hell fire - he would kill that blond, wailing bastard if he ever saw him again - Tomoe gave up on all pretenses of maintaining anything like calm and gave an entirely unmanly shriek as he scrambled backwards. The balls of fire followed his movements, undoubtedly reveling in his screams of terror, before spreading out to create a great ring of fire around the premises of the shrine and cutting off his escape. Abandoning his bags he scrambled up the few steps leading up to the shrine proper in the frantic hope that whatever deity may have once reigned over the abandoned place might grant him some semblance of safety from the demonic creatures behind him.
The doors to the shrine's inner sanctuary slid open with a surprising easy under Tomoe's frantic efforts and he found himself falling ass over tea-kettle at the unexpected ease at which they parted for him. He landed inside the shrine in a tangle of limbs and terror, scarcely having time to orient himself before another voice - feminine and as soft as silk to his ears - drifted over to him from the darkest corner of the room.
"You've really returned to me," Tomoe scrambled up to his hands and knees, blinking into the dark in bewilderment as the slim form of a woman took shape in the shadows. Or...not quite a woman. Was it the dips of the shadowy half light he was seeing her in, or was he truly seeing a tail swishing gently behind her? She peered over her shoulder at him, two ears far removed from human perched atop her head. "Mikage. It's been so long...so very, very long."
The silk of her voice became as jagged as broken glass, fury clear on her face as she spun to face him with long, dangerous claws flashing in the light of the demons aglow outside. "What the hell did you think you were trying to pull running off like that?!" More fire, blue and blazing and so, so much worse than that of the demons outside, roared to life around her slim frame. "I'm going to roast you alive and feed you to the rats for this!"
Tomoe screamed as the beautiful, terrible creature leapt at him, blue fire and sharp claws and fangs fit for tearing his throat out. He brought his hands up to try and defend as much as he could from the supernatural assault he'd found himself under, ready to feel his skin shred and blister the moment she fell upon him.
The attack never came.
He waited. One pounding heartbeat, then another, then another. The light of the fires outside disappeared from behind his closed eyes. Silence heavy enough to smother settled around him, stark and unsettling the wake of the chaos from a moment before. His body remained unscathed by supernatural attack. Hesitantly, he cracked one eye open.
The woman was standing over him, frozen in mid motion with claws extended towards him though the blue fire that had enshrouded her had dissipated. In place of the soul withering fury that had been on her face before now lay naked bewilderment as she stared at him. Tomoe took an unsteady breath and watched as her hands dropped to her sides, as harmless as they could be all considering. "You," She said, staring at him through the fringe of her hair. "Are not Mikage."
He blinked up at her, body starting to shake from the adrenaline pounding in his system. As he stared two fireballs the same color as those he saw outside though much smaller burst into life on either side of the strange woman. He was about to scramble to his feet and fling himself away before they turned into the monstrous flames from before but stilled as the small fires flickering out and took the shape of two masked children. Two masked children that, as far as he could see, were merrily floating in the air uncaring of gravity and it's demands. One of the yokai woman's large, animal-like ears flicked as the one with white and black mask started chattering, though her eyes didn't move from Tomoe's prone form.
"But I can sense Mikage-Sama's essence about him Nanami-Dono!" The masked child pipped.
The other floating child - this one's mask looked human though it was ringed in green - added in, "Observe the mark upon his forehead!" as he pointed at Tomoe.
The woman - Nanami as the demon children had called her - gave a tired sigh. "That may be Kotetsu, but the mark does not change that this boy is not Mikage." The woman's one ear gave another irritated flick and she rubbed at the bridge of her nose tiredly. She glanced at each of the children floating about her before peering down at Tomoe, grimacing almost guiltily as she did. Slowly, as if understanding that his heart was still pounding in his chest and his mind was screaming at him to flee, the woman settled herself down so that she sat kneeling before him. Then she did what seemed the most ridiculous thing of all.
She bowed to him.
It was a slight bow, respectful but reserved, her movements accentuated by the shimmering silk her kimono was made out of. Tomoe noticed suddenly, in a part of his thoughts that seemed very far away from the rest of his mind, that she was rather lovely. "I apologize for frightening you," She rose from her bow and met his gaze, an apologetic cast to her face. "I didn't intend to frighten you. I thought that you were Mikage and…" She stopped, and he saw a flash of hurt upon her face. "It doesn't' matter. My name is Nanami."
Tomoe felt very much like he was standing precariously close to the edge of insanity, his toes brushing over open air and his body swaying between the familiar and the impossible. But his mother had spent the too-few years she had in life drilling manners into him and he'd be damned if he failed her now. Sitting in a run down shrine on a half forgotten mountain, recently abandoned by his father and in the face of yokai of legends Tomoe sat up and gave a short returning bow and promptly introduced himself. "Momozono Tomoe."
Nanami nodded, smoothing her hands over the folds of her kimono as silence settled between them. He took the moment to take her in without the threat of imminent death to cloud his view. Two very unhuman ears twitching atop her head - cat, perhaps? - and a long tail curling around her knees marked her clearly as not being human - if the trick with the wild blue flames from earlier was not enough for him to guess. Long claws at her fingertips confirmed her as a yokai, as impossible as the more rational part of his mind insisted that be. She otherwise looked like any other woman he might meet on the street. A year or two off from his own age at a glance, ignoring the air of agelessness that settled around her. Honey brown eyes and long brown hair allowed to flow around her wild and loose in contrast to the traditional clothing she wore. It all suited her though. The fabric of the kimono a collection of light and dark blues gathering to create a flowing pattern of flowers, the ornate fabric held in place with an elaborately tied obi of soft pinks and creams.
The entirely mad portion of his mind that had noted earlier that she was lovely was, he could admit, correct. The yokai woman sitting before him was lovely, if entirely dangerous and still possibly going to kill him.
"Hmm. Well then Momozono Tomoe," Nanami said, seeming having sized him up at the same time he was trying to sort her out, "Do you mind telling me what it is you are doing here?"
"That bastard! When I get my hands on him I'm going to flay him alive for this!"
Tomoe shrunk back as he watched one of the masked children - Onikiri? He was fairly certain that was the name the shrine spirit had given him upon introductions - try and calm the raging Nanami's temper. The kitsune - kitsune, dear kami and all the spirits of the heavens what in the world had he gotten himself into - had managed to listen to his story rather calmly, interjecting politely only to ask questions or to get some clarification, sitting as poised as any queen holding court as he spoke. It wasn't until he'd finished that she'd lost what he now understood to have been entirely contrived sense of calm she'd shown earlier.
"First he abandons the shrine for decades and then he dumps his responsibilities on a human boy! What was Mikage thinking!" The blue flames he'd seen earlier burst to life around her slim frame again, sending the little shrine spirit skittering over towards Tomoe in search for shelter from the flames. Tomoe watched in awe as Nanami moved - so swiftly he scarcely could her movements at all - towards the still open door of the shrine and cast the balls of blue light out into the night with a sharp barking order, "Kitsunibi find Mikage!"
"I've never seen Nanami-Dono so angry before!" Onikiri whimpered from where she'd buried her masked face into Tomoe's shoulder. Kotetsu clung to Tomoe's other side tightly, the male Shrine Spirit somehow looking close to tears even through the mask. Tomoe tried shaking them off but they only clung to him tighter.
"Does anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on?" He turned his attention to Nanami still standing at the doorway. She paused in her glaring out at the city scape in the distance long enough to turn and give him a tired sigh.
"That man you met's name was Mikage, he was the Tochigami of this Shrine." She said, moving to face him fully. "Twenty years ago he left to go into the city for what he said was a brief errand. Suffice it to say he has not returned. And now," Tomoe saw her hands clench at her side, anger flashing in her eyes and turning them a furious amber for the briefest of moments. "And now he's given you this Shrine and his Mark of Divinity. Twenty years he abandons his duties and now he's made you a Kami in his place. What on earth was he thinking. "
The twin child spirits finally released him, but only long enough for them to cheerfully start flinging flower petals at his head and singing about how joyous it was to have a Kami back at the shrine. Tomoe ignored them, unable to do anything but stare at the woman before him in bewilderment.
"You must be joking." His voice was weaker than he would have liked. Exhaustion and an overwhelming night combined to sap the certainty from his voice. The whole thing was mad. He was seated in a decrepit shrine while a kitsune woman told him that he was the Kami of the land they stood on. A fever dream. He would wake up in his home with his father away at work and school only a few weeks away to find he'd been suffering from strange dreams brought on by a bad summer cold. "There's no way that I'm a-a Tochigami that is absolutely ridiculous!"
"I agree." Nanami's voice cut through the rising panic in his head and stilled the spirits in their song. The rage had gone from her and in the dim glow of the lantern the Shrine Spirits had brought earlier Tomoe could see the weariness in her frame. Twenty years, Tomoe considered, was a long time to be left alone to stew in your abandonment. He'd not yet had to face it for a full twenty hours yet and he felt stripped down and raw, what must have it been like for this sad looking fox standing before him now? "Mikage making you the Tochigami of this shrine in his place is ridiculous. You did not ask for this responsibility, he merely gave it to you without even telling you what it is or how much of a burden it would be. It's ridiculous and unfair."
Nanami stepped forward, moving to stand above him. Silence settled around them again as she stared down at him and Tomoe fought hard not to fidget beneath her searching look. A small hand, delicate and dangerous with long, deadly claws, reached out and brushed some of the hair away from his forehead. The same place the man from earlier - Mikage - had placed his hand just as he stood to leave. A small sign of comfort for a stranger Tomoe had assumed earlier, but now understood had been the man passing along the mark that would make Tomoe a Kami.
Nanami dropped her hand and looked again towards the open shrine door and the city where her kitsunebi was undoubtedly flying about in search of the man that had abandoned her. What had been Mikage to her? A husband, a father? Had she been looking for him all this time? Or had she, like Tomoe, accepted that she'd been cast aside the moment that she'd been able to fully understand it?
"Come." Nanami's voice broke the stillness. Tomoe blinked to find that she'd turned her attention back to him and was motioning for him to rise. "It's late and you must be tired. I'll make up a futon for you for the night and we can discuss everything further in the morning."
She held a hand out to help him up, the Shrine Spirits already rushing to lift the lantern and lead the way with the supernatural fire that burned within it. Tired, overwhelmed and lost as to where else he could go at that point Tomoe accepted the hand and the offer for shelter that came with it. He couldn't stay there forever - it was all too much, too impossible to live with - but he could stay a night or two while he got his bearings and figured out what his next steps would be.
As he drifted off to sleep in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room he wondered what Nanami would do, if the Kitsunebi she'd sent out would return to her with the news she was looking for. He wondered, in the last moment before he slipped away, why it was that they had both been abandoned like they had.