Disclaimer: I do not own Kamisama Hajimemashita.

Temple, Castle, Home

He continued holding her, long after her breathing had slowed, long after the tears had dried, savoring the feel of her in his arms. She was so light, so delicate. Spun as though of the finest silk and the purest glass. But there was a fire in her. A power so vivid, so intense he was drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

He could hold her forever, burning in her flame until his bones turned to cinders, his body to ash. She was everything. His everything. His temple to worship. His castle to adore.

Yet this pose could not be good for her. It would strain her joints as surely as it would his, though even more painfully for the utter fragility of her humanity. Gently, he set her down, twisting so that she lay in the cradle of his arms, his shoulder her pillow, his body her futon.

She was beautiful. By far the most beautiful human he had ever seen. No, perhaps, the only beautiful human he had ever seen. Not for the sweetness of her cheeks or the delicate petals of her lips, not for the curves of her body, or the soft angles of her face. No. It was not her physical beauty that drew him, though she was beautiful still; it was her spirit. Burning, blistering, yet warm as the sun seeping into the grass. Captivated. He was captivated by the power glowing so fiercely in her eyes. So warm. So comforting. So unlikely anything he had called his own.

Almost beside himself, he felt his hands moving, tracing the slopes of her cheeks, the perfect contour of an eye. So human. So fallible. Yet so utterly entrancing in that paradox. How could a human be so strong?

He looked at her, truly looked at her, his mercurial eyes absorbing every facet of her, shamelessly taking advantage of her unconscious state. Yukiji. His Yukiji. He would allow no other to have her! Could allow no other to have her! The fierceness of her nature, the gentility of her touch, it was his, only his. No other creature could appreciate her so.

He kissed her palm where it lay against his chest, reverent.

They were a beautiful contrast he thought, looking at the dark ebony strands mixing with the pristine white of his hair. A study in opposites somehow perfect together. His hand, where it now rested on her hand looked so pale to the peach of her skin. His body where it cradled her was so large in comparison to her own diminutive form. Yet she fit against him perfectly, molding against the contours of his flesh as though the kami themselves had cleaved out a part of him and set it aside within her.

Kissing her brow, he wondered, what magic was this that tamed him so? The unstoppable kitsune, the unconquerable yokai that even the kami had sought to destroy. Where they had failed, this tiny, human woman had won, not with the strength of her arms, nor with skillful cunning, but with secret touches in the night. With the weight of her hand, anchoring him to reality. With her presence stilling his fear and the sweetness of her peach scent that surrounded him with a comfort he had never known.

Home. She felt like home, or what home, he imagined, could be.

Perhaps it was this that made him love her so. Quietly, unassumingly, she came to him, cared for him, asking for nothing, wanting nothing of him. So different was she from the tanuki he surrounded himself with. So different from anyone he had ever known. To her he was simply Tomoe no more, no less.

But no, he thought as she shifted, the red of her inner kimono gaping a little where it rest against the deep charcoal of his own, it could not only have been then. He had been captivated long before, when she had looked at him so fearlessly and bit his fingertip. Such a warrior, this little human! She had only amused him then, but in the hours, days, weeks that they had remained apart, he thought of her more and more.

Each simpering human he met, he compared with her. The warriors kneeling at his feet, the bandits begging for his forgiveness, none of them compared with her. Even the housewife, struggling for her child, even as he left them, they continued to shake, trembling with fear as they scampered away. They sickened him with their cowardice. Why could they not look at him with the same intensity as she did? Why couldn't they see him as more than another demon, ushering in their death? They were nothing. Even tanuki he sated himself with were nothing. All their promises, all their platitudes, yet none of them looked at him with the feeling that she did.

His left ear twitched. He could hear the rain intensifying, a sharp tattoo against the roof of the house, the walls creaking faintly in the wind. He looked at her then, recalling the weakness of her body and the poison in her veins. Was she cold? Was it the chill that made her tremble so finely or the delusion of his preoccupied mind? He held her closer, shifting so that her body pressed fully against his, opening his kimono to drape it over themselves, and she smiled, a slow sleepy smile.

There, he thought proudly, she should be warm. It pleased him, this little thing. This knowledge that it was his heat that warmed her, that it was his arms that protected her as surely from the chill as they would protect her from any other. So long as he breathed no one would harm her. Neither demon nor human nor kami! They would not harm her! He would never allow it!

Satisfied, he allowed his breaths to slow, his heart unconsciously matching her own, until his limbs slackened and his head came to rest upon her own. There, with her body tucked securely beneath his chin, he allowed himself to fall. Content, in her presence. Assured in her acceptance. Safe in her affection.

Relaxed, redeemed, and utterly home.