Guys... Just... Noragami's last chapter broke my heart. Yukine, my poor baby... And Yato... (cries for about a thousand years)

Ahem.

Like, seriously. Please read it. I needed to vent my frustration and tears, so I wrote this XD And I hope you will not get enough of reading the word ashes, because I'm going to write this a lot XD

It all begun with heat.

An intense, suffocating heat along with a strangely strong smell of ashes.

Fresh soot came down from the burning roof to dust the sleeping shinki's nose. He let out a tiny sneeze when it started to tickle before shifting on his side with a groan, oblivious to what was going on. He wondered with annoyance if Yato had left the window open again, and it was this hazy thought made him finally open his orange, bleary eyes.

Yato never left the window open when they slept.

He sat up sluggishly and rubbed his eyes with the back of one wrist to see what was happening. Hot, blistering red flames were everywhere, destroying the wooden floor and threatening to bring the roof down on the duo while thick clouds of dark, suffocating smoke turned the air into something toxic and murderous.

Yato winced in his sleep at Yukine's increasing distress and moaned something that he hoped had reassured him before shifting to his side. Today had been a rough, long day, and if Yukine was that scared of a nightmare then he could always come and cuddle with him. He didn't mind.

"Yato, wake up!"

He groaned once again. "Yukine... What is it?" He had expected a timid, embarrassed answer, but it was a deafening, terrified cry that made his eyes pop open. He immediately understood why Yukine had sounded so scared just now. The fire had almost consumed everything; nothing was recognizable anymore.

"It's burning, Yato!"

He turned towards Yukine just in time to hear the floor crack beneath him with a sickening, dry sound. Both Yato and Yukine's eyes widened, dreading what would happen the next second. Yukine let out a terrified cry as his body fell and plummeted downstairs, burning flames threatening to burn him whole.

Unbridled horror harshly swept sleep's cobwebs away from his mind as he scrambled to his clumsy feet to go find him. His heart was already beating insanely fast - Yukine had fallen, he had fallen, he was surely hurt or burned or worse - but it was nothing compared to when he heard something loud crash downstairs. The heart in the god's chest just stopped beating, but at this instant he didn't know if it was his half or his shinki's that had stopped.

He took his sweaty jersey off to cover his mouth and nose with it and ran, ran without caring about the cinders falling from above that could set his clothes on fire or the hot floor reddening the palm of his bare feet or the huge beams that were randomly falling that could crush him alive in an instant.

He refused to evacuate this burning house before he found this kid.

Logically, judging from where he was before, and if he hadn't moved, then Yukine should be somewhere in the kitchen. The best-case scenario would be that he had landed on the floor or on something soft, but fate had always been cruel towards the boy. He was surely hurt.

Once he was done descending what was left of the stairs, he directly headed towards the kitchen, squinting his eyes as he looked out for, he hoped, his kid unconscious form among the flames.

But overexposure to smoke was starting to make him light-headed and sluggish; he knew he was running out of time. He called his name again and again despite the coughs shaking his body and the deadly heat threating to make him melt, and stopped mid-word when the cruel flames finally moved aside to let him get a peek at a tuft of dirty blonde hair a few metres away from him.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding all this time. Flames didn't look like they had reached him, at least not yet. Yukine was covered in a thick layer of black ashes and grime and unmoving, but he looked like he was unharmed. That couldn't be the case, though. He had fallen through a floor.

He dashed towards him like his life was depending on it, but his mad dash came to an abrupt halt when he caught sight of the large, burning kitchen's fridge that was completely crushing his left foot. So it was the sound of earlier, the sound of something heavy falling downstairs.

He desperately wanted to, but knew that he didn't have enough strength left to move it. He closed his eyes in a silent apology and took a long, deep intake of healthy air through his jersey. Then he held his breath and started yanking his kid out of there with all the strength he had left. Even if he didn't make it, Yukine had to live. As his master, he couldn't let him die another time, and even less because of him.

The unconscious child stayed still as a corpse during the whole operation, and Yato didn't know if he had to find relief in that or if he had to seriously worry about his lack of responsiveness. After a good five minutes of grunting and pulling him hard, Yukine's pinned foot was finally freed.

His heart sank. The sweltering heat was making it difficult to see in front of him, but the poor child's foot had been completely destroyed by the fridge's fall on it. There were pieces of broken, bleeding bones poking out of his bruised purple skin. It looked absolutely awful, and Yato dreaded to think that it may be too broken to be repaired.

Air was downright irrespirable now, choking him and burning his lungs like fire was directly being shoved down his throat. He felt like he was drying in this intense heat, but his suffering certainly paled in front of Yukine's suffering. He wasn't even conscious, and surely couldn't breathe in the heat either.

Yukine might be in serious danger.

A huge, burning wooden beam froze him by crashing a few centimetres away from his face. His eyes were riveted on the burning pillar, but when he finally snapped out of his daze – why did he lose time looking at this, he didn't have time, and Yukine even less - and looked up, he realized that the floor upstairs had been entirely burnt.

It let him stare with horror at the shaking, burning beams that composed the roof threatening to destroy the both of them at any minute. Ashes and cinders, as well as burning screws and nails started falling around him when wood wasn't blocking them anymore. His heart swelled with dread as reality struck him with full force. This building wouldn't last ten seconds more.

As he frantically searched for a way out for the both of them, his eyes caught sight of a hole with burnt borders in a wall near him. He threw Yukine out of the burning house without thinking twice about it. Although it was a desperate movement, he threw him gently enough so that his strength wouldn't send him slam against the garden's wooden fence and worsen his injuries. Yukine only rolled a few metres in the soft grass before coming to a stop, stiff and cold despite the inferno next to him.

Yato let out a small puff of relief when he saw Yukine was safe and sound outside. He forced his burned legs to bear his weight, just a little longer, just so that he could go out and save Yukine, but that's when the rest of the burning house caved.

Only his scream of agony rang in the black night.

Hiyori tuned out the bickering between her two friends, Yama and Ami, to frown at the unexpected deluge of messages and called she had received on her phone. Sixteen messages and twelve missed calls, all coming from Daikoku's phone. Usually it was Yato who harassed her until she got fed up of him. Maybe something had happened?

She tapped on her screen to call the number back and put the telephone to her ear. "How can you say that Hyakki-sama isn't the most beautiful person you ever saw?! He is just... come on, look at him! He is perfect!"

"I saw," grumbled Ami, pushing the picture that Yama was shoving in her face away. "Geez. You showed me this picture at least a thousand times. And I'm not even exaggerating."

"You can't ever get tired of seeing his face," grinned the high-school student. "I love him so much! He is famous, and smart, and rich, and totally handsome!"

Hiyori's bag fell to the floor. "How are they?"

Both girls turned their heads towards Hiyori, startled by the sudden silence in her voice. She looked a few seconds away from passing out, her face was ashen and her fingers trembling so much it was a true miracle the phone still held in her hand. They both gasped before lowering the fragile girl to the ground, wet by the earlier rain.

"Hiyori?!"

"Hiyori, calm down! What's wrong?!"

"Is he... God, i-is he... Is he a-alive...?" sobbed the young girl, and both students at her sides paled, wondering if they had heard right.

They both waited for her call to end without daring to speak. After the adult, low voice coming out of the phone was done answering her questions, they opened their mouth in sync to ask her what happened, but Hiyori dissolved into sobs.

They had never seen her in such a state. It didn't look like she had any control on her tears. She had tried to regain her composure and wipe her eyes several times, in vain. "H-Hiyori, what happened?"

Ami gently pressed her palm on her back. "Hiyori, listen to me. We will tell the profs you won't be there today, and we will also call your parents so that they don't worry about you not being at school. Focus on what's important, and go to the hospital, okay? Don't worry. Everything will be fine."

Hiyori nodded and mumbled something like a thank you to her friends before scrambling to her feet and running through the open school gates. She tuned everything out, the yells of people ordering her to stop running without looking where she went and the questions that some students asked her upon seeing her teary, sticky face.

The way to the hospital was a blur. There were grey streets, a handful of colourful cars and her heartbeat reverberating in her whole exhausted body before she arrived in front of the closed doors of her parents' hospital. Her throat burned and her knees were weak, but she gathered the rest of her energy to make a last dash to Yukine's hospital room.

Daikoku turned his head towards her when she yanked the door open, but Yukine didn't. He was still laid on his back in his bed. His heartbeat was steady, although slow, but his breathing was so shallow that she thought he wasn't breathing at all.

Daikoku caught her before she fell to her knees. "Hiyori-chan, breathe. Don't worry, he is okay. He is breathing."

"D-Daikoku-san..." She threw her arms around his neck to weep on his shoulder.

"Hey kid, save your breath," chuckled the older shinki. "Don't worry. It will take more than a mere fire to get any of us."

Daikoku spent a few minutes more murmuring calming words to the panicked young girl, hoping that she would stop crying. Hiyori was eventually led to a chair, where she tried to get herself back together. "I'm not going to lie to you; his body is barely holding on. Many of his ribs are severely bruised, and some of them even broke. You see him breathing shallowly, but any deeper breath would hurt him."

"I... I see..."

"He got a few burns on his arms too, but it's nothing that can't be healed. The docs already took care of that." He let out a sigh. "The worst is definitely his foot."

"His foot?" repeated the girl, her face turning a little bit green.

"He went through surgery." Daikoku eyed Yukine's thick white cast around his foot. "But he needs more than just the one they gave him. You see it in a cast right now, but they said that they hadn't even solved a quarter of the damn problem. All his bones got crushed." Hiyori shivered. "Completely crushed... u-u-under that damned fridge..."

Daikoku trailed off as violent, wet coughs twisted his upper body in strange positions, and Hiyori alighted on the fact that he was far from being okay too, even if he was the only one awake. His right hand, palm and back, was entirely burned, and she could see another bad-looking scar creeping out of his collar up to his chin.

She awkwardly patted his back. "Are you okay?! Maybe you left your bed too-"

"What, too soon? Please. I'm not a kid, Hiyori-chan. I told you I was okay. It's just smoke that messed my lungs up." He led her back to her seat, and pure ire passed in his eyes as he looked at Yukine. "If you want to worry about someone so much, then fuss over Yukine and Yato when they wake up, or over my goddess when she will finally open her eyes."

"Kofuku-san hasn't woken up yet? You... You told me that Yato and Yukine got injured, but you never mentioned Kofuku-san was hurt."

"She wasn't. She only got a few scrapes and she barely even inhaled smoke, but she hasn't woken up despite being the less injured out of us four and it's freaking me out." He blew a worried sigh. "I hope they will find what is going on with her soon."

He took a few gulps of water while Hiyori stared pensively at him. He looked terribly worried, more than anything she had ever seen. "They will," she mumbled, hoping she sounded more reassuring than she felt. Her teary eyes returned to her lap, and clenched the fabric of her skirt so tight that her knuckles were white. "She has to survive. You all have to survive this, all of you, otherwise I... I..."

One of Yukine's monitor cut their conversation with a shrill, high-pitched sound that sounded like it wouldn't ever end. The boy's breathing, trapped under a tiny mask, was fast and erratic, matching the rhythm of his heartbeat. His eyes were opened so wide that it would be surprising it didn't hurt, and he darted nervous glances in the room.

Hiyori stood up and took one of his hands in hers, and alarmed, teary orange eyes met solemn lilac ones. "Yukine-kun! Listen to me. The fire is over now, y-you're safe at the hospital. And you're not alone. Daikoku-san and I are awake and here for you." He blinked at her with barely furrowed brows, tears slipping free from his eyes to roll down his cheeks.

Minutes of her low, soothing words finally succeeded in appeasing Yukine's panic, leaving an exhausted and confused shinki on a hospital bed. He looked like he was barely managing to keep consciousness, and it was a heart-breaking sight.

He stared at her blankly and opened his mouth, intending to make some words leave it, a question if he could, but instead only a trail of dark blood left it. "Yukine, don't speak!" cried Daikoku. He knelt next to the boy. "Please, listen to me. You're suffering enough as it is, so... Ugh. What do you want to know? Do you want to know if we're all okay?"

He nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly. "Okay then. I will tell you. Kofuku and I are okay. More scare than hurt. Yato, he... I'm sorry. I guess you want to see him, but he isn't awake right now. He got some nasty burns... Really nasty, ugly burns. And many wounds too. He won't wake up now, but he will. We have to believe in him."

Yukine didn't seem really calmed by that. Daikoku was glad that, at least, he was lucid enough to know that the older shinki was withholding informations from him. It wasn't late before his eyelids fluttered shut as he fell back into unconsciousness. Pity tightened Daikoku's heart. "He fainted... Poor kid. I swear to you that I will find the bastard who did this."

"What do you mean?" asked Hiyori with a frown. "Wasn't this fire an accident?"

"No way it was an accident, Hiyori-chan," he cut, anger burning bright in his eyes again. "It is someone's work. I always check before going to sleep that everything is turned off, except Yukine's lamp. Not only nothing that could burn was on this night, but there is absolutely nothing in this house that could have burned it whole."

A weight settled in Hiyori's stomach. "It's impossible that it just happened by chance. Someone tried to murder the four of us this night, and I intend to find and utterly destroy the bastard who did that. He will regret putting us in danger, that's for sure."

"But who could it be?" breathed Hiyori, horrified by this idea. "I-It must have been another god, or a shinki in Takamagahara. I... I can conceive that Yato isn't very much loved, but to go that far..."

Her first guess was Fujisaki. He was Yato's creator, a mad man who kept repeating that his Yaboku was made to murder and destroy, and maybe he had decided to use this fire to show him this again. He could've had access to Takamagahara through shinki, and was mad enough to do something so drastic. He had often targeted her and Yukine, but she wouldn't ever have thought that he could do something so terrible...

She would confront him on Monday at school and get to the bottom of this. As Daikoku had said, whoever had done this wouldn't get away with their crime.