Yato loves his father and always has. That's why he understands from a young age that love is fickle and treacherous. Love is capricious by nature, and that's just the way it is. He's never known any other kind.
He's a fast learner, even if Hiiro thinks he gets distracted too easily and stumbles. Father is very clear about what he wants, and Yato wants to please him. If it takes blood and swords and bags of severed ears, then that's just the way the world works.
Yato would do anything for a smile, an approving nod, a kind word. He wants to make Father proud, and he isn't afraid to kill for his approval. It's his job, after all, isn't it? Father feeds him and puts a roof over his head and gave him life, and Yato figures he owes him something for that. Yato owes Father his very existence, and he is determined to make good on that.
Those first few months are so simple, so black and white. Yato never questions anything, Father and Hiiro are pleased with him, and they are the perfect little family.
It's only later that Yato notices the cracks beneath the surface and realizes he's stumbling on unstable ground.
It's Sakura, probably, who shakes their foundations. Or it's Yato's fault, because he's the one who strays, but Sakura is his catalyst.
Her love is different than Father's and Hiiro's. It is gentler, kinder, and less…transactional. There are clear boundaries and conditions—no killing, which Yato finds off-putting at first, since he thought that was supposed to be pleasing—but also forgiveness when he transgresses. Simpler things make her happy, like pretty flowers and small frogs. She gives him the name Yato, and he keeps it even though it's a mistake because it seems right to separate who he is with her from who he is with Father. Yaboku kills and Yato doesn't, and that's a simple enough distinction at first, but then things get messy and complicated. She teaches him a lot, and the more he learns, the more he wrestles with himself and debates the difference between right and wrong. Things were simpler before Sakura.
He loves her, though, fiercely and without reservation.
"But what makes you happy?" she asks when he brings her more trinkets and looks for her approval. She accepts them and thanks him and then looks at him with such earnest eyes, as if she really wants to know, even though she must fear it's a dangerous question given the killing he did before meeting her.
But the killing doesn't make him happy the way it does Father, even if he sometimes likes playing with Hiiro. He likes Father's approval, and the killing is a means to an end. He likes to see Hiiro happy, and killing is a means to that end too. He likes to make Sakura happy too, and killing isn't the answer there. He's found other ways.
"I'm happy when you're happy," he says.
"But surely there must be something that makes you happy that doesn't involve how I feel? Something that only makes you happy."
Yato frowns as he tries to work out what she means to say. He is a god, and gods are born to grant wishes and make people happy. He was born to make Father happy, and he'd like to do the same for Hiiro and Sakura while he's at it, even if sometimes those things are at odds.
His entire purpose is to make everyone else happy. No one has asked what would make him happy. He never thought it mattered.
"Oh, Yato," Sakura sighs. Her smile droops down into a frown and her eyes go misty, and Yato doesn't like that because he's supposed to make her happy, isn't he? She takes his hands in hers and smiles at him again. "Let's go find what makes you happy, then, alright?"
And she does take him around to try different things until he tells her that's it, that's the one, but truthfully he still wants to do whatever will make her smile. He is happiest with her. Father always tells him what should make him happy—"You did such a good job playing today, wasn't that fun?"—but he finds that he enjoys Sakura's company more.
If he hadn't been so caught up in the new possibilities Sakura unrolls before him, he might have noticed the tremors sooner. He misses the narrowed eyes tracking his every move, the whispered conversations behind his back, the snide warnings. He doesn't quite realize how much time he's spending with Sakura now or how little he's killing.
What he does notice is the blight bruising Hiiro's skin when he slinks home one day, the way her eyes shine with moisture and her lips wobble just barely and she walks awkwardly like she's trying to hide her vital parts.
"Hiiro, what happened?" he asks, aghast, but some little part of him deep down suspects the truth even before she casts her glare at him and Father steps out of the doorway behind her with the barest hint of a smirk on his face.
"You haven't been doing your job," she says. Her voice is perfectly flat, with no hint of wobble. "Where have you been going? Why don't you want to play anymore?"
Yato hovers, hands outstretched helplessly. He does not want to tell them about Sakura. He knew from the very beginning that she needed to remain a secret. He hasn't quite put a name to his wordless fear of what might happen if they find out, but he knows they won't be happy. They've built too much into their tight-knit little family, and Yato has begun to stray.
"I…"
"An ailment in the god is often caused by their shinki," Father says airily, like this is a simple thing, just the way the world works, and there's no reason to fuss about it. His eyes are smooth and shiny as river rocks, gleaming with a hard satisfaction Yato isn't sure he understands and doesn't like. "I was just reminding Mizuchi to behave herself. We only want what's best for you, of course."
"But she hasn't done anything!" Yato protests.
"Oh?" Father lifts his eyebrows. "Then why haven't you been yourself lately?"
"I…" Yato stumbles again. He wants to exonerate Hiiro and make sure she isn't punished again, but he can't betray Sakura either.
"Well, as long as you're both good, we won't need any more reminders," Father says with an indulgent smile. "Run along and get cleaned up, and then come back for dinner."
Yato grabs Hiiro's wrist and tugs her away from Father as fast as they can go without looking like they're running away. He makes sure she rinses off all her blight and is solicitous in fetching her anything she might possibly desire. She is quiet and does not meet his eyes, but he feels her resentment simmering beneath the surface and it makes him sick. He has neglected his duties, and Hiiro is paying the price.
He cuts off double the ears with Hiiro to appease Father. He feels Sakura's disappointment in him, heavy and impossible to ignore like he has internalized her as his conscience, and he brings her extra gifts and keeps his guilt to himself. If she doesn't know, she won't be unhappy. He feels bad about deceiving her, but what choice does he have? He can't lose her.
He thinks he's doing a pretty good job of balancing both sides, until one day Hiiro catches him with Sakura. He's been so careful that he can't help but feel she's been following him, sniffing out his secrets, and he can feel her lighting the match on this whole powder keg.
He knows it's wrong—feels it's wrong—to tell Sakura her old human name even if he can't say exactly why, but with Hiiro goading him into it and Sakura looking at him with such wide-eyed curiosity, what choice does he have? And when the name leaves his lips, he feels the spark flickering in the air for just a second before everything explodes.
Hiiro looks just as horrified as he feels, and he realizes later that Father must have lied to her too and hadn't told her what the gods' greatest secret would do. It's the only thing that lets him forgive her, later.
When Father appears as if by magic, as if he hasn't been waiting for this very moment, Yato kills the ayakashi that was Sakura like he asks. But not because he says so, not this time. He kills her because this isn't his Sakura anymore, and she is weeping from all the bulging ayakashi eyeballs littering her grotesquely transformed body. She is so sad, and Yato does not know how to fix this and does not think it can be undone. Putting her out of her misery feels like a kindness, if a cruel one.
Something inside Yato dies with her, some part of him that she had created and cultivated. He is not the same, and he will never look at Father the same way again. He has learned not to trust the words that Father says, or that Hiiro says as his mouthpiece. He has learned what harsh cruelties all three of them are capable of, and how easy it is to destroy something built with even the utmost care. How fast the world can fall down around him. Things can change in an instant.
Father does too. One day he comes back wearing a different face. Every few months, years, decades, he changes form, comes back in different human bodies. It no longer surprises Yato to wake up to a stranger in the house who wears Father's eyes.
His moods are as changeable as his appearance. He flies from amusement to cruelty, from teasing to rages in a heartbeat. One day he is kind, or as kind as he knows how to be, and the next he is slowly twisting the knife in Yato's gut, all while wearing that unwavering smile. In his rages, he might set the wolves on Yato and Hiiro or leave bruises on their skin or dig into their insecurities with gusto. In the in-betweens, he says he is their world and their father and he loves them, and hasn't he given them everything they could possibly want? His words are honeyed and layered with manipulation, until Yato never knows what to believe. Yato learns to read hidden threats and pointed barbs buried beneath polite conversation. He learns that words can have edges as sharp as swords. He learns to read Father's moods too, but it's like being tossed about in a stormy sea. Somehow, he is still always caught off guard.
Hiiro begins to morph as well, but she was always the one more eager to follow in Father's footsteps. Father sends her on missions, and she comes back with different names inked on her skin. She is a dozen different people packed in one body, shifting from role to role like a snake shedding its skin as she works with different gods to achieve Father's ends. Yato finds it off-putting to watch her bounce back and forth. She has picked up Father's way of speaking with honeyed daggers and veiled threats too, and Yato does not like that at all. He does not like the shifts in her moods, from flat and distant to black with anger to amused condescension.
It's like he hardly knows them at all. It's like walking on shifting sands, constantly stumbling and losing his balance as the ground moves beneath him. He never knows what he will walk into when he wakes up in the morning. And although he has always done his best to make them proud, has always sought their affection, he feels that their love is a moving target. He has started seeing strings attached to it everywhere, and it has begun tasting like just another sugarcoated lie.
But what would he know? He hardly remembers what a stable home feels like, if he ever knew at all.
Who could blame him if he becomes a little unstable himself?
He likes Yato better than he ever liked Yaboku, so he changes his name. Father never complies, of course—he says it's because it's ridiculous to let a shinki name a god, but Yato knows it's because a name is power and Father doesn't want to give up any shred of the control he wields so heavy-handedly—but Hiiro merely shrugs and concedes to his wishes. A name doesn't mean as much to her, perhaps, or switching between them doesn't seem as momentous when that is her way of life. Yato is grateful for it, regardless.
He continues asserting his independence, one small step at a time. He stays away from home longer, and Father doesn't mind as long as he keeps up with his culling. Then he begins leaving Hiiro behind, killing less and less. Father does not like that, but he seems to find it more amusing than anything. He has never taken Yato seriously. He lets Yato roam as he will, then calls him back when he tires of disobedience or wants to remind him of his place. It's a game he plays, spooling Yato out and reeling him back in.
Yato meets Kazuma on one of his in-between periods and does him a favor on a whim, saving Bishamon for him. That could have been the end of that, but Kazuma comes back, occasionally appearing with small gifts and fear-stricken thank you's that later turn to encouraging words as they grow accustomed to each other. Yato has nearly forgotten what it means to have a friend without strings attached.
He cycles through shinki at breakneck speed, searching for one like Sakura or Kazuma to fill the empty ache they leave behind. He never finds one. They are too standoffish, too fearful, too needy. They are too scared of him because he is cold, or need more than he can give. In their defense, he doesn't try his best. He knows it's dangerous to get too close.
Hiiro doesn't like it, but Father laughs it off as long as no one shinki stays at Yato's side for too long. Yato hates being dependent on Father's mercurial amusement and capricious contempt, always waiting for the summons home, the thinly veiled threats, the threadbare promise of an exchange of 'love' for 'favors'.
He decides it's high time to get out of the business of calamity. He throws himself into a hundred different projects, pursuits, and pastimes, trying something out for a few weeks, months, years. He will find a new calling if it's the death of him. He tries everything from art to thatching roofs, fashions himself as everything from a god of war to a delivery god. Nothing seems to stick, perhaps because he was created as a god of calamity and it's woven into his very nature, and then he's off to the next thing, searching for the one. It might take a thousand years and a thousand tries, but he's determined to find it.
He changes occupations and hobbies and personalities like Father changes faces and Hiiro changes names. One day he's a stone-cold killer, the next a carefree knave. He sheds glowers for smiles, cruelty for kindness, reservation for exuberance. And he can switch back again just as fast.
He's everyone and no one, the god of everything and nothing at all. Inside, he still feels trapped and hollow.
"You give me whiplash," Kazuma says once, eyeing him warily.
Yato is rebranding himself again, shedding his latest failed occupation for an entirely new one, as if he won't end up back a killer at Father's beck and call either way. He's smiling again, which might be what Kazuma finds so unnerving, since he knows better. But if Yato's eyes are still cold and flat, his smile is sunny enough to distract from it.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Yato says, even though he very well does. He wants to hear his friend say it, wants to feel that twist of the knife.
Kazuma shakes his head. "It's like you're a different person every time I see you."
"Is that so?" Yato's smile widens, his teeth poking into his lips like shards of glass. "I suppose I learned from the best."
Kazuma frowns at him again. "I don't know what you're trying to prove. I think it's good, what you're doing, finding a purpose besides calamity. But haven't you found anything that makes you happy yet? Just be yourself, Yato."
And then Yato does laugh, as the void yawns wide inside him. "I'd do just that, if I had any idea who that was."
He has changed his shape so many times that he hardly remembers what he used to be, much less who he is. He is as changeable and capricious as the wind, as mercurial as quicksilver, but in the end, he is no one at all.
