Takashi wasn't sure what he was doing here, curled up in a dead god's shrine with a human. A human that could have been an exorcist with how strong his spirit powers felt in the brief moments he stopped shielding them. He'd called Takashi Reiko, just like so many others had before, but he hadn't tried to hurt him for it, and he hadn't tried to bind Takashi to his will like the exorcists had before they gave up and sealed him instead.

The man, Madara, was an anomaly and Takashi wasn't sure where to categorize him yet, potential ally or enemy. For now, it wouldn't hurt to keep track of him. There was something about him, something that was familiar in his spirit senses, like they'd met once a lifetime ago. The vague warmth that had flashed through him, that spark of recognition that was gone as Madara snored, curled into a tight ball in the cramped space. Humans, ayakashi, neither made sense. Not this man, not the ayakashi who recounted the story of this man as a child saving her from an exorcist that bound her when she was researching humans, and not any of the others he had run into before in his brief span of memory. They hurt without provocation and lusted for power and would walk over you to get what they wanted without remorse.

Still, Madara had unsealed him, Touru had been kind, and Madara offered shelter instead of chasing him away. It meant something, something that Takashi didn't understand yet.

He meant to stay awake, but little by little, he drifted off, feeling strangely safe with a sleeping stranger.

o*O*o

Takashi woke to muffled swearing. At some point in the night he had slumped to the ground. One of the blankets Madara had been using was draped over him, an unnecessary gesture but surprising in its kindness. The man in question was bent over his luggage, searching through it for something. Takashi stared.

"Stupid thing has to be in here, I packed it. I know I—" Madara cut off, either feeling Takashi's stare or some other sense catching his attention. He whipped around fast enough to make Takashi flinch. "Oh. You're awake. Uh. Just go ahead and go sleep as long as you want I'm just..." He jerked a hand at the warped door, still most of the way shut. Takashi kept staring. Madara's hand dropped. He grabbed a pieces of cloth from the luggage and scooted to the door. "Breakfast. I'm going to find breakfast."

"Breakfast?"

"Food. That you eat in the morning."

Takeshi frowned. "Every morning?"

"Yes, if possible, every morning. Eating might be optional for most ayakashi, but humans don't exactly live long if they don't eat." Madara rolled his eyes like it was something obvious. Maybe it was; Takashi was hardly an expert on humans. "You should try it sometime."

"It seems impractical."

"Impracti—" Madara sputtered and froze in the doorway. He jabbed a finger in Takashi's direction. "You know what, I'm getting you breakfast too. If there are three things worth living for, it's food, sake, and sleeping as much as you want. Nothing better than that." He stomped out of the shrine and slammed the door behind him.

Takashi stared at the closed door. He could go back to sleep, sleep for longer than he'd been sealed if he wanted to. Or he could leave and follow Madara and the vague feeling of familiarity his presence pulled at his subconscious.

He followed Madara. Yesterday it took Madara ages to realize he was being followed. Today it took all of ten minutes before he turned around and glared in Takashi's direction. Takashi almost flinched back into the middle of a bush.

"If you're going to come, at least do it in the open!" Madara complained. "It's creepy being stared at behind tree trunks. C'mere." He beckoned imperiously.

Against all instincts telling him he should head back to the shrine or run for the hills, Takashi crept closer.

Madara pointed at a plant on the ground in front of him. Its leaves had jagged edges. "Look! Shiso. You can eat the leaves in a salad." He proceeded to pluck a bunch and stuff them into a cloth object shaped a bit like a bag. "And that—" Madara pointed to bright purple blossoms of thistle where the trees were a bit thinner. "Azami. You can eat the leaves if you boil them a bit. I can't find my pan though, so raw food it is for this morning."

There was something weirdly familiar about what Madara pointed out as they walked through the woods; knowledge slotted into place like it was something Takashi already knew, but had forgotten.

"And of course there are always dandelions," Madara said, pulling up new green leaves from the tenacious weed at the edge of a clearing. "You can always find dandelions. Bitter as hell, but better than nothing."

"Purslane," Takashi said, the name of another common weed popping into his head. There was some growing a bit further into the clearing, paddle-shaped leaves on a low-growing plant. "You can eat it raw or cooked."

Madara stared at him for a moment and Takashi wondered if he'd remembered wrong. Then Madara huffed. "Right. It also tastes kind of gross, but it's healthy."

"Isn't the point of food to taste good?"

"Not everyone has the luxury of being something that doesn't require food," Madara said. "Now pay attention! I'm teaching!" He grinned. "You should call me sensei."

"Why would I do that?" Takashi complained. Madara wasn't terrifying anymore; the more he talked, the more Takashi thought he just liked the sound of his own voice. He wasn't terrible company even if he was kind of annoying.

"Because I'm teaching you life skills, brat! You never know when you might need to know this!"

Those words tripped something in Takashi's memory. A woman and a small child in the woods and a handful of warabi, the fern stems still tight and new held close to her chest. It's a life skill, brat! Takashi blinked and the feeling of being two places at once vanished, but the moment lingered, exasperated fondness tinging his emotions. How odd.

Madara had an eyebrow raised in challenge and his hands on his hips.

That echo of fondness swelled and for a moment Takashi could see Madara as something other than a potential threat, just a ragged man with a bit of an ego and a soft heart under a gruff exterior.

"Well?" Madara said.

"Nyanko-sensei," Takashi decided on.

"Excuse me?!" He puffed up, just like an offended cat.

"Your eyes are gold like a cat's," Takashi said. And Touru's nickname of 'fluffy' wasn't wrong; he was a bit fluffy.

"Why is there a 'ko'?!"

"It sounds better," Takashi said, amused as the man sputtered and grumbled about ayakashi and demeaning nicknames.

"Fine!" Madara threw up his hands. "Whatever! Help me find something that isn't god-awful bitter to make up for the rest of this."

Takashi didn't point out that he had no idea what to look for. He'd let Madara remember that on his own.

o*O*o

In the end, Madara couldn't say they'd found much of a meal. Food, yes, but it wasn't exactly the most appetizing thing he'd ever scavenged. It would be better if he had a kitchen with spices and things to prepare it with, but he had a shrine and a pocket knife and (once he dug it out of his bag) a second-hand frying pan that would only be so much help in cooking. The only positive was that on the way back they'd found a mulberry tree with a lot of ripe berries. Madara picked handfuls of them, pouring them into the pillowcase he was using as a bag without care for how it stained. Seeing the fruit reminded him that somewhere in the woods were plums growing wild too, some trees left from when a farm was abandoned that his grandfather used to send him scavenging fruit from so he could make some awful, highly potent alcohol from them. He'd have to check later.

For now he had food for the morning, and food for later, and he was kind of glad for Reiko and Gramps all those years ago teaching him what he could eat without getting himself killed. Between the two of them, he'd learned enough not to starve whenever money got tight. Granted it wasn't a skill he could use much when he lived in the city. Dumpster diving was a bit more useful there, but like hell was he stooping to that before he had to.

Madara made two sad looking salads of shiso and dandelion whatever other greens he'd been able to scrounge up. He topped them with a handful of berries and hoped the sweet berries counteracted the bitter greens. There. Breakfast.

Takashi didn't look impressed by the result, but he did accept the sad pile of greens when Madara passed it to him. Madara kind of wished he had real food to share, but eh, good enough for what was on hand.

It was bitter, tasted like the soil it grew out of with weird bursts of sweetness that generally just made it taste a mess. Madara choked it down. He hated dandelion leaves.

Takashi nibbled on his and actually ate about half. "It doesn't taste as bad as expected," he said when he noticed Madara looking.

"It tastes like shit and I should have just saved the berries as a chaser."

"Maybe. But the intention behind it's surprisingly kind."

Madara didn't know what to think of that statement. In the end, he ate what Takashi hadn't and put the whole thing out of his mind.

o*O*o

Job hunting was harder than Madara remembered it being, but then, it was probably the fact that more people remembered him than he'd ever expected that was making it so hard. He'd been kicked out of the grocery store for goodness sake and he'd only ever shoplifted there a couple of times as a teen. The old lady running it was more nearsighted than ever, but Madara did look pretty distinctive.

That meant he'd been turned down from three potential jobs now. It had been so much easier to find work back in Tokyo as a day laborer. Haul some boxes? Sure! Clean some gutters? He could do that! Was it demeaning and backbreaking work just to get enough to fill his stomach? Yeah, but it'd worked and got his foot in the door once upon a time. And then he'd lost some jobs to ayakashi incidents, and others to his temper and inability to keep his mouth shut, and made some bad choices and gone into debt, but life happened.

Here Madara would think someone would need a roof patched or trash hauled or something, but even with scouring notice boards and asking shop keepers, he wasn't finding anything. Other jobs, well, most places preferred you weren't a high school dropout.

Madara kicked a stray can across the sidewalk with a satisfying clunk. This was only day one of searching. He couldn't get worked up; he'd known it wouldn't be as easy as walking into a store and getting a job. Timing and who you knew were what mattered. If Hinoe backed him...

"Hey!" someone called. "Is that Madara? Madara-san! Ma-da-ra-saaaan!"

Madara glared in the direction of whoever was screeching at him. Across the street were two people who looked vaguely familiar, dressed in business suits and clearly halfway to drunk even though it was barely past six in the evening. Names didn't spring to mind, but Madara vaguely remembered the guy with one eye being a few years ahead of him in school. He and his friend—who looked a little like a cow, not that Madara was going to say that to his face—used to get drinks after work at Hinoe's place. Madara was pretty sure he'd shared beers with them after he was already on his way past drunk on more than one occasion.

Before he could decide whether to acknowledge them or pretend he didn't know them, both of the drunks were crossing the street and running at him in the vaguely uncoordinated way that only the inebriated had.

"Madara-san!" One-eye said, giving Madara the most uncomfortable hug of his life. "You came back!"

"He's back!" Cow-face echoed.

"Uh. Yeah." Madara pried One-eye's arms off him as non-violently as he could manage. "And you guys..." He still couldn't remember their names. Shit. "...are still here!"

"Where've you been all these years? You used to be our drinking buddy!" Cow-face nodded along with One-eye's words as they leaned drunkenly against each other. "We missed you!"

Right, they were practically one unit, he'd forgotten about that. "I'm surprised you remember me at all."

"Hinoe-san hasn't held a drinking contest since you left so you still hold the record," Cow-face said like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to remember a person by.

"Right." Was it bad that they clearly remembered him more than he remembered them? He'd have to have been pretty drunk to be social. Then again, he'd gotten drunk a lot back then. ...And a lot since then. And a lot recently. Madara promptly ignored that little voice in his head that said he had a problem. It sounded like Touru and that was just strange. "Well I'm back for now; maybe she'll start having contests again."

"If she does, this time we'll beat you!" One-eye said.

"Uh huh." They were both so clearly still lightweights, but okay, let them dream. "You two wouldn't happen to know of any place around here that's hiring would you?"

Two faces scrunched in exaggerated thinking expressions. "The lunch shop...no, maybe...but there was..." they muttered to each other. "The grocery store?" they said in eerie unison.

"Nah, I got kicked out. The old lady hates me."

"The school needs another cafeteria staff member?"

"Do you think they'd let me near children?"

"Uuuuh, maybe...trash collector...?"

Madara scowled. "You don't think I'm qualified for anything do you?"

"Are you?" asked One-eye, giving him a doubtful one over for the first time.

Madara looked down at his shirt. It was clean and a button down at that! A bit wrinkled, but couldn't be helped considering he was living out of a matchbox of a shrine in the middle of the woods. He might need a haircut, and maybe a proper shave. But he didn't look like a complete bum. "I've worked loads of jobs. I've been a prep cook, a construction worker, a waiter—" some less legal jobs in there too, but who was counting?

"You've been an exorcist, right?" Cow-face said. "I heard Misuzu's looking for someone to—"

"I'm not working for Misuzu. Or being an exorcist. Why does everyone keep bringing that up?" He didn't want to deal with spirits. He didn't even want to see them most of the time either.

"Well." Both men looked uncomfortable. "You're someone who..."
And just like that Madara was fifteen again hearing whispers of people talking behind his back about how he was someone who sees things. It had never mattered if people believed in spirits or not, all it mattered was that at one point or another Madara had let slip that he did and people never forgot it. And things like that either landed you in a psychiatric ward or a shrine, and life had shoved him at the latter enough times trying to keep from being eaten that people just made assumptions. Something wasn't right with Madara, but if anyone could sort him out it would be monks at the shrine.

Madara had never been interested in being a monk. Reiko had given him an out in learning control from someone who wasn't trying to force him into the path of being an exorcist.
"Don't tell me you believe those old rumors," Madara said. "I mean, if I could see ghosts and spirits and shit, I'd be way stronger than them, but you don't actually believe in that right?"

"Uh..."

"Do I look like the kind of guy who sees weird things?" Hopefully they were both too drunk to point out that he looked like he was living out of the back seat of a car. Minus the car. Madara wouldn't hire Madara. No wonder he wasn't getting anywhere with this.

Thankfully they were either sloshed or dumb enough to shake their heads. "No, you're...uh, you look fine!" One-eye said. "Taller!" He squinted past Madara. "Uh, did you have a kid?"

"What." Madara looked. Takashi stood in a dated school uniform behind some bins like the stalker he was. He flinched as attention turned to him, but what the hell was the kid expecting? Who watched people behind garbage bins? Then the rest of the implications hit him over the head like a bag of bricks. "Me. A kid." Takashi looked like Reiko, not like Madara. Reiko who used to be around Madara all the time...who left around the time Madara did. ...Who Madara had clearly cared about more than he meant to let on. They thought Takashi was his bastard son, didn't they? "Uh."

Takashi gave him a wide eyed stare. Why was he even playing human again? Was that really the only way he knew how to suppress his powers?

How else was Madara going to explain Reiko's look alike if Takashi was going to hang around?

"Uh. Sure. My kid. Didn't know I had him until recently though. He's...kind of. Shy." Madara cleared his throat. "And he's part of why I need a job." Technically it wasn't a lie since Takashi seemed like he'd decided to stick with Madara for some reason. Which meant providing shelter and food because Madara wasn't a heathen and food was important.

Cow-face looked like he was going to burst into sentimental tears. Madara took a step back in fear that he was going to get hugged again. "That's so parental. You're not immature after all."

"Excuse me?" You know what? Maybe some heads needed smacking after all. Madara didn't need to stand there and be insulted. If this was a kind of sort of acquaintance-friend, who needed an enemy? "I'm leaving. If you think of a job, tell Hinoe. I'll bother her about it later." He stomped toward Takashi, ignoring the spirit's flinch. The kid wasn't who he was annoyed at.

"Bye-bye, Madara!" One-eye called after him, leaning on Cow-face again as he narrowly avoided face-planting with his frantic waving. "Bye, Madara's kid! We'll look for jobs! Come drinking with us sometime!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever!" Madara grumbled. "Buy me a drink and then we'll talk!" They laughed. Madara would trade one of his six shirts for a drink right now. "C'mon, Takashi," he said as he passed Takashi's hiding place. "Might as well walk with me in the open."

Takashi's eyes darted around at the few people on sidewalks, the car coming down the road, the two drunks still laughing to themselves, and back to Madara in an anxious, jittery loop.

When he didn't move, Madara grabbed his hand and tugged him along down the road one stumbling step at a time. "Since you're in human form you could at least try to blend in," Madara said. "You could have been in spirit form and gone unnoticed. You could have been in your true form—"

"True form?"

"I don't know," Madara grumbled, "but you feel like Reiko and Reiko was a fox spirit, so theoretically you might be one too." He glanced over his shoulder. "You don't know anything about yourself do you?"

Takashi flushed with embarrassment, or maybe anger, who knew, and dragged his feet a little bit more just to be difficult. "I'm doing fine. I can look like this can't I?"

"And you don't know how to hide your powers unless you're making yourself look human. That's stupid and impractical."

"You're stupid and impractical."

"I've been called worse things."

Takashi went through several scrunched up faces before he settled on annoyed. He really did look like a human teenager, Madara mused. All the more so with his powers covered up in a mortal-looking shell. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Hide your powers," Takashi said. "Because you obviously do it."

"Practice," Madara said, thinking of Reiko laughing at his failed attempts years ago, and his grandfather who'd figured out what he was trying to do and gave him the foundation for starting even if he hadn't had much spiritual power himself. "It's like putting things in a box sometimes. Locking it all up, but you have to make sure you don't miss anything. Other times it's just...pulling it in like it's snow and you're making a snowball."

"Those metaphors make no sense."

"Words aren't my specialty, kid." Honestly it was a miracle Madara figured things out because neither Reiko nor his grandfather had ever been that good at words either. He stopped off on a side road and crossed his arms. "So what do you do to look like that?"

Takashi frowned. "I just..." His hands made a swooshing gesture before sweeping inward like folding something in on itself. "I just do it."

"What you're doing is something ten times harder than hiding power, so clearly you're not lacking in ability." Madara pointed at him, ignoring the affront the gesture caused. "You. You are in the top percentile of strength to even be able to pull off looking human."

"That doesn't make any sense. If I was that strong then—"

Then? Madara waited for him to continue, but Takashi's face had gone blank as some ayakashi masks.

"Never mind. I can figure it out."

"Sure you can, kid."

"I can." He looked stubborn now, but that was an improvement over blank slate.

Madara sighed. "Any reason you're following me around?" He didn't really expect an answer. Takashi didn't seem like the talkative sort. He got a frown in response and Takashi rubbing at one wrist with his other hand, like a nervous tic. "You're a spring of conversation. Great talk. Now everyone is going to think I have an illegitimate kid with a woman no one's seen in fifteen years," he sighed. "Damn it Reiko."

"...Do you have a child?" Takashi asked.

"Do I look like the kind of guy that gets around?" Madara asked. "Don't answer that," he added, because he didn't really want to know if he looked like that sort of person. It probably didn't even mean the same thing to a spirit anyway. "Look, there's a zero chance of you being my kid so jokes and spontaneous covers aside, I don't have any more idea why you feel like Reiko than you seem to." There was a bitter taste in his mouth. No, there was no chance that Takashi was Reiko's child with Madara, though that wasn't from lack of interest on his part back then. It was Reiko who hadn't been interested in him like that, hadn't been interested in anyone like that so far as Madara knew, and who had looked at Madara and still seen the human child he had been.

He sighed again. The past was the past. He had to deal with his current reality. "Maybe someone will take pity and give me a job because I'm apparently now a dad." If Madara cut his hair, shaved, and bathed with soap in water that wasn't river water... "I don't suppose you noticed any signs for jobs while you were following me around today?"

Takashi shook his head. He was still all folded in on himself, wary and nervous even with that spark of stubbornness in his eyes. He couldn't be further from the proud, arrogant, confident Reiko.

"Too much to hope for I guess."

o*O*o

Takashi had never expected to be unsealed. He'd never really expected to exist as long as he had anyway, considering his earliest memories were full of fear and pain and danger.

Still, he had been freed and he still existed, and he wasn't sure what to do with himself. Rather than dwell on this, Takashi had taken to following Madara around.

Humans, in Takashi's limited knowledge of them, were dangerous and hurtful. Either they wanted to destroy spirits simply for existing or they wanted to enslave them for their own purposes. So far Madara hadn't made any move to do either. He was something of an oddity, grumbling and growling about this and that, dragging Takashi along to find edible things in the forest and insisting he eat too even though Takashi didn't need to eat near so often as humans seemed to. Madara was short tempered and irritable, but he wasn't cruel and he never took it out on Takashi. Every morning he got up, found food, and went into town—to find work according to him—and Takashi would eventually follow after and watch Madara get tossed out of buildings or walk out looking defeated or, rarely, stop and talk with other humans in a way that could almost be friendly.

Work didn't seem to appear, or if it did, it was nothing that took more than an hour or so, like fixing a leaky roof or moving boxes.

Madara seemed happier when those days happened, but Takashi knew that it wasn't enough. It was one of those things he knew without being sure how he knew. Like what cars were or how often humans needed to eat, or how to tell when fruit were ripe for picking. He couldn't remember using most of what he knew, or having learned it, and it bothered him.

It also bothered him how easy it was to get used to sharing space with Madara, a human, like some part of him knew that he could trust this human at least, even before observation gave proof to support that instinct.

Takashi watched Madara shove his way through bushes to get to a biwa tree, trying to get at the ripe fruits hanging just out of reach.

"They're good eating," Madara said, one foot in an over-grown hosta, a hydrangea shoving flowers in his face to his left, the remnants of someone's garden long gone wild. "You just—" He flailed for a lower hanging branch. "—have to reach it!"

He was trying so hard Takashi felt a bit guilty just standing and watching. Unfortunately, he hadn't managed to reign in his power without resorting to human form, so he couldn't simply fly over to the tree and grab fruit without risking any strong ayakashi in the area—and exorcist besides—honing in on him.

"Sensei, I could try on the other side?" Takashi offered. The biwa tree was surrounded on three sides by hydrageas long gone wild, grown thick enough that they would be a pain to try to pass through. That was why Madara was trying to force his way through the hosta instead.

"No! I can get them! I did this loads of times as a kid, just—! Lemme—!" He tripped, squashing bushes and rounded hosta leaves in all directions. The biwa tree shook as he grabbed the trunk. "I remember this being easier," Madara grumbled.

"Is this the tree you usually ate from?" Takashi asked. It was the only biwa tree, but there was a persimmon and a plum tree nearby with a bent over pine tree that must have at one time been carefully pruned and cultivated. There didn't seem to be any house though, despite all signs pointing to a private garden.

"Ha, there we go!" Madara finally managed to reach the fruit, using the full extent of his limited human body to reach a branch and pull it closer. So much effort for something so little. "Yeah," he said, answering Takashi after such a long pause Takashi gave up on it being answered. "This land was owned by a lady my gramps knew. She kicked the bucket when I was ten or so, but the land was willed to a distant relative who never really did anything with it. As far as I know, the guy still pays the taxes and all since this hasn't been torn up and renovated into who knows what."

Madara wasn't careful in his picking. Some deep part of Takashi was annoyed by that; he should be using a knife to keep from bruising the ripest fruit. The loquats would go bad faster when they bruised and Madara should be making more effort to make anything he gathered last to its full potential. The clear image of slim, clawed fingers carefully slicing loquat stems free from a biwa tree clouded Takashi's mind; another memory he couldn't remember clearly. Another memory Madara pulled from him that raised more questions than it answered. Takashi shook it away and tried to focus on Madara's voice instead of blurry images of a past that might not even be his.

"—ld make jam but I'm not going to do that. The old lady liked growing her own fruit and making things from it so I don't think she'd mind me taking things again. Gramps always had me picking sour plums to pickle but he made them awful. Weird fact, Hinoe makes great umeboshi. Do you think she'd trade me some booze if I brought her back plums?"

Like most of Madara's questions, that seemed to be rhetorical.

"Is the plum tree nearby?" Takashi asked, glancing around.

"Yeah it's..." Madara flapped a hand east toward a line of lilacs that had grown past bush size into a solid hedge. "That direction. Closer to where the house used to be before it got caught in a fire. That was years ago though. It's perfectly safe now."

"Right." Takashi left Madara picking fruit into his pillowcase-come-food-bag and headed in that general direction.

The land was actually very nice. Soothing the way well-loved, healthy plants tended to be. Even though they hadn't been cultivated for years, they'd been tended faithfully at some point to grow so well even decades later. There was a collapsed trellis past the lilacs with a twisted-trunk wisteria that must have once been held up on it before the wood rotted. It was still alive even now, managing to drape its branches off any other plants nearby sturdy enough to hold it. When Takashi brushed past it, he felt a deep peace in it, the core of a plant spirit well on its way to full sentience. The plants, or the trees at least, aged and strong, all had that feeling. In a few decades, this might be a spirit grove. It was nice and didn't give Takashi the somewhat paranoid feeling most spiritually charged places did.

The plum tree was a few meters from a mass of patchy ground. Closer examination showed it to be the foundations of a house, probably in traditional style since so little was left from the fire. It left a sad feeling in him, yet another frustrating emotion Takashi couldn't put a source to. The plum tree was stooped, once pruned to be both attractive and easy to harvest from, but had gone wild enough that only the oldest branches showed its old care. Its branches were full of tiny greenish-yellow plums that Takashi knew without tasting would be sour. Unlike the biwa tree, it was easy to get to and simple to reach out and grab a handful of fruit.

There was a burst of emotion when Takashi touched the tree, and for a moment he was elsewhere, in early spring or late winter, a carefully pruned plum tree in bloom as a woman sat on a porch drinking tea. She was old and wrapped in a thick blanket to keep warm, but she looked so peaceful and happy that Takashi knew that the plum blossoms were her favorite thing in her garden and that the tree loved her back as much as she loved it. For a moment, Takashi could swear the woman stared past the tree, directly at him, but it was only a memory.

The real world returned, a rough-bark branch under his fingertips and sour plums in one hand. The tree was quiet now. Things were always quiet once they'd passed on what they wanted him to know, though he was no better at guessing how or why it happened now than he had been when it first happened.

Takashi scooped dozens to plums into his shirt hem, holding it like a basket since he had planned to use Madara's bag if he picked anything at all. "Thank you," he told the tree, because it felt like the right thing to do. The tree was aware enough to harbor emotion and memory; it was aware enough to process his gratitude.

Madara had worked his way halfway around the biwa tree when Takashi returned with his shirt full of plums. The hydrangea bushes were a bit worse for the wear, elbowed and stomped aside so the man could reach more fruit.

"I picked plums," Takashi said.

Madara, who was still mumbling to himself, looked up and almost lost an eye to a wayward branch. "Ow." He struggled free of bushes. "Thanks. I was going to go there next. You didn't have to do that."

"It didn't look like I would be much help here," Takashi said, tipping plums into Madara's pillowcase. He kept one, and snuck a loquat. He'd kept one of the yellower plums and he nibbled the edge of it. His nose scrunched up at the sour juices. The loquat in comparison was sweet and mild.

"You got a lot," Madara said, peering into the bag. "I might actually be able to bribe Hinoe with these.

"Or you could trade it for something you need," Takashi pointed out. "Or money."

"Yeah or I could have a drink and pretend not to be stressed for an evening."

Takashi frowned at him.

"Look, sake makes the world a bit better place."

"It tastes disgusting."

"Obviously you've never had good sake."

"All alcohol is disgusting."

"To think," Madara said with a sigh, "I thought you could be Reiko. She'd never pass up the chance for a drink."

Another thing to add to the list of ways Takashi was thankfully not like her then. Speaking of Reiko though... "Did she ever come here?"

"Hm? Here as in picking fruit?"

"Or just...here in general. Visiting. You said she spent time as a human."

"She spent time as a human because she liked messing with people," Madara said. He turned back to the biwa tree. "But I dunno. Maybe she did come here but that was before she knew me if she did. She never wanted to come with me when Gramps sent me on plum runs but I know she'd take persimmons from this persimmon tree every year, so maybe she was just being contrary."

"Maybe..." Takashi looked back toward the plum tree, the faintest wisp of nostalgia coursing through him. His own nostalgia or Madara's? Or was it something else entirely? "Have you picked enough fruit?"

"Just about," Madara grunted. "I thought I might try to dry some. There's no way I can eat as many as I picked before they're too ripe. I was good at drying persimmons once, so it might work out. If not, at least we won't starve for a bit." He shouldered his bag of fruit. "And I can come back until these are gone. I'm glad I remembered this old place. Now c'mon and help me find some greens before I take off. I have a good feeling about the interview I have lined up tonight."

Takashi had the feeling that Madara wouldn't get that job either, but he didn't say it. Instead he gave the burnt foundations and plum tree one last look before trailing after Madara.

o*O*o

The interview did not go as planned. None of the attempts at jobs had gone as planned, and Madara had to wonder if it was time to raise the white flag and surrender to the world at large even though it would go against pretty much every instinct to do so. No one was hiring the guy who used to be the town black sheep, who had a spotty work record, no current recommendations, and no home address. He supposed he'd been overestimating his ability to keep presentable when he was living out of a box of a space in the middle of the woods.

At least, Madara reflected, face down on Hinoe's bar, Takashi hadn't been there to see this failure. Or the fact that an old man had waved paper charms in Madara's face like he was a demon because he had remembered a gold-eyed child in his shop decades ago right before the windows blew out. That had been an ayakashi but it hadn't really made any difference to the man. Madara was unwanted trouble. People would give him small tasks, but no one was going to hire him full time because too many people remembered the sort of accidents that plagued him as a kid.

"You know that there's a fix for this," Hinoe said in a pause between customers.

"I don't want to work for Misuzu."

"You have to face it, he's the only one who's going to hire you."

Hinoe, as always, lacked any shred of sympathy. Madara pouted at her and she simply raised an eyebrow, wiping down a corner of the bar where someone had spilled a drink.

"We don't get along," Madara said.

"You don't get along with anyone," Hinoe said.

"I get along with you," Madara protested. "Sort of. And there's—" He couldn't say any ayakashi names.

"So there's me," Hinoe concluded. "You're a real mess, you know."

"Shut up." Madara had brought her most of the plums Takashi picked along with a few loquats to try to get a deal. Instead of booze, Hinoe gave him a ten kilogram bag of rice and the promise of a jar of umeboshi when she finished pickling them. It felt like a betrayal.

"Ushio mentioned you were looking after a kid," Hinoe said pointedly. Madara flinched expecting her to rain down fire and ash at a rumor of him having a child with Reiko. Surprisingly, she just looked determined and a bit judgmental.

"Ushio?"

Hinoe nodded toward the other end of the bar at two noisy drunks—Cow-face and One-eye.

"One of them is named Ushio?"

And there was the full one flat stare he was used to receiving. "This is why you don't have friends," Hinoe said. She slapped down her cleaning cloth and leaned close. "Look, I don't know what all happened between you and old man Misuzu, but if you have a child to look after, you'd better suck up your pride and fix it. Parents don't have the luxury of avoiding a means to a steady pay check."

Madara flinched again at the twofold meaning there; he knew enough about Hinoe's childhood and his own to see the truth in her words. She was letting the fact that Madara might have a kid with Reiko slide, but if Madara didn't live up to what she saw as his parental duties, she'd give him hell. This explained a lot about the bag of rice actually.

"Would he even hire me?" Madara said after an uncomfortably long pause where it felt like Hinoe was trying to bore into his soul with a glare and willpower alone. She was giving off enough scary feelings that even someone who wasn't spiritually sensitive would be intimidated.

"He hired you once," Hinoe said. "And no one else he's hired since has had your skillset."

No one else could see spirits like he could, she meant. "We really don't get along," he repeated, serious instead of pouting. He could be straightforward too if she was going to be.

"We have different ideological views."

"Can you compromise them enough to get a steady paycheck?" Hinoe said. "Because that's what you need."

"Last time he asked me to... Look, the only way I could work for him is if he actually respects my boundaries this time because last time he pushed too much and I'm not letting that happen again."

"Only you two idiots know what happened back then so the only one who could tell you is Misuzu. So get your head together and talk to him, dumbass."

"Why can't you hire me?"

"I don't need the help and I'd probably end up strangling you in a week," she said bluntly.

"Your personality is as sour as your umeboshi," Madara replied.

Hinoe snorted. "Stop moping and get out of here, Madara. And next time bring your kid."

"Bringing a minor to a bar is irresponsible."

"Since when have you ever been responsible?"

Madara sighed. If he stuck around, Hinoe might decide to dump ice on him or something...

"You'll get over it," Hinoe said to his back as he left, "because you have to."

He kind of wanted to turn around and demand who'd ever gotten over themselves for him, but he knew that both Gramps and Reiko had done their best in their own ways with raising him. It was the world's sick joke to throw him into some kind of parental role himself. Even if it wasn't a real one. He gave Hinoe the middle finger on his way out. The door shut before she stopped laughing.

o*O*o

Misuzu's temple was on the edge of town, close to forest in one direction and a big open field in the other. It had the same tingle of pure spiritual energy that Madara remembered years ago, and was completely empty of spirits like how Misuzu preferred it. There had been a spirit pond once, existing in Misuzu's back yard, but even that had vanished after Madara made the mistake of mentioning it once. Its disappearance had left the temple feeling barren, lacking the odd bits of beauty spirits could add to the world even if it technically was a perfect haven from them.

Madara cleaned himself at the well before heading toward the temple proper, like Misuzu preferred from visitors. The grounds were too quiet and not as clean as they were years ago. But then if Misuzu hadn't had help in a while, he had to be too old to keep up with all the chores like he used to.

Misuzu was sweeping the courtyard, a bit more stooped and a lot more gray in his hair than Madara remembered, with a streak of white from his left temple, all of it tied back neatly at the base of his neck. He didn't look up as Madara stopped just outside the space he was cleaning. This too was familiar. Madara squashed down old irritation.

"Natsume Madara," Misuzu said when he came to the end of his work. His eyes when he looked up were as sharp and piercing as ever, like he was seeing all of Madara's flaws and finding him wanting, just like he had when Madara was young. "I didn't think you were going to return."

"I didn't want to," Madara said, shoulders tight, fighting not to cross his arms in a futile defense.

"I distinctly remember you saying you would rot in hell before you would come to my temple again."

"Yeah, well. Life happens." Madara shrugged.

Misuzu snorted, in a moment of humor or contempt, Madara couldn't tell. "And you come crawling back for a job."

"Who the hell is crawling?" Madara growled. He almost turned away then and there except he still had Hinoe's serious look in his head and Takashi waiting back at the abandoned shrine. Takashi wouldn't judge him for leaving but Hinoe would. Takashi should have more than a tiny shrine to live in though. He spent almost all his time in human form, and the current living conditions couldn't be any more comfortable for him than they were for Madara. "I heard you needed some help and were hiring. You don't have to hire me, but we both know I have the skills."

He'd hired Madara once. He'd trained Madara once. He knew what Madara could and couldn't do and how hard it was to find someone with even half of Madara's abilities or potential.

"I suppose all the reasons you had for leaving mysteriously vanished over the years," Misuzu said.

"If by reasons you mean morals," Madara spat, "no. No I still have boundaries and I'm still not going to cross them. I'll seal a spirit if it hurts someone. I'll banish one if I have to. But I won't get rid of something that isn't doing anything just because it exists. Not when there's other options."

"You always were soft." Misuzu eyed him for a moment. "I see that hasn't changed much."

"You haven't seen me in over fifteen years, what the hell do you know?"

"You're still someone who waits to get hurt before fighting back," Misuzu said, like it was a given that Madara would get hurt. And of course he wasn't entirely wrong. He never was and that was the most infuriating thing about him. "Come. If you're serious about this, I can give you tasks to complete."

"And pay me for them."

"And pay you for them," Misuzu said with a wry twist of his lips. He left the broom outside the temple, leading Madara to parts that weren't available to the general public, where he kept stacks of charms and ofuda and written correspondence from exorcists around Japan. Madara left his shoes at the door, feeling a bit like an out of place teenager again. "Sit," Misuzu said with a flick of his hand at the few cushions he had on the floor. "You're worse off than I was expecting," he said, eying Madara like he was covered in rats. "Have you used none of the skills I taught you over the years?"

"I'm alive aren't I?" Between Reiko and Misuzu he'd gotten control of his powers enough to live by. He didn't say how he'd spent most of the years away learning to pretend he couldn't see spirits and keeping his nose out of anything that had their energy all over it. He'd get that frown directed at him, the one that said he'd failed at some moral duty he'd never signed up for. "So you got any jobs for me that aren't going to lead to us fighting?" Madara sprawled on a cushion.

Misuzu smacked his legs with a paper fan until Madara sat up in proper posture. "I do have something that would fit your particular skillset. There aren't many people around anymore with Sight." Misuzu didn't have it himself, he was just very powerfully spiritually charged. He shuffled through papers, sitting on a cushion like he wasn't in his eighties—like he didn't have the achy back and bad knees he really should have at his age while Madara was horribly uncomfortable despite being several decades younger. "Ah, here it is." A paper was shoved unceremoniously in Madara's face. "I haven't had the time to deal with this yet, but it's more suited to your abilities anyway."

Madara squinted at the paper, trying to read the spindly handwriting of whoever sent it. "A missing god?"

"Missing or incapacitated. The priest at the shrine has found that his charms don't hold the same power and blessings have been failing, but there still seems to be some sort of presence at the shrine..."

"But no one can see the god to check," Madara concluded, connecting the dots. "You want me to go talk to the god or whatever spirit is there to find out what happened."

"And ideally to restore the shrine's power." Misuzu frowned. "I'd rather not rely on you," he said bluntly, "but I have too much to do and can't handle the problems of some of the smaller shrines like I used to. Solve the problem and you can consider yourself hired. Fail it, and you can find some other person to bother."

"For someone who's doing you a favor, you could say that a bit nicer."

"It's not a favor, it's a job. Act professional."

Madara rolled his eyes, tucking the paper away. "Go to the shrine, fix the problem, report back. Got it." He made to stand, then paused. "You're not going to have a problem if I say I still talk to spirits are you?"

"Are they bound to you?"

"Not as shiki, no. They're not into hurting me or any other human though."

"Keep them off my property," Misuzu said with a sniff, "and I won't do anything about their existence."

"Got it. Good talk."

"Don't come back until you have results."

Madara rolled his eyes again and let himself out. Annoying, prejudiced, stupid old man. He hated that he was going to owe him one now. And have to call him his boss. What ever happened to the weird guy that looked like a frog that was always cleaning up the temple anyway? Madara glanced back after he left the building, contemplative. Maybe Misuzu was as desperate as Madara was.