The abandoned shrine had started to feel less abandoned and more like a home. Takashi supposed that was what happened when you filled a shrine with a spirit and a spiritually sensitive human being but there probably weren't enough cases of this sort of thing happening to know for sure. They weren't tied to the shrine the way a god was, and the shrine didn't quite give off the feeling of a shrine with a god, but anyone with strong spirit sense would be able to tell it was occupied these days. After so long without a place to call home, Takashi wasn't sure what to feel about that. Madara had food and laundry hanging from the ceiling and a crude bed made of sheets and summer grasses in the corner and Takashi had begun to have his own small collection of things. He'd found a few stones that he liked, a dish from a nice old human woman who had thought Takashi was Madara's child, a book he was borrowing from Touru's human collection, and a blanket with holes Madara had found in someone's trash one day. It wasn't much, but these few objects filled Takashi with unfamiliar peace whenever he looked at them. Seeing them, he thought he might like this to last for a while.

Takashi had Touru's book in hand, paging though colorful illustrations of humans living their lives. It was a children's book, some part of him was sure, because it had simple kanji and lots of kana. He could read it all although he had the feeling most ayakashi wouldn't be able to. Human words were static on a printed page, holding so much less meaning than ayakashi script. How was the reader supposed to know how the writer felt? How did these static words manage to hold so much meaning without the extra layer of emotion and intent behind them? He studied the image of a human train which he was sure he had seen before, just as much as sure that he'd never used one quite as fast and bright looking as the one in the book when Madara returned. He looked a bit like a cat that had been through a few scares, hair a bit messier than usual and a wariness in what little spirit energy he let leak that had Takashi closing the book and sitting straight when the human slid open the shrine door.

"You visited Touru," Madara said, catching sight of Takashi's book.

"I think," Takashi said, studying Madara, "that she wants to be friends." It was a foreign concept to find someone who didn't want to use him, eat him, or follow him like he was some sort of deity. A bit like how Madara was an oddity. He liked the difference though.

"She probably does," Madara said, distracted. "She's like that. Hey, Takashi, if I said I was working for a priest, what would you do?"
Takashi froze, looking closer. There was a foreign energy lingering on Madara, something cold and sterile feeling. Beneath that, Madara roiled with nerves that

Takashi could smell even with his nose handicapped with a mostly human form. He was worried, Takashi thought. "You went to the man at the temple you were avoiding."

"Yeah. Yeah I did."

"The one you hate."

"Hate's...kinda strong. I don't like the guy but... Anyway. He'll hire me even if no one else will. He doesn't like spirits though so when I'm there you're better off avoiding the area."

"Is he going to insist that you bind spirits to you?" Bind Takashi to him. A familiar sick feeling twisted in Takashi's gut. Old fear and pain and bindings that didn't quite stick but he couldn't quite remove either. He thought that Madara was different.

"Bind...? No." Madara shook his head. "No, I told him that I'll work for him but I'm doing it my way and that means I'm not going to exorcise or seal any spirit unless I have to. And like hell and I going to stop talking to the few spirit friends I have just because old man Misuzu thinks it's a bad idea to get close to them. What the hell does he know? He can't even see ayakashi. I'm not going to go get a shiki either. I'm not some exorcist brat he can collar and yank around on a leash. And I'm not the same kid who can't control himself anymore either so he can go jump in the river. I'm not into that sort of thing."

Takashi relaxed minutely. "But you're going to be an exorcist."

"More of a...uh...spirit go between I think. If I have to do exorcist shit it's a last resort." Madara grimaced, messing up his fluffy white hair more as he ran a hand through it. "I don't like that crap. A friendly spar could be fun but." He didn't have to say that most ayakashi who liked to fight weren't the type for friendly anything let alone sparring. "Is it going to be a problem?"

"I don't like exorcists," Takashi said bluntly.

"I kind of figured considering how I found you."

"But," Takashi said slowly. Madara hadn't harmed him. He'd fed him and given him a home and tried to teach him things Takashi didn't need to know because they were things a human child would need to know to live, and Madara seemed to forget sometimes that Takashi wasn't actually a human child. He wasn't very good about taking care of himself let alone another living thing but he tried. Takashi couldn't bring himself to dislike him. "But so long as you don't try to use or harm me, I guess I can tolerate you working as an exorcist if you have to."

"Really?" Warm hope and happiness and surprise filled Madara's energy before he remembered to clamp down on them. He was more and more relaxed about such things around Takashi while he didn't relax around other ayakashi. It was both endearing and frustrating. "I mean good," Madara blustered. "Great. Glad we can work that out." He tossed himself down on his grass bed. "...So I have a job looking into a missing god. Would you be interested in coming?"

There wasn't, Takashi supposed looking at the sparse objects in their surroundings, much else to do. And Madara probably needed someone to watch his back.

"Sure. I can come."

"As a human," Madara said quickly. "No one has to know you're a spirit at all."

"As a human," Takashi agreed. It did make things easier when humans blindly assumed his identity.

"Great. I'm just gonna..." He pulled a sheet over himself. Madara did seem to love his sleep.

Takashi felt a surge of fondness and amusement that was deeper than less than a month of knowing the human should account for. But Takashi knew—somehow—that he tended to latch onto any bond that miraculously managed to form. He picked his book back up. Madara as an exorcist of sorts wasn't a pleasant thought, but for some reason he still trusted him. He said he wouldn't bind Takashi and Takashi believed him. And if Takashi went along with him...well maybe he didn't like fighting and didn't like exorcists at all, but he did like Madara. And Madara was only human. Takashi wasn't human no matter how much time he spent in human form and he'd survived hordes of ayakashi and a dozen exorcists trying to bind or kill him. If Madara ran across something he couldn't handle, Takashi wouldn't sit by and see him hurt. He wouldn't be bound to anyone, but there was nothing wrong with making a free choice in helping.

o*O*o

The shrine in question was a few towns east, a short train trip away. Takashi watched Madara count out the coins they would need for tickets over a breakfast of plain rice. Humans made things, he thought, more complicated than they should be. Money wasn't a familiar concept with ayakashi, though Takashi was used to seeing it used. Ayakashi dealt in favors and actions, gifts and debts, power and loyalty, not shiny bits of metal or flimsy paper. Takashi had power, and theoretically quite a bit of bargaining ability from that, but in reality it hadn't helped him much and a lack of control left all the power in the world more or less meaningless. Since they couldn't rely on ayakashi means, Takashi supposed that Madara's human coins would have to do.

The train itself was new and exciting. It wasn't quite the one in the book he'd borrowed from Touru, but the surroundings flew by outside the window as fast as if they were actually flying.

"You look like an actual kid," Madara teased as Takashi leaned against the window to see as much as he could.

Takashi ignored him. Often the best response when Madara wanted to annoy him was to give no response at all. Sure enough, a few seconds later the man gave a soft huff and pouted, denied Takashi's reaction. The familiar fondness didn't catch Takashi off guard this time.

Humans, Takashi decided as they arrived at their destination, had their moments of genius. Trains were one of them, one amazing way that they had made up for their lack of speed and strength by creating something to be hundreds of times more efficient in moving than any single human being could be. That ingenuity was what made humans fascinating, but it was also what made them dangerous too.

Madara led the way to the shrine. The closer they got to it, the stronger presence filled the air. A missing god? No, the god of the shrine was there and from

Madara's frown he obviously thought so too. There were ayakashi in the area, small ones, the sort that served gods like this. It was a god humans worshiped but it was also, it seemed, one that ayakashi followed, and that was interesting. Takashi knew that he should stay off to the side, but curiosity was a hard thing to ignore. He stayed by Madara's side as a priest came out to greet them.

"You must be the person Misuzu-sama sent," the man said with a half-bow, eyes flicking Takashi's way between him and Madara. "He said to expect a man with pale hair..."

"That would be me," Madara said. He strode past the priest, barely giving him a look as he focused on the feeling of the place. Takashi felt Madara's power unfold around him, reaching out in a carefully controlled way. "I can tell you right now you don't have a missing god."

"Oh. Um. Then why would...?"

"Gimme a bit and I'll let you know. Takashi?"

"I feel it. Them." There was more than one spirit inhabiting the temple, the brightness of the temple god almost covering up a much weaker feeling of power.

Just feeling it, the second power felt sickly.

"Them?" the priest asked helplessly.

Madara ignored him and started marching for the central shrine. Takashi sent the priest a nervous smile before following, leaving the man outside. The power blazed the closer they got to its center. Madara slid open the inner shrine door and froze as the power went from a passive presence to bright-sharp-forbidding in a split second. The hair on Takashi's arms stood on end.

"Huh." Madara didn't sound concerned about the change, holding still as he observed the inner shrine. Inside there were two glowing presences, neither manifested at the moment, the strong-bright one sheltering the weak-sick one. "Well I think it's safe to say the god's just been busy with something else."

"Are gods allowed to do that?" Takashi asked. Though the energy held a threat, it wasn't lashing out.

"It's pretty stupid to do since they need their followers to exist, but a god doesn't have to actually pay its believers any attention." Madara took a step into the room and the foreboding escalated, sharp as a knife edge on their senses. "Oh relax, I'm not here to hurt anything, I'm here to figure out why you're failing your job."

Behind them, the priest approached again and Madara shot Takashi a look. Takashi took the hint and stepped into the room too and shut the door behind them, much to the priest's displeasure if the sound of protest on the other side meant anything. But the priest wasn't important. The presence slowly taking form in the tiny space was what deserved their attention.

Inside the inner shrine, space wavered and resettled, the tiny room warping into a much bigger space as the boundary between the spirit world and the mortal world blurred. In the center of the room where the altar had been, there were now two spirits, one much older than the other as he sat at the younger's sick-bed. The younger spirit was pale and this close it was much easier to feel how its energy wavered and flickered.

"You shouldn't be here," the temple god said in a firm voice. It was the sort of voice that at any other time would have been kind and warm. For all that the air still hung heavy with threat, Takashi could feel that it was a mostly empty one; the being before them was not the aggressive sort.

"We can talk about should and shouldn't when you are doing what you should be doing," Madara retorted.

The god frowned and power crackled in the air as Madara made to move closer. "Stay where you are, human. Your presence makes things worse." At his side, the weak spirit shuddered. In an instant, the god was ignoring them again, sending energy through the other spirit and soothing away its discomfort. "I don't have time for humans at the moment, not when they caused this problem."

Takashi tipped his head to the side. The god had been a nature spirit of some sort before he became a god, Takashi decided. The feeling of his power was deep and soothing like standing in the middle of the forest close to the oldest trees. The other spirit felt like a tree spirit, one cut off from its source. Or perhaps one whose source was dying. The temple had been built around a giant cypress tree, perhaps the original source for the god, but the area around the temple wasn't nearly as green. Takashi let go of his human form for the first time in a while, knowing that here in the god's realm he could do so without any odd spirits trying to eat him. The god, at least, wasn't the sort of spirit who would try.

Both Madara and the god froze. Like this Takashi could feel Madara's shock and complicated tangle of sad-lost-hurt that came from any hint of Takashi's spirit energy and it similarity to Reiko. The god was a mix of fear and sadness and exhaustion; how long had it been caring for the other spirit?

"I'm not going to hurt him," Takashi said. "I think," a nebulous feeling on the edge of knowing slid through him, "I might be able to help."

"If I can't help him, I don't know how you could," the god said, sad.

"I don't know," Takashi said, already reaching out and moving closer. "But it feels like I can." The sick spirit looked young, which didn't mean much with spirits, but he felt young too the way Touru felt young. Dark hair poked past a cloth mask. His breathing was too harsh and painful, like a human with a cold almost.

When Takashi touched him, he almost thought he would be feverishly hot beneath his fingers, but the sliver of skin was cool and dry; what hurt him wasn't a physical thing.

"Takashi," Madara said by the door, sharp and nervous.

Takashi gave him a smile, looking calmer than he actually felt. There was a familiar déjà vu feeling in the moment, but that had happened so many times with Madara that it was easy to brush aside and focus on the flickering life force in front of him. Once, before being sealed but after he woke with no memory of his life, Takashi had healed himself from an exorcist's attack. He'd done it on instinct then and he reached for that feeling now.

"Do you know," Takashi asked, feeling like he was asking from under a wall of water, "what might have caused this in the first place?"

"Kaname has always been sensitive to human pollution," the god said. He hovered at Takashi's side, hands fluttering like butterflies, indecisive and restless. "His tree was injured in a storm recently though and..."

"Ah." Takashi felt it now, the broken line of energy leading back to a tree on the far edge of the shrine. A sacred tree just like the one in the center, but smaller.

Younger. Not quite grown into the massive well of power that the main shrine tree was, and it never would grow that big because it had been cut, not quite to a stump, but barely much above ground past its roots as the storm had struck it to its heart. All that was left of the tree was a few weak shoots struggling to regrow. That tree was closest to the road, closest to where runoff and human waste and litter might affect it too. Kaname's tree was dying.

"A tree spirit without a tree..." Madara said from the door. He smelled sad but unsurprised.

"There's rot and disease coming from the wound," Takashi murmured, feeling through the link. "If it wasn't for that he could probably heal." Could Takashi fix it?

A tree was a long way off from fixing burns from an exorcist's light.

Takashi wasn't trained, didn't know how he knew how he did half the things he could do, but he did know that intent mattered. Pure intent and power of will, when backed by enough spirit energy, could pull off things that should be impossible. Takashi centered himself, drew on power, and pushed.

The air burned white, bright, blinding. Madara's muffled swears and the shriek of the god were distant compared to the combination of flickering power beneath

Takashi's fingertips and the there-not-there feeling of splintered tree bark and beginning rot. His energy pulsed, filling the tree like sake pouring into a glass. Raw wood went dead. Live wood in the bark scabbed around the edges, unable to circle in on the massive damage, but between the layer of dead wood and the curl of bark, it acted like a shell, keeping out further damage. The rot and disease setting in burned away. The spirit under Takashi's hands gasped, jerking beneath him once. Energy pulled and pulled from him. It was more than Takashi ever used at once. More than he thought he could use at once. More than he thought he'd have control for but it was like he was more than himself at the moment, some magic equivalent of muscle memory taking over as he fed power to the spirit until he felt the tree stabilize and the spirit with it.

Takashi let go. Without the burning light of his power, the room felt dark. Spots danced in his eyes for a moment, such a human thing. He blinked them away.

"Takashi," Madara said, somehow right by his side even though he was supposed to be by the door. "What did you do?"

"I healed him," Takashi said. "I think." He didn't have words to explain what exactly he just did.

"Kaname?" the god asked shakily.

The spirit groaned. "Everything hurts..." His voice was a faint rasp, but it was there. Alive and bewildered.

Takashi slumped, exhaustion hitting all at once. Hands closed over his shoulders before he could topple over, Madara's hands even though the god had told him to stay on the other side of the room. The god was too busy paying attention to Kaname to care though. Takashi leaned into the support gratefully. "I wasn't sure if that was going to work," he admitted.

"Well it did," Madara said, sounding impressed. "That was a hell of a job you did, kid. Um, you might need a bit to pull yourself together though."

"Hmm?" Takashi wasn't quite sure what that meant, though he supposed with how tired he felt he also was the least tense and guarded he'd been in a long time. Added to the fact that he'd dropped human form for the first time in a while, he actually felt pretty free at the moment.

Madara tugged at Takashi's ear. ...An ear that was a lot larger and a bit higher up than it had been a few minutes ago.

Takashi reached up and felt two fluffy, triangular fox ears blending seamlessly into his hair. "Oh. I guess I'm a fox spirit like Reiko after all..." He should probably feel more than mildly surprise at this. Either he was too tired to feel it or it was another thing that some part of him had always known even if his conscious mind didn't. Another pass of his hands confirmed that he had a fox tail too, all silver like his hair. His fingers were slightly clawed and his teeth just a bit sharper.

"Is it supposed to feel so normal?"

Madara looked at him like he was an idiot. "It's practically your natural form, of course it feels normal. A full fox form would feel normal too. How the heck you were spending all this time with a human form or human-ish spirit form is beyond me. Even Reiko usually preferred to have her ears and tails out."

Tails. Plural. Takashi thought he only had one tail but he wasn't sure and his brain didn't seem quite connected to the extra appendages at the moment.

He was snapped out of introspection by Kaname sitting up. He still looked sickly, but he definitely didn't look like he would die any moment. "Thank you," he said, his cloth mask pushed aside so he could meet Takashi's eyes. "I would have died. Thank you."

Takashi didn't know what to do with thanks. He felt his ears twitch back on their own accord, betraying his emotions more than his face. "It was nothing."

"It really wasn't," Kaname said, a tiny smile on his face. "I'm in your debt."

"Really. It wasn't any trouble." Takashi's ears were flat now. Madara's hold, which had been comfortable, felt more like it was keeping him trapped instead of supported. "I couldn't even heal you fully."

"I've always been a little sickly," Kaname said. "This is more than enough."

"I agree," said the god. He bowed low to Takashi. Takashi stiffened, really not sure what to do with the gratitude of a god. "Thank you. You have my gratitude and blessing." He reached out and Takashi flinched as fingers, smooth like young tree bark pressed against his forehead and some sort of energy flowed over him. It settled over his skin a bit like the feeling of standing in a sunbeam, warm and calming. "If you ever need assistance, we will grant it."

"Sounds like you made a new ally," Madara said, teasing despite how serious everyone was.

Takashi was a breath away from refusing the oath, but he had the gut feeling that it would be a bad idea. Instead he nodded slowly. "Thank you for your blessing." He bowed back and almost toppled over. He would have if Madara didn't still have a hand on his shoulder. "Ah. I think I need to go rest."

"You can rest here," the god offered.

Takashi shook his head. "No. I..." He glanced at Madara. "I want to go home..." Calling the shrine in the woods home wasn't quite right but it was as close to home as he had.

"You got it kid," Madara said. "You're gonna need to change your shape first though."

Shape? Oh, the fox bits. Takashi concentrated. After using all that energy, he thought he might have a better idea of what Madara had tried to explain before about tamping down energy in spirit form. Drained like he was, it was easier to see the edges of his power and pull it in. Before, it must have been too much. He didn't quite pull it in-and-out like he realized he'd been doing when pulling on human form, but his energy tamped down.

"Hey, you figured it out," Madara said. "I knew my teaching would help."

"Please be quiet, Sensei," Takashi sighed. He closed his eyes—just for a moment, he thought. He wasn't really aware of much after that.

o*O*o

Madara caught Takashi before he could fall. He'd used too much energy, Madara thought, brushing silvery hair back from the kid's forehead. He looked a lot like Madara's first impression of him had been, delicate, like a doll someone had dropped, but after the lightshow they'd just had it was impossible to forget the sheer power that had rolled off of him.

"Your shiki is strong," the god murmured. He didn't seem too upset with Madara being so close considering how adamant he had been a few minutes ago about human pollution, but hell, that was how spirits worked. Immovable until they suddenly weren't.

"He's not my shiki," Madara said. There was no fever, no sickly look to Takashi like the tree spirit Kaname, just simple exhaustion from using too much energy. Madara hefted the kid into his arms. Somewhere along the way he'd stopped seeing Takashi as a spirit to be wary of and more a child to look after.

"Oh. My apologies then. Your...friend?"

"Close enough." Would Takashi protest that label? Who even knew? "Since he," Madara nodded at the sickly spirit, "is mostly healed now, will you be able to resume your duties?"

"Of course." The god looked down at his hands, neither shame nor regret present, just the kind of weariness that Madara knew on a spiritual level. "Kaname is my son," he said. "My only child."

The trees around the shrine, Madara realized, had mostly been different types than the sacred tree. "I'm not blaming you, just... hopefully this doesn't happen again in my lifetime. I'm one of the only people they have that can talk to spirits."

"You're strong too, aren't you?" Kaname said. He looked like shit but he was pretty aware for a guy that had been almost dead a few minutes ago.

"Eh. By human standards, but that doesn't mean much." He bobbed his head, remembering a bit of manners at least. "We'll leave you to your recovery, if you'd be so kind as to reconnect this space with the human plane?"

"One moment."

There was the disorienting feeling of being in two places at once and for a moment Madara's vision doubled before it settled again, leaving him back in the tiny shrine space with the priest pounding on the door. Comically, it bursts open a split second after their return.

The priest all but fell into the room.

Madara side-stepped the man, careful to hold Takashi out of reach. "You shouldn't have any problems with your god now. You might want to take better care of the tree that got hit by lightning recently though. It has a spirit in it. Consider it a...eh, not second god, but one of the god's servants." The concept of gods having children probably wouldn't go over too well.

"I... what? You... The door was stuck? It doesn't even have a lock, what just happened?"

"You don't really work with people who directly interact with spirits often do you?"

"What happened to your friend?" The priest looked around, unable to see Takashi now that he was in spirit form.

"He's still here, just not in a form you'd recognize. Don't worry about it." Madara snorted. "I took care of your little problem, you should thank me!" A brief pulse of the god's presence warned him that he shouldn't try his luck no matter how grateful the god was for his son's life. "Yeah, yeah, I'll go and take my contaminated human self far from here."

The priest flinched, having enough sensitivity to have felt the energy even if he couldn't understand it. He looked so bewildered that Madara took pity on him.

"Look, you shouldn't have any more issues. If you do, talk to Misuzu. Remember, look after the tree and take care of the tree that got struck by lightning, and it'll be fine. Now I have to go." He had a payment to collect and from there he was getting a meal he didn't have to cook or scrounge and a drink because it was a long day. Probably not from Hinoe though because she'd give him that look again about how he was supposed to be responsible. Madara cradled Takashi close as he left the shrine, feeling just a little guilty. Takashi did the hard work this time.

And maybe Madara didn't deserve that drink yet.

Takashi wanted to go home, so maybe that would be the first stop. Then Misuzu. Then... something he could bring back to share. Madara heaved a sigh. He hated being responsible.