Yato. Yaboku. Two sides of the same coin, yet different as day and night.

Yaboku was the skin he'd shed, the life he'd left behind. He distanced himself from the memories, tried to bury that aspect of himself deep inside where no one would ever find it. He donned a mask named Yato to forget the truth that was Yaboku.

No truth can be buried forever.

Hiiro was an aspect of Yaboku's life. She was Yaboku's regalia. For Yato to acknowledge her as Hiiro would be to shed the mask he lived as. It would mean Yato would be no more.

Yato would never call her name. But someday, irrevocably, inevitably, Yaboku would.

He still remembers the saddened look on her face when she first laid eyes on his mask clearly, late in the afternoon in the town they'd always come to play.

Your eyes, she'd said, the row of houses casting a long shadow behind her. Why are your eyes so dull? What happened to that beautiful blue glow?

Yaboku would always be a part of him, albeit one he constantly tried to forget. He'd have succeeded, maybe- he'd worn his mask for so long now that he could sometimes forget it was a mask- if it wasn't for the fact that once in a while, the part of him that was Yaboku decided enough was enough.

At his weakest moments, beaten down or cornered, at the end of the line and out of options, his eyes turned cold and began to glow a hard blue. His survival instinct caused him to drop the mask of playful, childish, ignorant Yato and remember who he used to be, if only for a moment.

If only for the single moment he needed to kill the threat, and the rest of the surrounding area while he was at it. He was still in control of himself, but that part of his was more driven, uncaring, instinctual.

Yaboku was a survivor, relying on his survival instincts more than anything. Consequently, Yaboku was cold, impassive, ruthless. But, even so.. Yaboku was the part of him that was protective, possessive, easy to anger yet quiet.

Yaboku was the side of him that was the most vulnerable.

And so, he'd hid his most vulnerable side behind an iron wall, becoming his own mask and hiding- protecting- his true self from the world. Slowly losing himself to the void of his mind, forever drifting from place to place and from Regalia to Regalia, there was no place for him in this world.

Everyone eventually forgot Yato, but if they had ever met Yaboku, they never forgot. He supposed it was because Yato had never existed; not really. It was irony at best, that the one thing he would give anything to forget would never be forgotten.