notes:

+ ch. 107 raws and translations can be found on tumblr. the ending was disturbing for many people so this is a short lil big blanket hot mug warm hug fic

+ let me know if you like it or find errors, & enjoy ^_^)

Light Again

The darkness is full of shocks and knives and tightening knots. Where is she? And when? Five hundred years ago — five hundred years later?

Akura-ou is here

The past, then.

Ami-chan is missing

No — the future.

Peach medicine. Mushrooms. Sake. A hairpin with charms that clink and crack and boom. Riverbanks — lake palaces — relentless oceans, with words that rise occasionally and hit her hard waves, clotting her lungs, dragging her under.

Get the item he used to seal the contract

Get to the god conference

Get passing grades

Get the celestial robe

Get — UP —

She mutters and usually the words crumple into themselves but finally, finally, Tomoe's ears twitch and he's sure he's heard Ami.

"Nanami," he breathes, no one is here, she's trembling in the blankets that have been swaddled around her and he's relieved to see it: signs of life.

"Ami," he hears again, a second word, a total miracle, he has to stop himself from shaking more out of her body. It's less that of an earth god's now than it is a mere human body, and weak. He holds a fingertip of foxfire close to her face, just a little too bright to be comfortable, and on cue her eyelids roll back, barely, unfolding like butterfly wings, paper-thin and pale. He's afraid to crush her as her consciousness crawls out of the stillness it's been in. He's afraid to scare her back in.

"Nanami," he whispers, and her eyes search the ceiling and finally roll toward him. She doesn't smile. Her mouth opens and her breath asks, hoarsely, "Where is Ami," and his temper — so carefully reined, so carefully suppressed, bursts out of him.

"Are you kidding?! You're still wondering about that girl even now? Will you just —"

And he bites the words back, because her eyes are dimming again, they're not meeting his, and he quickly moves towards her and raises her up and calls, "Nanami, Nanami," and she blinks again, glances at him and around the room, dazed. Her mouth opens and closes and no sounds come out.

"Stop," he urges, and reaches for a bowl of soup stirred as often as he's paced back and forth across the shrine, scrubbing the walls so pristine that the lacquer and paint have started to peel under the attention. He pulls her up against him. She is glacial, freezing and stiff and slow-moving, and he fills a wide spoon with broth, warms it with foxfire, and slides it against her mouth.

Half of it dribbles down her chin, but half of it she drinks. She drinks. Heartened, he wipes her face with his sleeve and gives her another spoonful. This time, the majority of it goes down.

It's warm — so warm it hurts — it burns in her esophagus and sinks into her chest like liquid fire. She can feel it spreading in branches through her body. But she drinks — one spoonful — two — more burning throatfuls than she can count. She hears the spoon clink against the bottom of the empty bowl and she's relieved to not have to swallow any more of it.

She feels the cold and the dark again, at her brow and fingertips, beckoning, velvet. The soup chills in her belly and turns stone heavy. It's a relief to close her eyes again and she wants to fall back, away from the numbs and hollows that are echoing in her body and making it quake — but then she feels herself rising. Her eyes open, widen. Tomoe is gripping her against him. He is warm; his hair tickles her ear. His ears are flat.

"To…" she starts, and he grips her more tightly, his face against her neck, so tightly that her cheeks burn. She closes her eyes. She doesn't know what has happened, but it's enough to be embraced in utter quiet, without tests or get-well parties or snakes hanging overhead or in-between.

"I'm cold," she manages after a while — her fingertips strain at the blankets — he reaches for it and she expects him to place them within her reach but instead, still holding her, he slides them both underneath.

Her forehead is nestled against him and she feels the vibration of his voice when he asks, "Still cold?"

She considers the cold of her gripped fingers and the tremble in her spine and nods, and without further ado Tomoe undoes his sash and wraps his outer robe around her, pulling her up against his skin. This time her cheek's flush creeps down across her body, her skin prickling the way that ice cracks. Her head rests on his right arm and he examines her, the soft skin and the curve of her throat that has always invited him to taste. He runs the knuckle of a curled finger against it and she glances up at him.

He's come close to kissing her so many times when she's asleep — the only time that she is never saving other people, or vanishing into time, or worried about human paperwork — the only time she is ever still enough for him to reach. Each time he has been stopped short by her astonishment and horror.

Not now. No more. He brushes her hair away from her face, careful that his nails don't scratch.

She blinks suddenly, fast; she glances away. "I have to tell you," she starts, "that is…I promised when I came back, I'd tell…tell you everything…" But she loses breath between the words, and by the end the syllables have exhausted her.

"Tell me later," he says, knowing as usual that she'll argue if he just instructs her to rest, but no, there she went again anyway — shaking her head.

"No...it's important. I just need to say…the truth is, I…and Kiri —"

"Stop," he growls, and she purses her lips. "Stop. I don't care about that right now. Whatever it is, it isn't important to me."

She looks back at him. His face is stern, his demon's eyes glinting like glass, with demon conviction. He is serious.

"Unless it's about you or me," he continued, "I'm not interested in hearing it."

She considers. It takes a while and for a moment he's relieved to think that she has finally given up, but then she looks up and gathers her breath again to speak.

"I'm so happy to be here with you."

This time she sees the barest hint of a flush on his cheeks. She laughs, lightly, the jarring of it in her chest painful but sweet as he looks away.

"Finally," he mutters. It only took some hundred years to be alone again with her. She squirms around against him and he looks down at her again, just in time to see her face centimeters from his. He swallows. For once she isn't filled with tearful panic. Her eyes are watching his intently.

"Are you too, Tomoe?"

He considers; and finally, says, "No."

"No?"

"No," he repeats. "Not now. I desperately require your help, Nanami." He brushes the back of his hand against her cheek. "You must drop everything and ignore everyone else and give me your singular attention."

She laughs, and coughs, and laughs, and her head falls on his arm. He smiles watching her and rests his head down as well. His lips press against her forehead and the softness of it thaws. It nudges awake a little light in her that chases away the creeping cold and dark.

His arms fold around her, steady, firm. Her hair is disheveled and her eyes close and she drifts into sleep but this time her breaths are deep, deep, the sighs of someone living. Finally he finds that the thorns that have been in every tendon of him have relaxed, and he is able to sleep too.