kinkfest | "before going home" (Okami, Amaterasu/Waka)

Title: before going home
Author/Artist:

nekokoban
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Endgame spoilers
Prompt: Okami, Amaterasu/Waka: traveling- the captain and me
Word Count: 1344

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As the mortal world drops away from beneath them, fading into an indistinct smear of color, Waka puts his sapling down carefully, in a place where the ship's uphill climb will not dislodge it, and leaves the cockpit. Amaterasu glances at him briefly, her head cocked just so--he doesn't think she remembers everything yet. There's a light of recognition in her eyes that he knows will grow brighter as they approach the Celestial Plain; he has to look away before it blinds him.

He walks the narrow length of their tiny ship, until he can look back, out at the Ark. It trails in their wake like some great docile beast, weathered and stained by its long years in the ice. From this distance it looks utterly benign--a relic of a peaceful idyllic past, something that could be used to ferry children back and forth--

It takes hours before the screams reach the cockpit, and already it's too late; he bursts into the main deck to carnage: countless demons swarming all the available space, and all the Celestials, every last one of them that he can see, have been torn apart--

Waka shakes his head. The image vanishes. A sour taste rises on the back of his tongue and he leans a hand against the wall, breathing slowly and deeply until that subsides. He turns his head and Amaterasu is there with something unreadable in her bright eyes. She glows now, just faintly, her white fur luminous even without light to reflect upon it. Waka tries a smile that feels sickly and weak even to himself, and she growls softly.

"It's fine," he tells her, and wills it to be so. "My injuries--"

most of the Celestials have been literally ripped to shreds; in his mad flight, he sees scraps of flesh--pieces of limbs scattered as though just carelessly discarded. A black imp blocks his way and uses discarded heads as an arsenal, flinging them after him as he weaves and dodges and tries not to recognize the faces that come after him

Amaterasu doesn't even blink. He's not even sure she's breathing. It's his cue to say something--he could exaggerate his accent to the point of parody, or possibly pull her into another dance--more difficult with her current form, but already proven not impossible--

Ushiwaka, she says, and he flinches from the weight of that name--he hasn't heard the whole thing in so long; no one calls him that except for her--they have forgiven you.

His next breath burns unexpectedly. He lets it out as a laugh that sounds ugly and strained to his own ears. They were all dead by the time he even realized anything was wrong, they couldn't know what he'd done--how could they forgive a man who'd fled the sinking Ark, never looking back as it smashed into Kamui--he hadn't even known where it landed, first chasing rumors of Amaterasu and then embroiled in the politics of the mortal world, and the pockets of Orochi's curse that remained even after the beast had been sealed--

Something slams into him, jarring his bruised ribs and knocking him over. Waka grunts and stumbles and loses his balance, going down in a painful tangle of limbs. Amaterasu keeps her forepaws planted on his chest and shoves her face into his. She isn't growling, but there is a warning look in her eyes. This time she doesn't bother with her words; she simply stares him down, never once blinking. He wants to look away--no man can stare at the sun for too long--but the moment he shifts a low sound rises from her throat. It isn't a growl, but it has the potential of one, and he stays slow.

Long moments pass. Somewhere along the way he forgets to breathe until spots begin forming before his eyes. Amaterasu leans with all her weight, and says again, You are forgiven.

Waka breathes in and exhales as a sob. For a single blessed moment he finds himself able to close his eyes, and when he opens them again, the woman who sits atop him is more sorrowful than the stern wolf that pinned him, but no less unwavering. He remembers the expression well: it was the same as so many years ago, when she'd swept away to face Orochi directly. How the Celestials had wept at her decision, he remembers dimly, like children already abandoned--and how that prophecy had come true, when he'd fled the Ark as soon as he realized who else slept within the ship's deep heart, with the ogres and demons and worse. Ah, there'd been blood and darkness both, enough to drown a man--

where is she, voices had cried--a multitude of them, each terrible and grating, a thousand red pinpoints of light opening in the darkness around him--where is she, where is she, WHERE IS SHE--and he runs from that, never looking back as the last of the Celestials scream and die in his wake, carrying his knowledge as the emperor of darkness shrieked its outrage and strikes him once. Pain blossoms with red blood as he breaks free of the Ark and watches it fall in a black cloud of smoke, and he thinks _you will have to find her yourself_ and starts to laugh hysterically as his vision shows him a tiny sleepy village and the white wolf that prowls through it, and she's far away, so far away from her children and from him, safe for now

Warm fingers press over his mouth. The touch snaps him back to the present, and he blinks. She does nothing obvious, but he can feel a warm curtain slide its way smoothly around his memories--not gone, nor even inaccessible--just pulled away from him, in a place too bright for darkness to do anything but shrink in upon itself. "Amaterasu-oomikami," he breathes.

"You have never been as terrible as you think," she murmurs. Her fingers trail down to press against his chin; he wonders if he'll see burnmarks there, later. "Even at your heartless worst, you have never been quite so terrible." She flattens her palm over his heart, over the old knotted scar from centuries before, so close to its hours-old twin. Then, casually, as if in afterthought, she adds, "There will be much to do when I return."

Waka blinks at her again. "I know," he says cautiously. "The Celestial Plain was burning when we fled--"

"Decide your path after we arrive," she tells him. "I, however, am too used to company to go by myself."

"--Amaterasu-oomikami?"

She cocks her head, the gesture copied almost exactly from her other form. Her lips purse, then stretch into a smile. "I know you are very important now," she says, "as the captain of your own ship, but one more adventure should be easy for you to manage, right?" The corner of her mouth lifts, and Waka knows she's laughing at him now--but he can't manage outrage for it. He thinks about pointing out the gravity of his previous thoughts: all the old blood still within the Ark, the demons that still wander the mortal world, the long road yet that stretches before Amaterasu's feet.

Her eyes are very bright--brighter than the hair that floats loose around her shoulders. He knows in that moment that one more adventure will become one more, and another, and yet another--he has the vision of years from now, still by her side, trapped as surely as if she'd placed a collar and lead upon him. The thought disturbs him less than he thinks it should. Greatly daring, he reaches up and curls his fingers around a handful of white hair and pulls. She leans over him with that, her lips still quirked in a smile.

"One more adventure," he says, and in his own voice, he hears and all others to follow.

Amaterasu laughs her gracious acceptance, and presses her lips to his.