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Rocks tear at Hitoshi’s bare feet. Briars and sticks catch at his clothes, at his cheeks, at any bit of exposed skin. He can feel a cut bleeding sluggishly on the back of his calf.
Hitoshi runs. Hitoshi runs, because he is being chased. He is being chased, and if they catch him, his life is over.
This has been a theme throughout his entire life — filthy little street rats steal, and then people chase them. Sometimes they get caught, but oftentimes they do not. But what’s at stake here isn’t tonight’s meal. It isn’t even a night in jail, which is usually warmer than the streets, or a flogging, which Hitoshi could take, has taken before, which would leave him scarred but alive, scarred but free.
“Stop running, little Mage,” yells a voice from behind him, and Hitoshi gulps around his fear and puts on another burst of speed.
The Kingsguard is after him. The Kingsguard is after his magic. And that means conscription, if they catch him. It means spending the rest of his life in service, cuffs on his wrists, his power twisted and used in ways he finds repulsive, at the King’s beck and call.
Hitoshi would rather die.
At least 15 men are crashing behind him, as Hitoshi pushes further into the woods. 15 armed men, and his only advantages are his speed and his stealth and the fact that it’s dark enough that both might let him get away, but none of those things will mean anything if he can’t find a place to hide.
He half-trips, nearly turns an ankle. He skids down an embankment and puts on another burst of speed, trying to get as much space between himself and the Kingsguard as possible.
At least they don’t have dogs. It’s the smallest blessing in the world, but Hitoshi will take it. They can’t track him by scent, and they can’t pursue him on four legs.
They’re not as loud behind him now, but that means nothing — they are ruthless, and there are more of them, and they have all night.
Something sharp and hard juts into the heel of his left foot, and his knee buckles from the pain. Hitoshi claps a hand over his own mouth to stop a scream as he falls into a kneeling position, eyes watering, listening desperately for noise behind him.
He can still hear them, at a distance but getting closer. His heel throbs.
Hitoishi forces his legs to take his weight, and runs.
.
The building is small, squat, and sneaks up on him from out of the darkness. It is made of stone and wood, and seeing it makes Hitoshi want to sob.
He can tell, from the lack of a solid door and the symbol carved above the entrance, that this is a shrine.
And Hitoshi isn’t devout, not like some of the soot-streaked street kids he shares sleeping spots and body heat with. Not like scarred Shouto or flinching Izuku, who both swear by Yagi, God of Perseverance and Patron of Common Heroes. Not like humming Kyouka, who dedicates every song that trips off her tongue to Yamada, God of Music and Patron of Restless Souls, to make even the most desperate of panhandling a prayer. Hitoshi has long-learned that sort of faith is for people with slightly more hope than him.
But this is shelter, and it’s shelter he desperately needs, and Hitoshi is not devout, but Hitoshi is also not stupid.
He collapses against the threshold, his breath leaving him in a wheeze, and then forces himself into a bow at the waist. Respect for whatever force this place belongs to. And then Hitoshi pushes off the wall and stumbles inside.
It is dark. No candles are lit. It smells like cool stone and fresh water, maybe a bit like herbs. There isn’t enough light for Hitoshi to see which god this shrine is dedicated to, but he can see that there’s an altar that takes up most of the center of the room. That means that there is a little bit of space between the altar and the far wall.
Hitoshi falls to his knees. His feet throb with his heartbeat, and he can feel the dampness of blood on the soles. His entire body hurts like a huge, continuous bruise. He can’t keep going. He needs to stop.
Hitoshi drags his body to the alcove between the altar and the wall. He pushes his back to the stone, pulls his knees to his forehead, folds his head into his knees. Tries to make himself small enough to vanish. His feet smudge blood onto the floor.
He strains his ears to hear the sound of the Kingsguard approaching.
What he hears instead is a deep, rumbling “merr?”
Hitoshi’s head shoots up. In front of him, like an animated piece of the darkness around it, is a large, sleek, inky-black cat. It blinks its huge red-ish eyes at him.
Hitoshi fights down the hysterical urge to laugh. “H-Hi,” he breaths out, “H-Hello, kitty cat, hi there, you gotta be quiet, yeah? You gotta r-run away, or hide. Do you live here? I’m sorry I’m interrupting, I just—”
The cat tilts its head. It purrs deep from its chest, and paces forward to butt its head against Hitoshi’s trembling knee. It meows, gazing at him expectantly, and Hitoshi finds himself reaching out a hand without really thinking about it.
He scratches behind its soft, fluttering ears. Its fur is soft and smooth and it leans into the scratching, happy as can be.
Then it walks even closer, and inserts itself into the little bit of lap that Hitoshi has in this position. It curls into the cradle made between his bunched-up legs and his torso. The cat is large and alive and, again, Hitoshi is moving before he processes what he’s doing. He wraps his arms around it. He tucks his face down towards the warm fur.
Warm and vibrating and alive, and with no intention of hurting him — this is the closest Hitoshi has had to comfort since the first Kingsguard did a double take at him, over 24 hours ago.
And Hitoshi, who is exhausted and aching and more terrified than he can say, starts crying.
The tears fall silently, because he’s had a lifetime to perfect the art of crying silently. His shoulders barely shake. The cat tolerates this without complaint. In fact, he feels a rough brushing at the hair by his ear — the cat is running its tongue over that spot, grooming him like a kitten.
“I-I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, kitty. I don’t want them to take me away. I don’t want to be one of the king’s mages. I don’t want to never see the other kids again, shit, I’m sorry, I’m so scared —”
And then he hears a branch snap outside.
His words clog up in his throat. He whimpers, high and pained. He tucks his head so far into his body, makes himself so small, that the cat slips off of his lap to sit next to him.
“Got a shrine, here!” calls one of the men outside.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” asks another, close and getting closer, “check inside.”
“Well, I don’t wanna piss off a god, do I?”
“Just be respectful and see if the brat’s inside!” the second voice shoots back. “If he is, I’m sure the fucking god will be happy to be rid of him!”
Hitoshi sucks in air. They're almost certainly not wrong. Gods don't protect kids like him.
And then footsteps enter the small shrine.
Hitoshi flinches. Shuts his eyes, because this is it. This is the end of his freedom, the end of his life. The end of being something good, instead of something used for evil.
The cat steps away from him, measured as a verse. For a single, panicked moment, Hitoshi nearly throws himself after it, tries to hide it and keep it safe with his body.
It walks cleanly out of the alcove and stands in front of it, facing the guard. It meows.
There’s a clatter as if the guard jumped three feet in the air. “What the hell?” he snarls, and he takes a step forward, and peers towards the alcove.
Hitoshi braces.
“Whatcha got?” calls the second voice, as the first one starts to curse.
The first yells over his should, “Just a fucking cat.”
Hitoshi’s eyes blink open. What? The guard had moved, the guard had looked. There’s no way the guard hadn't seen him, doesn't see him now.
“A fucking cat?”
“Yeah, some giant fucking stray. Nothing in here but that.” The guard snorts deep in his throat. “Should I kill the dumb thing?”
“Should you kill an animal in a shrine? No, you moron, that’s a good way to get yourself cursed. Leave the damn cat. We have a mage to catch.”
“Yeah, yeah,” mutters the first one, though Hitoshi can barely hear him over his pounding heart. He listens as the man turns, grunts, leaves the shrine. Walks away.
The cat pads back over to Hitoshi. It looks at him, maybe a touch smug. It meows, and then climbs onto Hitoshi’s trembling body, once again making itself comfortable in his lap.
Somehow, the guards are gone. The guard looked right where he should have seen Hitoshi, and he saw nothing instead.
The cat begins to purr. Hitoshi hugs onto it again, as the tears creep back up and over his eyes. He sobs once, and his body goes limp. The cat runs its rough tongue over his cheek, this time.
“Thank you,” he chokes out, and he doesn’t know who he is thanking, but he thinks that it’s probably the cat. “Thank you, thank you, oh, fuck, oh, thank you.”
He cries like that, until the ache of his body and the soothing purr of the cat coax him into sleep.
.
Hitoshi dreams, that night. He dreams that his head is resting on a warm, sturdy knee, and that a warm, broad hand is combing through his tangled hair.
It feels like comfort. It feels like safety. Hitoshi does not remember a time when a hand that large has meant anything but pain, but he cannot imagine this one ever hurting him.
He takes a page out of the cat’s book, and leans into the warmth and the touch.
A voice rumbles above him. It is low and gruff, and more soothing than anything that low and gruff should be. “There you go,” the voice says, “there you go. There’s a brave kid. You did well. Clever little bastard, aren’t you?”
And Hitoshi preens at that because, yes, he is clever. He’s clever, and it keeps him alive.
The voice laughs, then, short and fond. “Rest now,” it says. “I’ll keep watch.”
And so Hitoshi does.
.
He wakes up the next day to gentle sunlight streaming into the door of the shrine. The cat is nowhere to be found.
Hitoshi’s feet have been wrapped in clean, white bandages. There’s a small cloth laid on the floor a few feet away, with a pile of wild berries and a nearly-ripe apple resting on top of it.
Hitoshi’s heart is in his throat. He rolls himself to his feet — still sore, but so, so much better than they could be — and carefully steps to the center of the room. He looks at the altar, properly, for the first time. He sees what god this shrine belongs to.
Aizawa, God of Reason and Patron of Lost Children.
Hitoshi falls to his knees. This feels impossible, but the truth swells in the walls around him. He falls forward into the deepest bow he can, pressing his forehead to the cool ground. He can feel himself getting choked up once more, but he refuses to cry any more today.
“Thank you,” he says, and he feels that gratitude down to his soul. “Thank you, thank you, Aizawa. I don’t know why you — I don’t know what made me worthy of that, but you won’t regret it. I’ll come back, I’ll tend your shrine. I’ll do anything. Thank you, sir.”
Hitoshi thinks he can feel a warm hand in his hair. An assurance that this thanks is enough.
(And if, after Hitoshi limps back to the city and his feet heal, if he can run from people chasing him a little faster, jump a little higher, if he has just a touch more luck —
and if, suddenly, an old shrine to a secondary god is much more well-kept, and receives more small, soot-streaked visitors —
well. That’s another story enterally.)