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“I’m not taking the fucking box,” Sanemi snarls before even staring into the dark depths of said box, that Lady Amane so courteously holds open for him.
He does not stare, but from the bottom of the pitch darkness, abyssal blue eyes stare back - carefully curious, curiously blank.
“Lord Shinazugawa -” the Master’s wife implores.
“There’s no way in hell I’m taking that. I’m not gonna work with a fucking demon.”
Her smile teeters at the edge of her eyes as she heaves a near-silent sigh.
“This mission demon has been assigned to you, as the Wind Hashira,” she says. “He has been trained to make himself useful during missions. He won’t attack civilians or get in the way. The corps has kept close records of mission demons throughout its history, and no major incidents were reported for the four hundred years since -”
“- since the first breathing style user carried his demon of a twin brother around in stupid little box like that one. I know,” he interrupts her, growing exceedingly unnerved.
He may seem simple-minded, but he knows his history. Or at the very least, he knows the stories Masachika used to tell him around the campfire, while they stared up at the windswept maple branches overhead. Sometimes, he’d pause. Smile. His laugh would rustle through the leaves as they tickled the starry sky.
“Then why would you be so concerned about taking up a mission demon?” Amane asks. “This specific demon has been highly trained by the former Water Pillar and will be a perfect complement to your combat style.”
“That’s some bullshit. You can’t train a demon. Sure, you can teach them like you teach a dog to do tricks, but a demon’s instinct is still to kill. A demon doesn’t fucking remember.”
A demon doesn’t remember - what it does not remember, he does not say. Neither does she ask. The silence remembers enough for both of them. He pauses. Breathes. The still-freshly-stitched slash across his abdomen stings. The pain tastes metallic-sweet. It remembers enough.
“If you’re this unsure about mission demons, perhaps you could talk to some of the other Hashira who work with them. Lord Rengoku’s family has kept detailed records of every mission demon that was ever served with the hashira and kinoe-ranking members of their -”
“You want me to talk to that deadbeat drunkard?” He snaps back, the mere thought of the shape and smell of Shinjuro causing him to shudder. “I’d rather gouge my eyes out with my own fucking sword -”
“The Flame Pillar is your senior, I suggest you refer to him with more respect -”
“If it’s either talk to him or take the box… then whatever.”
With that, Sanemi sneers, snatches the box without even slamming it closed, and leaves.
From inside the container, blue eyes blink once. Then twice. But the demon’s muzzled little mouth remains silent.
More often than not, Sanemi wonders what compelled him to do something as insanely stupid as accept the box.
More often than not, he tells himself that’s what Masachika would’ve wanted. What Masachika would’ve done. That’s what he keeps mumbling to himself, until makeshift belief etches into each still-healing scar.
Mostly, the mission demon keeps to himself.
Not that Sanemi would want it to do anything else.
At night, when they’ve reached their wisteria house, it creeps out of its little box, its midnight blue hair spilling, waterfall-soft. It uses those long, heavy locks to polish its sword, the glimmer of the blade clattering against his porcelain pale throat. The skin shimmers with tiny scales, their icy gleam freckling its jaw, its inhuman cheekbones, all the way up to the sharp tip of its bone-white horns. Ever-shifting lines of light streak its body as if it lay at the bottom of a riverbed and let the moonlight dapple its silhouette through the water’s ever-flowing surface. The flowing lines almost reach the cerulean sclerae of its eyes, finely adorned with narrow veins like rivers flow out to see.
Other than that, it seems deceptively human.
Especially when nighttime falls, and those dark, demonic slit pupils widen amidst pools of electric sky.
Deceptively human, almost painfully so.
Specifically when it plasters a mortal mask onto its features to blend into the crowds they have to interrogate for their missions. Then, he looks painfully more human than Sanemi. And the Wind Hashira wishes it would help too, ask questions too and get answers from those too terrified by Shinazugaza’s appearance or demeanor. But apparently, even wishing for that kind of help is too damn much, and the demon doesn’t do much else than stand too still and look too pretty.
Too pretty and too silent, the muzzle staying stubbornly on.
To Sanemi, it hasn’t said a word.
Not that he hates the quietness, but the demon’s attitude is starting to hammer like raindrops on his nerves.
It’s not like demons can’t talk - other demons will keep running their dumb, ugly tongues even after he’s severed their heads. It’s just that this particular demon hasn’t deigned spare him even a word.
Not even a single word.
Not even its name.
Its name - his name, to quote Sakonji Urokodaki in his brief letter to Sanemi - is Tomioka Giyuu. Tomioka Giyuu - what a fucking joke. As if demons deserved a full fucking name. As if demons deserved a family name when they didn’t even remember ever having a family, and would devour their own kin of their own fucking blood on sight.
Sanemi knows this only too well.
Too achingly well, the pain seared deep into the scars on his skin and the screams in his nightmares.
Too achingly often, Sanemi still wakes in cold sweat.
He wakes in cold sweat, and the box by his side is warm.
To the touch, the hard, lightweight wood is strangely warm.
Too warm. Too alive. Too human.
Too unnaturally yet comfortably so.
Sanemi is too human. Too stubbornly, tiredly so. He’s made of fucking skin, and skin scars, skin heals, but even skin needs a while.
He doesn’t have a while.
He doesn’t have an instant, an hour, even a minute to catch his breath. He knows he doesn’t have time when Sorai screeches west, west. He knows it’s bad when the crow doesn’t scream new mission, demons sighted, or even strange disappearances - only west, west.
He cannot breathe, cannot pause, cannot even wipe the foul blood off his blade from his freshest kill before running west, west.
He’s grumbled too much about the weight on his shoulders that night - and that pesky mission demon always listens, because of course it fucking does - so at least, Sanemi doesn’t have to carry the weight of the box’s contents. Instead, Giyuu runs next to him. Side by side, in silence, they run west, west.
The night is warm, too warm, the air too humid with solstice-ripened storm clouds about to burst open. Sanemi cannot tell if dew condensates or wind-streaked sweat stings his scars, he only knows that he must run.
For west, west, he won’t find a demon he was assigned to kill. Not even a village he’s tasked to patrol or some slayers the Master sent him to support.
He’ll only find what he told Sorai to report to him. In a strictly personal capacity.
He’s exhausted, barely breathing while still upright when he finds what he came running through the forest towards, and his eyes catch sight of Genya’s bloodied uniform.
Genya’s hurt. In danger. Still hunting the demon that’s hurt him, the fucking demon that’s still at large somewhere behind the trees. This is what Sanemi told Sorai to tell him about - urgently. The back of his hand crudely wipes his brow, dispelling the perspiration-induced blur before he can raise his sword again.
He slices a narrow, practiced cut on his forearm, and without fail, the demon that hurt his brother materializes. Sanemi charges forward, his blade a whirlwind of slashes. Only to strike, stumble, and freefall through air where his foe once stood before dissolving into the dark and reappearing between Genya and Giyuu. Some teleportation blood demon art. Fucking great.
Before Sanemi can faceplant with all the dignified grace that befalls a fucking pillar, his mission demon intervenes, because of course that brat intervenes, no matter how often he’s told to stay out of the way. Reaching out as unsurprised as ever, he swiftly catches the Hashira and, despite his less-than-polite complaints, pins him to the nearest tree. Sanemi protests, of course he fucking does, but that doesn’t stop him from being securely wrapped up in locks of ever-flowing blue hair. With his sword, Giyuu severs his own ponytail, and his blood demon art turns it to water - then to ice.
“Let me go, you idiot! How fucking dare you?” Sanemi seethes, struggling to break free.
If he still had the strength, if he weren’t so exhausted and overheated, he’d have shattered the brittle ice easily. But instead, struggling is almost pleasant, the cold embracing him in a sharp respite. In his usual silence, Giyuu has floated away already, deploying his blood demon art to restrain the demon - but his flowing currents close around thin air, and soon, their foe reappears. Again, before Sanemi. Fucking typical. Of course it’d go for the easy target, the one oozing marechi blood and tethered to a tree.
Of course Sanemi had planned on it.
And of course, so had Giyuu.
The mission demon waltzes into the way before their enemy even fully takes shape, imprisoning the clawed strike of a hand with his own body. There is the sickly squelch of spilled innards, the blood-curdling snap of a spine, ripples across porcelain skin - but Giyuu remains steadfast, because of course he fucking does. That smug bastard counted on it. And of course, so did Sanemi. Reaching his arms over the ice that binds him, he catches the demon’s appendage poking grotesquely through Giyuu’s torso. And clenching his fingers with all the strength left in every fiber of his body, he shatters the forearm, causing bone to tear through putrescent demon skin. Stuck within Giyuu’s abdomen, their adversary cannot teleport away without bringing the other demon with him, no matter how frantically it may skip through space, skip between trees, skip away for dear life.
When it realizes that, it slows down.
And Sanemi sees it - the mission demon, arrogant enough to signal to Genya with a single tilt of its head as midnight hair caresses the side of its moonlit face.
Expecting the enemy to resurface behind him, Genya gives a single shot in the dark. And before the other demon can even react, Giyuu pushes it in the way. It does not even have time to scream when its mouth is blown to smithereens that rain glistening red. When the bloodstained dust settles, remnants of red rain and blown-out brains adorning Giyuu’s cheekbone are the only memories that haven’t been washed away by the wind, turned to ash.
It takes Sanemi a few more seconds, a few more undignified struggles to break free of his cold yet comfortable prison. By then, Genya’s left. The Wind Hashira seethes, his wrath unleashed upon the nearby tree, then the next one, then the next one. When he’s done, secretly, he’s thankful. That he doesn’t have to face his brother after failing so spectacularly that he needed his brother and a fucking demon to save him and get the job done. That he doesn’t have to talk to his brother after years of only stalking him when he’s in danger, not right now, not when he’s in such a dour, destructive mood, dizzy, overheated, and too exhausted from nights of missions to even think straight. Or even think at all. He’s thinking too much. He shouldn’t think.
Footsteps in the distance echo, rivaling with his racing heartbeat. Overhead, Sorai screeches to announce the kakushi’s arrival. Genya must have run off to meet the kakushi and have his wound tended to, Sanemi realizes - perhaps at the silent advice of that ever stoic and sulking mission demon. Said mission demon, at the moment, sits cross-legged on the forest floor, head held high as if fucking meditating or something. Typical. Infuriatingly so. Especially when it’s bleeding out, in desperate need of human blood to heal itself, and there’s a whole horde of unarmed people and a wounded Genya incoming.
“Get your ass over here, you idiot.”
Giyuu turns his head, wide-eyed, but does not give any other sign of recognition. Black pupils are blown wide, blue sclerae but specks of starry night framed by his dark lashes. Ordinarily, they’d have stopped at a wisteria house with donated blood stored for visiting mission demons - but now that they’ve completely run off course compared to their mission orders, they have none of that fucking luxury. No wisteria house, no blood bags, nothing. Nothing but a worn out, sweaty, disgusting pillar and his equally gross, gutted, entirely too dignified demon companion. Some pitiful pair they make.
“Come here, I bet you must be drooling for this under that stupid muzzle of yours.”
The demon shoots a long glance at the bleeding arm dangled under its nose, then just as quietly turns away.
“Come on, drink up. It’s an order. I’d rather have you take a sip out of my arm than attack anyone else.”
Crudely, he tugs at the bamboo muzzle, and only then does the demon deign calmly and carefully detach it. Swiftly despite his exhaustion, Sanemi draws his sword and rests it against the demon’s neck just as he shoves his arm in its face.
“Just don’t try anything weird,” he shrugs, his tone dripping with threat as the demon finally, finally begins to drink.
This shouldn’t feel this nice - to be relieved of elevated blood pressure, simmering to a rage-induced boiling point, of the weight, of the constant thundering echo of blood at his eardrums. Demon mouths shouldn’t feel this warm, this gentle, this alive. Demon lips shouldn’t feel this soft. Bleeding out, possibly to his own fucking death, shouldn’t be so damn blissful. Yet he sits, his back to a nearby tree, his fingers loose around the hilt of his katana as the demon all but tumbles into his awaiting lap.
For, as it turns out, Tomioka Giyuu is a fucking lightweight.
As it turns out, that arrogant, dignified demon can’t even hold his marechi. Instead, a few gulps transmute him to a puddle, all but melted against Sanemi’s body as it curls up into his lap with a somewhat contented snore - or is it a fucking purr? He certainly feels like an oversized feline dozing off with his head in Sanemi’s lap, his hair warm, soft, and ruffled by his even breaths as scarred, calloused hands carefully card the cobalt strands.
By the time the kakushi find them, both the mission demon and its Hashira are too fast asleep to notice them exchanging nervous glares before carefully, quietly stepping away.
A demon can die up to three deaths.
The first death occurs when the human heart stops beating, when the memories from human life are washed away, and demonic rebirth takes place.
The second death happens upon the first bite taken out of human flesh. Then, the soul is lost, unforgiven, unforgivable, and the demon may no longer be spared and trained into a mission demon. Then, rather than incapacitating or apprehending the demon, slayers are instructed to behead it on sight.
The third and final death when the demon dissolves into ash, beneath a nichirin blade, poison, or sunrise.
Over Tokyo, the sun has risen.
“It is fascinating that Tomioka was able to stop himself from bleeding you dry, especially given your marechi blood,” Lady Tamayo notes, inspecting vials of Giyuu and Sanemi’s blood samples side by side.
“Oh my, Shinazugawa,” Kocho comments, tilting her head slightly. “This only goes to show how lucky you are to still be alive and relatively unhurt despite how reckless you were!”
As Kocho inspects his still-healing arm, Sanemi sighs and turns away from the two doctors. Tamayo, Kocho’s homologue for the mission demons of the corps, sets down the test tubes to neatly jot down some notes.
“The regeneration rate of his blood cells has changed,” she observes, eyeing Giyuu’s box. “It could be an adaptive property of all mission demons. Possibly a result of them not being fed enough, but according to reports, that doesn’t affect their combat ability or blood demon art -”
“For all we know,” Shinobu cuts in, “Shinazugawa has the troublesome habit of bleeding over everything everywhere he goes, so it could be that his mission demon got used to the scent of his blood.”
Sanemi’s teeth clench, a tense inhale feeling his chest, but he says nothing - just yet.
“In this case,” Tamayo ventures, writing again, “it could be a viable solution for Shinazugawa to keep providing Tomioka with his blood, if no other options -”
“This isn’t the kind of risk we can afford to take!” Kocho disagrees, setting her hand down on Tamayo’s to stop her scribbling. “Not for Shinazugawa and his mission demon, or any other slayer-demon pairs! Too many lives are on the line. Given how little evidence we have, running such a dangerous experiment isn’t worth it.”
“But gathering more preliminary evidence is, as long as all parties involved know the risks and agree. Unless you’re afraid of what we’ll find, Kocho. Namely, that demons can be trusted around those they care for -”
“Demons can’t care for anyone!” Sanemi erupts, just as Kocho starts.
“Demons can’t -” she speaks at the same time, only to interrupt herself, her gaze shivering as it sets upon those long, loose locks of hair framing Tamayo’s eyes.
Kocho’s hand has left the demonic doctor’s digits to fly to her own lips in shock, but pallid marks from her too-clenched grasp still ghost Tamayo’s narrow, clawed fingers.
“Giyuu was just too fucking drunk to know what the hell he was doing, end of story,” the Wind Hashira continues in the hesitant silence. “And the two of you don’t get to tell me what to do or to decide whether Giyuu and I agree to your little experiments or not, so you should stop bickering and just fucking kiss already.”
He does not reap the fruit of the chaos he wreaked - he does not stay long enough to do that. Instead, he storms out of their joint office with tingles trickling down his arms, and the strange lightness against his shoulders tells him something is wrong. Missing. A weight. A warmth. He has to step back in to snatch the wooden box and wear it on his back again, which is what earns him a sharp reprimand from Shinobu.
As penance for his actions, he is given a myriad of bitter medications, bed rest for two days, and the rest of the week off missions.
Only when his head hits his well-worn pillow does he concede that in his state of exhaustion, bed rest isn’t such a terrible idea.
Every time he wakes, Giyuu brings him water. Then more water. Then more water again.
Only when the next day dawns does the demon deign make him a cup of hojicha.
As he sips on his steaming tea, he wants to tell the demon off for walking away instead of staying close to keep him warm. Until he notices that Giyuu is feeding Sorai and giving the bird gentle head pats to reward him for the heavy package he carried to the Wind Estate through the cold morning.
The delivery is from Mount Sagiri, courtesy of Urokodaki Sakonji.
There is a subtle lingering of Giyuu’s fingers as he hands the package to Sanemi, the slightest hint of an embrace to take in the familiar scent.
Quickly, the Wind Pillar unwraps the gift to reveal a thick garment matching Giyuu’s stupid eyesore of a haori in every way. Said haori having been ruined in their latest mission, it makes sense that a replacement would be needed. Giyuu healed, but his clothes didn’t. Cloth stays torn, battered, bloodstained. Cloth remembers.
Many slayers wear their clothing in remembrance or respect, Sanemi knows only too well. Kocho wears her sister’s haori, Kamado wears his horrendous family pattern, his yellow friend wears his sensei’s stupid little triangles, even that pink chick Iguro’s besotted with wears the Rengoku family’s traditional whites. But that still doesn’t explain why Urokodaki would spend his retirement days making garments this infuriatingly intricate for a demon who doesn’t even remember his own damn family.
“You know, when people wear stuff that’s this ugly, they at least have a sentimental reason for it,” he sneers softly, handing the haori to Giyuu who holds it close. “But I bet you don’t remember a thing about whose colors and patterns those were, do you?”
Slit pupils scan from one side of the garish fabric to the other, before long, pale fingers grip the red side like the world depends on it, and Giyuu shakes his head.
“Hmm, thought so,” Sanemi comments. “But… the other side?”
Suddenly, the demon reaches for the pillar's wrist, holding it tightly to trace a few characters on the scarred back of his hand. In the wake of his touch, ice crystals condensate alongside a million tingles, and Sanemi can squint and decipher the neat kanji fleetingly written onto his skin.
Sabito.
“Sabito? Was he a slayer?”
Giyuu wipes the fresh snowflakes away and traces another word.
Kinoe.
“You were his mission demon?” the hashira guesses, given that mission demons are most usually assigned to high-ranking slayers able to keep them in check and keep up with them.
A nod - Sanemi doesn’t need to look, only to feel it through the tense points of contact between them. He doesn’t need to look, or feel, or read to tell how that story ended. He knows only too damn well. All these stories end in the same damn way.
Lower moon, Giyuu writes next.
Yup. All these stories always end in the same fucking way.
He saved me.
Shit. That’s new. A slayer giving their fucking life to protect a fucking demon, of all things.
“So that’s why I have to deal with you sulking and moping all the damn time? All because of some idiot who decided that saving a demon was worth his life?”
Sanemi realizes as soon as the words leave him in their haste, sharp as gale. He realizes the harshness, the pain, the invisible scars he reopened - subterranean rivers under unblemished skin that can’t remember. He doesn’t want to feel. Doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want to read. He already knows the hurt he made Giyuu live again, knows it first-hand as well as he knows the scars on the back of his knuckles. Yet, he must feel, and as new icy scribbles etch themselves into his hand, he must look, and he must read.
I wish he lived.
He knows what that means. In the silences, he can read the implications. He can read the insteads. He can read who should’ve died, and his gut gives a roiling churn. He draws a deep breath. The well-worn scar on his stomach stretches slightly under a subtle tide.
“Nope, absolutely fucking not. You’re not allowed to say that - no, you’re not allowed to even think that. He didn’t go to all those fucking lengths to save you just so that you can lament his dumb decisions or his stupid fucking fate. The least you can do is hold your pretty little head up high.”
That’s what Masachika would’ve said, he doesn’t say.
I know it’s fucking hard, he doesn’t say - I know it’s fucking hard, surviving is hard, he doesn’t say. Every waking hour is hard and every nightmare is hard, even though demons might not even have stupid nightmares when they sleep, if they even really sleep… Do they even dream? What do they dream of if not memories of their families? What is it like to carry the cloudy weight of amnesia like the immensity of the nebulous sky? What is it like to carry the memory of immortality, of healing always while watching slayer after slayer die? No way in hell Sanemi would ever know - all he know is that it’s fucking hard, because all stories end the fucking same and living with the aftermath is always endlessly and immutably fucking hard.
I know how you must feel, he doesn’t say.
Maybe because he doesn’t fully know. Or maybe because he’s a stupid asshole. Because of course he fucking is. Of course that’s all Sanemi is, all Sanemi will ever be, some stupid asshole.
Or rather - a rather rude boy with a heart of gold, Masachika would’ve said.
You don’t have to say it with words, Masachika would have smiled at his struggles and said.
So Sanemi says nothing, and instead pulls Giyuu into a tight hug as if to never let go.
Silently, Giyuu hugs him back.
The next time they end up embracing, their mission has gone terribly wrong.
They killed the demon, of course they managed to kill the fucking demon in the end.
But by the time they got there, after running that goddamn mountain in the stupidly slippery fucking mud, the muddied path was already soaked in red. They’d arrived too late to save lives. Too late to save innocent victims from that damn fucking demon.
Beheading the monster took one second - the slash of a sword, the song of a blood demon art clear as a crystal spring. But burying the bodies? Took hour upon fucking hour, digging through the dirt till they knew no more what was encrusted in dull crescent beneath their nails, blood or mud. Probably both. The victims’ blood or their own? Probably both. Sanemi doesn’t fucking care.
Or rather, Sanemi wishes he didn’t fucking care.
He kneels before the makeshift graves and feels the earth turn, his head spin, his knees numb. Beside him, he feels Giyuu quietly shift, brushing off dried mud from that stupid haori of his. He wishes Giyuu would say something. Anything. Anything stupid, even, for of course he’s sure that if Giyuu ever opened his mouth, it’d be to blurt out something blunt. Something stupid. Something hurtful.
Sanemi wouldn’t mind something hurtful.
In fact, he wished that idiot would say something hurtful.
The pain would at least distract him from the numbness. The numbness that distracts him from the furious pain of guilt, the weight of lives, the shadows of souls on his conscience.
He bets Giyuu feels no such guilt. Demons can’t have a damn conscience, or can they?
If Giyuu feels any guilt, his inhuman eyes betray no such feelings. Instead, they remain stoic, solemn, catlike as he carefully considers Sanemi. Giyuu stares in silence, stubbornly refusing to break his silence and give Sanemi the hurt he deserves.
“You’re gonna keep fucking staring in silence, huh?”
In Giyuu’s gaze, a flicker of something. A flicker of almost nothing. A fleeting shadow, a sliver of uncertainty, a wordless ask for permission.
Nodding with a groan, Sanemi leans over and unties the muzzle.
Still, Giyuu says nothing.
Instead, his claws clench around Sanemi’s uniform to pull him in, and then their lips collide.
Maybe, there is pain. Fangs clashing with snarling teeth, broken gasps, bloodied fingers tugging at moonlit hair. Maybe, there is pleasure. Maybe, there is moonrise.
Still, there is silence.
But silence is no longer numb.
It is rife with sensation, raw sensation, too much sensation. Not enough sensation. So they deepen the kiss, tensing around each other like there is no tomorrow. Sanemi tastes foreign flavors atop the demon’s tongue, the coldness of mountain streams, the bitter tang of blood. Maybe his, maybe not. Good. There is a familiarity that tastes almost sweet.
And then, the sweetness is gone. On Sanemi’s lips, only cold. Only wind. Only tingles silently sparking in Giyuu’s wake as the demon pulls away, feline pupils dilated in the distant starlight. As starlight falls upon them, the thread of saliva still connecting their mouth still glistens. A silence. A warmth in the dark. An invitation.
Sanemi conquers the distance without hesitation. His tongue harshly pushes past Giyuu’s lips to delve deeper, and the demon responds in kind, never yielding. Clash after clash, coalescence after coalescence. There is painful passion in how Giyuu’s tongue tip traces the outline of the slayer’s softly chapped lips, somewhat roughened by the rigor of breathing techniques and the harshness of the elements.
With a low groan, Sanemi bites down on the perfect fullness of his demon’s bottom lip, and licks a line down his chin, down the curve of his neck. Blindly, his tongue follows the ever-fluctuating patterns that glower. He follows like cascades follow gravity, down, down, always down from the perfect arch of a jade throat to the crook of a collarbone. He follows like one follows rivers, from the spring to the sea, blindly like lifelines, like nothing else exists, and he forgets everything.
He forgets the dark. The cold. The silence.
In the end, there are only rivers. Rivers that taste like sweat-blood-mud-moonlight, ever mournful, but he does not care, he does not remember, he has never known. All he knows is the flavor of rivers that taste like Giyuu, Giyuu, Giyuu.
Mine, mine, mine. He can bite down and claim every pale plane as his, bite down till moonlight-mud-blood-sweat spill out in the dark, and demon skin’ll heal, demon skin won’t remember.
Tomorrow, they won’t have to remember.
Tomorrow, they won’t have to talk about it. Not that Giyuu ever fucking talks about anything anyway.
Tomorrow, they can pretend they forgot, pretend they forgot every day until they forget to pretend.
Right now, forgetting feels nice.
Better than feeling fucking numb.
Soon, they forget to pretend to forget.
Soon, it becomes so second-nature, ingrained so deep in their scars and the fluids in their veins that they don’t have to remember to forget anymore.
Soon, it stops hurting to have to forget that Giyuu kissed him.
Almost.
Up.
They’ve fallen into an easy routine, Giyuu’s hand blindly reaching for Sanemi’s hand to scribble brief characters as they stand back to back in battle.
“Ugh, no shit,” the Wind Pillar grumbles, staring at the abandoned temple’s wooden ceiling.
The lower moon they’re chasing, that fucking coward, took refuge in the decrepit building as sunrise approached, the slayer and his mission demon in tow. Giyuu gives the slightest of flinches as sunlight drifts between the planks overhead - but what makes Sanemi’s skin crawl is what he sees up there in the semi-darkness: myriads of glowering slit pupils of tiny bats creeping between the wooden beams. When the demon’s in that form, he’s hard to see, hard to hear, and above all else, hard to kill. Every last bat must be beheaded before the others regenerate, and any wing or claw clipped rather than a head, and two more bats would sprout from the severed appendage. Sanemi figured it out the hard way, and now he wipes the sweat and blood that sting his scars before letting it drip down to the floor.
Except the drops never drip down.
There is a quiet clatter, the cobalt gleam of a blood demon art, and then every flowing droplet in the room, joined by early morning condensation, falls upward toward the ceiling. Then Giyuu blinks, and the fluids freeze around the bats, rendering them heavy enough to fall like too-ripe fruit. Sanemi, of course, is ready. His katana sings out of its sheath, slicing the air in a flurry of slashes. As he moves, a breeze graces his sweaty skin. He does not need to see exactly where each frozen foe lands, only to feel how the air shifts around him to destroy every demonic body with implacable precision.
One by one, he beheads them all. Almost.
His blade meets bony resistance after it shatters ice, and then the winged body against his sword expands until its size rivals his. Emaciated claws reach for his face, leathery wings filling his field of vision, but he does not back down. Not until the overgrown bat opens its fetid mouth in a silent wail, and vomits out a tidal wave of smaller bats, all vomiting shrieks in ultrasonic unison.
Giyuu’s hands cover Sanemi’s ears as they yank the hashira away, shielding him beneath the mission demon’s haori. Even with his eardrums protected, Sanemi senses pain erupt in every bone of his skull, searing vibrations causing blood to trickle out - of his ears, of his eyes, of his nostrils? He can’t even be sure anymore, he only knows he has to get back up and fucking fight.
The sheer force of the wail pushes him and Giyuu all the way up against a mangled column supporting the ceiling. More tired aches bloom upon the impact, splattering black lights before his blurred vision. But even as he coughs out blood, he props himself up on his blade and keeps slashing at the enemy. He just hopes Giyuu does something. Anything to help. Anything to freeze or behead the endless onslaught of bats.
Of course, Giyuu doesn’t.
Instead, the mission demon’s blood art is focused on the largest bat’s throat, freezing it solid until the stretch from escaping bat bodies is too much, and the neck and head shatter the unbearable force. As they hit the floor, the frozen fragments of demon still bear a gruesome, bloodied grimace. Still, the existing bats still gather. Onto Sanemi’s fresh wounds, his scraped arms, his bloodstained haori, lured by marechi blood like moths to a flame. Focusing on his blood demon art, Giyuu condensates a small cloud overhead, and pressing his palms together, flattens it into a thin ice disc. It’s brittle, near-invisible, near-weightless. Yet, it’s enough to form a narrow lens and focus all the stray sunbeams through the ceiling onto Sanemi.
As the hashira slashes away ten dozen more bats, the rest of them burn away under the weight of the dawning sunlight. Soot particles brush his skin as they dissolve, and then he can exhale. Inhale without breathing in bats or dust, and then exhale again.
He’s battered, bleeding, his haori shredded, Giyuu’s box behind his back crushed to pieces. But he’s alive. Above him, as swiftly as it condensed into existence, the narrow ice lens collapses into a rain of shattered shards. Exhausted by the overuse of his abilities, Giyuu falls to one knee.
But before Sanemi can catch him, claws snatch Giyuu away into the darkness. There is the sound of a struggle, torn wings, broken bones. A chill creeps its way down Sanemi’s spine as he barely distinguishes Giyuu’s silhouette imprisoned in the gigantic wings of the last, immense bat. The repulsive creature lets out a short shriek, and a ceiling beam collapses, letting a puddle of sunlight drift in. And then, with a flap of its wings, it tosses the mission demon out into the light.
Sanemi moves before he can even realize. His body a human shield against sunrise, he wraps himself around Giyuu as tightly as he can, panic flaring through him as the body against his remains too lax, too lifeless. Giyuu’s neck is bent at an odd angle, snapped out of place, his eyes closed as his body fights to heal itself and bring him back to consciousness. For that, he needs human blood. Probably. Most fucking likely.
Without hesitating, the hashira crashes his own blood-smeared mouth against Giyuu’s.
And then, piercing pain rips his side open.
He tastes metal.
He hears torn flesh.
He does not need to look down to know how deeply that colossal demonic claw has impaled his abdomen, threatening to obliquely burst out the other side of him.
“Pathetic little hashira,” the lower moon sneers, its voice a hushed chorus of bat-like shrieks raking against Sanemi’s eardrums. “Unable to think straight or protect himself as soon as his little pet demon’s in danger… So easy to trick…”
Against him, Giyuu gives a small gasp, blue eyes blinking wide open. Then the mission demon swings his sword - but it’s useless, the lower moon’s head is too far, too shrouded in darkness…
“Hashira these days have become such weaklings… Mission demons have become their weakness, and will soon become their downfall… My master will be so pleased, oh yes, he will be -”
Quietly, there is a creak of wood on wood. And then, the column that carried the ceiling, severed by Giyuu’s blade, tumbles in a thunderous crash. Sanemi slices it open before it can crush them with its weight. But he cannot stop the ceiling from falling, the sky from falling, the dawn from flooding the now destroyed temple. Screeching, the lower moon turns to ash in the daylight.
But Sanemi doesn’t care. Sanemi doesn’t give a fuck. He can’t give a fuck right now.
Not when Giyuu’s decaying away just as fast between his arms, blackened shreds of him filling Sanemi’s lungs and stinging his eyes until tears form. Tears form, tears gather, and then they drip down. Down, down, always down.
“No, no, no,” he mutters under his breath in ugly, broken sobs even as he cradles Giyuu’s vanishing body. “You don’t fucking get to do that, you idiot. You don’t fucking get to sacrifice yourself to take out some stupid lower moon demon, let alone to save my stupid ass. You don’t get to leave me alone.”
Between his arms, he senses the mission demon desperately shrink to try to avoid the sunlight, to little avail.
“Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”
Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.
His stuttering heartbeat, broken breath continue in their furious, frantic rhythm when he can no longer speak, for he can no longer breathe. He can’t breathe when all he could breathe are ashes of Giyuu, when all he can taste on his tongue are what’s gone of Giyuu, Giyuu, Giyuu.
His vision sways, splinters, blurs. It’s the tears, it’s the soot, it’s the sunrise. He doesn’t fucking know, doesn’t fucking care.
Panic fills his head, spilling out of his wide open eyes until they hurt. He can’t think, can’t move, can only tremble as he holds Giyuu closer.
He does not know why - mission demons are meant to disposable, collateral casualties like any other weapon of war. He does not know why - he’s always hated demons, even mission demons, especially this particular one with his silent, stoic tendencies. He does not know why, nor does he care, but his head keeps spinning, spinning, spinning like a broken gramophone.
Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.
Don’t leave me like fucking Masachika did. Like fucking everyone did. Like my mother drifted away in the young sunrise. Don’t you fucking dare leave me too when you were supposed to be immortal.
Unbroken.
Unbreakable.
Unbreakable like water between his fingers, flowing till it filled every crack, every scar, every need, every craving, exactly where he needed it, when he needed it.
Unbreakable like soaring soot, flowing between his hands no matter how much he tightens them now, how much his knuckles blanch, how much his bloodied fingernails mark his palms in broken crescent pain.
The pain is the last thing he feels before his mind gives out, and he surrenders to numb, merciful unconsciousness.
The pain - and the too cruel, too ghostly illusion of Giyuu hugging him back.
“The kakushi said they found the Wind Pillar unconscious due to the effects of blood loss,” Tamayo reads, holding her spectacles as she peers over the report. “But he does not appear to have lost much blood. Rather, his blood shows abnormal hormonal levels. He appears to have fainted from shock.”
“You’re worried about Shinazugawa… oh my, are you worried about him?” Shinobu tugs at her sleeve, glancing over at the report and then at Sanemi’s sleeping form atop his hospital bed.
The two women stare at him from the doorsill for a few seconds, in nervous silence.
“It is uncommon for hashira to faint from shock and remain unconscious for days,” Tamayo justifies.
“He hasn’t remained unconscious for days. I had to sedate him when he started attacking the kakushi in a fit of blind rage akin to grief. He wouldn’t listen. He was too dangerous.”
“Still, I would worry for you if you fainted from shock, Shinobu.”
“You… would?”
The Insect Hashira’s rehearsed smile drops in favor of pure surprise, pure curiosity, pure hopeless hope. Demons aren’t supposed to care, much less worry.
“I worry for you more than you might think,” the demon doctor insists.
“Be careful,” Shinobu’s smile returns, though it softly caresses the corners of her eyes. “I might worry for you if you keep worrying too much.”
A chuckle, barely shared as the slayer inches timidly closer to her demonic colleague.
“You look different when you smile,” Tamayo finally remarks.
“I always smile.”
A sentence reflexively spoken, like a door slammed though with poise, with practiced politeness.
“Ordinarily, your smile is a citadel wall. Rarely does it let the light in.”
“And does that worry you, the light? Demons aren’t exactly known for liking light.”
“For you, Shinobu, there are many lights I could be convinced to let in.”
It is Tamayo’s turn to step closer, the moonlight between them apparently not that kind of beam she would like to tolerate. Rather, it is a space that needs to be conquered, a distance that needs to closed -
There is a shift. A breath. A creaking bedframe.
“The Wind Pillar is waking,” Tamayo whispers.
“I know.”
“He may need time to process what happened, time alone with…”
“I know.”
And gingerly snatching the demon’s hand, Shinobu drags her away down the corridor, smiling moonlight still dancing in her eyes.
“I’m fucking dead, aren’t I?”
Sanemi blinks, his parched throat hoarse from disuse. Soft sunrise assaults his sight until his eyelids sting in protest.
No.
A simple character, traced into the texture of his scars on the back of his hand.
That only confirms it. That he’s fucking dead. That this is the fucking afterlife. That his fucking asshole dad may be lurking somewhere, and that he should warm up his fists to fight back.
“Then why are you here?”
Not leaving.
You told me.
“So you heard that, huh?”
Yes.
“How did you even hear that? How did you even make it?”
Disbelief tastes like a sharp thing, rough against the ragged edges of his throat. He fears to hope, fears harder than he’s ever remembered fearing.
Pocket.
“What the fuck?!”
Your pocket.
“You made yourself so damn tiny that you fit in my fucking pocket!?”
You’d told me.
No leaving.
“Are you hurt?”
If he shrank himself to that size, the sunlight must have gnawed away so much of him, the mere thought of the devouring burn unbearable to Sanemi’s mind.
No leaving.
“No. No leaving. Stay with me.”
Slowly, the sunlight has edges, he realizes. Slowly, pain returns. There is a dull ache in his side, carefully bandaged. Pain, and softness, too. Giyuu’s frame is too slight on the mattress next to him, his skin too pale, near-translucent as rivers of blue run through his too cold, too-trembling veins.
But he’s not leaving. Not gone.
Not now, not ever.
He’s here to stay.
In the end, there are only rivers. Rivers of warmth spill out from Sanemi’s eyes, unable to hold back the tears anymore. No thoughts, no coherence in the wake of the aftershock, only rivers of unbridled emotions that caress the corners of his smile. Rivers that collide and coalesce - are the tears his? Giyuu’s? Does it fucking matter? They embrace as if they were made to fit between each other’s arms, fingers threading each other’s hair. Warm. Soft. Real. Alive, alive, alive.
Maybe it is a dream. Maybe it is a dream within a dream.
Sanemi isn’t sure anymore. He wakes, then he wakes again - he must have drifted off once more, his body still wary under the effects of shock, injury, and sedation courtesy of Kocho. All he knows is that when he wakes, his forehead is pressed to Giyuu’s. Or their fingers are interwoven. Or their lips almost meet, basking in the same warm breath, the same warm dream, the same warm dream within a dream. Alive, alive, alive.
In the end, there are only rivers. Rivers of them, in this life or another, in this dream or another dream within a dream, ever clashing currents, ever coalescent souls within ever entwined bodies.
Tamayo allows herself a small, mysterious smile at the sight of them through the door before retreating into the darkness and dragging a quietly giggling Shinobu with her by her tiny warm hand.