Chapter Text
A thousand years ago, you crawled out from your grave in Heian-Kyo. You followed your all-consuming hunger into a fresh grave, popped the lid off the coffin, and devoured the corpse like slightly stale sardines from a can. The flavor wasn't good or terrible, just like the discarded preserved fish you remember from scavenging trash with the other medical nuhi last fall. You take another bite. Then, your brain catches up with your stomach.
You stare at the half-eaten face of the human being in your claws. You taste iron on your lips. When you finish spitting between screams, you run. You stowaway on a ship from Japan to Goryeo. You make enough money to charter your own vessel to Great Yuan, where you spend a century trading the silk road from Dadu to Istanbul, wandering the desert where no human can live to tempt you. As your falcon delivers the news of the Red Turbans driving out the Mongols to your sheephair tent, you find the blue spiderlily blooming from the desert sands of Garagum.
You split three centuries between the desert, the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and La Sorbonne. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and you perfected your master's medicine in your Parisian greenhouse. As Ponce de Leon sought the Fountain of Youth, you stepped into the sun for the first time in three centuries, your visage unchanged since the doctor first injected you with the medicine he would later use on Muzan Kibutsuji.
At the turn of the 15th century, you learned to paint and sculpt from Da Vinci and Michelangelo. In the 16th century, you sat in the Globe's Pit to watch Shakespeare's plays premiere. In the 17th century, you debated Rousseau and Voltaire in Madame de Pompadour's salons. After Europe became saturated with the memories of those you've loved and lost, you venture to the New World.
Over the millennium, you've traveled the world from Heian Japan to Renaissance Italy. By the time the 1920's find you in America, you think you've seen it all. Then, the dead man appears in your living room with hair like fire and a hole in his stomach. His blood ruins your favorite carpet, and you're not sure you know anything anymore.
You're trying to drag the body to the garden when you feel his chest stutter with the intake of breath. He's alive. Without thinking, you break the skin of your right wrist with your left nail. You press the blood to his lips.
It's been decades since you last turned a human. You've forgotten how much the process takes from you. Kyojuro's body hungers for you more than you had hungered for blood when you'd first woken. His wound needs your blood to rebuild his body. You're drained until you collapse on his chest, your last thought of his comforting warmth, like the first touch of sunlight on your skin two centuries ago.
..........
You wake in the middle of the night. Your eyes adjust. You reorient yourself in the darkness.
Your skin's sticky with sweat and blood. There's a man under you. He runs hot. You prop yourself up on his chest and scoot away. You may dress like a flapper and run gin, but you're no floozy.
The parlor's ruined with blood. Your maids come on Tuesdays. You're a bootlegger, not a gangster. The girls'll get scared by the blood, so you have to clean overnight.
Your maids won't disturb the unconscious man if you tell them you've a guest sleeping in, so you carry him to a guestroom. He's no longer bleeding. His wounds have closed, so you slash up his ruined shirt and clean him with it before tossing the clothes in the fire.
The white "destroy" character stands against the black fabric before it all burns. You wonder what the man's destroying and what nearly destroyed him, but you figure you'll ask when he wakes.
When you turn back from the fireplace, you're startled to see a pair of eyes staring at you, so bright they could be glowing in the dark.
"Kawaī!" Your unexpected guest shouts with enough volume to shake the room before rolling over and falling back asleep. You blink. The room rumbles with his snores.
While he sleeps, you break his outburst into syllables. You haven't been to Japan since you left, so you must reconcile his modern accent with your Heian Japanese. Ka-wa...
Oh. You cover your mouth, laughing softly. He thinks you're pretty. You're far too old to flush like a schoolgirl with a handsome youth, but he thinks you're pretty.
..........
You drag the rug to a bathroom with a tub. As you run cold water over the hand-woven silk, you remember when you commissioned your carpet in Kankorum: the noise of the open air bazaar, the clink of gold coins in your gloved hands, the warmth of the sun at your back. You no longer remember the year, except that it was before you could walk in sunlight. You can't remember the weaver, except you recall she was a young woman with callouses on her hands and a twist in her spine, aged beyond her years by backbreaking labor at the loom.
When you open your eyes, you're back in Chicago, the cicadas calling into the night, your unexpected guest snoring softly next door. You prop yourself up with your wet hands on the marble tile, listening to the night for a moment before you drain the first tub of bloodied water, keeping the tap on while you run downstairs. After wiping the floor clean, you drain the tub a second time as you bleach the floor under the carpet.
The carpet's soaking in a third tub of water by the time you start the shower, tossing your clothes aside to be burnt with the dirty rags. You scratch the blood out of your hair, wiping the mirror free of condensation every wash to check your reflection. Once your hair's finally clean, you start on the blood covering your skin. If you're quick enough, you might still be able to catch an hour of sleep before sunrise.
..........
Kyojuro senses a demon. It's right next to him. He slams open—whoops, wrong door. That's a closet. He tries again, leaving the bedroom for a tall, western-style hallway.
This isn't the Butterfly Estate. When'd he get moved to a western mansion? He'll figure that later.
Now, he follows the sound of water and the demonic presence. He stops at a shut door. The knob doesn't budge—locked. He kicks down the door, wood splintering under his feet. There, behind the curtain—
"Demon!"
Kyojuro tears away the shower curtain. His slayer instincts tell him to kill. The being before him has taken thousands of human lives. Death weighs down the air like—
Wait. Is that death, or the moisture in the shower? Kyojuro doesn't sense Blood Demon Arts, illusions, or killing intent. He's not seeing any demons, either, just a human-looking girl with—
Stop. Back up.
Locked door. Running water. Shower. Girl.
All the blood in Kyojuro's body rushes up into his face. He goes redder than the tips of his hair. You slam his head into the shower wall.
............
"I am sorry! I will take responsibility!"
In your thousand years, you've had your share of surprises, from stepping onto the New World for the first time, to watching man taking flight, to—whatever this is.
You're in a bathrobe, thank the Lord. The ginger-blond—Samurai? Bushi?—kneels in your garden. You don't know what happened in the shower, but it felt like a switch flipping. One moment, he was ready to murder you. Now, he looks ready to commit seppuku, kneeling on your bathroom floor, head bowed, hands on his knees while the sky starts to blue with morning.
"Please stand."
"Yes!" he springs to his feet. You jump back at the sudden movement. Kyojuro stills. You can't tell if he's regarding you like a small animal about to startle, or a predator ready to spring. Maybe both?
"What are you!" he demands. "You have a demon's presence. You feel like death! But it's old, like you haven't eaten a human in years—"
"What is—" you try to speak up, but the man talks over you. He comments on everything, from the state of your bathroom (The floor is cold!) to the scenery outside (The flowers are blooming!) to his self-awareness (I do not know where I am!)
You watch the way he carries himself, back straight, shoulders squared, arms crossed over his broad chest. Definitely a warrior.
You're used to being ignored by men like him, so you wait, letting his monologue wash over you. You have all the time in the world, after all.
You take a seat on the edge of the bathtub. The room goes quiet. The bushi looks at you.
"You're in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. What's a demon?" you ask, remembering his shout when he broke down your bathroom door.
Kyojuro's eyes meet yours. You're caught under the full force of his fire colored gaze, which seems to glow in the dark with its intensity. He's unarmed, but you feel power pointed at you like a loaded gun, the bushi's finger on the trigger, the sights lined. He's ready to fire.
"I don't know what you mean, calling me a demon," you repeat, your voice clear and calm in the darkness.
Kyojuro reads your lips. He takes in your expression. There's no hesitation in your voice or avoidance in your gaze. You're telling the truth.
You're a demon who doesn't know what demons are.
What does that make him?
He doesn't feel monstrous. When he woke, Kyojuro didn't hunger for blood or human flesh. He felt no different than usual, which is why he chased the presence of a demon, hunting you down.
Coming down from his adrenaline now, Kyojuro realizes that he's a little different. He feels a little stronger, moves a little faster than he remembers. When you threw him into the wall, he recovered more quickly than a human can. The bump on his forehead's already feeling better.
There's no other explanation to how he's seeing from both eyes now, his stomach repaired with no scarring. You turned him into a demon. He had been dying. Now, he's fine. He doesn't even feel like death, because he's never eaten a human being.
This feels wrong, too normal, too easy.
"Are you sure you're a demon?"
You sputter, clutching the bathrobe tight to your chest.
"You—you ran into my bathroom, screaming demon. I don't know what a demon is. How would I know if I am one?"
The fire-haired man furrows his thick, forked brows. In that booming voice, he tells you of demons and demon slayers, Hashira and Twelve Kizuki, Muzan Kibutsuji and the country you'd left nearly a millennium ago.
You drop onto the edge of the bathtub as you listen. The energy of his voice washes over you, the excitement from earlier wearing off. Almighty Lord, the hour's too early and you're too sleep deprived for this.
Kyojuro watches you blink sleepily, leaning against the wall you broke with his forehead. The rest of the moisture evaporates from the bathroom, clearing the air so he can focus on your presence.
You're not a demon like Nezuko. Your energy is threaded with the human lives you've taken. But death doesn't weigh you down like Tamayo. Your essence is lighter, faintly threaded with the scent of flowers—lilies? Kyojuro closes his eyes and sees blue. He tells you he's a demon slayer and you nod lazily, like that's nice but none of your business. He finishes speaking and you yawn.
Your head tips back to expose the pale column of your throat.
He wants, suddenly, to run his thumb over your skin, and he doesn't know what to do with his wanting.
Dawn breaks. Sunlight spills through the window and over your features. You don't move from your spot.
The light stretches over to him. Morning passes over the healed wound in his stomach, the left eye he can now see out of.
"What are you?" Kyojuro asks. "What am I?" he murmurs when neither of you burn.
You close your eyes, pinching the slight bridge of your nose, "That—is a long story."
..........
In the 18th century, you cured your reliance on human blood, so you get to know Rengoku Kyojuro over breakfast. You fry eggs and bacon, and fry eggs and bacon, and fry more eggs and bacon because Kyojuro eats for ten. As you cook, he migrates from your dining room to the kitchen, standing beside you where he can eat as soon as the food cools off from the grill. At this rate, you'll have to telephone your grocer to come tomorrow instead of Saturday.
"Tasty!" Kyojuro exclaims between bites with the same exuberance as when he called you pretty.
At first, he looked suspicious of your food. You pointed out that he watched you cook. He took a first bite, then a second, and now he's on his fourth plate. Though the boy says he's twenty, he acts younger than he looks, approaching life with apparent joy that you've never been able to manage in all your centuries.
It makes sense. Kyojuro hasn't said as much, but his build and the way he carries himself makes you sure he's from a bushi bloodline that persisted after the Meiji Restoration. He's well-fed, well-clothed, and well-trained to serve his Emperor or the Diet from birth.
Unlike him, your first twenty years were spent starving, sick, or both. The shogunate plucked you from the streets to stab needles in your skin, draw test tubes of your blood, and collect slices of your flesh. Their doctors loved you because you were too weak to fight back and too strong to die, at least until you got the injection that would be adapted for Muzan Kibutsuji.
You died despite all your master's promises. Or maybe you just seemed dead enough to bury. You remember nothing between the treatment flooding your bloodstream like ice in your veins, and waking in the unmarked grave with that terrible hunger.
You tell Kyojuro of your journey from Kyoto to Chicago, omitting the gruesome brutality of slavery, the filthy truth of poverty, and the gnawing anxiety of running for your life. You give a sanitized version fit for a young bushi.
Kyojuro takes in the information without looking at you. He's washing your dishes, his sleeves rolled back to expose muscular forearms. He tries to keep his smile neutral, but you're too old to not see the hardness in his eyes, the set of his shoulders that speaks of preparation to strike.
Fine porcelain makes for a sharp blade once it shatters.
"You ate humans before you found it," Kyojuro notes when you describe the blue spiderlily.
"Yes," you admit and you wait.
When you dressed, you tucked a silver pistol into the waistband of your trousers. People like you and him are hard to kill, but you're loaded with sundowner bullets. If he tries you, you're ready.
Kyojuro passes you the cleaned frying pan.
"Do you regret it, eating people?"
He keeps up the hard smile, and you can sense yourself being evaluated for our worthiness to live.
You could lie to him. You should lie to him. All your self-preservation instincts scream for you to lie.
But Kyojuro is also a young man starting a new life in a new world. You know better than anyone how people can be robbed of their free will by lies and ignorance as well as whips and chains. In that instant, you make a decision that will define you.
You towel dry the pan and put it down, freeing your hands to reach for the gun. Then, you tell Kyojuro the truth:
"I regret nothing. I only ate people who deserved it."
His thick eyebrows narrow.
"Who deserves it? How could thousands of people—"
Not thousands. Tens-of-thousands.
"I'm a millennium old. I've been around the world. A lot of people try to take advantage of a young foreign girl traveling alone at night. I ate the people who assaulted me first."
The monsters you've known aren't demons; they're human beings.
Kyojuro blinks at you with the surprise of a young man who's never had to fear being raped and murdered in the dark. Eventually, he shakes his head.
"You didn't have to kill them!" he declares. "Human criminals can be sentenced in a court of law!"
Spoken like a true bushi, since the warrior class had been Japan's law officers. You smirk, imagining Kyojuro as a copper.
"People make laws." What if a copper beats his wife? What if the murders take place in the slums, where nobody cares to enforce justice? "Not all people are good. Not all laws are good, either."
"Bad people should be brought to justice! Bad laws should be changed!"
But reform takes time, like the Demon Slayers' mission. In the meantime, it makes sense to protect others using whatever means you have, including your demon powers.
"Can you swear you've only fought in self defense!"
"I've also fought in defense of others."
"Then you're a good demon, like Kamado's sister! Come home to Japan with me. You can protect people—"
Your own smile drops like a curtain falling over your emotions.
"No."
"Why not!"
You bite your lip.
Kyojuro is so, so young, and you do not know how to tell him: you've never heard of the Demon Slayers. That's no surprise—nobody's heard of the experiments that made you, either. Shoguns and Emperors and Parliaments tuck people like you into unmarked graves, not the anneals of history. You're acceptable sacrifice in the name of progress, and sometimes, acceptable sacrifice returns to bite them in the ass like the mistake that became Muzan Kibutsuji, who is not your problem. You're not bushi like Kyujuro. Slave girls don't follow bushido. Your country used you up and threw you out; now, it's their turn to reap what they sowed.
You smile sweetly at Kyojuro, an old habit from masters who beat in that girls like you should smile for your betters.
"Nobody ever protected me."
Your voice is calm, your smile flawless, but those are the words of someone small, weak, and helpless. Kyojuro's father slayed demons, but his mother raised him to defend the weak. You're a weak demon, and Kyojuro doesn't know what to do with himself.
In the hours that you've known each other, you turned Kyojuro into a demon. You bashed his head into a stone wall. You admitted eating humans without regret.
But you also healed his injuries and asked nothing in return. You dressed and fed him after he assaulted you and tarnished your honor. You told him the truth of your history and your choices, despite knowing he was a demon slayer.
During his first mission, Kyojuro said that life is a series of decisions. You never have unlimited options or unlimited time to think, but what you choose in that instant defines who you are.
In the milliseconds after you speak, Kyojuro makes a decision that will define him.
"I'll protect you!" he declares with the innocence of youth and the invincibility of warriors.
He did say that he would take responsibility for you, after all. Kyojuro keeps his promises. He takes your smaller hands in his and smiles at you, sun-bright.
You laugh in his face.
The shogunate of your era made armies of young men like him. When you left Japan, you learned that this happens the world over. Across countries and centuries, empires rise and fall under tides of blood from people like Kyojuro, young, hopeful, and foolish enough to adhere to chivalry, to noblesse oblige, to bushido, to believe their drops in the bucket can save the world.
You've lived through too many promises made and broken, met too many youths like him. For everyone you've reeled back from the brink, there's one hundred where you watched the light leave their eyes in despair or in death. Kyojuro is young. You are too old to believe men like him.