Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When night falls, Kanao remembers them. The faces of the siblings she left behind. Like every other night, they plead with her. They all want to know.

“Why?”

Kanao doesn’t have an answer.

“Why were you the only one who got saved?”

She doesn’t know, either. Why her string snapped. Why her tears won’t fall.

“Liar.”

Their voices grow louder, angrier. Kanao retreats under her pillow, trying in vain to cover hears. She can still hear them - and worse yet, they’re right.

She is a liar. Deep down, Kanao does know. She’s still scared. Deep down, she’s downright terrified -

That one day she’ll wake up, and be right back where she started.

Kanao knows, and she remembers.

The worst things always happen at night.

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“Onee-san…!” Shinobu’s frustrated voice rings down the hall, reaching the feet of the girl who wasn’t supposed to be there at all. “Can’t you do something?!”

Kanae’s voice is warm, gentle, and entirely at odds with her sister’s. Her flippant, dreamy attitude only aggravates Shinobu more, and the words leave her lips before she can stop them. “That girl…she’s completely useless! She can’t do anything on her own!”

For the first time in forever, Kanao can feel pain. Something about those words makes her heart ache. With a trembling hand, she clutches onto the coin Kanae gave her, until the very shape of it is embedded into her palm.

“Useless…” Kanao repeats the word under her breath, and it burns on her tongue. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s had the word hurled at her so many times before, so why did it only start hurting now?

A flip of the coin quickly decides for her - It doesn’t matter.

None of it does.

She’ll keep on living for the day she can’t be considered a burden anymore.

With a forced smile and a heavy heart, Kanao quietly returns to her training, the coin in her pocket weighing her down more than she could ever know.

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Kanao wakes up in a cold sweat, hands reaching out for the shadow of someone who she knows has already long departed from this world. Though her eyes are glassy and her smile ghostly, Kanao doesn’t feel any fear as she stares at her sister. Just seeing Kanae again, in any form, is enough to put her heart at ease.

It’s only when she notices the blood pouring from Kanae’s mouth, staining her once kind smile that Kanao begins to tremble, the weight of that terrible guilt wracking her entire body. When Kanae died, she couldn’t do a thing. She couldn’t protect her. She couldn’t even cry at her funeral. She was completely and utterly useless.

Kanao wants to scream, but the sound won’t make it out of her mouth. Fear has claimed her once again, as if to say that she’ll always be her parent’s loyal slave.

“Please…Don’t think of yourself like that. We love you, Kanao. So, so much.”

Kanae’s voice is as comforting as it always was, but Kanao can’t bring herself to look at her.

Her parents, her siblings, Kanae’s death, Shinobu’s revenge - It’s too much. It’s all too much, and she’s one, just one tiny crack away from having her string snap all over again.

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Kanae fears her heart might melt away under the searing, Hellish heat of Kanao’s despair, fears she might find herself dying all over again, drowning under the torrent of Kanao’s guilt. It hurts, on an unspeakable level, to see her beloved little sister tortured like this. She wants to stop the ache in Kanao’s heart as much as she wants the blood to stop leaking from her mouth.

But Kanae knows, simple wants and wishes won’t get her anywhere. This world wasn’t so kind, and that was exactly why she had to be kind in its place.

In life, Kanae firmly believed. Just one smile could change the world.

And for this no good, rotten world to be able to smile with her, happiness has to start from somewhere. Over time, Kanae came to realize. It had to start from within.

Slowly, Kanae forces the corners of her bloodied lips upwards. She remembers Shinobu’s smile, the one she loves so very much. It gives her the strength she needs to move on.

Kanae wipes at her mouth, glad to be rid of that incessant, luminous glow, and lets the blood join all the other stains on her Haori. Kanao is trembling faintly, frozen to the bed as if she can’t bear to leave it. Kanae is determined, steadfast loyalty shining for the sake of a single goal. If grief is the weight that pulls her little sister down to those unbearable depths of despair, then Kanae will be the one to remove it.

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Kanao feels the light flutter of butterfly wings on her back, and she lets herself relax into the gentle warmth that covers her completely before she can think twice about it. That sweet release, this comforting presence - Kanao only became aware of just how much she’d missed it until she was reunited with her again.

Wrapped up in the arms of a saint disguised as her sister, for one beautiful, transient moment, Kanao felt whole again.

Only the sad, muffled sounds coming from above broke her spell. The kind, strong sister - the one who never wavered, no matter how bleak the situation - was trembling as she held her close to her chest. Somehow, their roles had become reversed.

“Kanae…?” In a voice barely above a whisper, Kanao asked. “Are you crying?”

She nodded in response, and Kanao could swear rain was falling. “Why?” Despite her best efforts, she just couldn’t understand.

“Because,” Kanae choked out. “Kanao can’t cry.” She held her tighter, and Kanao felt lighter. “So until the day you can, I’ve decided…I’m going to cry enough tears for the both of us.”

Even now, as she held onto her little sister for dear life, as she desperately cried the tears that her sister could not, Kanae still forced herself to smile.

It was one of the most beautiful, and yet still one of the saddest things Kanao had ever seen.

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“Kanao?” With a heavy heart, Shinobu knocks at her door. “Can I come in?”

One moment passes, then another. She had to be flipping her coin. Shinobu doesn’t mind - by now, she’s more than used to to it. If it helped Kanao feel more at ease, then it wasn’t her place to say anything more. In the absence of Kanae, trying to understand her little sister was the least she could do.

“Yes.” When Kanao finally replies, Shinobu is flooded with relief. If she’d turned her away now, truthfully, she wouldn’t have known what else to do.

To her surprise, when she enters, Kanao is already faintly smiling, though her eyes are red - which only helps confirm Shinobu’s suspicions. “Is everything alright?” For once, the concern in her sister’s voice isn’t lost on Kanao.

“Last night, I…” Shinobu hesitates, not wanting to make her uncomfortable. Kanao blinks, waiting for her to continue. “I thought I heard you crying.”

Her eyes widen, but Kanao’s shocked expression soon gives way to a gentle smile. One that feels oddly familiar. It’s a smile that fills Shinobu with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia.

For once, Kanao doesn’t need her coin to help her decide -

This secret is something she’d like to cherish for a little while longer.

Chapter Text

Under the ghostly light of the moon, Shinobu sat in silence with her successor. The night sky was littered with stars, but she couldn’t find the beauty in it. Shinobu wasn’t like her sister. On some nights, she wondered if she ever could be.

No matter how many times she forced a smile, it never got any easier. The anger never truly disappeared. It simply stagnated, quietly rotting away in her veins. Shinobu let a rare sigh fall from her lips, completely unaware of the distance that Kanao had put her best foot forward in trying to close.

Tentatively, as though she might break, Kanao gently rested her head on Shinobu’s shoulder. In recent years, they’d never been this close. Not since Kanae first brought her home. Tightly, she gripped onto the coin in her pocket for courage.

“Do you miss her?” Kanao didn’t know where else to start, so she started here.

The air turned colder as Shinobu’s breath hitched, but she didn’t move away. Her shoulders slumped, but she didn’t look away. Facing Kanao directly for what felt like the first time in years, Shinobu finally allowed the forced smile to fade from her face.

“Every day,” Shinobu whispered, and Kanao knew she was telling the truth.

As a comfortable, familiar silence settled in between the two of them, Kanao looked to the sky. The stars seemed to be shining much, much brighter than any of the nights that had come before.

“I think Kanae-san is making the people up there very, very happy. And I think she’d want us to be happy, too.”

Shinobu stilled, Kanao’s sentimental words worming their way into her heart. “…Yeah?”

Gently, Kanao smiled. “Yeah.”

After a small, meaningful while, Shinobu finally smiled with her.