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"He's not healing."
Hakuji is calm in his tone and manner, betraying his rampaging anxiety, generating every and each worst possible scenario in his head. It manifests in the slightest tremors at the tip of his fingers, gently brushing Kyojuro's cold, clammy hand.
One week since the collapse of the infinite fortress. One week since the final battle that led to a victory of a heavy cost. One week since Muzan Kibutsuji was killed — and Kyojuro hasn't regenerated an inch.
He lies like a dead body on the bed, the gaping hole where his heart should be blissfully covered by the hospital gown and the blanket. If it weren't for the lack of rot, Hakuji would've been convinced he was dead. After all, demons don't leave behind a corpse.
Yet again, Kyojuro dreamt when he's not supposed to, and Hakuji worries that the exception might apply to Kyojuro in this situation as well.
He can hear the disbelief in the tone of the four butterfly workers by the door — they still fear him, and really, who could blame them — and sighs, pushing Kyojuro's hair out of his face. Even unconscious like this, Kyojuro still looks exhausted. Drained.
"He needs to eat."
—
Akaza could feel it from miles away — the bitter cold stabbing to his head like needles as he runs and runs through the halls to nowhere. His footsteps are rough and frantic, leaving broken tatami under his sole, following the pull of his compass in search for Kyojuro.
The wrath of his lord isn't something new to him. Muzan is beyond freezing even towards his favourites. The calm, calculated performance as he seeks for the Blue Spider Lily quickly melts away whenever things go awry even for an inch.
He's been off the hook for too long, has been given too much of a leisure for Kyojuro, with his empty promises of making the former hashira useful, that he'll be a tool as valuable as he is. There will be no more chances.
Not after Ubuyashiki trapped Muzan within a spiderweb at the cost of his life. Not after Muzan caught and absorbed the traitor from hundreds of years ago. Not that true immortality is still so far away from his grasp with the younger of the Kamado kept away where he couldn't see, couldn't reach.
Nezuko, the demon who conquered the sun. Nezuko, who sleeps and sleeps to heal without consuming human flesh.
Without her, Muzan only has one more thing right in his grip. It's a desperate measure, not in any way a proven solution unlike the Kamado who had tamed the sun, but Muzan would take anything he could in this situation.
He has to get to Kyojuro before Muzan does.
—
His suggestion was met with dread. It was a misunderstanding quickly corrected with Hakuji’s exasperated sigh. They won’t feed Kyojuro flesh, but rather blood from donors. Just the mere thought of making Kyojuro do such a thing when he's at his most vulnerable already feels like a betrayal.
Kyojuro struggled to do as much as drink blood back in the Fortress.
Day by day, Hakuji feeds him blood — pouring it slowly and carefully from the spout of a teapot to his throat. Hakuji holds his chin and pushes it up for him to swallow, wiping up any excess that escapes his lips.
Day by day he watches Kyojuro heal, peeking under the hospital garment to watch the muscles and flesh string itself back together at a snail's pace, listening his ribs crack and bend back to their rightful position.
It's a messy process, by any definition. Healing means he starts to bleed again, and keeping the gaping hole where his heart had been torn and eaten is in no means easy nor clean. Still, Hakuji holds him, washes the sheets dirtied with red before the color could claim the fabric as its permanent home, replaces them with fresh, warm ones from under the sun, keeping Kyojuro as comfortable like he was just asleep.
His calloused fingers tangle around Kyojuro's — cold and limp — squeezing, whispering to his ear that he'll be waiting for him, kissing his jaw as a temporary goodbye.
It's not until another week that Kyojuro's chest is healed, heart beating warm and steady behind the ribs. In its place is a gnarly scar, ebbing away like a fleshy mass of spiderweb over his heart, but he’ll live. He has to.
With his time as Upper Moon Three, his most important mission is to look for the whereabouts of the Blue Spider Lily. In extension, he possesses a certain degree of knowledge on how to undo the curse, but in his blind pursuit of strength as Akaza, such knowledge was worthless to him.
For Hakuji, it’s a blessing he couldn’t be more grateful for.
—
"What a damn shame."
The air is suffocating even before he could register the scenery before him. Red paints messy streaks along the floor, stopping halfway as it drips down the wall, past a pale lip—wiped away by Muzan's thumb as he wipes his mouth clean.
It's happening again.
"What a damn shame, Akaza." The glare sends venom straight to his veins, freezing him in place as he stares back helplessly. "If you were able to keep him fed, if you taught him to be a proper demon, maybe the rest of this pest's body wouldn't come to waste."
Blood pools around Kyojuro's body, shock-filled eyes stare up to Akaza's own. And Akaza hears something else, sees someone else.
(“They poisoned the well!”)
His knees hit the floor as his legs melt beneath him, skin cracking as Muzan breaks him apart inch by inch, hair by hair. He takes it, lets him, all too aware of the fact that the gap of power between them. Muzan could kill him then and there if he so wishes, all within the snap of a finger.
By Muzan’s foot, Kyojuro clenches his jaw, throws up more red as he grabs at the cuff of Muzan’s pants. But the threat in his eyes only serves as fuel to Muzan’s flames, earning him nothing but a kick to his beaten ribs.
No.
Stop it, he wants to tell him, but his vocal cord is burnt by his own blood, by his own curse. Stop it, you’ll only hurt yourself more. You don’t stand a chance against him.
He watches helplessly as Kyojuro screams, choked by the taste of his own blood. Until one last kick sends his body flying right by Akaza, still frozen in place.
He’s never been strong enough.
(When the people I loved were in distress. I was never there.)
“I've wasted enough time with you.” The vitriol radiating off Muzan’s very being betrays his calm tone, veins popping and eyes red. “Make yourself useful before you end up like him.”
It's with a warning and Kyojuro's half dead body that he leaves Akaza be.
A warning. One last chance. One last chance to let Kyojuro rot within the depth of the fortress, to fully serve the demon lord once again. One last chance to pick his side, to choose for whose sake he will sacrifice himself for.
But as he slings an arm around Kyojuro’s beaten body, so warm with his own blood, as he feels Kyojuro’s ragged breaths slow down until it stops, he remembers what it was like to hold the cold body of his dearest like so.
(“I just… I just don’t care… anymore.”)
—
“There was an old woman who made wind chimes near your family’s estate. You always stopped by in front of her house that was decorated with plenty of painted wind chimes, watching the wind blow at them and hearing them sing. Until one day she noticed, and she let you pick one to take home, since you seemed to love them so much.”
Hakuji tells this memory as he pulls at the curtains with a shaking hand, letting the gentle ray of dawn peeks through the window. And every time, every time he turns back, sees Kyojuro bathing in the mellow light, he feels his eyes warm and his heart heavy.
Two weeks since Kyojuro was human once again, and five since he hasn’t woken up.
“You picked—” Hakuji’s voice wavers, breaks. He takes a deep, shaky breath, blinking rapidly. “You- you picked the one with purple flowers painted on it, and you insisted so much that you hang it up yourself, so you did. When the wind blew, you could sit on the engawa and watch it for hours. It surprised your parents, because they could never sit you down no matter what they did.”
He sits down by Kyojuro’s bed, a hand hovering his face so hesitantly. Like he would hurt him again. Like he would be his demise once again.
“You were such an energetic child,” he continues, running his fingers over the curves of Kyojuro’s face. His chin, his dry lips, over the bridge of his nose, and over the eye his very own hand had ruined. “Your mother always wondered why you hadn’t blown up yet.”
The laugh that came out of his lips is low, heavy. Like the dark bags sitting under his eyes. Every syllable is a threat to the tears welling in his eyes, threatening to break the dam.
"...When your mother got sick, you took off the chime and hung it in front of her room. You said you wanted the wind to blow away her disease, and that you'll work hard to take care of her while your father worked and trained."
It's one of the memories Kyojuro had willingly told him in the fortress, unlike the ones Akaza had eavesdropped on. One of the earliest, one of the first Kyojuro had told him over and over time and again.
Each time he forgot more, each time there were more details missing, until Kyojuro couldn't remember even the face of his own mother.
"She had deep black hair and bright red eyes that always reminded you of fireworks in the night sky. Whenever you went to see them together with her, with your brother and father, you told me you liked to watch the fireworks from behind her eyes."
But Akaza reminded him, and Hakuji will do the same.
"Your father wouldn't let you hang up any wind chimes again around the time he started drinking," he continues, "You never told me why."
Akaza never understood. Hakuji does. Now that he remembers his own family, how he had wished for the pain of losing them would go away, so much that he erased them from his mind as Muzan's blood coursed through his veins, molding his body and mind.
"Hey, Kyojuro." Hakuji's fingers shake with his lip, his voice, as he runs a thumb on Kyojuro's grayish knuckles. "Would you like that? We could hang the wind chimes by the window, then you can- you can sit and watch, like you used to do."
Teeth bear down on his lip as his voice breaks, as he fails to keep the tears at bay.
"You just need to wake up, Kyojuro."
—
He won’t let it happen again. He won’t let his promise be nothing this time.
Akaza is frantic as he carries Kyojuro in his arms. He stopped moving, stopped responding, his eyes half-lidded and glazed over as Akaza runs like a frantic blizzard. Runs to the end of infinity, to wherever is safe enough within the endless halls, runs from the two slayers tailing him with bloodlust.
He can't let them get to him. Kyojuro is a demon first and foremost. They'll kill him.
His regeneration has been slowed down after Muzan's assault, and he doesn't have the focus nor mindpower to calculate whether or not he could fight against a hashira like this. Wounded, with someone he can't abandon that could be caught in the crossfire. His best option is to run, hide.
"How long are you going to run?! Coward! Coward!! Come back here, you bastard!"
A blade draws a devastating path through the back of his head, piercing straight to his eye. The force is enough to make him stumble, the added weight of the katana and the loss of half of his vision throw him off balance.
"GIVE BACK RENGOKU-SAN!!"
And he's not quick enough to recover, his foot separated clean off his leg from the calf in one swift strike of a flowing river. His breath is stuck in his throat, falling in slow motion as dread creeps to his veins.
He falls on his side with Kyojuro held to his chest, careful not to let the blade touch him. He can't fight without his hands, he can't run with only one leg. He can't leave Kyojuro here. And for once Akaza feels panic boiling in his throat that he couldn't think, only helplessly glares at the approaching slayers with little chance to fight, if he wants to prevent more harm to come to his companion.
The sword in his head only makes the room spin more than it already is.
Those red eyes are burning with bloodlust, veins boiling rancor, yet chipping away at Akaza's fingertips like a winter's frostbite.
This is not the same boy Kyojuro brought with him on that train. Not the kind, sweet boy Kyojuro had told him of, who cares about his family first and his own life second.
(He wonders if this is what he looked like on that day. When he found his family dead, when he walked to that accursed dojo like a puppet dangling on strings.)
(He knows about revenge all too well—so of course Tanjiro will kill him and Kyojuro all in one swoop, for taking away the brother he met on that train from him.)
"Give him back," the boy says—a clear command.
With shaking hands and clenched jaws Akaza holds Kyojuro tighter, shaking his head.
Each step the boy takes only picks up his heart rate, and Akaza has little choice but to freeze, all too aware of the warning gaze the Hashira behind the boy gave him—move, and I'll cut off more of you.
Yet as the boy has but an inch of a distance from him, something in the air shifts.
A whiff, and everything so dreaded about the boy thaws. The cold in the red of his eyes melts to something like perplexion.
"Giyuu-san, wait," so has changed his voice, now as gentle as Kyojuro's stories.
The so-called Giyuu stops, giving him a puzzled look.
"He's protecting him."
—
As his body was wrecked by quiet sobs, a hand over his eyes as tears spill, Hakuji didn't notice the presence just by the doorway.
Embarrassment is something he'd usually feel for being caught at such a weak moment, but the grief for something that is yet to happen overpowers it. With his sleeve he wipes his tears away, steadying his breath, only then the visitor finally lets themself in.
"Good morning, Hakuji-san."
The greeting is far too easy coming off from someone like Kyojuro's own brother. In his peripheral vision little Senjuro is a mess of colors, blurred by the leftover waterworks at the corner of his eye. When he approaches closer to place something on the night stand, does then Hakuji realize he was carrying a small bouquet of flowers.
There are a lot of flowers in the room as is. He dislikes how it starts to feel like a funeral.
"They're from Tomioka-san." Senjuro's eyes are red, puffy, no wonder having sobbed out the worst part of the storm. There's still tremor in the tip of his fingers, Hakuji notices, as he sits down on the other side of the bed, the satchel slung around him clinking with whatever trinkets he might be carrying.
"I can leave, if you'd like." Hakuji concludes, so sure that he's the source of the kid's anxiety.
"Eh?" Senjuro seems flustered, a moment before he shakes his head profusely, refusing the offer. "N-no, please don't. I- it's actually nice that you're here. Uh—"
What an odd thing to say. Nonetheless, Hakuji doesn't interrupt through Senjuro's stutters, combing for the right words rattling in his head.
"I- I- wanna- I wanna thank you," sniffles Senjuro, voice cracking at the edge. "For- taking care of my brother. For protecting him."
Huh?
"Tomioka-san… told me what happened." With tears he continues, wiping the corner of his eyes before another storm could hit. "I- I can't… I can't possibly imagine what would've happened if you weren't there for him. Thank you. Thank you. "
The kid has his head tucked to his chin, bowing just across of him, and Hakuji wants him to stop. Wants to tell him he's undeserving of his gratitude.
"I was the one who got him hurt in the first place." Yet, Hakuji can't bring himself to put the tiniest edge in his voice. "He wouldn't be taken if it weren't for me."
Senjuro's laugh is brittle, shoulders shaking as he lifts his head back up. "We could agree to disagree on that. I'll change my mind when my brother tells me otherwise, okay?"
Something clinks within the satchel as the smaller Rengoku shifts on his seat, his hand fishing within the neatly sewn leather. Hakuji blinks, questions in his eyes about the satchel, as well as the undeserving kindness everyone in the estate seem to always offer him.
"He told you that, didn't he?" Then, he adds as an afterthought: "I was- I was eavesdropping, sorry. I didn't mean to, but I didn't want to disturb you either…"
Red quickly finds place at the tip of his ears, yet in his embarrassment he watches Senjuro's hand re-emerges with curiosity. In his small palm is a clean, round glass, unmistakably a wind chime, plain as it is.
Oh.
"That's a fun one, he likes to tell people about it," he talks as he puts the chime on the safety of the bed, digging to his satchel once again. From the sounds, Hakuji could tell there are at least a couple inside. "That particular chime, though… I broke it."
There's remorse in the fragile of his smile, and a small paint set in his hand, twelve vivid hues of light held within his fingers.
"So, I was thinking that I'll paint him new ones, hang them outside." His little hand fumbles as he fetches the rest of needed tools — a small glass, smaller brushes. "Maybe… Maybe they'll guide him home, too."
Hakuji's gaze turns soft, reminded that, at least, he's not alone in his grief. Were it not for the distance he would've given the mess of Senjuro's locks a little ruffle. He wonders if he would allow him to.
Once again his thoughts were disturbed. "Do you want to help?"
"I'll get water."
Senjuro's laugh is softer this time, more genuine. "No, I mean… Would you like to paint, too? I brought a couple brushes."
This too is a long-forgotten memory. Brush in his hand, a paper on the floor, clumsy strokes on the paper met with bright, twinkling eyes as always. She would ask him to draw animals she could never see from her bed, and he would produce oddly shaped creatures from his poor memory.
"...Yeah," he replies, after a pause. "I'd love that."
…
Kyojuro has been walking for a while.
It's difficult to navigate within the darkness that seems to span until an eternity, swallowing his every senses as he steps through. He walks with an automatic quality, a hole in his chest in more ways than one, following wherever the heat leads him.
Surely, that's where he's supposed to go.
The numbness has taken home from his core to the tip of his fingers, engulfing his very being until nothing else is left but a lost soul and a broken body. In what feels like an eternity and a blink on this path to nowhere Kyojuro wonders, if he's become so repulsive that neither heaven nor hell want him.
Father's voice echoes through his ears, and whatever left of his heart aches. Oh how he was right in the end. How Kyojuro had died alone, as no one but the weakest link of their honorable bloodline, tainting the glory of their history with his sins.
A distant chime reaches his ears.
His eyes widen, body going stiff with the presence behind him. With eyes glued to the back of his head.
It could be a moment or an hour that Kyojuro gathered enough courage to turn his back, to see the unexpected visitor in this limbo.
Mother's eyes meet his, brilliant even in death, expression unreadable.
That itself is enough to break the dam, and all at once everything strikes Kyojuro with the intensity of a flooding wave—the guilt, the shame, the countless regrets of what could've been, what he could've done—sending tremors to every inch of his skin until a pitiful gasp escapes his throat.
Kyojuro's knees hit the floor beneath him, hands on each side of his head as he bows.
"I'm sorry!" The tears are unforgiving as they rain down his face in a heavy torrent. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry I couldn't be strong enough. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Senjuro. I'm sorry I couldn't make Father proud. I'm sorry I couldn't help him get back on his feet for us. I'm sorry! I'm sorry—"
His voice breaks until his words are drowned with the rain, dragging him down deeper to the depth of his remorse until he can't breathe.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be a better son. I'm sorry- I'm sorry I've failed you."
"Kyojuro."
Mother's voice only aches him further, needles to his shattered heart. But her touch is warm as she caresses the mess of his hair, as she pulls him up and holds him in an embrace like she did too long ago.
"I couldn't ask for a better son than you."
Kyojuro freezes, yet at the same time, the whispered words thaw something inside him. Something heavy, something he had been carrying for all his life that he never noticed, not until it was gone.
His grip around the soft fabric of Mother's is desperate, shaken from half a life's worth of grief, of wounded pieces of himself that never truly healed. And he holds her, cries the drought away to her embrace, like he had wanted to do that very day.
When the storm passed, when the crashing waves calmed, she speaks once again: "I can't bring you with me, though."
Ah. So he's going to burn, after all.
Yet there's only acceptance as he closes his eyes, nuzzling against Mother's shoulder. He feels as light as her hand running on his scalp—content. Like a tired child once again.
He could burn in the purgatory of his own name for as long as it takes. He doesn't care anymore.
"Go home, Kyojuro," she tells him, "You've made them wait long enough."
—
A distant chime reaches his ears.
The soft sheet covering him is not a stranger, but the warmth engulfing him is. Gentle ray of light like ones he would see in his dreams, when the stars were merciful enough — feet tickled by the grass under his soles, laughs echoing through the endless blue sky with the sun hanging high.
He never wanted to wake up then. He doesn't want to wake up now.
But that distant chime rings again, the noise anchoring him to the waking world. Kyojuro huffs, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, willing himself to crack his eyes open despite his own protests.
What greets him isn't the confines of the fortress.
The bed is of a western style, sinking like clouds under his weight — by his side someone is asleep with his face on the bed, Kyojuro can't quite care about that yet. The clock ticks fill the lavender walls surrounding him like a heart within a warm body, accompanying the sunshine peeking so shyly between the curtains.
Sunshine?
Kyojuro's breath is caught in his throat, the past flashing behind his eyes as the chime rings in its ignorance just outside the window — Upper Two pinning him by the throat. The infinity fortress. Caged. Trying to run. Akaza protecting him, keeping him safe. Muzan ripping his heart out of his chest. Akaza was hurt.
Akaza was hurt.
Where is he? If Kyojuro's human now, then this isn't the fortress. If Kyojuro's human now — what'll happen to Akaza?
(They'll kill him. They'll kill him — he's a demon, they'll kill him.)
"Akaza." Gods, it hurts to talk. Each syllable like sandpaper to his throat . "Akaza!"
Every rampaging thoughts only feed the frantic heartbeat behind his ribs, threatening to break free from the confines of his chest. It restricts the oxygen in his lungs, forcing him to breathe in shallow gasps until he chokes, sweating bullets as his hands grab wildly for an anchor.
Where is he. Where is he. He can't do this without him. He's not safe without him. Where is he.
"Kyojuro?"
In his panic he doesn't notice how his frantic breathing had jolted the poor sod by his side awake. Blue eyes staring wide at him in shock, before getting to his senses himself.
"Oh, gods. Kyojuro! "
It's by instinct that Kyojuro latches on to that familiar voice, fingers digging at the skin of the voice's arms as he shakes violently. Warm hands touch his face, eyes wide with worry, lips instructing him to breathe.
And he does, deep and slow like he had trained all his life. In his haze he drinks in the rough thumb caressing his face, the warmth of the skin under his palm, until the tight knot in his chest finally loosens free.
Kyojuro's grip on him loosens, and he can feel blood caking under his nails from the broken skin, but he doesn't quite have the energy to feel guilty.
Instead he looks up to the eyes observing him, concern shifting to relief, until tears fall down to the bridge of Kyojuro's nose, down to his cheek.
"Good job, Kyojuro."
He cups his face with a smile as fragile as a butterfly's wings, tears as warm as a morning drizzle, bathing in the very sun he had once dreaded, the one he once ran away from in their bloody clash.
It's the first time he sees him like this.
"You're—"
"Human." And the look in his eyes is something Kyojuro could cherish for years on end, as his lips wobble and his eyes water. "Save your breath. I- I promised you. I promised you. I'm—"
Kyojuro grunts when Akaza throws away his attempts at words, instead opting to pull him to a tight embrace — the pressure hurts, but gods, Kyojuro can't bring himself to care. Not when Akaza's so warm despite his tremors, quaking against his frail body. Not when his tears an odd comfort as they leave a wet stain on his shoulder.
"Welcome home, Kyojuro."
The chime rings louder than it has been — like restarting his heart, hammering one final nail on the depth of his core, of Mother's embrace and her last goodbye to him.
Once again he cries. Once again he holds on to Akaza like he was his only anchor to this world. Once again Akaza lets him as his nails dig to his back as his words were drowned out with his sobs, with the weight of his wounds.
But he's home. He's home.