Work Text:
It's 3:57 in the morning, and the devil in her heart is restless.
The bedroom would be pitch black, if not for a street lamp’s flickering glow right outside her window. It's Tuesday (Wednesday now), she has to be up for class in four hours, and the evil spirit possessing her body won't stop rolling this way and that, somehow hogging the small twin-sized mattress in her incorporeality, sighing and scoffing and grumbling to herself–
"Won't you please stay still? I'm trying to sleep!" Asa finally snaps, eyes shut against the darkness. Her words are oil spilling over embers.
"Do not raise your voice at me!" Yoru hisses back, hackles raised. She sits up, clenched fists pounding down on the bed, and Asa rolls to face away from her. The old, dusty tome on parenting she'd skimmed through at the library last week said to help with soothing techniques, but it's impossible to give Yoru anything but the cold shoulder when she gets like this. For weeks, Asa has tried bargaining and compromising of all kinds, doing her best to make her existence for the foreseeable future at least tolerable, and now her patience runs thin. She's a kid, and she shouldn't have to baby a fucking devil.
Yoru’s still going off, rambling about the darkness of night, of tentacles curling mockingly before them, of her power… and of Chainsaw Man, of course. Asa's lucky if they manage to get through lunch (eaten in the school bathroom) without Yoru pecking at the subject like a hoary old bird, bitter with resentment. "You're not even trying to find him anymore, you just give me excuses to get out of it for another week. You forget yourself. You forget who I am," Yoru spits out the words, teeth bared in a snarl of frustration. "I could just kill you if I wanted. If you won't help me–"
"Fine! Fine!" Asa cuts her off, raising her voice over the angry buzzing of wasps coming from her own head. She sits up, facing her hallucination head on. "Fucking fine! Kill me then, why don't you? Then you can go off and do whatever the hell you planned to that blonde dumbass, see if I care."
Yoru's eyes narrow dangerously, a silent warning, and the bed creaks as she shifts her weight– is it Asa's body that moved, or is there really any mass to the incarnation of fear? Thinking too much about the lack of awareness she has over her own body is a slippery line to thread, so Asa's mind reels back, the same it would do when thinking too much about her own mortality and whatever came after. She focuses instead on the devil's words, and the cyanide dripping from her mouth.
"Don't test me, Asa."
"Please. As if you dared. I'm starting to wonder if you even could.” Asa's next comment catches in her throat, an instinct in her gut, but she shoves the hesitation away and spits it out anyways. "Kinda sad that all your threats are empty. Has War really gotten so weak?"
Alone in the dark of her bedroom, a girl slaps herself, hard.
She hears the resounding smack before she feels it, but the pain comes sure as thunder, a sharp burning to her right cheek. Asa's head whipped around and now she finds herself looking down at her crumpled sheets, speechless. Asa can feel Yoru's palm sting.
"You sniveling worm. It's so hard, but you just love playing the martyr, don't you? Going out with a whimper at the hands of that vermin, that's a fitting end for someone like you, yeah? Poor little Asa, so sad and betrayed," Says the devil, venom glinting on her teeth with every word. "You think you died the night we met, but you had been long dead already. There were maggots crawling in your ribcage by the time I found my place inside you. A useless corpse, a waste of breath, just waiting for someone to make better use of your body. No wonder your family–"
Asa tackles Yoru, bodily forcing her down to the bed, pushing all of her weight on top of the devil. Looking back she'll wonder if she was just punching pillows like an angry child, but right now it doesn't matter, the predicament of their symbiosis doesn't matter, her threats to snuff out her conscience like a candle don't matter. All that matters is pinning Yoru down, her fists clumsily connecting with her shoulders, her belly, her head.
Yoru allows her seven good seconds of venting before her hands reach up to lock Asa's wrists in an iron grip, and a knee to the stomach knocks the air out of her body. The ease with which the devil flips them around embarrasses Asa, and in a heartbeat Yoru has wrestled the girl down on her back, hips pinned down by the devil’s weight. Asa feels suffocated and not just from the kick; the weight of something much, much larger than her own body is pressing down on her now.
Outside, the street lamp's bulb bursts, and the amber light it filtered through Asa's sheer curtains is sucked out of the world. Darkness and cold moonlight steal into her bedroom like thieves, and all the girl can do is stare as color is washed away from her reality.
It isn't entirely gone; it gathers and pools in Yoru's irises, giving her doppelgänger’s cheeks a ruddy glow. To call them snakelike or feline isn't right, and their color is not that of the morning sun. Yoru's eyes are the gold and red of a bloodied dagger, the treacherous red and gold of a crown on the edge of rusting. The rings around her pupils shrink and expand as they focus on the girl's face.
"Do not do that again, Asa Mitaka. Not ever." Some would call them twins, and deep down Asa knows Yoru has no body of her own, only an ethereal puppet made in her image, like God is to mankind; and yet the face she looks up to now could not be hers, not in a million years. Yoru’s unkempt hair is a sheet of bottomless black, unnaturally dark, its messy silhouette making her look nothing less than feral. Asa’s features look different the way the devil wears them; her face is lined, sharper, and her smile is often cruel in ways the girl never is. The devil is not smiling now.
Yoru’s hands are still pinning Asa’s down against the bed, her legs straddling her host’s hips. Her grip gets tighter, nails digging into the delicate skin. “Your body belongs to me, Asa,” she says slowly, as if explaining the ways of the world to a child. And what could a human ever be to War Incarnate, if not a child?
The War Devil's eyes glow golden in the night.
They aren’t the cozy golden-brown of dark irises watching the sunset, nor the thick hues of honey dripping down into warm milk. Their gold is fickle, full of arrogance and recklessness, unconcerned with humanity’s whims. “You live because I allow it. You draw breath because I allow it. Justice cut your head in half, but I took up the pieces and put you back together. I did not bring you back to defy me.”
The War Devil's eyes glow golden in the night.
In them, Asa sees millenia of conquest, hears the trumpeting of hooves and the old steel song, sword on spear, an ageless waltz danced in her honor. The gold in her eyes is the stuff of nightmares, the amber of fire consuming fallen soldiers by the hundreds and the thousands, and hers is the word that summons the clashing of armies, famine and death riding beside her, never far. Asa swallows thickly, and Yoru savors her fear. She licks her lips.
The War Devil's eyes glow golden in the night.
They’re beautiful.
Yoru blinks, confused and embarrassed to read this thought, and as her grip loosens Asa raises her right hand and gently cups the devil’s cheek, her palm lightly resting over the scar. The skin is warm. Alive.
“Why do you like it when I’m scared?” Asa’s voice is barely louder than a breath, too afraid to provoke Yoru further by disrupting the silence. The quiet is smothering, suffocating, a crushing pressure the devil exudes.
Yoru’s nose wrinkles as she scowls. “The same reason why water is so refreshing after a long day. Why food tastes better when you’re starving,” she explains, not kindly. The stupidity of the inquiry is only making her angrier. Asa’s hand still hasn’t left her cheek.
The girl’s body feels stiff, frozen in place— caught in the headlights? She certainly understands the deer now, staring straight on at the blinding yellow brilliance of fast-approaching death. Asa swallows thickly, carefully considering her words. “Yoru, I know you’re—“
“—I’m not afraid!” The devil lashes out, teeth bared in a snarl; the rust on her words is blood-red. Asa gets whiplash from how quickly the devil releases her, coiling like a wounded serpent, retreating to the edge of the bed furthest from her. “I’m not, and I know what you’re thinking." Her voice is full of anger, full of resentment. "I'm not afraid of Chainsaw Man, no matter what he did. What he did to me."
Asa's mind reels, back to the night where Yoru told her about her fight with the Chainsaw Devil, and whatever he had done to her. She didn't understand the mechanics of it just yet, the technicalities of something being erased, but she knew of how people could tear chunks of you out, swallow them, and make you theirs to consume. She knew fear.
"The Horsemen are all missing," Yoru was saying, too caught up in her rage and oblivious to Asa's lack of context for… anything, really. "Conquest is gone, and all the better. Last I heard, the Chinese government had her. But not before Chainsaw Man ate her. They say he cut her up…"
The War Devil clenches her teeth with an audible click, her hands pressed into tight fists. They’re trembling. Is it anger, still? Asa has no way to know, no way to ask, but the possibility bewilders her. "If we find Chainsaw Man… If he… defeats us…"
"I'm not sure what would become of you, honestly. Might be the Hero of Hell tears us apart and lets you slink away. Wouldn't you like that?" Her scarred doppelgänger smiles bitterly, but it fades quickly. "Then War will be gone from the world, and all the countries will cheer."
And wouldn't she like that? Asa tries to picture it, letting hazy images run through her mind like damaged film, shapes half-formed playing and laughing and working and building and loving and living and dying in a world of her own making, a haven of tranquility. Would it be her contribution what brought on such a vision? She thinks of Yuko then, somewhere beyond the city landscape, most likely under the care of her devil hunter relative by now… working on a way to regain her humanity, or not.
Yoru follows along what their mind conjures, impassive. Asa thinks of justice, and praise, and recognition. She thinks of superheroes from old comic strips, and sees Denji, golden-eyed and beautiful, babbling about Chainsaw Man and his newest feats of heroism.
And, eventually, Asa pictures a world without Yoru.
A happy ending, where all ten fingers are her own again. The copycat twin wearing her face to the masquerade of their daily life finally dissolving, someone else’s problem at long last, released from Asa’s gilded cage so she could sit through the withering of her wings in peace. The door clicks shut and she is alone. Outside, the world cheers.
“No need to be so gloomy about it,” Yoru mumbles half-heartedly, uncomfortable with the silence flooding into the bedroom like the shuffling of shoes in a funeral parlor. Maybe she meant for it to be playful. Maybe she didn’t want to hear Asa think about forgetting her within their shared mind.
Asa scoots closer, as careful as if approaching a timid animal. She lifts a hand, slower and gentler this time, and lets it hover in the space between them, a peace offering. Apprehension and the beginnings of nervousness cloud the rich amber of Yoru's eyes, an unsightly expression Asa has only ever seen whenever the devil spoke of her beastly nemesis and her older sisters. Sometimes it felt like both were the same to Yoru. The devil eventually reciprocates, leaning her cheek into the touch willingly.
“I wouldn’t just forget you, you know,” Asa murmurs, and Yoru frowns. It’s more than just petty stubbornness— it's about the way in which the devil has left an impact on the girl, made a longing-shaped indentation on the barren soil of her heart. And oh, how she's made it bloom. "I don't think I could, even if I wanted. If you get your war and we lose, and Chainsaw Man… eats you…Yoru, he can try and erase War, but there's no way in hell he could ever erase you."
She actually feels a hundred thoughts rise to Yoru's mind, a good third of them just insults, but Asa's voice tramples over them. "I know who you are and what you've been. I'm not stupid," she deadpans. "But I don't care about that stuff. I know who you are now. It's about the way you lose yourself in old history books, how you always take over when we walk home too late at night, the way you hum in the back of my mind when I shower, so quietly that you think I can't hear. But I do, I listen." Asa hadn't realized how close she'd leaned in, or how her companion hadn't pulled back yet either.
The predawn gloom crept up the sky, tinting the room with a powdery blue. Morning slowly brought color back into the world. "He can't erase that. He can't erase your name. He can have War if he wants, but Yoru– I won't let her fade. I won't."
She felt like a child making demands, and she must've seemed it too, cause Yoru actually huffs out a halfhearted laugh. Asa can feel the devil's teeth clench, a lump stuck in their shared throat. "I'll remember. So you remember me too, whatever happens to you next." Asa blurts out, closing the distance between them. Her lips brush over Yoru's, timidly grazing the phantom warmth of her mouth. She knew she wasn't actually there, and if she were to push their position any further, she'd phase through the apparition like morning mist. But maybe the ghost of this kiss could be enough for now. Maybe seeing Yoru's eyelashes flutter from this close was enough. "This is our contract," she said, and couldn't tell which of the two spoke the words into the other's mouth.
Asa's eyes opened as if waking from a dream, and found the space in front of her empty. But the concave inside of her chest was full to bursting, and nestled within her ribcage Yoru sighed, basking in the tranquility of sunrise. She hadn't just cobbled her flesh back together like pieces of a morbid puzzle– Yoru had brought Asa back to life in body and soul, and made her realize she didn't want to die after all. And each night when she closed her eyes to sleep and ran down the same miserable alley, struggling not to slip on chicken guts, she knew she'd wake up to an all-too familiar face by her side. For the first time in almost two decades of life, Asa Mitaka was not afraid to trip and fall, because she knew someone would be there to catch her. For as long as she drew breath, the War Devil would not be forgotten.
And so Asa sat on her small bed in her cramped room and looked out the window, and through her eyes Yoru could see the morning birds, the fading night, sleepy Tokyo stirring awake. And maybe yesterday she had been a great warrior, enemies trampled beneath her hooves, and maybe tomorrow she’d be nothing but scraps between the Chainsaw’s teeth. But today was Wednesday and they would need to get ready for class soon, and try not to sleep through their math class… But they still had some time to sit through the rising of the sun, comfortable in their shared silence. And maybe, just for now, this peace was enough.