Chapter Text
Losing something does not hurt as much as the tidal weight of emotions that comes and tears through your soul, grinding its crushing weight against the poor and fragile beating of your heart. Marking you. Branding you. "Forever cursed to shoulder this grief on one shoulder, and anguish on the other", a marking of one who has lost.
The darkened lines beneath the eyes, as with the sunken cheeks and the deepened dip of the mouth's curves, all signs of one who bears the weight of grief on their shoulders. Signs of someone who has lost .
Grief is a tricky bastard to deal with, because once you have lost something, you'll continue to lose, and lose, and keep losing all that you have left. As you mourn your loss, grief will take from you your appetite. It will take your tears, your energy, your capacity to do anything, and before you know it, grief has crippled you of your ability to go outside. You will lose colour, you will lose mass. You will keep on losing and losing until all that's left of you is a carcass with only bones to show.
Grief will consume you if you are not careful . Someone once said to him. Grief will destroy you.
Please do not drown yourself grieving. He would not want that. I will not let you do that Giyuu.
He couldn't hear him, the masked man who wore his face so sombre on his shoulders that Giyuu could see his own grief sitting and weighing on his shoulders.
He cried seven days and seven nights. He wept even when the tears had run dry. He wailed even when his throat ran coarse. He tossed and he turned, even if all his energy had been spent on crying and yelling and begging "Please! You can't do this! This is unfair! Unjust. Why did-?!"
He fought off his teacher's coaxing. He yelled louder, cried harder until his teacher realised there was nothing he could do to help him in this state. He could do nothing to ease his student's pain, not when he too was hurting. Not when he too, in the privacy of his own room and his own darkness, begged the heavens to give back what has been taken from him. To give back the sunshine that rekindled the light in Giyuu's eyes, the hope in their hearts.
Grief is heavy. Grief is a heavy suitcase that lodges itself in the restless of hearts. A suffocating weight that seems to never lift with each cry, with each wail, and with each grieven breath.
Yet, grief is a necessary process one must go through to accept the loss they've gone through. You pour your heart and tears out, praying for something to manifest and mend the broken piece in your life and restore peace and order. But you ask for too much. You ask for the impossible. You spill your heart and you spill and spill and spill until there's nothing left.
You are left with nothing but a hollow shell of a heart. A hollow, empty husk of a human. Spent wasting your life grieving for something long gone. Something you delusionally believed would come back if you just kept spilling more and more. But life doesn't work that way.
What you have lost, you may grieve, but grieving will not bring back the dead.
On the seventh night, as Giyuu's throat threatens to break down and close in on itself, he blanks out. He's weak. He's a crybaby. He's pathetic, and he does not deserve this life laid out to him on a red carpet stained with the blood of those he loves.
Losing Tsutako destroyed his soul. Losing Sabito crushed whatever broken pieces were left and glued together and grounded it all down into fine powder. Never to be rebuilt. Never to be rekindled ever again.
He does not think he'll be able to live anymore. He doesn't think he'll be able to enjoy life the very same anymore. Hell, the thought of laughter is something so abstract. Something so impossible to even render in his mind anymore. To him, laughing is no longer within the realm of possibility, not when there's something forever lodged in his throat, forcing his voice shut lest he threatens to damage it and seal it shut forever more.
There is a whirlpool in his stomach, it twists and twists and twists and he can't help but cry a little at the pain. Bedridden and the poster boy for "pathetic" and "long gone", he musters up all the energy he has left in his weak little limbs and forces himself to lay on his tummy and shift to his arms and knees, before wobbly rising, and hobble through the humble mountain residence.
His head pounds unforgivingly. This trek through this home of his- this trek through his master's home will be cut short if he fails to find food to nourish all that he's lost in these past days he's lost to himself. And most importantly, he needs to find water. He needs to find water now, or else this all be for nought and his journey would cut to an aborted end as he'd collapse then and there in the freezing wooden floorboard of the cottage. Forever a burden to his master, forever a slave to his grief.
As though the heavens heard his plea (for once), a pitch of water sits quaintly atop the kitchen counter along with three wooden cups. He hurries and inches closer and closer, and before he knows it, he blearily stands in front of the pitcher, and pours himself a sloppy cup of water, spilling the precious liquid everywhere- all over his clothes, all over the floor, all over the counter. Just a big goddamn mess and what a big goddamn burden he was to his master- but at this moment now, he could barely give two shits. This headache was skull crushing, and if he did not drink this elixir of nature now, he will lose his mind and perhaps become a demon to his own mind.
He slowly tips the cup into his mouth, gently sipping at the soft trickle of water, before the angle it’s elevated at is sharpened and he chugs through the sloshes of water like a starved man in a desert oasis. He gulps hungrily at the water before he gulps an awkward sum of air. That’s enough, he’s had his fill. He cannot be so selfish and starve his
father
mentor of his necessary supplies.
He will find food himself. He will earn it. And he will be deserving of it. But for now, he swipes a pear from the lonesome bowl of fruit idly sitting nearby, and disappears back to his room.
He gathers his
belongings
items. The Demon Slayer Corps uniform distributed to him fits snugly atop his skin despite all that he had lost in these past few days- this week. Wow. He’s wasted so much time sulking.
He hastens in his packing. His newly arrived nichirin blade slides easily into the band of the uniform’s belt. He wears Tsutako’s deep red haori over the black uniform. The only item he brought from his past life, and a belonging he can’t even call his own. He wears it anyway, it is the closest thing he will ever get to feeling his sister’s embrace around his shoulders. He quickly adjusts the coverings on his legs and sets off after pulling together his unbrushed, unwashed, and frankly uncaringly wild mane into a sad ponytail.
He walks out, but, despite all that he had poured out throughout the week, there is a lingering feeling in his chest. A sort of tugging from his heart. One last glimpse , it pleads. Let us see Urokodaki sensei one last time before we set off.
His feet take over for him, and he finds himself in front of his teacher’s door, slowly creeping into the very private room of a very powerful slayer, a once renowned Hashira. Giyuu holds his breath and his heart utters not a beat as he slips in the room heavy with incense and fatigue.
There his teacher lies, sleeping soundly, yet dangerously. Who knows what lies behind that mask. Perhaps he was awake this whole time, biding his time, waiting for Giyuu to do whatever it was he set out to do here. He was always good at that, waiting for the optimal time to strike and tickle
them
him silly.
But as he waits with bated breath, he does not seem to be able to read such intent from the snoring man, so he gently releases his held breath and stares at a trinket that caught his wandering, yet half conscious gaze.
A fox mask. A very simple one, its eyes painted a full black save for small white circles in the middle of each. A modest scar trailing its left cheek, but other than that, had no other further features a fox would not have.
He slowly makes his way carefully and silently, taking as much care into ensuring his master continues to sleep peacefully and unaffectedly. He gently picks up the mask and slips out of there with ease, and stares at the prized possession in his hands.
Sabito’s mask. A mask to ward off evil. A mask that reflected the wearer. Giyuu stares shakily into the mask’s piercing eyes, if he were to let the tears blur his vision a little, he could easily imagine it was Sabito himself staring back at him, his stubborn yet silly mannerisms akin to those of a mischievous fox. A fox child, he and Giyuu.
He lifts the mask to his face, and securely ties the red rope behind him. It’s a snug fit, it feels wrong. So very wrong. He feels as though he were wronging the dead. As though he were desecrating Sabito’s very own corpse.
But that was the price he had to pay. If the heavens were unkind and thought it funny to trade Sabito’s life for Giyuu, then he’ll just have to shove his middle finger up their behind and prove to them that he will bring Sabito back from the grave on his own.
He will make sure Sabito’s legacy does not end on that god awful mountain in that god awful test. He will make sure Sabito lives on, he will trade all that he has to make sure Sabito lives, even if it means discarding Tomioka Giyuu.
He is thirteen when he leaves home and never comes back. Off on an impossible mission to revive the dead, to spread the hauntings of a ghost. To tell the tale of the great Sabito.
He is thirteen when his crow tells him of his first mission, and he is thirteen when his blade digs into its first neck. When his blade drinks the blood and eats the ashes of its first victim. When he saves someone
and begins to pay back his debt.
“Boy, saviour, what is your name?” A villager, a father who he has saved from the hungry evil of demons, begs.
Giyuu stares, flicking his blade and ridding it of the foul blood of demons from it. The mask on his face, an eerie second skin, and he answers. “My name is Sabito.”
