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Soft footfalls tapped from behind Kiriko, quiet enough to not startle but audible enough to indicate a certain presence. The smooth rustle of a scaled tail and click-click of claws announced Higura as he paused in the doorway.
What once was a spacious mess hall was now a charnel house floor. There was no telling just how many times over the previous night she had broken the bones in her wings with her hands, how many times she tore them out at the roots, or battered them against the floor and walls. There was no way of knowing how many feathers she had ripped out over and over as they grew back, but the walls and ceiling were thick with her blood. The floor was strewn with what looked like millions of the black feathers, with those closest to the single beam of sunlight coming in from a hole in the ceiling left by the brotherhood smoldering.
She knelt in front of the beam, wings drooped to the floor, head bowed and eyes closed as blood in place of tears ran down her face. Her palms were charred, and drifting ash lifted off of them as she cupped her hands as if she was trying to capture the light like a liquid, as though one drink could burn away all the sorrow.
She lifted her head slowly, painfully, and turned to look at him. A little girl in adult skin, eyes stricken and heart broken beyond repair. A monster, and also just a 19 year old girl so desperate for family that she eviscerated all that remained of her life. Her lips parted; her lower lip trembled.
Her whisper echoed off the sanguine walls.
"Daddy, what have I done?”
Higura was slightly taken aback at Kiriko’s usage of the word father, not fully registering it, because surely she must have meant that for Douma-san? He was merely the caretaker… the one who provided for her when Douma-san couldn’t… the one who was… always…. There for her. Because Douma-san had never truly felt love for her, despite everything. Oh. Ah.
“Snowdrop…” He paused. “…You’re melting.”
There was a noticeable melancholy tone to his voice, a start contrast to his usual bubbly demeanor.
She sobbed. “I’m a monster.”
He gave her space, not approaching unless it became obvious she needed some physical comfort.
“Aren’t we all? But my dear Kiko-chan, you shine brighter on the inside than the rest of us could ever hope to. You will never be a monster in my eyes. Now, how can I help you? What do you need?”
His familiar offer of assistance rang out with a much more consoling melody, something more sincere and nurturing than he had ever voiced.
Kiriko rose from her knees as if her whole body was in pain, which, exposed to small amounts of sunlight for so long, it probably was. She staggered across the feathers on the floor, reaching for him no differently than when she was a child who had scraped her knee, a wordless need echoing through her blood demon art like an aftershock.
Higura approached her carefully, as if she was a scared kitten, maybe even as if she was back in the body of that tiny malnourished child from years and years ago. Removing his veil with one hand, he gingerly wiped away a bloody feather from her face with the other. Their eyes met for the first time in a long while—His long-time silver-and-gold irises against her newer cold cracked-ice.
“I don’t know what,” she sobbed, “wh….what to do. I can’t see a way out. It hurts, it hurts and I’m under the water and I can’t b….breathe…..” She came close to drowning once as a child, it was he who pulled her out then, too. “I don’t know what to do, I just don’t…..” Her eyes gazed into his helplessly, seeking answers, forgiveness, hope, even death. Anything but this.
“Kiko-chan… how did this begin? Can we work from there? I want to help you get through it, and let it wash over you like the tides. Time goes on, we can’t linger in it for too long or we fall forever downward. Don’t swim against the river. Swim with me.”
“Kanjo…..he…. He died. And, then I…. I don’t know. I don’t know why, I wanted it all to burn. And…. I’m the one burning. I hate fire.” Kiriko’s voice cracked. She looked up at the bloody ceiling before dropping her eyes to his again. “I asked for more, but it’s too much. I can hold it but I can’t keep it in. It’s bleeding out and it’s going to hurt everyone and everything and I can’t…. I wish… I wish I was like father and couldn’t feel, can he teach me how not to feel, daddy?” Her whole body trembled like a leaf in a storm, though the sharp edges of her blood art had been quiet since he made his presence known to her.
“Snowdrop, I’m so sorry… I truly am. But, not feeling anything won’t make this better. Pushing it all away won’t fix it. The fire leaves ash and soot, the blood stains the floor, it never really goes away. We have to embrace it and move forward, okay? I know this, because I also have gone through something awful.” Higura paused. “Did you know I used to be a Slayer, too?”
Her art was so silent it might as well not have existed at all as she hesitantly shook her head, the mystery behind someone so precious to her impossible not to be curious about even in her current state.
“It was years ago, before I joined Douma-san, obviously. So long ago that not a single Hashira today was in service. I was one of them during that time… me and another. His skin was a lot darker than yours or mine, even as humans. A foreigner. The Corps didn’t like him very much at first… but he eventually grew on us all. A wonderful moon-haired boy with an exotic name. Mmmwezi.” He took great care in pronouncing it.
“He and I bonded over not being of full Japanese heritage… and you know? I liked him. I liked him a lot. So it was so difficult when we had to destroy the… former residents of a small town’s orphanage. They had become demons, you see.”
“I wanted to save them. I thought that they could be, somehow. He refused to forgoe the idea that all demons should be killed, no matter what. So we argued. And foolish me, I ran off. I was so mad at him, and that deep down I knew those kids couldn’t be helped anymore, so I lost track of where I was going. Ran away, far away. And with some rather reckless impulses, I thought to myself--- why not become a demon too? I could show him that not every one of them is so terrible.”
“In a sense, I was right all along. Your friend, the little fish, for example. But my choice to convert to demonhood was my way of pushing the problem away. I really should have gone back to him, because I’ve since realized that even though some things are much harder to address and move through than others, they still must be moved. And sometimes you’re the one who needs to do the moving.”
“Oh, Higura-kun,” she breathed, her soft, sad eyes full of empathy. “I didn’t know.” Kiriko leaned against him and sighed, her whole body shuddering as her true personality finally took the reins. She had an easier time caring for another than herself…. Isolation was what had made her madness absolute. “Who do we side with, then? If anyone?” Her voice was small, but some of her strength had re-emerged; a ray of light suggested a possible way out, as if a window cracked open to the idea that she might continue existing instead of giving up. Something supernatural snapped like an overstressed tether, and all those under her control were abruptly freed.
Higura held her close, soft human hands nothing like the scales of his lower half. "Hmm... I heard something about the blue spider lily recently... was that you?"
At the question, she blushed miserably. “I fucked up twice over. I….. I told Muzan where to find them. And I planned to die here so I told the soldiers where they were so they can destroy them.” There was no distant pang of rage from Kibutsuji at the revelation, even she wasn’t yet aware that her decent into madness had effectively broken Muzan’s direct control over her. Kiri nuzzled against Higura’s side to hide from the shame of her stupidity, quietly catching her breath for the first time in days as the storms within her heart calmed.
In the distance a familiar voice called her name, shattering the moment of silence. “Kiri!”
She looked up at the sound of her name, unwilling to let go of Higura, but….. A tendril of feeling crept out from her and emerged in Fujiko’s heart, painting the way to them in a language of emotion rather than words.
The koi demon trustingly followed where the feelings led her, and before long found Kiriko and Higura cuddled together in a room of bloody horrors. The latter was kneeling down, his frame seeming much smaller without those massive legs towering upward.
Fujiko paused briefly in the doorway, unsure. “Kiri?”
“Fujiko, why?” Kiriko didn’t understand why her friend would blindly walk into certain death. She also couldn’t bring herself to take her hand off Higura, as if he was grounding her in place and keeping her sane.
"Because I love you. You're like a sister to me. Don't worry. I left Giyuu a note. This is where I want to be." She ran to Kiri without hesitation and grabbed her in a tight hug.
The broken angel hugged her back with both arms and both sets of wings. “I’m…. I’m so sorry, Fuji.”
She held on tight to Kiri as if she was the only thing in that world that mattered right in that moment…. Because she was. Kiri meant everything to her. Her best, best friend. The one to stay with her no matter how many times she messed up. Now it was her turn to be there for Kiriko. “Nothing to be sorry for. I love you so so so much, sister.”
Kiri smiled softly and pulled back, petting the shorter girl’s dark hair. “Sister…” She rather liked the sound of that. “I’m not ready to give up anymore. Will you help me try to find a way back into the light?”
“Yes, of course! I’m here for you no matter what.” Fuji’s eyes were bright.
Kiriko cleared her throat. “So. How DO we kill Muzan now that I sort of kinda killed…..” She quietly counted. “Four…. Hashira and crippled a fifth?” She winced, it sounded even worse out loud. “I’m pretty sure ‘my demon-dragon daddy came and talked me out of murdering everyone’ is going to go over worse than that one wingless crow that Tengen tossed like a javelin so it could ‘experience the joy of flight’….”
Her attempt at humor was interrupted by a loud, booming explosion. Fortunately it was only a misfire; the improvised shell whizzed past the mansion, thankfully not hitting. Still, she sighed as another sin came home to haunt her.
“ALSO… I might have told them to bomb this place.” She looked at Higura and gave a sheepish, guilty grimace as he pressed his lips together to try to keep from smiling at the scope of the mess she’d made for herself.
Even though Fujiko knew full well that the bombing was coming, she was drowsy from ingesting marechi blood, and swayed on her feet without the rush of adrenaline to keep her going. Kiriko scooped her up easily as Higura rose to his feet.
“Dad has an escape tunnel. Escape first, plan later.” In her arms, the sleepy koi girl yawned.
“I can walk….” Kiri didn’t even respond, she simply carried her as she drifted off to sleep.
Each step took the broken angel away from the room that Kanjo’s death had made into her prison and self-inflicted torture room, and each step down the tunnel with the sister and father of her heart put the shards of her heart back together.
Still broken, yes. But even a broken window could let in light, if one had the courage to draw back the curtains.