Chapter Text
Akaza looks at the dried blood flecking his fingers, and frowns. It has been well over a year, closer to two, since the Mugen train incident. Why does he still find himself so often thinking about what happened that night? That Hashira. His face sometimes comes to mind out of the blue, and quite frankly, Akaza is becoming annoyed with it.
Thus far, he’s avoided dwelling on it. It’s not like he can change the past or bring the man back from death.
A train runs through the valley alongside the remote little minka he’s claimed as his home however, and sometimes, against his will, hearing it pass by in the distance pulls him back to that battle.
What a waste that he hadn’t been able to eat Kyojuro Rengoku. A man of that level of talent? He would have tasted amazing! He tries to fool himself and focus on that. His frown deepens when, as usual, it doesn’t work. He knows he’s bothered by having wasted more than a meal. Many talented fighters have faced Akaza throughout his years, and he remembers all of the most noteworthy of them very well.
Few have so nearly killed him, and fewer still have matched Kyojuro Rengoku’s spirit.
Akaza may have ample reason to be cocky, but he isn’t stupid. He is well aware that if Kyojuro had not already been so tired from handling Enmu’s dawdling and saving the lesser humans on the train, their fight might very well have ended differently. It is exhilarating to have faced such an enemy, and if only the short-sighted Hashira could have seen the gift that Akaza had offered him for what it was, they could already be fighting again. They could have been well-matched opponents, trading victories, until the end of time.
Instead, there is only wasted potential. How regrettable that someone so promising had been brainwashed by a system that values weakness over strength. Akaza shouldn’t have wasted his chance; He should’ve just turned Kyojuro into a demon against his will.
He huffs, flicking more traces of his dinner from his fingers.
The train passes by on a warm summer evening, and again, the infuriating slayer is on his mind. Relenting to his curiosity doesn’t come easily to Akaza anymore. He cannot shake a thought though, and finally submits to pursuing it. It takes very little to find the information he needs.
A few hours later, Akaza finds himself hiding in the shadows of a dark night, watching an unfamiliar house.
Candlelight is snuffed out in the main room, and Akaza waits.
When there is nothing but silent stillness from the home, he enters. He easily finds the eldest Rengoku — the father and predecessor of the late Flame Hashira — sprawled on his futon, reeking of alcohol and regrets.
Akaza watches him curiously. Shinjuro was probably a noteworthy fighter in his prime. No one becomes a Hashira without skill. Whether he possesses the same admirable passion and fortitude of his fallen son, Akaza can’t be sure without engaging him in a fight. He suspects, however, that the stubble and the drinking and the lack of awareness that such a powerful demon has gotten so close, all attest to a man who is as past his prime mentally as he is physically — even if only by his own doing.
Perhaps if he’d died as his son had, he’d have died with dignity. As it is however, Akaza has no use for someone who has surrendered their conviction.
He extends his index finger and gently runs the edge of his nail diagonally across the column of the man’s throat, not hard enough to break the skin, just enough to watch a faint red line form on the surface of his flesh. The human doesn’t even stir. Shameful. Akaza should put him out of his misery.
It is a fate worse than death to exist with the knowledge that you have outlived your own son only because you underperformed him however, so Akaza leaves the man be, and moves on.
The reason he came is in the next room.
Senjuro is on his back on his futon, more recently asleep than his father. Placing a foot on either side of the boy, Akaza sinks to his knees and then his palms, hovering just above him. Senjuro’s face twitches in his sleep. Akaza watches. Within a few breaths, the boy becomes increasingly agitated, his brows pinching as he stirs awake without Akaza having touched him. His instincts are good. It’s a start.
Blinking through his waking haze, it takes Senjuro a moment to identify that someone is dangerously close, and when he does, his eyes blow wide with surprise. Before the boy can make a sound, Akaza clamps a hand firmly across his mouth, shoving his cresting scream back down his throat.
The index finger of Akaza’s free hand goes to his own lips. “Shhhh,” he whispers, “Lets not wake your father. I’d have an even better excuse to kill him.”
Senjuro freezes for a moment, processing the words, eyes scanning wildly to grasp what is happening. After a moment of consideration, he abruptly flails his whole body, attempting to free his mouth, bucking to shove Akaza off. When it doesn’t work, he doubles his efforts, panic-driven to escape. It is precisely as effective as a newborn deer fighting the grasp of a tiger. Akaza drops his weight, bracketing the human between his legs and controlling him effortlessly, just to limit the sounds of his struggling.
Useless punches rain down on Akaza. The best human blows are wasted on him in fairness but this struggle is particularly unimpressive. Disappointing.
There is a cough from the next room, and Akaza tightens his grip on Senjuro, stilling him completely. Bone grinds against bone and a muffled squeak of pain is all the sound that comes from beneath his hand. The kid is tiring himself out quickly, panting puffs of heated air through his nose. A trickle of blood, self-inflicted by his thrashing, runs from Senjuro’s nostril and across Akaza’s knuckles, making his stomach rumble. A single heavy droplet splatters against his yukata.
Neither human in this house is any match for Akaza. The Rengoku household is in close proximity to others, and even if they wake the whole neighborhood, and everyone in it happens to be bold enough to attack him, they still aren’t any match for him.
Attention can bring complications though, and Akaza would rather avoid them if he can.
He grips around Senjuro tightly, and in a blink, he steals the human away, sprinting into the night.
*****
By the time they arrive at Akaza's minka, Senjuro has given up squirming against his hold. Akaza drops the boy gracelessly, and he hits the floor with a pained grunt. “There,” Akaza says triumphantly. “Now we don’t have to worry about your noise.”
Scrambling upright, Senjuro demands, “Who are you?” He looks around from where he’s sitting, confused. “And where are we?” He’s disheveled and frightened and in no way does he appear to be any threat whatsoever but Akaza has been deceived by looks before, and has no intention of falling for that sort of trickery again.
Deeming the request for a name as an acceptable question however, he answers, “My name is Akaza. And we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“W…” Senjuro cautiously turns to better see the space around him, hesitant to turn his back to Akaza. Good. “Why have you brought me here?”
“I want to fight you.”
Senjuro’s brows gather. “Fight me? But,” he shakes his head. “I’m not a fighter.”
“Oh,” Akaza practically pouts. “Well that’s very disappointing to hear.” He considers this unfortunate news with a frown. This could just be a trick though, perhaps?
Senjuro stares at him in continued confusion, and an awkward silence falls between them. Cautiously, the boy rises to his feet. “So.. Are you going to let me go?”
Oddly, Akaza isn’t sure how to respond to that, probably because he’s never before let anyone live long enough to even ask such a thing. He can’t help a surprised chuckle that escapes as he answers, “No. If you don’t fight, I’ll just eat you and call it a night.”
Senjuro tenses. “You’ll…. You really kidnapped me and brought me all the way up here for that?”
“No, I kidnapped you so I could fight you …” Akaza pauses, tilting his head. Perhaps he’s made a mistake. “Are you dumb?”
“No…?”
“Are you sure? You seem unsure.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Senjuro scowls, offended.
“Mm,” Akaza hums, unconvinced. This has to be a ploy. Some trick to lull him into complacency. “Well, the choice is yours, I suppose. Fight me, or feed me.”
“That’s not a choice,” Senjuro argues.
“I beg to differ.”
“I don’t even have a sword!”
He should’ve seen that coming. Akaza groans, “You humans and your need for tools. It’s pathetic.” He chooses not to remind himself that many demons also use tools.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry we don’t have magic strength and sharp claws and whatever.”
“I don’t have sharp claws,” Akaza defends, proving his point with a raised middle finger as he steps toward the corner of the room, keeping the human in his periphery. “And I’d argue that your breathing forms are indeed magic.” Akaza doesn’t miss that Senjuro’s jaw tightens at that, swallowing something back. Akaza emerges from the shadows with a sword, and presents it unceremoniously to the human. “Here.”
“You’re…” He holds out his hands and Akaza lays the sword across them. “You just have a Nichirin sword in the corner? And you’re.. willingly arming me with it?” He stares at the sword, then up at Akaza, and back at the sword. “This sword can kill you.”
“Not on its own. And not for the last person who wielded it.” He shrugs. “But let’s see what you can do with it, hmm?” Crouching into a fighting stance, Akaza readies himself. This is entirely too much talking and not enough violence. “Come on, then.”
Despite having only fought Kyojuro once, Akaza has replayed that fight in his mind a thousand times. Every one of the Flame Hashira’s movements, each stance and every technique: They’re committed to his memory. And when he launches for the boy who surely trained under such impressive talent, it’s with the full expectation that he’ll be met with familiar moves.
Senjuro doesn’t react.
Doesn’t draw the sword.
This human’s skill at pretending like he doesn’t even see the attack coming at all is impressive.
Akaza’s foot meets the boy’s stomach, and he might as well have kicked an empty reed basket for the way Senjuro crumples around the force like a pile of dry grass, slams against the back wall of the building, and crashes to the floor in a heap.
Akaza resumes a fighting stance, ready for the counter-attack. Senjuro whimpers, curling an arm across his stomach. After a moment and a pained groan, he pushes himself up onto his arms.
“I'm not fooled by your act,” Akaza snaps. “Stop feigning weakness and fight me like you mean it.”
The sword is still sheathed. Calculating each fraction of a second and weighing its risks, Akaza leaps forward as Senjuro starts to rise to his feet, connecting an upward kick to the underside of his head, right at the point where the human’s jaw meets his throat. The momentum launches Senjuro’s whole body off the ground, flips him midair, and drops him almost where he’d started. He hits the ground hard, completely unconscious.
Akaza watches, confused, as the boy’s body struggles to inhale even a single breath.
Is he really unconscious? His lips begin to turn an oxygen-deprived shade of blue. Tentatively, Akaza approaches and grasps Senjuro by the hair, ready to fling him across the room if he is only feigning the helplessness. Pulling his head upright proves that the human is, indeed, unconscious. It also improves the angle of his airway apparently, and his body sucks a wheezing, weak breath. “Huh,” Akaza remarks to the room, dropping Senjuro back to the floor. “This isn’t at all what I’d hoped for.”
*****
Consciousness comes to Senjuro slowly. With it, a pain so bright that the intensity of the midday sun is an assault on his vision, and he slides along the pitted wooden floor to escape it. The realization that he’s been unconscious long enough for there to be midday sun comes even more slowly.
As he shuffles himself into the shadows, abating the sun’s attack on his pounding head, the confusion about where he is and why there is so much pain to begin with, begins to dissolve into memories.
Had those things really happened? Is there really a— He hasn’t slid far before a foreign presence on his throat cuts through his haze of pain and confusion, demanding an explanation. He reaches up, processing sluggishly, when his fingers find hard metal encircling his neck. A chain. “W—” Attempting to move his jaw is a mistake. Renewed pain blooms from his lower face, joining the pounding in his head, merging and snaking their way across his shoulders and down his spine. His voice is no more than a croak, and it wanes into a whimper as the pain shoots through him. Clumsily, he explores the metal with his hands until he’s blinked his eyesight clear enough to confirm that a long length of steel leads from his neck to a stout beam in the center of the room.
Is he alone? He turns as quickly as he can, scanning the room for the demon who’d kidnapped him. He sees no one, though it doesn’t bring much relief.
The room around him is almost exactly as he remembers it. Senjuro is chained in the center of a large space of an old, abandoned home. The floors are rough with age, and the two large doors that would have closed the home off from outside access and elements are gone, leaving a wide opening to the engawa and the outdoors beyond it. There are two interior doorways on the far side of the room, too far away for his chain to reach, only one of which has an actual door.
The beam he’s anchored to is roughly covered in some sort of metal, like someone hammered a thick layer or steel over the wood by hand. He’s never seen anything like it, and his confusion about it delays him noticing a small table in the sparse area, near the beam to which he’s anchored. Two mugs, a water gourd, and an onigiri sit atop the table. At the sight of food, Senjuro’s stomach rumbles. Thirst makes a sudden, demanding appearance as well.
He slides closer, hesitant to believe his eyes. Who would’ve left this? Surely not the demon.
Cautiously, he investigates it. One cup contains a clear liquid that smells like water. A whiff of the other makes him immediately gag. Nose wrinkling, he thrusts the cup away from himself, spilling a few drops of it to the floor.
“Careful with that,” a voice speaks, startling Senjuro into nearly dropping the cup. “I can’t make more until nightfall.”
Yellow eyes peer at him from the darkness of a corner of the room, and Senjuro gasps, unsure whether he’d overlooked the demon before, or if it’s just appeared out of thin air. Senjuro confirms to himself quietly, “So it wasn’t a nightmare.”
“I wouldn’t deduce that yet,” the demon replies. “But for now, drink what’s in that cup.”
Senjuro swishes the dark liquid. “What is this?” It smells strong, and unlike anything he’s drank before. “Are you trying to poison me?” His voice is so hoarse, everything sounds like a hiss since he can barely open his mouth.
“Yes. I enjoy both wasting my time and tainting my food.” The demon looks annoyed. ‘Akaza’, Senjuro remembers as his name just then. “It’s medicine. A concoction of herbs to help reduce the inflammation and pain.” Akaza stands. “Drink it.” He walks along the wall, keeping to the shadows. Silently, he goes into the neighboring room, the one with the door, and slides it shut behind himself.
Senjuro tries to yell after him, and manages nothing but, “H—!” before he doubles over into a coughing fit. When he can breathe, he tries again, with a hoarse but marginally more successful voice, “Hey! Are you just going to leave me tied up here?!” He pauses, coughing yet again. No reply comes. He strains out, “Hey!!” Nothing.
He huffs, and looks down at the drink still in his hand. If this demon wanted him dead, he would have just killed him, right? What he said about poisoning him does admittedly make sense.
Swallowing is torture… his throat is so dry and tender. Attempting to move his jaw has him questioning whether it’s broken. Pain booms like a gong in his head. And still, the taste of this drink somehow outshines all of those things. Scowling with each sip, he is glad there’s water to chase it down with. With reluctance, his stomach prodding him against his will, he conserves some of the water and moves on to the onigiri. It’s surprisingly good. He asks loudly enough to be heard in the next room, “Where did you get this from?” An unsettling image presents itself, of Akaza having stolen someone’s dinner, and then eating the cook as his dinner.
As expected, no reply comes.
It’s a good sign that he isn’t dead yet, right? Or do demons toy with their food? He really isn’t sure.
Silence and a satiated belly allow his mind to wander uncomfortably. Two years ago, he’d have sat here with little doubt that he’d be rescued, or at the very least, avenged.
Kyojuro would’ve moved mountains to come find and save him. A small spark of something unrealistic wants Senjuro to believe that his brother will transcend even death to come and rescue him. Similarly, he’s hoped, every day for more than a year, to see Kyojuro walk through the door to their home, alive and well. Neither will happen.
He grits his front teeth gently. Would his father come looking for him? Kyojuro had been everything anyone could have possibly wanted in a son, and their father had called him worthless for having died. Part of Senjuro knows their father didn’t mean it. Another part barely remembers a time when he didn’t act like he meant it.
Uncertainty settles around him like a blanket of blades.
Fighting back tears, the potency of the first drink hits him all at once. It is a wave of calm, dulling the sharp edges of his pain, muffling the sounds of his concerns, pulling at the weight of his eyelids. Senjuro fights it for a while, unwilling to be made into such an easy target. Acceptance is a cruel sort of relief though, and eventually, he curls up on the floor, and falls back to sleep.
When he awakes again, it is dark.
A familiar figure sits at the edge of the engawa outside, silhouetted by the moonlight.
Senjuro sits upright easily. Surprisingly easily. There is still some pain in his jaw and abdomen, but the pounding in his head and body are gone, reduced to a dull drone. More surprisingly, the sword is still at his side. When he shifts, his chain rattles against the floor, and Akaza turns his head, just enough to glance at him from the corner of his eye. Senjuro doesn’t know whether to curse him or thank him, so he does neither.
Akaza asks quietly, “How old are you?”
“Huh?” It isn’t a question he’d been expecting. “What business is that of yours?”
“Just answer the question. Human ages evade me.”
Senjuro can’t think of a good reason to lie or refuse to answer. What difference will it make? “I just turned sixteen.”
“You’re too old to be such a terrible fighter.”
Senjuro scowls. “I told you, I’m not a fighter.” They are his own words, and the truth, but they still hurt to say aloud.
The demon turns in place to face him, sitting cross-legged on the engawa. “Are you not a Rengoku?”
“Proudly.” Senjuro raises his chin. “I’ve just found service in other ways.”
“Mmm.” Akaza tilts his head. “So you did not want to follow in the footsteps of your ancestors?”
“Well, I wanted to.” He’d longed for it so deeply that his broken path still haunts him daily, taunting him with his failure. His shoulders drop. “I just wasn’t any good at it. I was never able to master the breathing techniques.”
“Did you try?”
“Of Course I tried,” he snaps. “My brother spent countless hours teaching me, trying to help me. And I did everything he said. I just…” he sighs. “I wasn’t good enough.”
“Perhaps your brother was a better fighter than he was a teacher? They’re not the same, you know. Especially if he was afraid to push you too far … afraid of seeing you get hurt?”
“Don’t talk about my brother.” His tone falls short of the threat he’d intended. “Wait.” Red flags wave in his mind. “How do you know my brother?”
“I fought him once,” Akaza answers easily. “He… left an impression. Sadly, the sun was coming up, and I had to depart our fight early.” It sounds far too much like a compliment for Senjuro to dissect.
“Do you know the demon that killed him?”
“Yes.”
Senjuro frowns down at the floor. “I heard it was a very strong demon. It had to have been.” The conversation had been so brief, when news of Kyojuro’s death had reached them. Their father had only expressed how little he cared, and hadn’t wanted to hear any more about it.
“One of the strongest,” Akaza says. Expression unreadable, he clicks his tongue and returns to the topic at hand. “You passed the final selection, did you not?”
“Yeah, but mostly by luck,” Senjuro admits. “And when I was presented with my Nichirin sword, it wouldn’t even change color.” He stares down at the ground, unable to shed his own shame. “So I gave it back. For someone more worthy to wield.”
Akaza stares at him in silence. The weight of his gaze, and the judgment it shoulders, drags on into discomfort. Senjuro shouldn’t have said any of those things. Akaza is right. The Rengoku name is a glorious ancestry of skilled and decorated warriors, and here he is: The only son left to carry on the name; One of the first to fall short of its heritage.
Akaza stands, and begins walking toward him. There’s something in his expression that Senjuro can only identify as disappointment, and he doesn’t understand why that would be the case, but it is pushed aside because he knows, with certainty, that the demon intends to kill him.
He’s going to die. Worse, he’s going to die as a defenseless coward.
Fear and anger collide within him. He is better than this. Is he really going to act like he’s never even touched a sword? All the time his brother spent teaching him. His father too, when he was younger. Kyojuro believed in him … was it all truly for absolutely nothing? His anger bubbles into action. Senjuro bares his teeth, twists behind himself to grab the sword, rips it from its sheath, and holds it in front of himself defensively. Akaza pauses in his step, and smirks. “Have you suddenly found the will to live?”
“I’m not going to let you kill me without a fight,” Senjuro exclaims, furious that the tears welling in his eyes undermine any threat he is trying to display.
“Very well,” Akaza nods, a glimmer in his eye. “I would love nothing more. I won’t even move, in fact. Attack me with your best strike.”
Senjuro knows he won’t get this opportunity again. He gathers all of his determination and anger, and rushes forward, sword drawn back above his shoulder. True to his word, Akaza stays planted in place, arms down at his sides, as Senjuro closes the distance.
In hindsight, Senjuro can really only blame himself for missing one very important consideration.
When his still-healing throat meets the end of the chain, the rest of his body — and the realization of his mistake — both snap like a cracked whip at the same speed with which his consciousness, once again, departs.