He thought he was happy. No, actually scratch that, he was happy or would have been if he was still capable of feeling that emotion. But he sure was pleased, at the very least, and very very pleased to be honest.
Thanks to providence that he was actually close to the Ubuyashiki Estate and Oyakata Sama had had the forethought of sending a crow that was not Kanzaburo. As much as Giyuu loved his crow he also knew that he tended to confuse things at his old age and, that information in particular, was better delivered quickly and safely to his hands.
He did not know how, and he did not care either, Oyakata-sama had successfully emptied the halls of his Estate so that Giyuu could walk through them however he wanted without anyone seeing him but he was grateful, any unwanted eyes would give him so many things to explain that he would probably refuse to leave the Water Estate altogether until everyone forgot about it.
Rengoku was in bad shape, "bad shape" did not even begin to describe it. Giyuu decided to focus on the important parts, the vital parts. Broken bones and crushed eyeballs, Kocho could deal with that, a hole in the chest… that was a life and death situation in Giyuu’s book. Punctured lungs, liver and stomach, that was certainly complicated, to say the least. And he was bleeding so much, Giyuu was not sure how he could keep bleeding like this and stay alive, he thought they did not have that much blood inside.
So he stopped the bleeding for Rengoku, who’s breathing had become quite erratic. Giyuu covered the hole in Rengoku’s chest with his bare hands and focused his energy there, pushing with every fiber of his being the energy into the tips of each of his fingers.
It was not a skill he used often, yes, he healed scrapes and cuts all the time, on himself and on his daughters, at home, but it was not nearly the same thing. First and foremost, the extent of the injuries could not be compared and, second, he did not have the same relationship with Rengoku as he did with his daughters.
But Rengoku was a good person and he made the effort to talk to Giyuu all the time, so he focused on those memories and tried harder, over the limit, until the bleeding stopped altogether and there was a new tissue layer sealing his lungs. Giyuu's scent spread throughout the room, completely out of control. It even filtered into the corridors and neighboring rooms, by the time Giyuu had finished tending to his fellow Hashira's wounds the Ubuyashiki Estate had been awash in his personal scent. Rengoku would have a hard time trying to forget the smell— not that Giyuu planned to enlighten him in that particular aspect… nor in any other aspect probably—.
The first thing his ears picked up was The Master’s voice at an unusually high volume. Giyuu knew that The Master was not alone, that was the only reason he could think of for such an unusual behavior, he recognized it as a heads up for him to hide, so hide he did, opened the window and jumped out when the door slid open.
From under the windowsill, Giyuu heard Kocho’s voice, shrill and singsong-like, the sole memory of her poking him nearly gave him a headache. No, Shinobu could NOT know about him, just like any of the other Hashira could not… Well not all of them, he figured Muichiro would either forget about it or not care at all, and Himejima would probably be fine with it, he never thought ill of anyone without a good reason, although he could not be one hundred percent sure since he had forgiven a demon not long ago, maybe he was still in Himejima’s rather short list of people he hated. At the end of the day, Giyuu thought that he was an easy person to hate.
So he took a long calming breath and left for the safety of his home thinking already about his daughters and what he was going to cook for dinner; maybe he could buy something on the way or he could improvise donburi, if he remembered correctly he had all the ingredients.
But he did not have to do anything, Aiko and Suki were waiting for him sitting side by side in the engawa, watching the koi fish swimming around the pond and arguing as they always did, dinner ready to be eaten, bathtub full of steaming water and house pristine clean.
For two ten-year-old girls, they were very helpful even when he had never asked them to. The truth, as much as Giyuu did not want to see it, was that Aiko and Suki genuinely wanted to help him because they loved him, because he had taken care of them and loved them in his own weird and caring way when nobody else had, when they were alone and afraid, defiled and broken. He had been there for them when they needed him the most, never presing for an answer about their nightmares, never screaming or shouting even when they got in trouble, when they got HIM in trouble, never raising a hand against them, not when they broke things or when they disobeyed. He was always gentle, always understanding, always listening to them first and accepting their apologies, always by their side when they had to take the responsibility for their actions in stride, always calming.
"Haha!" Suki was the first one to notice that he had arrived. It took Giyuu five months to convince them to stop calling him Hashira-sama, three more months until Aiko had said "hahaue" by mistake for the first time, and a whole year until they felt safe enough to call him "haha".
On second thought, Giyuu should have convince them to call him "chichi" instead, to cover up his lies, but he did not feel comfortable dragging his daughters into his lies, at the end of the day he was an omega and he would die as one, and to his daughters, even if they were not related by blood to him, would always be their haha.
Aiko ran towards him, her twin sister followed suit, catching him in a hug around the waist. As much as Giyuu shunned hugs or any kind of physical contact, he would always hug his daughters back, no matter if he was in a dark mood, overwhelmed after a day of people swarming around him, or stressed out, he pushed everything to the back of his mind for five more minutes and gave them the attention they so desperately seeked. After those five minutes he would make a beeline to the washing room where he would be left alone and soaking in warm water for the better part of half an hour to relax, all by himself, to recharge.
The girls knew about the routine and always waited for him with everything ready to go, to make his life easier, because they knew that their "Oka-san" had many more things on his mind that he let them know. They knew, even if he did not tell them, even if he did not show them, that a part of him had been wounded for as long as he could remember, that a part of him had died long before they met, that he would fake his smiles and give it all until he had nothing left to give because that was his nature.
Aiko had been lucky enough, or unfortunate enough, to forget the vast majority of their past, Suki, on the other hand, remembered every disgusting little detail. They processed their trauma in different ways, where Aiko was clingy, Suki wanted to be left alone, where Aiko would scream, Suki would be silent. Giyuu had never asked why, he just accepted it and tried to slip around them doing his best to accommodate them both.
Things had changed, though, and Giyuu knew it. Saving Rengoku was a big event and it would not go unnoticed by anyone, neither the Hashira nor the demons. Now he was in danger, all over again, and he had no safer place to run to, he did not have the freedom to run away and lie his way out of things, he was responsible for his daughters and even if it was dangerous to him physically and to his feeble mental health, the Water Estate was the safest place for his daughters.
But he could trust in Oyakata-sama, he was his last line of defense, and a very good one if he was allowed to say so, and he knew The Master would be able to hold the Hashira off. The demons were a whole different matter, but for as long as Rengoku’s survival was kept a secret, he was safe.
Oyakata-sama's Kasugai crow arrived early the next morning, there were two letters attached, one was probably the same one every Hashira had received. It explained Rengoku’s delicate health and urged them to keep it quiet so no demon would be sent to "finish the job". The second letter was for Giyuu and Giyuu only.
The letter advised caution, one slip up with his scent and his cover was blown off. Rengoku would probably always remember his scent and Kocho had sensed it too, if he had been more careful his scent would not have gotten out of control and Kocho would not have been able to smell him, betas were not as good with scents as alphas were, but he had blown his scent out of proportion and was still surprised that Oyakata-sama had been able to keep everyone away from the room for so long.
It also said that Kocho had noticed how very impossible it was to keep Rengou alive with the kind of injuries he had endured and had asked, more than once, who had healed him and how. Oyakata-sama had kept his secrets with elegance, a gentle smile on his face and silence but that would never be enough for Kocho, she would study the issue and poke her head into everyone’s business until she got to the truth.
Well, bad for her, but he could not let her find out the truth.
At the next Hashira meeting, Giyuu was extremely careful, every step he took was carefully planned, his face as aloof as ever, cold, forbidding. He kept his silence and his distance, they would pick on him like they always did, Kocho would poke him like she always did, he would not react at all, as usual.
Rengoku was not in the meeting for obvious reasons, he was still recovering in the Butterfly Estate, still sleeping, while his body prepared itself for the effort of awakening.
"Ara Ara, Tomioka-san"
He knew he would have a headache, he did not expect it to be so fast.
"Are you going to visit Rengoku-san?"
No, he was not going to. He could not, actually, because there was the slim chance that his body would react to his wounded colleague without permission. Rengoku would have to be awakened before Giyuu dared to visit him.
"Why are you ignoring me?"
Because she was rather annoying and because he could not possibly answer her questions without getting into a full-blown interrogation that he would not handle nicely. No, he had to keep his mouth shut or the truth would slip out.
"That's why nobody likes you, Tomioka-san"
As if he did not already know.
"I am not disliked by people"
He lied.
The truth was that he did not consider himself a likeable person, he knew he was not easy to understand, he did not talk much and when he did it took him a terrible amount of time and effort to express his thoughts in an understandable sentence. He never found the right words or he failed the tone. He just could not understand people and people did not seem able to understand him either. The only exception might have been his daughters but they did not have much of a choice, another exception might have been Tanjiro, but Tanjiro was the kind of person that made an effort to love everyone and be loved back. He even apologized to demons.
Thank to the most sacred of things the Master arrived and he was spared from torture.
There was a briefing on the events that had taken place on the train, the demise of the first lower moon thanks to Inosuke and Tanjiro, the survival of the passengers thanks to the combined efforts of Zenitsu, Nezuko and Rengoku and the subsequent fight against upper moon three which resulted in a hole in Rengoku’s chest and his left eyeball being crushed beyond salvation.
"Master, that wound did not heal on its own," said Kocho.
"No, it did not close by itself," Ubuyashiky-sama replied, a fixed smile on his face as if that answer was enough to any of the attendants… It was more than enough for one of them.
"Then… who closed it, Oyakata-sama?" she insisted.
"It was done and that is the important part” he replied with infinite patience and the meeting ended no long after that, Kocho did not dare to press The Master for an answer and Giyuu was relieved. He had missions to attend and people to worry about, but his secret was safe, telling Oyakata-sama was one of the best decisions he had ever made.
The slight regret came some time after that, once Rengoku woke up and decided, against better judgment, to continue with his responsibilities as Hashira fighting demons, even when he had lost an eye.
Giyuu thought guiltily that he should have left some lasting effects from his injuries to make full recovery impossible. Not having fully healed his lungs would have been enough, but he was not that kind of person and, at the moment, with half as many eyes as he should have had, Rengoku was shamelessly stealing his tsuguko from under his nose, even if Tanjiro did not know just yet that he was supposed to replace him as the Water Hashira in the future. And he was not even complaining because Tanjiro was smiling, happily accepting his new title without even thinking about Giyuu and how he felt.
Betrayed and humiliated, that would have been the answer if Tanjiro had asked, but even if he did, Giyuu would never have told him the truth, he would have supported his decision and congratulated him… but he would have liked to be asked or, at least, to be told about it beforehand, not in front of everyone, without a warning.
Giyuu endured the rest of the meeting barely holding himself together; numbing himself to everything inside and outside of himself. Oyakata-sama would probably send a letter later explaining the meeting all over again because he had not been able to hear a single word.
He needed to get home and fast, so as fast as The Master said his goodbyes, Giyuu got on his feet and walked away. He did not go to Tanjiro to congratulate him, nor to congratulate Rengoku, he was not interested in having dinner with any of them, he really wanted them to leave him alone so the world would truly reflect his feelings for once, alone and left behind, as always.
"Ara Ara, Tomioka-san"
Giyuu could barely hear Kocho’s signature phrase in her fake sing-song voice, but he did not turn around, he ignored her because he had practice on it and kept his feet moving forward, not a change of pace, without faltering, as if she had not spoken at all, as if he had not actually heard her.
"Haha!" Aiko was the first to notice him this time, Suki was nowhere to be seen, or at least she had not been because as soon as her sister spoke, Suki’s head appeared from the kitchen door and they both ran towards him.
Giyuu braced himself to endure the hug even when being touched was the last thing he wanted at the moment. He did not talk, he did not have the energy to even try, so he just listened to them, desensitized but trying to actually pay them the attention they deserved. He had a lump in his throat or maybe in his stomach, he was queasy, his total concentration breathing was suddenly hard to maintain and he noticed a layer of cold sweat all over his body.
He felt like he needed to get away, but get away from what exactly? He felt numb but, at the same time, he felt too hurt to be really numb, his chest tight, words buzzing around him, his daughters were talking but he did not know talking about what. Were they talking to him? He was not even able to understand their gestures correctly. Were they angry because he did not listen to them? Were they scared? Was that the reason why he felt he had to run away? were they in danger?
He wanted to ask “Is everything okay? What happened?” but he could not, the words refused to come out of his mouth or his brain, he was not sure.
“You are safe, I am here, no one will hurt you,” he wanted to say. His mind was racing, he was sure that he had his Nichirin sword at his side, hanging at his hip, he could protect them if he was able to find the source of the problem. Was it a demon? Had an alpha broken in? Was it all a dream, a nightmare? it felt a little bit like that, was he even breathing at this point?
"Haha!" Suki’s raspy voice floated towards him, piercing through the sound of his own heartbeat in his eardrums. "You have to breathe like you taught us, remember? in and out, nice and easy?"
Yes, he remembered, but his breathing was not as usual, he felt a weight on his chest that made it incredibly difficult for him to take a breath. He concentrated on his breathing and forced himself to return to his total concentration breathing. His mind kept going on and on, unstoppable, they were in the Water Estate, the safest place in the world, no demon would be able to get there, they were surrounded by wisteria trees and his own blood kept the entire town undercover. No demon could reach them there.
“It’s fine, I’m fine” he wanted to say. “It is just a bad day, I’ll go to the washing room and once I’m settled you can tell me everything you did today” his mind suggested but his mouth had been shut down. “Give me five minutes” he could have said, but he did not, he could not.
“You can not speak?” Aiko asked.
At some point during that episode, as he had taken to call them, they managed to sit him down, or maybe he had sat down on his own, he did not know, he did not remember, not really.
“No” he wanted to answer but the words would not come out so he just shook his head, defeated. He wanted to say so many things, he wanted to reassure them, he wanted to explain, he wanted to be stable enough for them to lean on him instead of… instead of that. He felt like a failure and the feeling of guilt and humiliation returned, stronger than ever. Despite the running dialogue in his head trying to explain his feelings, he could not push the words out of his mouth and he hated having that happen to him, he just wanted it to stop, whatever it was.
“The water is ready if you want to take a bath, we will wait for you in the kitchen,” Suki said, standing up and offering her hand to her sister.
“Do you want help, haha?” Aiko asked, standing alongside her sister, facing Giyuu.
He shook his head again. “Thank you” he wanted to say, but he could not, so he waited in the engawa with his back pressed to the wall, until his daughters had disappeared. He got up, ready to take his bath, bracing himself to talk to the only thing in the world that stopped him from spiraling down, his daughters.
Giyuu had had to deal with those episodes for so long that he could not remember a time when they were not present; at one point he had begun to believe that he had always been like that: a wrong kind of different.
The mutism had come later, he gathered, he remembered screaming and crying when he lived with his sister, he had always had problems with communication in general, he did not pick up subtleties as easy as everyone seemed to and he had always been inarticulate but he could speak, even if no one but his sister and Sabito were able to understand him. Physically he could say the words, even if they were not the right ones. But once his sister died, everything changed, his mutism had started then, when no one would listen to him even if he spoke.
The first few weeks at Urokodaki-sensei’s house were a different kind of hell. He could not get a word out of his mouth, they all died in his throat and all he could do was get more and more frustrated with himself. Sabito and Urokodaki would have considered him mute if it had not been for his nightmares: his screams woke everyone four or five times a week. He spent the remaining nights awake, with his back pushed against the corner of the small room he shared with Sabito, hands over his mouth to muffle the sound of his sobs, until morning came.
Giyuu got out of the bathtub wishing to stay a little while longer but he knew he would lose track of time there so he dried himself and got dressed in his most comfortable clothes, the homey clothes, his daughters called them. He had not regained the will to talk but at least he was not panicking anymore, he thought he could eat and listen even if he could not speak and, with that plan in mind, he went to reunite with his daughters.
He took refuge in his routine. He took on as many missions as he could possibly take and spent every minute to spare in the company of his daughters. Suki and Aiko filled his silences with talk, his numbness with smiles and his solitude with soft caresses and tight hugs. They had their first heat as well, that same month, so Giyuu had enough on his plate to be suffering for something, or more precisely for someone, that he could not have.
He had successfully managed to exhaust himself enough to get a full night's sleep. Maybe, now that his daughters were sleeping in his room, he had the good luck to be rid of the nightmares for once. No friends turning their backs on him and walking away, no sisters yelling at him that he should be dead, no senseis who could barely look at him, disappointed.
He was running terribly late again. Yes, it was the last day of his daughters’ heat and as such it was not as intense as at the beginning. Besides, they had already learned to use their scent to calm each other down, so he did not really have anything to worry about, he just wanted to be with them, it was an important moment in their lives and they were still so very young.
But there was nothing to be done, he had bought kasutera and taiyaki, maybe as an apology, maybe as congratulation, he was not really sure, but they were his daughters’ favorites so he hoped that would be enough.
Suddenly, his body went into alert mode. He was not close enough to the Water Estate, but he was certainly close enough to the town he protected. He could let it work itself out on its own, his protections would hold off whatever it was trying to get inside, but he could not ignore it in good faith. As a demon slayer and as a Hashira it was his responsibility to kill all the demons that would harm a human, as a kitsune, it was his responsibility to protect everyone in that town. It took him no more than an instant to decide that his duty was to intervene.
The moon was shining over the trees, almost full but not quite there yet, the night was quiet, warm and easy to breath in, a nice night for stargazing in the Water Estate, to spend time sitting on the engawa, if his daughters had not been in heat, he might have suggested going out to dinner. But his daughters were in heat and he was running late.
The scream caught him off guard, it was not fear, although “not just fear” would have been more appropriate, it was pain. It was not a loud scream either, more like a gasp mixed with a cry, a choking sound, filled with tears.
The demon was nothing to worry about, it was a newly transformed demon that had already filled himself two or three times. Enough to know that children, women and omegas were more nutritious but without any blood demon art. Its concentration was focused on a dark, dirty lump on the floor.
The lump was barely trembling, it was a child, maybe the age of his daughters or a little older if he could judge by the size. The lump had covered itself with a… cloak? Giyuu was not sure what it was exactly, but it was heavy looking, warm and big enough to belong to someone else.
The demon lunged at the child, arms outstretched, claws ready to cut through clothes and flesh, mouth open in a menacing scream and saliva dripping from its gaping maw, ready to bite.
Giyuu killed the demon unceremoniously, using his breathing style more out of habit than necessity, the fight was over before it could properly begin as the demon had not noticed his presence until the second its head was chopped off.
As the demon dissolved into ashes, Giyuu inspected the child from a safe distance, knowing that getting close to a terrified person could end badly for both of them, so he stood there, waiting... for something, anything really, a parent calling for the child, a cry from the aforementioned child, an idea lighting up in his mind.
“Umm… are you okay?” he said, trying to look under the cloak without touching it.
He got no answer.
“Kid?” He tried again with the same result.
Giyuu scooped himself closer to the lump of a child and grabbed the corner of the cloak with one hand to see under it, still wary of the possible attack, but all he got to see was a ponytail of bright yellow hair so he carefully uncovered the kid completely.
It was a boy, or at least it looked like it, he had covered his head with his arms and shrunk into a tight ball of human limbs. He was bleeding, not too much, nothing he could not heal in a few seconds, but the child had passed out, perhaps out of fear, he was sweaty and his face was flushed. He was an omega, Giyuu could smell it, something in that child tugged at his heart, so he picked him up and resumed his way towards the Water Estate.
He would bring kasutera, taiyaki and another child home.