Work Text:
The thing about Shinobu Kocho, the thing that made her so, so frustrating, was her kindness, the illusion of her being open, she made it damn near impossible to actually get close to her. Despite their supposed friendship, Mitsuri realized one day that she actually knew next to nothing about the other woman. She did not know any of Shinobu’s interests beyond her specialties for slayer work, and well, Mitsuri just didn’t think those should count as interests! At least, not in the sense that she meant. Perhaps hobbies was a better word… Oh, she couldn’t even tell someone what Shinobu’s favorite food might be. She was the Insect Hashira, but Mitsuri didn’t even know her favorite type of bug! Surely she must have one!
At first, she had not let it bother her. Some people were closed off. That’s just how they were, and Mitsuri could accept that it would take a little more effort and time to get to know them compared to others. It didn’t matter, because Mitsuri was insistent, and she could get there eventually. In fact, most of the Hashira had not been able to withstand her attempts at getting to know them! Even the grumpiest, most solitary, frustrating ones had eventually caved to her desires for conversation and friendship.
But Shinobu…
Perhaps that was why she made Mitsuri feel so helpless, so… upset. Shinobu was not grumpy, nor solitary, and while she could be frustrating, it wasn’t just because she was mean or stubborn. Shinobu was kind, Shinobu was chatty, and by all accounts, to an outsider, it likely seemed that Mitsuri and Shinobu were very close friends. They talked a lot, Mitsuri visited Shinobu whenever she could (although the Insect Hashira had never once come to her estate), Mitsuri baked Shinobu treats, she—
Okay, perhaps to an outsider it looked like Mitsuri was desperately vying for the attention of someone who did not want to give it, or at most, indulged out of politeness and nothing else.
But that wasn’t the case!
Shinobu liked her, she did. Mitsuri was not foolish. After spending so many years with various men feigning being interested in her for a short amount of time, she was rather good at telling when someone was genuine or not with their feelings.
Shinobu did like her. It was obvious in the small twitch of her smile when she saw Mitsuri, in the occasional way her tone shifted beyond the same one she always had, in the way that Shinobu always came to personally greet her when she was at the Butterfly Estate because Mitsuri knew the same courtesy was not extended to all slayers, not even all Hashira.
So why… why did she always do
this?
Right when Mitsuri thought they were finally getting somewhere, right when she thought maybe she’d finally finished chipping away at wall after wall after wall to catch her first glimpse of the real Shinobu beneath it all, she slammed right into another one, as if Shinobu was building them faster than Mitsuri could knock them down, even with her inhuman strength and determination.
Because it wasn’t just friendship she felt for Shinobu… It—It went deeper than that. Though she had felt the same things for women before, Shinobu was not the first, it was with Shinobu that Mitsuri felt brave and safe enough to indulge it. Here, in the Corps, things weren’t so… rigid, there was a flexibility to these things, more people turned a blind eye to it, and as Mitsuri had come to discover, rather a lot of slayers felt similar things.
Shinobu did.
And beyond even that, didn’t all girls want to know that someone loved them…? To this day, Mitsuri still had not experienced that. If she could give that to Shinobu, let her experience being loved like that, she wanted to do it. And she knew—! She knew that Shinobu cared about her too!
So Mitsuri had been brave today. She had fought through all the doubts and insecurities and decided to be brave today. She would tell Shinobu the truth, tell her of her feelings, before it was too late and nothing could be done. Before the feelings would have to be hidden forever, before Shinobu decided to do something she could not come back from…
Mitsuri had had such an awful feeling about it ever since Shinobu had refused to be a part of the Hashira training.
So she would be brave, she would tell the truth.
Except she had barely even started, and it felt as if Shinobu had already rejected her.
It had taken a lot to convince herself to refer to Shinobu with her given name. She’d been Kocho-san for so very long, because that was what was proper. But they were close, and Mitsuri wanted to be closer. She should call Shinobu by her given name.
So she did.
And Shinobu had blinked, her calm, collected mask slipping for a fraction of a second, before it quickly settled back into place, and she held a hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh, you’re so sweet, Kanroji-san.”
The words made Mitsuri’s heart crack and her stomach drop. The rejection of familiarity by calling her Kanroji-san. Even calling her sweet was almost backhanded. She knew Shinobu did not mean it that way, not really, but it felt that way. Calling Mitsuri sweet was a way to calm her down and shut her up, to push her away. It was meant to write her off as nothing but an overly nice girl who just simply was this sweet, and who treated Shinobu no differently than she treated anyone else. And well—!
That just wasn’t true!
Shinobu was different. Mitsuri did treat her differently, and she wanted Shinobu to treat her differently.
Deep down, she thought that Shinobu might want that too. If not, why not just outright reject her affections? Why not actually push her away? Why was she always so subtle, always so… sad about it? It must be because she did not truly want to do it.
Mitsuri didn’t just want to be the kind, sweet Love Hashira to her.
But Shinobu wouldn’t even use her given name.
“Why do you always do this?”
Mitsuri was not sure if she actually meant to say the words aloud; they were leaving her mouth before she truly realized it. They were quiet, raspy almost, but she was just glad she wasn’t crying. It frustrated her oftentimes, how she cried almost every time she felt angry or frustrated. And she felt a lot of those emotions right now.
Because she just did not and could not understand Shinobu nor why she did this. Why did she constantly push Mitsuri away but not fully? Why did she pretend it was something she didn’t do? Why, why, why?
It almost made Mitsuri feel like a fool.
But it worried her far more.
The battle against Muzan was right on their doorstep, and…
“Do what?” Shinobu asked with an innocent tilt of her head.
The space of Shinobu’s study felt too confining, like the walls were closing in. This horrible, awful, stuffy room that Shinobu shut herself away in far too often. Mitsuri did not like it in here, she did not like the stench of wisteria, nor the soft bubbling of beakers and tubes filled with brewing poisons.
She didn’t like the single, solitary cup of tea sat on the desk that was so out of place among everything else in the study.
“This!” Mitsuri exclaimed as she stomped her foot, ignoring how childish the motion felt. “You always act like it’s not a big deal that you push me away! You pretend that you don’t do it at all!”
Shinobu’s head tilted further, and the movement had no idea to be as adorable as it was. If Mitsuri weren’t so angry, she would have told Shinobu so. “I don’t understand what you mean. You’re a dear friend to me, Kanroji-san, and I would never—”
“Shinobu.” Mitsuri squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Please, just have an honest conversation with me. Don’t do this. Not right now. I-I’m trying to be honest with you, and I ask that you at least return the favor!”
“I am honest with you,” she insisted.
Mitsuri’s eyes snapped open. “No, you’re not! You say we’re friends, but it’s like there's an invisible barrier between us, and you’re the one propping it upwards! Please… You won’t even call me Mitsuri… I—I really care about you, Shinobu. Deeply and truly I do, but I feel as if you won’t genuinely let me. I feel as if you’re not allowing yourself to care about me. And perhaps even that is wishful thinking, but—! But I really find it hard to believe that you don’t care for me at all given some of the things you say and do!”
After the outburst, Shinobu stared at her for a moment, her face as impassive as ever, before her expression dropped, and she sighed, long and deep. “Kanroji-san… I do care for you. It is just that I fear this would not be a good thing for either of us.”
“Why not?!” Mitsuri demanded as she held her hands out.
“Kanroji-san—”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Kanroji-san.” Shinobu stepped forward to take her hand, gave it a soft squeeze, and gently ran her thumb along her knuckles. “You’re too sweet a girl for someone like me.”
Mitsuri shook her head. “No I’m not. Stop calling me sweet. I feel as if you’re patronizing me, I feel as if you don’t trust me, as if you think I can’t handle the truth of your feelings. I-I know compared to you other Hashira I must seem incredibly naive and clueless, but I’m not. Shinobu… Why do you push me away?”
Shinobu let go of her hand, and her gaze fell to the floor. “Kanroji-san…”
“Call me Mitsuri. Please,” she begged.
“I can’t do that,” Shinobu said with a shake of her head. “For both our sakes. I can’t. I shouldn’t. It’s not proper, Kanroji-san.”
Kanroji-san. Kanroji-san. Kanroji-san.
Mitsuri swore Shinobu was saying it like a mantra, like something to keep herself in line. As if her surname was a prayer for restraint.
“I don’t care if it’s proper.” Before she could pull further away, Mitsuri lunged to take Shinobu’s hand back. “I want you to call me Mitsuri. I want you to stop this.”
“Stop what?” Shinobu challenged with a sharp glare, her carefully crafted mask cracking further.
“Why didn’t you join in for Hashira training?” Mitsuri whispered as she tugged Shinobu’s hand to her chest. “It’s the same reason you won’t be genuine with me, isn’t it?” She pressed Shinobu’s hand against her sternum, right above her heavily beating heart.
The other girl’s fingers curled against Mitsuri’s skin, too cool to the touch, as if the blood could not make it all the way to her fingertips. “Yes,” she admitted.
“What’s in your tea?” Mitsuri dared to ask.
The question she had never once wanted to ask. It was something she insisted she was being paranoid about. It was ridiculous, such a silly notion, and yet…
Shinobu had never once offered to share any. Which wouldn’t be so odd, but the one time Mitsuri had dared to ask for a taste, because Shinobu brewed it so often, it must be especially good, the Insect Hashira had vehemently confused, and insisted it was an acquired taste, one that Mitsuri was sure to dislike.
Shinobu’s eyes slipped closed.
Mitsuri’s heart beat faster.
“If you’re asking, you must have figured it out already,” she said. “Like you said, Kanroji-san. You are no fool.”
Mitsuri let go of Shinobu’s hand and jerked back, as if her fingers were burning rather than freezing.
No.
No, that couldn’t be right, it couldn’t be true. It was simple paranoia, that’s all it was. Shinobu wouldn’t—Mitsuri couldn’t be right about this. Except…
Mitsuri lunged for the half-finished cup of tea on the desk, and raised it to her nose, all while Shinobu helplessly watched. The scent of acrid wisteria burned her nostrils, and Mitsuri grimaced. Although, she could not be certain that she wasn’t imagining it, that it wasn’t just the scent of the study around her (she wasn’t, it was real, there was wisteria poison in the tea, she just did not want to believe it).
So Mitsuri brought the cup to her lips next.
Shinobu gasped and reached for her, but her hand stopped just shy of her wrist.
Taking a deep breath to steady her frayed nerves, Mitsuri pressed the cup to her lips and tilted it back ever-so-slightly, allowing the foul liquid to drip into her mouth.
And foul it was. The second it touched her tongue, she cringed, her chest immediately convulsing as she gagged and coughed up the miniscule sip of the rancid poison-laced tea. It was as if her body knew she should never swallow the liquid, knew it was awful for her.
“Kanroji-san!” Shinobu exclaimed as she desperately reached for the tea. “Why would you do that?! It—”
Though she still coughed so fiercely it brought tears to her eyes, Mitsuri refused to let Shinobu have the tea back, and squeezed the cup with enough ferocity the porcelain shattered, slicing her palms and fingers. The fresh cuts burned as the room-temperature liquid cascaded over them, as the open wounds bathed in the poison that Shinobu drank every day.
Shinobu gasped, and jerked backwards.
“Why would I do that?!” Mitsuri demanded through her tears. “Why would you do this?! Why would you put this in your body, day after day after day?!”
Shinobu bowed her head, and though her composure had begun to waver, she was still far calmer than Mitsuri. “I have to kill him. No matter the cost.”
Unable to contain her panicked heartbreak any longer, Mitsuri pressed her bleeding, poison-slicked hand to her mouth as a sob escaped her. “You’re hurting yourself, you’re killing yourself…!”
“Do you understand now?” Shinobu asked, her voice far too soft for the situation. “Why I can’t give you what you want? It would only hurt you more in the end. This is better for the both of us, Kanroji-san.”
“No.” Mitsuri stomped her foot down on the shatter teacup, crunching the porcelain further. She lunged for Shinobu’s desk, and began ripping open the drawers to dig through them. She shoved papers and objects roughly aside, caring nothing for what they were or how fragile they might be.
She couldn’t allow this. She wouldn’t allow this.
She would not lose Shinobu to this, not to her own hand. Even if she insisted otherwise, that was all this was. The death of a demon wasn’t worth this; it wasn’t worth her. It didn’t matter what demon. Not even Muzan Kibutsuji was worth Shinobu’s life to Mitsuri.
Shinobu did nothing to stop her, and Mitsuri could not decide if she found that surprising or expected. She merely stood in the center of the study and watched Mitsuri tear every drawer open, rip every cabinet apart, watched he throw papers and vials and objects to the floor as she searched so desperately.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Mitsuri rasped, the demand weak even to her own ears. “Shinobu, tell me where the rest of it is!”
Silently, mechanically, Shinobu stepped over to one of the few cabinets that Mitsuri hadn’t damn near ripped off the wall yet, and flicked the door open. Inside were many brown paper packets, presumably containing loose leaf tea mixed with wisteria. Carefully crafted poison that Shinobu dosed herself with daily, perhaps multiple times a day.
With a desperate sob, Mitsuri hurried over to rip the packets from the cabinet. She was unsure of what exactly she intended to do with them yet. Destroy them, of course. But how? Perhaps she would burn them. Or maybe throw them down an old abandoned well somewhere. It didn’t matter. So long as something was done with them that left them entirely out of Shinobu’s access.
(It didn’t matter, not in the end, and Mitsuri knew that, somewhere in her head. Shinobu would make more. Of course she would. She wasn’t going to stop because Mitsuri threw a single fit over the matter. Come tomorrow morning, she’d settle down with another cup of poisoned tea, freshly made, no matter how many of these packets Mitsuri destroyed).
That was likely the reason Shinobu did not try to stop her. Shinobu was likely already calculating how much of each ingredient she needed in her mind. This was inconsequential to her. Mitsuri was not stopping anything.
That didn’t mean she could do nothing though.
Only when her arms were filled with the little packets and she could not hold another one without dropping two more, did Mitsuri halt her frantic grabbing of them and fully processed how pointless this all was.
“You’re not worth this,” she whispered.
“I know,” Shinobu answered.
Something told Mitsuri they meant two entirely different things.
The packets slipped from her arms, falling to the floor with dull patters. “I’m taking them with me. All of them,” she said. “I’m not letting you do this to yourself.”
“Okay,” Shinobu said, her voice as calm as ever.
Mitsuri shut her eyes, a desperate attempt to stop any more of the tears, but it was a failed effort.
Shinobu’s words weren’t lies, exactly. She wasn’t going to stop Mitsuri from taking these things. Perhaps she even found some comfort in the fantasy, the idea that the poison was leaving and would not be coming back.
As if she wasn’t going to make more the second Mitsuri left this office.
Mitsuri rubbed at her eyes with her sleeves, letting them soak up all the miserable tears, and she stepped towards Shinobu to grab her and crush her in a hug. Ignoring Shinobu’s surprised squeak, she merely hugged her tighter, nestled her into her chest, and rested her chin on the top of her head.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please stop this.”
“Mitsuri…” Shinobu’s arms came up to clutch at her back and she rested her cheek against her chest.
Mitsuri only cried harder as the Insect Hashira finally used her given name. This wasn’t how she wanted it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
It sounded like a goodbye, like this was the very first and last time Shinobu would ever use her given name.
“Promise me you won’t make more.” Mitsuri clutched her tighter, desperate to feel Shinobu’s real, breathing, alive body beneath her hands. “Promise me.”
Shinobu let out a shuddering breath.
And she did not make a promise.