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Ubuyashiki Amane is the wife of the leader of the Demon Slayers. She is a priestess. She has known horror and carnage. She has sat through reports of Slayers who were the only survivors of their groups, who can barely get through the words without crying for the lost or biting back pain from the demon’s blows. She has knelt beside doctors as they hold injured Slayers together, held teenagers down as they are treated for life-threatening wounds, and comforted warriors on their deathbeds as they fade from here to heaven. She is a mother, not just to her five children, but to every person in the Corps, and she holds that esteem in high honor.
And every time, no matter how stoic she manages to keep herself, there is never a way to prepare for carnage.
The smell of blood and rot infests her nose as she climbs the mountain to the Tokito children’s home with Nichika and Hinaki, and those smells can only mean something is deeply, deadly wrong.
It takes everything she can not to sprint up the path and leave her children behind, but she still does the best she can.
There is a pile of bloodied wooden stakes, boulders, axes, and tree pruners in the center of the path, and her heart drops to her stomach. They’re arranged like they were pinning something to the dirt, but there’s nothing there. That, in her experience, can only mean there was one thing here.
Demon.
She quickly gives her girls orders to find medical supplies where they can. Her husband had insisted the three of them–not just her, as she’d been doing for quite a few times now–visit the Tokito twins as soon as possible. Amane has known her husband long enough to trust his judgement and his ‘intuition’, as he calls it, so when he insisted he was fine and that she leave now with the girls, she did as he asked. He only insists like that with lives at stake.
She is already rolling up her sleeves and tying them back as she follows the trail of blood that leads back to the house, dread building in her lungs as Nichika and Hinaki look for buckets for water.
Whatever she imagined can’t compare to what she’s seeing.
There is blood everywhere in the Tokito’s little house. It’s flung all on the walls and ceiling and on the stove, it’s puddled up on the ground. A severed arm lies beneath a huge splatter of blood on the far wall, beside a still pair of legs and bare, battered feet.
There lie the Tokito twins.
Muichiro is lying half on the dirt floor, half on the raised wooden sleeping area of the little woodcutter’s house. He’s covered in bruises, blood, and lacerations; red is caked and flaking off his legs, his clothes, his hair. If she looks close enough, she can see movement, but it isn’t him: it’s maggots wriggling in his wounds.
His arm is outstretched to Yuichiro’s one remaining one.
Yuichiro’s blood is spattered all over the futon he’s lying on, soaked so deep into the fabric it’s spreading out into the floor below. His arm is the severed one on the ground. He’s completely limp, long hair covering most of his face. If she’d thought the maggots on Muichiro were bad…she doesn’t know what to say about Yuichiro. Muichiro is pale with blood loss; Yuichiro’s skin is tinted yellow, purple, and grey beneath all the red.
The smell of rot is coming from the house.
Her girls rush in, and she gives orders to boil water and put clean cloths on the wounds. Hinaki goes up onto the elevated side of the house to check on Yuichiro.
Amane kneels beside Muichiro, brushing his blood-caked hair from his open, dead-looking eyes-
And he breathes. His eyes flicker a bit, and they move. She can feel his pulse fluttering weakly, but it’s there. Relief and surprise flood Amane’s face, and she keeps it as stoic as she can, though she can’t stop her expression from changing. He needs something stable, anything, and she will be that for him, even if he’s barely clinging to not only consciousness but life itself.
“How’s his brother doing?” she asks, turning to her daughter.
Hinaki looks back up at her, eyes wavering. “He’s already passed away!”
Tokito Yuichiro is the casualty. Bled out from his arm being severed. He was only eleven years old.
“Don’t let the other one die, no matter what!” she insists.
Death is unacceptable for Muichiro. There is no bringing back his twin. They would’ve both made fine Slayers, but they are- and were- children first and foremost. Muichiro must live to do what he wishes with his life. Death hurts- it stings- but once death has occurred, there can be no stopping for it. Especially not in a time like this.
She has already lost one of the children, and she refuses to lose another.
She needs to find out where the blood is coming from. There’s lacerations all over Muichiro’s face, back, arms, and legs, but none of them are mortally deep. The danger here is infection. They need to remove the maggots that have thankfully not gotten to Muichiro too badly yet, wrap and treat his wounds as best they can, and get him back to their estate now. She doesn’t know how long the two of them have been like this- Muichiro barely clinging onto life and his dead brother’s hand, Yuichiro rotting in his own house.
“...bro…ther…” Muichiro’s raspy, weak voice interrupts her train of thought. His eyes and head move up a little to look at his dead twin.
Hinaki looks up at Amane for permission, and she nods. Her daughter slowly brings a sheet over Yuichiro’s body.
Amane cannot help but hesitate and fight back tears as she peels Muichiro’s limp hand from Yuichiro’s.
There is nothing she can do for Yuichiro anymore. But she can still save his brother.
The poor boy doesn’t even have the strength to cry out in pain as she and her daughters clean out his wounds, scraping out whatever maggots and infection they can and wrapping them up. There are no Kakushi close enough to call, but she and the girls did ride in a wagon to the mountain. It will be quicker, and safer. Muichiro has a better chance of survival with it. The three of them can do whatever first aid they have the supplies for, but one brush of her hand over the boy’s forehead exposes his intense fever. He’s burning up, and badly. Infection has set in, and they must act quickly so they do not lose him, too.
Nichika offers to bury Yuichiro, and Amane accepts the offer. She’s seen the graves where the boys had buried their parents. She tells her daughter to put Yuichiro right beside them. It’s the best comfort she can give the boy after his death. She also knows Hinaki is better with first aid than Nichika; Nichika prefers giving the dead their last respects over having a life in her hands. Amane doesn’t hold that against her. Both are equally important, and both unfortunately have their place right now.
Amane leaves Muichiro behind with Hinaki for a few minutes as she helps her other daughter carry Yuichiro out; the boy is fully encased in the sheet and she can still feel the chill coming from his body. Every bit of life’s warmth that has sapped itself from Yuichiro seems to have gone right to his twin brother to try and suck him into death, too.
Amane will not let that happen.
With a bit of water, the two of them go about washing the blood from Yuichiro’s body. She goes back in to check on Hinaki and see how Muichiro’s doing as she gathers Yuichiro’s severed arm; Hinaki has cleaned all the maggots out and is bandaging the wounds on his arms and legs.
Amane takes over saying the rites for the dead.
By the time Yuichiro is buried, Hinaki is calling. Muichiro’s wounds have been cleaned and bandaged to the best of her ability, and when Amane gives him a once-over, she approves.
Slowly, she picks him up, carrying him like she would one of her own children, because as wide and sprawling as a family the Corps is, he is one of her own. His head is resting on her shoulder and she can feel his fever through both her clothes and the bandages on his face. She wishes there were any extra clothes in the little house so she could’ve at least gotten him out of his filthy, bloodstained things. His eyes are still half-lidded; she cannot tell whether the clear drop running down his cheek is sweat or a tear.
The girls run ahead to get the wagon ready and tell their Kasugai crow to fly ahead and let Kagaya know what to expect. They have extra rooms, and she is well-versed in caretaking with her husband’s curse. Muichiro will be in their care and she will not lose him too.
Poor children. One dead, the other very nearly there.
She passes by the pile of stakes, stones, and tools in the road. They do not have time to clean those, or put them away.
She knows Muichiro was the one to kill the demon that had attacked. His injuries are consistent with defense against a less powerful demon’s(just because a demon is ‘less powerful’ does not mean it cannot murder and she feels almost bad calling something that caused this much misery ‘less powerful’), and Yuichiro’s were not. He’s impressive.
He’s a child.
He will be able to grow into his own later. She will ensure that it happens. She has already lost his twin brother; he is cradled in the soil beside their parents, surrounded by flowers. She will not lose Muichiro.
Her husband has his intuition, and Amane has her quiet stubbornness. She is steadfast, she is calm, she is stable and stoic. She is a mother.
Muichiro is one of her children now. And she will be damned if she lets him slip into death, too.