aiko's otter den

scent of smoke - They are kept together by the thread of the fire god. Or maybe its will. Whatever it is, they will not be separated again. Digimon!AU Reincarnation.

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19. Dark

Being alone with his mother is refreshing.

Mainly because there’s nothing that can go wrong, and the way she cares for Obanai is… normal. No fattening up for a snake demon, though she works a little too hard. There’s no men in this world either. Or no, not in this world, in her life. And here it actually seems to be a problem.

He misses Mitsuri. She’d make it easier. Mother always looks tired. He always has to help her. It feels like they were abandoned. Again.

Only this time, it isn’t his fault.

At least, he hopes it isn’t.

He prays it isn’t.

20. Multitude

Being the youngest sibling is new.

Mitsuri minds… a little. It’s nice not to be the center of attention, but it’s frustrating sometimes to be left behind because she is no longer strong, or pretty or proud. But she is loved and she can eat what she likes and she is happy.

Big siblings means she knows life in all stages again before she’s lived them and it’s so cool and so different that she needs all the help she can get.

Sometimes she gets the scraps, but those scraps are better than anything she’d eaten that wasn’t homemade, and there’s plenty.

She misses Obanai. He would find them funny. Maybe he’d understand it.

She is happy that they’d won and that there are no demons here.

She hopes there aren’t anyway.

21. Respite

Her mother is dying.

It’s different than the last mother who died, Hanako knows, bloody yes but locked behind walls of sterility. Because it’s clean on the surface it should be better. Because it’s not like father who wasted away at home with all of his children, not with Tanjiro running up and down the mountains and raising them with mother.

Her mother is dying and she has to be okay with it in a different way. People had died young because they didn’t know anything about keeping them alive.

Mother is dying here because they do know things and it’s not enough.

Hanako runs her needle through the fabric again.

22. Blessings

It seems as though he can never have a healthy body.

In this, at least, he can have someone to look after him, even if that someone is a spineless sort of parent and a boy who looks like him but apparently is not like him according to everyone around him.

He’s born into prestige and privilege again and it burns. It’s not like he can do anything about it, about his inability to run, about his older brother’s lack of allowance to be a human being to them.

There are no demons but humans don’t need monsters to be awful.

This is a good reminder of that.

23. Fortune

He is a god. He is in an ultimate, undying body and he is a god.

The downside is that he has minions again, and one is a bloody coward.

He’s not one.

(But, whispers a voice that sounds like that Tanjiro brat, he was one. He had been one. He should have some sympathy. Muzan ignores this.)

He is strong. He is might. He is correct.

And then he is knocked out of his own body. He doesn’t hold much attachment to anything. He tries. His family is the closest thing he has to love and attachment and he doesn’t really remember why he’s supposed to have those things, only that he is. There’s so much world out there that he couldn’t explore. Why is this any different?

And yet it is. And yet.

He doesn’t understand why this good life feels so empty.

24. Heartfelt

In this new life Daki is cute, not pretty. That matters about as much as keeping toys clean and not ruining your shirt, but there’s time. They have time.

They’re twins now, twins together, and of course children fight.

He knows she is Daki and she’s very stubborn. She’s still special even now. But not too special. Their absent parents praise him too.

This could prove to be a problem later. But she loves him enough. He loves her enough.

It’s… okay, he supposes.

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