i bet on losing dogs

by angstyfujo

Summary:

Tomioka Giyuu has already written his ending. Every mission is a countdown, every sunrise borrowed time he never asked for. He carries the weight of the dead like stones in his pockets, resigning himself to repaying that debt the only way he knows how: by meeting the death he should have met years ago. He walks into battle like he's walking into the ocean: calm, purposeful, with no intention of coming back up for air.
Sanemi Shinazugawa wasn't supposed to notice. Wasn't supposed to care. But there's something about the way Giyuu takes hits he could dodge, the way his eyes stay distant even in victory, the way he speaks about himself like he's already a ghost. It pisses Sanemi off because he recognizes it; that quiet resignation of someone who's decided they don't deserve to be saved.
So Sanemi does something stupid: well, he tries. He picks fights to keep Giyuu sharp. Shows up uninvited. Watches his blind spots. And somewhere along the way, irritation becomes devotion. He's fighting not just demons but Giyuu's guilt, his conviction that he's already dead.
The problem is, Sanemi doesn't know if love is enough when someone's already let go.

or

a sanegiyuu character study (inspired by mitski)

Notes:

hi and welcome :)

so, im not going to lie... this fic is going to hurt. i won't sugarcoat it, there are some pretty heavy themes here: suicidal ideation, survivor's guilt, depression, self-destructive behavior, and lots of miscommunication and angst.
please take the tags seriously. if any of this content is triggering for you, prioritize your mental health. i promise the tags are there for a reason, so please make sure you're comfortable with the themes of this story before diving in.
that said, i promise this isn't just trauma porn. yes, it's going to be painful and angsty, but this is fundamentally a story about healing, hope, and the stubborn refusal to let someone you love disappear. it's about the messy, imperfect work of learning to live again. there WILL be a happyish ending. they WILL figure their shit out. it's just going to take a minute (and several breakdowns) to get there.

a few housekeeping notes:
- i'm writing this at 3am fueled by mitski's entire discography on loop so apologies for any errors
- comments and kudos are always appreciated!
- if you have any concerns about the content or have a request for another fic, please don't hesitate to message me or comment!
- the tags/warnings will update as the story continues but i will always include possible content warnings in the end notes! (this will end up being an explicit fic!)

lastly, thank you for being here, thank you for giving this fic a chance, and i hope you enjoy!
with love and angst,
coco <3

Chapter 1: where i'll be looking in their eyes when they're down

Tomioka Giyuu did not fear death.

This wasn't bravery, he was self-aware enough to know that. Bravery required something to lose, something worth protecting. A future to fight for. People who needed you to come home. The small, precious things that made survival feel like victory instead of obligation. Feel worth it.

When was the last time he had that?

He tried to remember it. Remember a time when he felt alive. His mind came up empty. Perhaps it was before Final Selection, when Sabito's presence alone had felt like proof that he deserved to exist. Before the demon came, when his sister was alive and their small house had been full of warmth, laughter, and the mundane complaints of childhood. Back when his only grievances were going out to chop wood in the cold of winter. Back when "tomorrow" was assumed, not questioned.

Those versions of himself were lost in the past. In a distant dream that he could never return to no matter how hard he tried. Ghosts he'd left behind in various graves, lost to the fate of being forgotten.

What he felt instead was lighter. Quieter. The gentle resignation of water flowing toward an inevitable edge, content to fall. Water didn't fight against gravity. It didn't rage against the drop. It never fought back or raised it's voice against external forces. It followed in the direction that it was always meant to go. The path of least resistance. The path that took him everywhere and nowhere at once, until the only direction left to go was down.

Tomioka Giyuu was water destined to fall, and the mist rising from above didn't frighten him.

It felt… welcoming.

Death did not seek him out though, it seemed.

No matter how he sought for the sweet taste of finality, of peace, it was never his time. Living felt like treading water in a endless ocean. He could keep his head above the surface, he was skilled enough for that, but there was no shore in sight. No destination to count on. Just the repetitive motion of staying afloat because sinking would inconvenience the people who would have to retrieve his body.

He kept swimming toward nothing.

He never actively sought the edge though. He never stood at the precipice, leaning forward to fall. That would require intent, decision, the kind of active engagement with his own existence that he'd lost somewhere between Sabito's death and his first mission as a Hashira. Instead, he waited. He waited for a strong wind to blow his way, to take the final step off the edge for him. It was cowardice at its finest, but Giyuu had long stopped caring about trivial things like that.

He never stepped back from the edge. He would wait his entire life at the edge if he had to.

He never built walls or changed the course when the current pulled him closer to sweet finality. Never fought the flow when missions grew more dangerous, when injuries accumulated, when his body whispered that it was tired of healing just to break again. He performed his duties because the Corps needed him, because demons didn't stop killing just because he'd stopped caring whether he lived. His survival, however hollow it felt, meant that another family stayed intact.

That was worth something, even if his own life wasn't.

The other Hashira didn't understand this, of course. How could they? They moved through the world with a purpose burning in their veins. Every single one of them carried something precious within them that they refused to let the demons take. Rengoku had his unwavering conviction, his certainty that human life blazed with meaning. Giyuu wasn't sure what meaning that could be, but a small part of him yearned to feel as much as Rengoku. Shinobu had her sister's legacy, and a gentle smile masking calculated fury that could fool anyone. Revenge was something to live for. Even Shinazugawa, bitter and scarred, fought as though he was desperate to protect something... his brother, perhaps, who he acted as if he hated, as if the boy had every fault in his misery. Or maybe it was simply the idea that his suffering should mean something. That all the pain he'd endured had purchased something worth the price.

Giyuu envied that. The certainty. The anchor.

He had lost his reasons somewhere in the space between then and now.

Sabito. His sister.

Their faces came to him like a vivid dream sometimes in the hours before dawn awoke the sky. Their figures haunted him when exhaustion blurred the edges of his discipline, slipping through the cracks of his carefully maintained emptiness. Sabito, the boy who visited him in those quiet moments when they were younger, grinning with that infectious confidence. When the only thing they had to worry about in those moments was the anticipation for final selection. Giyuu forced those memories to the forefront of his mind, locking away the Final Selection as if it was a distant dream. A nightmare he could choose not to remember. Sabito's face would come to him, but it was never the one covered in blood, his pupils dilating in terror and agony. In purely selfish ignorance, Giyuu forbade himself from remembering that night, omitting Sabito's last expression from his memory like a redaction in the narrative of his life. He remembered only the good parts: the smiling, the encouragement, and the unwavering belief that Giyuu could be more than something more than he was already.

He wished that Sabito had lived long enough to learn that some people aren't worth saving.

Like him.

But wishes were futile.

His sister's face was fainter now, features softening into impressions rather than details. The warmth of her hand. The sound of her humming while she worked. The weight of her body as she shielded him, choosing his life over her own. Choosing to let the demon rip into her body so that he could have another chance to live. He couldn't remember anymore if that was love or simply duty dressed up as devotion.

Either way, he hadn't deserved it.

The irony wasn't lost on him that he'd become a Hashira, the highest rank reserved for only those who embodied the ideals the Corps' held with a passion. He performed his role with competence, never passion. His technique was flawless, honed through years of repetitive, tireless practice, done only to numb his thoughts. Demons didn't require emotional investment to dispatch. They were simple problems with simple solutions. Patterns to disrupt. Threats to neutralize. The work was simple enough when he removed himself from it. When he stopped thinking of the people the demons had been. When he stopped imagining the families waiting for Hashira who might not come home. When he became a weapon instead of a person, because weapons didn't have to justify their existence.

But the others looked at him and saw someone that he was not. A Hashira, by title and skill alone, yes. But it was a performance. A shadow puppet casting the right shape against the wall. It was all a farce—that he was allowed to still be alive. Some cruel joke that the world was playing to punish him for never being strong enough at the right time.

He existed behind glass, watching life happen, going through appropriate motions, but never quite living. Other people felt; Giyuu observed those emotions like a scientist studying specimens. Interesting, but distant. Not for him. He didn't deserve to feel in that way. He'd left his capacity for feeling at the bottom of a mountain seven years earlier, buried under rocks and guilt. Buried under the weight of being the one who survived. The one who deserved to die but had lived instead.

His body was a weapon that he maintained out of professional responsibility. Oil the blade. Mend the uniform. Eat enough to maintain functionality. Sleep enough to avoid collapse.

The person who inhabited this body was optional. The weapon was not.

Kibutsuji needed to die. After that?

After that didn't matter.

The water would fall eventually. That was its nature.

And when it did, Giyuu thought he would feel nothing about it, just as he felt nothing about most things these days. Just the quiet, the stillness, the gentle resignation of water that had stopped fighting its own nature and simply surrendered to gravity's pull. Any emotion he felt was trapped behind a steel iron gate, chained up so tightly that nothing could surface.

He stood in the Butterfly Estate's garden, watching wisteria petals drift in the wind. They drifted in soft spirals, weightless and pale, catching the faintest shimmer of late afternoon light before settling into air again, never quite touching the ground, always suspended somewhere in that in between. Behind him, the other Hashira were gathering for a mission briefing. He could hear Rengoku's booming laugh, Shinobu's carefully pleasant voice, and beneath it all, sharper, like steel scraping stone, Shinazugawa's perpetual anger.

Giyuu wondered, distantly, if Shinazugawa feared anything at all. The Wind Hashira fought like fury given form, all violence and noise. The opposite of water. The opposite of acceptance. He seemed to be everything that Giyuu was not.

"Tomioka-san."

Speak of the devil, and he appears.

Giyuu turned. Shinaguzawa stood at the garden's entrance, white hair catching late afternoon sun, scars vivid against skin, eyes fixed on Giyuu with an intensity that always felt like being dissected. Could there be something that Shinazugawa was trying to find something in Giyuu that could not exist?

"We're heading out," Shinazugawa said, his gruff voice cutting through the peaceful sounds of the breeze off the pond. Then, with barely concealed irritation: "Try not to die on this one."

It wasn't concern. Couldn't be. Shinazugawa hated him. He had made that clear at every Hashira meeting, every chance encounter. Even on missions he had kept Giyuu at an arms length. It was burning hatred poorly concealed by professionalism. They were oil and water, wind and stillness, everything incompatible forced into proximity by duty alone.

So why did he always notice?

Why did Shinazugawa's eyes track him across rooms, sharp and assessing, like he was trying to solve an equation that refused to balance? Why did his jaw tighten when Giyuu returned from missions injured, that muscle jumping beneath scarred skin in what almost looked like—

No. Giyuu dismissed the thought before it could fully form. He was projecting. Seeing things that weren't there because some buried part of him still remembered what it felt like to matter to someone.

"I'll try," Giyuu said, meaning it as much as he ever did.

Shinazugawa's eyes narrowed, like he'd heard the unspoken piece. As if he knew just how little Giyuu valued his own life. Like he always did, somehow, cutting through Giyuu's careful neutrality to the emptiness beneath.

"Yeah," Shinazugawa said, voice rough with something Giyuu couldn't name. "You do that."

He turned and walked away, but not before Giyuu caught the expression that flickered across his face, frustration, yes, but underneath it something that looked almost like concern.

Or maybe Giyuu was just that desperate to believe someone still cared whether he lived or died.

Either way, it didn't matter.

The mission would come. He would fight. He would fight for the people, never himself. And whether he survived or not would be decided by factors beyond his control: demon strength, luck, the whims of whatever God above decided who lived or died. Whatever God above that had kept him alive for this long.

He was water. He would flow where the current took him.

And if that current led over the edge?

Well.

At least the fall would be quiet.

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

The demon was faster than it looked. Stronger than expected.

Giyuu registered this in the split-second before it moved, the unnatural tension coiled in its limbs, the predatory intelligence gleaming in eyes that had once been human. Upper Rank. Had to be. The air itself felt heavier here, thick with malice that made his skin prickle with warning.

Which meant this village would already be dead unless they ended this quickly.

Behind them, three hundred civilians huddled in their homes, prayers whispered to gods that had never stopped demons before. They tended to the wounded, prayed for the dead in screams of anguish and grief. Giyuu could feel their fear like a physical weight, pressing against his back. They were counting on him to save them.

He would. That was his job. Whether he survived doing it was irrelevant.

Protect the people. Kill the demon. That was all that mattered.

"Upper Rank," Shinazugawa confirmed beside him, voice tight with controlled aggression, veins pulsing in his neck as he gritted his teeth. This was more than what they'd expected. More than what had been reported by the Kasugai. His hand was already on his blade, knuckles white with pressure. "We need to—"

Giyuu was already moving.

Water Breathing, Third Form: Flowing Dance.

His body knew the movements before his mind caught up, muscle memory carved deep through years of repetitive practice. He closed the distance between himself and the demon in three fluid strides, blade singing as it left its sheath. The moonlight glinted off of the blue blade as he raised from his side. The world narrowed to motion and counter-motion, action and reaction, the clean simplicity of combat where everything had a solution.

The demon's first strike came fast, claws extended, aiming for his throat. On the offensive. Reckless. Giyuu twisted, letting the attack whistle past his ear close enough to feel the displacement of air. Close enough to slow the demon's reflexes even by a second.

There it was. His blade followed the opening, water spiraling from the edge in that distinctive pattern that had become synonymous with his name. The cut was clean. Precise. The demon's right arm separated at the shoulder.

It grew back before the limb hit the ground.

Instant regeneration. This demon was stronger than they had expected it to be. But in it's eyes held kanji. A Twelve Kizuki. Lower Moon.

"Tomioka, wait—!" Shinazugawa's voice cut through the focused silence of combat, sharp with something that might have been concern. "Don't engage alone, we need to—"

The demon lunged with a screeching growl, cutting through the air like a piercing siren.

Giyuu sidestepped. Eighth Form: Waterfall Basin. The technique was designed for overwhelming offense, sacrificing defense for the sake of a killing blow. He drove forward, water cascading from his sword in a torrent of strikes that would have decapitated any lesser demon. The world narrowed to the clean, lethal arc of his blade.

Water rose, not gently, but in a plunging, merciless fall, the kind that crushes boulders and carves valleys over centuries. Giyuu abandoned any pretense of defense, all composure channeled into pure, overwhelming offense. Each strike broke against the demon with the force of a collapsing river, relentless, layered, inescapable.

The demon merely laughed. It jumped back, creating space between it and Giyuu.

"Hashira," it hissed, voice layered with too many tones at once. "I can smell your death wish from here." The words should have surprised him. They didn't.

The demon's counterattack came from three directions simultaneously, its body splitting into shadowy duplicates that moved with independent purpose. Giyuu tracked them all, calculating angles and trajectories, weighing options with detached efficiency. He could dodge all three. Easily. His body was already mapping the movements required: pivot left, duck under the second strike, parry the third with a defensive form. But Sanemi was overextended behind him, mid-strike against another demon that had emerged from the forest. His back was exposed. Vulnerable.

Giyuu made a choice.

He stepped forward instead of back. The edge grew closer.

The demon's claws punched through his left side, just below his ribs. Not deep enough to hit anything vital—he'd angled his body at the last second, turning a killing blow into merely a painful one. He gasped, his breathing ragged as blood filed his mouth. The impact drove air from his lungs, sent fire racing along nerve endings. Vertigo hit him like a wave and his tongue felt heavy, anchored to the floor of his mouth. Giyuu's ears began to ring, his head pounding. Still, his sword arm remained steady.

Water Breathing, Second Form: Water Wheel.

He rotated his entire body, using the demon's embedded claws as a pivot point, and brought his blade around in a devastating arc. The pain flashed through his side like a whip, quick and unforgiving. His arms had lost much of their strength, but the adrenaline flowing through his entire body kept his attack going. The blade met the demon's neck. Blood sprayed. The demon's head separated from its shoulders even as its claws tore free from Giyuu's side. The body dissolved into ash before it hit the ground.

"TOMIOKA!"

Shinazugawa's voice was raw, almost feral. Giyuu turned, slower than he should have, blood loss already affecting his reaction time. He found the Wind Hashira standing three feet away, his own demon dispatched, staring at Giyuu with an expression that was difficult to parse.

Fury. That was clear enough. Shinazugawa's default state was anger, after all.

But underneath it, something else. Something that looked almost like—

"What the fuck was that?" Shinazugawa crossed the distance between them in two strides, close enough that Giyuu could see the muscle jumping in his jaw. "You had time to dodge. I saw it. You chose not to." Giyuu stepped back, stumbling slightly. Shinazugawa grabbed his arm in a harsh grip, keeping him up from falling. His face remained impassive, but he held his breath until Shinazugawa let go of him, letting his arm hang by his side.

Giyuu pressed a hand to his side, feeling blood seep warm and sticky between his fingers. Not arterial. He'd been precise even in taking damage. Despite that, his head pounded, and his body felt more and more weighed down by the second. Pain lance through his side with every expansion of his lungs. "The demon is dead. The mission is complete."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the only answer that matters." Giyuu kept his voice level, professional. This was familiar ground; deflection, distance, the careful maintenance of walls that kept people from looking too closely. He had done this many times before, it had almost become an automatic response. "We should check the perimeter. There may be more—"

"Stop." Shinazugawa's hand shot out, gripping Giyuu's shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to prevent escape. He flinched back, trying to shake off the Wind Hashira's hand, but it was to no avail. The blood loss had weaked him considerably. "Stop doing that. Stop deflecting." Giyuu looked at the hand, then at Shinazugawa's face. The Wind Hashira was breathing hard, whether from exertion or emotion Giyuu couldn't tell. His eyes were too intense, seeing too much, cutting through the careful neutrality that Giyuu wore like armor. It was the kind of emotion that he had never expected to see on Shinazugawa's face before. It utterly confused him. He knew Shinazugawa's disposition, had seen it on every mission, in every meeting, with every little sneer directed his way at the Master's mansion. This was completely new. Giyuu had never seen Shinazugawa like this before.

"You positioned yourself to take that hit," Shinazugawa continued, voice dropping lower. Dangerous. "You had three fucking seconds. Three. You could have blocked. You could have evaded. Instead you offered yourself up like a goddamn sacrifice."

"The village—"

"Would have been fine! I had the angle on your demon. You know I did." Shinazugawa's grip tightened. "So why? Why did you take a hit that could have killed you?"

Because it didn't matter. Because his body was a tool, and tools got damaged in the course of their use. Because somewhere deep in the hollow space where his emotions used to live, he'd stopped believing his survival was worth protecting. But he couldn't say that. Couldn't articulate the truth without revealing how far gone he was, and that would lead to questions he didn't want to answer. Concerns that felt like obligations, and he already carried too many of those. He couldn't handle another person choosing to care for him and suffering the consequences. Never again. His gaze grew cold again, the momentary surprise once etched in his eyebrows vanishing completely.

"It was a tactical decision," Giyuu said instead. "Nothing more."

"Bullshit." The word came out flat, certain. "I've been watching you, Tomioka. For months now. And I see it."

Something cold settled in Giyuu's chest, like ice running through his veins. "See what?"

"The way you fight." Shinazugawa's eyes didn't waver. "Like you're waiting for it to finally stick."

The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Giyuu should deny it. Should laugh it off or deflect again or simply walk away. Should do anything to prove him wrong. But something about the way Shinazugawa was looking at him, not with pity or disgust, but with a sharp, focused intensity that demanded honesty, made lying feel impossible. It felt as though he was backed into a corner, unable to escape from the bitter truth.

"Would it matter?" Giyuu heard himself ask. "If I was?"

His voice sounded weak, softer than he had wanted it to. Somehow it felt impossible to put up a front against the man in front of him now, no matter how many times he'd done it in the past. Shinazugawa's expression did something complicated. The anger was still there, burning hot beneath scarred skin, but it had been joined by something else. Something that looked almost like fear. That couldn't be right. Giyuu had to be seeing things.

"Yeah," Shinazugawa said roughly. "It would matter."

"Why?"

The question came out quieter than intended. Genuinely confused. His eyebrows furrowed, the gears in his head turning, trying to find something, anything to explain this. They weren't friends. Barely colleagues. Shinazugawa had made his disdain clear from the first Hashira meeting, all sharp words and sharper glares. His profound hatred for Giyuu had not wavered once in the years they had been on missions together. So why did he care now? Why did it matter to him whether Giyuu lived or died? Why today, when Shinazugawa's concern felt like more of a farce than anything genuine.

Shinazugawa opened his mouth. Closed it. His jaw worked like he was chewing on words too difficult to spit out. Giyuu waited for the Wind Hashira to curse him out, to insult his appearance, his personality, to deflect with harsh words and possibly even harsher actions. But Shinazugawa stood in place, his feet grounded in the dirt.

"Because you're a Hashira," he finally said. "We can't afford to lose—"

"That's not why." Giyuu didn't know where the certainty came from, but it was there. Solid. Undeniable. "You don't look at the other Hashira the way you look at me." Giyuu could see Shinazugawa's expression betray him before he could school it back into the stern coldness it had previously been.

"The other Hashira don't have death wishes."

"Rengoku would throw himself into every battle like he was trying to prove something. Shinobu works herself to exhaustion hunting demons. Uzui took a mission that cost him an eye and a hand." Giyuu kept his voice level, factual. He was running out arguments, running out of ways to keep Shinazugawa out. "We all take risks. Why does mine bother you?"

Shinazugawa's grip on his shoulder shifted. Not releasing, but changing. His fingers flexed like he wanted to either shake Giyuu or pull him closer. "Because they're fighting to live. You're just fighting to not die yet. And if you can't tell the difference, then you're even more fucked up than I thought."

The words hit harder than the demon's claws had. Giyuu looked down at his injury. There was blood still seeping through his fingers, his haori torn, skin split in a clean line that would scar. He'd taken worse. This barely registered as noteworthy. He had dealt with worse and survived. Survived because surface wounds were just that. On the surface. But Shinazugawa was staring at it like it was a mortal wound.

"I should report to Shinobu," Giyuu said, because he didn't know what else to say. What else could he say? Shinazugawa had never treated him this way, had never approached him with words other than those filled with malice, pure hatred. "Get this treated before it becomes infected."

"You do that." The Wind Hashira's voice had gone rough again, scraped raw. Giyuu still couldn't understand where this was coming from. What had changed in Shinazugawa so suddenly to make him say these things? "And while you're there, think about what you're doing. Because this?" He gestured at Giyuu's injury, at the blood, at everything the wound represented. "This isn't sustainable. Eventually you're going to miscalculate. Take a hit that's actually fatal. And what then?"

Then it would be over. Finally. The thought came automatically, unbidden. Giyuu didn't say it out loud. He didn't have to. Sanemi's expression suggested he'd heard it anyway.

"Fuck," Shinazugawa muttered, releasing Giyuu's shoulder like he'd been burned. He stepped back, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of pure frustration. Giyuu didn't understand why he was acting like this. Why he seemed to care. "You really don't care, do you? Whether you survive." Then again, who did? Who was there to care about Giyuu's unfulfilling life if he could not? Everyone who once did was dead.

It wasn't a question. Giyuu didn't answer it anyway.

"The village is secure," he said instead, falling back on professional distance. "We should do a final sweep, then report back to—"

"I'll do the sweep." Shinazugawa cut him off. "You get to the Butterfly Estate before you bleed out. That's an order."

"You can't order me—"

"Watch me." Shinazugawa's eyes flashed. "Go. Now. Before I drag you there myself."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Giyuu considered arguing. He'd had worse injuries. He could complete the mission. He didn't need coddling. But something about the set of Shinazugawa's jaw suggested he'd make good on the threat. And honestly? Giyuu was tired. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the dull throb of pain and the heavier weight of exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical exertion. He noticed the changes as his arms began to feel heavier than they were before. The noise of the world dulled, slipping back until only his own breathing remained.

"Fine," he said. Each inhale feeling shallower than the one before it. Each exhale taking more and more effort. He turned to leave, but Shinazugawa's voice stopped him.

"Tomioka-san."

Giyuu looked back.

Shinazugawa was standing in the moonlight, covered in demon blood that would soon burn to ash under the rising sun, looking at him with an expression that was all too complicated to decipher. Anger, yes. Frustration. But underneath it all, something almost tender. It was something that he faintly recognized. It was the kind of expression that he had only been able to see long ago. Giyuu ignored the tugging in his chest.

"Don't die," Shinazugawa said. Not a request. A command. "Not tonight. Not on some backwater mission that doesn't matter. If you're going to die, at least make it count." The words should have sounded callous. Cruel, even. Instead they sounded almost like concern. As if, in the single hour that the fight took place, Shinazugawa had turned into someone completely different. Someone who's frustration only thinly veiled the concern hidden beneath. Giyuu didn't know what to do with that. Didn't know how to respond to someone caring whether he lived, when he'd stopped caring himself years ago.

So he did what he always did. He said nothing. Turned. And walked away, his footsteps heavy in the dirt as he began walking towards the rising sun peaking through the trees. Behind him, he heard Shinazugawa exhale long and frustrated. He chose to ignore it.

He didn't look back.

Chapter 2: where i'll be until you're home

Summary:

"'I want you to try,' Sanemi concluded. 'That's it. Just try. Try to come back from missions. Try to take care of yourself. Try to believe that you are more than just a sacrifice for the Corps.'
'And if I can't?' Tomioka's voice was uncharacteristically small, weak, like a small child, hurt and confused.
'Then I'll remind you. Every single goddamn day if I have to. Until it's imprinted on your mind.'"

Notes:

sanemi prove that you care for the one person you've openly despised for no reason for years challenge go!

(ps: cw at the end!)

The Master's estate was quiet in the same way sacred place were. It wasn't silent, but hushed, still. The kind of stillness that made even breathing feel intrusive.

Shinazugawa Sanemi knelt in position, spine straight while his hands rested on his thighs. Around him, the others were arranging themselves, preparing for the beginning of the meeting. The room was different without Rengoku. Without his presence like a small sun even at rest, warmth radiating from him in waves. Still, Shinobu smiled her pleasant, poisonous smile at nothing in particular while Uzui adjusted his headband with flair. Himejima presented himself as if he truly were a stone, sitting completely still with a practiced calm that Sanemi had never truly understood. Obanai knelt silently as always, but his eyes would wander over to Mitsuri beside him, who sat quite solemnly despite her usual brightness, and Muichiro's eyes were glazed over as he sat on the tatami, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time.

And at the far edge of the room, Tomioka Giyuu knelt alone.

Sanemi's eyes tracked to him automatically. It was a habit he'd developed over the past few months without quite meaning to. He didn't know why he had begun, but at the same time he couldn't break it. Tomioka sat with perfect posture, hands folded, expression as blank as a mask. Respectful. Appropriate. But something about his stillness felt inherently wrong. He was too still. As if he wasn't just quiet but absent. As if he was just a body going through the motions of living while the soul inside had vacated entirely.

Stop staring, Sanemi told himself. Focus on the fucking meeting.

But his eyes drifted back anyway, as if pulled by some gravitational force he couldn't explain. Tomioka's face revealed nothing. It, of course, never did, but there was still something about the way he held himself. Sanemi recognized the careful precision of someone performing a role rather than inhabiting it too well. Tomioka acted like he was a ghost simply pretending to be human, and the thought sent an uncomfortable twist through Sanemi's gut. The Master entered, and Sanemi's head focused toward the front of the room, but his mind still wandered.

"Thank you all for coming," Ubayashiki's gentle voice filled the room, commanding attention without effort. "I know many of you have returned from missions only recently. I appreciate your dedication." Sanemi forced his attention forward. Master Kagaya deserved his focus, not his distraction over Tomioka. Except it kept nagging at him. That wrongness. That absence.

When did it start?

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

- Three months ago; Mission in the northern prefecture -

The demon was weak, a Lower Rank, too weak to pose a challenge for two Hashira, but the village was remote and the Corps had wanted to be thorough. Standard protocol for isolated villages that couldn't afford to lose any more to demon attacks. Sanemi had arrived first, already mid-battle when Tomioka appeared like a silent shadow. No greeting. No acknowledgement. Just blade drawn and immediate engagement, moving with that distinctive fluid grace that made Water Breathing look less like combat and more like a deadly dance. Sanemi was fine with that. He had no interest in being Tomioka's friend. All they had to do was fight and kill together.

But something irked Sanemi about the way that Tomioka fought.

Sanemi had seen him in action before. Everyone had. Tomioka's technique was textbook perfect, all flowing forms and precise strikes, practiced to the point of mastery. It was beautiful, in it's own cold way. But that night, something was different. Tomioka moved with the same technical precision, but there was no adaptation. No self-preservation. When the demon would lunge, Tomioka didn't dodge. He redirected, of course, but only just, letting attacks come within inches of connecting. He was dancing on the edge of injury as if he was daring the demon to land a hit.

But then it actually did. The demon's claws had caught his shoulder. Not deep, but enough to draw blood, to elicit some kind of reaction. Enough that a half -second's delay would have meant a killing blow. Enough that anyone else would have grunted, made a sound, or jumped back. But Tomioka hadn't even flinched. He simply executed the counter-strike with the same mechanical efficiency as always and kept moving. It was as if he wasn't even human.

Sanemi confronted him in the clearing when the time came that the demon's ash fluttered away in the air. The village was safe, but not even that mattered to Sanemi after the fight. What mattered was knowing what the hell Tomioka had just done.

"You got careless," He said, his voice gruff and stern, betraying nothing of the confusion he felt inside.

"The demon is dead and the mission is complete. I'm fine."

"You took a hit that you could have avoided." Sanemi pointed out, his patience stretching thin. Something about the way that Tomioka had responded, the monotone carelessness that his words had been delivered with. The way that Tomioka had just looked at him with those empty blue eyes and said nothing else. Like Sanemi's concern was irrelevant. Like getting purposefully injured was just part of the job, as inevitable as rain.

"The injury is minor." Sanemi grit his teeth in frustration. Tomioka was testing him. That was it. That was all it was.

"That's not the fucking point—Tomioka-san, do you understand what I'm saying? You had time to dodge. You chose not to. " He tried to argue back, but nothing seemed to change in Tomioka's expression.

"I redirected the attack away from vital area. That was sufficient."

Sufficient. Not safe. Not smart. Sufficient.

Like he was performing calculations on acceptable loss rather than fighting to survive. Sanemi had wanted to push further, to demand an explanation for what he'd seen, but Tomioka was already turned away, moving toward the village to assess damage. The conversation was over before it had even begun.

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

- Two months ago; Eastern territory, Upper Rank suspected. -

They'd been assigned together again. Master had thought that they worked well as a team, which despite the fact that they'd barely even exchanged ten words with each other, was infuriatingly true.

The demon had been fast. Instant Regeneration. It could adapt to their techniques with disturbing intelligence, and had a Blood Demon Art that allowed it to split into multiple bodies. It was the kind of fight that required absolute focus and perfect timing. Tomioka had both. His technique was flawless. But still, something felt inherently wrong. There was still that absence of self-preservation.

Sanemi still couldn't shake the feeling that Tomioka was only living to fight and fighting to die. He was starting to recognize it as a pattern rather than an isolated incident.

They'd been fighting for what felt like hours when Sanemi had taken the offensive, his technique tearing through demon flesh faster than it could regenerate. Tomioka was supposed to be covering the flanks, preventing the demons split bodies from escaping or attacking him from behind. The demon had split into four bodies at one point, a technique designed to overwhelm its opponents with attacks from multiple angles. Sanemi had been engaged with two of them, the air itself becoming blades that shred everything in its path. Tomioka was meant to handle the other two.

He'd heard the impact before he saw it. That wet, meaty sound of claws meeting flesh and the specific quality of a strike that connected, that drew blood, that meant that Tomioka had failed to defend himself properly. But when he'd glanced back, Tomioka was already moving into his next form with such grace it would have been hard to tell that he had been hit if not for the blood soaking through the left side of his uniform.

His blade became a spiraling vortex of water, cutting through both demon bodies simultaneously. It was the perfect execution. But Sanemi could only see the cut across his ribs in that moment. It wasn't fatal. But it also wasn't minor either. It was the kind of wound that would make every breath painful, every movement an excruciating reminder of the injury.

"You had an opening to dodge!" Sanemi shouted over the chaos, fury and something else, something like fear, in his voice. "I saw it!" He yelled again, his blade slashing through the head of one of the demon's clones.

"Your position was compromised." Tomioka responded, his voice calm even with all of the chaos. "This was more efficient." Efficient? Like he was reciting a mission report rather than explaining why he'd almost let a demon gut him? Like his body was just a tool to be discarded and as if his pain was just data to be processed and filed away. Tomioka acted as if living or dying was a calculation with no emotional weight, just variable to be optimized for mission success.

"You chose to take that hit," Sanemi said, his gruff voice cutting through the silence after the demon's head had been separated from its shoulders. Tomioka was pressing a hand to his ribs, blood seeping between his fingers and letting out little grunts of pain at the added pressure.

"I minimized the damage while ensuring that the demon couldn't escape. The alternative would have allowed it to gain the upper hand. Would you have preferred that?" Tomioka bit back, his face void of anything except for the fact that his pupils were dilated in pain. Sanemi stepped forward towards the Water Hashira, who in turn stepped back, as if being in close proximity would only worsen his injury.

"The alternative would have been you dodging and me adjusting my position."

"Your technique was already committed. The demon would have had an opening if you'd adjusted your position mid-form."

"So instead you decided to let the thing nearly gut you?"

Tomioka didn't dignify that with a reply, simply turning away from Sanemi as if he was going to take his leave without saying anything else. Sanemi wanted to argue further, to make Tomioka see that there was something fundamentally wrong with his recklessness while fighting the demon. But was it really recklessness? Was it even carelessness? Tomioka wasn't making mistakes. He wasn't acting like the young slayers who got drunk on their own skill, convinced of their invincibility. Sanemi began to understand in that moment that Tomioka was making calculated decisions. Decisions that consistently valued mission success over his own survival.

He didn't know how to take that.

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

- Six weeks ago; Solo mission report -

Tomioka arrived at the Butterfly estate while Sanemi had been recovering from an encounter with an Upper Rank. It was nothing life-threatening, but Shinobu had insisted that he stay for observation because of the amount of injuries he sustained. This meant being stuck in a recovering room, bored out of his mind, listening to sounds of the estate and wishing that he could be back on a mission. It also meant that he was much more observant of who entered and exited the estate.

Sanemi had heard the commotion first. Shinobu's voice was unusually sharp with what he could have thought to be actual concern rather than her typical poisonous pleasantries. The younger girls were rushing past his room to prepare a treatment room. It was the specific quality of controlled chaos that meant that someone had come back from a mission heavily injured.

And then he saw Tomioka.

The Water Hashira was being supported by two Kakushi, covered in blood. Sanemi could tell from the smell that most of it was demon blood, but not entirely. It was also his own. Tomioka had multiple visible injuries, even through his torn uniform. Claw marks were spread across his chest, a deep gash on his left arm, bruising that clearly meant broken or at least cracked ribs told Sanemi all he needed to know. Tomioka had fought too hard for too long without the proper defense, or, he simply didn't care about coming back intact.

For the first time since becoming a Hashira, Sanemi heard Shinobu speak gently to someone. While she was scolding Tomioka all the same, there was a gentle sort of concern in Shinobu's voice that Sanemi had never expected from her. It was as if she knew just how much Tomioka cared about living. As if she actually wanted him to stay alive as more than just a Hashira.

Tomioka accepted her treatment, the scolding, and the pain of the salve being spread across his wounds without complaint. There was no acknowledgement from either of them that any ordinary demon slayer would have been killed by the wounds Tomioka had obtained on his mission. Instead, all he say was:

"When can I return to missions?"

That set something alight inside of Sanemi. Even he was not careless enough to speed run his recoveries after missions. He could see Shinobu pause through the curtain, her hands stilling on the bandage she was wrapping around Tomioka's chest. When she spoke, her voice carried a weight that suggested to Sanemi that this was not the first time they'd had this conversation.

"Three days minimum. And that's if you rest properly, which you won't." Shinobu concluded, but Sanemi knew that she was utterly displeased by the way her voice had lost that gentleness it had just seconds earlier. It wasn't her usual pleasant tone laced with poison though, it was something darker, colder. She sounded almost grim.

"Understood." Was all that Tomioka replied with, but Sanemi knew that he was lying. Perhaps Shinobu did too. Perhaps, since it seemed as though she knew what Tomioka was doing to himself, that she knew not to trust him to allow his body to rest. And he was right.

The next day, Tomioka was out in the training yard, despite Shinobu's stern orders. He was moved with fresh bandages still wrapped around his torso. Each strike he made against the wooden dummies pulled at his still open wounds, reopening them with each form, until blood began to seep through his white bandages like flowers blooming in snow. Tomioka's technique was still perfect, infuriatingly so. Even injured, even in pain, his forms flowed with that same water-like grace. But still, there was something mechanical about it. It looked like the difference between muscle memory and conscious thought. Like his mind was somewhere else entirely while his body went through the motions of ripping itself apart over and over again.

"The fuck are you doing, Tomioka-san?" Sanemi demanded, cross the yard before he'd even thought to intervene. Tomioka stopped mid-form, blade held steady despite the blood seeping through his bandages. His expression was still that same, empty calm that had always left a poor taste in Sanemi's mouth.

"Training."

"You're supposed to be resting."

"I'm functional." That fucking word again.

"Functional isn't the same as healed." Sanemi retorted with a glare, his eyebrows furrowed in frustrated.

"It's sufficient for basic exercises."

"Bullshit. You're wounds are still open and you've ripped your stitches. There's blood soaking through your haori." He pointed out, hoping that calling Tomioka out on what he was clearly trying to hide would prove some point. Even just looking at Tomioka from a good distance away, he could see the slight tremor in his sword arm that spoke everything of his exhaustion and pain, despite his weak attempt to hide it from Sanemi.

Tomioka glanced down at his haori, his adams apple moving in his throat as he swallowed thickly before responding. "The wounds were shallow. They'll heal."

"They'll heal faster if you stop reopening them." Sanemi argued back, walking closer to Tomioka until only the length of a sword's worth of space was left in between them. Tomioka looked unfazed, aside from the sweat beading on his forehead.

"I've been conditioning my body for years, I can't let these injuries get rid of that." Tomioka responded and Sanemi felt something crack inside of him. Whether it was the snap of the rope keeping him from grabbing Tomioka and shaking him, telling him to wake the fuck up, to actually live, or if it was a new sort of sadness that had formed inside of his chest, he didn't know. All he could think about was how Tomioka regarded himself as an object instead of a living, breathing thing that deserved to be alive.

"Shinobu-san's going to kill you if she catches you out here."

"Shinobu-san is attending to other patients." Tomioka had already resumed his stance, and Sanemi had half the mind to knock him out and haul him over his shoulder if it meant that he would finally allow his body to rest. "She won't notice."

"I noticed." Sanemi pressed, inching forward until his face was closer to Tomioka's than it had ever been before. The Water Hashira paused at that, something flickering in his expression too quickly for Sanemi to identify. Surprise, maybe. Or could it have been confusion that someone was paying attention?

"Why do you care?" Tomioka asked, and there had been genuine confusion in his voice, as if he had regressed back into the hurt child that Sanemi knew lingered in his soul. Had no one ever noticed it before? Tomioka was quiet enough that Sanemi had guessed that he was correct in his assumption. Sanemi didn't have a good answer for Tomioka's question though. Why did he care? Why did Giyuu's habits bother him for than they should?

"Because you're a Hashira," he'd said instead, even though his thoughts were more complicated than just that. "We need you functional." It was a bullshit answer, and Sanemi had a feeling that Giyuu would cling to that word. Functional.

"I am functional, Shinazugawa-san." Of course.

"You're bleeding through your bandages. Tell me, does active blood loss mean functional to you? How long will you be functional before you're dead?" Sanemi had wanted to shake him, wanted to grab him by the shoulders and demand to know what the hell was wrong with him, why he treated his own body as if it was disposable, and why he couldn't seem to grasp that his survival mattered. Even if it didn't matter to him, it mattered to someone.

Tomioka had already turned backed to his training, disregarding Sanemi's words and dismissing the conversation with a coldness that settled on Sanemi's shoulders heavily. His chest twisted with something uncomfortable. He recognized himself in the mechanical precision of Tomioka's moves. He recognized Tomioka fighting through injuries, pushing himself past unreasonable limits, and watching him train as if his body was a mere tool meant to be broken someday. Sanemi had once been like that. The only difference was that he was fighting for something. Revenge. He was fighting for Genya, for revenge, for the idea that his suffering should mean something.

Tomioka Giyuu was fighting for absolutely nothing.

He was just going through the motions because stopping and letting himself rest would require acknowledging that he himself couldn't even see a real point to any of it.

After that day, Sanemi had started watching obsessively. Counting missions. Tracking injuries. Noting patterns. Anything he could do to get past the impenetrable fortress that Tomioka had up constantly.

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

- One month ago; The incident -

The Upper Moon 4 was confirmed before they could even engage. It was the kind of demon that required more Hashira than just the two of them, but they had to make do with what they had.

The fight had gone badly from the very beginning.

The demon was as strong as Sanemi had expected, maybe even more. It was faster, more intelligent than any demon Sanemi had ever encountered before. It could manipulate shadows, allowing it to attack from angles that shouldn't have existed, to hide in darkness so complete that no one would be able to track it.

Sanemi had been barely holding his own. Wind Breathing was effective against shadows, the moving air revealed where the demon was hiding at times. But it was exhausting, having to stay vigilant constantly, having to adapt even more. Then he'd made a mistake. It was one mistake alone, but that against an Upper Moon was all it could take. He'd committed too hard to an attack and left his right side exposed. It was as if the demon had materialized out of the shadows behind him, claws already descending toward his neck aiming for a killing blow.

Sanemi had known he was dead. He'd felt that strange clarity that came in before impact. He'd accepted that this was how it ended.

Then Tomioka was there.

He moved faster than Sanemi had thought was even remotely possible, throwing himself between Sanemi and the demon's claws with no regard for his own safety. He had no defensive form, and he wasn't attempting to even minimize the damage done to his own body. This was pure sacrifice, and he was taking a blow that would have decapitated Sanemi in an instant.

The demon's claws punched clean through his Tomioka's shoulder, and it should have torn his arm off; it would have if Tomioka hadn't turned at the last second, which redirected some of the force. But his sword arm was now compromise, and the injured limb was hanging uselessly by his side with blood pouring from the wound in a way that indicated its severity.

Tomioka's expression still hadn't changed. His eyes were still so calm, so empty. They were still devoid of any emotion, even after nearly dying and sustaining a major injury.

Sanemi killed the demon in a rage-fueled frenzy, tearing it apart so violently that craters were being formed in the ground. He kept attacking, kept yelling until his vocal chords went out, until the demon was clearly destroyed, and even then, when the demon was made of ash alone, he didn't stop attacking. He released his rage on the cold hard ground as if he was in a trance.

And then he'd turned on Tomioka.

"What the fuck was that?" He spit out, stalking towards Tomioka angrily, veins popping in his arms and neck from how tightly he was gripping his sword. Tomioka was sitting against a tree, blooding pooling beneath him, looking down at his mangled shoulder with the same emptiness that he approached absolutely everything with. Sanemi knew that he was only doing so to catalogue damage and assess his own functionality. He wasn't scared, or in acknowledgement of his own pain, he was simply treating his injuries like new data, as he had always done.

"You were in danger, Shinazugawa-san." Tomioka gritted out, his eyebrows furrowed in pain and his teeth gritted. Sanemi could tell that this was worse than the last injury, could tell that Tomioka was trying so hard and failing to hide his pain.

"I can handle myself!" Sanemi's voice was scraped raw, tinged with a kind of fear that he had only felt a rare couple of times in his life, even if he couldn't accept that it was for a man like Tomioka. "I've been fighting demons since before you became a Hashira!" He yelled, grabbing Tomioka's haori and yanking his body closer.

"Your defense was compromised. The demon would have killed you." Tomioka grunted, weakly lifting his good arm to try and loosen Sanemi's grip on his haori.

"So you decided to die instead?" The words came out louder than Sanemi had intended, echoing in the clearing. "You threw yourself in front of those claws like your life doesn't fucking matter!" Tomioka looked up at him then, and just for moment, for a fraction of a second, Sanemi could see something flickering in those dead blue eyes. Not fear. Not regret.

Resignation.

But it was a different kind of resignation than the kind of absent resignation that constantly pooled in those dark blue eyes. It was almost… sad. As if he'd already accepted that his death was inevitable, that he was already waiting for the right time and when it would happen, but that he'd never had someone say it aloud before.

"Would it have mattered?" Tomioka dropped his head down, coughing quietly, his chest rising and falling in staggered breaths. The question was different this time though. It held a sort of sincerity, some kind of genuineness that Sanemi had never expected. It wasn't rhetorical either. Tomioka had asked that question because he wanted to know. "If I had died instead of you?"

Sanemi froze. That question, it was one that revealed more than he knew Tomioka had meant it to. That question revealed a sliver of the vulnerability that Sanemi had never been able to see before because of the iron wall Tomioka always held up around everyone else. He genuinely didn't know if his death would matter. He genuinely believed that it actually might not. Genuinely thought that his life might be worth less than Sanemi's, or anyone's, or nothing at all for that matter.

"Yes," Sanemi muttered, almost shell shocked. He had no idea what to say, and even if he did have the words, he had no idea how to say them. He had no idea how to say them in a way that would change Tomioka's perception. "It would have mattered."

"Why?"

It was such a simple question with such a complicated answer.

Because the Corps needed him. Because he was skilled and strong and he was a Hashira and because his death would mean more missions for everyone else, more risk, more chance that someone else would die. All true. All practical. All reasons that had nothing to do with the sick feeling in Sanemi's gut when he imagined Tomioka laying there on the ground, dead, all because he had thought Sanemi's life was worth more than his.

"Because you're a Hashira," he said instead. It was the safe answer. The professional one. The correct answer to give, no matter how much of a bad taste it left in his mouth. "We can't afford to lose you." Tomioka stared at him for a long moment with something unreadable crossing his face, as if he was trying to solve Sanemi like a puzzle with a few too many missing pieces. He passed out from the blood loss before he could figure anything out though, his eyes fluttering shut as his body became limp. His body was finally overriding whatever force of will had been keeping him conscious for as long as it had been.

Sanemi carried him to the Butterfly Estate. He'd stayed while Shinobu worked tirelessly to save Tomioka's arm. It had been close, so close that, for a few hours, Sanemi had genuinely feared that Tomioka might lose his arm entirely. He'd sat outside of Tomioka's recovery room for longer than he meant to, the hours melding together as he tried to understand what the hell had happened.

That was when he finally acknowledged what he'd been avoiding for months. Tomioka wasn't just strange. He wasn't just distant or antisocial or bad at connecting with people. Tomioka had completely given up. It wasn't obvious of course, because nobody had realized yet just how much Tomioka had surpassed his limit. He gone past his limit so much that he'd given up on the idea that his survival mattered at all. He kept fighting, kept killing demons, kept performing his role as if everything was completely fine. But he had stopped believing that whether he lived or died made any difference to anyone anymore, including himself.

Once Sanemi saw that, truly understood that, he couldn't unsee every single moment of Tomioka's self-destructiveness. He couldn't stop noticing all of the dangerous missions that Tomioka volunteered for, couldn't stop counting the visible injuries that accumulated on his body faster than they could heal. It was like something had flipped a switch inside of Sanemi's mind. Instead of anger at the sight of Tomioka's face, something inside of his chest twisted painfully. Now that he could recognize Tomioka's active dissociation and what swam in those dull blue eyes just under the surface, he would never be the same.

They'd never talked about it after Tomioka recovered. They'd simply gone back to being distant colleagues who occasionally worked together, otherwise ignoring each other. But Sanemi couldn't forget. He couldn't forget the emptiness in Tomioka's eyes when he truly, genuinely asked whether or not his death would matter. Nor could he forget the way he'd thrown himself in front of certain death like it was nothing; like his life was something to be spent carelessly.

After that, Sanemi started watching obsessively. Counting Tomioka's missions, tracking his injuries, noting patterns that painted a quiet picture that he didn't want to see, didn't want to believe was real, but couldn't look away from. Tomioka wasn't trying to die. Not actively nor intentionally. He just wasn't trying very hard to live, and somehow, that was even worse.

It meant that he could be saved. If someone noticed or even cared enough to push past the wrought iron gate he'd put up and make him see that his life had value, maybe Tomioka would live to see another day without feeling as though his life was as disposable as he did now. The question was whether Sanemi was that someone or not. How could he convince someone to live for more than just the thought of dying someday when he was still fighting the demons in his own life? And why the hell did he care so much about Tomioka Giyuu? Why did it matter so much to Sanemi that he stay alive?

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

"My child, your thoughts?" Sanemi's attention snapped back to the present with the force of a physical blow. Everyone was looking at him: Shinobu with that knowing smile, Uzui with barely disguised amusement, and the Master with his gentle patience. Fuck. He'd missed the question entirely, too caught up in memories and trying to figure out what exactly had changed for Tomioka to become his problem now.

"I'll take the northern sector," he said, defaulting to his usual aggression to cover his lapse in focus. It was his standard strategy, to be loud and confident, to make people forget that he'd been distracted at all. And it worked. Most of the time. "Unless anyone objects." He said afterwards, surveying the room with that perpetual sneer on his face, his arms crossed against his chest.

No one objected. No one ever did when he volunteered for the worst assignments because they had all learned that Shinazugawa Sanemi didn't make offers that he couldn't see through to the end. They were confident in his ability to take the most difficult assignment. He expected this before he had even spoken, knowing from previous meetings the unspoken trust that the other Hashira held for him.

"I'll accompany you." What?

Every head turned in the room, even the Master's, who seemed unusually shocked behind the soft smile that never seemed to leave his face. Tomioka had spoken. Actually volunteered for a joint mission. With Sanemi. Tomioka, who never volunteered for anything that involved working with others, who preferred solo missions and minimal social contact, who went out of his way to avoid collaboration, to the point where assigning him to a joint mission required explicit orders from the Master.

But now he was volunteering to work with Sanemi. Why?

Sanemi's mind raced through possibilities. Had Tomioka noticed something about his demeanor that had changed over the past few months? Was this some kind of response or an attempt to… what? Prove something? Challenge him?

Or was this another calculated decision made because the northern sector was the most dangerous assignment?

"The northern sector will require two Hashira minimum," Tomioka continued in that flat, empty voice. There was no inflection, no emotion. He was just stating facts as if he was reading from a mission report. "I'm available." Like hell you are. Sanemi wanted to argue, but arguing would mean showing the rest of the Hashira that he actually cared at least a little bit about Tomioka, who he'd openly hated from the start.

Tomioka knew exactly how dangerous this mission would be, and that was precisely why he'd volunteered. The realization hit Sanemi like a punch to the gut, driving air from his lungs with the force of his sudden and unwilling understanding.

Oh. Oh, you stupid bastard. You're doing it again.

"I don't need backup," Sanemi responded, his voice more aggressive, more cutting and agitated that he had meant it to be. He was pushing Tomioka, wanting desperately to be wrong about what he was seeing, about what Tomioka's volunteer actually meant.

"I didn't offer backup. I offered partnership." Sanemi wanted to strangle Tomioka in that moment. To incapacitate him just enough that he wouldn't be able to go on the mission. There was no reasonable excuse for him to refuse Tomioka's offer of partnership, and that was the most frustrating part. Their eyes met across gthe room. Tomioka's expression remained carefully neutral, revealing nothing about what he was thinking on the inside while Sanemi's eyes burned with a quiet rage. He was challenging Sanemi, he had to be. He was daring Sanemi to refuse, to call him out in front of everyone else. To acknowledge what they both knew but refused to say out loud.

That Tomioka was looking for dangerous missions the way other people looked for safe harbors. That his volunteer had nothing to do with partnership and everything to do with the fact that the northern sector was notorious for being the most dangerous. Would he have done the same if Sanemi hadn't volunteered for the northern sector? If another Hashira had volunteered in his stead?

Sanemi could call him out, he point out in front of everyone that Tomioka was only volunteering for the mission because he thought it was dangerous; because he was looking for a convenient way to die without it looking like suicide. He could force the conversation into the open, making it everyone's problem instead of just his. But he couldn't. It was unnecessarily, pointlessly cruel to someone who was already suffering, even though he was refusing to acknowledge it. Sanemi knew deep down that if he did that, if he exposed Tomioka, it would be the kind of public humiliation that would destroy whatever fragile equilibrium Tomioka had managed to maintain up until this point in his life.

"Fine," Sanemi said instead, keeping his voice level even though something was screaming in his chest. "Just don't slow me down."

Tomioka inclined his head wordlessly. It was either agreement, dismissal or something entirely different, but Sanemi couldn't tell what. Again, there was nothing to be revealed from Tomioka. It was infuriating.

As the meeting continued, Sanemi still found his focus drifting back to Tomioka, even as the Master discussed demon activity and mission parameters as well as other important things. He couldn't help it. Couldn't stop watching. Couldn't stop letting his gaze drift until he was back to overanalyzing everything about Tomioka. The way he sat, perfectly still, his body uncomfortably rigid. The careful precision of his posture. The way he existed in the room without actually being present. Like he was a sophisticated puppet, following all the right patterns, saying all the right things when prompted, but ultimately hollow.

How long? Sanemi wondered, though not for the first time. How long have you been drowning while keeping your head above water just enough for no one to notice? And even more importantly: Why hasn't anyone noticed?

He looked around the room, studying the other Hashira. Perhaps Rengoku had noticed in some way when he was still alive. He had never shown disdain toward Tomioka like the others always had, or perhaps Sanemi was being delusional, trying to come up with some alternative to the fact that he seemed to be the only one who actually noticed, or even cared for that matter. But none of them were looking at Tomioka. Not really looking, the way Sanemi had started to. Someone should notice, Sanemi thought, and anger rose in his chest suddenly and intensely. Someone should see that he's disappearing right in front of us. That he's been disappearing, probably for years, and we've all just… let it happen.

Because it's easier not to look too closely. Easier to accept that Tomioka is weird and distant and leave it at that. Easier than acknowledging that he was barely holding himself together.

But they didn't notice. So it would have to be him.

Sanemi didn't know when exactly he'd decided to care or when the hell all of this had suddenly become his problem, his responsibility, his concern. But the decision had been made, somewhere in the accumulation of missions and injuries and those empty, empty eyes.

He was going to do something about it. Even if Tomioka hated him for it. Even if it didn't work. Even if the only thing he accomplished was making Tomioka's last days slightly more uncomfortable by forcing him to acknowledge that someone was paying attention.

That someone finally cared.

₊˚.༄ .𖥔 ݁ ˖༄

The meeting finally concluded after what felt like hours with the Master's gentle dismissal. Sanemi stood, his knees protesting from all of the kneeling, and gazed around the room as others began to disperse, discussing mission details or simply exchanging pleasantries. Tomioka moved toward the exit without speaking to anyone as always. Alone, by choice and by habit and by the careful distance he maintained, keeping everyone at arms length.

Not this time, Sanemi decided before anything else within him could tell him to stop. He caught up with Tomioka in the garden, far away from the others. Tomioka stopped before Sanemi had the chance to make a sound, and it was clear that he had been waiting for Sanemi to confront him in some way following the meeting. His shoulders were tense, but they were tense in a way that it was barely noticeable. Only someone who'd been watching him as closely as Sanemi would have been able to catch it.

"Shinazugawa-san."

"Why did you volunteer for that mission?"

"As I said. Two Hashira will be required." Tomioka's voice was level, professional, but underneath it was cold and hard, stern to a point that Sanemi could tell he was done with the conversation before it even began.

"Bullshit." Sanemi moved around to face him, because it was clear that Tomioka was refusing to turn to face him. "You never volunteer for joint missions. You actively avoid them. So why this one? Why now? Why with me?" Tomioka's expression hardened, something akin to frustration or even anger flickering in his eyes.

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah. It does." For a moment, Tomioka said nothing, as if Sanemi's quick and blunt answer had shocked him to stillness. Or perhaps he was just trying to decided whether the conversation was even worth having. Either way, no matter how uncomfortable, Sanemi would force it to happen. He needed to know.

"The northern sector has had increased Upper Rank activity. The mission will be dangerous. You'll need support."

"I always need support. That's never made you volunteer before." Sanemi retorted, hoping that it would coax at least something more than dismissive disinterest from Tomioka.

"Then perhaps I'm trying to be more collaborative." Collaborative my ass. Sanemi thought. It was almost laughable, to think of Tomioka taking the initiative to 'be more collaborative.'

"Or maybe you heard 'dangerous mission' and decided it was a convenient way to—" Sanemi stopped himself before he could let his emotionally driven words accuse Tomioka of something he wasn't truly sure of yet. Before he could say something that couldn't ever be unsaid. "You know what? Forget it. We'll discuss this on the mission." He turned to leave, but Tomioka's voice stopped him.

"Shinazugawa-san."

Sanemi looked back, almost stunned that Tomioka had taken the initiative to continue the conversation despite his disinterest only minutes before. He was watching Sanemi with an expression that was almost curious, as if Sanemi was a puzzle he'd never bothered trying to solve before but his interest had suddenly been peaked. "Why do you care?"

"What?" It was the last thing Sanemi had expected him to ask.

"Why do you care if I risk my life volunteering for dangerous missions? We barely speak. You've made your disdain for me clear since the first day we met. We're not friends. We're barely even colleagues. So why do you care now?"

The question was so direct it caught Sanemi off guard, and his mind was stumbling over the words, desperately trying to scramble together an intelligible answer. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried to formulate an answer good enough to satisfy the question that he had never been expected to hear leave Tomioka's lips.

Tomioka was right. How the hell could he actually answer that question? Because I've been watching you self-destruct for months and it's driving me insane. Or. Because someone has to notice that you're dying inside. Or. Because for some reason I can't explain, your survival has become important to me.

"Because someone has to," he said finally, after stumbling upon his answer like a fool. It was true, even if it wasn't complete. "And apparently I'm the only one paying attention." Tomioka's expression flickered, definitely surprise, but this time it was mixed with something akin to confusion. As if the concept of someone paying attention to his every move was foreign. Unexpected. Unwelcome.

"I don't need—"

"Yes, you do." Sanemi cut him off before he could even finish his thought. He took a step closer, making it impossible for Tomioka to look away without it being obvious that he was trying to avoid some little truth to this conversation. "You just don't realize it yet."

"I'm perfectly capable of—" Tomioka began to splutter incredulously before Sanemi cut him off yet again.

"Of what? Taking care of yourself?" Sanemi laughed bitterly. "When was the last time you actually rested after a mission? When was the last time you actualy let your injuries heal before jumping back into training or—or god forbid ate a full meal without someone forcing you to?"

"My personal habits are none of your concern, Shinazugawa." Tomioka's expression fell back into that carefully blank emptiness, as if it was an automatic emotional defense mechanism.

"They are when those habits are going to get you killed."

"That's not—"

"Isn't it?" Sanemi challenged, getting more and more frustrated by the minute. It felt as though he was fighting a losing battle, but he had to keep going, for his sake and for Tomioka's. "You take missions that nobody else wants. You only ever volunteer for the dangerous ones. You fight like you've got nothing to lose because—" He stopped, a deep exhale leaving his chest before he finished. "Because you don't think you have anything left to lose do you? Tell me I'm wrong." It was almost a plead, and the question hung in the air between them, heavy with implication.

Tomioka was still, too still. The kind of subconscious stillness that only happened before either fight or flight.

"That's not your concern," he said finally, tone completely flat except for the way it wavered when he first began to speak.

"The hell it isn't."

"Why?" There was something almost desperate in the question now, something that broke through Tomioka's careful control. "Why do you care what happens to me? You hate me. You've made that abundantly clear. So why—"

"I don't hate you." Sanemi interrupted, and even though before that statement hadn't been completely true, it was now. When had that changed exactly? When had his irritation and disdain for the other man turned into this complicated tangle of concern and frustration mixed with something that felt uncomfortably like protectiveness? "I don't understand you. I think you're making stupid fucking choices. But I don't hate you." Had he ever really hated Tomioka Giyuu?

"I… see."

"Do you?" Sanemi stepped closer, until they were close enough that their breaths could touch. "Because from where I'm standing, you don't see anything. You're so busy not existing that you can't see when someone's trying to—" He stopped. What was he actually trying to achieve by doing this? Achieve some moral high ground above Tomioka? Prove that he was being selfishly careless with his own life? "Trying to give a shit about whether you live or die."

"You don't—"

"I do, though." The admission came out rougher than intended, and for a fraction of a second, Sanemi thought that it was enough to make Tomioka flinch slightly. "I don't know why. I don't know when it started. But I do. And I'm not going to stop, so you might as well get used to it." Tomioka looked lost, completely unable to process what Sanemi was saying, what he was trying to make Tomioka understand. He looked as if Sanemi had just announced that gravity worked backwards and he was trying to recalculate his entire understanding of physics. Was it truly that hard for him to believe that someone actually wanted for him to stay alive? Actually fought for him to see himself as more than just some disposable object ready to sacrifice at the right moment?

"I don't know what you want from me," he said quietly, and for the first time ever, Sanemi saw Tomioka look completely and utterly lost. The sight twisted something in his chest, made him deeply aware of the pit at the bottom of his stomach that hadn't been there before. He had won the battle, but why did it affect him so much to see Tomioka act so uncharacteristically? To see him so… uncertain?

"I want you to try," Sanemi concluded. "That's it. Just try. Try to come back from missions. Try to take care of yourself. Try to believe that you are more than just a sacrifice for the Corps."

"And if I can't?" Tomioka's voice was uncharacteristically small, weak, like a small child, hurt and confused.

"Then I'll remind you." Sanemi crossed his arms. "Every single goddamn day if I have to. Until it's imprinted on your mind."

"You don't know what I'm worth."

"I know you're worth more than you think you are."

Tomioka opened his mouth and closed it as if he was a fish out of water. He looked away, his carefully maintained composure cracking just slightly, just enough to reveal the built up, overwhelming exhaustion underneath.

"I should go," he said finally. "Prepare for the mission."

"Yeah." Sanemi swallowed thickly, watching him turn away. "Three days. Northern sector. Don't be late."

"I'm never late."

"I know." That was part of the problem wasn't it, though? Tomioka was never late, never unprepared, never anything less than composed and perfectly professional. That was what made it easy for everyone to assume that he was completely fine. "Just… try not to die before then." It was a low blow, but it was Sanemi's best attempt to lighten the weight he felt in his chest as he watched Tomioka's back get further and further away.

"I'll try," he said, but he was too far away before Sanemi could ask if he actually, truly meant it. He stood in the garden quietly, letting the breeze brush against him like a small bit of comfort, trying to figure out what the hell he'd just committed himself to.

This is a bad idea, Sanemi thought. But he was doing it anyway. Because someone had to. And apparently, against all logic and reason and common fucking sense, that person had to be him.

Notes:

!!cw!!
graphic violence (demon fight)
passive suicidal ideation
self destructive tendencies

i hope you enjoyed this chapter! kudos/comments are always appreciated :)
love,
coco <3

Notes:

P.S. - If you're struggling with thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please reach out to someone. You deserve to live, even when it doesn't feel like it.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US): 988

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

International Association for Suicide Prevention: https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of songs i wish i wrote :)