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anonymous-simp-1932 · 6 days ago

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Doing research on Taisho period marriage recently, as well as wondering “hmm, the text isn’t totally clear, is it that a distant Tomioka relative practiced medicine, or a distant relative of the well-intentioned neighbor had a doctor relative and that young Giyuu was being brought to a total stranger?” spurred me on another AU.

So young Giyuu was peppery enough to decide that rather than being brought far away to a stranger (who perhaps would had found him crazy for saying a demon killed his sister), he’d rather take his chances in the wilderness. So let’s say this little Giyuu also realizes, “you know, I’m the oldest son. My father’s not around anymore, so that makes me the head of the family. That means Tsutako-neesan can’t get married tomorrow unless she has my permission. I’m going to go tell her fiancé he can’t have her yet!!”

And then…

Demon!Giyuu, having just transformed, is not very stable and it’s hard to keep him under control, Tsutako has left everything and finds herself running away in the mountains with him. She put a daikon muzzle in his mouth and a sheet over his head without realizing that would save his life, but she does notice he strongly prefers to keep to the shadows and is irritable during the day. The house is in shambles due to the other demon that attacked her, so she hopes that her fiancé Yamada Tarou will have faith in her that it wasn’t her choice to leave the night before the wedding.

She runs into a hunter who is a friend of Urokodaki (the one who otherwise would had rescued starving little Giyuu) and is like, “hmm, a demon. I can take you to someone who will help,” and she gratefully goes along, only to have him introduce her to Urokodaki like, “see, you need someone with a specialized weapon to take off that thing’s head and kill it good and dead, this guy make not look like it now but he’s an amazing swordsman who can do that” and as she freaks out about how that was NOT AT ALL the help she was looking for, she insists that it’s been days since he changes and he hasn’t harmed anyone by the demon who nearly killed her. Urokodaki finds this highly unusual, and decides that Giyuu seems safe enough to take this risk (and if he proves otherwise, Urokodaki is confident that he and his other student can take him on). Still, as he agrees to teach her, he warns Tsutako as sternly as he warned Tanjiro about her responsibility for her brother.

That being said, Tsutako does not have superhuman strength and not all demons can be as special as Nezuko, so as Giyuu gets hungrier and hungrier he’s harder and harder to handle. It’s as she’s taken him deeper into the forest to try to reason sense back into him before Urokodaki notices that she meets the student Urokodaki already had around. Giyuu, who has at least figured out he doesn’t want to harm the person whose blood nevertheless smells really, really, really, really nutritious to him, starts to attack that boy.

That boy’s not taking that.

Tsutako, a girl of marriageable age at least a few years older than this pompous and unfairly strong child, finds Sabito both insufferably annoying and a freakishly strong threat. Sabito accepts her as a fellow student, and accepts Giyuu so long as he keeps his promise to Urokodaki not to hurt anyone, but he’s pretty blunt toward Tsutako. It’s only for her well-being that he tells her that her fiancé must have forgotten all about her already.

And, in case my poor handwriting isn’t clear, Makomo appears to Tsutako to give her the secrets to Water Breath Technique and Girl Power. Sabito is astounded and frustrated by how fast Tsutako, who is nowhere near as strong as him, overtakes him.

Thus, Giyuu attains more coverage for his easily sunburned arms. While Giyuu does retain the heart of a 12/13-year-old boy who doesn’t yet want to let go of his only remaining family and who looks up to a hero now, he is also a demon, and has a tendency to just quietly lurk to the side of things and watch things coldly. And he’s a demon with a mind of his own, so when Tsutako and Sabito go off to the Final Selection, Giyuu snatches one of Urokodaki’s haori to drape over his head and follows them. (Urokodaki is freaked out when he realizes Giyuu’s run off and tries to cover up how nervous he is as he goes checking the village to make sure no one’s been eaten.)

Giyuu makes his way to the wisteria border, but gets frustrated at the border, but pushes his way through. This was such a horrific blow to his health that it severs his connection to Muzan. Whoops. Muzan doesn’t care anyway. For now.

Giyuu is in half-crazy shape by the time he gets to his treasured ones, who are arguing. They are freaked out that Giyuu is there at all, and wind up having to work together to keep an eye on him. That means saving him from kids like Murata, too. When Giyuu, starting to lose his mind but still wanting to protect Tsutako, winds up saving them from a demon that would had taken advantage of Sabito and Tsutako trying to explain the situation to Murata, Murata is quickly convinced. “That’s pretty unorthodox, but okay I guess,” he yells back. Sabito tells Tsutako that they should probably make it a point to find all the other kids on the mountain and explain the situation to them too, and this is how everyone winds up knowing of Sabito, who also saves a lot of those other kids in the knick of time.

When Sabito and Tsutako find themselves targeted by the Hand Demon, Tsutako gets injured and Sabito tries to save her, and breaks his sword and gets injured too. Giyuu, on the last dregs of his sanity, rushes in to help and gets injured too, and Tsutako sees that their only chance of survival is if Giyuu is strong enough to protect them until sunrise. She feeds him a bit of her blood (*gasp!!*), and Giyuu tears that demon apart enough that Tsutako and Sabito can manage to defeat it together, also breaking Tsutako’s sword in the process.

Buuuut the Final Selection isn’t over. Giyuu is much, much calmer now that he’s had some nourishment (but Sabito and Tsutako agree to keep it a secret, even from Urokodaki), and the other kids who have been rescued rally to their aid. Thus, the first ever Final Selection in which all the kids survive (and all work together by volunteering their garments to cover Giyuu from both the sun and the wisteria so as to smuggle him back out. The Ubuyashiki Clan present members can kind of tell something’s fishy, but Oyakata-sama has already gotten an emergency letter from Urokodaki explaining the Tomioka siblings’ situation and the “uhh, I let him get out, I’m sorry” bit. The unusual story of the Final Selection In Which Everyone Lived spreads around, and it already sounds like such an urban legend that anything said about a demon on their side is dismissed by regular Corp members as embellishment.

So for Tsutako’s first mission, Oyakata-sama is like, “I’m gonna send those kids to Asakusa to try to make contact with Tamayo for me.” In the meantime, while she and Sabito are recovering and waiting for their swords, Urokodaki sews together a bigger cloak of the tattered clothes Giyuu came back in, looking like a sludge demon or something with all those scraps dangling off him.

The plan is that Giyuu will stay in Urokodaki’s care now that big sis is off to go do Corp missions, but once again, Giyuu slips out to tag along with her, much to Urokodaki and Tsutako’s consternation. Tsutako, while scolding him to stay put, winds up lecturing him about how he never would had turned into a demon if he had just learned to let go of her when she was supposed to leave him before (somehow she’s figured out why Giyuu went missing that night in the first place). She also uses her Kasugai-garasu right away to send a long awaited letter to her fiancé Yamada Tarou to explain her absence and declare her intentions to return to him as soon as she can find a cure for Giyuu.

So anyway. They go to Asakusa, and Giyuu is not only very pensive around all these humans, but he’s still very, very hungry. Tsutako, not being superhuman, very quickly goes into panic-mode trying to keep him under control, and Tamayo notices and comes to their aid. And Giyuu is teetering on the edge of losing his mind with hunger, Tamayo gives Tsutako tools to safely keep him sustained with very small amounts of her blood. They also wind up in the same arrangement to collect samples to try to make a cure for Giyuu, and Tamayo likewise asks if she’ll leave Giyuu in their care (to Yushiro’s disgust, of course). Tsutako gratefully takes them up on the offer to keep Giyuu safe, but of course, Giyuu follows her anyway. Dang it, Giyuu!!!

So Tsutako accepts that Giyuu is going to be her shadow, staying to the shadows and following her in his ominous patchwork cloak during the day (but as much as possible, Tsutako tries to make it easy for Giyuu to avoid the sun). At night, when he can openly approach her, he nudges a ripped piece of flower-patterned kimono silk to her hands with the ends of his cloak. The following day, Tsutako receives a very strongly worded threat letter from Yushiro.

But no letter from Yamada Tarou… sigh.

As they go on with their missions, they of course occasionally run into Sabito, who is blowing through the ranks. He’s blunt with Tsutako as usual, and Giyuu is always very pleased to see him. Otherwise, Giyuu mildly keeps to himself except when Tsutako is alone and it’s after dark so he can openly be in her company.

But yeah, Giyuu totally steps in and helps her fight. His Blood Technique is like cutting ribbons of water, so it basically is Water Breath in an actual physical form. Most demons never see it, though, for it hits them Dead Calm style.

So anyway, one night Tsutako and Giyuu run into Rengoku-san. Rengoku-san tries to kill him, of course, but Tsutako (already injured, because the heat of battle is dramatic) steps between them in the knick of time to save Giyuu, and would had totally sacrificed herself for him had Rengoku-san not had a built-in “don’t hurt humans” mechanism that stops him just short of her neck. He orders her to move, she refuses, Giyuu the demon is right there and now threatening him back because this guy has a sword pointed at his sister, but does not take advantage of the fact that Tsutako is injured to eat her. Rengoku has a bewildering moment of “attack! But that would hurt a human, don’t attack! But that leaves the demon alive. Attack? Don’t attack? Attack? Don’t attack? Demon is growling at me, attack! Demon isn’t eating human, um??? Demon is protecting human, don’t attack???” and takes an uncharacteristically long amount of time to decide his course of action. Standing down and asking her to explain herself (but of course staying ready to react if Giyuu is up to any funny business). He listens, says frankly that he’s an extremely unusual situation and he’s never heard anything like it. He decides to give Giyuu a pass since he was protecting a human (though Rengoku was no threat to her), but warns her about her responsibility to kill her brother and herself if Giyuu ever loses control. She accepts, and they go their separate ways.

On another occasion, Tsutako encounters Kanae and Shinobu during the daytime hours, and Kanae is like, “excuse me, there appears to be a demon stalking you.” Tsutako winds up explaining the situation, and Kanae is very, very excited to meet this demon and befriend him. She beckons him over to sit in his cloak in the shade with them while they have a picnic. Tsutako and Kanae become fast friends, and Shinobu doesn’t like it but goes along with it all.

You can tell where this is going. Demon!Giyuu eventually has encounters with ALL the Pillars. One day, Himejima catches Kanae hanging out with Tsutako and helping her with a Giyuu matter, and Kanae pulls Jedi charm on him and says “You didn’t see a thing.” Which he didn’t. Because he’s blind. Himejima is so exasperated with such a bad joke that he just decides to leave her to her own devices, she’s a big girl now and can make her own poor Pillar choices.

Uzui notices the demon in the trees one day follow that one lowly Corp member, and he jumps up to go threaten that thing before lopping its head off, to tell it how nasty it is for following a girl around like that, and how he’s so drab that even Uzui almost didn’t notice his presence. The daikon takes Uzui off guard, though, so he forgets what he was going to say, and in that moment, he realizes that there is no aggression in this demon at all. He decides this is kind of interesting, because the sound of it, this demon has never even eaten a whole human. That’s interesting, so he lets him off with a threat not to get himself in trouble, and warns him that he’ll have his mice keeping an eye on him. Tsutako is completely unaware of this whole interaction.

Iguro winds up in the heat of a battle with multiple demons and multiple Corp members when he sees Giyuu, but doesn’t realize that he’s fighting on their side, so he starts going after him. Tsutako catches him right in time and winds up redirecting him with false information, which Iguro only realizes later was a lie to protect that demon. He considers going on a witch hunt for her to punish her, but he’s quickly overwhelmed by the potential interactions he’d have to open himself up to with a girl as his adversary, so he decides just to keep an eye out for her and not make the same mistake twice.

Kanroji witnesses a dramatic battle in which Giyuu fights to protect Tsutako, but is on the edge of losing himself, so Tsutako calls him back and winds up having to force himself to drink her blood, after which he clearly feels ashamed and she assures him that she’ll do anything it takes to cure him. Kanroji is so moved by their sibling love that she roots them on and vows in her heart to keep their secret, they never notice her whatsoever.

And Sanemi has had a few run-ins with him over the years. To him, Giyuu is the demon who always gets away. If Sanemi has a special vendetta against one demon in particular, it’s this one. It’s gotten under his skin so much that he aggressively guards this secret of his greatest recurring shame. (One time Tsutako created a “he went that way” diversion which Sanemi fell for so hook-line-and-sinker that he never once suspected her of anything and totally forgot about her). For whatever reason, Sanemi’s blood doesn’t have an effect on this demon, who just stands there and stares at him with those dead looking blue eyes until Sanemi makes a move on him, and this this demon practically disappears before his eyes. And AT SOME POINT this demon started stealing scraps of things that belong to Sanemi and wearing them on his cloak to taunt him. It ticks him off so much, what if someone sees those and recognizes them someday and knows how many times Sanemi has let this demon get so close and yet has always let him get away!??

So after years of Giyuu becoming like a cryptid of the Corp, Tsutako is of course the one who has the fortune of running into Tanjiro the night Nezuko turns, so that she and Giyuu can both step in and help him. She of course sends Tanjiro off to Urokodaki, and Urokodaki is relieved to find that Nezuko is a demon who sleeps and stays in one place. Once Tanjiro joins the Corp (without the added boulder delays), he uses his first chance to go seek out Tamayo according to Tsutako’s introduction, and Tamayo begins her investigation of Nezuko’s transformation. At some point, Giyuu’s cloak acquired pink hair ribbons.

And Tanjiro, having his typical luck, winds up being arrested and brought before the Pillars anyway. Oyakata-sama learned about Nezuko too, and decided he should probably bring up this one to his Pillars a little sooner this time.

And, as all the Pillars are learning of Nezuko, they’re all thinking everything from ‘oh ship, I am in so much trouble if anyone finds out I already knew about that other demon’ to ‘does anybody else know this isn’t the first time this has happened?’ to ‘why the hell is this punk letting a demon live’ and then Rengoku-san just opens his mouth and is like, “ACTUALLY, OYAKATA-SAMA, THERE IS ANOTHER DEMON LIVING AMONG THE CORP LIKE THIS TOO!!!!” and all the Pillars’ calmness collapses. As they all start freaking out like, “wait, you saw it too?? You KNOW him????” and Sanemi is just having a mental breakdown as he puts all this together, you’ve got the Water Pillar.

And just to round out this is AU with a tiny bit of a plot, Tsutako one day gets a letter from Yamada Tarou! He understands and wants her back, after all these years!

She’s ecstatic to go be reunited with her love, and heads back to her hometown. Sabito, who happens to have run into her around this time warns her that it’s too good to be true, it’s got to be someone pulling a scam on her, because that guy must have long since settled down with some other girl and had a bunch of kids already. She tells Sabito to shut up and to watch over Giyuu for her while she goes to have this reunion.

Naturally, it doesn’t go so happy. Yamada Tarou is a demon, and he’s trying to curry favor with Muzan by catching that demon who slipped out of Muzan’s control! Oh no! And while Tsutako is heartbroken she is nearly killed, but of course Sabito comes to the rescue. In some scene I don’t feel like writing, while Giyuu stands his own against this demon by unleashing the true extent of his watery Blood Technique, Sabito tends to Tsutako, gives a manly pep talk, and she comes around and admits that not only was Sabito right, but that he wasn’t always looking out for her and never meant to be so annoying. She comes in and finishes off the fight in the way that’ll make that demon feel her broken heart.

But now she can finally move on! She’d have given up her life for Giyuu that night, after all, so it’s all the same to her to live for him still.