#;;mother ⏤ the strong protect the weak ✹ rengoku ruka

[loveoaths]

@slayersaided asked: (totally anon) can you tell us more about swordsmith ruka? did she have a mask of her own like haganezuka?

yup ! like all swordsmiths she wore a hyottoko mask to conceal her identity. there were few, if any, other lady swordsmiths, so there is no tradition of wearing otafuku, aka the female version of the hyottoko mask.

her background is still being worked out, but so far it looks like this:

born the youngest of five children ( and the only girl ) in an established swordsmithing family. very traditional household. her father told her that because she was a woman she was weak, and therefore her duty was to stay out of the way of the strong and take care of the house and occasionally assist him in the forge. ruka disagreed that she was weak, but she agreed with his general sentiment that the weak were burdens that hold back the strong. how many slayers died saving civilians, after all? but she really took to forgework and practices smithing in secret.

in her off-time she is trained to use a naginata for self-defense. she's very good at it and is, perhaps, a little too eager to slice at people who look at her the wrong way.

when she is sixteen, tragedy befalls the family, and her father and older brother are killed by bandits while they and her mother are delivering blades. her mother, an anxious woman, was frozen in fear and ran and hid while they're cut down. ruka hates other humans and never forgives her mother for this, and her belief that there is no place for the weak is solidified.

at seventeen, ruka tries taking over the family forge but is met with resistance from her older brothers and village outrage over a woman taking the forge. superstitious men believe a sword crafted by a woman will bring ill luck and guarantee death. no one will let her create a nichirin blade and bars her from accessing the special ore.

ruka sneaks out of the village to the mountain and steals sunshine ore that calls to her. she plans to craft something small to practice--

but on her way back to the village she is ambushed by lower level demons and dragged to douma's cult. douma is upper three at this moment in time.

from ages seventeen to nineteen she is douma's captive and his "favorite." she manages to stay alive by being incredibly fucking smart, calculatingly ruthless, winning douma over by scheherazading/jane greying him, and fighting to stay alive sheerly through spite. the abuse suffered at his hands makes her hate demons more than anything on earth. watching women sell each other out and walk blindly toward their death both increases her contempt for humanity and her pity for the weak. look what they're willing to do just to have a better life. it's a difficult time for her emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. douma never "has" her. however, the stress and harm she experiences her contributes to her general decline in health and eventual early death.

after learning as much about his weaknesses as possible and gaining his trust, ruka initiates an intimate moment with douma, making him belief she's finally going to be his -- and then blows ground-up sunshine ore into his eyes and cuts off his genitals? him with a small sun-ore dagger she forged in secret. she curses him and escapes, the only woman to do so.

she returns to her village and tells no one of what happened to her.

the family forge has been totally ruined by her brothers who married and left. ruka restarts the forge and essentially forces the village elders to recognize her as a smith. she is a no-nonsense smith and keeps to herself, but her skill as a smith is begrudgingly recognized.

at twenty she is assigned to rengoku shinjuro, who keeps breaking his fucking sword. she appears at his house and chews the shit out of him. they have a contentious relationship but shinjuro begins simping for her, and as she sees how much he loves helping people and how hard he works to protect the small, her misanthropic attitude slowly melts.

shinjuro is in love with her but he's too fucking weird and socially awkward and insecure to do anything about it. when ruka shows up at his house and informs him that they are now dating, he flushes like an idiot but is very happy.

they fall in love fast and are married within a year.

ruka wants a big, strong family, and works as hard as possible to get pregnant. shinjuro loves getting ridden into oblivion so he's all for it.

at twenty-two, kyojuro is born. when she sees his tiny little face and helpless hands, the last of her dark misanthropy finally melts away. he is small, and weak, and that makes him precious. his weakness gives her and shinjuro the strength to fight even harder for the good of humanity. the strong exist to protect the weak. she believes this now. she raises kyojuro with this mentality.

at twenty-seven, senjuro is born. he is weak, at first disappointingly so, but she loves him dearly. however her attention goes to kyojuro, because he will be her legacy, and the one to join the fight against muzan.

ruka raises kyojuro with her same strong moral sense. she also raises him to kill "the upper three" demon who tormented her. she may or may not have gone into detail. ( this missive will charge his fight against akaza, who he believes is the demon his mother spoke of; however, he is wrong, because douma has been promoted. either way, he dies having failed . . . but she still loves him. )

ruka dies at thirty-two, thirty-three years of age. she declines rapidly in the last three years and is house-bound for the entire last year. she is angry about dying, but she hides this from her children. shinjuro sees it, but doesn't know how to handle her burning pain. foreseeing his inability to cope with her death, ruka entrusts the care of the family legacy to kyojuro, and tells senjuro to do everything he can to support kyojuro's mission.

her strong personality, her anger over having unfinished business, and her attachment to her family ties her spirit to the rengoku estate and kyojuro's tsubasa. she haunts shinjuro and watches in disbelief as he becomes a twisted, crumbling version of himself. he believes he gets too drunk and hallucinates her sometimes. she is no hallucination.

in verses where kyojuro dies at mugen train, she relinquishes her ties to earth to lead her son to a peaceful afterlife. in verses where he survives, she holds him, then pushes his soul back into his body. he still has work to do, and he knows she's a perfectionist. he cannot come home until his work on earth is done.

[idiotwhotalkstoomuch]

I never expected you guys to like demon Senjuro so much lol I’m really happy to see that like it was such a random impulse thought but the au has a lot of room for growth

In this post Im gonna establish a few things about what happened to Senjuro and Kyojuro in the events between Senjuro’s “death” and the pillar meeting. I will only cover their relationship and a little bit of Senjuro’s relationship with Tanjiro. The others can come at a different post cause this post is gonna be long lol so I put it under cut cause no one really wants a post to flood their dash

TW: Mentions of death (some are children), mentions of cannibalism (If you’ve seen even the first episode of demon slayer and had no problem, you’re fine with this post. This post is slightly not anime only friendly as I make references to an upper moon and I show a manga only panel as of posting this) Shnjuro gets really depressed but luckily there is no attempted suicide

Senjuro Rengoku

- His class was at the bottom floor and they were cleaning the school (I heard thats a thing in Japan if someone has a better idea on what they’re doing feel free to shoot an ask) when they got attacked

- In canon we dont know his age but I’m gonna guess like 12-14 but in the au he is 13 so he was 12 when he became a demon. A rogue demon attacked Senjuro’s class and Senjuro ran to get help and was fatally injured but still managed run to get help as he was given a nichirin sword and even if it didnt change color he must have known breathing techniques at the very least on a basic level and the demon was too preoccupied with some of the teachers and others trying to kill the demon, of course unaware of what it was except for Senjuro

- Upper moon 4 was sneaking around when he saw the all but dead body of Senjuro and demons really dont have standards for turning people into demons so when he noticed he was alive, turned him into a demon mostly so that if he did find any “evil people” (demon slayers) he could use him as his meat shield alongside his personalities

- When Senjuro woke up as a demon (cause even if he was a breath user he was very inexperienced so Hantengu had no problem making him a demon), he had no memory of his life as a human and looked around trying to find a human to satiate his hunger and saw a human in the distance with someone and began to run to them to satiate his hunger when he felt himself being held back. 

- The spirit of Ruka Rengoku gently held her son back and instructed him to not eat humans as that’s not something he should do and even if Senjuro couldn’t recognize the woman holding him back, he found himself obeying her and running to go to a place to hide from the sun

- From that moment on for a few day he would hop from place to place whether underneath homes, in caves or any place he could find to avoid being seen and to be shielded from the sun and found himself growing sleepy so in the cave he hid in, far away from the place he was last in, he closed his eyes and fell asleep for a year

- When he woke up, he had unwittingly burnt away Muzan’s control of him and was unsure on what to do when Ruka’s spirit appeared again telling him that he needs to find his way home. Senjuro wasn’t actually listening to a lot of what she said except one thing stuck to him. 

- “Senjuro”, he didn’t know what his name was as a demon but the name seem to stick to him and he figured this must be his name (he would of course be correct)

- When he found himself staying with the Kamaboko squad, having been spared despite being a demon due to him not having any form of aggression to them (something they all noticed due to his general demeanor and their enhanced sense) and Tanjiro could smell he hadnt eaten one human and he invited him to join them. He joined Nezuko in her box (she can grow really really tiny if she wants or is tired)

Reference: 

Kny chapter 85

- He joined for two reasons: One, he was really scared of people and demon slayers especially so when Tanjiro offered him the chance to be able to be safe and hide he took it. Secondly, he wasn’t sure but the smile Tanjiro gave and his warm reassurance reminded of him of someone, when he thought hard he only saw blurry shadows and got a headache so didn’t try to push it

- Tanjiro did ask him in the wisteria house while Zenitsu was chatting with Nezuko and Inosuke was off being Inosuke about his past and Senjuro told him about his brief meetings with a woman with black hair and asks if they’ve met before as he feels familiar

- This is where he gets the idea that the woman with black hair (Ruka) is his mother and Tanjiro guesses that the person that he thinks is Tanjiro must be his father (right on the first part Tanjiro but wrong on the second lol, you tried)

- He wears a cyan yukata with a new hakama pants as the clothes he was previously wearing was the same bloodstained clothes he wore after turning into a demon and Tanjiro didnt want to leave him in that. Tanjiro thought to get him a gag but the idea made Senjuro uncomfortable so Tanjiro made him swear to never eat a single human

- In Mount Nagatumo, he was too scared to jump out to protect Tanjiro like Nezuko but when she gets sliced up he leaves the box to watch her while Tanjiro fights Rui, unfortunately he is caught in Rui’s webs like Nezuko and was saved from it by Nezuko flames (though it did burn him a fair bit, Nezuko would apologize to him for this later)

- Giyuu doesn’t kill Senjuro cause his resemblance to Kyojuro despite the different clothes and demon eyes is clear to anyone who can see and Shinobu also finds herself hesitating but shakes those feelings off as Kyojuro deserves better than to see his little brother as a demon. Luckily Giyuu stops him and Senjuro runs with Nezuko and Tanjiro but is later taken back to the demon slyer corps by a Kakushi who put him and Nezuko back in their box

- When Sanemi stabbed the box, he moved to try and protect Nezuko but the box was too cramped and they both got stabbed despite his efforts. Later when he tries to bait him with his marechi blood, he’s too focused on resisting the blood and on Nezuko who he had grown to see as a sister to care about the wide eyed looks the pillars were giving him.

Kyojuro Rengoku (I am so sorry in advance Kyojuro simps I put this man THROUGH IT)

- He had just finished a mission and was going to get another mission when a crow he hadn’t seen work in years came flying to him, obviously panicked telling him how Senjuro’s school was attacked and how no one can find Senjuro among the bodies. The crow was Shinjuro’s

- When he hears that, all the kakushi and other demon slayers present would say they had never seen the flame pillar run so frantically, he only stopped to apologize briefly if he bumped into someone while running but the only thing racing in his mind was his little brother who had no weapon to defend himself with. He forced the image of his brother being nothing but a corpse away only thinking about saving Senjuro

- When he reached the school, he forced himself to calm down. Panicking isn’t going to magically bring Senjuro to him so he needs to keep himself in check because with so many people dead, he’s not the only one concerned over the kids

- There were no survivors on the area that was attacked, the police were there investigating the deaths of the many children and teachers, Kyojuro had to spend time convincing the police he was with them and to be allowed to investigate as well

- With no survivors, he heard from the police that there was a blood trail when they got there and he went to find the trail, when he reached the end of it where there were no traces of Senjuro but since the people there were untrained civilians, Senjuro was the only possible person to have been there

- He spent multiple days searching, Mitsuri was at one point sent to check on him and it was clear he was pushing himself, as days passed by, his composure and bright demeanor were crumbling and he started latching onto any lead to at the very least find the body of Senjuro to take back home but it was becoming clear that he would never find it and a kakushi had to be the one to tell him that his body was likely eaten to the bone or eaten and discarded to either rot away or eaten by someone else

- Kyojuro took a week off, not just because of the grief he felt at that moment but because he needed to check on his father and make sure he would be okay, the man didn’t even face Kyojuro when he came in to visit, he forced himself to not cry in front of his father as he tried to talk to the man who couldn’t even say a word and just drank away even as his eldest son tried to talk to him

- Servants were hired to monitor Shinjuro by Kyojuro as he was concerned about his health both physically and mentally but he did notice how Shinjuro never resisted to being taken care of by the people he hired. They reported to him he could be heard muttering Senjuro’s name and even stares at his room for extended periods of time

- When he made his return, he apologized to the pillars for his behavior the past two weeks (even though no one blamed the man, some even said it was okay if he needed more time, they wouldn’t judge) but whenever he was told that he said he had to be strong to protect the weak so he could be someone that could stop families from ending up like his own

- He was far more determined in killing demons, demon attacks had become personal to him now, whenever he saw a demon eating people he found himself wondering what they must’ve thought in the afterlife as the demon desecrated their bodies

- In the pillar meeting, when he was informed of a swordsman who travelled with not one but two demons, he felt disgust as who knows how many humans they could eat. On the way to the meeting, he couldn’t help but notice Shinobu deliberately avoiding him a bit, Giyuu was doing the same but the man never really talked with them much to begin with

- When he saw Senjuro go out of the box with Nezuko, he felt the smile on his face drop and his heart practically sunk to the core of the earth as he saw the unmistakable hair of a Rengoku and the face was so clearly Senjuro’s despite his eyes having a black sclera and his iris and pupil becoming cat like, the pillars had all turned to see if the flame pillar was alright and he could hear Himejima mutter prayers and Mitsuri was on the verge of tears seeing Senjuro alive but as a demon

- He found himself going into denial until Tanjiro, who had been freed as Obanai left to comfort the distressed love pillar, ran and yelled Senjuro’s name and told him to resist his hunger

- “My sister and the other demon with us are different! They would never eat a human!”

- Senjuro was a good kid, he was innocent, kind and a bit on the timid side. He had helped raise him, he knew Senjuro would never want to harrm a fellow human even when threatened. 

[strawberry-lemonade-kisses]

Us

pt. 2 to You and Her

“Senjuro, don’t worry about me, I am perfectly able to get my own food.” The smaller male gave you a disheartened look as he placed a bowl of rice down in front of you. You sighed, looking over at the empty spot where your husband would usually sit next to you. His Zabuton still laid in its spot.

“He asked me to take care of you. I will do that for him!” Senjuro stood in his spot, placing a hand over his heart. The determined glint in his eye made you chuckle, picking up the small bowl of rice. “Plus, Uncle Tengen said that if you eat lots the baby will come out very big! She’ll be here really soon so we have to make sure she's ready” He looked down at your stomach, the end of it almost bumping into the table.

“Okay Senjuro, okay. But you have to eat lots too, you still have lots of growing to do.” he nodded as he sat back down, digging straight into his soup. Hard footsteps interrupted your bite as your father in law trudged into the room. Setting himself down next to Senjuro he dug right in, not bothering with romantics as he ate. The silence that followed the rest of dinner was surprisingly comfortable, much better than your first night in the Rengoku estate.

“There, all set. Does it look straight?” Senjuro backed up from the display stand he was setting up. Your late husband's haori hung proudly from it. You had to stop the tears from flowing as you embraced Senjuro, trying to hold him as close as you could with your baby bump.

“Thank you so much” He beamed up at you, Tears lining his eyes.

“It’s easier to have you here. Plus, I get to be one of the first to meet her. She’s going to be so cute, already knows it.” You laughed.

“I know she will be. She’ll look like your brother and you, all so handsome with the cutest hair” you ruffled his blonde locks, the red tips dancing around your fingers. The door to your room opened, sliding on the tracks. Your father in law, Shinjuro wandered into the room and looked around, analyzing the small setup of your things. His eyebrows furrowed as he glared at the altar

“Why is that out?”

“The haori?” Senjuro stepped towards his father, small hands raising towards his father.

“Father, don’t do th-”

“Why would you display that? Pathetic. You think he deserves that kind of acknowledgement? That kind of appreciation?” Shinjuros spoke with such hate, such distaste it took the breath from you. How could he say that? His own son, his son who worked so hard, protecting his family, raising his brother after his mom. His son who was nothing but good to you, loving to you. How could he act like he was nothing but a worm? “He was weak, see how far that got him? He’s dead.” anger bubbled in your chest as he spit the last words.

“Weak? You think that’s weak? Protecting everyone even if it killed him? Even if he had me and our baby to come home to? He fought to protect everyone and he did. What did you do? Quit once your wife died, leaving your sons to raise themselves while you grieved until now” Tears streamed down your face, racing each other as you waved an accusatory hand towards the man in front of you. “You act like you are the only one that has suffered like this. Like you are the only one that has felt pain like this. Senjuro has lost his mother and his brother who raised him yet stands here as an excellent young man no thanks to you” He stood in shock, his eyebrows furrowed as he thought of a retaliation. You sighed, wiping away the tears that had been falling non stop. “I understand you are in pain, I feel that pain everyday now, waking up to an empty bed. Feeling the life grow inside me that i didn’t make myself. I know he doesn't want me to wallow, this was the route he chose and I knew that a happily ever after wasn’t guaranteed when I agreed to marry him. But it’s not fair to take the pain I feel out on everyone else, because I'm not the only one hurting” You sat down on the bed that had been brought in for you, high off the ground so you didn’t have to struggle with your baby bump every morning. He grunted, turning sharply on his heel before storming out of the room.

Things were better than they were that night. Shinjuro acknowledged your presence but chose to stick to himself, only appearing before you and Senjuro for meals. He kept sentences short and didn’t comment on the amount of candles you had brought from home. You could actually get used to things like this.

“Eat this” He mumbled, placing a strip of steak in your bowl. A look of surprise crossed over Senjuros face as you stared over at him in shock, unsure how to process what just happened. “Ruka often said she ate more to keep her strength up for birth” He didn’t look up from his bowl as he spoke. You smiled at him, bowing as much as you could over your stomach.

“Father, thank you. Make sure you eat lots as well.”

“Yes! We have to eat lots to help too! I want to be strong enough to carry her on my back when she is older!” Senjuro piped up from his seat, a bright smile as he addressed his father. Shinjuro hummed, continuing his steady eating.

“Y/N, can I ask?” Shinjuro hovered in the door frame of the kitchen, staring in while you did the dishes. You turned, wiping your hands on the towel you had laid out as you faced the questioning man.

“Senjuro said you had a plan for a name. What is it?” You placed the towel on the counter, running a hand unconsciously over your stomach.

“Hinata. A bright name for a girl born from the sun.” You smiled down at your bump hoping with every word, every touch, she knew that you loved her.