Rui x reader: The Nanny

The Nanny: Part 7 (End)

After all of your time within the Spider home, you didn't think you had tears left to shed.

You knew. You knew before the cleanup crew of the Demon Slayers Corps burst through the tattered doors of the house that something wasn't right. The family had been gone for far too long and the forest just beyond was quiet.

Webbing fell left and right and the small spiders that had stood watch over you and the home dissipated into ash. You dropped your kitchen knife and fell to your knees once the corps members found you. A kind-looking woman was the first to approach you. The butterfly pattern of her haori looked just as soft and as inviting as her embrace.

You sobbed into it until you felt dizzy. It only felt right. The life you had adjusted to and had grown so comfortable with was over. You were so, so close with getting Rui on the right path. You were sure of it. Memories were just beginning to bubble under the surface after all of your tender attention to his needs. For raising him like he'd been robbed of so long ago.

There was a hole where your heart should have been, and you didn't know how to answer the demon slayer when she finally asked: "Just how did you survive this long?" Her curiosity was genuine, but you didn't have the strength to answer her how she wished. And honestly? A nagging in the back of your brain told you that the details would have sentenced you to your demise as well.

"I did whatever he asked of me."

You return to your village shortly after being dismissed from Shinobu's care. It's more of a ghost town than before. Many of the inhabitants had perished to the spider demons and you've never felt more like an outcast in your life.

It's been over a year. How did she make it out?

Poor thing looks like death.

I bet she's one o' them. Eat ya like a damn spider, she will.

It's so bright outside. The whispers and looks are just too much. You did what you had to, right? You dig at the scars that drag along your wrist and retreat to the safety of your home. There's a tension that you can taste. Like a calm before the storm. After all of the husbands and wives and children and friends to wander into the mountains... You were the sole survivor to walk out.

The sheets of your bedding are your safe place. They block out the light and stifle the sobs that begin to bubble up your throat.

For once in over a year, you're sleeping in a room without soft snores to fill the silence and not spider in sight.

You awake well into the night. There was a shuffling in your home and you blinked groggily at the figure in white who had taken an interest in the trinkets that decorated your nightstand. You sit up so fast it makes you dizzy. "Wha-" You brace yourself on your hands and knees. "Get out!"

The stranger wasn't fazed by your hostility in the slightest. "It wasn't right of him to leave you all alone." You swallow as the man lifts a necklace that had been your grandmother's and gives a small hum as it glints in the moonlight.

"You don't understand a thing..."

You jump when this stranger is suddenly in your face. Pink hues stare into your own and that feeling in your gut is worse than ever before. You're staring at something wiser than you, ancient in ways you couldn't hope to understand, and you've foolishly tried its damn near saintly patience for even breathing the same air as a being as low as you. You do what feels right. You bow your head and mutter out the words that were second nature: "I'm sorry."

There would have been silence if your heart wasn't pounding in your ears. You briefly wonder if this demon can hear it too.

"I know it must be hard to live without Rui." The hand on your head that pets you is cold, deathly so. This demon has definitely had more practice because his movements are so natural, unlike Rui's mechanical stumblings when he attempted to replicate your motions. "You have such a big heart. I've seen your kind time and time again." You shudder when you feel the tip of his finger hook into the collar of your kimono to better expose some of the flesh there.

"You're beacons of morality without asking for a thing in return. You get trampled on, but-" He pauses to look over your collarbone. "I can give you a gift. I can make sure that no one would ever be able to leave you again. Would you like that?" The demon lifts your chin with a finger and your lips quiver when you meet his gaze once again.

"Please..." You trail off. You didn't even know his name.

"It's Muzan Kibutsuji." He answers your thoughts as if he could read your mind. Fuck. He probably could, and it wouldn't surprise you in the slightest. "But for you? I'll be your Master." It was all he offered you before he pierced into your collarbone with a blue claw.

"The west!" The crow that circles a young demon slayer caws down to them. "The west! Your assignment is in the village by Natagumo Mountain!"

The inhabitants of the village he stopped by were a few hours away from his destination. "The children spoke of a woman 'fore they were snatched up." The elderly man took a long drag from his pipe. "Said they saw 'er in their mirrors."

"Did their parents see her too?" The swordsman attempted to fan away the cloud of smoke with his hand.

The old man shrugged. "Can't say. They were butchered in the middle o' the night. Ain't nobody see anyone go inside or come out, neither."

"Thank you for your help." The slayer bowed his head and walked away.

But it wasn't a conversation that escaped you. No... Hardly anything escaped you these days.

Your eyes, a dead spectral white, watched the young slayer through the reflection in the windows of the old man's home through one of the mirrors that decorated your house.

"Children." A gleeful hum bubbled up your throat as your hand pressed against the mirror, ready to phase through it to snatch this swordsman up at the next window he walked passed. "Set the table. We'll be having a guest for dinner tonight." A wide grin finds your lips that exposes your sharp canines. Well... At least the upper half of him will be joining you for dinner.