Virago | Kimetsu No Yaiba [F! Reader Insert]

【Ｐｒｏｌｏｇｕｅ】

She always lived in the shadows of, not only her siblings, but the walls looming in her gardens.

When she was little, she often wondered what was beyond them. What was beyond her village. The times she snuck out outside, she returned drenched with guilt and anxiety, holing herself up inside then to pay for her sins.

Her mother strictly forbade her. The very mention of it would drive her into one of her raging episodes, which she often had. [F/N] did not know whether it was because her mother was sick for as long as she could remember, or it was because never leaving the house, too, took an effect on her.

Her sweet words were like a drug to her. She yearned for a figure to latch herself to. Her mother would switch from allowing her to play with her siblings, to barricading her in the room they shared together; muttering things such as that in this world, only she truly loved her.

It scared [F/N]. So much.

But she found herself hugging this parental figure of hers and complying.

She was not the type of child who rebelled often.

It was her brother and sister that would drag her out of her shell--as though teaching a bird to fly from its nest.

She vividly remember red, the red trickling down her brother's knees and hands after enduring their father's rigorous training. She remembered the empty, resigned expression void of its usual cheeriness that her sister wore as she gave up her childhood to marry and made herself useful to their family.

They were of different status--the three of them. [F/N] was a bastard child, hidden away from the world. Nobody knew her name apart from this little, broken thing that she called family. Meanwhile, Hitoshi, her brother, and Hinami, her sister, were her father's legitimate children, whose lineage came from prestigious samurais.

She did not mind it. In fact, she wished she could have done more to help them.

Growing up, she rarely cried. She learned at a very young age, it was ingrained into her bone marrow, that emotions would only destroy you. She didn't like it, for she only felt its negativity; rage, sadness, and grief--wishing she could bury all these away and never come in contact with them.

But fate worked in strange ways, and it had a way of coming back to her. Specifically grief.

One moment, she was doing her daily routine of slipping away in the dead of night to buy her mother's medication, and then the next, she found herself kneeling upon the ground stained with her mother's blood as she gazed up at her unpertrubed, aloof father.

Maybe she got it from him. That callus expression she hated so much. It would make others hate her, too. She's certain. Because she for sure detested her father for it. Being the carbon copy of her mother, she questioned, why did her eyes have to possess the same shade as her father's did? It was a reminder. One that made her want to remove her eyeballs with her bare hands.

But she supposes her optics were not all that useless.

It blessed her with the memories of her laughing and grinning siblings, sometimes her mother's love, and it taught her survival.

If she had one thing besides certain peoples in her family that she was grateful for, it would be her memory.

Flame Breathing.

She thinks it was what their family practiced.

Her father was a retired martial artist.

She never knew what kind he was when she was little, but she knew now.

A demon slayer was what he was.

And her brother followed at the wake of their father's footsteps. Unwillingly.

She would watch him from afar as he swung his sword when their father was not there, elegant but fierce akin to flame itself. It captivated her. Mimicking his techniques, though rather clumsily and not entirely, it was safe to say she taught herself some of them.

Hitoshi, she admired him.

She understood the burden of the eldest. Again, she wished she could comfort him in the days he craved escape and nights he spilled his tears.

But it was too late.

The rope that tied their companionship severed when she fled from the house, in the middle of winter, after her mother's demise.

A daughter that never crossed the boundaries set for her, when it became too much for her to bare, how far would she traverse beyond that line? Years of torment and restrained emotions finally caught up to her, and she yielded to it as easily as she did running away without plans.

It was foolish, she knew. She had shelter, food, and resources for a fair amount of study. Yet she chose to abandon all of this behind? Not to mention her siblings?

For once she let that selfishness consume her, she let irrational lamentation greet her like an old friend.

[F/N] was not a good person.

She knew this since she was very little.

Burning the world down for those she considered worth loving was not out of her capability.

Which was why she found it odd, that in the cost of losing her siblings, her fate led her to meet him in return. Tanjiro Kamado. A person that would ignite himself into a ball of flame if it meant saving the world.

That's why, in the future, she would do everything she could to prevent it from happening.

[F/N] did not want to be mended nor for someone to collect the pieces of her and glue her back together. All she desired was a purpose, and acceptance for what she was or who she was. Broken or whole.

Perhaps Tanjiro would be the key to that.