The Blacksmith's daugther was a witch (Tomioka Giyuu x reader)

Chapter 7: Waking up

Previously:

Only now he noticed that her canines were a little bit longer and sharper than normal. And as he was studying her slightly unnerving smile, she bent down and picked up her arm. Then she pressed it onto the wound... and suddenly the fingers moved. They stretched a few times and when her other hand let go, there was no wound in sight.

Her arm reattached itself to her body.

The demon slayer decided then and there that even if maybe she wasn't telling him the whole truth... he could trust what she said.

She has been floating in the black nothingness for what felt like ages by now. This wasn't what she imagined death like. She thought that she would finally meet her dead sister again, maybe even her friends that died along the way on their jurney as demon slayers. Whatever it could be, it definitely wasn't this in her mind. Everything was just pitch black and there was nothing to hold on to.

It wasn't scary, no, she wasn't falling or anything... It was just incredibly sad and lonely. Her tears have stopped after a while and yet she still felt like crying. Was this her fate? To forever stay in this darkness with nothing else to do but think and regret? What was it that she did to make her recieve such a punishment? She didn't know.

At least she wasn't in pain anymore. It hurt a lot at first, it was pure torture, as if she was dying all over again... but over time it gradually started getting weaker and now she didn't feel in at all.

"If only we took a different path, things would have been different. I wonder if Tomioka-san survived... there is no way, right? There was no one to save him." she thought.

She really felt pathetic. A pillar of the demon slayer corps dying a pitiful death like this... She's achieved nothing, she couldn't save Tomioka, she couldn't get her revenge. Maybe she really was useless and weak... What kind of hashira is unable to slice off a demon's head anyway?

"...-up..."

"What?"

It was as if she could hear a voice from somewhere deep in the darkness. She listened closely but there was nothing else.

"Must have been my imagination, huh..? I am probably going crazy in here."

"...-ke-...-p..."

There it was again. Just what was it?

"Wake up."

It was a woman's voice. She couldn't be imagining this, it was so clear. Could Kanae be finally here to pick her up?

Suddenly she felt something smooth and cold touch her cheek.

"Wake up, Kocho-san. You have been asleep for long enough."

Shinobu's eyes shot open and her hand firmly grasped the thing on her face. It was someone's hand. She blinked the blurriness away and looked at the person above her.

There was a woman with a broken kitsune mask covering the upper half of her face. A gentle smile layed on her soft lips as she looked down at the injured demon slayer.

"Took you long enough. I was starting to worry you wouldn't wake up."

Shinobu wanted to answer her, ask her questions, anything but she only managed to croak out some incomprehensible sound before the pain in her throat silenced her.

"Oh! You must be really thirsty, right? Sorry, I'll get you some water right away!"

The woman got up and waked away. Seconds later she came back with a cup of water. She helped the hashira sit up and tilted the cup to her mouth so she could soothe her burning throat.