BIRDS OF A FEATHER PROLOGUE
a/n: this is the first fanfiction i've written in probably 10 years. i have had this idea marinating in my brain for a while now.
what if tanjiro and nezuko had an older sister who survived and became a hashira?
i had a vision for a girl alike to her father in featherlight strength, alike to her mother in song, and alike to them both in "fuck around, find out." thank u for reading. let's start from the beginning.
and please welcome my oc, kamado miel, the feather pillar. (before she became the feather pillar.)
cw: 4k words, angst, death, memory loss/amnesia, explicit language, prodigy
Miel Kamado may not have had her younger brother's sense of smell, but the change in the air was cold and heavy on her skin. For how bright the light was reflecting off the snow, she knew she was in the dark. Miel looked over at Tanjiro to find his red eyes shrunk to pinpoints and already trained on her. His usual tan skin now a ghostly pale.
"Tanjiro - No, wait," she starts, but he's already running.
"Miel, you know you don't have to go," her mother tells her while waving her over to where she stood with her 14 year old brother. "Tanjiro can take the charcoal on his own."
"I know he can. I also know he'll end up getting distracted lending a helping hand to everyone in town," Miel states as she walks up to them, ruffling Tanjiro's hair as she finishes her sentence.
Tanjiro blushes as he looks up at his older sister, "I just want us all to have a good holiday."
Miel smiles conspiratorially down at him, "I do too. That's why I'm coming with you to make sure we can sell as much coal as possible."
Miel looks out at her siblings playing in the snow together. "I want us to be able to eat as much as we want."
She spots her sister, Nezuko, playing with their baby brother, Rokuta. Miel can't help but think how mature she is for a 12 year old. The thought makes her stomach turn as she remembers why Nezuko has needed to become so. She shakes her head quickly to clear it before meeting Tanjiro's watchful eye.
Miel gives him a knowing look. He's always so perceptive about the emotions of others. Tanjiro says it's not hard when you can see exactly how she feels on her face. It's true. No matter how she tries to maintain an indifferent mask, if Miel is annoyed, excited, sad, feeling any kind of emotion, it's almost hard not to know. She knows that it's different with Tanjiro though. Even since he was young, Tanjiro has seemed to know Miel better than she knew herself. His voice has always gotten to her when no other could.
"Look at me," she tells him, "You've got soot all over your face."
While Miel wipes his face, she sees Hanako and Shigeru, her 8 year old sister and 6 year old brother, running over to them. Shigeru crashes into Tanjiro while Hanako pulls on Miel's haori - their father's haori.
"Why do you both have to go?" Shigeru whines.
"I want to come with you!" says Hanako, starting a small spat between the two about which one should get to go.
They quiet as their mother puts her hand up. "They're both carrying a lot of coal and won't be able to take the wagon. You know you two can't walk as fast as they can."
Shigeru flings himself into Tanjiro's arms while Hanako takes Miel's hand to place on her head. Miel smoothes the child's hair back and bends down to meet her eyes, "I promise we'll bring back something sweet." Hanako beams before running into Miel, wrapping her arms around her elder sister tightly. Miel stiffens for a moment but quickly relaxes and reciprocates the hug.
When Miel stands, she feels eyes searing into the back of her head. Their 10 year old brother, Takeo, stares between her and Tanjiro, visibly irritated.
"Takeo, I know it's no problem for you, but while we're gone, can you cut as much wood as possible?" Tanjiro asks.
Takeo scoffs, saying he was obviously going to do that before adding, "I just hoped we would do it together."
Tanjiro walks to him, ruffling his hair slightly to console him. Takeo looks surprised a moment before telling him to cut it out in such a cute childlike way that makes the whole family giggle.
"We should get going," Miel says finally. "I want to get back before dark."
Miel pats Tanjiro's shoulder as he nods to her.
"Please be careful," their mother tells them. They begin to walk away but look back to wave.
Nezuko catches them just before they leave. "I'm glad I get to wish you well before you go. I had to put Rokuta down for a nap first because you know he'd throw a fit at seeing you both go."
Miel chuckled and smiled at Nezuko, "You're all grown up."
Nezuko bowed her head in thanks and embarrassment before looking over at Tanjiro. "Since dad's passed, it feels like we've all had to lean on you so much."
Miel's jaw tightened as Tanjiro smiled softly. Tanjiro knew that Miel didn't like to talk about their father. That she didn't like that she had to lean on Tanjiro to support their family now. Miel never told him, but he knew.
Tanjiro took Miel's hand and beamed at her. "As the oldest, let's do everything we can to take care of our family."
Miel's body relaxed slightly as she looked at two of the people in the world she loved more than anything. She nodded to them as Nezuko waved goodbye.
Once the siblings make it to town, Tanjiro is exactly as Miel said. One second proving the innocence of a man accused of breaking a vase with his inhuman sense of smell and the next helping another with their luggage.
Miel wished she could be more like her brother in this way. He was the sun in the way that he heals. She was the sun in the way that she burns. She knew that his patience and kindness was the glue that held their family together when she could only find anger. At the world, at her father for his own sickness, at herself for not being enough, for not saving him, for needing help.
With all that talk of holding Tanjiro back from helping every person he saw, Miel was the one who couldn't help but let him while still keeping a close eye on him.
The sun began to set as they walked back up the snowy mountain together, nothing but the sound of coins at their hips in the otherwise quiet forest.
"I don't think we'll make it back before sundown," Tanjiro relents.
"It'll be alright," Miel tells him.
Tanjiro nods, but keeps his gaze locked on Miel. He wanted her to open up to him. He wanted her to feel like she could talk to him. Tanjiro had tried, but Miel had always found a way to escape the conversation. Always finding some task that needed to be done or another subject to deflect what was really bothering her. Yet, there was one thing he knew Miel could never refuse him.
"Can I have a song?" He asks.
Miel looks over in surprise, not expecting the request at such a random time. Her siblings will often ask her to sing, mostly before bed. She sees her baby brother looking back at her, now 14, now not so little, asking her for a song.
Miel smiles softly at him before telling him, "I have a poem perfect for you, baby brother."
Baby boy baby boy
When he was born
There were no clouds
And the sun it shone
In his eyes
In his hair
Baby firefly
Sun God's flame
On my life
I swear
His light is strong
With his love stronger
Hearts open up and
Run to him like water
"You always sing me that one," Tanjiro says with a smile.
Miel raises an eyebrow as she meets his eye, "Well I did write it for you." She means to continue telling Tanjiro about it before she's cut off by the sound of her own name.
"Miel. Tanjiro. Are you planning on returning to the mountain at this hour?"
Miel whips her head around to see old man Saburo. She relaxes slightly, enough to respond. "Yes. We are."
Tanjiro smiles at him, "I have a good nose. We'll be alright."
"No. You can't. It's dangeous," Saburo states.
Miel begins to tell him that they're fine before she is cut off again. "I will let you two stay the night tonight. Come in." She begins to protest again, but stops upon hearing him say, "Hurry. Before the demons come."
Miel and Tanjiro's eyes meet. Tanjiro gestures for Miel to come closure to listen to what he has to say.
"He's probably lonely. Let's just stay for the night," he says softly, so that only she can hear.
Miel looks over at Saburo then back to Tanjiro, relenting. "We go at the first light of dawn."
"Yes, sister," Tanjiro agrees.
Miel is about to fall asleep when she feels Tanjiro at her side.
"Can I sleep on the futon with you tonight?" he asks sheepishly.
Miel smiles and considers teasing him before simply moving over. Tanjiro brightens and makes himself comfortable next to his older sister. Miel relaxes and tells him quietly, "It'll be okay. There are no demons. We are safe," before drifting off.
Through each of their heightened senses; the scent of blood, the weight of the air, they knew. While Tanjiro ran, Miel was faster. Her hand reached the back of his collar and pulled him down as she ran ahead of him, screaming at him to stay where he was.
Tanjiro looked at his older sister with wide eyes, stunned frozen in the snow.
Miel's sight set on Nezuko's small frame curled up around Rokuta. She falls to her knees in the bright red snow and screams as Tanjiro got to his feet. While Miel was yelling at Nezuko to wake up, Tanjiro ran forward, looking into the house from where a wall used to be, now gone completely.
In a singular moment, everything was taken from the eldest Kamado siblings. Tanjiro began to shake, barely able to choke out, "Miel."
"What?" Miel screamed at him, looking up to see Tanjiro pointing inside.
Her eyes followed his finger.
Sometimes the mind tries to protect by erasing memories of trauma that the mind isn’t ready to accept. Takeo, Hanako, Shigeru, Rokuta, and her mother. Miel’s spent all 17 years of her life living with them, loving them. She knows this. She knows them. But in every memory, Miel can’t quite make out their features anymore.
She’s being dragged by the wrist. Miel sees her blood soaked sleeves and vaguely registers that her hands feel like they’re on fire. Beyond that, she finally recognizes Tanjiro. He's panting and carrying a girl on his back. Nezuko.
"What's going on?" Miel asks.
Tanjiro jerks his head around, "We're going to town. Nezuko needs to see a doctor now."
Miel resists, ripping her arm from Tanjiro's grasp, "Brother. Stop. Let me carry her."
Tanjiro didn't turn to look at her, no longer responding, just continuing to run. As Miel begins to yell at Tanjiro to stop, she sees Nezuko begin to stir, causing him to slip.
"Tanjiro!" Miel screams as he falls off the side of the cliff. She immediately gets as close as she can to the edge to find them. Miel exhales as she sees Tanjiro's gaze meet hers. Alive. They're alive.
Miel senses the shift in the air, almost as if it was being pulled away from their direction. Looking out in the distance, she spots him. A raven haired man wearing a mismatched haori. In his hand, a bright blue katana.
Miel looks down at her younger siblings helplessly. Her eyes squint as she tries to understand what she's now seeing. Nezuko, now double her normal size, on top of Tanjiro as he's resisting against strength Miel had never known Nezuko to have. Miel stands stunned at the sight, in denial, confused as why Nezuko would try to attack Tanjiro. She jumps and lands on a branch of the nearest tree, beginning to descend down to where Nezuko and Tanjiro lay fighting.
Tanjiro notices the man mere moments before his blade would've met Nezuko's neck, grabbing her by the throat and flipping her over. His hair now cut by the blow.
Miel begins screaming obscenities at the man as she continues to hop from tree to tree until she is front of her two siblings.
"If you lay a finger on my baby brother or sister, I will kill you where you stand," Miel yells at him.
"You call that thing your sister?" he asks. Miel looks behind herself at Nezuko, seeing tears staining her face with the axe still being held in her mouth by Tanjiro. In the next blink, the man is holding Nezuko by her wrists.
"Don't move," he says flatly. "I am a Demon Slayer. It is my job to kill demons. So I will need to decapitate your sister now."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Miel screams at him. She's inching towards him slowly. He notices, but doesn't move any further away from her.
"Nezuko has never hurt anybody!" Tanjiro's scream is so desperate, so raw, that Miel's first instinct is worry that he's hurting his throat. "There was another scent that I'd never smelled before. They had to be the one who murdered our family!"
The man begins to lift his blade. In the second that he lifts it, Miel is gone. Then she appears in flashes, circling the man before attempting to knock him off his feet by his legs. He counters easily, spinning, the side of his hand connecting with her neck and knocking her out.
Watching Miel fall to the ground, Tanjiro begins to plead. "Please! I'll hunt down the man who murdered my family! I will turn Nezuko back into a human!"
As his blade begins to lift again, Tanjiro falls to his knees. With his head bowed down into the snow, he began to cry softly, "Please. I’m begging you. Please don't kill my little sister. Don't take anyone else away from me."
The man's eye twitched as he lost his composure, yelling at Tanjiro. "You have no right! You have no power when it comes to the life or death of others because you are weak."
Tanjiro looked up at him, tears falling from his eyes as the man continued, "Get off your knees before you give your enemy the chance to kill you! If pathetic begging did anything for you, your family might still be alive."
The words were cruel and he had no defense, so Tanjiro listened.
"Cure your sister? Kill the enemy? You're ridiculous. Only the strong can get others to stand down. Maybe the demons know of some way to cure your sister, but don't think for one second that they'll tell you, let alone respect you. I don't even respect you. At least your older sister actually tried to do something about this. All you did was try to cover her with your body. You think that'll protect her?"
The man only pauses for a moment, cutting off the words on the tip of Tanjiro's tongue when he continues speaking, "Why didn't you swing your axe? Why did you show your back to me? You think you're gonna be able to take your sister from me that way? Are you just gonna sit there and watch while I kill her?"
He pierces his sword through Nezuko's chest as Tanjiro screams at him to stop, throwing multiple rocks at him before charging him head on. The man blocks one rock with the hilt of his sword and swiftly dodges another. As Tanjiro closes in, the man yells, "You're a fool!" The hilt hitting Tanjiro hard enough to make him pass out.
As the man looks up after striking Tanjiro, he senses the axe coming towards his head just before it finds its mark. Tilting his head to the side, the axe lodges into the tree. His focus shifts to the girl and boy seeming so peaceful face down in the snow. These two.
Nezuko's eyes fix on her siblings both lying unconscious on the ground. She chokes out a small growl before her foot collides with the man's side, kicking him away. The split second that the man thought all was lost quickly dissipated into shock.
He had heard this story before. A family member, a lover, insistent that this demon was different before being devoured.
He couldn't explain this away.
Demons will eat anyone, even people they love. It was clear that this young girl had just turned and must be exhausted. He was sure that she was starving. Yet, there she stood in front of her older siblings, arm outstretched protectively, setting her attention to the man in front of her. Nezuko runs at him, getting a couple kicks in. She's reaching for him when the side of his hand collides with the side of her neck, just as it had with Miel's, sending her collapsing into the snow in front of him.
Tanjiro is startled awake by the sound of yelling, his eyes flying open to see Nezuko's sleeping form facing him, a muzzle of bamboo in her mouth. His hand grasps the clothing on her shoulder with an intensity and quickness that made it seem as though she would slip through his fingers. Hand heavy on her shoulder, his eyes looked up into the white expanse of snow and trees before focusing in on Miel's voice. All he could see was the man with the red and green haori looking up into the trees. Following the man's gaze, Tanjiro's eyes landed on her.
"Just who the hell are you?" Miel spits out at him, attempting a tone of malice that read easily as fear.
The man's head turned to the side, breaking eye contact with her, "I am Tomioka Giyuu, Water Pillar of the Demon Slayer Corps."
In the blink of an eye, as if she had taken flight, Miel dove towards the man called Tomioka Giyuu. "Your words hold no meaning," she said in agitation, her thumbs directly in front of Tomioka's eyes. However, he appeared directly behind her as she landed on her feet. An arm wrapped around her body before she was able to turn to look at him.
"You're like a bird," Tomioka states matter of factly, like he was talking to himself.
"Let me go!" Miel cried, attempting to free herself from his grip, but even while tensing all of her muscles, it appeared as though she was completely still.
Tanjiro stood slowly in front of Nezuko before yelling, "Miel, she's alive! It's okay! Nezuko's okay!"
At the sound of her brother's voice, her head snapped up and her body relaxed, but only slightly. "Tomioka. Let me go," Miel said quietly through gritted teeth.
"I will. Once you say you'll stop trying to kill me. I don't want to have to knock you out again," Tomioka states coldly.
Miel bites the arm Tomioka has wrapped around her, but he doesn't budge. "The moment you threatened my family meant the next you would pay for it in blood!" she screams at him.
"Miel!" Tanjiro yells at her, shifting his feet in a way that showed that he couldn't decide whether to run towards her to help or remain in front of Nezuko before he forces himself to calm. "Miel! If he wanted to kill us, he would've done it already!"
Miel's eyes dart up, tears of anger threatening to spill over, and looks at her brother. His face nearly as red as his eyes and slick with fresh and old tears. At the sound of him pleading with her, she relents.
"Okay, okay, I'll stop. Just let me go to them." Tomioka's grip on Miel relaxes only slightly before she's able to free herself, running towards her younger siblings.
Miel's ear dropped to Nezuko's chest to confirm heartbeat, her body melting down upon hearing it. Her hand roamed over the blood staining her kimono, moving it away to try to find the wounds, but only finding dried blood.
"She's a demon now," Tomioka's voice cut through Miel's relief, "She will be able to heal her own injuries."
Miel's head slowly turned to look over at him, but Tanjiro's warm voice beat hers before her cold anger could bite at Tomioka again. "I don't understand. How could she become a demon?"
"Her wounds were exposed to demon blood," Tomioka states. "That's how the man-eating monsters multiply." He takes a beat, trying to decide how to continue before he does. "Moving forward, you are to never let your sister walk in the sunlight. We're okay now because of the clouds hiding the sun, but she will burn if her skin touches the light of day."
He pauses to confirm understanding before continuing, "You two are fighters. You say that you'll hunt down the demon that murdered your family. I am sending you each to trainers. Boy, you will go to a man named Urokodaki Sakonji. Miel, you will come with me."
"I will do no such thing," Miel retorts. "I don't know what makes you think for a second that I'm going to leave what's left of my family."
"You have talent," Tomioka says plainly, as if it is obvious. "He's intuitive and can think on his feet, but you..." he exhales before his clear blue eyes finally meet hers. "You don't hesistate. You act and you follow through. You will need to be trained separately.”
Miel flinches at the feel of a hand slipping into hers. She jerks it up into herself at the pain she feels at the contact and brings the palms of her hands up where she can see them. They're covered in blisters.
Her eyes jerk back to Tanjiro's. In them is weight of everything they've lost. What is gone won't be coming back. What she would've spent the rest of her life protecting. Now it’s just Tanjiro and Nezuko she swears she will spend the rest of her life protecting. If anything happens to them, it will be over her dead body.
Remembering Tomioka's existence, Miel's eyes shift back to him and she speaks softly, but clearly, "We will need to pay our respects."
"Understood," Tomioka states, starting to walk over to the siblings.
"Don't get too close," Miel warns him, moving her arms up, pushing Tanjiro slightly behind her.
"You're injured," he states. "Let me see."
"Sister, please," Tanjiro begs. Without taking her eyes off of Tomioka, she lowers her arms. Briefly, she considers how easily Tanjiro breaks her guard down, considering it as a potential weakness. But his judgment has never led them astray before.
Hesitantly, Miel's eyes catch Tomioka's ocean blue gaze. Her mind betrays her, allowing a fleating thought that they're pretty. And intense. Tomioka can't help but feel caught by the look in her eye, like he was a little boy again being caught by his big sister doing something he shouldn't be. There was something else there that he couldn't name, so he didn't try.
Miel holds her hands out to him and continues to meet his eyes. She watched him intently as he pulled medical supplies out of his sleeves and began to bandage her wounds.
Without emotion, Miel says, "Tanjiro, can you try to wake Nezuko? We should head back home now."
"Yes, sister," he responds.
Miel looks back at Tomioka, "I will go with you on one condition."
Finishing up with wrapping her hands, he tells her, "That's not how this works."
"I will go with you on one condition," Miel repeats. Before Tomioka can respond again, she continues, "I will be accompanying my brother and sister to their trainer. Afterwards, I will come with you."
Miel can tell that Tomioka is about to deny her so she keeps talking, "You will wait for me and come to where I am to get me. I don't care. I will be making sure that the only people left in the world that I'm sure I love make it to your trainer safely whether you like it or not."
Tomioka was not used to being spoken to like this. As a Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps, he is almost always acknowledged with fear and respect. Almost always.
Tomioka looks away from the siblings, "Remember what I said about the sun. When you get to Urokodaki, tell him that Tomioka Giyuu sent you."
divider credit: @uzmacchiato + @strangergraphics
➵ chapter 1: rises the moon
all of my writing is my own. do not steal, copy, redistribute or feed any of it into ai.
