To be reawakened was akin to the sickly taste of frustration of when the undoubted knowledge that a thought had existed overpowered the delicate details of the thought. For demons, the hellish nightmare of flames and constant pain that their human counterparts had dreamed up, in comparison to the lingering, heavy feeling of being so close to remembering their past incarnation, was far more despicable. Fragments of fuzzy faces and soft laughs, dark blurred alley ways and the color red… the memories broke off in pieces, teasing the demon for the very thing it longed for, but was no longer allowed to have.
For Kuroko, the memories sang from the far outskirts of his mind, soft notes of a lullaby sang by an older woman Kuroko could swore was someone who he wasn't supposed to forget. Since the moment his teal eyes opened for the first time in centuries, with the glare of the white sun blinding him, he had felt the annoying buzz of his memories.
The pieces of the past that longed for Kuroko to respond to them didn't belong to him. They belonged to the fragile, little boy… the human Kuroko Tetsuya, and Kuroko would be lying if he denied the misery this fact inflicted on him. The faces that blurred together, the smells that sometimes settled around him, the visions of pain and then comfort, muddled together in front of him and he desired to belong to that world again. To not be banished to the concept of an unholy monster out for human blood, but to be human and to live again was what they all wanted.
Kuroko could recall his brethren's faces when they were struck by a fragment. Some were only allowed glimpses of painful deaths, of murder and horrors, others taunted with the glimpse of a smile that so quickly faded away. He could recall that Aomine, who had become similar to an older brother figure, tried to hide his desperate longing to see the woman with bright pink hair and a smile that could cure any sadness. He remembered how he would avoid Kuroko's eyes and painfully glance at skyline and how he would try to hide the sadness in his voice when the woman's face had recently appeared to him.
He could remember the way Aomine held Kise, a demon who had become his mate, when Kise remembered being stabbed. Out of all the demons in the clan, Kise was likely to remember the most out of all of them. He often whispered to Aomine and Kuroko about how he remembered that he did something along the lines of acting or modeling, something that his parents thought would get money, he remembered being kidnapped, and being stabbed and killed. Kise would sometimes give a small, unsure smile, telling them that it was mainly all blurs, no definite evidence that his fragments were the truth, but he told them that the pain was definitely real.
Midorima would drift away from everyone. He would yell and scream when he thought no one was around, and would cry out for someone named Takao. One night in private Kuroko had discovered that Midorima had found out that he had a best friend that he had fallen in love with. The boy's face was all that Midorima was ever gifted to see, and most of the time, that beautiful face was twisted in pain. Midorima would cry, holding onto Kuroko when he just couldn't take it anymore, and would apologize to Takao. In his grief he would whimper that it was his fault Takao died and that Midorima should have taken more care to hide their relationship from their families.
Then there was Murasakibara who had never shared what the fragments he had seen where, but would pout and become childish if he reflected on them too much. Kuroko had seen all of his clan mates fall in their own ways to their human memories. Aomine had said that all demons go through this; a specialized hell they could never escape. Their human memories could never truly die because they were engraved into their souls, but their demonic nature forced them to the brink of oblivion in order not to interfere with the evil contained within.
Kuroko felt that the evil that may have originally seeded itself within demons had gradually faded away; leaving only tortured creatures in its wake. There were some, Kuroko knew, that did fallow in the stereotypical evil that humans had branded onto their kind, but most, the ones he knew, couldn't bring themselves to do any more than hide away in clans from the human world.
Generally, Kuroko agreed with Aomine's decision to leave the human's domain and to stay in the forest. It was a wise choice that kept them from being exorcised or attacked by another clan and Kuroko, being very independent for a newer demon, took comfort in the nature around him. There were times when Kuroko felt the hum of his memories echo through his mind and needed to escape all other noise. The sounds in his head were often too loud to concentrate on and the added chaos of this clan only left him with a headache. However, the leaves rustling on the trees of the soft sound of running water from the river lining the divide of their territory and the human's, seemed to sooth the singing and the shouting that his mind had been cursed with.
He was left time to think, to try to recall the face of the old woman, to understand if the blurred faces he seen even mattered, whether they were possible loved ones or abusers, or ones that simply just passed them in a moment of sheer coincidence. It was a lot to sort out, and mostly Kuroko could only see the elderly woman and a boy with orange hair.
His other memories that would sometimes find their way to him, were ones like Kise's; ones where he died. He could remember it was a violent death. Weapons carving into his skin, drawing out his blood in some sort of ritual that he wasn't ever going to understand. Kuroko would sob and try to draw comfort in playing with the water, trying to block the images from his mind. They weren't his memories, and Kuroko wished they would just leave and die with the human Kuroko. He wasn't human anymore and Kuroko was smart enough to know that the faces that he had seen had probably long since left the Earth and had gone to a better fate than he had found.
Kuroko would think of how they might react if they had seen his form now. Kuroko wasn't exactly sure of their personalities or how good their relationships were, but he could image they would share the surprise, and perhaps betrayal, when they were to see his appearance. When Kuroko had first seen his new form he was in shock. He understood that their general appearance, the parts of them that looked human, reflected the way they had looked in their past lives, but he didn't understand how different it would be to see his horns on his head, or how much his skin had paled compared to a healthy skin tone of a human.
Aomine had been the one to take him to the river in order to see what he had become. He had watched as Kuroko stared at the reflection with a self-loathing and he gently tried to cheer him up. Aomine explained how a demon's powers, like much of their appearance and memories, reflected the lives that they lived as a human. He told them of some demons that were able to change their forms and were able to hide their horns and sharp teeth. Aomine guessed that this might be an ability that Kuroko would come to learn.
"Why do you think that I will be able to change this form?" Kuroko had questioned, hiding his eyes away from the reflection.
"Because if I had to guess, your past self was someone who wanted to change and to make people happy. You are like that now; trying to cheer up Midorima or Kise when they're down… And now, you want to change who you are. Sometimes those kinds of desires and characteristics influence our powers and give us the things that our soul thinks we need."
Kuroko let the words sit between them, devouring their meaning and taking in the comfort that Aomine was trying to provide.
"I think that's the smartest thing I've heard you say, Aomine-kun," Kuroko let a small grin grace his face and laughed when Aomine feigned being offended and joked around with the younger demon.
A few decades later, Aomine's prediction proved to be correct by his mate. Kise had been observing Kuroko for years, learning what Kuroko would do on his free time, in order to plan the perfect scare. He had figured he might as well try to get back at Kuroko for all the intentional, and some of the unintentional, scares the boy had given them all when he was learning how to lower his presence to where even Aomine couldn't sense him.
It had happened during one of the times Kuroko was by the river, his usual hideaway from his clan, watching his reflection wave in the water's current. By this time, he had come to accept the beautiful white horns, that curved around his face. Sometimes he would have Aomine or another demon carve beautiful designs in them, to make them more than just markers of his species. It had taken him time to learn to accept himself, but Kuroko was finding that the combined support of his clan and the comforts of their home, provided him with the determination to continue living as a creature banished from the rest of the world.
After all his observation, Kise had found that scaring Kuroko was going to be easier than expected, especially if he were to use his ability. Kise had discovered his ability to instantly copy and remember whatever he saw one night when he had tried to match Aomine's speed. After some practice, Kise had decided he would sneak up on Kuroko and would use his ability to copy Kuroko's ability to hide his presence like Kuroko was able to. Once he had gotten close enough, Kise simply placed his hands on Kuroko's shoulders and pushed the other demon lightly enough that it made him lose his balance, but not to fall into the river. Kuroko's body jumped in response and his horns had quickly disappeared. They had both froze when they had realized what had happened and when they returned to Aomine, all the demon could do was smirk.
Kuroko then began to spend more time with Aomine and Kise to learn how to control his form. Though, he had first tried to avoid it and Aomine's boasts, he had found it was helpful to learn from demons who had already found a handle on their abilities, even if they weren't the same as his own. It was around Kuroko's thousandth year of walking the earth as a demon, that he had developed all the powers that he would. His main abilities where adjusting his presence and changing his physical form, though he was able to produce small amounts of magic that he used to trick or amuse the others. He had learned how to control the shape-shifting, no longer changing hair color, losing horns, or other such mishaps happened when he was scared or when his emotions were out of control. The hum never really tried to overpower him anymore, and Kuroko figured this was probably caused by his new found control of his powers and the fact that he had aged considerably from being a freshly awakened demon, to one with more experiences and abilities.
Kuroko could recall the day that he had decided to leave the clan in favor of sitting against the cool rocks by the river. He could remember using his magic to make small creatures form out of water and playing with them. However, most of all, Kuroko could remember the bright gold eyes that stared into his teal. He could describe the way her red hair fell across her face, or the curiosity and power laced in her stare. It was in that instance that their eyes meant that both knew what the other was, and developed a strong desire to learn more about the other.
The girl skipped across the river, standing a few inches away from where Kuroko sat. Her eyes told him not to move but offered something friendly between them. She outstretched her hand and waited for Kuroko to grasp it.
"I'm Akashi Akane! It is a pleasure to meet you, what's your name?"