Salvation
chapter 4: Raizen
For the third time in my life, I wandered aimlessly, but this time I left much more behind me.
My illusion of happiness was broken again, and that had become as painfully clear to me as the searing chill that came with the winter.
I let the cold envelop my heart, but it could only do so much to comfort me.
After many nights on my own, I suddenly became filled with a familiar anxiety. For the first time since I had escaped, I found myself truly reflecting on my life in slavery.
I could hear Chikou's voice in my head, and often awoke from terrible dreams of him. His voice echoing, "Happy birthday."
It had been like that every year for me. I felt that terrible day approaching, and it swallowed my heart in despair. Now, even though I was free, I could still feel it, and I cursed myself for it. I could not even be free to hate him, free to imagine his blood spraying—
sunshine
flowers
garland
happiness.
My birthday would again be a terrible one, although I wished so desperately that I could change it. If those men had not come, I could have been happy on this day. I could have been with Shun, and he would wash away all the terrible darkness that came with these memories like a gentle rain.
What I had instead was frost, and it bit my tender heart until my dreams had been frozen and splintered away.
-.-.-
At first, I killed out of necessity. I killed men and stole their clothing to keep myself warm. I killed a house full of people and sheltered myself, ate their food.
It was with a dead man's sword that I cut away all of my hair, and I, for all anyone knew, became a boy.
Eventually, I began to kill anyone who seemed vaguely threatening. Anyone who approached me with any seemingly negative intentions was destroyed. Those who got too close to my blind side were decimated. I did not care. I eventually blocked out all the screams, the blood. I incorporated them into myself—I even turned it into a game, to see how many people I could frighten, in order to keep myself from going insane with the reality of it.
I was good at killing. I became very good at it. Killing was what I was. And deep down, I felt I enjoyed it.
There was a sort of freedom that came with taking someone's life. The power that coursed through me as I severed flesh and bone. Pure exhilaration. As if I was focusing all of my pain into a single point and releasing it into their body, breaking the chains of grief that bound me.
It was only when I saw the remains of the deed that the truth of my actions came rushing back to me, but I was left with nothing but a bigger hole inside of myself, a yawning emptiness that I continuously thirsted to fill with more and more blood. I was an addict, racing to the next high, broken by the fall, but always craving it.
-.-.-
When I was nine years old, I began to gain followers.
There were people that admired me, even celebrated me, and I did not know how to feel about them. I had done nothing good with my life, nothing noteworthy. I was turned away and despised or adored.
I hated them all for not being able to understand. But I hated those who liked me considerably less.
I even began to tolerate them.
I was famous because I was powerful, and because I was a child. I never told them my name, and many were too afraid to even ask. To some I became "Aka," 'red,' maybe for the blood I spilled or the color of my murder. Others called me "the scarred child." There were likely countless other names that had been given to me, but I was not ready to be known by any of them.
Those years went by as a blur of blood for me.
-.-.-
When I was ten I knew I needed to replace my arm. I had, for the most part, accepted what I was, but I was not ready to consider my past again. My past with Shun.
I had arrived at the conclusion that I was angry with him. Deep inside I knew he had not abandoned me, and I had actually abandoned him, but I did not allow myself to believe it. He would have hurt me in the end, just as his look implied he would. I could not believe otherwise. To do so would be too painful, and make my past years of existence—of death—meaningless.
I ultimately decided that I had no choice. I had to face him. A part of me even wanted to face him again, to prove to myself that I had been right in leaving him. Yet there was a part of me that was deeply terrified of being proven wrong.
In the end, when I finally burst through his door and walked down his steps, I did not know what I was going to say to him.
Then I said, "I'm a killer. This is who I am. I've got money for you now. So give me the arm or don't."
I couldn't threaten him. I couldn't even meet his gaze. I thought if I saw those eyes, expecting to be looked down on, I might kill him, but I suppose in truth what I felt was a deep, burning shame. But at that time, the darkness inside of me smothered it all into an incomprehensible mess, and I had no idea what I was feeling anymore.
Shun agreed, but we did not speak. He must have felt the barrier I had put around myself, blocking everything out around me, and knew his attempts would have been useless. I would have twisted them on him.
No matter if he spoke or did not, I would still be full of hatred.
When at last he had finished my arm and attached it to me, I paused one last time before I left him for another several years.
I told him, "My name is Mukuro." And that was all.
-.-.-
It was a year later that I began to hide myself. The idea was not new to me, as I had often considered the best method of doing so, but it was when I met a woman who explained the ofuda wards to me that I knew it was time.
They would keep the bandages on me, and the wards' purpose was to keep whatever was beneath it safe, hidden, or restrained. No one's prying eyes could see my true face, gifted or not.
I covered everything but my sighted left eye until I was fifteen, when I went to visit Shun for another arm replacement.
He had made a prosthetic eye for me to take the place of my lost, blinded right eye. Again I would have to part with a useless piece of my body in order to use it. But I did not care this time.
I only saw his face a bare moment as he ripped out my eye, and that was that.
-.-.-
In the years to come, my advocates amassed. It seemed that I was not well-known enough anywhere but in the small part of the world I occupied to pose a considerable threat to Raizen's current domination. I embraced my anonymity, for I wished not to draw attention, but the more I sought it, the more attention I inevitably drew.
Eventually even killing could not bring me the peace I had been struggling for, and that made me even angrier.
I still did not feel safe. Secure.
I needed more.
-.-.-
I would not have to hurt them as long as they did what I said. As long as they respected me. As long as they never threatened me.
But not everyone could understand that. Not everyone, such as the woman in the village with a wild look in her eyes, that woman who I decimated, whose son's cries I ignored.
I did not ask for much.
-.-.-
When I was twenty, and I had accumulated five times as many followers, I grew less reckless. I slowly became more immersed in the world I had stumbled into, the power I had gained, and thus I learned more about what power was supposed to mean, though it did not change much about me other than my knowledge of the workings of the world and the people in it. My wishes remained the same.
But I had become a true influence in my part of the world.
As a ruler I was not concerned over being good for others. The world could remain in the state it was in for all I cared, as long as my corner of it was fit for myself. Many of my territory's conquests were not even my idea. Still, because I was powerful, I would always have those that stood behind me. Most of the time I realized that I was the catalyst they used to further their own goals, but some of them were loyal to me, although I had a hard time ever spotting the difference.
In a very deformed way, and due in no small part to the violence I was surrounded by from day to day, I felt that my bloody world was justified. My own self-serving intentions wrapped me up in a darkness that, because so many people supported it, I felt must be right. If I was a monster, then so was everyone else. I was simply the one on top.
At some point, I became obsessed with what I was more than what I truly wanted.
It was at this time that Raizen finally found me.
-.-.-
Raizen was incredibly fast.
He found me when I was alone. The both of us, alone. Something about being alone with this man—the most powerful man in the world—both awed and angered me.
And he did truly overpower me.
But he did not kill me then. He stood over me, and I realized that he could now do whatever he wished with me.
My fear brought all my remaining power to the surface, and I shot it at him, but he dodged it almost effortlessly. I was helpless now, resigned to whatever fate he chose to administer upon me. I knew it was all over for me.
I was too weak to even tremble as he reached down and stripped the bandages off of my face. His eyes widened just barely, then he stood back up and said, "I like you, Mukuro. You're not like the others. No big ideas, no lofty plans, just pure unbridled power. You don't even bother with the human world. I'd rather it be you than one of them. So don't get yourself killed." He stared a moment longer, then he walked away from me.
I had no idea what he meant, but he had let me live. He, knowing I was a woman, had not even touched me. I was too confused by him to even properly hate him the way I wanted to. I might even have loved him for it, if my confusion at it all did not make me so angry. I was angry that he had proven he was better than me, and angry that I did not understand why. He had not killed me, and he had not taken me in—he had left me with the most infuriating path of all: my own thoughts.
I vowed to myself that I would live on, to make him regret that he had not finished me off.
-.-.-
Raizen and I continued through the years with what was, to us, as close as we could get to friendly competition. Our followers were oblivious to our respect for each other, and I knew they would have no possible understanding of it, so to everyone's eyes, Raizen was as much of the enemy that I claimed he was, that I tried to believe he was.
I felt that opposing Raizen gave me some sort of purpose after all. If it were not for that and my inability to form bonds with others, I most likely would have been close to him instead of against him.
At times we met each other and conversed in secret. I did not feel the need to lash out against him and because of that, he held me in the same regard.
All of that ended when he fell so foolishly in love with the human woman, and he came back changed.
I did not know him anymore, and that threatened me. I could not relate to the monster that he no longer was. It was not his swearing off of humans that bothered me. Truthfully, it had not been my original choice to eat humans. I ate mainly meat, as most of us did. Then, frankly, most of them ate humans as well, and it happened that I followed suit. I did not mind it, as I did not mind most dead things anymore, and also because I had never known any humans, and I did not wish to. They were either more unnecessary threats or pointless distractions.
No, the truth was that the reasoning behind his actions, such emotion, such compassion and faithfulness, was nothing to me. I could not understand or agree with something so ridiculously futile, and it was not something that the Raizen I had known would do.
He was no longer like me, and that meant that once again, I was utterly alone.
Author's Note: Once upon a time, Mukuro and Raizen had a rad bromance. ... Yeah. Anyway. I realize this chapter is shorter than the others. It just happened that way. This chapter is dedicated to, um... Raizen lovers? I have no idea. The plot thickens! I know this chapter probably seemed a bit choppy from all the time skips, but to be honest with you, I don't want to write a super detailed account of 1000+ years of life (for now), which is why I'm basing all the chapters on influential figures in Mukuro's life instead. So the time skips are going to be rampant unfortunately. Thanks for the read!