Work Text:
As leader of the Tenshoin Naraku there are certain missions where the Bakufu demand the presence of the Yatagarasu to oversee the heavens' will. It is not a hard job to do, simply order your men to kill the targets, cover up our tracks and ensure there are no survivors. If the assassins wish to play with their targets it matters not to him, all humans are the same, savage and cruel. Even to each other, humans will always fight amongst themselves. No matter how much Utsuro tries he will never understand humans. The immortal has simply given up on them.
The village the heavens wish to erase is a funny one, its inhabitants filled with humans and vampires. Or more precisely vampires and their human livestock, either way the bakufu wants them erased and as the messenger of the heavens the naraku will see to it. As the immortal walks through the bloodstained and burning village he finds a child laying on the ground. It’s a small pale boy with struggling breaths bleeding from multiple wounds from his face down to his stomach. Humanity was always cruel to one another but upon closer inspection to the child the immortal will see two small puncture wounds bleeding tears from the child's neck and will see two small fangs peek out when the child asks if this is what death is to the shinigami himself. Utsuro feels pity for the fledgling for he too knows the feeling of humanities cruelty. When he moves to unsheathe his blade the child does not plead nor frighten, already accepting its fate, he gives the child his blood. If the child survives this night then he is more than welcomed to come after the shinigami himself for revenge. But until then that day Utsuro will pick up the bloodied child and carry him back to the base, bakufu orders completed regardless, all the villagers have died.
The boy is a particular one, hair the color of smoke and eyes black enough to remind you of the void within yourself but in the moonlight the child's eyes will shine in a shade much like utsuro’s own. The boy is skinny and feeble, but with the immortal blood in his veins and his rewritten vampire cells the fledgling regains its health fast. The child stays in the room conjoined with immortals so Utsuro can monitor his health. The boy stays unconscious for a week at most with a fever possessing its small body and abnormal temperature changing from cool to warm. In that time Utsuro reads all the library’s worth of books containing information on the Vampyr race. When the child finally awakens and recovers its strength Utsuro will give the child new clothes and a pouch of money knowing the child will leave before sundown. When Utsuro returns to his room for dinner the child will be there waiting for him and they will eat together.
Children are strange creatures Utsuro soon finds out. The child, Oboro will follow him around throughout the day while he performs his duties. Rarely speaking or making any noise, the only reason Utsuro will call the child Oboro is because one of the hags from the nursery came by and named the child when he mentioned he had no name. The child will sit next to his throne as he commands his assassins, sits and watches on the bleachers as Utsuro runs drills and training in the dojo’s and sits and watches in fascination as Utsuro fills out paperwork. Oboro will be silent through the meals they take in the mess hall sitting on Utsuro’s lap because of his small stature leaving him unable to reach his plate and Utsuro will feed him and show him how to use chopsticks when he sees him reach for his food with it’s small hands. When night falls Utsuro will soon grow accustomed to having the small child by his side as he keeps crawling in his bed to sleep next to him, curling up to the warmth the immortal’s body produces. Utsuro believes the child can no longer speak until one day they head to the aviary and the Oboro asks to touch the crow Utsuro feeds in his hand. Utsuro will associate the squeaking voice with a slight lisp due to his tiny fangs as Oboro’s. It seems that one sentence was the first break in the dam because the child will now follow him around asking the immortal endless questions without a care in the world. Unlike most children brought into the organization Utsuro forbids the training of the young child, he wants Oboro to grow free of the naraku’s clutches and hands stained of blood. However the child and the immortal are at a disagreement at that. Each morning Utsuro will ask the child to leave and be free of the heaven's will. The child refuses and follows him at his side, eventually Utsuro accepts the child's presence and allows him the status of a paige. Each afternoon after Utsuro trains Oboro will ask him to train him, but Utsuro refuses each time.
Utsuro thinks Oboro is different from others. The child was probably one of the many humans enslaved in the village used as livestock for feeding but was bitten by a vampire and is but a fledgling. The child is undoubtedly paler than any human, but can walk in the sun unburnt, nor does he exhibit any strengthened abilities that other vampires own. However Oboro has no thirst for blood like the books Utsuro read had mentioned. Perhaps it is the immortal blood in the child's veins that make up for the differences or perhaps this child is simply abnormal. The only occurrences that give away the child’s vampire relations is the fact that Oboro has tiny fangs which gives his speech a tiny lisp. But that should cause no problem since the child is clever enough to figure out how to retract them. It did cause a need for concern a few days ago when Oboro bit into an apple and it ended up stuck in his mouth. Utsuro had to cut it part ways before pulling it out of the child's mouth. Then when he checked if Oboro’s teeth were intact the immortal found them retracted and the fangs gone back.
As time goes by Utsuro finds his outlook on humanity changing, each time he looks at Oboro.
While looking at Oboro, Utsuro finds himself wanting to learn more about humans outside the naraku, Oboro is proof they must have changed. One afternoon Utsuro skips out on training and he and Oboro take a stroll around the compound instead. Utsuro asks once again why Oboro has not left and Oboro will respond with the same answer, how he is loyal to him, and wants to stay by his side and help him in any way possible, how he sees the immortal assassin as a teacher, as something good and respects him. Utsuro will tell the child that he is not a teacher, and that he cannot teach with the blood on his hands. He will tell Oboro a secret that has been heavily haunting his mind since he has met the child, that he wishes he could be a child like him, free of sin and able to learn while washing the blood of his stained hands. Oboro looking straight into the immortal’s soul will tell him that he should open a school where he and the students can learn together insisting that he would join the school run by the immortal, stating that Utsuro is not evil, if he was, Oboro would be a killer and not a paige. It is after that Utsuro feels a change in him, a change unlike anything he has gone through before.That night Utsuro will look at Oboro’s sleeping form curled up against him and slip from the bed and into the bathroom feeling lighter. Utsuro will look in the mirror and find someone else staring back, a completely different entity from him, a human one.
