As Things Should Be

-16- Prejudice

Inosuke's choice left Doma feeling anxious even though the boy had been gone for months. He feared for the boy out in the world, even with Daki secretly tailing him and watching out for him. Death took but a moment and if something happened... if Daki couldn't reach him in time... if the demon slayers found out where he came from... if Muzan found him...

Still, he did understand that the boy had to go; he had always had a wildness to him so it was only natural he chased after danger instead of fleeing from it. That still didn't stop him from seeing terrible visions of Daki bringing back a corpse... but he found Kotoha soothing those daydreams away.

"It's normal to worry," she told him one day, as they took shelter in a small empty building. "You're not the only one."

"It doesn't feel normal," Doma confessed as he held his aching chest. Kotoha wrapped her arms around him and laughed.

"Gyutaro's worried," she snickered. "So's Akaza. I'm sure wherever Daki is, she's worried too."

"Gyutaro?" Doma asked, caught genuinely by surprise. "He's just angry."

"That's how you know he's worried," Kotoha teased. "We all show our worry differently. Gyutaro's been so irritable lately because he's scared for little Inosuke. You've been so quiet because you're scared too. Miku's been so determined because she's insistent on being just like her brother."

"Oh gods, please no." If Doma's heart was still beating, it would've had palpitations at the thought of Miku going off to hunt demons.

Kotoha laughed and planted a kiss on Doma's cheek. "It's how I know we love each other; the worry we hold."

That did strangely enough make Doma's chest warm. He settled down, laying his head in Kotoha's lap and staring up at the wooden ceiling as his mind wondered...

 Akaza was out on a hunt and Gyutaro was off acting independently as he often did, Doma didn't care for what the demon did as long as it didn't affect what happened back home and didn't end with humans dead. 

Both Gyutaro and Akaza had taken a foul hobby of... eliminating certain humans if they fit a specific match and make. Akaza had occasionally let his hand slip and killed a few monstrous humans they'd met on the road, especially any in power... Gyutaro had lashed out at more than a few people who'd raised a hand at a child. It was beginning to drive Doma insane and he'd made it as firm a dictate as he could; no humans. 

But he killed his own monstrous human? Hadn't he? As he looked up at Kotoha he thought of a distant night with a sick man's blood on his fingers. He'd killed monsters in human skin...

So when Akaza came home covered in blood, a flower in his hand from a thankful family spared from a terrible fate... Doma only gave him a gentle look. When Doma found Gyutaro comforting a sobbing child in the woods, her monster of a father dead in a ditch, Doma helped the girl to her Aunt's house and only gently slapped Gyutaro upside the head. He reprimanded them... and then let it pass.

Did that make him a bad person? What made them different from any demon Inosuke ran across? What made them better? Morales? Emotions?

God... Inosuke...

Out there with two swords and a very frail mortal body standing between him and death itself. Gyutaro was right to be killing more demons out of rage... Kotoha was right, they were all worried. Akaza had been on high alert ever since the boy left and Gyutaro had feasted on demons like it was his last meal. They all saw the same thing... little Inosuke covered in his own blood with no way out -

Doma clenched his hands together and he heard Kotoha giggle, pulling him out of his ponderings.

"You're still worrying," she reprimanded gently.