#nitwiwd

In the eerie quiet of the indoors, every minor noise the crow made felt like it was magnified tenfold. Every croaky swear the crow uttered whenever he took too long in following felt like an alarm bell. Resisting the urge to pinch the beak of the featherball that had freed him, Virgil crept along the wooden floorboards as quickly and quietly as possible. 

Surprisingly enough, his luck held: they still hadn’t run into anyone by the time the bird led him to a sliding door, left slightly ajar. The snippet of forest outside was possibly the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen, and he wasted no time in slipping through to greet the cool evening air he’d thought lost to him forever. 

It was dusk, thankfully. There was just enough light outside for him to still feel moderately wary, but even as he watched from under the roof’s overhang, the last rays were slowly fading behind the distant horizon. He heaved a soundless sigh of relief, and began carefully winding his way through the copse of trees surrounding the building, sticking to the shade. 

For whatever reason, Fluffbutt had circled back around to settle contentedly on his shoulder. She didn’t look quite as raggedy and awkward as the last time he had seen her, finally reaching the normal crow stage of being more sleek feathers than downy fluff. Even if her choice of language remained just as immature as ever. 

“Scoundrelly fiend!” croaked Fluffbottom, who Virgil was beginning to suspect was just making up words at this point. 

“Ssst,” he answered, a stilted approximation of a shushing sound, following it with a few halfhearted signs. “You want me to get caught?” 

Fluffbutt didn’t respond, possibly because she was a petty little creature, or possibly because she was a bird and the chances of a bird understanding sign language were low. (But never zero.)

Of course, because Virgil’s life could never be easy, he caught the muffled sound of an impact nearby. Hunkering down further with his ears pricked up attentively, he slowly approached the noise until a clearing came into view. 

Even in the dark, he could easily make out the silhouette of the first slayer he’d ever run into, and also probably the reason he was in this mess in the first place. Biting back a groan, he retreated back a few paces before beginning the process of skirting around the slayer’s sword practice. Running across him wouldn’t have been instantly deadly– Roman seemed to be using a wooden training sword for some reason– but Virgil had no doubt that the slayer would raise the alarm if he was spotted, and the last thing he wanted was for his unethical scientist buddy to come running.

Idly, he signed to the bird still perched agreeably on his shoulder, “Your human is an ungrateful narc, you know that?”

“Fiend!” Fluffbutt replied at a far louder volume than was appropriate for sneaking around. “Ro-man! Ro-man! Ro-man!” 

“...Missus?” a voice called, sounding mildly confused. “Where are you?”

“Sst! Ssst!” Virgil made the hushing sounds even though it was obviously far too late, and attempted to scurry along quicker in the hopes that he could still salvage the situation. 

On his shoulder, Fluffbutt continued to call her slayer’s name, proving herself just as much of a narc as her human. He attempted to shrug and then brush her off, and only earned himself a harsh nip to the fingers for his trouble. 

“Why did you even let me go if you were just planning to get me killed?!” Virgil signed frantically, still half-crouched as he attempted to put cover between him and the rapidly approaching rustle of bushes. “I’m going to rethink my opinion on bird murder if you keep this up.” 

“Scourge!” Fluffbutt cried gleefully.

“Missus, is now truly the time to– hey!” Roman’s voice turned from exasperated to alarmed in a heartbeat. “What are you doing with– wait, it’s you!”

Virgil attempted to keep moving, as though if he turned his head away and pretended not to hear he could just avoid the entire situation. This pathetic tactic was quickly brought to a halt by a swipe of the slayer’s weapon slicing through the branches of a tree a few inches from him. Virgil turned to face the slayer, and then paused to eye the clearly wooden sword in his hand with disbelief. What were they feeding these freaks? 

“What are you doing to Missus Fluffybottom?” Roman demanded, as though Virgil was not very blatantly being victimized by his bird at this very moment. “Breaking into a Hashira compound, I should have known your earlier assistance was a trick!” 

Okay, first of all. “Breaking out,” Virgil signed with a frown, emphasizing the ‘out’ part of the statement by signing it twice. “It was not my choice to be here.”

“You can talk?” Roman asked at a near-shout. 

Virgil shot him an unimpressed look, and was surprised to see the man actually wilt slightly, abashed. 

“You– You know what I meant! You didn’t do any of that last time!” Roman defended himself, before the original statement finally seemed to register and he puffed back up. “What are you talking about? I would have known if you’d been brought in, and besides, all Logan’s been doing lately is working with his little lackey on nerd research.”

Expression flat, Virgil pointed at himself. “Nerd research victim.”

Roman’s face went slack with shock, the expression authentic enough to convince Virgil he really hadn’t known, before crumpling up into a confused scowl. 

“What do you mean, victim? You’re a demon!” he retorted, gesturing expansively to Virgil’s entire appearance. “An incredibly strange one, I’ll admit, but still a fiendish bloodthirsty creature of the night! Surely, you prey on victims, not the other way around?” 

“I don’t ‘prey’ on anyone,” Virgil signed with a little too much emphasis, jostling the crow right off his shoulder. “I was minding my own business, not killing people, and your coworkers abducted me.” 

“Bastard!” Fluffbutt cried, fleeing to a nearby branch. Virgil tried and failed not to feel a little abandoned despite it all.

“A likely story!” Roman echoed her scornful tone, angling his pitiful practice blade at him. “As though I would believe a demon has any other business than hunting humans!” 

Was he really going to be having this one argument with people for the rest of his cursed, monstrous second life? Kill him now. 

A sudden chill settled in the air, making the hair on the back of Virgil’s neck stand on end. It was nothing, however, compared to the icy tone of the voice that rang out behind them.

“Step away from him.” Logan was a mere silhouette in the night, but the razor sharp edge to his words told Virgil everything he needed to know. 

The even sharper edge of the slayer’s drawn sword glinted in the moonlight, further reinforcing the implied threat. 

… When he’d thought ‘kill me now’, he hadn’t actually meant it! It was a sarcastic internal remark, not an earnest request!! Why was his life like this!!!

“Logan!” Roman turned to Virgil’s likely executioner with a relieved slump to his shoulders, quickly skipping back a step to close ranks against the oh-so terrifying threat of Virgil, who was standing frozen there like a stunned rabbit. 

Before the slayer could make it across the clearing, though, that poison-coated blade shifted direction. 

“Woah!” Roman complained, forced to stop short or risk impalement. “Watch where you point that thing, Specs!” 

“Stay where you are,” Logan replied coldly, his eyes obscured by the light reflecting off his glasses. “Don’t take me for a fool.” 

“Huh?” Roman asked, dumbfounded. “Specs, it’s me.” 

“Silence,” Logan snapped, and the command came out brittle and harsh. “It’s pointless to drag this farce on any longer.”

“Um?” Despite it all, Roman glanced at Virgil, the two of them exchanging a bewildered look as though forgetting they were mortal enemies for a moment.

The moment of commiseration nearly cost Virgil his head. 

As it was, he heard the thin sound of metal slicing through the air just in time to throw himself backwards, thus keeping his head attached to his shoulders. The panicked sound that escaped him was something like the squeal of a dying frog, but he didn’t exactly have the time to mourn his total loss of dignity. 

“Logan, what in the world is going on?!” Roman screeched, practically tripping backwards to get out of range as his unhinged coworker lunged after Virgil with his jaw set. 

“Keep your distance if you truly retain the soul of the friend I know,” Logan retorted, the sentence bitten out between attacks.

“The soul of— Specs, what does that mean?!” Roman’s voice was rapidly shifting from confused to indignant.

Virgil didn’t have a single spare second to focus on the byplay, not with the ferocious pursuit Logan was leveling at him. It took all Virgil had simply to keep ahead of the blows; if he judged the direction of even a single swipe wrong, he was done for. 

At least it seemed like the scientist had given up on recapturing him. The last thing he wanted was to return to that cramped, sterile room and live out the rest of his days as a lab rat. 

The rest of his days being cut short here wasn’t ideal, either, but he hadn’t completely lost hope yet. There was still one direction unblocked by murderous slayers, the way out of the compound entirely if he was lucky, and if there was one thing he was good at, it was running the hell away. With every vicious strike from Logan, he inched his way back towards it, dodge by dodge. 

Even giving it his all, Virgil suspected he probably wouldn’t be doing half as good if it hadn’t been for the way Logan kept casting sharp glances in Roman’s direction, shifting his steps and the angle of his body to guard against both the demon he was fighting (made sense) and his friend (made no sense) as though either could lunge forward and attack at any moment. 

Well, whatever. If it would get Virgil out of here, he wasn’t going to question the random, seemingly unfounded bout of paranoia. 

As though summoned by his cautiously growing hopes that he would manage to get away, Virgil caught the distinct patter of footsteps coming from behind him. 

Extremely close behind, actually, and growing rapidly closer–!

“Virgil!” Large warm arms wrapped around his torso, pinning his arms and lifting him clear off the ground with the force of the motion. 

It was only the familiarity of the voice and the bright, cheery tone of the call that tapped into Virgil’s conscious mind enough to prevent him from trying to maul the idiot who had decided to run up and hug an agitated demon from behind. 

Instead, he did an awkward full-body twitch of surprise, most of which was completely muffled by Patton’s all-encompassing grip, and involuntarily made a chirping sound that was uncannily similar to a cat that had just woken up, probably because even the most surprising hug was still a hug, and he was weak.

Weak and probably about to be skewered, he realized as he abruptly recalled the fact that Patton had been the one to tell Logan about him. He stiffened back up– when had he closed his eyes?– and looked to see that despite his sudden prone state, both of the other slayers were standing still.

Roman was staring at them with his jaw dropped, his gaze flicking between Patton and Virgil’s faces with equal parts bewilderment and disbelief. As for Logan… Logan was standing stock-still in the middle of the clearing, his hand clenched tightly around the hilt of his sword and his expression extremely dark. 

Virgil felt a shiver run down his spine. That didn’t bode well. 

“It’s so good to see you again!” Patton continued, giving him one last gentle squeeze before looking up and seeming to notice the tense air that was currently stretched across the clearing, fit to snap at any moment. “Well, would you look at that! It’s rare to see so many friends in the same place at once. Logan, Roman, how twonderful to reunite with you both!”

Roman spluttered something that wasn’t anything close to real words. Logan maintained his icy, desolate silence.

Patton paused, tilting his head curiously. “Did I interrupt something?” 

Virgil took the chance to wriggle free of the slayer’s grip before one or all of them regained their senses, and scurried back a few steps so that he was at least out of immediate grabbing and/or beheading range. Patton cast a concerned glance after him, but his attention was dragged away by Logan audibly gritting his teeth. 

“You, too?” he asked, a deep misery in the words. “Am I the only one here who remains myself?”

Everyone else blinked at him with varying levels of befuddlement and apprehension. 

“Of course you’re yourself,” Patton tried, smiling despite his clear concern. “The one and Lonly!”

Logan closed his eyes as though pained. “Alone and outnumbered.” When he opened them, his glare was locked solely on Virgil. “I suppose you must feel smug, knowing that you’ve cornered me despite all my precautions.” 

After a moment of blank staring, Virgil slowly lifted a hand to point at himself in silent question. 

“Yes, you!” Logan snapped. “Enough with the act. I’ve fallen for your trap, now let it be sprung and over with!”

“Woah, hold it right there!” Roman stepped forward, his hands held up as if to stall any further action. “Would you please explain just what is so dire, Professnore?! You aren’t alone! From where I’m standing, it looks like the one who’s cornered is the demon, not you.”

“His name is Virgil,” Patton chimed in helpfully. Virgil was really starting to wish he would stop helping. “Logan, kiddo, did you manage to read through the last letter I sent–,”

“Fine. I’ll explain, even if it might be pointless.” Logan’s posture was still wrought with stress, his jaw tight and muscles stiff, but something about the abrupt cessation of the fight had thrown him enough to get through; this time, he at least deigned to actually meet Roman’s eyes and respond to his question. 

Even Virgil paused his sidelong glances towards possible exit routes to listen, mostly in the hopes that there would be something he could do to refute the claim and prove his innocence. (A guy could dream.)

“You both met this demon and claim to have gotten away unscathed, despite the multitude of reasons it had to kill you where you stood.” Logan leveraged his blade up to point at Virgil. “Did neither of you ever wonder why such an impossible being suddenly appeared before you, acting as no other demon ever has before? Did it truly never occur to you two that a demon would only waste time playing innocent for one reason: to sow the seeds for future chaos.” 

“What?!” Roman gasped. 

“Uh, Lo, I don’t think–,” Patton tried. 

“There’s only one explanation for such behavior,” Logan continued doggedly. “This demon has a method of control over those it spares, and now holds your lives and potentially even your minds in the palm of its hand, to use against me and any other slayer it encounters.” 

For a disoriented moment, he tried to check for the baby crow, which mostly just involved him listening closely for any loud, raspy-voiced swearing. Naturally, there wasn’t any, because he’d blacked out and the slayer very clearly hadn’t wanted Roman’s bird anywhere near him.

Bizarrely enough, he felt a little morose at the baby crow’s absence. Maybe because she was the only creature who had figured out that despite being a monster, he wasn’t actually a threat to humanity.

Or maybe it was just because being immobilized in a dark, silent place was totally freaking him out, and he would have taken any company so long as it meant he hadn’t been locked away forever or buried alive.

(Could he still die from a lack of oxygen? Would he be stuck underground, conscious and alone, for the rest of time? He couldn’t even call out for help.)

His body was unresponsive, and nothing his brain was coming up with was remotely helpful, so Virgil focused on his breathing, trying to keep his count steady as he inhaled and exhaled air that could be rapidly running out—

By the time the slayer entered the room, Virgil had already hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness a few times, each time utterly convinced he was dying.

The man didn’t bother saying anything to him or even sparing him anything more than a glance, simply walking around the space and lighting several lamps at a brisk pace, but Virgil felt a vast, sweeping sense of relief fall over him regardless.

He wasn’t buried. He hadn’t been left alone to rot away in the dark.

He was… extensively strapped down to a waist-high table in the center of the room?

A significant amount of his relief started to fade. Right. He’d been caught by a slayer who wanted him dead or worse, and was now entirely at his mercy— assuming he even had any for demons.

There was another person in the room, too, and they scurried about so quickly that it took Virgil a few moments to identify them as the wary stranger who had sent him to go find their brother. They were wearing the same uniform as the slayer, now, which answered basically all of Virgil’s potential questions about the situation.

“Subject ABN-V3, Log 1,” the slayer started, and Virgil’s eyes flicked over to him curiously. “The subject regained consciousness approximately half an hour after halting the regular wisteria toxin doses, indicating remarkable poison resilience, comparable to a Lower Rank.”

There was the distinct scratch of hurried writing, but the slayer’s hands were unoccupied as he circled Virgil’s prone form. The younger slayer must have been an assistant.

There was a muted pressure on his hand, which refused to even twitch, even as the pressure grew heavier. The slayer hummed, pulling away. “In contrast, regeneration ability appears relatively slow. Internal organ function has resumed, but exterior nerves and muscles remain paralyzed.”

His organs had been paralyzed?! Virgil’s breathing stuttered, and he wrestled with the instinctual panic for a moment. His lungs were clearly working now, so he should just keep breathing and not pass out again.

When he looked back over, it was to the sight of the slayer staring directly at his face with a detached sort of curiosity. That composed mask of his may have dropped for a few moments in the clearing, but it was fully repaired and glued in place now.

“Do you have anything to say?” he asked, which was a little startling.

Virgil blinked at him for a moment, and then very quickly recalled that blinking was about all he could do. His hands weren’t cooperating with him, and even his head felt too heavy to shake or nod at the moment.

An irritated rumble started up in his chest for a moment before dying out, and he heaved a low sigh, already exhausted. He’d burnt through all his default terror while panicking in the dark, and now there was barely anything left to scrape up for his impending dehumanizing death.

The slayer only watched him impassively for another long, silent stretch of seconds before turning his attention away.

“Subject’s nonverbal behavior remains consistent with previous encounter,” he narrated, which succinctly explained why he’d bothered to verbally prod Virgil in the first place. “No secondary manifestations present in the room. We’ll proceed with direct regeneration testing while the paralytic is still in effect.”

There was a metallic clink, and Virgil’s gaze flicked over to a tray covered with tools he could only guess at the purpose of. Most of them were sharp-edged.

At least he wouldn’t be able to feel them. Yet.

The slayer picked up a thin blade, and Virgil squeezed his eyes shut, in an attempt to not have to see whatever was being done to him.

The narration of that calm, clinical voice couldn’t be as easily blocked out, so he found out regardless.

—

His healing factor had improved a lot since being turned into a monster, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the level he’d seen from some of the other demons he’d fought, so he wasn’t surprised to find that the first thing he felt when the paralysis began to wear fully off was pain.

The wounds weren’t serious, at least. He hoped that didn’t mean they were saving more lethal ones for when he could actually feel them, but he wasn’t optimistic about his odds.

(Unsurprisingly, it seemed like most demon slayers really hated demons.)

The slayer seemed strangely perturbed by the way the methodical injuries he’d inflicted hadn’t healed yet. Apparently, vastly accelerated healing was the norm for most demons, so this was just another way in which Virgil was a freaky outlier. Virgil could have told the slayer as much himself if he’d been able to sign.

Not to say that he’d regained all his vocabulary. With his limbs strapped firmly down, his post-poison communication was limited to signs that he could form with just his hands, and no accompanying movements. Fingerspelling was tedious, but at least it was possible.

“S-L-E-E-P,” he’d signed when the slayer had been theorizing on his apparently deeply unusual slow healing. “L-O-N-G.”

It took a few repetitions for his captor to pay it any mind, but once he did, his expression immediately creased with doubt. Virgil let himself look irritated about the reaction, because really, what was the point in pretending? He was screwed either way.

“If hibernation periods could heal demons, there would be longer stretches of inactivity between attacks,” the slayer said, frowning down at him. “It would make my job much easier if that were the case, but it isn’t.”

Since when was Virgil the representative for all of demonkind? He’d barely even spoken to other demons, since generally their interactions tended to start and end with them trying to kill each other. This was his supernatural sleeping schedule, not theirs.

Generally, he only slept like that when he was injured. If he wasn’t hurt in a fight, he didn’t get tired. He signed as much to the slayer, and earned a disbelieving scoff for his efforts.

Virgil had only been dozing lightly so far, seeing as he was currently trapped and about as far from safety as he could possibly get, but the disbelief rankled, and he huffed before pointedly closing his eyes as though to prove it.

He thought maybe the slayer wouldn’t allow it— there probably wasn’t much to scientifically observe when your subject is sleeping— but to his surprise, the man only noted down the behavior and then left.

It took a good part of the first day to force himself down into genuine sleep, but being left alone in a quiet space was close enough to his usual cave naps that he eventually managed to sink into the heavy unconsciousness of one of his impromptu hibernation sessions.

A full week later, he snorted into wakefulness to see the slayer had unstrapped one arm and was inspecting the smooth skin where the incisions had been previously.

This must not have been the first time he’d removed a restraint to see if Virgil was faking his beauty rest, because his head shot up with keen alarm the moment Virgil’s eyes fluttered open.

He released Virgil’s hand and drew a thin, needle-like dagger from his side in the same moment, presumably a breath away from poisoning him back into temporary organ failure.

Virgil barely even registered the movement, his eyes still crusted over with sleep. Half-awake and triumphant, he blearily inspected his completely-healed arm and then promptly signed, “I told you so.”

“Return your arm to the restraint,” the slayer instructed, his voice brooking no argument and his gaze assessing.

Virgil made a sour face, rubbing at his eyes. “Don’t you have cuffs?” he asked, turning slightly so he could tap his free wrist to his strapped down one for the last sign. “I could at least sign in those.”

“The restraint. Immediately,” the slayer replied, firm as stone.

A low grumbling growl of complaint started up in Virgil’s chest, but there was no way he could get free of the other restraints quickly enough to try and escape, and he really wasn’t looking to get his organs shut down again for no reason.

Besides, the assistant kid was still there in the corner, watching him with wide eyes, and he didn’t like the idea of scaring them.

Fine. He’d go back to his stupid nap then.

With a petulant scowl, he closed his eyes and stuck his arm back out and allowed the slayer to pin it back into place and tighten the straps over it. He flipped him off afterwards, though, just to make things clear.

It was quiet for long enough that he pried his eyes back open suspiciously. Both of the slayers were staring at him like he’d just started abruptly juggling fish or something, and he raised his eyebrows in a display of irritated bewilderment.

For once, the slayer didn’t have some snappy annotation to spout, only glaring down at Virgil with his jaw working like he was gritting his teeth.

Was he really that pissed off that Virgil had been telling the truth about his healing? Why?

“Professor Logan—,” the baby slayer whispered, faltering when Virgil’s gaze flicked their way.

“That’s enough for today,” ‘Logan’ answered, stepping away from the table. “We’ll speak elsewhere.”

Virgil only barely managed to stifle an incredulous noise as the two of them left, putting the lights out as they went. They’d never bothered to take their rude and often horrifying conversations about him elsewhere before. Maybe he should try being right about things more often.

—

“Bastard!”

Virgil’s eyes flew open at the muffled call, his head feeling much clearer after sleeping off the last of the poison’s symptoms.

It was quiet and dark all around him, as always, and for a moment, he nearly convinced himself that he’d imagined the noise entirely.

Then, from outside the door, there was a raspy squawk and an audible ruffling of feathers. “Fiend! Fiend?”

… Just how determined to swear at him was this bird?!

He couldn’t exactly respond, and he wasn’t sure why he would want to. Logan had reacted extremely negatively to the bird existing in the same space as him last time, and he wouldn’t wager that the slayer’s attitude had changed in the past however many days.

Still, the crow was clearly looking for someone, possibly even him. He could hear the distinctive pitter-patter of little taloned feet scurrying back and forth on the floor, with the occasional inquisitive swear thrown in.

After a few long minutes of this, Virgil gave up on trying to go back to sleep, unable to tune the little creature out. He may as well try to answer in the limited way he could.

It took entirely too long, but he managed to purse his lips and whistle a long, low note.

The clicking of steps stopped dead, and then grew abruptly louder, the bird’s faux-speech taking on an excited tone.

The baby crow audibly scrabbled at the doorway for a few seconds, before evidently managing to worm her way under the door gap. From there, she made short work of the flight up to the table, where she immediately perched directly on Virgil’s forehead and peered upside down at him.

“Scourge!” she announced gleefully.

Someone certainly hadn’t learned her lesson about fraternizing with big scary demons. He whistled an amused note at her, fingers twitching in an impulse to reach up and ruffle her feathers before he remembered his situation.

Right. No bird-petting for monsters, he guessed.

The crow— wasn’t her name Fluffbutt or something?— seemed to notice the movement, though, and she traversed down Virgil’s arm in little hops. He still couldn’t really reach her scruff of downy baby feathers from this angle, but he gave it his best attempt.

Fluffbutt pecked him harshly, which, rude, and then she turned around and started picking at the straps holding his forearm down.

… No fucking way.

Virgil craned his neck to look over at the bird, his disbelief slowly melting away as he saw that yes, the crow really was tugging and prying at the corded knot holding the restraints in place like her life depended on it.

It was slow going, but as she steadily worked at it, Virgil could tell that progress was being made. He wiggled his arm testingly every so often, usually getting bit for his efforts, and after what felt like hours of agonizing waiting, he finally managed to pull through the last threads of the restraints.

He only had one arm free, but that and some time was all he really needed. Fluffbutt reclaimed her spot on his forehead, watching as he quickly tore at the restraints on his other limbs.

As it turned out, quickly sitting up for the first time in days was a bad idea. Virgil rode out the surge of dizziness and pushed to his feet, pacing back and forth in the small room until he was confident that his legs had remembered how to function well enough to get him out of there.

A simple test of the handle revealed the room had been locked, and Virgil wasted a few minutes poking through the unsettling number of medical tools in the room before realizing there was no way they’d left the key in here with him.

He could probably kick the door down if given a few tries, but the more noise he made, the more likely it was that Logan would find him mid-escape and put him right back in those restraints. Virgil had no illusions on how a second match between him and the uncannily quick slayer would turn out, which meant that stealth was currently his best friend.

He turned his gaze to the wall, wondering if they were flimsy enough that it would be better to try and punch a hole through one of those, but before he could decide further, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

Shit. Plastering himself against the wall, he waited tensely for them to pass by— only for them to pause right outside the doorway. There was the distinct click of a key being inserted into a lock. Double shit.

The door swung open, and the assistant slayer had just enough time to look up and see the empty specimen table before Virgil leapt at them.

Don’t freak out, he would have said if his hands weren’t currently occupied with covering the slayer’s mouth and dragging them bodily into the room. Instead, he made a series of low chuffing sounds from deep in his chest, which helped absolutely nothing about the current situation.

“Scourge!” Fluffbutt crowed, her contribution equally as unhelpful.

Hurriedly booting the door shut with his foot, Virgil only had a moment before the baby slayer gave up on trying to pry his hand away and instead went for the sword sheathed at their side.

Since letting them do that was basically a one-way street to getting decapitated, he risked releasing them for long enough to tear his claws through their belt and yank the sword free, sheathe and all, before tossing it into a corner with a muted thud.

“PRO—,” they started, and Virgil slapped his hand back over their mouth, hissing lowly in the closest approximation to a shush that he could manage. They responded by glaring and biting him, which he really should have expected after living with teenagers for a few months.

It only took a glance around the room to find a suitable cloth from the cache of cleaning supplies, and Virgil wrangled the baby slayer into a headlock for the handful of seconds it took him to assemble a makeshift gag and shove it in their mouth.

With the slayer now unable to raise the alarm, Virgil paused for a moment to think, his whole body jittering with sudden adrenaline. The easiest solution would obviously be to strap the slayer into the convenient demon-proof restraints readily available on the specimen table, but he really didn’t want to do that. The kid was already panicking hard enough, the last thing he wanted was to make them think he was going to experiment on them or something.

Instead, he tore a larger piece of linen into strips and wound them around the slayer’s wrists a few times before knotting the end of the faux-ropes intensively around one of the table legs.

The slayer started yanking against the makeshift restraints the moment Virgil stepped away, their cries muffled but still audible enough that he should really be escaping sooner rather than later.

Luckily, his cloak had been dumped on a nearby shelf with the rest of the meager belongings he carried with him, mostly ignored after Logan had finished snooping through it for bones or something. Virgil ignored Fluffbutt swooping noisily around his head as he slung the comforting weight back around his shoulders and pulled the hood up, and then stepped back around the table towards the door.

The baby slayer seemed to think he was headed for them instead, their gaze very obviously wide with terror as they scrambled ineffectively to get away from him. He stopped short, guilt swamping him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he signed, backing up a few paces to try and give them some space. “I just want to get out of here, okay?”

The kid stared at him, chest rising and falling as rapidly as a sparrow’s. He sort of wished he had heard their name at some point, but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. As it was, he didn’t even know if they knew sign, let alone how to calm them down.

He sighed, lifting his hands up to his shoulders in a gesture of nonaggression, and edged around them to finally get to the door. Fluffbutt settled on his shoulder, apparently content to be identified as a little feathered demon-associating traitor. 

The hall was blessedly empty when he stuck his head out to check, and so he waved a small farewell to the kid— almost certain that they would wriggle out of those haphazard bonds within the hour— and closed the door after himself.

The key was still sitting there in the lock, so he twisted it to relock the room, and after a moment of thought, dropped the key and kicked it under the door so that the kid wouldn’t be stuck if nobody else came by in the next few hours.

He’d done it. He was out— mostly, anyhow.

Even more pressingly, the kids were fond of him, always arguing about his status as a monster, and he was worried that it would get them hurt. Surely, there were other demons out there who would try to act harmless or friendly in order to lower an opponent’s defenses.

Virgil was pretty sure he was a bizarre outlier, a statistical anomaly that had gotten knocked in the head during the transformation or something. He’d never met another demon that didn’t want to kill people. He wouldn’t bet on another one even existing.

He knew the two of them had a history of their own when it came to demons, and neither were idiots. But neither were they cruel, and that soft-hearted nature was what concerned him.

Virgil didn’t want to be the reason they tried to extend a helping hand, only to get it bitten off.

He couldn’t bring himself to attack them wholeheartedly, to try and scare any missing portion of survival instincts back into them, because he was selfish.

(He doubted it would work, anyhow. The two of them had gotten concerningly good at calling his bluffs.)

He couldn’t bring himself to give them a proper goodbye, because he was a coward.

(He’d said a farewell to Thomas, that day he’d sent him down the mountain, hugged him tight until he’d smacked his shoulder and complained about worrywart brothers crushing the life out of him.

He’d said goodbye, and lost him in all the ways that mattered.)

Instead, he helped run them through one last day of training, exhausting every muscle, and then waited until the two of them were dead asleep before slipping out a window into the night.

Harley’s preternatural sense of smell was good enough that just dipping himself in a body of water wasn’t going to shake them, so instead Virgil relied on his own unnatural ability, and scaled a sheer cliff face to travel by treetop for a bit. It didn’t matter if they knew which direction he headed so long as they weren’t physically capable of following.

They had their own lives, their own goals to pursue. This was for the best.

And if Virgil found that his solitary travels suddenly felt much lonelier?

Well. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to notice.

—

It hadn’t even been a full month before trouble found Virgil again.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that he was sent into trouble. After all, the circumstances of his current situation seemed far too precise to be a coincidence.

He hadn’t thought anything of it when a teen had approached him timidly on one of the roads skirting a sizable town. It had happened time and time again before, though usually those approaching didn’t carry so much nervous tension. Most people were only a little wary of what they assumed was a demon slayer dedicated to protecting them.

That should have been his first sign, in hindsight, but he’d been too busy being morose about missing his own temporary wards to take note.

Maybe he should have worried about how their friendship would impact him a little, too. He doubted he’d ever be able to look at a younger slayer without seeing them again.

The stranger had pleaded for help, watching him with a curious spark in their gaze, and gave him directions to a nearby grove, one that multiple people had apparently disappeared in, including their older brother.

Virgil had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. He hadn’t thought to ask around for other victims, or even notice that nobody else on the path seemed familiar enough with the rumor to recognize him.

He hadn’t had the faintest inkling it was a trap until the snare had already cinched around his neck.

Metaphorically. Literally, it was more of a cage.

He hadn’t thought much of the trees ringing the clearing, not when he’d noticed more pressing details, like a collapsed form in the middle of it. He’d felt his heart kick up a few notches at the sight.

(He really hadn’t wanted to have to bring a body back to a little brother.)

There had been a worrisome pressure inside his skull as he’d hurried forward, like the lightheaded sensation that warned you you were going too high too fast while traversing mountains, but it hadn’t been that strong, and he’d been worriedly scenting the air for blood, and then—

And then the figure had pushed to their feet and fluidly ducked right out of the clearing, as though they’d never been injured at all.

A pop, and the pressure vanished. Virgil treaded forward a few paces after the stranger, bewildered, and was met with a wall of pain the moment he tried to exit the clearing.

He recoiled with a yelp, staring at the empty space between the trees with something like betrayal.

There were tiny purple petals scattered along the ground. Virgil cast his eyes upward with no little dread.

Wisteria trees formed a lavender-colored canopy ringing the clearing, a breathtaking sight, one that he definitely should have noticed before waltzing right into the middle of it.

He turned back the way he came, only to find that there was now a sapling stuck in the dirt hole he’d hopped past earlier. Its blooms were sparse compared to the older trees around it, but Virgil got the feeling it wasn’t any more likely to let him through.

Slowly turning a full circle, he still couldn’t see any trace of the formerly-collapsed stranger or whoever had decided to screw him over via tree-planting.

There was a distant birdcall, the high-pitched caw of a crow.

Virgil recalled the way Roman had decapitated a demon in the blink of an eye, and felt a shudder run through him, his shoulders raising up to his ears.

He suddenly felt a lot more empathy for every hare that had ever gotten caught in his family’s traps.

“How unusual. The vast majority of cognizant demons are far more aggressive by this point.”

The voice was clinical and steady, and when Virgil turned towards it, he found a stranger in a familiar black uniform, a sword strapped to his hip.

The slayer was watching him with an icy, dispassionate gaze, standing just beyond the circumference of the trees.

He was so screwed.

“Nothing to say?” the slayer asked, raising an eyebrow. “No futile demands, no pointless threats?”

Virgil felt his face pinch slightly. What would he even threaten the guy with? Watching him bash his face into the brain-fryingly painful walls of his magic flower cage?

“Patton was right,” he continued, watching as the breath visibly caught in Virgil’s lungs. “You certainly are a unique specimen.”

Patton had—?

Oh.

Virgil’s chest felt a little like it was crumpling inwards, a wilting flower crushed underfoot. He drooped slightly, despite knowing that this was a completely reasonable response. Really, it should have been the fact that he was even allowed to stay with DW and Harley that was surprising, not this.

The hug had probably been to distract him, then. A shocking gamble to make sure he didn’t realize that Patton knew the truth about him.

He should’ve known better.

“I’d advise you to save us both the time and drop the act,” the slayer continued, apparently a bit thrown off by Virgil taking a moment to wallow in completely pointless self-pity. “You’ll find that I’m far harder to trick than soft-hearted fools.”

Was he talking about the kids?

Virgil felt his face pull into a scowl, despite the fact that he’d worried about that exact thing himself. Those were his soft-hearted fools, and not even highly skilled top-ranking demon slayers were allowed to be cruel to them.

“They’re good kids,” he signed sharply, having more trouble than usual forcing his hands into the proper shapes. “Be nice.”

The stranger’s eyebrows flew up slightly, before settling back down into something even colder. “How long did they have left? When did you plan to stop playing nice with your food?”

Virgil recoiled so severely that his hood toppled back, revealing his demonic features and disgusted expression alike.

It shouldn’t have been such a shock. He knew how demons worked, was intimately familiar with the instincts that had plagued him since he’d first regained consciousness as a monster, but the past few months had left him surprisingly thin-skinned. While living there, that sort of vicious accusation was only thrown in his face in his more miserable nightmares.

He’d have sooner used DW’s knife to decapitate himself than tried to take a bite out of one of the kids.

His hands fumbled for a moment, before he gave up and resorted to a sharp shake of his head instead. A firm denial.

The slayer’s face contorted with a hint of anger, the patch of skin between his eyebrows beginning to wrinkle. “Enough. Behavioral oddities are one thing, but they won’t convince anyone with real experience. Demons are motivated only by power and their next meal. Stop pretending, or I’ll cut you down where you stand.”

Virgil could feel his body buzzing with adrenaline, his clenched fists wet with blood where his claws were piercing his own palm, but he clenched his jaw and held firm.

The slayer was going to kill him regardless. Virgil wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of rewriting his time spent with DW and Harley into some twisted plot.

The slayer’s hand dropped down to his sword, and Virgil swallowed thickly, but before a single move could be made, there was an obnoxious fluttering of wings right next to his head.

Virgil whipped his head around, startled, only to receive a faceful of feathers and one disgruntled peck to the nose.

“Bastard! Fiend!” a familiar, raspy voice cried right into his ear.

Virgil stared at the bundle of fluff that was irritably settling back onto his shoulder. It was unmistakably the bedraggled young crow that followed Roman around.

He started to reach a finger up to pet her on automatic, brain still struggling to catch up with what her presence meant, only to freeze at the feeling of sun-hot metal at his throat.

The slayer had crossed half the clearing in a heartbeat, and now stood with his sword one twitch away from sweeping right through Virgil’s neck.

His expression was a stone mask of neutrality, but he couldn’t hide the way his face had drained of color.

“Return the bird.” A monotone demand. A friend of Roman's, then?

Virgil slid his gaze back over to the crow. (What had her name been again? Something ridiculous.) He jostled his shoulder slightly, figuring that would disturb her enough to warrant a departure.

The crow continued to cling onto her perch stubbornly, sharp little talons digging into his cloak. He grimaced, hoping it wouldn’t tear.

“The bird. Now.”

Virgil shot the slayer an irritated look, wiggling his shoulder harder in clear demonstration of his effort.

The slayer didn’t seem remotely appeased.

What was it about Virgil that made people think he was into murdering birds? Was this some demon trend he’d remained blissfully unaware of?

The blade pressed forward slightly, singing through a layer of skin, and Virgil felt his general frustration with the situation solidify into petty spite.

He slapped the blade away, ignoring the piercing burn on his hand and the shallow gouge in his neck alike to jump back and lift a hand to the crow, prompting the slayer to freeze mid-pursuit.

Virgil curled his finger in so the claw wasn’t facing outward and delicately ruffled the downy patch of fluff on the crow’s chest.

“Bird is my friend now,” he signed, and flipped the slayer off for good measure.

“Rapscallion!” the crow added vehemently. Virgil chose to interpret that as agreement, despite the fact that she followed it up by nipping his ear.

The slayer stared at him with a peculiar expression, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. He exhaled slowly. “What do you want. In exchange for the bird.”

What part of being designated tree-adjacent by a barely-fledged crow translated to ‘holding innocent birds hostage’ to this guy? Virgil was literally the only one being held against his will here!

Well. There was an idea.

“Let me go,” Virgil signed, pointing at the freshly planted wisteria sapling. “Leave me alone.”

The slayer took a long, deep breath. “No. I won’t allow you to roam free and hurt more people.”

“Who have I hurt?” Virgil challenged, crossing his arms.

There was a certain sense of security that came with having an apparently-beloved crow sitting on his shoulder, protecting him from spontaneous beheadings by being dangerously close to his neck.

“I don’t know the specifics.” The slayer’s entire body was rigid with tension. “But I know it was someone. You’re a demon, and a remarkably keen one at that. No matter how well you pretend now, there was a time when you devoured the innocent.”

Virgil flinched despite himself, because the slayer was right. Even if he hadn’t actually done anything in the end, it wasn’t on his own merit. Only Thomas’s presence had pulled him from that feral mindset, kept him from desecrating their parents bodies in an unforgivable way. He’d been lucky.

“I don’t kill humans. I’m helping people,” he signed. “I’m a monster, but I won’t hurt anyone.”

“Your word means nothing,” the slayer said firmly.

Virgil rolled his eyes, letting a low hiss escape from between his clenched teeth. “Then what do you want?” he signed.

“There’s nothing you can give me to earn your freedom,” the slayer answered curtly, eyes barely visible past his lenses. “The only reason you’re not already ash is because there’s still information that can be gleaned from you. Abnormal cases are always the most interesting to unravel.”

Wow! That was about as far from a reassuring answer as a statement could get. Virgil was almost impressed.

“In fact,” the slayer continued, “if my estimations are correct, I should get a baseline for your vulnerability to slow-acting wisteria toxin within the next thirty seconds.”

Virgil’s face scrunched up in confusion, and he followed the tilt of the slayer’s head down to look at his collarbones, where he could just barely see the tail end of the scratch he’d gotten earlier. The edges of the wound were a dark purple, and when he reached up with his fingers, he found it was hot to the touch.

Dizziness descended on him like a second, much more uncomfortable cloak, and Virgil had just enough time to remember the uninvited guest on his shoulder before his knees began to buckle.

He scooped the bird into his hand without hesitation, filled with a sudden panic that the little creature would cling to him even as he fell, and end up squashed.

There was a shout of alarm as his legs gave out completely, but he was too busy to make out any distinct words. He tucked the squawking crow against his chest, giving her a solid cushion on all sides to protect those delicate bird bones.

His vision blacked out entirely as he hit the ground, the vertigo so intense he could hardly tell up from down. His fingers had grown too numb to register much of anything, let alone the negligible weight of an undersized bundle of feathers.

Before he could begin to fear the worst, though, he heard the distinct sound of offended, raspy-voiced swearing, loud enough to be audible even over the blood rushing in his ears.

The little crow was fine.