A Braid of Bamboo and Steel

So I wrote an honest to goodness EIGHTY FIVE THOUSAND WORD novel-length fic over a period of *checks* a month and a half? Maybe two months, I think I waited a little after I'd written the first two chapters before posting. It was like this intense fever dream, I was just SO INSPIRED, and then today I finished it and now I want to just be DONE and NOT THINK ABOUT IT ANY MORE.

A Braid of Bamboo and Steel (85772 words) by sqbr
Chapters: 15/15
Fandom: Hakuouki
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Nagumo Kaoru & Yukimura Chizuru, Nagumo Kaoru/Sanan Keisuke, Toudou Heisuke/Yukimura Chizuru
Additional Tags: Fanfiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Trans, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Disturbing Themes, casual transphobia, Getting Together, Sibling Bonding, Happy Ending, Drama & Romance
Summary:

Nagumo Chizuru escapes her demon captors, and Yukimura Kaoru finds himself the prisoner of the Shinsengumi. They're both determined to be reunited, but the reunion isn't quite what they expected.

An AU where Kaoru and Chizuru have swapped bodies and backstories but not genders.

I even made a cover image! (using other people's art) See, it's an AU because Chizuru is an INCH TALLER rather than an INCH SHORTER.

And naturally I got this inspired about TRANS FIC FOR A TEN YEAR OLD OTOME GAME. With an age gap and lots of violence, just to scare off anyone who's looking for ~wholesome Issue Fic. But one commenter left really lovely heartfelt comments on almost every chapter, and a couple of other people said nice things, so I'm going to hug those comments and all fifteen kudos to my heart and feel happy regardless.

And now to ramble about it a bit. Especially since I imagine some of you are looking at the tags going "Wait...you wrote trans shipfic about the serial-killing baby-eater and the cross-dressing evil twin?".

YES. YES I DID.

AND I REGRET NOTHING.
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