house of the waxing moon

Rating:

Archive Warnings:

Category:

Fandoms:

• 鬼滅の刃 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Anime)
• 鬼滅の刃 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Manga)

Relationships:

• Kamado Nezuko & Kamado Tanjirou
• Agatsuma Zenitsu & Kaigaku & Kuwajima Jigorou
• Agatsuma Zenitsu & Kaigaku
• Agatsuma Zenitsu/Kamado Nezuko
• Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
• Sabito/Tomioka Giyuu
• Kamado Nezuko & Kuwajima Jigorou
• Agatsuma Zenitsu & Kamado Nezuko
• Kamado Nezuko & Kokushibou | Tsugikuni Michikatsu

Characters:

• Kamado Nezuko
• Kamado Tanjirou
• Kaigaku (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
• Kuwajima Jigorou
• Kokushibou | Tsugikuni Michikatsu
• Agatsuma Zenitsu
• Kanzaki Aoi (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
• Tsuyuri Kanao
• Rengoku Senjurou
• Hashibira Inosuke
• Douma (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
• Tomioka Giyuu
• Kochou Shinobu
• Other Character Tags to Be Added
• Daki | Ume (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
• Gyutaro (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
• Shinazugawa Genya
• Nakime (Kimetsu no Yaiba)
• Kanroji Mitsuri

Additional Tags:

• Kamado Sibling Role Reversal | Demon Slayer Kamado Nezuko and Demon Kamado Tanjirou
• Role Reversal
• Demon Slayer Kamado Nezuko
• Demon Kamado Tanjirou
• Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
• Kimetsu no Yaiba Manga Spoilers
• Canon-Typical Violence
• Kamado Nezuko-centric
• BAMF Kamado Nezuko
• eventually
• Grief/Mourning
• Angst
• Breath of Thunder User Kamado Nezuko
• Breath of the Moon User Kamado Nezuko
• Period-Typical Sexism
• Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified
• Trauma

Language:

English

Stats:

Bookmarks:

22

Hits:

1,669

chaosandteo

Summary:

That day, Nezuko goes down the mountain.

She comes home to blood on the snow.

Notes:

Chapter 1: followed by blood

Summary:

When happiness ends, it's always followed by blood.

Notes:

Welcome! This fic's been in my mind for A While by I finally figured out how the pieces fall and how the characters interact. I hope you'll like it and that the mystery characters are as fun to figure out for you as they were for me.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

In the crisp winter morning, a gentle hush fell heavy on the house and its surroundings. The earth and leaves and trees were painted white, soft shoe imprints marring the blanket perfection. Above head, the sky was gray, like smeared and twice faded charcoal.

The sleeves of her brother’s green and black checkered haori were smudged with charcoal, too. The black pieces hid it, but they dusted over the green ones, an angry gray smear.

Nezuko had to fight the urge to tell him to hand it to her and let her wash it. Tomorrow, she told herself. She'll clean all of their dirty clothes, going to the river to fill buckets of cold water, rinsing at the cloth until the permanent charcoal and powder smells washed away, until her hands were red and raw and cracked.

Her brother's face was a mask of shame. “Nezuko, I'm sorry you have to do this.” He could be so tender-hearted, her brother.

Nezuko laughed softly, the sound crisp in the snowy surroundings. “It's fine, I really don't mind.” Nezuko softened her voice. “Really, it's fine, nii-san. You're sick, there's no way I'm letting you do the deliveries.”

“I know,” he said, in a way that implied he disagreed greatly with her.

“You need to rest,” she told him, again. “You'll be like new soon, don't worry.” He should be resting in a futon, she thought, by the hearth, warming himself. Their little siblings would keep him entertained, she was sure, and their mother would be able to do all the chores in peace.

Tanjiro’s face flashed a series of complicated emotions. They looked alike, her brother and her. Round-faced and doe-eyed, with small mouths, flat brows, and pointed chins, despite the differences in coloring. Nezuko knew her own face well enough to know that the expression her brother settled on meant—a tightening around the eyes, a barely there frown on the forehead, the trembling, pursed lips, all accumulated to one thing. Worry.

“I'll be fine,” she repeated. “You should go to sleep.”

He nodded, reddish hair swaying with wind. It was getting long—nearly as long as their later father's had been. Nezuko squashed the sorrow she felt, like she would a bug, and resolved to cut it for him before the New Year began.

“Yes. Yes, you will.” He sighed, a sorrowful thing. His voice carried with it the infliction of illness, and Nezuko recounted the money she had on her person again, resolved to go to the doctor and get medicine down his throat as soon as she could. He couldn't end up like her father, wasting away from an illness. “Be sure to sell everything, please? I wanted to buy New Year's gifts.”

The door cracked open slightly and Takeo poked his head out, freezing minutely when he saw Nezuko gazing at him firmly. Then the door slid completely open and Hanako pushed out, her second-hand kimono a pink blot of paint. “Can I go?” She cried. “Can I go?”

“Idiot,” said Takeo, pushing her back inside. “Of course you can't. We didn't go to the temple because it was too cold, why would you want to go to town?”

“That's not fair!” Shigeru bellowed, while Hanako started pouting in a way that suggested incoming tears. “I want to go to town too!”

“Takeo,” their mother chided, dragging Shigeru back inside, their littlest sibling, Rokuta, hoisted up on her arms. “Don't speak to your sister like that.” Takeo went red, huffed and his his face in his scarf. Their mother turned to look at Hanako. “But your brother is right, you can't go. It's too cold and Nezuko can't be looking after you.”

“But kaa-san-”

“Come back inside, Hanako,” their mother said firmly. “And you as well, Tanjiro. Nezuko will buy you some candy to make up for it.”

Tanjiro nodded, always the dutiful son, the earrings, a family hairlom that had been passed to him, bobbed along with the movement of his head. He started ushering the kids inside, to have some tea by the hearth. Nezuko turned around, starting her descent.

“Come back early!” Tanjiro screamed, voice croaky and sore, their mother glowering in disapproval. “It smells like it's going to snow.”

Nezuko nodded, giving him one last smile. “I will,” she answered, and started her descent.

The first order of business was to deliver her mother's carefully crafted kimonos to Kiyomi-san and Misa-san.

Kiyomi-san, a portly woman a few years older than Nezuko's own mother, was immensely pleased with her delivery—a leaf green kimono with pink and blue and gray details—and invited Nezuko in for some tea, which she had to decline. Misa-san was not home, but the help was, and agreed to give it to her when she came back. It was a beautiful kimono, the one she'd delivered for Misa-san, a furisode with dangling midnight blue sleeves that went to the floor, red and orange flowers spread throughout.

The cold months were always good for the coal business, for which Nezuko was grateful. The townspeople gathered when they saw her walking and soon she was exchanging coal for coins, their weight comforting on her person. The months after their father's death had been tough on the family, as they got used to his absence.

"Nezuko!" Someone cried. It was Haruto-san, who had been circling through jobs as far as Nezuko could remember, never able to keep a steady employment. He ran head first into her, carrying a package wrapped in lilac cloth. "Nezuko! Where's your brother?"

"He is not here," she repeated for the umpteenth time.

Haruto-san wailed, his face going an alarming shade of red.

"What's wrong?" Nezuko asked, helping him stand up.

"What's wrong," said Sayu-san, who had chased him down the street, glowering and looking like she was about to beat him with a broom, "is that this blundering fool broke my vase and is refusing to pay for it."

He didn't break it.

Nezuko was not sure how she knew, only that she was sure of it. Her family had long since accepted that quirk of hers, but strangers tended to tell her to shut it and mind her own business. So instead, she said: "I'm sorry, Tanjiro's not here."

The man wailed, throwing himself to the floor, the soil covered by white snow, in a fanciful display of shame.

"Oh, shut up!" Sayu-san snapped.

“Didn’t you have a pet?” Nezuko asked. “A dog or a cat?”

“I have a cat,” Sayu-san allowed, gaze like two hot coals on Haruto-san’s back.

“Maybe the cat broke it?” Nezuko suggested.

It had definitely been the cat.

Sayu-san, who was a friend of her mother’s and knew enough to know that most of Nezuko’s predictions came true, lowered her broom slightly. “Let me see that thing,” she snapped, taking the package out of Haruto—san’s hand, and unwrapping it, revealing pieces of broken pottery. She combed through the pieces delicately for a moment, before she narrowed her eyes. “There’s cat hair here.”

“I told you!” Haruto-san said, suddenly energetic. “I told you it wasn’t me!”

“Shut up—”

Nezuko decided to leave them to it and started making the rounds, intent on not leaving a single unsold piece of coal. They needed the money. They were not in as dire a situation as they’d been when her father died, and yet . . . Nezuko lived under the constant fear that suddenly the money they had now would not be enough. She knew her mother and Tanjiro feared the same, counting every coin frantically. Takeo was starting to notice—Takeo had always, deep down, noticed. He was too smart not to.

After she was done, she decided to do as her mother had commanded and buy the kids a piece of candy. A New Year’s treat, forthcoming by a few days. We’re better off now, she reminded herself.

The tea shop was a beautifully decorated building, with pretty pieces brought from the city; delicate paintings and a camera that Isayama-san rented, frilly lace curtains and white porcelain cups and plates with pink painted flowers. They had some books and magazines that they sold, as well; like Josei and Seitō and Fujin kōron, magazines from the city that published women's writing and talked about equal rights. There were, as well, some fashion and hair plates, some of the hair styles modeled after the pompadour that the Western Gibson girl had popularized. Nezuko always spent too much time staring at them.

"Nezuko, where's your brother?" Rin, the daughter of the tea shop owner asked. She sometimes helped man the tea shop, when there were enough clients to warrant it. Nezuko and her had known each other from when they'd been taught to read and write by the monks of the temple. Spread across the shop were the other humming figures of other people, their chatter low like the humming of a bee.

Nezuko tugged a bit self-consciously at her pink kimono, with its sashiko stitching; she was underdressed for the weather.

"He's still at home," she said.

Rin shot her a look. "Oh? And when is he coming down?"

Nezuko carefully selected the treats she was going to give to her siblings. "I'm not sure. He's feeling a bit sick.” She looked forward to being around when her brother encountered the giggling masses. It was always amusing to watch his obliviousness.

“Oh?” Rin prodded.

“Yes,” Nezuko said. “I have to get him his medicine. If you'll excuse me,” she said, with a shallow bow. A bell rang as she left the store.

The doctor lived in the center of the town, in a cozy house constructed in the Western style, with a withered garden of herbs.

“Young lady,” Sena-san said with a click of his tongue, when he saw her on his door. “What are you doing here with this weather? Are any of the kids sick?”

“Tanjiro is,” she told him. “He has a cold. Do you have anything I could give him?”

When Nezuko had been little, she'd known when her father was going to die.

Before her parents sat her and her brother down in front of the hearth, she had a feeling. A growing unease, a sentiment of dread, building over the course of weeks, even as she knew that the doctor was coming to visit.

Nezuko could remember clearly the doctor’s last visit, remember the way he'd looked mournful as he said he has a month left, maybe close to two if he takes care.

Nezuko remembered, brimming with tears, thinking no, he'll die in a week.

And she'd been right.

The sky was already dark by the time she finished selling coal. The moon was lovely up above, white and round and pearlescent.

She could still make it up, she thought, if she hurried.

“Nezuko!” Old Man Saburo barked when he saw her. “You aren't planning on going up the mountain with this weather, are you, you little brat?”

Nezuko chuckled, caught red-handed. “Yeah. . . But don’t worry,” she added when she saw his face, “I’ll be fine. I know the road like the back of my hand.”

“Nonsense,” he snapped. “Quick, girl.”

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. The night air was cold and chilling, no sun to warm it. “I promised my brother I would be back early.” Her brother would all be angry with her, if she arrived late. All of them.

“Well, it’s not early is it?” He asked, raising a brow.

Nezuko’s face went red with mortification. “Well—”

“Ah, let me guess, you spent all afternoon talking with your customers, didn’t you?”

“. . . Maybe,” she said, her face suddenly warm.

“Come here,” he insisted. “Before the demons come out.”

Old Man Saburo was a perfect host, and he dug out a spare futon and gave her dinner, steamed fish and vegetables, saltier than her mother made them.

"No one should be out this late," he commented as they prepared the futons to go to sleep. "It's in the dark that the demons come out."

"Demons?" Nezuko echoed, letting her hair down. Saburo-san had an old wooden hair comb that had once belonged to his late daughter. It was a beautiful thing, with orchids painted in all the colors she could think of. A small menagerie of colors, painted and embalmed in the plain wood; one she held in her hands.

"Demons." He nodded. He looked impossibly old, wrinkles and weathered skin, haunted eyes and graying hair. "Terrible, man-eating creatures that hunt during the night. They see us as nothing more than food.”

“Are they some sort of yokai? Can they get inside the house?” She asked, taking strands of her hair and braiding them. Weren’t there amulets and talismans for those things? To keep the evil at bay? Wasn’t that the whole purpose of the yaku-yoke talismans?

“They’re not yokai,” Saburo-san said grimly, with terrible, chilling sureness. “They’re real.”

Nezuko shivered.

It was cold, that was all. The air made the light of the candle flicker. "Then what's stopping the demons from eating us all?"

"The demon slayers." When Saburo—jiji said the words, with as much reverence as he did, it was almost as if he was speaking of the samurai of the legends, the heroes of the myths that slayed monsters like Yamata no Orochi.

"Demon slayers?" She parroted.

"They’re swordsmen who dedicate their lives to killing demons," he explained.

Saburo-san is just lonely, she told herself, as he put the light out and they bid each other good night. He has lived alone ever since his wife and kids died. I should bring the kids with me to cheer him up.

And yet . . .

She’d heard that before . . . hadn’t she?

It had been—

She was seized by a moment of fear as she tried to recall. Had it been her grandmother? Her father or her mother? Or something she’d seen in a play, performed by a moving troupe of actors?

She’d heard that before she was sure, someone had told her that. She just—she couldn’t remember who.

It took her a long time to fall asleep.

When happiness ends . . .

It was not snowing as she made her way back to her house, the first hour a world of white and trees. There was a sense of wrongness emanating from everything around her.

There was a smell on the air.

(banish that thought)

. . . it's always followed by . . .

The house was quiet, a rare occurrence. She wondered if they had slept late waiting for her. Perhaps that was why they weren't awake yet.

(you know it's not that)

The door was ajar and strewn open.

Her pulse raised, for no reason. She felt like prey, when a predator was nearby.

She slowly slid open the shoji door, the house was in disarray and covered in—

. . . blood.

For a moment, it did not register. The house was seeped in darkness; the floor was covered in red, like the falling petals of a red camellia, scattered all over.

She blinked at them.

But it wasn't petals.

The basket slipped from her clammy hands. Her body followed after a moment, suddenly heavy, suddenly weightless. Her head was pounding, a steady beating like a drum, dun dun dun.

Nezuko’s hands went to her head, to the crown of it, and started roughly undoing her bun—that was where the pressure was stronger. Nezuko angrily yanked at it, the ribbon threading itself on her hair, and ripped it off angrily. Dun dun dun.

Her breathing was the only thing she could hear.

Red, red, red.

Red, seeping into the floor. Red, tainting her mother's confections. Red, dripping indolently down the table.

Red.

Her family—

They were all—

All of them—

She giggled, shrilly, nervously. She shouldn't eat heavy foods before going to sleep. She was dreaming. Simply dreaming. She was going to wake up in the spare futon Saburo had dug for her, and then she’d walk home, the insides of her haori pockets cloying with the candy she’d gotten for the children. Rokuta would pull at her hair and Shigeru would make her play with the temari ball, risking their mother’s ire, Hanako would make Nezuko braid her hair and then Takeo would demand his favorite food, their mother would remain bent over the cloth, and Tanjiro would watch her with melancholy eyes. The worst of all.

It was all a terrible nightmare. She was going to wake up.

A futile attempt at denial.

She knew she was awake.

She always knew, when the world spun out of her control. It was a feeling deep in her chest, nestled around her lungs, wrapping around the organs like a vice, squeezing until she couldn't breath.

She looked down to her clothes, at the hem of the kimono. They stared back at her, stained with the blood and gore of the red ruin in front of her.

It was red. Everything was red.

What could have done this? Who could even be heartless enough to think of it? A group of bandits? But what bandit does not steal the valuables? Was it a bear? A wolf? Some wild beast, prowling the night, too animalistic to understand the ruin it brought, carving her heart up and leaving it to bleed on the indolent snow?

She held back a sob. She had not been with them. While she was warm and scared because of a ghost story, they had been here, getting slaughtered, experiencing real fear.

Nezuko was so, so useless. She should have been with them, should have—

There was a wheezing, choking sound.

Nezuko whipped her head around. She forced her sobs to quiet down, even as she felt like the air left her lungs.

It was silent, only the wind whipping her ears and the birds singing.

And then—

The terrible wheezing again, like her father when he had been in the final throes of his illness. Not enough air had been reaching his lungs.

Where was Tanjiro?

Nezuko raked her eyes over every figure in the room, scanning over the blood and gore and popped eyes and intestines.

Her older brother was nowhere to be seen.

That meant . . . That meant that Tanjiro was still more alive than dead. She could . . . she could still save him.

Nezuko tried to stand up. Her legs gave up from under her. She gripped the door, her knees shaking, and went outside again, to the chilly winter wind and dead trees, white snow and frozen water.

Her heart nearly beating out of her chest, she circled the house, her footsteps as loud as thunder in the quiet of the whiteness around her.

He was there. Limbs spread out like the petals of a spider lily, head bent just shy of too much, green clothes darkened with blood, carelessly strewn in the snow and staining it with blood, spilling lazily under him like ink on paper.

But that wasn't what was important.

Nezuko's eyes were glued to her older brother's figure. To the slow, too slow, rise and fall of his chest.

He was still breathing.

Nezuko stood there, watching him, for a moment, the way one might watch a comet before it disappeared and was never seen again.

Then he made another sound, like a dying animal, and she rushed to his side, nearly falling more than once.

His chest was rising and descending weakly, oh so weakly, but it was doing it. She placed her hand on his forehead. It was still ever so slightly warm, the dying embers of the hearth, a candle before it flickered out.

He was still alive.

Without sparing another thought, Nezuko half-dragged him away from the house.

She needed to find a doctor. There was one in town. She needed to get to town.

She hoisted him up with a sudden burst of strength and grunted when all of his weight fell on her, and started her descent down the mountain, uncaring of falling. Her breath was coming in puffs in front of her and her eyes were brimming with tears. It was a wonder she did not fall, her legs giving up under her. She felt like when she'd been younger and she'd watched her father kill a bear; there was pure adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Nezuko had never known she could be so fast, the snow crushing under her heel, as nimble as a deer sprinting away from the chase. Fear, her father had told her, was the most powerful impulse.

They were passing by the tree that Hanako had carved their names in, with delicacy and care, wanting them all to be remembered, when Tanjiro groaned. Nezuko hushed him, like she might have done to Rokuta and oh god, Rokuta was dead, dead before his shichi-go-san, and

Tanjiro groaned again, harder, and attempted to move, the attempt half-hearted at first, but becoming more and more frantic by the second.

He must be so stressed, she thought, finding it in herself to form a coherent thought in the frenzy.

"Nii-san!" She cried. "Stay still! Please don't move! I'll get you a doctor! You'll be fine! I promise!"

He had to be. She doesn't know what she'd do if he weren't.

Her brother moved suddenly, the same way a disjointed doll might, eyes filled with bloodlust, and lunged, jaw opening like a serpent’s maw.

Nezuko tumbled, her foot slipping on the snow. She screamed as she fell down the mountain, rolling until she was dizzy. Panting, she tried to get herself upward, but the world spun in front of her eyes, black spots dancing in front of her.

There was a rock, barely away from her face; a big bold thing that would have cracked her skull like an egg if she had rolled over ever so slightly to her left. On the white of the snow, her hair was a licorice spill, spreading like tendrils under her. The world seemed to swim, moving and undulating.

She closed her eyes for a second, sucked in a breath or a hundred. When she opened her eyes—after a minute or an hour—, her brother was standing straight, his hair shadowing his face.

“Tanjiro!” She cried, scrambling up. “You shouldn't be standing.” She remembered that much from the days when her father had been sick to his core. Even standing up could make him dizzy. “Come on. I’ll take you to town. The doctor will treat you.”

He swayed gently for a moment, like a reed, red hair swinging without rhythm. The fall had ruined his haori, tearing in to shreds in some places. He leapt toward her with an animalistic snarl, face twisted in an animalistic expression.

Nezuko's clammy hands grabbed the rock, a heavy jagged thing, and slammed it on his face, the bone of his skull giving in with a sickening crunch. He let out a pained wail as he stumbled back, blood running down his face like the rushing of a spring river. Nezuko dropped the rock as if it were boiling.

She watched in horror as her brother’s neck went back to the position it should have been, untwisting by a few degrees; as the dent on his face smoothed out, the skull creaking as it formed again, as the popped eye slowly filled out, the skin and muscle knitting to cover the ruin he was.

He pushed his eye into place and then he didn't waste a time to leap after her. That's not my brother, she thought with a distant horror. Tanjiro would never do this, Tanjiro would never do that.

Nezuko’s body reacted on its own. She rolled over and moved from where he was jumping at, all instinct. He fell to the snow-covered earth with an almost cat-like grace, rolling his shoulders in a way that he'd never had before.

“Nii-san!” She sobbed. “Tanjiro, what are you doing? Tanjiro!”

Something like recognition seemed to flicker on his eyes. They were a different color, now, she noticed dully. Gone was the pretty brown they were before. Instead, two bottomless pools the color of red wine gazed at her with something that was almost—

Well, it was almost something.

He tilted his head to the side, like an owl.

Nezuko breathed in deeply, doing her best to stand up, as slowly and non-threatening as she could, feeling the blunt pain of bruises on her legs. “Nii-san,” she began tentatively. “Please calm down—”

“Get away from the demon, brat,” a voice cut in, as grating and harsh as a thunder in summer rain.

Nezuko blinked.

In front of her, there was a strange man. With a sword.

Nezuko shrieked.

The man's eyes creased with annoyance.

Her first thought was, stupidly, that he was a police officer. She wondered if this was how they were dressed now.

The man was awfully uncovered for the snowy climate. He was wearing a black uniform, a tattsuke-hakama and a gakuran jacket, unbuttoned more than it should be: Nezuko could spy a peak to his chiseled chest. Scandalized, she averted her eyes. How indecent! Around his throat and dangling from his wrists she can see the delicate details of jade magatamas, tied with strings that shone the way Nezuko had learnt to identify that silk did.

He had short raven hair, close-cropped in a military style; eyes like frozen water, cold and so very blue, set in an unfriendly face, sharp and pinched: a face not used to smiling. He had pointed features; strong brows and bared teeth, a nose that had been broken once and hostility carved in the lines of his expression. Everything is about him bellowed beware, handle at your own risk, may cut.

"Are you deaf?” Nezuko stared at him. “Are you deaf?” He thundered. She shook her head vivaciously, her hair whipping from one side to the other. “Get the hell out of here, then.”

“I can't,” she sniffled. “That's my brother.”

“Fuck’s sake.” He ran his hand over his face. “Listen, girl, he's dead. That's a demon. Get out of the way so I can kill him in peace.”

“But why—”

In between one blink and the other, the man had grabbed Tanjiro by the scruff, like he was some sort of misbehaving cat. Tanjiro hissed and pulled, baring claws and nails to escape. Nezuko was too surprised to even scream. “I kill demons for a living, that's my vocation. Now get a move on and fuck off.”

Nezuko, despite feeling like she was to cry, straightened to the best of her abilities. “No! Don't do it! He's my brother,” she whispered brokenly.

He groaned. “They all say that. Oh, that’s my brother, that’s my sister, that’s my mother, that’s my grandpa.” He rolled his eyes. “He’s a demon, little better than an animal. It would be more merciful to kill him now, rather than after he sins.”

Nezuko gaped at him. “But that’s my brother,” she sobbed.

Tanjiro gave a nasty snarl and pulled, claws nearly taking the man’s eye out.

The man raised one of his eyebrows.

Nezuko’s face was a crestfallen mask. “I can’t leave him! My family, they’re all— The rest of them, they are— But he wasn’t the one that killed them! Someone else did! He’s human! He has always been!”

“Whoever turned your brother was the one that killed the rest of your family.” The man yanked harshly at Tanjiro’s hair, the color of a red spill of wine. “Blood getting into a wound, that’s how demons procreate.”

Blood, Nezuko thought with despair. Why was it always the blood?

“My brother would never hurt anyone!”

The man’s eyebrows went as high as his hairline. His eyes slid to the side, where Tanjiro was thrashing and groaning, like an animal in a trap. “Really?” He said, voice dripping condescension. At his side was the rock that she'd used to hit Tanjiro, before

“Isn’t there a cure?” She sobbed, bowing down under the weight of it all. “Can’t he be fixed? I would do anything for it, I swear, anything! I’ll find whoever killed my family and I’ll—”

kill them, she almost said, but the words stuck in her throat. She had never killed anything. She would do it, though. She would be the one to swing the sword. She had never felt the rush of fear and hate she felt at the moment, she had never even gotten close to it.

“A human that becomes a demon can never go back,” he interrupted, almost bitterly. “And you, what would you do? How could you get revenge, if you bow so pathetically and uselessly? If begging helped with anything your brother would still be alive,” he snarled, expression maniac. He grabbed Tanjiro by the hair, and Tanjiro howled, efforts to escape twice as animalistic. “The weak have no say in this world, brat. You should learn that and learn it quickly. I'm giving you that advice for free—not many would do that.”

He threw Tanjiro to the floor, body falling gracelessly, neck bared.

The man raised his blade then, and Nezuko was struck with how beautiful it was. A golden thing that caught faint light and reflected it hundred fold, delicate lines the shape of lightning, with a gold and black handle.

In a graceful arc, it started its descent.

Nezuko saw clearly what would happen. The sword would go down and down and down, connect with her brother’s neck, and cut through it in a single motion, and then there would be a spray of red.

Nezuko stood up, her head swimming, the surroundings blurring for a second, and jumped toward him. She collapsed against his body, throwing him to the snow. He howled as she did so, the rocks under the snow no doubt digging into his body.

Nezuko reached for the rock, the one she'd used on Tanjiro, tainted red and at the tip of her fingers. It was heavy and it wobbled when she held it in one hand. The black-haired man cursed at her, grabbed her by the hair, long and let down, and Nezuko sucked in a pained gasp, her scalp stinging, and hauled her to the side, her back slamming against a tree trunk. She tried to claw at him, trying to wring herself free, and he spit out a curse. He couldn't untangle his hand, she realized, her hair was too matted from the fall. She could almost see the leaves and small branches stuck in it.

Nezuko prayed, fervently, that Tanjiro still had enough common sense to leave.

In between, the pulling and stinging, Nezuko slipped and fell, dragging him with her. She had a moment to realize. She was not going to fall next to the rock, this time, she was going to crash her skull against it—

The clean slice of his blade, cutting her hair, scattering away with the wind, then his hand on her forearm, pulling her away from the rock, and threw her to the snow.

Tanjiro growled and through her blurry eyes Nezuko saw that he was in front of her, again, and she sobbed. “Leave,” she shrieked. “While you still can, leave!”

He didn't move.

Nezuko looked up from the patch of snow her hair shadowed. The man and her brother seemed to be in a strange sort of standstill.

The man still had his sword poised, ready to attack; Tanjiro stood in front of Nezuko, body flexed, a second away from sprinting.

He was protecting her. Even after all that, Tanjiro was still protecting her, always her big brother, kind and melancholy as always.

She felt like when she rushed into the water without breathing properly; plunging in, the air deserting her lungs as the world distorted.

Her vision swam, black spots dancing in front of her, and her eyes slipped closed.

When she opened her eyes again, it was dark, and she was tied to a tree. Well, she was tied and leaning against a tree.

Most importantly, her brother was tied as well, hands splayed upon and tied to the tree branches, feet dangling. Body pinned to the pine like a butterfly in a case, like the one Isayama-san had in his house.

Nezuko opened her mouth to scream—and that was when she realized that her mouth was stuffed with a piece of her own hanten.

“Ah, so you're finally awake,” the man said.

Nezuko's eyes were glued to her brother's limp, impaled form. He was alive, she saw, alive but drowsy, eyes gone all glassy.

“He'll be fine,” he dismissed, “there's nothing he won't come back from, save getting his head chopped up and the sun. Pay attention, brat. You need to know this—unless you don't want him to live anymore?”

Nezuko's eyes snapped toward him, surprised and imploring, as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Harshly, he yanked the piece of cloth out of her mouth, and Nezuko coughed at the dryness in her mouth and throat.

“Tanjiro—”

“I'm letting you two useless brats live, if you fulfill my condition.”

Nezuko's throat was so dry even breathing hurt—and yet. And yet she could do it, she could survive, her and her brother. “What's the condition?”

He shushed her. He took a coin out of his pouch. A 5 Rin coin. “Head or tail?” He asked, instead.

(head)

Nezuko bit the inside of her lip, so hard she felt the skin break under her teeth. “Head.”

Tou-san, she prayed, let this one be the right choice.

He threw the coin up in the air, and it spun and spun and spun, and then it was in his hands.

He looked at it. He showed it to her.

Nezuko sagged in relief when she saw the chrysanthemum seal. Head.

The man, who she was now beginning to realize couldn't be much older than Tanjiro, scowled. “Do you think,” he began, “that if I bleed all over your brother he won't try to eat me?”

Nezuko could feel her heart beating out of her chest. After all that had happened, could she?

“Yes,” she said, trying to inject as much force as she could into it.

He raised a brow, and drew a blade from his belt. Not the sword he'd been carrying around before, but some sort of small blade she couldn't see very well—only, she knew, it was beautiful.

He unsheathed it with care and went to stand in front of Tanjiro.

And slit his arm generously.

Tanjiro's head snapped up at the smell of blood, pupils dilating. “Come on,” the man grinned. “Dinner’s ready.”

Tanjiro opened his mouth, tugged at his bindings, before he paused for a second and he closed his eyes. Looking pained, he turned away, meeting Nezuko's eyes.

His eyes were kind, a deep rooted sadness tugging at him. That was her brother. Despite everything, he was still her brother.

“I won,” Nezuko said, feeling exhausted and carved upon both. Like her insides were spilling out and in between the gore there was a pretty flower or soft silks or a pearl to make up for it.

The man stood very still for a moment, before he nodded, brusquely, his understanding. He shook non-existent dust off his clothes. “If I’m letting you live, you can't stay in this shack. Someone will need to be around you. A slayer, to kill your brother if it's needed.”

“But you just saw he didn't attack you!”

He continued as if she'd never spoken. “This slayer will teach you how to become a demon slayer yourself. You said you wanted to kill whoever killed your family? Here's your chance. There's no way to turn a demon back to a human after they've been changed, at least none that any slayer knows. But demons . . . Demons might know a way.” He stopped circling her and he moved to the periphery of her eyes, a barely there reflection in the snow. “Third thing you need to know. If your brother ever kills or harms any human, you will kill him, or stand to the side to allow his execution.”

No no no no anything but that no

“And then, you will commit seppuku to atone for your sins.” His face was all sharp angles, under the light of the moon, all cruelty and no kindness, only a burning anger that reeked off of him, in every motion, in every word. “Do. You. Understand.”

Nezuko nodded.

Go to a slayer. Become a slayer. Stop Tanjiro from hurting anyone.

She could do that.

Probably.

He kneeled next to her and cut the bindings on her hands. He smelled musky and fresh, like the earth after rain. “Girl, do you know how to read?”

“Yes,” she stammered. “There's a temple around here, they gave us classes there—”

“I don't care,” he told her plainly. He threw at her a small heavy pouch, the tinkling of money in her hands, and handed her two folded pieces of paper. He tapped the biggest of the two. “This one's a map. You will go to Yamanashi, and there you will find an old man with a peach orchard. His name is Kuwajima Jigoro. He will be your master. Tell him that Inadama Kaigaku sent you.”

Nezuko nodded. Old man, selling peaches in Yamanashi. He would train her, if she made it in time. Inadama Kaigaku, angry man with a golden sword.

Inadama tapped the second envelope. “This is all you need to know about demons. Your brother can't walk under the sun anymore, kid. Demons are allergic to it. The most minimal touch with it and they die. They eat humans, as well, which you may have noticed. I have no idea how you'll do it, but you will get there in less than two weeks, or else the old man will not take you, and you will not, under any circumstances, let your brother hurt any humans. Are we understood?”

Nezuko nodded, too frightened to speak. Being around him felt like being with the walking aftermath of a terrible wreckage, a storm that had seized everything, left the lands barren and lives destroyed; thunder and lightning and raging winds and a downpour of rain.

He handed her, at last, the small blade, the very picture of ache. Even in the dimness of the night, Nezuko could tell it was a beautiful thing. “Don't lose it. Kuwajima-shisou will identify you with this. Even if you make it in time and your brother for some miracle hasn't started biting people, if you do not show him this knife, he will turn you away.” His face flickered uncomfortably for a moment. “Besides. It's dangerous for girls to travel at night.”

Oh. Nezuko hadn't thought that far.

He made a strange face then, and straightened. “That's it from me,” he said. He added: “I hope you live. You won a gamble against me. And I hate losing. Make it worth my while.”

And with that, he was gone.

As he settled in an inn for the night, the mountain long behind him, the scenery changed from snow to foggy air, Kaigaku could not help but wonder if he'd done the right thing. The girl was a wisp of a thing who'd never held a weapon and the demon was a dog gone half-mad.

Would the other Hashiras approve such a thing?

He thought of the Insect Hashira, a wasp ready to strike, and of the Water Hashira, voice saccharine even with a hand on the hilt of the blade, smile on the lips; of the Flower Hashira’s drawling voice and the Sound Hashira’s indifferent gaze.

No, he decided. They would not approve . . .

But.

But maybe his master would.

It would do the old man well, he reflected, ignoring the pain in his chest, to get some company.

He ached, with a strange ferociousness, with the force of a tide, for the small blade he'd given her. She had to make it to him. Otherwise it would be lost forever, and Kaigaku would have nothing of him left, truly.

Steeling himself, Kaigaku began writing a letter.

Notes:

Taisho era secrets:

• The novels that Nezuko sees in the tea shop are irl magazines that were published and advocated for women's rights and education, and the Gibson Girl she mentions was a Western beauty standard that gained popularity in the early 1900s, popularizing the pompadour style.

• Rin had a crush on Tanjiro.

• Kie was a seamstress, Takeo liked to paint, Hanako and Shigeru were twins, and Rokuta was born shortly before Tanjuro's death.

• The Kamado family live around Wakayama, in the Kansai region of Japan, because that's a region with a lot of history of coal. The Binchō-tan or white coal is originally from there. While the peach orchard that Kuwajima lives in is around Yamanashi, in the Chūbu region, as that region is recognized as having good peaches.

• Saburo-san moved to the forest after his wife and two kids died, because he didn't like being in the town after that. As far as everyone else in the town is concerned, his family was killed by bandits.