Chapter Text
____THE FOREST____
What wept at Tanjiro's feet was blocking his path.
He considered taking an alternative route: they were in the middle of a clearing in the dense forest thickets, the moon's spotlight leaving him vulnerable. There were several paths, presumably tread by the running feet of hundreds of slayers past, leading off from the clearing like legs of a spider. The path that Tanjiro had been following was well-tread so far, but these other paths seemed narrow, obstructed by half-fallen branches at chest or eye-level. A rat's nest of branches tangled on the ground like fingers eager to mischievously tangle themselves in Tanjiro's feet.
Tanjiro turned back to the thing in front of him. No - this path he would take.
The heap at his feet sniveled. Every few seconds its bright deluge of yellow hair quivered like a struggling flame on a windy evening.
Tanjiro vaguely acknowledged it as human; his eyelids drooped and muscles sagged at the thought.
"Get up," Tanjiro intoned, voice like a slab of grey stone.
The human glared up at him, revealing his pale face blotched with red spots. His lower lip trembled as Tanjiro sighed, "What's the problem?" Trying to reply, the other person's voice cracked and split like he'd caught ice in his throat by the last syllable.
Tanjiro didn't have time for this. A demon could show up at any moment.
"Move or I 'll make you."
The human's adam's apple bobbed, "We're both humans! You can't hurt me, it's in the code, you're not supposed to, they w-won't... you won't..." His pupils shrank in the white abyss of his scleras as Tanjiro drew closer.
"Y-you don't wanna hurt me!" he yelped, voice hoarse and squeaking, "I'm going to die anyway! I don't stand a chance, I'm going to die, this is my final day, my last day alive!"
He grabbed at his hair losing his fingers within the strands as a cry escaped his lips. Then he continued shivering feverishly, despite the long orange-and-yellow patterned jacket covering his shoulders.
Tanjiro frowned, noticing the sheathed blade at the other person's waist. Another slayer - how could he be so fearful? Didn't he want to fight demons? Wasn't that what they all signed up for? Something unfamiliar sprouted deep inside him.
Another human appeared - materialised. Tanjiro blinked, stepping backwards, eyebrows drawing inwards, hands raising slightly as his arm muscles tightened.
A mirage, surely. Its back was turned, kneeling down before the human snivelling on the ground.
It placed a hand on his yellow nest of hair, prising the fingers from within its mass with firm gentleness.
"It's okay," the mirage said, "You won't die - I won't let you. Let's get through this. We'll both pass this exam." Its voice was familiar - though Tanjiro couldn't quite place it.
And then the mirage glanced over its shoulder and Tanjiro's chest constricted.
His own face stared back at him, eyebrows drawn in.
"Aren't you going to comfort him?" Tanjiro's mirage inquired.
Reality rushed back with a pop like water leaving blocked ears. Tanjiro blinked several times; the mirage had vanished. Shaking his head, his hand moved to his sword hilt non-comittally.
What was that? And why had it happened now?
He gritted his teeth. Why should he comfort him? Would it get him any closer to finding a demon to slay? Would the choice to collaborate help to bring more demons to their knees? Wouldn't it increase the risk of the other slayer stealing his kills?
Tanjiro refocused his mind on the other slayer's perpetual string of wet, fretful jumbled murmurs that had faded into the background. No - surely there would be no chance of the fearful heap on the floor slaying any demons. The mirage must have thought it wise to have an extra pair of eyes and ears to look out for them. That must be it.
Tanjiro knelt down uncertainly and copied the mirage's actions.
"It's okay," he murmured, and suddenly his limbs were gripped with a life of their own. Muscle memory made him grip the other slayer's hands, look into his eyes and say kind things.
Then he stopped himself short, because something painful threatened to break through and he couldn't allow it to.
The yellow-haired slayer, falling silent for a second with his jaw open like a trapdoor, peered up at him through shimmering eyes.
Then his face crumpled with a cry, and he flopped forward onto his front, digging his face into the dirt and papery brown foliage.
Tanjiro blinked in confusion.
After a few seconds, Tanjiro realised that this wasn't going to happen, and the other slayer wasn't going anywhere.
Tanjiro's hand pulled at his sword's hilt, the grating sneer of the steel against its protective cover resounding for longer than it needed to. But Tanjiro had nothing to slay. He had to get away from this hindrance, before a demon showed up and he got in the way.
Upon calling the image of a demon to his mind, his grip turned to stone...
_____
"Tanjiro, do you remember how it felt to kill that demon?"
Urokodaki's angry crimson mask formed itself in Tanjiro's mind, his cropped grey hair and wrinkled cheeks were just visible poking out from behind.
Tanjiro gazed up at him. The world was slightly blurred, like peering into a bowl of water. The floorboards of Urokodaki's modest hut pressed, unrelenting, on his back and gelatinous limbs splayed at his sides. The scent of smoke faintly tainted the air, emanating from what Tanjiro assumed from the flickering amber glow on the walls was a lamp.
Tanjiro's eyelashes weighed down on his lids, and he could feel gravity's effect on every cell of his body. His chest was tight and cheeks damp, and pins and needles prickled his hands and feet. It was not unlike upon awakening from a coma.
"I..."
The crack of Tanjiro's stone against the demon's skull.
"...I felt..."
Its battered corpse lying at his feet. Him - Tanjiro.
"...Powerful."
__________
The scent.
Tanjiro sniffed.
A monster's stench.
He pivoted 180 degrees, every hair on his body alight.
"Hee-hee...!" a childish sound - high in pitch yet distorted slightly in a manner that couldn't quite be described. A chill spidered through Tanjiro's bones.
Directly opposite Tanjiro and the obstacle, on the other side of the glade, the thick, hair-like mass of tangled shrubbery and fallen foliage between the trees rustled. Slowly, Tanjiro slid a foot backwards. He allowed the chill air to hiss between his teeth, allowing his chest to expand and fill with it. The familiar practice was steadying; he tunneled his vision onto his target.
He pictured the demon emerging from the shrubbery, the moon's silver spotlight harsh along every inch of its putrid flesh, illuminating its every motion. There would be no surprises for either of them; the bushes above Tanjiro's head were still too, so the demon must be his height or shorter.
Tanjiro prepared himself for a fight where neither had the advantage, but he would come out on top.
The rustling intensified, branches crying out as they snapped and strained.
Tanjiro focused on his breath, ignoring the deafening percussion of his telltale heart, overwhelmed at the scent of a demon that had haunted him since that fateful night where his life metamorphosised permanently.
That night...
______
"Powerful? In what way?" Urokodaki probed.
"..." Tanjiro turned his neck. It felt as though someone had put an icicle through it. "Like... I wasn't helpless... not completely... not anymore... I could actually... do something. Not like..." Tears sprang to Tanjiro's eyes.
"Like what happened, to your sister. When you saw what happened to her - the demon devouring her. And you could only watch, watch as it happened."
Tanjiro's whole body throbbed with grief. A chasm yawned in his chest and he let himself plunge into it, the water closing in above his head as the world faded around him-
"Tanjiro."
Tanjiro paused, one finger away from relinquishing himself to gravity and letting the currents of depression take him.
"What if I told you that you could always feel how you did with that demon you killed? That you would never feel helpless, not for anyone, not for yourself, not ever again if you choose."
A flicker- a spark - ignited against the abyss.
"What if I could train you to take that power into your hands again, and again, and again until it becomes second nature? That way, you will be always powerful, always potent against any demon."
Tanjiro glanced up, that spark within him exploding into a golden torrent.
"Always powerful." he murmured to the thrumming percussion of his heartbeat, "Always powerful."
______
The rustling crescendoed to a deafening din, its area of influence spreading like a ripple through water, the stench calling a wave of stinging hot bile to Tanjiro's throat.
He swallowed it down, tightening his fighting stance, but his jaw fell slack as his wide eyes watched leaves higher and higher above his head begin to rustle...
"Another fox come to play!" the demon squealed, glee oozing from the tone.
_______
Urokodaki stood and stared at the fox mask, rubbing its smooth surface with his thumb for just a moment. The painted eyes stared back at him, lips pulled down into a feline pout. He allowed himself but a second to trace the pointed ears, the rounded pale cheeks, the crimson patterns across its face, his own handiwork, shaped by his own hands. In every fox mask was a small piece of himself, an obvious token to each student. It was only the tip of the iceberg of all that he'd already given of himself in time and thought and effort.
He didn't want to give another child a mask, but the masks had a purpose, to ward off demons, and Urokodaki believed in things being used for their purpose. There was a time for everything - he practiced patience regularly, despite having a nature that rebelled against it - but to deny something ultimately of its true purpose was something that Urokodaki would feel disgusted at himself for participating in. No matter how you felt about it, a thing with a purpose must eventually fulfill its duty. The mask had a ribbon - it was intended to be tied onto a face.
Urokodaki's hands dropped from their project, finally acknowledging that they had done all that they could. It wasn't perfect; it didn't have to be, regardless, it was time to release it to fulfil what it was made for.
He walked over to where Tanjiro knelt on his straw mat, expression set in silent resolve: eyebrows drawn slightly in, hands rested but ready on the knees of his baggy black trousers. "You may stand now," Urokodaki instructed with characteristic firmness. Tanjiro complied instinctively, and Urokodaki reached down to fix the fox mask onto his face, adjusting it to the left slightly so that Tanjiro's whole face was visible, the twin flames behind his gaze fixed on Urokodaki all the while.
Reaching down to adjust Tanjiro's jacket, Urokodaki briefly acknowledged the familiar ache within his chest, before meditatively re-aligning his focus and abandoning it to fester in seclusion at the back of his mind. He knelt to slide Tanjiro's nichirin sword from its hilt, holding it horizontally to check for faults or fractures. The glow of the lantern flickering in the corner of the room reflected weakly off the steel, seeming almost as wistful as Urokodaki himself.
But there was no doubt in Urokodaki's controlled stream of emotion, not as his eyes scanned the length of the blade and found nothing to persist on. There was no question as he adjusted his student's collar, fixing his jacket where the fabric had gotten tangled in his belt, no dilemma as he righted the sword in its appropriate position hooked on the belt.
Placing a hand on each forearm, he regarded the full picture, his own handiwork, for what he acknowledged could be the final time. His own handiwork, shaped by his own hands.
Hands that shaped him even now, checking for tiny minutae, inconspicuous rough edges, or chinks to smooth and perfect.
Urokodaki recalled each and every one of his past students' eyes; he could feel their gazes prickling on the back of his neck occasionally: whilst he pulled weeds from between his subsistence crops in his garden under the sun, or in the lamplight as he set his container of water above the coal stove for his bath, the youngest's giggles amongst the successive popping of the bubbles on the water's surface. Each pair of eyes housed twin flames, and every student's pair of flames had its unique amalgam of hues that licked and wrapped around each other in a rainbow of shapes, of characters, of dances, all comprising the forces that drove each person to continue down the path of life and to contest its challenges.
But Tanjiro's twin flames burned one shade alone. A deep amber glow that drowned out its surroundings rather than illuminating them - its purpose was not to illuminate. Its purpose was one alone: to fell demons. And denying them of that craving for any longer, denying them access to the Demon Slayer Exam...
There was nothing for his mind to grapple with. It was not an option.
The world had taken from Tanjiro. After Giyuu had delivered him to Urokodaki with a recommendation, his mind hadn't yet comprehended losing his family, and he was ardent to become a demon slayer. But after a few hours the grief had left a shattered, hollow doll, barely a phantasm of lost potential splayed on Urokodaki's straw mat. Knowing this, Urokodaki had saved him from sinking into the oblivion of helplessness by doing the only thing he knew best. He'd taught him the art of carving, of breathing, of standing, of thinking, of existing to slay a demon. He'd taught him a way to have power over something in his cruel existence, taught him to believe that there was only one way that it was possible.
What stood before him was all that a teacher could want for. The perfect demon slayer.
Urokodaki's hands dropped to his sides, finally accepting that their work was done.
"Go," the simple word weighed like a brick on Urokodaki's chest. But he stood tall, for his back was already hardened with muscles taut under the strain of uncountable burdens - one for each soul of a student that never returned from the exam.
"Thank you, Master Urokodaki," Tanjiro exclaimed, "I'll remember everything that you taught me. And I will use it to slay whatever demon that comes my way."
Urokodaki nodded, this response didn't surprise him. Not even slightly, he acknowledged, a tiny bloom of affection flashing across his countenance.
He stepped aside so that Tanjiro could make it to the open doorway, where snow and mountains seemed to peer into the hut to observe the interaction, the farewell.
"Make it, Tanjiro. I know that you can do it. But you must believe it yourself. Believe it." Urokodaki commanded, leaning a hand on the doorframe as he watched his student's retreating form.
With a solemn nod, Tanjiro turned away from Urokodaki and directed his focus to the mountains. Urokodaki's view of those twin flames was obscured. The teacher stood and watched his figure shrink and shrink and shrink amongst the forest of frosted inclines and slopes until he resembled a candle, his hair flickering in the autumn zephyrs.
"Do not let them take you," Urokodaki murmured.
His hands almost physically burned - from time and time again gripping an imaginary fishing rod, a line of memory trailing behind after each of his students as they departed. Chafed from reeling it in like a fisherman to check the other end for a student, every time the sun rose.
His last student would be the first to return.
The invisible chain was there, trailing from Tanjiro's left foot.
Urokodaki gripped it.
_______
A grey leg emerged from the shade of the foliage, flattening the earth and helpless branches beneath it.
A hand webbed with bulging veins.
A bulging eye, brighter than the moon but with a sickly yellowish hue to its glow.
Behind Tanjiro, the yellow-haired slayer squeaked.
"Hee-hee!" The demon emerged completely.
The moon illuminated every inch of its form. But Tanjiro was drenched in its shadow.
"Hee-hee, another little fox for me!" when it chuckled, its entire bloated body shifted, interminable layers of thick demon flesh cocooned by a ladder of arms that climbed and climbed and climbed above the forest canopy. From the apotheosis, those inhuman eyes glared down, edges wrinkled in humour.
Tanjiro gritted his teeth. The neck was lost within those arms - he couldn't even see it.
He blocked out the shrieks coming from behind him, every muscle fibre in his body ready to spring into action, to work harder than they ever had before.
Because despite the many feet that the demon towered above him, despite the unrelentingly merciless nature of the world that brought this challenge upon Tanjiro, the same needle that had stitched the thread leading him away from his home that day to leave his family behind, Tanjiro could not flee.
Because every fibre of every muscle in him sparked, willing to tear, to stretch, to contort, to burn.
Willing to die to have this demon fall at his feet.