Chapter Text
He opens his eyes to a vaguely unfamiliar ceiling. That's not particularly alarming, considering he's been juggled around to a truly impressive number of Wisteria houses in even more impressive and alarming states of near death these past years. But there's something about this place that niggles at the half forgotten recesses of his mind.
A quiet muff of breathing sounds beside him, not quite Zenitsu's near silent hissing and certainly not Inosuke's snorting. He turns his head and immediately reaches for his sword, his hand closing around empty air.
Old man Saburo.
This night. He's dreamt about this night too many times to count, in nightmares that cracked his ribs open to wrench out his heart, and dreams as cloying and sweet as one of Shinobu's poisons. Normally, the latter are manufactured by demons.
He searches around for a weapon, the floor creaking under his feet, and eventually turns up his hatchet. The way the wind batters the windows helps mask his footsteps, and old man Saburo doesn't even stir. He needs to get out of here. The last time he had been caught in a dream like this, he ended up helplessly watching as Rengoku was cut down.
The whole home shudders in protest against a sudden flurry outside. Abruptly, he realizes two things: he hasn't made footsteps in years, forced into a silent gait and precise control of his body through Urokodaki's murderous training—and the smell of this place.
Since this night, he never remembered the smell of his home mountain the same. The odor of blood always lingered, a reminder of happiness long gone. But this—this is pure and untainted: pine and spruce whispering in the wind with the crispness of winter and the raging storm. It's something a demon has never been able to recreate in any dream, would never be able to pluck from his mind to fool him. The smell of a time long past.
Maybe this is a demon more powerful than he's ever encountered, but they've decimated Muzan's upper moons and managed to wound the man himself. It would take hundreds of humans to manage a feat like this, a strength privy only to those they have already eliminated.
His side is empty, but when he glances down he's relieved to find a bevy of familiar calluses on his hands, distinctly sword calluses, rough and worn from years of training and fighting for his life. And yet, his body doesn't quite feel right, his limbs are... short? Something throws his balance off. At least constant total concentration breathing doesn't seem to phase him. It seems like he's woken up in a strange amalgamation of himself and the him from 3 years ago.
He steps outside intent upon finding the border of this world, and then he smells what he's been dreading. Blood. Familiar blood: his family and Muzan's.
He shouldn't.
His hand tightens around the hatchet until the handle creaks, then starts cracking. He prays for his friends to hold on for just a moment longer, and sprints up the mountain.
The icy air stinging his lungs is a discomfiting familiarity. He forces his body to move faster—more, as fast as he can—for the sake of his family in this dream and his friends fighting outside.
And yet, he still arrives late. It's a haunting tableau that greets him: glassy, empty eyes, and the end of happiness. The bodies are warm, but the pulses are gone. Only Nezuko is alive, in the midst of transforming. Wracked by pain, she cries out wordlessly; he can't just leave her like this.
She won't be able to hear him, but he hums a lullaby for her anyways, thinking of when she was still little enough to be afraid of the dark. So much has changed since then, and yet they've also stayed the same. For Nezuko, he'll chase away the monsters in the night. And then one day, he'll definitely buy her beautiful kimonos to wear while she smiles under the sun.
The scent of Muzan's blood around them is pungent, rotting and invasive. It's futile in a dream but he collects a sample of Muzan's blood anyways. If Tamayo could get her hands on this, she'd almost certainly have a breakthrough in the cure.
He returns to Nezuko's side and sits with her, holding her hand until she stops writhing; her brow no longer furrowed in pain, and her guttural growls easing into shallow breaths. Then he takes a knife from the kitchen and exhales. He's kept his friends waiting for more than enough, it was stupid of him to even stay this long.
He presses it against his neck, and the pain hardly registers before he's bowled back through the house. Nezuko is on him, her veins bulging and teeth bared, but her eyes are human, terrified. She hunches over him desperately trying to stem the blood.
Her face breaks his heart, but any moment now he should be waking up to the real Nezuko.
It doesn't come.
His little sister is still watching over him, frantic and confused and now a demon. And he's dying, bleeding out but not waking up.