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It’s a beautiful house, nestled in the outskirts of a small village just within the Water Pillar territory, a mere stone’s throw from the border with the Insect Pillar territory.
Few others know of these boundaries – they are a demon slayer corps construct, unheard of by the common people, and they now mean even less in the days after the Final Battle. But Giyuu is a creature of habit, and he has spent nearly half his life a demon slayer.
Old habits are hard to break.
It’s a beautiful little house, built along traditional lines with wooden panels and sliding doors and soft tatami sheets lining the inner rooms, with a large cherry tree in the garden. It is summer and the tree is devoid of its iconic blossoms, but it is Tanjirou who identifies the tree so – cherry isn’t as good for heating as oak, but cherry firewood produce a really pleasant fragrance! – and so it must be true.
Giyuu has trusted Tanjirou on more perilous situations with less concrete evidence to base that trust on; he won’t stop now just because they have both retired.
Retired. That’s one word for it.
Giyuu feels—off-balanced, unsteady, and it isn’t only because of his missing right hand. His has been a life of constant movement, of battles fought in the depths of the night. It is strange to have no duties, no obligations beyond healing and living, to go to bed amongst soft sheets and realize that the sharpest weapon in the house is the kitchen knife, not his nichirin blade.
His katana was broken and subsequently discarded for more serviceable blades during the Final Battle; there are swords left aplenty from all the dead demon slayers, but—
That’s neither here nor there.
These are the facts: Kibutsuji Muzan has finally, finally been defeated, and the demon slayer corps is now only needed to deal with the remnant pockets of demons, the few that had tenuous enough connections with Kibutsuji that their master’s destruction didn’t take them down with him. Kibutsuji’s final assault decimated the corps’ numbers, but there are enough who survived – and survived with all their limbs intact – that the ones like Giyuu and Tanjirou don’t need to be called up to help.
(You’ve done enough – we wouldn’t be here without you, they all say – the kakushi and the medics, and even Kiriya-sama. Please, rest now, you deserve to rest. You don’t have to fight anymore.
Giyuu is used to keeping his silences, his expression as stoic as the utter serenity of the eleventh form of the Breath of Water, and so he keeps his but what else am I supposed to do now? sealed firmly behind his lips).
Two months recuperating at the Butterfly Estate and several weeks living at this new residence of theirs, and Giyuu still doesn’t have a proper answer to his unspoken question.
“Giyuu-san!”
Tanjirou’s footsteps are silent, but the clatter when he runs headlong into the door frame is not. Giyuu probably spends more time repapering shoji screens than any other household chore; Tanjirou’s lost eye throws off his depth perception and sometimes gives him dizzy spells; oddly enough it’s taking him longer to get used to the loss in their safe and sheltered home than all the other difficulties he has learned to adapt to in the heat of battle.
“Are you all right?” Giyuu calls; he has learned to stay put unless Tanjirou indicates he is not. At the beginning, they both broke far too many things rushing to each other’s aid at every fall, every mishap, frantic and panicky and high-strung even though Kibutsuji was long, long dead.
They’ve learned a lot about how to cope in the weeks since. They still have so much more to learn, now.
Tanjirou pops up in the doorway, grinning despite the faint blemish on his forehead. “I’m fine!”
He makes his way across the room, and his hand settles unerringly on Giyuu’s head, fingers carding gently through the spiky mess of it.
(You always find me, Giyuu says once, as he’s busy dressing a long scratch on Tanjirou’s cheek – a parting gift from a thorny berry bush, Tanjirou’s stubborn will to get the very last piece of fruit, and his offset eyesight. Tanjirou falls down steps, runs into furniture and walls alike, but he never misjudges distances when he is reaching for Giyuu, his hand finding Giyuu’s as easily as breathing.
Tanjirou stays still long enough for Giyuu to tape the small bandage in place, and then smiles. My sense of smell is better than my sense of sight, you know, he says. Even if I was completely blind, I will always find you).
Giyuu lets Tanjirou pet his hair to his heart’s content – a habit from Tanjirou’s time taking care of Nezuko – and when Tanjirou’s hand finally stills, tilts his head up to meet Tanjirou’s gaze.
“You were looking for me?”
“Right, I was! I thought we could get an early start on dinner, and for that, I need your hand.”
Giyuu is ambidextrous, as most demon slayers eventually become, but he never quite realized how useful having two hands is until he lost one. He and Tanjirou adapt well enough with their permanent injuries – probably better than civilians would – but having two functional arms is so much more convenient.
Tanjirou reaches down with his hand; Giyuu takes it and allows Tanjirou to pull him to his feet.
“Then you have it,” Giyuu replies quietly. “My hand, that is.”
It sounds silly when he says it out loud, but Tanjirou’s laugh is delighted, not mocking. “Okay! Let’s go.”
Tanjirou whirls for the doorway, barely hesitating at Giyuu’s careful guiding tug so he passes through it safely this time, and so he misses the small smile that rises on Giyuu’s lips. He and Tanjirou are together now; if either of them has their way, they will never be apart.
Giyuu still feels unbalanced, still lacks an answer for what he’s supposed to do with the rest of his life. But for now, he’s happy to be Tanjirou’s spare hand when he needs it.
---
Tanjirou is a tactile person, used to bestowing his affection through pats and hugs, offering comfort through a soft touch to the hand or wrist, and just as game to wrestle with his fellow demon slayers in mock play disguised as training. He had coaxed his way into Giyuu’s personal space both brashly and unobtrusively, until it became natural for Giyuu to expect Tanjirou to be at his side, close enough that Giyuu could count every dark speck in his crimson eyes when Tanjirou tipped his head to smile up at him.
Now, Tanjirou may lack one whole arm, but he has found innovative ways to be tactile.
An ankle hooked around Giyuu’s foot, when they’re both working at the kitchen counter. Their knees pressed together, or Tanjirou sprawling completely over Giyuu’s legs when they are resting. There is a lot of casual leaning against each other, and when they are seated side by side, Tanjirou’s completely missing left arm allows him to slot right against Giyuu, to pillow his head against the shoulder of Giyuu’s truncated right one.
It leaves Tanjirou’s blind eye facing the world, and it makes Giyuu shiver every time, the trust Tanjirou must have to leave himself vulnerable like that.
But the shivers soon give way to contentedness, Tanjirou’s living warmth a balm against any and all dark thoughts.
It’s comforting, how well they still fit together despite their missing pieces.
---
They don’t get many visitors. The curious gawkers and starry-eyed lower ranked demon slayers have been strongly discouraged from encroaching on their privacy – Giyuu may no longer be the Water Pillar, but the murder of kasugaigarasu attached to his territory have long adopted him like he is one of their displaced chicks, and they are protective.
The ones who garner the kasugaigarasu’s approval (or have Tanjirou’s enthused vouching) often come in with a crow on their shoulder; Nezuko, who visits like clockwork twice a week, arrives with no less than a flock – at least one from Giyuu’s murder, sometimes Tanjirou’s mouthy kasugaigarasu, and more frequently, with her own crows from the Butterfly Estate contingent.
Watching the Kamado siblings reunite is never anything less than heart-warming. Nezuko always rushes for her brother, scattering crows in her wake, and Tanjirou is there to catch her, to fold her into a tight one-armed embrace. They never need to speak out loud in those first moments; silent communication, conveyed through body language, signaling taps, emotion and Tanjirou’s sense of smell, have seen them through the long years when Nezuko was a demon, and just because Nezuko can perfectly speak her mind now doesn’t mean they are any less fluent in that silent language.
Still, there is a special joy in hearing Nezuko’s voice pipe high and clear, conveying the Butterfly Estate’s greetings and recounting stories from the days she spends apart from her brother, Tanjirou’s voice a lower but no less cherished accompaniment to her bright enthusiasm.
(Headstrong will runs in the Kamado family; Giyuu never had to ask her why, because Nezuko comes right up and tells him, long before he ever had an inkling of her plans.
“I won’t be leaving with you,” she says, four weeks into their recuperation at the Butterfly Estate, just as Giyuu and Tanjirou’s tentative plans for when they heal up enough start looking less like a pipe dream and more like reality. “I will stay here, at the Butterfly Estate.”
Giyuu blinks at her, and his reaction is that mild only because he is used to how the Kamado siblings constantly upend his expectations. He and Tanjirou have been retired out of the demon slayer corps, which still stings no matter how nicely everyone words it; the biggest consolation is the knowledge that Tanjirou and Nezuko will be together, safe and alive and wholly themselves.
“I want to help. There are—things—in my head—” Nezuko’s mouth thins; she grits her teeth and then continues, more decisively, “I remember things, from when I was a demon. There is knowledge that is intrinsic in me, the way I could use the demon blood arts, information that I can process the way no other human can. Kanao-san will be an incredible Flower Pillar, but Shinobu-san’s research—I can continue it. I would like to try.”
Considering all that Nezuko accomplished as a demon – circumventing the bloodlust, using her blood burst demon art technique to heal without harm, and conquering the sun – Giyuu doesn’t doubt her eventual success as a chemist, healer, researcher, or whatever else she chooses to specialize in. But that is not the most important motivation that is driving her, so Giyuu waits.
Nezuko glances away, and when she speaks next her voice is soft. “Onii-chan is Onii-chan. You know, Giyuu-san. He is my elder brother, and he will always take care of me. So, it’s time we learn to live apart. This way, Onii-chan will finally live for himself, to do the things he wants instead of what he thinks I need. And it will be okay, because I know he won’t be alone.”
She raises her head then, and her eyes when she meets Giyuu’s gaze is steadfast; strong and unwavering. It’s okay, her fuchsia eyes – just a shade pinker than Tanjirou’s crimson – say. It’s okay, because you will be with him. I trust you to take care of him.
Personally, Giyuu thinks it’s the other way around; Tanjirou has saved him more times than Giyuu can count. The mere fact that Tanjirou is alive makes everything in the Final Battle’s aftermath so much more bearable.
Still, Giyuu once made a pledge to protect Tanjirou with his life – that is hardly going to change now.
“All right, Nezuko. Do you need my help with anything?”
It’s Nezuko’s turn to blink at him, and then, to Giyuu’s surprise, she blushes. “Yes, probably,” she sighs. “I’ve already spoken to Kanao-san and Aoi-san, but everyone else will probably protest.” She wrinkles her nose.
Giyuu doesn’t mind. It makes plenty of sense to seek allies to strengthen her position, and while Giyuu is no longer an active demon slayer, he still carries enough clout as a former Pillar and as one of Kochou’s closest friends to ease Nezuko’s way through.
“We can come up with a plan,” he tells her. And although the conversation has moved on, some things are best said out loud, so he gives her a quiet smile and adds, “I promise.”
From the way Nezuko’s eyes glow, she knows exactly what he means).
Today, the siblings have decided to make it an outdoor day, and Giyuu settles on the veranda, out of their way but still present. The garden is a riot of autumn colours – red and gold and every shade in between, and the cherry tree is resplendent with fire-tinged leaves. The fire that Tanjirou builds blazes bright and warm, and for a while it looks like he and Nezuko are busier playing with all the fallen leaves than they are burning them off.
An hour or so later, Giyuu looks up from the novel Kochou shoved into his hands more than three years ago, shortly before Kanae’s death and before Kochou gave up books of fiction for academic publications on anatomy, botany and biology. The savoury scent of grilling fish and meat fills the air, and it seems like every kasugaigarasu in the vicinity has put in an appearance, jostling for space and mostly on their best behaviour, since the food hasn’t been doled out yet.
It is not the crows that pulled Giyuu’s attention from his book, but Nezuko stalking up to the veranda, her mouth pursed in a shape that is too dignified to be called a pout.
“Honestly,” she huffs. “Who does Onii-chan think cooked all our family’s meals back when we lived in the mountains? Mother and I, that’s who! And now he insists that I leave it up to him. Just for that, I’m going to grill mochi over the fire later for dessert, and we’ll see who is better at cooking!”
It’s not the first time Giyuu finds himself pulled into the middle of the siblings’ bickering like this, and he wisely chooses to stay out of it. He marks his place in his book and goes into the house to make a fresh pot of tea, taking extra cups with him this time.
Nezuko is waiting when he returns, and she takes the teapot first, and then pours out the tea when Giyuu reclaims his seat. The heat of the tea is wonderful against the autumn chill; Nezuko sighs contently at the first sip, and although she sticks her tongue out at her brother when Tanjirou waves at them, it’s clear that she is not as piqued as she makes herself out to be.
“Your hair is getting long again,” she notes. “Do you want me to trim it back for you before I leave?”
Giyuu sets down his cup to finger the back of his head, where his hair has grown out enough to cover the back of his neck. His hair has always been unruly, tamed only by his efforts to tie it back; with just one arm apiece, neither he nor Tanjirou can easily knot off ties, and so now Giyuu skirts around the inconvenience by having his hair shorn short.
Nezuko usually does the honours.
“In another week or two,” Giyuu decides. “It’s not unmanageable yet.”
“Mm, okay.” Nezuko studies him over her teacup. “Can I tie it back for you? Since I’m here.”
Giyuu’s bangs are getting long, and although having them hanging in his eyes has never bothered him before, even in battle, it does get in the way of his reading. “Sure.”
Nezuko doesn’t waste another moment. Kneeling behind Giyuu, she combs through his hair with her fingers, and briefly gathers the fall of it into a small ponytail.
“Onii-chan used to keep his hair in a tiny tail like this,” she says, giggling.
“I know,” Giyuu says. “I believe I snipped it off with my nichirin blade the first day we met.”
“Well, better his ponytail than my head,” Nezuko notes cheerfully, and goes back to finger-combing his hair.
How very far they’ve all come since that snowy day in the mountains.
He doesn’t have time for reminiscences, however; Nezuko tugs the bangs near the center of his forehead back and begins braiding along his hairline, pulling in new sections of hair as she works her way down towards his left ear. It is intricate work; Nezuko murmurs quietly under her breath, counting off the weaves.
Finally, she comes to a halt, and Giyuu feels her carefully knot off the braid before tucking the tiny tail into the hair behind his ear. “There, done!”
Giyuu reaches up to check her handiwork. The braid is very neatly done, tight and even, and holds his hair in place well. “Thank you.”
Nezuko sits back down beside him. “Now we match,” she says, gesturing at her own hair. “Kind of.”
Today, Nezuko’s long hair has been pulled back into three separate braids, which means that Kanroji must have been by the Butterfly Estate recently.
Tsutako-nee-san had favoured braids too, although she kept to just the one, starting at the crown of her head and cascading straight down her back. Giyuu doesn’t often lament his missing arm – it is a small price to pay considering what they accomplished in the Final Battle – but he had often helped his sister with her more elaborate braids, and a part of him wonders if Nezuko would have allowed him to style her hair if he had two hands to work with.
Now, it doesn’t matter.
As he always does when he starts feeling morose, Giyuu’s eyes seek out Tanjirou. He and his kasugaigarasu are yelling at each other now, the other crows watching on in amusement (or possibly just watching to make sure their dinner doesn’t burn) and the late afternoon sun lights Tanjirou’s hair up like a beacon of fire, like the fall foliage that surrounds them.
And then, inspiration strikes.
“Nezuko,” Giyuu says. “Turn around.”
“Hmm?” Nezuko hums quizzically, but turns to oblige him.
In addition to ribbons, Tsutako-nee-san enjoyed accessorizing her hair with flowers. They don’t have flowers now, but what they do have are leaves in every shade of the sun. Plenty have blown in to scatter along the veranda, surviving the siblings’ haphazard garden clean up; now, Giyuu selects the most perfect, symmetrical and colourful ones and begins threading them by their stalks into the weave of Nezuko’s hair, a crown of gold at the top of her head, melding into bright orange around her shoulders and a deeper red to match the vermillion ends of her hair at the tails of her braids.
“There,” Giyuu says when he decides he has done enough. “Now you match your brother as well.”
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, he reaches for his cooling cup of tea, just to have something to occupy his hands with.
Nezuko sits perfectly still for a long minute, and then she carefully pulls one braid over her shoulder to study her hair.
Then she whirls around. “I can’t see the full effect. What do I look like?”
Startled into honesty, Giyuu says the first thing that comes to mind. “Like Amaterasu.”
The silence that falls between them rings very loud in Giyuu’s ears, somehow.
Nezuko’s eyes are wide with surprise, but that surprise soon melts into pleasure. Her smile, like Tanjirou’s, is brilliant, but this time there is a hint of mischief in Nezuko’s.
“So if Onii-chan is the sun goddess’s elder brother, that means you worship him every day, right?”
Giyuu nearly drops his tea all over himself.
Nezuko laughs, bright and happy, and she darts forward to give Giyuu a quick hug before seizing a handful of leaves from Giyuu’s discarded pile.
“Onii-chan!” she calls, and charges in her brother’s direction brandishing her bouquet of leaves, which will no doubt soon get woven into Tanjirou’s hair whether he wants it or not.
Giyuu himself is probably safe from getting a headful of leaves, but considering the critical blow Nezuko just landed on his sensibilities, she has most definitely won this afternoon’s bout.
---
They start off with their own bedrooms, which quickly turns into a single one when the second day dawns with both of them utterly sleepless and wrecked. But no matter how close they grow, they keep their separate futons.
They’ve long learned to manage their injuries, but the phantom pain of a missing limb is something else altogether. Some nights, Giyuu wakes up from deep sleep to excruciating pain, and no amount of total concentration breathing can ease it. Other times, it’s an indescribably irritating itch that Giyuu can’t scratch, and all he can do is stare up at the shadowy ceiling and silently snarl at his misfiring nerve endings.
It is nights like these that Giyuu misses Kochou the most, and not just because she had a gift for healing the most difficult of injuries. She was kind to the other demon slayers and utterly ruthless when it came to Giyuu, which he appreciated more that he could say; her well-aimed emotional jabs often took his mind off the physical pain, while constantly needling at him took her mind off her own suppressed emotions, and it worked because they were both a little broken like that.
She shows up in his nightmares, sometimes, because Giyuu’s nightmares are full of what could have happened worse. In those nightmares, the Ubuyashiki kasugaigarasu announce Kochou’s death, but there isn’t a follow up announcement declaring Tsuyori and Hashibira’s subsequent victory. Instead, the Upper Moon Two waylays Giyuu and Tanjirou with Kochou’s corpse half-fused into its body, her eyes grey with death, while Tsuyori and Hashibira lie dead further down the corridor.
Hers is not the worst nightmare Giyuu has; the other Pillars feature in one form or another. All of them could have died so easily during the battle against Kibutsuji, so in Giyuu’s dreams, they fall over and over and over – beheaded, skewered, crushed against walls, gutted and left to bleed out. It’s a litany of violence and carnage, and yet none of them scare Giyuu as much as the one about Tanjirou.
It could have happened, that is what makes the nightmare so frightening. There’s Kibutsuji, pinned in place by Tanjirou’s nichirin blade; a blast of raw power devours Tanjirou’s left arm, knocking away Shinazugawa and Iguro, and Giyuu gets there just in time to brace Tanjirou, to set his hand behind Tanjirou’s remaining one on the sword’s grip.
Together, they turn the blade a searing red.
Giyuu suffers through that part of the nightmare stoically; it’s the next part that turns his stomach and sets panic racing throughout his veins. In real life, Kibutsuji’s form coagulates, bursts outwards, and Giyuu just barely manages to tug Tanjirou back into safety, leaving the blade behind; in the nightmare, Giyuu falls away but Tanjirou is consumed, swallowed by the swell of Kibutsuji’s flesh, the gigantic baby form monstrous and cowering from the sun.
Giyuu’s screaming of Tanjirou’s name is what always wakes him up, because he knows without a doubt that Tanjirou dies in that instant.
A split second is all it takes, and the nightmare could have become his reality. If Kibutsuji’s shifting form moved faster, if Giyuu’s grip around Tanjirou had been any less vice-like—
Tanjirou never asks him what the nightmares are about, not even the ones where Giyuu awakens with Tanjirou’s name echoing in his ears, his throat scraped raw from the half-suppressed screams. He just sits up and speaks quietly into the darkness, so Giyuu can hear his voice and know that he is alive – they both learned the hard way that touching or trying to wake the other from the nightmare just ends up with even more injuries, and that unexpectedly turning on the lights can trigger a bad reaction.
(Tanjirou has his share of nightmares, and he dreams of what did happen. He dreams of Tokitou and the younger Shinazugawa and Kochou and all the other dead demon slayers, and his mind fills in the blanks of what he didn’t witness with dreadful, heart-rending scenarios.
Giyuu wakes up thrashing, his body trying to move to intervene, to rescue, or he wakes up screaming Tanjirou’s name. Tanjirou wakes sobbing his heart out, practically hyperventilating from the sheer intensity of his emotions).
They make a sorry duo, two nightmare-ridden ex-demon slayers, and for the first weeks they barely get more than a handful of hours of sleep between them. They never sleep through each other’s nightmares, so when one of them has a bad night, they both have a bad night.
But suffering together is infinitely better than facing the nightmares alone. There is breathing quietly together, there are soothing cups of white tea and midnight baths to wash off the cold sweat, and when they’ve calmed enough to endure touch, there is their hands clasp around each other’s wrists, so they can better feel the other’s living heartbeat pulsing under the skin.
The arrangement is a good one – one bedroom, so they can be together, and two futons, so they don’t risk hurting the other when lashing out during a nightmare.
And sometimes, when the world is kind and neither pain nor dreams plague their sleep – sometimes, Giyuu gets to wake with Tanjirou pressed up against his back, or the both of them curled together, legs tangled, Tanjirou’s head tucked neatly under Giyuu’s chin, his breath feathering against Giyuu’s skin.
---
Demon slayers are expected to travel through all weathers and in all seasons, but Giyuu is one of the rare few who didn’t mind performing his duty in winter.
There is something about the profound silence of a wintry landscape that feels almost comforting. It is quiet, still, the world asleep at his feet. Out in the snow, where Giyuu’s heart must pound all the more faster to pump blood to his body’s extremities, where he has to control his breathing even more precisely to not choke on the freezing air and every moment just standing there is a subtle fight for survival—
Surviving is a good thing; sometimes, back then, his head tried to convince him that it wasn’t. It didn’t change the fact, however: every moment Giyuu spends out in the heart of winter is a visceral reminder that he is very much alive.
Still, there is a pleasure in leaving the clean cold of the outdoors and stepping into the shelter of their house, to feel warmth lapping against his skin as Giyuu brushes snow off his shoulders and sheds his heavier layers.
“Welcome home,” he hears Tanjirou call, and he follows that voice into the main living space of the house.
“I’m back,” Giyuu replies, and that’s another pleasure – to have someone to say that back to.
Tanjirou is seated at the kotatsu, papers strewn across the table surface. It took a long while to convince Nezuko not to wade through the piles of snow and increasingly bad weather for her biweekly visits. The compromise is letters, sometimes as often as daily; the downside is Tanjirou’s grumpy kasugaigarasu, especially when Tanjirou’s other friends at the Butterfly Estate decide to tag on their own letters as well.
The kotatsu is an indulgence that neither Giyuu nor Tanjirou had before – Giyuu because there was no point when he spent most of his time away from the Water Pillar residence, patrolling even through winter, and Tanjirou because the Kamado’s mountaintop hut didn’t have the space for it. Giyuu settles himself opposite from Tanjirou, lifting the heavy futon and tucking his lower body under the table. The charcoal heater set in a recess under the table radiates a steady heat, and Tanjirou immediately hooks one besocked foot around Giyuu’s ankle.
“How was it outside?” Tanjirou asks.
“Still snowing. We are fine for tonight, but if it continues this way, we should stock up tomorrow just in case the village gets snowed in.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Giyuu looks up. Tanjirou has his moments of contemplation, even though between the two of them Tanjirou is undoubtedly the more vocal one. But it is odd for him to speak so succinctly, especially when Giyuu has just returned.
Tanjirou doesn’t seem to notice Giyuu’s sudden focus – another occurrence uncharacteristic of him – and although he is staring down at the open letter before him, there is a faraway look in his eye, like he’s not quite paying attention its contents.
“What’s wrong?”
Tanjirou’s eye snaps up.
“Nothing?” he says, his voice lifting up at the end like it’s a question he is asking Giyuu, and Giyuu has to smother a sigh; he suspects it might come out somewhat bemused.
“Tanjirou.”
Tanjirou drops his gaze back on the letter. From Nezuko, of course; Giyuu can tell from her writing – her lines very straight even if her characters are a little messy, her hands still not quite used to the brush after three years without practice.
He presses his ankle up against Tanjirou’s foot, and waits.
“We met on a winter’s day, didn’t we?” Tanjirou says at last.
Giyuu remembers. “We did.”
And then he waits once more, because he doesn’t think that this – Tanjirou’s sudden melancholy – is about them.
Tanjirou bites his bottom lip. “Winter,” he says softly, “is very quiet. I never realized, before.”
Giyuu turns those statements over in his head, trying to piece together the riddle of Tanjirou’s words.
And then, with bruising abruptness, he gets it.
Giyuu’s encounter with Tanjirou and Nezuko was not the only thing that happened that day; they met him because the rest of their family had been murdered. If three teenagers – Hashibira, Agatsuma and Tanjirou himself, when the other two drop by – can be noisy enough to give Giyuu a headache, then six Kamado children bundled together in one cosy mountain hut must have made quite the raucous.
And now, with the snow halting their usual visitors – all they have to fill up the quiet is Tanjirou’s own efforts, and Giyuu, who prefers his silences.
Giyuu rolls to his feet with battle swiftness.
He contemplates retrieving his novel, sent by Uzui this time and predictably is a tale about shinobi. He enjoys reading, and it is no hardship to read the stories out loud, but—no.
He rounds the kotatsu, Tanjirou staring up at him with one wide eye, and gently nudges Tanjirou’s side with his knee. Tanjirou shuffles sideways, and Giyuu squeezes under that side of the kotatsu with him. It’s a little crammed and leaves them pressed against each other from thigh to shoulder, but then again – personal space isn’t an issue with them.
“Have I told you about my sister, Tsutako-nee-san?”
Tanjirou’s breathing stutters in surprise. “No, you’ve never mentioned her before.”
“She saved me,” Giyuu simply says. “She was a lady in every sense of the word – gentle and refined, and she loved her books. And because she loved books and read tremendously, and she would share the best and most curious of her findings with me, I always felt perfectly happy staying home with her. Would you like to hear more about her?”
“Yes,” Tanjirou says immediately, and his voice this time is slightly closer to his usual self – interested, and much surer. “So, you were a younger brother.”
“I was, and we were the only two children in the family. My earliest memory is of my nee-san reading to me; I suppose it isn’t surprising that I listened to her and her instructions much better than I did my parents.”
“How much older was she?” Tanjirou asks. Although there is still a fine tension running through his body, the stiff line of his shoulders has relaxed enough for him to lean into Giyuu’s side.
Giyuu has to think back, double check the numbers. “About six years. She learned her words very young.”
Giyuu’s memories of Tsutako-nee-san are hazy, like ink portraits faded with too much light exposure, but he has stories enough of her to tell. After his sister, there is training with Urokodaki and Sabito, and after that, almost a decade of demon slayer experience to draw on for anecdotes as well.
But for today, for now, Giyuu will start with his most personal and cherished memories, and he will fill the too quiet space with his voice, with pieces of himself, until the silence doesn’t ring quite as loud in Tanjirou’s ears anymore.
---
Greetings, Urokodaki Sakonji-dono,
Tanjirou has reminded me several times over the past week that we have not yet had the chance to visit you since the final battle against Kibutsuji. As spring will soon be coming upon us, we hope to change that. When would be a good time for us to visit?
I know I haven’t been the best of students, and although I have requested much of you over the years, you have always been patient and far too understanding of me. I hope now to give you all the respect and appreciation that you deserve, and also to give my greetings to my fellow disciples. It is long past time that I should face them.
I hope this letter finds you in good health and in good spirits.
Sincerely,
Tomioka Giyuu
---
Spring is in the air. The signs are everywhere – the warming weather, the increasing hours of daylight, the growing calls of birds returning from their winter migration. The cherry tree in their garden is already in bloom; instead of snow, they have to clear the path of petals instead.
Sometimes, they don’t even bother.
“Giyuu-san,” Tanjirou calls, and Giyuu turns naturally towards him, the same way the villagers can’t help lifting their faces towards the sun, basking in its warmth after a long winter.
It has been a while since Giyuu has seen Tanjirou in the familiar green-checkered haori, and because they will be traveling publicly, as slow as they care to go, he wears a simple black eyepatch over his damaged eye, the fall of his hair further covering up the scars. Instead of the once ubiquitous lacquered box he carried Nezuko in, there is a bag slung over his uninjured shoulder, and as always, he reaches out for Giyuu the moment he is close enough, his hand finding Giyuu’s unerringly.
This time, Giyuu has to force himself to relax, to let Tanjirou lace their fingers together instead of pulling free. It is one thing to hold hands indoors, to be so tangled up in each other that it’s hard to know where he ends and where Tanjirou begins. Outdoors, where they can be so easily ambushed – all of Giyuu’s instincts are clamouring at him to be battle-ready, to keep his dominant hand free to draw his blade at a moment’s notice. Now, he doesn’t even have that hand, and the one he has remaining is captured quite neatly by Tanjirou.
Old habits are hard to break.
Tanjirou peers up at him, watchful and knowing. He doesn’t remind Giyuu that they don’t have to fight anymore – even now, they’re both carrying short blades hidden under the folds of their haoris, and Giyuu has three vials of wisteria poison that he inherited from Kochou stored safely in his bag, just in case. Instead, he just squeezes Giyuu’s fingers, and then says, lightly, “It looks like we have perfect weather for our trip.”
“Yes,” Giyuu replies, allowing Tanjirou to distract him. “I’ve plotted out our route, but it’s been a year since I traveled these paths, and the updates that the kasugaigarasu bring back can only tell me so much. Hopefully, we won’t encounter many challenges along the way.”
“We’ll be fine!”
Giyuu tilts his head. “You sound very sure of that.”
“Of course.” Tanjirou smiles, swinging their hands lightly between them. “Back then, during those last moments when we were fighting Muzan – we both held onto my sword to pin him in place, and together we turned the blade searing red. As long as we are together, we can do anything.”
Giyuu’s breath catches.
Overhead, the wind rustles, scattering a rain of cherry blossom petals around them, the flowers’ subtle and delicate fragrance a light counterpoint to the wisteria incense they keep lighted around their house, both for protection and in remembrance of their fallen friends.
“Of course,” Giyuu murmurs. “We will be just fine.”
There is something welling up in his heart, and Giyuu gives into the impulse, lets it spill over like spring water trickling lightly over soil and stone into a river. Carefully, he raises their clasped hands, and presses a soft kiss to Tanjirou’s still calloused fingers.
Then, he lifts his head to meet Tanjirou’s gaze.
Tanjirou’s cheeks are flushed, but his one crimson eye is bright with happiness, dazzling under the spring sun. There are cherry blossom petals in his hair, blush pink and sweet, and Giyuu would reach up to brush them gently away if it isn’t more important to keep ahold of Tanjirou’s hand.
Giyuu could spend the rest of his life like this, with Tanjirou.
“I think it’s time to set out,” he says, and Tanjirou nods furiously, still blushing. He starts down the path and Giyuu moves with him, walking side by side, hand in hand.
It is a fine day, full of new journeys and promises.
