Chapter Text
And for the first time since his family’s demise, Tanjiro no longer felt powerless.
His veins pulsed with smouldering magma, his eyes burned and his vision blurred red. His fingers throbbed from gripping the jagged stone, and his body was alight with tender spots of soreness.
But these simple agonies were drowned out by the primal roaring of his blood in his ears, a frightening crescendo that he was compelled to join in unison with his own breaths.
At that moment, he was breathing flames.
Tanjiro raised the stone above his head, ready to bring it down one last time on the crumpled demon’s body that lay before him-
Tanjiro’s leg gave out underneath him. Without even the energy to cry out in alarm, he careened backwards, the stone in his hand throwing him off balance, and landed flat on his back in the snow with a whump. Each bruise on his body rushed to the forefront of his senses in a million red-hot flares, and for a moment it took everything he had to struggle through a single breath.
The mist of his breath shrouded his vision for a moment, and the snow was therapeutically chilling under his throbbing limbs.
Then there it was. The smell of blood, right beside him.
Gasping hoarsely, Tanjiro rolled away from the stench and staggered painfully to his feet.
What he saw was a hair’s length away from a nightmare.
It had once been a demon. A humanoid corpse. Now, it was a wet, mutilated mess of red and red and red, painfully stark against the snow.
Bones stood out stark against the haphazard tangle of intestines. What skin remained was loose and frayed, like worn clothing, sparse and splotched with shades of olive and mauve.
But worst of all was the face. Both eyes, having fled their sockets, left two dark, soulless craters behind. It’s jaw had become detached like a trapdoor, leaving the bloated, half-bitten tongue to loll out. The nose had been reduced to bone - broken and blood-covered.
Bile flooded Tanjiro’s throat, allowing him the distraction to tear his eyes away from the corpse. Spluttering weakly, he gripped the nearest tree trunk for support with one hand, his other clapped around his mouth, vomit seeping between the fingers.
He took several hoarse, feverish breaths, throat aflame.
Then his breaths stopped.
Because in the corner of his vision, drenched in blood, was the stone.
The stone that he’d been holding.
The memories rushed back to him like a tsunami and nearly drowned him.
He’d been frightened.
He’d been bereaved.
But most of all, he’d been livid.
He had killed this demon.
This brutal execution, the ruined corpse, was his work.
[SEVERAL MINUTES BEFORE]
Tanjiro raced down the mountain, Nezuko draped like a limp doll across his back.
He had to get Nezuko to town, so he could find someone to heal her.
He knew that she was dead.
But he couldn’t let himself believe that his whole family was dead. No - if he did so, he wasn’t sure what he’d have to live for.
Breraths stuttering, he stumbled down the snowy relief, so stubborn and tunnel-viewed that he didn’t notice the demon.
Not until, of course, it was literally on top of him.
The demon yanked Nezuko from Tanjiro’s back. Its veins bulging from its forehead, it rounded on her corpse and began to feast.
With a roar, Tanjiro grabbed a nearby stone and leapt on the demon. His blood coursed hot and his vision bled crimson…
[PRESENT]
Tanjiro hated what was before him. He ached to look away from the corpse, to be reminded of his own animalistic massacre. But his eyes were transfixed by it, despite what he wanted.
He suddenly felt the blood on his face, soaking into his clothes, sticking them to his skin, and gagged.
He didn’t hear the swift approaching footsteps over the roaring of blood in his ears.
It was only a few minutes later that he at last glanced up and was met by a stare deep and azure as the ocean.
“Hey,” Tomioka Giyuu said, “Did you kill this demon?”
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