Chapter Text
The sight that welcomes Nezuko when she returned from picking vegetables for the New Year’s Feast—instead of Rokuta’s clinging, Hanako and Shigeru’s cheering, Takeo’s nagging, Tanjirou and Mother’s smiles—is their dead bodies.
She drops her small basket, the wild vegetables spilling into the snow.
“T-Tanjirou? Onii-chan? Wh-What happened?!” She takes a step closer to the body lying in the snow, mere steps away from the doorstep of their home. She stretches out her trembling hand toward her brother, who laid silent, body hunched over something—or someone! Nezuko’s hand freezes right before it touched his bloodied skin. “Rokuta!”
Indeed, Tanjirou’s arms seems to be desperately sheltering the small child, as if to hide Rokuta away from…
From what?
She whips her head up, eyes wide. “M-Mother?” Her throat tightens from the thick scent of blood that had gone unnoticed in her panic.
Her mother sits at the corner of the room, head hanging. Takeo and Shigeru lay criss-crossed on top of each other. Shigeru’s arms dangled off the porch, as if reaching out to someone. Takeo faces the ceiling, eyes half-open and face matted with blood. “Takeo? Shigeru?”
She forces her legs to stand and hobbled into the house. Tears threaten to spill, blurring her vision.
Someone is missing. Hanako. Where is Hanako?
Her body is still shaking, but she forcibly slaps her cheeks. Calm down. They may not be dead! Find Hanako! Gritting her teeth, she forces herself to look for Hanako’s small body. “Hanako?” she calls out. “Hanako!” Maybe she escaped?
Shigeru and Takeo’s bodies are both snow-cold when she brushed her hand over their fragile bodies. The temperature makes her flinch, but her mission of finding Hanako cannot be stopped. Only after she carefully sweeps over the room and walks closer to Mother, does she realize that a small head of black hair was behind Mother’s body.
A gasp chokes out from her lungs. Is Hanako dead too? It can’t be, not sweet Hanako. She tries to gently move her mother’s head out of the way, shivering at the frostbitten skin of her face, and reaches for the sleeping Hanako.
Who is also cold.
Inhumanly cold.
Hanako is not sleeping.
(But Nezuko should have expected that. Blood trails down her forehead and mouth. Nezuko should have known.)
The smell of blood clings to the atmosphere, iron and ice, and Nezuko’s body feels so cold that it ran hot. I…I have to check Tanjirou and Rokuta. Because it’spossible that her family of seven only had one left. Just her.
She steps out of the blood-filled room, only to trip off the porch as she scrambled to reach Tanjirou. Please, she prays to their family’s patron god, to all the gods, as she forced herself to crawl toward their bodies. I would give anything, all that I am. Let them be alive. Her legs were too weak to stand, and she had never hated herself so much until this moment. Move, you foolish girl!
When she finally reaches them, she closes her eyes and mutters a short prayer before reaching out to both of their bodies.
Rokuta is cold.
But Tanjirou is warm.
The tears, held back for so long, rushes out of the corner of her eyes as she lets out a sob and kneels over his body. Relief sweeps a fiery path through her body.
Alive. He’s alive!
—
(And Nezuko, for the briefest moment, wonders why she would be the one left alive and whole—wishes to the gods that she could die to bring them all back.)
—
It’s snowing.
Nezuko gasps as she slowly trudges through the snow, Tanjirou slung across her back. needs needed a doctor. She lets out a groan and shifted her body to properly balance her brother. Rokuta (cold, cold Rokuta) is—was half Tanjirou’s size, and she’s not used to the heavy weight of her brother’s body.
The air is thin from the weather; her throat constricts such that she couldn’t breathe, and her muscles protest but she will bring Tanjirou to the doctor, because she refuses to entertain the thought that her family (her only family left) will leave her. I’m not you, Tanjirou, I’m not the oldest, but I’ll be strong. Strong enough for the both of us.
“Just wait a little longer, Tanjirou,” she whispers. “We’re halfway there. You’ll be fine, I promise.” Tanjirou remains silent, but Nezuko feels his shallow breathing besides her ear.
Her vision blurs as the urge to cry welled up again. But Nezuko has never been the crier of the family, and she knows how to keep tears down; the eldest daughter soothes others’ hurt and does not show her own. Grin and bear it, Nezuko, like you’ve always done.
But it’s hard, now that the ones she was supposed to comfort are gone. Was it a bear that had gone out of hibernation? Was it bandits? It’s hard to think when her feet feels so heavy to lift.
Then all of a sudden, the rhythmic breathing is gone. Tanjirou’s head tilts back and the difference in weight distribution has her craning her neck to make sure Tanjirou is all right, as she struggled to keep herself upright. “Tanjirou? Don’t move! It’s me, Nezuko!” Tanjirou’s body jerks as he shoves at her back in a struggle to escape. “Tanjirou! Please!”
Tanjirou’s movements increases in intensity as she tries to hold onto him harder, but the piggyback position he’s in makes it hard to grasp onto him with her arms. “We need to get you to a doctor! Onii-chan!” Her foot slips and she fell face down into the snow. Tanjirou leaps from her back while she scrambles to get up. Snow splays into the crook between her neck and her kimono, melting from the warmth of her skin and soaking in the clothing.
When she finally manages to get up, Tanjirou is standing a few feet away from her. He looks at the ground, his expression hidden by loose hair.
“Are you okay, Tanjirou?” She’s worried about his condition. He shouldn’t be overexerting himself. “I know you won’t like it, but let me carry you—you need to see a doctor!”
She reaches for him. And then stops at the sudden throaty growl coming from her brother. “T-Tanjirou?”
Tanjirou finally looks up, veins bulging on his forehead. She shriekes as he bares his sharper-than-normal teeth at her before leaping. Her body falls backward into the thick snow, and the noises he makes kicked her into survival mode. She twists and rolls her body to the right just as Tanjirou runs at her on four legs like an animal, narrowly missing his swiping claws. Claws?!
Tanjirou turns around, snarling. She rushes at him and clamps her legs around his body to prevent him from moving. They both fall into the snow again, with her sitting on him and her hands snapping around his wrists to hold them down.
“Stop! What are you doing?” she cries. Nezuko knows she’s weaker than her brother, but from all the blood loss, he should not be this strong right now. And it seems like he was gaining even more strength!
Tanjirou growls in reply, his long canines grinding together. What had happened to her brother?
The sound of her brother’s hanafuda earrings tinkling against the wind cut through the howls.
The scent of dried blood tickles her nose.
Her grandmother’s voice rings out.
Nezuko, when happiness ends, there’s always the smell of blood in the air.
And she remembers a story, from long, long ago.
—
“Grandmother, a story please!” Nezuko nuzzles into her grandmother’s warm, rough hands. Mother said to be careful, as grandmother is getting older. Nezuko is a good girl, so she always listens to Mother. Good girls get head pats and hugs and kisses!
Tanjirou sits next to Nezuko and holds her hands. Nezuko likes Tanjirou’s warm hands. “Yes, Grandmother!” Tanjirou gave a big smile. There’s a gap in his teeth from the loss of a baby tooth, and Nezuko wonders when she’ll be old enough to lose her baby teeth.
The thought both frightened and excited her. She’d love to get older so that she could help out Mother and Father more, but it looks like it would hurt…
Nezuko leans into her grandmother’s arms and inhales her scent while Tanjirou pats her hand. Grandmother’s hands weaves into Nezuko’s thick black hair and begins braiding it. “All right, my silly children. Settle down. Let me think of a good one…” She hums softly for a bit while Nezuko and Tanjirou wait eagerly, impatiently shifting around, but not daring to interrupt the aging granny.
Grandmother’s voice rings out. “This is a tale from long, long ago. Some say man-eating demons sprang forth from…”
—
As the memory slips through her mind, Nezuko latchs onto anything she can recall. Man-eating demon, she thinks miserably. Large canines, brutal strength, attacks humans for flesh. She grits her teeth and wrestles to stay on top of Tanjirou.
“Tanjirou, you must fight it!” Her brother grinds his teeth with a menacing strength. Nezuko yelps as his head snaps forward toward her chest, almost brushing against her neck. While his wrists are not out of her hold, his hands reaches and claws at her arm. Blood trails out of the cuts, which only made him more frenzied.
Her entire strength is dedicated to holding Tanjiro down to the ground. “You must have suffered. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Tanjirou, but you’re alive now, and that’s all that matters. Fight it!” Nezuko refuses to believe that Tanjirou was the one that harmed her family. He’s human. Was human. Will always be human to her, her big brother.
Tanjirou lets out a miserable howl as he thrashes in her hold. His legs kicks and his dig dug deeper into her skin, but Nezuko refuses to let go. Pain is nothing compared to the sight of her family’s bodies strewn across the snow.
“We’re family,” she chokes back a sob, “Onii-chan, come back to me! It’s me…” She trails off and whispers, “Nezuko, your little sister.”
Tears begin pooling in his eyes. They roll down his cheek, leaving behind a frozen trail. “Si-situh?”
“Yes!” She gives him a weak smile, as his struggle weakens. “Me! Remember Nezuko?”
“Nezuh!” Tanjirou howls again, his hanafuda earrings shaking. The claws loosen their dig into her flesh and his feet stops kicking. “Nezuh! Situh!”
“Yes, it’s Nezuko,” she whispers in a hoarse voice. “Onii-chan…” Her arms slackens.
And then he growls again, taking advantage of her lapse in strength to lunge. Nezuko widens her eyes as his arms wraps around her. She winces, preparing for pain.
Except…
There is none.
Instead, she is dumped on the ground as Tanjirou stands in front of her, stance open to hide her behind him while growling.
She rubs the snow from her eyes. Someone else was here. In front of Tanjirou is a man in a half-red, half-patterned haori. The stranger’s eyes narrow as he stares at the both of them.
Nezuko freezes. He brandishes a katana with a red hexagonal handguard. Through the falling snow, she struggles to read the engravings on the blade.
Akkimessatsu.
Destroyer of Demons.
Pointing straight at her brother.