Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Agatsuma Zenitsu is going to die.

This is the undeniable truth. He’s gone. Doomed. He’ll never see the sunlight again. How could he ever think that he was strong enough for any of this? How could he believe in himself when the constant crumbling of his pitiful life was always so apparent?

It hasn’t even been a week after the final selection and he is already pushed into a mission. To fight with all these scary demons which are so much stronger than him. To, to die, and to suffer, to get his brains eaten. He can’t do this. He’s too young for any of this bullshit!

His little bird is chirping, visibly annoyed at him as it tries to get him from under the log where he has hidden himself from the rest of this awful, scary world. He waves his hands at it and cries.

Zenitsu’s in so much trouble after this. What do they do to slayers who abandon their missions? Fire them? Kill them? Torture them until they submit? That’s bad, he doesn’t want to get killed or tortured. What is he going to do if they fire him? How will he feed himself? Is he going to starve to death?

He sobs. It’s not like he has much choice. Looks like he is going to die either way.

What is gramps going to think when he finds out Zenitsu ditched his very first mission?

Oh no. He doesn’t want to upset gramps like that. After everything his gramps has done for him, after all this trouble…

He’s such a disgrace. He sobs pathetically, and sniffles into the sleeves of his haori.

Okay, maybe… Maybe he could do this. Get up and go. Maybe he isn’t that weak and things aren’t that bad. Maybe he could survive, somehow, by some very small chance. Try, at least. For his gramps.

He rubs his mess of a face with his hands and crawls out. His bird is taken aback for a second at his sudden change of attitude, and chirps with pride for him. At least Zenitsu likes to think it’s pride. He doesn’t really know bird language. Whose idea was it to use them for communication anyway? What a joke.

He brushes off the dust from his pants.

A sudden high-pitched shout slices the air of the forest, and his legs send him three feet into the air and straight back into his little haven.

“No, nope, it’s too much. I can’t handle it, I’m sorry, I can’t.” He closes his eyes tightly and trembles so hard that his teeth start clanking.

“Hey there, um…”

He shrieks at the voice and accidentally hits his head on the tight, moist wood above him. He’s about to complain, or maybe wail in fear and despair his life put upon him, he hasn’t really decided yet, but…

Turns out deciding wasn’t necessary at all, because the moment he looks up and his eyes meet with the owner of the voice, his mouth snaps shut in disbelief and his breath is stuck in his throat.

It’s a girl. A beautiful, gentle, fragile creature with big brown eyes and pretty face and nice long legs. Zenitsu recalls thinking these same thoughts before, for some reason, but that’s stupid. He’s stupid. This time – he is sure – this time it is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.

Big brown eyes are staring at him intently, with so much attention, and maybe, maybe care? He feels hot, his insides suddenly burning with excitement and hope. Maybe the universe has heard his prayers. Maybe this girl is here to save him. Pity him, for once, for all these terrible, terrifying hardships he is going through. Maybe he could...

“Um, are you alright? Do you need help? I was hoping that you could help me, actually, but…” The girl trails off and looks away, wet eyes shining in the sunlight and heartbeat so wonderfully quick, so powerful, and Zenitsu yelps and nods frantically and reaches out, because how could he leave her without attention?

“Of course! Of course I can help. What do you need? I can do anything for you!”

She blinks at him. Smiles with a relieved breath. Zenitsu smiles back, hopeful, delighted.

Maybe he could marry her. Maybe she wouldn’t reject him if he helped.

“You have a sword. You’re a demon slayer, right?”

His breath suddenly stutters.

No, if it has anything to do with demons, he certainly can’t…

“Me and my friends went into an abandoned house few miles away from our village, you know, to have fun, but… there were noises in the attic,” she continues, quieter than before. She takes a shuddering breath, and Zenitsu realizes that her heart is so quick because she is scared. “There was a demon. It didn’t go after me, but we all lost each other when we ran, and now I don’t know where my friends are, and…”

This is bad. His breathing is messing up again. This is really bad. A demon, potentially somewhere nearby, a bunch of kids, potentially dead, and she is scared and he is about to piss himself. He pulls back, hugging himself and hiding in this little shelter of his once more.

“Please!” She suddenly moves forward and grabs his sleeve. “You can help us, right? You can save us… You’re a demon slayer.”

She’s crying.

This isn’t right. Girls aren’t supposed to cry. This always means that he messed something up, didn’t give them enough, enough gifts or attention or…

She falls right before him.

“Even if you’re not,” she whispers, “There’s only you here. I’m all alone, and there’s that awful monster, so please.” She chokes. “I’ll be so grateful.”

At that moment, when he looks in her shining eyes, his guts twist in a way he doesn’t understand. His arms tremble with an emotion he can’t depict.

It’s fear, obviously, fear for his life.

He takes a deep breath. He’s going to die either way, right? We’ve already established that, yep. Either be eaten or starve to death. He isn’t a warrior. He’s in all of this by mistake, by some cruel joke of the universe, because no matter how hard he trains, no matter what his gramps says, he’s still a coward. A weakling. This is a war and he isn’t a warrior.

But this girl, she’s even less of a warrior than he is. Well, at least he has a sword (a constant reminder of his misplacement, a weight he can carry on his belt, but not in his heart). How could he feel more terrified than she is? What right does he have? What right does that demon have to eat innocent people?

It’s not like they have much choice, his mind supplies. They both do what they do just to survive, he thinks, and his mouth fills itself with acid.

He realizes that his arms are trembling with anger.

He takes another breath, takes her hand – gently, untangling her long white fingers from his wide sleeve.

Okay. Okay, he can do this. Slowly, with a little helping tug from her, he gets out from under the log.

She looks drained and is thanking him their whole slow journey to the house. Clinging to him for support. He feels like he needs support himself, like his legs will give out any second, but he needs to look strong in her eyes. Right now, no one else can.

He sees the house and tries not to pass out. What was he even thinking when he agreed? Just this thin, almost invisible string of hope to marry this girl? Oh well, it never worked between him and girls anyway. Horrific images of his possible death here pass through his mind.

But it isn’t fair. It isn’t about him, or the demon, or his fear and its hunger. There is more to this war than that. His muscles are tense under the innocent girl’s hands. He has to push forward.

He takes a deep breath and concentrates on his hearing, then, because it used to help him when he was feeling overwhelmed.

There’s nothing. Not a hint of a sound. Demons are loud, with their clanking teeth and nails and rattling sound of their heartbeat, ugly, haunting. But he hears nothing.

Has it… Has it left?

Something in him moves in relieved joy, only to be replaced again with anxiety. If it isn’t here, where is it? Is it occupied eating those children? Is it going to eat even more people if they can’t find it in time? Shit, he doesn’t want that, he hates how his cowardly heart feels lighter at the thought of not confronting it when he has to, he has to stop it, what is he going to do now-

It’s midday. Zenitsu sharply exhales. It’s fricking midday. Demons die in the sunlight.

But if it can’t leave, where is it? Where is its sound?

In silent fear and anticipation, they enter the house, and all he can hear is the rattling of the wind and the creaking of the floors. The house is very old, covered in dust and hauntingly cold.

“It’s in the attic!” the girl whispers to him, still clenching his haori in her arms and hiding a little bit behind his back. He nods.

He nervously lies a hand on the hilt of his sword.

They make their way up the stairs as quietly as possible, and once Zenitsu reaches the end of the staircase, desperately trying not to faint out of terror, he finally hears it.

A sound so quiet and fragile it makes his heart stop.

A sound so gentle it makes him want to cry.

“Are you alright?”

“Huh?”

He rubs his eyes with a sleeve in sudden realization. His face is wet.

“Are you alright?” the girl whispers again, still clinging to him.

“Yeah, I’m…” It sounds so gentle. Heartbroken. Heartbreaking. “I’m fine.”

There’s a movement on the other end of the attic. They both jump, and Zenitsu barely manages to catch his sword in his shaking hands. He points it forward, but his mind isn’t there. His mind is full of water, as light as air, and fragile breeze, and distant singing.

“It’s the demon!” the girl hisses. “It’s lying right there! Kill it! Kill it!”

He doesn’t listen to her venom, but he takes a step forward, terrified, fascinated. The sound gets more and more complicated with each step he makes. More distant voices, muffled laughter. Of children, he realizes absentmindedly. The ringing of the sun. It’s sad, messy, a terrible pile of nostalgia and tragedy, but the core of the sound is all the same.

Kindness.

Zenitsu sees a boy. Zenitsu cries.

Kindness.

Chapter Text

Zenitsu blinks the salt out of his eyes. It’s small, it’s curled on a pile of old hay, sleeping, breathing, jerking with its entire body ever so often, eyebrows twitching. Its fangs are showing under blue lips covered in red – a wild contrast spot against the dark skin. There’s blood in its long messy hair, and rust on its claws, and dirt on its torn clothes. It looks horrific.

And yet, there’s not a single thought of running in Zenitsu’s mind. What he sees doesn’t match with what he hears at all, and that’s perplexing, scary on its own, but not nearly enough to make him want to run.

Zenitsu takes a deep breath. His arms are trembling. He listens very carefully, trying to catch every movement, every breath, his sharp, agitated ears endlessly searching for any ugly spike, for any black shadow in the stream of the sounds. He finds nothing.

But he hears shuffling behind him, and terrified whimpers that he would’ve mistaken for his own, if not for their gradual distancing. He’s afraid to turn away from the small body before him, for a reason he can’t depict, so he stretches a hand out to check behind him. There’s no shaking warmth pressing into his back anymore.

“Kill it!” the girl shouts in utter horror all the way from the staircase, but her voice is a mere whisper. “Blood… So much blood!”

A lightning strikes his body, and he quickly steps back. What is he even thinking? He’s facing a demon, a monster. He can see perfectly how terrible it looks, can imagine clearly how many lives it has taken. He winces in disdain, in a state of this must-fear, and blinks, and blinks, and blinks away the pictures in his head, and his weak hands lift up the sword.

The demon sighs quietly. Its chest heaves, heart beating a tad bit faster than before. The realization of control fills Zenitsu with intoxicating power. A demon is afraid of him. Of him. He sweats, his head feels heavy, and his breath is too hot in his mouth. He wouldn’t have believed someone’s heart could have such a clear and powerful sound, such sad notes to its drumming, but- No, he must focus.

It’s a hard thing to do, when he’s slowly getting so overwhelmed, trapped between the person he has to end, the never-ending terror behind him, and his own raging, cold body, so unsure, lost. He looks, and hears, and cries, and he knows he cannot do it. He listens carefully, really carefully, and tries to find any dark spots, any danger in the demon’s hitching breath. His ears are betraying him, surely, because a sound can’t be so heartbroken and scared and bright and hopeful at the same time, because there has to be something vile in one of the creatures he has been fearing and hating all his life.

He finds nothing.

Zenitsu looks, feeling like he might break if he moves or thinks too fast.

He doesn’t see a monster. He doesn’t see the danger, or the horror, or even the blood. All he sees is a person, and his own shining blade lingering over a vulnerable neck.

He breathes out, unaware he’s been holding his breath, and as he does, metal clanks against the wooden floor. Without feeling his legs, he turns around, lighting going over his spine and the hair on his nape, and quickly stumbles towards the girl. His vision is blurry because he is crying, but he sees that she’s weak and whiter than snow, and his heart darkens at the passing thought of using her vulnerability, of earning her trust and her love through this crisis. He gives it no attention. None of that matters anymore. His head is the air and the sun and the tragedy, and there is a sense of urgency running through his body.

“You- you need to go,” he stutters, grasping her trembling shoulders. “Go, run to the village, it’s too dangerous for you to stay, okay? Okay? Tell everyone it’s too- too dangerous.”

“Didn’t you kill it?” she whisper-shouts in his face, grabbing his clothing hysterically, wide eyes full of terror. “Is it alive? Is it still alive? Why is it alive? Didn’t you kill it?”

“I will,” he nods. “Go,” he pleads.

Her eyes are big and glistering with tears, and her lips are wobbling, and Zenitsu remembers himself and, just for a second, questions if he’s making the right choice. He wonders, just for a second, if the music in his ears is deceiving him, a mere trick leading to a vicious bloodbath, because the mere sight of a demon scares people to death for a reason. And yet his heart is twisting painfully at the thought of raising his sword again. His eyes are just as big as hers, just as full of burning salt, his lips are twitching as violently under all this pressure, but his jaw is set, and his hands are firm. His ears have never lied to him before. His heart never lies.

The girl watches him for a few seconds in stunted panic, eyes full of doubt and hesitation. The demon yawns, and its jaws and teeth click together, loud enough in the quiet attic to make Zenitsu jump. With a cry, the girl takes off, legs tangling in each other.

“I will bring help,” she wails in a thin, breaking voice.

Then, like a baby deer, she quickly falls down the stairs. He hears her body and her tears hitting he floor below rapidly, and then her wet breathing gets more and more distant until it disappears under the noise of the woods.

Zenitsu sighs quietly, with tension, slowly relaxing his shoulders. She’s gone. A misplaced sense of déjà vu hits him in the guts.

He sniffs, rubs his face with a sleeve and turns around. His gaze gets stuck on the demon almost instantly, and his mind turns off for a few brief moments, nothing but ringing occupying his thoughts.

Then, he grimaces in horror, because he realizes, a bit too late, that he has absolutely no fucking idea what to do next.

He had been thinking straight, he did have a plan, a goal. Look at that, one sound from a sleeping demon has made him lose all of his cool. Laughable. And now the only person who could make him come back on the path of straightness is gone, shooed away by no other but Zenitsu himself! Hysteria comes up to his throat, and he giggles softly and desperately, hiding his face in his hands, hunching into himself.

He takes a deep breath, inhaling his palms. Okay. He has to make up a new plan. He doesn’t have much time.

He unravels himself and takes a few slow, careful steps forward, nervousness still gnawing at his skin.

Zenitsu is stuck with it now, completely alone. The whole world is going to turn its back on him now. He lets out a bittersweet laugh and awkwardly hugs his own shoulders. If only there was something, anything he could turn to, any way he could get help and advice and shelter.

A thought so wild that it makes him straighten into a tight line suddenly strikes his mind. Gramps. Gramps could help.

He bursts out laughing. Ridiculous. Gramps would turn on him too, even he isn’t crazy enough to help Zenitsu handle a demon. For god’s sake, he used to be a demon slayer! He will end this little creature’s life the moment he sees it. And Zenitsu’s life too, most likely. Beat him into a pulp, that’s a sure one.

His chuckling dies down. He rubs the tears away again. What other choices does he have? No one will want him. If people see this, they will panic, call someone on him, lock him up, kill him, silence the gentle calming sounds in his ears forever… He has to find a way to do this unseen.

He looks around the attic. It doesn’t look lived in, but it doesn’t look ancient, there are heavy boxes, piles of hay and torn clothes all over the place. There must be something useful. He searches between the boxes, under the rags, coughing out the dust that gets in his lungs. There are big stains of old blood on the floor, all connected and leading to the demon, that make him pause and swallow down acid vomit.

His fingers find a small woven basket, large enough to fit in his hands easily. He holds it, and it’s light, nice to the touch, despite the filth and the dust. Probably was used to collect cherries, or apples, or peaches. A sad, comforting item. Despite never seeing it, Zenitsu feels the weird, nostalgic connection. This will do.

He whistles out a breath. He’s really about to do this. He’s insane. He’s absolutely bonkers. He looks straight in front of himself, turning to approach the demon.

It looks so murderous, yet so otherworldly peaceful. He puts the basket nearby, and his hands hover over it, trembling. It breathes in and breathes out, face so… relaxed. Just like a real, living human would be sleeping. So much going underneath that peaceful face, yet none of that is danger. Only heaviness.

Zenitsu awkwardly kneels down and reaches out to grab it by its shoulders, withdrawing at the last moment. He pauses, scanning the small, limp body, then slowly slides his hands under its back. The coldness makes him flinch. He’s gentle and careful as he lifts the body up.

He stands there, paralyzed and shaking, throat painfully dry. He is holding a demon in his hands. A living, breathing, gentle-sounding demon. Its long eyelashes are flattering against its cheeks. Its long hair is touching the dusty floor. Its fangs haven’t disappeared, nor did the claws. The blood-

Zenitsu gulps. He feels afraid, but he certainly doesn’t feel as afraid as he should feel. With tension, he puts the demon into the basket. It’s small enough to fit inside whole, and that, for some reason, makes Zenitsu feel fragile. He exhales slowly, hesitates for a few second, then carefully adjusts the locks of hair that were left outside. Despite the dizzying stickiness, they’re very soft to the touch.

He remembers that he has to hurry. He collects a dusty rag from a crate and covers up the basket.

Something suddenly rattles under his legs, startling him. He looks down to see his own face in the reflection of his thoughtlessly abandoned blade.

The steel is condemning him. His eyes in it are tired, glistering, fearful about the future, doubtful about the present. He doesn’t know what awaits him: a bloody, gory death, or an eternal banishment, or hundreds of dead bodies on his kill count because of this one decision. For one fleeting second, his heart does a painful flip, because he sees the eyes of a coward and a traitor.

Unable to comprehend it, he grabs and sheathes his sword, trying not to think about things too hard. He lifts the basket up and holds it close to his chest.

He’s moving. Down, down, down, a weight light as a feather, heavy as a rock on him. No goal in mind, no strength in arms, no bravery in his pulsating guts. He stops to look at the brightly shining sun just outside the doorframe, lighting up the floor right at his feet. It would save him, but it would kill the thing he’s cradling near his heart.

The gentle breathing in his ears is enough to make his soul crumble.

It’s enough to make him take his first step.

Chapter Text

Zenitsu’s head is on fire.

Well, not literally, no, but as his free palm desperately tries to cover his hair from overbearing heat, he contemplates if there even would be a difference. His thoughts are a train of sluggish mess, jumbling into each other, but too slow to thunder inside his skull like they had been the entire time he’d walked through the forest. That, at least, he is grateful for.

Endless field stretches before him as he makes his way through short, but too-thick grass that they grow to collect before winter. There are countless houses of different rank of size in the distance, and mountains lingering further away. The further they are, the bigger and closer they seem, but Zenitsu feels in his heart how feigned that illusion is, and how, in reality, they are completely unreachable.

He sighs with heaviness, rubbing the sweat off his way-too-warm forehead. This is what this journey is like. Illusive image of his home, lingering in the distance, too close, but too far away at the same time. He dreads reaching it, but he dreads the road even more. Literally, too. Every time he sees a vague figure of a person ahead, he takes a swift turn: through the rivers, the rocks, the fields. It only prolongs, stretches this honey-like, slippery, endless journey. Sometimes, he’s almost compelled to quit altogether. What a no-good coward like him is doing here?

Stuttering future unravels before his eyes. The greens of the trees, the grays of the villages, grass and dirt on his clothes. All the familiar sights and smells and sounds, faces he must evade, bread he must somehow get his hands on, straws and hays he must sleep in. And then, like images in shattered glass: the peaches, the house, Gramps. Wrinkled eyes with comforting strictness and hidden love shining mutedly in them. His surprise. His horror. His disappointment.

At these times, when the thoughts and the path in front of him are too overwhelming, his legs become weightless, and he trips. At these times, he gets to look at his heart, and his clogged ears open, and it’s like taking a fresh breath after hours of suffocation. He remembers. He never falls.

The sun is too bright and is overheating him, but it is a saving grace of sorts. Too hot to look at directly, as it might eat him alive, but something that, he knows, will steady him. It slows the gnawing on his skin, soothes the itching underneath, making him light-headed. It’s a reminder, too. A promise, burned into his core.

To continue moving forward, even through the dread.

///

First, it’s blood.

Blood always comes first.

Smell sharper than a razor. Sight blurred with mixed tears. It’s not terrifying, because it’s familiar. It’s something present under all and every skin. It’s not terrifying, but it’s horribly sad, because when there’s blood, there’s always loss.

Second, it’s pain.

Usually, pain isn’t too bad. It’s accidental, and it can be endured. But this pain, somehow, is different. It goes deep, and it’s not spiky, but tearing, of the same nature that the iron grip on your throat when you’re exhausted and reach your limit is. And this feels like one. A limit.  A finish line.

An end of the world.

At a time like this, blood and pain are deathly, and scary, and horrific, but they are not terrifying.

Third, it’s hunger.

Piercing, sticky, disgusting hunger. It has to be a nice, rewarding thing – not this, not so alien and monstrous and death-craving. It feels insatiable, but it also feels like it will start eating the insides it’s residing in if not relieved, a dark hole of an ouroboros. It’s worse than the tears and the blood and the hurting combined, because there’s nothing familiar about it, nothing grounding, nothing human.

Hunger is terrifying.

He feels trapped. Drowned. He feels the desperate need to fight back for his humanity, to fight back the pit in his guts, the slimy darkness creeping into his foggy mind. He does so with his tears and claws, wiggling and snarling like a caged animal, one pair of muscles fighting down another, his body convulsing, his mouth bleeding from how hard his spears of teeth bite around. It’s madness evolved into effort, growing out of his very heart, because his heart is the only part of him that remains something less than a monster.

But somehow, even that isn’t enough. He gives enough for it to be a fight for life, but even that doesn’t save him out of his crazy hunger-cage. If he loses and gives in, even more grief, even more death will follow his beast-steps, and that is something he can’t let happen even if he will have to breathe his last breath.

In one last, titanic leap, something finally breaks.

And with it, breaks his skin, put under thousands of fires and pierced by thousands of burning needles at once.

///

The grass is endless. Zenitsu isn’t sure if it’s because his time perception is warped because of how overheated and tired he is, or if the field really is this big, but it’s like he’s been walking for hours.

The worst part is that it’s only midday, and he’ll have to deal with this for another half a day. On any other day, he would’ve taken a dozen of breaks already, but there’s a persistent nagging in him demanding him to move. And if he were to sit down, he would have nothing to distract him from himself. A stray thought is whispering that it would be great if he just collapsed from exhaustion at some point. Some well-desired rest, no feelings, and no having to talk himself into sleep tonight.

Something rattles under him, but he doesn’t give it a second thought, sluggishly continuing on his way. He does jolt when it rattles again, though, with a creak and a whine this time. Zenitsu halts, listening in closely.

Same ringing. Same melodies. A bit more sad, perhaps, and a bit more erratic. There’s no way the demon could be awake, right? Everyone makes weird noises in their sleep once in a while. There’s nothing to worry about, right?

A minute passes. Then another. Zenitsu’s heart soothes its rapid pounding, and he starts walking again.

Just as his breathing steadies, the rattling comes back, and, before he can react at all-

It jumps. It jumps right out of his arms. With a snarl of a horrible monster, it jumps, and Zenitsu shrieks, and his hands are so terrified that they don’t even think about landing on his sword. His mind, his body, his heart all freeze into a panicked mess, because the demon is awake, and on the loose, and he’s standing there completely defenseless, and it’s screaming and crying, and-

And it’s screaming and crying on the ground, in the sunlight.

And a sound of pain so sharp it makes him tear up suddenly pierces his ears. It’s so urgent and it’s hurting so badly that it unfreezes him instantly and makes him jump forward without thinking. His hands couldn’t find his sword just a second before, but they somehow so easily find his haori and rip it off his shoulders now, and then just a second after he’s on the ground too, covering the demon with his clothing, holding it, arms closing around it protectively.

Only once it’s done it hits him. Nothing in his life has been more terrifying, nothing, and usually, when it happens, he faints. Right now, he doesn’t. Right now, he can feel all of the weight of the situation, and the fear that he feels is like a cracking rope that holds him at the edge of a cliff. He can’t let go, he can’t fall, but it will kill him no matter what he does.

And he just might let it, because louder than anything else is what thunders in his skull. The softness and kindness distorted in the most unbearable way, shaped into sharpness and confusion and fear and pain, and god, it’s like Zenitsu can feel his own skin turning into the dust under the sun. They’re both shaking around each other, clinging and crying despite their mutual horror, and suddenly it’s all so real and it tears Zenitsu apart with sadness and compassion, and if he could, he would dig them a path into the core of the earth, he would find them a way into the deepest of underworlds – anything, anything just to stop the suffering. He would walk through a thousand more hot days, he would lose a thousand more girls, he would fight a thousand demons on his own, he would snatch the sun from the sky and eat it whole.

And so, he holds, and he doesn’t let go.

Chapter Text

The next time he wakes up, an eternity has passed, and the world is exploding in white-red fireworks.

Emotions, like sharp bloodied spears, stomp on his curled up little body: confusion, terror, echoes of pain and grief. He doesn’t remember a single thing, but something screams at him to run, run, run away and hide as far as he can.

His skin is phantom-burning, and his teeth shake, fangs catching on his lips. His insides turn upside down from how overwhelming it all feels, how suffocated he feels. His nostrils are two clogged gun barrels, firing and crashing themselves every second. His head is a helpless rock at the bottom of a heavy lake.

The desperate desire to run wins at some point, and he fights to open his eyes. His eyelashes are long and sticky and wet for some reason. He doesn’t understand that they’ve given in before realizing it’s pitch dark.

Gradually, his senses start coming back. There’s a soft cloth covering him, and wood under his claws, and wind blowing outside the closed space he’s trapped in. Crickets, owls, whispers of the grass, creaking of old wood, rustling of the dust… It almost calms down the pain in his throbbing head. Slowly, he inhales the clouds and the fruit and the aftermath of raining, constant and lingering.

And then, there is the smell of blood.

It sends his sharpened, scared guts into a panic, but with it, something dark emerges. The thing that started it all. The torture that he fought so hard to evade, to suppress. The death of him. The hunger.

He growls, mind running ten miles a second, head pounding in pain harder than before, hair on his skin standing up, claws and teeth elongating, pupils shrinking. He is less of himself. He is feral, and a survivor, and a hunter. He needs to kill, devour. And he must hide.

Hide, before it can get him. Hide, before he can hurt anyone. It’s an instinct, it’s in his roots, but it’s brawling with this new, alien, horrific longing in him. Both are ropes squeezing down on his neck, making it impossible to simply breathe, and it’s enough to finally make his legs work.

He nearly rips the colorful cloth on top of him to shreds when he leaps out with a fierce snarl. Instantly, he hears a shriek, and someone jumps away from him, lightning-fast.

Old floorboards creak under his growing weight. The hunger in him is delighted when the smell becomes more powerful, mixed with such delicious fear, it makes him want to tear himself apart. Hide, his mind keeps screaming, but it’s less and less loud, quickly, before it strikes again, it can’t happen again, you won’t survive if you lose them again!

Despite his best efforts, he can’t force himself to move away. Cold sweat breaks out on his skin as his muscles fight to run, and as the monster inside him forces him to stay. He keeps forgetting who he is, and the edges of his mind start to blur, smearing like the blood on the walls of his broken home.

“What the fuck, stay- stay where you are! Don’t you dare to come any closer!” the person in front of him screams, shaking like a leaf in the shadow. “Back- Back off! I’m serious!”

The back of his throat tastes like acid from how potent the fear in the air is. It both excites him and mortifies him to his core. He growls louder, inadvertently crawling closer. Clouds of dust are raised around him, moon lighting them up as it creeps in from the glassless windows. His ears are pierced with another shriek.

“No, no! I knew this was a bad idea, I knew it! This is the end of me, the end! I’m going to repent for my sins!” the person screams, backing away and crying miserably.

The handle of a sword flickers in the moonlight on their belt. They have a smell of someone incredibly strong. Just for a second, it makes a part of him shiver in nervousness, but it’s not enough for his consciousness to take the reins back.

Instead, he keeps moving closer, the monster taking over more and more the better he can smell the blood and the flesh. He hasn’t eaten in years, he is weak and helpless and on edge. Violence is pounding in his veins. His vision blackens, and he sees and feels nothing but a veil of throat-squeezing desperation. The thing that has been holding him back breaks – no, drowns.

He bounces forward and tackles his prey down.

They screech and wail so loudly their vocal cords must be bursting. Instantly, there is the cold metal of the sword between his fangs and firm feet pressing on his stomach, keeping his deadly limbs at bay. The weird metal burns in his mouth; still, it’s held in such a way that it doesn’t cut him.

What does cut him is the look on their face. Wide eyes glassy with animalistic terror, tears running down like waterfalls, body trembling like in a fever, a nightmare.

“Please, please don’t eat me, please calm down, I’m begging you!” they stutter through their shaking teeth. “I hear you in there, I know- Am I wrong? Am I going to die?”

It smells like a child about to fall off a cliff, it smells like lungs about to implode with water, like a suicide note, a deathly disease, a family about to be slaughtered. The veil suddenly lifts – it’s too similar, too dangerous, there will be death, there will we tragedy, and the parasite feeding on his blood isn’t strong enough to hold him back from doing anything in his power to stop it. He has to run.

And he tries to. He tries to make his limbs listen to him – to stop trying to grasp the poor person underneath him. They breathe and pant and keep blubbering in fear, it’s miserable and makes his stomach flip-flop every second. He tries to pull his teeth back, to stop gnawing on the sword, to trample the poison inside him. At first, it’s futile. The smell of blood is too strong, the control is too slippery, but his heart is beating as strong as before, and his will is like steel. Like an arrow stuck deep in the flesh, he slowly pulls himself out, squeezing the madness away. It’s agonizing, it goes against his entire being, like he is purposely killing himself, like he is pouring water out on the sand after weeks of thirst. Hunger, like the serrated tip, scratches his insides in the most unbearable fashion, but he fights and he fights and he fights for it to leave him, and bit by bit, he starts winning.

He blinks, and his vision blurs, dangerous slits of his pupils shaking and struggling to round back into normalcy. He makes himself put less pressure on the sword and the feet, flail his arms around less wildly, crave death less undoubtedly. More control; step by step, more control.

And the moment there’s enough of it to actually move on his own, he bolts. He effortlessly wrecks the door on his way off the hinges and runs into the surrounding sparse forest. Get away get away get away, is ticking in his brain, and behind him, the floors whine, and the grass moves, and the person he has almost murdered stumbles out in messy panic.

In horror, he realizes that they start chasing him, and runs faster. As he leaps and leaps away on all fours, his claws are getting covered in dirt, and his energy is depleting quickly, draining out of him alongside the weight of his body. Loss of size doesn’t make it easier to move – on the contrary, it slows him down. The hunger is caged, hidden, banished out of the front of his mind, replaced by horror and urgency and unexplainable sadness. As he runs, the strings inside his heart are being played with such brutal intensity, reverberating through him, that he is afraid they will break, one by one. Wind is cold in his too-long hair, against the skin of his face, and his eyes sting, and it takes away his breath when he realizes that he is crying.

He doesn’t understand. Why are they running after him, after what he did? Why? Did they not see? It’s painful, but it’s his entire fault. His fault alone, guilt scratching away layers of defense, slicing fatally.

“Wait!” they scream. She screams. “Tanjirou!”

He doesn’t listen. He has to leave her the way she is: struggling through the snow, crying out his name over and over, wailing after seeing their home. Siblings must stick together till the end – now that they’re alone, it is them against the entire world, and he knows that, he knows, and he is dying. She is dying with him, but there is something much more important, something crucial, that he hammers into his head again and again and again: protect her, protect her, protect her.

A cry leaves his throat, and he nearly collapses. Protect her from yourself. Run.

But he can’t anymore. He can’t protect anyone. Grief, guilt hurt more than anything. He doesn’t remember what happened, but the feeling is there, his subconscious is whispering to him, constantly: he shouldn’t be here right now, he should be with them all – what kind of otherworldly cruelty made him the one to survive? What kind of wicked fate twisted his life? What kind of a family is he, not being able to save any of them?

The world is pulsing, and nothing really makes sense anymore. One emotion replaces another, and it’s head-achingly confusing, but he tries his best to make sense out of it. As he is chased by half-memories of death and horrors too devastating to not be just a nightmare, fear creeps into his aching soul, weakening it further the closer the steps behind him are. No one should be near him, no one should be able to see the monster that he is. Fear, clingy and irrational and all-encompassing, scrapes its way inside, messing him up.

He is on the ground. The footsteps come to a halt.

He would never give up against anything, but at the moment, he is defeated. His own feelings are too powerful of an enemy, and he lets himself shake violently, summoning the last bits of his strength to hold himself together before he can break completely.

The sparse, tense breaths he takes catch a familiar smell, and the sickliness of human flesh has gone out of his nostrils enough for him to finally register everything else.

He sees white when he recognizes it, and a surge of electricity runs down his spine. Memories are vivid, even if he could swear they were only a dream.

He remembers fighting for his life and jumping straight into the sun. He remembers his skin burning and melting, the agonizing pain, the panic…

And then this exact smell. Arms around him, holding him, covering him from the lethal flame, a cloud to consume the death-sun away. Rain and peaches and bravery and kindness, saving and soothing and helping and healing. Drained, he drifted to sleep right away, feeling the most content and safe than he had in an eternity.

And now the feeling is back, trapped within the tremorous odor just a few steps behind him.

He slowly turns his head towards it. He sees a boy with wide fear-filled eyes, with sweat and tears running down his face, with hoarse lungs barely squeezing breaths in-between the nervous gulping, and with limbs that are shaking harder than a cart struggling through a shattered road. It’s a jarring contrast to the image that his smell builds: how could such a scared mess be the same person?

There is awkwardness and nervousness and confusion in the boy’s demeanor, like he doesn’t quite understand how he got to this point, like he finds it absurd and insane and hard to believe in. The feeling is shared.

“Please don’t eat me,” he quickly whispers, terrified, then tries to steady his breathing. It barely works apart from making him louder, and his teeth still clank together after every word he articulates: “I’m sorry, okay? I’m, I’m really sorry, but I can’t just let you run away like that! You might eat someone! Or they might see you, or, or worse, kill you! Do you want that? Do you really wanna be beheaded that badly, huh?”

The way the boy speaks is almost baffling. How could someone combine concern, annoyance and fear so flawlessly? With every bit of air thrown in his way, the rapid beating of his heart slows down, and tension is melting like butter, making it all the way easier for his face to start breaking. It feels unfair, undeserved, stupid. Someone coming after him, talking to him, unknowingly calming him down, all after he attacked them and almost… Almost…

The boy suddenly rushes forward, making him fall and crawl back in shrilling surprise, like a pressure spring untwisting itself, but the boy halts and freezes the moment he sees movement. His face is frozen in horror at his own actions, at the reaction, but it quickly softens into something timid, sad, regretful. His voice is mutedly sharp, a knife covered in cloth with care and caution:

“Don’t.”

He gulps, brushing away drops and drops of sweat collecting at his chin before they can turn into icicles.

“Whatever you’re thinking. Don’t.”

Whispers:

“The sound of it breaks my heart.”

He can’t remember a thing. Painful, flashing past only lasts so long in his head. But in that moment, lost, vital knowledge of who he is comes back to him at once, the kindness and compassion in the air echoing and waking it up in the deepest corner of his conscious.

His name is Tanjirou. His soul is strong, and kind, and made of light, and it can withstand any monster that might reside within it.

His name is Tanjirou, and he lets a weak, hopeful smile sneak up on his lips.