Chapter Text
The air in the clearing had never been so lively. Nezuko wasn’t sure why she hated the feeling so much.
She had been home from Final Selection for roughly two weeks, recovering from her injuries, two of which were going to scar: a faint one that cut through her right eyebrow up towards her hairline, and a larger crescent at the base of her left palm that curled up around her thumb joint.
She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten either of them, exactly, and she wasn’t sure exactly how to explain it, but she sort of liked looking at them. They were a reminder, if nothing else—a reminder that she wasn’t the same Nezuko she’d been two years ago; a reminder that nothing would ever be the same again, even after she healed Tanjirou and killed the demon responsible for her family’s deaths.
There were days where she adored that feeling, the feeling of knowing that she was strong enough to wield a sword and fight for her life and survive . But there were days, days where she missed her old self so badly that it hurt like a bruise, where she wished more than anything that she could slip out of this dream and wake up to find Okaasan and the rest all waiting for her, eager to be kind and good and simple.
Those days were always the hardest.
It was on those days that she spent the most time in the clearing, searching for any hint of Sabito and Makomo. She couldn’t help how much she missed them, even though she knew they deserved to rest in the afterlife after their killer had been slain.
But there was this part of her that just couldn’t bear to lose anyone else; it didn’t matter that she'd lost them before she’d even known it; it didn’t matter that they had been dead for years before entering Nezuko’s life. She just wanted so desperately to have this one good thing continue to be. She felt like she’d already been stretched so far, and if she had to give another inch, she would snap and leave nothing but her broken, jumbled pieces for Urokodaki-sensei to collect in the aftermath.
Please, she prayed, sitting in a clearing that had never felt so empty despite being full of movements and sounds, a clearing that had never felt so big without the shadow of a familiar boulder. Just one last time. Let me see them once more, before they're truly gone.
↭
“She’s back again,” Makomo commented, twirling along the tree branch. It dipped and swayed under her weight, but she didn’t seem to care.
Sabito was sitting on the same tree branch, his back resting against the trunk. He thumbed that now-familiar, neat seam in his kitsune mask, frowning and watching Nezuko. She was sitting in the center of the clearing, gracefully weaving some flowers together. Crown after crown, she created and wove, expression creased in concentration and sadness alike.
“I don’t understand why,” he muttered.
“She misses us,” Makomo replied simply. “She’s lonely.”
“Her brother woke up,” Sabito pointed out.
His companion stopped her twirling and flashed him a pointed look. “Her brother’s a demon. He can’t spend every minute with her. And he’s not much for company.”
That was true. Sabito turned his eyes back to Nezuko.
“I can feel you,” she called out. “Sabito, Makomo, I know you’re out there.”
Sabito blinked, looked at Makomo.
It wasn’t the first time Nezuko had called out for them since returning from Final Selection. It seemed as though her senses had become even more refined upon returning; Sabito had been extra careful to conceal his presence today, and it still hadn't taken long for her to discover them.
No, it wasn’t the first time she had discovered them again. But they had never revealed themselves. Sabito was starting to think it was taking as much of a toll on them as it was on Nezuko. But they couldn’t show themselves, no matter how much they wanted to.
It wasn’t right. After all, the dead don’t belong with the living.
“Why do you think we’re still here?” Makomo asked suddenly, twirling on the branch to stare at him.
“I don’t know,” Sabito confessed quietly, leaning his head back on the trunk. In all honesty, they should have departed by now. Nezuko had killed the Hand Demon. She had avenged them, and everyone who came before. All the others had left. After seven bitter years, Sabito and Makomo were free.
And yet, their souls remained. After all the others had ventured on, the two of them lingered around this clearing, like there was still something that needed to be done.
“I think it’s Nezuko,” Makomo confessed, skipping a step towards him. The branch swayed dangerously, and Sabito braced his hands against it, scowling at her.
“You think her desire to see us is preventing us from moving on?” Sabito asked. Irritation flared through him, hot and sharp as a railroad spike. It was laced with a fond sadness that was strong enough to build a pressure behind his eyes.
“No,” Makomo giggled. “The living can’t stop the dead, silly. Otherwise no one would ever leave.” She sobered like a match stick flickering to life, blue eyes capturing his own. “I think it’s our desire to see her that’s stopping us.”
Sabito stared at her. He didn’t understand. “You think…you think we remain because we love her that much?” he asked, voice chalky and forced.
Makomo grinned and swung back around to look at Nezuko. “I want to see her again. To thank her. To say goodbye.”
Something bitter and sweet and lonely was crawling up his throat. “We never said goodbye to Giyuu,” he whispered.
Makomo froze midstep, suspended with one foot on the branch, the other dangling over open air. She twisted her body slowly, deliberately, looking at him. “We didn’t have a choice,” she replied. Her eyes were more serious than Sabito had ever seen them. “You know that.”
“What makes this any different?” Sabito asked. He was gripping the tree branch so hard that if he’d had a body, he would have been bleeding from his fingertips.
Makomo looked back down at Nezuko, who had abandoned her flower crowns and was laying on her back in the sun, eyes closed, looking so terribly sad that Sabito’s heart clenched uncomfortably, and that protective urge that he’d tried so hard to release spiked through him, bitter and hot.
“Was there part of you that wished she’d died, so she could have joined us?” Makomo asked abruptly.
Sabito jumped, stared at her. “No!” he growled. Then he paused, looking at Nezuko. She looked so miserable… “Though I will miss her,” he found himself whispering. I’m sure everyone who's ever known her does too.
Makomo twirled back around and grinned at him, all traces of her heart aching question gone.
“One last time?” she asked, her voice simple and sweet and filled with all the longing that was beating inside Sabito’s own rib cage.
In the clearing, Nezuko’s lip quivered slightly, and she pushed her hair away from her forehead, away from that new scar that sliced through her eyebrow. “It’s okay if you don’t want to see me,” she called out. “I just…wanted to say—to say goodbye.”
She looked ethereal, surrounded in woven clusters of flowers, her long hair loose for once, spreading out around her on the ground. Each strand looked like a ribbon, thick, heavy, soft. She sat up abruptly, batting angrily at the tears clinging to her eyelashes. Sabito smiled, a quiet and twisting pain. Makomo was right. He wasn’t letting himself move on from her. He was going to miss her in the way he missed Sensei and Giyuu. He was going to miss her in the way he missed being alive .
“The dead don’t belong with the living,” he murmured again.
Makomo looked at him with her head cocked to the side. “And yet we won’t be able to leave without saying goodbye,” she replied. “Besides, we’ve already broken that rule. What’s one more time?”
~
Nezuko sighed heavily. She could feel them, just beyond the edge of what she could see. Sabito’s presence, so passionate, so strong, and so incredibly sad. Makomo was there with him; she felt like the leaves on the trees, peacefully twirling and shifting; so close, and yet so far.
Nezuko missed them. She loved them. She wanted to see them so badly it ached.
Just once more , she pleaded in her heart again. Once more, and then I’ll never ask for it again .
Just as she was about to give up for the day and go back to Urokodaki-sensei, the air rippled in front of her, and Sabito and Makomo walked out of the disturbance.
She stared at them, her mind suddenly halting in its tracks. This was all she’d wanted, and yet…
And yet?
It felt too good to be real.
And it didn’t matter if it was or not. Her best friends were ghosts. Her older brother was a demon that slept instead of eating, and couldn't walk in the sunlight. Nothing about anything made any sort of sense these days.
She was on her feet before she could stop herself, crushing the two of them into a fierce hug. I’m not crying I’m not crying I’m not crying—
“Are you still crying?” Sabito asked gruffly, his hands closing gently over her back.
“No,” Nezuko sniffed.
Makomo laughed, and Nezuko adored the sound against her side. After a moment, Sabito laughed too, leaning into her embrace. Nezuko didn’t know why the action made her heart race.
“I have so much I want to tell you,” she said, finally pulling away and scrubbing at her eyes. She scowled at them. “Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
Makomo smiled up at her and slipped her hand into hers. “We are dead,” she replied simply. “We don’t belong with the living.”
Nezuko fell silent, studying them. “You knew Tomioka-san, didn’t you?” she asked softly.
Both of them fell silent, before Sabito, still standing so blissfully, heartachingly close to her, shook his head softly. “Yes, we did,” he whispered.
Nezuko felt her chin tremble, and she looked at the ground. “Part of his haori,” she murmured. She looked up quickly and touched the fabric of his kimono gently. “It’s the same pattern as this.”
Sabito nodded softly.
Nezuko sighed and pulled Makomo under her arm again, leaning her head against the smaller girl’s. “I thought I would feel better once I saw you,” she admitted, “but I’m still sad.”
A rough hand shoved her, and she blinked her eyes open, staggering against Makomo. “Don’t be,” Sabito growled. “There’s nothing that can be done to change the past.” She didn’t know where the two practice swords in his hand came from, but he grinned at her, face stark and beautiful without his kitsune mask to hide it. “You’ve become quite the swordsman. Care for one last spar?”
↭
Their one spar turned into two, and then three, and then four. Makomo cheered from the sides and sometimes joined in, but mostly Sabito and Nezuko went against one another, again and again and again. They were fairly evenly matched now, Sabito realized with a sharp grin. His victory wasn’t always so assured, and he even lost a few times.
After they sparred to their heart’s content (in other words, until Makomo told them to stop), Nezuko told them a bit about Final Selection. Mostly, she told them about breaking that one boy’s arm, which Sabito laughed at. “Should have known the moment I saw you that you were anything but shy and sweet,” he replied with a sharp stab of pride.
All too soon, the sun was sinking, and Makomo announced that it was time for them to go. “After all, we have a long journey to make,” she stated.
Traitor, he thought venomously. He wasn’t sure if the word was directed more at Makomo or himself. On the one hand, she had convinced Sabito to come, to say one last goodbye to Nezuko, and now she was announcing that they had to leave. On the other, he had advised against coming, and now he didn’t want to leave. He stared at Nezuko’s hands, lungs filling with pain so sharp he thought it would puncture them every time he breathed.
Nezuko stood and dragged Makomo into her arms, hugging her fiercely, knocking the small girl’s flower crown askew. Makomo didn’t seem to mind, winding her arms around Nezuko gently, firmly, steadily. Nezuko clung to her like she couldn’t bear to say goodbye, but Makomo hugged her like she was confident they’d see her again soon. Like this wasn’t a forever-kind of goodbye.
“Thank you,” Nezuko whispered into Makomo’s hair. “You’ve saved me in a lot of ways. I wish I could return the favour.”
Makomo only smiled lightly, brushing a piece of Nezuko’s hair from her eyes. “Don’t you worry about us,” she replied. “We’re alright now.” And then she was gone, fading like a breeze, leaving Nezuko looking like she’d been sucker-punched. She breathed but it sounded like a wheeze, and Sabito watched her push shaking hands against her eyes for a moment.
When she lowered her hands and faced him, her eyes were rimming with red. She smiled, slow and shaky. “Why does it feel like I’m losing everything all over again?” she whispered, chin trembling the way it does when one is trying so very hard not to cry.
The question was like a stab to the gut. Sabito felt himself reaching for her, felt himself stop, unsure. An imaginary heart rate was picking up in his chest, those pink eyes burning holes in him. She stepped towards him and pulled his kitsune mask away from his face, and his breath caught in his throat.
She was so close to him. Close enough for him to see the light reflection in her eyes, close enough to feel her breath fan over his lips, close enough to ache for her in a way he’d never ached before. For a moment, he wanted her so badly, she didn’t even feel real. A vision flashed across his mind, of a world where he was able to slip his hand into Nezuko’s and walk alongside her for the rest of her life. A world where he was able to keep her safe and happy, a world where he was able to chase away her loneliness and remind her of all the reasons she was incredible. A world where he’d been strong enough to stay alive.
Nothing else seemed like it had ever mattered quite so much, though Sabito knew that couldn’t be true.
And yet, and yet…
And yet, her hand was on the side of his face, her eyes searching his. She smiled, and his heart stretched towards her, longing for her, wishing for a way that they could have been happy together; wishing that he’d never met her, wishing that she had died, wishing that he had stayed alive. He didn’t know when his respect for her had transformed into an affection strong enough to delay his journey to the afterlife even further, but here they were. Her thumb brushed over his scar, and his eyes fluttered closed for a moment.
And then her lips were pressed against his scar, light as a feather, soft as sunlight. He blinked his eyes open, taking her in—she was so close, so warm that he almost felt alive again.
She was gone too soon, and though he couldn’t make himself to kiss her back (it already hurts so badly, please don’t make it worse, don’t give yourself another taste of something you can never have), he reached forward and cradled her face in his hands, pressing his forehead to hers. He never wanted to leave this moment, but he forced himself to pull away. Something warm pricked at the corner of his eyes, and he cursed it with all the strength he had. She was looking at him, so trusting, so sad, so kind. He closed his eyes for a moment. Isn’t there a limit, he wondered bitterly, to how much this world is allowed to hurt people like us?
“Live a good life, Nezuko,” he whispered, taking her in. “Maybe we’ll meet again in the next one.”
Her hands gripped his, strong, kind, protective. “I’m going to miss you, Sabito,” she murmured back. She smiled shakily at him. “Don’t forget about me.”
As if I could, he thought sadly.
As if I would ever want to .
↭
“Where is the swordsman?” a deep voice demanded. The presence was intense, passionate, bordering crazy.
Nezuko hurried towards the hut, lips still tingling from Sabito’s warmth. She wasn’t sure where that had come from, the desire to press her lips to him, just to see what would happen, just because it was her last chance to say a thousand things she couldn't articulate. She’d liked the outcome the way she liked stretching a muscle—it felt so good it burned.
“She will be arriving shortly, Haganezuka,” Urokodaki-sensei’s voice replied.
Nezuko rushed through the door to find Urokodaki-sensei and a strange man wearing a large woven hat hung with wind chimes. Tanjirou was laying under a massive blanket, his head poking out, large burgundy eyes looking at her curiously. He made a muffled noise, and Nezuko knew that he could smell the sadness and heartbreak wafting off her.
The man in the hat looked up sharply as she entered, revealing a Hyottoko mask. Nezuko resisted the urge to flinch back in surprise.
“I am Kamado Nezuko,” she said, bowing. “My deepest apologies for keeping you waiting.”
Surprisingly, the man named Haganezuka-san didn’t care much that she was late. He explained (in incredible, painstaking detail) the way blades were forged, the materials that were used, and the process of colour changing, ignoring any of Nezuko's inquiries. It was almost as though he was speaking to himself.
“Your brother is a Child of Burning Crimson, is he not?” the man finally asked, eagerness rippling off of him as he leaned forward.
Nezuko frowned slightly. “No. He is a child of Tanjurou and Kei, same as me.”
“That is not what I meant,” the man replied condescendingly, like he was talking to a small child. “You’re a family of fire makers, yes? It is very lucky to have a child like him, with crimson eyes and hair. You are his sister, and though you clearly aren’t as lucky as he, there is still a chance your blade will turn red.” His head whipped towards Urokodaki-sensei for confirmation, and Nezuko bit back the various scathing retorts on her tongue about where this man and his rude comments could stick that sword and how he could get it there. I really have been spending too much time with Sabito , she thought, and a wave of sadness and longing and confusion washed over her, painting her the colour of his blue, blue eyes.
Urokodaki-sensei nodded, and Nezuko caught a flash of amused exasperation drifting into the air around him.
Finally sitting in the center of the hut, Nezuko slowly pulled the sword out of its scabbard. For a moment, nothing happened—the blade was simple and gray, glinting faintly in the light of the hut.
Then, like someone was pouring ink across parchment, a deep, powerful black bled into the blade. Nezuko gasped, turning the sword from side to side, watching it change like ripples across the surface of a pond. It was breathtaking.
“BLACK!!” Haganezuka-san blurted. The eyes of his mask looked ready to pop out of his head.
“It’s…black,” Urokodaki-sensei repeated.
The energies flowing out of them were confused, skeptical, and (in Haganezuka-san’s case) unreasonably disappointed, which Nezuko didn’t really understand. She thought the blade was beautiful.
“Is it…a bad sign?” she asked, still captivated by the blade. I don’t care if it is , that new, fierce part of her whispered. It’s mine and I love it .
“No, it’s not like that,” Urokodaki-sensei said hurriedly. “I’ve just never seen a blade turn this dark of black—”
“EHHHH, I FINALLY THOUGHT I WOULD SEE A CRIMSON BLADE, DAMMIT!!” Haganezuka-san wailed. He reached for Nezuko, the energy around him flushed with disappointment, resentment even. She caught his wrist before he could grab her and twisted it sharply to the side. From under his pile of blankets, Tanjirou growled.
Before the tension in the room could overflow, a familiar beautiful black crow flew through the open window, croaking out, “CAWW, CAWW. MESSAGE FOR KAMADO NEZUKO. HURRY AND GO TO THE NORTHWEST TOWN!”
Nezuko released Haganezuka’s wrist and held out her arm for her crow, Matsuemon Tennouji (adorably nicknamed Matsu, though Nezuko wasn’t really in the mood to find anything particularly cute at the moment) to land on. “An assignment?” she asked, stroking his sleek feathers. She didn’t know what to think of the trickle of excitement slipping down the notches of her spine.
“Remember this well,” Matsu creaked, his beak snapping and clicking as his voice swelled with human words. “In the Northwest town, girls are disappearing every night. Go and slay the demon, Kamado Nezuko!”
↭
Nezuko was outfitted in the demon slayer uniform—a dark kimono and hakama pants, with a haori made from the pink kimono she’d worn for the last two years in Sakonji’s care. Her hair was tied up with a simple pink ribbon, and Tanjirou stood next to her in his child form as he batted and jumped playfully for the fluttering orange ends.
Sakonji had been so relieved when she’d arrived home, but the truth was hitting him now—she may have passed Final Selection; she may be stronger than anyone realized, including herself; she may have a demon brother on her side who loved her more than anything.
But she was still walking into danger. She was doing it willingly, almost excitedly . She was eager to get on the road, to save people, to prove herself. She was eager to get her brother back any way she could.
And though he hated to admit it, there was no doubting that she was eager to try out her new sword, to move through her breathing techniques and forms, to see if she truly was meant to be a demon slayer like she’d been born to do nothing else.
Sakonji couldn’t squash down the feeling that he might never see her again.
“Sensei?” she asked.
He blinked out of his daze and realized that he was staring. “Yes?”
She smiled at him, shouldering the box he’d made with Tanjirou now stowed safely inside of it. Her new sword was strapped to her belt. She looked good. She looked strong. She looked like she belonged in her bones in a way that she hadn’t before. That was what Sakonji was most afraid of.
“Why are you so sad?” she asked softly, stepping towards him.
He had to laugh, if only because he could smell the sorrow on her skin as well. “Be careful out there, my dear Nezuko. Protect your brother, and allow him to protect you.”
“I will, Sensei,” she replied. “And…” she paused, before darting forward and crushing him in a fierce hug. “I will return home,” she whispered. “I promise.”
As she walked away, waving behind her, Sakonji’s heart swelled. She will be safe , he thought. She has Tanjirou…they have each other. And they will come home.
Nezuko's voice rang in his ear, an offhand comment she'd made who-knows-when, one that had stuck to him like tree sap: Don't worry, Sensei. I always keep promises to my family. And, well, you’re part of my family now. A careless grin stretching sun-kissed cheeks, the sunset-tails of her ponytail swinging over her shoulder as she turned once more to wave him goodbye.
He would have to trust her, the way he had when she’d left for Final Selection, the way he had so long ago now when Giyuu brought her to him in the middle of a bright-mooned night, sleeping like the dead itself.
He would trust her. His Nezuko would be safe, and incredible, and strong. She’d change the world, exactly as she was meant to, and then, when the curtain fell, she’d come back home.
All Sakonji had to do was wait for her to take the world by storm.