Chapter Text
A long way away from any sort of train line chalk-full of demons and girls that were willing to give their lives, there was a quiet little town, one that had not-too-long-ago been plagued with similar kinds of monsters, and a girl with a jet-black sword. And in that once-again quiet little town, a man who’d lost his fiance to a swamp creature sat on his futon patiently, while a woman who had been stolen from her bed by a monster in the night fluttered around him, painting his face with all sorts of things that he had absolutely no hope of understanding.
The unconscious woman that Kazumi had cradled against his chest while a girl with a startlingly intense pink gaze had slain monsters wasn’t Satoko, not by a long shot. But somewhere along the line, Kazumi had maybe fallen in love with her just as much. Different, always different, no one could replace his Satoko. But he thought that Satoko would have liked her. And Kazumi...he loved Mizuki. He really, really did.
“Close your eyes?” she whispered, and Kazumi obeyed as Mizuki leaned forwards, her breath brushing his skin as she touched up a smear of something or other that had foolishly gotten out of place.
Kazumi wanted to open his eyes, wanted to see if Mizuki was sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth the way she did when she was trying to concentrate, but he kept them closed, because he didn’t want to mess her up. She got flustered with direct eye contact, especially eye contact only inches away from one another. It was too intimate, as she’d once told him. Adorable . But as cute as it was to see her blush and duck and stammer, Kazumi knew that today, Mizuki was jittery enough as it was.
Mizuki was more than just a girl who’d nearly gotten killed by the same monster that had taken Satoko. She reminded Kazumi of a tiny bird—anxious; hands always fluttering uncertainly; quick, springy movements; small, chirping voice. She was good at painting, on people, paper, rocks, anything. There was a wedding coming up, and she was in charge of the makeup, and she was anxious, always so anxious, hands twisting and fluttering, eyes darting around while she hopped and skittered and spun. Kazumi did the only thing he could: he let her practice on him.
Because he loved Mizuki. He loved the way her mind was always spinning, ticking away like clattered clockwork, always compiling lists of things to do and things to buy and the order of which to do everything in. He loved the way she was buzzing with this nervous energy, the way she never really stopped moving.
Satoko had been the calm to his storm, but now, Kazumi was the calm to Mizuki’s. It was a beautiful sort of ironic.
So he kept his eyes closed, leaned back and smiled. He smiled, and he thought of the girl that had saved Mizuki, a girl in a pink haori that had been just a day too late, a girl with a sword that had been right on time.
He loved his Satoko. But he might have loved Mizuki just as much. And he didn’t want to trade this thing he’d found. Maybe it was horrible, but he didn’t want to have to choose. So he was grateful, for a girl with a sword, who had made it so he didn’t have to.
~
Tamayo-sama was lovely, as always, slumped over her notes and theories, snoring softly. The windows were boarded up tight, the candles had been blown out. With a soft, affectionate sigh, Yushirou tugged off his haori and draped it over Tamayo-sama's graceful shoulders, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear as he did.
She worked so hard, always slipping on her apron and digging her fingers a little deeper into this whole immortality mess, pushing and straining until she was up to her elbows in things that Yushirou would never have thought to question.
Tamayo-sama had always pursued these questions of hers with vigour, but her spirit had been renewed recently, thanks to a certain kid in pink, a kid who touched Kibutsuji in front of their very eyes, and walked away with hardly a scratch.
Yushirou dropped himself into his favourite reading chair by the dying fire, Chachamaru springing gracefully onto his lap before he'd even fully settled himself in. He scratched the cat gently behind the ears, and the resulting purr that seemed to vibrate all the way through his bones reminded him of a demon boy with unbelievable strength, and a girl with just enough spite and snark to survive, but just enough passion and heart to make it a wee bit difficult.
Wherever Nezuko was these days, Yushirou had no doubt she was causing problems. And he would deny it to his very grave, but there was a part of him that found her incredibly amusing. There was a part of him that hoped that she was causing problems for everyone else, and not herself. There was a part of him that hoped that whatever form of trouble Nezuko found herself in these days, she'd pop back up like a perennial in springtime, forever ready to make the world a little more interesting.
~
Teruko skipped between Kiyoshi-nii and Otousan, swinging their hands as they walked to the market. Otousan had a basket of eggs and cheese on his arm. Kiyoshi-nii had the bag of scarves and other knitted goods that Baa-Baa had made. In the front, Shoichi-nii was pulling the cart, filled with carrots and corn and rice.
It was a good day, sunny and bright and hot, filled with the lazy smells of summer.
Teruko paused in recounting the dream she’d had last night to her father. It had been about Nezuko-san, which, according to her brothers, was weird. Teruko didn’t think so. She was just so excited for Nezuko-san to come back and visit them!
She smiled at Otousan brightly. “And then she came to live with us, and we were all happy forever, and she brought the yellow boy with her and married him, and named her baby Teruko-chan!”
Shoichi-nii snorted in front of them. “As if she’s gonna marry Zenitsu-san,” he scoffed. “She’s probably not going to marry anyone!”
"She could marry that weird boar guy," Kiyoshi-nii added unhelpfully. "At least he wasn't as whiny as the other one."
“No way,” Shoichi-nii argued. “Did you see the way she punched him?? She couldn’t stand either of them.”
“You guys don't know anything!” Teruko cried back, sticking her tongue out. She turned back to face Otousan. “Anyways, Touchan, do you think Nezuko-san really will come live with us?” she asked.
He smiled down at her, tugging on one of her pigtails gently. “I don’t know, Bird. But I hope she does. You seem to like her quite a lot.”
“I do!” Teruko replied, beaming. She twirled up towards Shoichi-nii, swinging her arms out in a lazy circle. “Nezuko-san is the most amazing person ever! She protects everyone, and she's so smart—"
"Oh my gods, enough about Nezuko-san already!" Shoichi-nii groaned. "We get it, you have a crush on her, so does everyone, you're not special."
"Sho-kun, watch your mouth, and don't tease your sister," Otousan intervened, frowning at Shoichi-nii as Teruko shrieked like a tea kettle in the background.
"I DON'T, I DON'T!!!" Teruko hollered, stamping her foot in mortification. "I just...I want to be just like her when I grow up,” she whispered. She whipped back to face Otousan, stars shining in her eyes. "Do you think I could be, Touchan?"
Otousan smiled softly down at her. "Of course, Bird. I think you could be anything you wanted."
Teruko spun away with a smile, not noticing how her father’s expression pinched just so, uncertainty clouding his gaze, like he was worried that this girl with a sword wouldn’t ever come back from whatever nightmare she’d crawled into, or maybe that she would, and his little Bird would follow in her footsteps, and leave their family behind forever.
~
Murata whipped around the corner and skidded to a halt just in time to stop himself from crashing into the man approaching the Butterfly Estate from the opposite direction.
"Woah!!" he yelped, staggering back. "Sorry, stranger. I didn't realize..." He trailed off, his eyes tracking the curve of a sheet mask that covered the man's pallid face. Sunken eyes stared back at him, waiting. "Are you alright?" Murata asked, leaning a little closer. "You don't look so good, my friend."
The man turned his head away, gazing towards the Butterfly Estate’s main gate. "Tuberculosis," the man muttered, already leaning away from Murata, like he wanted to get some distance between them before Murata decided he wanted to make it for himself. "I just came...I heard what had happened to her, and I...I wanted to pay my respects."
"She hasn't died, has she?!??" Murata blurted out.
The man looked back at him, startled. "No...just unconscious. Battling infection and blood loss. All that good stuff."
"Ah, good. I MEAN, BAD!! I mean, subjectively, that's bad, but comparatively it's good—" Murata blinked and cut himself off as a quiet snort came from his right.
He shot another glance at the sick man, who was pulling his shawl a little tighter over his head. There was a flicker of laughter residing in his gaze, hesitant and unsteady, like a colt stumbling around on knobbly legs, not quite sure how to walk just yet, but learning more and more every moment spent trying.
"You know Nezuko?" Murata found himself asking after a moment.
Another look was sent his way; more of a briefest flicker of dark gray eyes than anything else. They were kinda pretty. The eyes, of course. If you could get past the eyebags and spite. And obvious sickness. If you were into that sort of thing. Murata coughed.
"I didn't learn her name," the man replied, hands fiddling behind his back. "But...a demon slayer girl with a pink haori and a scar through her eyebrow saved me on the Mugen Train. I want to make sure she lives long enough for me to thank her properly."
Murata nodded slowly. "That’s Nezuko," he agreed. "She saved me on Mount Natagumo once. She was...terrifying."
A dry chuckle escaped his companion's mask. "Yes, I’m certain we're talking about the same person." He paused for a moment. "I was employed by the demon to shatter the spiritual core of any demon slayer on his train," he whispered hoarsely. "I didn't care about any of it...I just wanted to sleep without this pain...but Nezuko...her soul is so full of love...it stopped me in my tracks."
Loving? Our little heathen?? Maybe the sick man actually was talking about someone else.
"She loves like she would burn society to ashes for a single person. She loves like she could pinch the world together with the tips of her fingers, stop it from breaking with a single look."
Murata slowly released the breath he'd been nursing. "Yeah, that actually does kinda sound like our Nezuko," he finally conceded. He held out a hand to the sick stranger. "Name’s Murata, by the way. What's yours?"
The sick man looked at his hand for a long time, before gingerly grasping the tips of Murata's outstretched fingers, squeezing once. "Kutsuki."
↜↝
“That cute girl that curb-stomped Shinazugawa-san and made Tomioka-san look all angry and handsome??” Mitsuri asked, wide-eyed. “Of course I remember her! She was so cute! And she curb-stomped Shinazugawa-san! And she made Tomioka-san look all angry and handsome!”
“Right,” her crow, Urara, agreed softly. “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry!” Mitsuri replied cheerfully. “What about her? Is she doing alright? Oh, Oh! Has she done something terrifying and noteworthy?? Did she and Shinazugawa-san get into another fight??”
If crows could smile, sweet, anxious little Urara might have been nervously doing just that as she shuffled from foot to foot. “Not exactly.”
~
Kanzaburou landed softly on Giyuu’s outstretched arm and settled in, old bones creaking.
For a few minutes, silence prevailed over them, before Giyuu said, "What?"
Kanzaburou stared at him. "Hmm?"
"Why are you here?" Giyuu asked slowly.
Oh. Right. Kanzaburou preened his wing slowly while he thought. There was definitely a reason he’d been sent...
(He hadn't made that long flight on these ancient wings for nothing, he was sure of it...)
"Oh, right!" he sat up a little straighter and pecked at Giyuu’s hair, excitement making his voice tremble a little. "Do you remember your friends...what are their names...those kids, you know? The girl and that demon boy?"
“Yes,” Giyuu responded slowly, uncertainly.
“Well, the girl and some others were on some train or other with...hmmm...was it—no, it couldn't have been...Wait, maybe it was—!"
"Rengoku-san?" Giyuu offered.
If Kanzaburou had fingers, he probably would have snapped them. Instead, he settled for clicking his talons together a few times. "Yes, that's the one!"
“Right,” Giyuu agreed.
“Yeah, right, so they were hunting a demon...or was it a human...?"
"Definitely a demon," Giyuu encouraged.
"Right then, well, the girl killed a really important one...maybe one of those special guys—"
“Wait…” Giyuu interpreted, which obviously threw off Kanzaburou's groove a tiny bit. He wasn't sure that Giyuu had ever interrupted him in the history of ever.
“Nezuko killed one of the Twelve Kizuki?” he asked. The barest flicker of intensity bled into his tone, and Kanzaburou paused for a moment to consider the way his master's features were twisting themselves into something that almost looked like a normal human expression.
“...Yes, that is the name, isn't it?" Kanzaburou asked thoughtfully. Uncertain of how else to react, he pecked at Giyuu’s ear (lovingly, of course) and ruffled his wings. “She killed...maybe something low? I can't exactly remember—Wait, why…why are you making that face??”
Kanzaburou had noticed the skin around Giyuu’s mouth doing something odd, but now that he was really looking...
It…the possibility seemed far too absurd to possibly be true, but…Was Giyuu...smiling??
~
“That entirely almost-flashy little squirt with the demon brother killed a Lower Moon?” Tengen asked. “Hmm. Interesting.”
His crow ruffled her feathers. “It was quite a show,” she said as she began to make a spectacle of preening her wings with a sense of importance.
“How so?” Tengen asked, leaning his arms forwards on his knees. He loved a good gossip session with Nijimaru. After all, spilling the tea with a literal animal?? It didn’t get much more dramatic than that.
“The demon fused with the train,” Nijimaru explained happily, leaving her wings alone in favour of Tengen’s attention. “And the girl had to slice this massive neck bone embedded in the floor of one of the cars.”
“That does sound exciting,” Tengen agreed, grinning.
Nijimaru’s eyes twinkled secretively, and she took a few delicate hops closer to Tengen. “That’s not all,” she replied.
~
“There was an Upper Moon?” Muichirou asked listlessly. He couldn’t exactly bring himself to care about that. There was always something, wasn’t there?
“What was the death toll?” he asked.
“Zero casualties.”
Muichirou snapped his head towards his crow so fast that his neck cracked with the movement. “What?” he demanded. Zero casualties?? With two of the Twelve Kizuki present??
“Rengoku-sama and his tsuguko were very effective at putting the first demon down,” the crow explained. “Then Rengoku-sama managed to hold off the Upper Moon until sunrise.”
“And the casualty count is zero?” Muichirou asked again, disbelief flooding his system. There was no way that was true, it wasn’t possible—
~
“Zero casualties?” Gyoumei asked. He wasn’t sure he believed it, but he could hear the truth spilling from his crow's lips…er, beak.
“If the girl pulls through, then yes.”
“The girl?” Genya asked.
Gyoumei paused, listening carefully to the sounds that his tsuguko made. Some boys were dangerously interested in girls. Genya, for all his other faults and shortcomings, wasn’t one of them. In fact, he generally went out of his way to avoid girls at all costs. He’d certainly never asked a follow-up question about one before.
But the vaguely alarmed, slightly interested sounds that he was making didn’t lie…
“Kamado Nezuko, the slayer with the demon brother,” the crow replied. “Rengoku-sama has recently taken her on as his next tsuguko.”
"She the girl with the pink eyes and the scars?" Genya asked. "Black sword, asanoha pattern haori, kinda scary-looking?"
Zekka clicked his beak twice, a quiet confirmation that Gyoumei didn't need sight to be able to understand. Genya’s breath hitched, and Gyoumei felt his own concern rising in his throat at the sound of the girl’s name—such a young child, such a small thing, but with a heart that sounded larger than anything he’d ever heard before…
“What happened to her?” Genya demanded.
~
“THAT BRAT,” Sanemi roared. “SHE JUST FINISHED HEALING AND NOW SHE GOES AND DOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS???”
Of course, there were plenty of people to hear him in his rage, but none of them approached him. Seeing the damage he’d done to his training courtyard, that was probably for the best.
He couldn’t quite pinpoint why it made him so angry…why he cared at all. So what? The Nezuko brat was a bit of a badass. A super injured badass. It wasn’t like Sanemi was worried about her. She’d pull through, obviously. She was a tough kid.
“She’ll pull through, right?” he demanded, whipping to face his crow.
The bird skittered nervously. “She…she arrived at Kochou-sama’s this morning. I believe she’s undergoing a medical operation as we speak.”
“But she’ll pull through?”
“She took most of the brunt of a blow meant to kill from an Upper Moon demon,” Sorai replied flatly. “She lost a lot of blood.”
The bird was gone before Sanemi could even blink, probably trying to escape the destruction radius sure to be caused by this next piece of information. Smart bird , he would have thought, if he’d been in a thinking sort of mood. As it was, he whirled back to his training grounds with a roar, ready to give some hell to every inanimate object he could find.
~
Shinobu jolted and whipped around. “Nezuko did what???” she demanded.
Her crow, En, repeated her message, and Shinobu could only stare, eyes wide with shock. Kamado Nezuko…what are you even made of?
“Rengoku-san…Nezuko…”
“There’s more,” En warned.
Shinobu huffed a sigh. “Of course there is,” she sighed. “What else has she done?”
~
“Not possible,” Obanai said, nearly losing his footing in his surprise. “There’s no way,” he repeated. “Demons die when they touch sunlight.”
“The demon boy didn’t,” his crow argued. “If you’re so certain that I’m lying, then go and speak with Rengoku-sama and the boy yourself.”
Obanai waited for Yuan to take flight before he looked down at the ground from the building he was standing on, contemplating. If the demon boy really had survived sunlight…if the girl really had saved Regoku’s life by taking most of the blow for him…
What are those kids made of?
↜↝
Muzan hated this child’s form, but even he had to admit that it had its uses. Everything did.
Except for maybe any of his formerly beloved Kizuki.
Seeing Akaza on his knees was always such an ethereal experience: one of his favourite toys, always so bold and brash and cruel, sitting meekly on his knees with his head bowed low…
But Muzan could smell the failure wafting off of him tonight, and his blood boiled at the realization.
“You couldn’t find it,” he stated, snapping his book closed firmly.
Akaza, to the most minimal amount of credit that Muzan was capable of giving, did not flinch. “No,” he breathed.
“And you didn’t kill the girl.”
There was a pause, weighed down with an energy that Muzan nearly didn’t understand. Then, Akaza raised his head, eyes narrowed. “I don’t kill girls.”
~
There was silence, heavy with the implication of what Akaza had just said. For a moment, he was so shocked at his own boldness that he forgot that his words would definitely have consequences.
And then the pain set in, and he remembered just how cruel of a master Muzan-sama could be.
Cracks appeared across his entire body, and pain shot through him, pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before. It was electric, bloody, cold. It ripped through him with the speed of a lightning bolt; with the speed of that girl as she tore into him with the same intensity that he tore into her, an equal and opposite reaction delivered at the speed of light.
Muzan-sama was probably saying something. This seemed like one of those times that his master would decide to give a very stern lecture, as though the demon he was lecturing could possibly be bothered to listen past all that agony. Akaza certainly couldn’t; couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his own ragged breathing, over the images flooding the link between him and his master.
All he could see were pink eyes and blood, sickness, poison, weakness . A man with a mighty laugh and a kind disposition. A well, hazy through a cloud of rage that was nearly tinted pink in his agony.
The anguish bit into him, stronger than even the physical pain. His heart was writhing in his chest.
And then, cutting through everything else, an image of Nezuko, overlaid with someone else—long reddish hair and cold eyes and a scar that looked familiar—
“Akaza,” Muzan-sama hissed, and the images cut off sharply, with the pain easing gradually in the background.
Akaza was still kneeling on the floor, trying to bite down on his whimper, trying to get his breathing under control.
“To think that you took a blow from a swordsman who isn’t even a Pillar,” Muzan-sama said mockingly. “I’m disappointed to see how far you’ve fallen, Akaza. Get out of my sight.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Besides, if he stayed any longer, his master might read the traitorous ball that his thoughts had coiled themselves into, things along the line of, if she touched you and lived to tell the tale then you shouldn’t be surprised that she outsmarted me .
Because no matter how good of a dog Akaza had been before he'd failed to kill Nezuko, there was no way Muzan-sama would treat something so traitorous with anything less than death.
And Akaza was not ready to die tonight. Not until he convinced Nezuko and Kyoujurou that they'd be happier as demons...with him .
↜↝
Zenitsu was used to feeling useless. He was used to feeling like he was pathetic, and helpless, and weak.
Somehow, feeling that way for most of his life had not prepared him for what to say when he realized that Nezuko was feeling the exact same way.
It had been almost a month since the train demon. A month since Nezuko killed Lower One. A month since the world almost lost her forever.
She was good at hiding it—good at pretending that everything was fine. She rested impatiently, she bickered good-naturedly with Inosuke and Zenitsu, she let Tomioka-san braid her hair, she teased Aoi-chan.
But Zenitsu could hear that something was off. He could hear that her heart beat a little more unsteadily, that she mourned a little more fiercely, anger coiled tightly into every action. He could hear the sound of her hating herself, and it was driving him mad.
It was like all that pain that Nezuko had been harbouring when they’d first met had been peeled away, layer by layer, until it cracked, and now the only thing left of her was a skeleton made out of grief.
She clung a little tighter to her brother most days, but some she pushed him away, just a little, like she couldn’t bear to be touched. Those were the days that she snapped at Zenitsu more, the days that she sat silently, brooding and grieving and staring off at nothing. Those were the days that she brushed Rengoku and Tomioka and Shinobu-san off, the days that the three Pillars would share a pinched look, like they were counting down the seconds until Nezuko exploded.
Those were the days that she drew into herself, like maybe she could hold herself together if she suffered in her silence.
Today happened to be one of those days.
When he had woken up this morning, everyone else was gone, but Nezuko was awake. That was the first sign that it was a Bad Day—Nezuko always woke before Zenitsu, and she usually sprang out of bed, eager to get her recovery exercises going, eager to regain the strength and mobility that she needed in her injured arm and leg.
But on Bad Days, she lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling with a blank look on her face, making sounds that were empty but violent, destructive. She sounded like she was screaming, like she was trapped, like she didn’t care.
She sounded defeated, like she knew it was a Bad Day, and she knew that she was going to lose to herself.
The next sign that it was a really Bad Day (maybe the worst she’d had yet) was that she didn’t respond when Zenitsu spoke to her. She flinched when he touched her arm, her eyes sliding over to meet his for a second, before refocusing on the roof.
And maybe Zenitsu was used to feeling weak and useless, but that didn’t mean he liked it, and that definitely didn’t mean he enjoyed watching others go through the same thing as him. In fact, he hated it so much that it made his skin crawl, until he marched out of the room and stole some buns right from under Sumi-chan’s nose, because Nezuko needed these more than anyone else, dammit!
He re-entered the medical bay and made his way to Nezuko’s bed. She was sitting up now, so that was good, and her eyes followed him silently, assessing him in a way that had become no less sharp despite her uncharacteristic silence, despite the way she sounded absolutely exhausted .
“I brought you some buns,” Zenitsu explained quietly, sitting on the edge of her bed.
If this had been a Normal Day, Nezuko’s lips would have twitched into something that was almost a smile. If it was a Normal Day, she would have said, so you stole from the girls, and Zenitsu would reply with, Nezuko!!! Do I look like the kind of man who steals????
But this was not a Normal Day. And all Nezuko did was watch him warily, trapped inside those lovely eyes, eyes that Zenitsu had probably thought about far too much to be considered normal.
He pressed a bun into her hands, and nudged her until she shuffled over, before crawling under the blankets and settling back against the headboard next to her. “Don’t make me feed you,” he joked, and Nezuko just watched him.
He sighed. “Come on, Nezuko. You need to eat something. I know it’s a Bad Day, so I won’t make you eat much, but you need to eat that. Just one bun, alright?”
~
Something swelled inside Nezuko’s chest, and she glanced down at the plate of buns on the foot of her bed, at the single one pressed into her hands.
I know it’s a bad day, so I won’t make you eat much.
It was a bad day. A day where Nezuko was stuck in that dreamscape again, mulling over every single detail, circling around the fact that she’d been given an opportunity to stay with her family in a world where everything was the way it should be, but she didn’t take it .
But Zenitsu’s leg was warm where it pressed against her own, and his soul was brimming with anxious concern, and the combination of everything shocked a bit of life back into Nezuko’s bones.
Before she could move, Zenitsu’s hands were gently taking the bun from her own, pinching off a small piece, and passing it to her. “Please?” he asked.
He looked at her with big eyes that were gold and brown and kind, eyes that looked just a little like honey. Nezuko took the piece he offered, and placed it in her mouth.
It didn’t taste like the buns Okaasan used to make, but Nezuko found that it didn’t bother her as much as it should have. These buns weren’t as sweet, and maybe, Nezuko realized she liked them a little more.
The thought made her want to throw up, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Nezuko,” Zenitsu pleaded. “Please, just talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He was so earnest…but—
“It doesn’t matter,” she croaked, keeping her eyes closed. “You can’t do anything to help me anyways.”
The moment she said it, she knew he’d misunderstood her. She didn’t think that he specifically couldn’t help her. She just didn’t think anyone could.
Shame washed over him, followed by that familiar anxiety, the kind that was trying so very hard to creep into the spaces between Nezuko’s bones and stay locked away in there. She refused to let it.
“Nezuko…” Zenitsu sighed, and he felt just like heartbreak. “It was something to do with your family, right?”
She didn’t say anything.
Another sigh…and then—
“I’ve never had a family, Nezuko. Never had parents, or siblings, or anything like that. But…I always wanted it. I always wanted so badly to feel needed, and loved, and like I mattered to anyone.”
Slowly, Nezuko cracked her eyes open. To a certain extent, she already knew this, but hearing Zenitsu say it out loud was different. It was intimate, and vulnerable, and Nezuko looked at the side of his face and wished that she could say she felt the same—like she had been stripped bare, able to lay out everything in her soul and let him try to put it back together.
But she couldn’t. Her soul was held together by the iron running through her veins, but even that was weakening under the intensity of the anger that boiled deep inside her blood. If she let any part of herself out into the open air, she might finally crack, she might finally explode. And she didn't really want to watch another person that she cared about get caught in the crossfire.
“And then, I met Jiichan and Kaigaku, and I thought that maybe I’d found it," Zenitsu continued, like he couldn't hear the helpless loathing on her thoughts, even though Nezuko knew he could. "With Jiichan, sure, but Kaigaku hated me because I was weak, and I had always craved some kind of connection with someone my age, someone who would be able to understand me.” He rested his head back against the headboard, and turned it slightly to stare at Nezuko. “And then I met you.”
Nezuko blinked, that endless stream of why weren't you enough cutting off abruptly as she stared at her friend, the words sinking into her chest. Then I met you .
There were only four of them, but they seemed to tilt Nezuko's world on a new kind of axis, and her voice spilled out of her throat before she could pause and decide what to think. “What are you saying?” she asked, rusty and cracked, a little bit of panic spilling into her mind.
Because she knew that Zenitsu was anxious, and ridiculously flirty, and that he was incredibly worried about her. But right now, he was so full of love that Nezuko couldn’t breathe around it all; couldn't get an exact read on what those words could possibly imply, on what type of love they'd bled from.
“You, Kamado Nezuko, are the best friend I’ve ever had. You are the only person I’ve ever met who didn’t have to stay, but did.”
Nezuko stared at him; stared at Zenitsu, her best friend , who was smiling a little, even as his eyes fluttered closed like that would hide the tears that she’d spotted brimming there.
“You made me feel like I was more than I was…you pull people in, and not just because you can read their souls. You pull people in because you’re magnetic, because you’re kind and brave and a little crazy, and because you treat the entire world like it belongs to you, like you have to protect it with your life.”
“What?” Nezuko croaked.
“I know that you miss your family. I know that the train demon did something that made you feel like you didn’t deserve to stick around while they were gone. But I don’t care.” His eyes snapped open, and he lifted his head, staring at her. “You are the reason I’m still alive, Nezuko. You are the reason that I always try to get back up, because you always get back up, even when it seems impossible, even when it seems like you should just stay down.”
Nezuko kept staring at him, because the words he was saying made sense somewhere in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t pin down the reason—
“The world of demons and hunters would have kept spinning even if you weren’t in it, Nezuko.”
She blinked. Yes…
“And maybe I’m biased because I think you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met, but I think it would be a lot more unbalanced without you. Without you, the people you’ve saved would have died, and the demons you’ve killed would have lived.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Would your family still be alive? Probably. But I never would have met you. Maybe that’s selfish, but I don’t really care about that either. You have saved me in so many ways. You have saved so many people in so many ways, Nezuko.” Zenitsu closed his eyes for a moment, and that sense of desperate love continued to wash off of him, like he couldn’t stand to hold it in any longer. It terrified her, down to the deepest parts of her soul.
“Those kids in the demon house, remember? That man from the city square. That pretty boy from the mountain. The man that lost his fiance, and the girl that the demon stole from her bed. Inosuke on the train. Rengoku-san. Tanjirou.” He opened his eyes, looked at her.
“Maybe you couldn’t save your family. Maybe they're gone, and maybe it hurts so much that you get Bad Days, days that make you wish that you didn’t exist because you’re tired of being the one who survived. But remember, Nezuko.” Zenitsu’s eyes were burning , and Nezuko felt something inside her burn with them.
“Remember that we are your family too now. You have saved all of us, one way or another. And none of us are willing to watch you give up. So don’t, alright? Don’t let that demon win. Because that’s not who you are.”
~
Zenitsu snapped his mouth closed, holding his breath. She sounded uncertain, disbelieving. She sounded like she could not believe Zenitsu had just spoken to her like that. In all honesty, he couldn’t really believe it either.
But he couldn’t take any of his words back, because he meant them. Regardless of the fact that Nezuko was gorgeous and that he hadn’t once stopped thinking about the dream the demon had shown him of the two of them in the peach orchards, Nezuko was his family. She was the first friend he’d ever made that was his age. The first person who’d ever stayed, even after she found out how difficult he was to love.
“No,” Nezuko whispered after a moment, looking away. “That’s not who I am. Because who I am is a broken, angry girl, a girl who can’t step away from a fight, a girl who didn’t fit in the dream that the demon created just for her. A girl who’s family hardly even knew her. A girl who was given the choice to go back to the perfect life I had, but I didn’t take it . Do you understand me, Zenitsu? The demon let me dream of a world where my family never died, and I didn’t fit in it anymore. I didn’t want it.”
Zenitsu stared at her. Any words that he might have wanted to say had been wiped from his mind. He’d poured his soul into the sheets between them, and it hadn’t been enough to break her out of her anger, her despair. Maybe there wasn’t a single thing on this planet that could.
The thought made him want to cry for the rest of his miserable life.
“Nezuko,” a soft voice said at the door, and Zenitsu’s head snapped up to see Rengoku-san in the doorway, sounding sad and fond and like he could blow an entire village down with his relief.
~
Rengoku’s energy was warm, fond, relieved, sad. He entered the room, dead eye travelling over the scene in front of him, and he sighed, taking a few steps into the room. “Everyone is a little broken,” he said, and he sounded like he was confessing some big secret, which made Nezuko think of Inosuke, who loved a good secret almost more than he loved his dual blades or sparring against Nezuko. Her chest ached.
“The fact that you were able to adapt to this lifestyle does not mean that you are a bad person. The fact that you prefer it over the one you had doesn’t either. It only means that there is a reason that you survived. There always is.”
“I survived because I was the only one who wasn’t home,” Nezuko snapped bitterly.
“Perhaps,” Rengoku replied softly. “Perhaps at first. But then you survived, again and again and again. You saved your brother. You saved countless others. I looked into it, you know. Back at the Hashira meeting, when you told us to look into the jobs you’d done if we were so desperate to prove you and your brother guilty? I talked to every person that you saved. Do you know what each of them said about you?”
Something was blooming inside Nezuko’s chest…something that was sticky and wet and bathed in grief, sorrow, relief, acceptance. Something that begged, please, let them be right. I’m so tired of hating myself.
“Every single person you saved said that you made them want to survive. That you acted like giving up was never an option, that you believed it so fiercely that they started to as well.” Rengoku walked over to her bed, and dropped into a crouch next to her. Something caught in her eyelashes, hot and wet, and her lip trembled.
“Dear young Nezuko,” Rengoku said softly. “We’ve all seen the darkness that follows loss. Some see it more clearly than others. But do you want to know what I believe? I believe that nothing happens by accident. I believe that there is a reason you lived and Tanjirou became a demon, and I believe it is because the world needed to understand that demons could be impossibly kind, and girls like you could be utterly unstoppable. There is a reason that your friends follow you, and a reason that you draw everyone in.”
A sob rose in her throat, and Nezuko was too tired to bite it back down. She leaned into Zenitsu’s side and squeezed her eyes shut. I’m so tired of hurting like this.
“I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that an increase in opposition means that you are going the right way. It is the natural order of evil to push against good. And I believe, Nezuko, that you are good. And you will do great things for this world, no matter how selfish and horrible you think you are.” He paused. “I met the man who entered your dream shortly after we arrived at the Butterfly Estate. He followed after us, to thank us. To thank you . Do you know what he said?”
Nezuko shook her head, and the first of the tears fell.
“He told me that your soul is so full of love, that he couldn’t even move once he entered it. He said you are filled with thunderstorms, the rain of which is so warm and fierce, it made him cry. You changed his life. Touching your soul sent him spinning in a completely new direction, like a comet hurling into an immovable object so strong, it is forced to alter course. He said that you love like you could hold the world together with your touch. He says that he believes that you probably could.”
~
Nezuko broke open and sobbed. And Kyoujurou smiled at Zenitsu softly, before cramming himself on the other side of a bed that was much too small for three people, and wrapping his arms around his tsuguko. On Nezuko's other side, Zenitsu leaned back against the headboard and slowly began untangling the knots in her hair.
“But I left them,” she cried. “In the dream, they wanted me to stay, but I turned around, and I left them. Because no matter how much I love them, I could never leave this life behind.”
“You mean you couldn’t leave us behind,” Kyoujurou corrected softly. “You left them because we needed you, Nezuko. None of us would have awoken if not for you.”
“But it wasn’t just because of that,” she protested. “I…I hate feeling weak. When I was stuck inside the dream, everyone kept asking me if I was feeling alright, because I was talking too much, talking too loud, working too hard. And I hated it. I hated that I felt jumbled and confused, because why wouldn’t I say what I was thinking, and why wouldn’t I work just as hard as anyone else? And then I realized it was a dream, and everything made sense. Because I don’t fit their mold anymore. Because they begged me not to leave them, and I only looked back once, just to see if they still knew me. And they didn’t .”
“Maybe,” Kyoujurou agreed, patting Zenitsu’s hair gently. “Maybe they didn’t recognize you because you have changed astronomically from how you were when they were alive. But from the way you’ve spoken of them to your friends, to Kochou-san…I believe that your family was impossibly kind. So how can you look at their memories and believe that they wouldn’t have accepted you for who you’ve become? How can you look at them and believe they wouldn’t forgive you for choosing the living over the dead?”
“W-what?” Nezuko hiccuped.
Kyoujurou hummed softly. “Life is full of impossible choices, Nezuko. Sometimes there isn’t a right one, just a few that hurt a little less. Maybe this is one of those times.” He sighed. “Like I said, I don’t know if there is a right answer here. I don’t know if there is anything that I can say that will make you believe that, either.”
There was a pause, heavy with the silence that Kyoujurou’s words had left behind. “But if there was, what would you say?” Nezuko asked, hesitant in a desperate sort of way.
Kyoujurou carefully considered his words for a moment. “Your family…if they were anywhere half as kind and good as your Tanjirou, I don’t think they would have forced you to stay in a life that felt like a cage,” he started slowly. “I’m not saying that I think your old life was one…I mean, I didn’t know you back then, so I can’t really say. You probably would have turned out happy in any circumstance, Nezuko, because you seem like the kind of person that chases any good thing that you can see.”
Kyoujurou paused, gathering his thoughts, and trusting that Nezuko would be able to pick out the intention that he wasn’t properly conveying. “Maybe it was their deaths that were the catalysts for your rebirth. But maybe it always would have turned out this way. Maybe being a demon slayer is something that always would have called to you, no matter if they had lived or died. Maybe you can love your family with all your heart and accept that you feel more alive without staying in the life they designed for you.”
“How??”
“I don’t know exactly,” Kyoujurou admitted. “But if anyone could do it, it would be you, Nezuko. I have heard so many people tell me that you don’t know how to give up. I can’t imagine that one experience would change that.”