Chapter Text
Kamado Kie watched as her son went down the mountain, humming as he dragged through the snow with coal packed into the basket on his back. With the New Year, the town would need more coal for the winter. But she knew that her softhearted boy would probably stay out later than expected because he was always willing to help out the townsfolk.
She was so proud of her boy. Ha, if only Tanjuro could see him being the responsible older brother he was now. He would be so proud of the son they raised.
Kie swiped away a tear before it could trail down her face as she watched Nezuko carry Rokuta on her back.
“Kaa-chan! When will brother come back?” Shigeru asked while dragging a log behind him.
Kie smiled reassuringly at her son as she stitched up his shirt. Takeo had accidentally swung his ax into his sleeve which resulted in quite a large tear. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon, my dear.
“Kaa-chan!” Hanako yelled with a grin. “Are we going to have blue soup tonight?”
“Oh!” Shigeru’s eyes widened. “Can Rokuta have some this time? I think he’s old enough!”
“Oh really?” Kie turned her attention to Nezuko who was slowly walking around the forest line close to their home to find some herbs. “I’m sure I can make some for lunch and save some for Tanjiro when he comes back.”
Kie adored the special blue flower because of the sweet, flowery taste it provided for the soup she would make for her children. The flower combined with the sweet vegetables and berries in the forest was a perfect meal for her young family.
“Kaa-chan, is Tanjiro going to get married soon?” Takeo asked after chopping a log in two with deadly accuracy. He looked like his father when he chopped the wood so precisely.
Kie turned her attention to him, “Why do you ask?”
“He’s getting old. And when you get old, you get married,” Takeo gloomily said with a pout. He chopped the firewood with his ax like he was trying to turn it into twigs. “And if he gets married, he’ll leave.”
“Eh? No, big brother will stay with us forever!” Hanako protested.
Shigeru looked so worried that he dropped the wood in his arms. “Brother?”
“Children,” Kie got her children’s attention with a wave of her arms. She calmly reassured, “Tanjiro is not getting married anytime soon. And even if he does, he will never stop visiting and loving each one of us.”
Her words calmed her children down enough to continue working. Nezuko walked up to her with a smile.
“Kaa-chan, do you need any help?”
“Ah, can you fetch some coal for the fire?” Kie asked her eldest daughter who adjusted Rokuta on her back. His soft hum was the only sound he made in his slumber, making her smile at the softness of his face despite the small shiver in his shoulders. “I’ll start working on the soup soon, so it can slowly cook until lunchtime.”
“Where do you even find such flowers?”
“It’s a secret place. I showed Tanjiro once when he was younger, but I’m sure he forgot where by now,” Kie bit down on a laugh. She knew that her son would have forgotten by now since she only showed him when he was only five. “I’ll show you sometime soon.”
Nezuko stoked the fire as Kie spent time sewing up her children’s clothes that had torn. Sometimes some tears were too big. She used scrap pieces of fabric she got in a trade from a seamstress to fix it.
She mostly watched her children gather and chop wood or scavenge for food within the forest. When it was lunchtime, Kie made sure she made a large batch for her hungry children. The blue flowers making the soup look purple from the petals
And she watched with a smile as her children watched Rokuta’s reaction to eating her signature soup for the first time. He was too sick to eat it last year and was too young to eat it beforehand. And she watched his eyes sparkle as he slumped down the soup from his utensil.
She laughed as Takeo dug in like a hungry animal into her dish. She took slow sips from the soup as she poured a second serving for a ravenous Rokuta that was waiting for her.
*
Kie stared at the sky as it started to darken. All her children were inside the house except her eldest. “He should be back by now. I hope he found some lodging for the night with one of the townsfolk. I would hate it if he walked at night.”
“I’m sure he is alright. You might want to stop Rokuta from eating Tanjiros’ leftovers,” Nezuko tilted her head to show her youngest staring at the bowl set aside for Tanjiro.
“Rokuta,” Kie called out to her youngest as she went to him, dragging his body into her lap. “I’ll make some stew for dinner instead. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Nezuko already put the pot on the fire and started to stoke the flame before she even had to ask. Shigeru and Hanako watched as she started to prepare dinner with what she could find.
It was almost time to eat when Kie got a sudden chill up her spine that wasn’t from the cold leaking in through the small hole in the thin wall. Shigeru rose from his seat in anticipation, “I hear something. It must be brother!”
No, something was wrong. Kie could see Takeo grabbing his ax from where it was laying against the wall. Maybe he noticed something off as well. Something in the air felt so wrong. “Shigeru—“
The door swung open in a flash with Shigeru falling to the ground with claw marks down his front. His scream invaded her ears as she unsteadily grabbed for the metal fire poker behind her.
Takeo’s hatchet was buried deep within the stranger’s chest in seconds, making the stranger—monster—lock eyes with another one of her sons.
“Get away from my brother, you bastard!”
Takeo got pushed away harshly, his back hitting the wall with a thump. Hanako screamed, knocking into the boiling pot of food and making the contents and the fiery coals spill out onto the floor.
Rokuta started to cry which forced her to act, gripping the poker in her hands as the man pulled the hatchet free from his chest without a single twist in his expression.
Kie rushed forward, burying the poker inside the man’s arm, stabbing it further into his chest before he grabbed onto her wrist. “Nezuko, take Rokuta and run!”
The man’s blood dripped all over the floor and onto the fallen bodies of her children. His hand curled up and plunged into her chest. She gritted her teeth as she screamed, twisting her arm to force more blood out of his cut and subsequently onto her.
She fell to the ground as the monster picked up her youngest daughter and threw her to the ground. Her daughter bit into his hand before he sliced her throat in one move. Kie reaches out to comfort her choking daughter as the man stepped over the bodies of her two sons.
She could barely see Nezuko and Rokuta until the man suddenly was over both of their bodies. She saw Rokuta trying to claw or bite at the man until his scream died out shortly after.
There was so much blood. She never knew how small her children were until they were crumpled onto the floor like this. Her eyes burned with tears that leaked onto the stained floor beneath her.
Tanjiro would be back soon. She just needed to hang on...
Tanjiro...
*
Hunger.
Hungry. So hungry.
She could smell something good. Her claws dug into the blood stained floor as she crawled her way outside where a beautiful massacre of pink and red was waiting. Four smaller bodies were picking off fresh, bloody pieces of a large animal.
Her hands scrambled against the thin, cracked wall as the smell enticed her towards the meal.
But then her eyes found something more interesting.
A figure dressed in green holding another clothed in pink. Something about it was familiar as the four figures immediately abandoned their meal to run towards the two.
She slowly trailed after them, watching the figure kneel down and clutch onto the hungry children like their own. Their salty tears smelled fresh in the winter air.
“Takeo, Hanako, Shigeru, Rokuta! You’re all okay!” The figure cried out as the one in pink pulled their faces back so their teeth wouldn’t bite into the other’s flesh.
The voice penetrated her mind, drawing her sights onto the red hair and eyes. The earrings that hung so low on the lobes of their ears.
“Kaa-Chan!”
Her Tanjiro.
Her baby.
Oh, her sweet boy.
Kie felt tears come back to her eyes as she cradled her eldest son into her arms once again, ignoring the hunger pang in her chest.