Chapter Text
Breathing slowly to hopefully quell the poison, Zenitsu lies staring up at the full moon, stars speckling the abyss that is the night sky. It's pretty tonight.
Honestly, he didn't even want to come on this mission. Tanjiro and Inosuke practically dragged him to this creepy forest by the ear! Looking back, the only reason he entered the forest was because Tanjiro took Nezuko with him. If only she stayed out of there with him, then she'd be safe and he wouldn't be slowly turning into a demon-spider-thing... gross...
Zenitsu is bitter, yes, but...
He's not mad. Sure, it would've been so much better if they'd just listened to him and not gone to fight the demons in the murder-woods, but then again, he knows why they did it. It's their duty as Demon Slayers to keep others safe from the monsters that feast on people, children, families. He really can't be mad about that in the end.
His lungs burn. His veins are filled with fire. His leg throbs. And all he wants, all he can do, is lie in wait, hoping, praying, that someone will find him before it's too late.
"Nezuko-chan... I'm sorry..." he breathes, sight blurring and fading.
"Don't give up!" his gramp's voice urges. "Don't give up!"
Slowly, he forces his eyes back open. When had he shut them?
A butterfly flits across the sky, slowly nearing him. The butterfly's fuzzy shape refines into a woman. A goddess, perhaps. "Are you all right?" the woman asks softly, staring down at where he lies, spread out on the suspended house, slowly fading away.
"Gramps..." Zenitsu calls out weakly for the voice. "Who are you calling 'Gramps'?" the woman asks, far too lightly for the situation. The butterfly woman kneels down next to him, poking his forehead. "Right. You did a good job slowing down the poison's path with your breathing," she praises. "I'll inject the antidote now, okay?"
He barely feels her lifting his arm, and he feels the needle even less.
Slowly, Zenitsu's eyes close, and he drifts away.
"I'm sorry, Nezuko..."
Gasping, Zenitsu sits up, kicking the sheets off in a startle, his eyes landing on his hands.
While no longer swollen and purple, they're also no longer worn and calloused from his sword-wielding. Instead, they're smooth, save for the Lichtenberg figures spreading from the center of his palms all down his arms, straight to his chest, and webbing out from there.
It's like he's never even swung a sword before, like the years of work with Gramps and all the missions with Tanjiro and Inosuke never happened, like he’s never killed a demon before. Maybe it's because he hasn't.
Not in this lifetime, anyway.
Denki sighs, running his hands down his face. "Those stupid..." he groans, mentally calculating the times he's woken up from a dream looking for a sword he doesn't own or a girl he's never met before, nightmares and confusing dreams alike waking him up left and right. The air in his dorm room is stifling compared to the breeze of that forest he dreamed of, somewhere he both dreads and longs for at once. Checking his clock, Denki groans. 1 A.M. Far too early to be up.
Turning back over, Denki pulls his covers back up to his chin, staring up at the popcorn ceilings of his dorm room.
If he stares hard enough, he can count them like stars.