Chapter Text
Sanemi had always considered the sight of his beloved mother, bloodied and hacked apart from the butcher's knife in his own hand, to be the worst thing he'd ever seen. The snap and give of her flesh beneath the knife, the worst he'd ever felt. He'd known, even at the time, staring at himself as if outside his own body, that this moment was the most horrifying he could even imagine.
Until he opened his eyes after their fight against Upper One to see just one half of his baby brother's face.
At first he was certain his eyes were lying somehow. It simply couldn't be. Genya was lying on his side but the rest of him was just… gone. It wasn't until Genya's eyes met his own that his heart ceased its beating in his chest and he realized in horror that he was not dreaming.
Sanemi's was up on his knees in an instant. "Genya!" He screamed, because it was suddenly the only word he knew how to say. His scarred and bleeding and shaking hands hovered over his brother. He didn't dare to turn him over. He didn't want to see what Upper One had already taken from him.
"Nii-San," Genya whispered. Tears beaded up in his eyes and clung to his long lashes. Sanemi could hardly hear him over the sound of his heart raging in his ears.
"G-Genya—!" It's alright, he eats demons, he can regenerate! "H-hey, it's alright, Genya, I'm going to get you out of here—!"
"Nii-San," Genya said again. "I'm sorry." Sanemi couldn't breathe. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more. That I was so weak—"
"No." Sanemi proclaimed. To his brother. To god. To the tips of Genya's ears and fingers, turning black, floating into ash. "No, no. Genya—" his words tumbled clumsily from his mouth, everything he'd wanted to say from the very start and everything that had kept those words locked in his throat, tripped and fell from him now as if that could stop his baby brother from burning away. "No, you were never a burden to me, Genya, you—!"
He was everything. The first thing Sanemi worried about the moment he awoke each morning and the last thing in his ever-unanswered prayers at night. And he was, like everything else good and beautiful and soft in Sanemi's life, about to be ripped away. About to die believing to the very end that his own brother hated him.
"Please, Nii-San…" Genya was whispering now, as if speaking was taking great effort. Finally Sanemi mustered the strength to reach down and grip him by the shoulder, pull him up to cradle him—what was left of him, in his arms. "You have to-to live."
"Genya," Sanemi whispered brokenly. "Please, Genya don't—" How dare he ask anything of him now? After failing him so utterly? He clutched his brother desperately. and remembered holding him for the very first time, just like this, just as fragile and as precious.
How it all had gone so wrong.
"You have to live—and be happy," Genya was saying. He was so light in his arms now, more than half of him had slipped away already. Sanemi helplessly watched the last shreds of his family disappear into the sky. "You deserve to be happy."
"How could I?" Sanemi's volume surprised him, his voice becoming tight and desperate. Genya didn't respond this time, his eyes, so like their mother's, sliding closed. The last time he'd ever see those eyes again. "No, Genya!"
"You deserve to be happy. Because my big brother…is the nicest person in the whole world." Genya concluded, eyes still closed. Sanemi grabbed him by the cheek, what little of it was left.
"Genya! Please! Don't leave me—!" Selfish, even now. He could hardly see him now for the burn of tears falling openly from his face and onto Genya's. What irony that he'd spent so long not seeing his brother, yet at the moment when he'd never see him again and was trying desperately to memorize his face before he was gone again, forever, he couldn't even look.
Blood from his torn-open hand mixed with the tears having fallen from both brothers' eyes. It rolled across Genya's smoldering cheek and across his unmoving lips. Sanemi, eyes squeezed shut tightly, still trying to will himself out of this nightmare, at first did not notice that Genya had suddenly stopped smoldering.
Sanemi opened his eyes to take one last look at the only family he had and froze. Genya's eyes were still closed but his body was no longer burning away. Sanemi still had ahold of his shoulder and his face, even if the rest of him was gone. He stared at the scarlet blood on his cheek, running into his mouth.
"Genya?" He did not dare allow himself to hope. But if Genya was demon enough to be smoldering to ash rather than dying…
Without hesitation Sanemi took up his sword and sliced his palm open.
"Shinazugawa!" Himejima said in surprise from behind him. Sanemi had forgotten he was there. "You've already lost more than enough blood to be dangerous."
Sanemi neither listened nor stopped as he brought his bleeding hand to his brother's mouth. At first his blood flowed across his lips and back out again. At first Sanemi wondered if he'd already lost his mind in the four seconds he'd been without his reason for keeping himself together.
But then Genya moved. Just a little. The margins of his broken body shuddered, pushed themselves forward and together and back into the approximation of a body rather than just parts.
"Genya!" Sanemi gently laid him back down and took up his sword again and felt his hope swell against his own wishes. He felt his sword catch on something before he could get far. Himejima had grabbed its hilt.
"Let go! It's working, look!" Sanemi attempted to yank the sword back out of Himejima's grip.
"Feeding human blood to someone this close to becoming a demon could create one." Himejima said sternly.
"Don't care." Sanemi yanked on the sword again.
"Sanemi." Himejima said seriously. "You've lost a lot of blood already. If you continue cutting yourself, you will die."
Sanemi looked back down at his brother. His body was still broken and half-formed, but his shoulders had regenerated down to his chest, his arms, the tips of his fingers that used to be so tiny. "Don't care."
He gave the sword another yank, much harder this time, nearly viciously. Himejima held firm. "Let go, Gyomei! I don't care! It's Genya!" His hands shook against his sword. Genya was slipping away, he felt him slide through his fingers like sand. He'd gladly die if it meant saving him. He'd die a thousand times.
Sanemi was surprised when Himejima abruptly released the sword, but joined him kneeling on the floor beside Genya. He watched silently while Gyomei took the sword from him and sliced open his own forearm.
Genya was so small when he first met him. Small and mean and deeply, profoundly wounded. It had taken him a long time to gain the kid's respect, even longer to gain his trust. But from the very first moment Himejima looked at Genya he'd known. Genya would invade the soft edges of his heart the same way all his kids once had.
Sanemi watched as Gyomei tipped his bleeding forearm towards Genya's slack mouth; his blood disappeared behind Genya's lips.
"It'll go faster with mine." Sanemi fussed, choked by the gesture and uncertain how to express his gratitude. A drop of his own blood was worth a pint of Gyomei's. But he didn't have many drops to spare, he supposed.
Gyomei was silent for a beat. He glanced up, to Muichiro's body just a few meters off, growing cold. They'd already lost too much. They'd lose more; the battle was far from over. "It doesn't have to be him or you. If I can save you both, I will." He finally said.
Sanemi couldn't think of anything to say to that.
Steadily, a little slower now with common blood rather than Sanemi's Marechi, Genya's body stitched itself back together. Sanemi clutched tightly onto Genya's tunic and watched his torso, his legs and feet, the broken half of his face all flourish back into existence like a blooming flower. He had two eyes again, two ears. The right side of his face regenerated itself along with the scar that matched Sanemi's. To Sanemi's surprise, the right side of his head filled his signature Mohawk back in with pure white, leaving an even line between it and his natural dark brown down the middle of his head. Sanemi stared at it.
It was that moment he realized what Gyomei had just said. Feeding human blood to a…whatever Genya was…probably wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. But he'd been full of bad ideas throughout his life, in service of much less noble goals than saving the life of his little brother. Why stop now?
Gyomei sat back on his heels, then stood. Genya was whole, but unmoving. Sanemi had stared so long now his vision had blurred over. Gyomei began to pray from behind him. Though he had never been a praying man himself—why would he, when he'd never once been answered?—Sanemi slowly leaned down so his head was resting against Genya's forehead and prayed too.
Everything was still.
Please, god, Buddha, whoever is up there, if you're up there. Don't take my baby brother. Take anything else. Not him. Please.
Genya stirred.
Sanemi opened his eyes and gasped, pulling back just slightly but still keeping himself within inches of Genya's slack face. "Genya?" He called. "Genya, wake up, kid. I'm right here."
All was silent, save for Sanemi's whisper. "I'm right here."
Genya's eyes shot open. Sanemi was too relieved at first to even care that the whites of his eyes were now deep black, his irises an unnatural, shining gold. That was, until Genya lunged at him.
Sanemi recoiled just in time for Genya's teeth, long and canine, to snap shut just a few millimeters shy of the tip of his nose. A horrible growl ripped out of his newly regenerated lungs and he tried again, leaping forward, tackling Sanemi to the ground and going for his throat.
"Genya!" Sanemi shoved him back with brute strength alone, his sword forgotten on the ground beside them. He wouldn't need it. Even if Genya had the strength of an upper rank rather than a fledgling newborn demon, Sanemi wouldn't need it. He'd never turn his steel against his own family. Not again.
He shoved his forearm against Genya's throat, pushing him back and away from his face. "Genya, it's okay." he whispered. "It's okay. I'm right here. You're okay."
Genya just growled. Abruptly his weight was lifted off of Sanemi, who sat up and blinked. Himejima had Genya by the back of his tunic, scruffing him like a feral cat.
"Spare me the I told you so." Sanemi begged. Himejima held Genya at arm's length and watched him struggle and thrash, tears rolling across his high cheekbones.
"We should try to find Kamado." He suggested over the sound of Genya's growling. "If he can turn Nezuko…"
"Right." Sanemi nodded. He stood and noticed how profoundly his legs shook. Whether from blood loss, from exhaustion, or from the trauma of losing the only good thing that had ever happened to him, he wasn't certain. Upper One had gone, the high-ceilinged chamber was filled only with the sound of Genya's desperate growls.
Now that he'd done what he could for Genya, Sanemi took a moment for Muichiro. His body was still and cold and he looked so much like he was just sleeping, so long as Sanemi's eyes did not wander downward, to where the rest of him used to be.
"Muichiro," he breathed. There was almost a smile on his pale, ashen face. Sanemi put his hand on his forehead and brushed his thick bangs away from his forehead gently. Since the prayers had worked out alright for him so far, Sanemi silently prayed Muichiro had found his way to someplace much gentler and more merciful than there.
It killed him to tear himself away, but there was more fighting to do. Guilt sat in his gut but Sanemi pushed himself to stand and shrugged off his haori. He tore a long strip of it off, rolled it a few times, then approached Gyomei with it secured in either hand.
"Here, bring him down." Gyomei obeyed and Sanemi shoved the fabric into Genya's foaming mouth to stay his teeth, then tied it behind his head like Nezuko's muzzle. Genya actually seemed to calm a little; Sanemi's haori had been so thoroughly soaked in his own blood it was hardly even white anymore. His growl lessened, both muffled and pacified by the bloody fabric, Sanemi subdued his arms too and for the first time envied that stupid box Tanjiro always carried the thing he called a sister in.
Kamado and Yushiro were their only hope now. He hoped they weren't dead already. He allowed Gyomei to carry Genya—the kid was nearly as tall as Sanemi was now.
"H-Himejima." He said as Gyomei began to walk. "You've done enough for me already but…"
Genya was subdued for now, frozen in his demonic form as if in stasis, but not out of the woods by a longshot. There were a hundred points of failure, a thousand ways this could go wrong, and only one possible way they'd all see the sunrise. "If I don't make it out of here, will you…?"
Gyomei had taken care of Genya in his stead already. They both knew Sanemi didn't even need to ask.
"I'll find Yushiro and ensure your brother is returned." Gyomei said.
"And—and if you can't?"
Sanemi would never raise a blade to his brother. Whether he survived the night or not, if he couldn't turn Genya back the very least he could do is die with him. But he'd have to fall on his own blade before anyone took Genya out. Selfish as ever, he couldn't bear to watch. Gyomei would have to do it. Or Giyuu or Kamado or whoever managed to make it to sunrise.
"I'll be able to." Gyomei said with conviction. "We'll be able to."
It was very hard to argue with Gyomei's conviction. So Sanemi didn't, for once, and simply followed.
X
Sanemi was practically jumping up and down at his mother's bedside while the midwife helped to towel off the screaming bundle of rags she now pressed adoringly to her chest, his only being barely north of five making it difficult for him to understand the complexity of what his mother had just gone through.
"I wanna see!" He cried. "Mama, I wanna hold it too!"
"Sheesh kid, be patient." His father chided.
He'd certainly heard her screams. All last afternoon and late into the night she'd labored, restless, accepting tinctures and cool rags from the midwife but assuring Sanemi she was alright. Then when it finally came time to push, as the midwife said, her screams of pain were more than frightening to Sanemi, who cowered behind his father while the midwife worked.
"Mama…" he murmured nervously at every spare moment.
"Relax, kid." His father would say. "This is how childbirth goes. It was like this when you came out, too."
Sanemi knew his father lied about many things and hoped he was lying about this, too. He didn't want to believe he'd caused his mother that much pain.
But at daybreak as the sun came up, the screams had turned to tears of joy, and his mother seemed exhausted but no worse for the wear. The infant in her arms had cried too, but Sanemi didn't even mind. He couldn't believe such a thing had been created right in front of his eyes.
"Mama! What is it?!"
His mother laughed, still tearful, and glanced up at the midwife, who smiled.
Since first finding out that his mother was pregnant, Sanemi had begged to know if he'd have a little sister or a little brother. His father openly and unashamedly hoped for a boy, so Sanemi had tried to echo the sentiment, but privately he didn't care much either way. He had vivid dreams of a little miniature version of his mother, pretty and sweet, that he could hold onto like a treasure and follow behind like a guard dog. But he'd also dreamed of having a younger brother, robust and rambunctious like him, a forever playmate, so he could pass on all the knowledge about being a man his 5 year old head had to offer. Either way, he just wanted a friend.
"Sanemi, meet your new baby brother, Genya." His mother said. A boy! He rushed forward onto the bedrolls to look at the bundle peeping out of the blankets. He was kind of funny looking, his face all scrunched up with a poof of dark hair sticking out of his head.
He was the most beautiful thing Sanemi had ever seen.
Suddenly he was afraid to hold him, whereas he'd been clamoring just moments before. He looked so fragile, so precious, much too precious for a kid like him to touch. But his mother was already leaning to him and passing the bundle over.
"Support his head," she instructed. Sanemi held his breath and felt his new brother's weight in his arms, his heavy head against his hand. "Good job."
Sanemi met his brother's eyes and tried to imagine how he'd be when he was bigger, when he was his size, when they were both grown ups. Though he was a little disappointed at first to see his hair was black rather than stark white, like his, staring now into his little face, Sanemi thought he looked just like him. Like he was made just for him, just to be his friend.
"Hi." Sanemi whispered. "Hi, Genya." He was surprised to find himself crying, tears dropping down onto the infant before he could help it.
Genya fussed a little and his mother moved to take him back, but Sanemi was steadfast. "It's okay, Genya. Nii-chan is right here." He'd been waiting to use that title for a long, long time. Hed never not be Nii-Chan, ever again.
"Genya." Sanemi said again.
X
Genya.
Sanemi sat up with a start. Had he lost consciousness in the middle of the fight? Had they won? Had they lost? Was he dead?
Where is Genya?
He moved and was stopped immediately. Something was jabbed into his arm, a tube, tethering him to a bag of some kind of medicine hanging from a pole beside him. He closed his hand around it and began to yank. Someone's hand on his wrist stopped him.
"Don't," they said tiredly. Sanemi looked up and squinted.
"Giyuu?"
"Don't try to get up." Giyuu said. He was, inexplicably, seated beside his cot on the floor. His hair was in disarray and his face was covered in blood and scrapes, haphazardly bandaged. That half and half haori of his was torn and covered in dust and more blood.
"You look like hell." Sanemi said, but obeyed him for the moment. His head was pounding anyway, hot pain pulsing persistently at his temple. "Wh-what happened? Did we do it?"
Giyuu was silent for a moment, which didn't exactly inspire confidence. Sanemi sat up a little further. He probably looked like hell, too. He certainly felt like hell.
"Yeah." Giyuu said after a long time. His voice was tight with emotion as he looked up at Sanemi and met his eye. They were teary. "We did."
His breath escaped him in a shaking sigh that he wasn't sure if it was closer to a laugh or a sob. It was like he could breathe for the first time
Genya.
Sanemi tried to get up again and was stopped again, Giyuu's hand against his chest.
"You lost a lot of blood, Sanemi. Don't get up."
"Who put you in charge of me?" Sanemi complained hotly. Giyuu's voice was tight and his eyes were deep-set with purple bags. As he shifted against his grip, Giyuu just pushed harder with his left hand. For the first time Sanemi noticed his other arm was wrapped tightly in a sling that stopped abruptly at his elbow. His haori sleeve hung loose and useless at his side.
"Y-your arm." Sanemi said stupidly. Giyuu said nothing. Sanemi settled against the bed a little, now feeling a little guilty for giving him such a hard time. "Sheesh. Don't they have anybody with both arms to be my babysitter?" His heart wasn't really in it. But Giyuu didn't appear amused by the remark.
"Sanemi," he began, very slowly, his voice strictly measured, as if speaking any louder would break it. He was unable to meet Sanemi's eye, looking instead at his own hand, still on Sanemi's chest even as he settled. "We're the only Hashira left."
Sanemi stared at him, uncomprehending.
The rest of the night came back to him in cruel flashes. The blood, the screams, the pain. Muichiro's pale, youthful face, slack and still and unmoving. Himejima and Iguro and Mitsuri and—
"Genya." He said. Giyuu opened his mouth but Sanemi was rolling on ahead, his panic rising. "K-Kamado? Did he survive…?"
He watched Giyuu's shoulders slump. "He's alive, f-for now." His voice was a sigh. "But he's—"
Giyuu had watched numbly as the meager remaining Kakushi, as well as grateful civilians and whoever could still walk, carried Tanjiro to where they'd been since that night, a secluded wing of a local hospital. They'd stitched up the blunt end of his arm and he'd hardly felt it, just watching Tanjiro's broken body, hardly breathing. At some point he must've fallen unconscious, because when he awoke in a cot an unclear amount of time later, Murata had informed him that the doctors didn't have much hope for Tanjiro.
Sanemi didn't push it, easily able to recognize the pain that clenched Giyuu's heart. He knew that pain well. After a brief moment during which he appeared to collect himself, Giyuu finally met his eyes.
"I can take you to your brother." He said. Sanemi raised his eyebrows, his heart soaring and falling and breaking all at once. The way Giyuu said it made it sound like he was already mourning. Sanemi nodded, swung his legs slowly over the side of the bed and tested his strength. Something came into his field of view: Giyuu's hand. He took it to help him stand.
Giyuu inclined his head a little to examine his face, making sure he was alright before they moved.
He explained how they'd both gotten to the hospital as they walked, slowly, both gingerly, both taking care not to aggravate the other's many injuries. Sanemi was silent for once, a little surprised Giyuu was talking, especially to him. He supposed that kind of thing came with now being the last two standing. There wasn't time for resentment or jealousy or grudges or whatever reason it was Sanemi hadn't liked Giyuu. He couldn't quite seem to recall now.
Sanemi held tightly onto his arm as they walked, blood loss still making his head swim. Giyuu told him Kamado's friends had both survived and actually weren't too much worse for the wear, as well as Shinobu's Tsuguko Kanao. All three of them hadn't left Tanjiro's side.
"The kids really are alright, huh?" Sanemi remarked quietly. They'd turned down a dimly lit hallway. Somehow he could feel his proximity to Genya, like a thread connecting them was tightening, pulling him forward.
Giyuu stopped in front of a door. Sanemi took a shaking breath as Giyuu slid the door open. Sanemi could have fallen over backwards.
Genya was inside, still muzzled and restrained, seated on the floor of an otherwise almost empty room. The window had been carefully covered with newspapers and blankets. Genya's eyes glowed gold at them in the dim light like a wolf caught in a torch beam. He curled his lip back over his teeth—his fangs— and growled.
To Sanemi, still trying to right himself in this strange new world where he and Giyuu were the only Hashira standing, Genya was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Genya," he breathed as his world crashed back into orbit.
So he was still a demon. That…wasn't ideal. But he was upright and breathing. God had yet to take Genya fully from him. Even if it meant dragging out the torture of losing him, he'd endure anything for just a few more moments of having his brother. It had worked for the Kamados so far—
It was that moment he realized Genya was not alone in the room.
"Giyuu-San," she said, standing from where she'd been sitting across from Genya. She blocked Sanemi's view of him with a wall of pink. He blinked at her, disbelieving, shocked into silence by her troubled, empathetic expression. Her eyes, magenta and discerning, moved from Giyuu to him. He was speechless. Giyuu wasn't.
"Hi, Nezuko." He said.
"N-Nezuko?" Sanemi tilted his head to the side and stared at her. Nezuko stared back. "You're—" Sanemi stuttered. "He did it. Kamado really did it."
She smiled at him a little bitterly. He recalled threatening her in front of everyone, stabbing her through the box, taunting her with his Marechi. Nezuko probably didn't like him very much. Add that to his list of things to deal with later. He looked to his brother again. "If you're human again, why…?"
Nezuko and Giyuu looked at each other. "I'll go get Yushiro, he can explain." Giyuu said. Sanemi watched him go and was a little sorry for it. He was his anchor in an otherwise choppy sea. His only connection to the world of before while he now struggled to navigate this after.
Nezuko stepped out of the way and toward Genya, beckoning for him to follow. He obeyed, shakily. There was a long moment of heavy, strange silence, interrupted only by Genya's growling. "He's not very aware of himself, it doesn't seem." She finally said while Sanemi stared at her stupidly. "But I'm sure he's very scared. I was."
She was a scared little girl he'd stabbed in the shoulder. Nice going, Sanemi. Again he tried to focus, but couldn't think of much to say. Another voice saved him. And also made it worse.
"He's still a demon because I figured you'd rather that than dead. Well maybe, I don't know you that well."
Sanemi whipped around hotly while Nezuko sighed. Yushiro stood behind him, holding a clipboard. His bright blue eyes were no longer deadly slits, his hair had dulled into a soft bluish grey.
"You're just as bad as before." Sanemi remarked. "What do you mean?"
Yushiro glared at him and moved to stand beside Nezuko. "Genya is a demon now, but that doesn't change the fact that he lost more than half of his blood. If we change him back, he'll die."
"But being a demon fixed him!"
"No, being a demon means he doesn't need all that blood. But as soon as we turn him back he will."
"So…what?" Sanemi turned and watched his brother again. He curled his hands into a fist so they would not shake. "He's stuck like this forever?"
"Not forever." Giyuu took over explaining for Yushiro, whose bedside manner left a little to be desired. "He'll naturally regenerate all that blood in time, but it could take a while. Yushiro and the doctors are working on a plan."
Sanemi stifled a sarcastic remark. He didn't quite have the energy to argue. He didn't have the energy to do much other than stare at his brother.
"C-can I talk to him?" Genya's eyes fell on him at the sound of his voice. His face was twisted into an apparently tireless rage.
It was Nezuko who answered him.
"Of course. He may not know who you are or understand what you're saying, but a part of him might remember your voice, or something about you." Oh great, Sanemi thought. That'll probably make it worse. He jerked his head into a nod.
Yushiro and Nezuko backed off and left just Giyuu to put his hand down on his shoulder encouragingly. Sanemi couldn't bear to look at him. He longed for Himejima's advice, his guidance, or else just his conviction that everything would be alright. But instead he had an empty room and a brother that probably wanted to kill him.
And he'd deserve it.
The door shut behind him, and they were alone.