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If there is one thing Sanemi knows about life, it is the way that it is always changing.
Can’t things just stay fucking still?
Too damn unreliable, every time he starts to get comfortable—or if not comfortable, at least accustomed—some cataclysm upends the ground beneath his feet all over again.
A father dies, and suddenly the family falls to him. His responsibility at the tender age of twelve, to help a widowed mother keep mouths fed, to keep a house clean, to protect them all from the throes of poverty.
And it’s hard, but he gets used to it…
Only for a mother to no longer be a mother, but a monster.
Death knocks at his door, takes his siblings from him, all save one. And then death hands him the cleaver, gives him the choice: take a life or lose your own.
So he kills the wretched creature that used to be every good and lovely thing he’d ever known. Slashes at her arms that heal in seconds to keep her back, keep her distracted, until she begins to slow as his own blood stains the ground. When the end comes, he watches her lie there, body heaving with gasping breaths, falling still as the sun comes up. Her eyes are open, looking at him, and for a moment there is a shine there, glittering on long dark lashes. One last trace of her humanity slipping down her cheeks and onto the dusty ground.
Genya holds her as she turns to ash.
Sanemi leaves then, Genya’s screams in his ears. It's all he can do. Walking away is agony. But it's better this way. The cataclysm of their mother becoming a demon wrenched them onto separate paths, a rift so deep between them Sanemi hopes nothing will ever bridge it. Genya will stay on the side of normality and safety and peace, and as for Sanemi…
Sanemi will wander into this desolate land where nights were ruled by demons alone.
He finds himself settling into a new normal: Scrounging for scraps of food. Wandering village to village.
He is single-minded in his determination to kill them. Kill all of them. Kill every last demon until the earth is cleansed, safe, for his little brother.
He thinks he'll live the rest of his days that way. He thinks he's ready for whatever else life can throw at him.
Then…
“You’re good at this,” a young slayer by the name of Masachika says to him when Sanemi, a scrawny, nearly feral fifteen year old, helps him kill a demon with his bare hands. He looks at Sanemi, appraising him, and then nods as if he’s come to some conclusion. “You’re coming with me, I’m going to introduce you to my master.”
It should have been easy, going with Masachika. But Sanemi is too used to the reality of sleeping in abandoned homes and the companionship of an empty stomach. He is too used to silence, the memory of his own voice a distant thing. He is…afraid…not knowing what lies ahead.
But Sanemi has never had the luxury of entertaining fear.
So he follows Masachika. He picks up a sword. He learns the art of breathing with all the rage and power of a storm, the strength of wind tearing up trees, sweeping decimation, relentless, razing the land until it is bare. Sanemi becomes as much a part of the wind as he is a living person, narrowing all his pain, his fear, his doubt, his fury into the cut of his blade.
He slays more demons than ever before.
And…he's less lonely.
Masachika fills a measure of the hole in his heart, despite that Sanemi can never seem to find it in himself to accept the friendship, the brotherhood, that is offered. Because hasn't he learned? Life is unreliable, wont to take and take and take, and Sanemi thinks that, if life has no shortage of cruelty to dole out, then isn't it better to walk alone?
Sanemi’s adamant attempts to deny his friendship never deter Masachika. And Sanemi, though he will never admit it, loves him. He can't help himself, can't keep the warmth of his friend’s gentle kindness, bright humor, from thawing the ice around his heart and bringing him into the sun.
He wishes they could have stayed that way for longer.
True to its unspoken promise, just when Sanemi thinks…maybe…maybe…maybe the worst of things is behind him…
He's holding Masachika in his arms, blood soaking his uniform, body heavy and still.
I’m not ready.
The thought is traitorous.
Has he ever been ready for when the cataclysms come?
He should expect them by now.
Sanemi knows, knows, that this was always going to happen. Nothing ever stays the same. Nothing is steady, or reliable. The only sure thing is that nothing is sure at all. From the moment he met Masachika, he should have prepared himself to lose him.
Still, knowing, expecting, doesn't make this pain less. He isn’t ready for Masachika to go. He isn’t ready to be a Hashira. He isn’t ready to be alone again.
Through his tears, he looked at the sky and he wonders…
How much more is there to take?
What a stupid fucking thing to ask.
Life was ever-shifting and moving, like plates of ice on a turbulent ocean, an illusion of stability, roiling just beneath. And, with death as her companion, life continues to punish him again and again and again.
It takes Kanae from him.
It takes his Master from him.
It takes Genya from him.
Again and again and again, it takes and it takes and it takes, and always, fucking always, Sanemi feels impossibly unprepared, left to pick up the pieces and try to forge something new, placed on an strange, unfamiliar path with no choice but to keep going, keep going, don’t stop or quit, don’t slow down, not ever.
But surely. Surely now. With Muzan dead and gone, with everything done and ended, with nothing ahead of him but empty days and four short years until the candle of his years is blown out by the mark that he can still feel burning under the skin of his cheek, surely now, life has nothing more to take from him.
Surely now he can carve out a place for himself in this life, painful perhaps, and alone as ever, but no longer with death trailing in his shadow. He would be content with that.
Damn Tomioka Giyuu to hell and back for deciding that alone isn't acceptable for either of them.
Damn him for now, at the end of it all, choosing to try to forge something between them.
Friendship, at first.
Then something more.
Sanemi is never, never, ready where Tomioka Giyuu is concerned.
He isn't ready for the warm laughter under bright stars, or blue eyes that gaze at him with so much fondness. Isn't ready to find him beautiful when the lamplight falls soft on his skin. Isn't ready for their hands to touch, or their lips to meet, or their bodies to come together until they are more one person than two.
He isn't ready for Tomioka Giyuu to tell him he loves him.
He isn't ready to admit that he loves Giyuu back.
And even though they both know, know, it is coming…
Sanemi isn’t ready for the morning of Giyuu’s twenty-fifth birthday.
He doesn't know how long he holds Giyuu’s body as it grew cold. He can't seem to let go, can't bear the thought of parting from him, this one last piece of his heart that has remained miraculously steady for the better part of four years.
Another cataclysm.
Another loss.
Alone again.
He realizes that there is nothing left to do but wait now.
Wait for his own turn.
So he fills his days with walks under a kind sun that reminds him of Giyuu’s smile.
He fills his nights with replaying his happiest memories and reading old journals left by the Hashira who’d gone on before. It makes him feel closer to them. Closer to Giyuu.
He makes himself live, knowing that for Masachika, for Genya, for Giyuu, it is all he can do. He sends gifts to the Kamados and Rengoku Senjuro. He spends time with the Uzuis and Ubuyashikis. He tends his garden. He appreciates sunsets and sunrises and thanks the gods for each new day.
When spring finally passes into summer, and summer into fall, with the approach of his twenty-fifth birthday, Sanemi can feel death one more time, waiting at the periphery of his vision. Weakness in his body. A rattle in his breath.
He doesn't shy away from it this time.
On the night of November 28th, he settles down on the engawa and stares at the sky, feeling his life ebbing away.
Death waits for him.
Once it might have scared him. But now…
He smiles.
On the other side of this last door is every person he’s ever loved.
On the other side is steadiness, stability.
An unchanging and eternal peace.
He closes his eyes, takes a final breath, and murmurs to death like it's an old friend.
“I’m ready.”