Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What makes a life fulfilling? What makes the decades hold meaning, the years complete?

Is four years enough to mend the fraying threads of his life back into some semblance of the smooth, harmonious fabric it once was? In a way, Giyuu feels both achingly world weary and obliviously newborn, all at the same time. The war against demons is over, and yet as he lies on a soft mattress recovering in the butterfly house, his war with himself drags on and on. Giyuu is not an easy person to live with—this he knows better than anyone else. His melancholy touch, his empty gaze, his torturous mid, all his traits are painfully inadequate, cheap imitations of what a real person should be, and he has to endure every loathsome thing about himself forever until death.

He is not well liked, he knows and for good reason. He barely feels human anymore, every loss eating at his mind, his heart. If he let himself feel, he knows he would shatter. Existing is laborious. Every exhale is laborious, every inhale reminds him how unworthy he is of even the air in his lungs.

He lifts his remaining hand to stare at his own pale skin and he hates, he hates, he hates. 

And yet.   

His cheek cramps where his demon slayer mark had manifested, throbbing painfully as if counting down the minutes until it takes him. It scares him. He hates that it scares him. After all those nights of crying for Sabito, for Tsutako, wishing to turn back time and die in their stead, after all the self loathing that followed, the quiet defeat of staring up at the stars and wishing to join them, he has the audacity to be afraid of death? Even when fighting Muzan, it was defeat he feared the most, not death. And yet the dull ache in his cheek, the hours trickling like water through his hands leave him terrified and small, like the child Tsutako hid in the cupboards, like the boy Sabito left behind all those years. Why, why, why is he afraid now?

It strikes him suddenly, the realisation that even after all those years of enduring himself, enduring life, he has never really lived. Only those who stood still in life run from death, and  Giyuu realises that he has laid as motionless as a corpse. He has never lived. He has never lived, and now he is dying. 

Kakushi mill about him, tending to his wounds, changing bandages, checking on the still healing remains of what was once his right arm. It aches bitterly, like it's still there. Everything aches bitterly like it's still there. Fire races up a limb that does not exist anymore, pain blooming like a flower in spring.

Will he even live to see the next spring? Perhaps it's ridiculous of him to worry about the mark when he can very well still die from his injuries. The slow sweltering of a fever on the horizon is unmistakable, having survived one already since the first week after the battle. The Kakushi recognize the oncoming  fever too, and they frantically run about, preparing tonics and supplies for its onslaught. Everyone is anxious for him to live. Except for him.In truth, he doesn't know what he wants, if he wants to continue living or to fall into oblivion. He is not the only demon slayer on the verge of death in these halls.

So many have already gone beyound the veil, why is he staying? 

His sluggish mind conjures up a hazy memory, his cheek stinging for a different, softer reason and a peach haired boy yelling at him. Somewhere he remembers a frowning tengu mask, a fatherly old man, and a kind older sister who doted on him, soft hands wiping away childish tears. Somewhere in these halls, there is a boy with a checkered green haori and a scar on his forehead and his young sister and they need him.They have gone through enough.They have lost enough.

They need Giyuu. And so he stays.

Losing an arm is not something easily survived, regardless of Uzui's loud proclamations of how easy it was for him. The initial pain is scalding hellfire, and if that does not take you, the fevers and infections which follow do try their damnedest. Giyuu's entire being feels like a contradiction, too swelteringly hot and too frigid all the same time. His right arm, or what's left of it, twists and burns, fire racing all the way from nonexistent fingertips to his flushed neck.

He wants to jump off the futon and claw at his arm, he wants to lie there forever until the earth swallows him. A few more hours before the fever truly sets in, he guesses. Time passes funnily, crawling at a snails pace one moment, and racing like lightning the next. There are no windows nearby for him to see outside, and the world feels strangely in limbo.He blinks, once, twice and then shuts his eyes, turning his head towards his right, gazing into nothing. The air crystallizes around him, heavy and thick, uncomfortably warm. His missing arm twists viciously. 

His exhales are laborious, hot breaths escaping past clenched teeth. The war against demons is over, and yet his war with his own body drags on and on.  He can hardly see the boards of the ceiling anymore. Idly, at the edges of his vision, he sees the vague shape of Sabito's familiar fox mask. Is it a trick of the light? The shadows loom strangely in these halls, filled with the dead and dying and recovering. He tries to reach out, to grasp at his haori, to hold his hands, to see his face, but Giyuu's body fails him when it matters yet again.

He can't hear the Kakushi's frantic yelling as they try to keep him awake, he can't hear Sabito telling him to keep his eyes open, to survive once more. 

He knows why he has to stay.

He inhales, and knows no more.

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When he awakes next, he regrets doing so immediately.  He feels like fire and brimstone, from the ends of his hair all the way down to his toes. His missing arm is twisting and burning and itching and a thousand other sensations all at once. His scars, new and old throb with lava, in time with his frantic heart, threatening to give out. His breaths seem choppy, like he can't inhale all the way in, like his exhales are dragging out more air than what he has. His skin is soaked through with clammy sweat. Agony makes him her vessel. Voices clamor around him, a hundred painful noises crashing like the tide on his ears. 

Agony races up his spine all the way to the back of his neck where it pools,stagnant and poisonous. His core tenses, all those muscles cultivated to help fight demons, working against him now, as though his body knows how much hates it. His eyes are still glued shut and he lacks the strength to pry them open.

He aches, he aches, he aches. He calls out for his sister, he calls out for Sabito, for Urokodaki sensei, he yearns for their soothing hands and familiar voices. He aches alone.

Fire eats his flesh and licks at his bones and he jerks and thrashes wildly to escape it, but then a hundred hands hold him down, voices crashing like tides over him as he tenses and untenses erratically under them. It hurts, it hurts, the way his body wont listen to him, the way his muscles won't calm down, the way his heart jackrabbits inside him. Everything jostles his injured arm, already wrecked nerve endings alight. A hundred hands clamp down on him, rough palms holding him down. They pin him down like a butterfly, fragile and weak and hurting, and fire cannibalizes his flesh and gnaws at his bones all the while.

Giyuu aches.

He hopes his family forgives him if he dies now. He doesn't even remember why living is important— he just wants it to end. The peach haired boy, the tengu mask, the sister, the sunshine boy and his sister, they all meld together in his head, a thousand reasons ball into one and it feels like his mind is shattering, unable to contain it all. He just wants Tsutako-nee to hold him. Fire can have him if he gets to be held again. 

It is an eternity before he untenses for the last time and those hands let up. Their palms were rough and clinical but he whines at their loss regardless, the lack of cool contact agonizing. He wants to be held, he needs it like he needs air in his lungs. He prays to whatever gods may listen, even though he knows they won't answers. They never do.

And yet.

A new set of arms wrap around him. He does not recognize those hands, the broken pattern of scars he can feel through his own fiery nerve endings are unfamiliar and frightening, but the touch soothes him, the coolness of those palms appease the fire consuming him.

They arrange him on his uninjured side, arms around him slowly tightening until his back is flush with this mysterious new person's chest.  For a moment he hopes it is Sabito who holds him so softly, so close and caring but he knows Sabito's hands could never be this unfamiliar, this new and unrecognizable to him. A whine slips from between his clenched teeth. He feels the painful warmth of fresh tears escape his still shut eyes. Even his tears are punishing him, scalding against his raw skin, making him cry even harder.

Quickly, as though sensing his agony, those cool, thick digits softly brush away his boiling tears, uncaring of how they might burn themeselves. The calloused pads of his saviour's fingers briefly clean his face soaked with tears before they go back to holding him.

Is this stranger not in pain too? Do Giyuu's burning tears not eat away at his flesh too? Is there a chance that not everything he touches is consumed by flames? The fire eating at him feels muted somehow. 

"Tomioka. Tomioka Giyuu", a quiet voice says and he realises that oh, this is Shinazugawa. This is Shinazugawa Sanemi, the pillar who hates him the most, who yells at him and glares scathingly, now brushing his tears away and cleaning his face and lowering his voice for Giyuu. He has never even heard the wind hashira speak at a normal volume before, and now that same man is whispering for him. 

" Giyuu. " Sanemi says again "It's over. It's okay. "

And how can Giyuu not believe him when he says it like that? Sanemi's arms tighten around him briefly and Giyuu breathes out like they've emptied the air from his lungs. 

Slowly, in the safety of Sanemi's arms, he untangles the faces of his loved ones, one by one. Slowly, in Sanemi's arms, the world begins to turn again. 

He inhales, and knows no more.

Chapter Text

Pain is a constant companion in a demon slayer's life.

Dark purpling bruises, pale and aching old scars, bloody wounds, infected cuts, lost blood, lost fingers— what is a little pain if you get to slay another demon? What is pain to the taste of victory, to the knowledge that one more piece of evil is gone from the world? Sanemi would give it all up to secure a world without demons, he would bleed and bleed and bleed until every last vile demon was destroyed. He would go on collecting scars for the rest of his life if it meant another family was safe. If it meant Genya was safe. If it meant his little brother got to live in a world without fear.

And they won, didn't they? He got what he had been fighting for. Muzan would never sully the earth with his poisonous presence, would never speak another vile word, would never lift his ugly fucking face ever again.

But where was Genya? In this new world free of evil, where was Genya?

Tears fall unbidden, frigid and cold, grating on the multitude of scars on his face. Winter settles deep into his bones. Pain is a constant companion. Blooming in his chest, trailing vines up his limbs, it clings and chokes and strangles, refusing to leave him for a moment.

That is what pain is— his only companion. He has nobody left.

Almost all the hashira are gone. A huge, staggering part of the corps itself is gone. Genya is gone, withered away, faded to dust, and the wind will carry his remains forever. His heart will carry him forever. Why? Why now? Why is he alive still, with undeserved victory in his hands and winter in his bones, with scars littering his body and pain as his only friend?

What was all his aching, all his perseverance, all his efforts for, if Genya is gone? If Genya isn't here to live in this new, safe world where everything is finally different?

He had been too harsh, too cruel, too uncaring. He had been a fucking idiot, too scared to let go of his fears even when they were suffocating him. Even when they were suffocating Genya. Genya, who deserved the best the world could offer. Genya, who greeted him with hope even when he was beyond it. Genya, the one person Sanemi had loved and failed the most.

Genya, Genya, Genya, Genya— if only he could travel back in time and tell him how sorry he was. Let him know how loved he was. His head swims, pain and blood loss making mush out of his brains, dredging up sorrows old and new.

So many bodies, so many faces. He is forgetting. Little by little, he is forgetting the tilt of their eyes, the curve of their smiles. Their voices fade from his memory even as their screams ring in his ears in every quiet moment. His younger siblings, Hiroshi, Koto, Kyogo, Shuya, Sumi, Teiko, his mother, Shizu — he failed to protect them all those years ago, from the monster that was his father and then from a demon, and now he is failing to protect them even in his memories.

He wants to climb onto the roof and yell profanities at the gods, he wants to scale the walls of the butterfly mansion and disappear into the forest, he wants to jump back into that accursed castle for another chance at a different sort of victory. It is the kind of want only madman could have. The multitude of wounds littering his body are nothing in comparison to the one in his heart.

But the universe cares very little for those who have lost everything— much less for a man like him who might have deserved half of it. In the grand scheme of celestial happenings, he is yet another man, indistinguishable from the rest. His pain is just pain, no matter how it clings.

So the world keeps turning. The sun dips low, past the lazily drifting clouds, past the windowsill until he cannot see it anymore. He does not care. He does not want to see it anymore either.

Perhaps it is the blood loss, perhaps it is the medicine, Sanemi is too far gone to care for anything.

He thinks of nothing, and lets himself be lost to the undertow of sleep.

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Sanemi blinks awake to the sound of crying.

Years of combat training and fighting demons have him jolting up in his futon, instincts sharp despite his injuries. His vision swims, the world tilting as he swivels his head, searching for the source of the disturbance.

The noise seems muted, muffled somehow and he realises that the person in distress must be in the room adjacent to his. Their sobbing is wretched and he can almost make out names, as though this person, alone and in pain, was calling out to someone. It strikes as chord in him, something familiar in their cries, something that takes the shape of grief and loss. It is almost cathartic, listening to this person cry. Sanemi's eyes had dried of tears and his voice had gone low days ago from screaming his grief to the heavens— listening to this person cry was almost like having the strength to cry again. Like finding the strength to scream again.

It stirs something in him, like water wearing away at stones, it wears away a little of his own tired frigity.

Cold tears drip onto his hands and he buries his  face into them. His scars ache. His wounds ache. His head swims. Silently he cries along with this mysterious kindred spirit. He could go on crying along with this spirit of water forever, he thinks. He could be worn away by rushing tears until he is dust, just like Genya.

His spirit of river water must think differently though, for the sound of sobbing stops abruptly. For a macabre moment, Sanemi wonders if his crying neighbour had finally joined whoever he had been crying out to.

Sanemi is left alone yet again, with pain as his only companion.

The silence is deafening in the loss of their brief connection. Sanemi's ears ring loud. Cold settles into his bones once more. 

Shadows twist strangely on the wall across from him. The butterfly house creaks eerily in the silence.

A moment passes.

And another. 

And another. 

Giyuu screams. 

The sound alone has Sanemi bolting up from his mattress, racing to reach the other room. 

This is a sound he knows well— he knows instantly that this is Giyuu, having fought countless battles with his fellow hashira, having heard it loud and clear, in tandem with his own yells of pain during their battle with Muzan. But he has never heard Giyuu like this. Like this, so wretched and terrified, an animal wail of pain bouncing off the walls. 

And it terrifies him. 

He limps to a halt in front of the door to Giyuu's room when his scream cuts off, just as jarring and abrupt as when he stopped crying and it sends ice sliding down his spine, hands haltingly sliding the door open as he braces himself for the worst. 

The sight that greets him would haunt his nightmares for months to come. 

About a dozen kakushi hold Giyuu down as he convulses on the bed. He looks possessed, eyes rolled back all the way into his head as his limbs thrash erratically. Foam visible at the corners of his mouth. Even in this weakened state, he is incredibly strong and Sanemi can see the way the healers have to strain themselves to restrain him, an entire team of kakushi struggling to hold a single weakened hashira down. 

Giyuu continues to thrash under their hold, drool foaming from the corners of his mouth, bandages wrapping his right arm blooming with red. His back arches of the mattress before more hands arrive to push him flat against the futon once again. His limbs bend like a ragdoll being tossed into the wind. The whites of his eyes glint in the light, and combined with the thrashing it reminds Sanemi of the way fish thrash in nets, a final ugly dance of death. 

The longer it drags on the more worried he and the kakushi get, as Giyuu twists and thrashes, saliva soaking Giyuu's pillow and blood smearing everywhere. Despite everything, the water pillar is silent throughout the whole ordeal. He doesn't even seem to be breathing. 

It feels like it lasts an eternity before Giyuu finally calms down.

Everyone in the room watches with bated breath as he inhales lungfuls of air, and Sanemi feels fit to pass out from relief, or maybe exhaustion. 

One kakushi lifts the water pillar into their lap, with their back to Sanemi, while another tends to his aggravated stump. Behind them, more kakushi swiftly change out Giyuu's bloody bedding with clean linens and mattresses. Like this, Sanemi can see Giyuu's agonized face resting on an unfamiliar shoulder, pale skin flushed with blotchy red, eyes unfocused and distressed. 

They deposit the water pillar back onto a clean futon when he lets out a faint whine. It is a little thing, easily lost among the healer's panicked whispering, but it rings in Sanemi's ears, amplifying by the thousand. Giyuu looks......another breath away from dying. He is going to die. 

Suddenly, Sanemi can't take it anymore. He rushes forwards on unsteady legs, ignoring the panicked attendants and settles down next to Giyuu. It is a strange thing, to care so much for someone he hates. The kakushi mill about them anxiously, but no one stops him. They all know what is to come. 

He lays down and wraps himself around Giyuu, arms coming up to cradle a kindred broken body. It is blameless, he thinks. He cannot allow  someone to pass on like this, overwhelmed and alone. Secretly he knows he needs it as much as Giyuu does.

He wraps his arms fully around this spirit of water, knowing that he would soon be slipping through his fingers. His body is warm against Sanemi's cold bones. Tears make flowing streams on his face and Sanemi wipes them away, holds him closer, mindful of their injuries. Giyuu's tears are hot on the pads of his fingers. Despite the warmth, he wishes he could stem their flow.

"Tomioka. Tomioka Giyuu. " His voice sounds strange now, even to himself, hoarse and low.

He feels Giyuu inhale, and then halt.

"Giyuu" He breathes, at a loss for words and bracing for the inevitable, "It's over, it's okay. "

A weak attempt at comfort. A pale imitation of something a real person could offer, but it is all Sanemi can give. 

He tightens his arms around his kindred spirit, and braces. 

Giyuu. Exhales. 

The elation that passes through his body would keep him warm for weeks to come.

Sanemi near crushes Giyuu to his chest to feel him breathe. It means next to nothing he knows, Giyuu is still nowhere near healthy. But something tells him that after today, they might pull through this. 

Faintly, he can hear the Kakushi celebrate amongst themselves. Giyuu breathes against him, body warm with life. 

It soothes something in him. Like a balm on old wounds, like the waters of a warm spring on sore muscles. 

He thinks of nothing, and lets himself be lost to the undertow of sleep.