Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tanjiro descends the mountain alone, of course.

The days were growing shorter and the nights longer, and it was slowly becoming harder and harder to make the trip. Soon, they’d hardly be able to go at all. So they needed the food, and therefore, the money, and therefore, for Tanjiro to sell as much charcoal as he could. So down the mountain he goes.

He goes by himself, of course, because the terrain is difficult even without the presence of snow and ice, and his younger siblings could hardly make the trip once, even if he brought the cart. Kie doesn’t go, because they’d already lost one parent and couldn’t afford another, and Nezuko stays to help with the younglings. Takeo stayed to chop more wood to make the charcoal, and Hanako and Shigeru were still too young to help with much of anything. Rokuta, of course, stayed with their mother. So: Tanjiro goes alone.

What happens next is largely to be expected: the snowstorm arrives earlier and kicks up a bigger mess than previously thought, and Tanjiro takes shelter with his neighbor Saburo, a man he’s rarely spoken to, but never acted unkindly. A bit odd, perhaps, but never unkind.

Despite the storm, the Father Of All Demons still arrives at the Kamados’ property and wreaks His terrible fury on everyone that crosses Him, and one by one, the Kamados fall. Mother and children, each in turn, all save one- the son at the foot of the mountain.

The Father Of All Demons chooses who He seems the worthiest of His gift, and leaves the rest. A welcoming feast, should His chosen’s transformation be successful. He takes His leave quickly as He always does, the coward, and leaves His newest child to incubate under the cover of the snowstorm. A treacherous womb of wind and ice, sure to keep away anything troublesome until His offspring was strong enough to fend for itself.

So Nezuko, his chosen, falls into dreamless sleep, festering with tainted blood, fated only to wake when her brother returns home. Dead to the world, Nezuko begins to turn.

But as the hours pass, one by one, her family begins to wake.

- - -

Rokuta awakens first.

A demon infant isn’t all that different from a human one, as it turns out, so Rokuta awakens first, and when he does, and sees that he’s functionally alone, each of his family members in differing states of dormancy around him, he does what any infant does: he wails. He wails, because he’s alone, and scared, and hungry, and it doesn’t feel much different than it did the day before. It doesn’t feel different at all.

- - -

Kie awakens, next.

Demon though she may be now, the sense of motherhood remains, and there is no humanity to be found to render her children foreign to her. So when her youngest begins to cry, she does what any experienced mother would: she rises, perhaps with sleep still lingering on her eyelids, but still she rises, bloodied and not-broken from wounds she doesn’t quite remember getting.

She stumbles on unsteady legs, as new and delicate as a fawn, and manages to make her way over to Rokuta, gently plucking him from the arms of her eldest daughter. It doesn’t strike her as particularly odd; Nezuko would nap out here on occasion, when the weather was warm, with whatever sibling that deigned to join her. That she, too, is bloodied from wounds that no longer mar her body doesn’t strike Kie as odd, either, nor does her (and everything else around them) being dusted with frost. Kie holds no fear for the cold now, and neither does the child fussing in her arms. She can’t remember why she ever did.

Rokuta keeps fussing, and while it’s a bit earlier than she would’ve typically started breakfast, a half-moon still bright and high in the sky, it probably wouldn’t hurt to start now, so this, too, doesn’t feel all that different from before. Something hearty, perhaps, something filling. The hunger that resides in the pit of her stomach is strange and familiar at once. It’s sharp, sharper than anything she can remember experiencing before, but: inconsequential, somehow. This is not a hunger she will die from, this she knows. It will and is causing her a gnawing pain unlike any other, but she knows down to the bone that it will not kill her. Most things won’t.

Now, Rokuta had been teething for a good long while, and he was certainly old enough where he no longer needed to be breastfed. He could manage most soft foods, and some solids. Normally, she’d have her eldest, Tanjiro, go out with his sister Nezuko or his brother Takeo into the woods to forage and hunt. But Tanjiro was still down the mountain, and Takeo in dreamless slumber. So: Kie goes to forage and hunt, like she used to when her children were too young and her husband too sick. She might be rusty, but the knowledge of it never left her, truly, and it rises to the surface of her consciousness in newer, more vivid detail in some ways and a faraway blur in others.

She doesn’t remember being this skilled at tracking deer and other wild game. She doesn’t remember her steps being so quiet and fleet, seeming to hardly even touch the ground. But here she is, barefoot in snow several inches deep, and it hardly even registers. There’s no crunch of ice as none gives way beneath her, no mist from her breath entering the cold around her. She hardly breathes at all. She knows, on some level, that she is not the same as she was in some nebulous Before, which becomes farther and foggier the longer she’s awake, but she can’t bring herself to be bothered by it.

It can’t have been that different, she thinks. The mountain is her home, still, and so is the house that she’s lived in since she’d first been married. She adores their children, still. She does her best to provide for them. But the hunting of this deer feels different, somehow. It isn’t as if what she’s doing now feels wrong, exactly- one moment she’s observing it across the glen, and the next, it’s fallen with hardly a sound as moonlight glints off her bloody talons. But there was more to it, she thinks. She used a bow, maybe, or a spear. It feels awfully cumbersome, now. Too much time spent, too many middle steps. This way is better.

Rokuta securely in his sling, she hefts the deer carcass over her shoulder easily. Is it supposed to be this easy?

She supposes it doesn’t matter, as long as her children are happy and fed. She would provide for them, as she always had.

- - -

Takeo awakens next, and Hanako and Shigeru shortly after.

His mother was in the middle of preparing their meal when he awoke. It feels like any other family meal to him; Tanjiro was still Away (and the meaning of that word becomes increasingly opaque as memories of Town slip from him), and his remaining siblings were sleeping, save Rokuta, who always woke first and loudest.

Takeo doesn't feel any less like himself than he did the day before. He's still sluggish, as he always is when he first wakes up, rolling over and yawning multiple times before committing to getting up, and he's still the first of his siblings to arrive at mealtime. Takeo had always been a big eater, and he'd always try to sneak whatever extra bites he could, especially if Tanjiro wasn't around to monitor him. And this holds true, now, After whatever it is that's meant to have changed him. Changed them.

He feels. He feels himself, but more. Himself, unfettered. Parts taken off here, replaced there. He doesn't act any different, and he doesn't feel any different, truly. He still loves his mother. He still feels a begrudging affection for his siblings, especially Tanjiro, his favorite, though he'd never say it to his face.

Takeo, upon seeing his mother dressing down a large deer- she must have gotten it earlier- slinks around behind her, sizing up a portion of it to swipe. As always, when he dives for it, Kie is there to smack his hands away. Takeo whines in his throat, looking at her plaintively, but she's been his mother for far too long to be fooled by such crocodile tears. She growls, not loudly or meanly, just enough to give him a warning, and he backs off, sulking. A typical conversation for breakfast, really.

He comes back not a moment later, plopping down next to her and bumping his head into her shoulder, a plea for attention and forgiveness. Kie rumbles her approval, and takes a small, bite-sized portion she hadn't yet shredded for Rokuta to give to him. Takeo pouts, having expected more, but he'll have to wait his turn. Rokuta is the youngest. Takeo knows he needs to eat first.

Takeo isn't too proud to turn his nose up at what he's given, however, and scarfs it down, hardly taking the time to chew. Kie nips at his nose, scolding him, and he scurries away before he can be scolded further, chewing his food be damned.

The next step of their usual morning ritual is for Takeo to wake his other siblings, impatient to eat, and so he does, taking the time to roughhouse with Hanako and Shigeru since neither Tanjiro nor Nezuko were there to stop him. Shigeru, hot-headed, snarls upon being woken up, and Hanako yelps in surprise and complaint. There's a small scuffle, and then all three of them race into the yard, chasing each other, tumbling about. It might have started in irritation but it's given way to genuine joy and play, the sounds of their play-growling filling the small hours of the morning. Their mother lets them tussle, for now. It's not as if their food was ready yet, so they had plenty of time.

Inevitably, there's a moment, in their roughhousing, wherein Takeo is too rough with his younger sister. It's all too typical of him, really. At ten, he was growing faster than Tanjiro ever did at that age, and he never quite knew his own strength. The thing of note here, however, is that in that nebulous Before that none of them could seem to grasp, the most that Hanako would end up with was a couple bumps and bruises. Half the time, she wouldn't even have felt any sort of pain, lasting or not, and would be more upset that Takeo had scared or startled her, somehow.

He'd pop up behind her and be just a little too loud, or accidentally bowl her over in an attempt to charge at Shigeru, and after, there'd be a moment or two of ominous silence before the waterworks started. Hanako was only eight, after all. She'd run to their mother, or their older siblings would come running, and Takeo would be scolded. He didn't intend to be a troublemaker, it just sort of happened. The key difference here being that typically, Hanako didn't end up with slashes on her arms from ruddy, nascent claws.

First came the swipe of Takeo's hand, with all the restraint an excited child usually had (which is to say: none), the forming of cuts and the spilling of blood, and then, Hanako's startled shriek. Then the quiet, when her brothers looked at her with dawning horror and her lip wobbled and suddenly Nothing Was Okay and Everything Was Horrible. There's so much blood. There's too much blood, for what should just be horseplay in the front yard. But that doesn't particularly matter to Hanako. The only thing that matters, really, is that she was scared, however momentary that was. So: Hanako cries, like any eight-year-old would do, demon or not, and Shigeru runs to their mother to tell on Takeo.

Takeo panics, of course, bolting after Shigeru, but his younger brother is off like a shot. Had he always been this fast? It certainly felt like it, typically, but even this instance of it seemed to be too much. His legs should not move so fast as to blur, nor should they blast away the snow around them like a gust of wind, and yet: here they were, Shigeru doing exactly that.

He tugs on their mother's sleeve, chirping loudly, and attempts to drag her over. But Shigeru is six, and their mother is in her thirties, so Kie does not move until she is good and ready. She gets to her feet, picks up Rokuta, and pads over to Hanako, still blubbering. Kie rumbles soothingly, drawing her child into her embrace, and this helps immensely, as it always has. Hanako burrows into her shoulder and hiccups, still upset, and Kie nuzzles into her daughter's hair. She doesn't forget about Takeo, however, and turns an unimpressed eye on him. Takeo freezes, a yelp halfway out his mouth, but he still manages to drag himself over when Kie motions for him to.

Kie stares at him expectantly. Takeo grumbles and growls, stubborn, but Shigeru yowls at him angrily, having none of it. Kie shoots Shigeru a Look, and he quiets, albeit resentfully, and when she turns that same look on Takeo, he can hardly stand it another few moments before giving in. He just shy of stomps his way up to them (because big boys don't stomp their feet but he can still be Mad), and trills, calling for Hanako's attention. She looks up at him, eyes red and puffy, and Takeo bumps her forehead with his own. An apology. Hanako accepts, and moves from Kie's embrace into Takeo's, clinging tightly. He returns the hug, and despite the show he puts on - huffing and puffing and snapping his teeth- he doesn't fool anyone. Anyone with eyes can see he is holding on just as tightly.

Kie examines the slashes in question- already smaller than they were before; she must be seeing things- and elects to kiss it better. Instinctively, it feels the Correct course of action, beyond mere show of affection and reassurance, in ways she cannot quite explain.

Kie presses a kiss to her child's wounds, perfectly motherly, and when she pulls away, they’ve already sealed up, as if they’d never been there at all.

- - -

Hanako, of course, is ravenous after that whole experience.

After Rokuta had eaten his fill- far more than Kie ever expected- though he is a growing boy, she supposed- it was time for her other children to have their turn, now that the survival of the most fragile among them had been secured. Takeo and Shigeru, she expected some squabbling from, but from Hanako, who was easily the sweetest and most even-tempered among them? That was a bit of a surprise.

It had been a bit of a rough morning for her, Kie supposed, and it was understandable that Hanako would have some lingering resentment towards Takeo, but Shigeru? Absolutely not.

But that didn’t appear to stop Hanako from acting out like she was- snarling, growling, snapping her teeth at her brothers, carrying on- this was unacceptable behavior. Not even her brothers went this far in their bickering.

Kie rumbles a warning, far deeper and more gravelly than she ought to be capable of, but it feels no less natural to her. Hanako stops dead in her tracks, and her eyes go wide and her cheeks go pink with embarrassment. Takeo and Shigeru both go quiet and contrite as well, all three of their faces smeared with the innards of the deer. Kie regards them with a measuring stare, then nods, and they continue to eat, albeit in a much more well-behaved manner.

She looks at the remains of the deer and back to her children again, thinking to herself. Gauging their hunger, and her own. They would need more, she realizes. Much, much more.

She looks to the woods.

Perhaps a hunting lesson is in order.

- - -

It’s unclear, exactly, what could’ve caused things to go as sideways as they did. Perhaps their sire was not as thorough as He thought He’d been, in ending them. Perhaps, in His haste to get away, He had not been careful enough, in passing on His gift to Nezuko, and her mother and siblings had also been given it through sheer exposure. Their sire was a gluttonous hound, after all, and their wounds had been many and deep. If Nezuko in her incubation could turn away from Him, perhaps the rest of them could, as well.

In any case, receive His gift they had, and turn from His sight they did, hidden away from Him and the rest of the world on their mountain. The storm lingers far longer than it should, days instead of hours, and Tanjiro is driven half-mad with worry as his neighbor refuses to let him return. 

It’d been an easy enough thing to ignore, at first, Saburo’s ramblings about a family Tanjiro can’t ever recall seeing, the many creatures living in the shadowy corners of the world that stole them away from him, first in life, then once more in death, wearing masks of their faces in increasingly crueler paints. It’s not that he doesn’t believe him, exactly; he’s sure that Saburo went through something tragic, and he has no doubt that they met their end to some horrible thing that crawled out of the woods. He’s just more inclined to think they were lost to a ravenous animal or even a bandit before he’d ever think to consider whatever it was his neighbor called a demon.

It’s good, in some ways, that Saburo keeps him here- he can earn more money this way, doing odd jobs around town, he can bring back more supplies- but the storm is barely at its tail end before Tanjiro is rushing back up the mountain path, hot on its heels.

Kie, meanwhile, had spent those days teaching her children to hunt. Takeo had already been hunting with Tanjiro, and had to be old enough to learn to manage on his own, she thought, and Hanako and Shigeru old enough to tag along and observe. Their success abounds, both in Kie’s teaching them and in the children picking up these lessons, as if they’d always known them. Between her and her children, the blizzard was not the only thing raining terror down on the mountain. Limited to the local wildlife, mind, but that didn’t make the vision of blood and gore trailing up the mountain any less gruesome or any more reassuring for Tanjiro.

That the blood is of various animals, from what he can tell- tufts of fur, shed antlers, bones broken open that couldn’t possibly be human- is no less unnerving. The Kamados were no strangers to bears, here, and Tanjiro cannot help but fear the worst. What if- what if a bear had woken up mid-slumber, and sought shelter from the blizzard in their cottage? What if it’d woken up starving, and furious, and no amount of noise and racket could dissuade it otherwise? And in the back of his mind, emerging unbidden: Saburo’s cryptic warnings. Pushed away, but no longer able to be shaken off so easily.

Tanjiro knows, objectively, that even if he had been home, there’s not much to be done against a bear that has tasted the forbidden flesh of man, but. But still. He should’ve been there. He could’ve- he could’ve done something, even if it was only stealing a precious few moments for the rest of his family to get away. And even if he couldn’t- he would rather have perished alongside them. He would rather have joined them in death than be left in this world without them.

He shakes the thought from his head. He can’t afford to waste any more time.

As he hurries up the mountain path, the blood and gore only grows worse. The surrounding trees are painted with viscera, and there are patches where the snow has turned to red sludge with increasing frequency the closer he gets to the family cottage. When it is joined by the scent of human blood- days old, by this point, but its coppery tang is no less familiar in his nose, nor does its age or staleness make it any less discomforting- the dread that fills him is unlike any he’s experienced before. His mouth goes dry, and fingers numb, hands and jaw clenched like he can cling onto the last swiftly-deteriorating sliver of hope he has through sheer force alone.

The fear fills his lungs and stomach as though it were hot tar, dark and tacky and suffocating. He already was having trouble keeping himself calm, pulse even and breathing as steady as he could manage to be, and now he can scarcely breathe at all. An odd thing, that, being that he has known this mountain for far too long as friend and home and family to fear it stealing the breath out of him or any of his siblings, and yet: here he is, scrambling up the mountainside as fast as his legs will carry him, numb to the cold, numb to any scrapes or cuts or bruises, numb to anything that isn’t the searing, syrupy dread or his gasping, stuttering breaths.

The cottage is a scene of abject horror.

As he crests the hill on which his family home sits, there is nothing he could have envisioned, no nightmare he could have conceived in whatever darkened fervor it would’ve taken to desecrate his home like this. The ground is littered with torn flaps of skin and hide, and the shattered fragments of broken bones. That there is no soft tissue to be seen, no muscle, no organs, no meat, paints as vivid a picture in their absence as their presence would have, and Tanjiro honestly doesn’t know which is worse. Saburo had never gone into detail, in explaining whatever it was that had ripped his life out from under him, had stolen his family away, but Tanjiro can’t help but think that it would’ve looked something like this. The gory remains surrounding every inch of the property seem to be (he hopes, desperately) mostly animal in nature, and while there is a wide variety of shape, size, and species, there is nothing recognizably human. A shallow, tepid comfort at best.

Then: the unmistakable crack of newly broken bone, resounding through the clearing. He cannot help the flinching gasp that escapes him, though he does his best to stamp it out quickly. He draws his hatchet with shaking hands, willing them to go still in the deathgrip of his fist around the handle. It’s a small thing, really, fit for woodcutting and not much else, but he knew, he knew when his father passed- so brief in his absence that Tanjiro’s grief is an open wound, so long that his younger siblings have already begun to forget his face- that he would have to take his father’s place, as protector, provider, whatever else his family would need. But he knows in his heart that he was not made for this. There is very little that could have been done to prepare him for this, and his mother and father have done admirably, for what little they could have done for their eldest son. But the fact remains: Tanjiro is only barely not a child, nor is he anywhere close to being the man he needs to be for his family. He looks at the cottage again, swallowing. He steels himself. He has to try.

He circles around to the back of the property, listening closely. There are no more cracks ringing through the air, at least not as loud as the one that announced the presence of whatever it was that resided in the cottage now, but he can hear movement within, and snarling, and crunching. There’s no clear sign of his family anywhere, alive or not, and he has to stamp down on the panic building in his chest, choking him. Tanjiro swallows around the scalding lump of coal that’s lodged itself in his throat. Forces himself onwards.

On the back porch. There, on dark wood damp and half-frozen with snow. The petal pink of Nezuko’s favorite kimono, just barely seen underneath. The lump in his throat drops through his stomach to the soles of his feet, and he stands there, frozen with shock and disbelief. Forces himself forward again, one dragging step after the other until he manages to stumble into a tilted run, fear gone from frozen terror to frenzied desperation.

He scrapes the snow away, exhuming his sister with hands that have already gone red and raw from the cold. Impossibly, when he manages to find a pale, limp hand beneath the shroud of white and red frost, Nezuko is still warm. She still has a pulse. Frantic, Tanjiro unburies the rest of prone form with a haste he did not know he had and yet one that still felt painfully slow. This is why, this is why he should’ve been here, if he’d been here, if he’d only been here-

A creak. The familiar slide of the back door, the groan of the wood. The little thump as it catches in the one part of its track that had begun to go crooked- he still- he still needs to fix that, some part of him thinks, the part of him that’s left his body and drifts listlessly overhead- before sliding over completely. So familiar, so intimate a trait of his family’s home, painted in such shades of uncanny wrongness that it now feels manufactured, somehow, a wholly new and strange entity wearing the former’s skin in some grotesque, imitating parody.

Something is standing there, in the doorway. Tanjiro realizes, distantly, that beneath the sound of the opening door and his own shallow, quickened breaths, was the little, soft steps of something small padding over to the doorway, to join whatever had opened it. There’s a curious sort of sound after, an inquisitive chirp, not unlike a cat’s, but he’s never heard any creature like this. It runs too close to a human’s voice for comfort, but it doesn’t actually succeed in sounding altogether human, either. There’s something about it, though, that he recognizes, clear as a bell, and its familiar toll creates an entirely new kind of dread in him.

Tanjiro turns his head. He can’t help it, neck turning of its own accord. In the doorway, splattered with gore: his younger siblings. Hanako, and Shigeru. Eyes bright and sharp, pupils slitted. Reflecting light like the eyes of some beast of prey, peering out at him from the darkened corners of the woods. The sight of it paralyzes him. Demons, he thinks, hysterical. Saburo was right. Saburo was right-

The Thing That Looks Like His Brother is holding what appears to be some dark lump of flesh. A liver, perhaps. It takes a bite, staring back at him curiously. Its teeth are too sharp, and so are its nails. The tearing of the flesh resounds with a disquieting squelch, and blood dribbles down its chin.

Tanjiro gags. He has to leave, he has to grab Nezuko and flee back to Saburo’s. Whatever grief he feels, whatever misery, he’ll just have to put it away. There’s no time.

He chances the briefest of looks at Nezuko, who lies there unmoving and mostly unburied. The Thing That Wears Hanako’s Skin chirps again. It must have been the one to open the door. Its voice is questioning, worried, perhaps. The expressions these creatures wear are far too close to the real thing for comfort. The sound of it is agony.

Tanjiro lunges, making a dive for Nezuko.

The sudden movement scares his not-siblings, it seems, as they rear back and scramble away. He succeeds in pulling Nezuko into his arms, and makes a run for it. That, apparently, startles them out of their initial fear and into a different sort of distress, as they start crying out with voices that are entirely too similar to his brother and sister for them to not be genuine. Tanjiro feels a twinge of guilt, but- if his neighbor is right, then they could not possibly be them. How could they be? How could they not be? He swallows his guilt, and runs, runs, runs-

He’s hardly out of the yard again when Takeo- something in the shape of Takeo- appears before him, blood splattered all down his front, stepping out of the trees and onto the path. Tanjiro veers and tilts and almost falls, but manages to keep himself upright, miraculously. The Thing That Looks Like Takeo stumbles back, giving a surprised yelp when Tanjiro nearly knocks him right over, and lets out the same distressed cry as the rest of his not-siblings did back at the house when they saw him take off to begin with.

Not-Takeo had an entire stag hefted over his diminutive shoulders, Tanjiro realizes in a fit of hysteria, and it’s not even the strangest thing he’s seen today, but the sight of it is so absurd that it’s enough to send him spiraling all over again. He staggers, and has to slow for a moment he can’t afford to lose, somehow keeping himself and Nezuko from falling over again. It’s a moment too many, it seems, and that fact becomes apparent soon enough.

Not-Hanako and Not-Shigeru have followed him away from the cottage, and both cry at him, their inhuman voices laced with distress. Guilt pierces through him again, and he can’t tell which time he left the cottage is causing it. Not-Takeo grumbles and whines at him, annoyed and worried at once in the same way his brother was. Is. He doesn’t know.

He tries to take a breath, calm himself down. It comes out shaky, stuttering. He doesn’t know when his vision began to blur or when his face became hot and damp with tears, but here he was, nonetheless. Tanjiro’s whole body aches, shuddering with each sob he smothers, and he can no longer bring himself to run. He’d failed. He was going to die. He and Nezuko were going to die. The tears come in force, now, and he cannot will himself to stop.

His not-siblings seem hesitant to approach him. Hanako comes the closest, cooing at him gently as if they were both the same, attempting to comfort her kin as if her clothing hadn’t been dyed a deep, saturated scarlet, as if her mouth and hands hadn’t either. Tanjiro clutches Nezuko to himself, legs refusing to move.

Impossibly, over the reeking, sticky-sweet stench of old, congealing blood and flesh left to rot, the scent of spring drifts over to them. A floral sweetness, paired with the crisp moisture of snowmelt and earthy petrichor. There is something distinctly blue about the scent, peaceable, tranquil, that conjures something familiar in his mind. Midday, under a clear sky. A gentle breeze, carrying away a summer heat yet to come. Its calmness passes over him, seeping deep into his bones like the warmth of the sun, shining directly overhead.

His fear feels so far away, now, and he knows that this probably isn’t good, for the fear that choked him with grasping, smoking fingers to bleed from him so easily, but with how quickly it slips from him, he doesn’t quite know why it isn’t. His tears slow, his chest stops heaving, and the peace that has laid itself over him like a shroud now holds his heart in a gentle grasp. He is adrift, held in the space he only travels just before sleep, when his mind is dark and quiet and whatever dreams lying in wait begin to trickle in, color and shape morphing in tandem until he has surrendered completely to them. That this happens in the waking world is of no concern to him, somehow, whatever remaining of his panic flickering out, fragile as a lone, burning candle.

His vision turns blue at the edges, painted in the colors of his dreamscape, and something around them in the woods shifts, the snow stirring noiselessly as movement runs beneath. They’re a long way away from spring, yet, but this doesn’t appear to bother the growing stalks emerging from underneath the snow any. Up they come, in green and blue and violet, blossoms that could not have come from anywhere but the hands of the divine.

Another figure steps into his line of sight. A little peculiar, that; he should have been able to detect their scent long beforehand. It occurs to him, possibly too late he realizes, that the scent of spring and frost and grave soil comes from this figure, as if they’d torn themselves from the frozen earth. As they step fully away from the line of trees, Tanjiro recognizes the silhouette as that of his mother. She carries Rokuta in her arms, and small, delicate blue flowers burst from her every step. Her dark hair flows long and loose, and her hands and feet are red and bloody.

He should be distressed by this change in her countenance, he thinks, but Tanjiro is awash with the azure tranquility. His mother’s expression is that of calm, open affection, and her eyes are clear and bright, sharp as a cat’s. She calls to him, an inquisitive rumble emanating more from her ribs than it does her mouth or throat, and the sound rolls through him as though it were the patter of a warm, spring rain.

His mother kneels to meet his eye, shifting Rokuta to one arm. She runs a hand through his hair. Wipes away his tears. And when Rokuta reaches for him, fussing, babbling, it is the same as it was every other day Tanjiro had seen him, claws or no claws, blood or no blood.

Kie presses a kiss to his cheek, continuing to rumble reassurance to her son, and Takeo, Hanako, and Shigeru approach, chirping inquisitively. Hanako wraps her arms around his shoulders, and Shigeru chuffs and growls, tugging at his sleeve, demanding his attention. Takeo, of course, stands to the side, huffing. It’s so typical of him, even in this new visage, that it shakes a small laugh out of Tanjiro. Takeo, realizing he’s being teased, snarls at him, stomping forward and throwing himself into Tanjiro’s side with another huff. It knocks the breath out of him, and a little bit of sense back in. Shigeru doesn’t appreciate being shoved away, and snaps at Takeo, flashing sharpened teeth that Tanjiro begins to remember should alarm him. The blue coloring his sight fades away, as does the odd tranquility. And yet: the fear does not return, at least not how it was before.

His neighbor hadn’t spoken of this, when speaking of the tragedy that ravaged his life. Saburo had spoken of blood and bone, but not of it being that of animals, and he’d spoken of the wretched creatures that had slaughtered his family, but not his family rising again of their own accord. But watching his siblings- his brothers squabbling, his sister attempting to intervene before being drawn in herself- it doesn’t feel all that different from when he’d left, days before. His family is… different, yes, but they’re still here. They still care for him, certainly. That has to mean something , he thinks.

Kie gently pulls Nezuko into her free arm, handing Rokuta off to Tanjiro to hold her properly with both. Rokuta is appeased upon being placed in his brother’s arms, happy to coo at him and put his hands on his brother’s face. The teeth that had been in the process of coming in are now noticeably sharper, Tanjiro notes. But Rokuta’s voice and demeanor- all of theirs- are unmistakable. This isn’t ideal, obviously. But at the very least, Tanjiro is willing to try.

- - -

The next few days are certainly. Interesting, to say the least.

It’s a curious thing, to be fussed over so much and so soon after being scared half to death that his family had been killed (and then, that they would kill him), though he supposed it’s not that surprising, considering how long he was gone. It was rare, almost unheard of, for him to be gone this long, especially since his father had passed.

The chuffing is new, though.

It wasn’t as if he’d never heard the sound before, or somehow didn’t know what it was. On the contrary; he’d heard it more times from the neighborhood cats in town than he could count. It didn’t make it less novel, though, to hear it from his siblings when they were particularly excited about something, or angry, or content. It’s an all-purpose sort of sound, Tanjiro is realizing. The catlike behavior didn’t stop there, either; the grooming is new, or at least the methods used to do so were, using hands and fingers instead of combs, and distressingly, eating whatever pests they may or may not have found, as if it were a snack.

His siblings were never quiet about their desire for his attention, even before all this, but it was downright subtle in comparison to now. Shigeo would throw himself over his lap and stare up at him, calling to him with what sounded suspiciously like meowing. Hanako would lean on him and nuzzle into his back, his shoulder, his chest- whatever she could reach. And Takeo being, well, himself, leaned on him as well, before quickly growing impatient, yowling at him and smacking whatever Tanjiro was holding out of his hands. Now, this was all very sweet and endearing, but he had to clear the surrounding woods of their debris, at some point, and they simply would not let him out of their sight. Cleanup needed to happen first and foremost, and their increasingly unreasonable demands for his attention was making that difficult.

He managed to make it work, however, so long as he always had at least one of them with him at all times. It was typically whoever had the fortune of not being volunteered by their mother with… whatever it was she needed help with, when she went out into the woods. Tanjiro tried not to think about it too much. She only ever came back with the carcasses of animals, and never carried the scent of human blood, but it didn’t make it any easier to see her splattered with blood, at all.

It became a little easier once he somehow managed to convince each of them to switch to clean clothes while he washes the dirtied ones in the nearby creek, but communicating his intentions had been a whole other endeavor, and not one he’d like to relive again.

So: Tanjiro gathers the bones and piles them up behind the house, near the woodstove where he usually made the charcoal. He does the same with the shed antlers, and the teeth, and the fur, wool, and hides, separating them into neat piles once he brought them to the woodstove. The little ones begin to view it as something of a game, he thinks, because without prompting, they begin to mimic him, gathering all they can in their arms and unceremoniously dropping it in a messy heap once they’re within range of the woodstove. Then, they race off again, coming back only when they’ve filled their arms again. Tanjiro appreciates the help; it’s unclear how lucid his family actually is, so he can hardly ask for help when he actually needs it. He won’t complain when it’s freely given.

He tries to remember what he’d previously been taught, by parents and grandparents alike. He separates the bones into what could be made into tools and what could be used to make a base for soup broth. He finds what hides and furs can be tanned, the shed fur that can be woven into skeins of yarn, the teeth, hooves, and antlers that could be cleaned and used to make jewelry. The rest, he burns, or buries. They couldn’t afford the danger that leaving it around for anyone or anything to find could bring. It’s grueling work, but. He’d do more for his family, if he could.

It’s a good thing he got as many supplies as he did, when he was stuck down in the village. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to go back, or if his family can even come with him. He doesn’t want to think about it. They’ll just have to make do with what the mountain would provide them, at least for now.

His bustling around the woods seems to stir some kind of memory of being human, he thinks; when he pins the freshly-cleaned hides to the clothesline alongside their laundry, his mother’s expression becomes curious, and then distant. It’d been from her mother that Tanjiro had learned any of this, after all, so it made sense for his own mother to know more than he would.

As if reading his thoughts, his mother takes a couple tentative steps forward, moving as though she were in a dream. She rumbles and chirps, handing Rokuta off to him as if to say, no, dear, let me take care of that. He can practically hear her voice, low and warm, as she called him, called each of her children in turn, “babe” or “baby” or “bunny.” He’d never been particularly embarrassed by any of these pet names, unlike his younger brothers who mostly suffered through them, but he never thought he’d feel so bereft without them.

There is an awful lot Tanjiro would do, he’s realizing, to hear his mother speak these names again. To hear his brothers’ cries of protest, his sisters’ laughter. He never thought he’d be without them. True, yes, that his family still lives, so it wasn’t as though they were gone, but this was not the same. It terrified him, to think of how long it would take for them to return to normal. If they could do such a thing, at all.

His vision blurs and he sniffs, holding back a sudden, irrational sob. Warmth builds behind his eyes, and he attempts to swallow down whatever tears attempting to burst out of him. In his arms, Rokuta coos at him, patting his face. Tanjiro sniffs again, louder this time, and after his mother pins the next fur to the line, she turns back to her son, rumbling inquisitively.

What’s wrong, bunny? he can practically hear her say, and this is about when his tears begin to overflow. Kie wipes the tears from his eyes and presses kisses to the top of his head, rumbling all the while. It doesn’t stop the tears, but it helps.

Inside the house, Nezuko still lies prone in her bed. Dead to the world.

- - -

It’s a little easier after that.

His family begins to pick things back up in bits and pieces. Once he’s sufficiently cleared enough of the remains of their hunts from the roads (at least enough that no stray travelers would see this and presume the worst, like he did), he resumes cutting wood and preparing charcoal. Even if he wasn’t planning on going back down the mountain anytime soon, they still needed some for the house, and he’d already let their supply of it fall entirely too low as it was.

Takeo watches him while he does it, his eyes taking on that same distant look that their mother had. Tanjiro isn’t sure why, at first, beyond a flimsy hope, until he’s distracted by a fussing Rokuta. Their mother was out hunting, and while she could manage doing so with her youngest on hand, it was much easier to do it by herself. So Tanjiro tends to Rokuta, and when he comes back to the woodstove, Takeo has already taken over preparing the charcoal.

Tanjiro had fooled himself, for a moment, into thinking that everything had gone back to normal, but then his brother turned his head, and he was greeted with slitted red eyes and an annoyed grumble. Takeo never did like it when he hovered over him, and the familiarity of the scene only makes it all the more painful. It must show on his face, because Takeo drops the grumpy facade long enough for the worry to flicker through, and he whines in his throat, putting the wood down in order to trot over to Tanjiro, to ask for reassurance and give it in turn.Tanjiro gives it readily, Takeo wrapping himself around his torso, under his haori.

His younger brother buries his face in his chest, somehow managing to growl and whine in complaint simultaneously. It’s so emblematic of Takeo that it startles a laugh out of Tanjiro. It’s entirely too close to a sob, and Takeo stares at him and whines and growls and won’t stop until Tanjiro holds him and runs a hand through his hair. It’s what usually worked, when Takeo was otherwise inconsolable like this.

Tanjiro takes a deep breath, calming them both, and shushes him gently. Takeo stops whining (but not growling), and proceeds to start purring instead, like the neighborhood strays. That in itself was new, but his brother, being the contradictory creature that he was, invented an entirely new sound, made by overlaying the two sounds overtop the other.

This, too, is just so typical, just so unmistakably Takeo, that it simply cannot be anything or anyone else. Another laugh bubbles out of him, and while he wouldn’t say the tears are no longer there, they’re certainly less present than before. The absurdity of the past couple days continues to spring forth from him unbidden, laughter shaking his overtired frame, and he knows he’s crept into hysteria when Takeo looks at him again with the biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes he’s ever seen. Tanjiro is giggling in earnest now, face wet with tears again, and his brother very visibly doesn’t know how to deal with whatever it is he’s doing, worry and annoyance mixing in equal measure. Takeo warbles in complaint much like a spoiled dog that feels it’s been very put-upon, and this just starts it all over again.

Takeo seems to think that Tanjiro is laughing at him, which strictly speaking isn’t untrue, so Takeo keeps complaining with increasing volume, and Tanjiro keeps laughing with mounting delirium, and the two just keep feeding into each other until Tanjiro is doubled over with laughter, Takeo is damn-near yowling at him, and the rest of their family has gathered around to see just what the fuss was about. It’s the lightest Tanjiro has felt in days. It must show, because although Kie watches them warily, a bemused smile plays on her lips, and she does not stop their horseplay, nor does she discourage the other children from joining in. Shigeru and Hanako start picking on Takeo by mimicking him, warbling and yowling at him the same way that he’d done at Tanjiro, and this just about kills him, falling to his knees, wheezing with laughter. Rokuta squirms until their mother puts him down, and he toddles over to Tanjiro with an open-mouthed, dopey grin, attempting to push him fully over. He lets him, Rokuta giggling at him, and Tanjiro starts getting repeatedly patted by very little hands. He’s laughing so hard he can barely breathe.

He needed this desperately, he realizes. One thing or another, any kind of sign to let him know that, despite everything, his family is still his. That each of their hearts remained, the core of them unchanged, even if the topmost layer has shifted. He just needed that little scrap of familiarity to keep going. They’ll get through this, he thinks. And if they can’t- they’ll make it work.

- - -

There’s apparently a few more caveats to being a demon, Tanjiro learns; more than he could’ve expected to learn from Saburo, anyway.

It was days after Tanjiro had gotten back, a week at least, and while the snowstorm had more-or-less cleared off, the cloud cover hadn’t, and it made the next couple of things to happen a little confusing, to say the least. It wasn’t all that strange for there to be a near-permanent curtain of clouds this time of year; it was more out of place for them to have any semblance of sunshine, really.

So when a little pocket of sunshine did finally manage to peek through the clouds, Tanjiro didn’t quite realize what that meant now, for his family. It was made apparent soon enough, though, when upon looking up to enjoy the brief moment of light and warmth, he suddenly found himself alone outside. Which was. A little unexpected, considering how he hadn’t been left alone for more than a few minutes at a time since he’d gotten back. It was as if when the clouds had parted, the ray of light that shone through had swept them away like so much dust.

To be fair, it wasn’t as if he’d been left alone for long. He’d been able to enjoy the sunlight for maybe a minute before he was suddenly and bodily dragged backwards into the cottage by his ankles. He’d barely managed to keep from smashing his head open, and when he had looked down to see what had grabbed him, he was greeted by spiraling, blue-green vines, unfurled from the single open door of the cottage. Many pairs of eyes glinted from its shadowy insides, all other doors and windows suddenly shut tight.

When Tanjiro was in arm’s reach, many little hands grabbed him and pulled , one of them slamming shut the door he came from. He was startled, and confused by the whole thing to say the least, but with how bizarre everything had been of late, he couldn’t truly say that he was scared. His family, however- nearly in a collective meltdown. All the little ones were close to or already in tears, whining and clinging to him just a little too tight, and, and Takeo scolded him, he thinks. There was a lot of emphatic grumbling and warbling, some on the edge of actual speech. The vines were from him, apparently, leaves beginning to dot his brow, along his hairline, and painted vines seem to have spontaneously grown across his face and hands. That’s new.

Then, Kie holds him, as if to comfort both him and herself, and it’s truly an unsettling thing, to find that his mother is trembling. Tanjiro has never seen her so shaken, not even when his father’s illness was at its worst. They don’t let him go for some time afterwards, huddled in the darkest corners of the house, and don’t let him outside again until long after the sun has set.

So that’s how he learned that daylight was no longer an option for his family, or at least clear, unfiltered daylight wasn’t. That complicated things a bit, but arguably wasn’t so bad up here on the mountain, where the trees were tall and thick and the shade cool and spacious. They can figure something out for when they’re not on the mountain once he’s able to go back down to town again and peruse the market. He could probably get some additional fabric or even curtains, to help them feel a little safer in the house on brighter days, and maybe he could outfit the cart he used for charcoal into something they could use for travel.

He needs to get food for himself, as well. He isn’t quite sure how their little vegetable patch is going to work out come spring; he could forage for roots and mushrooms well enough but their mother did the majority of the gardening and her still having the capacity to do that is a bit up in the air at the moment. His family also doesn’t seem to understand that he can’t really eat the things that they eat, anymore. Kie will make sure to save him some of whatever trophy she’d managed to catch, but her expression always turns so puzzled when Tanjiro goes to cook it. But then she’d shrug and sigh and she’d ruffle his hair, as if all this to say, oh, well, whatever you think is best, bunny. As if Tanjiro were merely her oddball child with very particular tastes. Which, well. He supposes among Kie’s children, that’s true now. He tries not to think about it too hard. This is made somewhat difficult by both his siblings’ open, childish disgust, and that they can’t seem to eat anything he cooks. Which is. Troubling. Especially when Shigeru, seemingly on a dare from Takeo and Hanako, volunteers a bite, and ends up violently ill after. He barely makes it out of the house before he vomits over the side of the back porch.

Tanjiro tries not to take it personally. He ends up getting an eyeful of the contents of Shigeru’s stomach while rubbing his back to try and ease his discomfort. There’s a lot of undigested lumps of raw flesh. There’s also a lot of bugs and dead grass. Tanjiro isn’t entirely sure where Shigeru would’ve gotten his hands on either, but it does give him an idea.

Putting his own meal aside (which Kie now eyed with blatant suspicion), Tanjiro takes some of the soup bones and begins to prepare them to be used for broth. He cleans them, but forgoes roasting them, first, trying to use the minimal steps it would take to accomplish this. He had been suspecting that there was something about most cooked foods that demons couldn’t stomach, but couldn’t quite pick out what part of the cooking process that did it. So, until he could nail down what it was: minimal steps, minimal ingredients.

He takes some of the rice they have stored away, figuring it should be alright as long as he doesn’t season it, and throws it in a boiling cookpot alongside the soup bones. He wanted to add some vegetables, but he didn’t have anything fresh, only dried. Best not to try it yet.

Tanjiro lets the pot simmer for a while, rubbing a still-whimpering Shigeru’s back while he waits. His brother clung to him throughout all of this, wrapping himself in the comforter of his futon and holding onto Tanjiro’s sleeve, or lying next to him on the floor, practically glued to his side. Kie busies herself with grooming her children, clawing hands delicately untangling hair and plucking leaves, twigs, and whatever else was there, and Takeo and Hanako watch Tanjiro cook with fascination, where they hadn’t before. Tanjiro takes that as a good sign.

After a while, Tanjiro checks on the pot. The rice is more-or-less cooked, if a little watery, and the innards of the bones have bled into the thin broth. Hopefully, the rice as well. The moment the lid comes off, Tanjiro can feel multiple sets of eyes on him. He scoops a small amount of his porridge concoction into a bowl, and nudges Shigeru into sitting up. His mouth is a scrunched, miserable little thing, and he looks at Tanjiro like he’s torturing him. Tanjiro smiles apologetically, and takes a spoonful of the porridge from the bowl, opening his mouth with a small, “ah.”

Without thinking, Shigeru mimics him, breathing out a pathetic little “ah,” with an open mouth. Tanjiro chooses to disregard how large and sharp his brother’s teeth are, and places the spoonful in his mouth, making a show of closing his own mouth, which Shigeru dutifully mimics as well. Shigeru cringes a little at first, expecting the worst, before his eyes very suddenly pop open with surprise. He swallows, then opens his mouth again.

“Ah,” Shigeru demands. Tanjiro bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, to keep from cooing how adorable it is. It’s killing him. He feeds Shigeru another spoonful, and Tanjiro can hear his teeth clack around the utensil as Shigeru closes his jaw around it with a little too much gusto. Tanjiro worries for their dishes.

Hanako and Takeo both crowd close and complain at him, and Tanjiro portions out some porridge for them before it can turn into caterwauling. Kie joins him by the hearth and looks at him expectantly with a serene smile, so Tanjiro prepares bowls for her and Rokuta as well. Relief floods him like it never has before.

He continues to spoil Shigeru until his bowl is empty, but by that time, his family seem to have remembered how to serve themselves from the cookpot, and before long, it’s completely empty.

Tanjiro’s dinner has long since gone cold, but he can’t bring himself to mind.

- - -

The day Nezuko wakes up, things become a little more complicated again. It wasn’t because she had woken up, though that certainly didn’t help , so much as how it just happened to coincide with the arrival of further complications. Not that Tanjiro thought of Mr. Tomioka as a mere complication- no, of course not. It’s just, well, Tanjiro could’ve used a little more time to figure things out and get Nezuko settled before Mr. Tomioka arrived and got everyone riled up. Not that Tanjiro thinks he did it deliberately , just. Well. It’s not as if he helped his case very much. Even if he was just doing his job.

Tanjiro had only just gotten something of an everyday schedule going, since his family’s change. He’d wake up a little before dawn to get breakfast started and check in on each of his siblings, and after they ate, he’d go outside to clean up whatever remained of his mother’s hunt the night before. He’d harvest whatever usable parts he could, and set aside the rest to be burned or buried. The backyard was swiftly becoming a graveyard for the creatures of the forest, and Tanjiro did his best to come up with more uses for individual parts. He could make bone meal, he supposed, for the vegetable patch, or delegate that task to one of his siblings. If he buried the remains under tree roots or brush, then the plantlife would pay them back in kind, with healthier wood, more abundant fruit, and hopefully, larger, more vibrant foliage, with which the Kamado family would be protected from the sun.

But in the interim, however, Tanjiro worries about the state of the property, and the woods around them. Digging up so much frozen soil would be difficult, and to put it bluntly, it already looked like the killing grounds of some unknowable, monstrous thing. Which, well. Such was the state of its disarray.

After he picks up a little, he checks to see what food they have left, and either forages, if they don’t have enough, or goes to prepare charcoal, if they do. By the time midday rolls around, his mother has pushed him back into the house, and he makes his lunch before being bullied to his futon. His siblings are usually already waiting for him, all in a heap with their own beds and blankets piled up. This had started happening since the incident from the other day, when the sun had dared to poke through the clouds and scare his mother and siblings half to death. Now, everyday, at noon on the dot, somehow, someway, Tanjiro always finds himself in the house. Sometimes it’s not deliberate; sometimes he’ll have to go back to the house to put something away, or because he forgot a tool, and then, coincidentally, his siblings will start following him around the house or pushing him towards the hearth, putting the stewpot in his hands in a clear demand for food, and coincidentally, by the time he’s finished making their porridge, Kie will have already shut all the doors and windows tight. Sometimes.

Usually, thought- usually it’s very incredibly deliberate, with Kie just shy of dragging him back to the house. Brooking no argument. Tanjiro doesn’t know what it is, exactly, that they fear so much from the sun’s gaze resting too heavily upon them, but he’s sure it can’t be anything good.

So Tanjiro lets his family herd him back to his bed, and they gather around the last of them yet to rise, Nezuko. There’s been no changes, chill, and beyond Tanjiro washing the blood from her body and dressing her in clean clothes, she hasn’t moved an inch. She hasn’t even stirred in her sleep, lying in the same prone, unmoving stillness as she’d been when he’d laid her here days ago. His other siblings don’t seem too vexed by it, and his mother doesn’t, either, but Tanjiro cannot help but be plagued with the worry that she’ll sleep forever. Her pulse is present, but sluggish. Her body is warm to the touch, but her flesh reacts to nothing. No goosebumps when subject to cold, nor sweat from heat. Her breathing is so slow and so slight that it often cannot be detected at all, save for putting an ear to her chest and straining to listen. He checks on her, often, whenever he can, but nothing ever happens. Still, she lays in her bed. Unmoving. Unchanging.

Or at least, she did up until Mr. Tomioka arrived.

It’s the afternoon, when it happens, and Tanjiro had just woken up from his family-enforced communal naptime and finally been allowed to go back outside. The sun, though behind the clouds, was well past its apex by then, and Tanjiro is just about to start sorting through a freshly-retrieved pile of bones, when he catches a scent on the breeze.

A human. A man, perhaps? It does not carry the same notes that the village or its denizens do. There are no traces of pine or cedar that surround them, nor of the cooling frost that drifts down from the mountain's peak. It does carry something similar to the creek nearby, though, the one not far from the property that lazily trails between the trees and down the mountainside. It's not- it's not the same, though. Colder, and unmoving. The eerie, glassy stillness of a lake lying dormant in winter. The faintest traces of blood, and iron. But. But not the same. Here, too, does the scent become some foreign unknown; the blood, it's not. It's not human, and yet it is. Far from animal or beast, yet somehow too close to human for comfort. Both, and neither. And the iron- could he call it that, truly? Metallic, yes, coarse in his nose like nothing else is, but something in it prickles the inside of his mouth, like mint or ginger, lacking the sweetness of both. Tepid. The lukewarmth of a river stone fished up from the bottom, slowly losing its chill in the light of the sun.

The combination of these notes, and the anonymity of whatever it was carrying the scent, unnerved him. And, unmistakably: moving closer.

Smoldering, choking fear shoots up his spine, sitting in his stomach and at the back of his neck. He swallows, stumbles, and the bones he’d been holding fall from his grasp. He’s not- it’s not-

He’s not ready yet, it’s too soon for it to be safe for others to be around this early. Far from it. And who- who was it, this stranger, who climbed the mountain, who carried the scent of blood that was human-yet-not, of a metal of some impossible make? Nothing good can come of this- Tanjiro knows this, right down to his very sinew.

As if that wasn’t enough, before he even had a chance to process all this- behind him, a door opens. It’s not quite a slam, but it might as well be with how badly it startles him. He whips his head around. Kie is looking at him with pointed concern, and it only becomes sharper when her gaze drifts towards the path leading up to their home. Her eyes narrow, and her pupils go needle-thin. Her long, dark hair fans out around her, caught on some unseen wind, and she steps into the yard, leaving no footprints behind her as she treads the top of the thick shroud of snow covering the house, the ground, the trees. Tanjiro watches her nails extend into pearlescent claws, and patches of her skin shift to a cold, pale blue. He breaks out of his reverie.

“Mom, wait,” he blurts out, staggering towards her. She nor any other member of his family had given any sign that they understood his words, not really , not fully , but that doesn’t appear to be stopping him from trying again, now. Trying again, anyway.

“Mama, it’s alright, I can handle this.” He hasn’t called her that since he was eight. He doesn’t know why he does so, now. Kie pauses a moment, recognition flickering through her, and a queasy, desperate hope streaks through Tanjiro. He stands in her path, hands out in front of him, as if he were calming a wild animal. The image of it guts him.

Kie looks down at her son, taller from her perch on the snow-top that has not crumbled under her weight since she had fallen and risen, once more. Tanjiro’s feet have sunk into the snow. He wouldn’t be able to catch her, if she ran past him.

(He wouldn’t be able to catch her anyway, he knows, sick to his stomach. He’s seen her take down animals twice her size with hardly a breath. He shoves the thought away, stomach threatening to empty itself.)

“Mama, please,” he tries again, voice quavering. Blood and iron carries up the path, growing ever-stronger. “I can do this. Please, go back in the house.” His face feels hot, and his vision blues. Please, not now, he pleads with himself, trying to swallow his tears.

Kie regards her son. Strokes his face delicately with the back of her clawed hand. Affectionate, but eyes remaining steely. Behind him, on the path: the crunch of snow. Startling him. His mother’s gaze snaps to whatever it was that stood there, that carried the scent of human-not-human blood, of water and heat and metal. Kie’s expression hardens, and she bares her teeth, lips unfurling in a thunderous, rumbling growl that reverberates right through him.

“Boy,” the thing says, a man’s voice, low and devoid of any emotion. Tanjiro whips his head around. A man in a two-toned haori stares back at him coolly, blue eyes dark and distant. The far-off depths of waters that could swallow him whole. The smell of it radiates from him. And from his side: blood and iron. A sword.

“Move,” the man tells him, authority in every thread of the word. He moves to unsheathe his sword. In an instant, Tanjiro is numb and nauseous.

“It’s n-not what you think,” Tanjiro pleads, the words falling from his mouth with hardly a thought. He throws himself in front of his mother, shielding what he can of her with what now feels like a tiny body. Tears threaten to overflow, again. There’s a crack of popping bone, and Tanjiro sees that his mother’s claws have morphed into full talons, each one as long as one of his fingers. Somehow, Kie’s growling becomes louder, and she crowds against his back, hair growing wild and mane-like. The man’s expression doesn’t change, save for the slightest furrowing of his brow.

“That’s not a human, anymore,” he says, firmly. “That’s a demon behind you.”

“I know,” Tanjiro replies gravely. The swordsman’s mask of apathy cracks as confusion bleeds onto his face. “I know she is. But she hasn’t hurt me, she- she’d never hurt me-”

“Do you think I’m blind?” the swordsman snaps. Tanjiro flinches, and Kie doesn’t like this one bit, growling louder still. “Do you think I don’t see the piles and piles of bones?”

“She hasn’t hurt anyone!” Tanjiro damn-near yells, eyes watery. “Those are animal bones, they’re not people-”

“And how long do you think it’ll be until that changes?” the man barks. “All demons consume flesh and blood. They need to. That one you’re trying to protect is no different.”

“She’s my mother,” Tanjiro begs. Tears flowing freely, now. The swordsman cringes.

“Please, please don’t hurt her,” he continues, barely able to keep from sobbing. Desperation and fear at their height. “She hasn’t eaten anyone, I swear. I’ll make sure she doesn’t, for the rest of my life. Please. Please.” Kie attempts to sidestep past her son, patience well and truly past the point of worn out, but Tanjiro twitches, stumbles, blocks her path with his body. Blocks the swordsman’s path with it. There’s a moment, here, where neither he nor the swordsman say a word, where Kie’s growling swiftly evolves into snarling and gnashing her teeth.

The swordsman levels Tanjiro with a measuring stare. He unsheathes his blade. The strange smell of blood-not-blood, iron-not-iron has never been stronger, and the scent of the stranger’s breath goes from warmth and winter to glassy lakewater. He looks at Tanjiro as if he stood at the very bottom of its depths.

“I have to do this,” he explains grimly. Sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”

The swordsman lunges.

- - -

Nezuko awakens alone.

Something has gone wrong for her to have woken up alone, this she knows. In the time she has slept, surrounded by home and hearth and family, she has never been alone in her dreaming. Not once. At all times, the presence of her family was close by, even in this unfamiliar twilight she had found herself in. The scent of them was all around; different, yes, somehow, but still them, and she was, too. Different. Herself and not herself. She no longer remembers what it was that put her in this long slumber. It hardly seems to matter, right now.

And then, she hears it: the scuffling outside. Her brother, crying out in despair. Her mother, furious. The younglings, shivering in the darkened corners of the house. And a stranger. Reeking of blood and death and drowning.

Nezuko rises from her bed in a rage, rushing to a front door which has been left dangerously open. She stands in the doorway. Her mother, talons drawn, struggling against a man she has never seen before. Her brother, trying desperately to intervene.

The stranger- a swordsman- how dare he, how dare he attack her mother, how dare he invade their home-

("Nezuko?" Tanjiro says, wide-eyed with relief and fear. There is no recognition of her own name, or even that she'd heard him.)

Her limbs lengthen, as do her claws, sharpening to a dagger's bite, turning red and burning, and she holds a burgeoning fire behind her closed lips, under her tongue and in her throat. She steps into the yard, the snow melting around her feet, and bares her teeth, a blazing heat escaping from between her jaws as she lets loose a low, gravelly snarl. As though it were the most natural thing in the world, for her.

And isn't it? Is it not her nature to protect her family, to ravage their enemies? To rend and tear until the danger that dares to threaten her home, her family, is good and dead? Until their bones fall to splinters, until she is awash in their treacherous blood? She cannot think of anything more natural, than culling a predator that has invaded their hunting grounds. This stranger will either surrender and flee or they will die by her hand. It was their choice.

("Nezuko," Tanjiro tries again, fervent. "Nezuko, wait. Don't do this, don't hurt him-")

Nezuko snarls a last warning, and when the stranger does not cease, she launches herself from the doorway in an aggressive charge. He dodges, sidestepping her, and the place where he stood is scorched, raw earth, snow melted away in an instant. Nezuko howls, a pure expression of her fury, and all she can see is red, tinging her vision at the edges as she locks onto her prey. Steam rises from the ground as her anger continues to mount, the snow quickly evaporating.

("Nezuko!" Tanjiro tries a third time, voice shrill and full of dread. "Stop! Please!" Once again, it goes unheeded.

"Quit getting in the way," the swordsman growls, and turns his focus to Tanjiro.)

The stranger turns away from her for the briefest second. He shoves her brother to the ground, and Tanjiro yelps. Absolutely incensed, Nezuko howls at the invader, and charges again. Before her claws land, before she can sink them into treacherous flesh and rip and tear until her frenzied heart no longer cries for justice, for vengeance, the stranger suddenly drops. Falls to the ground in a heap. She ends up flying past him, coming to a skidding halt, and jerks her head around, only to find that her brother had hooked his hands around the man's ankles and yanked him down. He looks just as unpleasantly surprised about it as she is.

Frustrated in her impotent attempt at ending this man, she stalks forward to correct this, but quick as a blink, Tanjiro throws himself over the man, covering him while he's stunned.

"Nezuko," Tanjiro tries, a final time. Winded, he's hardly able to get the words out. "Please." And finally: she hears him. She recognizes her own name. She stops in her tracks, and it's enough for the red to bleed from her sight.

A new scent on the breeze. Not new, she realizes. She just hadn't noticed, before, consumed by her rage as she was. The last hints of winter, the first hints of spring. Greenery, and damp, upturned earth. The patter of a warm, gentle rain.

Nezuko blinks, and now there is blue to fill in the spaces red had left behind. Green begins to creep up from the earth, and spring is all around. Her rage falls away, as if it'd never been there at all, and the fire in her lungs cools to an ember.

Her mother steps back into her line of sight, regarding her son, and the stranger he defends. She turns to Nezuko briefly, a tired but fond smile on her face, and runs a hand through her hair. Kie approaches the two on the ground, then, kneeling down to peer at the strange man in their midst. He and Tanjiro both look a little dazed, as Nezuko herself probably does as well. The swordsman still looks wary, though, even when she coos and comforts Tanjiro, showing him the same affection that she did Nezuko. Tanjiro sniffles a little- he'd always been a crybaby- and Kie shushes him softly.

Kie turns her gaze fully to the swordsman, watching him for a moment. Thoughtful. Sighing, she nods, and gently but firmly takes his sword from him. It slips easily from his slackened grip, and Nezuko briefly feels a spark of fear and anger try to stoke her violent fury back to where it was. Her mother fearlessly holds the blade, it continuing to exude blood-death-drowning in her hands, before snapping it in two. Easy as you please.

The stranger's eyes widen slightly at this, but he makes no attempt to move. Nezuko isn't sure he can. She isn't sure she, herself, can either. Kie tosses the two broken halves behind her, and they land some ways off, in the woods. Now the stranger just looks tired.

By this time, the little ones have crowded the open doorway to their home, peering out curiously. They start venturing out, one by one, and gather around the stranger to stare at him. Now he looks exhausted.

"Um," Tanjiro says. "I can explain." A pause. Shigeru and Takeo are playing with the sleeves of the stranger's odd haori, and Hanako is petting his hair comfortingly. And then: "Do you want to stay for dinner?"

The stranger sighs deeply.

"Fine," he says. Defeated utterly.

- - -

Giyu Tomioka, as Tanjiro had learned what the swordsman was called, had been on his way to the area when the blizzard hit, and had been stuck in the neighboring village for days and days while it raged on. He’d been tracking a particular demon- probably the very one that had attacked and turned his family, they figured- and by the time the storm had died down, the trail had long since gone cold, other than the abrupt arrival of several new demons, damn near overnight. So he came up the mountain path, somehow managed to find the carcasses Tanjiro had not been able to clean up, and hurried to their cottage, fearing the worst had happened. And, well, it wasn’t as if he was wrong. Tanjiro would have spent every waking moment of the past week or so cleaning up bones, if he was.

Tanjiro’s entire family being targeted wasn’t much of a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was that his entire family had turned.

“That’s not really the usual method,” Mr. Tomioka explains. They’re in the house proper, now, and he’s sitting near the hearth with Tanjiro while he prepares his family’s dinner. Mr.Tomioka hasn’t really relaxed all that much, but he’s doing better than before, when he was still, well, trying to attack them. He’s still pretty visibly distressed, though, fists white-knuckled in his lap and jaw clenched. It probably doesn’t help that the little ones haven’t left him alone since they entered the house, or that Nezuko hasn’t stopped glaring at him with open, contemptuous distrust. She’s mostly managing to keep their siblings away from him, but she still snaps at Mr.Tomioka if he so much as looks at them. This wasn’t ideal, considering how determined they were to get in his business.

“Guys, that’s enough, leave him alone,” Tanjiro admonishes. When this doesn’t appear to work, he clicks his tongue at them, loudly, and none of them appear to expect it, jumping a little. That, they do seem to understand, and each withdraw sulkily. Mr.Tomioka is very visibly at a loss as to what to do with this. He does, however, peer curiously at Rokuta, who babbles happily in Tanjiro’s lap while he stirs the porridge. Tanjiro tries to take that as a good sign.

Kie is in the yard, likely dressing down her prey from that night’s hunt. That’d been an interesting experience; while Tanjiro trusted his mother well enough to handle herself, Mr.Tomioka absolutely did not, and thus, while normally Kie would go off by herself or with one of her children, leaving the rest with Tanjiro, that night’s hunt turned into a veritable family outing. It was just as well, he supposed; his mother wanted to leave him alone with Mr.Tomioka about as much as Mr.Tomioka wanted to leave Tanjiro alone with her. Which is to say: not at all. And besides, it seemed that Kie very much wanted Nezuko to join the hunt. As if to make up for lost time.

This was all still very helpful, Tanjiro supposed. Anyone with eyes could see that Nezuko was starving- she was always cranky when she got hungry- likely from not eating for over a week. She needed the quick meal, and Mr.Tomioka needed the proof that what Tanjiro said was true. That his family had no interest in eating people. And he got that evidence- with gusto, even.

While his mother and sister scouted a short ways ahead for their prey, Tanjiro led a daisy chain behind them: himself in front, Rokuta in his sling on his back, then Mr.Tomioka, holding Tanjiro’s hand in one of his own, and Takeo holding the swordsman’s other hand. In Takeo’s other hand was Hanako, and finally, at the very end of their little chain was Shigeru. Takeo had looked very pleased to be given the task of holding Mr.Tomioka’s other hand, and puffed out his little chest whenever the man turned to check on the back of the line. It reminded Tanjiro of a little kitten arching its back and raising its tail, making itself look as big as possible in order to scare off whatever perceived threat approached it. Mr.Tomioka hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at this. He just, as he always did, looked incredibly, incredibly exhausted.

Kie and Nezuko closed in on their prey, soon enough; a mountain boar, as it turned out. That was good, Tanjiro thought; he’d noticed that boar tended to satisfy his family a little more than deer did. Maybe because it was fattier, so it was more filling? He didn’t really know. Whatever the reason, he was thankful for the boar. There was no doubt in his mind that eating it would help soothe Nezuko’s temper.

And it did, somewhat. They watched as Nezuko flew forward and cut down the beast in a matter of seconds, her roar of victory carrying over the tops of the trees. Mr.Tomioka hadn’t been too fond of that (the spray of blood was a little excessive, Tanjiro admits), nor of the way Nezuko immediately tore into it like a rabid dog, but the gruesome scene served its purpose well enough. See? No Interest in humans whatsoever!

(This proof was not as reassuring as Tanjiro thought it was.)

When Nezuko had her fill of the boar, or at least had enough to calm her somewhat, she and their mother tracked down another boar to take back to the house. And that’s where their mother was now- carefully skinning the second boar and preparing to butcher it for her children. Mr.Tomioka had certainly looked impressed by all this (though whether this was good or bad is up for debate), but he still didn’t look particularly convinced. But that’s alright; they’d sort it over dinner.

“The usual method is for one person to be chosen,” Mr.Tomioka continues, steadfastly ignoring the perhaps over-curious children surrounding him. “Then that person typically goes after whoever wasn’t chosen.” His eyes flit to Nezuko for a moment, still sitting on his other side. She’s not snarling anymore, thankfully, but she does bare a single fanged tooth in warning.

“Nezuko,” Tanjiro says, exasperated. She puts her canine away, but she also turns her face away from them, pouting. Hanako has somehow managed to dodge being caught by sitting directly behind Mr.Tomioka. She’s braiding his ponytail. Tanjiro didn’t even notice her until Nezuko turned her head.

“Hanako,” he adds, even more exasperated. Nezuko snaps to attention, spinning in her seat and grabbing Hanako’s little hands. Hanako yowls in complaint, trying to squirm away from her. Nezuko growls, something high-pitched Tanjiro has heard from the stray cats around the village when they’re sizing each other up for a fight. Hanako yowls louder and whines, and on cue, Shigeru comes tromping over and tugs on Nezuko’s wrists. Takeo rolls behind her and starts pulling on her arms. Both of them start yowling, too, and the sheer amount of noise makes Rokuta cry. This is a disaster.

“Guys,” Tanjiro scolds. It’s not nearly loud enough to be heard over the cacophony. He decides to try something.

Tanjiro pulls his lips back and hisses at them, as loudly as he can. Save for the child wailing in his arms, all the commotion comes to a complete, immediate stop. All of his siblings’ eyes are on him, now, openly shocked. That’s fair; he rarely if ever raised his voice to them. This is a pretty new experience for them.

“You’re making Rokuta cry,” he tells them. “That’s enough.”

Nezuko, Hanako, Takeo, and Shigeru slowly disentangle themselves and start to sulk around different corners of the house. Tanjiro quietly shushes Rokuta, holding him close and stroking his back, and Rokuta slowly calms down, sniffling in Tanjiro’s haori. Mr.Tomioka watches the proceedings unblinkingly.

“I’m so sorry, they’re normally a lot better behaved than this,” Tanjiro apologizes. The swordsman looks at him like he’d grown a second head. Tanjiro is aware of how strange this looks, he doesn’t need to be reminded, thank you. He picks up a long-handled soup spoon and holds it out to him.

“Can you please stir up the porridge so the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom? Rokuta needs me right now,” Tanjiro explains. Mr.Tomioka sighs deeply. He takes the spoon and begins to stir, and by the hearth-light, Tanjiro can see the bags under his eyes.

“It’s a really long walk from here to the village,” Tanjiro says. “Do you need somewhere to stay for the night?” Mr.Tomioka doesn’t say anything, fully focused on stirring the porridge.

Nezuko gets up from the corner of the room she’s brooding in, pads over to Tanjiro, and gently takes Rokuta from him, still pouting. Rokuta complains a little at being moved, but he quiets right down after a minute. Nezuko holds Tanjiro’s gaze, frowning, and motions at the cookpot with her eyes, chirping at him. Tanjiro sighs a silent chuckle.

“Here, I can take back over,” he says, taking the spoon from their reluctant guest. Nezuko sits down on Tanjiro’s other side. A moment passes.

“This is,” Mr.Tomioka starts, and there’s a hidden tinge of deranged agitation beneath his remarkably flat tone. “Completely unprecedented.”

“Pardon?” Tanjiro says, looking at him more fully. “It’s just porridge, sir.” Mr.Tomioka looks at him as if he’d slapped him across the face, all sudden, stinging shock and recoil. Tanjiro doesn’t know what he could’ve done to cause that.

“Are you alright, Mr.Tomioka?” he asks, concerned. Saying this only makes it worse.

“I’m not talking about the porridge,” Mr.Tomioka manages to grind out, sounding half-insane. There’s another warning growl from Nezuko, who looks around Tanjiro’s back to glare at him.

“I think she thinks you’re growling at me,” Tanjiro explains, apologetic. “I know this is a lot, but…”

“You really don’t,” the swordsman mumbles before Tanjiro can finish, half under his breath. “This is so much.”

“...you really don’t have to be so on-guard all the time,” Tanjiro continues. “You’re making them nervous. And you really don’t have to worry! None of them have ever hurt me, or anyone else.” The swordsman looks at him with utter disbelief.

“It’s really alright,” Tanjiro finishes, insistent. Mr.Tomioka doesn’t reply. It’s just as well; Kie has opened the back door of the cottage and re-entered, covered in blood, no doubt from the cuts of meat she’s holding. Mr.Tomioka’s eyes go wide again, but all his mother does is carefully lay the meat over the iron griddle Tanjiro had set up earlier, on the outer edges of the hearth. The meat starts cooking, a satisfying sizzle filling the air.

“Thanks, mom,” Tanjiro tells her, genuine, and she smiles and presses a kiss to his forehead before retreating to the other room, no doubt to change. Once Tanjiro had re-introduced the idea of clean clothes, his mother had picked it back up pretty easily, and was quick to enforce it among his siblings.

Mr.Tomioka watches them and doesn’t say anything. Tanjiro doesn’t really know what that means.

- - -

The swordsman is quiet the rest of dinner. Tanjiro finishes cooking his family’s meal and doling out their food. He was taking a little bit of a risk with the grilled boar, but he was getting worried that they weren’t getting enough variety. They seem to appreciate it well enough; Kie has to break up a minor squabble between Takeo and Shigeru (again) as they both dive for the last scrap of it, so he’ll take that as a compliment.

Afterwards, he takes some of the porridge into a separate pot, and prepares something simple for Mr. Tomioka and himself, adding some mushrooms and dried vegetables. His mother surprises him, then, by adding some of the grilled meat from earlier, before going back to monitoring her other children. Throughout all this, Mr.Tomioka watches them silently, only breaking said silence once, to thank Tanjiro for the meal. His demeanor all throughout is too stoic for Tanjiro to actually read, but he seems. More relaxed, at least. He even tolerates Hanako’s persistent attempts at braiding his hair, even though she’s eight and she has to be reminded to wash her hands, and not to pull too hard, and to be careful not to tie it into knots.

Mr.Tomioka finally opens up again a little after dinner, and tells Tanjiro a little more about himself, and namely, why he was there. Tanjiro learns about the demon slayers, their mission, and the shadowy figure behind the creation of all demons, including his family. Mr. Tomioka thinks that He probably only meant to turn Nezuko, judging by the sheer difference in raw power between her and the rest of their family, but it wasn’t as if they were completely bereft of it, either. The swordsman had obviously seen what his mother was capable of, and surmised that probably played a key role in how they were able to function as a unit.

“We’ve always gotten along like this, though,” Tanjiro tells him. Nezuko is sitting in front of him, patiently waiting for her hair to be brushed, and Takeo is dozing off with his head in her lap. Kie apparently thought Mr. Tomioka was trustworthy enough to hold her youngest, so Rokuta is laying in his lap, babbling, mouthing at their guest’s hands. Kie at the time was preparing a bath for Shigeru, because she’d apparently remembered how to do that sometimes between now and the first night he’d cooked his family dinner. Maybe something about the ritual of it became familiar again, or the muscle memory was so insistent that it could not be denied. Either way, Tanjiro could scarcely contain his relief.

“It’s unusual for demons to get along like this,” Mr.Tomioka explains. “There’s hardly any cooperation between demons, let alone anything like this.” Tanjiro frowns, sympathetic.

“Really?” he asks. “That’s so sad. It must be so lonely for them, living like that.” The swordsman’s face scrunches up.

“I suppose it is,” he hedges, though it looks like it pains him to do so. Tanjiro finishes brushing Nezuko’s hair, and puts it in a simple braid. He wasn’t entirely sure how she wrapped her hair into the bun she usually had, but he figured she’d want it out of the way. The braid is a little bit of a struggle- he’s only watched it done before this, he’s never done it himself- but he manages to school it into something acceptable. Nezuko leans backwards to nuzzle him, thankful, and Takeo whines that his pillow is moving. Nezuko chuffs at him, affectionate, and delicately combs through his hair with nascent claws. Takeo grumbles, but that doesn’t stop him from rolling over to give her better access to his wild hair. Mr.Tomioka’s expression softens.

“I guess it’s too late to start the walk back to town,” he concludes, as if that’s all he’d been thinking about this entire time. Tanjiro blinks at him. He was still considering it?

“I’ll go get the extra bedding,” Tanjiro says instead.

- - -

The rest of the night is uneventful, for the most part. The novelty that was Mr.Tomioka has finally worn off as far as the little ones were concerned, and they more-or-less leave him be. Nezuko still has to be convinced not to throw him suspicious looks constantly, but that’s about the worst she gives him, now.

Bedtime was a bit of an odd affair for Tanjiro, now. His family would get ready for bed at the same time they did Before, they’d start dozing off at about the same time, but once it got late enough in the night, one by one they’d all start waking up again. This was when his mother would rise and hunt for their next meal, and now, this was when Nezuko would rise and stalk the deer paths winding through the woods. Defending their territory, he can only assume.

The little ones play in the house or the yard and make sure to check on Tanjiro every once in a while. He knows this, because they’re not always careful not to wake him. This night is no different, even with their guest, much to Tanjiro’s chagrin. He knows that they know better, even like this.

He doesn’t know what time it is when they wake him. It has to be past midnight, judging by the moon’s position in the sky. He rolls over in his bed, trying to get comfy again, and sees Mr.Tomioka staring blankly at the ceiling. He looks tired. Far more tired than any lack of sleep could make.

“I’m sorry, did they wake you?” Tanjiro asks him softly. The swordsman shakes his head.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he replies, voice a little hoarse. Probably from the lack of sleep, Tanjiro would wager.

“Are you alright?” Tanjiro asks quietly. He doesn’t know what it could be; the others are outside. He can hear Hanako’s excited, squealing laughter. It wasn’t as if they were pestering him awake, like Tanjiro had feared. He isn’t so sure he likes this, either, though; something feels off.

“According to our code,” the swordsman starts, each word filling Tanjiro with dread. “Your family should not be allowed to live.”

“But- but you-” he tries, stuttering. Already choking on his own fear. “Don’t- please-”

“They’re demons, Tanjiro,” Mr.Tomioka continues, sitting up. “Demons are too much of a danger to be allowed to live. How-”

“Then I’ll change them back,” Tanjiro says, far too loud for such a small room. He’s shoved himself upwards, into a seated position. He doesn’t even remember when he did that. “I’ll turn them back into humans, I’ll- I’ll figure it out, please just-”

“However,” Mr.Tomioka says, cutting off his mounting hysteria. “Your family is different. Far more different than any demon I’ve ever seen. That you’ve been able to manage all of them is astounding.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts. Tanjiro’s dread doesn’t ebb, exactly, but now it wars with an errant, feverish hope.

“But you need to learn how to defend them, and yourself,” the swordsman continues after a moment. “Even if I were to spare them, there’s no telling who would come after you, next, demon and slayer both.” Tanjiro gulps, hope withering, but he nods, clinging to whatever remains of it.

“I’m going to contact my old teacher,” Mr.Tomioka says. “I’m going to explain the situation to him, and ask that he teaches you, as well.” The hope returns, springing forth with abundance. It fills every inch of him, leaving room for nothing else. It must show on his face, for the swordsman to look so startled.

“Now, this isn’t a guarantee,” he’s quick to say. Tanjiro deflates a little. “But I at least wanted to give you a fighting chance.” There’s a soft thump as Tanjiro just short of flings himself into Mr.Tomioka’s side, skinny arms snaking around the man with a strength that is not belied by their size. The swordsman wheezes.

“Thank you,” Tanjiro blubbers, already on the verge of tears. Mr.Tomioka manages to lift an arm high enough to give him a few awkward pats on the shoulder.

“Tanjiro,” he rasps.

“Oh, sorry!!” Tanjiro apologizes, letting go all at once. He sniffles a bit, scrubbing at his eyes with the meat of his palm. Mr. Tomioka points behind them, to the now-opening door. Tanjiro’s siblings peer in, equal parts curious and concerned.

“It’s alright,” Tanjiro says, trying to wave them off. “I’m alright.” Takeo harrumphs, and stomps over anyway, dragging his bedding over and tossing it next to Tanjiro’s in a heap. Takeo pushes his brother back down into his bed and throws his own comforter over him before crawling underneath, himself. He plasters himself to Tanjiro’s side, and from what Tanjiro can hear, Hanako and Shigeru are gathering up their own bedding.

“Um,” Mr.Tomioka says. There’s a rustle of fabric. Tanjiro pokes his head out of their little blanket nest. Hanako is piling up her and Shigeru’s bedding next to Tanjiro’s, and Shigeru himself is tugging at the swordsman’s sleeve, chirping at him insistently. Hanako joins him after a moment.

“Um,” Mr.Tomioka says, again. He seems to be at a loss of what to do.

“Oh, sorry-” Tanjiro starts, embarrassed. “Guys, leave him alone-”

“No, it’s- it’s alright,” the swordsman manages to reply. He seems to be just as embarrassed as Tanjiro is, but he slowly scoots his futon over, anyway. He looks a little like a caterpillar. Tanjiro snickers a little. Mr.Tomioka throws him a withering look. It just makes him look sillier.

“Sorry,” Tanjiro laughs, shaking. Takeo takes that moment to pinch his sides, and Tanjiro squeaks. His other siblings freeze in place, eyes dilated like a cat with a mouse in its sight.

“Oh no,” Tanjiro breathes, giggling. Takeo pinches him again, and Hanako and Shigeru are giggling, too, when they descend upon him.

It’s some time still before Tanjiro falls asleep again.

- - -

In the morning, a little before dawn, Tanjiro wakes to find that Nezuko has joined him under his blanket, but that the little ones, and Mr.Tomioka, are gone. He rises blearily, hearing a commotion outside, and Nezuko hangs off him sleepily when he manages to drag himself to the front porch.

Mr.Tomioka, apparently, was attempting to make his getaway before anyone else woke up, the keyword there being “attempt.” He’s clearly been caught; the little ones are pulling on his clothes and mewling pathetically. The swordsman is trapped in their tiny clutches, and grimacing.

“You’re leaving already?” Tanjiro asks, yawning. Mr.Tomioka cringes. He doesn’t say anything in response.

“Mom’s going to be back soon,” Tanjiro offers. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay for breakfast?” Mr.Tomioka considers this for a moment.

“Alright,” he says finally, and allows himself to be dragged back into the house. He doesn’t appear to be quite so reluctant, this time.

- - -

When all his family have returned and sit around the hearth for breakfast, Kie notices a stray grain of rice on her son’s cheek, and plucks it away, popping it into her mouth. She wipes his face with a cloth, and Tanjiro, for a moment, feels whole again.