Chapter Text
She was startled by a knock at the door. Nezuko's intuition had always been strong. She couldn't remember the last time someone walked up to their house without her noticing.
She automatically looked to Tanjiro. Her brother sniffed the air with a small frown on his face. But he put on a smile as he got up to open the door.
Their eyes met without any need to search. As if they'd already been making contact through the screen door. The man had red eyes, an unusual color, but what really stood out to her was the disdain in his gaze as he glanced over them. So cold and impersonal, as if their mere existence irked him.
The expression looked wrong on a human face.
The man wore a black, western suit with pretty golden patterns. He had wavy black hair and a handsome face. He looked beautiful, but not in a nice way. He was beautiful in a way that made her want to avert her eyes, lest the monster notice her.
Every cell in her body screamed at her to run. To get away from this unnatural being pretending to be a person.
Then his eyes landed on Tanjiro. The look of contempt that twisted his face suddenly felt much more personal.
Nezuko stood up.
'Step back Nii-chan, that thing isn't human.’ She opened her mouth to say it, but her voice wasn't working.
The man’s arm moved in a blur.
She thought Takeo might’ve been screaming, but she couldn’t make anything out, even though he was standing right next to her
There was something warm on the side of her neck. It trickled down and soaked into the collar of her sleeping yukata.
Nii-chan was standing by the door just now, wasn’t he? How did he end up next to her, slumped against the wall?
She didn’t get it. Her head was all messed up, and she just couldn’t figure out what had happened a moment ago. But she knew they needed to leave, that was the only thing that mattered right now.
Nezuko used one arm to scoop up Rokuta, and shoved Takeo and Shigeru out the side door with the other.
Her eyes snapped to the left when she felt a sudden itch on the side of her head. That man's clawed hand was inches away from her face. She turned her body away from him to try and shield Rokuta, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the monster. His pupils were slits now.
Kaa-san crossed the room faster than she'd ever seen a human being move to get between them. Nezuko didn't waste any time in sprinting past them.
As she rushed towards the door she could hear the sound of two skulls colliding, and the grunt the man let out. She reached out to Hanako, who stood frozen by the wall, to drag her out the door.
A prickle in her side made her jump away from her little sister. Something red shot into her field of vision, too fast to make out, right where she'd been standing. It disappeared just as quickly, yanking Hanako back with it.
But she couldn't stop running and she couldn't turn around, because she was still carrying Rokuta, and if she went back she might as well be killing him.
She heard Hanako cry out in fear behind her. She heard two sets of footsteps on the hard floor as Takeo and Shigeru ran back inside to rescue her. She heard the snow crunch under her feet as she finally passed the threshold. And she heard Rokuta sob against her chest. She couldn't hear herself screaming, but she sure felt like she was.
One by one the sounds died down.
Behind me.
She hadn't seen or heard his approach at all, but she knew he was there. Nezuko kicked behind her.
He caught her ankle. Her voice still wasn't working, so she was stuck screaming in her head.
‘I'll haunt you! I’ll never let you out of my sight, and when you die I'll tear your rotten, miserable soul apart, even if I have to rip your spirit from your body myself, you hear me!’
The corners of his mouth twitched. She swore she could see the mirth in his eyes.
"You have good instincts, let's hope you'll survive."
He dug his nails into her ankle and she hugged Rokuta close to her chest.
Then the monster tossed her against the side of the house and Nezuko passed out as her head hit the wall.
She was hungry.
She was laying in the powder-y cold, on top of something soft. The soft thing was cold as well.
It wasn’t supposed to be cold. There was something wrong with that, but she couldn’t remember what. Something in her head was missing, she was sure of it.
More of the soft things were scattered around in the cold. They smelled so good, and she was so hungry.
Warm drool trickled down her chin as she opened her mouth, and she leaned towards the one underneath her. Her head snapped up as she sensed it. Something was approaching.
Kin, she realised, as she watched him enter the clearing. He paused when he spotted her and blinked at her for a moment before walking towards one of the soft things. To eat, she knew.
…But those are mine.
He turned his head towards her just as her foot connected with his side, sending him flying into a tree. The trunk shook when he crashed into it.
Her kin groaned as he got up, clutching at the back of his head. His hand came away bloody, and he scowled at his palm for a moment before running back into the clearing. He growled as he tackled her to the ground. He started lashing out blindly once he had her pinned, putting scratches all over her face and clawing her throat open.
Out there in the cold, the blood running down her neck might as well have been boiling. The scorching liquid painfully restored feeling to her cold-numbed skin. Somehow, it still wasn’t nearly as bad as the feeling of her stomach eating away at itself.
She tried to kick and push him away, but he was too close and too heavy, and she was just so, so hungry.
He had blood running down his head from where he hit the tree. She could smell the traces of that man's blood mixed in with his. She was supposed to get more of that, wasn’t she? Yes, that would be good.
She made herself grow taller, pulling him tight against her torso. A slight squeeze was all it took for her stomach to start reeling him in. She squeezed until she ended up with her arms wrapped around herself.
Her kin was gone, and she wasn’t hungry anymore.
Now she was just tired, and her thoughts were sluggish but she couldn’t place why.
She began absent-mindedly raking her nails across the frozen ground. She kept on digging until she’d made a hole big enough for her to curl up in, and crawled into it before falling asleep.
Nezuko woke up feeling different.
She felt different, and she felt like there was a frozen hand in her chest, squeezing her heart with an iron grip.
She dug up to the surface and crawled out of the hole. She sat on the ground and rubbed the sleep and dirt from her eyes with pine needles digging into her knees.
The first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was a row of graves. Someone had already buried them.
She shouldn’t have been surprised, it had already been ten months after all.
She wasn’t sure how she knew that. But it was probably the same way she knew how far the sun was from the horizon, even while underground.
She walked up to the house—her house, pausing in front of the door. She took a deep breath, trying not to think about what she might see, before opening it with shaking hands.
The blood was gone. Someone must've cleaned up the house as well. Her shoulders sagged with relief and she stepped over the threshold. It was dusty inside, but not nearly as dusty as it should be after being neglected for ten months.
There was a letter on the table. Tanjiro's hanafuda earrings sat on top of it.
She held the letter in one hand, using the other to clutch the earrings to her chest. With both of her hands were occupied she couldn't wipe away her tears, and the letter ended up getting stained.
Dear Nezuko,
I’m not sure if you’re alive, or if you’ll ever come back here, but in case you do, I don’t want you to have to dig these up. Forgive me for assuming, but I thought you might want to hold onto them.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
—Saburo
She grabbed the sewing kit, along with her favorite kimono while trying to hold back her tears. After several attempts to thread a needle with shaking hands and blurry eyes, she finally sighed and gave up.
“This isn't going to work.”
Nezuko set the kit down on the table. She remembered what she'd said to her siblings when their grandparents died as she walked into their shared bedroom.
‘...They won't be able to rest if all we do is weep. Cry as much as you want for one day, but then we should pull ourselves together and continue with a smile.’
She tilted her head back and took a deep breath, eyes trained on a sky she couldn’t see, and she started screaming at the top of her lungs. She screamed and sobbed as long and hard as she possibly could. Until she felt something tear, and her vocal chords stopped working. Then Nezuko stormed through the door to take her feelings out on the first tree in sight.
She kept on kicking, punching and clawing at the trunks until something cracked, and she was left panting and clutching her right hand.
She let out a startled scream when the broken bones abruptly snapped back into place. Realising her voice was working again, she went back inside to go scream some more. She stopped screaming after she choked and began coughing up blood.
The loss of her entire family felt just as painful and raw as it did before she started. But it was just a little less overwhelming.
Nezuko sat down at the table, and attempted to sew a pocket onto the inside of her kimono. Even without the tremors, it was a lot more difficult than it should have been. More difficult than it used to be.
Her body felt so much lighter, as if it suddenly needed much less energy to move. It made her fingers twitchy. She didn't feel like she was using any more force than before, but the needle that pierced her hand really spoke for itself.
She'd also noticed it while she was tearing down those trees. She didn't feel like she was kicking any harder than before. She only felt the force behind it once her foot made contact and the trunk gave away.
It hurt a lot. Maybe just slightly less than it should've, but that wasn't the weird thing about it. The panic, the need to ‘MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT GO AWAY’ was very subdued.
While it ended up being an extremely frustrating task, she managed eventually. Now Tanjiro’s earrings would always sit right over her heart.
It was already dawn. The sun would rise soon, so she made sure every door and window was shut. Something told her that sunlight was deadly.
Nezuko was getting hungry again. She’d have to do something about that, but she couldn’t eat humans. She wouldn’t. She’d sooner walk out into the sun. That was a promise, both to herself and to her family.
Then her only option would be to eat other demons. If she could do it once she could do it again.
Nezuko got herself cleaned up, and began the long, tedious task of untying, and untangling her hair. It was a complete mess, getting all of the knots and chunks of dirt—ew—out was nearly impossible. She had to wash it twice thoroughly afterwards, but honestly, she’d thought it would be more. As she did, she noticed that the tips of her hair had turned orange.
When she was done washing her hair, she tied it up in her usual style, making sure to secure it as best she could. She didn't want it to get matted from hanging loose. Then she changed into her kimono.
Nezuko stared in the mirror for a while after she was done. Her irises were a much lighter pink, and they were covered in thin cracks. Her pupils were black now, and her they turned into slits if she stared too hard.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave immediately after the sun had set. Nezuko stood in front of the graves, trying to come up with something to say.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go now. I’ll be back someday, maybe I’ll even visit in between.” She forced a watery smile. “I promise I’ll write you all letters. Goodbye for now.”
And with that, she left.