Chapter Text
Everything hurt like hell.
At this point, it could be argued that Kamado Tanjiro should be very well accustomed to the feeling of pain. However, repeated, prolonged exposure does not make for thicker skin. What a surprise.
It’s something like the pain firing in his nerves at such an intensity that sensations begin to bleed into each other, that it might be excused when Tanjiro does not register the pricking of his skin. He does not feel the dirty grime of Muzan’s nail— better akin to a wild animal’s claw, really— piercing his cheek, nor is he aware of the filthy blood now infesting his veins.
The world is cold and fading, sound bleeding into a mindless cloud of empty noise, and Tanjiro is perfectly fine with passing in this very moment. It is a real shame that he will never be able to celebrate his achievements or savour the rest of his fleeting life with his dear sister Nezuko, but at least his main goals have been achieved. Nezuko was restored to humanity, and Kibutsuji Muzan will burn under the sun in a few short seconds. He can finally go to rest.
Such an unpleasant surprise it is then, when his darkening world suddenly brightens up again, and his limbs grow warm with new blood.
Tanjiro opens his eyes, and the daybreak is in a daze.
There are people screaming like madmen when Tanjiro comes to, which is nauseating and illogical. He can’t make sense of anything at all. The entire area is littered with bodies and rubble, stone and flesh battered together until they’re an indistinguishable mess. And all around, the most prominent scent of all is something sharp, something iron.
Blood. Why does it make his mouth water?
Tanjiro’s nose twitches, and he staggers upright on sore legs. Strange. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as he expects for it to.
Unfortunately, there is little time to marvel over his body’s apparent sturdiness, as there are suddenly people striking him with swords. The nichirin swords, to be exact— Tanjiro can recognise the weight that cuts into his skin, the smell of the ore. He wouldn’t forget that sensation for the rest of his lifetime. It’s too distinct, even for something that had only originated from within Enmu’s dream.
However, that is besides the point. Why are the demon slayers attacking him?
The pushing force that presses upon him is aggravating. Without thinking much, Tanjiro jerks his arm forward to shove them off. The unidentifiable body goes flying through the air, unusually light. Someone screams, loud and shrill. Is this how Zenitsu feels all the time?
There are more people shouting, and Tanjiro would like for it all to come to a stop by now. He takes an imbalanced step forward, swaying on his feet, and squints through the haze.
Figures and people are difficult to make out, but he catches glimpses of colour. Something yellow and something pink, something blue and black and screaming. All three of them are split and stained with blood. Are they okay?
At least, that is the question that Tanjiro wants to ask. For some reason, his mouth won’t cooperate. Drool gathers in his jaw, thick and hungry, and Tanjiro steps forward again. He wants this hunger to be put to sleep. It won’t be hard, someone’s voice whispers to his ear. Just take a few more steps forward, and your food is right within your reach.
It isn’t until Tanjiro tastes blood on his tongue, that he registers just what that food might be.
Spitting it out with a disgruntled hacking, he coughs and claws at his own mouth. The warm, now wounded body he had been grabbing earlier thrashes away with panic, pink eyes breaking through his vision. He knows her, she is—
“Nezuko!” Someone screeches. There are people running up front, grabbing his little sister and dragging her out of harm’s reach. Out of his reach, Tanjiro bitterly realises. He can’t see their faces well. All of them are clad in that same black uniform, destruction eyeing him back with resentment for what he’s become. A demon.
That isn’t quite right. He’s supposed to be dead, is he not? Whether himself or that man, neither should have lived to this minute. Tanjiro hisses despite himself, pulling back. Something isn’t quite right.
Forget what is and isn’t right. That doesn’t matter right now. That strange person’s voice is back in his head, urging him forward, and Tanjiro nearly lets him before coming back to his senses and retreating. Absolutely not. These are his allies. They are his friends and family. He can’t attack them!
Even if the uncharacteristic hatred filling his being feels so heavy he might burst, and the pit of hunger rotting at his stomach only continues to grow deeper.
“Tanjiro!” Another voice yells. Tanjiro forces his head out of the hunger, focusing on identifying the voice instead. “Please stop fighting! Stay down, just stay down!”
He hisses at the command, shrinking back further. Something bright shines over the top of the rubble, outlining everything in gold. It blinds his eyes and burns his skin; sunlight. Tanjiro screams, running away in a wild frenzy.
Fool, the voice in his head barks. Where are you going? The job’s yet to be finished.
Irritatingly enough, his voice is the clearest of them all. And Tanjiro doesn’t have a face for the voice yet, but he’s starting to gather an idea of who it might be. Of all the things to be hearing properly in this cacophony of disorder…
The demon slayers remain faceless as they were from the start, though.
“Someone get him!” There are too many voices to bother trying to identify at this point. Just the sound of general mayhem and chaos running rampant all around him. Heavy bodies collide against Tanjiro, but it isn’t difficult to fling them off in his panic. “We need to take him down!”
Nobody will be going down today, not on Tanjiro’s watch. Kicking down his hunger and this misplaced bloodlust, Tanjiro drowns out their voices and runs until the demon slayers become nothing more than a blip on the horizon. Even if distantly, he knows there are better options to consider, the need for survival outweighs his rationality at this moment.
The sounds of swords clashing and people screaming quiet to the background, until all he feels is his own heaving chest and laboured breaths. Tanjiro comes to a panting stop, hands on his knees, and his ears ringing so loud he thinks he might pass out. The sound of his heartbeat is deafening.
As is his voice, because apparently the gods decided that this wasn’t agony enough.
“Kamado Tanjiro,” Kibutsuji Muzan grits in a low voice from behind. “What do you think you’re doing?”
At first, Tanjiro takes to pretending that the demon is a simple hallucination. An awful image conjured by the very traumatic experience of fighting that lunatic for hours on end. His brain hasn’t had time to process their technical victory yet, that’s all! Because this is a victory, for the demon slayer’s end, at least. Even if he’s in this strange… state, now.
“I am not a hallucination,” Muzan sneers from his side. He sounds awfully realistic for being a figment of Tanjiro’s imagination. The human brain can be a wondrous thing. “I am very real, you foolish child. Did you think the sun was enough to kill a being like me?”
He looked pretty dead when he was disintegrating under the sunlight. Stubbornly, Tanjiro ignores the demon and continues dragging his feet along the road. He’s got to find water, food, or shelter at the very least. And he can’t return to the demon slaying corps because of reasons. Very important ones.
He’s still processing, Tanjiro defends to nobody in particular. He isn’t even sure what exactly happened back there. But the first step to seeking a clear mind is getting proper sustenance, and that involves eating a proper meal and taking some good rest. Maybe he’ll manage to dispel the illusion that is Muzan afterwards.
“Tanjiro. Have your ears gone faulty with the fight?” Muzan scoffs. “I know that isn’t possible. You have a superior form now, there is no excuse for not hearing me.”
What superior form is he even blabbing on about? Lazily, Tanjiro lets his eyes wander around the landscape. If only there were something he could stab the demon with. He had left his sword behind when he fled the battle scene, but even so, that obviously would not have any impact on Muzan anymore.
He’s just a hallucination. If not a vivid imagining, then it can only mean that Muzan’s vengeful spirit has tied itself to Tanjiro, and that’s too horrifying a possibility to entertain. So he continues on forward, stubborn and unrelenting. Nightfall will come soon, and Tanjiro would rather be in safety’s sanctum by then. There are still demons on the prowl. It’s a very bad time to be out and alone, wounded and without his weapon.
“You aren’t wounded,” Muzan reminds, following on behind him. “There isn’t a single scratch on you anymore.”
He’s a liar, of course. Tanjiro felt it, the staggering lightness his severed arm brought, and the pain that bloomed so intensely it blended with the adrenaline as a cocktail of mistaken renewal. His left arm hangs from his side now, well and intact as if nothing had happened before, but it’s still covered in blood. Blood from his friends, blood from his enemies.
Regeneration is not something that ordinary humans can do. For the demons, it’s a greatly draining feat, and he briefly wonders how he hasn’t lost his head to the hunger. Tanjiro stares at the dried, sticky redness coated on his skin. He shakes his head as quickly as he considered it, biting his tongue hard.
Do not lick that. He isn’t that depraved yet.
Muzan must be silently watching his inner battle. The demon king scoffs after a moment’s quiet. He sounds unimpressed, not that Tanjiro cared for his judgment to begin with. “Aren’t you going to ask what’s happened, demon hunter?”
He says the question incredulously, like he cannot fathom the idea of somebody not seeking his grandiose advice. What a narcissist. He should not be surprised, yet perhaps he keeps lending the demon too much grace because Tanjiro still finds himself astonished at the lows a man can sink to. Disguising a snort as a cough, Tanjiro increases his pace to be faster. It does no good. The red-eyed bastard is still following him, like an unshakable disease.
It isn’t too far off from the truth. There are less kind descriptors available for use out there.
Lifting his gaze to the darkening sky, Tanjiro watches the sun’s slow dip below the horizon. He wasn’t fast enough to make it before evening. It’s a shame, but at least the burning itching on his skin has been alleviated with the sunset. He searches for the stars to gather a sense of location.
The sky is too darkened and cloudy from the ground alone, though. Looking around the area, Tanjiro brightens up when he spots a tree with good footholds. That should do nicely enough! Running to the base of the shoot, he crawls up with a surprising dexterity. Tanjiro has been doing a lot of surprising things lately. He will choose not to linger on the thought that humans should not be able to achieve these things, and push the wonder to the back of his head, with all the other dangerous thoughts.
Leaning from the top of the tree instead, Tanjiro raises his head and scans the sky for any familiar constellations. He’s run further than he thought from the place the infinity fortress spat them out. This far south, the closest village would probably be…
“What are you thinking about?” Muzan’s voice comes out of nowhere, a jarring shock in the quiet of late evening.
Tanjiro screams.
“I knew it,” the demon’s eyes darken. Muzan sounds almost victorious now, and Tanjiro internally curses himself for not being better prepared. “You can hear me.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Tanjiro seethes from the treetop. It seems he can run from his demons no longer.
Glaring at Muzan, his eyes trail down to the ground below, approximately thirty feet underneath both of them. Theoretically, Muzan should have been left there. Last he checked, the demon didn’t have the ability to fly (although it would not be the most surprising discovery). Apparently, the laws of gravity that most creatures must obey no longer apply to Kibutsuji.
Look at him go. Conquering death, conquering flight, anything but the sun.
“Pathetic insect,” Muzan scoffs. “Are you finally going to talk, or will you keep childishly ignoring me?”
He is so nauseatingly full of himself, as if Muzan has any right ground to stand upon. If he had his sword in hand, Tanjiro might have forgone the small talk and started fighting. Unfortunately, he’s without his katana right now. He is stuck in a tree, trying to survey a way to shelter for the night, and Muzan is meant to be long passed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Tanjiro fixes a hard scowl at the demon. “I don’t talk with dead people.”
Muzan’s eye twitches with something vaguely offended. “I am not dead. I have transcended death.”
“And you chose to spend it following me all day.”
“You think I wanted to be stuck tethered to your sorry self?” The demon’s glare narrows, somehow radiating a hatred more venomous than before. “I’m not supposed to be out here at all. I’m supposed to be in there, in your transformed body.”
He moves forward, closer, and for a moment, Tanjiro has the irrational fear that Muzan will attack him. Hallucinations can’t attack people, though. Neither can ghosts. They lack physical form, and that’s very important for interacting with the mortal plane. Even Muzan’s needless will to defy nature at every waking turn cannot subvert this.
“I’m sorry?” Tanjiro questions instead, raising an eyebrow. He can’t understand anything the demon says. “What do you mean, out there? You look…”
Fine enough. He certainly looks like he has transcended something, though Tanjiro is not so sure that thing is death. The burn marks from scorching alive in the sun are nowhere to be seen on his pale form, and Muzan is so pale he might as well be shimmering in the air, but he looks fine. In any case, he should be sticking to his own body. Tanjiro does not appreciate the idea of sharing a body with the king of demons.
“You look like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be,” he settles on awkwardly finishing. Turning back to scouting the landscape, Tanjiro frowns. There don’t appear to be any villages nearby. He might have to take refuge in the trees for tonight.
“Filthy spawn,” Muzan scowls. “You don’t seem to understand.”
Then he’s reaching out, and his ghostly hand settles on Tanjiro’s skin and wraps around his wrist. Cold and hard and dangerous, but that’s not the main focus of Tanjiro’s thoughts. No, he’s much more concerned with the fact that he can actually feel Muzan’s grip.
He’s solid? The demon is solid, he can touch him. This is unprecedented.
“What?” Tanjiro questions, head snapping up like a deer being hunted.
Muzan doesn’t answer his fleeting question. Instead, the demon pulls hard, until he’s yanked Tanjiro out of the tree and he’s now dangling in midair by the hands of a hallucination. For the second time that day, Tanjiro is screaming. The demon looks slightly perturbed by his reaction, but he doesn’t let up in dragging Tanjiro through the air. Across the plains, to where, exactly? The infinity fortress is destroyed, and any shelter out in the cities or villages must require some sort of human disguise. Where is he being taken?
Nowhere at all, really. Muzan ends up floating down to the ground and dumping him on the dirt after some unguagable distance.
If he had a slightly calmer head on his shoulders, Tanjiro might find the situation mildly amusing. How low the demon king has fallen, that he must physically transport his victims instead of immediately teleporting them. There is little to find funny about his wider predicament, though, and that is that he appears to be stuck with Kibutsuji’s spirit for no explainable reason.
“Get up,” Muzan growls. “I need you to be aware of this. Look into the water.”
Lifting his head, Tanjiro coughs and spits out the dust that got into his mouth. He looks around in confusion, scowling at Muzan before noticing where he’s been placed. Right by the edge of a cool pool of water, likely branched off from the main river. He approaches it with suspicion. The air smells damp here. Not much sign of life at all, aside from a few fish and bugs.
“What is this about?” he mutters, kneeling down by the water and peering over it. Muzan is acting weirdly. The pond doesn’t look very special.
It’s too dark to properly make out any clear images anyway, aside from the slow darting of fish below the surface, and the flowing coontails that lazily drift in and out of vision. That, along with two strange red lights dancing on the water’s surface. Tanjiro frowns, leaning in closer. There shouldn’t be any source of light out here, so far from any town or village.
He backs away just as quickly, once he realises what those lights are.
“No,” Tanjiro shakes his head. He didn’t see it right. That can’t be it. “That isn’t—”
Muzan grabs his head by his hair and drags him to the edge of the pond again. His tone is condescending, somehow blending annoyance and smugness together in one. “Don’t waste my time. Shut up and look again.”
It is difficult to refute a second time. Tanjiro stares in numb horror at the reflection of his eyes, glowing. Something red in the backlight. His eyes are glowing like an animal’s might, but that’s far from the worst of it. Tanjiro had already suspected he was turned into a demon, but that was tolerable enough to stomach. In the worst case scenario, he could always turn to one of his friends for salvation and trust in them to behead him, assuming they were even still alive, but.
He can’t afford to consider such negative thoughts. But! This is not just the case of him being turned into a demon. These eyes, he’s seen before, and never on his own face.
Snapping his head up, Tanjiro glares at Muzan. There’s the final confirmation he needs— Kibutsuji’s eyes have slits running through them as well. They carry a ghostly, almost supernatural quality. How revolting. Tanjiro’s skin crawls just thinking that he shares those eyes now as well.
“What’s the matter?” Muzan raises an eyebrow, as if he hasn’t just given Tanjiro some of the worst news possible. “Did you figure it out?”
Oh, he figured something out, alright.
Tanjiro takes his head and bashes it into the water, hearing Muzan’s hiss as his fingers are crunched between Tanjiro’s forehead and the pond ground. It’s enough incentive for the demon to release his hair, pulling back with a disgruntled look.
As if he has any right to feel vexed. Tanjiro is the one suffering this personal affront.
“You ass,” Tanjiro seethes with no small amount of restraint. He’s been doing his best not to become completely irrational at the sight of Muzan. A commendable effort, really, but the demon king makes it so very difficult to stay civil, and Tanjiro is just about at his wit’s end. “What the hell did you do?!”
The demon is still nursing his broken hand. How ridiculous. Aren’t demons meant to be blessed with virtually indestructible bodies? Or did that attribute burn up with Muzan in death?
Although, maybe nursing isn’t the best word to be using. He’s looking at his hand as if surprised he felt pain at all. If that’s the case, Tanjiro certainly won’t object to deploying another hit. Unfortunately, his personal grievances don’t take priority right now.
“Muzan.” He scowls and kicks his foot into the pond, showering a spray of water up to catch the demon’s attention back. “I’m talking to you now, bastard. Are you listening?”
Muzan’s unblinking stare slowly drags from his hand— unblemished, mind you, so what was he even staring at— and turns to look at Tanjiro. He wipes his face down, despite the water having passed through him harmlessly. See, Tanjiro knew his gut was right. Muzan isn’t real. Muzan is dead. He’s an illusion at best and a vengeful spirit at worst.
“You really have grown stronger,” he says after a moment. Tanjiro is boggled. Of all the things to focus on, and that is what the demon chooses to remark about?
“That isn’t what I asked,” Tanjiro glowers. “Tell me what happened. What did you do?”
He can’t ignore the bait any longer. Muzan is practically forcing it into his mouth at this point; nobody can fault Tanjiro for biting.
“What I did,” Muzan begins with an unnerving sort of calm, “was achieve perfection.”
Perfection is such a vague thing to describe. Tanjiro stares at Muzan, waiting for the demon to elaborate. The demon silently stares back. And this persists as the seconds bleed into a minute or two, and Tanjiro grows more and more inclined to bash his head into the pond and brush this off as some nightmare-induced hallucination.
Really, it’s his fault for trying to reason with a madman. What was he expecting?
“Could you be any less vague?” Tanjiro hisses under his breath.
Muzan does not seem to understand his sarcasm, choosing to cock his head to the side. The king of demons is poor with social cues, who would have known. Didn’t Tamayo describe the man as a master of manipulation? Some master he turned out to be.
“Explain.” Tanjiro spits. “In detail, now.”
A slow, dreadful smile splits across the demon’s mouth. He’s playing with him, damn it.
“I injected you with my blood,” Muzan says. “As much as possible. Ordinary humans would collapse from the overdose. You should be very glad you’re still alive.”
He says it with a sort of pridefulness. Tanjiro can’t help but want to scrub his skin clean from simply hearing the tone alone. Who would be thankful for life on these atrocious terms? Either way, it isn’t as though the demon has ever cared whether Tanjiro lives or dies. Correction— oftentimes, he is the propogater behind those life or death circumstances.
“I can’t help,” Tanjiro says, “but feel like that was not intentional.”
Got it right in one. The moment he says that, Muzan’s face sours immensely. Tanjiro bites back a snort at the look.
“No, no. Your body was meant to survive. That much was not wrong.” Muzan shakes his head, something displeased pinching at his expression. “Your mind, however, continues to cause me trouble.”
“My mind,” Tanjiro repeats flatly. “Come again?”
Evidently, it seems he was wrong. Death is not the worst fate that could befall him, nor is it his transformation into a demon. Apparently, Kibutsuji somehow conceived a plan worse than human imagination proved possible, and Tanjiro is unsure whether to feel grateful he survived and the plan failed, or upset because he now has the unfortunate pleasure of paying company with Muzan.
Upset, he decides. He has every right to be upset in a situation like this.
“You aren’t that much of an idiot,” Muzan sneers. Seems he won’t be simplifying things any further. “I know you can put the pieces together. What I care more about is how you’ve defied my will. My cells should have overpowered your puny human spirit by now, yet here we are.”
An accusatory finger is pointed at him, the sharp end of the claw angled as if in threatening. Tanjiro stares at the man, incredulous. He understands now, what the demon meant when he was babbling on about being trapped outside. He’s locked out by no will of his own, but Tanjiro’s. That must irritate him greatly.
Without the proper scent and familiarity to deduce emotions, it’s difficult to pinpoint, but Tanjiro is almost certain. The bridge between Muzan’s eyebrows twitches very slightly, furrowing with an unseen frustration. They’ve realised the same case then: Muzan may be able to interact with him on a physical level, but he has no more power here. No, that privilege belongs to…
“Explain that to me, Tanjiro.” Kibutsuji’s voice is both accusatory and guarded. He’s right on the precipice of admitting his confusion, but too arrogant to confess to it entirely. It is almost amusing to witness. This isn’t funny at all, though. Tanjiro just continues to stare the demon down. His shoulders shake, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Does he really want to do either in front of Muzan?
Well, not that he has much of a choice. The demon is here to stay. The demon is alive, only by the grace of his remaining cells flowing in Tanjiro’s blood. Such a disturbing thought. They’re clinging to whatever traces of vitality they still have left, too desperate to die with dignity and accept the karma their host has gathered.
It’s quite pathetic, in all honesty.
“What? You’re stuck like this and you don’t know why?” Tanjiro asks, raising his head and fixing a sharp look on the demon. “How should I know? Why should I know? It’s not like I care.”
“You’re as stuck as I am,” Muzan hisses. Clearly, he’s attempting for rational sympathy, though it isn’t like Tanjiro has any to spare for a hateful being like Muzan. “You should care the most. Are you not curious? You don’t have even a single question about how to fix it?”
“Our definition of ‘fixing this’ is very different.” Standing up straight, Tanjiro lifts his gaze from Muzan to the sky above. The moon has since crept out into view, filtering through the trees and down onto them. “So no. I don’t particularly care.”
His main goals have already been achieved, anyhow. Muzan is essentially good as dead, and Nezuko will have been cured with the good hands back at the demon slaying corps. This current predicament is unfortunate, but with an ask as big as the one Tanjiro demanded of the gods, he figured he’d pay for it in some way.
“Maybe the gods have cursed you,” he mentions as an afterthought, glancing back at Muzan. The demon probably won’t believe it. He doesn’t believe in higher powers.
Either way, it fails to hold weight. This doesn’t matter. After all, this isn’t Tanjiro’s problem.