Chapter Text
Swords, blood and cries from warriors.
Pain.
All of these suffocating feelings, their tired muscles and bones, eyes crying, hair messed up, everything is shore and dull.
They aren't the first, yet they may be the last.
Flesh, or what seems like flesh is covering everything that the boy knows. The slayer's body is another's flesh and blood. A mass of a monster's corpse becoming himself. He can't stop it, he can't move, he can only feel the veins and the slow breathing of what will be soon him.
His memories fade alongside the voices outside of that lucid nightmare.
He can feel two hands cuddling his face, a shadow covering his eyes as someone is watching him. White hair fall on his nose, disappearing into the thick skin of the demonic flesh as soon as they appear.
"The shadow of death has always been close to me." The murderer of his family starts saying, trembling and shivering against him.
"My heart stopped numerous times while I was still in my mother's womb. They said I was stillborn, I had no pulse and wasn't breathing." If the slayer had met this man when he was still innocent, when he was still human, he would be so sorry for him.
"But when they went to cremate me. I writhed and struggled and released my first cries."
Now he was just angry that he hadn't died then.
"What I have strongly desired has always come true. I have made it happen...However what I could do alone was limited. Ubuyashiki, I must admit that what you said is true. All that lives must die."
'Perish then, perish.'
"Only feelings are eternal and undying. That is true. I do not remember a single human I have killed. Flesh dies and that is the end."
The slayer wants to struggle him, choke him for saying that, admitting such a thing. His family, all those other families, died and weren't even remembered by their killer...like they never mattered...
"However their feelings passed on and never fell to ruin and have even defeated me. I have witnessed that fact with my own two eyes and I was so moved that I trembled."
'Only your own death matters to you, you monster!'
"My flesh will soon crumble in the sunlight but my feelings are also undying and eternal."
"I will entrust all of my feelings to this child."
The so called child does not talk, does not move and does not try to reply this time.
"His breath and heart have stopped, but not all his cells have died, so he is alive. There is still time. I will pour into you all my blood and power and if you avoid immediate death and survive...."
'He wants me to...survive?'
".....Tanjiro Kamado you will conquer the sunlight and become the strongest king of demons!"
Rage, hot familiar rage replaces his confusion.
"That is because you are the elder brother of nezuko kamado and thus share her blood and you are the only one able to use the same breathing as that monster."
That killer calls another being a monster, what a joke! He even says his sister's name!
His eyes blur with hot tears as someone breathes inside his ear, he can't see him even if he is watching straight ahead nor he can smell him but he knows who he is. The heartbeat of another, the monster's, the corrupted human's heartbeat is everything he knows.
"Oh, so you are awake. Perfect."
His body is chained, one of his lungs has stopped working, he is wheezing, crying, yet he doesn't feel anything.
He feels like he is covered in snow, hypothermia crawling inside him. Making everything white and numb.
A thumb caresses his face, wiping away a tear and slowly petting the young man's hair. The monster is crying too, the demon who he now knows the name and life sobs. They both share the same memories, feelings, purposes, goals, dreams and hopes. Yet they are different.
"Hold me, Tanjiro..." The white haired murderer whispers, moving one of his much larger hands around the other's waist. Bringing him close, making the transformation quicker. Their sobs stop as an unfamiliar feeling envelops them.
"I won, I won, I won..." He repeats. Comforting heat embraces their bodies, Tanjiro's eyes are open, staring forward but unmoving.
"We belong together, you and me, will always stay together from now on..." He says and he smiles an all too familiar smirk. He is the predator of their twisted relationship, he is the one who will dominate their soon to be powerful demonic body. Muzan hates him, yet he knows that if they stay together they will become much more powerful than he ever was or could be. That's why he wants Tanjiro, that's why he needs him.
"Hold me, my saviour." The demon lord of the past almost weakly demands, now going limp too.
He falls and ends up laying on top of Tanjiro's remaining torso as the flesh had absorbed the other half. His head rests in the crook of the other's neck, slowly breathing.
Hunger overcomes both, they move, but they don't part from each other.
Muzan is hungry for power, Tanjiro is hungry for human flesh.
"Why are you ignoring me?" The lips that refuse to answer crawl making a small opening only to close again after sighing.
"Why are you holding me? I hate you." Is the response he eventually gets.
'Lies.' Muzan wants to scream. 'I am the only one you should care about. You can't hate me.'
"You are a demon." Says the teenager under his arms, making a soft noise as his right arm is now being swallowed by the mass of flesh.
"And so are you." He wants to make Tanjiro realise that they are one, whatever one of them is so is the other.
"Die."
Bloodthirsty eyes peer inside the no longer human's, sweat covers both of their foreheads.
"Live with me."
The kind one wishes for an end while the grim reaper searches for a new beginning.
The tables have truly turned.
"Tanjiro...Tanjiro..."
A whine is the response he gets as pain envelopes both. Muzan melts in his arm. He doesn't want to leave.
"You are so cruel, Tanjiro"
The boy's eyes close for a moment, his head moves a little, closer to him, surprising him.
"You are so harsh, so stubborn, you are hiding your true nature from everyone." He says more loud, chuckling.
"Your own heart was once a blue sky with clouds, angels made out of pure light and kindness, silence and peace...but now..now there's only this hellish nightmare."
"I could do it too in the real world with my own body, I could make it bent, twist...but never..never like this...never this nightmarish...even I am scared now!" The speech continues, earning a hum from the other whose torso has almost disappeared.
"You will make an excellent king."
"Truly perfect."
Tanjiro groans, he can feel Muzan placing his hand behind his neck while moving rather roughly his head to look at him.
"Never leave me."
"Make my dream come true Tanjiro!"
"In my place you must destroy the demon slayers!"
The demon, admires him. He talks to him, guides his eyes for the last time. He tells him to look him into the eyes and not through him. Because even the monster doesn't want to die alone.
And so the devil hugs and cries on top of his enemy, the warrior breathes inside the monster's lungs and lives. Their lips touch, dooming them to forever be one.
One close to the other, they truly fuse this time. Everything is a part of the past now. A new start.
But they are crying as their blood and cells merge, they never wanted that.
Muzan breaks the kiss, delaying the transformation for a split second. His eyes are half closed, but they still glow, they still look inside the other's. Tears blur his vision.
He speaks, for the last time.
"Hold me until we reach Heaven."