Chapter Text
Giyuu Tomioka wakes up from a long, long dream.
The afterlife is splotchy with muted pinks and yellows. An outstretched hand and a voice long missed, ringing like a church bell in an empty field.
“...Sabito?”
“Is everything alright, Giyuu?” Sabito’s smile wanes and the scar on his cheek stretches with the movement of his lips, like a rippled reflection in the water; Giyuu’s heart constricts. “You look pale.” His hair, shimmering in the sunlight’s refraction behind him, stings Giyuu’s eyes. He blinks, and blinks, and blinks.
“Eeh? Why are you crying all of a sudden?” Sabito crouches in front of him - Giyuu’s crying? He doesn’t think so. But Sabito reaches out, his movements dragging on in impossibly slow seconds, and his hand makes contact with Giyuu’s cheek. The outline of his fingers burns the indent of his demon slayer mark into his skin - but when Sabito moves his hand away, the feeling of fresh air is cool again, and there is no wound. Just the brushing of dampness with the edge of Giyuu’s - no, Sabito’s haori, that matches on both sleeves.
Giyuu stares at it, just stunned.
“Are you sick?” Sabito’s voice is downturned, and when he tries to raise a hand to Giyuu’s forehead, Giyuu surprises himself by raising his right hand (he hadn’t even known it moved; he didn’t even know it was there) to block Sabito’s arm. Sabito’s lips thin.
“...I’m just feeling under the weather,” Giyuu says. His own voice sounds…
“I’ll tell Master that we’re cutting training short,” Sabito says. His hand waves, small, calloused, into Giyuu’s field of vision, and Giyuu realizes, oh, he’s meant to take it. He expects it to feel exactly like the times he’s gripped onto Tanjiro’s hand, but he slides his palm into Sabito’s, their fingers interlocking, and realizes his own hand is now the smaller of the pair.
Giyuu catches a glimpse of himself in the river’s reflection as Sabito pulls him to his feet.
His hair is shorter.
Sakonji is a decade younger than Giyuu remembers. “You’re awfully solemn,” He says lightly, “Throat hurts?” It does. He accepts a cup of tea with trembling hands and takes little sips, shivering greatly the words of his two companions wash over him like a rumbling wave, filling his ear with nothing but white noise.
A phrase snags his attention, washing up on the shores of his mind like a glass shard.
Final Selection? “That’s coming up?”
Sabito and Sakonji look at him with eerily identical expressions. Twin frowns with similar dimplings on their cheeks, their brows furrowed at the same angle. “Did you forget already? We’re setting off in two days.”
Fear seizes Giyuu. “We shouldn’t go.”
“What?!” Sabito says.
“I… I don’t want to be a demon slayer.” I don’t want you to die.
Sabito leaps to his feet, his hand raised like he’s about to strike Giyuu again. “Hah? Do we need to have this conversation one more time?!”
“Hold on,” Sakonji chides him, hand on Sabito’s arm, forcing him back into a sitting position. “Giyuu, please explain yourself.”
“...” Giyuu opens his mouth, but the words sit heavy on his tongue. What should come out first - the apologies or the ludicrous explanation disguised as a hallucination? The boy is lying - he’s delusional! What a vivid dream he just had - dare he have the arrogance to claim that there is a future for himself as the Water Hashira? To be the sort of person, too, that claims ownership of a new form; a survivor of Muzan? Sabito and Sakonji are still looking at him, and he just shakes his head, and again, and again-
“Argh, enough of this!” Sabito exclaims. “I thought I got through to you, Giyuu, but if you want to be like that, then I’ll just take the Final Selection myself-”
“No!” Giyuu explodes. He digs his fingers into Sabito’s haori. He cannot. “I’ll go with you.” Sabito cannot go alone.
“Are you sure?” Sakonji asks this time. His mouth is set in a heavy line. “Giyuu, it is unlike you-” It is quite like him, actually “-to be so expressive with your hesitance. There is nothing as dangerous as wavering conviction on a battlefield. If you hesitate, you may cost someone’s life - or your own. If this is truly a dilemma you are carrying, then perhaps-”
“Sabito cannot go alone,” is the only thing Giyuu manages to say, because it is the unwavering truth that he holds, the easiest thing to say.
Sabito now looks conflicted despite his earlier outburst. “Giyuu… you really look like you’re marching towards death.”
Sakonji cuffs Sabito over the head for those words; but their expressions of doubt towards Giyuu don’t waver.
I’ve already died once, what is there to fear? He holds his tongue. Better me than you. He holds his tongue.
“I’ll go, and nothing can change my mind.” Because nothing can change Sabito’s, it seems.
“Fine,” Sakonji says to Giyuu, and then turns his head away, his eyes cast heavenward. Giyuu, for a brief moment, wonders if he knows of a reality where his students were not meant to come home.
The scent of wisteria is thick in the air on Mount Fujikasane and Sabito’s nervous energy radiates with his incessant humming. Giyuu appreciates it banishing the silence of the trek (cicadas whistling, leaves crunching underfoot), and he endeavors to stick close to Sabito for the entire Selection. Then, ah, he thinks, looking down at his thirteen-year-old palms that can barely close over the hilt of his katana, can he even stay awake for this?
It would be quite pathetic of the Water Hashira to have been granted omniscience and still encounter the most basic of failures.
But he is not the Water Hashira, is he? He is not even a demon slayer. Furthermore, how can he even believe that worthless dream was anything but a fantasy wherein he, the main character, made it past the end of the world? Egotistical - delusional! Giyuu bit downward on his cheek. Even in that twisted premonition, he could not have imagined a scenario where he became a Hashira out of his own ability - he still had to wrench the position out of Sabito’s cold, dead hands -
That encircle his wrist, abruptly. Giyuu freezes, he slams into Sabito’s back. The boy tugs him forward, “we’re here!”
Swallowing, Giyuu takes a step past the torii gates. Above it, a windchime sways with the breeze, like a mourner’s cry.
(Caw! Caw! XXX is dead! Upper Moon XXX has defeated XXX in battle! Caw!)
“Don’t be nervous, Giyuu,” Sabito says. “You can stick close to me the whole time, if you want.”
Giyuu nods. He grips Sabito’s hand tighter. He will.
The Hand Demon. Giyuu has never seen it in person, he realizes - Sakonji clearly had, having captured the creature. Sabito has his fate entwined with this demon, and eventually, Tanjiro will. He is grotesque, not any more so than any other demon Giyuu has - will eventually - face in his lifetime, and he finds that he much prefers a demon whose features so clearly reflect the lack of humanity within them, as opposed to normality lying in wait (Muzan, a human face, and a family he pretends to have.) His lip curls.
“More of Sakonji Urokodaki’s students!” The demon crows. “I’ll devour you all, one by one, one by one…”
“That thing…” Sabito’s hands tighten over the hilt of his katana, his knuckles whitening. “Is this part of the Final Selection as well?”
The morphed demon should hardly be compared to the other lower-ranking demons that are chosen to populate Fujikasane, having heard of its exploits. How has it devoured fifty - well, the number should be slightly less in this time period, Giyuu tries to think - and still be part of this test? It is true that not every candidate is meant to survive the final selection, but there must be some moderation.
The creature roars, lunging out, and Giyuu registers Sabito trying to push him backwards, behind him, Giyuu, run! Get away! He hears the pounding of his heart in his head, the heaviness of the water vapour in the air, the prickling of droplets collecting at the edge of Sabito’s blade as he calls upon his water breathing arts; Giyuu takes in a deep breath. Total Concentration:
The world slows into a false sense of serenity, of bright colors and faded edges, and time crawls like an ache. He sees the projected arc of Sabito’s blade, the step that has yet to land as he lunges and swings forward, and he knows already that it will not connect with the Hand Demon, who is diving into the path beyond Sabito’s reach, with an outstretched swipe aiming for his blind spot.
Giyuu releases a breath, unsheathes his blade, and steps forward.
Swing.
Sabito trips with the unexpected movement in the air from behind him. He falls gracefully, tucking himself into a roll to minimize his fall impact, and is up on his feet in the next moment, whipping around, battle ready.
And he falters, taking in the scene. His hand slackens from his blade; his eyes grow wide.
“EHHH?”
Giyuu registers the shocked expression on his friend’s face before the impact of his actions catches up to him. “...Oh.”
“Oh?! Is that all you have to say - oh?!” Sabito trembles under the weight of Giyuu’s blank stare. “You killed the demon in a single strike!”
The moon is out from behind the clouds tonight and the edge of Giyuu’s katana is slick with blood, glimmering as he tucks the blade away. It’s a sharp, clean slice that separates the demon’s head from his body. The twisted mouth moves, and neither of the boys look at it, and unceremoniously it crumbles into ash and dissipates in the wind, ephemeral evidence as if Giyuu hadn’t altered the course of history forever.
“You could fight like that the whole time?!” Sabito bounds after him, yelling at the top of his lungs. “Giyuu! All that talk about not believing you could make it - you defeated such a terrifying demon in a single strike!”
As they make their way to the mountaintop shrine, other candidates steadily converge with their path, and an increasing number of eyes bear into Giyuu’s back - he desperately wishes he had the Haori he hated to create, to pull over his ears and eyes. He settles for crushing the balls of his palms over his ear canals, which only distorts Sabito’s voice but not wash it out entirely, and he can still hear Sabito speaking to the other people around them, only now he cannot discern what their responses are.
Many curious gazes are directed to him and Giyuu’s hands don’t move from the sides of his head, even with Sabito’s increasingly aggressive elbowing. They’re filtered in a line, two - he does not remove his fists from his hair even as someone (his gaze blurs; who is it?) tries to present him something (it’s eventually placed at his feet.)
The first and only other time Giyuu had ever participated in a Final Selection, he had been half delirious, recovering from a head wound, grieving so intensely that he barely registered any of the proceedings; it was as if the world wanted to cement the fact that he was not worthy to be a demon slayer or graduate proper. But this time…
This time…
Giyuu lifts his head, and he is back in Sakonji’s hut.
“My boy, is that true?” Sakonji is gripping onto his shoulder. “You defeated the Hand Demon in a single slice?”
“It’s true!” Sabito answers. “He was so fast, I barely even noticed he was moving before he did, and - wham! When I turned around, that thing had turned to ash!”
“My word,” Sakonji breathed, something like awe in his voice, and Giyuu’s stomach twisted for a reason he cannot articulate. “Which of the Water Breathing Forms did you use?”
Which… one? Giyuu’s head pounds. He does not even know. They come to him now, natural as inhalation and exhalation (breathing), he hardly thinks about battle in terms of forms, and his mind refuses to cooperate with him to answer a simple question.
A pause. Sabito looks at Giyuu, his exhilaration fading back into contemplation. “He’s been like this since he defeated the demon,” he says, not expanding on, like what. Then, “I don’t even think he used a water breathing form.”
“I see,” Sakonji says, and Giyuu does not know in the slightest what he sees, but again, he’s left out of whatever conversation that Sakonji and Sabito must be having over his head. He’s abruptly thrust into a memory of his time in Ubuyashiki Mansion, where the other Hashira often held no qualms speaking over him. He shuts his eyes and imagines a rushing stream of water, and awakens to Sabito lightly shaking him.
“Let’s go inside, okay, Giyuu?” He says, and grasps Giyuu’s hand; and Giyuu, small palm in his, clenches his fist over Sabito’s fate line, and presses his thumb against where he can feel Sabito’s pulse; for a moment, this feels like the sun rising on his skin.
For the second time in his life, Giyuu Tomioka is inducted as a Mizunoto in the Demon Slayer Corps.