Author's Note: Man, I've actually been writing this for the better part of an entire year. Finally it's done. Un-betaed and not quite perfect, but close enough to what I had envisioned when I started on it. I hope it is worth your read.

Whilst the manga's ending was satisfactory, I felt there were some loose ends, and this was my attempt at envisioning how everything played out.

If you would be so kind, I would appreciate if you could drop me a comment or review, I would love to hear what you have to say.

Warning! Passive spoilers for end of the manga.

Tomioka Giyuu makes his home amongst the trees atop Mt Sagiri.

It is peaceful and quiet, and though the air is a little thin, and the fog a little thick, it does not bother him in the slightest. It does mean that he gets less visitors, however, so he spends most of his days by his lonesome.

It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that Giyuu had found out quite accidentally, and quite belatedly, that he actually liked having company, despite having gone years in self-imposed isolation. Or perhaps it was because he had lived that way until Tanjirou had knocked him out of it that he started to appreciate companionship.

But anyway, there's no helping it now.

Today he begins his routine as usual, wandering in search of an appropriate spot to sit still and meditate. It does not take him long to find the clearing. Strangely, he always finds himself there, as if drawn by some invisible pull.

Giyuu hops lightly and perches atop the familiar boulder split cleanly down the middle. It's only when he tilts his head back to look at the sky that he notices flecks of white drifting lazily in the breeze. Ah, he blinks blearily, not quite believing that it is snow he is seeing. It has been difficult keeping track of his time in the mountains, with the only indications being the gradual change of seasons; but the white blanket is hard to ignore even amongst them, and he realises with a slight pang that it is winter already.

He runs his fingers over the worn edges of the rock. How many years has it been since that day?

It feels even worse when he finds he can't remember.

Tanjirou visits sometimes.

He comes to the rock, touches his hands to it in a small prayer, and talks about anything and everything. Nezuko and Zenitsu have just gotten married, he says. They've set up a clothing store in a peaceful town and invited Tanjirou and Inosuke to live with them in the shophouse. Giyuu can't help but mirror Tanjirou's infectious smile, radiant and hopeful in the gentle sunlight.

"I dropped by to check on Urokodaki-san on my way here," he continues, "I'm glad he's doing alright. He made me a whole dinner spread!" Tanjirou laughs. Then a slight frown, "I think he's a little lonely these days. He keeps telling me not to worry, but I do anyway. So I try to visit as much as I can."

Giyuu's chest aches suddenly. There is no judgment in Tanjirou's eyes, but he imagines there should be. There should be, because Urokodaki means so much to them both and Giyuu can only seem to bring him sadness.

Thankfully the conversation quickly moves to something else, guided by Tanjirou infallible cheer, and Giyuu feels the regret wash away, carried by waves. He doesn't talk much, doesn't need to. He is just glad to listen to Tanjirou's stories, picture the colors of his life painted in words. And the red-head is glad to oblige, chattering away to the day's end.

So they sit like that in the small clearing amongst the trees, with Tanjirou sharing and giving to fill in the time they had spent apart, and Giyuu receiving and growing and almost feeling like he is truly living. Sunset sets the trees ablaze. The warmth seems to caress Giyuu's face and seep into his chest, to his very fingertips.

But every day comes to an end, and Tanjirou eventually moves to stand when the last of the sun's fading rays are chased from the chilling air.

"I'll be back again soon," he says reassuringly, as he dusts off the snow settled on his haori. He gives a little wave and smiles. Giyuu's response is a complicated knot in his throat, so he doesn't reply, but he stares at Tanjirou's retreating back until he disappears into the encroaching fog.

The silence gets louder as darkness falls. Giyuu eventually lets his eyes slide shut.

Nothing left to do now but wait.

He trains other times, swinging an imaginary sword through the trees, breathing measuredly as he revises the forms that come more naturally to him than anything. Without the weight of his nichirin blade, absent for obsolescence, his movements are much more akin to a dance. They feel familiar somehow, like he is merely emulating something he has seen once before, and though he ponders, he can't quite put a finger on it no matter how much he tries. So he just lets loose and sinks into the rhythm, steady and frantic all at once.

On this one particular night, he takes a walk through the mountain trail, subconsciously still looking out for the traps he knows to be hidden beneath the snow and bramble. He sidesteps a pitfall, manoeuvres through a network of trip lines and ducks a log placed quite deliberately at collarbone level. None of them endanger him, of course. He feels almost silly avoiding them.

When he finally reaches the end of the trail at the foot of the mountain, he stops shy. Urokodaki's hut is the same as he remembers, a humble silhouette tucked unassumingly into the surrounding foliage. The wood is worn but well maintained. Just like Urokodaki himself.

The moon is already high in the winter sky, brilliantly silver in Giyuu's eyes. Urokodaki wouldn't be up and about at this time, he thinks. But his legs refuse to move.

Tanjirou's words echo in his mind, almost reproachfully.

Then he hears a creak.

And unexpectedly, the door to Urokodaki's abode swings open. Giyuu's breath catches at the emerging sight of the red warding mask, distinct even in the darkness of the night.

It stares pointedly, eyes impossibly wide, a frowning visage and furrowed brow reminiscent of its owner's own countenance.

For a moment, it seemed to stare straight at him.

Then the gaze sweeps to his left, excruciatingly slow.

Giyuu still doesn't breathe. He instead concentrates on staying infinitely still, quelling his involuntary panic with the lull of a deep, practiced calm. The darkness presses around him, shrouding him from the searching gaze of the red demon. He melds in unseen.

Urokodaki pauses for a second more.

Then with a shake of his head, turns back into his wood cabin, pulling the door shut behind him.

Giyuu dares not move, at first, and stands frozen, eyes boring holes into the door. At a certain point he had become better acquainted with the view from the outside rather than in, and he's not sure why, but he feels like he is being crushed. A weight presses on his chest and his gut and he wants to sink into the ground and never get up.

He tells himself it's for the better.

The pressure doesn't quite disappear, but it ebbs just enough for his legs to finally obey him. It takes all his willpower to wrench a foot back, and the strange spell over him mercifully breaks for him to flee into the night.

It was when his days had blurred together and he felt like drowning when they appeared before him for the first time. Two little people he'd thought he had lost forever.

"You're still wearing that old thing?" The familiar voice was incredulous. But Giyuu's face must have had been even more so because the peach-haired boy immediately frowned and quipped, "I was here first, you know."

Makomo - or at least, who he thought was Makomo, it'd been more than two decades ago that he last saw her and she looked so tiny compared to back then - bounded over to peer at him, "and I wonder who was before you?" She aimed this back at Sabito.

And it was Sabito. The likeness was undeniable. The scar atop his cheek crinkled as he stretched his mouth into a grin, clear, fond eyes peering into his own. His peach brown hair splayed out messily, framing his face, boyish, and falling to shoulders and a collarbone that suddenly seemed much too delicate. It made sense in hindsight how Tanjirou would occasionally address both Sabito and Makomo in their conversations, as if the two were somehow still around. Giyuu wanted to kick himself for not noticing, they were right here all along.

"Giyuu? Are you alright?"

He blinked down at the two pairs of concerned eyes staring up at him. No, he wanted to say, I'm not. There was a tug on his hands as Makomo reached for them, her palm eclipsed by his own, larger one. They were so small. Giyuu felt almost like he wanted to cry, bend forward and pull them into a hug, do both at once.

Instead, he simply nodded, too choked up to speak. There were kind hands in his hair, dragging slow, sympathetic circles. When he opened his eyes, snow piled high around them, cold and serene at once. What a sight he must have been, knees buckled beneath the snow, a trembling mess held together by two pairs of small hands he should have protected, not be protected by.

Sabito's smile was gentler now, sadder.

"You've been through a lot, huh?"

When Tanjirou next visits, it is without his usual cheer.

Giyuu finds him already settled in the usual spot, tired eyes trained ahead. There is a strained line to the curve of Tanjirou's back. He doesn't move when Giyuu lowers himself beside him.

They stay like that, for a while. Snow lazily flutters in the air, catching on long lashes, weighing them down. Tanjirou doesn't even blink.

But Giyuu is patient. He has ever been, waiting by his lonesome atop Mt. Sagiri. Waiting for a time he is not yet sure if he wants to come to pass.

He calms himself, clear and undisturbed like the surface of still water, and waits.

It takes more than just a few days to pay off, as Tanjirou visits again and again, in the fading twilight.

Eventually though, and with a slight shudder, Tanjirou sighs, defeated. His voice comes out cracked. Emotion seeps into his every motion, every expression, spilling from a cup too full for his years of life and living. There's an uncertainty to his admission that Giyuu unconsciously mirrors, his heart fluttering with anticipation. Dread.

"Urokodaki is sick," he unloads with a heave, and Giyuu's earth seems to tilt alarmingly before he swallows. Closes his eyes. Tries to focus on the singular point that is Tanjirou's breathing.

"The doctors say there's nothing they can do," each word dims the evening light, rings with a truth that sinks like stones in his stomach.

A fist sinks into snow. Tanjirou curls into himself, and the voice that comes out next is sorrowful, strangled, broken.

"There's nothing I can do-"

And it's strange how that snaps Giyuu's world back in focus. He looks at Tanjirou, really looks at him, and searches. There's hopelessness in the tilt of his shoulders, his bowed head. Pain in his clenched fists and his trembling lip. But it isn't there. The frustration and anger. Fire that he has grown so used to seeing in his eyes, his smile, his very blood. Fire that was strong and bright enough to kindle hope in everything he touched.

Giyuu sees only defeat, and heat bubbles up his throat in a flash of anger. It's enough to burn up his own indecisions, parting them in a wave, shoving them aside.

"Why are you here?" he barks, putting in every ounce of frustration.

Tanjirou jerks up, looks wildly around, as if he hadn't noticed him there before. "Giyuu-san?" he ventures, voice wobbling, unsure. Giyuu's heart hardens.

"Isn't there somewhere else you should be?"

Because it isn't like Tanjirou to be here, with a waste of time like him, despairing about what-ifs and what-nots. Tanjirou is a figure ever in motion, ablaze, lighting the world around him the way only he can. Giyuu can stand to examine the still tender part of his own heart later, alone, but for now-

Tanjirou is staring at him, almost through him, with how he doesn't quite manage to meet Giyuu's steady gaze, but there is an uncanny glint of wonder in his eye that hardens into determination when he blinks. It's flickered back to life, that unmistakable fire.

"...You're right," Tanjirou nods at last. The waver evens out. "I'm sorry, Giyuu-san," he hurriedly gets up, shaking the snow from his hair, "I have somewhere I need to be."

Giyuu watches him leave in a messy sprint, and the coals in his chest cool ever so slightly. There is a part of him that clambers, so do you, almost desperately, like an errant child, but he quells it with a tilt of his head backwards and closed eyes.

No, he reminds himself, as bitterness coats his tongue. My own place is here.

The sparks are doused all at once, and his mouth tastes strangely like ash.

The winter gives way to genteel spring, and there is a fragility in the air that Giyuu cradles close as it splinters, bit by bit, in Makomo's quiet voice.

She is smiling.

Giyuu can't bear to look at her, so he keeps his head down and tries to steel his trembling heart, because they both know.

The silence is broken by a question, tentative and small.

"Are you sure you can't come with us?"

And it brushes something deep within him, something delicate that has always yearned to return to them. Giyuu looks up and wants to say no, please, take me with you. Wants to be a kid again, without a care in the world.

But he can't. As much as it had pained him - still pains him, he had grown and moved on, bound himself to duty. Duty, which he has not yet fulfilled.

Makomo's smile falters, then slides back on with an easy grace. "I'm sorry," she says, truly apologetic.

Sabito's hand finds its way onto her shoulder, and she nods.

It's time.

Watch over him for us?

Giyuu lets his resolve speak for itself, firm on his lips and in the tilt of his chin. Sabito takes one look at him and laughs. He turns, pulling Makomo with him.

As the morning fog fades like a memory, Giyuu stares out into the sun, bright and blinding and burning. Whether to etch the memory into his irises or to melt them away, he doesn't know.

Either way, it's not enough. It never really is.

Tanjirou moved into Urokodaki's residence soon after his passing. Rather not get in his sister's hair now that she has a family, he had said, suddenly seeming much, much older than his years.

His smile is infinitely soft as he prays, bowed amidst a field of flowers. The gentle breeze is cool on their skin, ebbing down, down into the vastness beneath them, awash in an ephemeral light. It's almost surreal, dream-like. Giyuu's senses feel muted and distant, but at the same time, sharp. Discordant. Like waves dragging backwards and forwards, crashing against the sea, into glass, into nothing. He stares almost down into himself - at himself - an out-of-body feeling, unable to move an inch.

But whatever it is in this moment cracks with an inevitability at the shuffle of Tanjirou's feet, and everything rushes back all at once. Waves crashing onto the pieces, scattering them, swallowing them into depths he can never reach.

Tanjirou's good-eye is knowing when he turns. There are lines on his face. Lines of laughter and joy are the most familiar to trace. But there are also lines of sorrow, deep and scarring, and they pull together in a kindness that is both beautiful and sad all at once.

"Please," he breathes into the silence, just imperceptibly above a whisper, "Please, rest in peace."

The prayer lifts into the sky, impossibly light, borne by the strength of a dozen combined wishes. It goes up, and up, and up, to a place they cannot yet go, until only silence is left to linger in its wake.

Giyuu feels people in everything that he sees.

Urokodaki in the rain, a calm and soothing presence. Shinaguzawa in the winds, wild and free across the mountaintop. Kochou in the delicate beats of a butterfly's wings, spiraling lazily over the last closing wildflower buds of the season.

They feel close, inexplicably, like a presence barely below the water's surface, or an image just behind translucent sheets of a sliding door. Sometimes, when he dares to reach out, breaking the surface, the image ripples and disappears into waves. The shadow vanishes. He can never hope to reach them, not from this side.

So he lets himself feel, zooms in on the intangible beside him, the thrum of souls. Memorises their rhythm and their warmth. Lets himself attune and be swept up alongside their song.

Thank you, he thinks. He has a lot of words, a thousand things to convey, but not a voice nor the chance to learn to say them, in a broken world - a broken life, where those he would direct them to have long gone.

Instead, he directs them inward, into his body. Projects them with all the earnestness he can. He hopes they see, hopes they understand what he wants them to know. Thank you.

The leaves rustle in reply, unassumingly forlorn.

The seasons pass by at an unhurried pace, with an impending steadiness in the shade of the leaves and the sweetness of the air. The heat of summer has diffused into damp earth, piled high in autumn's many tones.

Giyuu wonders how many more he has left to see.

Tanjirou visits as often as he can, and it's likely due to the regularity of his presence that Giyuu only realises, drawn up to his full height, that he has to look up to meet the boy - young man's - gaze, much, much later than he should.

And yet, it's not apparent with how Tanjirou stands, one foot bent, a casual slouch to his shoulders that dips inconceivably lower with each day. The sun mark is an ugly scar on his forehead, blooming across his skin in tendrils that dig deeper and deeper at something intangible, something precious.

The mark was a blessing at first. The Demon Slayers sought it with fervour, anxious to catch up to an inhuman tenacity bent on their destruction. For Tanjirou, the distance was simply longer - years and years of training that the world's last sunset could never wait for. Years he will now never have.

Isn't it enough? Giyuu wonders. Tanjirou shifts slightly, and his hair, deliberately long across the right side of his face, falls forward to reveal an empty window, sightless and unseeing. Hasn't Tanjirou given enough?

The world serves to remind him again that life is most assuredly unfair.

"I might-" A cough, deep throated and painfully raw, "I-" he tries again, "-might not be a-able to come, so much...anymore..."

Tanjirou winces as he visibly struggles to swallow another imminent coughing fit, dragging a hand to his mouth to stifle the jerk of a dry hack. Giyuu knows better than to assume this some sort of illness, temporary or otherwise. He knows it like he knows himself, the memory traced into his very body, the phantom ache that burgeons in his chest.

There's a wry smile on Tanjirou's face despite it all, "Don't worry," he exhales tiredly, once the urge has passed, "I don't plan on going just yet. There's still something I have to do here."

Giyuu's eyes land on sharp elbows and even sharper collarbones, and wishes that he doesn't.

"...You should be resting," he admonishes, finally, "Home." Not up a mountain, in the dead of winter. Giyuu's fingers twitch involuntarily as he struggles against the urge to reach out and pull the redhead's haori tighter against the cold.

Tanjirou continues like he never heard him. "I'll bring a special someone, next time." A grin spreads across his face, radiating fondness, "He's still very small, but he's very, very cute. I think he might not remember, and I don't really expect him to at all… But I want him to see it."

Giyuu tilts his head in confusion. "See, what?"

"My father's dance," Tanjirou is wistful, now, and Giyuu feels a tug of something very much like deja vu. "It's something that's been passed down in my family. I didn't know what it was all for, at first, even though I knew it was something I should never forget."

It's strange, because Giyuu has never heard of or seen such a dance. But its image takes flight in his mind all on its own, like he knows it almost instinctively, had known it all along.

Tanjirou shrugs a little.

"The world won't be needing it anymore."

He looks straight at Giyuu. His voice is soft, but it rings with a sharp clarity in his mind all the same.

"Even so," the fog curves around his lips, trembling slightly-

And for a moment, all Giyuu sees is blue. Tanjirou's eye shines like the light of the sun, reflecting and scattering across the surface of an endless horizon, a gleaming boundary between the sky and the water's edge. A ghost of a breeze that tingles his skin is almost warm, magical-

Then his eyes curl up in another grin.

"Won't you watch me?"

The night is quiet.

He perches beneath the trees, scopes the clearing ringed with unlit braziers, a solemn regiment in the dark. He will keep his vigil until it is time.

Snow flutters, coating the ground in a fresh blanket that shimmers bright under the silver moon. Beautiful and lonely and cold. But even that will not last for long.

He sits and waits for the inevitable.

Senjurou watches the flames dance, sees his brother, and cries.

Giyuu can't look away.

It is beautiful. Breathtaking. Infinitely familiar. It touches something in his heart and squeezes, leaving him gasping, choking. The wide crescent arc cuts across the air, ringed by the light of the rising dawn. Snow glitters around them, kicked up in the air, scattering in the breeze, an iridescent halo around the flames, bright and strong. Ablaze.

There are a thousand individuals dancing with him, centuries of struggle, of blood, of life. They lend him strength. There is Kyojurou in the swing of his arms, Tokito in his footwork. Many are nameless, phantom wisps, but they weave together tightly, insistently. A network of support and meaning, of whispered promises and broken dreams. They sing. They are remembered.

Giyuu closes his eyes. Because Tanjirou shines too bright, even as his shoulders dip, as his lips tremble, his feet trip.

He shines like hope, and that is more painful than anything.

In the light of the morning sun, they remain suspended.

The bells' last chime rings out with a finality, high and clear in the air. Around them, the world is wrapped in temporary stillness, a kind of awful reverence.

Then the moment fades like a sigh, and Giyuu blinks, chances a look at the bundle in Kanao's arms at last, and catches the horror cross her face.

Like a marionette cut from its strings, Tanjirou collapses in the snow.

Everything happened in a whirlwind. He stood in the eye of the storm, looking on at a silent slideshow.

There were two people beside Tanjirou in an instant. Kanao, gently lifting his head, the whisper of her voice tinged with urgency and panic. Senjurou - because Kanao didn't have the extra hands - pulling his arms over his shoulders, heaving him up with much too much ease - Senjurou must be stronger now, that, or Tanjirou was-

Giyuu shakes his head, but the images don't recede. They play on a broken reel, stuttering, distorted, almost strange enough that he can pretend it isn't real.

Something is pulling at his chest and he knows where it leads. But he knows, also, that it is ultimately futile.

In spite of it all he lifts a defiant foot and makes to step over the border, because logically, it's only air.

Instead, he meets something hard, a resistance so strong that it physically repels against him and sends him stumbling backwards.

There's acid at the back of his throat now. Maybe from the sudden vertigo, but more likely from the frustration bubbling dangerously hot in the pit of his stomach. He glares darkly at the invisible dividing line barring him entry.

Somewhere within the familiar wooden shack, not even a hundred feet away, lies Tanjirou - just out of his reach and likely bedridden with weakness, if the state he had last seen him in remains any indication.

And whether by the smallest mercy of the gods or not, there's nothing Giyuu can do.

Not even watch.

After Tanjirou, he never expects another visitor. There isn't anyone else left in this waking world that would have him in their thoughts, or so he had assumed, because he is now having to re-evaluate being decidedly wrong. The newcomer's approaching footsteps are soft and featherlike - unfamiliar, yet not altogether so.

Sunlight is pooling around his feet, playful and lazy on one of the warmest winter days since the start of the new year. He's still trying to place a finger on the feeling when the figure in question emerges from the brush, unnaturally quiet.

No wonder they remind him of Kochou's. Light, dainty, almost weightless.

It's Kanao who smiles back at him with a slight tilt of her head. But unlike her mentor, it's benign. There's no twist to her lips, no trace of the dangerous light that always glinted too sharply off of Kochou's dark eyes.

Kanao is, instead, serene, fitting right in with the natural tranquility of the mountain upon which they both reside. She comes to a stop a distance away from him, just close enough for him to catch the telltale signs of fatigue on her face. Like the rest of them, she carries with her a kind of sadness, a strange phantom that they wear after the war and all the fighting.

But there's also an animatedness to her that is startlingly fresh and unabashedly captivating, speaking of hopeful and happier times. The delicate wings of the butterfly accessory, once an object of mourning, now bloom artfully from her hair, catching the light as though fluttering.

Giyuu smiles. It looks good on her.

At the same time, there's a knot of anticipation building in his throat, because she must have come bearing news, and Giyuu is dying to, or prevent himself from even daring to, ask.

"Tomioka-san," Kanao greets amicably, looking in his rough direction. Giyuu almost nods in reply before he notices her eyes remain dilated, having trouble with focus.

She's just guessing, then.

Somehow, the realization sends a pang through his chest. It's so unexpected he forgets the words on the tip of his tongue.

Kanao closes her eyes and hums thoughtfully for a moment.

"Tanjirou told me you were here," she says slowly, then nods with a small smile, "I know now that he is right. Your presence is strong here."

A pause.

"You feel like him," she admits.

That stops him in his tracks. He doesn't quite know how to feel about that.

Tanjirou is different from him. That, he believes beyond any doubt. She's wrong, yet hearing those words makes him feel almost fond.

He shakes it away.

"...How is he?" he ventures instead, warily, much too tentative. He doesn't know why he asks, really.

Predictably, his question hangs in the air when Kanao doesn't reply.

A funny numbness creeps up from something other than cold. He has to force himself not to look away, and wonders again why Kanao had come here today, if not simply to confirm what he already knows.

"Tomioka-san."

He blinks slowly at her, then in vague surprise.

Her head is down in a low bow.

"Thank you, Tomioka-san," she says, much too respectfully. Black hair veils her face from his view, but her words are deliberate and meaningful, and he hangs on each one.

He swallows, trying to stem the sudden tide rising in his throat.

"Knowing you are here for him, it gives me-"

Kanao raises her head.

It's a crescendo in his ears.

"-peace," she settles, with finality.

Giyuu has a waking dream.

The first thing he notices is the quiet. There's a stillness to the world, an immutable silence. The very air exudes a quality as though untouched.

His vision doesn't quite seem to focus. Vaguely, he notices an estate framed with greenery, rough shapes in the distance. There might have been butterflies - spots of colour amidst the scene, dancing in and out of periphery, but when he squints they blend ever frustratingly into the light.

So he gives up and turns to examine his hands instead. With a mild curiosity, he rubs them together. There isn't a sensation.

There isn't a sound, either, when he presses his feet into the pebbled ground. It's a dream, of course. He wonders how he knows. He also almost has time to wonder at the marvel of dreaming in his present state when something distracts him from the thought.

A tinkling voice. It's barely audible, but rings clear against the otherwise silent environment. From the sound of it, it's coming from the estate situated quite unassumingly ahead.

Giyuu blinks. The fog clears somewhat, and he notices a path. When he takes a step forward, the distance appears to stretch, almost lazily, then contract rapidly, alarmingly, squeezing to a point before his feet from the tip of his toes.

He blinks again, and is assaulted by sunlight in his eyes, filtered through trees suddenly overhead, swaying in an obvious breeze that tugs playfully at his hair.

Like the flipping of a page, he's arrived in the garden.

When a gasp unwittingly leaves his lips, he still doesn't hear it in his ears, but he must have because the shadow of a figure before him shifts in response, turning.

Hanafuda earrings dangle in the wind. He knows this man.

"Tanjirou?"

But it's not his voice - it's much too high, feminine in pitch. The man turns away from him to its source - Kanao, kneeling on the engawa. A child runs circles in the white pebbles between them, his peals of laughter little bells of joy.

Giyuu feels out of place, like he is intruding on something, situated awkwardly in the open as he was. But something possesses him as he watches this older, strangely familiar Tanjirou as he picks up the child and holds him up towards the sun, a contented smile atop his lips. In a dream within a dream, the threads of happiness waft lazily in the air, almost too transparent to see save a slight sheen against the light. They slide through his fingers, unraveling, and as he stands, rooted, it strikes him that he doesn't want this moment to end.

"Tomioka-san?"

It's Kanao. She steps into the space by his side, looking upon the same scene. Her eyes are shining in the light.

Tanjirou spins the child in the air, who explodes in giggles. Time seems to slow.

Then she looks at him.

Looks at him. Straight into his eyes, an impossible clarity that jolts Giyuu out of his reverie, splinters the edge of the dream. But even as his heart races with a sudden panic, Kanao is smiling against what he now recognises as unshed tears.

"I'm glad he was born into this world."

A world that they had given their all to protect.

The glass turns into sand. The light's glare cuts into his vision, fading gradually into white.

Her back is small against that world, but her voice doesn't waver.

"Please, don't worry about us."

The tugging turns into a lurching pull.

"Be safe on your journey."

And everything upends.

.

When Giyuu wakes, it's with a whisper of a wish in his ears, and a ghost of sensation on his cheeks, chased into the winds.

.

He spends his last days praying.

Winter gives way to the first buds of spring, when Tanjirou manages to make it up the mountain for the very last time.

He stumbles into the clearing, looking for all the world like someone tethering upon its very precipice, and catches his breath in deep, rattling heaves.

The mountain, in silent reverie, stands still.

Then ever so slowly, Tanjirou straightens up.

"Ah," he sighs - after a hanging moment - an exhale of relief, tinged with years of bone-deep fatigue. With his single good eye, he gives Giyuu a long look, as if taking in the sight of him.

"Finally," he breathes, a small smile tugging on cracked lips. "I see you."

Giyuu stares right back, heart in his throat. Then there's a slow release as the words sink in. He drops his shoulders, almost wants to laugh, but nothing comes out.

It feels like the world has taken on a new color, like a breath of fresh air forced unceremoniously into his lungs. It feels like he was just waiting for this very moment. This moment, that's an eternity and a second, where they meet, at long last, and all the remaining chills of a giving winter are chased from the blooming of the warmth in his heart.

Giyuu hopes that to Tanjirou, it, too, feels like coming home.

"Thank you. For staying."

Giyuu frowns in reply. "I would have waited longer."

He would.

But Tanjirou shakes his head.

"It's enough."

The sun mark on his head is fading. Once stark against pale skin, Giyuu now has to squint to catch its outline.

Tanjirou wobbles slightly on his feet, strength flagging at last, and there's a flash of panic as Giyuu instinctively reaches out.

When Tanjirou takes it, he glances down at their intertwined hands - Giyuu's right hand, with fleeting surprise, and laughs.

The sound is bright and enveloping.

He wipes the tears from his eyes with his free hand. "It's enough," he repeats, quieter, but stronger now, with a resolve Giyuu cannot bring himself to doubt. He pulls the red head upright, and watches as Tanjirou stands, unburdened for a first.

The trademark Hanafuda earrings are conspicuously absent. He's not a Demon Slayer, or a sun-breather. For once, it's just Tanjirou.

Giyuu smiles.

Warm light dances at the edge of his vision, coaxing, enveloping their presence.

"Shall we?"

The only way left was forward, and ever so, into the blinding lightness of the world's end cradle.

They cross over to the other side together.

Tanjirou hears his family, and turns with a gasp, in pain, in love, in joy.

Giyuu hears an unmistakable snort that could only be Sabito's, "Took you long enough", sees the iridescent flutter that is Kochou turning from her sister, and finally beholds Urokodaki, the form of whom stands tall and strong before him, just as he had always remembered it.

He takes it all in, and for some reason, there's a sudden, uncontrollable pressure building in his chest, pressing in, pushing from his eyes. Trembling. Hot. They sting against the glare of the light.

Urokodaki reaches up to unsling his red tengu mask from his face, and in a gentle motion, sets it onto Giyuu's instead. Then he pets him, just the slightest bit awkwardly, on the head.

.

Tomioka Giyuu gives in at last, and cries.