𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄   𝐌𝐄   𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑   𝐆𝐎𝐃,   𝐈   𝐂𝐀𝐍   𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄   𝐘𝐎𝐔   𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆  

 moodboard for @moonfelling for luka & mizi

A lift of that delicate veil, the leaning in of the Lady Founder. Ena presses a soft kiss to Douma's temple, a sacred spot to both of them, a blessing before his hunt.

Douma leans down, head bowed in a posture of reverence and humility, hands folded before his chest in prayer. A prophet receiving his blessing from a goddess.

He exhales slowly, and a fine cold mist billows from his parted lips, head deliberately turned away from her as to not let the cold invade her lungs. Joy had long been lost to him, but he is certain that it was the feeling of her warm lips against his frigid flesh.

His eyes flutter open after the kiss, a finger oh-so carefully wiped away the frost that had gathered on her cheek.

❝ I HAVEN'T SEEN a half decent garden in a while... why do you maintain it ?? ❞

@moonfelling (eiko) // one liner call

" hey, stranger ! small world, huh ? " a smile, wide, a wink with her eye that isn't strange and smooth like a subtle manufacturing of stone. whatever he's drinking, it's set down in front of him, fresh, to his liking. tequila sunset and one of whatever that guy over there's drinking, thanks ! and then a slide of the ginger-haired gunslinger into the booth across from him. the booth in the corner, where sisyphus can rest his boulder, rest his legs and arms, and she can get a real scoop out of him. " you look rough, pal. you okay ? " asks kioko, lips wrapping around the coiled straw in her drink, pulling the colorful liquid up slowly. ( @ sisyphus :3c )

── And for a second - for a perfect millisecond - he's home again. the taste of honey whiskey rolls 'cross his tongue and down his throat in a deluge, and he's sitting in front of his grandfather again, and they're back in the sunroom. the paintings are mostly completed. some are unfinished. some will always be unfinished.

the old man dies before he can talk again. this time, he's not killed by his body finally tapping out. the end does not come to him by natural means. it comes to him by someone approaching, citing that he looks rough -

and for a moment, he is infuriated. of course he looks rough. of course he does. he travels from this particular canvas all too often as of late, person to person, world to world, meeting and staying and meeting and staying. he travels and he talks and he makes new friends, and then he leaves them. or he travels and he talks and he winds up with an arrow through his jugular. or he travels and he talks and he doesn't get a chance to explain, because someone saw him do something wrong - not wrong to him, wrong to them, like they know anything about the word - and now he's being chased like he was today.

and now he's sitting down in a corner booth, delighting in his silence and falsified memories of a life better lived, and someone is interrupting him.

the liquor in his veins calms his temper. the glass before him helps. the face across from him does not.

he pulls his head up from the table, takes a breath, and musters his best attempt at a smile. it is not a good one.

❝ i appreciate the concern, but i am fine. if i wasn't, i would not be here. ❞ he would be screaming his lungs out in a canvas unoccupied; he would be dragging his nails through the dirt in hopes of digging a hole for himself; he would be curled up somewhere, dark and damp, waiting for the stormclouds to settle up above. anywhere but here.

he sets his own glass to the side, the contents all but drained, and slides the new one forward.

spoken through broken, panicked sobs. this was never supposed to happen. how was she supposed to know she'd meet her adopted father in the woods? how would she have known that he would stoke something burning and violent in her blood? that his words cut deeper than any poison he could inflict her with? she can't do this. she can't do this anymore she can't breathe she can't -

( mainverse (hashira) ena and douma :) )

His movements were bestial, hurried, a blizzard that threatened to snuff out all life. The moment he caught that sickeningly sweet scent, Douma understood the gravity of the situation at hand, this was no simple prey. He moved like a man possessed, leaping from branch to branch, effortlessly weaving between the trees. He followed the scent to a clearing, marred by the beast's poison. Douma bit down the bile that threatened to rise to his throat from that rotten stench, eyes desperately searching for any trace of her. And there it was, he caught a glimpse of her haori, a petal in the midst of ash.

The Ice Hashira leapt from his hiding spot, immediately closing the distance between them. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that awaited him.

@moonfelling | &. 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝟐 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬. ❛ i want you to go on. i want you to live. for yourself and for others. ❜ From Reiko

For the longest while, there's only silence. Madara's gaze drifting past her to the silhouette of mountains in the distance. The wind pulls at his air, yet he doesn't move outside of tightening his jaw once, twice, as though he's grinding the words into something palatable before he says them.

❝. . .you ask the impossible.❞ he says at last, his voice quiet and low enough it could be witnessed as a unforseen tenderness. ❝ You think I can unlearn what built this 'peace'? That I can just forget the blood spilled? ❞ A faint breath escapes, not quite a sigh, nor a laugh, ❝ I've burned too many bridges to pretend I deserve the other side.❞

Finally, his eyes shift to find hers⸻his onyx eyes weary but firm all the same. ❝You want me to live, Reiko? ❞ He questions as he steps closer, the tone nearly accusatory as he studies her closely. ❝Then tell me how to do it without becoming more of a monster.❞

Finally his tone falters, the subtlest fracture and the next breath he takes seems to cost him something. ❝You see the man I once was. . .while I only remember what I've become. ❞ A half-formed smile dies before it can fully soften his expression.

" i - inosuke ?! " it comes as a shock at first, watching the boar waddle in with bruises across his ribs and blood seeping from one of the eyes of his mask. tanjiro lunges up from the dinner table to brace his friend, careful not to touch his torso much, not wanting to hurt him anymore than he's probably already hurting. was it a demon? did he just get back from a mission? did he wrestle a bear again? " what happened ? we need to get you to see aoi-san, right away ! "

For a second, Inosuke looked uncharacteristically sheepish. He was like a mischievous child expecting a deserved scolding, his steps silent as he followed the walls, his senses on high alert.

It was crucial that he got to Tanjiro first.

"What?! No! This is nothing! No need to get the blue nurse involved... or anyone else!"

A shiver ran down his spine at the thought of it, while Tanjiro's hands hovered above his wounds. Inosuke had no fears, but the girls of this manor? They scared him.

"I was testing my strength, that's all! Just to make sure I still had it in me! I couldn't find any demons to hunt, so I stopped for a fish break... and I got my fight!"

he's never known how to wish for himself. he's known how to rage, to feel hatred, to feel painful, all sundering love for others but not himself - but wishing slipped through his fingers long ago. with each cycle, he burns a bit more. with each cycle, the sun dies a little bit more to buy time. with each cycle, his hands once shaking and trembling with golden blood, or struggle to pick up a dropped dawnmaker with spasming fingers; now simply tighten his grip on his soaked blade. he has no right to mourn them but move forward.

khaslana's anger and memory of their wishes, their feelings, their hopes, keep that single flickering bit of humanity in him still alive, even three million cycles later. against the rot of the black tide consuming his body. against the way his flesh tears, cracks and seeps until he can no longer fully cover his body as he ought to. eons before ' flame reaver ' is born but ages after ' phainon ' has died.

ironic isn't it ? phainon wasn't even his real name. a nickname, something fond and cherished by those he's killed. those he had in a twisted fate where the only way to save them is to trod over their bodies, to burn until his cold, blazing light extingushes inevitably.

and kaishu remains at his side; and he remembers in the flickering, dark, almost emptied out cavern of his exhausted mind desperately clinging to that candle of his humanity, the love that went beyond the anger of keeping his friends wishes with him, khaslana hesitates.

he hasn't hesitated in a long, long time. much less has he used declining vocal chords rasping with fire licking him from within from billions of coreflames to answer someone that...wait.

hasn't khaslana always considered her a friend ? why is that...so dulled now ? there is a flicker of a foreign warmth he can barely remember but it still persists. it isn't the flaming solar flare that is his body as a sun for tomorrow, but something softer. almost entirely forgotten but subconsciously never had they ever been.

there's a long pause; washed out eyes and features shrouded in what meager clothing he could find settle on her face. she persists, and he wishes she wouldn't.

they are both so tired. he can recognize that, despite the encroaching numbness that registers a moment of fear to lose it in the first place. to lose his emotions to nothing. he can't.

he just can't. even if his humanity is a flicker, even if his love is subconscious and his wishes forgotten save for everyone else's . . he cannot allow himself to forget.

nor kaishu's wishes too.

the words do something to him. something enough that makes a boot halt, almost twisting in the dirt as he doesn't remove his hood, but white hair still pokes out in pale tufts as he cants his head, something in his chest hurting, but the worst pain one could conjure is a familiar resting place for him. in his heart, his ribs, his veins from the coreflames consuming him. the fires of hatred, the wishes of the dead and loved. even if...the last part is hard to remember how it feels more than the sensation of an ache that it is still there.

she's...a friend. she didn't abandon him. she should abandon him. she must be exhausted. his slowed mind, long obsessed with the goal and fruition of buying time and halting the black tide, halting irontomb, stealing coreflames from friends like family - makes his breath hitch.

it isn't a pretty sound. more like a cracking rasp, as if a match was slowly burning his throat from the inside out and seeping out his mouth.

she still loves her friend - and khaslana isn't sure he even exists anymore save in the flickering humanity he still can reveal to her from time to time, and even that, he cannot remember.

" kaishu . " it's rasped out, monotonous, but there's an ache there, almost a plead to somehow still be seen in the funeral pyre that is 'him'.

my wish? my wish is to fulfill everyone else's wishes !

" i'm . . sorry . " how many times has he told them that ? his precious friend, or in his memories she was - still is, even if barely anything registers now. an anchor to keep his humanity flickering. even if she was able to escape the eternal recurrence, he'd still keep her in his memories as one, even if he lost that too. something keeps him even by a few percents, human. but maybe only she sees that. she's the only one left to see that, not that his existence matters. not that he ever mattered.

" . . . i. . . " a cough, sounding more like a sickening battle for clean air and not ash. " i. . . am sorry that i can't find a way to get you out of this hell. i . . . " he forgot how to smile. to show emotion. there's only a brief flicker of his long protected humanity, however faint, seeping into his dead blue eyes.

" i still . . . think of you as . . a friend . . . somehow i . . somewhere . . " his speech patterns are less coherent, less frequent; so obsessed and frantic to stall for time, so desperate to obtain the coreflames as efficiently as possible, subconsciously wishing to put everyone out of their misery if this nightmare is going to continue.

"but i couldn't . . " another hideous excuse of a cough. " couldn't get you back home, or elsewhere. i couldn't - " and you still say you love me. you still treat me as a friend when you're just as frayed as i am.

he turns to her, khaslana's once unmarred countenance layered with multitudes of bloody, golden cracks on his skin; some from his neck curling up in jagged claws to his jawline.

he is the epitome of someone just existing to be hurting.

" i want to. " it's still that dull tone, still an exhaustion no one could ever know, against the unbearable pain he feels that love seep into him. it burns and maybe khaslana can't even recognize it anymore, but for a moment his chest does not burn as badly.

( it's a different kind of hurt. )

" hey . . . " a croaked rasp.

" kai . . shu . . .while i have the chance . . . want. . to ask . . . " broken, fragmented sentences with an echo of something with too much pain and suffering to name. something longing but only in slivers. slivers are all he's allowed now.

" . . . . what is . . . your wish . . . ? i know everyone's . . . but yours . "

before this sun is set to die entirely, before it lights the way in its pyre for a single dawn over amphoreus . . . he knows he'd like to hear what she wants.

it's his unspoken, quiet way of saying, that even as he's all but burnt away, all but ashes - that he loves her too.

maybe he's forgotten how love feels, but it's there, like a pulse in his decaying lungs. he hopes before he loses his voice entirely, that he can, with poor semblance thank her. for everything. and plead to gods that have long abandoned their creations that she won't burn with him. that's what a 'good friend' would wish.

if only we met in another life. surely we'd have . . . i could . . . help fulfill . . . that wish . . .