The Demon Queen

In an Eternal Fight

TW: Gore, body mutilation

I stared in terror at the shining metal blade being held above me. 

He wants to kill us? I asked myself. But why?

"F-father?" Muzan spoke in a stutter.

"The two of you are too dangerous to keep around," Muzan's father said. "I hope you'll understand."

Hope we'll understand!? I thought.

Muzan kept fighting with himself as to whether to move or not. Or more so, when to move and how.

"He's your son ..." I said, staring up at my own reflection in the axe's blade. "And I'm ..."

"My wife," Muzan said. He glanced past the axe's blade to his father's anxious, broken face. "Please stop this," he said to his father. "Mother died to try to save me. She wanted me to live. She wouldn't want this!"

Muzan's father gripped the axe's handle tighter. "Forgive me," he said. "After I kill you both, I'll kill myself. I promise."

Why? I thought. Why, when he survived all of this just now?

"You can't do this!" Muzan exclaimed.

Why would he throw all of our lives away?

The axe swung down at us.

"Stop!" I yelled at the top of my lungs and thrust my hand up towards the blade.

I didn't know why I made such a worthless move. My body alone couldn't stop the axe, demon or not.

The axe sliced off half of my hand. I screamed in pain and grabbed my mutilated hand as Muzan's father stared in shock at his own doings.

How could I ...?

I screamed so loud that my throat felt like it would rip apart.

How could I have been so stupid!?

"Damn it!" Muzan yelled and grabbed his father's hands, which were still holding the axe. He held them firmly with inhuman strength so that the blood circulation to his father's hands was completely cut off. He stared at his father with gritted teeth and venomous eyes. "I'll never forgive you!" he screamed and dug his claws into his father's wrists. "You filthy traitor!" He stabbed his claws and fingers through his father's wrists and ripped his father's hands from his body. "Traitor!"

Without a moment of hesitation, Muzan hurled his father's hands with the axe across the room. I stared in shock as I heard Muzan's father's terrifying scream. Blood streamed from his wrists, pouring onto the floor and all over his clothes. Even if he somehow got a hold of his hands and was able to position them at the proper places at his wrists, they were not going to reconnect. His hands were severed from his body forever, unlike the half of mine that was in the process of slowly reattaching itself.

I didn't feel any remorse or regret. I wasn't going to stop Muzan. It was about survival. His father tried to kill us.

That was that. Kill or be killed.

That was the world we lived in.

I watched in silence as Muzan stabbed his hand through his father's chest, killing him instantly. A second after his hand completely pierced its way through, Muzan ripped his hand out, creating a gaping hole through his father's chest. As his father's body fell to the floor, Muzan just stood there, staring at him. The blood oozing onto the floor crept to Muzan's bare feet, inching farther and farther away from his father's body. Muzan soon stood in a shallow pond of blood. He didn't move the slightest and didn't take his eyes off of his father's body.

We both stayed that way for a long time. I started to wonder if Muzan was ever going to move at all, or if he even could. He seemed like he almost could have been in shock. Meanwhile, my hand had completely healed, and so I decided to cautiously approach him.

"Muzan?" I asked and put my hand on his shoulder.

Still staring at his father's body, he asked me if I was all right.

I told him I was, and that my hand regenerated.

"I have no one but you now, Sakura," Muzan said. "You have no one but me. Forget about that older brother of yours. He'll only try to kill us, too. Like our own parents did." He looked down at his bloodied hands. "I wanted to become a doctor to help people. I wanted to save people's lives, so they wouldn't be at the gate of death like I was. I never thought that I would end up as a killer." He paused, studying his hands. "I never thought that I would feel relief when someone died ... when my own father died ..."

"I understand," I said.

Muzan looked at me. He took a deep breath, as if to cleanse himself from the tension he was facing. "We're free now," he said. "We really are free now." He rose his hands up to his eye level and looked at them. "Even though I have soiled us both."

I took his hands, holding them tight as the dried blood on his hands rubbed off on mine. "It's not all on you," I said. "We're in this together." I laced my fingers with his. "We're all each other has now, but we're free. We'll be fine."

His gaze focused from our hands over to my face. He looked me directly in the eyes. "We'll be fine."