Sanemi (tried to) believe there was still a little bit of humanity running through his veins, despite the clear fact that his blood was already chaotic enough.

Sanemi awoke to silence.

There was only silence.

He awoke to darkness.

There was only darkness too—suffocating and heavy. He didn’t mind the dark.

(He didn’t, not when the moonlight streaked past bloodied bodies and broken little brothers and sisters; when the fog cleared, and their cramped home was painted in their lives. He had stopped fearing the dark then, because he wanted it to go back, cover, and hide the dead corpses of his siblings.)

Sanemi didn’t wake up screaming. That was odd, he thought, because he only felt numb when he should have felt gutted. He was empty when he should have felt sorrow, supposed to feel anger, so it was odd. It shouldn’t have been like that. It shouldn’t. Grief was supposed to be the death of him.

Sanemi’s curtains pulled, and they clinked noisily. Sunlight struck through his still form and hit him like a deadly beam.

He hissed like a demon- perhaps he was, reaching for his face to shield it. He deserved to wallow in darkness, just a little longer. All the light in his world had already decided to leave him. He could still feel his little brother's - Genya's blood on his hands. It made him sick.

“Good lord of the fucking land,” he snarled, letting his arm lower as he squinted to rid of the dark spots dancing in his vision. Sanemi rubbed at his scarred face and blinked at the checkered robe of Giyuu.

“Great, you,” he said, bitter, something short of a greeting. “Why are you here?”

“Visiting,” Tomioka hummed. Sanemi didn’t have the energy to be annoyed by how unaware he was getting—enough that it allowed the Water Hashira of all people to slither into his room. “You.”

“Me?” Sanemi asked incredulously, anger sizzling underneath his skin, face blank. “Why?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment. Sanemi made it a pause because he spoke again.

“Piss off, then. I’m not dying, you critic.”