Goretober

bloodspill

Tanjiro had a difficult relationship with blood.

Whenever he saw it, he saw his family. He saw them bleeding out on the floor, he saw the red liquid pouring out, staining the floors and then the white snow. It just spread and spread until he honestly felt it was covering the whole mountain. It was the only thing he could see. There was nothing but the haunting red colour. And as he tried to see who was alive in the bile of bodies that was his family, he got some of the evil blood on him. when he lifted his hand, it was like it had infected him too. More like a deadly disease than something that was keeping him alive. The fresh blood latched itself onto his cold hands. He tried shaking it off, but it clung into his skin like some sort of curse. Red. Red was everywhere. He couldn't get away from it, he felt like he was drowning in a sea of blood that covered everyone and everything in sight.

If only he could somehow turn back the time. he'd have done anything to prevent it, prevent them from dying, prevent the blood that had now stopped flowing out of them like waterfall. He'd be glad they'd stopped bleeding if he didn't know what that meant. They must have been drained dry; more blood was on the outside than inside. More was on him now. It was drying and cracking in this cold icy nightmare. It cracked but never quite fell off every time he moved his hands. It was embedded into his skin. Even weeks after he'd still feel like there was just a little left, hiding in his pores, between his finger, or maybe he just couldn't see a speck left. He'd washed his hands hundreds of times, but he still swore he could see just a hint of red. Like a ghost haunting him. stalking him, even months later he still wondered if there was some left.

Now when he was mid battle and saw it coming from the injuries the demons, he fought so intensely the blood was like a cruel reminder. Every time he got even a cut, it was the first thing that flashed into his mind. The way the blood dripped out the little cut or even the large slashes just told him how much worse they had all got it, how much pain they must have been in. the feeling when he was bleeding out, especially when he was fighting a lower or upper moon was the closest, he'd ever get. He knew what they must have gone through, he knew they must have felt the dizziness, the pain, the feeling of being so much lighter almost like floating but with the dreadful thought that you must have lost so much blood that your body could tell how much it was lacking. It was like floating to a slow and painful death. And Tanjiro never, not even once, thought it would be as bad as theirs.