bleach diversity writing: section a
— 500 word drabble
anatomy of a traitor
treachery is a curious thing, and comes in many forms, uryū decides, when he watches his father sever all ties with his grandfather. the treachery of abandoning your family, the trust they put in you to carry on their legacy was, for example, different from spilling secret plans to enemies, yet had somewhat equal repercussions: ties broken, never to be renewed again.
he thinks the same thing when he dons the pure white cape of the Vandenreich and the light blue of the Quincies, watching himself in front of the mirror, trying to discern any seeable changes in his image. after all, every single one of his friendships are now severed— there is no turning back from this point now or any time in the future.
and the thing is, he isn't, not really, and not at all. he is not a traitor. he never planned to be, in the grand scheme of things.
from the day he met kurosaki ichigo and kuchiki rukia, his life has been irrevocably and utterly changed. he is supposed to hate shinigami— and he tries to. but he realises that hating the new order of shinigami is not the answer, after all. why hate the children for the sins of their fathers?
there are countless times he could have killed kurosaki, after all. killed him to ensure the total destruction of the soul world. (he still finds it ridiculous that the fate of the world is held in one teenage boy's hands, but he's learnt to go with it) he's grown to enjoy the brash bright head's optimism, though. he can no longer imagine a life without it, and that is why this has to happen.
this is not like ichimaru gin's ridiculous, complicated plot, though. he doesn't have a slow building revenge plan that will take years to complete or a lifetime of grudges to simmer on. what he is however, is a rare and valuable chess piece that the shinigami have on their side. a piece which urahara kisuke can strategise and use to turn the tides of the war, and a piece that is the perfect decoy with his tragic past, that can slip into ywach's cracks without him noticing.
and oh, it hurts. it hurts to turn his face away from those he called his allies, his friends. it hurts to plot against them, to make decisions that he knows will deliberately injure or harm them, but he soldiers on, praying to the non-existent gods to protect his friends and to give them strength to weather the oncoming storms.
I was merely a piece in the game, he will write in his final letter to his friends, the letter explaining everything and everything, (conferred to urahara to give to them in the likely case of his death.) I wasn't meant to be the hero. That was always you, Kurosaki. You, Inoue, Sado, always selfless in the face of fire.
This time, I will be the one to burn, instead.
