~:Journey:~

This is dedicated to Kuchiki Byakuya, who, now he has made his reappearance in the manga, I feel I can actually write and post this with some confidence (knowing where the start and end points were tricky until I knew what Kubo had in mind xD). I originally thought about doing something like this when we were all debating whether we had seen the last of the Petal Prince, but even though he's (thankfully) back with us, I decided to go ahead and write it anyway. Albeit the ending is slightly different than how I thought it might have been first and foremost.

This is a story about Byakuya between the fight with As Nodt and his regaining consciousness in Kirinji's spa. It is a spiritual journey, not a physical one, and it relies on a number of cultural and classical references, because Byakuya himself has close ties to Japanese classical literature (Senbonzakura is the name of a play, for example, but more on that later). Where poems appear, they are my translations, which are probably not as classy as published translations, but I didn't want to use anyone else's versions. The story also contains some suggestions as to elements in Byakuya's past that have never been explored in the manga. Part of the format of this story is also somewhat influenced by reading Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet In Heaven", for although it's NOT that story, I'm pretty sure anyone who's read it will see what I mean by that.

As Nodt will probably never appear by name in this story, because I'm pretty sure Byakuya never knew his name. However, in Japanese lore there is a spiritual entity who operates in a similar manner to As Nodt's Fear abilitiy. For that reason, I have chosen to use the name of this entity - the Okubyougami - at times when referring to Byakuya's fight. As Nodt is obviously a Quincy, and therefore not culturally Japanese. But this story is founded entirely in Byakuya's awareness of things, therefore that seemed appropriate.

Byakuya and As Nodt etc are all characters belonging to Kubo, and not to me.

The Road To Shide

The whole of the world had fallen into shadow.

In the recesses of what seemed like a long, black tunnel, he could still make out the faint silhouette of a wisplike wraith disintegrating into the gloom. His perception was fading and blurring at the edges now, and he realised with some regret that its skeletal leer would likely be the last thing he saw, imprinted on his memories as he slipped from this life into the next.

He no longer had any strength to hold onto his sword. His fingers had long since begun to turn numb, beginning with the tips and then spreading across the palm as his nerves ceased to send signals of pain to the brain. Pain was a survival reflex, he remembered dully. There was no need for it when you were dying, and so his body had already discarded it.

The flame haired boy's presence had already slipped from his thoughts, names and faces blurring together into one. It was only the skeletal phantom that still lingered at the corner of his thoughts, taunting him - or was it leading him forward?

Who was it, then, who guided shinigami on the path to the afterlife? Who called the Death Gods forward to answer for and atone for their sins and their inadequacies?

He could no longer see, nor could he feel, but he could still hear. There was a strange hiss of air passing over his wrecked form, but although he knew he was no longer holding his zanpakutou, he did not hear the clang of metal hitting hard stone. As his consciousness was fragmenting, so he felt his sword's spirit shredding and breaking away, the malformed remains disintegrating into fragments small enough to be dust on the wind.

Chire, Senbonzakura.

His lips moved slightly, as if trying to form the words, but more from instinct than from a conscious attempt to make contact with his weapon. It could not answer him now, anyway. It had been ripped away from him and violated, as he had been, to a point where even if he had known how to speak to his weapon, he was not confident it would ever wish to hear his voice again.

Still, none of it mattered now.

Take nothing with you.

Well, it was not as though he had anything left to take anyway. His pride and his courage had been stripped from him, his dignity left shredded like the tattered remains of the haori that hung folornly over his bloodstained shoulders.

The tunnel was growing narrower, the darkness that he had already thought pitch black somehow growing heavier and more cloying with each passing second. Was he still breathing? It was hard to be sure, for he could no longer feel the muscles on his face, nor tell if his chest rose and fell in painful gasps of air. The spectral wraith was still ahead of him, turning to stare at him once more before, with another, horrific leer, she beckoned a bony finger, before disappearing into a haze of dust.

Even the proud name he had been born with now seemed nothing more than a cruel joke...a rotten tree no longer capable of putting forth blossoms. Fleeting scraps of memory too vague to grasp hold of disappeared one after another in the recesses of his mind.

"Mumoregi no hana saku koto mo nakarishi ni"

As the last one rose and fluttered out of view, he heard the voice of his grandfather, reciting the words of a poem which, with each syllable, grew fainter and fainter until he was left in silence.

"Mi no naru hate zo kanashikarikeru"

With the final syllable, he heard what sounded like the call of a cuckoo, and then, the world was gone.

Author's Note: The Poem.

"Like an old buried tree that cannot even bloom,
The end of my life cloaked in grief."

~(credited to) Minamoto no Yorimasa (1106-1180)
Recited in (Kakuichi-bon) Heike Monogatari, circa 1371
(Chapter 4: Ujigawa Kassen)