He's not the cruel one, he's not.
The first time he hears about it they are fifty and way too young, and Ukitake has collapsed in front of him after one of their many illegal sojourns out of the Academy.
They are both dead drunk so Ukitake's face is in a ditch, there are splatters of mud and dirt on the edges of their clothing, and he knows better than to leave his friend face down in a ditch but is too out of it to care.
Eventually, when the cicadas come out, when the moon rises, and when it becomes too bright, too dry and too cold to stay in the ditch, he shakes Ukitake awake. Blood bubbles out from the other's mouth and his world sharpens to a point.
"Fuck," he hisses, shaking Ukitake's shoulder, "don't you fucking dare die on me. Not here, not in the middle of nowhere, not now."
"Not gonna die," the bubbles mumble, "can't die."
They sit down and have a long conversation about it after he storms into Ukitake's room in the middle of the night, screaming obscenities and railing at the world with all that he has, after Lisa disappears, after he's lost yet another lieutenant, yet another person that he cares about in this world.
Ukitake offers him tea and platitudes, says nothing that means anything, and he hurts and he hurts and he hurts, Ukitake isn't hurting the way he is hurting, and it comes bursting out.
"And one day it'll be you too."
Ukitake's jaw hardens, his eyes flick to the window, flick to the door, then says nothing.
The silence is sobering and as he stands it sinks into him. He wrings his hands in as much of an apology as he will ever give because he is not wrong and Ukitake knows it.
He is not wrong.
"How will I know," he asks. It's not a question he has ever asked, has ever felt the need to ask before, but the situation has now presented itself. He needs to know, he tells himself, he needs to know because he needs to be able to write it down in a report, pen it down in impeccably neat script, file it away for posterity, have it haunt him from a filing cabinet.
He has to know.
"You'll know," Ukitake says.
"No," he says from the other side of the table that was not his, and never really truly feels like it will ever be his, "you know that I mean."
They lapse into silence, the cross-breeze is all wrong.
"You'll know," Ukitake says, fingers stop tapping on the side of his cup, "you'll know."
He understands, knows why Ukitake was so angry at what looked like a needless sacrifice. She didn't have to die, he knows Ukitake thinks, he knows it eats at Ukitake in the dark nights when the clouds cover the moon, lid it in slumber.
She didn't have to die, because Ukitake will, and that will reset it, and all will be alright. Except he'll be dead and gone and all they'll be left with is a shell and it won't really solve the problem, but that is what alright sounds like to Ukitake.
If he were a more emotional man, Kyouraku Shunsui might want to scream and cry and rail at the world. As it is, he nods, says nothing, from his seat as Captain Commander of the Gotei 13.
"I'll let you know," Ukitake says from the doorway as he leaves, "you'll know, because I'll tell you."
He snorts, tugs the brim of his hat lower over eyes too sad to water.
"We can just rebuild," Ukitake says, with those damned bandages wrapped around his neck, and Kyouraku doesn't have to turn to know that they hold his ribs together, keep him alive.
He takes a breath, feels it rattle his lungs, sinks into him and shakes him from the inside in the way he imagines it must feel to have lungs that are not yours. A piece of rubble shifts beneath his foot, and he sees it tumble down, foreign stone from the Quincy realm.
"Did you know," he asks, did you know that it has happened, did you know, how could you not know.
He hears it, feels the cold seep into his chest, can do nothing else but make light of it. He catches a glimpse of Ukitake before he tugs down the brim of his hat before it becomes too much. That smile, he's going to miss that wry smile, going to miss it when someone looks at him and sees him and understands. But he understands. He wishes he didn't understand, he wishes he didn't know why this had to be done, wishes he could be selfish enough to say no, selfish enough to stop it, but he is not.
"Take care," he says, when he means goodbye.
This is not something he will ever be able to rebuild.