A/N: Not particularly proud of this one, but I wanted it out of my system.
rant
I have a tiny bit of a problem with women in the Bleachverse. In my opinion, they are
a) pathetic (Orihime, Rukia, Momo, Isane, Yuzu, Nemu, Mashiro, Nanao + Sui Feng – because you can be pathetic even if you aren`t a whiny beetch)
b) slutty, creepy and/or really weird (Rangiku, Yoruichi, Cirucci, Tia, Chizuru, Lisa, Kuukaku Shiba)
c) tomboys (Tatsuki, Karin, Hiyori, Kiyone)
The ones that I think are actually worth mentioning are Yachiru, Nelliel, Ururu and Unohana.
/rant
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or any of the characters mentioned in this story.
Title: Pain
Summary: She belongs to the eleventh.
Spoilers: umm...no (?)
Characters: Retsu Unohana, mentions of Abarai Renji, Hinamori Momo.
Rating: K+
Contrary to popular belief, she really, really likes the eleventh division. There is something remarkably beautiful about the raw display of strength, about the way they are so easily swayed into drawing their swords and their blood. A sharp melody of steel on steel, steel on flesh, steel on bone.
She loves to hear them screaming and cursing, she loves to listen to their cries of despair whenever they would lose a match, or to their smug (very, very loud) boasting when they would win one. However, she loves the pain that surrounds this and only this particular division the most. They are men of action, the first line of offense, forging their relationships through fights and tears. Pain is a constant to all of them, a familiar concept, be it physical (for they are used to losing limbs) or emotional (for they are also used to losing comrades). Pain is what they know, what they can deal with.
She, too, knows pain. She deals with pain everyday. Except that, unlike the eleventh, she is doing so by choice. She finds pain incredibly rewarding, because pain is to her -always was to her- the very sign of life. She likes the eleventh because they are wearing their pain on their sleeves. Because every time they come to her to be treated, they swear and shout and scowl and they make the most amusing faces. Because OUCH goddamit lady, this sodding hurts!. As long as they continue to swear and shout and scowl and bleed and complain about everything, they are good.
It`s the silent ones who scare her, the ones that are either excellent at hiding their suffering (she knows they will burst eventually, and it will not be a pretty sight to behold) or the ones that are too far gone at the moment to even feel something. Anger. Pain. Something.
It was Abarai, when he stood up to his captain. It was Hinamori, when she stood up for her captain. And there were many others, countless others. Way more than they should have been. Sometimes her little magic tricks work on them, sometimes they do not. What nobody knows is that in the time she is desperately clinging to every bit of power she can find in the patients -Abarai, Hinamori, countless undeserving others-, in that time when everybody believes she is working her mighty power on them, she does not think about saving them. She does not even think about fixing them. She does not think about them being alive and kicking, returning to their families or even walking on their own, really. She just wants to bring them to the point where they can feel pain.