Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. All characters are based on the original anime/manga by Kubo Tite.
Muse
(soundtrack: Ludovico Einaudi – DNA)
As a boy he had never played any instruments. His family had been farmers, going several generations back. Music was something one did not contemplate much, it merely existed, like breathing, as a general communal establishment during social gatherings.
There were the work-songs on the fields; the rough voices of men joyfully urging each other's spirits on during hard labour, followed by the brighter voices of women chanting blessings for a good harvest. Young and old alike would join in heartfully in the name of companionship, for the words were the same as it had been when their forefathers had tended the same fields, and were the bond that tied them to the land.
Whether or not you could sing was not an issue; it was an exercise of the heart, and no one ever needed to formally establish a given rhythm or key. It always started with one of the elder members taking up the song, and another standing nearby followed, and another, until the whole field was resounding with human voices that echoed the rhythm of their working hands.
As soon as he was old enough to work on the fields, Roujuurou participated in these vocal expressions of fellowship, with the eager playfulness of a bird that has spread its wings for the first time. Like all of the villagers had done once, he stumbled across the unfamiliar words, imitating his father, until his voice became confident enough to join in on initiative.
Soon enough the villagers' melodies flowed from his throat on instinct, as if he was born with their songs on his tongue. He felt as if they were all inhaling and exhaling together, like one complex, complete being. There was no way to tell where he ended and another began, only that they existed together in those moments when their voices merged into one harmonious multitude. His spirit burned with the pure joy of life, and his eager, childish voice caused several of the grown ups nearby to smile.
Sometimes the song would mesmerise him. He would forget everything else, forget the rice that needed to be harvested, the hardship of farmer life, his back aching from bending over. All that mattered was the music, and how the whole world seemed to join in around them.
The rain did not stop anyone from working, and it poured down upon them in steady allegro, muting their voices just enough to make them a natural part of the landscape. Sometimes the wind would pick up the tune and blow a fanfare to celebrate their unceasing labour, or whisper in sotto voce for those who had passed away and those who were yet to be. Birds chirped in irregular staccato, an eagle cried out a refrain and the trees breathed a chorus; all in perfect accompaniment to the farmers' song.
Roujuurou came to realise that this was how the world had began in the first place. With song. One voice had found inspiration to express its being, loud enough to be heard by others, who followed. It became an eternal melody, and as long as there was life, it would never stop. People died, but new ones always came along, and took up the tune; always continuing, always changing.
This idea exited him, and he could spend hours in the evening with his eyes closed, just sitting outside listening to the world and its ensemble, sensing his own mortality in bittersweet fascination.
He closed his eyes out on the field once, trying to gather up all the different voices and pitches, imagining for a moment that he could hear each heart beating under his breath. His father caught sight of him, and whacked him over the head for slacking. He took up his task again, blushing slightly for being reprimanded, but felt more than ever that he understood how everything came together.
The song that was the world was in everyone, and all that came to be would become part of it, but more importantly, part of each other. In this sense, Roujuurou thought with joy, nothing ever really dies. Somewhere, somehow, we continue to play.
That winter, however, Roujuurou died.
It was a particular harsh winter, and the pneumonia was just stronger than his little body could withstand. His mother sat by his bed with a helpless expression, and the fever turned the world into a floating river, dense and muffled and peaceful.
The sounds of the world emerged loudly and disappeared again as if they had never been there. His lungs followed suit, and his breathing oscillated between a low wheezing drone to sudden bursts of violent chest coughs. During intervals, he could hear the distant sound of laughter, or perhaps it was sobbing; the whistle of a boiling kettle; voices he thought he recognised.
Then he heard nothing more.
Rose never contemplated much on what he had been once in the World of the Living. It was common to forget, after the first daze and confusion of waking up in Soul Society.
It was not that people decided to move on, it was just that whatever you had been before, simply didn't seem to matter any more. Some held on to memories of dear ones a little longer, but this also faded into oblivion eventually.
Dying was like entering a room in your house with a purpose, but once you got there, you couldn't remember what that purpose was, and then you got distracted, and soon forgot all about it.
He had learned that things always changed, whether you wanted them to or not. He had learned this the hard way, and it had taken him around a century to deal with it like a man. He had also learned that definitions are mostly ambiguous, and that sooner or later all borders become blurred.
He had entered the afterlife with a profound sense of peace, and could not fathom the general anxiousness of some of the other newcomers. Surely waking up to find that death was not the end, but a new beginning, was the sort of thing that people only dared to dream of?
He had not known the reason why he knew he must become a Shinigami, apart from an insatiable drive that could only be described as Hunger.
Much later, he would consider this description in a sardonic view, and how fitting it was considering his current state. Hiyori would chide him whenever he approached the subject, stubbornly claiming that Shinigami and Hollow were as similar as night and day, but Rose knew better. They all did.
They had spent a good deal of time (decades, in fact) and energy trying to establish which of those categories they fitted into, when Shinji finally decided it was time to realise they were neither, and thus invented a new category for them.
It had worked, for a while.
They had slowly and gradually managed to re-create a sense of identity and belonging, and felt less like the monsters they had been brought up to fear and kill.
That was until they learned of the Arrancar, another category invented by the means of self-proclamation. Antagonists to the Vizards, the Hollow-turned-Shinigami shed the masks that had so conveniently rendered them inhuman in the past, leaving their faces bare for the world to see. To kill a faceless enemy was one thing, but to look upon a countenance full of expression too much like your own was a matter too disturbing for the comfort of the heart.
In addition, Hiyori's theory that Shinigami are distinguished from Hollow by their Zanpakutou was shattered to dust.
Rose's first communication with Kinshara had started when he made a discovery about his own nature that at first did not strike him as unusual. He would walk the streets of Soul Society like so many children, but unlike the others he would not participate in play. He would stand on the sideline, content to watch, and listen.
When he stood like that, and concentrated on nothing but taking in all modes of breath and movement that succeeded in apparent disarray, it all slowly started to grow on him, like a distinguishable rhythm. He heard, not noise, but music. The spirit particles in the air, the voices of the children, footsteps in the streets, someone sleeping and breathing heavily in one of the houses; he could distinguish and gather them all into a perfectly organised symphony.
They moved him with reverence, and he felt as if he was listening in on Creation itself. He understood that he was different from others, and soon the music started to play in his dreams.
Love used to tease him at times, calling him a sorcerer.
He would smile at this, forgiving his friend for not possessing the subtlety of senses that he himself had perfected. For someone whose abilities were focused around brutish strength and large scale destruction, his own ability to enthrall and manipulate the enemy to his will must indeed seem like magic.
Love had the heart of a warrior. He would fight fair, but never hesitate. He would face the enemy head on, deflecting any attacks, and when he found an opening, he would put all his force into one powerful hit. If it landed he would cheer triumphantly. Love was not destructive by nature, and could be a big softy at his best, but he adored his companions, and the fierceness of his attacks was a tribute to this.
Rose's attacks were not any less lethal, and once he had his victims in a trance, they were helpless to his deadly frequency. His own reiatsu would merge with his captive's and he could feel the two energies surging through his system like a wild dance. Once he was tuned with the other, the composition began.
The victim would feel perfectly at ease in the first few moments, drawn in by the stimulation of a rhythm that echoed its soul. Sweet, melancholy tones would emerge like a lullaby through its very being, slowly paralysing it.
Rose could feel the victim's pulse beat with his own, and for a few seconds, they were one.
The other's life was completely in his hands. It was a precious moment. Part of him wanted to stay in that moment forever; feeling, breathing another life in perfect harmony with himself. But it was also the moment where he had to act quickly, lest he lose control, and become swallowed by the other instead.
He would build up the tempo until it reached a terrible crescendo, his reiatsu burning with passion and concentration. Then it would be over.
The victim's life was forfeit, bursting apart from the pressure of spirit particles that was introduced to its system. Their reiatsus disconnected, and Rose felt his own stabilising again.
He did not cheer afterwards. His companions interpreted his silent reserve as part of his characteristic attempts at elegance. This suited him just fine. He didn't know how to explain the peculiar emptiness he felt at the death of an enemy.
They had grown so much since they left Soul Society for good. Individually, and as a group.
They were as tight-knit as family, and disputed and fought as freely as one. They accepted each other's quirks, which tend to develop as time passes, so there were a reasonable amount among them. They would get into each other's faces, on each other's nerves, but would always cover each other's backs.
Sometimes one of them would take off for a longer period, and none of them asked where. They always ended up back together eventually. Each felt they had a role to play, and could not cope without the group for very long. They trained together, grew stronger, and tried to accept what they had become, together.
When despair came over them, and words could not fix it, Rose played.
On those days they would sit very still, listening, each in his or her own private struggle. Sometimes they would gather quietly around him as he let his fingers glide over the tangents on the piano or as he hummed a soft melody while strumming the guitar.
And sometimes, when no one felt like company, he would take his violin to the highest place he could find in their current abode and let the music float through the house, so that despite their solitude, they weren't lonely. Tears didn't come easy after a century of regrets, but when they did come, music was a gentle healer.
His soft strokes on the strings were imitated in the flow of his reiatsu, barely noticeable as it found each of his companions in their private rooms.
Like invisible hands, it would stroke a few strands of Lisa's hair, caress one of Hachi's moist cheeks and put a slight, warm pressure over Shinji's hands, until he no longer felt the need to bury his face in them. The tones would soothe, cheer up or encourage where needed, without the necessity to talk about it afterwards.
Occasionally, when the temporary crisis was over, Kensei would walk up to Rose and lightly touch his shoulder. Rose understood.
Art.
Despite the decades gone by, this was something of a topic that never seemed to grow old. Not for Rose, anyway. Love had a different opinion, and would discreetly head-knuckle him whenever he felt that they had reached an inappropriate limit of aesthetics debates for the day.
How can one, Rose would but argue, not consider art in all things – the expression of the human spirit – when one is but Spirit oneself?
Time was never a great factor in Soul Society, but here in the Real World, it was paramount. Here, things changed so quickly that one would hesitate to sleep just out of fear of missing something. Politics, inventions, trends, social revolutions; the great river of human culture moved with incredible speed, and their little group had moved alongside it as best as they could.
Timid at first, feeling like stray dogs in the devil's backyard, they had mostly wanted to hide themselves away. Once the initial shell-shock had receded a little, however, they found courage enough to explore their new environment, and soon they were adapting to Modern Society as if they had been reborn into it (which, Kisuke had tactlessly commented once, in a way they had).
Since then they had lived in endless locations all over the World of the Living; experienced hundreds of cities; feasted in traditions, languages and people. They had seen empires fall, wars fought and lost.
They had moved from one Zeitgeist to another as casually as walking across the floor. The 20th century had been a bumpy ride towards the commercialisation of Everything, and at the end of it, when all was said and done, popular culture was mostly labelled with an uncertain Post-Something, to emphasise the end of originality. This, however, did not dishearten the Vizards one bit.
They still viewed themselves as outsiders to their habitat. Eternal voyeurs; invisible tourists who slipped in and out of the material world at will, thanks to Kisuke's continuously improving gigai skills (including, of course, a few particularly embarrassing episodes during their trial period with such).
Mortals' lives were interesting, but fleeting and short, so any attempts at relationships never lasted for long. Instead, they attached themselves to whatever part of the centuries that inspired them; American 50s and 60s Jazz-and Beat, punk-rock anarchism, hippie-Taoism with a hint of neo-baroque Romanticism, Heavy Metal, Folk and Manga, Starbucks and Victorian tea cups. It was all good.
When Post-Modernism announced its promiscuous arrival, they were already way ahead of it.
Despite the confusing maelstrom of impression and change that was the World of the Living, Humans remained human. And art, in all its forms and declarations, prevailed through it all. It was almost absurd to think that mortals could afford to spend their precious time on something so abstract and diffuse.
Or perhaps it was not strange at all, Rose thought to himself and smiled. Did not art itself touch upon a kind of timeless immortality?
When the flesh has expired, the spirit moves on, and perhaps – no, surely – its passions and sentiments goes with it, at least to some extent? Rose liked to believe so, or else he simply could not see the point to material existence in the first place.
He believed that the particular vulnerability one suffers as a result of mortality was an inspiration, nay, an essential ingredient to entering that state of creative impulse that transcended time and space.
Time was everlasting, as far as Rose was concerned, but moments were forever lost in the past. The re-creation of a moment; the dedication of one's spirit to one flighty, passing experience in the great flux of Time, now that was something worth talking about, Rose thought.
He did not have the chance to voice his train of thoughts, however, as a plate of potato salad came whizzing through the air and nearly took his head off. He managed to duck just in time, and the plate continued its destination towards the wall behind him, where it crashed and splattered itself into a magnificent explosive pattern like a great sticky flower, complete with small pieces of glass shards and potato tumbling down onto the floor.
"Say that again, Baldy! I dare ya!"
Rose could easily have calculated the exact pitch of a sandal hitting soft skin, the echo-effect reversed back from the high ceiling, and the milliseconds of dramatic silence that followed before the inevitable retaliation.
"Dammit, Hiyori! That was my... ow! Let go! Let go, I said, or I swear I'll.."
He could use a bass line that imitated the rapid change of heartbeat during the build up of adrenaline, multiplied by a sort of metallic beat-box rhythm in the background, for a more urban sound.
"Or what, Shinji! Ya gonna start crying, ya dickhead? I'll give ya somethin' to cry about!"
He could even throw in a layer of slightly de-harmonised piano chords, to give it a political edge; a comment on the psychological effects caused by too much violence in today's society.
"Noooo... please... somebody, help me.."
But he decided against it. As a connoisseur of artistic expression, one must learn to pick the moments that are perfect for re-creation, and this was simply not one of them.
He put his musical facilities to rest for the time being, and went to help himself to some potato salad instead.