For Kiharu Lamperouge.
Because no one dies in Bleach. Ever. (except Grimmjow, but I am still in denial about that)
Complicated
"Why me? Why this now? Why this way?
Overtone's ringing, undertow's pulling away under a sky that is grey,
On sand that is grey, by an ocean that's grey.
What kind of paradise am I looking for?"
- Ani Difranco
The Captain of the Thirteenth division of the Gotei 13 was used to feeling pain. he had spent a lot of his life in pain, racking up through his lungs and spearing across his back and through his head. Pain was a constant, was like an unpleasant old friend that you just couldn't get rid of. Perhaps that was what was so strange now- he felt nothing, nothing at all.
No pain.
As he fell from the sky Jyuushiro Ukitake watched his blood ark up above him in a dash of red, blurring into the sky as his eyes lost focus, and then into darkness. He felt the air rush up around him as he fell, but he seemed to fall for a very long time; it seemed like he fell forever until all he could see was grey around him, above him, all around, and then he opened his eyes again- when did he close them? - as he heard a voice echo through the greyness that had suddenly stopped moving, he had stopped moving, frozen in time and the descent.
"Is this really how it is going to end?"
Jyuushiro felt the air still around him as he replied, soft draughts of air blowing his hair lightly, dancing.
He tried to find someone there, but couldn't. He wondered if he had gone blind.
"Who are you?"
Laughter in the monochrome, the stillness came back again and his hair fell to rest as it normally did. He realised that he was no longer falling on his back, but upright.
"I'm you."
He blinked.
"I am me."
"You're who I will be. Or I am who you used to be. It doesn't really matter, does it? None of that is going to matter now. You know that."
"Do I?"
"You're an idiot."
"That makes you an idiot too."
"I'm young. I'm allowed to be foolish."
Jyuushiro sighed to himself. There was something nagging on his conscious, something he had forgotten but something that he knew he should remember. He touched the front of his haori and felt something wet, but as he brought his fingers up all he could see was that they were stained with something grey.
"Is this really how our life is going to end?"
The voice sounded vaguely petulant, and Jyuushiro found himself wondering if he really had sounded like that at times in his youth. He smiled, although thinking that he was smiling at himself was a strange thing to think of.
"I don't know."
There was a pause, and Jyuushiro felt the air start to move again, just slightly. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't warm, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, as if it were moving in anticipation, as if there was an electric tension in the air.
"Do we lead a good life?"
"It has its highs and lows, as all lives must."
A sigh ghosted through the blankness, and Jyuushiro could almost feel the heavy disappointment settle in the greyness at the ambiguity of his answer.
"Is it happy?"
Ukitake remembered the laughter of his new lieutenant on his first day as second chair, the smile of his oldest and dearest friend, the feeling of hilts in his hands and the smell of clean wind against his face. He remembered the sight of the glittering Soul Society in the dawn and warm touches in the darkness of people long gone. He remembered all of the times he had smiled benevolently at people who had come to him for help, and the rush of power and joy the first time he had reached bankai. He remembered first hearing the voice of Sogyo no Kotowari in his head, and remembered the faces of his family, of his sisters and brothers, glowing pale in the darkness of his mind.
There were some beautiful things in his life.
He looked at his fingers again, and this time he could see the red, as if this greyness was retreating, just a little.
There were some ugly things, too.
He remembered the look of fear in the eyes of those he was supposed to be protecting and was failing to do so, Kaien's final screams, the hollow eyes of those who had lost those precious to them. He remembered the horror tight in his stomach the first time he walked onto a battlefield and saw his colleagues and friends as nothing more than mangled corpses, and he remembered those conversations about what it was like to be the only one left, the one to had to see everyone else pass by. He remembered staring into an empty corner and wondering why people had to go. He remembered the feeling of his heart in his throat as he watched Shunsui battle that Espada, and finally that gasp forcing its way out of him as something ripped through him, and then the warmth of blood and then… falling…
"Well? Do we live a happy life?"
The impatience was evident, and Jyuushiro wondered when he had grown out of that. He wondered when a lot of things had happened, when he had matured from a child, because it had been a long process, a long time ago, the kind of thing that you don't remember happening.
"Well?"
"It's going to be… complicated."
He felt the silence start the updraft again, and he smiled into the nothing, hoping that the other could see it and feel reassured.
"There are people with worse lives."
"Oh?"
He felt his hair fan out in the wind and realised that at some point he had been put on his back again. That is, if he had ever not been in the first place.
"Look forward to it. Enjoy what you have."
There was laughter as he felt himself falling again, and the response was almost lost in the wind that once again blew hard.
"You look forward to the rest of yours. You're not going to let yourself die like this, are you?"
He forced his eyes open- when had he closed them?
No.
He needed to see colour again.