Disclaimer: if I owned bleach this wouldn't be fanfiction, it would be a mini story arc.
It was funny how much death sacred the dead. How a spirit could freeze in fear when they saw the blood in their hand.
Joushiro was born weak and sickly. He had quiet memories of hospital walls and throwing up the medicine from fear. Now he didn't cry when he couldn't breathe. He cleared his mind and focused on surviving.
It occurred to him that he could easily let go and be reborn into the world of the living, but, no matter what happened he couldn't shake the terror he felt as black crept onto the edges of his vision. He didn't want to leave. Shunsui, Rukia, Kiyone and Sentaro, they needed him. What would they do with out him? Moreover, what he do with out them.
He had to come to the conclusion that death frightened him. He was sure that there were those, many residing in the eleventh division that would scorn this fear and his desperate desire to live, but he celebrated it. It meant that he had something to live for.
A/N: if you review, ukitake will get some medicine and deus knows he needs it.