Characters: Ishida, Mayuri
Summary: In order to hate someone, you must first hate yourself.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc
Timeline: Post-Soul Society arc
Author's Note: I leave the meaning of the two final paragraphs open to interpretation. Personally, I believe revenge "is a sucker's game" (to quote David Xanatos of Gargoyles fame) and that hate is really, really bad for your mental health if allowed to fester.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Before, even when he used the word "hate", it was really only a substitute for "dislike", because there wasn't a single target to focus it on. Hate only really works (at least for Ishida) when there is a lone target to single out. Even with Ichigo, it wasn't hate, because Ichigo was not at all how Ishida expected a Shinigami to be. Just the opposite really, and Ishida was, though he will never admit it no matter how much he softens, glad to let go of the pretense of hate towards his orange-haired classmate.
He isn't even trying to put up a facade of hatred towards the Shinigami race as a whole anymore. Some of them he counts as comrades, others as friends, something that, years ago, he had never dreamed he would.
Ishida finally has a proper target on whom he can direct his hatred.
He finally has a face for all of his troubles (or most of them, anyway), a single person to blame for all of the family he has lost (his grandfather, his mother, the distant cousins on both sides of his family whom he never had a chance to meet), and, eventually Kurotsuchi Mayuri will get what's coming to him. If there is any justice left in the universe, Ishida will, one of these days be allowed to end the life of the one who has caused him and so many others, Quincy and Shinigami alike, so much suffering.
But the revelation is bittersweet at best.
Because now with a single object of hatred in his hands, Ishida realizes how hollow his life has become, bent on hatred before he even knew the true meaning of the word. He drank from the cup without realizing that it was poisoned.
Ishida now appreciates how wrong he has been.
About everything.