Notes: The subtitle of this is Or How Anne Learned to Stop Worrying and Be Okay With the Anime Canon. Epigraph is from the movie The Long Goodbye, the interstitial text is from Pablo Neruda's "Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines", though there are allusions to other pieces of his work. I apologize in advance for abuse of the second-person narrative voice.
Even as she smiles a quick hello
You let her go
You let the moment fly
Too late you turn your head
You know you've said the long goodbye
- John Williams and Johnny Mercer
You thought it would be sudden, all at once. Like the pain of a palpable strike, or like that first time, a sudden loss and absence. And, to tell truth, it is like that, at first. That first week you spent unconscious, waking up in that house with everyone around you. Like losing a tooth as a child. Like forgetting something someone told you.
Like the first time you lost your mother. Except, at least this time you know the second loss is coming. You have no idea when, or how, or what your last act of power will be, but you can only hope, as you throw yourself into protecting your people, that it will be something good.
At least they're quieter in your head now. That, at least, is a benefit. It's been a long time since you've thought about how to fight battles conservatively and sometimes it's difficult. Destiny never seemed to pull you in that direction, did it? It was always a call to get stronger, to save people, to beat the 'bad guys', and to do it fast, to do it before too many people got hurt. That's what your powers were there for, after all, right?
But now you're learning how to live all over again. You'll have to do it once more, you know. How to be again.
You spend the first few days like a patient diagnosed with a terminal disease. "It could take a week, or a year." The unknown time it takes to shatter a life, little by little. So you spend the first few days of it marveling at the world, noticing the details, the things you took for granted before: the color of sky when you leap through it, the weight of your sword on your back, the quick, deft movements of your sword, her steady presence ahead of you or at your back.
But it gets old, it gets tiresome, living as if each day will be your last. It's not something you can sustain for long, what with the Hollows and your schoolwork and everything else in a life you're only beginning to realize you won't have, soon enough.
It feels almost normal, after those first few days. School, and home, and routine patrols for Hollows you outclassed long ago, even in your current state. Learning to fight while holding a part of yourself back becomes just another sort of training, and at least it's less stupid than some you've been through. Rukia's always waiting there to scold you with a lecture, or give you a short nod when you've done something she approves of.
You try not to admit to yourself you're going to miss her.
Oh, sure, she'll still be safe and you tell yourself that means she'll be fine and happy. But you both know what's coming. Sometimes, when her cheerful, dutiful mask built of all the little lies she's lived for so long is perfectly in place, you know (though you won't admit) that underneath it's as empty as anything called Hollow.
You're going to miss the rest of them too. Oh, sure, you'll still be able to see Inoue and Ishida and Chad. It's not as if they're going anywhere... you're the one who's leaving. Little by little. You won't forget, but remembering will be too painful, even if you deny that now. Even now, remembering what you used to do, what you might have done once upon a time, hurts.
Even bankai is difficult for you these days. It used to be... but that was before everything went right, just the wrong kind of right, as it was planned. Before you gave up everything to save everything. That's how it's supposed to work, right?
She says something, and you miss it. She repeats it with a scowl, her large, still eyes reflecting the cloudy skies today. Life goes on. As normal, you tell yourself. But not for long.
Write, for example, "The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance."
It's the little things that slip and fall away, as he does. You wish you could stop touching him, stay your hand from those things that have become so routine. The admonishing smack, the restraining hand. You're afraid, really. Afraid of keeping him there too long; afraid of losing him too soon. You wait for him to slip, to not be able to keep up, one of these days. Like a slow sieve you can feel the power going, taste the dissolving loss on your tongue. You know one of these days you'll say goodbye, and that will really be it, finally.
It was only a year, you know. Why should a year seem so long? You've seen nearly two hundred of them yourself, so why should it be that it seems half your world is falling away? It was so short a time, but forgetting is so much longer.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
All too soon, and almost too late, the day comes. And like a bowl slowly leaking through the cracks, slow at first and then all in a sudden rush at the end, you wake up one morning and can feel it. You don't say anything. She won't look at you. She knows too, soon, soon...
It's like a hammer-strike against your bones, and you notice everything in bright, stark vividness as you go down, catching yourself on the rough pavement with its craze of cracks. The sound of her footsteps as she runs back for you, the smell of hot tar and dirt and ice, and then nothing but blackness broken by the knowledge, because she says so, that your friends are coming. The knowledge, because she says so, that she's there.
Because you're leaving, finally. Or at least a part of you. You wake up, and it's in your own bed, and everyone is, indeed, there. It's just the five of you now, Chad's solid presence, Inoue's concern and relief intermingled, Ishida's scolding that he does instead of simply telling you he was worried, is worried, and Rukia's silence, more subtle than Chad's, like the silence of snowfall or rain.
It's like losing everything all over again. You walk outside and try not to think that this is the last time you'll see the sky like this, the last time you'll talk to your friends like this... the last time you'll see her. Rukia, the shinigami of this group of five. You have a fleeting thought that Renji should be here too, maybe Yoruichi... but no. This is hard enough.
You never liked goodbyes anyway.
There's a moment, strung out between the two of you, the others loathe to interrupt. She jokes, and you return it, and the phrases fly up uselessly like ashes. Another moment, because she can't say to you 'don't go' and you can't tell her you don't want to. What you've done is not something you regret, even now. Not any of it. Even at this far remove when saving the world means losing that world, losing her, forever. You've never run from anything in your life, but if you could you might start now.
It's a visible thing now, in the way she's going fuzzy around the edges. And between one moment and the next she's dropped that mask she always keeps close by, that wall around her soul because it was safer to keep everyone out and never be hurt. It hurts all the more because you were always in there anyway, and you both know it. From the moment she pierced your heart with a piece of her soul, so very literally.
And all the walls in the world can't stop this, can't keep out this ending. The last you see of her are her large, still eyes, knowing, or at least imagining, their turn to a soft, sad smile, when she goes. You tell yourself she'll be happy, just like you'll be happy, and she doesn't contradict you. You don't see, except in your imagination, the smile she gives before she goes, half a mask and half hope, all mixed in with the sorrow.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
Life goes on, as you knew it would. Normal. That's what you always wanted, isn't it? No monsters, no strange girls with spooky eyes and spookier powers. No living people and no boys who contradict you and save you despite your arguments. It's what you've always wanted. Right?
You never wanted to have to forget. To find the slips of paper and the scraps of sensation that slipped between the cracks of your life, everything that exists bringing you toward him, toward her, never reaching, always afloat.
You know how this is: Forgetting is so long. Life was always so short.