He had been one of the lucky ones.
He hadn't been almost murdered by the hands of the man he loved the most. He hadn't slowly withered on the outside to match how dead he was on the inside. In fact, he thought he was over it relatively quickly. Someone told him that he was just in shock, but a year later and he was still okay so long as he just didn't think about anything pertaining to the incident.
Which, he had found, was easy to do. Without a captain, paperwork practically toppled over the boundaries of the desk, not because he was untidy, but just because of the sheer volumes. He thought that as a vice-captain it had been a lot, but now it was doubled. On top of that, he had inherited the duty to make any and all choices pertaining to his division. What he had originally thought to be almost a flippant task took more than he had realized.
And then they were all called off to war.
Where divisions were entirely useless. He was in charge of a squad of people, none of which were from his division. It was difficult to be in charge of people he didn't know; he didn't know weaknesses or strengths, but he was pretty confident in his abilities at first. Thankfully they weren't in charge of any Espada or anything, just lower Arrancar. Other captains with more experience and prowess took care of those things, and that defense didn't leak for a long time.
However, despite his confidence in them all – Yamamoto, Soi Fon, Unohana, Kuchiki, Komamura, Kyouraku, Zaraki, Ukitake – the line did finally leak. The enemies continued to get stronger, and slowly their party had already dwindled in the presence of abundant assaults. They got through a solitary Espada before he was the only one left standing. He was the last of one hundred, and the weight of those deaths were beginning to ease their way onto his heart, though he pushed against them with all that he could.
There were more pressing matters.
Like the one that stood before him, clear as day like he had never left. The clothes were different, the hair was different, but everything else remained the same. And suddenly, a strange fear prickled through him like hot needles. He didn't know why. He had no reason to fear this man; this man had never hurt him, not while he was in office nor when he left. That's why he was the lucky one. The odd prickling fear left quickly, however, replaced by a strong resentment, bordering on hatred. Had this been a calmer moment, he would've stopped to reflect on it. Why? There had been none of this at first, so long ago, so why now?
He couldn't bring himself to say a single thing, only tightening his grip on the bloodied hilt of his zanpakutou and staring at the man in front of him with hatred bubbling through his veins, building up in the back of his throat. Funny. Hatred felt an awful lot like tears. It would've been so easy to let them fall, to let his knees hit the earth whose thirst was quenched by brave blood. But he didn't. There were more important things.
Like how he was ever going to be able to suppress these feelings he didn't even know he had.
"It's been a long time," came the deep voice mere feet away from him. At least he didn't need to worry about making the first move, but any comeback seemed pasted to the sides of his throat, hiding from the open air where they would be heard. It took almost a full minute for him to be able to speak again.
"It has," he said, and was surprised at the cold tone in his own voice. He was never like this before.
"Ironic that it has come to this."
A tiny, pitiful word unglued itself from the side of his throat and fluttered up through his mouth. "Why?" it graced the space between them, shaky and crinkled. Then, like it was a growing trend, the rest of those words unstuck themselves, too, falling out of the open cavity before he could even stop them. It was like his brain shut off.
"Why didn't you give me some kind of good bye? Nothing. There was nothing. Kira knew it was going to happen and Hinamori was so close to getting a mercy killing that even I have to think would probably be better than she is now. I got nothing. Do I mean that little?"
The last sentence came after a brief pause, words that hadn't built up, but had come straight from the brain and out the mouth. He stood panting with the grip on his zanpakutou, no matter how much he tightened it, quivering visibly. He felt the movement against his leg, cooling metal tapping against skin through torn cotton. He couldn't seem to lift his feet when his former captain walked towards him, shorter than he but as always radiating a quiet power that commanded respect. And even now, he still had it.
"I don't understand," the taller man whispered, his grip slackening and the sword dropping with a muffled thud. "This isn't like you. I know that you didn't put up a mask like the other two did. It's just not like you."
He waited for it, for the "you never knew me" or the "never judge a book by its cover" or something to that degree. Instead, there was a slow smile, tiny but genuine, if not a little tarnished on the edges. It pierced through him.
He hadn't realized that it did so literally until chapped lips pressed against his chastely and came back smeared with the blood that had begun to dribble out of his mouth. Hisagi Shuuhei said nothing as he sunk to the ground gradually, falling forward and bathing in the richness of his own blood.
"I respected you," his captain called back in the same calm voice he always used. "And I still do. Justice still has a place in this time and it will be found."
There were no more questions left. They fluttered against the back of his teeth, but his mouth wouldn't open and they slowly stopped flailing as he slowly stopped living.
This was justice. Justice can be directly related to peace, and peace was achieved when there were no more questions to ask.
He couldn't ask anymore questions, and in that moment, all of them were answered. Justice was an emotion, and he was experiencing it.