Characters: Unohana, Isane
Summary: Even the dead see ghosts.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Timeline: pre-manga
Author's Note: This can serve as a companion to God in a Dark Room; you really ought to read that before coming to read this. It's from Unohana's perspective, explaining why she took Isane with her that day; it's essentially the other half of how they met.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Unohana walks the freshly dead and newly dying with the sort of serenity that can only come from having seen it all before. She can smell death in the air but the sort of look affixed to her face has the air of strolling at her leisure through a rose garden in full glorious bloom.
She has grown accustomed to having to smile in the face of such abject misery. Given time, any and every mask can be perfected to the point that it is nothing more than a natural skin.
It is with confidence that Unohana is able to walk, knowing well that what they have she won't contract the illness that has struck the prone, atrophying inhabitants of the ramshackle clinic in Rukongai—this illness only strikes those already weakened by hunger. No one could mistake Unohana for a starving woman.
Her eyes rove the crowd that barely registers her presence, searching for someone who can perhaps be saved—better to treat them, and then move on to the others.
And Unohana's blue eyes fall on a short shock of silver hair, belonging to a young woman who sits with her back against a rotting pillar of wood. She sits upright, if huddled. This is a sign that she is perhaps not so far gone as the others around her, lying prone in their pain and suffering.
It only takes three strides to stand over the girl, hovering in clouds of black and white linen.
Something seems…familiar about this girl.
Unohana kneels, and holds out a hand.
When dark gray eyes darker than the yukata the sick girl wears meets hers, it's all Unohana can do not to blurt out an old name.
Isano?
Then, she understands.
Welcome back, old friend.
Unohana smiles, and beckons to the girl. "Come with me."
Eyes that are so young and yet so old, eyes that once belonged to another, flicker, perhaps recognizing her in a way that the conscious doesn't register, and a long, pale hand, again a familiar feature, reaches up and takes her own.