Pathology
By
SMYGO4EVA
The Seireitei works in mysterious ways – the Shinigami come in and become domineering captains and subservient lieutenants. They are shrouded in the black shadows they have created themselves, forever intrigued by death and the heinous acts it commits in the name of nature and balance. They are almost akin to the very idea that the Shinigami are inscrutable and inhuman, as if they are indeed wretched. Madness and sanity are two different things, but in the Seireitei – they are one and the same, between succumbing to the truth and the lies.
Kenpachi Zaraki fuels madness, for that he fights with both power and ferocity. He is always looking for a battle conjoined with blood and carnage leaking with breaking sanity. He welcomes insanity of the worst kind, staring at him with sanguine orbs. He creates a brutal world, with more fights, more blood and more burned bridges. He studies the calm and stoicism of the fools he brings to their knees. He sees through them, he sees the fear of dying and lets them fall into their own grave.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya knows death; he has seen that he caused it and he shields the guilt and regret afterwards. A day without death is a rare gift. He sees that the Shinigami are attached by death; chained like prisoners and captives in the morbid threshold. He tries not to let rage and anger make him kill again, but when he does feel it take over, he would let it control him. He becomes a demon of ice and water, just as a martyr would sacrifice their salvation for another's. Death makes him the villain of the story, but he can't help if he is just like Zaraki.
Cruel and corrupt, enraged and powerful, merciless and full-circle in ending life: the only characteristics of when battle becomes so beautiful and so irresistable that it makes two different people alike. Even the most stoic and brutal of captains can taste the fear in their opponents. Anger becomes an addiction, a disease that no one can cure, and the pathology of the curse is almost something they can never escape.