Rose x Izuru
Opening Doors
It had been many years since Rojuro Otoribashi had donned a Captain's haori, and when the crisp white fabric slid over his shoulders he was still not convinced that it was the for the best. But he closed his eyes, breathed in the deep scent of sandalwood and fabric detergent, and let the soft folds of the haori settle around him in a way that was oddly comforting.
When he opened his eyes again, he felt a little calmer.
The room was not his own, but the one that he had been permitted to stay in whilst the decision on his fate and future was made. It was bare wood and white sheets, without personality, and in the weeks he had stayed there that had not changed. All he was taking with him was one small packing case, his guitar, and the haori that now sat on his shoulders with the weight of an old friend.
It had been delivered the night before, in cellophane wrapping, clean and new, the white as bright as only new fabric is. He wondered what had happened to his old haori, but he supposed it must just have been thrown out. He had never wondered about it before.
The walk across the Seireitei had never seemed as long as it did that day, from the barracks to his Division. He walked with his two fellow returning Captains for a while, but soon Kensei had to turn off, and Shinji not long after that. When he reached the gates of the Third he felt the hilt of Kinshara, a soft touch for comfort, and prepared himself for the pomp and ceremony of the shinigami welcoming their new Captain.
The guards on the gate looked at him almost as if they were afraid, and bowed low to him. Their words were official and spoken without feeling, as if they were reciting what someone had told them to say.
He nodded at them, and thanked them, and moved through the gate.
The shadow of the doors to his division fell over him, and as he stared at them for the first time in a century, he was struck by just how much the building had changed. The once whitewashed stone walls were flaked and peeled, the grey stones visible through it. The columns that had once stood on either side of the doorway were gone, only the bases of them remaining. The window above the doorway had been blocked up with stone that did not match the rest of the masonry, and the whole building had the look of abandonment, as if it had not been used since he had been there, even though that was not so.
He sighed, and closed his eyes again, before pushing open the door and stepping through into the shadowy interior.
The halls were deserted inside.
He looked around. No one had come to meet him.
Even though he had been dreading the introduction, the fact that no one had shown up was still discomforting.
There were changes in here too, deliberate ones that made the place seem different, quiet. The panes of glass in the large windows that had once let in so much light had been replaced, perhaps after they had been shattered in some accident of spiritual pressure or perhaps just on whim. In their place were small panels of stained glass, forming abstract images in dark reds and earthy greens, casting coloured, dim light through the hallways. It left the corridors feeling as if were dusk outside, rather than a bright midsummer morning. He tried not to look at them.
The one closest to him was a hunting scene, dogs ripping apart the throat of a deer, the blood spreading around the gentle curve of the doe's neck.
He resisted the urge to unleash his zanpakuto and shatter the glass, just to let the light back in, and rubbed his chest, where an old, familiar pain surfaced, a tightness that grew worse each time.
Continuing through the halls revealed no more shinigami: in fact, the place seemed deserted. He had expected the Division to be waiting to greet their new Captain, but instead the dusty corridors presented nothing but closed doors and shadows of colour. The air felt too heavy, as if he had to press through it, and smelt slightly musty, as if no window had been open in a long time. He passed the deserted canteen and the empty offices of the ranked shinigami without seeing a soul, but when he came to the door to the Lieutenant's office he thought that he could hear something, echoing down through the building.
He reached for the handle of the office door and then hesitated.
It seemed as if he could feel the air of the corridor move around him as he turned, leaving the closed doors behind him.
The walls felt so familiar to him, the scuffed wooden floors unchanged, and he felt an ache in his heart that he could not explain, because it felt at the same time like homesickness combined with the joy of returning home, as if he both loved this place and felt like a stranger to it. It was a feeling enough to drive a man mad with confusion, but he was used to being torn apart with conflict: he could no longer remember a time when he felt as if everything was right, and made complete sense.
He pushed open the last door at the end of the hallway, which opened out into the training ground. The entire division, in silence but for grunts of exertion, were following the routine training regime with a direction that seemed forced. Watching over them was a thin, blonde man, who Rose recognised vaguely as being his new Lieutenant.
No one turned to greet him, so he walked around to the man, wondering if no one got the memo about his arrival time.
His Lieutenant didn't turn around to face him, but stood straight, shoulders back.
"Practice begins at eight thirty every day."
Rose nodded, cautiously. The stiff tone was unfriendly, but not impolite, and the message was clear.
"A good Division needs routine."
His Lieutenant looked over his shoulder, and for the first time Rose saw the face of Kira Izuru. His eyes were cold and shadowed, and they looked into the Captain as if he could see past the blank expression and into some deeper meaning in his words.
"A Division will not fall apart, just because it has no Captain."
Rose must have appeared taken aback, because Kira frowned at him, and sighed.
"We didn't need a new Captain."
Those words still echoed around his head, even months later.
It took them a long time to find a routine. Talking with his friends, he knew that the same was not the case for them: Kensei seemed to fall into a natural rhythm with his Division and his Lieutenant, and everyone always seemed to find themselves walking at Shinji's own pace, his new Division being no exception.
But Kira had been right when he had said that a Division did not need a Captain to work; all they needed was discipline, and that could be effective from anyone willing to take control. Kira handled everything with an authoritative and stern manner, gaining many of his subordinates respect, but little of their affection. Rose watched Kira go about many of the jobs that he himself should have been doing, and wondered how long he had been effectively running the division, long before Ichimaru had left. After a week, he made his move.
He started by calling the central offices, and having them re-route the recruitment paperwork directly to him.
Two days passed before Kira knocked on his door, for the first time.
"Ah… Captain." He spoke the word as if it cut at his throat. "The paperwork on the new recruits from the Academy-"
"Did it."
His expression shifted slightly, and Rose could see something else under the surface. His Lieutenant nodded, and started to shut the door.
"I have just finished the latest set of reports, could you send them off for me?"
Kira clenched his fists.
"Captain, those are something that I normally do."
Rose looked up, an expression of bland bemusement on his face.
"But it is the job of the Captain of the Division."
For a moment he thought that he would say something, but all he did was nod, and close the door.
Rose smiled, and picked up his pen.
Weeks passed, and the confusion in his soul did not heal itself as he hoped that a return would do, but as time went by he found himself content in his new routine. He had the stone ripped out of the old window and replaced the stained glass out of his own pay check, letting the light back in. Often he found Kira watching him, as if trying to decipher him, although Rose did not know what question Kira wished answering. There was a hard set to his jaw that would not go despite how much his workload had lessened. In fact, he seemed to take it as an offence as, one by one, each of the Captain's duties were returned to the correct office.
Four months almost to the day since he came back to his Division, he still had not exchanged more than a few words with his Lieutenant besides the customary ones, and all of his paperwork was his again. He listened to the stories told by his friends as he sipped his wine and wondered why he was the only one whose Lieutenant seemed to dislike him so much.
He himself was becoming quite fond of the young man, of his unimpressed eyes and the way he seemed to shoulder the weight of a thousand worlds.
If his friends noticed his concern, they said nothing. He watched Kensei stare off more and more into the distance with a slight smile, and wondered what falling in love felt like, and as he walked home from the bar he felt the old, familiar pain in his chest, and pressed his fist against it. The Division was quiet at night. The barracks were in a separate building in the Third's compound, only the rooms of the Captain and Lieutenant inside.
He breathed in the cold night air, and slipped into the barracks.
The floor was cold beneath his feet as he followed his memories through the chill of night to the Captain's gardens, the place that had once been his refuge and his favourite place. He had avoided it since he had returned, not wanting to know what it now looked like, passing the screen door to the place without a glance. A meditative peace had fallen with darkness, and the moon was bright in the sky as he slipped through the door, silver light bathing the walled garden with a glow.
The grass was overgrown, and wildflowers and weeds had seeded in it, making the once sculpted lawn look more like a meadow. It was damp with dew and parted around him, soaking into his kimono, turning the blue dark. He brushed a dying rosebud with his fingertips and it fell apart around them, scattering browning petals on the mossy bed. The rosebushes had not been pruned in decades, and the branches stuck straight upwards, black and dead, only the occasional one living enough to give flowers still.
The trellises were smothered with dead honeysuckle and overgrowing ivy.
He lay back in the grass, feeling the cool damp of earth soaking through to his back, the scent of vegetation and dirt rising up to envelop him.
The stars were like a million pinpricks in the sky above him, and he closed his eyes.
The ache began to feel worse, a loneliness that he didn't understand.
The sound of the door opening came to him across the silent night, followed by the sound of it closing again. Footsteps padded a little closer.
"Good evening."
The steps stopped, for a moment, only to cautiously begin again.
"Captain?"
He smiled, eyes still closed. "Hello, Lieutenant."
There was hesitation, he thought, and he waited for Kira to make a decision about whether or not to stay or go, but he supposed that in the end curiosity won out over his odd, beautiful Lieutenant. Kira sat next to him on the grass. He was frowning down at his Captain.
"What are you doing here?"
"This was my garden, once."
His Lieutenant said nothing, but ran a finger up the stem of a wildflower.
"I didn't know that."
"I doubt many people do."
Kira nodded, and glanced down at his Captain, only then noticing that Rose was watching him. He looked away, up at the sky.
"I've never seen you here before."
Rose shook his head. He had wanted to, but had been afraid. This garden had once given him a sense of peace, a feeling of calm, and it had always managed to ease the sadness that coursed through him in quiet, lonely nights. He had been, he supposed, scared. A hundred years is a long time for anything, let alone a garden, and he had not known if it would still have such an effect on him. It seemed, however, that it did.
"What are you doing here?"
Kira shrugged.
"I come here when I can't sleep. My former Captain never did."
Rose nodded. That knowledge made him feel a little better, the thought that this garden was so untouched and abandoned. It did not surprise him that Ichimaru had never sought rest here: he did not seem like a man that ever needed to look for clarity or peace.
"Captain…"
He turned to look at the blonde man beside him, who was staring off into the distance. It sounded as if he had something that he wished to say, some question that was gnawing at him. Rose was unable to stop a smile creep across his face at the sight of his Lieutenant, but in the end, the man never asked his question. He nodded at his Captain, and stood up to leave.
"It was good talking to you, Izuru."
"You too… Rojuro."
"Rose."
The door slid shut, silently, and his next words were spoken only to the darkness.
"My friends call me Rose."
The sadness continued, as it always did, and time moved on. The weeks passed with slow steadiness, and as the last of the golden leaves fell from the trees and winter's frost crept across the window panes, he found that he had settled into his division as one would an old coat that you find in the back of a closet. His subordinates, at first afraid of him, learnt over the months that his gentleness was not a front for anything, not any kind of trickery, and they came to respect their Captain, even care for him.
But as the months wore on he felt no closer to his Lieutenant anywhere but in his heart.
He kept a perfect distance, and he found that it tore at him, though he could not really explain why. He watched his movements from a distance; the careful way he flicked through reams of paper with his long, pale fingers, the fine golden hairs on the nape of his neck, his cool and collected voice.
Most nights it ended up with the two of them being the only ones left in the division, working late. He didn't think, really, that Izuru stayed late because he had too much work, but perhaps just out of habit. He himself remained because the only other option, if his friends were busy, was to retire to his bed, and strum himself to sleep on his old guitar, which still echoed without familiarity in these halls.
Every evening, Izuru would come to his office with the forms he had completed for the day, that only needed the signature of the Captain to be sent off the next morning. He would nod politely but without smiling, and excuse himself for the night, and every time Rose watched him leave he wondered a little more about the quiet man, and what made those eyes of his so distant and unreadable.
Often he thought about reaching out to him, a calm word or action, to uncover the mystery, but knew not how to do so.
The final push, in the end, was a small one. Izuru had come in as usual before he left for bed, looking more tired than usual. There were shadows under his eyes that seemed deeper than before, a slowness to his movements that indicated tiredness. As he placed the forms on Rose's desk the Captain looked up into those eyes and realised for the first time that they were a dark shade of blue: he had never noticed before.
"You seem tired."
The Lieutenant shook his head as he made for the door, reaching the doorway before he responded.
"I am sorry if it is affecting my work, Captain."
Rose shook his head.
"It isn't, Lieutenant."
"Then goodnight, Captain."
He slipped through the doorway into the shadowed corridor beyond.
"Izuru?"
He could almost hear the hesitation through the door, and could imagine his Lieutenant, waiting in the darkened, silent corridor, hand still on the door, wondering whether or not to pretend that he had already left, that he had not heard the soft voice of his Captain. Rose smiled at the door, and closed his eyes.
Outside, Izuru raised his hand, pressing a fist to his chest, as if some phantom pain haunted him.
He could leave, he knew that.
Instead, he pushed the door back open.
"Yes, Captain?"
Rose smiled at him from across the room, and wondered for a moment. The dying sunlight poured through the window, casting the room in an odd grey-golden light, extending shadows across the floor and making the planes of Kira's expression seem even more dramatic. The darkness around his eyes seemed almost impenetrable.
"Izuru, do you like music?"
He shook his head, trying to ascertain the meaning behind Rose's smile. The light fell against Rose's back, leaving him almost a silhouette, a mystery figure, the expression on his face more of a suggestion. The tension in the room seemed to fill them with loneliness, with emptiness, and Rose felt the pain in his chest stronger than ever before, as if his heart were trying to leave his chest.
"That is a shame, I think that music is one of the most beautiful things."
They stared at each other for a moment, and Rose smiled as he took off his haori and hung it up, brushing the fabric with his fingertips. The bright whiteness of the fabric was already fading, not as new as it had once been, and he realised that though he had been Captain again for over half a year he still didn't feel as if he were home. He turned back to Izuru, who was frowning him.
"What are you thinking, Izuru?"
"That you are a difficult man to read, Captain."
He smiled.
"I suppose I am. Here, come with me."
They walked slowly through the corridors, and as Rose took a deep breath he noticed that the mustiness that had been there when he had first arrived had gone. They reached the door to the garden and he slid it open, stepping into the long grass. The wildflowers that had been bright in bloom when he had arrived here had now died back, as had all the flowers: now only the greenery of the grass remained, and the mosses that sprung up between the stems of the dead roses.
Frost had threaded delicate patterns on the dead leaves littering the ground, and the air was chill, but Rose still lay on the ground as he had done in midsummer, between the frozen blades of grass, lying back to stare upwards at the quickly darkening skies. The stars were beginning to appear, one by one, but whispers of cloud still lingered here and there, reflecting the lingering light back down, making them almost appear to glow with grey light.
He had meant to begin on making this garden his once more, returning it to the ordered garden it had once been, but he found that the chaotic wildness of the overgrown place had a beauty of its own, and he had let it be.
Izuru sat next to him, though he did not lie back.
"Time passes so quickly."
Something close to a smile passed over Izuru's expression.
"You're hard to understand, Rojuro."
"As are you, Izuru."
"I'm glad you have not changed this place, even if it is yours."
He smiled up at the man beside him, but his hair had fallen forwards, and Rose could not longer see the expression on his face. The pain flared in his chest.
"It is as much yours as it is mine."
A cool breeze blew the night, and the stems of the dead plants waved at the stars, the silent dark closing in around them. The dim light from the hallway only shed the slightest of illumination over the tableaux, and the breeze blew strands of fair hair across Izuru's face, and without quite meaning to Rose reached up from the grass, the silver-green thawing from the heat of their bodies, and brushed the hair off his cheek, tucking it behind his ear.
Izuru's dark eyes stared down at him, and Rose wondered what lay beyond them, beneath that mask.
His skin was cold to the touch, and he could not help but wonder if it was always like that, or if the cold night had simply set a chill in Izuru's bones, as it was starting to do for him. The frost that lay on the ground sank into his frame, drawing him in, as if the very ground wished to bind himself into the earth.
He only realised that his hand was still resting against Izuru's face when he felt fingertips reaching for his own, the touch of skin against his, a strange feeling that seemed so oddly alien, and at the same time, so natural. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, he saw an expression on the face of his Lieutenant that he did not quite understand.
"Rojuro?"
He nodded, slowly, as that hand pressed against his own, still resting against Izuru's cheek.
"It is getting cold."
He said nothing, for nothing needed to be said. As the last light of the winter's day slipped away Izuru rose to his feet, letting Rose's hand fall back to its place as his Captain followed him. They slipped through the door and back into the relative warmth of the Division, but the frost still bit at his body, creeping across his chest, a sweeping numbness along his back and limbs. Izuru watched him out of the corner of his eye as they walked side by side, and wondered what his Captain was thinking as he involuntarily shivered.
"Captain-"
"It is Rojuro, Izuru, on either side of the door."
Kira seemed to smile again.
"No, it isn't, Captain."
Rose tried to smile, but the pain in his chest felt worse than ever before, and there seemed to be a chill in him that he could not chase away. But then there was a press of warmth against his side as his Lieutenant moved closer, their arms against each other as they walked together through the silent corridors; warmth that seemed to flow through his body as if he were winter in thaw.
Izuru reached over, and took his hand.
And he felt to him as some unseen door had been opened to that quiet, untouchable place in his heart, as if a great gust of air had swept through, lifting cobwebs of grief and the dust of sadness away from him, leaving behind a freshness, a feeling of newness, as if, by the simple act of taking his hand, his Lieutenant had cleared out centuries of burdens and replaced them with hope.
"You are a hard man to understand, Rojuro."
The Captain smiled back, in that warm way that seemed to mean both everything and nothing, and Izuru too felt a part of himself thaw, some warmth of happiness creep into him unbidden, but not unwelcome.
He felt Izuru's fingers stroke his, and noticed that at some point the pain he had grown so used to had receded, the tightness of the ache releasing his chest, and as he looked down at his Lieutenant he realised for the first time that he might know what happiness was.
"As are you, Izuru."
The two padded silently through empty corridors, no words needed to explain how they were feeling. And as they walked, they grew a little closer with each step, and each doorway they passed through seemed to warrant the slightest of touches, a ghost of a press of fingertips, a whisper of breath on bare skin.
He thought at one point he heart Izuru speak his name, barely a whisper, but he could not be sure.
The simple touch of a hand, he thought, could cure all woes in this world.
How had he never realised that before?
As they came to their rooms an unspoken understanding was already formed, and as Rose pressed his palm against his Lieutenant's chest he felt the rhythm of his heartbeat, a simple music, and as he closed his eyes he felt that he could hear his own heart moving in tune.
What would be find, he thought to himself, if he stayed?
It would be easy to walk away from this, to turn before he looked at the expression on his Lieutenant's face. They would forget this one, strange night, and never speak of it again, act as if nothing had happened. Nothing would have changed.
Was that really what he wanted?
When he opened his eyes he saw that Izuru was smiling, a slight smile that might almost have been bitter had his eyes not been so warm. He did not think he had ever seen the man before him look this way before, and wished there was a way to freeze the moment, so that he did not have to choose.
In the end, it wasn't a hard choice.
He let his Lieutenant draw him in through the last doorway, into to the room and each others bodies, and felt for the first time how companionship should feel: trusting heat, gentle warmth, unbidden joy; and as he did so, he realised suddenly what all of those songs, whose meanings had eluded him for centuries, meant.
Night crept over the Soul Society, and in the darkness two bodies understood what it meant to ease loneliness.
There is always music coming from the Third Division now.