Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Tite Kubo. I only own any of my original characters that I choose to include, as well as any of my own original plot ideas.
Honor For The Dead
A/N: Thousand Year Blood War; alternate events.
In her arms, she holds him, fearful of everything and nothing at all. If she moves, he might fade away into the dark. A darkness that, before now, she has never once feared.
He smells of stone and blood and lilac, causing her nose to wrinkle as she presses it into his hair. Still warm, still alive, still oblivious to the fact that she's finally come for him. Though she wishes that their circumstances were drastically different.
A captain, he should be shut up in his office, handing out orders or dutifully completing paperwork of his own. Not lying on the ground with her body as his only support, steadily bleeding out from wounds dealt by his own power turned against him.
When he opens his mouth, it's not her name on his tongue, passing his lips. It's that of his sister. Quiet, not at all a whisper, but a slow breath that sounds like death.
She holds him closer, listening as he repeats dear Rukia's name.
If he has to die in her arms, her words forever left unspoken, then it cannot be here. For on a battleground such as this, there is nothing but despair and emptiness.
On the day that a man like Byakuya Kuchiki dies, there should be nothing for him but honor.