Characters: Isane, Kiyone
Summary: Isane finds her sister.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers; rated for descriptions of burn injuries
Timeline: Pre-manga
Author's Note: I decided that the story of how Isane and Kiyone found each other again was worth talking about, and that it could stand alone, outside of my drabble collection. You can consider this as a spiritual successor to God in a Dark Room.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Long fingers with slightly chipped fingernails run down the brow of a small girl, as Isane wrings water out of a rag and places it, cool and moist, on the girl's burning forehead.
Well, it was quite literally burning a few hours ago.
Unohana-taicho has Isane who, despite being as of yet unseated is a skilled healer, help her run the clinic in Rukongai on a alternating (every other day) shift. It's good practice, Unohana says, and Isane secretly (or maybe not so secretly) idolizes her captain and is willing to do anything the older woman asks her to.
Presently, the clinic is populated by burn victims of a fire in a nearby neighborhood, and it's just as overcast outside as it was the day Isane met Unohana.
Thunder rolls, and the familiar drilling sound patters on the ridged tin roof. Isane sees a silver sheen through the cracks in the ramshackle boards that form the walls of the clinic, and a sweet smell filters through the thing wood. It's not just overcast anymore. It's raining again.
She sighs, and turns her attention back to the girl beneath her capable hands, where her mind should be, instead of out with the rain.
The girl's tiny, and emaciated—probably has high reiatsu and doesn't get enough to eat. She has second-degree burns over forty percent of her body; she's mercifully unconscious. Isane doesn't want to think about the sort of pain the girl would be in if she was awake, covered in weeping sores and blisters.
Isane pauses, takes the moment to peer more closely at the girl.
Her face is mostly indistinct—childishly round with a small, unformed nose and pink, babyish lips. Her chin is soft and undefined. A haze of dark autumn gold hair fringes her face and glitters at the closed lids of eyes dyed bruise blue, deep and profound.
When Isane thinks about it, this girl bears strong resemblance to the step mother she left behind in the land of the living.
The girl twists and squirms when Isane's fingertips gently probe a cut on her cheek, a soft groan escaping from her lips, pain putting furrows on her temple and disrupting the wet cloth put there.
"It's alright…" Isane bites her lip, realizes she doesn't know this girls name. Softly whispering, she murmurs. "It'll be alright."
Strangely, the girl responds to that. She turns over on her side, the rag falling to the dirt floor, and shifts as one would to pull blankets more firmly over herself. Her brown yukata shifts and exposes her legs from the knees down.
"I know…" she whispers, half-conscious. "I know, neesan."
Isane stares at her for a moment, her gray eyes huge.
A heartbeat seems more like an eternity.
Then, she screams.