Characters: Byakuya, Hisana
Summary: Each one sends up a rippling ocean of memory.
Pairings: ByaHisa
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc
Timeline: No timeline needed
Author's Note: Not much to say here. I can only advise you to read and review.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The day is perhaps a little too bright—but Byakuya can live with that. He is used to the days of summer when the sun beats down on his back and draws sweat out from the skin like blood from a stone—and he feels like just that, a bleeding stone.
Thanks to the heat the garden is deserted—this garden in particular was her domain and has become overgrown, the rose bushes with all their thorn-knives growing over so they almost bridge the narrow stone paths and leave little space for Byakuya to walk. The whole place seems more like a forest than a garden, perfume and bees buzzing in his ears, dead, brittle, withered leaves crunching beneath his feet.
Byakuya is not sure why he has come here, but answers the soft, whispery voice on the gentle wind that echoed around the walls surrounding the garden the servants all do their best to avoid.
There is a pond here, with a bent cherry tree beside it, thin, spindly boughs hanging like arms over the serene, deep gray depths of the water.
Pink petals drop lazily onto the water as Byakuya kneels at the bank, and he watches the ripples with a strained face.
One shows her bright eyes.
Another, Hisana's gentle hands.
A third, the smile she rarely showed but was so achingly beautiful when it emerged.
Another, and another, ripples recalling Hisana's spirit trapped beneath the water, calling to him, imploring him to free her, singing a siren song to try to draw him down with her, to drown there in the garden left untouched since her death.
Byakuya splashes them all away and moves on, heart so still at the ache that it barely lives at all.
He does not return.