Two days. He'll give himself two days of ignoring, actually ignoring her, and then he'll get back to work. Two days. Can't be too much to ask. She'd understand.
He feels the fire in the air, feels his lips crack again, and suddenly, he feels like a child, wandering through the hallways of an unfamiliar familiar house once more.
The bottom of his bottle understands. She'd understand.
When he next swims out of intoxication, it's not clear what day it is, or night, in this case, as the moonlight shines through the window and everything seems a little duller. He needs food, and water, and a bath, maybe. He turns to the door out of habit, but there's no frustrated knocking, and no shadows of feet that peek in through the screen.
Well, it's late, he supposes, although that's never really stopped her before, or maybe she's just giving you space. She understands. You've worked together for long enough. She's seen enough to know that it would take you time. It's odd though.
It's very odd.
"Uh, the Twelfth's training grounds, sir," comes the hesitant, wary reply.
He raises an eyebrow, takes a half-step back, "Did she say why?"
"No, sir," the officer shakes his head rapidly, as if wondering how it was that out of all the seated officers of the First, that he was the one being questioned by their new Captain, "Just that she did not want to be disturbed unless the Quincies were back, or the sky was falling down."
Shunsui cracks into a smile.
It is working.
The power bends around her fingers, melds itself into a shield, builds and grows and she bends it again over itself. It smooths into a sheet just as the pulse of pure reishi crashes into it. It shakes, she shakes off the urge to use a conventional barrier, and has fractions of a second to think before she feels the next one coming from behind.
Make it second nature, make it second nature and it will naturally grow stronger. This time she quirks it up into a ripple. The reishi is different this time, purer and stronger, but the rippling barrier catches it. The vibrations run up to her elbow and she prepares herself for the next one.
Faster. Faster. Faster.
She dials the cannons up, feels them tick, feels them drain her own reiatsu from the air, feels the weight of the sky come down towards her. She stands her ground, forces her tired, burnt fingers in front of her and concentrates on forming the vision in her head.
The first shield cracks, and she smothers the panic down with rational thought, focuses and feels for the threads and the hairlines that fell first. These she grabs and twists together, throws shield onto shield onto shield as she scrambles for another solution.
The new form is different, a different mesh, different structure holds it together. She goes for hexagons, watches as the power strikes the edges and deflects off, hot and angry, onto her arm. She hisses, but corrects, curves it, and then realizes that this is not a solution.
It must hold. It must hold on its own. She steeps her finger into the canister on her belt, syncs the cannons up with the remnants of Quincy reiatsu, and immediately feels the difference. This is a filtered, focus energy, not haphazard as shinigami are wont to emit, not the small constant flow that bubbles out from them like fountains. It is molded and formed into the sharp edges of invisible blades, and she spares another fraction of a second to marvel at their control, before she stops and thinks, choosing to dodge the next blast. It slices past her face, she feels the warmth, feels the chill, and realizes that she must be like them.
The next two shots are messily deflected by burning palms into the sides of the barrier. The barrier is weakening. Perhaps she should stop, but she knows that she is close. She is so close.
The new shape forms in the center of the palm of her hand. It grows, spreads its wings, grows and grows sharp and angry and terrifyingly strong. The reishi pulse from the cannon melds into its surface and disappears. There is no smoke, but the shield eats, and eats, and eats.
She has one second to wonder if that is what being a Quincy is like, before she remembers that she was also once desperately hungry.
The next pulse puts her out of her thoughts, and when it just melts away into the shield, she turns it up again, flicks two of them to fire at once.
The first blast comes at her, but the second flies straight for the door that has just been flung open, stretching the barrier thin then tearing it open with a flourish.
She would know this reiatsu from anywhere.
She also has all of a tenth of a second to get the next barrier up.
Somehow, she manages to place herself between the blast and Captain Kyouraku, or more precisely, her heel stomps straight down on the top of his foot, and the shield eats into her palm, angry, hungry and she feels the reishi molten and sharp as it tears into her fingers.
She steps away, off his foot, shuts the cannons off, and somehow cannot find it in herself to be angry at him for barging in.
"Well," she says, turning and tucking her bleeding hands in her sleeves, folding her arms, "are they back?"
The barrier crumbles beneath his fingers, tsk tsk. This is not the Nanao he has for a Lieutenant. He swings the door open, and suddenly her heel is on his foot, her back is in his chest and there is hot, angry air swirling around them.
He feels her tense up, then step away.
"Well," he hears her say tersely, "are they back?"
His eyes sweep over the ends of her sleeves. Her hands stay hidden, her reiatsu feels sharp and dangerous, almost different.
"Not yet," he says.
Her eyes narrow, "Then why are you here?" They both acknowledge that the sky is not falling down.
"I thought I'd come check on you," he says, taking a step forward, "I'm not sure I expected this."
This, is a room the size of a small mess hall, with small cannons on each of the four corners, and one more in the middle of each wall. The air buzzes with the remnants of reishi explosions, the energy perceptible, and he wonders for the briefest of moments if shinigami too can absorb this energy if it is present in high enough concentrations.
He watches the way she fights the urge to adjust her glasses, and reaches forward for her hands.
She takes a step back away from him.
"I told them that I did not wish to be disturbed," she says, but he knows that she knows that means nothing for them.
He levels her a glance, she glares back defiantly. At that moment, blood drips out onto the floor.
They both stare at the droplet as it is joined by another.
He raises an eyebrow to hide how hard his heart is pounding. He can feel the heat in the air again, can almost feel his lips drying and cracking and by the gods he will not lose her too.
"It's nothing," she mutters, and he sees the glow of healing kido in her sleeves. Her hands fall out of them, and he sees the remnants of cuts and a star-shaped burn on each of her palms.
It clicks.
"Does it work yet?" He says yet, because he knows she will get it.
A barrier spring up between them instantly, wraps itself from corner of the room to corner. He does not bother to test it with a finger, goes instead straight to his swords, drawing them in slicing arcs.
They slide straight through the barrier, he frowns, holds them there, debates stepping through, when it suddenly burns with a terrifying hunger. He seals the swords, shoves them away before the barrier manages to seep into him.
"Impressive," he says.
She acknowledges the praise with a grim smile and retracts the barrier. He watches the burn in her hands grow redder and angrier, and knows that he cannot keep hiding her away.
She reaches up to adjust her glasses, and her hand curls a little too much in that motion. The pain flickers over her face but she does a good job of squashing that down. He closes his eyes for a moment, wishes for a time where no one will die, but opens them to reality.
His gaze sharpens,"It works against their reiatsu, I assume?"
His heart cries.
Just who does he think she is?
She nods, "I will return tomorrow to test it on all the different samples we have obtained."
He heads off towards the cannons, perhaps admiring her handiwork, perhaps seeing something else in their stead.
"You won't have to," he says, hands in a cannon, feeling it for compartments, searching for something.
She frowns. Yes, maybe she overstepped a few boundaries in preparing this, but it has been too many battles that she has watched from afar. She will not be kept out of this next one, no matter what he says. Not that she has this now. She will not stop here. Not after she is so close, not after this works.
He turns back from the cannons, holding their reishi canisters in his hands, eyes serious.
"Only these three," he says, "only one of these three will come for us."
Her heart stops cold in her throat, and it is moments before she can reach a shaky hand out to take them from him. She knows which three those are, and she knows, also, that she stands no chance against them in a straight fight.
The enormity of it all sinks in, and in that one moment when her torn fingers close over the first smooth silver sphere, she knows that she will die in the upcoming battle.
But before she does, the barrier will hold. It will hold, and then she will die.
A/N: Set in the few days between the first Quincy invasion and second Quincy invasion. This story ran away from me, but I think it turned out alright in the end.