Characters: Ryuuken, Sayuri (OC), Uryuu
Summary: The problem comes when you start to see her everywhere, see her where you least want to.
Pairings: Past only
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: Pre-manga
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The months that pass on from her death are little more than a haze, a sleepwalker's foggy nightmare where everything in the silver mist reminds him of her, and he only sees his reflection in the glistening glassy water.
Ryuuken is sitting in transit, a long sleep that he would like nothing more than to wake up from but can't, still asleep in the deep darkness of white winter, the snow muffling step and sound.
Nothing to do but sleep, and sleep is blinding and merciful like doses of morphine, shining iridescent but still incapable of blocking out the memory of her. Japan is full of her laugh, the brief flash of her smile, Japan houses a host of small, dark-haired women and the only thing it seems powerless to reproduce is the glint of her dark blue eyes.
Ryuuken wakes up, finally, to come face to face with the reality that waking hours contain a nightmare all too real, and far more terrible thanks to its permanence.
This one won't quit.
Uryuu is nearly a year and a half old and he sits staring out the window, watching the iridescent silver sheet of rain come near, translucent and glittering with illusory mica flecks.
Ryuuken comes near, and Uryuu's first words ever spoken are a question. The slurring lisp of a toddler makes it indistinct but somehow so very clear.
"What is it?"
And Ryuuken is again confronted with sight of her. Blue eyes flash, curiosity a stranger but so very familiar raising its head from depths of dark water, the reflection that is skewed and blemished, imperfect and earth-shattering.
The wakeful hours encroach like a slithering beast with the silver rain veil and he will never know the mercy of morphine-sleep again.
Because thought of her can never fade when he still sees her every day, in depths of curious dark water that are actually eyes.