Characters: Byakuya, Nemu
Summary: They will lean together until the world ends.
Pairings: Byakuya x Nemu
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: No timeline needed
Author's Note: Nothing to report here. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
She is the one who is empty and pointless and looking for anyone to give her purpose, and he is the one who is just as empty, barely notices what she looks for yet still manages to give it to her. He is not free with dispensing this but she laps up all she can get and he can't think to stop his hand.
The one Byakuya loved fully is dead, and any other woman can never excite more than a pale imitation of what he felt. The one he was happy with is dead, and he can never truly find happiness with a woman again. Nemu almost seems to exist just to confirm this, yet they continue to exist together, in a way that barely qualifies as anything but stasis.
Her hands are as cold as his, if not colder. They aren't the hands of one who has ceased to live but one who never lived to start with. Nemu's skin is marbled and yet seems gripped in a sheen of rust, rusting over as one does when stuck in a rut and unable to free herself from it.
This may be why she and Byakuya seem to be so well-suited for each other, fingertips touching palms, filling in their words with silences and leaving their silences blank.
They are both starting to break down and dissolve—creatures built on such fragile foundations with the stone taken away can not ever hope to survive long enough to see the next sunrise. Hearts only beat because the flesh still tell them to. The minds have long since ceased to care.
Byakuya knows he is dead without Hisana. Nemu herself has never been alive.
That's why, when pale, marbled hands reach his own, they fit so well.
They will simply lean together, until the world ends, and they forget.