Characters: Ichigo, Hichigo, Soi Fong, Yoruichi, Orihime, Chad, Uryuu, Ryuuken, Rukia, Juushiro, Shunsui, Nanao, Byakuya, Hisana, Starrk, Lilinette.
Pairings: Shunsui x Nanao, Byakuya x Hisana.
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers all over the place. Readers beware.
Timeline: No particular time.
Author's Note: Really, I have no idea why I wrote this.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
1. Laugh in the Dark
It mostly happens when he's dreaming. Ichigo wanders around in the inky darkness, trying to discern shapes and not walk into buildings that materialize out of the darkness.
When he's sleeping, Ichigo tries not to think about his mother—long light brown hair splayed out in the water, crinkling folds growing darker as the night moves on, her body cold and wet and strangely crumpled, and when he tries to look at her face it has a caved-in look to it—because invariably when that happens his dreams turn into nightmares. No matter how much he blames himself, he has to realize somewhere along the line that it's enough to be beating himself up about Masaki's death when he's awake.
That's when it starts.
It's laughter Ichigo hears. Far off, like an echo on stone walls, but he can hear it clearly, and he doesn't like what he's hearing in that tone—Mockery, hateful tones that chill the spine and make the eyes go dark.
At first, Ichigo thinks it's just an echo of his laughter, even though he can't remember what his own laughs sound like.
Then he eventually wises up and chooses that moment to rouse himself from sleep. Ichigo stares around the dark shadows of his room, and counts himself lucky that he finds himself alone.
The only problem? He's starting to hear that laughter when he's awake.
2. Fool's Gold
Her gold eyes still flash when Soi Fong is unprepared, and the young captain's mouth forms a thin line as she counts scratches in the sand with her blade.
Only after Yoruichi leaves does Soi Fong realize how much she loved the gleam of brilliant, shining gold, metallic eyes that are bold and forthright, and how empty her life is without it there.
Now, Soi Fong is only alive in the midst of battle—copper in her mouth, salt running down her forehead and iron in the air, her own vicious, vibrant cocktail and she loves it so, so much—and gold is hated and despised, those eyes a truly odious thing. Soi Fong would like to point to the silver moon as superior to the bright gold sun, a gentler light that she can hide in.
The little night owl carries out her assassinations at night, so the sun can not beat down on her back and so Soi Fong can feel like Yoruichi isn't still watching her. The sun can only be scorned by the thief in the night.
Soi Fong still loves the sight of gold, though.
3. White
No matter how much she screams and begs, Orihime can't escape the sensations of white-washed walls and eerie silence.
Orihime has come to hate the color white.
There's a labyrinth in her mind, that she is trying to traverse—always with the sense that the Minotaur is just behind her, but when she looks around there's nothing there, and oh, now look, she's lost her thread too, so she has no way out anymore—but can't—every time she comes to a new corridor and thinks she sees the end a new wall springs up out of nowhere and blocks her path without feeling or mercy, leaving her to scream and pound her fists against plaster-cast stone, until there are scarlet streaks rolling down—and it's all done in white.
All of it, pristine, unsullied, antiseptic, sterile white. Too quiet. Eerie. Grains of sand crunching beneath the soles of Orihime's shoes as she runs, and calls out for someone to hear her.
Orihime doesn't want to be alone. She doesn't want to run around in circles. She doesn't want to be trapped anymore, by her mind or by her memories.
She calls. She cries.
And no one ever answers.
4. Devil
Chad thinks of sand and thinks of the Devil.
The Devil is some hoofed monstrosity with red skin, goat's feet and a tail, brandishing a pitchfork and laughing from the fiery pits of Hell. To others, the Devil is an impossibly beautiful fallen angel, the Deceiver. Still more think of a serpent with coils and a silver tongue.
The Devil has many names.
Lucifer.
Satan.
The serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Morningstar.
And, to some, Sado Yasutora.
There's more than one Devil. Yes, there's that Devil—Ruler of Hell, the source of all evil who may have not implanted the seed of darkness within mankind but did—and does—encourage it to grow—but there are human Devils too, and some of them regret it afterwards.
So Chad sifts sand through his huge hands and tries not to think back to the days when to several children, he was the Devil.
5. Peripheral Vision
Uryuu comes closest to hating his father in those rare moments when Ryuuken actually shows some emotion other than detachment and a cold, contained anger.
It comes when Ryuuken thinks his son isn't looking, and Uryuu can feel eyes burning on his back and, just in time, catches sight of those momentary glances of strange sadness that wash over his face before Ryuuken recovers control of his emotions and rearranges his face, going from being a total stranger to being familiar again.
Uryuu can only see it out of the corner of his eye, and the momentary saturation of emotion is so fleeting that it's difficult to catch, but see it Uryuu does. His peripheral vision is better than Ryuuken thinks.
In those moments Uryuu comes as close as he ever has to hating his father—because he has no right to behave as though he doesn't care and then shoot those looks at him; why can't he just choose one extreme or the other and stop jerking them both up and down the emotional roller coaster—and afterwards after Uryuu's had the cathartic experience of getting away from Ryuuken and has had time to think, he just feels sick.
It would be so much easier—for both of them—if they could just peg their relationship down to one emotion and keep it there.
6. Dust in Mouth
Rukongai swallows souls up whole, and spits them out as mangled corpses, uncaring of what it has to do to get its due, out of everyone who goes there.
Rukia's hardscrabble life in Inuzuri has taught her things, opened her eyes to things lifelong dwellers of Seireitei have never fathomed or imagined in even the darkest of their nighttime dreams.
The taste of dust and ashes in her mouth, cloying, noxious, choking. That is Rukia's most constant and reliable memory of Rukongai; that and the swirls and eddies of gray, dirty river water—a vortex that sucks everything in, with open mouths and leeches as their suckers, a place of no escape where any child trying to swim will find only a slow, dark death. Rukia remembers all the children who drowned in the river when she still lived in Inuzuri, their faces gray and slimy, their bodies horribly bloated by the time they were brought out of the river, putrid and grotesque.
Dust comes in the height of the summer months, when even rain is denied to Inuzuri. The river runs low and even if it didn't, the water is so foul and contaminated that no one would dare drink it. It's so dry, so hot that Rukia's mouth feels like a barren desert, and she and Renji both can barely talk until they've stolen some milk from a farmer's store room and guzzled it down.
On the grounds of the Kuchiki estate, Rukia kneels by a small koi pond, and runs her fingers lazily, lightly through the water. She can taste dust in her mouth. Just a little bit.
7. Too Old for This
Juushiro fears he's gotten too old for everything.
Nowadays, he spends most of his life on his death bed, his sick bed, or his couch, watching the world float right on by him through his window—a rushing river that stops for no one, unfeeling, unmovable, unstoppable—and listen to the bright voices and laughter that he can no longer experience himself.
But he's not too old. He keeps telling himself that, even when his bones ache and his lungs burn and Juushiro is faced with the reality of his snow-white hair.
Shunsui is the same age as him; he's actually a year younger than him, if Juushiro recalls correctly, all the way back to their Academy days so very long ago. And Shunsui is still far more energetic than Shinigami half his age, Juushiro fondly thinks, smiling slightly as he witnesses Shunsui (constantly) in the act of chasing after his aloof fukutaicho; he's like a horny teenager again, exuberant and single minded.
And Juushiro?
Juushiro just lies there.
It's been three hundred years since he's been with a woman. Or anyone else at all, for that matter.
He hates to admit it, but he has gotten too old for this.
8. Reflections on the Water
Byakuya leans against a column of wood under the shelter of the porch, as deep purple dusk settles over Seireitei. He smiles slightly as he watches Hisana kneel by a koi pond and dip her hand in, absorbed in the task as she watches the kois' scales flash and glitter in the dying sunlight.
His smile fades.
It's not Hisana.
It's Rukia.
Byakuya shakes his head, and tries to forget the past flowing like water under the bridge. But it's difficult, when he has the living shadow of his wife living under his roof—as like Hisana as any living being can be; her elusive smile and near-nonexistent laugh, the shadow of her deep violet eyes cast in the canvas of smooth, pale skin and fine small bones—as difficult as swimming against the tide of a great, monstrous river, and Byakuya's never been much of a strong swimmer anyway.
Bleed it out. Catharsis. Let it all float away. Psychobabble that Byakuya knows solves nothing, absolutely nothing at all, because he's already tried it all, and nothing works. Nothing absolves him of the memory of Hisana, and nothing can make him look at Rukia and not do a double-take, and not mistake her for one long dead.
9. Stranger in the Mirror
Run me out of my vision.
Take over my face.
Scream in my head.
Full-on wreck the place.
Shinji finds a reason to hate Aizen in every word he hears resounding in the bone confines of his skull, as clammy, sweaty, shaky hands hit a hotel room sink, deep down in the grime of so many useless years and brown eyes search the mirror for a face he recognizes.
He doesn't find it.
10. Solitary
It's always night on Hueco Mundo. Cool, cold night, with a sickle moon and a deep blue sky of coldly glittering stars—a stark landscape in which he finds no relief and even gives rise to his name, homage to his home, testament to his eternal solitude—twinkling down upon them. Hardly anyone ever sees the stars anymore.
Starrk does.
Starrk is truly unaware of which one of them came first. He has few memories left after Lilinette appears in front of him, cold, naked, covered in a slimy amniotic fluid and trembling on the sand—just a long long period of alone, being so locked into solitary confinement, and every time he tries to reach out to others it just ends up blowing up in his face, invariably.
It doesn't really matter which came first.
They are Starrk and Lilinette.
They are alone together.
They exist to try to eradicate those ever-present feelings of loneliness.
They simply are.