I do not own Bleach. I do, however, hope that you enjoy the following fic.
He awoke with a sudden jerk, as though he had only dreamed of falling to the desert floor, as though he had only dreamed of dying. Perhaps he had. Perhaps everything before was only a dream. Perhaps, even now, he was dreaming. The world was without color. He lifted a languid hand to the moon, turned it, examined it as one would examine something frightening and alien and wondrous; a severed limb regrown, a dead body given new life.
Pale white skin; as white as the sand. Pitch-black tattoo; as black as the sky. He tried to remember if he ever dreamed in color. He pondered the idea for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few millennia-did it matter? He should have know, it occurred to him, considering how much he had slept, but he couldn't remember, couldn't remember the last dream he had. Even then, he could have been dreaming.
But he wasn't. Everything was clear-too clear-and yet not clear enough. The moon was a spotlight. The sand was powdered glass. The silence was suffocating. He tasted blood in his throat. The world was rendered in painful, painful clarity, while his thoughts were still scattered. He wasn't dreaming. This was real. Sitting up, he looked around.
Moonlight and sand and night. Utterly peaceful, utterly painful. No fighting, no pain, no company. No one to tell him what had happened or what he was doing here, no one to tell him what happened to-
But that might only have been a dream, too. He sat for another few millennia, propping himself up with his elbow. A hundred sandstorms rolled around him before he lifted his head again and peered into the distance.
Had it really happened? Had he fought? Lost? Fell? Had he found allies? Did he have friends? Did he really split himself-?
Merely another dream. How could that be possible? But if it was just a dream, why couldn't he remember waking up?
He could have seen for himself, searched for the empty city beneath a sky of impossible blue, the bone-white labyrinthian palace, all of the alien and wondrous dreamscapes. But how? How could he find such impossible places when he didn't know the way? How could he backtrack through his imagination to something that wasn't even guaranteed to exist? How could he find people he had only met in his sleep? What would he say if he found them? What would he do? What if it was someone he didn't know?
What if they were only a dream as well?
Weighed down by invisible memories, he slid back onto the sand and stared at the sky until he fell asleep.
He began to dream.
He dreamed of golden light and green grass. What is grass? he wondered to himself, What is this light? He dreamed of movement, of a woman in a dress beside him, of a child on his knee, laughing. Who are you? he asked.
He dreamed of others, of being surrounded, of moving through cities like the empty city, but filled with people, brimming with people and sound and noise and color and light and screeching. Suddenly, screeching. Coming closer.
Car?
An impact, red with pain.
And then the pain faded.
He dreamed of running, of being hunted, of moving through the brimming city, surrounded by thousands of people, yet remaining utterly alone. He dreamed of shadowy figures in the distance, leaping lithely across the rooftops. He called, but no answer came; or, worse: he called, and the monsters came.
He dreamed of monsters. He dreamed of being captured, devoured, swallowed up. He dreamed of peering out of the world through a peephole, of seeing the world through the eyes of a monster. He dreamed of passing time, of others joining him. He dreamed of others joining him in the darkness. Hundreds of others, thousands, consumed by sorrow and hunger and silence.
He dreamed of fighting. He dreamed of winning. He dreamed of being alone.
He dreamed of being hungry and of a Hunger. More fighting, more hunger. At some point, he became full. He stopped fighting.
He dreamed of the desert again, and of wandering, alone. And later, of wandering accompanied.
Who was she?
He dreamed of sunlight and laughter. He dreamed of finding others, of being happy, of fighting again. Why was he fighting? He didn't want to. He dreamed of playing, although that, too, felt like fighting. He dreamed of loss, of falling, of losing a part of him that could never be replaced. He dreamed for an eternity, endlessly, until he woke up.
His eyes opened on the night sky, dead and devoid of light. The moon had set, but no sun had risen. He stared until it rose and set again. Then he sat up, again.
It was as though someone was watching him. He turned around.
Nobody. Silence. Only sand dunes and dead trees.
And yet, there was the echo of someone, the memory of someone. Not a dream, but Someone. Someone that reminded him of sunshine and laughter, that elusive golden light, that sense of others, the weight on his knee. He decided to find that someone. He stood.
He fell to his knees.
The echo cleared, like someone standing in his shadow. The white flash of a smile, the silhouette of a head. He couldn't see her, couldn't place a name. The curved flash of a blade, the fading sense of someone. He clutched the hole in his chest, suddenly overcome by something, he didn't know what.
The phrase "Playing games" floated into his thoughts. Why did it seem so sinister?
He gasped, remembering the empty city with its impossibly blue sky, the colors, the rush, fighting, her. Something inside him shifted, a tremor, or vertigo. The echo resolved again, stronger this time; almost like a memory, almost like yesterday, or a thousand years ago. He straightened, suddenly overcome by something, he didn't know what. Tears flowed, unbidden. Why? Who was she? Was she real? If he found her, would she know what to say? Would he know what to say?
He sat for a thousand years, grains of sand flowing past him.
It wouldn't hurt anything to chase a dream. Perhaps even this was a dream as well.
He stood. He dreamed.
He wandered.
So yeah, I guess you may have got a sort of Inception vibe, but I liked the idea of associating Starrk with dreaming and memories. Also, I am fully convinced that he survived the battle of Karakura Town, if you couldn't tell already. Hope you enjoyed it! Reviews are always welcome!