A random one-shot about Masaki and Isshin. I like them. This is kind of poetic, I guess. This was originally written on 7 May 2013. I'm pretty sure no one cares but me.

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I am floating in ether. Weightless, empty of anything except a faint outline of identity. The blackness is velvet soft, at once cool and warm. Soothing. I am simultaneously completely without pain and in the most excruciating pain of my life. I cannot move. Actually, I can move, but it has no effect on my position in space. Can I see? All I can see is the black feathers of darkness batting softly against my retinas. It is just so soft. This softness is impossible. I can see no light, but I am not afraid. I am sad, but my tears melt into feathers as soon as they are borne of my eyes. I am happy, but the music of my laugh is lost in the gentle rush of waves of ether against my eardrums. I would scream, but my vocal chords are filled with the invisible down. I can smell nothing except the fear I do not feel and the spring smell of coolness. My mouth is closed, and I can taste nothing.

All of a sudden, a light comes.

The light is gradual at first. It lightens the feathers, adding streaks of red wine and pale pink to the blackness. Stars come out and the beauty of this moment is unrivaled. I am spinning among galaxies of ether, smelling all the sweet and savory scents of the universe, tasting all the flavors. The silence is still echoing in rings in my head.

All of a sudden, a noise comes.

A horrid scream of pain and instinct. It sharply tugs my ribs back in a primal fear that transcends any I have felt before. All I can smell is blood and pain. All I can taste is that palpable fear that wraps me is suffocating iron bonds and squeezes me till I try to curl up and cry. I am terrified. My body is weightless and unmovable, and I cannot feel anything bad. Yet. That is undoubtedly coming next.

All of a sudden, a new light comes.

It is a light and a darkness. It is fear and pain embodied in instinct. As it approaches, it becomes a face. A mask, to be more precise. The mask of the one I killed so recently. Its horns point at me and its bony teeth open to reveal nothing. I am going to be eaten alive by this creature of destruction. My soul will be eaten. The mask becomes large as it looms in front of me. It grows larger and larger until it could snap my slender waist with a single snap of its gruesome teeth.

All of a sudden, a mask disappears.

That huge embodiment of my pain. Gone. The shreds of the mask look like white scraps of fabric, or maybe ether, and indeed, as they curl in a non-existent wind, they slowly grey and turn black. They dissolve into the ether. They become the ether. Now I have time to look around. But all of a sudden, I don't. An arm loops around my waist and pulls me to a side. I suppose I have been floating on my back in this ether, then. I look up slowly, taking in what I see. A standard black uniform with a sheath on a long fabric band around his waist. A captain's haori. I look up, and he smiles slightly, this man I saved from death not two nights ago.

"Hey."

I say nothing, staring at his face.

"I've come to protect you."

What was his name?

Shiba Isshin.