Characters: Byakuya, Nanao, Hisana
Summary: The mind forgets but the heart never will.
Pairings: Byakuya x Nanao, ByaHisa
Warnings/Spoilers: spoilers for Soul Society arc
Timeline: none needed
Author's Note: I expect a certain reviewer (I won't name any names) to be very pleased by this. Crack pairings are truly extraordinary.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Partly thanks to his own design, he begins to forget, blurring the images of the two women in his mind. Picking them apart is a long process, tearing the skin off his fingers and leaving his heart utterly raw.
Hisana is little more than a distant dream, a short and transient memory that though it becomes just a puff of smoke is more real to him than he ever could have imagined. Byakuya runs his hands through the steam and comes out scalded and burned. So badly wounded that he can hardly feel anything more at all, heart shriveled, mind frosted over so it sees the world in a way that won't hurt.
Nanao, on the other hand, is just ice, carved in ice, pale, lovely, translucent, somewhere between frigid and melting until her features are nearly effaced in the sun—though Byakuya's mind does the job of erasing and overwriting her face well enough.
No heat, no living passion found here—just the knowledge and the promise that everything better spent has already gone before—just quiet glances and the attempt by one to keep the other upright. Your burden to bear is now mine as well, because I've been drawn into the river of your life, and the current's too strong for me to find my way out.
Nanao knows pain. Byakuya knows it too. They always will, he supposes; it doesn't really matter anymore.
He begins to forget, forget that their faces are different, forget everything. He can't remember whose hands are stronger, can't remember that both of them had calluses on their hands. Ink black hair flashes in his face and he can't remember that it was Hisana who had waving hair and Nanao's who was straight and even. He can't remember that both are shy in bed or that they both tilt their head the same way when they're confused. He can't remember that one has a heart that still beats beneath mounds of warm flesh, while the other is just mouldering, her pale, delicate beauty stripped away from her.
One is dead, the other alive. He knows that, but can't remember.
Byakuya's mind grows a haze around it. Nanao—who tries to keep him up since Hisana can no longer do so—is real and Hisana's not, but neither of them are real in the fog. Hisana is a distant memory made of smoke with sad, glimmering eyes, and Nanao is a mist storm who presses small, cool hands into his own to make him feel that there are still creatures of blood and flesh in his world.
His mind forgets.
But his heart will always know.
Byakuya's heart will always know who is past and who is present—who it is who presses her thin body against his at the side, who throws deep blue-violet violet-blue eyes up at him. His heart will always know that neither of them are anything but real and unreal at the same time, that this frozen world offers no comfort but that which he is willing to accept.
I know I'm not her. I know I can never be her. I know I will never be the one who truly holds your heart. But this river is fast and strong, and I know how to swim, even if you do not. I can lead to the shore, if you'll just give me your hand.
It's a half-life, a stunted life.
But Byakuya's heart has always told him true.
And it tells him now that his life with her, the only one who is left to be real with cool, strong hands, is the best he will ever have.