A.N: This is my first fanfic, so I sincerely apologise if it's rubbish.

I don't own Bleach. I only own my words, and even them, I'm not so sure about

A lifetime passes in obsolete darkness. Living becomes relative. Living is merely a kinder word for not dying. Emotion becomes myth. Feeling becomes fairy tale. Love becomes a joke, but humour is forgotten, he does not laugh.

Time passes, but time is relative, no longer relevant. Time runs over him and forgets him. He forgets, forgets how to live, how to bring words from his mind to his mouth, and his mouth closes over. He is nothing, and life is nothing. Breathing is just an alternative path to not breathing. Everything becomes the same in his grey world.

He finds purpose, a master to serve, who gives him back his voice, so that he can obey. He is given strength. He is not given emotion. He is not given colour. He is given only orders, and the ability to obey the orders and follow without question.

He takes lives. Perhaps he hopes that in their death, he will find life, in their blood, find colour. Perhaps when he tears out their hearts, he will obtain a heart. He does not.

He is a void, sucking in all that is light to assimilate with his darkness.

His master gives him an order, a prisoner to guard, a light to assimilate, a piece of trash. Her hair is red, the first beautiful colour he has ever seen. He finds it hard not to look. She brings out a voice, hidden behind the one to obey with. Inquisitive but still unfeeling. She forces his despair upon him, hidden behind nihility. Desolation hidden behind indifference, indifferent no more.

He interrogates her, asks her of the heart she speaks of, and though he does not understand, cannot understand, the answer lingers.

Death approaches quickly, but he does not want to die. He wants to live, he wants to show her. She is there. She watches in horror as her captor fades. He reaches for her. He does not make it. She is not afraid. Why is she not afraid? Such pain he feels, his mind is rioting. He did not realise it would cause this much pain. He is dead, almost. He wants to show her. He has a heart. It is broken. It shatters and disintigrates with the last of his body. His life used to be filled with nothing and now she is everything.

He understands.