Characters: Shinji
Summary: He used to be so lucky. And maybe, just maybe, he still is.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Turn Back the Pendulum arc
Timeline: post-Turn Back the Pendulum arc
Author's Note: I spelled Yamamoto's full name right the first time, without looking at a source; I'm so happy.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
He used to be so lucky. That was a long time ago, of course, but there was a time when Hirako Shinji seemed to be especially blessed by fickle Lady Luck. He seemed to come out of every encounter that should have killed him either only mildly injured or unscathed altogether.
Shinji had started out as a thief in Rukongai. Even when luck didn't seem to be going his way, it was. It was nothing more or less than luck that had led Shinji to make the ill-advised decision of trying to pick the pocket of none other than Yamamoto Genryuusai Shikeguni. Luck too can be the only explanation as to why Yamamoto chose to bring the young thief back with him to Seireitei instead of incinerating him on the spot.
Sakanade is talkative. Specifically, he likes to argue with Shinji; that's probably the only reason why Shinji attained shikai and bankai as quickly and as easily as he did. In fact, the whole story of how Shinji got to shikai can be explained in one sentence: Shinji and Sakanade got into a staring contest, and Shinji won. He attributes that entirely to luck.
He's survived so much. Teeth and arrows and the unforgiving strokes of a zanpakuto, none of it was ever enough to fell Shinji for good. He was so convinced that he had it made, that he would be able to glide through the rest of his life riding entirely on his own spectacularly good luck.
Then, then came the day Shinji met someone even luckier than him. Lady Luck saw him too, and deserted Shinji entirely.
Aizen Sousuke was the new, the newest to be favored by fickle Lady Luck. For Shinji, the fall was swift.
Now he is without a home or any guarantee of safety and wisdom. He is by his very nature, as it is defined now, the friend of no one and the enemy of all. Not human, Hollow or even Shinigami; Shinji has been molded into some bastardization of life, one not even sure if it still has a soul. An abomination.
There is nothing in his life to look forward to, just the promise of still more bleak days like these, spent in uncertainty.
Shinji used to be so lucky.
And maybe…
Maybe, just maybe, on some level, Hirako Shinji is still a lucky man.
He can still hear his heart throbbing beneath his hand when he puts it to his chest, cased in masses of flesh and a cage of ribs. He can still count on more than one hand that number of people alive that Shinji doesn't think he could do without. And Shinji still comes out of nearly every battle he enters unscathed.
It doesn't seem like much, in view of what he's lost and what he used to have.
To Shinji, it is nearly nothing at all.
But it's something, all the same.