Characters: Byakuya, Rukia, Hisana, Rangiku, Gin, Ryuuken, Uryuu, Nanao, Lisa, Shunsui, Shinji, Hiyori
Summary: Five ways to break a heart.
Pairings: ByaHisa, GinRan, Shinji x Hiyori
Warnings/Spoilers: spoilers up to Deicide arc
Timeline: timeline varies from segment to segment
Author's Note: The idea just occurred to me today and I thought "What the Heck; I might as well go through with it."
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
I:
In a perfect world, he wouldn't have to deal with this, wouldn't have to face it every day, but this is not a perfect world and Byakuya supposes that whatever great sin he has committed he is paying for now. It is a more than fitting punishment, no matter what his wrong was.
The light starts to shift as Rukia comes running across the deserted courtyard, black shihakusho swishing at her ankles in her haste. Her brow is a mountain range of preoccupation, her hands little flying birds of anxiety.
She just has to shift a little on her feet and her face becomes Hisana's, her slight, sloping shoulders the burden that his wife carried for what to her must have seemed an eternity.
If Byakuya believed that a soul could be reincarnated into an already animated body, he would still not believe that Rukia is Hisana's soul born anew. There are too many differences found there for him to see Hisana in the whole picture, and instead sees a painting done by an amateur, something meant to convey Hisana's likeness but instead just getting a rough approximation of how she truly appeared.
Invisible thorns still sting at his flesh, though, cut and score so deep they draw blood when Byakuya's not looking.
On the outside, Byakuya casts his eyes over his adopted sister disinterestedly, no emotion flickering in the gray seas of his eyes.
On the inside, he is dying, and Rukia is too much like her.
II:
Her hands feel broken even though the fingers are straight and immaculate as ever. The knuckles aren't even slightly swollen. This pain, Rangiku knows numbly, is not any pain that stems from physical stimuli.
This is the pain that has always been there but has only bloomed into a noxious flower just now. This is the pain that will always be here, a flower that never dies.
And still, Rangiku wonders, why it was Gin who died, and exactly what happened on that day of blood and horror that is still the predominant feature of her dreams and nightmares. The knowledge—or rather, lack of—dogs at her footsteps, with every breath that resounds from her mouth, even though the act of breathing takes rather than gives.
Others move on, growing and forgetting and pretending that what happened to their loved ones never happened at all. Rangiku isn't like them. She isn't like the one who forgets that the one they loved is dead. She doesn't want to be like the one who is alright because they still talk to the one they lost each morning, still see them where other eyes would see nothing.
She is too raw, left hanging too open for that.
There is nothing to say that Rangiku can not simply remember Gin; Seireitei can control everything else but her mind is unconquerable, untouchable territory.
She still remembers him in her heart and mind, and for anyone else, that might be enough.
But it's not.
It never will be, not for Rangiku.
III:
Really, it's not so much that one kills the other as much as they kill each other. Uryuu is far fonder of making his father angry than he should be, and Ryuuken enjoys watching his son suffer far more than anyone should—at least, on the days when he isn't going through the sort of detached, apathetic emptiness on par with an out of body experience.
But nothing is ever so simple as what appears on the surface of the pond. Where there is serene or choppy water there, what lies underneath is often far more complicated.
This has gone on for so long that it's become a game that is utterly predictable, at least in the steps—the blows actually dealt still have the power to surprise and harm and debilitate far more than either Uryuu or Ryuuken think they should. It's a train wreck that still keeps going after the trains have collided, a piece of road kill that refuses to die after being battered again and again and again by the passing cars. A host of issues that refuse to die.
They just continue to chip away at each other, actions speaking far more than words ever could (for better or worse) and neither ever voluntarily giving voice to their pain, sometimes utterly successful in hiding it.
But there is pain.
In the end, there is a son to break his father's already shattered faith and his heart, and a father to return the favor. Nothing more, nothing less.
IV:
Shunsui is useless, always has been and always will be, so Nanao doesn't rely on him and doesn't try to tell herself that she has any right to feel abandoned by Yadomaru Lisa, because in the mind of one who has been denied the full truth, Nanao does not know of any conceivable reason to feel abandoned.
She has no right, and she hates the word "abandoned" more than any other in the wealth of human languages that exist to her, but Nanao still feels the meaning of the word keenly in the quiets of her mind and when her heart starts to still. Her anathema is existence, her bane cold reality.
Nanao knows what an abandoned child feels like. And she wishes she couldn't. She wishes she could just be cold and analytical and not truly care about anyone or anything that can hurt her the way Kurotsuchi Mayuri does—his life is so much less complicated than nearly everyone in the Gotei Thirteen.
And as much as she apes the style of moving on and forgetting and being the one that never lets anything hurt her anymore, a cold ice statue of a woman, Nanao can't quite manage it.
Not when she can still see Lisa reflected in the eyes of others when they look at her.
They will never forget Lisa, and thanks to them, neither will she.
V:
That the blood of humans and Shinigami smells of iron is something Shinji learns early, and the lesson is hammered home with Hiyori's blood spilling all over him like water sloshing over the sides of a tub. He's being drenched and drowned in her blood.
The art of drowning is something Shinji has down to a science, too.
And now with Hiyori like this he may as well take the final plunge.
God, how did it come to this?
Hiyori's never apologized to anyone before, Shinji registers numbly, and he never expected her to, but she is now and there's blood and foam bubbling up when she tries to speak to choke out her words, like it deliberately tries to keep them apart.
Then again, the whole universe has conspired to keep them apart in terms of emotional comfort and sanity in the past century, so why should Hiyori's own fading moments be any different?
The smell of her blood maddens him, as the words Not Enough Not Enough Not Enough Not Enough rings with brutal clarity through Shinji's horrified, devastated, barely working mind.
notenough notenough notenough notenough…
He couldn't do enough, could never do enough, and can't do enough to save her now.
Shinji realizes, really realizes for the first time just how inadequate he is as Hiyori's dulling brown eyes carve holes into his flesh. No one could ever hurt him like she could; she's still proving that now.
And to think, that this is the world they call perfect.