A.N.: Hi! This is my first time publishing here, and in English as well (I'm not really used to writing in it). I hope you enjoy this fic and leave me a review on how I can improve. Thanks!

On the fake sidewalk

It was a strange thing to suddenly realize you have been lying to yourself. Yoruichi remembered a time when she thought all that mattered was making the right choice, and the consequent circunstances would never bother her. She quickly discovered that was not the case when the ground didn't become any less hard despite the fact she had chosen of free will to lie on it.

Over the hundred years she spent roaming the world of the living, mostly as a stray cat, she had grown a little wiser and a little less optmistic, but that was to be expected given the harsh turn her life had taken. She knew her ideals wouldn't be enough to make up for the longing she felt for the better times she had once experienced. But she also reached the conclusion that it was better to endure those hardships and to hope, however weakly, for a better future, than to force your own eyes closed and refuse to see that those good days had ended before anything could be done to prevent it.

The good days of her past ended when traitorous plans were born in Soul Society, and she still couldn't understand how the crazed dreams of a single rotten soul could turn off the balance of so many worlds. Though if she lost some of her faith in the Gotei Juusantai - and in her own - ability to mantain the peace, at least something remained: her faith in the people she called her friends, the people she admired and the ones she believed would forever be at her side in the same fight even if through their different means and points of view.

So, she could never be glad enough about being there on time to save Urahara Kisuke and the ones that later became known as the Vaisards. She, at that moment, was able to change something for the better, and only time would tell the role this would have in that desperate war. And another thought, more than the others, always filled her with pride and hope, and it was not related to that fateful night, but, rather, to the one she had then left behind: her prized student, her little Soifon, was doing really well.

The girl had always stood out from her peers, and Yoruichi had quickly noticed it and trained her to her best, feeling that one day she would have enough power to be respected and feared by the allies and enemies of the Sereitei. The dedication, the loyalty, the ability and raw potential of the girl, all about her, if she could use only one word to describe it, was fierce. The tiny girl had always amazed Yoruichi, and she didn't even know exactly why she was training her so diligently, just like she didn't know what was that great force that always pushed her student further. Yoruichi had tried to understand these things by talking to her, pressing and teasing her sometimes, but she always kept a formal distance that only provoked more teasing from Yoruichi's part.

And if her questions went without answer for a long time, it didn't really matter in the end, for Yoruichi was still proud of her pupil's accomplishments and happy to have someone worthy replace her when it became necessary. Soifon taicho was a well known efficient and deadly opponent, a strong leader, someone who could overcome her foes and guide her men to the right path of duty.

So, after all those years apart, after that long time full of reflections and lonely philosophies, Yoruichi never thought she was going to get that feeling once more. The one that made her world seem upside down, while something whispered to her, "you've been lying to yourself again". And that was exactly the feeling she got standing there on a fake sidewalk, watching the broken, bleeding, small body of her ex-subordinate try to move itself to a sitting position from the ground.

"Soifon", she tried to say, but she wasn't sure she didn't say it in her head only. In the seconds it took the captain to realize there was a new presence near her, the silent woman standing there got a glimpse of the stump she now had for a left arm. The blood rushed out of Yoruichi's head, and she felt nauseated. No, it was never to be like this. It was never her intention, training her. She never really thought she would be in a real battle, she could be really injured. What did she think she were training her for? For artistic purposes? Just so she could wear the white - now in part crimson - cloth she wears over her uniform these days?

"Yoruichi-sama", her voice, in a expressionless tone said. "I'm sorry, give me just a second...", and now it sound strained, almost weak, and Yoruichi finally realised she was trying to stand up.

"Stop", she said in return, still looking down from her standing position. Soifon didn't answer, just kept on with her pathetic attempts to get up.

"Stop" she said again, with more force, which made the captain fall in a kneeling position, head bowed to hide her shame. "Why...?" she started without thinking, "why can't you ever stop, why must you always go on like this, and push yourself past any limit...", but this was a thought she kept once again to herself, the question she could never find the answer for in her disciple. And she started to see things more clearly now, she knew now that was why she was drawn to her. She was drawn to her, it was never a matter of training her, it was about spending time with her, about seeing her grow into this woman, this unstopable force. "Seek nothing"; how it made sense then. Seek nothing, just go on, and on...

"I can still get up, Yoruichi-sama. Please, stay back, it is not safe here", Soifon said in a strangled voice of someone fighting against tears. She was still seeking what she had always sought, what she had always declared as her purpose in life, and that was protecting her, her, her Yoruichi-sama. How could she have ignored it so until now?

"Then please stand up, Soifon, and obey me, and follow me once more" Yoruichi said, fighting tears herself, which left her voice cold like on the second time she told her to stop.

Her part on this battle was taken a hundred years ago. Now was time to protect, not the world, but her Soifon, if from nothing else, from herself. "Come, Soifon. We must depart to the real Karakura town, now"

"Yes, Yoruichi-sama" she answered after a second of hesitation, the strenght somehow returning to her remaining limbs, the life somehow returning to her dark eyes.

And Yoruichi once again escaped to the world of the living, this time suporting a smaller weight. She knew it would be easier to live with her choice now, though.