Characters: Ryuuken, Uryuu
Summary: Life's but a walking shadow. /Macbeth, Act V, Scene V, Line XXIV./
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: No timeline needed
Author's Note: I just finished reading Macbeth in class last week and I love that soliloquy he does near the end (The summary quote was taken from the soliloquy in question, as is the title). It's basically nihilism, Shakespeare style. I realized I could apply it here.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The paths of their lives have diverged and yet somehow manage to parallel each other, different in significant ways but the same in less important matters. The pieces fall in different ways; the jigsaw puzzle is missing a few parts and can't create a complete picture.
And does it really matter, at all? Ryuuken has never been sure it does, and is even less sure now. He's not really sure of anything, anymore.
Shake the dust from the paper and time will have still erased all the words; a paper with no words can't be read, just like Ryuuken can't read his son or himself—the words aren't gone in this case, just written in a language that he has forgotten, has never known. It doesn't call to him the way it does to others; he has always been deaf to it.
If Uryuu is angry and he is angry than there is no way to fix it because nothing can ever make either one of them forget, no way to ever erase what has happened in the past. Ryuuken knows he's in so deep that he'll never get out; they both are. So why regret any of it? Why try to stop?
Light spills forth and is swallowed whole by gray shadows that gather in silence at Ryuuken's heels; it's not a matter of not being able to see the light as much as it is of ignoring it. He's always been aware of the way his child looks at him, in bemusement at the man who sees nothing, in anger at the way he scorns him, in fear at the way the shadows all fly towards him.
Not to say Ryuuken doesn't still have his pangs of conscience. Those pangs are all that keep him from cutting off ties with his child entirely. They remind him that sometimes it's too far and that not all is dead and decayed within him.
Not even he can ignore the beating of his own heart.
But it will cease eventually. Just as everything will stop, and wither.
Ryuuken knows that.
And Uryuu will just have to accept it.
The elder sees no reason for anything, not for human warmth—not that he isn't still capable of experiencing it—,no reason for anything.
It's all just shadows and dust, 'til tomorrow comes and repeats it all again.