Characters: Kira, Gin, Rangiku
Summary: Kira, after Gin's death.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Deicide arc
Timeline: Post-chapter 422
Author's Note: I realized that I'd never really focused on what Kira's reaction to Gin's death will be, even though I'd completely played out Rangiku's take on the whole situation, so an apology seemed in order. And, no, for all of you shippers, this is not meant as a pairing.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
He begins to see faces of all sorts in the shadows, twisting and undulating without cease. Kira knows he's sober (a rarity, these days), and can find no cause or explanation for what he sees and chalks it up to sleep deprivation and long, wakeful nights at his desk.
The paperwork gets shunted to one side and Kira leans far back into his cushioned chair, watches as the masked, the grinning and leering shadows dance in the gyre around the light of a single wax-dripping candle flame. He wonders if he's watching Hollow being born before his eyes, if he's becoming one himself.
Kira twists the brush still dripping ink in his long, almost skeletal hand and watches black drops pool on the wood. Is it blood?
Funny…
The pen falls to the desk and splatters ink against stacks of white paper like sin besmirching Adam and Eve.
He thought he was reconciled to this.
.
Kira prays for dawn, but the clock reads just after midnight to spite him. Everyone—Nearly everyone, he corrects himself with a shake of the head; Rangiku and Hitsugaya can find no reason to celebrate—is celebrating Aizen Sousuke's death, but he finds no happiness in victory and can only reflect with a roiling stomach and a dry mouth.
His chain is severed, not the chain to his soul but the chain to all sanity and earthly concern. The chain to his connections with other beings.
No, wait…
It started to fray like old rope a long, long time ago, but now it's finally snapped.
And Kira prays for morning the way he used to pray in front of his parents' graves as a child. Quiet, fervent, desperate.
Hoping beyond words that someone will hear him.
.
It's not fair, that even dead Ichimaru-taicho can still keep an iron grip over him. The man is dead; Kira ought to be free of him, but he's not. He can still Ichimaru-taicho's hand on his shoulder, can remember how much his praise mattered and how much his incisive criticism hurt, can see his Cheshire Cat smile and squinting eyes. Ichimaru-taicho is gone but will never leave.
Kira lifts his head and the familiar smell, strong and heady and sweet in a choking sort of way, hits him, wafting on non-existent winds into his nose.
He doesn't know why he hasn't changed out Ichimaru-taicho's incense, why he chooses to still let it burn.
He doesn't know why he chooses to allow a dead man to dominate the room.
.
The silence is resounding, despite the far-off laughs and screams of drunken revelers in the distance, and as Kira feels the quiet start to swallow him, he realizes that he's still listening and waiting for the familiar footsteps, springing in their walk, to sound in the hall.
Why is he waiting for a ghost? Why does he still slip and think that he'll come back, if he starts to confuse the present with the past?
.
Somewhere between two in the morning and the false light of pre-dawn, Kira's body gives way and he sails off on troubled dreams.
Memory and reality blur, and Kira is consumed by both, twisting desires that rip him in two like a paper stork—and if it does that he'll be alright because he's already torn and broken but he doesn't want to end up like Hinamori all the same…
It's galling, disgusting, downright treasonous. He should revile his old captain, but instead, Kira finds he still misses Ichimaru-taicho.
It's impossible not to miss him.
.
Kira still dreams, but then, something shakes him, literally.
"Kira."
The tremors continue.
"Kira?"
More insistent now.
"Kira, wake up."
And he does, to bright sunlight through the open window and to dried ink on his face and hair and to the sharp smell of coffee as Rangiku holds a cup under his nose.
She is pale and drawn but also more alive than anything Kira has seen in days. "It's morning, Kira."