Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Tite Kubo. I only own any of my original characters that I choose to include, as well as any of my own original plot ideas.

Paying In Naivety

A/N: Post-Winter War; Pre-Fullbring.


Humans were far too fragile, he'd said. That they were unfit to be proper research subjects, useless, dying all the damn time. Their bodies were incapable of dealing with the required procedures of the experiments he'd decided upon. It had just gone on and on.

She hadn't said a thing, deciding that it would be best to leave him alone after so long, let him get the adrenaline, or whatever it was, out of his system. Weeks in the living world certainly hadn't done Mayuri any favors. They'd just wound him right up again, and the ranting had come out back here.

He hadn't looked at her once since her arrival, hadn't spoken to her at all. Just sat there, hunched over and tugging at his hair, muttering again. Another moment in his world wherein she didn't quite exist.

Leaving him alone like this, what with an explosive temper, had always been best. Often, she'd return to tending patients, and find later that he'd unlocked her doors and found a way inside long before she'd returned home. But Retsu couldn't now. He'd jumped at the chance to sift through the discoveries within Hueco Mundo, even more when the time had come for a living world mission, which he'd plainly neglected for the sake of research.

He'd set his sights upon a rather vast mystery, an idea that, to him, was like glittering gold. A shame to say that it had all been for naught.

With her fingers grazing his, Retsu had never seen it coming. It had been a moment wherein she could be more useful than challenging him and satisfying physical needs. A time where, perhaps, there could be some form of healing.

But her mistake was saying nothing, and doing something.

She had thought that it would turn out differently, the way they usually did. With him giving her a warning glare that broke beneath her smile. That, somehow, all that fury would melt away and be channeled into something far more productive.

But, with a hand across the side of her face, that idea was dashed.

It didn't sting, not really. In fact, she hadn't even felt the pain at all. But, what she had felt was that bizarre sinking feeling that only surfaced when she didn't want it to. When watching people suffer, even die, it came. That idea that there was nothing in the world, nothing within her power, that could change the cause and effect that had fallen upon them.

A feeling of ice, the sort that had filled the atmosphere when the dead had been buried, lanterns lit in their honor, walked through the room.

In some rare cases, however, the dead, what with their cold, unblinking eyes, were never laid to rest. They wandered openly, in some suspended animation, immune to the fact that they were losing pieces as every day passed slowly by.

Retsu felt as though she were staring at one of them now. And acknowledging that fact, which classified him as one of steady decay, clearly labeled her a fool.

He wasn't looking at her as someone who could offer anything. At this point, she was little more than the enemy.

She'd always been open to believing that people could change, that there was always room for positive improvement in everyone. But not him.

It was just a pity that it had taken this long to realize just how naive she'd been.