One Thousand Years of Rain

by Tiamat's Child

Unohana’s last days as a student are full of dreams of rain.

Title: One Thousand Years of Rain
Author: Tiamat's Child
Rating: G
Fandom: Bleach
Disclaimer: Not my characters!
Summary: Unohana's last days as a student are full of dreams of rain.

One Thousand Years of Rain

Unohana woke from the familiar dream of water gently, slowly, as if she had been washed quietly up on shore and calm, small waves still lapped at her, curling about her toes, letting her go slowly, so slowly, smoothly, without a shock.

She stretched, stood, got ready in the predawn dark, light provided by the nearby glow of the hospital and the equally close brightness of the kitchens. She was not the first one up and about.

But she was the only student in her dorm awake at this hour, and she took advantage of the quiet to let the dream whisper to her. Loveyouloveyoulearningtobreathe something said to her, just beyond the border of her waking mind, out in the dimness beyond the lamppost circle of her consciousness. Rain. She dreamed of rain on the surface of water, rain forever, rain to heal and grow, to wash away death and poison and leave life behind to take hold. Rain, and she herself below it, in water, loose and graceful. learningtobreathe, something hummed in her, sweet and good against her bones, against the skin of her throat, learningtobreathe.

She felt it, as she made her way through the streets. Was she speaking – for indeed she sometimes felt she simply did not know how to breathe in this city – or was it another person, another something? She did not know. She felt as if she would spill over, because if she was speaking, she did so love what she was speaking to, and if she was listening she did so love what was speaking. Love, oh love, and the rain. learningtobreathe.

The explosion that afternoon was almost quiet. It was, she would later say, strange to hear the silence first, the total cessation of sound before the shock of power, the displacement of air that came after. It tumbled through her, vibrating her bones, shaking the structure of the clinic.

She picked herself to her feet and ran. Ran towards the explosion, not away, because she was a healer, and that was what healers did. She was a healer, and her feet were quick on the stones and the roofs.

It cannot be said that she was the first there, but she was the first who was not herself wounded, and she ran a rapid triage, only her, only her, due to graduate in a week. It was overwhelming. The air seemed thin.

Help, she thought, vague and undefined, hardly a habit of hers. She did not, as a generality ask for help, and she certainly did not ask it when there was no one to ask it of.

Someone answered anyway. Helploveyou, her dream voice hummed through her pulse, down her spine, loveyouhelp.

It was a somewhere else, was what it was, deep water and rain. She breathed ocean water, sweet salt strong, and choked, shuddered, shivered as her lungs struggled, and there was that voice breathebreatheloveyou.And there the voice's owner was, great wings, great ray's wings, brushing against her, powerful and gentle. loveyoubreathe.

There was no point to protesting, and no way for her to do so. She breathed, took the sea in, and did not die. She drifted, heard the rain and the sweep of the waves above them both, and she breathed. The salt burned her lungs, but she did not die.

She breathed, but she could not speak. She swam, striking out for the surface. Surely there she could speak, could ask the question she needed the answer to. That she wanted the answer to, suddenly, as she could not quite recall wanting anything, not even food, in the long years she went half starved.

She broke the surface, spluttered, coughed, half drowned in her hair, and took a breath as rain poured into her mouth and got into her lungs, freshwater instead of salt. Unohana shook her head, reached out her hand to steady herself against the edge of a wing, graceful and strong, belonging in this element that she did not belong in at all. The being – her sword, had to be her sword, she wanted to know her sword's name, wanted that – slipped beneath her, bore her up, lifted both of them into the rain, out of the sea, out of the ocean.

see? learningtobreathe.

She laughed.

Then she was back, solid and gasping on the pavement, her hands full of someone's intestines. But that was all right. She knew how to deal with that.

It wasn't hard to breathe anymore.