Standard disclaimers apply.
Persistence of MemoriesShe stands before him, soft and delicate and everything he knows she is not. The moonbeams line her pale skin with silver and her ink-dark hair with blue, and renders her outline as indistinct as the ghostly petals that float about her face.
Against his volition his hand reaches out to brush over soft white fabric and softer skin, tracing the shadows from the hollow of her throat to the sinuous tendons of her neck until his fingers slide, slowly, deliberately, into her hair. The strands slip over his fingers like crushed midnight as he tilts her head up to him. He leans down into her dusky gaze, and thoughts of betrayal and redemption suffocate him as surely as the scent of cherry blossoms.
Her whisper brushes warm air against his lips, and his fingers tighten in reaction in her hair and against his sword.
"Nii-sama…"
The sakura petals twist and flash, and she crumples into his arms.
His eyes rove over details like the fragile bones of her wrist and gentle slope of her clavicle and the crimson ribbons that spread across white linen and near-translucent skin. Her lips shine darkly in the moonlight as she smiles at him, and he thinks that she looks beautiful in red, and so, so much like…
He clings to her and the memory of dead wives
and promises..
.
.
The day of Rukia's
execution dawns with dull, blue-gray light.
His throat is thick with cherry blossoms when he wakes.