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.
Empty Space
A/N: AU.
The matter really becomes questionable when one gets down to the grit. Maybe it's because she's irritated with him; because he's gone more often than not; because she doesn't hear what she needs to. But she won't ask for that, because she knows. Still, it wouldn't kill him at all to actually give her the relief she needs. They're just words, but they mean something.
She'd much rather have certainty than suspicion.
Nobody knows, but she doesn't mind being alone. It gives her time to get things done and to think. She rather enjoys thinking, even if the subject matter isn't anything of real importance. It helps pass the time, so waiting isn't really a bother at all. In fact, it's rather pleasant.
It's the blatant lack of information that gets to her.
She remembers the words, the lectures, drilled into her head from the time she reached middle school. Her parents would always tell her to be careful, to avoid getting involved with a man who couldn't, or wouldn't, commit. But that's not the case at all. What rankles is that it's never enough. She can never absorb enough information, because he doesn't give it freely. She has to tear it away, pull it to pieces, and reassemble them in a manner that makes sense.
Put simply, he doesn't make any of it easy.
Worse than that are some of the things he does say. That she shouldn't be there, with him; that there are better things she could be doing; that he's completely bastardized the meaning of the word they experience.
He just can't understand that they defy all of that.
Retsu doesn't know, but she adds it all up, coming to the same conclusion each time: He doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He knows it means something, but he doesn't know what or even why it's lasted. He's just lost.
She hates hearing that kind of thing, because it makes her curious about all else. If she questions it, then that means her faith isn't everything she thought it was. It's just shallow, and it means nothing.
They're lies, she decides. Some inexplicable defense he's somehow set on. Even if he doesn't know what it is he's saying.
But there's a fix, as there is for most everything. She just needs to find the empty spaces, and fill them.