Characters: Ryuuken, Uryuu
Summary: Memories are like ghosts. Ryuuken's thoughts on ghosts, and the legacy he never wanted for his son.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers; T for Angst.
Timeline: Set some time while Ryuuken is training Uryuu.
Author's Note: Ryuuken seems like such an angry man, for all that he tries to project himself as detached; he's very bitter too. Let's take a guess as to why. Might be a bit OOC, might not be.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Ryuuken takes a moment to stare down at his hands. The calluses there were once thick and well-defined, but the years have worn them almost all away, due to time and inactivity on the part of the man who owned them. Now, fresh calluses are coming over the old ones, shiny and red, a harbinger telling him that the birthright he doesn't want is coming back to him anyway.
Though few would be able to tell by looking at him, Ryuuken is a man surrounded by hovering ghosts, clinging to his flesh and walking in step with his shadow.
When someone dies, they do not have to linger on in this earth, either as a Plus or an earthbound spirit, to become a ghost. All that is needed is for those who live to have memory of them, and possess an inability to let them go and a desire to cling to what hurts themselves most.
Ryuuken doesn't talk to his ghosts, his shadow-walkers, like others do. If anything, he tries his best not to acknowledge their existence, though sometimes, he slips, and sees them. He's only human.
Ryuuken's passing the mirror in his bedroom, and his eyes are caught on the afterimage of her sitting on the edge of the bed they once shared, so long ago. In the mirror's reflection, she turns her head, her visage blurred, and looks at him. It is too blurred to tell, but Ryuuken thinks she might be smiling.
He doesn't dare turn around, his breath caught in his throat. Finally, Ryuuken tears his eyes away from the sight—Not real, she's never real when you see her, it's just an echo of her, some memory loosed from the abyss. She's not coming back, never coming back; get a hold of yourself—and when he closes his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering, cleansing breath, his eyes sting.
When one associates as closely with death as Ryuuken has in his past, one tends to gather ghosts to them, hiding from others but all too visible to him, seeing his father's gentle eyes, hearing his wife's light, cheerful laugh and still remembering the smell of her short black hair. Even down to the little girl whom Ryuuken had known only as a child dead in a Hollow's jaw, her soul already devoured, who only ever looks at him forlornly and asks, Why couldn't you save me?
There is nothing he can say to her, because there are no words that will bring her back, and no words that can expunge the memory of her blood dripping to the pavement. Nothing that will ever let Ryuuken forget all of those faces, of those he couldn't save.
It's the one legacy that no Quincy ever expects, the legacy that stays with them long after they have put away their old clothes and the gleaming spirit bow, the legacy that keeps them from sleep at night. It's the birthright that makes Ryuuken despise himself for the fact that, though he never believed he could save everyone, he tried anyway.
Ryuuken wishes he could make Uryuu understand, understand why he can't try to save everyone and why he has tried to take Uryuu away from the Quincy's path his whole life. Ryuuken wishes he could make his son see why he has shunned that path himself. But Ryuuken can not find the words to articulate what he knows, the knowledge that has darkened his eyes and contributed to the grim, embittered set of his shoulders.
In those moments, knowing he can not warn him, Ryuuken feels intense, uncharacteristic bouts of fear for his son.
Because some things possess no words with which they can be communicated.
Some things can only be learned by bitter experience.