Characters: Shinji, Hinamori
Summary: No one escapes prolonged contact with Aizen unmarked.
Pairings: none
Warnings/Spoilers: spoilers for Turn Back the Pendulum arc and Fake Karakura Town arc
Timeline: Fake Karakura Town arc
Author's Note: Shinji-Hinamori interactions are highly underrated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.


We who once stood so tall are now reduced to creeping along in the shadows, down on our knees and crawling, backs bent and aching, hands rubbed raw from the rubble of our collapsing lives.

I don't need eyes that see through flesh and walls to see Aizen's mark on you, Hinamori-chan. The dark, smoldering tattoo sits all over your skin, black marks on pale flesh. They've been burned in to you, like they were in to me. No one ever escapes prolonged contact with Aizen unmarked. Not you, and not me, either.

I'd be lying, Hinamori-chan, if I tried to say that I don't feel responsible for you in a way. After all, you're the lieutenant of the division I was forced to leave behind; you would have eventually been my subordinate, if I had been able to stay.

And it's my fault you're in this position now, on the ground and bleeding, face crumpled. If I had never left, you would be just a happy little girl, with not a care in the world—you never would have gotten dragged into this world of deception and lies and danger that Aizen's constructed for us all.

You, Hinamori-chan, are simply one more notch on Sakanade's blade, of all the things I have to answer for. One more mark of shame, for not catching my erstwhile lieutenant and putting an end to him, any way I could have—I shouldn't have cared about getting proof or the consequences that would follow, I should have just killed him, while I still could.

Well, Hinamori-chan, I'll be setting things to rights today, if I can.

I'm here to kill him. I hope you don't mind.

You and I are both tattooed by our memories, the black lines forming patterns of familiar sights and sensations on our skin. Neither of us have escaped shame and regret. We both still creep along the ground.

But the foot on our backs will be gone.

It will if I have anything to say about it.