Title: Disease
Words: 468
Disease and the rot that came with sickness and pain were not normal in soul society. It was a perfect type of world where the only true worry was the hollows and if you were a death god, if you were strong enough to defeat the hollows. She was a vice-captain and that meant strength, power, and the ability to overcome almost any obstacle that the hollows could throw at her. But this was something entirely different.
She stood at the edge of the healers tents, their offices and rooms no longer able to hold those injured, and fought back the urge to weep. This was new, this pain, the disease that was slowly slipping through their city and their lives. It could not be treated here, in these tents in halls, could not be stopped by the gentle hands of the healers who worked so hard to save the lives of those who came to them.
Battered, bloodied, beaten, the looks in their faces promised that they wished for the death that they were fighting so diligently. It was their pride, their instinctive need to live, that kept them going. That kept them fighting the darkness that was slowly starting to creep into their eyes.
This was the disease of war.
This was what would bring them all to their knees; the cries of the injured, the smell of blood and death. This is what the captains could not fight, could not overcome. The very real reality of what war brought to them all.
The taste of death was in the air.
She wanted to walk among them, wanted to whisper soothing words to those that were dying, who could not be saved. Their faces showed their fear, their agony as they pushed forward, knowing as they did that they were only going to greet the next life a little faster than the one laying in the bed next to them.
But she couldn't. She could not bring the words to pass her lips, could not summon the strength that she needed to face those in front of her. Could not push past her own shame of wishing the man who was the cause of all this would return and be who he had once been.
She wept instead; wept for her own foolish mistakes and for those who would not make it through the night. Wept and prayed that the rot and disease that was slowly taking over Soul Society would be defeated, that those who left to do battle would return safely.
Wept for her own mistakes, her own pain, and her own grief.
And prayed.
She prayed through her tears that when those who had gone to do battle did return, they would have something left for them to return to.
