Chapter 2: War and the Return of the 5th
Yes, he was fighting for her, despite of all the pain that she had caused him.
She had looked at him with honest confusion.
"Why?" she had asked him, lowering her eyes to the ground, not daring to look at him, anxious of what he would tell her.
"Why not?"he had countered with uncharacteristic playfulness, fully aware of what she was actually asking.
But when he saw her misty eyes, and realized that she didn't want to play his game, he had chuckled and pulled her closer to him. Then he whispered, "Because you mean more to me than life."
She had looked straight into his radiant eyes, inviting him to gaze back into her soul. "I'll miss you", was all that she could bring herself to say.
She saw from his gentle smile that he knew what she had meant.
--
When she woke up, he was already gone. She hadn't expected him to wake her, but she wished that he had. In his place lay a piece of paper with his small, neat handwriting.
"I'm not going to tell you that I'll be back and that we'll live happily ever after. We are both too old to believe in such nonsense. But I will love you until my last breath, and if I don't return, then I want you to know that I did.
I love you, in this life and in the next."
She couldn't help but to smile at the contents of the note. He hadn't pretended that everything would be alright; he hadn't promised that he would come back, because he knew and she knew that such a promise could so easily be broken by a quick flick of a wrist or a violent burst of light. The note was so typically him that she could almost hear his voice.
And so the waiting began.
No scraps of news were too small to be ignored, and she had been anxiously waiting with the rest of Soul Society for a message from the Captains. Days and weeks went by, but none came.
Anything, it didn't matter how small, just to prove that he was still alive.
Sometimes she had wished that she could have gone with him. But she knew that she wasn't powerful enough to contribute to their efforts, and as a lieutenant, she was required to stay with her squad. She hadn't been back to the 5th Division office since she regained consciousness – it had been overwhelmingly painful to even imagining walking through those doors... Of course, as its lieutenant, she had dutifully managed the mountains of papers and reports, but she had worked from the safety of her living quarters.
But it had been time to finally face her fears. When she had finally returned, her squad had lined the walkway to the office building, waiting for her in complete silence. She had been struck by how much it had changed since its traitorous Captain had revealed his true nature and abandoned it. The members of her division had borne expressions that she had never seen before, and which she prayed that she would never have to see again – they had looked afraid and so utterly lost. The sight had filled her with anger, and as she marched back into the building, she had defiantly held her head high.
It took all of her time and energy to collect the parts of the broken squad and to slowly piece it together. Yes, it took time, but her skittish division finally settled. It would never be the same as before, but it stabilized and that was all she could have asked of it. She told them that as the 5th Division of the Gotei 13, they were braver than yielding to despair, and prouder than allowing the past to interfere with the present. She wasn't sure if her words had reached them, but she had hoped that they eventually would come to believe her. Soon, she realized that they did. Her subordinates no longer looked at each other with suspicion, or hung their heads when confronted by the other squads. They were no longer ashamed. No, they wanted revenge.
--
Wave after wave of arrancar attacks were held back by the collective effort of the Gotei 13 lieutenants. Without their Captains, they did not have the power to protect the living world, as they could hardly defend their own, but they hoped that Aizen had focused his attacks on them and halted his attack on the humans, at least momentarily. It had seemed that Aizen meant to crush the resistance from Soul Society before harvesting the innocent souls from Karakura Town and crowing himself King.
In any case, their orders had been clear: the lieutenants' priorities were the defence of Soul Society and the survival of the members of their divisions. But they stood powerless as their numbers dwindled with each attack and when fear was digging its claws deeper into their ranks.
She didn't know exactly how they had managed – it was stubborn determination and sheer force of will that had kept each division from falling apart. But sometimes she had wondered just how much abuse sanity could tolerate before it finally snapped. A shinigami was taught how to defend from physical attacks, but nothing could have prepared any of them for the length the enemy would go in order to break them.
She could still remember the nights. The nights were even worse than the days. At least the clamour of battle hid the sounds. But during the night, the agonizing screams of the dying and the tortured, who had been found by the enemy, echoed over Soul Society, breaching the defences that had been put in place around Rukongai. Perhaps the enemy knew that they were missing their captains, and thus wanted to test the mettle of those who had remained. Perhaps it was to satisfy their base viciousness. She didn't know why. She didn't want to know why. She didn't even want to imagine why.
It was during the nights that the lieutenants, who were not on active patrol duty, would assemble in small groups to discuss defence plans. They claimed that it was the best time for developing strategy, but the truth was that without their frequent meetings, none would have had the strength to carry on. There were moments when they thought that they would break, but they leaned on each other and somehow they held firm. They would not allow themselves or anyone else to yield to the enemy; they wanted to make their Captains proud, and to show the arrancar what it meant to be shinigami.
--
She had been aware of their reluctance to let her division partake in the defence of Soul Society. The 5th Division had been assigned to assist the 4th, and she had understood the unspoken reasons all too well; she remembered the painful period after the coma, how she had been utterly convinced of her Captain's innocence. She couldn't blame them if they secretly worried that she could become a security risk. But she hadn't been removed from her position, and she knew that unless she and her squad were trusted once more, they would never fully recover.
So she had called a meeting; she knew that more than one shinigami had been surprised by her sudden assertiveness. She had stood in front of the rest of Seireitei with her entire squad behind her, knowing that they trusted her completely. That trust had been hard-earned and it had filled her with pride, but also with fear – when she had stood there, it had been as their commanding officer. In a sense, she had been Aizen. Or at least, she was what he had been before the traitor had left her to die in a pool of her own blood, ending the long years of sickening pretence; before he had trampled on her trust, their division's trust, as if they meant nothing.
Trust. It still frightened her that neither she nor the other shinigami of her squad never even dreamt of questioning their absolute loyalty and dedication to him, their former Captain. No, they never questioned the trust they placed in him – not even once.
She had secretly wondered if Aizen had not only stolen the Hougyoku, but also his former division's ability to trust. But as she had been patiently waiting for the sea of shinigami in front of her to offer her their complete attention, her squad had confirmed that she was wrong – Aizen would not win, at least not in this. While the Head-Captain somehow had entrusted her with the responsibility of continuing to lead her squad, it had been the 5th Division itself that had trusted her enough to follow. It had chosen her to deal with the aftermath – it had trusted her to heal the wounds. So as she had stood there with her squad's combined spiritual pressure gently reminding her that they would stand by her, no matter what, supporting her to the end, she had sworn an oath. She had sworn that she would never leave them, never yielding to her own insecurities and fears. They would always come first, and for them, she would take on the entire Seireitei if she had to.
Then she had opened her mouth to speak.
She told them everything. She told them of how she had since long ceased to grieve for him, the Captain that she had thought she knew, and who she had trusted with her life.
That man no longer existed, if he had ever existed at all.
No, she had felt no regret when the Captains left for their mission – rather, she welcomed it. She hated that man. She hated him with all the venom her little body could muster. Aizen had betrayed her, betrayed each member of their squad, and betrayed Soul Society.
She wanted him to die.
When she was finished, she had looked each of her fellow lieutenants in the eye and told them that the 5th Division was ready to report for active duty, and to beat the fuck out of anyone who thought that they were weak. She could sense how the men and women behind her straightened their backs and raised their heads, as if to challenge those who still questioned their lieutenant.
That was the moment when she knew, beyond all doubt, that they truly were ready. So she had smiled. It was not the sweet, innocent smile that she was known for, but a smile that would send chills up the spines of her enemies.
They had stood before of her, speechless. Even the little pink-haired lieutenant of the 11th Division didn't say a word. The girl standing in front of them wasn't the timid, soft-spoken creature they were used to, and definitely not the victim that they had assumed that she was. No, she was a proud, powerful lieutenant of the Gotei 13 – a lieutenant just like them. Matsumoto Rangiku, her old friend and lieutenant of the 10th Division, had been the first to break the stunned silence.
"Welcome back, 5th Division. We missed you."
That small act of recognition had been enough. The 5th Division of the Gotei 13 had risen from the grave like a phoenix from its ashes. And the shinigami of the Gotei 13 knew it – they had seen it happen.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
