Author's Notes and Miscellany: Urm… I wrote it a while ago, when I first started watching/reading Bleach. I was stricken with Kenpachi's relationship with Yachiru. A twisted father/daughter thing, except they're probably more precious to each other than that. Hmmm- I feel another idea coming on. Anyway, Daddy Kenpachi.
Wind of the Seven Crows
Sometimes it happened when she least expected it; she would be asleep for an hour and the dream would come. Sometimes it was like trying to listen to a voice while you were underwater- all you could hear was muffled sounds, strung together like wailing, and the sound of your blood pounding in your ears. Sometimes, she could smell something, something sort of flowery, and hear the song- she remembered its name because it was her favorite song in the whole world, even today. It was called "The Wind of Seven Crows", and she particularly loved it when she got Ken-chan to sing it to her.
But when the woman in her dreams sang it, it was sad and creepy because the dream always ended with the woman screaming. So on those nights that she dreamed of the woman, much like this night, Yachiru got up from her bed and padded down the hallway to Zaraki Kenpachi's room. So Yachiru crawled under the blankets, pulling one of Kenpachi's lean, wiry arms over her and snuggled up closely into his chest. He murmured something unintelligible, then, "Yachiru? What is it, brat?" But he got no response. Kenpachi lifted a hand to his face yawning, and then dropped it back over Yachiru, his eyes drifting shut. Small, barely audible sounds that blended into the night awoke him once more; his eyes snapped open and he levered himself up onto an elbow, picking up his tiny bedmate and looking at her. "What is it, Yachiru, why are you crying?"
For Kusajishi Yachiru, was indeed crying, which was a rare event for either Shinigami; even when she was a baby she had been perky and upbeat, save for roughly five or six times that she had woken whimpering and crying. Now, she held her tiny white fists to her eyes and cried without knowing why. "Ken-chan, sing me a lullaby." She hiccupped, starting to hyperventilate. Alarmed, not knowing what to do, Kenpachi scooped the girl onto his lap again, rubbing her back, scouring his mind for a song one did not sing while drinking or killing people. A few notes of the refrain of a song rose, as though they were carried by the wind. Something he had often sung for Yachiru when she was younger.
"A league along, a hundred strong.
Then all at once, it blows away.
Wind of Seven Crows
Flies into the bay."
His voice was raw, and sounded painful to sing with, but it seemed to be a world of good for Yachiru; her frantic hiccups started to subside and she relaxed in his arms. Kenpachi himself was relieved that being in an exhaustive state actually seemed to help his brain remember things. As it was, he managed to get through the whole song, and then sing the first stanza as a sort of apology for skipping it earlier. The tiny girl was now breathing quietly in his arms. Kenpachi sighed and reclined, but gently, back on the futon. For a while he remained awake, trying to come up with a comprehensible reason for Yachiru to cry. Eventually, he put it down to her old bad dreams and drifted off to sleep. It wasn't too long before a song wove itself into his dream, sung by the one of the only people Kenpachi had cared about.
