Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach
A/N: Includes spoilers for manga chapter 392 (The Breaking Glaciers). I'm warning you now that there's character death in this drabble. If you don't like that kind of thing, you probably shouldn't read this. I won't say what the scenario for this drabble is, because if you can't work it out, it just means that my writing's not good enough. Happy reading!
I'm surrounded by carnage. Bloody, decaying carnage. That's simply the only way to describe the bodies littered around me; rotting and turning into spiritual particles as I stand here. My eyes ache; the tears want to come, but won't fall. Blood drips steadily from my multiple wounds, but the pain refuses to register itself in my mind.
They're all gone.
The cold wind blows and stings my eyes. The air is stale, and I can taste the blood tainting the oxygen I draw into my battered lungs. A numbing sensation gnaws at my chest. It asks me what I am doing. Why am I still here after I let everyone down?
That bastard.
Their faces, frozen in shock and pain. The realization that this is the end melting their expression into either acceptance or fury at their own weakness. My face, contorted with frustration at being unable to stop the sword ending their lives. His face, smugly smirking, revelling in the bloodshed. The skies don't hide their grief, they split open and pour out their innards.
I was going to protect them.
Who could have known that my negligence from over a hundred years ago would make things end this way? Hiyori, severed at the waist. Lisa, skull crushed under the force of a Gran Rey Cero. Love, lungs punctured and destroyed from a deadly sword strike. The list goes on. One name after another. One person after another, dead because I didn't stop him. My hands are stained crimson; a crimson that no amount of soap and water can ever wash off.
Collapse, Sakanade.
Kyōka Suigetsu. He was using it the whole time. Powerless, that's what we were. Ichigo couldn't see the same things we did, he wasn't caught it the web of the illusion like we were. Yet he still couldn't stop the sword that came arcing down across his body. He joined the ranks of those that had fallen. Was it then that we truly lost hope? The hope that we had already tried to abandon?
I'm left standing.
I fought as hard as I could, but to no avail. Everyone fell around me. After Hinamori's death, Hitsugaya lost all sense of self-preservation; determined to join her, wherever she may have gone to. The dance went on, and one by one the dancers made their exit from the stage. He said not to touch me; to leave me alone. I still fought, but was only warded off, no matter how much I tried to intervene.
Is this my punishment?
With no one left around me, he decides that the battle is over; he has won. He leaves me, tells me once again that everything turning out this way is my fault; he thanks me for my incompetence. He spares my life, he says, but it's an obvious lie. 'Sparing' is done out of compassion, mercy. He leaves me alive so that I can curse my existence, my ineptness; curse the life that gave me everything, only to take it back at the most crucial moment.
I failed them all.