Author's Note: Isane's Zanpakuto was hardly ever mentioned at all, so I got a little bit creative with this one. I hope you enjoy it, and I can't thank you enough for favoriting and reviewing! :) Aizen's is next!
Every time I type Isane's name, I want to type "insane." Does anyone else have that issue, or is it just me?
Itegumo
I am opposite of my Shinigami in every way. Isane Kotetsu is tall and gentle and soft spoken and warm, whereas I am short and sharp and cynical and cold.
Isane tells me that she wishes she looked more like me, that she wishes she was powerful like me. I tell her that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, or that she needs to stop complaining and build her powers so she can be stronger and achieve bankai one day like some of the other lieutenants have already done. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly cruel, I will goad her about the things she hates most about herself until she snaps and lashes out at me. Isane is more powerful than she realizes, but she smothers her power with her insecurities.
I hate the place where she's kept me. I am in a meadow that is covered with a thin layer of snow and is surrounded in all sides by sloping lavender mountains capped with ice. The air is clear and cold on my skin. Where ever I step, the snow melts and leaves a patch of vibrant green grass and wildflowers around me. When I step away, the snow replaces the little circle of spring. Isane says that I am beautiful this way, with flowers at my feet and my cheeks flushed from the cold. I do not feel beautiful. I feel like an outsider, a foreigner in my own realm.
Despite all the things I hate about Isane, she makes me laugh. I love her silly nightmares. She does not find them funny, but I do. They are ridiculous and the fact that they keep her up at night is somewhat pathetic. I think when she talks to me she realizes this about them, and they don't bother her as much.
And her theories! You would think that the lieutenant of the Fourth Division would know a thing or two about the human body, but Isane seems not to. For instance, she believed that porridge (because of it's "poor nutritional value") would make her stop growing! As if!
Another favorite pastime of mine is to watch her blush when I bring up another aspect of the human body. Isane is so innocent, so modest. The heat of her embarrassment when I bring up the male influence is nearly enough for her to melt the snow as I do.
The only time I really feel at peace, though, is when I am with my Shinigami and we are laying side-by-side in the snow, looking up at the sky as the snowflakes gently fall around us. Isane will run her fingers though the grass around me. She will pick a bundle of white and yellow wildflowers and tuck them behind my ear. Then she will call me beautiful, and with the look of such tender love she gives me I will have no choice but to believe her.
