More silence. The sun has passed its peak and is on its descent now.
"I'm going back tomorrow," he says into the stillness. "I'm not coming back."
She turns her head from where it is on his shoulder towards his neck, her breath escaping slowly from where she'd held it when he spoke.
She manages a nod, she doesn't think she can get her lips to move right now. Not now that the time is here. That he is saying what she knew he would, that this is final now, that this is happening, that this is real.
"When I die, I don't want to remember." She closes her eyes against his words.
"Can you make sure? I just want to be some old man wandering Rukongai with no powers and no memory of life or how he got there. I won't join the Gotei 13. I'll just be a soul with no clue what a shinigami even is."
More silence. She feels the cracks in her wall, the one around her heart. Feels them expanding.
He doesn't want to hold this power forever. This burden. She gets it, she does. But also… he won't remember. He'll die, and move on, and leave her behind.
She clutches tight at his hands, and them releases them slowly, reaching for her Shirayuki and his Zangetsu, pulls them between their laps.
She hasn't responded to him yet, but he seems unbothered by it. Just watches whatever it is she's doing. Maybe his fingers are tighter around her stomach, at her hips, but if they are, they are only helping keeping her icy wall around her heart from collapsing.
She ends up playing with Shirayuki's ribbon and Zangetsu's shoulder strap, entwining them together. She thinks about fate and red strings and two souls finding each other out of millions.
She feels that warmth at her spine, an embrace, and she knows he feels something similar when his arms tighten. She didn't even think that was possible.
A tear drops, solitary and lonely, down her cheeks. He kisses it away.
At that, she lets out the softest whimper, barely there, but he hears it and shushes her right away, rocks her, soothes her.
But that is all she allows herself, the one tear. She must be strong. For him.