10. Dead Man Walking
Izuru and Rose
Izuru doesn't sleep anymore. That's not the real problem, but sometimes it feels like it's the only problem there is. Izuru doesn't sleep because apathy eats him.
Izuru doesn't sleep because the rats of the past have made a nest of straw and used syringes somewhere in the cavity of a hollowed chest that was probably his at some point. It's just a thing now. The hand, the body, the mind, just things — used and neglected and overlooked. At one point, a million years ago, Izuru would have done anything to ensure he lived. One more day. He remembers thinking it: one more day, he remembers the plea. The same plea every night, like a prayer but much more desperate and to no one but himself, a long, long time ago. Every night. It was clockwork.
Who will fight but the desperately vital? Heart lines on a monitor; Shuuhei, Momo, Renji, the captains, all breathing all thinking. They'll make it.
When Izuru moves his arm it scrapes against itself and the sound is enough to make a person cringe but he does it again, and again and again, feeling nothing at all. So he's not a person and he's not a monster and he's not … what? If a person is what he isn't then what?
Izuru doesn't sleep anymore because Mayuri wills it that way. What creation sleeps? Izuru doesn't sleep anymore because the heart doesn't need the break, because the skin won't heal, Izuru doesn't sleep because he is a dead man, walking into a battle field to fight a fight that's no longer his.
If there is a god, it will kill him.
And if there isn't, it will feel the way dying feels a thousand times and every time will be the ecstasy of anticipation.
I'll say, this is one of my personal favorites; is that an odd thing to say about something you've written?