21.
Title: Anniversary
Prompt: Fall (season)
Pairing/Character(s): Rukia
Word Count: 459
A/N: Thanks to Devil'sEyeAlchemist13 for the prompt! Happy Rosh Hashanah to all who celebrate! I had a bit of trouble choosing a character, but eventually it worked out as well as I had dared hope. I hope it's not too much out of character angst.
It was autumn. It was when sharply dressed green leaves turned late-bruise yellow and rotting brown. It was when you started pulling your sweaters and scarves closer to yourself to escape the chill newly brought by the winds. It was when children suffered the catastrophe of becoming students again. It was when everything ended and the mundane began, wiping sunshine from the skin and smiles from faces.
It was autumn and autumn only regaled change.
Through all of this, however, she had to forcibly remind herself that change was not all bad.
She stood lonely on a rooftop in Karakura town, hands brought back up into the arms of her shihakusho to keep them warm. It was night, and she could just barely see her breath in the light pollution from the streetlight to her right.
It was where she had entered Karakura town for the first time, exactly a year ago today.
She didn't quite know what to think as her slightly-longer hair wavered in the slight breeze, how her shihakusho billowed, and a leaf flew into her face. She picked it off and let it fly once more, joining the dancing filigree on its way to nestle in the cold-hardened grass, joining other rotted, dead leaves. It was like the vines of the Menos Forest.
No. She shook off of the thought. It was reminiscent of it, but not quite the same. After all, she had chosen to go to Hueco Mundo, chosen the actions that had led to that encounter. She had chosen to go and rescue Inoue Orihime with Renji, Ishida, Chad, and Ichigo. She hadn't truly chosen any of the beginning. It had just sort of happened.
No, she could have refused. She could have bound him with a more powerful spell or knocked him out. She could have let the hollow eat him and get it while it was distracted. She could have hit in a way that would have left her unharmed despite some harm to the soul. She could have purified the hollow from behind if she'd tried hard enough and gone fast enough. She could have cut the arm off of the hollow first.
She could have died there and let be.
But she had chosen not to.
And so here she was, among the seething fires of yellow leaves, orange leaves, red leaves, dead leaves falling all around her and bowed her head to the decision she had made one year ago. A decision that had shook Soul Society to its foundations and to the leaves, which were starting to fall off. Dead leaves.
The fire, she thought, gazing absently at the place where it had all began, truly does not discriminate in who it burns. I'm sorry, Ichigo.