Chapter 15 – Impermanence
Nothing is permanent.
Abarai Renji was floating in a sea of darkness. The dark waters carried him, the gentle sound of the waves a lullaby to his blurring thoughts. People would think it a heartfelt wish, to be drifting indefinitely in calm waters as the gentle waves licked across his skin in loving caress of a tender lover. To be adrift in an endless ocean of stars, floating towards an island of dreams. How he wished it would last.
Alas.
It was a flurry of wrathful motion that stroke the dark, shameful fire of his fear. Strong hands coming seemingly out of darkness, gripping him tight, forcing him apart. .His very core being torn to shreds as he heard himself let out a deafening scream of terror. Never-ending torture inflicted upon him, merciless as a machine, forcing its way in and tearing through his very soul, trampling as if he was the very dirt that everyone walked upon.
He was impure.
And then there was that voice. It echoed over and over again, saying the same thing until his ears bleed.
"You killed her."
"You killed her."
Who?
A flash of a young woman, petite and fair, her long, dark hair spread about as she was cradled by someone that was her dearest.
Rukia...?
The man was trembling as he held her lifeless body tight against his beating heart.
"Now you will pay," the threatening voice was next to him and then he was plunged into a sea of nightmares.
Nothing is permanent.
Life, fragile as it is, most of all.
It is the epitome of impermanence. To be born, to live and grow, to age and to rot away in a casket. It is the very cycle that gives and takes, it changes and it grows, and then perishes for eternity. Only to begin again. A never-ending cycle of pain and suffering, of joy and happiness.
Ignorance is key when you witness others' suffering so you can survive through yours. We are all suspects of disingenuous sympathy because we lived through our own sets of torture each and every day—your suffering is not as important as mine, but do share your joy with me.
Every single day, every single moment we spend focusing on finding our happiness by trampling on others' misfortune that we justified. To live our lives to our final dying breaths, hands reaching forward, just knowing that true happiness was a hairbreadth away—and then slipping.
To live is to slowly trudge towards death.
But to take a life? Deliberately and actively doing so. To rip its miraculous energy from its core. To separate it from the soul and plunge it deep into the abyss. It took one motion. Swift, subtle, undetectable.
It took a drop of snow to create an avalanche. It took one conflict to create a war.
It took only one absolute to take a life.
A simple catalyst.
You are reborn into this world.
He gasped as his body was ripped from its constant and slammed upon doors of the pasts, ugly creatures crawling out of the abyss and chasing him, urging him to look back and see what he had done.
What his existence destroyed.
"It was a shift in the reiryoku... she was already fragile as it was," wisps of images of men dressed as healers entered his vision, their whisper a loud booming alarm to his ears as he watched them conspired behind an ajar door leading to a room he had seen in his previous vision.
Of the dead woman cradled by her love.
But just before he could do anything, he was once again moved by an indomitable force to another vision.
It was the First Division's conference room. From the scene alone, he could tell that it was an emergency meeting. The room was different. Some of the people were different, but he knew they were the former captains of the Gotei 13. And they were all there, except for one. Who, he couldn't remember. But he knew that person was important.
"Thousands of souls are dead," a shinigami whispered in horror as he reported his findings to the group of high-ranking officials.
Renji could see it clearly. The Captain-Commander looked guilty enough that he knew the man knew what happened that could cause such devastation.
Another shinigami burst through the room, his mien panicked and his uniform dirtied with dried blood.
"Hollow attack!"
"Prepare your units!" the Captain-Commander's voice was booming, "get Kuchiki!"
His breath hitched as he was pulled apart, and sewed back into another memory of the past—another one that was not his.
But it was definitely very recent.
"It took a toll on everyone, even the captains," a familiar lieutenant's hesitation could be heard from her voice. her tall, lanky body awkwardly shuffled to pace in with her shorter captain as her silver braid swished with her movements.
"Why have I never heard of it before?"
The captain sighed and looked at her subordinate. "No one was supposed to talk about it," she warned, "the Captain-Commander decreed the incident as an anomaly that no one could answer."
"So he silenced everyone from the incident," the lieutenant concluded quietly.
What incident?
"It is better to not delve further into this, Isane."
"You killed her."
The voice was back again. The torture continued as he opened his mind's eye.
And now he realized. The dead bodies, the souls destroyed before their time. The woman.
Just as he was about to succumb to the eternal suffering and darkness, the foreign memory continued in his mind.
"But Captain Unohana, the secret is out already, we know who he is now," Isane insisted.
"This is a different matter to finding out who he is," Unohana stated firmly, "and Lieutenant Abarai shall not know about this at any cost."
So they planned to keep him in the dark from his own sins.
As his body was ravaged by his tormentor, he could only stare back at the darkness as blood seeped out of all his orifices. He deserved it.
My awakening killed Kuchiki Hisana.
I killed her.
I killed them all.
"Renji," a deep, gentle voice called him back to his conscious.
I killed her.
Facing the eyes of my tormentor, I found guilt entrenched so deep within my soul that I feel the bottom crumbled down to the deep darkness of my sin.
"I killed her," he croaked.
"Renji," Kuchiki Byakuya sighed softly, reaching to caress his lieutenant's face when the redhead flinched.
He cowered away, his fears mixed with guilt—of himself, of what he was, what he did—were all that it took for him to shift his eyes like a shameful convict.
"He is affected."
The sound of a woman snapped him out of his thoughts enough to peek at another figure standing beside his bed.
She silently gestured for Byakuya to step out of view, which he reluctantly did. She coaxed the redhead to tell her what he meant by his words.
Memories of the past flooded his mind, the horrifying visions intertwingled in his mind forming a cohesive story that he was never aware of before.
After the war, he wandered Soul Society as a spiritual entity, invisible, undetectable—free. He roamed the lands and witnessed beauty, happiness, pain, and chaos all due to the war and conflict amongst people. He found that even free to do what he will, he was bound to the world to be reborn and bestow upon a champion the power to defeat the evil that still lurked in the shadow.
And so he was. His rebirth was a chaotic force that he never thought it was. The Kiishi cliff—the place where it all started—was once lush forestry stretching for miles, filled with forest dwellers and people. On his rebirth, the reishi accumulation happening in the area and the sudden explosion afterward decimated the entirety of the population—the trees, the animals, the souls—and a part of the land fell apart, leaving behind a barren cliff filled with strangely dense reishi.
He killed them.
After his rebirth, taking the form of an innocent babe underlying the sins that he had just for being born, he was taken in by survivors, thinking that he was simply abandoned and they took mercy on him by raising him as their own. Until they decided he was not worth even a meager day's meal.
His first real memories were that of Inuzuri. Every day was filled with an uncertain notion if he would survive another moment of constant starvation and abuse. Every turn he took filled with threats that shouldn't have been witnessed by a child. Shouldn't have been experienced by one.
"You took him in," a middle-aged woman spat, her face twisted into an ugly scowl, "not such a noble idea, after all, was it?"
"Shut up, woman," a skinny man growled, clearly he wanted her constant nagging to stop, preferably by cutting off that lashing tongue of hers.
"Just put him up for auction or something. He's scrawny, but they'll have use of him yet."
The man glanced over at the redheaded child cowering under a meager table, his twig-like limbs pale and marred with black and blue. "He's not bad to look at, either."
The woman, though ugly in the heart as she was on the outside, was positively scandalized. "He's a child!" she hissed.
He was. But who was he to complain? He lost his childhood innocence the very moment he was cast aside by his 'family' when he proved to be a burden than a blessing. He was no better than the people who used him for their gains. He was a filthy murderer by design.
The days blurred together as he was handed from one house to another, serving families or running from bad people when he didn't have a choice but to steal. Until one day he was found out by the bad people and they had their way with him. By the time they let him go, he couldn't move an inch, his bones broken and his skin blistered and bruised and crusted with blood and other filthy things and he was preparing himself for sweet death.
And then they found him.
"Hey," a lanky teenager kicked at his feet where he was crouching down in a small, deserted alleyway, "ye wan' join us?" the boy grinned as he jabbed his thumb to the group of small children behind him.
He could only stare back.
And he became a part of them. His childhood friends. His life support. Since he was one of the oldest, he became a parent figure to the rest of the kids.
Then Rukia came.
"Yer jus' a girl!" the boy who saved his life, Yoshiro, exclaimed in disbelief.
"Yeah? A girl who just saved your butts!"
And she, too, joined their growing family.
For a time, he didn't have to scramble for scraps in fear of getting caught alone by the bad people. They still struggle for each and every day, but they were happy. They were a family. And he loved them.
Nothing is permanent.
He was in a teenager's body by the time he realized none of his friends had aged—except for Rukia. They found that they both had more reiryoku—something that they didn't know about until they entered the Academy—than the rest of their family and that they aged as a normal person would compared to a waiting soul. They became far stronger than the bad people chasing after them. For a while, it felt good.
Yoshiro, even though he didn't understand what was happening, was very supportive of him. In a lot of different ways.
And in a lot of ways, they became more than friends. Until the wheel of his awakening moved.
It surprisingly took a lot out of... everything.
"Ren?" Yoshiro whispered one day, his eyes sallow as if he hadn't a good night sleep, "I... I feel real tired these days," he admitted. He was never one to admit weakness as he always acted like the leader of the group. But he found that with Rukia and Renji, he could loosen up for a while. And it was indeed very concerning for him, he never got sick before. It was not in the nature of a waiting soul, after all. He didn't want to be a burden to their group.
"Me too," Rukia quipped softly, she was hugging herself.
"Rukia?" Renji questioned, reaching to touch her temple if she perhaps caught a cold.
He had a sinking feeling.
It was not long after that he found the rest of the children were growing sick too, and soon after everyone was bedridden.
All except for him. He didn't knew then what he knew now. If he did, he would have done something to prevent it from happening.
He would have killed himself.
Because he was sucking their life forces. All of them. All of Soul Society.
The adults, who had better stability in their souls would feel lethargic, but the children?
They didn't survive through the winter. Only Rukia did, but only due to the fact that she had a bigger reiryoku reserve than most souls in Rukongai.
Far away in the middle of Seireitei's prosperous households, another family was suffering the loss of a loved one.
The man cradled her lifeless body into his beating heart. "Hisana..."
I killed her.
"Be strong, Renji," she touched his slumped shoulder hesitantly where he kneeled in front of gravestones that he made himself. It was not reassuring because she was sniffling and gasping, trying to control her tears and failing.
"Yoshiro... everyone..." he sobbed.
He was alone. Rukia was his only salvation.
Until she faded away.
He stood up in panic as his surrounding grew bleak, his vision hindered by the tears blurring his eyes.
He could see a silhouette of a man approaching.
"Renji," his voice was somber and sad. And then he felt a large hand covering his eyes and grasping at the top of his head. He couldn't move.
"This is for the best."
And he was simply made to forget his sins ever happened. That his friends simply all got reincarnated to the Material World while he and Rukia stayed behind and grew. After all, ignorance is bliss.
When his awakening reached its final point, he was held captive in the Muken. He counted his blessings as it took an explosion of dense reiryoku that the reinforced cage absorbed willingly, gradually trickling in memories of his past lives.
But not of what his rebirth and awakening destroyed. For a little while, he was spared from the torturous truth of what ruins he left behind in his wake.
But nothing is permanent.
Aizen's little trick opened the lock that had been placed in the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, holding in memories as if wild beasts caged to never be let out for eternity. And now he knew how deeply entrenched in red, red blood he really was. How excruciatingly unfair the world was, to put him in the high pedestal as he climbed over the mountains of souls that he unknowingly took simply for his existence.
How unbelievably big his ego was, thinking that Aizen Sousuke was not worth his 'blessing'.
When he knew he was a curse.
Byakuya was livid.
Never mind the jarring fact that the memories that Renji experienced were directly broadcasted into his mind, each second a live imagery of the most graphic description.
To know that Hisana...
He killed—no. No.
You know why it had to happen, he tightly thought, forcefully shoving the images of the simultaneous scenes between Renji's awakening and Hisana's death rolling through his mind like a broken film. But he couldn't.
He felt the soft, linen fabric of her white yukata as he cradled her body close to his heart. Her own heart beating gradually softer and softer, that his exceptional hearing had to strain to hear it until it simply stopped.
He was there as she died.
As she was killed in front of his very eyes by forces he couldn't control. He cursed the entity that created him, the god who ruined his life, and his creation lying before his eyes.
He blankly gazed at the figure lying on the white bed. It was a familiar scene. White walls. White sheets. White robe. Sickly pale skin. Red.
Not Hisana.
She's dead.
He unconsciously took a step forward, his eyes blank as his emotion froze. His hands, however, they knew what they wanted as they reached for the sword by his hip. Senbonzakura protested, screamed into his soul and tried to force him into his inner world.
How dare you, he thought harshly, I am your master and you will obey me or I shall cast you out.
The sword grew cold and the spirit quieted. He knew that his master could do what he said. Senbonzakura was only safe in his zanpakuto form because his master was not made aware of his true nature before. But now that he, also, had awakened to his nature, Senbonzakura was not needed.
And so shalt he obey his king.
You will pay.
Byakuya felt a set of hands gripping his arms, but he felt indestructible. Unstoppable. The hilt reached his chest as he drew the cold, unyielding metal from its scabbard, the material glinting viciously in the harsh white light of the room. The hands that tried to restrain him was slain away from his person, uncaring whether he had completely severed them from their host's body or not. He could hear the quiet whimper of the woman those hands belonged to.
He could vaguely hear her weak voice. It was a warning, perhaps. But he had no time to listen to her. He had not time to think of what he was about to do. And to who. There was a murderer in front of him.
You will pay.
He steadied his grip on the sword with both his hands—he didn't want to miss his aim—raising it above his head. It was a still, defenseless target. It was outrageously easy. But he would take that opportunity.
For it was the monster who killed Hisana.
He watched in disgust as his twisted vision showed him the monster cowering on the bed. He sneered as it trembled in fear for its impending demise, the dark mane of the demon flowing through the white, satin robes. It was a beauty, but he would not be fooled by its deceptive looks. He knew of the rot sitting inside that thing, in the place of where a heart should have been. He would not be played with by the demon, like a siren leading sailors to their doom.
"You will pay," he heard himself speak. His voice was eerily calm. He sounded like a predator. He refused to acknowledge the tiny voice that told him he was the monster if he would go through was he was going to do. No, the demon disguised as a deity in front of him was.
You will pay.
The sword swung at impossible speed.
"I'm sorry," the person whispered as he embraced death.
The sharp metal stoppered close to a fragile, pale neck, barely grazing the skin.
It drew a trickle of blood.
Red.
Byakuya felt himself shiver. His hands clamoring in horror at what he was about to execute. What a split second of hesitation saved.
Sad, lifeless brown eyes gazed into his own. It was that of a pure soul brought upon a cruel, dark world. Tainting holy will into something twisted, guilty. Dirty.
It was not a monster.
It was Renji. And he was not trembling in fear as much as he was wrecked by misplaced guilt that his tears soaked through his face, the force of his sobs wrecked through his body as he closed his eyes in acceptance.
Byakuya was going to kill him and Renji would have accepted it.
He threw away Senbonzakura in disgust. The sword clanked somewhere on the furthest side of the room, out of his reach.
It was for the best.
He did not deserve the loyalty of the fine warrior his zanpakuto spirit was.
He took a step back, and two, until he was a good distance away from the bed his former lieutenant was laid on.
And he ran.
He knew he wasn't supposed to run in such disgrace. He was supposed to support Renji in his recovery. To apologize, no, to be begging on his knees for forgiveness. To kiss the feet of the person who had been nothing but a kindred spirit in his life.
The drop of blood staining Senbonzakura was still fresh on his mind.
I almost killed him.
Because of something that he couldn't control. He knew that the creator that made him what he was, if anything, was to blame. Renji didn't choose what he was, and neither did he.
Hisana's death was inevitable. He knew that. She was fragile and sickly. If not for the swift death that she had from Renji's awakening, she would have to suffer through years of suffering because of his own selfish will that wouldn't let her go.
From the time he took her as his wedded wife, he couldn't let her go. It wasn't a simple whim, nor was it a mere act of rebellion against the elders who gnawed their lips in frustration as he took a poor commoner for a wife. Sure, the first time he saw her, she was a mere pretty face with nothing to her name. And perhaps, indeed he at first took her as his to show the elders simply that he could. And she, being poor and suffering all her life, took that chance to live in a large noble house to be wedded to a handsome heir. She was not always of pure intention. She needed to survive, and he understood that.
But the more he knew her, the more he grew to cherish her. She was sweet and kind, she was caring and motherly. She was the woman his mother never was to him, a figure that he needed in his childhood so he didn't grow into such a twisted, selfish person that he was. She helped him become more open, and helped him to love others. And he did, as he started to love her.
Their relationship was not of a pure, love story. He didn't love her at first sight. But as he grew to, his selfish nature wouldn't let her go. She loved him for all she had, but she grew sick with worry and guilt for abandoning her baby sister to survive on her own the more she stayed at the manor, the lavish life she had making her feel all the more guilty. Her worry grew into her already weak body, and it made her ill to the point that she couldn't do anything unassisted. The elders were triumphant, gleefully waiting for her demise for they found her a disgrace and useless addition to the household. For she couldn't give Byakuya the one thing he needed as a clan leader. An heir.
But he was persistent. He searched for the best healers he could find, even venturing into the Material World to find the best doctors to see to the roots of her illness. They found that she had a rare autoimmune disease. It was incurable for them, but Byakuya was optimistic that the healers in Soul Society would find a cure. Every day, he gave her a boost of his own reiryoku to feed into her system, to help combat her cells that attacked themselves. It would rid her of her weakened state for a while, but his reiryoku was not accepted by her own life energy, and it would be expelled from her system in a violent manner that left her worse for wear.
But he was persistent.
She told him time and time again, that she was exhausted. She wanted it all to stop. For him to let her go. To accept her death and to grant her final wish—find Rukia and care for her as his own sister, in her stead.
But he wouldn't listen. He didn't want her to go. So he kept going on, putting her through various medications and treatments, futilely grasping at the single thread of life she had left.
He would have destroyed her until she was only a shell of her former self. Renji unknowingly took mercy on her and granted her a swift, painless death, her life force intertwining with the rest of the souls, becoming one and fusing into the Seika's core. She was within him, and she was one of the reasons that the their only hope for salvation from evil was alive today.
Nothing is permanent.
Strengthening his resolve, he returned to the room that held his redhead. He was there where he left him, the healer was nowhere to be found.
He took in the picture Renji made for his eyes to feast upon. The dull red hair slowly getting back its shine, fluttering lashes wet with fresh tears and a bright red line cutting harshly across the contrasting pale skin of his neck.
He reached for the dull strands he loved to play with in his time with Renji before all of this happened, back at the manor when he found him asleep and unknowing of his advances. It was excruciatingly similar that he wished he could go back in time and relive them over and over again for eternity.
A bolt of energy struck him as his hand drew closer, leaving deep gashes across his right arm, traveling from his burnt fingers to just an inch above his elbow. He frowned, finally noticing the near-invisible protective cloak surrounding Renji's fitfully resting figure. The wound was already healing rapidly as it was, but it still stung.
"Are you sound?"
He then saw the healer emerging from a hidden door into the room, striding elegantly with her long legs and stopping just before him, on the other side of the bed Renji was occupying. Her stance was protective and her eyes were sharp and calculative as she waited for his answer. It was her duty to protect the healing Seika, especially in his fragile state of mind, after what happened.
Byakuya couldn't help but feel ashamed of his uncontrolled actions. "Yes."
"It is well," she inclined her head and waved her hand across the barrier, dissolving it—she believed his remorse. He watched as she worked, noting the still mangled figure of her hands that he struck with his sword just hours ago. Another shameful wave struck his nerves.
"I will heal," the healer remarked knowingly, her wound was already stitching back together as it was, steadily fusing the skin with the undercurrent of her power.
He nodded at her reassurance and looked back to his sleeping redhead. He stroked the strand of hair closest to his reach, marveling the glowing ethereal light that seeped from within the deity and into every fiber of his being. He looked otherworldly in his death-like sleep, his closed eyes holding wonders that Byakuya feared he would never see ever again. And then a warm pair of chocolate orbs revealed slowly to gaze upon his entranced ones.
Byakuya found beauty in impermanence.
- to be continued -
Additional Notes:
- Waiting souls: It's not a canon term, but I'm using it for the souls in Soul Society who were once humans and only waiting for their allotted time in Soul Society until they are reborn as humans again. This is because there really isn't any proper explanation about how the souls age, live, etc. except that souls without reiryoku don't age and get hungry, but even that is inconsistent. So in my theory, there are three types of souls;
type 1) the waiting souls: once humans, waiting to be reborn (don't age, don't get hungry, around 80+ years of time spent before being reborn;
type 2) born in Soul Society, have a low level of reiryoku, slowly age, require food and rest, the same level as any common masses, and;
type 3) shinigami-level souls who are either once humans or were born in Soul Society but have a higher level of reiryoku, very slowly age, require food and rest.
- Kiishi cliff: remember the cliffside from the new recruits' training in chapter 3? Yay to in-story throwback-slash-reference!
Three weeks—that's a new record. Yay...?
Okay. First of all, it's end-of-year, closing of the book kind of hectic in my office for the past few weeks. Second of all, I can't find the time to write or think about the chapter because of reason number one. Tee-hee.
Moving on—so this chapter is pretty much a background enrichment kind of chapter, so you won't find much action here. I've been meaning to do a flashback since I don't wanna put expositions every few lines, but again, I'm not an actual writer so bear with me lol.
But I do plan on writing an actual, full-on flashback chapter or two. I'm thinking... Aizen's past? I've been formulating it in my head, but don't know how it will connect to the rest of the story yet. It will be interesting if I can manage it though.
Please tell me your thoughts on this story. While I will try to continue writing it regardless, it would be nice to know if I've done things right, or if there are things that I should revise or do better in the future :)
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Thank you for your feedback!