Chapter Fifty-Two

Ryohime slumped, wishing there was a wall left standing that she could lean against, but not wanting to move far enough to reach the one across the ashen crater. She wished, too, that she could have kept Muramasa manifested, just to have him there, but maintaining an unnecessary shikai would have meant that much less energy she could put into healing kido.

She had done all she could. Even a low-level hado would be beyond her abilities for now... if any enemy appeared, it would be up to the still-injured Shinigami to deter them, and only one had regained consciousness.

He stood nearby, his back to her and his hand on the hilt of his Zanpakuto. They hadn't exchanged a word since Urai left.

Urai...

She wished it was as easy to adopt a new name as he made it seem. They had never thought of that, in all the years of being trapped together. Why bother coming up with new names after the old ones died when it was just the two of them? He was he, and she was her. That was that. It was enough.

Not anymore, it wasn't. She could either be her, or she could be Ryohime, and there were people who would only know her as Ryohime. She'd have to face that identity sooner or later, unless...

He wants to leave.

She could see it in the tension of his back, the set of his shoulders, and the twitching of his scarred fingers against the hilt of his Zanpakuto. He could sense them, too, distant but there. The Fourteenth Division, the Special Units. Everyone who they had once fought alongside, but who they had grown so far beyond that the very idea of seeing them again stirred butterflies of panic and pain within their chests. How do you relate to someone who you haven't seen for nearly two decades when, to them, it has only been a day or two?

So much easier to just vanish. She licked her lips.

"We have to explain, at least."

He did not say anything, but turned and simply looked at her in reply. She forced herself to look back, right into his yellow eyes. Eyes, she realized now consciously despite knowing for years, that were no longer quite human. His black hair was, at best, as long as hers, but cut unevenly and sticking out wildly from years of neglect and near-misses with Zanpakuto blades. Even his face, his body, seemed a little inhuman, hard and muscular from years of constant battle, but gaunt and skeletal from living a half-life without nourishment of any kind. They had been trapped by time, able to change themselves but cut off from anything that could effect the world around them.

And... the scars.

She knew she looked the same. They weren't ghosts anymore... they were revenants. How could they go back to the World of the Living after this? Their old lives? There was no way.

He said it with a look, and she had no reply. He was right.

"But... we have family," she managed, and he looked away. "They don't know. If we leave now, they will never know."

"Just as well." His voice was scratched and hoarse. His release had let him speak, for a time, with the smooth voice of Aizen, hide his closed eyes behind a smiling mask, but it had not fixed the damage done by years of disuse. Her voice had weakened, his had rusted. "What good could come of pretending... he still exists? He doesn't. I might as well be a stranger, come to tell her I murdered her son."

A stab of agony twisted through Ryohime's chest. She choked back a dry sob and hugged her arms around herself.

"I'm... as old as he is," she whispered. "Oh, kami... with everything that has happened to us... I may be older then my own-"

She couldn't finish. He was right. There was a reason she had planned to vanish too, if ever they got out. Muramasa had made her think there was another way, but no. He was different.

"What are you?"

The Fifth Seat's voice jolted her out of her thoughts. She looked over at where he had been lying, and now leaned half-raised on one arm, and could not think of how to answer.

"Ghosts," he said dryly. The Fifth Seat narrowed his eyes.

"You weren't always. Where have you been? Hueco Mundo? The beyond-Rukongai wastes? A prison-basement under the Twelfth Division?"

She licked her dry lips again. "Right here, but not entirely. We..."

"Glitched out?" the Fifth Seat suggested, his sky-blue eyes lighting up with a kind of gleeful excitement. "Got stuck between layers of spirit? Perhaps you were ready to be reincarnated but never properly managed it? I wrote a theory once (this was ages ago for my promotion-exam) about Soul Society existing at a hub between multiple worlds, and spirits recycling between all those worlds through Seireitei. If that was true-"

"No." He glared at the Fifth Seat, cutting short the off-topic rambling. His gaze snapped over to Ryohime. "If he is well enough to talk, we can go."

The Fifth Seat sat up fast. "What? No! This is too good a mystery to let slip away from me... you have to stay, please. Just for a little. You don't even have to-!"

"We are not puzzles to be solved," Ryohime replied harshly. "You cannot help us by poking and prodding." She rose, feeling empty and annoyed at her own optimism earlier. "Goodbye, Kaba Goseki."

He nodded, his own expression matching how she felt. She took a deep breath, but it did nothing to lessen the void in her chest.

"Wait!" The Fifth Seat lurched to his feet and lunged forward, grabbing her around the wrist before she could walk away. His tone changed, quick as thought. When she glanced back at him, the excitement that had shone in his eyes was gone, replaced by something... else. "Just hold on, alright? No prodding necessary, but... I might be able to help you, anyway."

She stopped. He stopped, too, and looked back with barely-constrained astonishment.

Kaba Goseki released her arm and stuck his hands into his sleeves, pulling them out again with a maroon book in one and a feather-quill in the other.

"I don't specialize in happy endings," he began hastily, sticking the quill behind his ear to flip furiously through the small pages, "but I think... hmm. Well, you saved my life, so it's only fair for me to try and return the favor, right? Something happened to you two, something that made it impossible for you to live with real people?" He glanced up at them when neither replied. "You have to work with me... Kessho is only so flexible. What went wrong? How would you fix it, if you could?"

They looked at each other, equally stunned and conflicted. How... would we fix it?

"I'd... make it so it never happened," she managed finally, feeling light-headed. "You can't go back to normal after that."

But the Fifth Seat did not seem convinced. He kept searching, more slowly now, scanning each page and mouthing sentences as if double-checking what his eyes were seeing. Then, abruptly, he stopped. His fingers thrummed against the cover and he glanced up at her, then him, then back at her. The fever-excitement and mad-scientist air he had been giving off since he first woke was completely gone; now, he just looked concerned.

"I have something, a fate, that might just work." His voice dropped slightly, his tone became reluctant. "But... unfortunately, Kessho does not repeat fates, and I can only write one name for each."

She stared at him. Perhaps she simply did not want to understand, but whatever he was getting at refused to register. He looked back down at his book, kept a finger on the page and flipped through the remaining pages, but when he looked back up again his expression was even more resigned then before.

"I might be able to make it so that whatever happened to you never happened. But there is only one fate like it that I can give, and that only to one person." He lifted his hand to adjust glasses that no longer sat on his nose, three fingers outstretched. When that tic failed him, he dropped his hand and sighed. "'But for someone,'" he quoted, "'the events were little more then a fearful dream soon forgotten. Upon waking, it was as if nothing had changed.' The fate it is yours, if you want it, for saving my life... but you have to decide who gets it."