Title: Five Years
Author: darkling59
Rating: T
Date: 3/15/2013
Disclaimer: Bleach and all related characters, plots, etc. do not belong to me.
Warnings: AU/fix-it fic, time travel (sort of…), assumptions about pre-series events and timelines, no pairings
Summary: After waking up to a life he thought he'd left behind, Starrk's search for answers takes him from the depths of Hueco Mundo to the Human World and beyond. He meets some interesting people along the way and, despite his best efforts, reluctantly becomes involved in the conflict that nearly killed him...which will not officially start for another five years. Time Travel (with a twist).
Prologue
What are five years in the grand scheme of things?
To a shinigami, five years is barely enough time to complete paperwork. In fact, some documents can take more than a decade to go through. It takes even longer to rise in rank for all but a select few, and the Central 46 can take five to five hundred years to make a decision. Adult shinigami can survive for tens of millennia unless killed by outside sources, and their younger counterparts can take centuries to grow into adults. In Seireitei, five years is barely the blink of an eye.
To a hollow, five years is not even enough to grow from a common hollow into a Gillian, the shortest period of evolution in the cycle from Basic Hollow to Vasto Lorde. It takes at least a decade to become a Gillian, and centuries to become an Adjuchas. The transition from Adjuchas to Vasto Lorde is so rare that no one knows how long it takes; those few hollows that complete the evolution quickly lose track of time, and shinigami cannot capture and study creatures so powerful; but it is likely longer than all of the other evolutions put together. To a hollow, time is meaningless and five years might as well be five minutes, or five decades. The hunger never changes.
To a human, five years is enough time to grow from a child into an adult, or to fully realize previously untapped potential. A year is enough time for a child to grow physically and mentally, to enter puberty, or to undergo experiences that will change who they are and the way they see the world. Five years is enough time to finish high school, or college, and switch occupations, sometimes more than once. While it's true that some humans can go for ten or twenty years without changing what they do, human lives are normally in constant flux. Even for an adult, looking ahead ten years feels like a long time. For a human, five years is life-changing.
To the hogyoku, five years represents millions of possibilities and probabilities, things that might happen and things that could have happened; decisions that were never made and choices that can change the tide of future events.
To a war between dimensions, on which the fate of all three worlds depends, five years can be the difference between victory and defeat or, for some, life and death.
CHAPTER 1: Memories
Pain…
He was falling, dying, watching as the ex-shinigami he'd sworn allegiance to ignored him, like he was nothing; feeling the eyes of the shinigami that killed him observing his descent with something a little like regret…and a lot like pity. The presence of his other half flickered in the back of his soul, a small spark burning brightly, even in unconsciousness.
"I'm not alone."
Harribel was still fighting. He could hear her, sense the anger and deadly focus in her reiatsu.
"I'm not alone."
She could not win on her own, not against all of them. But Aizen would…Aizen was…what?
"I'm not…"
Suddenly, her reiatsu changed, flavored with shock and pain.
"I'm…"
Betrayal. Anger.
"I…"
Death.
The last of the espada were dying.
"I'm…alone."
...
Coyote Starrk awoke with a quiet, agonized gasp as images too real to be nightmares danced through his mind's eye. The chaotic memories swirled in his head, forcing him to revisit his battle, the shinigami, his mortal injuries, and Aizen's betrayal of Harribel. In that one moment, every illusion about Aizen had been stripped away.
In a rare show of emotion, the primera clenched his fists in helpless anger, forcing his fingers through the coarse sand.
Wait…what?
Startled, Starrk flatted his hand on the ground and felt the surface beneath him, then took a deep breath of air through his nose. Lilynette's slight, warm body was curled up next to him, head on his stomach. It was all very, very familiar.
With a mounting feeling of dread, he opened his eyes and was immediately met by the sight of Hueco Mundo's eternal night sky and crescent moon. If he'd had a heart, it would have stopped beating in that moment.
Aizen would not be so cruel, would he? To dump Starrk back in the desert he'd come from, lost and (worst of all) alone? He was done with the arrancar, that much was obvious, but surely he wouldn't take the time and effort to return them to exile in Hueco Mundo before moving on with his plans? Except…it looked like that was what he'd done, down to the exact area where Starrk and Lilynette had lived before meeting Aizen. The giant piles of dead hollows were still intact.
In fact, he was wearing the same hollow-hide garment he'd had on when Aizen found them…except...
That didn't make any sense; the furry material had been discarded and destroyed when they'd been issued uniforms.
"Lilynette?" He shook her shoulder gently.
She grumbled and batted his hand away, snuggling further down in her own fur. He shook her shoulder more firmly until she yawned and opened her eyes, pouting sleepily at him.
"What? I was…" he could tell the moment she realized where they were. Her eyes went wide, losing all trace of sleepiness, and her hands came up to push the cloth away, checking his chest where he'd been fatally slashed by that captain's sword. When she spoke, her voice was small and scared. "Starrk? What happened?"
He sat up with a low sigh, automatically sending out a wave of pesquisa to check for other hollows. Nothing. Lilynette sat back on her heels, hugging the cloth to her defensively and taking in their situation with an increasingly unnerved expression that exactly mirrored how Starrk felt (although he was better at hiding it).
"I don't know. What's the last thing you remember?"
"You were…" she reached and touched his chest where the sword had gone through. It was bare of any blood or injury. "I thought he killed you."
"So did I." He pulled up the cloth like a blanket, wrapping it more comfortably around his shoulders and chest. "I was slashed by that captain, and dying, when I felt Aizen kill Harribel." Lilynette stiffened and her confusion began to morph into anger. "Then…I don't know. I think I felt something, a different sort of reiatsu, but I fell unconscious before I saw what it was."
"Aizen…did what?"
Ignoring her, he returned his gaze to the dead hollows.
"If it weren't for the fact that you remember it too, I would think the whole thing was just a dream." He remarked pensively.
"No kidding." She tugged urgently on his arm, pulling his attention back. "WHAT did Aizen do?"
Another sigh. "He stopped her fight, and slashed her with his zanpakuto. She was dying when I fell unconscious."
"That…that….!" The smaller arrancar was literally shaking with rage. "That BASTARD! We gave him everything! We trusted him! And I'll bet he never expected us to survive, did he? That …that…SHINIGAMI!"
She said it like the worst insult imaginable and, against his will, Starrk felt his lips twist into a slight smirk. It faded quickly.
"I know. By killing Harribel, he betrayed all of us. I still don't know what we're doing back here though, or how we're alive at all. Why would he cause our deaths, only to heal us and return us to Hueco Mundo?"
Lilynette scowled, diatribe effectively killed by Starrk's quiet logic. "Well, I dunno. Maybe he didn't? Maybe the shinigami did?"
Starrk shot her a 'look'. "They were the ones trying to kill us."
"…Maybe…maybe it really was a dream? I mean, how else would our clothes still be intact? And you don't even have any scars."
"If it was only one of us, I would agree. But we've never shared dreams before, and that didn't feel like any nightmare I've ever had."
"Yeah…"
For a long moment, they sat in silence, gazing out at the landscape they had tried so hard to leave behind. It was depressing. After so much time, effort, and suffering, they were right back where they'd started.
"What if…what if we're not the only ones here?"
"Hm?"
"What if other espada have been brought back?"
"…Maybe they have."
"Well then, let's go look for them! It sounds like Harribel was in the same situation, right? Let's find her and ask!"
"Hmph." Starrk slid back down, gazing up at the sky. He despised loneliness, but laziness was a hard habit to get out of. "Nap first?"
"No! Let's go!"
When he didn't move fast enough, she kicked him in the leg. HARD.
"Ow! Alright, alright! I'm coming."
After a moment of concentration to restrain his reiatsu to less lethal levels, the two arrancar set off into the desert, looking for answers.
Author's Notes:
So…as promised to my HatM readers, here it is!
I was originally going to add a few segments to the end of the chapter from other POVs, to make the situation clearer, but I figured it would be more effective this way. Also, it'll be a little while before Ichigo comes into the picture, but he'll be a major player later so I've put him as the second character.
I have a lot of other information I could write here, but I'd rather fill it in as it becomes relevant in the following chapters. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them (unless the answer is a spoiler)!
A/N: I've spent three freaking days trying to get the summary right. I'm posting it regardless of its quality.
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