Loss
It was hard. Not just for him, but for the others who had lost the war.
Not that the campaigns had resulted in defeat, the war had ended with them victorious, but their losses weren't insignificant at any means.
Most of the people could be replaced, given enough time, but Her death was something else entirely. While she fell honourably, her sword in her hand to the last, she did not fall in battle with any of the enemy, instead, falling to one of their own captains in a last-ditch effort to teach him how to properly use his power.
"There are worse ways to die than in the arms of the one you love."
Maybe in another time, in another place, in another life, this statement would have been true. Whoever the fool was who created that saying probably never thought of the fact that the people who loved the victim had feelings of their own. Hell, it was the worst way to meet your end by miles, especially if the one who had devoted his heart to you for centuries was the one who had to, in the end, crush his own soul and drive the fatal blade into the person beside whom he felt privileged, wanted, beside one who would never judge him first and ask questions later.
The blonde captain slowly rose to his feet, his normally cheerful features clouded over with thought. Not only had his demon of a friend lost one of the few people whom he had, in his own way, loved, but he had lost someone whom he had considered as somewhat akin to the mother he had lost all those millennia ago. Yet, the losses ran deeper. Not only had the man who was, in a way, a brother to him, lost the only person he had ever loved, he had also lost the companionship of the little pink ball of happy energy who had for centuries been a daughter to him. He still remembered the shattered expression on his brother's face when he realized that she was now gone, never to ride on his shoulder, address people with ridiculous, but funny nicknames and ask everyone for candy again.
Then there were the friends and comrades-in-arms that all of them had lost. The current General was living proof of the way they had rallied afterwards- having lost that old, yet formidable father-figure to a trick played in the battlefield. They weren't even able to bring his body back for a proper funeral with the honour that old Yamamoto had deserved, being forced to watch as it was obliterated from existence. Then came the loss of the Captain of the Thirteenth- the kind-hearted White Knight of the Gotei, whose ultimate sacrifice was nearly in vain, had the young boy who had been surprising them over the last couple of years not been able to defeat their enemy with some help from a traitor. Or rather, two traitors.
They would rebuild, yes. But would the loss of three of their oldest and strongest still weigh them down in the future?
That was a worry for another time, he thought. He had more than enough time left to see what would happen in a few hundred years. First, they would rebuild. New captains would be chosen. New soldiers would come. New bonds would be forged. Old ones would be renewed, and he would be there. Because, whatever he loved, whoever he loved, he would stand beside, even if it cost him everything.
A/N- the blonde Captain mentioned is NOT Shinji