Title: Love Lies Bleeding
Author/Artist: Norrowa
Pairing/Characters: Shuuhei-centric, implied Shuuhei/Izuru/Momo, with mentioned Tousen, Aizen and Ichimaru
Fandom: Bleach
Theme: Snow's, #22: Tragedy
Rating/Warnings: I'd say it's G. However, there are some warnings. Firstly, it's Shuuhei first-person POV, very introspective. Secondly, there is angst out the goddamn wazoo. And lots of poetic metaphory-stuff. Possibly OOC, for that reason. But mainly, oh, the angst!

---

Even now, people keep on telling me how sorry they are about Tousen. They say it's a fiasco, say it makes them so sad, say it's such a tragedy. I was raised to be a polite boy and therefore grew into a polite man, so I always smile and thank them, and tell them that I'm coping well. When they tell me how well I'm holding up as the 9th division's new captain, I thank them again. It's simple, really; it's routine by now, and I hardly even pay attention to the apologetic platitudes.

But whenever I hear someone call it a "tragedy", I think that they just don't understand. It's not a tragedy. Maybe it was a tragedy, but it's over now. I have Izuru, and Momo. I'm not alone. I'm not incomplete. The loss was surprisingly easy to overcome; one day I woke up and realized that I still had my friends, and I had my lovers too, and that that was all right. I think that Izuru and Momo both realized the same thing at some point. They loss is not a tragedy any more.

No. The tragedy isn't that they're gone, but that we have overcome our losses.

That sounds perverse. Masochistic, maybe. Let me explain.

Now that the grief isn't raw and bleeding—now that the scrapes have scabbed over, now that the long, weeping gashes have been stitched up—now we can look down at our bodies and look inwards upon our minds and wonder what went wrong. Now we can rationalize. Now I can look back, and I can tell myself where exactly my balance shifted too far to the left and I started to wobble, started to tip off that precarious pedestal of trust and safety. I can analyze and obsess over it, because it's so hard to let go even if I'm healed—so hard to watch the bruises fade, because they're the last memory I have. So I don't let go. I pick open the scabs in punishment and hope that they'll scar so that I have a memento. I judge myself.

The problem is that there is one thing that was injured in the fall which hasn't healed. My judgment was shattered, and it hasn't been repaired. I've just swept the pieces under the rug, because I have an obligation to my division, to my friends, to my comrades—and the obligation is stronger than ever because I failed them so badly, following Tousen. So I've hidden the shards away and forced myself to soldier on, like some clockwork toy all wound up by guilt and guilt and guilt. A tin soldier, with a bloody tear painted on his face.

But my judgment is broken. My judgment is broken and I'm blaming myself. I've slid down some nameless slope, into darkness, and my judgment is broken.

And I'm not sure if it will ever heal, no matter how many times Izuru says that he loves me, no matter how many times I make Momo laugh. No matter how many times I protect one of my subordinates, no matter how many times I may make the memory of my mother proud, no matter how many payments I make towards my debt... my judgment is broken, and I'm so scared—so scared!—that I'll never regain enough trust and self-respect to repair it.

It's the same for Izuru and Momo. I know it, when I see that heartbreaking little quirk of Momo's lips when Aizen's name is mentioned. I know it, when I watch Izuru staring out the window, and he just asks me—"Shuuhei, do you ever wish you could go back in time?"

They say that it's a tragedy that Tousen, Aizen and Ichimaru betrayed us so. But they're wrong.

The tragedy is not in the loss. The tragedy is not the past, not in the wounds which are growing older and older. The tragedy is in every new day we three see, every breath we draw in, every minute we live. The tragedy is the fact that we—the ones they left behind—have to live with the knowledge of everything we could have done.

That is the tragedy.