.


Dark Matter

A Bleach Fanfic

Chaos Theory AU

Chapter Three: Keeping Flowers in Full Bloom


The might that shaped itself through storm and stress
In chaos, here is lulled in breathing sweet;
Under the long brown ridge in gentleness
Its fierce old pulses beat.

-Æ (George William Russell)


Yuzu's feet pressed into the damp soil of her inner world; she curled her toes around the cool loam and pursed her lips. From above, the rain fell steadily, plastering her hair to her head and sliding beneath the collar of her sleeping yukata to curl down the length of her arms, gliding over her fingers until gravity cast it from her as surely as the march of time.

More surely—considering how time seemed to warp and twist here, until she wasn't certain if minutes had passed in the outside world or hours.

Hazel eyes narrowed, contemplating her unwelcome guest.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about his presence was that he, too, was damp from the rain, the heaviness of his white jacket preventing the color from fading too much under the steady fall of water. He smiled back at her, unperturbed by the flecks of moisture on his glasses or the way his hair was curling against his nape.

Sōsuke Aizen should not be so integrated with her world.

This would, she felt, be easier if he were aloof from it, a dry phantasm unaffected by the conditions here—an obvious intruder. Or even if he looked as she remembered him. But though he wore the black-lined uniform that had been commonplace in Las Noches, the square-framed spectacles and almost-shaggy hair were different. More in keeping with what she'd been told he disguised himself with during his time in Soul Society. The slightly doleful aspect it all lent him unsettled her.

It was much too human.

"But you acknowledged it, didn't you?" he asked, smiling slightly. "That I am human. As human as you. Not that I find the characterization particularly flattering, but this is your world, I suppose."

He might not be a god here.

But he wasn't a monster, either.

She didn't answer him immediately, frustrated by the fact that ignoring him entirely was impossible. Some bone-deep courtesy of hers didn't allow it. Or maybe it was the curiosity, or the danger. There were a lot of good reasons not to ignore him—the trouble was, she had no idea what to do instead.

With a glance over her shoulder, Yuzu made eye contact with Hasuhime. "What's he doing here?" she asked, hoping the spirit would have some answer she did not.

But the woman in her lovely furisode only pinched her immaculate, petal-pink lips and shook her head. She didn't know either, then.

Yuzu returned her attention to Aizen. Or the apparition of him that shouldn't be here. Surely it had something to do with the real him—not that Yuzu had the faintest idea what. He was crouching, now, reaching out with one hand to trace the slightly-wilted petals of a yellow freesia. His expression suggested a distinct interest; she'd been under the gaze before, but now the object of inspection seemed to be her inner world as a whole.

Her chest was tight; Yuzu recognized the feeling as wariness, flavored with the sharper taste of bile on the back of her tongue. She swallowed.

"I did," she said, finally answering his earlier question. It had probably been rhetorical, but if this… apparition was appearing in her inner world, then it was likely that engaging with him somehow was the only way to figure everything out. "But I never invited you in here."

It felt like a violation—moreso the longer she contemplated what it really meant. No one else had ever seen this place. They were in the deepest part of her, and she didn't want him anywhere near it.

Aizen placed his hands on his knees and stood, not dignifying that comment with a response. Instead, he crossed over the little arched bridge that led to the center island. Yuzu, almost against her better judgement, followed him.

"Now this is interesting." He'd folded his arms into his sleeves; now he was looking up at the tree, head tilted and water rolling down his jaw and neck.

She knew what he saw—the tree was still desiccated, still black and lifeless. Yuzu herself had wondered more than once about what that could possibly mean. There was nothing about anyone's inner world that wasn't meaningful somehow; and this was central in hers. She'd faced what it meant that her garden was half-dead—she needed to cultivate new things in it.

But trees didn't just come back to life. Hasuhime said it was dormant, not dead; but then she also had no idea what had made it so or even what kind of tree it was.

"Has something died in you, Yuzu?" He said it with an almost-mocking lilt, the words edged with derision.

Yuzu couldn't decide how she knew it, but she did know that the scorn wasn't exactly aimed at her. To be sure, he wanted to make her feel like less than him—that was par for their interactions thus far. But that rage that sat just beneath the menacing quiet of him… that was directed at something much older and larger than her.

She lifted her head; the change in angle shifted the trajectory of the water on her skin. Several fat drops fell from the very point of her chin onto the ground below. "Not because of you."

His smile widened; even the changes in his appearance couldn't minimize the menace of it. "No? But so much of your life has been because of me. I was choosing its course before we ever met. Before you existed."

Stepping away from the tree, he brushed past her, heading back towards the front of the garden and the attached building. Hasuhime tracked his progress with narrowed eyes; understandably, the spirit was not any happier about having her domain invaded than Yuzu was. For his part, Aizen merely tilted his chin down in her general direction as he stepped up onto the engawa. Yuzu grimaced and followed, dripping onto the polished wood even as the patter of rain on her head and shoulders stopped.

Unfolding his arms, he laid a palm flat on the door. Clear surprise flickered over his face, for a moment, resettling into amusement as he turned to glance at her over his shoulder. His eyes were difficult to read behind the distortion of droplets, but the curl to his mouth was obvious enough.

"You can't get through here yet."

Yuzu felt her jaw tighten. "What are you doing here?"

She didn't much feel like discussing the intricacies of this place with him, even if the tone of voice he used suggested knowledge she might want to have. She wouldn't be getting it from him.

He hummed, soft and contemplative, lifting his shoulders. "Perhaps you should ask me. The actual me."

She frowned, feeling the expression etch itself into her face. "The actual you is in a solitary confinement cell on the lowest levels of the Central Great Underground."

He arched an eyebrow at her—the precise halfway point between disdain and curiosity. "Of all the obstacles before you, that's the one you're stymied by? How disappointing."

She took a half-step forward. "You—"

How that sentence would have ended—and Yuzu wasn't entirely sure—she never got the chance to find out. Consciousness pulled at her, and knowledge that she was uncomfortable. Heat was prickling at her skin, sweat running the trails rainwater had in her dreams.

Karin.

Her own conundrum could wait, for now.


Yuzu sank into one of the chairs at the nurse's station. Technically, it was meant for a single nurse, but they'd pulled two more chairs to it for now. With both her and Karin here, as well as Matsumoto-san, dad had a lot more help than usual. He was away today, leaving her to act as doctor, mostly, since she was the one with the healing experience.

Of course, most of the people who came in had colds or minor injuries, which didn't require any particular expertise beyond what most every shinigami learned about first aid at Shin'ō. So it was mostly an empty distinction.

Pulling the nearest clipboard towards her, Yuzu added the forms she'd just filled out to it, rolling to the very old computer console at one corner of the desk and hitting 'enter' on the keyboard a few times to wake it up. Her last patient had been completely new to the clinic, and while the Rukongai did not have anything like health insurance, her dad still liked to keep track of the people who came through the clinic and what their problems were. Also how they'd paid, which was usually money but sometimes had to be things like maintenance or yard work on the property. Not everyone had enough stashed away to deal with unexpected expenses—Yuzu was very conscious of how nice her salary was. Not extravagant, by any means, but enough that she could tuck away a little each time she was paid.

She still couldn't comprehend the fabulous wealth of some of the people who lived in the Seireitei, though. Presumably extended lifespan made it easier for some of them, but not everyone in there had the reiryoku for that. Most of it was inheritance, she was sure.

Entering the new patient's name, she glanced to her side. Matsumoto-san was working at some forms, too—an exam report, it looked like. Yuzu knew that, like Karin, her sleep was restless at best. It was less clear what the reasons were, but she didn't pry. Lots of people had lost something or someone of importance during the war; it was not at all hard to believe that Matsumoto-san was among them.

Still, not wanting to pry was a very different thing from not wanting to help. Yuzu's eyes moved down the form; she blinked.

"Oh, um, Rangiku-san, you don't have to do the whole medical history on Shota-kun. He's been in a few times before. He just has a different last name now; his mother married." Yuzu stood, crossing to the filing cabinet and pulling the third drawer open. Flicking her fingers over each folder, she meandered back to the old one for the little boy and extracted it. "Just some new notes on what he came in for this time would be plenty."

She held the file out; Matsumoto—who didn't like to be called that, Yuzu knew—lifted her head and reached out to take it.

"Thanks, Yuzu-chan. Should I change the family name and put it in the right spot?"

"That would be really helpful—thank you." Yuzu smiled and went back to her chair.

She'd been tapping away at the keys again for a few minutes when Matsumoto spoke to her again. "This actually isn't all that different from doing division work."

Yuzu smiled a little wider and shook her head. "Not really, no. Especially Fourth Division work. These forms are pretty much exactly the same."

The door to the waiting room opened; Karin shuffled in with an armful of lunch containers. Plopping into the empty chair, she handed one of the bento to Yuzu and another to Matsumoto before opening the last one. "Chopsticks are in the boxes already," she said, pointing to the narrow opening at the side of her top layer.

Since Yuzu already knew that, she was probably saying it for the benefit of their guest.

"Oh, do I get to try one of Yuzu-chan's famous bento?" Matsumoto asked, peeling back the lid of hers with obvious curiosity.

Yuzu felt her mouth pull to the side. "I don't think they're famous," she pointed out, feeling a twinge of embarrassment. The warmth to her cheeks went with; she didn't blush half as darkly-red as Karin, but she did it a lot more often. Matsumoto had been to their house for dinner before, so she wasn't quite sure what the big deal was about lunch.

"Are you kidding? Renji loves these. So does Rukia-chan." Fishing her chopsticks out of their slot, Matsumoto dug in. It seemed like she'd barely swallowed before she was speaking again. "And the rumors are true—that is delicious." She grinned broadly; the edges were a little shaky, but the expression read as genuine. It lit up her whole face.

"Monkey only knows that because he steals my food," Karin grumbled, poking at her rice for a second. It was sticky enough that she left a hole in it.

"Thank you," Yuzu said, addressing herself to Matsumoto. "I'll be sure to make you one tomorrow, too." It wasn't like it was any extra trouble, really.

"I think I figured out how Isshin managed to not lose any body mass," the other woman added. "Was he secretly practicing with his sword too?" She contemplated her own question for a second.

"Who, him? He's way too lazy for that," Karin said, shoveling another clump of rice and mushrooms into her mouth.

She was… possibly right about that, though it did get Yuzu thinking. Most shinigami abilities relied much more on reiatsu than actual conditioning, but as she'd painfully learned in hohō class at the academy, conditioning made applying reiatsu in certain ways a lot less taxing. Maybe he had been keeping up with some kind of training regimen over the years that they didn't know about.

"Did he look the same, before—um." She wasn't really sure how to finish that in a way that wouldn't be even more awkward than not finishing it.

Matsumoto was conspicuously quiet for a moment, but then she straightened a bit where she sat. "Sort of. Didn't have the beard back then, and I guess he looked a little younger. But not that different."

Curiosity niggled at her, but Yuzu was cautious about asking anything else. She didn't know all the details, exactly, but Karin had filled her in on the broad strokes. It seemed like a sensitive topic to touch; she picked up her own utensils only then. The pickled plum had come out particularly well, if the sharp tang in the aroma of it was anything to go by.

"Hitsugaya said he basically fucked you guys over by going to the living world. Seems like you all were pretty close back then." Karin, of course, was unlikely to hide what she was thinking.

Yuzu resisted the urge to sigh softly.

Matsumoto didn't seem to take it badly, though, just chewing over her lunch thoughtfully and then swallowing. "He was… well, don't tell either of them I told you this, but he was absolutely Tōshirō's hero." Nostalgia, or something like it, turned her mouth at the corner; her eyes weren't looking at anything in the room anymore.

"And for a Sabitsura brat like me…" She paused, a line appearing between her brows. Her eyes snapped back into focus, flicking between Karin and Yuzu. "Safety. He was safety."

Yuzu could understand that. Her dad had been safety to her for a long time, too. Part of that was just because he was her dad, but more than a little had to do with his personality in general, too. He had a warmth to him, a comfort and sense of ease. Something familiar and homey.

"Sabitsura…" Karin echoed, frowning. "That's pretty far out there."

Everyone knew that most families were found ones, out there, when they existed at all. The souls that arrived in some other way than being born to other souls usually did so further away from the Seireitei.

Matsumoto interpreted it as an oblique question, lifting her shoulders. "I didn't have any family before the two of them. Except, well—" she fell silent, her face contorting in a way that meant the discussion had touched a raw nerve.

Yuzu sought to change the topic. "So tell us more about the Tenth. You were dad's fukutaichō, right?" It seemed to be a relatively safe topic by comparison.

Matsumoto cleared her throat, collecting herself for a moment before nodding. "I was. Of course Isshin never did any work, so that fell to us…"


The Fourth Division's complex was actually a bit larger than the standard space allotment for divisional grounds, but that was because they needed to fit a hospital and several auxiliary medical buildings on it in addition to the same barracks and mess and administrative buildings and training areas as the others had.

The hospital itself was significantly larger than the segment of it they kept in operation most of the time; with the battle and its aftermath, Yuzu understood why. They'd opened up all the extra wings, then, and the duty rotations had lengthened and become more frequent even for the unseated officers who normally handled things like laundry.

If she hadn't been among the injured, she'd have been among them. Yuzu had found that—laying on her narrow mattress and fretting about the conditions of her family and friends—she'd much rather be wearing herself out with the rest of the Fourth and at least knowing how everyone was doing. Maybe being able to do something about it.

But even though she was among the first to recover from her injuries, Unohana-taichō had forbidden her from working anywhere but the kitchen. She hadn't understood why—she was healed and knew how to heal others—until the notice had come from the Sōtaichō that she was being placed on leave.

She couldn't be one of the healers if she was still one of the patients.

And today, she was visiting the Fourth as a patient, even if no one really acknowledged it that way.

Pushing open the glass door, Yuzu bypassed the reception area and waiting room; she still had those rights, after all. Instead, she headed back for the central hub that was the nurses' station. Much larger than the one in her dad's clinic, and sort of deceptively named, since just about everyone stopped here to drop off, pick up, or log information of some kind.

This early in the morning, things were still slow; not unexpectedly, Hanatarō was the supervising officer. He looked like he was preparing the materials for Unohana-taichō, Isane-san, and Iemura-san, which was usually her job at this time.

Sensing her approach, Hanatarō glanced up, expression flickering with surprise for all of half a second before he smiled. "Yuzu-san. It's good to see you."

She offered an echo of the expression. "You, too, Hanatarō-san." Her eyes fell to the slim touchscreen he'd braced against one arm, fingers poised over the surface. "You're doing both of our jobs for now, then?" It seemed like a lot to demand of one person.

Hanatarō shook his head slightly. "It's not so bad. Mostly I just prepare and process appointments and notes, then do what I normally do. Occasionally, taichō will ask me to assist, but only when I'm not busy, so it works out fine. You don't need to worry."

Yuzu didn't need to wonder how Hanatarō knew she was worrying. He was basically the same way, and it hadn't taken them long to discover this fact about each other. She'd always catch him looking at doors where surgery or some other complicated procedure was going on and furrowing his brows. Or sometimes sneaking extra gelatin cups onto the trays for younger patients, or offering to do the last few pieces of paperwork by himself so someone else could go home earlier. There were countless examples like that.

"Okay," she said. They both knew that even if she didn't need to, she would. "But that does mean you have to take this." Sliding her satchel off her shoulder, Yuzu reached inside and pulled out a bento box. She'd made an extra this morning, for whomever her replacement turned out to be. Probably she'd subconsciously known it would be Hanatarō, because she'd included tamagoyaki, which she didn't make that often because Karin didn't like it. Hanatarō had mentioned that he did, though.

He looked surprised again, but accepted the box nevertheless. "You've got a deal, Yuzu-san." Setting both the bento and the tablet on the counter, he leaned over and looked down the hall. "By the way, um, I think taichō's in her office. If you were looking for her."

With a slight grimace, Yuzu nodded. "I should probably go. It's about time—she's expecting me."

With a final wave to Hanatarō, she headed down the hallway, turning when she came to the stairwell. Unohana-taichō's office was on the top floor of the hospital, and even if she didn't use it for much but lunch break, it was also where Yuzu went on the days her captain asked her to come in.

Before the war, she'd almost gotten used to being in there every day. Now, though—it wasn't anything specific that Unohana-taichō was doing, or really anything she was doing at all, but the sense of familiarity had… gone away. Everything felt like that now. It was hard to believe forty days could change a person so much, but if Aizen's invasion of her inner world was anything to go by, then maybe it had more to do with who the forty days had been with than anything.

Stopping just outside the door, Yuzu raised her hand to knock, then paused. Pulling in a deep breath and holding it for several seconds, she let it back out slowly through her nose, then rapped her knuckles smartly against the doorframe. Taichō never had to say anything specific to somehow convey that squeamishness was not something she particularly appreciated in her subordinates.

"You may enter." The captain's voice drifted trough the door, light and gentle as it always was.

Yuzu slid the door open and stepped in, sliding it closed behind her again without being asked. Unohana-taichō was hard at work behind her desk, it seemed, moving through paperwork with the calm efficiency of someone who'd been doing it long enough to know all the forms upside down and backwards. She set it aside with a slight rustle when Yuzu entered.

Instead of speaking across the desk, both of them moved to the low table the captain used for lunch, where a pot of tea already waited, a pale curl of steam wafting from the spout. Yuzu poured, then sat back in seiza on the cushions, lifting her cup with both hands and holding it gingerly in front of her.

But it was Unohana-taichō who spoke first. "How are you finding your leave, Kurosaki-kun?"

Yuzu wasn't exactly sure how to answer. Her lips parted; she sealed them closed again, setting her teacup down untouched and clasping her ceramic-warmed hands in her lap. There was a hangnail on her left index finger—smoothing over it repeatedly with her right thumb produced a little twinge each time. "I don't really know what to say, taichō. I guess it's… fine."

Unohana tilted her head, but took a slow sip of her tea before she replied. The room was slowly perfumed by the scent of chamomile. "You find something dissatisfying?" Her tone left the words open for interpretation, conveying neither judgement nor a really clear sense of just how much she knew or had already guessed.

It was difficult to respond to for exactly that reason. Yuzu thought it was entirely possible that her captain knew more about what was bothering her than she did—and that the only brand new piece of information was dangerous to convey. What would she think, if she knew that Aizen had begun to appear when her ninth seat dreamed or meditated?

"No, just—" Yuzu sidestepped that issue and tried to find the root of the rest of it. "I don't know. It feels like… I'm restless. It's hard to explain. I like working at dad's clinic and helping the people there, but I can't make myself forget about how big everything is outside of it."

The captain nodded slightly, her expression still unreadable as it had been for the first two such visits Yuzu had made since winter's end. "Big how?"

Yuzu twisted her grip, feeling the contours of her second knuckle under her fingertips. She dropped her eyes to her hands, watching her skin turn white, then flush again when she released her hold. "There's so much out there," she said softly. "And pieces of me still out there, too. I don't know if I'll get them back. I don't know if I want them back."

She could feel the weight of Unohana-taichō's regard even if she couldn't see it. "What pieces are those, Kurosaki-kun?" The sound of ceramic colliding softly with the table followed; she'd set her teacup down, too.

"Lots of things, I guess." Yuzu shook her head, reaching up to push back the strands of hair that dislodged when she did. Her hand lingered against the side of her neck; she could feel her pulse beneath her palm. "Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I don't think I'm the same person I was before it happened. And I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

Silence pervaded not unlike the herbal scent, hanging over the both of them and the room itself for some amount of time Yuzu couldn't quite keep track of.

"Perhaps," Unohana said at last, "that remains to be seen. To be made."


"Catch."

Yuzu turned just in time to get her hands in front of her. The gently-lobbed cabbage fell right into them with a soft impact sound; she blinked down at it for a moment before turning her eyes up to Uryū.

The little slant to the corner of his mouth was about as much smiling as he ever did. He shifted his bags of groceries back around so the weight was evenly distributed again, taking a few longer strides to catch up with her and walk at her side. "On your way home?"

She nodded. "Yes, actually. Are these for us?" Raising the cabbage to indicate what she was talking about, she nodded down at the other bags as well.

"Most of them. I picked up a few things for myself also." Of course, there were plenty of places to purchase food in the Seireitei, so she knew that if he was out in the Rukongai doing this, then the point had been to help them out.

Yuzu tossed the vegetable between her hands as they walked, smiling a little bit herself. "Do you want to stay for dinner tonight? I was going to make okonomiyaki—or something quick like that."

Uryū pursed his lips. "I'm not sure I should," he said at last. "I was planning to stay late at the division. There's a lot of work I still need to do for the transition."

She'd known about his promotion—it was the kind of thing that rippled through their mutual social circle quite quickly, even before he'd told them personally. Yuzu was happy for him, but she had to hope that the late nights wouldn't become too regular.

"Well, it's up to you," she said, with some delicacy. "But I'd like to thank you, somehow, for looking out for us." He'd done a lot of that. Not just since the war, either, though maybe it was most obvious now. Her eyes fell to the stone paving below their feet; she tucked the cabbage under her elbow.

The rustle of cloth bags probably meant he was adjusting his glasses. "You don't have to thank me for that," he replied, more quietly now.

"Yes I do." Yuzu stopped; he immediately did as well. She tilted her head up to meet his eyes. She felt—something. Some frustration building behind her own, making them hot and itchy. "You—you've done so much for me, and I don't… haven't…" A harsh breath escaped her; perhaps her talk with Unohana-taichō had left her more raw than she'd thought at first.

Uryū clearly sensed her distress. His attention shifted; he was scanning the immediate area. "Here," he said, gesturing over her shoulder with his chin. "Let's just sit down for a minute."

He'd spotted a park bench—they weren't too far from the house, just skimming the edge of a public garden. Yuzu nodded slightly and moved to it, sitting and placing the cabbage on her lap, a hand resting at each side of it. Uryū divested himself of his bags, putting them at the side of the bench before taking the spot next to her. For a while, they were both silent; only a few other people passed the bench by, none of them paying much mind to its quiet occupants.

Yuzu used the time to try and get a grip on herself; she wasn't even honestly sure where all this was coming from. She was upset, but not at anyone, and she felt uncertain about a lot of things and restless in a way she couldn't name and sad and lonely, which was ridiculous because she had so many amazing friends and family members.

It didn't make any sense, but that had never stopped feelings before.

"I'm sorry," she said, pulling in a deep breath. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

In her periphery, she saw Uryū shake his head. "There's nothing wrong with you, and I'm not accepting that apology. You don't owe me any."

She made an awkward little noise in the back of her throat and rotated the cabbage in her hands, following the pattern of white, webby veins on the leaves from bottom to top. Used to carry water once, but not since it had been severed from its roots. "I feel wrong," she admitted. "Like I don't fit in my life. And I feel like that's so terrible because you and everyone else did all of those things just to bring me back. You almost died—and it was my fault—and I can't even be grateful in the right way because I don't know how I feel about anything anymore." The sting in her eyes got worse; green and white started to blur together in her vision. Her breath came out unsteadily, a tremor she couldn't force away.

It wasn't that she wanted to go back to being Aizen's captive or anything. But—

The thought stopped itself, or she stopped it. Or maybe it was Uryū putting his hand on her shoulder that did it. Yuzu couldn't be sure. A gentle pressure tugged her closer; Yuzu yielded to it readily, letting her head rest against the crook of his shoulder. He was so spare, even with the muscle their training had given them all; he'd always be thin and sharply-angled. Just like she suspected she'd always be small and a little soft.

"Nothing that happened was your fault," he said, sounding quite sure of it. "You did what you had to do to survive, and that means that your feelings got caught up in all of it. No one who understands that could blame you for being confused, or conflicted, or any of that. I wasn't upset with you for healing someone who tried to kill me, and I'm not upset with you now."

A lump built in her throat as he spoke; she only just barely managed to swallow past it. It felt constricting, like she couldn't breathe. Yuzu squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face further in towards him. Her forehead pressed hard against the fabric over his collarbone. She couldn't stand the secret anymore. It was too big for her to carry by herself.

"He's in my head, Uryū." Her voice cracked and broke. "Aizen. He's in my inner world, and I can't make him go away."

She braced herself for the reaction, her entire body tensing and coiling to spring. But Uryū—reserved Uryū who didn't often touch people and who was probably already profoundly uncomfortable trying to hold her together while she not-quite-cried into his chest—just shifted his hold, splaying the fingers of one hand over her back and setting the other at the crown of her head. He stroked down the length of her hair, then did it again until it was repetitive, regular. Steady.

The cabbage rolled off her lap and onto the ground; Yuzu grabbed the sides of his uniform in her fists and held on for dear life.

Saying it out loud made it real. Like a dam had been broken, fear and misery welled in her chest, hitching her thin, wheezy breath in her throat. He was supposed to be gone. They were supposed to have won.

So why was she so sure she could feel him smirking at her, even now? In what sense was that a victory for anyone but him? Why did the danger of him still seem so obvious?

Why couldn't she stop shaking?

Yuzu lost track of how much time they spent like that. Uryū said things to her, she knew—things she recalled only as a hazy fuzz of softness, like being rolled in a blanket against the winter chill. It was funny, because his diction was usually precise and crisp, cool and sharp. It was odd that she should find it warm and indistinct instead.

When she finally relinquished her death-grip on him, she was more composed. But not any better. Just—calmer. And just for now. Maybe that was all she was getting from here on out.

By silent consensus, they gathered up the groceries and returned home. Uryū would never tell anyone her secret; she was already feeling bad for burdening him with it. He wouldn't call it that, though, and maybe she didn't have to, either. Maybe time would do her the kindness of distance, and all of this would seem more bearable. Maybe she could rearrange her life so that she fit in it again, and so did all the people she loved.

Maybe.


Term Dictionary:

Sabitsura –錆面 – "Rusted Face." The sixty-fourth district of Rukongai, and where Rangiku and Gin grew up.