Disclaimer: Don't own, etc.

Dedicated to my friend Megan. I haven't been much in the Bleach fandom for a while, but she likes ShuNao and this fic has been in my mind for a while.

Enjoy!

"Lisa-chan will be back soon."

Five words he can never take back.

You were not there when she needed you the most.

Kyoraku Shunsui had a reputation was one of the most powerful shinigami in Soul Society, but people were often disarmed by his easygoing demeanor to let it worry them. They knew that this fearsome man in battle was the same person who enjoyed being showered with rose petals and strolling along in a pink kimono.

They don't know that behind that smile, a nightmare rages in his head.

He wants to keep it that way.

Some days, he has to pour sake cup after sake cup down his throat just to blunt the claws of his guilt as it rips into him from the inside out, as if trying to climb out of him. He wakes in a hung over blur, hours later and wonders if he's trying to escape or be punished further or both. Sleep doesn't offer him much reprieve either- distorted images of Lisa's face swim through his mind, inhumane screams puncturing the silence of the night like a sterilized needle. He has long since stopped waking up in a cold, breathless sweat, but he can still see skulls and glowing red eyes if he blinks hard enough. You wouldn't know it from his casual, blithe demeanor.

He wonders if Nanao ever dreams of her, too.

Sometimes, he wonders if she even remembers Lisa.

And, if she does, he wonders if she remembers that he's a goddamned liar.

Nanao knows why Shunsui never lets her go out onto the battlefield. (He'd never admit it.) But the truth is, he carries the guilt of Lisa's banishment, draped over him as sure as the kimono he wears around his shoulders. He let Lisa go, so sure that it was nothing to worry about that he was oblivious when she, too, was swallowed up by the madness of Hollows. He had failed. He had failed as a Captain, for not thinking about the welfare of his subordinate. He had failed as a man, to sit at home while a woman was being cut down.

But most of all, he failed as a person. And nothing she says will convince him otherwise.

So Shunsui keeps Nanao close by, appears right when she thinks that she has truly no hope left. She doesn't resent him for this, exactly- she isn't one of the most combat-oriented lieutenants, but she wants to remind him that protecting her isn't going to chase away what happened. She wants to talk to him about Lisa, but she knows despair when she sees it and so swallows her questions, trying to bury into paperwork to keep herself busy.

It usually works.

"You were confident in her. You believed in her." Ukitake told Shunsui, over and over again. "That doesn't make you the Devil, Kyoraku."

No, it doesn't.

But it doesn't stop him from envisioning Lisa's blood spraying from her chest, of the horrible, distorted screams as the Hollow took over her. It doesn't stop him from wishing that it had been in her place, as he should have been.

He couldn't have known.

Ukitake has assured him this platitude multiple times. But Shunsui has never once been comforted by it. While he truly had confidence in Lisa's strength- she was his lieutenant for a reason, he still carries the mistake of waving her on without a second thought in his heart. He knows that Ukitake is a hypocrite. A well-meaning one, yes, but he knows that his childhood friend regrets the death of Shiba Kaein every day. Shunsui himself doesn't know if all Captain's mourn their subordinates, but not all of them sat obliviously by while somebody very important to them was forcibly mutated into a monster like he did.

Nanao grows up to look eerily like Lisa and it makes his chest hurt to look at her. He wonders if this is a conscious decision on Nano's part, a strange way of paying her own respects to Lisa's memory. Lisa is not technically dead- not by Soul Society standards- but her ghost is still very much present, stalking the halls of the Eighth Division as if daring Shunsui to ignore her. He wouldn't even if he could.

I'm sorry.

You should be.

When he meets Lisa again on the battlefield, one of the first things she does is kick him in the head.

He'd expected her to be angry with him, but all she had to say on the matter was for him to watch her. She wanted to prove that she had become much stronger than she ever was. She wanted to show him that what happened had not managed to defeat her. Lisa had not allowed it to.

Shunsui admires her for that. As he watches her ebony braid whipping in the wind, he wishes that he could let go like she has. He knows things will never be quite the same between them, whether or not Lisa does return to Soul Society after all this is over. It is a bittersweet feeling to see her this way.

Nanao watches Lisa and Shunsui. The look they exchanged has so many meanings behind it that it steals her breath from her. Sometimes, she forgets there was somebody else to prop up their Captain and to watch his back as they followed him. It leaves her peculiarly hollow.

All three of them know that something exists between them that has suddenly shifted at their reunion. But there is no time to talk.

There never was enough time.