Author's note: I do not own Bleach or its characters. This is AU.
Reminders
He woke gasping, his hand going to his side. The wound had healed, but the memories remained. Shunsui reached for the lamp at his bedside. Experience told him that he wouldn't be getting anymore sleep tonight. Instead, he lit the lamp and reached for the scroll he'd been reading before bed. Romantic poetry wasn't exactly appropriate for the situation, but it was lighthearted reading that hopefully would keep his mind of the memories.
Shunsui almost hadn't made it to Karakura. There had been two attempts on his life during his journey. One before he had even left Seireitei. That had been a very near miss. It had been a good thing that Jyuushiro had been riding with him to the border. His friend had recognized the poison by smell. Shunsui assumed that's what came of having a healer as a wife. Whatever the reason, he was grateful. He really wasn't ready to give up on life just yet. The first incident had made him wary though, and that had probably saved his life when the second attack came.
It had been two days away from his arrival in Karakura. If there hadn't been a temple near by, Shunsui doubted he would have survived. He'd been ambushed just after dark. Later, Shunsui had been told they were bandits. They seemed awfully well trained for bandits though. He'd killed many of them, but one man, however skilled, against a dozen or more was never in a good position. They had wounded him badly and left him there to bleed out. Shunsui really didn't remember much besides the pain and the battle haze, but he remembered the man who had been leading the group. If they ever met again, Shunsui would have a debt to repay to Kaname Tosen. He didn't know when the other knight had betrayed their order, but it was clear that he was no longer interested in upholding the rules of the order.
He sighed. The poetry wasn't distracting him as he had hoped it would. Something was going on back home, and there was nothing he could do to help except gather what information he could and send it back home. So far his low profile and new identity had protected him from any further attacks, but it was still a concern. But he worried more about what he was missing. While he was sending information to Urahara on a regular basis, Shunsui didn't get much in the way of news from home. Other than general gossip, he had very little knowledge of what things in Seireitei were like right now.
The miniatures of his princess caught his eye, and Shunsui let out another sigh. Nanao would be fifteen this summer. She wasn't a little girl anymore. There was never any gossip about her, and he could only guess at how she'd changed. He hoped she was happy. He had promised her that he would return as soon as she came to power, and he would keep that promise. He just hoped that she would still want him to. He reached for the flask of sake that he had taken to keeping by his beside. With his alcohol tolerance, it didn't really do more than take the edge off his memories, but even that helped. Dawn was a long while off.