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A Bleach One-shot (in two parts)
She opened her eyes to a cold, unforgiving kind of darkness. It was different than having her eyes closed, even though she could make out no more of her surroundings when they were open. The darkness she saw – and yes, it was a darkness she could definitely see – was deeper than any darkness she had ever experienced. It surrounded her, consumed her, threatening to drown and suffocate her.
Yet she felt nothing. No fear, no guilt, no regret – nothing. Her mind was completely blank, apart from a selection of black and white pictures that ran through her memories. She was seeing – not consciously seeing, rather… remembering – the life of a young girl. No emotions arose inside her as she watched, even though the girl she saw was definitely herself. She felt no attachment to the people she saw – they were probably important to her, or they had once been – but she felt nothing. There was an emptiness inside her that she could not describe as she watched her life go by inside the darkness.
Her eyes stared into nothingness as the cold closed in. Was she supposed to fight this? Was she supposed to try and find a way out of the darkness? She didn't see the point – something told her that being unfeeling had to be an improvement. There had to be a reason for her to be here, something that justified the emptiness. Maybe she had experienced great pain or loss – maybe she had wished for blissful ignorance.
Her ignorance at the moment, her unfeeling existence – that was not blissful. But she lacked the will to change it. Why not just stay the way she was now? What was the point of waking up… to pain?
She was suspended in some kind of void – she could spin around freely, and wherever she turned she saw small, shimmering lights around her, too far away for her to ever reach them. They were simply there, providing her with enough light to know that she was the only living thing for as far as she could see.
That wasn't really saying much, since she had nothing to measure her sight by – she didn't know how far she could see, since there was nothing here except the unreachable lights and her own body.
Living – was she even alive…? When she searched her brain for something that would tell her whether she was alive or dead, she seemed to hit a wall.
Who am I? Why am I here? What does "here" even mean…?
She didn't understand a thing. All she knew was that she existed – for the moment, that was all she could hold onto.
She noticed that she was floating, and gently moving in one direction, constantly. It didn't bother her for the moment – there was nowhere she was headed, and should there be some kind of destination she would see it up ahead soon enough. What did bother her was that faint scraps of memory were beginning to find their way to the forefront of her mind. Memories, pictures – of herself, she realized. She tried to grasp them, to see them more clearly and find out who she was, and how she had got here – but they didn't seem to want to be seen. She only ever caught fleeting images: A table with seven people sitting around it, two adults and five children. A cupboard being opened to reveal a small child, hiding – probably during some kind of game. A wooden floor, stained with something dark and liquid – it looked like wine, slowly spreading a stain across the light surface.
The only color she could see, she realized, was red. The rest of these memories were black and white and blurry. And the only sound she heard repeatedly was a loud, high-pitched scream.
Somewhere inside this cold, unending darkness, a light had appeared. Not bright, but very faint and dull, and pretty far away.
She stared at it without emotion, and mostly out of lack of anything else to look at. It seemed to be coming closer, slowly and gracefully.
She decided that she thought it was kind of pretty – it wasn't as cold and unfriendly as the darkness. But what would happen when it reached her? Should she try to avoid it, or seek safety and comfort inside it?
She stared straight ahead, indifferently. She guessed she would just let it come for now – it was still far enough away for her to get out of its way later.
Instead she turned a part of her attention – without real interest – back to the colorless and emotionless memories. It was strange, somehow… she felt absolutely nothing, even though she recognized herself as the person the memories belonged to. From what she could tell, they were perfectly normal situations – normal, gray and boring. Hazy, even. As if she has spent all that time in some kind of trance. Sure, there was emotion in the memories themselves – but no lasting one, just passing turbulences of the outer layer of her feelings. A little anger, a little hatred, a little joy, a little sadness. She didn't feel the need to acknowledge any of these as important. There was nothing that actually made her feel – the real her, beneath the outer layer of indifference.
Another thing that struck her was that she seemed quite young in these memories, even though she knew she was now older. Was there some part that she was missing? Some part that she had forgotten…?
Her eyes returned to the light, which had edged considerably closer than before.
Something inside her told her to let it be, to ignore it and wait for it to pass – but another, much smaller and quieter part of her seemed to look up into this light with admiration and wonder. It was such a tiny, dull light – and yet, it did more than she did, right? She wasn't glowing – she doubted she'd know how to, anyway. But that aside, that light… she imagined it could feel. And even though the biggest part of her was glad about her indifferent shell, a tiny part still wished, only for a moment, to be inside that light and understand the world that she so rarely touched with her own emotions.
Once she had noticed the screaming, it hadn't stopped. It was like she had pressed some kind of an irreversible button, or entered a one-way road full of loud, obnoxiously raised voices, without the option of turning back.
Another thing had changed since she registered the noise – she was moving faster now, flying towards something in the far distance. She had no idea where she was going, and she still found her velocity comfortable, but the slightest hint of surprise had found its way into her mind when she realized she had accelerated. Why was she now moving faster than before? Earlier on she hadn't even known that she was heading in a specific direction, and now it seemed like there was definitely some kind of force somewhere far away that was moving her towards something, pulling her into – well, into what? She didn't know. It wasn't enough to unsettle her, but still she found it peculiar, and the screaming also puzzled her.
While she moved, more memories seemed to be flooding into her mind, and all of them only had one color – the same bright red that seemed to weave itself like a thread through everything she had ever seen and done. She had recognized herself as one of the children in these memories, and she seemed happy – she felt warmth inside her heart when she remembered these scenes with the children that she guessed were her siblings. But, for some reason, she was unable to see their faces – they were shrouded in darkness, impossible for her to make out. And throughout all her memories, there was, aside from happiness, a quiet, shadowing emotion weighing over her – some sort of foreboding, frightening feeling that wouldn't let go of her no matter how hard she tried to shake it off. She felt that something was fundamentally wrong with her memories, and had the strange notion that something horrible was going to happen, a sensation she could not explain. And whenever she allowed that dark feeling to take hold of her, even if only for a moment, trying to find its source, she was returned to the image of the bright red liquid on the ground, and the screaming rang in her ears.
The light was close now – so close that she felt she could reach inside it if she only stretched out her hand. It had stopped moving and was now hovering in front of her, bobbing up and down ever so slightly as if to say "go ahead, touch me!". She wasn't sure she wanted to. The biggest part of her brain was telling her to leave it be – it would surely go away if she didn't pay attention to it, right?
But there was this small bit of doubt. "Don't you want to leave this darkness?" it was screaming. "Don't you want to know what's on the other side…?!"
She didn't know if she wanted to know. She couldn't deny that now that she thought about it, the darkness was becoming rather unfriendly and cold around her – the light was tempting her, offering her an alternative. But was it really an alternative?
What came next, after opening one's shell to emotion and light? What happened then? Surely there wasn't only joy and happiness and laughter – there had to be a dark side, too, with pain and suffering and hatred. She would have never confessed this to herself, but there was a fear inside her, a fear of that dark side. She didn't want to feel anymore. She had had enough of that.
…enough of that?
But… that made no sense. Her memories showed only shallow and unmeaning emotions.
What, then, had made her become the way she was now, unfeeling and… cold?
Was there something else, something that she had been missing?
Ignoring the bobbing light in front of her, she closed her eyes, trying to remember more. Her indifference was wavering – she did want to know what had happened to her, somehow.
More memories of the same structure as the ones before came up before her eyes. She could see a perfectly normal, almost boring life before her – one that wasn't in the least interesting or engaging.
What was it, then?
The light was hovering closer to her, and she found, to her surprise, that it was only inches away from her fingers when she reopened her eyes.
In a reflexive movement she pulled her arm back, away from it - but that was when it happened. The light, tiny as it was, shot forwards at a speed she could not follow, and collided with her hand. And in that second, there was a huge burst of color and brightness, and all darkness vanished from around her.
She was now accelerating to a point where it was considerably making her feel uneasy. She felt that now, if she were to find some sort of obstacle in her path, she would definitely collide with it for lack of time to move aside. Of course she had nothing to measure her speed by except the glowing lights in the distance, but she didn't seem to be coming closer to any of them – it was more like she was moving alongside them. Now, however, she could no longer distinguish the single lights from one another, it was more of a big blur to her left and right, and an unsure goal ahead of her.
Furthermore, she got the uncomfortable feeling that she was being followed, and that something dark and dangerous was lurking right behind her. She did not dare turn around, and given her speed she didn't think it was wise – at least this way she could see where she was going.
The screaming still filled her ears, and the image of the red floor did not leave her inner eye. She was trying to shut it out, trying to concentrate more on the problem she faced now: Not knowing how to stop or diminish her speed.
Between the screams she could now hear children laughing – they seemed faint and distant, but she could definitely hear them. She also heard them calling someone's name, but she didn't understand the words they were saying.
The images from her memory had burned themselves into her mind, and she was beginning to see them wherever she looked, as if she were shooting through a tunnel with her memories pasted to its walls. Flashes of red mixed with the blur of lights around her, and she felt compelled to close her eyes.
But she didn't dare. Something was starting to show up ahead, rapidly coming closer as she accelerated. It was white and bright and it blinded her, and fear was building up exponentially inside her the closer she got to it.
She was suspended in nothingness – that much she knew. But everything around her was now full of bright, shining colors. Suddenly the world around her seemed vivid and emotional. The darkness from before had vanished.
Bright feelings overwhelmed her, swallowing her up and engulfing her in sharp definition.
There was laughter now, warmth and a new feeling she could not place.
Strange and unknown though they were, they took away all her indifference at once and replaced it with euphoria.
Pictures were flashing across her mind – She saw herself inside her plain, gray world, walking though yet another door into another new part of her life, her expectations low. But then, suddenly, a burst of color erupted in front of her. A girl, sitting at a desk with an empty seat next to her, ablaze with brightness and liveliness. She found herself sitting next to her, listening to her animated words, overwhelmed by her joy and enthusiasm.
So it was her. This girl had taken away the darkness – she had brought light, and above all, a meaning. Something worthwhile that no one had been able to show her up until then: The joy of being alive.
She reached the light she was speeding towards in a matter of seconds, and was immediately sucked inside it, consumed by its brightness. Lights danced around her in every thinkable color, and laughter echoed in her ears. Laughter full of friendship and compassion, happiness and joy. Another memory took hold of her – a girl her age, walking alongside her. She could not hear the words they spoke, but their combined laughter rolled over her like a wave.
Why, then, did her fear not pass…?
It was still there, like a gigantic shadow hovering behind her, waiting to strike without second thought.
It was her constant companion, day and night, watching and waiting. Waiting for her to break.
And yet again the red splashes tore through her vision, staining her face in sticky liquid.
She reached upward to touch her cheek, gasping – the memory was so real.
Why? What was she so afraid of?
Then, suddenly, the color vanished. Her surroundings became dark and foreboding, as she found herself standing in the unlit hall of a large house. One she recognized as her home.
The silence around her was absolute, so complete that it sent a cold shiver down her spine.
She felt herself shaking – but then she froze. A gut-wrenching scream tore through the air.
She was immersed in this new, happy feeling. She felt invincible, as if she were floating. To have found a friend like her was something she could never have imagined – and how should she have been able to, all her life wandering in darkness?
But this feeling of security lulled her into a dangerous carelessness. She was feeling invincible – but that did not make it so.
And soon, very soon, reality came crashing down upon her.
It came in the shape of two bright, cold lights, rushing straight towards her.
She was like a deer caught in these headlights – unable to move or to react. The lights came closer and closer, and her insides screamed to her to run, to dodge – to move.
But it was impossible. She was dazed, caught in her false idea of invincibility, too late to see the harshness of the truth. Everything around her seemed to slow down, and she became incredibly calm at the last moment. There was nothing she could do anymore.
Suddenly, a scream echoed in her ears, bringing her back into reality.
"Watch out!"
She ran across the hall, her breath accelerating. The scream echoed in her ears, and her panic grew rapidly.
Rounding a corner she banged her knee on a small wardrobe, but she ignored the stinging pain and pressed on, a dark foreboding feeling looming over her, to the source of the noise.
The door to the room at the end of the hall stood ajar, and the first thing she laid eyes on was the dark red stain on the ground, spreading steadily further.
There was a second scream, louder and more terrifying than the first, followed by a soft whimper of fear.
She burst through the door – and froze in her tracks.
Another scream filled her ears, and she realized in an instant that it was her own.
The sight spread out before her was incomprehensible, utterly horrifying and brutal. She fought back the urge to vomit as she saw the bodies of two small children lying on the floor – slaughtered to the point that made them unrecognizable.
A figure stood above a third child, cowering in a far corner, with a raised knife.
"NO!" she screamed. "No… no… NO!"
A body slammed into her from the side, causing her to stagger.
The scene unfolded before her in less than a second – understanding came right before it was too late.
It was her, the girl from the earlier memory. She had thrown herself at her in an attempt to save her from the oncoming car. But her strength had not sufficed.
What the hell was she doing, now they were both going to die!
At the last second she turned to her friend, seeing desperate determination in her eyes, which was, at the final moment, overwhelmed by fear.
She remembered that her last thoughts had concerned the other girl – the only light, after all, she had found in her life. And it was the horrible feeling of guilt that remained.
The figure had paused in its movement, realizing that it was being watched. Sounds of footsteps came from the hallway outside, and the shouts of raised voices.
In a fluid movement, the figure moved towards the window, leaving supposedly the way it had come.
She was still frozen in the doorframe, her hands clasped in front of her mouth. The sight of the tortured children had forever burned itself into her mind.
A new memory swept over her – but her senses had now dulled. She saw the girl from before, the girl from her happy memories, walking across a street. In an instant she realized a car was speeding towards her – and a strong emotion took hold of her, a need to save her not matter what. She was not going to stand by while another person dear to her was killed – she would never stand for being helpless again, not even at the cost of her life.
"Watch out!" she heard herself scream as she flung herself forward, just in time to reach her friend before the car did, but too late to push her aside.
Their gazes met at the last moment, caught in the bright cold lights of the car, and hearing the sound of its loud beeping horn before the impact.
Hey there, everyone!
I know many of you have been waiting for me to update Water and Ice and my other stories - don't worry, I haven't forgotten them. On the contrary, I'm constantly worrying about them. In the meantime I decided to try out a different style somewhat, and this is the result. Further explanations for this will follow in the second part, which will complete this oneshot. I just thought I'd shorten it a bit, and that's how it turned out to be two parts instead of just one.
Anyway, I hope you can forgive me for taking so long to update, and also for not updating the fictions I should - but there will be updates again. I promise. I am doing all I can.
This fiction is something rather special, so it gets a dedication: This oneshot is for my best friend. She ought to know that :) Even though I'm a moody and difficult person, she puts up with it, and that's what makes her awesome. Thanks a lot!
And of course, a huge thanks to anyone who still stuck with me even though I've taken such long break now... you guys are my motivation! So thank all of you, and I'll see you all again soon.
~ZoeTsunami~