Title: Clinging to Hope
Author: darkling59
Fandom: Bleach
Date: 6/10/2022
Disclaimer: Bleach and all associated characters, settings, concepts, etc within this story do not belong to me.
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It was difficult to conceive of the true enormous size of Hueco Mundo without having been there, Jushiro reflected tiredly. When told that he had an hour to find the portal home and that the opening device would appear near the spot he'd been transported to, it sounded so simple.
But the sands were both unchanging and ever moving; the expressionless white expanse stretched out in all directions, constantly blown about and shifting from the stinging wind but never truly changing form. As soon as he moved from his original spot, he lost his way back and if the return device HAD materialized correctly and within his eyesight, it had been consumed by the shifting sands before he could find it. With only the static moon in the sky, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed but Jushiro was certain it was far longer than an hour...probably longer than twice that. When he attempted to lay out a grid and search logically, his lines and markers were erased; leaving him even more turned around and lost. Now, he had no idea whether he was right on top of his original spot or miles away. No landmarks to navigate, no one he could ask for directions, no way to trace his path, and no way home; just the sand, the moon, the occasional quartz tree, and the hollows.
Increasingly frantic and far-reaching searching produced no results; all it did was attract hollows.
He was going to die here, Jushiro realized after what must have been at least two days of wandering. The realization was surprisingly calm and came with a quiet sense of resignation. He had no food, no water, no shelter, and hollows regularly screamed in the distance. The scavengers were circling like ravenous sharks and drawing closer as their prey weakened. He'd fought the first wave off with his zanpakuto, but as soon as he stopped to rest, they would be on him. Already staggering from exhaustion with darkness eating at his vision from hunger and fatigue, that wasn't far off.
None of his friends would ever find whatever the hollows left of his body; a single insignificant speck swallowed by the sand.
His world became a mantra; just one more step, one more step, one more step…As long as he kept moving, they would consider him a threat and keep their distance. For a time, he could postpone his inevitable collapse.
The shinigami captain was so doggedly focused that he didn't notice as the howls all around gradually faded away and the wind died down, nor how the concentrated reiatsu in the air around him steadily thickened until it lay over the landscape like a stifling, deadly blanket. He did notice the dead hollows; bodies lying sprawled where they'd fallen. At first he just shot them dull passing glances, assuming they were the natural byproduct of hollow competition. However, the bodies quickly increased in number and power level; where he'd originally only seen one or two massive low level hollows every few hundred feet, now he was seeing entire packs of small adjuchas interspersed with single bodies of even greater power. As the desert came to appear more and more like a battlefield and feel more and more like a graveyard, he crested a final hill and came to a startled halt. There were massive piles of bodies in the valley between the sand dunes, standing many times his height in some places. It was a morbid, grisly tableau made more unsettling by the absolute silence.
But he did not have the time to appreciate it. As soon as he stopped walking, his body decided it had had enough. A rough, bloody cough forced its way from his throat. When he tried to bend over to relieve the pain and wait out the coughing fit, his trembling muscles finally gave out and the sand rushed up to meet him. He pitched forward down the hill, flailing ineffectually. All he managed was to trigger small sandslides that followed him as he rolled, creating a constant stream of loose, scratchy white silt that got in his eyes, mouth, hair, and clothes. He came to a halt when he fetched up against the body of a dead hollow at its bottom.
He lay there covered in a fine layer of sand with his vision blacking out, muscles unresponsive, and blood filling his lungs. His pitiful coughs and wheezes did not help clear his chest and he didn't even have enough strength left to brush away the sand. Distantly, he noted that the hollows had stopped screaming before he finally fell into blissful unconsciousness.
Author's Notes
This story is five chapters long (well, four plus an epilogue) and will be posted once a week, every Friday until it's complete.
Fun Fact: I wrote this story out of order over the course of three different years: 2014, 2019, and 2022.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!