Requested by 3R15UKOUM31- thank you
Hebi x Karin, Saru, hints of one-sided Renji x Rukia
Hebi is the snake half of Zabimaru, for those who didn't watch the latest (filler) arc of the anime.
Afraid
He wasn't really afraid of all that much. He and Saru had seen a lot of things with Renji, and had been beaten up too many times to worry too much about pain any more. He hadn't thought that there would be anything that he would become afraid of- each bad guy that they met, they either destroyed or learned from, and if they were to die, at least it would be in battle, in glory.
Then, he found freedom. Then, he met her.
He supposed that it was far worse to have something taken away from him once he understood what it was. He had never been concerned with freedom before, believing himself to have it, but that brief time in the Human World had made him realise that he didn't have any of it, nothing like it, at all.
And then, to have to give that up again- that would hard. That, that would be difficult.
Which was why he supposed that it was better if he never saw Karin Kurosaki again.
Saru believed that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. He could tell- that was why she looked at Rukia with more of an affectionate eye than he did. He could remember, could still feel it even now, the grief that came unbidden over their wielder, and he knew that he would prefer any day not to have to face that, to be able to go back and change Renji in some way so that he had never met her, never had to live with that pain.
So, he was okay with never getting to look at her face, hear her voice, touch her skin; never again.
Because it was better that way. Safer. Stronger. It was always the better way, to never had had her, so that he could never be afraid of losing her, after that.
Wasn't it?
If Saru disagreed, then she kept silent, and did not correct him. And if, at night, she heard him mutter a name in his sleep- just softly, under his breath, the two syllables catching in his throat as if he were sobbing- then she never mentioned it, to anyone.