Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. Oh, the things I would do if I did…
The first time Yoruichi undresses Soi Fon, they burn, and Soi Fon's face flushes with shame. Her skin is pockmarked by stabs and puncture wounds, ridged and scarred by countless avulsions and tears, cuts and bites. To her, each one is a sign of her weakness, a reminder of a failed mission or her reckless abandon, telltale signs of her insanity, the training she subjected herself to, the quiet hours where she would try to forget her mentor in the controlled pain of a blade.
They are a red letter. So when Yoruichi takes off her uniform and gazes at her, all Soi Fon can feel is embarrassment. To be judged by the person you could never hope to be worthy of and to have the proof of that inadequacy laid out so plainly is mortifying. She feels as if she is letting down her lover, because she does not deserve Yoruichi and the princess could do so much better than her scraped and ruined flesh.
But Yoruichi traces each one of them in wonder. Yoruichi doesn't have scars. Maybe one or two, but they are hard to see, small, mostly healed over. Soi Fon thinks that to a goddess, her failures must be intriguing, a sign of her fragility, so she lets her goddess ghost her fingers over her war wounds.
They are just the opposite for Yoruichi and very much the same. For her, scars are no new thing. She has seen them countless times on the bodies of foes and friends, the comrades she led into battle and the soldiers she's saved from the frontlines. She wants to believe that she understands the pain in each one, but the size and scope of them, the network of jags and slashes across Soi Fon's skin protests. She is left amazed by the resilience of the woman under her and humbled by the way Soi Fon lets her see them.
Yoruichi thinks herself unworthy of Soi Fon's trust. Maybe she has never failed as much as her protege, and the life of a noble has left her as flawless as the day she was born, but it is just that lack that fuels the guilt inside of her chest. It pumps a sullen blood, heavy and dark with the emptiness of not knowing what Soi Fon has endured. How could she empathize with, understand, support her partner like this? She has never had to push through the crushing weight of defeat.
Except this.
This feels like defeat, because each scar is a story, a story that Yoruichi missed, a moment when she wasn't there to help the love of her life.
She thinks back to the incessant comics Urahara texts her. Most of them are jokes, things he pairs with "You" or "have you done this with your little bee yet?" But some of them are different. One of them sticks out in her mind as she bends down to kiss Soi Fon, trying to siphon away her lover's embarrassment and maybe even her pain. The comic is a short affair, a human couple's timeline as they grow old together. It starts in their childhood and stretches through their college years and careers and retirement, and it fills Yoruichi with sadness. She will never get to share that couple's happiness in the same way with Soi Fon.
Yoruichi has missed too much of Soi Fon's life, and now after a century of lost time, she can never recover those milestones her little bee has had to reach on her own. Yoruichi will never know what Soi Fon's Captain Ceremony was like, she will never know her lover's first solo mission, she will never know the face Soi Fon made when she unlocked her bankai. Soi Fon's scars are a reminder of that, of her own failure to be there.
It is a wonder how Soi Fon is still here, Yoruichi thinks as she runs her hands over her lover's ridged flesh, the countless dissolved stitches and scarred cuts crisscrossing Soi Fon's body. They have a different texture from the few patches that have been spared, stiff, tough, almost scaly, and Yoruichi marvels at her little bee's strength.
It's just, how does Soi Fon feel about all this? Yoruichi pauses and looks up at her lover, a small part of her anxious that she's making her little bee relive something better left forgotten. In that moment, she wants to shoulder all the trauma and hurt simmering under the scarred tissue her hands are resting on, but it's an impossible wish.
Soi Fon sees how Yoruichi hesitates before kissing her flesh. She can see the fear in her lover's eyes, as if contact will contaminate her own flawless skin. "You don't have to force yourself," she whispers to Yoruichi. The last thing she wants to do is drive away the only good thing in her life.
"No," Yoruichi shakes her head. "It's just…"
They lie there awhile, Soi Fon's robes open to Yoruichi's gaze.
"I don't want to hurt you," Yoruichi leans in and whispers to Soi Fon.
Soi Fon almost laughs. "They don't hurt anymore."
"That's not what I meant." Yoruichi's breath almost shatters Soi Fon, because now she knows that Yoruichi knows.
"Don't worry about me. It's my fault for being weak enough to earn them in the first place." Soi Fon pulls Yoruichi down, right up against her chest so the older woman can't see her body anymore.
"Don't say that." Yoruichi lets herself be dragged down. "It's not your fault. We all make mistakes." Her arms snake around Soi Fon's body, hugging her back.
"You don't." Soi Fon can feel herself grin, looking up into the shocked face her goddess makes. Her heart is so full, it might burst, but at least she can see Yoruichi like this.
"I did…" Yoruichi mutters, burying her face into the crook of Soi Fon's neck. The movement is accompanied by a quick squeeze as the goddess hugs her protege.
Soi Fon doesn't reply; she doesn't know how to. Instead, she lets her goddess hold her.
"You know, you really are beautiful."
And Soi Fon braces herself for what Yoruichi will say. "No, I'm not. Look at me." She almost laughs.
"You are," Yoruichi breathes. "All of you."
"This part of you." She kisses Soi Fon's cheek.
"And this part of you." Yoruichi moves lower, to her collar where a burn mark that was surely left by her bankai stretches wide.
"And this part of you." Yoruichi cups Soi Fon's breast.
"All of you." By the time Yoruichi finishes listing off everything she can think of, her head is lying on Soi Fon's belly. It's the most damaged part of her body. There's so much scar tissue that if Yoruichi fell asleep, it would leave a mark on her face, a silent map of the punishment carved into Soi Fon's skin.
Soi Fon is silent, and Yoruichi stays put, content listening to her little bee's heartbeat through her stomach. It's a wild kind of fluttering.
"Maybe," she finally mutters.
"You are!" Yoruichi chuckles as she drags herself back up to Soi Fon's face and kisses her. "Don't you believe me?"
"I do."
At least, she wants to. She wants to believe in Yoruichi, but Soi Fon doesn't even want to look at herself. She knows how every single one of them appeared, how they dug into her flesh and reminded her just how far away she was from the woman now holding her. Against one hundred and ten years of solitude, even Yoruichi's words seem small.
"Tell me how you got them."
It's a small request in words, but Soi Fon can tell how heavy it is. It weighs on both of them, her body practically screaming that lost century to Yoruichi. Soi Fon isn't sure how to say it. "Do you really want to know?"
"I do." Yoruichi breathes Soi Fon in, almost trying to direct her to do the same, to relax.
"Why?" Soi Fon nearly chokes on the word.
Yoruichi could reply that she doesn't know. She could say that she wants to know Soi Fon's story. In truth, those answers are almost the truth. Instead, Yoruichi tells her everything. "Because I don't want you to bear them on your own anymore."
Soi Fon ponders her answer. "Do you really think you can take them from me?" She laughs for real this time. The idea is ridiculous. How could Yoruichi lift a scar off of her skin?
"It might make you feel better, and…" Yoruichi trails off. Soi Fon can feel her swallow as she considers her next words. "Maybe it'll help me understand how much I hurt you."
It is the first time Yoruichi has ever admitted fault. The guilt has always lain between them, in the anxious glances her goddess passes from time to time, the assurances and compliments Yoruichi pays her whenever she senses Soi Fon tensing. Yoruichi smooths things over in credit. She does not bother with debt.
Soi Fon weighs the options in her head, between her shame and Yoruichi's guilt. It is dark out now, and maybe in the darkness, when only Yoruichi's eyes can make out her imperfections, she can admit where everything went wrong.
"You won't like what I say."
"That shouldn't stop you." Yoruichi curls up into the crook of Soi Fon's neck. "We're partners now, right? I'm trying to be better."
Soi Fon chuckles. "It's a lot to lay out for our first real night together. I thought we'd be more romantic than this."
Yoruichi runs her hand down Soi Fon's arm and a particularly long scar. "I missed a hundred and ten years of you, you know." And just from the way she says it, Soi Fon can tell she isn't the only one hollow and aching. "I want to stay by your side for all of it, not just the romantic bits."
Soi Fon shakes her head. Where to even start? She pulls Yoruichi closer, so that the older woman's body is almost leaning over hers. It's an awkward position. Soi Fon isn't big enough to cradle all of Yoruichi, but Yoruichi lets herself be taken.
The moment stretches warm and soft, and Yoruichi nearly falls asleep in her lover's arms before Soi Fon speaks up.
"I got rid of all the mirrors in the squad two barracks when I became captain."
A/N: Another paired work to go with an earlier fic. This time it's an actual prequel to "Mirrors." I thought about making it a second chapter for that fic too, but in the end, I split it off because the style was so different. It's kind of hard to believe I wrote that fic a year ago. How time flies! I've really enjoyed coming back to fanfiction. My profile really is just a swath of YoruSoi now, isn't it? But I fail to see how that's a bad thing.
Speaking of returns, it seems like I'm going back to form with angst. I never intended it to get this sad. I just wanted to write a short piece on how Yoruichi and Soi Fon view her scars differently, but I guess old habits die hard. At least it makes "Mirrors" a little more balanced in retrospect. I like that Yoruichi is the one to initiate this whole conversation. I'm still pondering that phrase I hit upon in "Shadows," Justice for Soi Fon. I think a big part of it is Yoruichi acknowledging just how badly she damaged Soi Fon, not just apologizing but trying to shoulder some of that damage. After all, you can't undo trauma and you can't pretend that it never existed.
Anyway, this was just more of a bonus fic this month. If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment and keep an eye out for my other fics!