DISCLAIMER FROM 2024

At the encouragement of my readers, some of whom have followed me for twenty years, I have decided to reupload my old fanfiction stories. I do this with some reservations. I wanted to revise them before posting them again, but the sheer amount of words involved means that that would take me years to accomplish, and it would be better for me to focus on writing new stories instead. Maybe someday I'll go back and make the edits, but for now, I'm reposting everything, warts and all. So expect characters to be out of character, expect nonsensical sections, and expect there to be many grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes.

In addition, please understand that the story you have in front of you was written by a very different person. I was a teenager who was raised on 90's media, who lived in an abusive household and in a white conservative town. I was steeped in problematic beliefs and had an equally troubling sense of humor. Anything I wrote before 2010 will reflect that.

However, my understanding of the world has grown since then. I'm an adult now, out of the closet and firmly politically left. I'm also much better at my craft these days. It makes me cringe to think about how my earlier writing must have hurt some of my readers.

That being said, these stories were also ones that people loved and missed. If they can still make someone's day brighter, that's worth something. Maybe they can even inspire others by showing them how much someone's writing can grow with time and practice. Plus, my younger self worked hard on these. Even the darkest ones comforted her during a difficult time in her life. So maybe I owe her something better than burying her words.

So, without further ado, welcome to my old fanfics! You're in for a messy and melodramatic experience. As always, I hope you enjoy the read.

WHAT I HAVE BECOME

Snowfall,

The frozen tears of the forlorn,

And when the purity of their sadness kisses your skin,

Remember,

You may follow in their path,

Becoming one of their number,

Never forgotten,

Yet barely remembered in the abyss that is:

Existence.

- "Winter Truth"

I do not belong to this world.

I do not belong to any world, do I?

It is a strange, sorrowful thing to think about, this current place in which I stand. Caught between two worlds, the one of humanity, and the one of the shinigami. The Death Gods. The Soul Reapers. Can I truly be considered one of their kind any longer? Yes, I still have my demon powers, and my zanpakuto. I still have my battles and my post in Soul Society. Essentially, on the exterior, nothing has changed. Yet inside, everything is altered. Where is my resolve? Where is my pride, my certainty? Where is that core of strength that made me what I was?

It has been weakened, eroded, has it not? After all these years, in the end, it was not a Hollow, Bount, Vizard or Arrancar who destroyed me. It was a mere human. A teenage boy, who looked and acted so like him. My leader, my Kaien-dono...the one I loved, and never could have. The man who I only wanted to be happy…whose life I took to save the remnants of his soul and mine.

It strikes me now that time is so irrelevant. It could very well be that Kaien's spirit energy, having faded in the world of death, had recycled in some form back into the living world over the decades, his spirit reborn into a human child, which all souls begin within.

The strawberry could very well be that renewed soul. After all, he was born from a shinigami- human union. Perhaps that would be fitting….

I muse on the idea.

Ichigo…he is mostly human, but becoming a powerful shinigami. Myself…I am mostly shinigami, yet increasingly, becoming human. Can I blame Urahara for these things? He aided Ichigo along the road to become the realization of his hybrid self. And he gave me that accursed gigai, which reduced my powers, corroding my spirit until I was nearly one of the young man's race.

But no…there is so much more to being human than what your spirit is.

How strange really, this twist of destiny…after all, I died as an infant. I was raised in Soul Society, reared on its teachings. If anything, I was more a shinigami than many could attest to be…for I had barely ever been human.

Yet it changed. With one selfless decision, with a few months of living in the human world…everything changed.

And the truly ironic thing is…I find I prefer the alteration, no matter the pain it brings me.

Perhaps that is why I wander here, in the graveyard of the Kurosaki's hometown. Perhaps that is why I continue to wander, remembering all that changed me. The memories of that boy, so bittersweet…I could lose myself in them, and no one would care.

Things have changed so much this past decade. The legendary battles are over, and peace is restored as much as it can ever be. Humans and shinigami alike are finding joy in their own ways; and all know their place in their worlds. All known what their tasks are, and what they long to do or be.

Yet as for myself? Who can say?

I am both now. Shinigami, and human. Just like him.

And in being this abomination, there's no place called home for me.

But for Ichigo…yes, there may well be. He can go back to being human, he can return to the life he once lived…and to the people he truly loves.

But as for me? I am changed, irreversibly and irreparably. I cannot return to what once was. And this will always set me apart.

So this pain I feel…it is loneliness, quite simply put. Nothing more…nothing less.

I set the white flowers on the gravestone of his mother, the beautiful woman who loved a captain. A shinigami captain who gave up everything before daring to love her. Yet for me to similarly fall, to make that choice and give up who I am and my mission, would be to lose all I still possess. For the one person who I cared for…the one human who this shinigami dared to love and would give up everything for….

He has moved on. He has found his lovely partner in the world of life and sunlight…not in mine, of death and moonlight. Again, I am forced to watch from a distance as history repeats itself.

And like before, I am still so alone….

For I am neither a shinigami, nor a human, but somewhere in between. I cannot belong in this world, no matter how I love it, no matter how I crave it.

That is my fate.

And since time remains pitiless, that will always be….