anaelau (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} anaelau) wrote,@ 2005-11-06 18:19:00 |
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Woo. More words on this than on essay.
Title: Distance
Author:icefalcon
Rating: PG
Fandom: Bleach
Pairing: Byakuya/Ukitake. Sort of. Not really. Largely Byakuya centric.
Warnings: angst. spoilers for character deaths. crap.
Disclaimer: not mine. Set just after Ukiake telling Byakuya about Rukia, prior to his fight with Ichigo. Possiiiibbbly might venture a sequel post fight!
‘The execution is tomorrow. That is what they have decided, and I shall honour their decision.”
Byakuya’s father had once told him that happiness was the natural flower of duty. He wondered if this was happiness.
“How can you say such things right now?”
The caring fury in front of him had seemed so very out of place from the cool sterility that defined his world.
“Please be reasonable.”
And cold silence.
After Hisana, Byakuya had simply never cared enough to notice the distance he had enforced between himself and the outside world.
He had pulled up his walls, and left them, withdrawing behind into a silent icy solitude, hardening into a parody of himself.
As Byakuya had sunk further into chilling silence, he told himself that words were never important to a real shinigami. Words created an unbecoming closeness that a captain should not foster in his chain of command.
And after all, silence spoke louder. The hissing silence that sang after blades clashing faded. The absence of a breath after a comrade fell.
Or after a loved one sighed their last.
After that severing silence, that separated him from Hisana, from everything else, what words could possibly heal that gap?
No, ice, distance and silence were the best he could do.
Despite Hisana staring at him whenever he closed his eyes, reaching out for him.
He couldn’t reach back, wouldn’t reach back. To cross the distance again, even for Hisana’s face, would at the same time mean putting her memory away.
It was strange, that people tried to make him reach anyway. Rukia, Rukia.
He knew they were leaving him behind. Growing, living, moving on.
Even though he knew somewhere that the distance between law and justice was too far, the distance between him and what he had once cared about was too much, he still found it hard to imagine a path through it all.
Hardness and control, silence and withdrawal, law and ice, were not enough, no real power lay behind them. He was good, one of the best, but the true strength of a shinigami lay in his heart.
Byakuya’s heart was deeply shadowed.
He found it even stranger that even the one dying was faster, stronger, and more sure-footed than he. More alive than he was. No fleeing into an apathetic chill that she had embraced towards the end, letting others near him despite the risks, despite the pain.
Once, just once, because it was the one dying, dying like Hisana, dying like she would again tomorrow, he could almost bring himself to care.
And so Byakuya sat, and in that peculiarly still moment of dusk, when the sun has gone but the light remains, allowed himself to think of white, and the distance between hard and strong.
Title: Distance
Author:
icefalconRating: PG
Fandom: Bleach
Pairing: Byakuya/Ukitake. Sort of. Not really. Largely Byakuya centric.
Warnings: angst. spoilers for character deaths. crap.
Disclaimer: not mine. Set just after Ukiake telling Byakuya about Rukia, prior to his fight with Ichigo. Possiiiibbbly might venture a sequel post fight!
‘The execution is tomorrow. That is what they have decided, and I shall honour their decision.”
Byakuya’s father had once told him that happiness was the natural flower of duty. He wondered if this was happiness.
“How can you say such things right now?”
The caring fury in front of him had seemed so very out of place from the cool sterility that defined his world.
“Please be reasonable.”
And cold silence.
After Hisana, Byakuya had simply never cared enough to notice the distance he had enforced between himself and the outside world.
He had pulled up his walls, and left them, withdrawing behind into a silent icy solitude, hardening into a parody of himself.
As Byakuya had sunk further into chilling silence, he told himself that words were never important to a real shinigami. Words created an unbecoming closeness that a captain should not foster in his chain of command.
And after all, silence spoke louder. The hissing silence that sang after blades clashing faded. The absence of a breath after a comrade fell.
Or after a loved one sighed their last.
After that severing silence, that separated him from Hisana, from everything else, what words could possibly heal that gap?
No, ice, distance and silence were the best he could do.
Despite Hisana staring at him whenever he closed his eyes, reaching out for him.
He couldn’t reach back, wouldn’t reach back. To cross the distance again, even for Hisana’s face, would at the same time mean putting her memory away.
It was strange, that people tried to make him reach anyway. Rukia, Rukia.
He knew they were leaving him behind. Growing, living, moving on.
Even though he knew somewhere that the distance between law and justice was too far, the distance between him and what he had once cared about was too much, he still found it hard to imagine a path through it all.
Hardness and control, silence and withdrawal, law and ice, were not enough, no real power lay behind them. He was good, one of the best, but the true strength of a shinigami lay in his heart.
Byakuya’s heart was deeply shadowed.
He found it even stranger that even the one dying was faster, stronger, and more sure-footed than he. More alive than he was. No fleeing into an apathetic chill that she had embraced towards the end, letting others near him despite the risks, despite the pain.
Once, just once, because it was the one dying, dying like Hisana, dying like she would again tomorrow, he could almost bring himself to care.
And so Byakuya sat, and in that peculiarly still moment of dusk, when the sun has gone but the light remains, allowed himself to think of white, and the distance between hard and strong.
