“ I don’t want it ” her answer is QUICK & RESOLUTE, not even the slightest waver nor pause to think it over. no. she has no desire hold that title – she’d seen men pry the name from COLD DEAD HANDS with no regard for what it MEANT. they came for the title and they inherited a DIVISION ( yet none ever truly wanted it ). it drove her mad. no… she had no desire to be like THEM ; to gain a title and be SLAUGHTERED by the next in line. she’d rather live longer. “ Had I wanted it, I would have it already. ”
it may be true. Kiganjo was strong, but she… she was strong enough to hold him on her own, YEAR AFTER YEAR, stilling his hand against the other men. could she have killed him? some believe so. some wonder why she NEVER DID. and he may not understand her mistrust, how those who bore that name ( HIS NAME ) before him had a b u s e d it, had abused HER, with their dirty knuckles & scarred tongues. how they had DESECRATED her home over and over and over. so it matters, that he hasn’t yet sliced through one of the unseated boys. it matters that he hasn’t yet burned the place to the ground.
she shifts slightly, draping long arms over the railing ( bangles jingling ), appearing as if making herself COMFORTABLE, but it really only is a better view to see him from – considering her eyes rest on him fully now, BRIGHT GOLD even in the dusk. “ Many men come here for that title, but they never want what comes with it – barracks filled with loyal men, training grounds laden with wiry boys – AN ENTIRE DIVISION, who only want someone to lead them. Many men come here and destroy what they’re given – the man you killed had stabbed through his weight in my boys. The title’s all that matters to them. But not to me… ” her voice, deep in her chest, fills with a bit more emotion than she’d previously intended, but her point is made plainly — this is why I watch you like a hawk, Kenpachi… I have to know you’re not the same.
Thin lips curl up into a wry smile at her quick answers - he doesn’t want it either, not really. It looks as though he won’t be able to pawn off the title or his duties to her. He wouldn’t want to just hand it over anyone. After all it was her division once, and even though it seems to have gone to shit the last thing he wanted to do was let it fall into the hands of someone who didn’t deserve it.
“ Guess so. You would of had it years ago. “
The former captain was not that strong, it had taken one swing of his sword and the hulking man was crumbling to the ground in a pile of shame and blood. He imagines that it would have taken her not much more, even if he hasn’t seen her strength he felt it. In the moments after the last Kenpachi fell and her reitsu rose like a animal emerging from the dark to tear out the neck of its prey.
One dark eye meets with the sun-bright golden ones that were locked on him. He listens, because she deserves that much - she wasn’t the captain but he can feel her strength and that’s all it takes to earn his respect.
“I didn’t come here to train a bunch of green kids who don’t know one end of their sword from the other.” He admits, it was never his goal to become a leader. But at this point, he doesn’t know what else he could do. Everyone who isn’t inside of the Seireitei worth fighting he’s found and defeated already. Which means staying here made sense, even if it might be boring as hell. “ They’re a bunch of weaklings, but they live to fight - and I respect that. The best I can do is teach them how to live long enough to die in a fight worth dying for.” Flashing of an angry man beginning him to end it flash in his mind, and a grin splits across his scarred face.
“ I don’t give a shit about being a Captain, the title is worthless. Shit, I don’t know fuck all about leading or guiding. That’s never been who I was.” He explains with a wave of his hand, singular eye still locked on his vice-captain. She has to realize that if he’s gonna stay as captain, he’d need her.
