brother mine
𓇬 some (mostly) short drabbles of moments between jushiro and shunsui because i love their friendship 𓇬
❤︎ characters: jushiro ukitake, shunsui kyoraku & retsu unohana. other characters mentioned.
warnings: fluff, angst, mentions of injury & death, tybw spoilers.
part 2: what he left behind
𓇬 after the seireitei is attacked, those he left behind scramble to pick up the pieces 𓇬
Jushiro felt sick. He always felt sick, but for once it wasn’t in his body but in his very soul. Everywhere he looked there was chaos. Death and terror. A hazy, rushing blur of people and bodies.
They’d been defeated. The enemy was still out there, and now their head captain was gone. The aftermath left the Seireitei in ruins, with most of the squad barracks destroyed.
Squad four was overwhelmed; any able-bodied individual with a fractional amount of talent for Kidō was ordered to heal the wounded, while the rest were dispatched to find injured or secure the grounds.
There were countless injured, even more dead, and some still missing. Fearful his best friend was among them, Jushiro had gone out to find him and any others left alive in the chaos, dragging a frazzled and worried Lieutenant Ise along with him.
They’d eventually found Shunsui. Lying unconscious, bleeding, and half blind. Gathering him up, they headed back to the squad four barracks.
When Jushiro arrived with Shunsui, Nanao, and a slew of other wounded in tow, Unohana was already working on several victims.
Her calm and poised demeanour remained, but her face gave way to the tensions she felt. She was surrounded by injured, and the sounds of pained cries droned on in the background. Her hands and sleeves were bloodied.
When she eyed them in the doorway, she went straight for Shunsui, immediately yanking open his kosode to check over his wounds, all the while ordering her squad to triage the new patients.
She and Jushiro had exchanged a look then, a brief, fleeting glance. But after hundreds of years, that few seconds was enough for them to both understand what the other was thinking.
How would they recover from this?
As the hours dragged on, and the frantic rushing energy slowly died down from a roar to a quiet hum. Jushiro found himself sitting at Shunsui’s bedside. Shunsui was asleep, his chest wrapped in bandage, a bloody patch over his right eye.
There was no word from Central 46 yet, no policy or procedures to be followed. Instead, there was a rapid shift of duties. Lieutenants stepped up as acting captains, third seats moved to first, a jumbled-up, scrabbling mess of delegation.
Jushiro and the other able captains were stretched thin, desperately trying to maintain order without any direction in the few short hours that had passed since the initial attack, but all they could really do for right now was help the wounded and focus on securing what was left of the Seireitei.
He held his head in his hands, nursing a pounding headache. He was anxious for Shunsui to wake up. Sooner rather than later because they didn’t have much time. They’d lost their cornerstone, their pillar; it was up to them, his legacy, to carry on.
The sound of Shunsui taking a pained breath had him snapping his head up, pain all but forgotten. He leaned over, looking down at Shunsui with some concern—his breathing was laboured, coming out in wheezing, heavy pants.
“Captain Unohana!” Jushiro called out.
Shunsui groaned then, his breathing eased. Jushiro looked down, and being mindful of his wounds, he placed a hand on his chest.
“Kyoraku? What is it?” He asked.
He began to mumble something then, incoherently. One of his hands came up towards his bandaged eye, but there was a flash, and a hand caught his.
Jushiro looked up to see Unohana standing over him, her grip on Shunsui’s wrist gentle but firm.
“Don’t touch it, Shunsui,” she said, her face grim.
Shunsui shifted, his good eye opening, and he looked towards Jushiro; the corner of his mouth turned up, just slightly.
“Hey...handsome...so...how do I look?” He asked, humour lacing his gruff voice.
Jushiro let out an amused huff of breath at that, feeling relieved to hear his friend speak. His hand came up to rest on the top of Shunsui’s head, and he stroked his hair.
“You’ve had better days, my friend,” he said, warmly.
Shunsui inhaled sharply then, his eye squeezing shut as pain lanced through his chest once more. His hand that Unohana was still holding twitched, and he interlaced his fingers with hers, squeezing tightly. His expression was troubled.
“What is it, Captain Kyoraku? Are you in pain?” Unohana asked, brows pulling together with concern.
Shunsui shook his head; it wasn't the pain in his body that troubled him. When he did speak, his voice was strained, barely a whisper.
“He’s gone.”
Jushiro felt his chest tighten, and he closed his eyes, bowing his head low, and Unohana sighed, a quiet, sad sound.
A deep and profound loss shrouded them all as they mourned their leader. The massive force that, for a time, seemed like he'd live forever, was now gone from the world, ripped away by the enemy.
The room felt smaller and darker as silence stretched far and wide between the three old captains. His legacy.
