@iikorose [requested AU starter - finally]
‘…at the cost of much of their lifespan.’
Everything comes at a price. For victory, the price is paid in the lives of the soldiers – on both sides. For love, it’s the price of heartbreak. There’s always a cost, there’s always a price one must pay. For her freedom, her salvation, her life – it cost her much of her potential future. A tough pill to swallow, coming to terms with this new development, her new reality – time had never been something she kept track of, worried about. A souls’ existence was long, a shinigami’s – a lucky one anyway – spanned centuries and potentially thousands of years.
And now that time had been what – cut in half? Kurotsuchi-taichou couldn’t give her an answer, nor could he give her comfort. His bedside manner was lacking, disgruntled that she didn’t worship at his feet for having done the unthinkable, that she didn’t praise him for having saved her. That she came to him, asking questions – as if she was doubting his ability, his process. There was no use going to the Fourth either, they were still inundated with the injured and they couldn’t provide her with a second opinion, when they themselves were reeling from the loss of Unohana-taichou. Besides as Kurotsuchi-taichou had so delicately pointed out, there was a difference between science and medicine.
She had been told it would take time to process – it always came back to time. Time, she had spent, time she had lost, every second felt like sand slipping between her fingers. No matter how desperately she tried to hold it, it continued to spill, slipping away till her palms lay bare.
A street vendor hollered loudly beside her, snapping her from her melancholy thoughts. It was only then that she realized where her aimless walking had taken her, not back to her division, not back to her apartment, not to a bar but out into the first district of the Rukongai. Her pale blue gaze drifted over the crowded and loud market; souls waved to-and-fro – existing in their own world.
She was used to keeping her emotions and thoughts bottled up, internalizing them, drowning them in sake rather than sharing and forcing others to also deal with her problems. Then again, who was she supposed to talk to? They were all healing, they were all fighting their own monsters, their own battles – no one needed her dumping her issues upon them. She wouldn’t go to her taichou, even though she knew he’d listen – but every time she looked at him now all she could think of was – ‘how much did you lose’ and ‘if I had been stronger, maybe I could have protected you’. There was only one person, one single person she wished she could talk to – and she couldn’t.
Her gaze dropped momentarily to the dusty ground. A hand rose brush through her tousled locks as she raised her head a silverly head caught her attention, weaving in and out of market goers on the other side of the street. Her mind was simply playing tricks on her, tormenting her with illusions of a man long dead, causing her heart to ache as it did on days of remembrance. Still, her gaze lingered, watching for movement whenever he – it – come into view. She needed to be certain it wasn’t him, squash the small sliver of hope but as the crowd parted momentarily, a willowing form that haunted her dreams, an illusion casted into reality stood before her.