FIC - Failure to Realize ~Hisagi Shuuhei PG
Title: Failure to Realize
Pairings/Characters: Hisagi Shuuhei, Komamura Sajin, mentions of Tousen Kaname, no pairings
Warnings: angst
Spoilers: all the way through manga chapter 315 and the flashback gaiden
Rating: PG
word count: 1524
Prompt: hollow
Written for: Week #22
bleach_contest
Description: Hisagi has given up and Captain Komamura notices.
Beta:
akiahara
I sit by this unnamed grave and feel nothing inside. Where is the justice my captain spoke so highly of? Where is the rage I should feel at his betrayal? Where is the anger at being left behind? I feel nothing. Is this how a human soul feels before turning into a hollow? If I were a living world soul would I become that which I am supposed to battle?
I sit here for hours and find no answers. I find no feelings. I find nothing. Everything is empty. I do my job. I go home. I eat. I sleep. I come here and sit for more hours when sleep eludes me.
I’ve even stopped striving for my bankai. What is the use? It will only serve to put me in the front lines where I’m even more likely to face my ex-captain. I think that’s the one thing that could take me out of this walking trance I find myself in and I don’t want that. If I leave this blankness behind I’ll have to feel. I think I prefer feeling nothing at all.
This morning Captain Komamura sits beside me, much like he has many times these past few weeks. It seems he has trouble sleeping, as well. Normally, he sits quietly and we rarely talk. We simply stare at this unnamed grave and wonder. I don’t know what the captain thinks on, but I question what this nameless shinigami said or did to drive Tousen to the madness of Aizen’s path.
This morning is one of the rare moments that Captain Komamura speaks.
“Why have you given up, Vice Captain Hisagi?”
I startle out of my stupor. “I don’t know what you mean, Captain.”
“Do not play dumb with me boy. I can read it in your face, and see it in your actions. Why do you not train with your division anymore? Why does it appear you have given up on reaching bankai?”
I scoff. “I’m busy running the division myself. Besides, there’s no use for it any longer.”
“Do not begin to mistake the remaining captains. We see what you are doing and it will not work. Failure to achieve what is within your grasp will not keep you from being thrust into battle. You will be required to fight Tousen if it should come to that. Your failure to properly prepare yourself will only result in your untimely demise when this war begins.”
Why is he telling me this? I don’t want to know these things. I most especially yearn not to feel what his words are forcing on me. I choke and barely hold back a sudden and unanticipated noise from the back of my throat.
I whisper, “I can’t kill him. I don’t even think I want to kill him, but I do know that I can’t. What use is bankai, if I’m unable to wield it as it was meant to be?”
The stoic captain, who carries so many more burdens than I, sighs and continues. “We would not do that to you, Hisagi. I know how close you were and how much you worshipped him and his sense of justice. When the war comes we will not take you with us. However, we will still need strong arms and cool heads to protect Soul Society while we are gone.”
“Vice Captain Ise has already been chosen to remain here in charge. She should have her bankai in a few more days at most, and as you know her kidou is exceptional. I think perhaps there is no cooler head here, except perhaps the one you used to have. She will desperately need backup to keep things running as smoothly as possible. We want you to be the one to assist her. However, to be that person you will need your bankai. I do not wish to leave Iba behind as Vice Captain Ise’s second in command, but I will if you cannot perform the duties. He is not as close to achieving his bankai as you are, but he is more reliable at this juncture.”
The Captain paused; I think to let me contemplate everything he had just dumped on me. “I don’t know, Captain Komamura. For so long I’ve wanted to feel nothing, to achieve nothing. I’ve become an empty shell. I doubt there is anything that will fill me again.”
“Why did you become a shinigami? Or perhaps a better question: Why did you desire the shinigami job? Think on this. Maybe it is your past and not your former Captain’s that you should look at to show you the way.”
Komamura stands and with a great sigh places his hand on the unmarked stone of the grave. “I will not come here again. I, too, have started to lose my way in this war. There is no bringing him back from the hell he has chosen. Unnamed friend of Tousen Kaname, I bid you farewell until this war is over and we have won. Only then will I return and tell you of the fate of your friend and mine.”
At those parting words, he turns and crouches to place a gentle hand on my shoulder. He says nothing, but even in a face as strange and fascinating as his, I can see the plea in his eyes.
As he stands, I nod at his unspoken request. “I will try.”
As I watch his retreating back, I carefully rub the three parallel scars on my face.
I’d earned them trying to save a class full of cadets and had in turn been saved by three first years. To this day I consider them friends, but they have each suffered as much if not more than I in the rending of Soul Society.
Hinamori will probably never recover and Kira is only marginally better. Renji seems to have fared the best of us four, having long ago irritated Aizen into discarding him.
Who would be sitting here today if that hollow had killed all four of us as cadets? I had already been slated to be in the ninth division when Aizen ran his hollow experiment on our class. I could easily have died. I should have died. All along I was a simple pawn, to Aizen and my former captain; a pawn to be sacrificed when necessary without a single notion of regret.
Thoughts of my death make my fingers travel to the other permanent marks on my face. 69.
It was hero worship at the time. It was simply my way of honoring a shinigami who had decided my life was important enough to save.
Captain Komamura’s parting words come back to me. Why did I become a shinigami?
As I run my fingers over and over the 69 permanently inked on my face, I remember the feelings of worthlessness and helplessness I had as a child in Rukongai. After the shinigami captain with the 69 tattoo saved me, I knew my life was worth something. Even if it took the rest of my existence, I would prove it. Nothing would stop me.
I can’t even remember how many times I failed the entrance exam for the academy, but it didn’t matter. I never quit. I faced that hollow in the living world to protect the cadets under me, in hopes that I could buy time for their retreat. I graduated early with a promised seat. I did all these things because a man with a 69 tattooed on his chest had saved my life at a time when it meant nothing to him or me.
As I reflect on my past, I begin to see what Captain Komamura had been trying to tell me. I don’t do this job for Tousen and his justice. Long before he was my captain, I was doing this job to repay an entirely different Captain.
I stand and walk to the unmarked grave. Tears silently run down my face. I feel for the first time in what seems years, but is in reality only weeks.
“I’ve also decided to follow my own justice. I wish I knew why Tousen believed in you and yet still chose to follow Aizen. I don’t think it matters anymore, though. If I’m alive at the end of this war, I’ll return once to tell you all I learned. However, after that I won’t return anymore. Captain Komamura was right. I have much to live for and much to do and I can’t sit here in peace and wallow in self pity.”
I gently draw my finger over the 69 adorning my face, proof of how a shinigami should act. As I stroke the scars on the other side, I realize for the first time, my ex-captain was probably as much to blame for them as Aizen. I laugh at my stupidity for just realizing the irony of my own face.
My tears forgotten; my bitter laugh dries in my throat as purpose and emotion surge through me.
I wonder what the captains would do if I beat Ise to bankai? I think it’s time to find out.