without you
Characters: Byakuya, Isane
When: Sunday 03/22 nightfall
Where: the Kuchiki estate
Rating: indeed.
Summary: In which a Kuchiki falls to the sickness.
Byakuya hadn't slept in three days. Ever since Rukia had left for the living world, he'd spent all his time at his grandfather's bedside; the old man's health was waning fast, and it was all Byakuya could do to adjourn for the time it took to gather his paperwork and return to his grandfather's sickbed.
The flu had not spared him. For the past eighteen hours, the old man had been delirious, writhing in his futon and moaning in the most hollow and lamenting manner possible. The sound wrenched Byakuya's heart; he could hardly breathe for the agony of listening to it.
But he'd been instructed: "You will send for no doctors. If my time has come, then it has come; no Shinigami can hold himself true if after a lifetime of delivering death to countless souls he fights his own death in the end."
He was at his wit's end. The fever was robbing his grandfather of what little strength he had; the man would die before long, and yet he knelt there beside the last vestige of his blood family, bound by the last wish of his elder.
Kuchiki Ginrei had never been a man of many wants, but this last thing he wanted. He was dying; he was not a fool and was quite aware of the fact, and moreover was aware that sending for help from Fourth might very well prolong his life yet. However, Ginrei was quite done with this life, with its pains and sorrows, its past glories and its current tribulations--there was but one thing he felt he had left to do in his life, and that one thing could really only be accomplished by his death anyway.
Oh, how he loved his dear grandson. The greatest pain of his life, worse yet than losing his beloved wife, and even worse than losing his only son, was the loss of the grandson he'd raised so fondly. Watching Byakuya dwindle away, from a fiery-hearted youth powered by the passion of ideals and the unwavering righteousness of true love into...this cold shell of a man, too lost in grief to live the life intended for him, too tangled in loss and denial, too thwarted by his own oaths to uphold the law and tradition--for years, Ginrei had felt that his grandson had died with Hisana, and that a new sort of Hollow had grown in Byakuya's place.
His first true loss had driven him to withdraw from the world, but Byakuya now was as withdrawn as he could become; where would he go when faced with another loss? He loved the boy dearly but...the only way to help him now was to break him apart.
The misery of illness was thus bearable, knowing he underwent it for some cause, some good--for love. But it was that burning love that seemed to seize hold on him; it twisted in him and wrenched his breath away, demanding he sit upright, demanding he vent his rages and frustrations, the angers and loneliness of an old man abandoned by the boy he raised so fondly.
The accusations clenched into wordless growls in the back of his throat, and his gnarled hands groped but found no purchase; Byakuya stared in aghast horror at his grandfather's contorted face, the man's agony so apparent in his twisted features that Byakuya reached out a hand, as if he could somehow smooth the pain away.
And then...it happened. Sprouting like the molds of decay that ravaged untended corpses came a stark whiteness, streaked with black and yellowed with age; it sought to swallow up his grandfather's face, choking the life from him and crumpling jagged and ruthless over his features. A final strangled cry wrested out of the old man as his arms shot out, grasping for anything and finally grabbing Byakuya's hand, and his eyes met his grandson's.
Something burned there, a hatred and resentment that Byakuya had never known the man to have, burning there now in the darkness of his eyes beneath fragments of a mask that Byakuya couldn't bear to contemplate; the gaze burned, and the cry died away into a pained croak as his body went slack, still warm but limp and heavy, those gleaming edges of bone marring the passing visage of his beloved grandfather.
"--Ojiisama?!" came the soft wail from his lips, his hand aching in what had been a clutching embrace, and for a long moment all he could do was stare in horror at the...mask--it was a mask, a Hollow's mask!--there on his grandfather's--
"NO!" The strangled cry was Byakuya's this time as he dropped the old man's hand and lunged like some crazed witch at his face, clawing at the bone, grasping it and jerking it away, tearing bits of flesh from the edges of the face as he wrested the fragments away, his fingernails splitting with the force of it and some choking and shuddering breath too like sobs to be called anything different wringing out of his lungs, sounding despair through the otherwise silent room. "Ojiisama--"
Fingers bloody and bleeding, Byakuya fell back then, his fingertips leaving trails of blood across his dear grandfather's face, and he just shook with the horror of it; barely managing the concentration to summon a hellmoth, he grated out a summons so fractured and shrill that it hardly sounded like him.
"Isane, come help me, please!"
When: Sunday 03/22 nightfall
Where: the Kuchiki estate
Rating: indeed.
Summary: In which a Kuchiki falls to the sickness.
Byakuya hadn't slept in three days. Ever since Rukia had left for the living world, he'd spent all his time at his grandfather's bedside; the old man's health was waning fast, and it was all Byakuya could do to adjourn for the time it took to gather his paperwork and return to his grandfather's sickbed.
The flu had not spared him. For the past eighteen hours, the old man had been delirious, writhing in his futon and moaning in the most hollow and lamenting manner possible. The sound wrenched Byakuya's heart; he could hardly breathe for the agony of listening to it.
But he'd been instructed: "You will send for no doctors. If my time has come, then it has come; no Shinigami can hold himself true if after a lifetime of delivering death to countless souls he fights his own death in the end."
He was at his wit's end. The fever was robbing his grandfather of what little strength he had; the man would die before long, and yet he knelt there beside the last vestige of his blood family, bound by the last wish of his elder.
Kuchiki Ginrei had never been a man of many wants, but this last thing he wanted. He was dying; he was not a fool and was quite aware of the fact, and moreover was aware that sending for help from Fourth might very well prolong his life yet. However, Ginrei was quite done with this life, with its pains and sorrows, its past glories and its current tribulations--there was but one thing he felt he had left to do in his life, and that one thing could really only be accomplished by his death anyway.
Oh, how he loved his dear grandson. The greatest pain of his life, worse yet than losing his beloved wife, and even worse than losing his only son, was the loss of the grandson he'd raised so fondly. Watching Byakuya dwindle away, from a fiery-hearted youth powered by the passion of ideals and the unwavering righteousness of true love into...this cold shell of a man, too lost in grief to live the life intended for him, too tangled in loss and denial, too thwarted by his own oaths to uphold the law and tradition--for years, Ginrei had felt that his grandson had died with Hisana, and that a new sort of Hollow had grown in Byakuya's place.
His first true loss had driven him to withdraw from the world, but Byakuya now was as withdrawn as he could become; where would he go when faced with another loss? He loved the boy dearly but...the only way to help him now was to break him apart.
The misery of illness was thus bearable, knowing he underwent it for some cause, some good--for love. But it was that burning love that seemed to seize hold on him; it twisted in him and wrenched his breath away, demanding he sit upright, demanding he vent his rages and frustrations, the angers and loneliness of an old man abandoned by the boy he raised so fondly.
The accusations clenched into wordless growls in the back of his throat, and his gnarled hands groped but found no purchase; Byakuya stared in aghast horror at his grandfather's contorted face, the man's agony so apparent in his twisted features that Byakuya reached out a hand, as if he could somehow smooth the pain away.
And then...it happened. Sprouting like the molds of decay that ravaged untended corpses came a stark whiteness, streaked with black and yellowed with age; it sought to swallow up his grandfather's face, choking the life from him and crumpling jagged and ruthless over his features. A final strangled cry wrested out of the old man as his arms shot out, grasping for anything and finally grabbing Byakuya's hand, and his eyes met his grandson's.
Something burned there, a hatred and resentment that Byakuya had never known the man to have, burning there now in the darkness of his eyes beneath fragments of a mask that Byakuya couldn't bear to contemplate; the gaze burned, and the cry died away into a pained croak as his body went slack, still warm but limp and heavy, those gleaming edges of bone marring the passing visage of his beloved grandfather.
"--Ojiisama?!" came the soft wail from his lips, his hand aching in what had been a clutching embrace, and for a long moment all he could do was stare in horror at the...mask--it was a mask, a Hollow's mask!--there on his grandfather's--
"NO!" The strangled cry was Byakuya's this time as he dropped the old man's hand and lunged like some crazed witch at his face, clawing at the bone, grasping it and jerking it away, tearing bits of flesh from the edges of the face as he wrested the fragments away, his fingernails splitting with the force of it and some choking and shuddering breath too like sobs to be called anything different wringing out of his lungs, sounding despair through the otherwise silent room. "Ojiisama--"
Fingers bloody and bleeding, Byakuya fell back then, his fingertips leaving trails of blood across his dear grandfather's face, and he just shook with the horror of it; barely managing the concentration to summon a hellmoth, he grated out a summons so fractured and shrill that it hardly sounded like him.
"Isane, come help me, please!"