Good things die all the time

[neverquitedies]

Characters: Yuca Collabell (neverquitedies) and Kurotsuchi Mayuri (law_of_reason)
When: Shortly after this
Where: Kurotsuchi's lab
Rating: PG-15 for... possible gorybits and... well, it's them. Also, I'm apparently writing novels.
Summary: After another night of dreaming, Yuca gets a little too desperate and goes to Kurotsuchi to slice off pieces of his soul. You know.

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[neverquitedies]

He nodded, a little relieved at the answer- as apathetic as Yuca was, pain was never something he enjoyed. If they could bring him to the edge of death with drugs, rather than physical trauma, he would be pleased enough with it.

Situating himself on the table at Kurotsuchi's instruction, Yuca took a deep breath as the needles were rifled through and picked up- he was pleasantly surprised at the sensation of the numbness, and vaguely wondered if something was the matter. He'd never known the shinigami to have been so considerate before. It was odd- had something changed? For a moment, he thought that miss Unohana had tried to set another ultimatum, but that couldn't be it, could it? Even if she had, Kurotsuchi should know that Yuca wouldn't exactly go running to her if an injection site was numb or not.

"Alright," he finally replied, taking a deep breath and trying to relax back into the table. He didn't focus on the machines- rather, he forced himself to disregard them. They were unsettling, and Yuca really didn't need to feel any more unsettled than he already was. So, he turned his head to the side a little and stared up toward the scientist as he worked, focusing on taking deep, even breaths, and trying to just... not think about any of it.

"There's nothing that I want that you'd particularly care to honor, should things go wrong." Yuca admitted it with a shrug, tapping a finger lightly against the operating table. "I suppose- if I wind up as some sort of monstrosity, kill me so I can be brought back at least in a slightly better position."

[law_of_reason]

"Of course," he agreed simply, though didn't stop to question what exactly a monstrosity entailed; it wasn't as though he was planning on switching out Yuca's limbs with anything exotic. He was just... taking apart his soul.

His own doubts about the operation had nothing to do with the nature of souls. They were nothing sacred or special to the scientist - in his own world he was surrounded by them, his job was knowing how to take them apart and create them. His department was responsible for creating single-use, disposable souls for that matter; the spiritual was purely mundane.

After starting the flow of the transfusion to pull Yuca under, drag him to the point of dying and leave him there, Kurotsuchi glanced sideways at him. He had no reassuring impulses, nor comprehension of how such attitudes worked. And even if he had, he would've recognized it as pointless; there was no promise of success.

Though he had an impatience to get started, the usual enthusiasm was muted, even as the machines around them progressively whirred into life, attaching onto Yuca's as the body began to die. With the containers empty, and the lights on, there were odd reflections everywhere, and the stretched wires made it feel like being in the center of a very distracted spider's web.

After the medical poison, the soul displacement drug followed, to loosen and illustrate the immortal's spirit as it had when he'd vivisected him before.

[neverquitedies]

Yuca gasped softly as the drug kicked in, fighting it instinctively for a moment, before forcing himself to relax. To count backward from one hundred, to not focus on anything, just- absence. Floating. Slowly, he could feel his consciousness draining, his awareness fading as his vision went dark.

At the additional supplements, his body started to fail as well, as per the plan. His heart rate started crawling, lungs barely expanding in a breath. He wasn't aware of it, but he was dying, again- and no matter how much experience his soul had with it, his body was something else entirely. It had never died before.

He lay there, on the edge, as the drug was administered. At first, it seemed as if nothing had happened- his chest was a little warmer, but that was about it. Yuca dragged in a slow, deep breath, and let it out, just as slowly. His heart continued to move sluggishly, his mental functions almost totally gone.

And then, finally, slowly, something began to emerge. The black thing, identical to what Kurotsuchi had faced last time, trickling out of his pores, along his veins, almost literally bleeding out of him. Yuca's soul, as it had before, did not want to be singled out. It existed, almost permanently within a body, and it didn't enjoy being forced out of it. With a low, resonating noise, it swirled into a single mass just above his chest, falling across his shoulders and face like little wisps of liquid- but like no liquid ever seen.

It was vast. Incredible. Old. Imposing, even though it had no special shinigami-esque skill of its own.

[law_of_reason]

For all that he'd seen it before, had dealt with it before, that didn't make meeting it again any more comfortable. Kurotsuchi wasn't afraid of it, but there was something there in the back of his mind, some base instinct of self-preservation, that wanted to recoil and flee. He was a soul, after all; it was impossible to disconnect entirely from knowing that he was standing very close to an entity that was supposed to be of the same essential composition.

But what should've been familiarity was twisted - Yuca's soul was old, and his senses felt dulled, weighted down just by feeling it without the protective cover of the immortal's body. He had to concentrate on breathing for a moment, to remind himself that he wasn't suffocating, no matter what it felt like.

Fascination, no matter how dark, remained, and the scientist had to deliberately pull his hand back, after realizing his fingers had already moved to touch it. But that would be careless, he wasn't there to idly poke it, he needed to keep himself as firmly rooted in himself, in the present as possible.

There was eternity to dissect.

Giving the swirling mass a cold eye, he moved the first of the linked containers into position, and quickly said a few words of kidou. Glowing bands formed along one of the farthest edges of Yuca's soul, shining hooks digging into the 'body' of it, fading from sight as though they had been buried into something physical.

[neverquitedies]

The soul remembered this, if such a thing could be said for a soul. It recalled a feeling like this, being literally forced out of the still-living body. It didn't make it any more pleasant, just more... disgruntled, if a soul could be disgruntled. It knew what was happening, and it knew, somehow, how to combat it. At least, it knew- from a strange sort of conditioning, if nothing else- what had sort of worked last time.

Slowly, the soul billowed out, extending it's tendrils (like liquid gas, almost, in the way it moved, the way it looked), searching for the body nearby it. For there had to be one- how else was it like this? Last time it had been intruded upon, touched and prodded, that made it easier. Now, however, Kurotsuchi wasn't going anywhere near it. It was alone, isolated, and it curled back into itself after a moment of searching, dripping essence along Yuca's neck, which floated up and rejoined the body of the thing as some kind of mist moments later.

The hooks, though- it couldn't feel them, not physically, it had no nerves with which to 'feel'. But there was an intrusion. A break in the form, a hole in the mass. Almost immediately, it tried to recoil, but it couldn't simply slip around the hooks, for some reason- they were holding it tight. Yuca's soul shifted in mass, centering further up, away from the hooks, pulling itself away while two abandoned little tendrils remained trapped, tugging at the body of the thing.

[law_of_reason]

Despite that it couldn't attack, couldn't really defend - that didn't make it feel any less dangerous. And though Kurotsuchi attempted to avoid getting too near it, some distance had to be closed if he was going to be at all precise about cutting it. Not that it would matter too particularly to the soul - he'd have to specifically try to hit anything that wasn't excess, wasn't the effect of age. But he needed to keep it into manageable pieces.

But he moved in, closer to the trapped fragments, bringing in a blade that could damage them, the material clouded in a quietly shifting way, and with an edge that was more of a suggestion. The shinigami didn't hesitate to cut it, ignoring the flashes of warning coming from his own soul - this was something that was ancient, nothing that he should be able to touch, much less damage. It was wrong, in a way that still refused to be defined.

Kurotsuchi ignored it, severing that part of Yuca's soul. At the same moment, the nearly-patterned threads began to glow quietly, light traveling along the edges as though some outside source was being shone on them. The low metallic whine in the background clicked a note higher, louder, and the removed bit of soul was captured, dragged through the first linked box, pulled inexorably down the chains of them, to settle trapped in the last.

[neverquitedies]

At the first touch of the blade, the soul attempted to slide away from it, something not quite fear (for a soul couldn't really feel fear, nor dread, nor apprehension, nor any other emotion that was generated separately in the brain), but as close as it could reasonably get. Somewhere in its dim levels of consciousness, it was aware that this could hurt it. And as ancient as it was, it had never encountered something that could physically damage it before... at least, not since last time.

And finally, a piece of it was suddenly removed. Severed. Cut off.

It let out a high-pitched sound, something regular humans probably wouldn't be able to hear, but something that was undoubtedly a scream. The soul unfurled quickly, roiling about in its depths, reaching for Kurotsuchi, trying to access the damage, trying to figure out what it could possibly do- pulling back, curling under itself, laying low and trying to contain itself under Yuca's skin again. Under Yuca's skin it was safe- him with his slow beating heart and his hatred of eternity. It was safer there.

The piece of soul that had been separated from the rest whirled and expanded, and tried to push at the corners of the box that was holding it. It had never encountered something like this before. Boxes couldn't hold souls. The soul had no prison, save for maybe the body, and it didn't mind all that much for that one. But when it was forcibly pulled through the boxes, trapped in the last one with no way to rejoin the other, it let out that sound too- that aggravating soul-sound, high pitched and... angry, if a soul could be angry.

[law_of_reason]

There was noise, and there wasn't noise. It wasn't a sound, for all that it first registered as sound, as his mind tried to understand the sensation, compare it to something that he understood, that was familiar and normal. And it registered as pain, for all that he knew he was unharmed himself.

And though Kurotsuchi didn't exactly recoil, he couldn't prevent a flinch - but nor could the fury of the exposed soul prevent him from repeating the words of kidou, trapping another portion of it with gold hooks. The actions were purely reflexive now, the unemotional anger echoing in his head if he thought too much about it - which he couldn't, he couldn't let himself get distracted. There were too many things to be aware of, and with the way it was thrashing, it was next to impossible to move to cut it cleanly, without brushing against it himself. But there wasn't any choice.

He'd dissected souls before, so often that it was routine, but none of them ever felt like this, none of them ever caused his own soul to panic, in a form of sympathy that he could never consciously possess. It was contacting something greater than itself, and it hurt.

[neverquitedies]

Yuca's soul was old, ancient even, and though it had never experienced anything remotely like this before (barring the first time they had done this), it was perfectly capable of... adapting, in a way. It didn't have thought, or rationality, or emotion, or logic, or any of those things- those were functions of the body, tools for its host. No, the soul was far more primal in its anger, utterly complex- though perhaps that was because it was the most simple thing that something could be.

As the hooks dug in a second time, the soul attempted to adapt to the situation and make it work- it flared out once more, attempting to catch Kurotsuchi and drag him under, as it had in the past.

[law_of_reason]

Kurotsuchi didn't let himself think - or rather, he only let himself think of what he was doing, each particular, precise motion, only the facts of his efforts. Not the meaning, not the non-sound that echoed through him, not the responses of the soul he was dissecting.

Detachment was a familiar thought, though usually it was effortless, even accidental. This time he stuck to it consciously and deliberately, cutting more of the soul free with a sharp kind of grace. But though the whirring hum raised again, the severed part drawn into captivity like the last, Kurotsuchi misjudged the timing of the pulsing waves of the soul, the back of his hand grazing fully along the edge of a snarl of it.

[neverquitedies]

It realized that sensation all at once- another soul, brushing up against its own. In an instant, it knew exactly the type of person Kurotsuchi was, but it disregarded that almost immediately in favor of lashing out, the only way it knew how.

A flower garden, vivid. Reds and blues and golds. Humid. A little plate of rotting fruit setting out, a blond girl smiling at him and drawing the butterflies as they stopped on the fruit. There was a sketchpad in front of him- their hands brushed together as they reached for the same pencil and she giggled softly. The scene shifted- a fire, burning pictures into a crisp, a woman screaming as the flesh melted off of her very bones, stumbling and running and falling, her steely fingers catching onto an ankle- and suddenly water, drowning out the fire, all around him, a heavy weight around his neck, forcing him down, the only pinprick of light on the surface was so far away- the water dissolved into rain, miserable cold rain that lashed out against his face as he slipped and fell down the hillside.

Faster and faster, they rotated out, some peaceful, some not- brutal battlefields and soft sheets and blood and tears and intestines pooling out of his open stomach. There were guns, aimed at him, bullets shattering through his skull, warm, loving arms encasing his shoulders in a warm hug, primitive hunting with a pack of other humans, spears and bows in hand, everything, fast, hitting him with names, faces, personalities, loves, and gravestones, all at once. An eternity of memory.

[law_of_reason]

In just a touch, the present was gone, there were nothing but lives, experiences, memories - each as indistinguishably real as the last; there was barely any chance to realize that it wasn't happening now, much less not happening to him.

The soul was a well of memory, and it went further than anything possibly should, without collapsing in on itself. Kurotsuchi's own soul was nothing, and somewhere behind consciousness, it was aware of it, on some base, primitive level.

The base and primitive was all the shinigami had left, frozen still from the moment their souls touched, stricken by the weight of lives, deaths, emotions that he'd never experienced, that weren't his experience, but were poured onto him, eroding the small thing that he was. It was like being suffocated- but no, it was being burned, drowned, thousands of variations of death, of pain and suffering, it was everything, and it was impossible--

Physical collapse was the only thing that saved him, pulling him unconsciously away from Yuca's soul. Hitting the floor jolted him, if only a little, if only enough to grab the leg of the operating table with a hand, fighting through the blackness and the afterimages. The coldness of the metal, his gasping breaths - nothing else was allowed to exist, and even that little was hard to hold onto.

[neverquitedies]

It was gone, thankfully. The soul condensed tightly over Yuca's chest, whirling around itself, trying to contain everything again. There were pieces, entire decades of growth, just gone. It needed time to cope, time to regenerate the loss, and so, it hunkered down low, assuming that the threat was gone.

The soul didn't have eyes. It couldn't see, or sense the fact that Kurotsuchi was indeed, alive, and just a few feet away. As a matter of fact, it was rather reassured in the knowledge that it could just sit there forever- at least, until it could get back under Yuca's skin and regenerate the pieces that it had lost.

[law_of_reason]

It took some minutes for him to recover - and 'recover' was probably an optimistic way to put it. The flashes of old memory weren't gone, and if it was anything like the last time, it wouldn't go away for a while. But at least he knew who he was, where he was - for the most part. He was reasonably sure.

But the experience was significantly draining, and as he clawed his way back to his feet, looking down at the settled mass, Kurotsuchi couldn't feel much of anything for it. The emptiness as he stared at it was familiar, if not reassuring; it was strange for something unpleasant to not trigger anger. But there wasn't time to think closely on it - and he didn't want there to be time. He was tired, but he didn't want to stop now, didn't want to collapse until he'd finished, and wouldn't have to wake up with the rest of it waiting for him.

He ignored the longer future that would include studying the collected parts. Instead, he quickly reassured himself that the machines were still in place, that nothing had snapped when he'd fallen. But with everything set, there was nothing to do but continue, and a few moments later more hooks were buried in the resting soul. If he had to close his eyes for some seconds here and there, both when he was restraining it, and while he was cutting it, forcing back the memories that tried to rise - it was probably to be expected.

[neverquitedies]

It made that sound again- the sound that was not specifically a sound, high pitched with a primal rage and pain. The soul was, for the most part, utterly defenseless, and didn't take very kindly to being ripped into shreds. It moved against Kurotsuchi's blade, his hooks, did everything in its power to prevent further detachments from happening, but it could not abandon Yuca's body while it was still alive.

Logically, the soul would have tried to kill the body in order to escape, but that thought never occurred to it- how could it? It had no brain and couldn't think for itself. Even if it could, how does a soul kill a host? It wasn't purely physical, it wasn't capable of suffocating him. It was useless in that regard.

It didn't quite resign itself to being cut. It still resisted, still tried to feed Kurotsuchi memories through contact. But, as a whole, there wasn't a lot it could do except sit there and wait to be ripped to shreds.

[law_of_reason]

Each slice, each motion - for all that the essential aspect of what he was doing remained constant, it couldn't be considered routine. His weakened state didn't excuse any lapses in caution, but it was more than once that the shinigami had to fight off a past that wasn't his own. After not long at all the outside world ceased to exist; his mind was too confused with everything that had been forced onto it, so that he was nearly afraid to think back to pick out his own history among the fading shards he'd been left. There was only the now, and it felt like he'd been cutting this soul to pieces for as long as he'd been alive, and was fated to do nothing but this for the rest of it, listening to it scream in the back of his mind.

But gradually the boxes filled, the mechanisms binding them together glittering among the swirling murk of Yuca's soul. Gradually, the shape still attached to the immortal's physical body grew smaller, the 'meat' of it ripped away, leaving it barely a shell of its former self.

But that didn't make it easier - not to cut, not to be in the same room with. Kurotsuchi was still surrounded by it, for all that most of it was now locked away where he couldn't accidentally brush against it.