Worlds (Bleach, Unohana, PG)
Title: Worlds
Author: array_of_colors / Eve
Rating: PG
Fandom: Bleach
Warnings: None, unless you don't know who Unohana is.
Prompt: 199. "I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance."--Bell Hooks.
Summary: Unohana's life before Soul Society. Thank you muchly to xskadi for being my beta!
The day after Unohana's husband's funeral, her mother came over. She found Unohana in his examination room, sweeping the floor. The window had been flung wide open to let in the weak, buttery sunlight. On seeing her mother looming at the threshold, Unohana nodded and expressed her mild surprise at the sudden visit.
"What are you doing?" her mother said.
Unohana smiled. The crisp tone and accusing eyes she had found intimidating in her childhood were now attaining the characteristics of a faded relic. "I'm cleaning up the room, so that in two or three days I'll be ready to start receiving patients. Please have a seat - I'll be joining you in a moment."
"I thought we discussed this yesterday. You are to sell this house, and come back to live with your father and me."
"This house is too full of memories and love. I can't simply hand it over to some stranger, at least not so soon. Besides, I'm as much a trained physician as my husband was. His patients know that. They wouldn't mind very much asking my advice instead of his."
"Retsu, you're still young - not even thirty yet. You still have your life ahead of you - "
"This is my life. Helping the sick, tending to the wounded."
When her mother left, she shut the front door perhaps a little more loudly than necessary. Unohana sighed. Had her parents wholeheartedly approved of her husband, she would have said that this was what he would have wanted. As it was - She gave a small shrug, and opened the drawers to see how she should sort out their contents.
---
The villagers, wary at first, grew to trust her as her husband's professional replacement. She was secretly relieved; she would not have to waste precious time arguing why she was the right person for the job. Also, they had known her for too many years to harbor doubts for very long, which was a big help.
The months flew by. Winter came, and she experienced a fleeting sorrow each time she blew out the candle before going to bed. It was not only that she was used to snuggling against a warm presence next to her; winter had also been her late husband's favorite season. He said that there was nothing as picturesque as thin, frozen branches against a slate-gray sky, and figures wrapped up in layers of clothing making their way across a shining white earth. The fact that he was curiously near-impervious to cold must have also contributed to his fascination with winter.
The sentimental darling, she thought, and took comfort in her own small smile.
---
She had expected to encounter plenty of frostbite cases, and found herself dealing exclusively with the more regular crop of ailments instead: coughs, sprains, fever. She mentioned this in passing to one of her patients, an elderly man who owned a modest food stall down the street. The man said, "People just don't go out very much these days."
"Why's that?"
"It's all this political unrest. Folks are afraid of the soldiers they sometimes see passing by in the distance - if the soldiers know there's a village over here, they might drop by to ask for food, horses, shelter, and the like."
"Ah." Since the death of the dictator last year, the country had been plunging deeper and deeper into political and military turmoil. That, and the inevitable civil war, was a frequent subject of conversation among the village inhabitants. "But it's winter, and surely the generals haven't gone so far as to scour small villages like ours to recruit men for the army?"
"The generals know the generals better," the elderly man replied, rather obscurely.
Later the same week, Unohana heard that the seamstress's son had run away. The youth being eighteen, and an exceptionally robust fellow to boot, whispers circulated that he had run away to become a soldier. Since young men running off to join the army was not unheard of, the rumors grew to assume a tinge of truth.
The seamstress was dejected when Unohana paid her a visit. "People get killed in wars, and he'd be a mere foot soldier, or something even lower in rank," she lamented, sniffing. "No one will bother to send his body home. I'll never see him again."
"I'm sure he will come home to you - aren't you his only living parent? When he does, and if he sustains an injury, please bring him straight to my house, and I will treat him."
The seamstress, not consoled, continued to sniff and handed Unohana the kimono she had come for. Bowing, Unohana took her leave.
---
Spring brought deepening unease and more rumors. A man said that his cousin's sister-in-law's son had been taken forcibly from his house by a group of soldiers. Alarm mounted, especially when the man added that the village where the boy lived was only a day away on foot. Unohana listened to her patients exchange speculations and fears, both inside and outside the examination room.
One night she was awakened by distant, rapid knocking at the front door. Blinking away sleep, she started to push it open, when a hand shot out from the darkness and clutched at the doorjamb.
"Sensei, it's me," whispered a tense voice. "Please let me in, and don't make any noise."
Recognizing the seamstress's son, Unohana stood aside until the young man had entered, and closed the door. "Kensuke-kun? Why aren't you at your mother's house? You're shaking - would you like some tea?"
"Only if you don't have to boil anything. Don't let anyone know you're awake."
She led him to the kitchen, where she gave him a cup of cold tea. Kensuke related his story between sips. "I didn't run away to join the army. You see, I owed money to some people. The payment was due before the New Year, but I still couldn't find the money. So I ran and hid in a friend's house. They seemed to have traced me there, though, so I ran again."
"And you can't go back to your mother's, because it'd be the first place they'd head for." Unohana got to her feet. "You can sleep in the kitchen tonight. Tomorrow morning I'll tell your mother that you're here."
"Thank you, Sensei."
Having noticed that Kensuke was limping a little, Unohana asked him to show her his leg. A deep gash ran down the entire length of his right calf. "Did they do this?"
"Yes - on the day I ran away from home. I still can't understand how I managed to escape and lose them. Dumb luck, I guess."
"It's quite deep. I'm amazed no tendons have been severed. It must have hurt terribly."
Kensuke gave a sheepish grin. "It did. I remember wishing for a medicine that can cure wounds, even fatal ones, immediately. Or a person with a divine healing touch, who can bring people back even from the brink of death."
Unohana shook her head. "I would like that too, I think. Even if - "
A crash came from the front door. Kensuke froze. Unohana, motioning at him to stay put, swiftly left the examination room.
She was about to reach the front door when what she had assumed to be shadows shifted and separated themselves from their surroundings. In her shock she nearly stumbled on her own toes. The shadows were standing before her, a silent menace.
"Hand that boy over to us," one of them rumbled. From the general direction of his hand flashed a metallic gleam that made Unohana's heart leap to her throat. She drew a deep breath and swallowed.
"What boy?" she said in a low voice.
"Don't lie. We saw him enter."
"There's no one here," she said, taking another step forward.
---
She must have fallen asleep (but how?), because she dreamed that she was lying on the ground and staring up at a sky unmarred by clouds. A sickening heat was gripping her midriff. When she raised her head to look at it, she saw that her clothes was stained bright red. Whose wound had she been nursing? Why had she kept the clothes on instead of changing into a clean one? Dreams, she mused, do have that perverse tendency to turn your daily habits upside down.
---
The sky was still there when she opened her eyes. It was gray, and of a shade she had never seen before; it made her think of curdled memories, dashed hopes, fraying dreams. She had never known a sky like that, especially not during springtime; briefly she wondered if it was a sign of an approaching freak storm.
A low hum was filling the air. It vibrated in her eardrums, thrummed in her blood. The heat clawed at her midriff, but she was getting too sleepy to care.
Honey, you would have loved this, she thought, and let the strange drowsiness overtake her.