[March 3] [Bleach] The Key To Everything
Title: The Key to Everything
Day/Theme: March 3rd - "my cage has many rooms, damask and dark"
Series: Bleach
Characters: Byakuya, Hisana, Rukia
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Starts pre-series and ends immediately post Soul Society arc.
The Key To Everything
After she died, Byakuya locked many, many rooms.
He walked slowly down the polished halls of his inheritance, bypassing the exterior rooms and their rice paper doors, pausing only in front of those for which he had a key. It was an old thing, tarnished silver, and the creak of unused locks turning echoed loud in the silence. He went through them all, closing away forever those places that had been hers - theirs - and his world shrank with every turn of his wrist. In the end, he stood before the last, contemplating the empty chamber with dry eyes and an unreadable expression.
He did not lock it.
He wore the key around his neck on a chain, hidden by brilliant folds of windflower silk, and did not draw it out again until years had passed and he filled that empty room with a promise kept.
"This is yours," he told her, holding out the chain, letting it drip into her cupped hands. Her eyes were Hisana's but her voice was not. Rukia looked up at him, solemn.
"What is it?"
And the words to tell her that it was the key to their past, to a prison he had made to hold safe all those memories for her, no matter how painful, would not come. Instead, his voice came slow and almost hesitant, a locked room opening at last.
"Everything," he told her, "It's everything."
End
Day/Theme: March 3rd - "my cage has many rooms, damask and dark"
Series: Bleach
Characters: Byakuya, Hisana, Rukia
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Starts pre-series and ends immediately post Soul Society arc.
The Key To Everything
After she died, Byakuya locked many, many rooms.
He walked slowly down the polished halls of his inheritance, bypassing the exterior rooms and their rice paper doors, pausing only in front of those for which he had a key. It was an old thing, tarnished silver, and the creak of unused locks turning echoed loud in the silence. He went through them all, closing away forever those places that had been hers - theirs - and his world shrank with every turn of his wrist. In the end, he stood before the last, contemplating the empty chamber with dry eyes and an unreadable expression.
He did not lock it.
He wore the key around his neck on a chain, hidden by brilliant folds of windflower silk, and did not draw it out again until years had passed and he filled that empty room with a promise kept.
"This is yours," he told her, holding out the chain, letting it drip into her cupped hands. Her eyes were Hisana's but her voice was not. Rukia looked up at him, solemn.
"What is it?"
And the words to tell her that it was the key to their past, to a prison he had made to hold safe all those memories for her, no matter how painful, would not come. Instead, his voice came slow and almost hesitant, a locked room opening at last.
"Everything," he told her, "It's everything."
End