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valmoraMy Aizen icon is strangely appropriate for this ficlet. As is my "I'm not insane. I'm just very very very eccentric" icon. Consider them both used.
Title: post-secret
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Bleach, an AU
Ships: Abarai Seika/Unohana Inari (OFC/OFC), Kuchiki Byakuya/Abarai Renji, Aizen Sousuke/Ichimaru Gin
Notes: With a nod to Gali and Kira's epic Bleach RP canon-based AU "Three Parts Dead" and an especial nod to Gali, with whom I RP Seika and Inari occasionally.
Warnings: .....look at the last names. And the ships. Do you even need to have me spell it out for you?
Further notes: This fic is crack. And involves things I shall not mention because - the shame. We shall merely say that the children herein portrayed could have killed Macbeth JUST AS WELL AS MACDUFF but for "different" reasons. Yes, that was an allusion to Shakespeare. Look it up before you read or you'll regret it.
"I read it a long time ago," her mother says, handing her the letter, "in case it could have helped, but he was very canny and gave nothing away. You will see how."
"Thank you, I think," Inari says, touching the end of her braid. There is nothing to say to this. Her father left her a letter for her to read when she became an adult. Her father, who is dead, who let her go because he did not want her - because neither of her parents wanted her, and Unohana Retsu of the Fourth Division took her in.
Inari's mother nods, so kind that it hurts, and says, "I have some bandages to make." She leaves the room, leaves Inari alone with the bed and the letter and the paintings on the wall, and the fox-kit Seika made for her out of clay when they were very little, its head broken off and missing its tail and the red paint inexpertly applied.
Seika said, when she presented it to her, "Because daddy's vice-captain calls you 'fox-kit' for your name." Inari smiles at the thought, thinks of the kiss she shared with Abarai-taichou's daughter a week ago, and kneels on the floor, gazing at the letter.
The handwriting on the front is like Kuchiki-taichou's, archaic and strange, but not stiff like his. It says Inari and then, beneath that, when she is old enough to appreciate what this letter says. It is appropriate enough; she is twenty-three years older than Seika but has nothing to show for it; she merely did not age until Seika was born, remaining for a long while three years old, walking but not talking.
She opens it, and it unrolls in her hands, feeling to her reiatsu-senses like a still pond. She does not know what that means, only that it is. Inari's mother always feels like a rippling stream, patient and gentle, healing; Abarai-taichou is like a wild thing caged, howling to the moon and raw and hungry; Ukitake-taichou is like lightning and the sharp pain of rain falling hard against her skin. It would seem her father, whom Inari's mother will not name, kept himself closed in his power.
Inari, it begins, If you will permit me the intimacy of calling you by your given name then I will. I wouldn't like to call you "Unohana-san;" you are not, after all, of her blood. As you should know by now. Let alone resembling her not at all, you are not made for healing.
If you are reading this I am dead or at the very least have failed, but I am under no illusions about what will happen if I am defeated. If we are defeated, I suppose I should say, since I am not the only one with a stake in this letter, though it's not as though Ichimaru knows I know about you. If he did, I think he might kill me - and if he killed me, the irony would doubtless kill him as well. He has a keen sense of it.
You are not something of love, and as cold as it is to say that, it is true. It is not meant to wound, only to warn. You were not born of love, but you are loved. Sometimes love is not keeping a child but giving her away so that she will not be in harm's way. Unohana could not give you to a living person; you are not flesh-and-blood enough for that, and anyway, I think she liked you.
I do wonder what you look like now. You had his eyes when I saw you last, impossibly blue - no matter what you may hear, his eyes are only red in certain lights; the true color is blue. I think you will have his bones, spare and sharp, though that you are a woman may soften his edges. Ichimaru is bones overlaid with skin and nothing between the two, and I don't think you will be like that. That you are like that.
I don't know what of me you will have. Perhaps my skill with kidou and little else. It is not as though Ichimaru wishes me to have anything to do with you at all, but you are mine as much as his, I would think. It does, after all, take two.
Inari stops reading, breathes in-and-then-out. She had known, of course, that there were many rules of biology that were broken in the presence of reiatsu, the one that governed her birth included. But to have that phrase thrown in her face, as though he had no shame, no sense of decency; and him a stranger-!
And that is where her thoughts cut cold. He is not a stranger, she thinks, and looks in the mirror on the other side of the room, the sheen of it sending her face back colorless. Her hair is the same color as his, her eyes the same shade as the other's would have been otherwise. Her bones delicate, smile gentle but eyes distant, sharp jaw, bony ankles.
They are strangers, she thinks, but not to her body. Everything she has is of them, even the way her hair escapes from the braid she adopted from her mother's habits. And, clenching her fists so the paper crinkles, not quite tearing in her palms, she thinks Traitors' blood and, shaking, throws the paper away from her and curls up on the bed, touching her lips, thinking of Abarai-but-also-Kuchiki Seika and how they are so similar in so many ways except the important one, that is that Seika is of blood that is honorable and loyal and bears a good name and Ichimaru-or-perhaps-Aizen Inari is not.
Title: post-secret
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Bleach, an AU
Ships: Abarai Seika/Unohana Inari (OFC/OFC), Kuchiki Byakuya/Abarai Renji, Aizen Sousuke/Ichimaru Gin
Notes: With a nod to Gali and Kira's epic Bleach RP canon-based AU "Three Parts Dead" and an especial nod to Gali, with whom I RP Seika and Inari occasionally.
Warnings: .....look at the last names. And the ships. Do you even need to have me spell it out for you?
Further notes: This fic is crack. And involves things I shall not mention because - the shame. We shall merely say that the children herein portrayed could have killed Macbeth JUST AS WELL AS MACDUFF but for "different" reasons. Yes, that was an allusion to Shakespeare. Look it up before you read or you'll regret it.
"I read it a long time ago," her mother says, handing her the letter, "in case it could have helped, but he was very canny and gave nothing away. You will see how."
"Thank you, I think," Inari says, touching the end of her braid. There is nothing to say to this. Her father left her a letter for her to read when she became an adult. Her father, who is dead, who let her go because he did not want her - because neither of her parents wanted her, and Unohana Retsu of the Fourth Division took her in.
Inari's mother nods, so kind that it hurts, and says, "I have some bandages to make." She leaves the room, leaves Inari alone with the bed and the letter and the paintings on the wall, and the fox-kit Seika made for her out of clay when they were very little, its head broken off and missing its tail and the red paint inexpertly applied.
Seika said, when she presented it to her, "Because daddy's vice-captain calls you 'fox-kit' for your name." Inari smiles at the thought, thinks of the kiss she shared with Abarai-taichou's daughter a week ago, and kneels on the floor, gazing at the letter.
The handwriting on the front is like Kuchiki-taichou's, archaic and strange, but not stiff like his. It says Inari and then, beneath that, when she is old enough to appreciate what this letter says. It is appropriate enough; she is twenty-three years older than Seika but has nothing to show for it; she merely did not age until Seika was born, remaining for a long while three years old, walking but not talking.
She opens it, and it unrolls in her hands, feeling to her reiatsu-senses like a still pond. She does not know what that means, only that it is. Inari's mother always feels like a rippling stream, patient and gentle, healing; Abarai-taichou is like a wild thing caged, howling to the moon and raw and hungry; Ukitake-taichou is like lightning and the sharp pain of rain falling hard against her skin. It would seem her father, whom Inari's mother will not name, kept himself closed in his power.
Inari, it begins, If you will permit me the intimacy of calling you by your given name then I will. I wouldn't like to call you "Unohana-san;" you are not, after all, of her blood. As you should know by now. Let alone resembling her not at all, you are not made for healing.
If you are reading this I am dead or at the very least have failed, but I am under no illusions about what will happen if I am defeated. If we are defeated, I suppose I should say, since I am not the only one with a stake in this letter, though it's not as though Ichimaru knows I know about you. If he did, I think he might kill me - and if he killed me, the irony would doubtless kill him as well. He has a keen sense of it.
You are not something of love, and as cold as it is to say that, it is true. It is not meant to wound, only to warn. You were not born of love, but you are loved. Sometimes love is not keeping a child but giving her away so that she will not be in harm's way. Unohana could not give you to a living person; you are not flesh-and-blood enough for that, and anyway, I think she liked you.
I do wonder what you look like now. You had his eyes when I saw you last, impossibly blue - no matter what you may hear, his eyes are only red in certain lights; the true color is blue. I think you will have his bones, spare and sharp, though that you are a woman may soften his edges. Ichimaru is bones overlaid with skin and nothing between the two, and I don't think you will be like that. That you are like that.
I don't know what of me you will have. Perhaps my skill with kidou and little else. It is not as though Ichimaru wishes me to have anything to do with you at all, but you are mine as much as his, I would think. It does, after all, take two.
Inari stops reading, breathes in-and-then-out. She had known, of course, that there were many rules of biology that were broken in the presence of reiatsu, the one that governed her birth included. But to have that phrase thrown in her face, as though he had no shame, no sense of decency; and him a stranger-!
And that is where her thoughts cut cold. He is not a stranger, she thinks, and looks in the mirror on the other side of the room, the sheen of it sending her face back colorless. Her hair is the same color as his, her eyes the same shade as the other's would have been otherwise. Her bones delicate, smile gentle but eyes distant, sharp jaw, bony ankles.
They are strangers, she thinks, but not to her body. Everything she has is of them, even the way her hair escapes from the braid she adopted from her mother's habits. And, clenching her fists so the paper crinkles, not quite tearing in her palms, she thinks Traitors' blood and, shaking, throws the paper away from her and curls up on the bed, touching her lips, thinking of Abarai-but-also-Kuchiki Seika and how they are so similar in so many ways except the important one, that is that Seika is of blood that is honorable and loyal and bears a good name and Ichimaru-or-perhaps-Aizen Inari is not.
