Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Seireitei Monogatari ❯ Of Honor and Pride ( Chapter 55 )

Title: Of Honor and Pride

Characters: Ukitake Jyuushiro, Mentions of Others

Rating: T

Warning: SPOILERS, Language

Words: 736

Description: Honor has killed millions and saved no one, least of all the man he loved as a son.

 

 

He sits back, and his eyes flicker to the calendar again. Forty-three years ago to the day, he had once watched his subordinate take the life of his vice-captain in a battle for pride. It has not gotten easier for him to accept, and even to him, the words he told Rukia all that time ago return fake and hollow.

 

Jyuushiro often berates himself when no one is looking because it is not their business how much he despises his own choices and wishes he had picked differently. Not even Shunsui is aware how deeply the guilt runs in. It is a burden that Jyuushiro bears alone.

 

He knows it was his fault that Kaien died.

 

To be sure, some of the blame rests on the Hollow that was the catalyst of the events, but the knowledge that he had the power, that with a simple incantation Jyuushiro could have saved his vice-captain's life, rests heavily on his soul. It is an endless, sick cycle of thoughts running over and over in his head. For the sake of honor and pride, for the sake of a tasteless nothing that can't be held or loved, he allowed his good-as-son to die.

 

Jyuushiro remembers the lines that he fed Rukia, recalls it was his hand that held her back at first, explaining the difference between two kinds of battles. But if he had known then what he knew now, perhaps things would have been a bit different. If he had realized that he would be grieving over Kaien's body, that he would change Rukia's life and deprive the Shibas of their eldest child, maybe he wouldn't have said such foolish things.

 

Honor is a cold, heartless creature, caring little for the love left behind, for the heartache and pain. Pride is an empty, hungry beast, empty as the sorrow of Rukia and the Shibas. As empty as the second seat in his division, one that he cannot bring himself to fill. He knows it is because the irrational part of himself is still waiting for the ghost of a dead man to return. Jyuushiro understands that if he lets someone else take that spot, take the position that was Kaien's and Kaien's alone, it will be as if he has finally accepted what has happened.

 

But he hasn't.

 

He knows the biggest mistake he has ever made was to believe in honor and pride, to believe that it was worth it in the end. He comprehends that had he been in his right mind, he would have killed the bastard of a Hollow himself. He would have endured the anger Kaien would have thrown his direction. And eventually, Kaien would have gotten over it. He would have proved his skill time and time again in some other capacity.

 

Jyuushiro knows that he would have rather had a furious and disappointed Kaien, alive and warm in his division, than a Kaien with his pride but now only a spirit consumed by a Hollow, blood staining Rukia's once hopeful hands. He would rather have given his vice-captain the chance to regain his lost honor than see the pain in Kuukaku and Ganju's eyes for the sibling he so callously took from them.

 

And he hates himself more and more every day for that mistake.

 

For ever how much the Shiba clan blames Rukia and he for what happened, Jyuushiro knows that no one can fault him more than himself. And in the end, it hadn't even been him to take Kaien's life, to free him from the grip of the Hollow. It had been Rukia, still struggling to find her place in the world, forced to draw her sword and kill the one person she had really trusted.

 

There is nothing Jyuushiro can do to ease that agony for her. His words sound hollow, just as they did then, hollow and empty and fake. He wishes he could go back and tell himself how much of a fool he was to believe in pride and honor. He wishes he could say, “Fuck honor, just come back alive.”

 

But most of all, he wishes he still had a vice-captain, a son. Wishes that Ganju and Kuukaku still had a brother and Rukia still had a dear friend.

 

No one knows his own mistakes better than himself, and no one could possibly hate them more.

 

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