Work Text:
He never asked.
Granted, the middle of the battlefield hadn’t been the best place to ask the people who enforced your exile how your wife was doing, and the thought might have crossed his mind before he violently shoved it back down, but.
He never asked.
The fucking bastard told him anyways.
He was stalling, Shinji knew, running his mouth while trying to figure out how Sakenade’s shikai worked and oh, Hirako-san, did he know that she became a shinigami? Had gone through six years of the academy on Aizen’s sponsorship and dealt with the stares from students centuries her junior? Had joined the Tenth, and then transferred in a promotion to a seated position in their old division? Had worked her way up to fifth seat without the hope of ever achieving a shikai, with basic zanjutsu and kido alone? Don’t look at him like that, Hirako-san, he only ever pitied her carrying around an ausachi made in Sakanade’s image, under the impression that her sword was the last thing left of Shinji.
Did he know that she cleaned that sword religiously, that she spoke to it when no one else was around? Did he know the new scars that dotted her hands from kido burns, or the new limp from taking her shunpo too far, made to rely on other arts because she didn’t think her false-Sakanade would ever answer to another master?
Did he know what she looked like with a bouquet of white lilies in hand before Shinji’s fake grave? Did he know what it was like to drape a haori over her shoulders as she slept on her desk from too many late nights of paperwork?
And suddenly, he wasn’t the one holding Hiyori back anymore, small hands fisted in his shirt in a way that untucked the tails and snarling at him to get it together, idiot—
Shinji couldn’t even be proud of drawing first blood on the bastard. Not when he’d cut them down like ants a moment later.
Shinji didn’t have many scars.
A hundred years, a lifetime ago, his long hair had been a testament to his skill. One simply didn’t wear their hair down and loose at that length unless one was skilled enough that the liability in battle was negligible.
A hundred years, a lifetime ago, his long hair had been a testament of her love. A passing comment on the length every one in a while, the way she would card her fingers through it, the quick muss of his bangs when he ducked down for a kiss, a poem circulating the romantics of the upper districts from the night her friends took her out for a drink and ended up with her on a stage spilling stanzas about strands of sunshine and spun gold.
And then he was in a holding cell, feverish and unable to look the others in the eye for the lieutenant he’d failed to stop. So he looked at himself instead, at the long, ugly wound bisecting him from left shoulder to right hip, at the choppy ends of his hair that had been caught in the crossfire in a testament of his failure.
And then he was in a warehouse, an entire dimension away from her and dead in half the ways that mattered. So he took Sakanade, who cried for blood in a doubled voice that she hadn’t had before all this, and made a clean cut through his own hair instead— a testament of his loss.
And now he was back in the Fourth looking the same as it had before everything, torso bared in the mirror to inspect the new silvery line trailing down his right shoulder and joining the old line at his hip. There was a click sometimes when he walked, and he wondered what side her limp was on and if they were matching as he cut his bangs on the opposite side of where the bastard had ruined them.
After the— everything, the only good thing that came out of it was their quick regenerative abilities. And even then it was an outside-to-inside kind of deal and didn't include organs, so Shinji had almost drowned in his own blood before Unohana-senpai got around to him.
He still couldn’t breathe, sometimes. It was probably the result of his lung having been sliced through and then healed late, but on the longer nights in the Fourth, Shinji wondered if it wasn’t his penance to pay. And then he laughed until he coughed, all bent and hunched over, because no one cared about the sacrifice he’d made out of skill and sunshine and spun gold but him.
He could request to see her. The fifth seat of the Fifth Division, she's my— I used ta know her, could ya ask her to drop by? They probably wouldn’t turn him down.
The next shift of guards rotated in come sunrise.
Shinji held his tongue.
All of the Visored had an understanding with their hollows: listen to me when I bring you out, or both of us die.
At least, this was Shinji’s agreement with his. There was always a disconnect from his body when he put the mask on, as if he were puppeteering his limbs with someone else hovering over the strings, ready to take them at a moment’s notice. They’d tested it before— the more attention they directed on themselves, the easier it was to stay in the front. Mashiro held the longest record for fifteen hours, sitting eerily still and unspeaking the whole time in Hachi’s kidou cage before her mask crumbled.
Here was the kicker, though: their masks didn’t fall apart because they couldn’t hold on, but rather because they had to let go.
It was kind of like holding your breath, Shinji mused. Eventually, your body made you breathe to keep from killing yourself. It was instinctual, it was involuntary, it was natural to let go of the mask.
Rose had tried to test it just the once. Their masks never lasted longer than three minutes in a fight, collectively, and Rose had gotten it in his head that he should try to keep it for longer than three minutes consecutively. Not in the way where the Visored would practice multitasking between their meditative focus and the actual movements of a fight in their masked spars until they hit the limit, pushing a little further every day—no, if they kept with his metaphor, then Rose wanted to try duct taping his airways shut.
Love’s ribs were lopsided now. The rest of them didn’t dare to try the same.
None of the Visored were overly familiar with their hollow, even after a century. Outside of the initial meet-and-greet followed by the first victory in their war for control, Shinji knew that they hadn’t interacted nearly as much as one would think they did with the other parts of their souls. Not that their hollows had much to say, anyways.
Shinji had never thought of himself as a good man, per se, but stood before a pharaoh's throne of bones in his inner world of brick and stone and endless sky, he knew that he wasn’t.
It commanded attention, tufted tail lashing around as it told Shinji less in words and more in feeling that the Visoreds were its pack and it was the leader, that he should eat any of them the moment they fell crom a help to a hindrance, that the humans he leered at in jest could belong to him if only he reached out and took, that it would wait patiently for the day when Shinji slipped up and let it through, that it saw the world through his eyes when his mask was on and that there was nothing worth keeping in it.
And when Shinji declared defiantly that it was wrong, it greedily latched onto the memories that flew by. Striped ties and the sound of sax with piano and his friends and her.
A queen, it had rumbled, a queen before my time. But a queen all the same.
The fire turned cold.
Aizen was dead and the Fourth was the same and a pitter-patter of footsteps down the hall turned into shouting at his door, fingers prying the sliding door open by a sliver before the guards got a better hold.
“Let her in,” he croaked, horse and dry and not ready, never ready for this. “I’m— I'm stable, I swear. Let her in.”
Slowly, reluctantly, they did.
Gone was her blue yukata, her short hair, the scent of bread and warmth in the air. Shinji never thought he would loathe seeing the black folds of the shinigami shihakusho on someone, but here he was. The image of her in his mind, the one he had held on to in the dark corners and buried under countless new memories, didn't match with this image of her in front of him.
She got the first words out. “You cut your hair,” she whispered, a hand reaching out in this impossible distance between them before dropping to his bed. It trembled where it lay for a moment before she fisted it in his blanket, breaths coming in hitched.
“Oi,” Shinji had to fight past the blockade in his own throat before speaking, placing his hand next to her’s. “It’s not that bad, is it?” he teased. But then the tears started falling in earnest, and he reached to pull her up because why was she kneeling on the floor? The soft shushing that came to his lips unbidden hadn’t changed— his love had always been easy to cry, even if her tears were silent now. “Ya grew yours out,” he replied. “The— the hairpin. It looks good. On ya.”
“It was going to be for you,” she said, and when Shinji realised that she wasn’t going to be pulled up he couldn’t tumble onto the floor fast enough. Her hands fluttered around like she was afraid to touch him, so he caught her wrist and placed one over his heart, then moved to tuck back the two parts of hair framing her face separate from her up-do, reminiscent of his own before everything. “It was going to be for you, but then you were gone and I didn’t need to keep my hair short for the bakery anymore.”
“You’re—” Shinji stumbled over his words, “Fifth seat? In my old division?”
“Someone responsible had to show Hinamori-chan the ropes, and heaven knows Oboro and doesn't care a whit for paperwork." she shook her head, and then moved slowly for her katana, every movement telegraphed clear as can be. “I— this isn’t Sakanade,” she sighed, tracing the blocky hourglass-shaped tsuba before presenting it to him. “I know that, now, but I thought— they gave her to me and there was nothing to bury, so I kept her clean and took her everywhere and went to Shin'ou to learn how to care for her properly because it was the only thing left of you. And I thought I must have been doing something right, because even though everyone said you were dead and she never spoke to me, she never shattered, either.” She gave a watery laugh. “But I guess that never meant anything after all, did it?”
Shinji gently pushed her asauchi back, wrapping her fingers closed around the scabbard. “Means something ta me,” he said, and it did. “If I’d had ta leave it behind, I’d rather it be with ya than anyone else.” It was good to know that if he hadn’t been able to take it with him, then at least that part of his soul would have been treasured and well cared for.
She shook her head again. “What else was I going to do, bury it six feet under?” She traced the tsuba again, and sighed. “I need to learn its name,” she muttered. “It couldn’t have been nice, being called the wrong thing for a hundred years.”
“Betcha get shikai within the year.” She scoffed, bumping him too lightly with her foot to be called a kick. He nudged back, a small grin stretching across his features. “What? My help ain’t good enough for ya?”
“You’re staying?”
“Yamamoto has a couple captain positions that need filling and stand-ins for Central Forty-Six is full of old coots who ain’t apologising for somethin’ they never did,” he told her wryly, "An' it's not like our divisions had anything to do with the whole exile thing. Old man sent a couple half-dead lieutenants to guilt the final nail inta us, Hinamori sounds about right—" and then aborted a shunpo when she flung her arms around him.
They went down in a pile of limbs and blankets. "You fool," she breathed. "I thought— I didn't want to get my hopes up. I'm glad I packed for nothing, then."
"Eh?" Shinji peeked over her shoulder, and sure enough, there was a bag tossed onto the floor a few lengths away from them. "Well, now I'm half-tempted to run away together."
"I didn't want to get my hopes up," she repeated. "It was all a bunch of ifs. If the rumours were true, if you were still alive, if you hadn't left yet, if you would take me, if you hadn't— hadn't found someone else."
And oh, if that last one didn't hurt. It hurt, that she hadn't trusted him, trusted their vows, but he could see why. A hundred years was a long time to be so very far away. One night stands and drunken compliments and always, always the ring threaded through his necklace burned.
It burned now, too. He took it out now, clasped it between her hand and his. "Nothin' that ever meant anythin'," he dragged out of his mouth, because she deserved honesty. "I swear on my life. I pretended they were you, sometimes," he admitted. "But nothin' that meant anythin'."
A hundred years and no precedent. Shinji braced himself for anything, to be left on the ground as she walked away, to be sent flying into a wall, to be blasted at point-blank range, to drown in her tears. Their relationship had been one built on trust and honest communication and whispered conversations underneath the sheets, and now...
Now Shinji had a truth, and he wasn't sure how much trust they had left between them.
The blanket shifted. Shinji recovered from his surprise relatively quickly, noting that the wiry muscle from her years as a baker had turned into something more as they held him in a bridal carry without strain. It was a familiar angle for him, although usually his head was closer to her lap than her shoulder. "You must have had your reasons," she said, and Shinji hated the way it sounded like she was trying to convince herself. He tucked her hair back from where it had fallen forward, again, but otherwise said nothing. She was the arbiter, and it wasn't his place to interfere. "When you— were gone," she started haltingly, and Shinji exhaled. It sounded too much like when you died, and he didn't think he'd be forgiving himself for the pain in her voice any time soon. "Aizen was there. He picked up the pieces, he sponsored my academy entrance— he reminded me of you at your kindest, Shinji. I called him Sosuke-kun."
Please not you too he was lying he's a liar tell me it didn't mean anything it was a lie please please
Shinji closed his eyes.
"I figured it out, eventually. You looked down on him, I knew, and he knew it, too, so he took over your captaincy and your people. And what else was left of you other than me?" she smiled sadly at Shinji's grimace. "So I ruffled his hair and told him that I was too old for him, but really, it was hard to get angry when he reminded me so much of you."
"I'm nothing like him," he snarled, and damn it all, that set off a round of stitches in his side.
She must have noticed, because gently, gently, she set him back down on the bed and pushed him until he was laying down. "No," she agreed. "You're nothing like Aizen. But Sosuke-kun was like you."
He pulled her down with him, and then they were twined around each other with Shinji’s head in the crook of her chest and her fingers in his hair like a century hadn’t passed since the last time they did this. Her touch was light and feathering, tracing the scars that hadn’t been there before dancing away like he might crack. Shinji hummed. “I’m not delicate, yanno.”
She shot him an incredulous look, at odds with the tear tracks streaking her cheeks. “Unohana-taicho might be a miracle worker, but Aizen cut through your collarbone, your ribcage, and your lung.”
“I feel fine,” and he did, at the moment, if a bit tired and stiff. “What, darlin’, ya want some acrobatics ta prove it?”
She curled around him a little more, forming a bubble against the rest of the world. Shinji closed his eyes and focused on the sound of his breath and her heartbeat thudding against his cheek. Stay, he didn’t beg, didn’t say, because technically he had been the one to leave.
"Neither of us are going to forget anytime soon," she whispered. "We can't just pick up where we left off. But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather forgive you now rather than waste another century being mad at you."
That was fine by him, Shinji had enough self-loathing for the both of them. "Aizen's a manipulative fuck," he told her plainly. "Whatever happened, he made ya do it. There ain't nothing to forgive on my part."
"Worlds above, Shinji, nothing happened! He— he turned to Hinamori-chan afterwards, when he realised I wouldn't."
Oh, shit. "Did he...?"
"Night before he pulled that death stunt of his," she sighed. "I got the whole story from her two halls down the other day. It was only the once, but I'd be fifty years too late to try and prevent anything. Poor girl's in tatters, so I'm trying to keep everything running to give her some time. I don't know what the soutaicho was thinking, sending her to convince you to join back up when she's still half-convinced that this is all a terrible dream."
"Guilt-trip," he reminded her with a snort. "An' it worked, too, though I dunno why he didn't send you."
She cocked her head in that little way of hers whenever she was thinking about something, and gods had he missed this. "You know, I don't think he knows that we're married."
"Yes he does. Had ta file the paperwork and everythin' for, yanno, if anythin' happened."
"No, I mean," she raised her hand, and the sunlight glanced off on the gold band. Traditional Japanese marriages didn't really do rings, he knew, but Shinji had grown up with a lot of foreign influence from the other side of his family at home, and the idea of rings had been nice. "You filed for me, but I couldn't exactly file for you at the time." Understatement of the century. "But I took a look at the papers and technically, they ask for the addresses and number of kin, Shinji, not names. And I've been living in the barracks for— for a while now."
Shinji took her hand and inspected the ring. Maybe gold hadn't been the best choice for someone who worked with their hands, but then again, he hadn't been expecting her to become a shinigami in his footsteps, either. It was well-worn and boasted surprisingly few scratches and dings for someone of their profession, and he guessed that she must have removed it whenever she needed to handle something rougher.
“I want to disassemble the shrine that I turned our bedroom into,” she confessed quietly over his head. “I want to stop sleeping on futons and couches and desks because the bed feels too empty. I want to know what my zanpakuto’s name is. I want the Fifth to stop falling apart because Aizen walked away and Hinamori-chan is too broken up to put herself back together, much less anything else." She took a trembling breath, held it, and let it go when it was steady again. Shinji let himself mourn, just for a moment, for the woman who was just as free with her sobs as she was with her laughter and her pastries to children on the streets. "I want you to tell me everything, in bits and pieces if you have to, whenever you’re ready.”
They had both been adults when they met, adults when they married, adults when they parted, but Shinji had missed her growing into the person that she was now, with kido scars instead of oven burns and a sword instead of a tray.
“There’s time,” he said, muffled by her skin but close enough that she could make out the words anyways. “Whatever fell apart, we’ve got time ta fix. And I’ll be here, this time,” he promised.
I’ll be here.