recent events at exsilium called an old muse back...

[onehundredswords]

Ah, now ain't this somethin'? It's been...what, four? Five years?

An' what, ya' run into Hitsugaya with some green haired lookalike an' suddenly want me back?

Yer' quite the joker, Mun, I'll give you that.

Comments

[rotwood_reaper]

Yer' quite the joker, Mun, I'll give you that.

Which makes them perfect for you, Ichimaru-taichô.

[Rukia doesn't quite spit his title, but the stress she lays on it is far from friendly.And yet... it's the only moment in the sentence when her tone becomes actively hostile. She's wary, of course — she'll never not be on her guard around this man — but she sounds willing to talk, to keep the Nexus peace.]

[onehundredswords]

Well, well, if it ain't the littlest Kuchiki! It's been so long an' ya' don't even seem all that pleased to see me. I'm hurt, really.

[j/k]

But honestly, me? Heh, I just ain't the jokin' type I'm afraid. This is the face of utmost seriousness, don'tcha reckon?

[rotwood_reaper]

[This. You see, heibon? This is exactly why she didn't want to have this conversation, and why she was secretly pleased that previous Ichimarus didn't take her up on it. This feeling of having a snake wrapped around your entire body, gently but firmly squeezing the life out of you.]

You're certainly quite serious about it. My heibon-san* tells me that mothers in the world of the living sometimes tell their children not to pull certain faces, lest the wind change and their face get stuck that way. You'd been making that face for 100 years by the time of your death; it stuck that way long ago.

He thought that if I understood you — if he shared with me the knowledge of why you did what you did — I might be able to forgive you, as I've managed to forgive oniisama for... certain things he did. As Kaien-dono, and later his sister, forgave me for what I did.

But I could forgive oniisama because, as screwed-up as his actions were, for the most part he was doing them for me, not to me. Kûkaku Shiba was able to forgive me because her brother already had.

You have my understanding, and possibly even my sympathy. But I'm not ready to forgive you. For that, you'd need to ask the one you did it all for.

* heibon: ordinary.