Tempering the Steel [Solo/Oneshot]

Complacency.

It had never been something that Maki had thought that she would have to attribute to herself, but here she was. She had trained, and trained, and trained, and gotten so used to the habit that it had become routine. Her skills had reached a stable level, a level that could be easily referred to as respectable, and then stagnated. A more forgiving soul, looking in from the outside, might have pointed out that she had also continued to grow stronger in that time, but Maki knew better. She had not become stronger, she had merely been borrowing the power of another. Enkidu's strength was remarkable, such that even the little that bled through into her own power was easily enough to allow her to coast on by with. Perhaps that was why it had been so easy to fall into this trap. When you were strong enough that your power eclipsed your skill in wielding it, when it overshadowed any of the challenges before you, relying on it was a simple mistake to make.

There was no other choice.

Maki had taken a Gigai into the world of the living. Into Kyoto, to be precise, in search of an old face. It had been four and a half centuries since they had met, but fate made it's mysterious twists and turns. She had never expected that she would be pointed in this direction after all this time, nor that casually browsing through old records would have brought her face to face with her past like this. Would he even remember her, after all of this time? Was he even still alive? She had heard that his powers had been sealed when he had 'retired' to the living world, so would that have also restricted his lifespan to that of a mortal? It was a troubling thought, and one she didn't want to dwell on too much. She had too much of her hopes invested in this to be able to fret about something like that without something breaking.

Ah, the glorious city of Kyoto, the cultural jewel of Japan. It hadn't been long since she'd been here last, a few months, really, but it was so much different visiting it in an unofficial capacity. The last time she had been here, she had been tracking hollows and run into a strange young human. This time, she didn't anticipate hollow trouble. Strange humans, on the other hand, well... it was an artist's city, after all. She was bound to have to speak with some people if she was going to find the one she was looking for, anyway. It wasn't as if he had a spiritual pressure to sense, and she had been a child the last time they had met. The one person she had ever considered family, the person who had lifted her from the cold depths of the Rukon, from her own mind, and showed her that there was more to life than scraping and clawing just to survive.

All that she had to go by was a rumor that he now lived here in Kyoto along the Katsura river. While that made things a little narrower than having to search the entire city, it was still a huge task. It had been so long since Maki had been forced to rely not only her mundane senses but in straightforward physical fitness as well. Not that she'd ever truly slacked in caring for her body, but there was a difference between the boundless energy that came from the wealth of her spiritual powers and the limitations of fatigue in an ordinary body. Though it was still early morning, she knew that she would have to pace herself. Was this what it was like for ordinary people? Even when out and around in gigai before, she'd never suppressed her abilities to this extent, and couldn't help but be a little surprised at just how advantaged she really was under ordinary conditions.

After stopping in a bakery for some melon bread for breakfast, Maki began her search. The air was fresh and crisp with the ending of another Japanese winter, and she breathed it in deeply, enjoying it in a way that she rarely found the time to. The brilliance of the sun-filled morning was interrupted only by the sound of the river flowing. That eery sound always made her uncomfortable, evoking uncomfortable imagery of drowning in her mind. Even the fact that she could, in her ordinary body, likely cross the river in an instant wasn't enough to suppress that feeling. Today was going to be tough.

She began walking. Getting started, this was the most difficult part of any search. Any task at all, really. Maki watched as cars whizzed by, as mothers watched their children playing by the riverside. It was calm, it was quiet. Oh, certainly there was the noise of the city, the sounds of voices and the sounds of machines. That wasn't the kind of quiet she meant. There was a gentle peacefulness to the city that at once both set Maki's heart at ease and stirred a quiet sadness within her. This was what she had dedicated her life to, protecting this, ensuring that it could go on for just another day further. It was fascinating to stop and really see it with her own eyes. It was heartbreaking to know that she could be part of the cause that would tear those peaceful days asunder.

To avoid that fate, to escape the burden of that possibility, it was not something so simple as power that she needed. Instead, Maki knew, it was a refinement of both her mind and her control of her own body that she required. It was something that every soldier needed to learn, but that the Fifth had been unable to aid her in. It was something that she would have to learn for herself. Discipline. Unfortunately, it was not such a simple thing that she could master it with her own efforts alone, as much as she wished it might be otherwise.

Her pace was moderate, neither fast nor slow as she walked along the riverbank. Though she did not possess her spiritual abilities in the case of an unexpected accident, Maki was unconcerned, instead focusing her attention on the people and places on both sides of the river. Surely, there had to be some clue as to his location. The morning passed into the afternoon and her search was unsuccessful.

Of course, she had only explored a small portion of the city surrounding the river, so that was only to be expected. Maki made her way to the center of a bridge overlooking the river and surrounding cityscape, pausing to lean on the railing. Again, she could not help but be amazed by the scenery. It was breathtaking... but it was still not what she had come here for. Though her logical mind knew that she had only truly just begun her search, she could not help but feel just a little disheartened by the lack of so much as the slightest hint of progress.

Behind her, she could hear a procession of priests from a nearby temple. Slowly, she turned to watch, observing as the priests slowly crossed the bridge. It seemed to be a celebration of a newly blessed infant, and for a brief instant Maki caught sight of the child. It seemed like a hearty child, likely to grow up healthy and strong. Despite that, all she saw was a flesh of black and red, that innocent smile that Artix's daughter Rose had given her the day they'd met, the evocative imagery of blood pooling from her skull that that strange rose-patterned lock of hair had invoked.

It had been just an image, a trick of light and colour. Rose had merely had strangely coloured hair, that was all. It hadn't been really blood at all... had it? Then again, Maki could remember all too well the news of Rose's death. How she had suffered, and how deeply it had shaken Artix. The face became Miki's in her mind's eye, the image solidifying into a grotesque caricature as she turned again, leaning over the railing just in time for the contents of her stomach to be emptied into the river. As she did, a sense of hopeless snuck it's way into her muscles as if through the chill of winter. Could she have withstood something like that? Could she have... prevented it? Inside her mind it all seemed so impossible, so infinitely far beyond her reach that it was unthinkable. That she had ever looked down on Artix made her sick. Despite everything, she still wasn't half the person he had become.

Was this what it felt like for the others, watching from afar as she sailed - seemingly - effortlessly through the challenges that life had thrown at her? Perhaps a little of the resentment directed towards her was more understandable than she had thought. How spoiled she had allowed herself to become. How content with mere instant gratification. She had needed this excursion more than she had known. Maki dismissed those pointless thoughts from her mind and began to walk again. They were just as self-serving and deceptive as the ones they cautioned her against, and it was for that reason she knew their poisonous nature. To use such obvious concerns as a means of disguising themselves was ever the tool of self-deception.

The city passed by slowly, rolling past her senses as gently as the earthly, altogether eery flowing of the river.

The sun passing through the sky, the people walking along their everyday lives, the feel and sound of gravel crunching her her sandalled feet. Were these the things she had left behind when she had become a sword of the Gotei? Maki wondered, briefly, what it would be like to live out her days as a mortal. Would it be as carefree and serene as the day she witnessed rolling by around her? The temptation was a sore one, but that, too, she rejected. Even if the world was that simple - something that Maki suspected was unlikely - she could never live with herself knowing that she had simply run away from her responsibilities. There was too much at stake for that level of childishness.

The sun slowly began to set. Had the day really gone by so quickly? The children had departed from home, replaced by artists and young couples, tourists replaced with locals searching out a moment's tranquillity along the water. In the distance she could hear the sound of a flute and stringed instruments playing in a gentle, haunting melody. She could remember having heard it before, along with... a story. What had it been again? Maki paused, frowning, as she tried to jog her foggy memory. It had been a poem from the Heian period, when... had that story been from human or shinigami hands? Maki didn't supposed it was that strange a thing to be hearing such an old song in Kyoto, the cultural jewel of the east, but if it wasn't even ...

No, she remembered it now. She had been getting ahead of herself, mixing up an old court song with something else entirely. Her impatience was showing, her lack of comfort with the ever-tightening deadlines around her. As a Shinigami she had always had all the time she needed to prepare for things, and now she was being thrust head first into experiences she had never expected to have for herself. She could almost hear Sorashiori with some kind of sarcastic, snippy retort, but her Zanpakuto's voice was silent in her current body. She was alone with her thoughts for the first time in centuries, and despite the sounds around her, things felt... quiet.

It was peaceful.

Maki couldn't stand it. This was not her world, had never been and would never be her world. Yet still, she could not deny what she saw with her very own eyes. Smiles and innocent laughter intermingled with song in the air, the high-pitched trilling of lovers' voices fluttering in her ears. It was beautiful, and yet she hated it with a passion. It didn't take a genius to find out why. Everything came into focus when she realized this simple little factor of her personality. She was... jealous. What had these people done to deserve this peace of theirs? What sacrifices had they made? It was an ultimately selfish thought, but not one she could avoid or deny having.

This, too, Maki hated. More than anyone, more than anything else, Maki loathed herself. The way that she would assure others of their well-being and then fail to be there when the times were toughest. The way she demanded discipline from others as her own life slid ever further out of control. The hypocrisy of stating that she would protect someone when all she had ever managed to bring them was harm. How could she not hate such a disgustingly unreliable person? How could others not see what she truly was and deny her for it? Ah, how much easier it would have been if someone else had been the one to feel such disdain. For someone else to resent her failures and free her from the responsibility of self-awareness.

She could have handled that.

Maki continued to walk. What else could she do? Her thoughts would achieve nothing, had never achieved anything. Her life was one of action. She had never achieved anything in stillness, and today would be no different. Before she knew it, the sun had set. The sky was the wispy black of smoke, stars obscured from sight by dark clouds. Save for the artificial lighting of the city, she was in the dark.

A day. An entire day, with nothing but regret to show for it.

Maki's eyes closed. Slowly, inch by inch, she drew in a long, deep breath. The breath escaped her lips a moment later in a sigh. She had been wasting her time. She'd never find what she was looking for here. How was she supposed to find an answer when there was no-one to give it? How was she supposed to grow stronger when there was nothing inside her but weakness?

A hand settled on Maki's shoulder, firm and strong, and all of her centuries of accumulated experience... did nothing. She didn't resist, didn't struggle, didn't even attempt to slip away to safety. Her eyes opened with painstaking slowness, and her head turned, ever so slightly, to face the direction of that hand. Four hundred and fifty years slipped away, and she was a child once again. Her head turned further, her body shifting with it to look past that hand at what lay beyond, trembling with trepidation. It couldn't be...

A moist glimmer tugged at the corner of her eyes, but she blinked it away.

The rough-shaven face of Takahashi Kazuki regarded Maki solemnly. The silence was deafening, and Maki's heartbeat thudded in her head more loudly than any battle drum ever could. He throat constricted, a painful, all too familiar tightening that arose whenever she was confronted with the truth of her feelings. After all of her life struggling to stand on her own two feet, to even fill a fraction of this man's shoes, they had met once more.

"I already know what you want."

Those six simple words resounded in Maki's head, her vision swimming as her throat constricted more, her breath becoming more and more difficult to catch. This was really him. The man who had lifted her from the darkness and proven to her that there was more to life than death. She had been in denial all this time, hiding behind ten thousand masks to conceal that delicate internal core. Inside she was just a child all this time, desperate to belong, to have someone who she could call family. She had curled up onto itself and shielded with layer upon layer of emotionally protective armor to conceal what she truly was.

"I cannot be a part of that chronicle."

Maki's heart dropped. Stopped.

"You already knew this, though, didn't you? My little demon sword, you always were the most honest with yourself of the lot."

Shattered.

Maki knew precisely, instinctively, what he meant. Part of her wanted to cry. To scream. To rage. To abandon this gigai where it was and strike him down where he stood for daring to do this to her. Maki's body shook with the intensity of her emotions, her vision becoming a watery blur filled with pinpricks of light like stars.

The back of one rough finger wiped them dry.

"... But... But... why...?" The desperation in her voice was thick, the clinging, cloying neediness of a child that had been told that they had never been wanted. Never been needed. That they were free to go, and make their own fate. That they need not have anything holding them back from shining like a jewel in the night sky.

"You do not yet know yourself... and my time has passed. Take your kin and return home. I have no comfort to impart to you." Kazuki's voice was stern, his face solemn and impassive. Maki could feel no emotion there, no concern, none of the support that she had expected to find. Why, or how she ever would have garnered it she didn't know. In hindsight she looked and felt the fool. Tears once again rolled down her cheek, their salty taste bitter on her tongue, tickling her face as they stretched to her chin before dripping unevenly to her shirt. She sniffled, but Kazuki gave no sign that he had noticed. Nor had she expected him to.

"I... I'm sorry, Father."

There was no response.

Maki pulled herself away by force, only to find that there was no resistance. Blind and unseeing, she fled stumbling on the uneven ground before remembering herself. In an instant, she slipped out from her gigai, grabbing it by the arm even as her sword slid from it's sheathe.

"Sorashiori!" Maki's voice cracked midway through the name, but her sword's power responded nonetheless. In a movement more reflexive than deliberate, she carved a glyph of force into the air and severe it, opening a portal home, uncaring of who might see. A moment later it closed, leaving only her namesake standing by the riverside. Kazuki's brown eyes glittered in the reflected light of the jewel of the east as he whispered into the suddenly cloudless night sky.

"Who would I be to comfort you when it was I that helped make you as you are...? This is just one more hammer's blow."

---
3128 words
41GP