.
.
.
.
THERE WAS A WORD that sometimes came in between sentences and conversations. That word that she would see on a poster. See on a list.
Hear the gardener mention whenever she and her beloved asked about the well-beings of the rows upon rows of flowers. Of multi-colored petals and curves and the most intoxicating of smells.
That word was a trigger. The magic word. The key that unlocked the secrets nobody but her (and him) know.
It was the Pandora's box to her ears.
Every time she hears that certain word, or more specifically that certain plant, she felt something not so different from disgust and fear rile up inside at her.
The deadly combination—she deemed it aggressive apprehension—were as if she'd been poisoned by an evil witch. There are moments where it felt like toxin is shaking inside her whole body. Moments where her vocals are unharmed and yet she cannot speak.
Minutes, hours, days, weeks pass by until her mouth opens up and can say the words it forms, and what comes out is half of the time her, half of the time a scream that could be described as the scream of the monster that dwells within her.
Whether or not she is alone or in public, the enemy that has invaded her sneaks out to flutter around her deepest memories. With every day that passes by, it seems to grow more and more, and she ends up more and more isolated from the world around her.
Sometimes, she cannot even face him, when that name comes up. He opens his mouth to speak to her and it feels like every gentle word has the possibility of that thing that crawls around her body, somehow, getting out to strike at her.
Lashing out profanity at her.
She sobs and coughs at night.
And she can't stop it.
Soon, she notices how her steps are haltered, hampered, haunted.
When she tries to solve the issues of the thing that is breaking her apart from the inside, a terrible pattern happens.
It goes:
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Four and five and six and suddenly she is crouched on the floor and coughing up tiny sparkles of scarlet.
The maids help her up and clean up the metal-smelling fluid on the floor—well, at least the maids said that it is the "typical rusty-tingling that reaches your nose," when she asked why it smelt like the rotting flesh of a being who is much too young.
And it hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurtshurtshurts and she has no one else to talk to but herself (and that monster inside of her.)
Walking is very tedious. The bones in her legs shake and she wonders if it's from fear or if it's a last minute warning before they're going to shatter.
Standing isn't any easier. Talking to other people, especially those with thick, gem-covered fans and golden ornaments in their luxurious hair, is more or less social suicide.
She prefers to hide away in her bedroom, when company is around, and allows stronger, more classy voices to give out the word on how she's doing.
She never really liked talking to them, though, with how they sneered and scoffed at her; so it's nothing to miss on either side.
At least with this method, the times where she must crawl to her destination are kept as in the shadows as those moments can possibly be. Not allowed out of the closet. Not allowed to be seen behind the curtains of inner and outer destruction.
Swept under the rug from the stuck-up noses above the mouths that would scream at the one she loves, "We told you to choose a hand that's befitting to your status!"
At moments where no event is around but she is at her most feebleness, she must drag herself alongside wooden floor, as anyone nearby is either working or someone that would look down at her for such weakness.
Her typical movement goes:
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
And she falls. She falls falls falls, and the poison inside her guffaws each and every time her knee harshly touches the ground.
The more it happens, the more the pain increases and the less she tries to prevail until, suddenly, she gives up. Soon, she just does nothing. Nothing at all.
She is soon restricted to a futon, and he comes in sometimes, and he talks and she listens. Gives a word or two of a response.
(When the sprinkles of scarlet turns into the cascade of crimson, she realizes that sentences should be preserved for the time being.)
The invisible snake of despair seems to of fully destroyed her insides. Breathing hurts. Living hurts.
Being herself hurts (though self-deprecation had always been a thing with her.)
The amount of red that she has spat and coughed and sneezed out is horrifying. She sometimes has to close her eyes until a maid wipes it away.
The futon that touches her back is the twentieth one she's gotten in three months, and she's already worked up some ruby, sticky patterns on the pillow and covers.
It doesn't matter now, though.
"Rue the day, I told that relative, when he had the nerve to say you wouldn't last another month and that I should get a woman 'more to my status,'" he said reassuringly, but she chuckles and shushes him.
"It is my time. I deserve it."
He grips her hand and bites his lip.
She knew he didn't mean to say the trigger word, but he did.
"I will find the greatest medicine for you, I swea—"
"It is alright...I-It is my t...time..."
His eyes bulged and, despite how he was raised, panic is evident on him.
"There is no way that just that could...!"
Her significant other was as smart as he was gifted. He tries to bow, but she shakes her head no, before she coughs off some blood. She doesn't blame him. It was inevitable, with how common the word was.
It wasn't his fault, really, because it was truly her fault. That word is the punishment she received for her careless act. The selfishness of that decision of hers many years ago.
The word that was, at that moment, the embodiment of that day...that event, which once traveled just in her stomach and now was happily mocking her, tormenting her insides from the areas around her crooked legs to her skinny arms and sweaty head.
That source of negativity that thrived by a simple three-lettered word.
And it's all her fault.
Yes, it's all her faultfaultfaultfaultfaultfaultfaultfaultfault (and she feels like she is about to have a ripped in half body by the time she departs from Seireitei but she has to keep a smile for him...) and nothing will change that. Nothing.
It is all her fault because the word "rue" is the reminder for her about the little one she abandoned who, if not dead, was barely alive.
Yes, that little one she had abandoned, if still present, was "living" through filthy clothes in a filthy environment, probably on an empty stomach, and all while she herself was—before her decline of health—in the most detailed of kimonos, dining on the most delicious of meals.
As she reminds this to her lover, he assures her that she was not a demon for what she did, but she can't accept such an answer when the monster inside reminds her about the possibilities of misery that the poor little one could've faced.
It hurts. It truly hurts, and not the hurt that she feels as the demented toxin is about to devour her full but an emotional one; a feeling of regret. Of sorrow.
That is why, right before she departs, she looks up at her husband, and asks him if he can do one—no, two—no, three things, he nods and she, trying to make an open smile, giggles, despite the little drop of blood that comes out.
"B-B-Byakuya, my love...F...Find Rukia, r-raise her as if she were your sister, and please, please do not tell...h-her about the...truth of me...I do not d-d-deserve to be considered her sister, after all I've d-done," she says, the longest sentence she's ever spoken in months.
He nods.
Her eyelids cover her violet pupils.
There is silence.
As a tear falls from her grief-stricken husband's eyes and touches the side of her left, pale and skinny cheek, the tormented that had pestered at her, clawed at her, unleashed corruption inside her—
It diminishes. Both it and her have
e-l-a-p-s-e-d.
.
.
...
...
...
.
.
...
"You look just like her."
Rukia cupped the five bundles of rues in one hand, and cupped the five bundles of roses in the other. "You tell me this more and more, Byakuya-niisan."
"Lay the ones that dwell on your right side in front of her."
With a sigh, Rukia slowly lowered the bundles of roses on top of the grave. She fixed up her just given captain's robe, her long hair flowing slightly in the breeze. Byakuya went and kissed the stone that engraved Hisana's name.
Rukia looked at the bundle of rue that she still held. "Er, niisan, what will we do with...these?"
...
"We shall burn them at a river and leave their ashes to fly into the air," Kuchiki responded with a little bit of a somber tone but overall in his usual nonchalant fashion, the male starting to walk away from the grave. "Then we shall pray at a temple."
Rukia cocked her head in slight confusion, and after a minute passed by, Byakuya momentarily stopped walking, though he didn't look back.
"Are you coming, Captain Rukia?"
With the mention of her title, said ebony-haired female smiled somewhat, and began walking towards the once again moving male.
"Yes, niisan," Rukia said, and Byakuya gave a tiny smile before going back to his frown and walking forward.
'Hisana, I pray that I have done your last three requests as well as you wanted me to.'
...
Though neither Byakuya or Rukia noticed it, one of the rues had quickly traveled from the bundle in the new Captain's hand, and landed unto Hisana's grave; after a few seconds, the wind threw it far, far away, with such harsh force that it was torn to shreds.
[Fin.]
.
.
.
.
The Prompt: Without Revealing Anything or Anyone, Write a Story Pertaining to a Character's Name. The Only Clue You Can Give Can Only Be in the Title.
...
...
...
(Sorry about how the bloodiness of how she dies and etc kinda fucks up with canon but for this fic let's pretend it doesn't.)
Thanks for reading!