Your hand trembles as you sheathe Hyourinmaru. The bone-deep cold, you know, will not leave for several hours. As you pant, puffs of breath crystallize in front of your face. Shuddering, you let yourself sink to the ground. You feel the icy dampness seep into your knees, and welcome it. You would sink into the muddy ice, if you could, and curl into it like a makeshift womb. The temperature will make your blood and thoughts sluggish, until you fall deeply unconscious.

There is a sort of peace to that, you think. A sort of goodness, in being less than you are to other people, and exactly what you are to yourself, for a little while. But your time is not your own anymore. You aren't the same scrawny, lonely boy you were not so long ago. The weight of your duty settles heavily on you. And you must return now.

The early morning sun pierces the veil of clouds and falls sharply on the virgin snow, already melting. It is high summer, so soon. The breath leaves your lungs in a gasp as you stagger to your feet. You survey your fingers dispassionately—they are red and cracked. Frostbite? Deep inside your mind, an ice dragon laughs.

Perhaps you will find your lieutenant asleep, or drunk, lips twisted in bitterness, and you will leave her there because she makes you feel…young again, like you are full of only childish worries. And you are slightly glad that you aren't her, and fearful, because it is only a matter of time.

There is a girl with dark hair and tearful eyes asking you why.

You used to have different dreams, long ago. You used to have dreams of squalls and whirling storms where you would stand in the eye of a great tornado of wind and snow, unharmed and unmoved as the elements raged around you. Those were dreams that didn't frighten you. They made you lonely and cold, but never afraid. The dreams that you have now are filled with sounds of pain and anguish. They want you to help them, and you want to help them, but you cannot. You have reached the limit, now. No more surges of power, no more heroic rescues and no more fields of slain hollows beneath your victorious, ice-swathed form.

There is just you, and the people who are hurt because of you. And despite you.

You can save them from a lot of things, you have learnt, but you cannot save them from themselves.

And there is a man with gentle eyes who cut you to bits without even trying. You know he is several hundreds of feet below the ground on which you stand, and sometimes you imagine him breathing. And existing. You are in the same world as he is. You dream about him sometimes, and wake up sweating and gasping and struggling for air. Because of him, you know the taste of fear and impotent rage on your lips very well now.

Outside the gates of Seireitei, she is waiting for you.

You know this before you even see her, because the hair on the back of your neck rises. There is something, you have learnt, beyond sight alone, and it feels like…a sudden rush of blood, but not quite. Something in you acknowledges that she is nearby. It has been this way for more years than you care to remember. You have a good idea of what it means, but you push that thought firmly away every time it floats to the front of your mind.

She sleepily greets you and smiles. The sharp morning light sharpens and blurs faces strangely—you can see the lines under her eyes and the curve of her lips and the slope of her cheek as it meets her jaw. These are things-you realize suddenly-that you would be able to draw with your eyes closed. If you never see her again, this is what you will be left with—the shape of a smile, the slope of a cheek, and a sleepy good morning.

This is enough.