switch5
Member
The Convicted
The room was dirty. He expected no less. Criminals, after all, don’t have the luxury of normal services and accommodations. They have to be reminded everyday about what they did, and how it doesn’t fit the concepts of what’s normal for the rest of the society they live in. And to do that, you strike first at their most primary needs, and then you wear out the details. When the world around you is unclean, you start to think that maybe you're that way too, and from there to darker thoughts it really doesn't take that much. Dust, crumbs, trash, uncleanness in all degrees could be found within the room that now secured Tetsuo, two metal chairs and a metal table - they were, of course, unclean.
Tetsuo pat the dirt out of one of the chairs and took a seat. His zanpakutou was held captive by one of the guards, which made him feel a slight discomfort on his left side. He thought it would go away soon, but after ten minutes it was still there, nagging him. He took a cigarette out - god knows the guard tried to confiscate these as well, but things got settled after a good round of talking and bribing - and lit it promptly.
White smoke rose towards the room’s ceiling, and ashes fell to the ground to dirty it even more. All the while, his eyes waited patiently to see the figure of Hayashi Amaya, who would surely join him in a few minutes... or so he hoped.
The jangling of chains was apparent long before Amaya came into sight. The woman was walking hurriedly down a hallway, flanked by a pair of guards. Her pristine hair was fanned out behind her, highlighting the stark contrast between the state of her hair, and the state of the res of her body. Her robes were coated in a soft layer of dust, her skin was flushed and red, and her face was splattered with blemishes. But despite it all, her hair was pristine and silky, and her head was held high as she walked.
Amaya had no idea who she was meeting, but the worry that Yuzuki Masato would be waiting inside of the metal doors was the primary thought in her mind. As the large door opened, the squealing of the unmaintained metal drowned the jangling of her chains out.
Amaya peeked her head in quickly, and immediately the worry that dominated her mind was lifted. For an instant a gleeful grin filled her face, but she restrained it hastily. Quickly and calmly she made her way to the dirty chair that sat across from Tetsuo, and without hesitation she fell into it.
"Tetsuo,” she smiled, "what brings you to these dirty cells?”
"You, of course.” His reply was short and honest. His voice coated with camaraderie for a former comrade in arms. The smoking man lifted his cigarette as a sign of welcome, and took one last draft of it before promptly erasing it from existence between his fingers - reiatsu and whatnot can actually become very handy when properly applied.
"A little bird told me that you ended up here some time ago, and that you had sent for me after a while. You wanted to talk, it seems? Well, here I am, Hayashi. I’m sorry for the delay though, I was out on missions most of the time, and you know how messages can take a while to go around the Eleventh... I guess we’re not that used to talking with others, eh?”
The maroon eyed shinigami took out his pack of cigarettes and a lighter and placed them above the table at arm’s reach. He lit yet another white stick and took it to his mouth before resuming his speech.
"So... let’s not beat around the bush, right? What shit did you pull off to end up here, Hayashi?”
Amaya tried not to let the sudden question put a damper on her mood. After all she had been hoping that Tetsuo would come for weeks, and finally he was here.
Learning backward, the woman crossed her legs, and took a deep breath as she prepared her answer.
"I’m surprised that someone actually mentioned it to you at all. Like you said, dualists don’t really talk much. I am surprised you heard I wanted to see you, but didn’t hear what I did. I would have guessed there would have been some sort of rumors spread about it..."
Amaya sighed again, and eyed Tetsuo’s cigarette. She had never smoked, but it always reminded her of her father, and made her feel uncomfortable. Squirming a bit more in the dirty metal chair, she started into her story.
"Do you remember when you taught me Munimentum Ad Umbris? When I was frozen in that ice, and the fear you saw in my eyes? I was afraid... of my father, whenever it snows, or I slip on ice, I think of my brother.” Amaya realized she was on a tangent, and Tetsuo was probably barely following her thought process.
"In my past life, my father blamed me for the death of my mother and brother. He hurt me, attacked me, and a lot more, for years. Eventually, he couldn’t stand letting me live anymore and her killed me.” Her hand subconsciously dropped to the stop on her stomach that held the scar from his blade.
"I feared my father more than I have every feared anything. And Masato discovered that about me. In an effort to help me grow fearless he suggested that I explore my past, in an attempt to reconcile with it. I decided to look through Rukongai for any sign of my family. And... I found him Tetsuo. I couldn’t help it, with everything he had done to me... all of my memories flooded back at once, and I attacked him.”
"He was a teacher, and his students tried to fight back... and I fought them all. When I finished, I had left my father near death, and injured all of his students. I came back, and I was immediately confronted by Masato, who arrested me. And then the Central Forty Six convicted me of treason, and multiple counts of assault. That’s about it...”
She trailed off trying to make sure she didn’t leave out any details, and giving Tetsuo a chance to take in what she had told him.
"Pretty stupid shit you pulled off there, Hayashi. Can’t blame them for putting you here, really. After all, our job is to secure the safety of souls, and not going berserk on their asses like that.”
He might’ve been a little too honest there, but there was a reason - at least he wanted to think there was - for such simple minded methods. His current cigarette expired not after long, and yet another was promptly lit by the guest shinigami.
"Yet things don’t add up, I guess. I mean, it might be really stupid of me, but if you really feared your father that much, how come you just went there and kicked the crap out of him anyway? Was it really fear inside your head all this time?” he tapped his own head twice for emphasis, "or had the fear subsided and given way to something much more harmful to you and to others, like say, hate?”
"Of course I hate him.” She said plainly, "He betrayed me, a little girl, who had just lost her mother and brother. I’ve never denied the duality of my fear for him, part of the reason I aspired to become stronger was so that men like him could no longer use me as prey. So that I could fight back if that situation ever arose again.”
Amaya sighed and looked once again at the newly lit cigarette. At first the scent of tobacco on the air hadn’t bothered her, but Tetsuo’s most recent comment had put her on edge, and with each exhalation of smoke she was growing more frustrated.
"I never denied my mistake, not even to the Central Forty Six, or Tsubaki when she visited me. I’m pretty sure if I was in the Central Forty Six’s position I would have sent me here too. What’s frustrating, is having to defend myself to every damned person who walks into this place. You wouldn’t guess it, but it’s pretty hard not to think about my crime when I’m locked inside these jail cells.”
"Oh, I would, Hayashi. I’m pretty sure it must be damn hard not to think about what you did, and think about if it was right or wrong, and get lost on these thoughts over and over again as long as you‘re bound by these walls here. Trust me, I have quite a lot of experience with carrying sins and worrying yourself needlessly.”
That Hayashi was losing her composure didn’t pass unnoticed by Tetsuo. However, the proper explanation to her decline in decorum wasn’t clear to him at all. Were his words the culprit? Or was it the hostile ambience of the room? The ever present pressure that it exerted on her, throwing daggers and veiled implications against her mind at every single opportunity?
"But I’m not asking you to defend yourself at all. I won’t pretend that I’m a saint in the presence of a hideous devil, Hayashi; I’m no hypocrite. Our job is to kill, isn’t it? Stripped of all the glory and universal importance to balance and whatnot, we’re all just hired killers. Yet... we all know what we can kill, and what is off limits. When you do shit like what you did, it gets easy for people to think that you lost sight of that line. That’s all. I’m thinking that you haven’t, but that’s something only you can know for sure.”
Tetsuo leaned forward towards the woman, his elbows on top of the table and his face beaming with child-like curiosity and an ever so slight tinge of eloquence, perhaps even intelligence instead of the usual savageness attributed to him by many of his peers.
"So, that whole deal was just part of your reason to want power, hmm? Would you tell me about what else drives you to that end, Hayashi?”
"Yuzuki, Masato.” She let the name linger in the air, like the smoke from the cigarettes. "On the Sands of Hueco Mundo, before you and Tsubaki returned from the Forth after facing that Espada, I confronted him. I told him that I had faith in him, despite his failure, a failure which cost the lives of many dualists. Mere moments later he stripped you of your rank... and your humanity... for a mistake, that he and Tsubaki had made as well. He is a man of hypocrisy, a man of lies. He told me to go looking for my past, and when I failed, he tossed me aside to once again avoid any blame for his failures.”
"Yuzuki, Masato is a man who finds faults in everyone around him, he sentences them to death for any mistake, and he has never been held accountable for his own mistakes. He left us alone twice on the sand of Hueco Mundo. Twice dualists died because he was a failure of a leader, and he cannot forgive my mistake, he can’t even come to visit me in this rotting place, despite the blind faith... and love I gave him.”
"I will survive, and I will grow stronger. One day, I will make that shell of a man answer for the mistakes he has made. I’ve been pushed around for decades by men who find themselves the pinnacle of existence, and I made the mistake of loving another one of those men. I won’t be pushed aside again.”
Tetsuo carefully listened to Hayashi’s monologue, expressing very little of his emotions about them to the woman. What she said wasn’t entirely wrong, but there was a pervasive sense of selfishness to it all. Was that all she could see about Masato? Were those words the extent of her insight about the man? Surely he wasn’t a role-model to be followed by others, but there was more to him than what her self-centered words described. Perhaps the love she spoke about blinded her from truly seeing Masato for what he truly was?
"Everyone makes mistakes, Hayashi. Living to expose another’s faults is but a fool’s errand; a path that’ll lead you to nowhere... or as Yuzuki would say, it won’t take you any closer to a truth.”
Tetsuo closed his eyes for a moment, his expression became clearly disturbed during those precious seconds of reflection. And then, the twentieth seat gazed at the woman once more.
"Aren’t you merely replacing the figure of your father with that of Yuzuki, Hayashi? It seems to me that your love for him came with along wishful thinking from your part. Perhaps you idolized him far too much, hu?”
"Wishful thinking?” Amaya sighed, "there may have been aspects of my feelings that were nothing but hopes on my behalf. But is it too much to ask for some understanding? I seriously doubt that Masato’s only option was to arrest me, let alone push to have me sent here. I relied on him, like I relied on my father Tetsuo...”
"How else was I supposed to handle this? There are only so many times I can be put through this, only so many times I can answer for a single mistake I’ve never been able to reconcile. He should have seen through it, he called me weak for attacking my father, but he never went deeper, to try to understand the truth of the situation.”
Her eyes locked with Tetsuo’s, they were bolstered with a newfound stubbornness. Clenching onto the table she tried to restrain herself as she spoke.
"As someone who has been forced to answer for every mistake that I have ever made, even ones that I didn’t necessarily make, I had hoped someone I had put so much faith in would have tried to give me a second chance. I don’t think that’s a byproduct of my love, or my idolization of him, I think it was something I expected out of our friendship.”
"The mere thought that you were friends is already wishful thinking from your part, Hayashi,” the words were cold, oh so cold, but he wanted them to be just like that; stinging to the ears, provocative to the mind, "he was a Captain, not just some mere pal of yours. Understanding you wasn’t something he did out of mere camaraderie, it was his job. And it was never his job to meet some personal expectation of yours.”
Tetsuo got up from his chair, his eyes fiercely burning with some kind of quiet, pervasive aura of menace and malice, of hidden intentions and deep thoughts as they glanced at Hayashi’s figure - and her fingers, tightly clenched against cold steel, perhaps aching to find his neck?
"Come now, you’re talking about faith, Hayashi? Something that has absolutely no foundation, no solid base to even exist. Something that has no shape, and the sole meaning of being an easy way out for those who cannot accept the truth that we’re out there on our own. That’s typical of those who are weak, Hayashi... and you are not weak.
You cannot hope for things, you cannot have faith or simply believe in them... you have to know, you have to understand and see them for what they truly are. You want redemption from your past sins? You want to make up for your wrongdoings? Forget about that. That is impossible. You can’t rule over time, you can’t erase the past.
What’s done is done. Masato, your father, your mistakes, they’re part of the past. They’re gone. Put them behind and move on, that’s all there is to it.”
He paused and chuckled, another cigarette found its way within his lips.
"Then again, Tsubaki would disagree with me, in fact, she already did.”
Amaya’s hands released a little on the metal on the table. Her eyes focused on Tetsuo, suddenly very intrigued by his last words.
"Tsubaki disagreed with you eh? She mentioned something about you when she visited me. Something about her past, and your family. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but what exactly was she talking about.”
She knew it was an obvious ploy to change the topic of the conversation, but she was tired of his advances into her personal psyche. Maybe it would work, and they could talk about something else, if not it would still give Amaya a small chance to regroup , and figure out exactly what else she wanted to talk to Tetsuo about.
"She killed my mother when I was but a child," he said, quite easily in fact, "and for that she feels indebted to me for foolish reason that I still fail to accept to this day. You and Tsubaki are very similar in regards of how you deal with whatever shit happened in the past. Was she who influenced you or the other way around?”
The same quiet eyes as before stared at the woman and waited for her reply.
"After you’re return to the Division in Hueco Mundo, Tsubaki saved my life.” She frowned, "Afterwards we talked, she saw my weaknesses, and she helped me start to deal with them. Later on, after Yuzuki beat me nearly to death, she visited me again, and taught me yet another lesson. It was her that influenced me.
Why do you ask?”
She smiled, and let herself lean back, for a moment she was enjoying another conversation. She didn’t mind letting Tetsuo know she owed a great deal to Tsubaki, she was just happy to talk about something other than the Yuzuki shit, or the mistakes she had made that landed her in these cells.
"Because I don’t like how Tsubaki deal with her past, which is also the case with how you deal with your past, Hayashi.”
His eyes sought some kind of mystic imagery on the dark, dirty ceiling of the room, and his hands drew circles and other forms in the air as the shinigami went on with his monologue. Perhaps he was excited, or maybe he was merely contemplating something that had bothered him for far, far too much time in the past.
"I don’t see the benefit of living like that. Letting your past shape your future, allowing your mistakes to force you to cause even more mistakes. Shouldn’t you learn from them? Shouldn’t you be striving to evolve, to become something better than before? How can you even attempt to do that if you’re always trying to find a way to justify something that requires no such thing?”
"Is justifying a hatred for a man who wronged me something that will hold me back? I think, just like my hatred for my father before him, this new goal will help me grow stronger, and into a new woman. I’ll push myself every day Tetsuo, I’ll push myself so that Masato can no longer prey on me. So that he can realize there is something more to me than a little girl who’s lost her way.”
"I am learning form my past however, as well as the teachings of the Eleventh Division. You see, I do not fear Yuzuki Masato... Fear was what caused me to break down whenever it snowed, it is what kept me from looking for him for so long, and it is what caused me to lose control when I found him. As long as I don’t fear Yuzuki, I will always be able to temper my reactions around him, and I will not make this same mistake again. Although... I may never be in a position to.” She chuckled shortly.
"And that is why you’re still here, I guess. Or should I say, why he even sent you here in the first place. Can’t you see, Hayashi? The obvious flaw on your thoughts just now? Tell me something, if you will: and when there’s not a Masato for you to use as the physical image of what you should not fear, what then? Do you truly desire to live your life, to amass power and become stronger, simply because you do not want to fear a mere man?”
Tetsuo paused, and his eyes fell on the woman like pouring rain - subtle at first, but with increasing intensity with each passing second they stood starting at her.
"Don’t you see how selfish that is?”
"Selfish?” She stared into the onslaught that was Tetsuo’s stare. If she hadn’t have faced Yuzuki so many times, the woman may have withered under the stare, but instead she leaned on her stored resolve and responded. "It may be selfish Tetsuo, but I’ve never been in a position where something other than selfishness suited me. Everyone I relied on, everyone I gave something to, betrayed me in return... or died...”
The words stuck in her throat as she remember her meeting with Takeo... She still could barely accept the idea he was alive, and they could help each other.
"... Look Tetsuo... even if there was someone important to me, I just don’t know another way.”
"And that’s your excuse to not try and learn another way? Hell, if everyone followed that example we’d be totally fucked, wouldn’t we? Just because you don’t know a different path doesn’t mean you’re obliged to go down the same one over and over again... where’s your curiosity, Hayashi? Where’s your ability to dare?”
He turned around and left the woman to stare at his back for a moment, but his mouth didn’t cease spouting words for her to hear.
"Forget about what you’ve done in the past, Hayashi. Assimilate that it all is but a part of what you are right now and move on. The time to linger on the past and following easy ways out is over for you, unless you wish to spend the rest of your life behind iron bars, Hayashi. You need to reshape your thoughts, and that can only happen as long as you accept that what you have right now is not what you want.”
She thought about Takeo, a figment from her troubled past. The happy memories the two of them shared were enough for Amaya to understand that this isn’t what she wanted. These iron bars, this cycle of hatred, and the fear, she wanted it gone. For a brief second she thought about letting her entire past go, but immediately her mind snapped back onto her darker memories. She closed her eyes, and her brow furrowed, and she tried to move past them, but it was like she was trying to push a train, no matter how hard she tried they stayed there.
"Tetsuo... I... I can’t, I don’t know how. Everything they’ve done to me, it’s just not something I can let go of right now. I want to, I want to be happy, but this isn’t that simple, these aren’t just memories I can let go of. I close my eyes and they come back to me, I see something else that one of these men did to me. I can’t just... move on, it’s not that simple...”
"It’s never simple, Hayashi. I took fifty years to let go of my past. Long, hard, foolish years that I spent gaining power by putting myself closer to certain death each and every time I had the chance to. There is no need for you to do the same. You don’t have to follow that same road.
All I’m saying, and you should listen to this well, is that there is an alternative to what you’re currently doing to yourself. The simple act of accepting that there’s another way is already a big, big improvement over your previous self.”
He turned to her with a somewhat friendly smile on his face. Perhaps he wanted to look that way, or maybe it was pure reflex or something; one would never guess his true intentions with that smile. In fact, Tetsuo smiling was a rather rare and awkward event nowadays... it might’ve even look creepy for all he knew.
"I can’t force you to change, but only show you alternatives. Whether you decide to stick to your plan or think something new is entirely up to you. I won’t pretend to understand your pain or say that I’ve been through your suffering, that’s hypocrisy. I know only of what I felt, and that makes me say it’s possible to change. Accepting that or not is, again, entirely up to you.”
Amaya smiled back at for a moment at Tetsuo. She tried to remember the last time she had seen the man smile, and couldn’t remember another time. It was relieving that someone as tense as the usually stuttering man in front of her was actually showing her his first smile, and the tensions she felt from the earlier conversation started to drift away.
She had known it off the bat, looking at this from a different outlook wasn’t as easy as choosing it to be that way. But with the help of someone who had been through something similar as her, maybe Amaya could start to turn it around. With Takeo back she had started to feel glimmers of hope that her life would be more than seeking vengeance, and maybe she could start to change that now.
"Who knows Tetsuo, maybe the next time you see me I’ll be a completely different person,” she joked, "but for now, I think it’s going to be small steps, for a long time, if I can even change.”
"That’s better than nothing, Hayashi. Much better...” Though his voice sounded somewhat confident and relieved, Tetsuo knew better than to simply believe that people could change that easily. It was simple to say the words, but to actually take action was another thing entirely. He knew that all too well.
Tetsuo looked her over one last time before turning and knocking at the door from whence he had entered the room. He waved a goodbye to the woman, and the door was shut behind him, effectively cutting him off from Hayashi for the time being.
Along the way towards the Eleventh, he couldn’t help but to think how everyone seemed to allow their pasts to get in the way of their present; and how often times that was the difference between getting somewhere, and getting nowhere at all...
As Tetsuo left the room, Amaya felt guards move to her flanks. Without a word, Amaya stood up, and let them lead her out of the room. The cells that she walked past sent chills up her spine. Now, more than ever it felt like she didn’t belong here. She realized that it didn’t matter if she wanted to change her outlook on her past, Tetsuo was right, if she didn’t do something about it, she’d end up here.
As she muddled around in her thoughts she wondered if letting go of her past was even possible. She closed her eyes as she walked, letting herself be lead, and memories of her past life played through her mind. She remembered those first few hours after the fire, and the bone breaking force her father had squeezed her with. She remembered the flying beer bottles that left welts, and when she told her friends that she had fallen out of bed to cover them up.
Suddenly the group stopped walking, and Amaya’s eye’s snapped open. The dreary iron, and empty cell in front of her was all too familiar. As she walked into to her new home, one glimmer of hope for the future burned in her mind,
Takeo...
[4650]
Kanzaki, Tetsuo
Hayashi, Amaya
Hayashi, Amaya
The room was dirty. He expected no less. Criminals, after all, don’t have the luxury of normal services and accommodations. They have to be reminded everyday about what they did, and how it doesn’t fit the concepts of what’s normal for the rest of the society they live in. And to do that, you strike first at their most primary needs, and then you wear out the details. When the world around you is unclean, you start to think that maybe you're that way too, and from there to darker thoughts it really doesn't take that much. Dust, crumbs, trash, uncleanness in all degrees could be found within the room that now secured Tetsuo, two metal chairs and a metal table - they were, of course, unclean.
Tetsuo pat the dirt out of one of the chairs and took a seat. His zanpakutou was held captive by one of the guards, which made him feel a slight discomfort on his left side. He thought it would go away soon, but after ten minutes it was still there, nagging him. He took a cigarette out - god knows the guard tried to confiscate these as well, but things got settled after a good round of talking and bribing - and lit it promptly.
White smoke rose towards the room’s ceiling, and ashes fell to the ground to dirty it even more. All the while, his eyes waited patiently to see the figure of Hayashi Amaya, who would surely join him in a few minutes... or so he hoped.
The jangling of chains was apparent long before Amaya came into sight. The woman was walking hurriedly down a hallway, flanked by a pair of guards. Her pristine hair was fanned out behind her, highlighting the stark contrast between the state of her hair, and the state of the res of her body. Her robes were coated in a soft layer of dust, her skin was flushed and red, and her face was splattered with blemishes. But despite it all, her hair was pristine and silky, and her head was held high as she walked.
Amaya had no idea who she was meeting, but the worry that Yuzuki Masato would be waiting inside of the metal doors was the primary thought in her mind. As the large door opened, the squealing of the unmaintained metal drowned the jangling of her chains out.
Amaya peeked her head in quickly, and immediately the worry that dominated her mind was lifted. For an instant a gleeful grin filled her face, but she restrained it hastily. Quickly and calmly she made her way to the dirty chair that sat across from Tetsuo, and without hesitation she fell into it.
"Tetsuo,” she smiled, "what brings you to these dirty cells?”
"You, of course.” His reply was short and honest. His voice coated with camaraderie for a former comrade in arms. The smoking man lifted his cigarette as a sign of welcome, and took one last draft of it before promptly erasing it from existence between his fingers - reiatsu and whatnot can actually become very handy when properly applied.
"A little bird told me that you ended up here some time ago, and that you had sent for me after a while. You wanted to talk, it seems? Well, here I am, Hayashi. I’m sorry for the delay though, I was out on missions most of the time, and you know how messages can take a while to go around the Eleventh... I guess we’re not that used to talking with others, eh?”
The maroon eyed shinigami took out his pack of cigarettes and a lighter and placed them above the table at arm’s reach. He lit yet another white stick and took it to his mouth before resuming his speech.
"So... let’s not beat around the bush, right? What shit did you pull off to end up here, Hayashi?”
Amaya tried not to let the sudden question put a damper on her mood. After all she had been hoping that Tetsuo would come for weeks, and finally he was here.
Learning backward, the woman crossed her legs, and took a deep breath as she prepared her answer.
"I’m surprised that someone actually mentioned it to you at all. Like you said, dualists don’t really talk much. I am surprised you heard I wanted to see you, but didn’t hear what I did. I would have guessed there would have been some sort of rumors spread about it..."
Amaya sighed again, and eyed Tetsuo’s cigarette. She had never smoked, but it always reminded her of her father, and made her feel uncomfortable. Squirming a bit more in the dirty metal chair, she started into her story.
"Do you remember when you taught me Munimentum Ad Umbris? When I was frozen in that ice, and the fear you saw in my eyes? I was afraid... of my father, whenever it snows, or I slip on ice, I think of my brother.” Amaya realized she was on a tangent, and Tetsuo was probably barely following her thought process.
"In my past life, my father blamed me for the death of my mother and brother. He hurt me, attacked me, and a lot more, for years. Eventually, he couldn’t stand letting me live anymore and her killed me.” Her hand subconsciously dropped to the stop on her stomach that held the scar from his blade.
"I feared my father more than I have every feared anything. And Masato discovered that about me. In an effort to help me grow fearless he suggested that I explore my past, in an attempt to reconcile with it. I decided to look through Rukongai for any sign of my family. And... I found him Tetsuo. I couldn’t help it, with everything he had done to me... all of my memories flooded back at once, and I attacked him.”
"He was a teacher, and his students tried to fight back... and I fought them all. When I finished, I had left my father near death, and injured all of his students. I came back, and I was immediately confronted by Masato, who arrested me. And then the Central Forty Six convicted me of treason, and multiple counts of assault. That’s about it...”
She trailed off trying to make sure she didn’t leave out any details, and giving Tetsuo a chance to take in what she had told him.
"Pretty stupid shit you pulled off there, Hayashi. Can’t blame them for putting you here, really. After all, our job is to secure the safety of souls, and not going berserk on their asses like that.”
He might’ve been a little too honest there, but there was a reason - at least he wanted to think there was - for such simple minded methods. His current cigarette expired not after long, and yet another was promptly lit by the guest shinigami.
"Yet things don’t add up, I guess. I mean, it might be really stupid of me, but if you really feared your father that much, how come you just went there and kicked the crap out of him anyway? Was it really fear inside your head all this time?” he tapped his own head twice for emphasis, "or had the fear subsided and given way to something much more harmful to you and to others, like say, hate?”
"Of course I hate him.” She said plainly, "He betrayed me, a little girl, who had just lost her mother and brother. I’ve never denied the duality of my fear for him, part of the reason I aspired to become stronger was so that men like him could no longer use me as prey. So that I could fight back if that situation ever arose again.”
Amaya sighed and looked once again at the newly lit cigarette. At first the scent of tobacco on the air hadn’t bothered her, but Tetsuo’s most recent comment had put her on edge, and with each exhalation of smoke she was growing more frustrated.
"I never denied my mistake, not even to the Central Forty Six, or Tsubaki when she visited me. I’m pretty sure if I was in the Central Forty Six’s position I would have sent me here too. What’s frustrating, is having to defend myself to every damned person who walks into this place. You wouldn’t guess it, but it’s pretty hard not to think about my crime when I’m locked inside these jail cells.”
"Oh, I would, Hayashi. I’m pretty sure it must be damn hard not to think about what you did, and think about if it was right or wrong, and get lost on these thoughts over and over again as long as you‘re bound by these walls here. Trust me, I have quite a lot of experience with carrying sins and worrying yourself needlessly.”
That Hayashi was losing her composure didn’t pass unnoticed by Tetsuo. However, the proper explanation to her decline in decorum wasn’t clear to him at all. Were his words the culprit? Or was it the hostile ambience of the room? The ever present pressure that it exerted on her, throwing daggers and veiled implications against her mind at every single opportunity?
"But I’m not asking you to defend yourself at all. I won’t pretend that I’m a saint in the presence of a hideous devil, Hayashi; I’m no hypocrite. Our job is to kill, isn’t it? Stripped of all the glory and universal importance to balance and whatnot, we’re all just hired killers. Yet... we all know what we can kill, and what is off limits. When you do shit like what you did, it gets easy for people to think that you lost sight of that line. That’s all. I’m thinking that you haven’t, but that’s something only you can know for sure.”
Tetsuo leaned forward towards the woman, his elbows on top of the table and his face beaming with child-like curiosity and an ever so slight tinge of eloquence, perhaps even intelligence instead of the usual savageness attributed to him by many of his peers.
"So, that whole deal was just part of your reason to want power, hmm? Would you tell me about what else drives you to that end, Hayashi?”
"Yuzuki, Masato.” She let the name linger in the air, like the smoke from the cigarettes. "On the Sands of Hueco Mundo, before you and Tsubaki returned from the Forth after facing that Espada, I confronted him. I told him that I had faith in him, despite his failure, a failure which cost the lives of many dualists. Mere moments later he stripped you of your rank... and your humanity... for a mistake, that he and Tsubaki had made as well. He is a man of hypocrisy, a man of lies. He told me to go looking for my past, and when I failed, he tossed me aside to once again avoid any blame for his failures.”
"Yuzuki, Masato is a man who finds faults in everyone around him, he sentences them to death for any mistake, and he has never been held accountable for his own mistakes. He left us alone twice on the sand of Hueco Mundo. Twice dualists died because he was a failure of a leader, and he cannot forgive my mistake, he can’t even come to visit me in this rotting place, despite the blind faith... and love I gave him.”
"I will survive, and I will grow stronger. One day, I will make that shell of a man answer for the mistakes he has made. I’ve been pushed around for decades by men who find themselves the pinnacle of existence, and I made the mistake of loving another one of those men. I won’t be pushed aside again.”
Tetsuo carefully listened to Hayashi’s monologue, expressing very little of his emotions about them to the woman. What she said wasn’t entirely wrong, but there was a pervasive sense of selfishness to it all. Was that all she could see about Masato? Were those words the extent of her insight about the man? Surely he wasn’t a role-model to be followed by others, but there was more to him than what her self-centered words described. Perhaps the love she spoke about blinded her from truly seeing Masato for what he truly was?
"Everyone makes mistakes, Hayashi. Living to expose another’s faults is but a fool’s errand; a path that’ll lead you to nowhere... or as Yuzuki would say, it won’t take you any closer to a truth.”
Tetsuo closed his eyes for a moment, his expression became clearly disturbed during those precious seconds of reflection. And then, the twentieth seat gazed at the woman once more.
"Aren’t you merely replacing the figure of your father with that of Yuzuki, Hayashi? It seems to me that your love for him came with along wishful thinking from your part. Perhaps you idolized him far too much, hu?”
"Wishful thinking?” Amaya sighed, "there may have been aspects of my feelings that were nothing but hopes on my behalf. But is it too much to ask for some understanding? I seriously doubt that Masato’s only option was to arrest me, let alone push to have me sent here. I relied on him, like I relied on my father Tetsuo...”
"How else was I supposed to handle this? There are only so many times I can be put through this, only so many times I can answer for a single mistake I’ve never been able to reconcile. He should have seen through it, he called me weak for attacking my father, but he never went deeper, to try to understand the truth of the situation.”
Her eyes locked with Tetsuo’s, they were bolstered with a newfound stubbornness. Clenching onto the table she tried to restrain herself as she spoke.
"As someone who has been forced to answer for every mistake that I have ever made, even ones that I didn’t necessarily make, I had hoped someone I had put so much faith in would have tried to give me a second chance. I don’t think that’s a byproduct of my love, or my idolization of him, I think it was something I expected out of our friendship.”
"The mere thought that you were friends is already wishful thinking from your part, Hayashi,” the words were cold, oh so cold, but he wanted them to be just like that; stinging to the ears, provocative to the mind, "he was a Captain, not just some mere pal of yours. Understanding you wasn’t something he did out of mere camaraderie, it was his job. And it was never his job to meet some personal expectation of yours.”
Tetsuo got up from his chair, his eyes fiercely burning with some kind of quiet, pervasive aura of menace and malice, of hidden intentions and deep thoughts as they glanced at Hayashi’s figure - and her fingers, tightly clenched against cold steel, perhaps aching to find his neck?
"Come now, you’re talking about faith, Hayashi? Something that has absolutely no foundation, no solid base to even exist. Something that has no shape, and the sole meaning of being an easy way out for those who cannot accept the truth that we’re out there on our own. That’s typical of those who are weak, Hayashi... and you are not weak.
You cannot hope for things, you cannot have faith or simply believe in them... you have to know, you have to understand and see them for what they truly are. You want redemption from your past sins? You want to make up for your wrongdoings? Forget about that. That is impossible. You can’t rule over time, you can’t erase the past.
What’s done is done. Masato, your father, your mistakes, they’re part of the past. They’re gone. Put them behind and move on, that’s all there is to it.”
He paused and chuckled, another cigarette found its way within his lips.
"Then again, Tsubaki would disagree with me, in fact, she already did.”
Amaya’s hands released a little on the metal on the table. Her eyes focused on Tetsuo, suddenly very intrigued by his last words.
"Tsubaki disagreed with you eh? She mentioned something about you when she visited me. Something about her past, and your family. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but what exactly was she talking about.”
She knew it was an obvious ploy to change the topic of the conversation, but she was tired of his advances into her personal psyche. Maybe it would work, and they could talk about something else, if not it would still give Amaya a small chance to regroup , and figure out exactly what else she wanted to talk to Tetsuo about.
"She killed my mother when I was but a child," he said, quite easily in fact, "and for that she feels indebted to me for foolish reason that I still fail to accept to this day. You and Tsubaki are very similar in regards of how you deal with whatever shit happened in the past. Was she who influenced you or the other way around?”
The same quiet eyes as before stared at the woman and waited for her reply.
"After you’re return to the Division in Hueco Mundo, Tsubaki saved my life.” She frowned, "Afterwards we talked, she saw my weaknesses, and she helped me start to deal with them. Later on, after Yuzuki beat me nearly to death, she visited me again, and taught me yet another lesson. It was her that influenced me.
Why do you ask?”
She smiled, and let herself lean back, for a moment she was enjoying another conversation. She didn’t mind letting Tetsuo know she owed a great deal to Tsubaki, she was just happy to talk about something other than the Yuzuki shit, or the mistakes she had made that landed her in these cells.
"Because I don’t like how Tsubaki deal with her past, which is also the case with how you deal with your past, Hayashi.”
His eyes sought some kind of mystic imagery on the dark, dirty ceiling of the room, and his hands drew circles and other forms in the air as the shinigami went on with his monologue. Perhaps he was excited, or maybe he was merely contemplating something that had bothered him for far, far too much time in the past.
"I don’t see the benefit of living like that. Letting your past shape your future, allowing your mistakes to force you to cause even more mistakes. Shouldn’t you learn from them? Shouldn’t you be striving to evolve, to become something better than before? How can you even attempt to do that if you’re always trying to find a way to justify something that requires no such thing?”
"Is justifying a hatred for a man who wronged me something that will hold me back? I think, just like my hatred for my father before him, this new goal will help me grow stronger, and into a new woman. I’ll push myself every day Tetsuo, I’ll push myself so that Masato can no longer prey on me. So that he can realize there is something more to me than a little girl who’s lost her way.”
"I am learning form my past however, as well as the teachings of the Eleventh Division. You see, I do not fear Yuzuki Masato... Fear was what caused me to break down whenever it snowed, it is what kept me from looking for him for so long, and it is what caused me to lose control when I found him. As long as I don’t fear Yuzuki, I will always be able to temper my reactions around him, and I will not make this same mistake again. Although... I may never be in a position to.” She chuckled shortly.
"And that is why you’re still here, I guess. Or should I say, why he even sent you here in the first place. Can’t you see, Hayashi? The obvious flaw on your thoughts just now? Tell me something, if you will: and when there’s not a Masato for you to use as the physical image of what you should not fear, what then? Do you truly desire to live your life, to amass power and become stronger, simply because you do not want to fear a mere man?”
Tetsuo paused, and his eyes fell on the woman like pouring rain - subtle at first, but with increasing intensity with each passing second they stood starting at her.
"Don’t you see how selfish that is?”
"Selfish?” She stared into the onslaught that was Tetsuo’s stare. If she hadn’t have faced Yuzuki so many times, the woman may have withered under the stare, but instead she leaned on her stored resolve and responded. "It may be selfish Tetsuo, but I’ve never been in a position where something other than selfishness suited me. Everyone I relied on, everyone I gave something to, betrayed me in return... or died...”
The words stuck in her throat as she remember her meeting with Takeo... She still could barely accept the idea he was alive, and they could help each other.
"... Look Tetsuo... even if there was someone important to me, I just don’t know another way.”
"And that’s your excuse to not try and learn another way? Hell, if everyone followed that example we’d be totally fucked, wouldn’t we? Just because you don’t know a different path doesn’t mean you’re obliged to go down the same one over and over again... where’s your curiosity, Hayashi? Where’s your ability to dare?”
He turned around and left the woman to stare at his back for a moment, but his mouth didn’t cease spouting words for her to hear.
"Forget about what you’ve done in the past, Hayashi. Assimilate that it all is but a part of what you are right now and move on. The time to linger on the past and following easy ways out is over for you, unless you wish to spend the rest of your life behind iron bars, Hayashi. You need to reshape your thoughts, and that can only happen as long as you accept that what you have right now is not what you want.”
She thought about Takeo, a figment from her troubled past. The happy memories the two of them shared were enough for Amaya to understand that this isn’t what she wanted. These iron bars, this cycle of hatred, and the fear, she wanted it gone. For a brief second she thought about letting her entire past go, but immediately her mind snapped back onto her darker memories. She closed her eyes, and her brow furrowed, and she tried to move past them, but it was like she was trying to push a train, no matter how hard she tried they stayed there.
"Tetsuo... I... I can’t, I don’t know how. Everything they’ve done to me, it’s just not something I can let go of right now. I want to, I want to be happy, but this isn’t that simple, these aren’t just memories I can let go of. I close my eyes and they come back to me, I see something else that one of these men did to me. I can’t just... move on, it’s not that simple...”
"It’s never simple, Hayashi. I took fifty years to let go of my past. Long, hard, foolish years that I spent gaining power by putting myself closer to certain death each and every time I had the chance to. There is no need for you to do the same. You don’t have to follow that same road.
All I’m saying, and you should listen to this well, is that there is an alternative to what you’re currently doing to yourself. The simple act of accepting that there’s another way is already a big, big improvement over your previous self.”
He turned to her with a somewhat friendly smile on his face. Perhaps he wanted to look that way, or maybe it was pure reflex or something; one would never guess his true intentions with that smile. In fact, Tetsuo smiling was a rather rare and awkward event nowadays... it might’ve even look creepy for all he knew.
"I can’t force you to change, but only show you alternatives. Whether you decide to stick to your plan or think something new is entirely up to you. I won’t pretend to understand your pain or say that I’ve been through your suffering, that’s hypocrisy. I know only of what I felt, and that makes me say it’s possible to change. Accepting that or not is, again, entirely up to you.”
Amaya smiled back at for a moment at Tetsuo. She tried to remember the last time she had seen the man smile, and couldn’t remember another time. It was relieving that someone as tense as the usually stuttering man in front of her was actually showing her his first smile, and the tensions she felt from the earlier conversation started to drift away.
She had known it off the bat, looking at this from a different outlook wasn’t as easy as choosing it to be that way. But with the help of someone who had been through something similar as her, maybe Amaya could start to turn it around. With Takeo back she had started to feel glimmers of hope that her life would be more than seeking vengeance, and maybe she could start to change that now.
"Who knows Tetsuo, maybe the next time you see me I’ll be a completely different person,” she joked, "but for now, I think it’s going to be small steps, for a long time, if I can even change.”
"That’s better than nothing, Hayashi. Much better...” Though his voice sounded somewhat confident and relieved, Tetsuo knew better than to simply believe that people could change that easily. It was simple to say the words, but to actually take action was another thing entirely. He knew that all too well.
Tetsuo looked her over one last time before turning and knocking at the door from whence he had entered the room. He waved a goodbye to the woman, and the door was shut behind him, effectively cutting him off from Hayashi for the time being.
Along the way towards the Eleventh, he couldn’t help but to think how everyone seemed to allow their pasts to get in the way of their present; and how often times that was the difference between getting somewhere, and getting nowhere at all...
As Tetsuo left the room, Amaya felt guards move to her flanks. Without a word, Amaya stood up, and let them lead her out of the room. The cells that she walked past sent chills up her spine. Now, more than ever it felt like she didn’t belong here. She realized that it didn’t matter if she wanted to change her outlook on her past, Tetsuo was right, if she didn’t do something about it, she’d end up here.
As she muddled around in her thoughts she wondered if letting go of her past was even possible. She closed her eyes as she walked, letting herself be lead, and memories of her past life played through her mind. She remembered those first few hours after the fire, and the bone breaking force her father had squeezed her with. She remembered the flying beer bottles that left welts, and when she told her friends that she had fallen out of bed to cover them up.
Suddenly the group stopped walking, and Amaya’s eye’s snapped open. The dreary iron, and empty cell in front of her was all too familiar. As she walked into to her new home, one glimmer of hope for the future burned in her mind,
Takeo...
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