A/N: Thanks to Paper Bullet, I decided to continue Say Your Goodbyes. Sort of. A sequel it is, then. Which means you should read that first if you want to understand what's going on here :)

To all, thanks for clicking and I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: Kubo Tite, you talented man, you.

Unwinding

Calculus just didn't feel the same anymore.

He shoved his textbook away from him on his bed and lay down, trying to drown out the sounds of the raging thunderstorm outside with bland thoughts about numbers and variables.

It rained a lot more nowadays.

Fat, watery, droplets that mocked him as they ran rivulets down his window, forever tracing back memories he didn't want to rethink or relive. Memories that made him ache inside with his buried attempts at forgetting.

(But he would be insulting her if he thought forgetting her would be so easy.)

He watched the raindrops race each other down the windowpane before shutting off the thought pattern that his mind was about to wander down. He refused to go there, to think that, to remember what a fool he was.

Calculus was the problem at hand. Calculus had always been the problem. The only thing going wrong right now was the homework nibbling away at him.

It was too late, though, because his mind was already taking him on a refresher course on the memory of salty tears (from the sky, not him, not her, they just don't cry), dotting her face as her voice squeaked and tore from her throat, bubbling out less-than-solid words that made him falter and crack.

But at the time, she had been the smart one. She had known what to say to make it easier for him, make it easier for her, make the severance something a little less meaningful or significant, dull the pain of it with other pains. She had always been the smart one.

And he had always been the temperamental one, the one who acted without thinking, whose mouth took orders from nothing and no one, least of all his mind.

He was the stupid one, he was the foolhardy boy thinking that as long as he admitted how he felt, even after her more-than-real words (rejection was an ugly beast), there would be some form of a happily ever after waiting at the end of this dismal tunnel. He was the rash one for running his mouth at the last, worst second possible, he was the idiot for thinking some rule of clichéd love would save them.

For thinking that this couldn't be real, that there was no way that something like this could happen, that she'd find a way back or he'd find a way there or they'd meet at some midpoint where their two worlds could mesh and just let them stay the way they were.

Except the world didn't work that way, that sometimes overprotective brothers actually do succeed, that sometimes life (or death) just gets in the way, that fairytale endings belong in bedtime stories reserved for the masochistic only.

And he couldn't help but wonder how she had felt after he'd said what he'd said, wonder what she was thinking right now, if he had scared her or shocked her or anything, but he doesn't quite remember how it went, because his memory of that day is a blotchy, blurry mess of shining violet gazes and rumpled shihakushos that he carried home safe in his arms.

Although if there was one thing he absolutely refused to think about, beyond any and all memories that he just might have been trying to forget, if there's one thing he would never go over in his mind, no matter how persistently it demanded for attention, he'd never ever think about the truth behind those words.

He'd never allow himself to ponder just what had made him say that because realizing any modicum of truth in there would make this unbearable, and right now he didn't really feel like taking on another load and frankly—

Variables. Right. He forced himself back to reality, to the here and now and to stop dwelling on the things in life he just couldn't do a single-fucking-thing about, and to stop wishing for a thousand different endings to something that never should have ended.

And the pattering of rain against his window was driving him crazy, he'd never be able to do his homework if the constant dribbling didn't stop dragging him back to places and times he didn't want to revisit, as if Mother Nature herself was determined to make math more hellish than it already was.

He pushed himself off of his bed and stumbled to his bedroom door, rubbing his eyes mechanically as he twisted his doorknob and opened it.

Even sneaking out of his bedroom late at night seemed terribly familiar in ways that weren't too pleasant. It had to have been around two in the morning, and the rest of his family slumbered peacefully in the neighboring bedrooms, blissfully unaware of the fierce storm raging outside and the restless boy shuffling around inside.

He found himself hopping down the stairs and out the front door into the deluge, aching for the wake-up call that the rain (which felt more like liquefied bullets), brought back so quickly.

He'd never felt so refreshed, although there was a price to pay for such a jarring awakening. Here the rain was a little more real and his memory was having a little harder of a time shying away from the droplets that took his mind back and made his remembering that much clearer.

And he knew he looked pretty pathetic with just his pajama pants on and in his bare feet, but the sea of cement below his toes felt good in all of its chilliness. It made his heart race and mind skip around wildly as he hunched underneath the creamy golden-yellow pool of light cast by the streetlamp overhead, illuminating his figure against the wet, darkened bricks of the hospital building.

There was a benefit to it being so late at night, though, seeing as the streets were deserted. After all, he hated people thinking he had been so infatuated with her and now sat at home slicing his wrists with butter knives and writing bad poetry, he hated people viewing him as a sodden, lost little puppy that just wanted a meal and a good pet or two, because they didn't understand at all.

He wasn't some sort of freak pining away for his beloved, he didn't want this kind of complication, he didn't want her to junk back into his arms to the swelling orchestral music in the background. All he wanted was to eradicate the empty spaces and forgotten voids that he never knew she filled until there they were, lonely and unfulfilled with promises of nothing at all.

It wasn't like he was asking for much- he didn't want to skip around holding her hand like some twisted, lovesick fool, he didn't want people tossing rose petals at their feet while they pranced off into the sunset, he just wanted her back in his swivel chair, twirling around and whooping giddily like the real nuisance she was.

And he didn't want the worried face of a certain redheaded girl popping in and out of his line of vision or the concern of his peers with their apprehensive questions that made him feel slightly more vicious that necessary.

All he wanted was to be left alone, they didn't need to keep prodding at his sore spot, acting like he needed all this tender love and care. He didn't need their sympathy, he was tougher than that.

And at two in the morning in the torrent, when the whole world seemed to be at his disposal because there was nothing and no one on it anymore but him, he considered paying a visit to that shopkeeper. Maybe he'd ask him to find him a way back into the Soul Society, and once he got there maybe he'd insist on seeing her (ohso ignorant) brother, maybe he'd shove Zangetsu in between his ribs and demand to know how he felt now.

Because he doesn't like the fact that she left without him saying anything all, he doesn't like that there is an empty swivel chair in his room, he doesn't like the fact that her last words to him are something as simple and meaningless as "goodbye" (because they last thing he—she—they were was simple), he didn't like the fact that there have to be any last words at all to a pattern, a routine he had slipped into so comfortably and easily.

But he could only laugh bitterly at his idea, brought on by a fit of hotheadedness (he seemed to have those a lot), at the idea of ever being able to stand up against a decision that all of the Gotei 13 agreed on, he'd never be able to outwit them all, not if they were of one mind, and maybe it was about time that he came to terms with the idea that he was just a silly teenager who couldn't deal with a permanently large amount of silent nothing right after eighteen months of such a very loud something.

And it frustrated him, because he knew deep down that this wouldn't ever end. Always him running away from thoughts that he couldn't handle, the ones he wasn't strong enough for because those were wounds and complications and emotions more difficult and more deep than swords could cut or time-space manipulation could heal. Those were things that Bankai's couldn't defeat and the strongest of Captains fell victim to.

Things that he was a thousand years unready for, things that he didn't want to face, not yet, and the things he found himself confronting anyways.

He thought it was pretty sadistic of the world, or fate, or whatever the hell was manipulating him to force him into something he was scared of and refused to acknowledge and then, just when he was accepting it, maybe even enjoying it (just a little), to intervene and cause that one thing he thought he had a firm grip on to evaporate in his clutches.

Bet you think you're pretty funny, huh? He snarled inwardly, glaring up at the sky, blinking away the raindrops that framed his eyelashes furiously. This is probably really fucking funny to you, what you've done. Bastard.

He realized his fist was clenched and on the verge of shaking itself at the skies and unknown entities that probably were pretty amused with his childish behavior right now, as he comprehended just how immature he was being.

It was no one's fault but his own. He'd taken the fall into this bottomless pit for which there were no ladders to climb out of. He'd been the one who'd asked for her powers, he'd been the one to turn her into a stranded excuse for a shinigami, it was his fault she had to stay with him.

It made sense- it'd been his fault he fell, so now he had to pay the price.

And he hated himself, hated himself for taking the irreversible plunge (just when exactly had he dived in, anyways?) into something so terrifyingly, world-swallowingly enormous, he hated himself for being so weak and getting so emotional over just the one person, he hated himself for being out here in this downpour and feeling the way he did, he hated himself for not stopping her.

If he could have the chance, there would be things he wanted to say and words he'd never get to voice and oh, the thoughts he'd thought he'd be able to share in ten, twenty, fifty years, when maybe he was a little older and a little wiser and a little more prepared. But all of that sureness he'd felt about the future had just melted away underneath him, leaving him standing there, back to square one, alone and uncertain of his feelings, a newborn child in a reality where emotions were sharp and raw and could cut hard enough and make you bleed long enough to make any zanpakutou weep with the shame.

As the rain fell and fell and fell and fell it really hit him that she was gone, gone, gone. There were so many things unspoken that he wished he had told her, but that day had all but flashed by before him. When he was scrabbling to hold on to his last moments with her, they had just slipped through his fingers and before he knew it, she had left.

(Forever.)

He willed her to understand, to subconsciously know and accept the mistake he made by not speaking sooner, there were endless words and countless apologies he needed to make.

(Sorry for calling you short, I actually kind of like it. Makes me feel a little more tough. Sorry for insulting your drawings, at least they're better than nerdboy's. Sorry for freaking you out with what I said, I know it was wrong and it would've been better to have just shut up. Sorry for the worst goodbye in all of history, maybe I was just in shock. Sorry for all the days we didn't get to have.)

And there he stood, breathing heavily, feeling like the epitome of the stereotypical self-righteously dejected high school boy, the kind that always made him feel sort of nauseous watching, standing in the pouring rain with no real purpose at all, starring in his own personal drama of unhappiness.

Too bad there were no violins sighing out a lonely tune, or a depressing choir singing a depressing song, because this was no movie and this wasn't the beautiful climax right before the girl made a magical reappearance and rushed back into the main character's arms.

This was reality.

And there was nothing harsher or colder that night.