Like a Promise

Retsu knows how these things go. After all, she's seen so many lifetimes pass her by as she remains, ageless, in the shadows, watching the way the world starts to change. She's seen love and loss and death; she's known the pains and joys that life can bring. Retsu is so long away from being a blushing maiden that even she cant remember with true clarity her days as a young shinigami.

So why, then, she wants to know, does she feel so flushed and awkward now?

She's always, always had a fondness for Ukitake Juushirou—there's no point in denying it. She's been watching him since the day he arrived at the Shin'Ou Spirit Technical Academy, a naïve young man with a winning smile and clear hazel eyes. She's watched him grow, from innocent youth to the man he's meant to be. She's nursed him through countless nights of fever and blood, begging, in her mind, as she smooths a cool cloth against his brow, that he will live. She's been with him in better times, too, when they've sat in the starlight and drunk tea and sake with Shunsui and laughed, laughed, laughed. She enoys his company—prefers it, even, to the company of any other shinigami—but she still cant answer to herself whether this is love or not.

Perhaps there's no point in trying to rationalize it.

She turns to face him with a tremulous smile, and steps into his arms.

They close around her like a promise.