Characters: Mashiro
Summary: Through childish eyes.
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Turn Back the Pendulum arc
Timeline: post-Turn Back the Pendulum arc
Author's Note: This is my first piece that even has Mashiro in it, so I hope I haven't gotten her out of character. Please tell me what you think.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
It will be an eternity before she's back to normal.
And you won't be, not even then, the voice inside tells her. Though Mashiro isn't usually upset by its taunting, this strikes a painful chord in her, a sore spot that has festered for well over a century and won't heal, even though it's left a pink seam of a scar over her skin, all over her skin. The memories still bind and burn and fix her to one point in time.
Though she has the body, habits and temperament of a child, Mashiro doesn't look at the world the way a child does. Not anymore.
Gone is her optimism, her naïve trust in the order of things. When her life can be destroyed and turned upside down in the space of a single night, Mashiro doesn't trust anything anymore. Loud, willful tantrums replace the capricious, mostly playful fits of temper she used to exhibit—the praying mantis her Hollow depicts itself as has worked its hand into destroying her good cheer and eroded her temper. It's one second from calm to explode now.
Mashiro doesn't understand why.
She doesn't understand why Aizen had to play God with her—with all of them—and twist her into something she doesn't recognize in the mirror. Mashiro barely even knew Aizen beforehand, and hatred was an emotion alien to her before she was introduced to his schemes and manipulations and lies. What was alien has become integrated into the fabric of her very being.
Simple, innocent—even if at times lecherous and lewd—eyes have been corrupted and corroded by darkness and shadows. Naïveté is replaced with cynicism that Mashiro only expresses at the deepest levels of her consciousness. No one can see sadness behind falsely cheery eyes, no one can but Mashiro when she looks at the stranger in the mirror, and sees sadness in eyes that she doesn't see as belonging to her.
And still, she knows that the stranger's sadness is hers.
Why does it have to be like this?
Mashiro used to think that the world was always changing, that tomorrow would always seem brighter than today, that it would all be better in the morning if she simply slept.
But what Mashiro has learned, above all else, is that Purgatory is forever.
And there is no escape.