Pairing: Jūshirō Ukitake x Ichigo Kurosaki

Music Only Time, by Enya

Word count: ~ 1000

Rating: T

Prompt 13: We All Float On

It was still dark when she reached the graveyard, the sun just barely cresting the trees. Mist rose in trickling patches, illuminated by the creeping dawn. The flowers in the bucket she carried rustled softly in the wind that whirled down from the mountain. Even the headstones were peaceful, standing solid and stately in neat rows as she approached the plot she was headed for. Usually, at this hour of the morning, it was just she and the songbirds, working to greet the dawn.

This time, however, there was a man standing over Sensei's grave.

He was middle-aged, she saw as she halted on the path, not wanting to intrude. Average height, but muscular. Lean and obviously fit. He wore a simple sky-blue yukata with a pattern of darker green maple leaves, and had one hand resting on Sensei's marker, his head bowed. In the half-light, she could just make out his orange hair.

"Was it long ago?" he asked suddenly, and she started, having thought him unaware of her presence. Quickly, she approached and placed her bucket on the ground next to the grave.

"No," she answered softly, kneeling down and beginning to pull at the weeds that were already starting to grow. "Three months or so. For all that the disease was harsh, it was an easy death."

The stranger knelt down, too, and joined her in weeding. His hands were slim but strong, calloused with the marks of labor and work. She darted a look up at his face, and saw the weary grief there. He caught her glance and gave her a wan smile, pausing in his task to brush gentle fingers over the marker.

"I'm glad," he said after a moment. "The disease was hard on him for a long time. I just…wish that he could have told me." The hand retreated, and he brushed fingers that were nearly shaking over his heart. "I felt it, when he wasn't here anymore. But it…took me time to find this place."

She didn't know what to say, so she simply nodded and asked, "You're from the place where Sensei used to live? It's not common to find people who move between districts."

The man nodded, too. "Yes, he was…everything to me when I was starting my life here. Without him, I don't think I would have survived. Finding out that he had left, without saying anything to me, was…hard."

Sympathetically, she touched his shoulder, wishing for a brief second that they weren't strangers, that she could comfort him that way she would anyone else from the village. "Sensei was very special to us, too. When he told us he was dying, I think half the village went into shock. He was…a special man."

"That he was." The stranger's smile was bittersweet as he piled the pulled weeds off to one side with absent movements, as though used to the task of cleaning graves. "A very special man."

Seeing that the grave was clear, she sat back and tugged her bucket closer, lifting out several of the plants she had brought. When she noticed his eyes on them, she offered him a smile and said, "He always loved my flowers in the springtime. These are a bit past that, but if you come back next year—"

He cut her off with a quick shake of his head. "No, I won't be coming back. He wouldn't have wanted me to spend all my time languishing on his grave. This will be…my last visit." He raised his head, eyes tellingly bright, and drew in a shaky breath. "You call him Sensei. Were you one of his students?"

She shook her head slowly. "No, that's just what we called him. He was always teaching us things, or helping us, even when his cough was very bad. I'm Yui, the one who took care of him, in the…in the end."

The man smiled at her, softly, sadly, and touched her fingers gently in return. "Thank you, Yui. I'm glad there was someone with him. And I'm sure he would have love the flowers." He stood up, carefully, as though he would break if he did anything too fast, and ghosted his fingers over the marker one last time before he turned to leave.

"Wait!" Yui called as he left. "Who are you?"

He paused, hesitating, then turned a fond, heartbreaking smile on the grave. "Just a stupid boy, who loved a dying man." And with that he was gone, as silent as the mist and as swift as shunpo, vanished into breaking dawn.

Yui planted her flowers and paid her respects quickly, some recurring thought that she needed to leave the grave in peace speeding her motions. With one last bow to Sensei, she hurried back down the path to the village, clutching her bucket in one hand.

When she returned the next day, the flowers were undisturbed, but someone had added neat lines of kanji to the formerly blank stone, the words painted with a sure, graceful hand.

Ukitake Jūshirō

Captain of the Thirteenth Division

Master of Sōgyo no Kotowari

Friend

Teacher

Companion

Below those six lines, in a less ornate hand, the person had added another word.

Beloved

Yui pressed her fingertips against the last word, her throat feeling tight and her eyes hot.

"A stupid boy indeed," she whispered, remembering Sensei's dying words, whispered to someone he had left behind. "Goodbye, Kurosaki Ichigo."