White Empress

She is most vivid to him in the place between sleep and wakefulness, when she is blurred by neither the haze of dreams nor the clarity of reality. Draped in white, crowned with silver, and veiled with the scent of icemelt and spring, she is the only one to whom he has ever and will ever kneel.

It takes a white empress to put a lord on his knees.

She is a soul after his own heart: impassive, cruel, and violent beneath the imperious and indifferent exterior. She is pristine white silk without a single mark, and the fresh vivid rose of blooming sakura blushes subtly in her white hair: dilute blood trapped in ice. She is the thousand blades that women wield behind their paper fans.

Her appearance reflects the state of his spirit, and so her stern face is in turns both gentle and fierce. She is an ephemeral elegance that kills like lightning, with a nature as sundered as her wielder's.

She is not yet ready to speak to him.

Before she will let him learn her name, she learns him: taking the measure of this spirit to whom she has been bound. She is beside him, her breath cool on the back of his neck, as he hones her curved edge sharp enough to halve dropped silk. She lies alongside him, learning the lines of his face and the indifference of his sleepy-lidded eyes, when he lies abed at night. She learns the lordly curve of his throat and the proud tilt of his head, and judges the menace and authority of his quiet voice.

She draws him close to her when he dreams at night, leading him past half-open gates and long rows of sakura trees to her silent palace and shadowed throne. There, in the realm she has carved for herself within his soul, she lays his head in her thick-robed lap and learns the feel of his hair: as silken as the drifting petals that shroud her empty empire.

She speaks to him only after he has gained her respect; for she is not a spirit to fight either for one who would rule her, or one who would permit himself to be ruled. She finds comfort in his impassive equanimity, and in the equality of their interaction.

For him, she has decided, she will scatter to the four winds.

Unsheath me, she whispers as he stands in the garden, the heavy weight of sovereignty jeweling her voice. Bare my blade, and listen well.

He clicks her free of her sheath, the blade gleaming a centimeter's worth of soulsteel just above the terminus of the saya, and her freed presence slinks about his shoulders. A cool touch smoothes along the line of his jaw, gentled fingertips turning his face to the tiny blossoms scattering from their delicate branches. The tips of her nails press along the slope of his throat.

I am the flowering of a thousand fruitless lives, and I am their thousand deaths. I am unlimited blades, sealed into a single sword. Unfold me with 'Chire,' and my scattered shape will carve you a thousand victories. My name is Senbonzakura, and I am yours.

He listens, considers, and marks her words down carefully in the pages of his memory. Then he bows once, and sheathes her again.

There is a gravity to his treatment of her that is neither reverence nor caprice. He is neither a weak spirit that would idolize her, nor a flippant one that would feed her the insult of common blood. He releases her when he needs her, and trusts her to obey: for honor and respect frame this synergy between them.

The first time he releases her, it is not in a mere idle test of his newfound connection to her. The noble-blooded do not rip their gifts open before the very eyes of the giver. A true shinigami does not lightly use his zanpakutou.

He lifts her from his side, bringing her within a breath of his face: his lips a mere whisper from the cool arc of her back. A charged intimacy lives in the lack of space between them.

Her curved back aches for the warmth of his mouth, but expects only his command.

He breathes her name to her like a caress, and the steel of her body shivers at his voice. As his command sinks into her, she scatters her veils to the wind and melts away.

He watches her dissolve, her body flaking into a docile drift of petals, and at his first violent thought she dances through his enemies with shredding, bloody steps.

In his dreams of her that night, her white clothes are garnished with a faint red tint: and the color is that of a new sakura petal. Her red eyes laugh as she presses a kiss to his face, and when he wakes in the morning he finds a tiny line of blood, dried and black, drawn at the arch of his cheekbone.