Uh…this just came out of nowhere…sort of based on my own childhood fears in a way I suppose…Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review,

ForeverFalling.

Ps. Don't own Bleach. It'd be cool if I did though.

An older Toshiro looks back…

Time…passed quickly…

In a world where people could be said to be ageless, where lives spanned for thousands of years it all passed…so very quickly. And yet it still stretched on before him.

He could look forward and see no end and look back and see no beginning. He was just stranded somewhere in the middle. The things…the world, the people around him had once all been so vivid.

So very alive.

And yet in the blink of a teal eye they were gone. The world had changed and the people who had once been so very alive were now so very dead.

So very gone.

Saplings were towering oaks, small streams rivers. The human race had once again changed. They built cities and destroyed them and left the structures to exist as scars on the earth. Entire civilizations gone…with new ones at their heels to take their place.

War. Hate. Love. Passion.

Well. Maybe they hadn't changed all that much.

No matter how they pretended to evolve or learn from their mistakes; hid behind their façade known as progress, they were still the essentially the same. They still had the same wants and desires as those who came before them. Their cycle was set.

The wheels of time continued to turn, their momentum pushing everything onward.

It all blew past him.

While the others disappeared into its flow it seemed that he remained. An outsider who could only watch on. But he could feel the rush of it as it scarred his skin and tore at his being as it went by.

Faces blurred. Events faded. Voices were forgotten and dubbed over…

Sometimes things came to him suddenly in blasts of sound and technicolor. They exploded in his mind like the short lived fireworks which he was so fond of. They all fade back into grey eventually, but sometimes it was nice just to see the colour. To know his vision hadn't always been clouded.

He was waiting on the next change.

All it would take was a blink and everything would be different. The faces of his subordinates would morph into that of another and another until he was unsure of who was who and who was gone and who was even there.

More people would die. More children would be born. Would his river be a lake?

So many possibilities.

He'd gripped onto the past until his fingers were raw and bleeding…but it had been ripped away in the end. And rushing forward had only smeared everything with blood and pain. So he'd stopped. Stopped. It could all move on without him. He alone would remain the same.

But even that had been useless. Time continued to rush past and change him. Change the world. Change his world. Change… everything.

A blink and he was no longer a child. A blink and the war was over.

A blink.

But some things still stayed the same. The sun still rose in the East. The sky was still blue and there were still stars. His hair still white.

It was good to know that some things would always be the same. That he could depend on something to still be there when he opened his eyes and found that everything had shifted again.

The sun would always be the sun…well, until it imploded. But that was something he didn't care to dwell on.

But who knew?

A few blinks and maybe the sun wouldn't be the sun.

Anything could change. Sometimes even the things he thought never would. It could be hard to understand at points. Hard to figure out why some things would change and others wouldn't. But maybe…if he could watch closely he'd be able to figure it out.

If he learned…not to blink.

One day he would. He was sure of it. He'd learn to let himself be caught in the rush and enjoy it instead of letting it fly past and only seeing the damage it brought and not the joy and the… life. Enjoy the vividness of it all again and not let it blur into pale greys. So he could see the spark in the eyes of the people who were there. Enjoy them while they were. And say goodbye when they left. Watch the shift unfold.

Learn not to blink... One day he would.

After all, he had time.

There would always be time…