Characters: Hanatarou, Rukia
Pairings: onesided Hanatarou x Rukia
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc
Timeline: Soul Society arc
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

In her cell, small, pale, melancholy, she was many things to Hanatarou, who considered himself lucky just to be able to see.

He dared not look at her until she asked him to. He dared not refer to her but anything as "–sama" until she protested, her voice weary and careworn as though she had had to make this request before. Hanatarou had dared not try to be a friend until Rukia had asked him to be, the request silent in her dull, heavy eyes.

Rukia had needed a friend; God knew she had needed a companion in that whitewashed chamber of hopelessness. Her crimes did not warrant death, yet she was still to die. Hanatarou could not understand; he had never met anyone less deserving of death.

Yet they were still going to kill her.

Hanatarou's visits were brief and purely for medical purposes. Making sure she had enough sustenance, making sure she was not sick or that she had not injured herself, because Hanatarou knew like any good Fourth Division member that prisoners facing execution, especially what Rukia faced, were prone to depression and might try to take their own life before the state could take it for them.

Rukia did not hurt herself. She did not fashion a crude cutting implement and open her veins. She did not tie her bed sheets into knots and swing from the ceiling. There were no washes of red on the floors of her cell. There was no human piñata in her cell.

And Hanatarou respected her for that.

Being small, quiet and shy, many took Hanatarou for granted. Many forgot that he was even there, a faint shadow upon the wall. Being the silent, unnoticed observer had given Hanatarou a gift that few would ever possess: the gift of discernment. He could look into someone's eyes and peel back the shutters on their soul.

And in Rukia's soul, Hanatarou saw the death of hope, the death of everything. In her small, ghostly face there was a crumpled guilt, yet Hanatarou sensed that this guilt was undeserved, because she grasped at it and held her grip clenched around the small bird of guilt like she had stolen it and didn't want to let go.

Hanatarou shook his head in pity, because she was just one of many he had seen who held on like a drowning man on a life raft to that which hurt them most. It was foolish, it was harmful, it was destructive…

…It was human nature.

Hanatarou wanted to reach inside and snatch her guilt away from her, to save Rukia from her own dark impulses, because no one else sensed these things, and thus he was the only one who could. He wanted to put a smile back on her face.

But the bars stood between them, and he just wasn't brave enough to do it. Saviors were those people like Abarai-fukutaicho and Kurosaki-san, big, bold men who were loud and good fighters and would move heaven and earth to achieve their goals. People like Hanatarou were just their sidekicks, their lackeys, their messengers. He couldn't save Rukia, couldn't help her.

Rukia, if she had anything to say about it, was going to die.

And Hanatarou couldn't help but think that that just wasn't right.