Weaving - starmag99 - Bleach (Anime & Manga) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter Text

When a person dies, it is an affair. A service is held, and mourning expresses and vents grief for several months, at least. People dress up, and it is a celebration of life and a condemnation of death at once.

When a tool breaks, it is a regrettable thing. It is seen, teeth are clicked, and it is thrown out and replaced. Expenses are paid, and the job is completed.

People aren't tools. Such is the wisdom of children. But, sometimes, very often, the two are confused.

Sometimes, it is the people who are used, break, and are thrown away.

Soldiers are conflated with weapons, employees with assets, test subjects with experiments, and when a person is a tool, it is very easy to throw it out.

In such cases, it is also very easy to forget that they must keep going afterwards. Because a person can live through far more than breaking.

This is the story of one such person. The life of a tool after a second death.

A pitter-patter echoed through the hall, and Masaki saw Roka quietly shuffling in to the living room bathed in lazy afternoon light.

Of Masaki's twins, the slight younger, she considered, was rather unusual.

She would never say as such aloud, of course, not until the girl was well and grown enough to be able to distinguish observation from criticism. Children were sensitive to such comments, she understood.

Even so, her little Roka had an odd disposition. Where Ichigo was sunshine and smiles, brightening the room as soon as he saw Masaki, Roka was...

Muted. Quieter. Softer, is the word she would be willing to say out loud.

"Roka," Masaki called cheerily, sprawled out on the sofa, "come here, Mommy needs some hugs~!"

The little girl, barely five years of age, nodded shallowly, and padded over to her, climbing into her arms. Masaki squeezed and recharged her battery with Roka's affection.

And it was affection, she believed. She knew. It was evident in the little things. Little things like the tiny, ever delicate smile blossoming on Roka's face right now.

She would pinch her cheeks if she had any less self control.

Of course, Masaki would praise Roka's listening skills. She would always do what was told of her and never complained or cried about anything.

Masaki sometimes wished she did, if only just to understand Roka's wants a little better.

She would settle, though, with the way Roka's arms wrapped around her waist as she laid atop her.

She knew, and she knew Roka knew, and maybe that was enough.

Masaki knew her little ones could see ghosts. She never really needed to give advice about it; the two were always polite to the spirits, respectful in a way you would be to a person. She doubted the two even knew the people they were talking to were dead.

As she watched Roka, sitting on a bench, talking to a hollow, she started to think that maybe the slightly younger wouldn't have minded even if she knew.

The hollow, a fur-less, hunched beast vaguely resembling something between a hyena and a fox, sat on its hind legs and stroked the chin of its flat, round mask with hideously clawed fingers wonderingly.

Masaki palmed the Quincy cross in her hand. Sweat beaded down her cheek. Her heart felt heavy.

"That's a fair point," the hollow offered patiently, and Masaki discreetly pinched her own cheek, "but if you disregard the change itself, hollows and humans might as well be different races of the same species when you look at the end result, no?"

"I don't agree," her sweetheart countered equally patiently and with a soft voice. "Disregarding that disregards what a hollow fundamentally is. Artificial as the distinction between two races is, they are born into those categories. But hollows are transformed from human souls, it's closer to the distinction between two different stages in development."

Masaki wondered if such a retort would enrage the beast. On some level, she may have hoped it did, at the very least to wake her up from this fever dream.

"I... suppose so?" The hollow paused, before pressing on. "But that comparison only works until you realize that human souls who pass on to Soul Society can't become hollows. Though in exchange they can become soul reapers. That's two different paths of development. What would you call that, then?"

"They would be different sexes, I suppose," Roka offered, subtly fiddling with her fingers as she looked calmly at the pavement. "Human embryos begin development with slight female characteristics. Human souls, similarly, begin their spiritual journey with slight soul reaper characteristics. As the embryo develops, the genes which encode for respective sexual characteristics alter the outcome. Similarly, as the chain of fate consumes itself, the soul sleep inverts and the heart envelops the soul becoming a hollow. This, of course, implies the existence of people with both hollow and soul reaper characteristics, as well as people with characteristics of neither. Quincies and arrancar, then, would be 'intersex' on two different points of that spectrum, probably."

Masaki thought the logic was a little silly, but her little girl was a genius, so there wasn't an ounce of silliness to be found.

"Ho~h!" The hollow exclaimed its own understanding, and she hated that it understood. "In that case, would there not be souls that don't match where their spiritual bodies ended up on this spectrum?"

Roka thought for a moment, before continuing. "Well, yes. Hollows can gain soul reaper characteristics and become arrancar, for example. In theory, the opposite should also be true, with soul reapers gaining hollow characteristics."

"Of course," the hollow supplied, and Masaki boggled as she witnessed the conversation between the monster the size of a large truck and a tiny little girl the size of a chair that more closely resembled something that might occur between her and her dorm roommate back in university.

"Roka-chan~!" Masaki called cheerily, pretending not to see the hollow. If she didn't see it, it might just move on for the moment.

"Ah," Roka noticed her, slid off the bench, and gave the hollow a small, adorably polite bow. "Sorry, El Skinner-san, Mommy's calling me, so I need to go home now."

"No problem," the hollow provided understandingly. "It was an interesting conversation. Take care now."

"Bye bye," Roka waved calmly as she slowly made her way to Masaki.

Masaki thought the hollow may have just been a sightseer. Someone visiting from Hueco Mundo for the weekend. Something like that, anyway.

It would have made marginally more sense than the alternative, she supposed.