Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. It is the property of Tite Kubo; I merely borrow the characters for my own amusement.

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Conflagration

He can document the very day his vice-captain entered his life down to the hour and minute, and perhaps if he tried, even the second. Hiyori Sarugaki burst into his life like a trackless missile, leaving behind her the slightly singed smell of bruised egos and swallowed pride.

(Not his – his too-large, too-immutable ego – of course, but not everyone was as immune to her biting sarcasm and violent propensities.)

In the sanctuary of his laboratories, Hiyori is a calamity unleashed, the explosion of a bomb, the terror of a volcano—the glory of a firestorm.

Within the sanctuary of his laboratories, Hiyori is the infidel who scoffs at the tenets of science, the heretic who defiles the purity of lifetime convictions based upon endless trial-and-error—

He lets her because – first – she, like many others, lacks the proper appreciation for that uncertain law that governs her existence. And – second, third, last – he lets her because, against everything he had ever observed in the course of his lifetime, contrary to the – only – laws he lived by (breathed by), Hiyori acts as she wishes, as she pleases, and in her own words, science be damned.

(There is simply no genus, family, class that can describe Hiyori Kurotsuchi.)

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In the commotion that follows, only made worse by the panicked yells of the research division, all motion and efforts to put out the fire ceases to a halt at a single, cutting word:

Stop.

Captain Kisuke Urahara stands amidst the falling debris unflinchingly, and observes solemnly as the raging blaze extends grasping tongues greedily towards the midnight sky, revealed by the charred, crumbling remnants of the ceiling. An expressionless glance behind him instantly silences the muttered complaints of frustrated scientists, and again his attention returns to the ruins of his lab.

The flames creep ever higher, ever closer towards his still, unyielding form, and the heat of a nighttime sun beats against his features, threatens to raze his existence from the face of the earth. The panicked looks of his subordinates flits from face to face behind his back, not daring to violate the creed of silence, yet contemplating how best to remove their captain before he destroys himself – and them – in the course of his mesmerized trance.

And still he remains, eyes now closed against the blinding glare, relishing the warmth, the destructive force of a manifest volcano—

He feels her at his side before he hears her – that brusque manner, that contemptuous scowl – above the anguished roar of fire and piercing-whistling shrieks of accusation, and the smile, so hated by her, slides slowly across his features, like the relief of sleep against the tedium of living. She does not disappoint him.

Get your ass outta here, she hisses, with her usual charm, and his expression widens.

He breathes in the smoke, and thinks that in a breath, he can smell her sweat, her blood, and his lips part in a silent whisper.

Give me a moment—just one more, one other moment.

And he can feel her grudging assent, her companionable wordlessness – that everlasting exasperation with him – as she dissolves on the hazy wind, merges with the stifling air with a farewell—hardly fitting, entirely her.

Now get outta here—get outta here ya stupid, retarded, fuckin’ idiot.

With a reluctance he doesn’t bother to hide, he obeys.

--

And then she is gone, leaving behind only the shade of a voice.

Stop. Stop Whining. You fucking idiot, you know I loved—didn’t hate you. So shut the hell up and forget about me.

His gaze never wavers, his stance never falters as the building collapses upon its very foundations, and he is left with nothing more than dust and the remembrance of a warmth, a heat, a life so far—so far estranged from him.