Categories > Anime/Manga > Bleach
Children
by Charis
/Disclaimer: /Bleach? Totally not mine. I just like to abuse Kubo’s characters.
Notes: Dear brain: um, whut? Also, title failure, yet again. Very rough. Not sure if it wants to be longer or not. And in the realm of characters I never ever/ thought I’d write …/
It is, he thinks, a little like watching one’s children grow up – or, perhaps more accurately, like turning around one day to realise that your children are grown and have ideas all their own, and since nothing you do will dissuade them from their foolishness, you have to sit back and let them stumble and fall and make fools out of themselves, and realise that all you can do is hope for the best and be there afterwards. Except that he can’t even do that, really, because nepotism is a dangerous word, and he’s always tried his best to not play favourites.
He tries, yes, but he never succeeds, because they are very like the children he never had (not in this existence, at least; he remembers, vaguely, children in a long-ago world, but he has been Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni for countless years now, and the man who watched his children run through the fields is long gone). He is more fond of them than he will admit, particularly those eldest two, so like a pair of brothers themselves. Theirs is the betrayal that cuts deepest.
He learns, in the aftermath, that other difficult lesson which every parent must: how to admit that he was wrong. He says nothing about it, but the next time a meeting of the captains is called, Jyuushirou’s smile makes it clear there are no hard feelings, and when he asks Shunsui how his vice-captain is doing, they both know it is as close to an apology as he will allow – because they are like his sons, and he cannot allow that.
He thinks of Sousuke, and the coming war, and tries very hard to remember that they are not his children. He knows he will have to sacrifice them, some or all, in the end.
That is not something parents do.
- finis -
by Charis
/Disclaimer: /Bleach? Totally not mine. I just like to abuse Kubo’s characters.
Notes: Dear brain: um, whut? Also, title failure, yet again. Very rough. Not sure if it wants to be longer or not. And in the realm of characters I never ever/ thought I’d write …/
It is, he thinks, a little like watching one’s children grow up – or, perhaps more accurately, like turning around one day to realise that your children are grown and have ideas all their own, and since nothing you do will dissuade them from their foolishness, you have to sit back and let them stumble and fall and make fools out of themselves, and realise that all you can do is hope for the best and be there afterwards. Except that he can’t even do that, really, because nepotism is a dangerous word, and he’s always tried his best to not play favourites.
He tries, yes, but he never succeeds, because they are very like the children he never had (not in this existence, at least; he remembers, vaguely, children in a long-ago world, but he has been Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni for countless years now, and the man who watched his children run through the fields is long gone). He is more fond of them than he will admit, particularly those eldest two, so like a pair of brothers themselves. Theirs is the betrayal that cuts deepest.
He learns, in the aftermath, that other difficult lesson which every parent must: how to admit that he was wrong. He says nothing about it, but the next time a meeting of the captains is called, Jyuushirou’s smile makes it clear there are no hard feelings, and when he asks Shunsui how his vice-captain is doing, they both know it is as close to an apology as he will allow – because they are like his sons, and he cannot allow that.
He thinks of Sousuke, and the coming war, and tries very hard to remember that they are not his children. He knows he will have to sacrifice them, some or all, in the end.
That is not something parents do.
- finis -
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