5 years…

It was a mild summer evening. The sun was just about to set. The mood of many souls seemed to be lively, they seemed to be celebrating something. Only in one place - on a meadow in Rukongai, near the gates of Seireiteis - was the core mood a different one. The people who stayed here did not feel like having a party. Not today. Not on the day of his death. Not after they found his diary shortly after his death and learned the painful, bitter truth from it. Ginyanote Ichimaru hadn't betrayed her. Never. I just wanted to protect. To keep a promise. Play back what was stolen. I wanted to do everything better. I just wanted to dry her tears.
5 years had passed since then. But the wound his loss left was still not healed. His smile, however often completely out of place, was missing. His sarcasm, which was anything but appreciated at the time, was now longingly missed. And his false and utterly exaggerated politeness had been a painful memory for so long. Just one of many. But it was the knowledge of his fears, his worries, his personal memories of those who mattered to him, his true intentions and negative feelings, but above all the fact of his perhaps avoidable, so terribly cruel death that hurt the most. The knowledge of the agony he endured. To protect those he loved. To protect the soul society.