This is how it ends: in pain and rage and despair, standing atop a rise and staring up-up-up at the Soul King’s Palace so far overhead, acknowledging the truth of his life, the truth of his existence, and the inevitability of everything he’s worked to become and—
This is how it ends: shoving-shoving-shoving until his guest-savior-damnation finally pulls away, pulls free, one painful centimeter at a time, relinquishing its hold with the reluctance of a vine being torn away, torn loose, until all that remains is Jyuushiro, is his crumbling, aching body, unable to sustain itself by itself, lost and empty and alone for the first time in memory and—
This is how it ends: his life come full circle, sacrificed at the beginning to an uncaring god in a desperate bid for a child’s continued life and sacrificed at the end to yet another uncaring god in a desperate hope to buy his allies, his friends, just one second longer, one minute more to survive, to live, to prevail against an enemy that none of them knew of, none of them were prepared for, and—
This is how it ends: his centuries of borrowed time traded for minute-seconds-heartbeats, spread across the entirety of Seireitei, gifted like his life was once gifted to him, and—
This was always how it was going to end.
And so he ends it.
This is how it begins: a sharp pain in his head, an ache in his chest and burning in his limbs and the scent of blood-smoke-death in his nose.
This is how it begins: a hand on his shoulder and words in his ear that he can’t understand, can barely hear over the roaring in his ears and the clanging-clatter of aches-pains-smells overwhelming his senses when he had prepared for nothingness, prepared to be nothingness, and—
This is how it begins, but not how it ends.
The hand on his shoulder turns desperate, turns painful, another joining it and hauling him to his feet and then away, away from the desperate-greedy-hungry roar of flames and fury, away from the strange power he can feel saturating the air and trying to steal the very breath from his aching lungs.
The hand, the pain, so desperate and distinct, so present, snaps something into place in his mind, in his very soul, like the first moment he connected with Sōgyo no Kotowari, an inevitability and yet not, a truth that he could have gone eternity without knowing and yet still always knowing, and—
Sounds resolve into words into meaning, a desperate plea to breathe, to move, to keep going, and suddenly everything is too-sharp, too-bright, too-present; the scent of burning is sharp in his nose, sickly sweet and greasy, like the aftermath of Yamamoto-sensei’s fury, and he pries his eyes open expecting to see the devastation of Seireitei, expecting to be greeted by his own wretched failure, and—
Devastation is what greets his eyes, but it is not the devastation he had expected. There are stairs stretching downwards, burning rubble scattered across the pale stone, and below him a town, smoldering wreckage marring it like the careless brush of crumbs from a giant’s table.
He does not recognize the town, though perhaps that is not a surprise; there are many places he has not been, many places he cannot go, but there is something about the air, about the crackle of flames and distant cries and the echo of words in his ear that tell him he is not where he expects to be.
“Are you with me?”
He slants his gaze to the man supporting him, takes in the black hair and pale skin and wide, dark eyes and the simple blue band with a green crystal resting upon the man’s brow… and no familiarity stirs within his soul. He does not know this man, so desperate, so young, but he knows the aching, painful uncertainty reflected in the young man’s gaze better than the other likely expects.
Jyuushiro takes a breath, careful-cautious-gentle, and feels the expected roughness, the snag that tells him to be wary, to keep each breath slow and shallow, lest the snag catch and haul and tear apart his lungs, his chest, his throat—
(He cannot sense Mimihagi within his soul, and that worries him.)
(He expected it, but… how is he to live when he gave away the very thing keeping him alive?)
(And yet… how is he to not when such a young soul looks upon him with such desperate uncertainty?)
“I’ll be fine,” Jyuushiro forces out, then frowns at the sound of his own voice, his own words, the timbre right but the tones wrong, the words wrong, his mouth shaping sounds different from what’s in his head. He does not understand his own words and yet he does, like he both did and did not understand the man’s question, like he suspects he will and will not understand whatever the man says next.
(He is not in Seireitei anymore.)
(But… where is he?)
(And how did he get here…?)
The young man’s face twists with worry, but he doesn’t question Jyuushiro further, just adjusts his grip on Jyuushiro and begins to guide him down the stairs. Their pace is as swift as the young man can manage, and Jyuushiro can’t help but note the panicked looks the other casts over his shoulder.
It makes his pause. Makes him look and—
He doesn’t know what he should be seeing, but… the path above them is wreathed in swirling, greedy flames that reach-reach-reach—
(Beckoning-whispering-screaming—)
—towards them, towards the sky, towards anything and everything all around. There is a restless hunger to the flames that seems to suck the very life from the air around them, stealing the breath from his throat and the sense from his mind because— because there is something so familiar about it all, vengeful and furious and so, so pointed.
(This is punishment.)
(Whatever has happened, whatever disaster has befallen whoever once lived atop these stairs, atop this once-beautiful mountain…)
(This is a punishment.)
The young man tugs at his arm once more. “Come, we must retreat,” he urges, dragging Jyuushiro down a few more steps before he can truly register the man’s words. “We have a measure of protection at the moment, but it could—” he breaks off with a sharp gasp, his grip tightening reflexively, and the sharp pain tears Jyuushiro’s attention away from the disaster looming above them.
“Wait here!” the young man barks, hesitance sloughing away as he releases Jyuushiro and waits only a bare moment to make sure he doesn’t fall before bolting back the way they came. He leaps two, three, four steps at a time, barely noting the crackle of flames and the occasional swirling spark as he crosses the distance in a heartbeat and—
And oh, Jyuushiro sees what the man spotted first. Sees what he was too lost in his head to notice.
Sees the battered man sprawled gracelessly across the steps, pale robes singed and bloodied, face slack and eyes closed, sword just beyond the reach of a limp hand—
(He is dead, he must be dead, his chest does not rise and his skin, where it is not covered in blood, is pale, pale as his robes, pale as the stone, pale as death—)
Jyuushiro gives himself a mental shake. He cannot— no, he must not assume. He is too far to see true detail, and he does not know this man – either man – so who is he to assume something?
(Above them, flames crackle and swirl, driven by a furious power that he both can and cannot sense, overwhelming one moment and gone but for a hideous weight the next.)
(It is uncomfortably akin to how he’s heard reiatsu described by those who cannot properly sense it.)
(He would be a fool to assume anything about this place he’s unexpectedly found himself in.)
The young man reaches the other and falls to his knees, swiftly snatching up the nearest hand and pressing his fingers to the other’s wrist. He waits a beat, another, and then breathes out and lifts his head to peer down at Jyuushiro. “He is alive!” the young man announces with relief, then turns back to the unconscious man. “Brother Xie? Brother Xie!” he calls, panic creeping into his voice at the lack of response.
Before Jyuushiro can attempt to help, the young man swallows and takes a deep breath, clearly forcing himself to calm down and think instead of react. A moment later and he squares his shoulders and looks back at Jyuushiro, gaze steady as he asks, “Do you think you can make it down to Ferry Stop ahead of me? I will bring him to the Sunset Inn in town, but we will need a doctor to see to Brother Xie. Can you fetch one?”
“I will,” Jyuushiro answers, something settling in him at finally having a goal again. He is a stranger to this town but he is no stranger to doctors, so it should not be too much of a trial to find one in such a small town.
(If there even is a doctor here…)
Relief paints the young man’s face and he says, “Thank you. Dr. Sun lives at Hui Chun Tang in the western side of town. Tell him that he needs to come quickly!”
“I’ll tell him,” Jyuushiro agrees, filing the names and general location away in his memory.
(Once again, the names are familiar-unfamiliar, the dissonance itching at his mind and making his fingers curl in discomfort.)
(He hopes whatever this is passes with time, because if it doesn’t…)
(No, focus on what needs to be done.)
With a final nod to the young man, Jyuushiro turns away and sets off down the stairs. It is… uncomfortable, walking unaided, but not impossible; there is an unsteadiness in his limbs born of strain and a pain born of being too close to a raging fire, but those are familiar aches. They are ignorable.
What isn’t is the subtle sense of something being wrong with his body. His stride feels strange, like at any moment he could miss a step and tumble headfirst down the stairs, and the clothing he’s wearing is just different enough from his normal attire to make it worse. He can’t remember ever feeling like this before, subtly out of place in his body like he’s wearing clothing a half-size too small; even straining to remember his distant childhood doesn’t produce anything quite the same, because his growth was never slow.
(He sprouted up like a weed, small and sickly one day and then tall and gangly and still sickly the next.)
(There was never anything subtle about his growth spurts, much to his chagrin.)
The steps seem endless, heading straight down the mountainside without a single switchback in sight. There are at least a few flatter areas to one side or the other that seem to be designated as rest stops, but Jyuushiro doesn’t have time to rest, not with the young man slowly making his way down the stairs behind him with the unconscious Brother Xie in tow.
(And besides, he knows himself far too well.)
(If he sits down now, he’s not getting up again until someone hauls him up.)
So he fixes his gaze on the steps in front of him and just puts one foot in front of the other. Every so often he has to detour around rubble laying across the stairs, but beyond pausing for a few moments to try and clear the path a bit more for the young man behind him, he doesn’t stop his trek.
And then he’s suddenly there at the base of the mountain, a partially destroyed stone archway in front of him and parts of that archway blocking the path further. Jyuushiro approaches the rubble with a scowl and sizes it up, grimacing at the tongues of flame licking up from dark rocks and scorching the pale stone of the ruined arch.
This is… not going to be easy to deal with, Jyuushiro acknowledges with a sigh, before casting a glance behind him; the young man is still far above him, which gives him time to deal with this last obstacle, but… can he?
(He’s so tired, exhaustion tugging at his limbs and the rasp in his throat growing worse and his hands are beginning to tremble.)
(Whatever happened before he awoke, whatever ruin was cast down upon this place, it has taken a hefty toll upon this body.)
Jyuushiro gives the pile of rubble one last assessing look, then braces himself and reaches—
His reiryoku does not answer his call, coiled deep within his soul like he is once more a child without training, but something does. It trickles through his limbs like honey, but leaves him feeling strong-powerful-warm in a way he never expected.
The feeling creeps all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes and then pools, eddies of whatever it is swirling through his hands and feet and building-building-building…
Before it can build up too much, Jyuushiro bends down and grabs a piece of the broken arch, fingers digging in and stone crumbling beneath his grip like sand before water. He swallows at the sight. Takes a careful breath. Heaves—
The stone goes flying to the side as if it weighs nothing, crashing through already broken bushes with enough force to tell him his senses are lying and—
What can he do but continue?
Jyuushiro sweeps more of the rubble aside with equal ease, every movement easing the pressure building in his limbs, until there’s space enough for two people to slip through. Goal accomplished, he stumbles through and into the town proper— and immediate has to catch himself on the brick wall to his right as he nearly tumbles headfirst down the short flight of steps just beyond the archway. He presses his shoulder into the stone, careful of his currently unnatural strength, and runs a trembling hand down his face, feeling the way something smears across his skin at the motion.
He doesn’t bother to look when he lowers his hand. It doesn’t matter what he’s just dragged across his face, be it sweat, ash, or blood, because he refuses to falter now. He’s in the town at last and just needs to find this ‘Dr. Sun’, who is apparently in the western side of town.
Not that he knows where west is.
A glance at the sky overhead doesn’t exactly give him an answer; the sun is to his left, but he can’t tell if it’s rising or sinking.
Out of options, Jyuushiro pushes himself away from the wall and starts moving down the street, eyeing his surroundings as he moves. There’s a building to his left and what looks like a banner of some sort on the corner, though he can’t see anything more than the faintest hints of writing on it from this side. With luck, he’ll be able to puzzle something out of the banner when he reaches it, but considering how the spoken language is already giving him a headache he’s not sure he’s looking forward to trying to read something.
(If he even can.)
(It’s clear he’s gained this body’s understanding of the language somehow, but was this person literate?)
(If not, he might be in trouble…)
He stumbles to a halt at what looks to be a wooden message board, bracing himself against one edge of it as he glances over at the banner. He can see parts of the writing from this angle, enough to (somewhat) recognize the characters; it almost looks like kanji, almost looks familiar, but… not quite. It reminds him more of when he first started learning to write centuries ago, but even then there’s something off about it, even beyond the calligraphy used.
It doesn’t help that the characters swim in his mind, what he thinks their readings should be clashing with what this body insists they are. It’s disorienting, and confusing, and incredibly painful, and he’s just trying to make sense of a grand total of four characters.
(He really hopes the language settles soon, because he is not looking forward to all the headaches to come.)
But, importantly, he’s pretty sure he’s staring at a sign for the Sunset Inn, which means that at least he knows where to go once he’s found the doctor. It doesn’t help him find the doctor, but it’s a start.
“Oh, you survived!” a voice calls out, pulling Jyuushiro’s focus away from the banner and towards another man standing a few meters away. The man grimaces at the sight of him and then gestures towards Jyuushiro’s right and says, “Should probably see Dr. Sun, though. His shop is up these stairs and straight back.”
Jyuushiro blinks at the man, then inclines his head in thanks and pushes away from the post, stepping carefully around the message board to find a set of stairs leading up to the top of the wall he’d been following already. He trudges up the stairs on shaky legs, feeling every inch of his growing exhaustion, and doesn’t bother to pause at the top to take the area in; he can spot more burning rubble and shattered stone scattered all around, but the ground between him and the first building ahead of him is clear and that’s all he cares about. He just… needs to make it there. That’s all he needs to do. Just reach the building—
“What on— oh!” yet another voice breaks his focus, followed by strong hands gripping his arm and guiding him straight into the building he was aiming for. “First that horrific sound, then the rain of debris, and now I find you once more at my doorstep, looking significantly worse for wear,” the man says as he nudges Jyuushiro to one side and then pushes him down into a chair. “Sit, sit! May I assume that something happened to the Guiyun Sect?”
Jyuushiro makes a noise of agreement and reaches up to rub at his temple, trying to gather his scattered thoughts through the building headache. He needs… he needs to make sure this is Dr. Sun and, if so, tell the man to go to the inn, but… but the young man was so far up the mountain the last time he looked, surely a moment to rest won’t go amiss?
“Let me take a look at you,” the man orders in a no-nonsense tone of voice, one calloused hand tipping Jyuushiro’s chin up while the other wipes a damp cloth across his face. “Hmm… not as bad as it looked initially,” is the verdict, followed by another few swipes of the cloth to clean around his eyes and under his nose, “though a head wound doesn’t account for all of this…”
The man’s voice settles into a quiet murmur as he works, and Jyuushiro finds his mind beginning to settle into a familiar blankness, the aches and pains blurring together into a haze that’s hard to pull himself free of. He needs to, though. He must. There are two people relying upon him and he cannot simply let himself fall apart because a doctor is beginning to fuss over him!
So he takes a breath and reaches up with one clumsy hand, pushing Dr. Sun’s hand away from his face and leaning back in the chair to pull his chin from the man’s loose grip. “There’s someone worse-off than me,” he says before Dr. Sun can do more than draw himself up. “One of the others who escaped with me found Brother Xie laying unconscious on the stairs,” he continues, trying his best to work around his complete lack of information. Information he probably should have.
(Fuck, how much can he get away with not knowing?)
(Was this the hometown of the person he took over?)
(Is he going to be called out for being an impostor?)
(He hates trying to wade in the dark like this!)
Dr. Sun frowns deeply and glances at the door to his shop, then shakes his head and grasps Jyuushiro’s wrist, tugging off the fingerless glove Jyuushiro is wearing and then pressing his fingers into Jyuushiro’s pulse for one, two, three heartbeats—
“Ukitake Jyuushiro!” Dr. Sun barks, the name strangely accented but unmistakable, and drops Jyuushiro’s wrist to stride over to the shelves behind the counter. He starts snatching up jars and setting them out on the counter in little clusters as he says, “I am certain I will need all my skill to tend to Brother Xie, but I will not leave you sitting here on the knife’s edge of a qi deviation of your own!”
Jyuushiro watches the man for a long, silent moment, confused by the use of his own name because… because surely this body’s original soul wasn’t also named Ukitake Jyuushiro. The very way Dr. Sun spoke it indicated the name was foreign, and the few names he’d come across so far — Dr. Sun, Brother Xie, Hui Chun Tang — were exceptionally foreign to him, so… so why…
(Did his arrival here… overwrite the previous soul and everyone who had once known him?)
(…he hopes that isn’t the case…)
(But what other explanation is there…?)
He shakes his head with a grimace, then squeezes his eyes shut at the wave of dizziness that washes over him at the motion; whatever the case, he doesn’t have time to deal with having potentially erased a soul from existence, not now. He’ll… he’ll set up a small shrine somewhere private once he gets a moment, even if he never finds out the original soul’s name.
(It’s the least he can do.)
For now, he needs to focus on the present and on his current task: getting Dr. Sun to the Sunset Inn.
With that in mind, Jyuushiro takes a few careful breaths, in and out, in and out, never deep enough to catch-snag-tear but deep enough to steady him, to ease the dizziness and banish some of the weakness from his limbs. He flexes his fingers, noting the way his hands feels swollen despite no evidence of actual swelling — a result of whatever power he’d called forth previously, perhaps? — and tries to make sense of this ‘qi deviation’ that he’s supposedly on the verge of. Without calling attention to the fact that he knows nothing about what Dr. Sun is talking about, because he gets the feeling that he’s supposed to know.
There’s… something niggling at the back of his mind about it, but he can’t quite grasp it; the weird dissonance between what he hears and what he understands is still in effect, but for some reason he’s not really getting a meaning for ‘qi’ beyond a sense that it’s… energy. Of a sort. Which means that it’s probably the power he used before, since that certainly wasn’t reiatsu trickling through his limbs. And the ‘deviation’ is likely related to how awkward it felt, building up in his hands and feet like water hitting a dam, unable to escape until he did something with it.
It’s very probable that he messed up some internal circulation of ‘qi’ due to his inexperience and inability to really sense it yet, and now he’s paying for it. He’ll need to make familiarizing himself with this body and its powers a priority, before he does something that can’t be fixed. Hopefully he’ll have time—
“Drink,” Dr. Sun orders as he holds out a cup of tea, jarring Jyuushiro from his thoughts yet again.
Jyuushiro blinks up at him in surprise, then glances behind the man at the counter where containers are stacked in neat little groupings and a pot of tea is steaming. He didn’t even hear the man making the tea, much less approaching him, which is… concerning.
Dr. Sun’s eyebrows start rising and something like concern sparks in his dark eyes, but before he can say anything else Jyuushiro reaches out and takes the cup from him.
“Sorry,” Jyuushiro murmurs as he takes a sip, then wrinkles his nose and resists the urge to spit it right back out. It’s bitter, sharp like thorns in his mouth and possibly the worst tasting tea he’s ever had, but as he forces himself to swallow he can already feel it soothing the ache in his throat.
“I had to mix the tea I previously prescribed you with something to help settle your qi. I apologize for the taste, but my supplies are limited,” Dr. Sun says as he steps back to collect the pot of tea and a small plate from the counter and carries both over to Jyuushiro. “You’ll need to drink the whole pot, eat something, and then rest.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Dr. Sun admonishes as he sets both things down on the small table beside Jyuushiro. “Drink, eat, rest. I will go to the Sunset Inn and assist Brother Xie, but you are in no state to go anywhere.”
Jyuushiro scowls as he forces down the rest of the cup in one go and reaches out to pour himself another serving of the vile ‘tea’. His hand trembles as he grasps the handle of the teapot and lifts it up, but not nearly enough to make him spill, unfortunately; before he knows it, he has another cup full of the maybe-poison that Dr. Sun has decided to foist upon him, and a complete unwillingness to drink even a drop more.
Still, while centuries of experience allow him to work around his body’s current weakness in order to serve himself, those centuries also tell him that Dr. Sun is — unfortunately — correct about eating and resting, at minimum. Whatever he did at the archway into town, combined with whatever this body went through before he woke up here, has left him with barely any strength.
It’s an uncomfortable realization; this body has limits he’s not aware of, and until he finds those limits again, he’s going to be in danger of harming himself on accident.
(Like he used to do as a child, before he figured out how to work around his limitations.)
(The idea of having to relearn his body all over again is exhausting.)
“Here, wash your hands off,” Dr. Sun says as he sets a shallow bowl of steaming water and a ragged cloth beside Jyuushiro. He pauses there for a moment, sharp eyes sweeping over Jyuushiro and lips pinching into a thin frown, and asks, “You are not injured anywhere else, correct?”
Jyuushiro sets aside the teacup and gives his hands a considering look, flexing them again to feel the pull of too-tight skin and the sting of scrapes, then hums and tugs off the other fingerless glove to set the bloodied thing down atop the one Dr. Sun pulled off. A quick examination of his lower arms shows no indication of wounds there, even when he quickly wipes the damp cloth over his hands and lower arms to remove the blood and dirt.
“No,” Jyuushiro decides on when no new blood wells up on his hands or arms, though he supposes there could be something hidden underneath his clothing that he hasn’t noticed yet. It’s a bit unlikely, considering he doesn’t feel any pain elsewhere on his body, so for the moment he’s going to assume that any blood on his clothing is from elsewhere.
The look Dr. Sun gives him is thoughtful, sweeping from his head to his toes, but he doesn’t argue, just gestures sharply towards the plate of buns and the teapot and says, “I’m going to pack my supplies and then toss some extra blankets on my bed. If you can stand up and walk to the counter by the time I’m done, I’ll leave you be. Otherwise, I have to insist that you lay down before I leave. I don’t want to return after treating one patient to find you passed out on the floor.”
Jyuushiro resists the urge to sigh at the fussing, minimal though it may be, and reaches out to take one of the buns as Dr. Sun walks back to the counter and starts fussing with the things he’s set out again. He toys with the bun as he watches the man begin to pack things into pouches, then finally musters the courage to take a bite.
The food is… not terrible, he decides, though certainly not flavorful enough to completely wash away the taste of the tea. Which he still apparently has to drink.
(Ugh.)
Deciding to just get it over with, he finishes off the bun and downs the cup of tea as quickly as possible, trying in vain not to taste it as it goes down. Another bun helps to take away the worst of the taste again, and he pours a third and apparently final cup of tea and then just… picks it up and stares at it, watching the liquid ripple from the persistent, if faint, trembling of his hand.
Now that he’s sitting down— now that he has been sitting down for more than a few moments, he can feel everything start to catch up with him. Not just what he’s been through since he woke here in the world, but even before that: the Quincy, the fighting, watching his companions have their bankai stolen, watching the Soutaicho — his teacher, someone who believed in him when he was just a stupid, sickly youth — sacrifice himself, and then…
And then deciding to sacrifice himself in turn.
(He doesn’t even know if it helped or if it was just another stupid, useless effort on his part.)
(Oh, Shunsui…)
Jyuushiro sighs and knocks back the third cup like he’s drinking a shot of Shunsui’s terrible alcohol, then immediately crams another bun in his mouth in a futile effort to keep from tasting the ‘tea’.
(At least he doesn’t have to drink any more of it, now.)
(Probably.)
He doesn’t even know what exactly the tea is supposed to do, though the rough, rasping edge to every breath has finally faded away and he can actually breathe without much strain. But that’s probably the normal effect of the tea, whereas Dr. Sun said he mixed in something to help ‘settle his qi’, but what does that even mean? Should he be able to feel any difference yet?
“Good, you’ve finished the tea,” Dr. Sun says as he walks back around the folding screen and gives Jyuushiro a once over. “Wrist, please,” he states as he steps closer, reaching towards the same wrist he checked before.
When Jyuushiro’s wrist is in his grasp, Dr. Sun presses his fingers into Jyuushiro’s pulse once again, dark eyes intent as he focuses on something that Jyuushiro can’t quite grasp and—
“Good. Better than before,” Dr. Sun announces at last, then releases Jyuushiro’s wrist and steps back out of Jyuushiro’s personal space. “If you can walk to the counter unaided, I will allow you to follow me to the inn.”
Jyuushiro blinks at him in surprise, confused that the man isn’t going to simply insist that Jyuushiro stay behind, and then rises to his feet—
And almost immediately falls back into the low chair as his knees give way.
Dr. Sun huffs and moves closer. “I thought so,” he says as he leans down to sling one of Jyuushiro’s arms over his shoulder and hauls him upright with a grunt of effort. “You cultivators and your insistence on pushing yourselves beyond mortal limits, I swear,” he grumbles as he guides Jyuushiro back into the main area of the shop and then to the open doorway on the other side.
“I’m not—”
“Save it,” Dr. Sun cuts him off with a small shake of his head. “I don’t treat cultivator problems, usually, but even I know how exhausting even a minor qi deviation can be. It’s not exactly something you bounce back from immediately,” he says as he brings them into the side room and maneuvers Jyuushiro over to sit on the slightly elevated bed set against the left-hand wall.
The bed itself has a canopy from which gauzy curtains hang, though the curtains on the side Jyuushiro’s sitting have been drawn back and tied to the canopy support posts. It’s also been covered in what looks to be several layers of cloth, on which Jyuushiro can spot patches of familiar discoloration: spots where blood never quite washed out, he suspects.
“I will be back by morning at the latest,” Dr. Sun declares as he kneels and begins to quickly unlace the boots on Jyuushiro’s feet, tugging them off and setting them aside with absent motions. “If I am not yet back when you wake, do not leave,” he orders, giving Jyuushiro a stern look.
Jyuushiro suppresses a grimace at the order but nods all the same; arguing now will only waste time, time that Dr. Sun has already wasted on dealing with him instead of seeing to Brother Xie, who he suspects is significantly worse off than he is.
He’ll put up with unnecessary restrictions if it means the man will finally go do his job.
The noise Dr. Sun makes is deeply skeptical, but he still rises back to his feet and sweeps another considering look over Jyuushiro. “Get some sleep,” he orders brusquely, then turns and strides out of the room, snatches up several pouches sitting on the edge of the counter, and then leaves the building without a backwards glance.
The silence that falls over the shop is… stifling.
He’s… alone. Alone in a strange place, in a strange body—
(He lifts his hands and finally looks at them, at the shape, at the callouses, at the skin color, and swallows at the unfamiliarity.)
—and now he doesn’t even have a goal to drive him forwards. He’s discharged it. Sent the doctor to the inn as requested. And now…
Now what…?
A yawn sneaks up on him, and he presses one hand to his mouth to cover it.
(Well… maybe Dr. Sun has the right of it.)
(Sleep first, and then he can worry about what he’s gotten himself into.)
(…that sounds like a plan…)
(And maybe… maybe this was all a dream, a nightmare, from which he’ll wake to find Shunsui leaning over him, tired-worried-exasperated at his choices but glad to find him alive and— and everything will return to normal…)
(…let that be the case…)
(…please…)
(…)