Work Text:
This wasn’t where Byakuya wanted to be.
It was humid and way too hot for his liking. Summers in a tropical island were truly no joke. As for the setting sun, while it was aggravating to his eyes, the colors it casts were one of few natural occurrences of purple and bright pink. Gave him a small reminder that his world wasn’t only made up of brown, blue, green, gray, and tan.
He was sat atop a cliff the kids had playfully named “morning cliff” due to it being the first place the sun shone on. However, being sat next to a headstone made “morning” feel like a cruel play of words.
For all the strides we made… To be taken out by pneumonia.
The headstone was nothing more than a large-ish rock with a name freshly chipped into.
Pneumonia of all things.
He wanted to say that was where his sole focus was on. The grief of losing a close friend, how Shamil was holding up, and about the children suddenly missing their mother. Be in the here and now like he had been telling himself.
“Byakuya?” Byakuya turned to see Lillian coming into the clearing. Her lips turned up for a second or two, “So this is where you’ve been?” Her voice was so hoarse Byakuya worried it was hurting her.
“Yeah, thought I’d clear my mind here for a bit,” Byakuya watched his wife shakily sit down next to him.
Like the last leaf on an autumn tree shaking in the breeze but refusing to let go of the branch. “I thought so,”
Cuddling closer, his arm around her neck and her hand on his knee, Byakuya thought he felt something connecting his broken heart. Though they still beat in two pieces.
“So, what’s up?” Lillian asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well you’re clearly here for a reason. Looking at the sunset and everything,” She tried to force out a happy note somewhere but it sounded like her voice breaking more than anything else.
Whether it was god or time itself, thank you for letting this wife be as strong and as stubborn as she was. “Aww Lilly,” Byakuya’s notes holding up a bit better than her’s. ‘It’s just a few old memories coming back. That’s all,”
“About Senkuu then?”
Byakuya crocked out a chuckle. “That obvious?”
“A little,” Lillian hummed. “So what’s gotcha ya mind going? And don’t tell me you don’t know what. I know that nostalgic face of yours”
“I didn’t know that was a face,”
“Byakuya,” She scolded
“Right right,” Byakuya sighed. “And it’s a small thing really. It’s just- when I saw Bella look at Connie I saw Senkuu for a second. Those eyes that just know something's wrong,”
“And that reminded you of Senkuu?” She continued to ask.
“Oh ya! When I first met him, he glared at him like he was piecing something together. Of course at that time I was kinda just his dad’s coworker. Wasn’t even the first person he asked either,”
“Your Coworker?”
“Yeah, he asked if I could watch his kid over the weekend for some money and I was a broke TA so,” The memory brought a brief smile to his face. Byakuya always pictured the man more and more frantic every time he told the story. “Next thing I knew, he dropped out and I never saw him again. And there I was, about to graduate, with this little baby in toe,”
“Must’ve been scary,” Lillian added.
Byakuya’s hand slid to Lillain’s shoulder to pull her a bit closer as the setting sun dropped lower into the water. “Oh ya, I had been living off ramen and then suddenly I was in the baby food aisle trying to figure out what flavors a baby would like. Thought if I made the wrong move all those glass jars would crash onto me,” He chuckled at the thought of being covered in all the abstract combinations even he wouldn’t want to try.
“Heh, that would be quite the tale,” Lillian leaned in. “And did Senkuu like any of the flavors you picked out?”
“Oh god no. Threw a lot of it back at my face,” Byakuya had the picture of senkuu’s little nose scrunched burned into his mind since it so often meant duck.
“Maybe he was just trying to share with you,”
“Ya maybe,” Byakuya lightly shook his head. “Listen Lilly, I’m okay. Just an old man reminiscing about his son,”
She snorted. “Really Byakuya? In that case, I’m just here because it’s chilly out and my personal furnace is here,”
“Do I really run that hot?” Byakuya raised his brows.
“Almost feverish,”
With the sun having fully set it was getting a bit chillier. It also didn’t help that they were sitting on a seaside cliff. With a playful sigh Byakuya rubbed his hand over Lillian’s shoulder. Both to keep her warm and to send a warning to any cold breeze that dares to chill her.
When he noticed the goosebumps skin start to even out, he kissed the top of her head and looked to the stars. “You know I used to have to drive hours for a view like this, Tokyo didn’t really have starry nights like this”
“You should’ve tried LA. You could see all the stars there,” She sarcastically sang.
Byakuya pushed his lips with a loud hum. “Maybeeeee. Though only if you let me take you around Tokyo,”
“Sounds fair,” Lillian leaned her head up as well. “But for now, this is good too,”
“Yeah,”
“How do you think Senkuu will feel when he sees this?”
Byakuya didn’t know of any family history with heart problems but he was starting to think he had one. A sharp thud made him crumple into himself. “He’ll love it. Being able to see the stars without needing his old man to drive him hours. He’ll be so excited,”
“I don't know. I think part of the fun for him was having you there,” Lillian said so calmly.
“One can hope,” A lump in his throat started to form. “I mean when he got older and I left he and his friends still ventured out. Could tell it meant a lot to him, and really I couldn’t ask for better people to be there with him. You know, all parents want their kid to have friends there with them for the moment you-,” Byakuya knew what he wanted to say next but the word was caught in his throat,”
“Like when he’s an adult?”
“Ya,” Byakuya choked down the word. “For moments you can’t. I mean, he didn’t give me much reason to worry regardless but… You know- adulthood,”
“It's terrifying,” Lillian commented. “Even without all this,”
“Ya, and my son, so ready to run headfirst into it,” Byakuya really cranked his neck to look at the stars directly above him. “You know, one moment you have this baby and it feels like your world is pinpointed down. Then you blink and you have this toddler trying to figure itself out. It’s the same kid and you’ll love unconditionally of course, but… You’ll never see that baby again. And as you miss the baby you realize you have this kid right in front of you. And if you thought you had to worry about your toddler, ohhhh kids are their own kind of chaos. They barely know anything about the world yet they're so ready to jump right in. And you can’t always have a helmet on them,”
“I can only imagine the amount of time you wanted to slap a helmet on Senkuu,” Lillian tried to laugh but it came out like a shaky breath.
“Oh ya, used to joke I was going to glue a pair of safety goggles on his head when he started high school,” Byakuya’s laugh wasn’t much better. “Also used to wish time would stop pulling Senkuu along for a bit. Now look where we are… Archhh I regret that now. At least then when he came an adult I would be there for him as long as I could be,”
“Byakuya…,”
“I know I know, it’s how it’s supposed to go. The parents go first, and if it all goes right, That’ll be what happens. And we’ll have a whole bunch of goodies for Senkuu and his friends. So I don’t know why I feel this way,”
Lillian put her hand on her husband’s face and lowered it to meet her’s. “Like what Byakuya?”
Byakuya's lips quivered as he looked at his wife who was doing the same. “Li-Like I lost my son Lilly,” and that broke the floodgates. “Oh god, my son…” He found his voice in the cracks between breaths.. “My son!” The father wailed out to the vast sea in front of him.
If anyone could figure out petrification and break out of the stone, it was his Senkuu. He was alive out there somewhere coming up with a way out. Senkuu Ishigami would not let his story end with such an unsatisfying answer.
But for Byakuya’s part, he’d never seen that. He’d never seen his son grow again. There will be moments in a time far past his own where he should be there for his son but can’t. Moments he should be able to hug him and tell him everything will be okay. Especially moments when he should be able to tell Senkuu he was proud of him. And he knew moments like that would come. As long as Senkuu was his son, there would be moments like that. Moments he wouldn’t see.
Mourning the living was something else.