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Endurance. It was both his gift and his bane.
With every war, every battle, there were two types of victims: casualties, and survivors.
Kyouraku had always known this, and throughout his life he had been reminded again and again which category he fit into. When he closed his eyes at the end of a long day, streams of faces played across his memory like a film.
He remembered. He endured. He continued as a living vessel, carrying the lives of those who had gone before him.
"Ne, Ukitake....it's hard to think this place was ever as torn up as it used to be now, eh?"
Kyouraku Shunsui muttered as he bent to sit at the memorial. His grey eyes creased at the edges, heavy with centuries of loss and loneliness. He brushed a hand across the inscription on the stone.
"So today's the big day, crazy how time flies. Rukia's still really nervous about the ceremony, but if I remember correctly so were you, way back then."
He smiled, a sad but knowing smile, as he sat next to the gravestone of his friend and recounted tales of the past few days, only pausing to refill the tiny saucer on his knee once in a while.
"You'd be proud of her. Of all of us. I know you would, my dear friend." He sighed, a exhalation somewhere between contentment and weariness. He brushed his hand across the stone again, feeling it's coldness, stopping and pressing against it as if he was trying to absorb some of it's strength. He would endure, just as this stone would.
"Ne, Ukitake. The world is quieter without you in it. Wish you were here."