Heaven

Heaven, I rather thought, was an illusion humans came up with to reassure themselves that the afterlife wasn’t so bad. And it wasn’t, really, but shinigami couldn’t go around spreading that rumor to the undead, now could they?

It really was amusing how humans had concocted and kept the concept of heaven and hell alive throughout the years – throughout the centuries where life had flourished.

I still remember what it had been like when I was alive. (I think that’s what spurred my intellectual mind to figure out why some souls retained their memories and others didn’t - spare time project, mind you, and my findings never amounted to much.)

I often recalled stories my elders had told me of heaven back when I was a kid and how I had had dreams of actually going there. It had been the sole reason I had kept living for as long as I had, I suppose. Perhaps because slaves needed some form of hope to even get up and face the day.

My past was something I kept well hidden, as you can imagine. Or rather, I pretended I was one of the many who couldn’t remember. Mostly because I would rather have forgotten all together than remembered in the first place.

To be honest, I should have become a Hollow. When you had hated life as much as I had, it was only to be expected.

But that wasn’t the reality of what had happened in the end; for a shinigami had come and saved me from such a fate, even adding some semi-balance of truth to my foolish notions of heaven. That woman ended up becoming my closest friend and confident, almost like a sister to me, and she knew more about me than any other person.

Isshin thought he knew me, but there were some things that were just too hard to admit; my past being only one such example.

Then, why, you must wonder, did I fall for him instead of Yoruichi? They were both from noble families, born and raised in Soul Society. Both of them had carefree, easy going personalities. Both of them had always stood by me, befriended me.

But there was something only Isshin had that I admired the most – his love for life. I think I lost that somewhere, but he had it in spades. Sure, Yoruichi respected life itself and gave her all to protect those important to her, but Isshin’s morals encompassed so much more than that.

He made me believe in heaven again.