Do you see my point? [Hannah/Wakaba]

“I don’t want her sprawled across my desk. Not anymore.”

Was that a lie or a revelation? Somewhere in between maybe? Kisuke offered little more than his words for further interpretation on the matter. Even still, he was saying a little too much but perhaps that was the point of this whole process.

“We were on and off for the best part of a century. Then she left for good, and all that’s left is the repercussions. The battles we fought together; the battles where we fell apart. It was easier when we were fighting, now it’s thinking about what comes next.”

“What sounds unresolved about that?” Kisuke bit back, any sense of amusement rapidly drying up. This might have been cathartic for a while but it could quickly become an irritant. This was as close to the truth as he would get, for her sake just as much as his own.

“She left, I accepted that. There are just some other things that you can’t both run away from when a relationship ends. I don’t wonder ‘what if she walked in that door right now?’ because I know that she won’t. Or if she did then she would be twice the fool.”

"Just because it once was doesn't mean it always will be. Sometimes love fades, just like anything else. Slowly, over the course of many years and more fights than I care to remember. That doesn't change the fact that it happened, but most people can tell that we don't exactly get along like that any more. In fact, you're the only person to want to bring her up to me so candidly."

She had professed her inexperience, and yet Hannah was quite insistent on correcting him on this whole situation. It was amusingly insightful when he paused to think about it, that was enough to drag him back from the ledge of simply stamping out this little chat.

"So, what's it gonna be Doc? Am I to track her down and have one last cataclysmic showdown to bury the hatchet and then we hug it out at the end?"

"Wrong. This isn't a superhero movie, where the good guy gets the girl and they ride off into the sunset. It's real life. I've talked to her, she's talked to me, and here we are. If it could be fixed then it would have been by then, but there are only so many times that you can agree to keep trying and expect it to have a different outcome before you're both driven insane."

Kisuke did not shout, nor let his voice betray even a hint more emotion than it needed to. Sometimes a flat delivery did more than adding any such volume or power. There was an unmistakable weight as he cut in

"You wanted to know more about our relationship and I shared. Now it seems you have this fanciful idea that we could still be friends after all that, I wanted to advise you that was not the case. Yoruichi and I are better off apart."

Kisuke paused, observing the little exchange as he considered whether or not he had come off too strong. It was likely always going to be a delicate matter to him, and the only surefire way to get under his skin, but he had no intention of advertising that fact.

"You said it yourself, it happened so I spent a great deal of time trying to understand why. We talked a lot before she left, and plenty after, so would you understand if I said that I would rather move on than keep looking back?"

He was hardly a prospective bachelor, well into his seventh century, but maybe that was where some of his unsure footing came from. He knew love and romance, and the absence of it too.