"Keh......."

     It felt as though it had been years since he had last stood in the frigid night air without the presence of gloves to protect his slender fingers from freezing...though their true purpose had been to protect him from not only the external forces around him, but the very reality of the world, itself.A barrier to all that was not under his control....a barrier to the truth that he did not want to see.

    The process of removing him from that fictional world...where touching and knowing were the enemy of all he stood for....was a long, painful one...and he still felt himself on the fringes of that same despair on occasion.

    But with the cold metal of a gun in his hand....and the words of the boy who pulled him from those very pits of despair still echoing in his ears, Byakuya let out a sigh.