The reality of Renji's death smacked Momo once again when she woke up inside the institute and the other vice captain's reiatsu was absent. She hadn't been expecting to find it, but a part of her had hoped that perhaps she'd been mistaken or perhaps she'd been too far away. No, she'd been correct. Renji was dead.

For the second time, Momo cried. This wasn't the silent tears of the previous night where she'd had to contain as much of the emotion as she could being on duty, but the vocal sobbing of a woman who had lost one of her best friends. She was still crying while she hid her sword, still sniffling when the nurse arrived. She didn't care enough to protest when the nurse cleaned her tear-streaked face, merely put up with it and then collected her journal and pencil before slowly making her way to the cafeteria.

A tray of untouched food sat before the small shinigami. She sat there, her journal open to a blank page, pencil in hand as if she was about to begin a new drawing. She was having trouble focusing on which of her myriad emotions she wanted to put down onto the page, so she sat there, staring at it, in limbo as she tried to decide.

The thought that kept creeping into everything else, though, was what are we going to do now?

[Raine]