and 5 years after I begin....
Byakuya: Prologue
The tiny print on Kotetsu-fukutaicho's report blurred. He squinted, but his tired eyes had long passed their limits. The blank margins took on a life of their own, creeping into his consciousness.
Slim hands as white and nearly as translucent as the heirloom scarf around his neck holding delicate sprigs of dark pine behind the pastel lavender of the crocus blossoms.
That woman once told him there was a kind of sense that could only be found in the exhaustion that left one teetering on the edge of consciousness. Bitterly, he reflected how, like most of her prattle, it was nonsense. He only ever saw those ghostly hands clutching at bouquets.
Flowers never begrudged anyone their beauty, even when broken from their homes and forced into unnatural arrangements at the whim of another. But inevitably, they withered to nothingness within the elaborate confines of such alien rules and traditions.
Sometimes he saw those same hands flipping open a thick book. It looked so heavy, supported by fragile fingers and palms so pale the faint yellow of the off-white pages seemed intense by comparison. A startling red flower slipped from between the pages.
Flowers can be pressed, their beauty immortalized. But their soul is crushed, and when you try to embrace the beauty you refused to set free, it crumbles in your hands and you realize it has already long decayed already.
A few times, he wondered if it was memories of his mother. Part of his mind calmly told him it was hard to imagine when he ever could have been alone with the mistress of the Kuchiki clan for her to say such things. She had passed on when he was so young he thought it perfectly natural he remembered nothing of her. Another part, equally reasonable, asked why his utterly unfanciful mind would trouble itself to invent false recollections of her.
So he endured these strange fragmented visions of hands that were the same deathly white as the Senzaikyuu, hands that clutched at vibrant petals, half-convinced it was an elaborate hoax by Senbonzakura.
Byakuya: Violets in the Night
One hundred, one hundred one, one hundred two, one hundred three... Suddenly the wind was knocked out of him as he crashed against a branch. Cursing quietly to himself, he realized belatedly he had miscalculated the distance of that last step. One hundred three. Hardly enough.
One hundred three pins jabbing into his skull.
“Not enough,” the servant chided as he fidgeted in his seat. A warning glare from his tutor (or was it his father? There was never anything to distinguish them in his mind.) stilled him.
Three hundred - he would manage three hundred consecutive shunpo steps before the night was out. Failure was not an option.
Three hundred pins spearing his scalp. Three hundred pairs of eyes watching him, waiting to notice any lapse of decorum. More than three hundred nights spent standing perfectly poised even while sweltering beneath the suffocating layers of his ceremonial robes until he was as used to it as his own skin.
“You look like a puffed up, overdressed poodle.” Eyes of a brilliant amber peered into his, sparkling with mirth. “Especially with that ridiculous kenseiken stuck in your hair.” She swiped his hair ornament.
He lunged for it, but she was already twenty feet away.
“You know the rules,” she smirked. “If you want it back, you'll have to catch me.”
He leaned against a branch, breathing deeply to loosen the knot of pain forming in his lower abdomen. The pale moon hung limply midst the wild purple background of the night sky.
The pristine white fabric hung limply in her right hand while she effortlessly blocked his sword with her kodachi in her left. He saw the intricate chain of entwined golden dragons around the hilt, a symbol of the Shihouin clan.
“What is the Shihouin heir doing in my bedroom at this hour?” he demanded coolly, resheathing his sword.
She ignored him, dropping the robe carelessly back onto his chair. She strolled around casually as he grit his teeth.
“Typical Kuchiki room,” she remarked. “Perfectly proportioned, perfectly clean, perfectly devoid of personality.”
He had the vague feeling she was commenting on more than the room. And that little of it was complimentary. “You have precisely two seconds before I alert the entire estate that an intruder is in my personal chambers.”
She regarded him with amused condescension. “In two seconds, I will be halfway back to the Shihouin grounds.”
“One...two...”
There was no trace of her except the creases in his now-rumpled robe.
Two hundred, two hundred one, two hundred two, two hundred three, two hundred four... A sharp pain tore through his ankle as his feet caught in a protruding root. He jutted his hands out just in time to break the fall somewhat.
Two hundred four. Failure again.
Two hundred four stony faces of the Kuchiki children watching him with a mix of awe, fear, and raw dislike. A brief spasm of discomfort must have crossed his features because a voice hissed in his ears, “Never let an emotion cross your face again. A man whose thoughts are known can be manipulated, and the Kuchiki head is no one's pawn.”
No, he thought, remembering the stifling folds of his satin robes and the choking weight of the heavy platinum chain. The Kuchiki heads were the pawns of the thousands upon thousands of voices encoded by these rules, voices of those long dead. He wished he could have been the pawn to someone living.
She picked up one of the polished marble pieces, examining it with interest. “So, are you any good at chess?”
He shot her an affronted glare.
“Ah, naturally the Kuchiki heir would be a chess prodigy.” She had the uncanny ability to make compliments sound like insults. “I was never taught chess. After all, the leaders who view their decisions as a game-making strategy and their subordinates as inanimate tools are usually the worst of leaders.”
She casually threw one of the pawns at his face. Startled, he caught it but realized belatedly he had left himself open and she had stolen his hairtie. Again.
"Cheater!!"
He picked the damp leaves from his hakama as he gathered reiatsu to heal the sprain. He had seen the root in time to avoid it, but his foot had not been able to follow the directive in time. It was always a source of endless frustration for him, that his own body would fail to instantaneously obey the orders of his mind. It seemed like the worst sort of betrayal.
“Betrayal?” She stared at him. “Hell, you're pompous. Your body isn't one of those little meek servants for you to order around.”
“It should be under the jurisdiction of my mind and therefore has a duty to obey its orders,” he returned, somewhat petulantly.
She laughed at him in that superior manner that always grated his nerves. Just because she was a few decades older, she always seemed to think she knew more about everything. “Even subordinates resist - sometimes subconsciously - if they don't have sufficient trust in your orders. Why should your body be any different?”
He snorted in disbelief. His body lacked trust in his own judgment? What was he to do to earn its trust? Hold long heart-to-heart conversations?
“I hardly mean for you to try to talk - or bully - your body into submission,” she said dryly, reading his thoughts. “It just means your mind is conflicted. Hence, your body becomes distrustful and slower to respond.” She smiled impishly as she quoted, “'A warrior's mind must at all times be absolutely focused. No hesitation, no doubt; only the goal in his mind, before his eyes, on his blade.'”
He was surprised to hear the familiar words of a precept for heirs of the noble clans from her. As far as he knew, generations of Shihouin heirs considered a point of pride that they never learned a single one.
She shrugged. “It's a bit of a clan secret, but that's the only one they do drill into our heads. Mostly because it's the only one that makes any sense.” A taunting gleam was in her eyes. “Is it also the only one that our perfect Kuchiki heir can't obey?”
Three hundred steps. He tried to clear his mind of everything but three hundred steps and the feel of the wind skimming beneath his feet as he ripped holes in the time/space continuum with his reiatsu for each successive step. Three hundred, he chanted to himself, three hundred.
“This is our three hundredth game,” she informed him, dangling a bottle of sake in front of him.
“Indeed,” he said, attempting to feign disinterest. It was barely noon, far too early for it to be proper to be drinking.
She gazed at him with a strange, softness at the edge of her eyes. But only for a moment. He blinked in confusion. It had made her eyes rather lovely - a warm sort of gold like the edges of a fire blazing in the hearth on a cold winter morning.
“I hear you've been promoted again already, and to the fourth seat,” she said.
Her rapid changes of topics had long ceased to confuse him. “What of it?”
“You'll probably make taichou someday,” she mused. He was deeply offended by the word 'probably', but she was on to the next topic. “Will you have beaten me - just once - in tag before then?”
He was already standing where she was a moment ago, but she had disappeared from his sight.
An hour later, throat burning, he saw her a few feet away. She was gasping for breath as well. “Almost.” She smiled. There was a trace of that softness in her eyes again, but it seemed somehow...melancholy? “I suppose I'll let you have a taste of the sake anyway.”
She was saying good-bye. The memory of the warm sake would forever burn a path down his throat like acid. There was that stinging behind his eyes. He bit his lips hard and felt the coppery taste of blood on his tongue as he ruthlessly suppressed the wrenching pangs in his chest.
A distant cousin, secretary to one of the Kuchikis in the Central 46 Chambers, sat quivering before him.
“We would like to know if you have any information on the possible whereabouts of the fugitive Shihouin Yoruichi,” he asked nervously.
“None.” Byakuya noted with relief his voice was utterly impassive, even as the word 'fugitive' resounded in his head, even as the flood of questions he wanted to scream at the Shihouin, at everyone, but mostly, at Yoruichi churned furiously through his mind.
“Certainly, my lord. We mean no untoward insinuations. We understand that you would never engage or assist in activities of dubious legality. We merely wondered...” the man was babbling. His already eroded patience was gone.
“Do you have any further pertinent questions?” he interrupted icily.
“Oh, no, not at all. You have been most generous, most cooperative. Thank you ever so much for agreeing to help with the investigation,” the man gulped.
Three hundred consecutive steps, he reminded himself. He would manage the three hundred steps and then she would have no hold left on him. Once that goal was achieved, he would have no reason to ever think of her again. But as he stared into the endless dark of the forest, he could not help but think that, really, the worst sort of betrayal was a friend who left him behind to chase hopelessly after shadows in the silent night.
The tiny print on Kotetsu-fukutaicho's report blurred. He squinted, but his tired eyes had long passed their limits. The blank margins took on a life of their own, creeping into his consciousness.
Slim hands as white and nearly as translucent as the heirloom scarf around his neck holding delicate sprigs of dark pine behind the pastel lavender of the crocus blossoms.
That woman once told him there was a kind of sense that could only be found in the exhaustion that left one teetering on the edge of consciousness. Bitterly, he reflected how, like most of her prattle, it was nonsense. He only ever saw those ghostly hands clutching at bouquets.
Flowers never begrudged anyone their beauty, even when broken from their homes and forced into unnatural arrangements at the whim of another. But inevitably, they withered to nothingness within the elaborate confines of such alien rules and traditions.
Sometimes he saw those same hands flipping open a thick book. It looked so heavy, supported by fragile fingers and palms so pale the faint yellow of the off-white pages seemed intense by comparison. A startling red flower slipped from between the pages.
Flowers can be pressed, their beauty immortalized. But their soul is crushed, and when you try to embrace the beauty you refused to set free, it crumbles in your hands and you realize it has already long decayed already.
A few times, he wondered if it was memories of his mother. Part of his mind calmly told him it was hard to imagine when he ever could have been alone with the mistress of the Kuchiki clan for her to say such things. She had passed on when he was so young he thought it perfectly natural he remembered nothing of her. Another part, equally reasonable, asked why his utterly unfanciful mind would trouble itself to invent false recollections of her.
So he endured these strange fragmented visions of hands that were the same deathly white as the Senzaikyuu, hands that clutched at vibrant petals, half-convinced it was an elaborate hoax by Senbonzakura.
Byakuya: Violets in the Night
One hundred, one hundred one, one hundred two, one hundred three... Suddenly the wind was knocked out of him as he crashed against a branch. Cursing quietly to himself, he realized belatedly he had miscalculated the distance of that last step. One hundred three. Hardly enough.
One hundred three pins jabbing into his skull.
“Not enough,” the servant chided as he fidgeted in his seat. A warning glare from his tutor (or was it his father? There was never anything to distinguish them in his mind.) stilled him.
Three hundred - he would manage three hundred consecutive shunpo steps before the night was out. Failure was not an option.
Three hundred pins spearing his scalp. Three hundred pairs of eyes watching him, waiting to notice any lapse of decorum. More than three hundred nights spent standing perfectly poised even while sweltering beneath the suffocating layers of his ceremonial robes until he was as used to it as his own skin.
“You look like a puffed up, overdressed poodle.” Eyes of a brilliant amber peered into his, sparkling with mirth. “Especially with that ridiculous kenseiken stuck in your hair.” She swiped his hair ornament.
He lunged for it, but she was already twenty feet away.
“You know the rules,” she smirked. “If you want it back, you'll have to catch me.”
He leaned against a branch, breathing deeply to loosen the knot of pain forming in his lower abdomen. The pale moon hung limply midst the wild purple background of the night sky.
The pristine white fabric hung limply in her right hand while she effortlessly blocked his sword with her kodachi in her left. He saw the intricate chain of entwined golden dragons around the hilt, a symbol of the Shihouin clan.
“What is the Shihouin heir doing in my bedroom at this hour?” he demanded coolly, resheathing his sword.
She ignored him, dropping the robe carelessly back onto his chair. She strolled around casually as he grit his teeth.
“Typical Kuchiki room,” she remarked. “Perfectly proportioned, perfectly clean, perfectly devoid of personality.”
He had the vague feeling she was commenting on more than the room. And that little of it was complimentary. “You have precisely two seconds before I alert the entire estate that an intruder is in my personal chambers.”
She regarded him with amused condescension. “In two seconds, I will be halfway back to the Shihouin grounds.”
“One...two...”
There was no trace of her except the creases in his now-rumpled robe.
Two hundred, two hundred one, two hundred two, two hundred three, two hundred four... A sharp pain tore through his ankle as his feet caught in a protruding root. He jutted his hands out just in time to break the fall somewhat.
Two hundred four. Failure again.
Two hundred four stony faces of the Kuchiki children watching him with a mix of awe, fear, and raw dislike. A brief spasm of discomfort must have crossed his features because a voice hissed in his ears, “Never let an emotion cross your face again. A man whose thoughts are known can be manipulated, and the Kuchiki head is no one's pawn.”
No, he thought, remembering the stifling folds of his satin robes and the choking weight of the heavy platinum chain. The Kuchiki heads were the pawns of the thousands upon thousands of voices encoded by these rules, voices of those long dead. He wished he could have been the pawn to someone living.
She picked up one of the polished marble pieces, examining it with interest. “So, are you any good at chess?”
He shot her an affronted glare.
“Ah, naturally the Kuchiki heir would be a chess prodigy.” She had the uncanny ability to make compliments sound like insults. “I was never taught chess. After all, the leaders who view their decisions as a game-making strategy and their subordinates as inanimate tools are usually the worst of leaders.”
She casually threw one of the pawns at his face. Startled, he caught it but realized belatedly he had left himself open and she had stolen his hairtie. Again.
"Cheater!!"
He picked the damp leaves from his hakama as he gathered reiatsu to heal the sprain. He had seen the root in time to avoid it, but his foot had not been able to follow the directive in time. It was always a source of endless frustration for him, that his own body would fail to instantaneously obey the orders of his mind. It seemed like the worst sort of betrayal.
“Betrayal?” She stared at him. “Hell, you're pompous. Your body isn't one of those little meek servants for you to order around.”
“It should be under the jurisdiction of my mind and therefore has a duty to obey its orders,” he returned, somewhat petulantly.
She laughed at him in that superior manner that always grated his nerves. Just because she was a few decades older, she always seemed to think she knew more about everything. “Even subordinates resist - sometimes subconsciously - if they don't have sufficient trust in your orders. Why should your body be any different?”
He snorted in disbelief. His body lacked trust in his own judgment? What was he to do to earn its trust? Hold long heart-to-heart conversations?
“I hardly mean for you to try to talk - or bully - your body into submission,” she said dryly, reading his thoughts. “It just means your mind is conflicted. Hence, your body becomes distrustful and slower to respond.” She smiled impishly as she quoted, “'A warrior's mind must at all times be absolutely focused. No hesitation, no doubt; only the goal in his mind, before his eyes, on his blade.'”
He was surprised to hear the familiar words of a precept for heirs of the noble clans from her. As far as he knew, generations of Shihouin heirs considered a point of pride that they never learned a single one.
She shrugged. “It's a bit of a clan secret, but that's the only one they do drill into our heads. Mostly because it's the only one that makes any sense.” A taunting gleam was in her eyes. “Is it also the only one that our perfect Kuchiki heir can't obey?”
Three hundred steps. He tried to clear his mind of everything but three hundred steps and the feel of the wind skimming beneath his feet as he ripped holes in the time/space continuum with his reiatsu for each successive step. Three hundred, he chanted to himself, three hundred.
“This is our three hundredth game,” she informed him, dangling a bottle of sake in front of him.
“Indeed,” he said, attempting to feign disinterest. It was barely noon, far too early for it to be proper to be drinking.
She gazed at him with a strange, softness at the edge of her eyes. But only for a moment. He blinked in confusion. It had made her eyes rather lovely - a warm sort of gold like the edges of a fire blazing in the hearth on a cold winter morning.
“I hear you've been promoted again already, and to the fourth seat,” she said.
Her rapid changes of topics had long ceased to confuse him. “What of it?”
“You'll probably make taichou someday,” she mused. He was deeply offended by the word 'probably', but she was on to the next topic. “Will you have beaten me - just once - in tag before then?”
He was already standing where she was a moment ago, but she had disappeared from his sight.
An hour later, throat burning, he saw her a few feet away. She was gasping for breath as well. “Almost.” She smiled. There was a trace of that softness in her eyes again, but it seemed somehow...melancholy? “I suppose I'll let you have a taste of the sake anyway.”
She was saying good-bye. The memory of the warm sake would forever burn a path down his throat like acid. There was that stinging behind his eyes. He bit his lips hard and felt the coppery taste of blood on his tongue as he ruthlessly suppressed the wrenching pangs in his chest.
A distant cousin, secretary to one of the Kuchikis in the Central 46 Chambers, sat quivering before him.
“We would like to know if you have any information on the possible whereabouts of the fugitive Shihouin Yoruichi,” he asked nervously.
“None.” Byakuya noted with relief his voice was utterly impassive, even as the word 'fugitive' resounded in his head, even as the flood of questions he wanted to scream at the Shihouin, at everyone, but mostly, at Yoruichi churned furiously through his mind.
“Certainly, my lord. We mean no untoward insinuations. We understand that you would never engage or assist in activities of dubious legality. We merely wondered...” the man was babbling. His already eroded patience was gone.
“Do you have any further pertinent questions?” he interrupted icily.
“Oh, no, not at all. You have been most generous, most cooperative. Thank you ever so much for agreeing to help with the investigation,” the man gulped.
Three hundred consecutive steps, he reminded himself. He would manage the three hundred steps and then she would have no hold left on him. Once that goal was achieved, he would have no reason to ever think of her again. But as he stared into the endless dark of the forest, he could not help but think that, really, the worst sort of betrayal was a friend who left him behind to chase hopelessly after shadows in the silent night.