[Bleach] Tsubaki, PG-13

[moonsheen]

So about a month (or two? I don't know I've lost track it's been awhile) I had a crack theory, and I started with a necessary 'get out of my head' short fic. About a character that kind of annoyed me. With the hopes to make it go away. It didn't. It ran away on me, and now it's finally finished. I guess I can now say I've come out of it an odd, newfound affection for aforementioned character: The. God. Damn. Priss.

Title: Tsubaki

Genre: Drama, bastardized backstory

Characters: Kuchiki Byakuya, Ukitake Jyuushiro, Hisana

Spoilers: Most of the series up till…137, I think? Not sure. The chapter “Individual Thoughts.” Sort of. Not really. Since we’ve been left going “???” over it.

Summary: Byakuya on the subject of war, poetry, and growing up in the Kuchiki household.



She barely came up to his waist. Tottering in the hall, owl-eyed, hair falling in her face, he found he had to catch her before she ran full out into the wall. He wondered for a moment: who had let a child in? In retrospect it was strange; they’d occupied the same living space the whole of her existence and nearly half of his, but she was very young and he was very busy and uninterested in such things. He could be excused for not recognizing his sister at first sight. She flung her arms around him and blinked up at him. He handed her off the nearest puffing servant. He didn’t think twice about it-until she started following him around the complex. This, he found vaguely annoying. She did it regularly. He asked the servants to put an end to it, and they only cringed and bowed apologetically: Young master, they said, one cannot do much to counter the will of a young Kuchiki. He had to content himself with scowling at her and hoping one day she would understand that she was not wanted. She never did.

She was quiet, those days. She followed him with large, round dark eyes, watching him, saying nothing. On rare occasion he turned and asked her what she wanted. She would breathe out so fast she squeaked and then snap her mouth shut and press her heels together. Her cheeks turned an impressive shade of red. It would be a hopeless effort, getting a word from her.

Except one day-which was barely a day at all, but rather twilight waning on night-- he turned and said, with a sigh: “Yes?”

Predictably, she squeaked and flushed. But she said: “Nothing.” She spoke it in a tiny, surprisingly high voice. It struck him as silly to have expected otherwise; she was so slight. She barely amounted to anything at all, lost in her brightly colored kimono. Still, her words weren’t shrill and, he discovered, not terribly unpleasant to the ear.

“Brother is amazing,” she burst out, bowing low. “That’s all.” That said, she bolted: her steps too light and fleet to make much noise.

She spoke more after that. It seemed once the initial crude embarrassment was over with, she decided she do no worse. It was a resolve that would have been commendable, coming from anyone else-from a Kuchiki like himself it was expected. As it happened, she wasn’t bad company. He said little in return to her prattle, and would admonish her for tugging his sleeve, but he allowed it. There was more irritating company. Better his sister than a fretting maid, who would be neither Kuchiki nor interesting-though less prone to walking into walls and stumbling on stairs. The girl needed to be taught something about grace.

In the garden, she watched him practice. Basic movements, with a basic blade-she held a stick from one of the trees and mimicked him in coarse ungainly movements sorely lacking in refinement. He ignored her for the most part. He’d heard his father considering and knew he would be taking the entrance exams for Academy soon. She knew, too. She was growing older, larger, and more perceptive. She came up to his chest. Her eyes had gained a clever tilt to them when she spoke certain ways. He found he approved of it, though he could never place exactly why.

“Brother,” she said one day. The shadow of his sword flickered over her face.

“Don’t interrupt me.”

“Father is going to send you to Academy.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She left before he was finished, which was unusual for her. One of his father’s attendants pulled him aside for a word the moment he sheathed the sword. Something about it felt more tedious than usual. He resolved afterwards to scold her for speaking while he was training, but she was no where to be found. He walked the length of the complex before dismissing the whole thing. It was a bit ridiculous. Even more so the next morning, when he discovered she’d evidently taken her leave to steal a knife from one of the maid’s quarters and cut off most of her hair.

The incident earned far more noise than was entirely deserved. There was much feminine exclamation about it, over how awful it looked now, how the young lady had had such beautiful hair-none of it he understood, or cared to attempt to. He just felt she had acted inexplicably rash. He didn’t see the results of it for himself until several days later, on the evening before his father had announced he would be leaving. He was writing under the tree in the center of the garden. She had emerged from the house in her night clothes, shamefaced. He’d spared her a glance and no more, until she sat down beside him.

“Yes?”

“...father is sending you to Academy,” she said slowly, knitting her hands together.

“Yes,” he replied, dipping his brush. “You know this already.”

She was quiet. He thought she had understood, until she dropped her head onto his shoulder. He blinked. His hand paused.

“You are cold,” she whispered. “And I will miss you.”

She got up and walked away. The ends of her hair, he noted out of the corner of his eye, were a little jagged. They barely covered the back of her neck, and they’d brushed him as she’d moved aside. It seemed useless to complain about them as the rest of the house seemed to do: he didn’t ponder it any further as he looked back down. He’d been writing about the frayed ends of white cloth, but ink from the brush had spattered jaggedly over the last line. This, he stared at for a long time. There was something troublesome about it, he had to admit.

“Hoo,” a classmate would whistle. A boy, a year or two Byakuya’s senior, with wide black eyes and long mouse brown hair he kept loosely tied. Some of it would fall in his face as he leaned over. They’d been introduced more than once. His name had been of no importance at the time. “You sure do a lot of reading. Another letter?”

“It’s from my father.”

His classmate would whistle again. “So was the last?”

“Yes.”

“And the one before that?”

“Yes.”

“Hm!” his classmate would say, and straighten up with a hand behind his head, rubbing absently. “I’ve known guys who’ve written home, but I’ve never known guys who’ve been written from home quite so much.”

Byakuya would fold the letter down and look at him: “You’ve never been an eldest son.”

When he returned from his first year at school, his father called him for a word in the study. He took the long way through the complex, the one that cut through the gardens, where the trees were thick in bloom and she was practicing messy strokes of his old sword under the shadow of the branches. Her movements were better than he recalled, paused to observe. Nearly graceful, though lacking in a love of the blade-her eyes lifted, still dark and wide, and still wider when she spotted him. He moved on; he wouldn’t keep the clan head waiting any longer. In the man’s presence he was chided for his lateness and praised for his performance at school. Both he accepted with a grateful bow of his head, and a promise to do better-no, to do the best. He was top mark already, and already under the watchful eye of the shinigami higher ups, despite his age. The name Kuchiki was not one to be taking lightly, and the name Kuchiki Byakuya was already proving to be an exemplary model of this fact. More than that-there was a hunger in the clan head’s eyes with each compliment; an envy that touched the aging fingers smoothing the clean white of his scarf over one shoulder. Something about that pleased Byakuya more than the acknowledgement ever could-a long held suspicion confirmed. Taken by sudden warmth for the man, he bowed again.

“Thank you, Father.”

“You may go.”

Amusement-- that’s what it was. He returned quickly to his room that evening to find it clean and well cared for, the belongings he’d taken with him unpacked and arranged properly. He lit a lamp and knelt with a book. Paused with a fingertip on a page, his lips pursed.

“You followed me.” He turned a page. “You should practice more. You need it, if you’re going to be distracted so easily.”

She stepped into his doorway. She was older, and so was he, but a year’s span had passed on her more in thought than in body. She would always be small and frail looking. She smiled.

He waited, and when she said nothing, he closed his book and set it in his lap. “Yes?”

“I’ve wanted to see you again,” she said. “That’s all.”

She left, but later that night she joined him along the walkways. She said very little, not out of a shyness her odd welcome may have brought on, but more mindful of his preferences. Her eyes were loud enough, watching him, never leaving him. It was very much like it had been-- which pleased them both.

She’d kept her hair short while he was gone. It fell softer now, and the female attendants had had to revise their opinions about it: how beautiful the young lady looks, how mature, how it suits such a lovely girl.

It struck Byakuya as a little more sensible, really. Not that those matters concerned him in the least.

She’d taken to climbing trees.

“Young lady!” a servant babbled haplessly. “Young lady, please…!”

“It’s fine,” she’d called from the higher branches, tucked among the leaves and the blossoms. She made enough noise and rustling that, lounging on the steps (writing then, not of silly girls but dark, dark woman to whom he’d made a promise in the year that had gone by), her brother gazed up at her. She had wormed most of the way up, her feet hung awkwardly. One sandal was missing. “I’m fine! I’m really--!” A sleeve snagged in a branch. She tugged it free and swayed precariously. She wrapped her arm around another branch and laughed. Her cheeks were flushed and breeze blew hair into her mouth.

“Young lady,” the servant whined, cringing. One expected to see the tail curl between his legs. He glanced Byakuya’s way. “Young master…” he whimpered plaintively.

“Mm?”

“Your sister,” the man began, gesturing. The girl was swinging her feet. Petals were falling everywhere. “Could--”

“Are you ordering me.”

“N-no!” the man said quickly, bowing quickly with an ugly sputter. “No, I wouldn’t dare--”

“I see.”

To his credit, the man had some composure. “….she’ll hurt herself, that’s all…”

“You seem to think very little of your betters,” Byakuya noted. To his sister, he said: “Come down.” To the servant he said: “Go, and hope I will forget you.”

The man did so.

“You know he didn’t mean it that way,” said the girl from above.

“Do not presume.” Byakuya stood. “And come down like I asked.”

She smiled, squirmed her way out between two branches-and jumped. She was not without her foolishness.

“You’re cross about something,” she murmured later, when he came to stand over her. Her back to the tree trunk, her knees scraped, and her clothes ruined. Her missing sandal had turned up by a root; she held it in both hands. There was dirt under her nails.

“I am cross with you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” she replied, which was not the answer he had been expecting, this was true, but to his credit he couldn’t have imagined it was the answer anyone would have expected. It was purely bizarre and inappropriate-and entirely sincere. She tipped her head and beamed at him. The petals still stuck in her hair dangled. His fingers twitched. He was more than cross. He was annoyed. He took his own leave, and had the servant punished when time allowed.

He left the book on the steps.

“If you gave more thought to your training--” he told her that evening, when she came to his room to return it. The petals were gone, though she hadn’t bothered to change her clothes. He thought of her walking through the halls like an unwashed child and bit back harsher words. They were not worth the effort. “--You would have landed easily.”

She held the book close. Her fingers curved on the bindings. “If I gave more thought to my training, it wouldn’t make a difference. I have no talent for these things, brother. We are not all remarkable--”

“Stop that.”

“-we are not all you,” she finished, wryly. “Has Father spoken of sending me to the Academy?”

He’d forgotten that tilt of her eyes. “No.”

“I hadn’t thought so.” She looked down. “There will be other ways I will do service to this clan. Please don’t think I pity myself. I would make an awful shinigami. I don’t mind. Though I…”

The lapse was forgivable. She regained herself, looked up, let the mistiness clear from her eyes, and handed him the book with a movement fairly refined and a tip of her head that was fairly respectable.

“We are not all remarkable,” she repeated. “Here.”

He kept the book in his hands for several minutes after she’d turned back into the hall. He looked at it. He didn’t open it again that night, and when they later walked the complex together she’d changed to her bedclothes. She made no mention of the incident at all.

Later he came to tell her: “Your self-pity would be none of my concern.”

Later she came to reply: “Oh?”

To which he said: “But I would be very cross with you, were that the case.”

And to which she touched her lips as they curved: “Oh.”

Of the woman to whom Byakuya had made a promise it was once said, in tones of utmost awe and respect: “It’s her.”

Ukitake Jyuushirou was not one for the poetic turn of phrase.

Still, for all the number of things Byakuya could say of his classmate, he would admit that if nothing else Ukitake knew which people to watch. It explained his presence nearby the day Byakuya first saw her, in the halls on the morning of Exams, dark upon dark just as it was often said. The old headmaster had been speaking with her and she had been laughing at every other word. She hardly seemed bored at all-though she had to have been; a woman of her position and infamy, come to watch a handful of mostly lackluster children out of age old formality. The ranks were still swollen in those days; it was hardly out of any necessity that most officials came to eye the prospects. They still did, though. It would work to Byakuya’s advantage.

His classmate had grabbed him. “Look.”

“I am,” Byakuya said, and eyed the hand on his shoulder. “….let go.” he added sourly. Ukitake did. His fingers hovered aimlessly, after, as though he had forgotten his ownership of them. His attentions were clearly diverted. When her name fell off his lips they both already knew it.

Everyone did; just as everyone knew her more heroic deeds-along with the rumors of those less so (Dark upon dark had many meanings). Everyone knew she had a brother: a man of equal if not more renown, a Captain within the 13 Divisions. Her twin, she claimed-- though whether this was true by blood or by circumstance no one could ever say. Everything else about her was subject to speculation and there was much, much speculation indeed.

‘Byakuya’, the Kuchiki clanhead had had to warn his son when he’d asked of her a week into his return home. ‘ Leave it. She is not one of the eyes you wish to catch.’

In this matter, the son had to disagree. He’d felt her power ringing in his ears long after she’d rounded the corner that morning. His cheeks hadn’t flushed from it as his classmate’s had, but the sharp tug of it was undeniable. He would follow it, he determined.

He’d told his father he understood. This was not a lie.

“This woman,” his sister murmured. As she leaned over the page their heads nearly touched. Her shadow crossed his, dark upon dark. She tapped a space above the newest stroke of ink (Dark upon dark upon dark). “You write about her a lot. Is it…?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not what you’re thinking.”

“Oh.” His sister sat back and bit the crook of her finger. “I’m thinking you’re in love with her,” she said at last, settling her hands in her lap.

He corrected her flatly: “I want to catch her.”

This was the truth.

The middle of his second year of school, Byakuya found two scrolls at his desk in his room. They were unmarked. He opened them and read them standing, going over each twice with care. After he had done this he deliberated, rolled each up again, and sat down to pen a reply, which he had sent out before dusk.

Yes, he would be interested.

The answer came the next morning: We are pleased.

The Kuchiki clan head, when he heard of it-- a week later, when the formal announcement of his son’s entrance into the Secret Maneuvers was made-was not so terribly pleased.

“He’s furious.” Byakuya’s sister reported, as he breezed into the main hall. “You could hear him from the other side of the complex.” She paused and tipped her head blithely as he passed. “You may have surprised him, I think.”

“Hm.” Doors and confused attendants snapped by quickly. She had to jog to keep pace with him, holding up the folds of her kimono. A few clips dangled dangerously from her half-pinned hair. A few voices called after her: lady, young lady. She ignored them.

“I think you’ve surprised a lot of people, actually--” He rounded a corner with her nearly at his heels. “Everyone was expecting you to receive an invitation from the 13 Divisions--”

“I did.”

“-well, everyone was expecting you to take it.”

“And I didn’t.” He rounded a corner, and heard her stumbling to stay at his heels. Light from the open garden doors hit them in sharp gold contrast to the shadows shivering on the clean white walls. “I was not aware these matters were of interest to you.”

“They aren’t,” she assured. “But you are. I just, I’m surprised too I guess. Wouldn’t…” her voice had gained a rough breathless quality to it. “The 13 Divisions be more…more notable?”

“That’s father’s reasoning.”

“But not yours--”

“No.”

“Why?”

He stopped. She nearly ran into his back. It was the loudest tones she had ever used with him; the note her disrespect had taken was high and petulant and unpleasant-and she seemed aware of it as he turned to look at her. Her flush was an unhappy one, but she did not shrink away. It only left them several breadths apart. When he spoke it was not the automatic rebuke that had clicked on his tongue, but instead words he kept close to her ear lest they be stolen by any unintended.

“Father’s reasoning is not where my interests lie at the moment.”

He could feel the suggestion of her loose hair as she swallowed; a near brush. “…it rarely is,” she murmured.

“Precisely.” He straightened, regarded her coolly. “And I would recommend you not speak to me like that again.”

She told him she understood. He was relatively certain this in particular was a lie. She stayed in place as he continued down the hall. He found himself biting the inside of his cheek-which tingled, and this struck him as supremely odd. Nothing had touched him there. Nothing had touched him at all. He’d given the girl far too much leniency over the years. He resolved to be more mindful of such things in the future.

The laughter came from behind him. It was sudden, barely a hiss in the air-if that at all. He felt the impact of the woman’s leg against his calf. She swept him off his feet. He planted his hand against the ground. He did not fall-but he was already on his knees, and it was distasteful. Absolutely distasteful. He swallowed dust and pressed his wrist to his mouth to keep from coughing-- for it would have been a perfect final stroke in this humiliation. He would not do her that privilege. He heard her toe tapping idly in the dirt. One. Two. Three. He heard her yawn-four -and he didn’t need to turn his head to see the disgusting, lazy expression. The disdainful curl of her lips or the mocking roll of her tongue-she came around to look down at him. Her head was tipped and she smiled. It was nothing but fond.

“Boy, boy,” she sang. Her voice was low and rolling. It had a thick, unfathomable quality, like the rest of her. “Dear boy. Little boy. Is that what they teach in the Kuchiki house, these days?”

Byakuya met her eyes at the insult and said nothing.

“I can see five steps ahead of you. You’re slow.” She held up the number in fingers with relish. “You’re no better,” she added over her shoulder.

Ukitake, on his back where she’d laid him, wheezed on dust and murmured an apology. She went to him next. Bent at the waist-her hair slithered over her shoulder--her hand brushed his chest. It made him cough harder, which only proved to encourage her. She leaned lower, and black strands touched his nose; her fingertip his chin.

“Almost waste of my time, you.” She closed his mouth for him.

She reminded Byakuya of some sort of predatory beast, sleek furred and white-fanged. Appealing perhaps to a certain aesthetic-until one realized where those fangs were buried.

“But anyway,” she continued, grabbing a fistful of Ukitake’s robes. She hauled him up with great cheer, and her eyes settled back to Byakuya, bright and affectionate and devoid of any form of mercy he may have ever encountered in passing. “You’re young.”

She turned Ukitake around on his feet, gave him a whirl, set him loose- “You’re bendy.” She clapped her hands together, ignoring his flush. “Again. We’ll try it again.”

Someone would ask her, on a late vigil: “…who’s come closest?”

And to this she would hum and toss her head, thinking. “My little brother--” she would say, examining at her nails. “--can get one step behind me.”

She would turn and strut along the wall. The white city to her left and the endless roils of the alley to her right.

“But he has his own little specialties.”

The blossoms were weak that year. It was not due to any poor tending, Byakuya when he was present made sure to oversee their care himself. No, the skies had been thin that season; there’d been unfortunate irregularities in between-world passages; less spirits one way, more shinigami the other. It left the weather sickly and overcast, clouds massing. The trees felt the most of it with their colors faded, their blooms sparse, and their trunks greyer for it. Already the greater poets wrote again about the beginnings of a war with something like a yearning. Byakuya hadn’t written terribly much that year. He’d been occupied.

“Father had someone tend to your study,” his sister noted mildly, walking with him one night. She moved before him. Her arms swung, white and thin and long in the folds of her nightclothes. “He sent someone yesterday, and the day before-twice, I think. Oh, and someone for your room, too. My brother’s very messy when he’s not here, apparently.”

“How unfortunate,” Byakuya murmured. She craned her head back to watch him. “Should he be made aware of this?”

Her smile was impish. “Not according to father.”

In the winter, late in the offices, he would come to write a name out of idleness. He would take the characters, separate them, and rewrite them on a fresh, clean stretch of paper. He would stare at them for a time, perplexed, until one of his subordinates would catch him at it and, in an attempt at amiability, would ask: “So who is she?” with what would be presumably a knowing smile.

And to this Byakuya would give such a stare that it would be a swift retreat indeed that would leave him back to his own devices. He would get back to work.

And if he gained a reputation for testiness out of the incident, he would not care in the least.

“Three steps,” the woman told him, as her heel dug into the small of his back. “Not bad. But not quiiiite there yet either, I don’t think. Try again.” She laughed and pressed down. “If you can still stand.”

It was summer and the trees were white and bare, and Ukitake Jyuushiro reported in late that morning. He swaggered across the courtyard stiff shouldered, head high. His steps were even and confident, his eyes dark and resolved, his hair bound back in a messy loose ponytail, and his left side was completely drenched in blood.

He left a trail of it up the steps as he’d come. Later it would be a task to clean up and one that would never be managed with any satisfactory completion. Some places where it had fallen had become pitted and scored-the stone sizzled. Poison, it was realized, and the young feared to touch it for several hours until the damage was done and irreversible. Decades later (after the main base of operations of the division had been moved, and the building had been restored to better reflect an extravagant pride the ruling powers preferred) they would remain, and they would be made note of: it had been a last battle of sorts, though the details of which would always remain classified information. No one in the courtyard thought of it at the moment he’d arrived, however. They were all staring. Ukitake made it to the doors before he had to pause and wipe his mouth. He said nothing of his injuries. He stood at attention.

Kuchiki Byakuya watched all of this, but he said nothing. He stood opposite of him by the doors. He didn’t offer help, nor was it requested of him. This much between them was understood. The commander arrived shortly from the halls, guarding her eyes against the sun with an arm and looking perfectly annoyed with them both.

The glare over the city that day didn’t favor Ukitake. On closer inspection he was wan and grey around the eyes and the lips, and the growing spread of blood in his uniform was especially red. He could not speak above a whisper, but speak he did, and at greater lengths than perhaps was wise in his condition. The target had escaped, injured, and so had he. Here were its abilities. Here were the numbers. Here is the shape the weapon makes when it pierces. Here is the nature of the substance in the hilt. Here is how it leaves tremors in the fingers. Here is how it spreads through a crushed lung. Here is how it damages. Here it is hoped this information is sufficient.

“I see,” said the commander. Her lips pressed together. There was a hard look in her eyes. There was no reason or warning Byakuya could match prior to the movements. At two steps, she could never be caught. She swept upon Ukitake with a wordless, ruthless efficiency. She clamped her hand across his shoulder, moved her lips, and plunged her hand into his broken chest, up to the wrist.

“That will do,” said the commander to her subordinate’s wide eyes, giving her arm a sharp twist. He arched, gasped, and fell silent. His head dropped to her shoulder. Her hand disengaged with a wet sucking noise. She let it rest in a fist by her side. Three drops sizzled in the flat stones by the door-these would come to be repaired and forgotten but these were the details Byakuya would remember. His commander looked to him, then.

“No lessons tonight.”

Ukitake was sent to the infirmary.

The weapon’s name had meant roughly Serpent’s Fang. It had had round body unsealed, bone white and curved wickedly. It had been a head longer than the man who’d wielded it was tall. It had had thin, long mark along its ventral side. When struck along this shaft, the blade bled a nauseous, black substance. It shattered beautifully. The hilt fell among the tall grasses and would be retrieved and disposed of later. The man was brought back alive, though bearing three heavy wounds to the chest, and in absolute shock. Officially he died of his injuries before he could be questioned. Unofficially he was given a swift, quiet execution, by his own poison to his own heart-for his captors were civilized and had offered him the manner of his choosing.

Kuchiki Byakuya couldn’t care one way or the other for the commendation he received. Though it pleased his House and seemed to have shifted just a little more favor upon them in the eyes of the ruling powers. He couldn’t care less for the dead man, either: he had been a coward and a fool of murky, misplaced ideal, and not Byakuya’s opponent besides.

He said as much to his sister, when she congratulated him (having “heard from father!” as the explanation went): He was not my opponent.

His sister cocked her head in doubtfulness (“So?” She said. “You defeated him, didn’t you?”) He shook his. You do not understand.

This was an admonishment, and his sister was appropriately flushed (“…No, I guess not.”), though not appropriately cowed (“…ah but my brother is confusing.”). She brushed her hair out of her eyes, pressed her palms together, and shrugged, summoning a servant to fetch her brother something to drink. (“…and not sake. Tea. Tea. Brother likes tea.”)

“That,” Byakuya informed her, taking a sip from the cup she’d given him. “Is irritating.”

“Thank you,” she answered, folding her hand around the lacquer under his, and tipped it down to take a sip herself.

“Kuchiki Byakuya,” said the woman, her fingers drumming along the desk of her office. Her nails were clean now. Perfectly so, which was remarkable in its own right, but remarkable was generally assumed to be her line of business. Her hand curled and uncurled and she yawned, tucking her legs up in her chair like a small child. “Kuchiki Byakuya. His demon arts are top notch. His swordsmanship is nothing to scoff at. Heir to the most ancient and most esteemed Kuchiki house. Second to none. Except maybe the Shiba or, oh gods forbid, Shihouin. Depends on who you ask, really. He could have had quite the cushy position in the 13 Divisions now, had he so chosen. As it stands, he is known of, but he is not renown, persay-the name’s a bit of a rumor. How about that. A noble’s son who doesn’t flash himself to the world. What do you believe he’s about, hmm?”

“I would not know,” said Byakuya. The woman laughed.

“You wouldn’t be liable to say, would you. Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” she said with a grin. “I think he’s a school boy. He made a good showing, his first year. This, this I’ll give him. The rest he’ll have to fight me for.”

“Two steps,” murmured Byakuya.

“-and a half. It’s a lot.” She shrugged. “If you think about it.”

He would remember her laid out in perfect repose. He would remember dark cast of her skin, the slight smirk she still wore. He would remember the cloth laid over her, the details in its pattern, nearly as fine as his father’s scarf. He suspected had he drawn it aside as for a moment his fingers wanted for he would remember the gape of her ribs, and the wound in her stomach. He would remember the missing arm. He would remember the crushed thigh-among these things no one would ever be able to say which had been the one to kill her.

They lined up, all of them. He had been high in the ranks then, he was allowed to stand nearest in attendance. Ukitake held no rank among them at all. He had kept himself in relative seclusion in the decades after his honorable dismissal, and at that time he favored a cane and his hair was well on its way to a solid grey. Still, he stood to Byakuya’s left. His face, though thinner than anyone remembered, still held that old look of earnest, desperate awe that he had favored when they had first watched her through the halls of the academy. In this way he had never ceased to be the student, something Byakuya could not say he himself was anymore. The woman was dead. It felt as though she had cheated them; in some indistinct, outrageous way that buzzed at the back of his mind like an insect. It bit sharply and for a moment in his composure he stared upon her with a jolt of loathing that would never come so simple and strong again. He paid his last respects as a subordinate. It felt very much like a lie.

“Hm,” Ukitake said afterwards on the steps, sleepy eyed. He smiled vaguely. “I should be studying.”

“What for?” asked Byakuya, noting how loose his fingers were around the cane and wondering just where the man’s mind was.

“For exams.” The man shrugged, and then when Byakuya shot him a particularly dubious look he explained: “Entry exams. For the 13 Divisions. I’m sick of retirement.”

“You’re not healthy.”

“I’m not dead,” Ukitake said with perhaps more force than intended. He took a dry breath. “…she’d laugh at me, wouldn’t she.”

Byakuya snorted. “I will not speculate on the actions of a corpse. If you are asking for my own opinion, I will tell you: you are a fool.”

“Ah,” said Ukitake, rubbing the back of his head. “Yes. That I am.”

Of the matter, the Kuchiki clan head bowed his head solemnly: “It’s unfortunate,” he said. “She did great things. She could have done more great things. Soul Society has lost something. Still, perhaps there may be something to gain.”

“I agree. Though I fear would not be able to tell you what, precisely.” Byakuya bowed his head in an echo of the old man’s. “I resigned yesterday evening, Father.”

The shout that came from the clan head startled his daughter, who’d been sitting at his side. From the depths of the creases, his eyes flashed angrily. He couldn’t quite focus on his son, and he’d yet to acknowledge his failing vision and submit to lenses, but he managed a glare that was moderately furious. “Resigned! What-what are you still doing here?” He turned to his daughter, blinking. “My children have gone mad. Take your leave.” The young lady did, slipping away without a word. She passed close by her brother, and the cloth of her kimono sleeve brushed his wrist. When she had gone the clan head had regained some measure of calm.

“Resigned.”

“Yes.”

“What for.”

“I am taking a leave of absence from formal duties as a shinigami--”

“You will not.”

“--I have already gained approval to do so. Though it was with some regret that it was granted.”

His father sat back as though the wind had gone out of him. He brought a hand over his brow. “…how long.”

“Indefinitely.”

“And…why is this necessary?”

“To progress.”

“You call this progression.”

“Yes, Father.”

“I would wonder now what you are thinking.” The old man growled. “But you would not tell me, even if I were to demand it of you. You may go, Byakuya.”

Byakuya bowed again, warmly, and stepped out into the hall. His sister waited anxiously. She jumped on her toes when she emerged.

“ ‘I would wonder what you are thinking,’” she said. He did not pause for her. She followed him. “…what you are thinking. I want to know what you are thinking. And I don’t have the authority to demand it of you. Would you tell me--”

“I want to become stronger.”

The girl stumbled. “-is that it?”

“The most of it, yes.”

“…oh.” She stopped. “…this is your reasoning-I….” she dropped her head low. “-I apologize for my tone, Brother.”

Byakuya turned to regard her. “Stand up,” he said. She was bent so far that he could see the back of her neck, the way her hair fell around her. “That doesn’t become a woman of this house.”

“…a woman,” his sister mused. She stayed behind him after that, ignoring any of the servants that might have begged her to stop and fix the tousled state she’d left herself in. “Brother, may I see you tonight? You’ve been so busy these last few months. I’ve missed our walks together.”

“I suppose you may,” said Byakuya. His tones bespoke complete disinterest on the matter.

It was later in the evening she noticed: Ah, brother. It looks like the blossoms are beginning to show again.

This he considered, and then nodded: Yes. It seems so.

His sister held familiarity with most of the servants of the house as it turned out. She knew their names. She knew where each of their quarters lay. She knew which had come to serve in which generation and which had come to serve in this generation-or the one just before, which were quite a few, after that illness had claimed a great number of them, along with the Most Beautiful Lady Kuchiki. Their mother, who had had straight black hair that fell nearly to her waist and had always loved the color red, it was said. (Though Byakuya knew for a fact that their mother had actually hated it quite thoroughly, it had just simply been the hue that had best suited her and thus she was fated ever to be presented in it, head to toe.) His sister knew where things were kept: the keys to all of the rooms, the dishes, the little trinkets in the drawers she liked to snatch up and fiddle with-and always she placed them back exactly where she had found him, which confused a number of people very greatly. These were details Byakuya listened to with little interest but passable attention; one never knew when one could find a use for small things. He’d learned that well.

“…there was Aki,” his sister said “I stole her comb. It wasn’t even a very nice comb. But she’s been trying to hint-respectfully of course, my lady!-- that I should grow my hair long again, and well, I don’t really want to…Father thinks you’re planning to kill him.”

Byakuya paused with the blade outstretched. He looked along it, to where she sat under the tree, her legs folded beneath her and a multitude of glass beads in her lap, one of which she was threading through her hair. “Does he.” He swept the blade up level with his face. “How ridiculous.” He sheathed it.

“I thought so too. You’re stronger than him.”

“Ah?” Byakuya was not amused, precisely. “I would think that would make you wary as well.”

She blinked. “Why? That would make him boring to fight, wouldn’t it? Which is how you’d do it, if you wanted to. You’d challenge him. Am I right?”

“..hm.” Byakuya crossed the garden to where she sat. “How long has it been since you’ve practiced?”

The young lady bit her lip and laughed a little sheepishly. “Awhile now, Brother. I’m not very good--”

“You mean you do not find it relevant.”

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”

“That’s foolish. I would assume grace is relevant to you, is it not?” He very well knew the answer.

“...Yes?”

He held out the hilt of the sword to her. “Take it.”

She spilled the beads in the process of standing, and her stance had truly gone to seed-but she practiced, standing with her feet apart and the weapon lifted in the center of the garden. Her brother watched and said nothing in praise-but neither was anything said in reproach, though much of it would have been warranted.

On a cool evening, at the end of a long walk, after a day’s absence from the compound and relatively quiet conversation that night he said: “I want to touch your hair.”

It was the bluntest he had ever been with her, and she didn’t seem very surprised by it. There was a tilt in her eyes. She weighed the words for all their worth. She turned her heels in his doorway. She raised her chin. “If brother wants to,” she said. “I think I’d like that.” To this he did so, and one could kill with a gesture no simpler than the raise of a wrist and the loose extension of a two fingers. These he touched to the strands that curled in front of her ear. He ran them up. She watched him quietly.

Her hair was coarser than appearances suggested, though appearances had suggested quite a lot, and it was not a texture he could ever say he found displeasing. It was cooler too-though in this there was sense, for the air was not warm. He rolled the strands against the pads of his fingers. They yielded. He pressed them close to the contour of her face. They curved. He heard the slide of her bare feet along the floorboards, and would never be able to gauge just when he had stepped back to allow this-he had only retreated for a set number of instances that could be recalled, and none of them recalled at that precise moment. None of them at all; it was unnerving and when she parted her lips and sighed and lifted her hand to press the light of it to the back of his arm, it was simply disturbing.

“…I’ve heard things about my brother,” she murmured. “I listen. I always listen. I’ve heard things that don’t surprise me. My brother is Lord Byakuya. It’s good that people talk about him. I’m glad. I’m so glad. I’ve heard he has ice in his veins, I’ve heard he is unmovable. I’ve heard he is remarkable. I’ve heard he is unparalleled. I can’t disagree. Why would I? I have the luxury of being able to say it’s all true.”

Her hair was laid tighter past her ear. Behind her head, the strands could not be counted individually, dark and smooth as they were. It was thick and heavy and it took something more, lacing his fingers beneath it to pass close to the skin, to feel its parting. Her eyelids flickered.

“Even now,” she breathed. “You’re cruel brother. It’s perfect. I’ve never known anyone crueler than you.”

She reached with one hand, slender and steady. She moved it over his jaw and across his own hair where it fell, with his head inclined just so, combing it back.

“Hisana.” She looked up at him. “Enough.”

“…but I think I love that about you, too.”

There was a shrine in Seireitei that Byakuya made a point of visiting every few years. He may have been the only person who remembered its existence-though in this suspicion he could never be certain, for once he’d come and found the stones swept. For the most part though he arrived to leaves scattered across the steps and a deep, abiding silence. It was this that he found appealing about the place.

It was not a unique condition. There were many forgotten corners within the city (which was not so much a city at times, but a world unto its own, or perhaps a great sleeping beast which breathed and lived and died in great swathes of flesh laid out over Soul Society). This one looked as though it had never been very large. It was not a spectacular find, but it served its purposes to the young lord of the Kuchiki house, and in turn he served it by paying it notice, a privilege many a man would be honored to receive.

He visited that year, though he had already come within the decade. It was an uncharacteristically short interval for him. The time seemed suited, however. He came and he laid his sword down. The skies were very clear on that particular day-as they had been for the whole of the season, the last of the cloud and the chill having been shaken out of it by a decisive use of force. Poets wrote of as a peaceful year. Poets wrote of a kind year. Byakuya would come to read them all coming out of his youth, and he would come to find he disagreed.

There are no kind years, wrote Kuchiki Byakuya, only the moment when one blinks.

“We have a beautiful daughter. It cannot be denied. Perhaps she has not always been exemplary, but she has served in her fashion, and done so as we have expected of a Kuchiki: flawlessly. If she’s lacked talent, she’s lacked nothing in affection.” The old man took a breath, and touched his spectacles. “…her loss is unfortunate.”

This daughter stood across from him. Her family lined the walls around her. She looked horribly lost in the center of that large unoccupied floor. This she clearly hadn’t counted on. It was the last of many things she hadn’t counted on.

“Father--” she began.

“You have never shamed us.” His voice creaked like old wood. It carried.

The young woman’s lips moved soundlessly. Her hands fisted in the cloth low on her abdomen. To her left there were whispers. Father, she mouthed. Her hair fell in her face. Father. She swayed uncertainly, as though she meant to drop to her knees. Father. Please.

“Never, Hisana. Not now, not in this way.” said the old man, so sharply she stayed standing. “Never.”

Kuchiki Hisana did not die proudly. Kuchiki Byakuya, who was witness to it, could attest. She died with her heart in her eyes. She died with a tongue that worked loudly in her mouth to try and form the words, as though these words would forge weapon enough to hold it to the clan head’s throat and cut the decision out of him. For all the petty scraps of cleverness she had found within the course of her life, she hadn’t the wit or the power to save herself-though one might have argued, nothing in one world or another could have anyway. Such was the nature of the illness that had claimed her.

“Father,” she said, and swallowed. She took a step forward. She stopped. She wrapped her arms around herself. She straightened.

“Brother,” she said thickly. She looked across the room to him. “Brother.”

Her eyes had been a dark grey; different from her father’s, different from his. This detail he made careful note of before, with perfect elegance, he turned his head aside. He heard her breath fall. He heard the rustle of his father’s sleeve in a gesture. He heard them lead her out. No more was said of Kuchiki Hisana. She had been ideal as expected. Thus it was not worth mention.

There was a shrine in the Kuchiki compound Byakuya would come to make a point of visiting every few years. Servants would see him come and go, and perhaps it would seem a few times more often than every few years-but they would not dare not to say a word of it. Kuchiki Byakuya was not a man to be crossed, for by then he would be a shinigami of the 13 Divisions and well known for having little patience for fools.

She just came up to the waist. Tottering in the doorway, owl-eyed, she stumbled twice. Her cheeks were dirty. It looked as though she’d snagged the sleeve of her little frayed kimono on something as she’d come running home. It wasn’t much of a home; but it had a roof and it had a door, and it had a yard where her mother hung the things she’d washed for other people.

She moved like a small animal, fraught with enough life to make her gait ungainly, and enough uncertainty to give her eyes her hands just a bit of hesitance when she lifted them. She had a bruise on her left cheek from the other day, during the brief heist of a chicken from a man who lived on the end of the street. She thought her mother didn’t know-- but she did. The woman found it harder and harder to wake after noon naps these days, but she still knew these things. She heard the girl set the bowl by her side. She felt the girl press her face into her lap. She opened her eyes, and settled her hands in her smooth soft hair, combing it out of the child’s eyes, where it always liked to fall against all protests.

“…brought some water for you,” said the girl. “Didn’t drink a drop.” The woman had to laugh. It couldn’t be helped, she’d sounded so proud of herself.

“You should have. You’re very silly,” she said, fingers stopped on the top of her head. The little girl blinked up with her large, pale eyes. “But I think I’ll love you for that, too.”