Heartstorm part 2

[nightheartchan]

I split it up into two parts so here's the second half.



"I love you."

There was no room in his serious tone for doubt or prevarication. This was a fact to him, as solid as the earth and unchanging as the stars. Which was good, because Rukia's world had certainly just turned on its side. Her mouth opened in shock, trying to form a question but... she couldn't even think straight. Her mind had blanked as she tried to frantically adjust her world view.

It couldn't be true... could it? No, surely not. Not Renji, he couldn't hide anything from anybody, and certainly not from her who had known him the longest. She would surely have noticed something... wouldn't she have?

She cast her mind back over all the little conversations they'd had as kids, especially as they got older, and in the academy, searching for something, anything that would confirm what he was saying. There had been some long looks he'd given her after saying something out of character, seeking glances, trying to gague her reactions maybe?

Maybe she herself had been complicit in Renji's ability to keep his secret. She might have turned a blind eye to any little hints he might have put out, maybe her ignorance was nothing but denial...

"I have loved you..." he smiled a little, softly. "Gods, I almost can't remember a time when I didn't. I wanted you ta have the best of everything. Anything I could give you."

Well, Renji had always give her the lager share of the water they stole and the better cuts of the food they hunted. He'd always said that it was because she was so scrawny that she clearly needed the nutrients more than he did (he who was forever outgrowing his clothes). He's always given her the thicker, warmer blanket, and had slept between her and the door in winter saying that she was so small the cold would go right through her.

"I was always going ta be a Soul Reaper, but after a while that dream changed a little too, or at least the reason behind it did. If I could gain even a little rank, I'd be able ta get ya nice things. A nice home ta live in an' pretty clothes ta wear. Something better than trash an' stolen loot anyway. So I did what I could ta prepare along the way when we went ta go take the tests for the Academy."

She remembered that trip, it had been a long one, traveling all the way from the outer districts to the inner ones. And now that she thought about it Renji had often gone off on his own, Rukia had assumed he was out looking for food, or scouting around for a place to sleep, but he'd been trying to push himself to improve his skills? She had a little bit along the way too, making spirit-globes and bragging at Renji about how much better hers was than his.

"I still don't really know how I got into the advanced class," he admitted. "I could barely read and write, and my skill at kido still sucks to this day."

Even then, untrained and un-manifested, Renji had been a natural with the blade. Powerful, fearless and aggressive. She had not seen an untrained, raw recruit that was as natural as he was with a sword until she'd sent Ichigo into battle.

"But we drifted apart in the academy," she protested.

:Let's see you explain that one!:: she thought not without a tiny twinge of vindictiveness.

"You were settling in and making friends, and getting to do everything first. If you were so much in love with me, why weren't you there? I was lonely."

"I know that now," Renji said sadly. "But I was still a kid back then. You hang around those brats all day every day, you must have seen it and noticed it for yourself! Geeze, when yer a brat that age an' ya like a girl, ya gotta give her shit ta prove you don't, helps a guy maintain his image."

She shook her head slowly at him in bewilderment.

"That," she said flatly. "Makes absolutely no sense."

"I never said it did," Renji replied, sounding a little frustrated. "But things don't when yer that age!"

Rukia thought about that statement for a long moment, while Renji huffed to himself, and decided that, based on her observations and experiences (both recent and in the past) with adolescent males... he had a point.

"I was a kid, okay? I was just puffing up and strutting around, trying to show you I was the best. Even better than you, because... well, I didn't want you lookin' anywhere else."

A strange laugh of both relief and disbelief escaped her. Not that she didn't believe him about that last, she did hang around children that age on a daily basis in the mortal world, she had seen conclusive evidence to support his assertions for herself. Boys did things that were exceedingly floolish, many of them involving stupid stunts that might require her presence in a Soul Reaper capacity to send them on to Sol Society if they went wrong, all to catch the eye of some girl.

:Boys are dumb, and Renji is such a male!: she thought, shooting him a well-deserved reproving look for his idiocy.

"It wasn't like I wanted ta drift apart, it just happened," he protested. "Every time I got near you I got all tongue-tied and flustered and that made me get all, y'know, proud an' stuff."

:And he had to puff himself up with bluster even more to cover up the panic,: this she knew from watching other little boys in Ichigo's high school.

She supposed he could forgive him for acting his age in that instance, it wasn't like there hadn't been times when they hadn't gotten along too. There had been cherry-blossom viewing parties among the other students where they'd been able to enjoy each others company, and a tanabata festival before she had joined Kuchiki that had been particularly wonderful. It had been just the two of them that night, stretched out on a blanket underneath a sky full of stars with fireworks going off across the lake with his warm, strong arms keeping away the slight chill. She'd wanted that night to last forever.

:He could have made a move then,: she grumbled to herself.

It wasn't like she would have turned him away, exactly. Maybe.

Rukia tried to recall what she had been like in those days and guiltily had to admit, in the light of being so much older and wiser, that maybe Renji was not the only one trying to act cool around someone they wanted to impress so that person wouldn't look anywhere else. She'd heard the bath-house talk among the other female students about their classmates, Renji, despite his low background, had been a fangirl favorite even then. That might have been part of the reason Rukia hadn't had any friends in her class, after the Incident in the mortal world with the Hollows and Captain Aizen, Renji, Kira and Momo had all had something of a celebrity status (at least for a while) and the other female students might have been jealous that he was always visiting with her and talking to her and not them.

"Well... then, um, what about that day? Why'd you tell me to go? You were congratulating me and saying I was going to get to eat fancy food and live the good life and... you didn't even ask me what I wanted! You all but threw me after them, like you couldn't get rid of me fast enough! And now you tell me you were in love with me when you did it? How the hell is that love, you had to know we were gonna be separated! Why didn't you tell me not to go? Why didn't you fight to keep me?"

All the questions and misery and sorrow she'd been keeping bottled up all this time just came exploding out of her... and hit Renji like a blade though the gut to judge by his expression.

"You're so stupid..." she whispered, tearing up again.

"Rukia," he reached for her, but couldn't seem to decide quite where to touch and after a moments indecision, put his hand back down.

"Love ain't about gettin' what ya want. Not fer me it ain't. Love is about me making sure that the girl who means the whole world ta me has the very best life possible. I couldn't give you the kind of life that you could get with them. Even if I was Seated right out of the Academy it'd still be a few years until I worked myself up to a position to provide any sort of good life for you. How could I hold you back when you had someone already there offering you the moon. I couldn't give you that. And what's more, you were gonna have a family, I mean a real family! Not just something cobbled together out of necessity but, you know, somethin' solid. Something you could rely on."

Rukia looked at him for a long moment and had to restrain the urge to hit him. Then hit him again, and probably some more until that thick skull of his was dented enough for some common sense to able to sink its way in.

"You... dumbass," she said in amazement. "I already had something I could rely on. Well, up until he showed up I did."

"But you-"

"My honorable brother and the Kuchiki Clan have given me things I had never once imagined I would have, or even look for," she said, overriding his confusion. "Thanks to them I have a name, and a place in the world. My life and world has a structure and a definition that I often find comforting, even though I equally find it stifling. And you're right that a number of the previous worries that used to define our lives when we were kids like, where is my next meal coming from and where are we going to sleep tonight, are gone. This life I have has many things in it that are really wonderful, but at the same time I often wonder if it makes up for what I lost."

"Even after I gave you up, I still couldn't give up on you. I still wanted... I wanted you to have the best, but... I wanted to be what was best for you," he said honestly.

"What was best..."

"So I made a deal with Zabimaru, and after graduation, we trained."

Rukia stared at him for one long blank moment. She had kept track of him over the years, mostly by rumors going around the Seireitei among the squads. Her brother hadn't expressly forbidden contact between them, but he'd advised her to keep to her place so talking with him hadn't been much of an option really. But she'd kept tabs on him. She'd heard the rumors about how he'd torn through the ranks in Eleventh where the only thing that mattered there was the strength you could bring to the battlefield. She'd heard about his numerous decorations for valor during his missions, and she knew that Renji got assigned to all of the danger zone missions, the ones where the Hollows were all really vicious. She'd heard that the Third Seat, a warrior of renown, had taken him on as a protege.

...He had considered all of that training? The things he'd done could make a Soul Reapers career several times over, and Renji called it practice?

"If I was ever going to get to talk to you again with my head held up, I needed ta get rank, so I did," he smiled a little. "It happened a bit slower than I would have liked though. I'm a pretty good fighter, but ya don't get put in Eleventh if yer a wuss, so I had ta beat some guys who were really good and tough first. It was hard, an' it took longer than I wanted, but eventually I made it there."

Rukia had seen some of the hulking brutes that qualified as Seated officers in Eleventh. She wouldn't have taken any of them on without several prepped binding spells and Sode No Shiraiyuki shikaied and ready to fight. Some of them she wouldn't have even taken on then, at least not without a really, really good reason for doing so. Renji had done all of that, just so he could talk to her.

"But then I finally make lieutenant, make it to a place where it wouldn't be improper for me to talk to you again, and you go an' get yerself arrested and sentenced to death," Renji glared at her hotly. "You have any idea whatcha put me through, havin' ta drag you in and lock you up?"

She had assumed he hadn't cared at the time, even if he did come and visit her. His visits had usually devolved into bickering and shouting matches as she skillfully pushed his buttons and pissed him off. Renji had already seemed to be carrying a chip on his shoulder anyway. In light of this new information it was no wonder he'd been so foul tempered.

She recalled the optimistic way he'd tried to comfort her by saying that her brother would be sure to get her out of prison on a technicality or something, and Rukia had been forced to disabuse him of his notion. She had been puzzled at the time at the look of shock and dismay on his face.

::Poor Renji,:: Rukia thought with a twinge of sympathy. ::He gives me up to someone he thinks is powerful enough to protect me, goes through hell just so he can talk to me again, then finds out that the man he handed me over to won't do his job.::

"But you fought my own honorable brother," she prodded. "You had to have known he out-classes you."

"On a lot of levels," Renji agreed grumpily.

Rukia smiled.

"An' o' course I fought 'im," Renji said, as if no other course of action would have occurred to him. "He was gonna let you die over some stupid principle that don't even matter."

"Leaving my honorable brother out of this," she said, putting aside the matter for the moment. "You were in love with me all this time... and you never once thought to tell me about it?"

"O'course I wanted t' tell you about it!" he snapped back in reply. "But how could I? You were on a completely different level than I was If I was ever gonna have any chance at a life with you, I had ta play by the rules."

Rukia thought about that statement for a moment. Any attempt at her would have been seen as an assault on her brother's pride; if Renji had improperly snuck around behind his back that would have been breaking the rules. If Renji had broken the rules, Byakuya Kuchiki wouldn't have thought twice about breaking him.

"You still could have told me," she grumbled.

"Oh yeah?" he challenged. "When? When would have been an appropriate time to let you know? When you were taken into the household? What, I was supposed to sneak in as a half-trained adolescent past all those ninja guards of his and slip you a note?"

"What about when we met at Soul Reaper Functions?" she suggested logically.

"Tried that," he said flatly. "You may not think that you're being watched over all the time, but you are."

"Are you suggesting that my honorable brother... has it in for you?"

"I'm sayin' he's not so stupid that he can't see what's up," Renji replied a little sardonically.

"But he took you in personally as his own lieutenant," Rukia said confusedly.

"Keep yer sisters close and their suitors even closer," Renji misquoted with a smile.

That got a giggle out of her.

"I was advised that if I wanted ta do right by you, I should stay outta yer way until I could approach you properly. I didn't want ta do anything that was gonna hurt ya... looks like I managed to screw that one up," he said glumly. "Maybe if I'da been there like I wanted to, instead o' followin' the rules hopin' fer a someday, you wouldn't have been so eagre ta send yer powers to a mortal and take up with him."

Rukia narrowed her eyes at Renji and studied him for a long moment. What exactly did he mean by take up with him? Had he really loved her all this time?

"What's done is done I guess," Renji sighed. "So, how're you holdin' up?"

He just dumps all this on her and then wants to know how she feels about it? She still didn't have her feet properly under her again and he wants to know...

::I think I want to hit him,:: she thought calmly.

How dare he hide something this important from her for so long! She'd thought he hadn't cared! And how dare he just make decisions for her about what was best?

He must've seen something in her eyes or on her face because he promptly tried to back up and get away.

"Hey, hey, now Rukia. I wasn't tryin' ta make you upset, you were the one who wanted ta know!"

"Idiot!" she said as a battle cry.

She sprang at him, pouncing on him like a cat and promptly bound his wrists to the stone floor of the cave with a bakudo. She secured his legs next while he tried to thrash around.

"Hey! Lemme up dammit!" he howled, trying to get loose.

Rukia stood and looked down at him from on high, completely at her mercy.

"Let's get one thing straight," she growled at him, pointing a finger down at his nose. "Stop making stupid decisions, even if they are for all the right reasons!"

After all, she couldn't really bring herself to be completely mad at him. He may have been a typical dumb male (dumber than most) and avoided her for a long time out of some misguided sense of chivalry (and since when did Renji have chivalry?) but all the decisions he had made had been made with her well-being and happiness at its heart. He was stupid and there was just no getting around that, but he could also be very sweet. She'd just have to cure him of his annoying habit of always trying to protect her and make decisions for her. Trying to provide for her and give her a good life was one thing, Renji had always done that and she didn't think there was any changing that about him, but how in the world could he be so dense as not to see that there was a vast difference between material wealth and quality of life. They could have been married with a whole tribe of screaming brats running around by now!

"Rukia!" he snapped, still trying to free himself.

She let him wriggle. After all, she had him securely on the hook and had for years (even if she hadn't known it), there was no point in not having fun with it and watching him dangle.

"Ye-e-e-es," she said with her wide, drawn out "fuku-taicho-dono~" smile.

"How did I ever fall for such a cruel and heartless woman?" he demanded of the universe at large.

Now that was uncalled for. What, just because she now had him utterly at her mercy, heart in his hands in obeisance at her feet, thrown over in worship of her?

"You should have known that this wasn't going to be easy," Rukia said in a mock-sympathy tone.

Then she got down to business.

"You really love me?" she asked, trying not to let that sliver of insecurity slip out into her voice.

"Yeah. Always have, always will. Even when you're a brat, like you are now," Renji said sincerely, smiling up at her.

"You only sent me away because you thought I deserved better than what you could give?"

"Yes. I've never regretted anything in my whole life more than I did forcing myself to let you go and not chase after you."

"And you fought all the Seated Officers in Eleventh and went out to fight tough battles and get stronger so you could gain rank and talk to me?" She knelt down next to him.

"Yes. Well, mostly. I have to get stronger than him. I can only take you back that way. You deserve the best, and I want to be that best."

"You're an idiot," she told him, tears in her eyes.

"I thought we covered that already," Renji said, sounding exasperated. "Are you gonna let me up?"

"Nope," she told him, crossing her arms over her chest. "You can stay there. Consider it penance for decades of idiocy."

Renji raised a tattoed brow, nonplussed, at her. Suddenly he gave a popping flare of his now-immense lieutenant-class reiatsu and the level one bonds she'd entrapped him with to hold him in place dissolved like sugar in hot water. She was abruptly wrapped in his arms again as he sat up suddenly and secured her to where she was the one who couldn't move. His voice was low in her ear, making her shiver as he said

"I should have known better than to trust that you wouldn't push the limit Rukia. I'd almost managed to forget that when you get an advantage over someone, you have no concept of mercy. Can you blame me for being so cautious?"

His reiatsu wrapped around them both, warm and soft, currents flowing and caressing here and there like unexpected currents in a bath. He never had had very much control over it. She felt warm and safe in a way she hadn't for years. She relaxed into the embrace, knowledge of his feelings for her speaking to her on an instinctive level of comfort and security.

"Aren't you going to give me an answer?" he asked her.

"I never heard you ask a question," she replied.

Her voice sounded faint and vaguely dreamy in her ears but that was alright, she felt wonderful.

"I love you with everything I am, is there a chance for me?" he asked.

She could feel his arms tremble around her, his eyes searched hers desperately, expression completely vulnerable. It still amazed her a little bit, because vulnerable and Renji were just two words that didn't fit in the same sentence together, or even the same book.

"I should make you wait," she said, unable to resist the urge to torment him a little more.

"Yer killin' me here," he growled. "Answer now or I'm going to find out my answer the fun and easy way."

His smile was wider and sharper, more the confident, cocky grin she was used to. There was her Renji, the one she knew so well. But there was something distinctly predatory in his look, a gleam in his eye like a hungry tiger that's sighted a rabbit in the grass and it knows the bunny can't outrun it.

"What's that?" she asked, stalling for time while she tried to figure out a way out of the situation she'd found herself in.

A half a second ago, she had been the one with all of the advantages, and now she was in over her head and sinking fast. What did he mean fun and easy way? He'd get no answers unless she gave them to him!

"Don't dodge the subject, ya got three more seconds."

His smile was wider, sharper.

"I didn't know there was a time limit."

"Two."

"You're not being fair, how can I even-"

"One."

"You pig-headed-"

The rest of what she might have said was cut off by the feel of his lips claiming hers. It was no chaste little peck either. Renji kissed just the same way he fought; powerful, aggressive and skillful. His lips drank from hers like a man dying of thirst in the desert stumbling across an oasis. But there was also a soft quality to it that made the kiss less of a claiming and more of an offering, a slow, lingering and gentle pressure on her mouth that sought and beguiled rather than forced. It spoke without words, saying 'you are precious, beloved and cherished, I want to share this with you.' Reiatsu, warm and deep, flared around her in a tempestuous whirlwind with the two of them at its center. Her own spiritual force flowed out of her to meet it, mingle and combine with it, tasting and testing its energies. Before she'd even thought about it Rukia had surrendered herself to the powerful magic of their two souls meeting with no secrets between them, her eyes closed of thier own accord as she lost herself in the feeling of bliss and completeness. The world fell away and everything that had gone before dissolved into senseless noise that was drowned out by the steady beats of thier hearts. It felt like an eternity later when the kiss was slowly, lingeringly disengaged. Her eyes drifted lazily open, as if she were reluctantly coming awake from a pleasant dream. The first thing she saw was his face gazing back at her in naked adoration and wonder, his warm puppy-brown eyes looking deep into hers.

Slowly, a surprisingly shy smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm taking that as a yes," he informed her solemnly.

Rukia opened her mouth to fire back a retort that would set him back in his place but the kiss he'd given her had apparently scrambled all of her circuits for she came up with nothing. She just huffed at him instead. A wide, pleased, smug smile stretched across his face and Rukia thought about saying something to wipe it off his face but was stopped by the next kiss he gave her.

It was even gentler than the first. It did not demand, it beguiled, coaxing her from passive recipient to active participant by moving away slightly, forcing her to pursue after him if she wanted the kiss to continue. She sought after his warmth, pressing her mouth to his, curling her fingers in the front of his shihakusho. She then got the brilliant idea, somehow sinking through the haze of passion, of making him hold still. She untangled her left hand from the front of his robe and slid it up over his chest and around his neck, twining the fingers of her hand in his thick blood-red hair and holding her head in place. She felt him smile against her lips as she took greater control of the kiss. He seemed quite content to let her have it, lingering over the taste of her in a savoring manner, as if determined to enjoy every last second of the kiss the way a connoisseur of fine wine might savor an unexpected treasure trove of fine centuries old merlot. She had to come up for air sadly and when she broke the kiss she found that breathing was a little more difficult than it had been.

"That's not fair," she said weakly.

He had cheated. He was supposed to wait until she decided to give him an answer not just stroll up and plunder the answers from her mouth and body.

"Fairs are for tourists," was his easy reply.

He pulled her to him, cradling her in his arms, her back against his chest, her head resting somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder. He poked up the fire with one hand, and tucked one of the mantles around them both. She supposed she should be struggling to gain the upper hand but she felt so peaceful and relaxed, and by the soft, slow pressure of his own reiatsu, like a sigh of contentment all around her as he held her, so did he. She felt like she'd been out wandering, walking through strange lands filled with things she didn't understand, and had at last arrived at her home and sank into her own bed with a feeling of relief and contentment at being in the place where she belonged.

Outside the storm still howled, but they were safe from its anger, the fire was warm and they were alone together with no-one to bother them or chide them for impropriety.

"I love you Rukia," he said into the silence.

She sighed with happy contentment and snuggled closer into his embrace, smiling drowsily as she closed her eyes. That was nice to hear. She liked hearing that, he could say it a few dozen more times, more if he wanted to.

"Hey..." he said after a long pause, poking at her.

"Hm?" she questioned lazily, not even cracking an eyelid, basking in the warmth and comfort of his arms after so long a time without the same way that a reptile would soak in the sun on a warm rock.

"Isn't there something you want to say to me?" he pressed.

She just smiled in his arms. He could damned well work for it.

"Hey, Rukia," he said poking her again. "Aren't you going to say you love me back, I told you how I felt..."

"It took you fifty years to do it," she replied. "Ask me in another fifty years and I'll tell you."

"You're not going to hold a grudge about that are you? I told you I had my reasons. C'mon, don't be mad, that's not fair."

"Fairs are for tourists," she said with a wide grin that he couldn't see, pressed up against his chest as she was. She looked up at him and he down at her. She smiled widely at him even as he frowned.

"Brat," he informed her, leaning in to kiss her again.

She repositioned herself to a more comfortable position, cradled properly in his arms. Rukia wasn't the sort to go looking for a big, strong man to protect her, but if she was going to have one anyway there was no point in not making the most of it. She tilted her lips up to receive his kiss. She'd be making sure that there were plenty more of those coming, he had a lot of lost time and misunderstandings to make up to her after all, he could start right now. He was hers, utterly and completely, and if she tormented him a bit with that fact, well, he deserved it. Rukia smiled letting him lean in to capture her lips again with a sigh of contentedness.

"You love me anyway," she replied securely.

The End