Bleach // Prompt 43 - Angel // Always There Part X
Title: Always There (Part X)
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Kuchiki Byakuya, Kuchiki Rukia
Table: Four
Prompt: 43 - Angel
Word Count: 3,037
Rating: T
Summary: After so many years of not understanding and ignorance, it all comes together during several series of encounters. To follow a relationship that was never thought to be, it turns out to be quite interesting...
Author's Notes: I did not like this chapter. Period.
written for
100_situations
Prompt 43 - Angel
Byakuya was flying.
It was like he was in the shukei form of his bankai, with the hakuteikan at his side, except that instead of having wings and a halo composed of his reiatsu, the wings and halo Byakuya sported now appeared….real.
Byakuya had always wanted to fly. It seemed splendid, to soar through the sky, above everybody else, and never be able to be caught.
He was an angel descended from the sky.
Well, being shinigami, he could stand in the sky and “move”, technically, but it didn’t allow for the free range of movement, the sinuous stretching of muscles and limbs that were unusually light and seemed that all one needed for flying was a good wind to float upon.
He wondered where he was, at times, because he was nothing but a mere speck in a vast canvas of blue, the beautiful, tranquil blue of a sunny blue sky in the spring, overblown with sakura blossoms and brightening up even more with Rukia’s smile.
Byakuya.
Somebody was calling for him, a voice that was hauntingly familiar, so similar to Rukia’s, but it couldn’t be - he was dead, wasn’t he? And unless Rukia had died too-
Byakuya. Come here.
He furled his wings and dropped to the ground, if there was a ground in this large, stretching atmosphere. But he soon felt secure on his feet and warily stood up, regarding his surroundings with sharp taichou eyes honed from years of experience.
A voice spoke from behind him, the same voice that had been calling him.
“I’m glad to see you’re doing well, Byakuya-sama.”
It was a shy, delicate voice, one that Byakuya suddenly realized who it was with a jolt. He whipped around, and stared into the demure face that had been Hisana’s.
“H-Hisana…”
She laughed, all tinkling bells and a proper laugh expected of a Kuchiki lady. Her face hadn’t changed at all since the last time he had held her hand and whispered that he loved her before she sighed and closed her eyes and left him forever.
“Naa, Byakuya-sama, what are you doing here? You don’t belong here.” Her brows furrowed in that adorable way of hers that Byakuya had spent hours tenderly pointing out and she had laughed and told him to find better things to do than just stare at her.
Rukia did the same thing, Byakuya realized.
“I - where am I?”
“This?” Hisana gestured around her with one large arm, delicately wrapped in a replication of the plum-colored kimono she had worn when she had died. Byakuya thought, randomly, that if he died, he would want to die wearing his shihakusho and his captain’s haori so he could wear them forever.
“This isn’t really anywhere. It isn’t Life, and it isn’t Death, not quite yet.” She peered at him with inquisitive eyes, searching him. “It’s closer to Death than Life, though. This is why I’m here.”
He blinked, confused, for a few moments. “Are you really Hisana?” he ventured cautiously.
She laughed again. “Of course. Who else would I be?”
“An imposter,” he said bluntly.
“If I wanted to be an imposter, Byakuya-sama, then I would have chosen Rukia, because that’s the one you care for the most,” Hisana replied. Her words were as soft and as carefully-chosen as always, but to Byakuya a huge thud hit his heart and he told himself that that wasn’t true.
Hisana turned, and began to walk away, and Byakuya wondered how she knew her way around this place. Did she always do this to the people stuck between Life and Death, or was it only for him? “Come on, Byakuya-sama,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m here for a reason, and I haven’t got any time to waste before you start to be pulled closer to Death.” She jerked her head to a dark abyss swelling on the left side of the blue space, one that Byakuya hadn’t dared fly close to because of the evil reeking from that place, and he was relieved that he hadn’t.
An old spark jumped into her eye, one that Byakuya recognized from the first day when he had found her in Rukongai, after she had stood up to him and stubbornly yet fiercely talked with him in a way that surely violated some rule in the Kuchiki handbook that said that it was illegal for beggars to talk to aristocrats like that.
Still wary about the whole Hisana-suddenly-appearing situation, Byakuya had little choice left than to follow Hisana as she disappeared over a dip and out of sight.
--
“Where are we?” demanded Byakuya after what had seemed like hours of going in circles and following Hisana.
“Now we’re getting closer to Life,” Hisana said matter-of-factly. “Except that once you ‘cross the border’, as we like to call it, you still won’t be restored to Life because I’m here with you.”
Byakuya didn’t quite catch that, but he didn’t dare argue with the tone Hisana held. Even more confusing was the “we” that she constantly referred to. What was “we”? Or rather, who was “we”?
--
“Come,” Hisana said for practically the twentieth time. “We’re here.”
She cocked her head at him, her eyes reading, before she turned tail and dove into a large hole that seemed to pulse behind her.
Byakuya stood there, stunned for a few moments, debating whether or not to follow Hisana. This hole could most certainly lead to Death, and Byakuya wouldn’t know, because the Hisana he had been following all along could have been an impostor.
He weighed the pros or cons, using the precise analytical thinking of a taichou. At last, he concluded that even if the hole led to Death, he didn’t really have much left to lose - a few more days, and he would have been in Death anyways (or at least, what Byakuya thought of as “a few more days” - it could have very well been two months or three years in the real world).
Sighing at what he had been reduced to, diving into black holes like Alice chasing the rabbit into Wonderland (Byakuya had never told a single soul that he secretly loved the story of Alice in Wonderland), Byakuya took a deep breath, and dove.
--
He tumbled out into a dimly lit room, with what he could make out as two figures. One was lying still in a bed, while the other smaller figure was hunched over the bedside.
“You just wasted a week and a half of you already dwindling life debating whether to jump in after me or not,” Hisana snapped, but Byakuya lost her words when he realized with a shock, who exactly the figures in the room were.
Coming closer, he saw that the pale, frightening figure lying still and comatose in the bed was…him. It was a surreal experience seeing your exact twin down to the scar he had gotten on his collarbone when he had accidentally been playing with his father’s zanpakuto when he was six.
Well, at least he wasn’t dead. He was just in a coma, which was as good as being dead, because he had no idea when he was supposed to wake up (which was rather ironic, in retrospect, since Byakuya was the one in the coma anyways).
But what really shocked him was that it was Rukia, sound asleep on the bedside, her small fingers entangled with his own still fingers. It was moving, actually, to see that she still cared for him even though he was almost on the brink of death, and even though technically, he had left her already.
“Why am I here?” he asked, watching Rukia for any sign of a reaction, but she didn’t stir. He hesitantly placed a hand on her arm, and he felt the warmth of her skin, but she didn’t budge, and her breathing stayed the same.
“I’ve been watching you, Byakuya-sama,” Hisana said, a bit too solemnly for his liking. “I’m so glad that you found Rukia and you took her in under your wing.”
She glanced fondly at Rukia, murmuring something along the lines of “she’s all grown up now,” under her breath, before turning back to Byakuya. “Of course, I never imagined that you would go and marry her, but there you go. I know it wasn’t exactly the best arrangement for both of you, but I was delighted to learn that both of you actually loved each other and both of you were being dumbasses trying to figure out how to tell each other.”
“Charming, Hisana,” Byakuya remarked dryly. “And don’t you think ‘love’ is a strong word?”
“No,” she replied stubbornly, the gleam in her eyes getting brighter. “I’m here to tell you why you love Rukia and that you only get a second chance to go back, because of Rukia, and if you’re careful, stay there in Life because you get a second chance to love and a second chance to live.”
“I told her I loved her,” Byakuya replied, almost automatically, and his mind flashed back to his last memories before he had spiraled into the field of black and Rukia’s panicked face blurred and faded and her scream disappeared into silence.
His eyes started wavering and his grip on Rukia’s hand grew weak. “Suki dayo, Rukia…”
“No, no, don’t say that,” Rukia said, clutching Byakuya’s hand as if it was the only thing that still connected him to her - their lifeline.
“She didn’t believe me,” Byakuya muttered. “I told her I loved her, but she didn’t believe me.”
“Rukia a stubborn sort,” Hisana said rather airily, seating herself on one of the rickety wooden chairs in what Byakuya recognized as the Fourth Division.
“But why doesn’t she believe me?” Byakuya asked, frustrated.
“That’s why you get a second chance,” Hisana said. “You get a second chance to go back and tell Rukia you love her, and you convince her that it’s true, and she believes you and she tells you she loves you back because that’s how fairy tale romances go,” she continued, a dreamy look entering her eye before snapping back to Byakuya. “She secretly loves you, Byakuya-sama, but she’s even more confused than you about how to express it.”
“Love trumps everything,” Hisana remarked. “It’s the superior out of all of them, even higher than death.” She laughed now, rather mirthlessly, and refused to meet Byakuya’s eye. “You’re lucky you’re even getting the second chance. I told you everything that I had ever truly meant in my life, and I didn’t get any second chance.”
“But I don’t even know why I love her-” Byakuya started.
“You’re so thick,” Hisana scoffed, swinging back around to look at Byakuya. Only Byakuya knew this side of Hisana, the side of the tough and fiercely independent street scamp he had rescued off of the streets of Rukongai before she had been transformed into the prim and proper Lady Kuchiki.
He had a second chance, with Rukia, and he wouldn’t let that happen to her. She would always stay his Rukia, and not the next artificial Lady Kuchiki.
“Let me sum it up for you,” Hisana continued. “You love her because you admire her spunk and her courage and you secretly love your small banter sometimes because both of you are petulant little children and both of you have to get your way because you’re just so damn stubborn like that. You find her intriguing, unpredictable, like fire. You like the challenge she always seems to exude and also, you think that she’s beautiful.”
Byakuya faintly blushed at the last words Hisana said, but didn’t contest anything that she had said after mulling over it for a few moments. All of the accusations she threw at him were true, and there were much more, like how he loved watching her train with Sode no Shirayuki and practicing the steps of the dances with that lone white ribbon fluttering behind her, or simply marveling at how wonderfully her body fit into his when he buried his nose into her hair and held her tight in the dim shadows of their room back at the Kuchiki mansion.
Hisana took a deep breath, and continued. “She loves you because-”
He stood up and stepped over to her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “I understand what I have to do now, and I’d rather hear Rukia’s reasons from Rukia herself.”
Hisana blinked and snapped closed her gaping jaw. “Well, that didn’t take you as long as I’d predicted. Then, come along. She’s going to wake up any second now and feel your reiatsu.”
“Can we wait a few seconds…? I want…I want to see her wake up.”
Hisana muttered something about “bossy Kuchiki-taichous never change” and in a breath, Byakuya felt instantly weightless and Hisana had disappeared, her parting words being “follow the blue line when you’re done and I’ll be at the end of it.”
Rukia stirred and awoke, her small nose twitching and her hair disarrayed and all jumbled up around her head. Her eyes were bleary but as vividly purple as ever.
Byakuya had always thought that Rukia looked beautiful, like an angel, in the rare morning when they woke up together and he awoke and saw her large eyes blinking contentedly down at him.
The whirlwind of the past few months slammed back into him with a sickening thud, and Byakuya bit his lip (so reminiscent to Rukia’s habit of biting her own lip when nervous or worried)as he watched Rukia squeeze the hand of his still form and murmur some comforting words that he couldn’t make out.
“Rukia,” Byakuya tried, but the room was as still and as deathly silent as ever.
“I’ll come back, I promise,” he continued.
Rukia’s face was hidden in the shadow and the gentle curve of her hair, but the lone tear that traveled down her face was unmistakable, as she tenderly caressed his hand.
“Only for you,” he murmured, and then, following the distinct blue line as Hisana said, he disappeared back into The Dimension Suspended Between Life and Death.
--
“How do I get back?” were Byakuya’s first words as soon as he had ungracefully tumbled back out into the wide, stretching blue space.
Hisana was facing the opposite direction, and her words were more subdued now, more familiar to the quiet, timid, Lady Kuchiki that never dared venture out of her shell. “Think of your happiest moment,” she said hollowly. “Think of your happiest moment with Rukia, and then you’ll be back to where you started.”
“Hisana, I’m sorry - ” Byakuya started.
“Don’t be,” she said, her eyes bittersweet. “Go, Byakuya-sama, go back to Rukia, and make her happy.”
“Make her happy, because that’s what second chances are for, ne?”
She managed a smile and then turned her back again, hunching over and staring distantly into the vast world that had no beginning or an end.
“Hisana-”
“Just go already!” Hisana practically shrieked at him, her hair flying as she tossed it, and her eyes wide. “You already did too much for me by taking Rukia in and making her happy. She’s almost given up on you, Byakuya-sama, so don’t give up on her for me! I was the past, and she’s the present. Please, just please, make her happy, whatever you do.”
Byakuya smiled crookedly and nodded. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
Hisana gave a short nod. “Now go.”
Byakuya closed his eyes, sorting and choosing from all of the memories he contained, for quite possibly, the happiest one he had of Rukia.
It was during one of their lazy Saturday mornings together, back when they had all the time in the world and they usually spent it in the beautiful red room in the Kuchiki estate, Rukia’s small, delicate fingers gliding over ancient yellowed keys on the piano, guided by Byakuya’s larger ones.
Her nose scrunched up in the most adorable way as she practiced her chords, and then as Byakuya silently looked on, she practiced the piece again, until the music seemed ingrained into the very room whenever he stepped onto the lush red carpeting.
She laughed, a sinuous, floating laugh that carried and cut through the music. Byakuya smiled, and settling his hands on the piano, he added his accompaniment.
It had been a rainy and blustery, heartless day outside, but Byakuya felt that in the shadowed room draped in red velvet carpeting and the ancient piano that had been there for generations, it was the warmest place on earth, simply because he was there with Rukia.
--
Byakuya blinked open his eyes to find himself in the room in the Fourth Division, with a warm weight pressing down on his chest.
He stirred slightly, and recognized the early morning light seeping in through the drapes drawn over the window, and Rukia’s dark hair sprawled out over his chest. He could feel the scar stretching across his abdomen from where the Menos Grandes had cut him.
Had it really been that long? It had only felt like the course of minutes the last time he had left Rukia in this very room, and she had been awake. But now, she was asleep again, and Byakuya guessed that at the very least, a few days had passed. He didn’t even want to know how much precious time had passed during the time he had been flying in The Space Between Life and Death, as he had dubbed it.
He moved again, shifting his body weight and trying to loosen out the slight cramps that had worked their way into his muscles. Rukia mumbled something, and blearily blinked open her eyes, and promptly stared at him.
“B-Byakuya!”
It even hurt to smile, but Byakuya did so anyways. “Ohayo, Rukia.”
“Is - is this a dream?” she whispered, her lip quivering, and her eyes brimming over with unshed tears.
“No,” he said simply, and even though pain burst through his body when Rukia threw herself at him and sobbed into his shoulder, and he awkwardly held her and patted her back, it was all worth it to feel Rukia safe in his arms again.
“It’s good to be back.”
-to be continued-
A/N: AURGH. SORRY TO DISAPPOINT ALL OF YOU PEOPLE WHO LIKED THIS STORY :(
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Kuchiki Byakuya, Kuchiki Rukia
Table: Four
Prompt: 43 - Angel
Word Count: 3,037
Rating: T
Summary: After so many years of not understanding and ignorance, it all comes together during several series of encounters. To follow a relationship that was never thought to be, it turns out to be quite interesting...
Author's Notes: I did not like this chapter. Period.
written for
100_situations
Prompt 43 - Angel
Byakuya was flying.
It was like he was in the shukei form of his bankai, with the hakuteikan at his side, except that instead of having wings and a halo composed of his reiatsu, the wings and halo Byakuya sported now appeared….real.
Byakuya had always wanted to fly. It seemed splendid, to soar through the sky, above everybody else, and never be able to be caught.
He was an angel descended from the sky.
Well, being shinigami, he could stand in the sky and “move”, technically, but it didn’t allow for the free range of movement, the sinuous stretching of muscles and limbs that were unusually light and seemed that all one needed for flying was a good wind to float upon.
He wondered where he was, at times, because he was nothing but a mere speck in a vast canvas of blue, the beautiful, tranquil blue of a sunny blue sky in the spring, overblown with sakura blossoms and brightening up even more with Rukia’s smile.
Byakuya.
Somebody was calling for him, a voice that was hauntingly familiar, so similar to Rukia’s, but it couldn’t be - he was dead, wasn’t he? And unless Rukia had died too-
Byakuya. Come here.
He furled his wings and dropped to the ground, if there was a ground in this large, stretching atmosphere. But he soon felt secure on his feet and warily stood up, regarding his surroundings with sharp taichou eyes honed from years of experience.
A voice spoke from behind him, the same voice that had been calling him.
“I’m glad to see you’re doing well, Byakuya-sama.”
It was a shy, delicate voice, one that Byakuya suddenly realized who it was with a jolt. He whipped around, and stared into the demure face that had been Hisana’s.
“H-Hisana…”
She laughed, all tinkling bells and a proper laugh expected of a Kuchiki lady. Her face hadn’t changed at all since the last time he had held her hand and whispered that he loved her before she sighed and closed her eyes and left him forever.
“Naa, Byakuya-sama, what are you doing here? You don’t belong here.” Her brows furrowed in that adorable way of hers that Byakuya had spent hours tenderly pointing out and she had laughed and told him to find better things to do than just stare at her.
Rukia did the same thing, Byakuya realized.
“I - where am I?”
“This?” Hisana gestured around her with one large arm, delicately wrapped in a replication of the plum-colored kimono she had worn when she had died. Byakuya thought, randomly, that if he died, he would want to die wearing his shihakusho and his captain’s haori so he could wear them forever.
“This isn’t really anywhere. It isn’t Life, and it isn’t Death, not quite yet.” She peered at him with inquisitive eyes, searching him. “It’s closer to Death than Life, though. This is why I’m here.”
He blinked, confused, for a few moments. “Are you really Hisana?” he ventured cautiously.
She laughed again. “Of course. Who else would I be?”
“An imposter,” he said bluntly.
“If I wanted to be an imposter, Byakuya-sama, then I would have chosen Rukia, because that’s the one you care for the most,” Hisana replied. Her words were as soft and as carefully-chosen as always, but to Byakuya a huge thud hit his heart and he told himself that that wasn’t true.
Hisana turned, and began to walk away, and Byakuya wondered how she knew her way around this place. Did she always do this to the people stuck between Life and Death, or was it only for him? “Come on, Byakuya-sama,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m here for a reason, and I haven’t got any time to waste before you start to be pulled closer to Death.” She jerked her head to a dark abyss swelling on the left side of the blue space, one that Byakuya hadn’t dared fly close to because of the evil reeking from that place, and he was relieved that he hadn’t.
An old spark jumped into her eye, one that Byakuya recognized from the first day when he had found her in Rukongai, after she had stood up to him and stubbornly yet fiercely talked with him in a way that surely violated some rule in the Kuchiki handbook that said that it was illegal for beggars to talk to aristocrats like that.
Still wary about the whole Hisana-suddenly-appearing situation, Byakuya had little choice left than to follow Hisana as she disappeared over a dip and out of sight.
--
“Where are we?” demanded Byakuya after what had seemed like hours of going in circles and following Hisana.
“Now we’re getting closer to Life,” Hisana said matter-of-factly. “Except that once you ‘cross the border’, as we like to call it, you still won’t be restored to Life because I’m here with you.”
Byakuya didn’t quite catch that, but he didn’t dare argue with the tone Hisana held. Even more confusing was the “we” that she constantly referred to. What was “we”? Or rather, who was “we”?
--
“Come,” Hisana said for practically the twentieth time. “We’re here.”
She cocked her head at him, her eyes reading, before she turned tail and dove into a large hole that seemed to pulse behind her.
Byakuya stood there, stunned for a few moments, debating whether or not to follow Hisana. This hole could most certainly lead to Death, and Byakuya wouldn’t know, because the Hisana he had been following all along could have been an impostor.
He weighed the pros or cons, using the precise analytical thinking of a taichou. At last, he concluded that even if the hole led to Death, he didn’t really have much left to lose - a few more days, and he would have been in Death anyways (or at least, what Byakuya thought of as “a few more days” - it could have very well been two months or three years in the real world).
Sighing at what he had been reduced to, diving into black holes like Alice chasing the rabbit into Wonderland (Byakuya had never told a single soul that he secretly loved the story of Alice in Wonderland), Byakuya took a deep breath, and dove.
--
He tumbled out into a dimly lit room, with what he could make out as two figures. One was lying still in a bed, while the other smaller figure was hunched over the bedside.
“You just wasted a week and a half of you already dwindling life debating whether to jump in after me or not,” Hisana snapped, but Byakuya lost her words when he realized with a shock, who exactly the figures in the room were.
Coming closer, he saw that the pale, frightening figure lying still and comatose in the bed was…him. It was a surreal experience seeing your exact twin down to the scar he had gotten on his collarbone when he had accidentally been playing with his father’s zanpakuto when he was six.
Well, at least he wasn’t dead. He was just in a coma, which was as good as being dead, because he had no idea when he was supposed to wake up (which was rather ironic, in retrospect, since Byakuya was the one in the coma anyways).
But what really shocked him was that it was Rukia, sound asleep on the bedside, her small fingers entangled with his own still fingers. It was moving, actually, to see that she still cared for him even though he was almost on the brink of death, and even though technically, he had left her already.
“Why am I here?” he asked, watching Rukia for any sign of a reaction, but she didn’t stir. He hesitantly placed a hand on her arm, and he felt the warmth of her skin, but she didn’t budge, and her breathing stayed the same.
“I’ve been watching you, Byakuya-sama,” Hisana said, a bit too solemnly for his liking. “I’m so glad that you found Rukia and you took her in under your wing.”
She glanced fondly at Rukia, murmuring something along the lines of “she’s all grown up now,” under her breath, before turning back to Byakuya. “Of course, I never imagined that you would go and marry her, but there you go. I know it wasn’t exactly the best arrangement for both of you, but I was delighted to learn that both of you actually loved each other and both of you were being dumbasses trying to figure out how to tell each other.”
“Charming, Hisana,” Byakuya remarked dryly. “And don’t you think ‘love’ is a strong word?”
“No,” she replied stubbornly, the gleam in her eyes getting brighter. “I’m here to tell you why you love Rukia and that you only get a second chance to go back, because of Rukia, and if you’re careful, stay there in Life because you get a second chance to love and a second chance to live.”
“I told her I loved her,” Byakuya replied, almost automatically, and his mind flashed back to his last memories before he had spiraled into the field of black and Rukia’s panicked face blurred and faded and her scream disappeared into silence.
His eyes started wavering and his grip on Rukia’s hand grew weak. “Suki dayo, Rukia…”
“No, no, don’t say that,” Rukia said, clutching Byakuya’s hand as if it was the only thing that still connected him to her - their lifeline.
“She didn’t believe me,” Byakuya muttered. “I told her I loved her, but she didn’t believe me.”
“Rukia a stubborn sort,” Hisana said rather airily, seating herself on one of the rickety wooden chairs in what Byakuya recognized as the Fourth Division.
“But why doesn’t she believe me?” Byakuya asked, frustrated.
“That’s why you get a second chance,” Hisana said. “You get a second chance to go back and tell Rukia you love her, and you convince her that it’s true, and she believes you and she tells you she loves you back because that’s how fairy tale romances go,” she continued, a dreamy look entering her eye before snapping back to Byakuya. “She secretly loves you, Byakuya-sama, but she’s even more confused than you about how to express it.”
“Love trumps everything,” Hisana remarked. “It’s the superior out of all of them, even higher than death.” She laughed now, rather mirthlessly, and refused to meet Byakuya’s eye. “You’re lucky you’re even getting the second chance. I told you everything that I had ever truly meant in my life, and I didn’t get any second chance.”
“But I don’t even know why I love her-” Byakuya started.
“You’re so thick,” Hisana scoffed, swinging back around to look at Byakuya. Only Byakuya knew this side of Hisana, the side of the tough and fiercely independent street scamp he had rescued off of the streets of Rukongai before she had been transformed into the prim and proper Lady Kuchiki.
He had a second chance, with Rukia, and he wouldn’t let that happen to her. She would always stay his Rukia, and not the next artificial Lady Kuchiki.
“Let me sum it up for you,” Hisana continued. “You love her because you admire her spunk and her courage and you secretly love your small banter sometimes because both of you are petulant little children and both of you have to get your way because you’re just so damn stubborn like that. You find her intriguing, unpredictable, like fire. You like the challenge she always seems to exude and also, you think that she’s beautiful.”
Byakuya faintly blushed at the last words Hisana said, but didn’t contest anything that she had said after mulling over it for a few moments. All of the accusations she threw at him were true, and there were much more, like how he loved watching her train with Sode no Shirayuki and practicing the steps of the dances with that lone white ribbon fluttering behind her, or simply marveling at how wonderfully her body fit into his when he buried his nose into her hair and held her tight in the dim shadows of their room back at the Kuchiki mansion.
Hisana took a deep breath, and continued. “She loves you because-”
He stood up and stepped over to her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “I understand what I have to do now, and I’d rather hear Rukia’s reasons from Rukia herself.”
Hisana blinked and snapped closed her gaping jaw. “Well, that didn’t take you as long as I’d predicted. Then, come along. She’s going to wake up any second now and feel your reiatsu.”
“Can we wait a few seconds…? I want…I want to see her wake up.”
Hisana muttered something about “bossy Kuchiki-taichous never change” and in a breath, Byakuya felt instantly weightless and Hisana had disappeared, her parting words being “follow the blue line when you’re done and I’ll be at the end of it.”
Rukia stirred and awoke, her small nose twitching and her hair disarrayed and all jumbled up around her head. Her eyes were bleary but as vividly purple as ever.
Byakuya had always thought that Rukia looked beautiful, like an angel, in the rare morning when they woke up together and he awoke and saw her large eyes blinking contentedly down at him.
The whirlwind of the past few months slammed back into him with a sickening thud, and Byakuya bit his lip (so reminiscent to Rukia’s habit of biting her own lip when nervous or worried)as he watched Rukia squeeze the hand of his still form and murmur some comforting words that he couldn’t make out.
“Rukia,” Byakuya tried, but the room was as still and as deathly silent as ever.
“I’ll come back, I promise,” he continued.
Rukia’s face was hidden in the shadow and the gentle curve of her hair, but the lone tear that traveled down her face was unmistakable, as she tenderly caressed his hand.
“Only for you,” he murmured, and then, following the distinct blue line as Hisana said, he disappeared back into The Dimension Suspended Between Life and Death.
--
“How do I get back?” were Byakuya’s first words as soon as he had ungracefully tumbled back out into the wide, stretching blue space.
Hisana was facing the opposite direction, and her words were more subdued now, more familiar to the quiet, timid, Lady Kuchiki that never dared venture out of her shell. “Think of your happiest moment,” she said hollowly. “Think of your happiest moment with Rukia, and then you’ll be back to where you started.”
“Hisana, I’m sorry - ” Byakuya started.
“Don’t be,” she said, her eyes bittersweet. “Go, Byakuya-sama, go back to Rukia, and make her happy.”
“Make her happy, because that’s what second chances are for, ne?”
She managed a smile and then turned her back again, hunching over and staring distantly into the vast world that had no beginning or an end.
“Hisana-”
“Just go already!” Hisana practically shrieked at him, her hair flying as she tossed it, and her eyes wide. “You already did too much for me by taking Rukia in and making her happy. She’s almost given up on you, Byakuya-sama, so don’t give up on her for me! I was the past, and she’s the present. Please, just please, make her happy, whatever you do.”
Byakuya smiled crookedly and nodded. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
Hisana gave a short nod. “Now go.”
Byakuya closed his eyes, sorting and choosing from all of the memories he contained, for quite possibly, the happiest one he had of Rukia.
It was during one of their lazy Saturday mornings together, back when they had all the time in the world and they usually spent it in the beautiful red room in the Kuchiki estate, Rukia’s small, delicate fingers gliding over ancient yellowed keys on the piano, guided by Byakuya’s larger ones.
Her nose scrunched up in the most adorable way as she practiced her chords, and then as Byakuya silently looked on, she practiced the piece again, until the music seemed ingrained into the very room whenever he stepped onto the lush red carpeting.
She laughed, a sinuous, floating laugh that carried and cut through the music. Byakuya smiled, and settling his hands on the piano, he added his accompaniment.
It had been a rainy and blustery, heartless day outside, but Byakuya felt that in the shadowed room draped in red velvet carpeting and the ancient piano that had been there for generations, it was the warmest place on earth, simply because he was there with Rukia.
--
Byakuya blinked open his eyes to find himself in the room in the Fourth Division, with a warm weight pressing down on his chest.
He stirred slightly, and recognized the early morning light seeping in through the drapes drawn over the window, and Rukia’s dark hair sprawled out over his chest. He could feel the scar stretching across his abdomen from where the Menos Grandes had cut him.
Had it really been that long? It had only felt like the course of minutes the last time he had left Rukia in this very room, and she had been awake. But now, she was asleep again, and Byakuya guessed that at the very least, a few days had passed. He didn’t even want to know how much precious time had passed during the time he had been flying in The Space Between Life and Death, as he had dubbed it.
He moved again, shifting his body weight and trying to loosen out the slight cramps that had worked their way into his muscles. Rukia mumbled something, and blearily blinked open her eyes, and promptly stared at him.
“B-Byakuya!”
It even hurt to smile, but Byakuya did so anyways. “Ohayo, Rukia.”
“Is - is this a dream?” she whispered, her lip quivering, and her eyes brimming over with unshed tears.
“No,” he said simply, and even though pain burst through his body when Rukia threw herself at him and sobbed into his shoulder, and he awkwardly held her and patted her back, it was all worth it to feel Rukia safe in his arms again.
“It’s good to be back.”
-to be continued-
A/N: AURGH. SORRY TO DISAPPOINT ALL OF YOU PEOPLE WHO LIKED THIS STORY :(