Fic: Sunlight and Song (1/11)
Title: Sunlight and Song
Author: Venefican
Artist: 2nds2disaster
Beta: pekori
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Nanao/Shunsui, cameos from Rangiku, Toshiro, Momo, Ukitake
Rating: PG
Word Count: 15,160
Warnings: Some violence, nothing explicit.
Summary: After the defeat of Aizen, life attempts to return to normal in Gotei 13. But an argument has shattered the already-fragile new romantic relationship between the 8th Division's Captain and Vice-Captain, and the pair embark on a series of misunderstandings that would do Jane Austen proud. And Nanao? She just wants for everything to be as it was. It's a shame that nobody else agrees. So as she and her Captain continue their 'one step forward, ten steps back' daily lives with each other, Nanao unearths secrets and learns that there is strength in strange places. Rangiku conspires, Ukitake guides, and Nanao just tries to get the paperwork done.
A/N: Possibly the oddest thing I've ever written, it owes a great debt to Emma as well as various BBC costume dramas. Many thanks to pekori for having the courage to wade through my random tense changes, and 2nds2disaster for the lovely lovely art, which makes this Georgian period fangirl very happy indeed.
1
Seireitei smells of ash. It shouldn’t, of course. Maybe it’s some part of her wilted imagination trying to insert a sense of high drama into the whole affair.
She couldn’t even blame the bonfires scattered throughout the court like warning signals. It had been annoying her since the doorway from Fake Karakura had reopened. Maybe she is trying to make it more tragic than it had been. Battered warriors, returning home. Stained and tired and carrying the smells of war from the battlefield. But no.
Instead there had just been a snap of spiritual energy, a breath of wind and suddenly the various officers of Gotei 13 were just there, scattered around the courtyard in front of the First Division, bringing with them an inexplicable smell of ash. Burnt offerings.
That had been hours ago.
Now she is crouching upwind of a bonfire, trying to calculate exactly how much has changed. They have all returned, thanks to good fortune and one extremely overpowered human boy, but their victory has come with its own price, calculated and obvious and somewhere Aizen Sousuke is smiling to himself.
They had paid for their own arrogance. Things would never be the same again.
‘Dark thoughts, Nanao-chan?’
She glances up at her captain. He, at least, hasn’t changed, smiling idly at her with his second-best haori - purple, not pink - thrown over his shoulders. She never thought she would miss the pink monstrosity but the lilac folds are just reminding her how much she has missed. How much there is now to do.
‘Practical thoughts, sir.’
‘My lovely vice-captain-chan, always so studious. Never even a thought for relaxation...’
‘Some people would call that a virtue, sir.’
‘Yare yare.’ He’s not wearing his hat, his hair is a rat’s nest of tangled waves and his eyes are unbearably solemn. ‘Enjoy this while it lasts, Nanao-chan. The hard work will begin soon enough.’
She needs to say something, anything, to put them back on their usual footing. To dismiss from her mind’s eye the wary way Hinamori had held herself like a beaten dog, the way Lisa had looked at her, the way Rangiku hadn’t, turning and disappearing into the smoke faster than her shikai. To make her captain stop behaving like an odd, sad stranger.
‘Your definition of hard work, sir,’ she begins slowly, trying to remember how they were before ‘involves the roof, sunshine and ten-month old sake.’
A sudden smile, like the sun coming out, and some unknown tension unravels from her spine. As long as one thing stays the same, she will manage. ‘You know your old captain so well.’
‘Less of the ‘old’, sir.’ There’s still pinched tension around his eyes, and she chews over the various things that could have caused it before settling on the most obvious. ‘How is Ukitake-taichō, sir?’
Kyōraku makes a small noise in the back of his throat, folding his arms into his haori with a poorly hidden expression of worry that she recognises very well. ‘Better. Retsu insisted he’ll be fine right before she kicked me out. Said my reiatsu was upsetting everyone.’
She doesn’t doubt that. Kyōraku Shunsui loves in the same way he does everything else - easily, generously, and with a complete lack of discrimination. Unfortunately his spiritual pressure behaves in much the same way, when he is upset everyone from here to the Living World knows about it. Now it’s pressing against hers, hesitant, as if he’s not sure of the welcome he’d receive. He’s right to. Her earlier shouted words echo just as clearly in her ears as they must do in his. But there’s nothing she can do now. Just hold herself in and try not to destroy him or her any more than she already has.
‘What of Yadomaru-fuku... Yadomaru-san, sir?’
She doesn’t want to upset him, but she’s curious and some part of her thinks that she has just as much a right to know as him.
‘She didn’t want to come back with us. Said that she had gone beyond Gotei 13 now, that there is no place for her, for them.’
Lisa is right - Central 46 may be scarred and humbler and different from one hundred years ago, but what would they do with a group of former Captains and Vice-Captains who aren’t shinigami anymore but aren’t humans either? End up as Twelfth’s test subjects, most likely.
But she still wonders how it would have been had none of this happened. She wouldn’t be Vice-Captain of course, but would she still admire Lisa as she did - does - or would that feeling have faded with adolescence, rather than grown into absent hero worship?
Dark thoughts, indeed. It’s not like her to be morbid, or linger on things that are dead and gone. But what else is there, now?
She glances around. There are captains and vice-captains still in the Fourth Division, of course. Captain-Commander lost his arm, and it makes Nanao uncomfortable to realise just how easily everything could have gone terribly wrong if he hadn’t returned, no matter the safe holds they arranged together. But Soifon is still here, and Zaraki, and Hitsugaya watching over his troops with a weary kind of indulgent affection. Nanao frowns.
‘Sir, have you seen Rangiku at all?’
‘No, not since Retsu gave her the all-clear.’ He looks down at her. ‘Some things are hard unlearnt, Nanao-chan.’
She still loves him.
Rangiku and Gin. She and Shunsui.
It hangs between them, and Nanao represses the headache now threatening the edges of her mind. She wants to go home, she wants to sleep, she wants to forget, she wants her captain to stop looking at her like an abandoned animal.
She has never considered herself cruel. Not deliberately, anyway. But she has to bite back the anger coiling in her stomach at the little lost looks he keeps directing at her. Like she’s hurting him just for the pleasure of it. She can’t bring herself to apologise. Not when she knows she would say the same things, a hundred times over.
She closes her eyes and tries not to think about anything more complicated than the smell of ash that shouldn’t exist.
Onwards to Chapter 2
Author: Venefican
Artist: 2nds2disaster
Beta: pekori
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Nanao/Shunsui, cameos from Rangiku, Toshiro, Momo, Ukitake
Rating: PG
Word Count: 15,160
Warnings: Some violence, nothing explicit.
Summary: After the defeat of Aizen, life attempts to return to normal in Gotei 13. But an argument has shattered the already-fragile new romantic relationship between the 8th Division's Captain and Vice-Captain, and the pair embark on a series of misunderstandings that would do Jane Austen proud. And Nanao? She just wants for everything to be as it was. It's a shame that nobody else agrees. So as she and her Captain continue their 'one step forward, ten steps back' daily lives with each other, Nanao unearths secrets and learns that there is strength in strange places. Rangiku conspires, Ukitake guides, and Nanao just tries to get the paperwork done.
A/N: Possibly the oddest thing I've ever written, it owes a great debt to Emma as well as various BBC costume dramas. Many thanks to pekori for having the courage to wade through my random tense changes, and 2nds2disaster for the lovely lovely art, which makes this Georgian period fangirl very happy indeed.
1
Seireitei smells of ash. It shouldn’t, of course. Maybe it’s some part of her wilted imagination trying to insert a sense of high drama into the whole affair.
She couldn’t even blame the bonfires scattered throughout the court like warning signals. It had been annoying her since the doorway from Fake Karakura had reopened. Maybe she is trying to make it more tragic than it had been. Battered warriors, returning home. Stained and tired and carrying the smells of war from the battlefield. But no.
Instead there had just been a snap of spiritual energy, a breath of wind and suddenly the various officers of Gotei 13 were just there, scattered around the courtyard in front of the First Division, bringing with them an inexplicable smell of ash. Burnt offerings.
That had been hours ago.
Now she is crouching upwind of a bonfire, trying to calculate exactly how much has changed. They have all returned, thanks to good fortune and one extremely overpowered human boy, but their victory has come with its own price, calculated and obvious and somewhere Aizen Sousuke is smiling to himself.
They had paid for their own arrogance. Things would never be the same again.
‘Dark thoughts, Nanao-chan?’
She glances up at her captain. He, at least, hasn’t changed, smiling idly at her with his second-best haori - purple, not pink - thrown over his shoulders. She never thought she would miss the pink monstrosity but the lilac folds are just reminding her how much she has missed. How much there is now to do.
‘Practical thoughts, sir.’
‘My lovely vice-captain-chan, always so studious. Never even a thought for relaxation...’
‘Some people would call that a virtue, sir.’
‘Yare yare.’ He’s not wearing his hat, his hair is a rat’s nest of tangled waves and his eyes are unbearably solemn. ‘Enjoy this while it lasts, Nanao-chan. The hard work will begin soon enough.’
She needs to say something, anything, to put them back on their usual footing. To dismiss from her mind’s eye the wary way Hinamori had held herself like a beaten dog, the way Lisa had looked at her, the way Rangiku hadn’t, turning and disappearing into the smoke faster than her shikai. To make her captain stop behaving like an odd, sad stranger.
‘Your definition of hard work, sir,’ she begins slowly, trying to remember how they were before ‘involves the roof, sunshine and ten-month old sake.’
A sudden smile, like the sun coming out, and some unknown tension unravels from her spine. As long as one thing stays the same, she will manage. ‘You know your old captain so well.’
‘Less of the ‘old’, sir.’ There’s still pinched tension around his eyes, and she chews over the various things that could have caused it before settling on the most obvious. ‘How is Ukitake-taichō, sir?’
Kyōraku makes a small noise in the back of his throat, folding his arms into his haori with a poorly hidden expression of worry that she recognises very well. ‘Better. Retsu insisted he’ll be fine right before she kicked me out. Said my reiatsu was upsetting everyone.’
She doesn’t doubt that. Kyōraku Shunsui loves in the same way he does everything else - easily, generously, and with a complete lack of discrimination. Unfortunately his spiritual pressure behaves in much the same way, when he is upset everyone from here to the Living World knows about it. Now it’s pressing against hers, hesitant, as if he’s not sure of the welcome he’d receive. He’s right to. Her earlier shouted words echo just as clearly in her ears as they must do in his. But there’s nothing she can do now. Just hold herself in and try not to destroy him or her any more than she already has.
‘What of Yadomaru-fuku... Yadomaru-san, sir?’
She doesn’t want to upset him, but she’s curious and some part of her thinks that she has just as much a right to know as him.
‘She didn’t want to come back with us. Said that she had gone beyond Gotei 13 now, that there is no place for her, for them.’
Lisa is right - Central 46 may be scarred and humbler and different from one hundred years ago, but what would they do with a group of former Captains and Vice-Captains who aren’t shinigami anymore but aren’t humans either? End up as Twelfth’s test subjects, most likely.
But she still wonders how it would have been had none of this happened. She wouldn’t be Vice-Captain of course, but would she still admire Lisa as she did - does - or would that feeling have faded with adolescence, rather than grown into absent hero worship?
Dark thoughts, indeed. It’s not like her to be morbid, or linger on things that are dead and gone. But what else is there, now?
She glances around. There are captains and vice-captains still in the Fourth Division, of course. Captain-Commander lost his arm, and it makes Nanao uncomfortable to realise just how easily everything could have gone terribly wrong if he hadn’t returned, no matter the safe holds they arranged together. But Soifon is still here, and Zaraki, and Hitsugaya watching over his troops with a weary kind of indulgent affection. Nanao frowns.
‘Sir, have you seen Rangiku at all?’
‘No, not since Retsu gave her the all-clear.’ He looks down at her. ‘Some things are hard unlearnt, Nanao-chan.’
She still loves him.
Rangiku and Gin. She and Shunsui.
It hangs between them, and Nanao represses the headache now threatening the edges of her mind. She wants to go home, she wants to sleep, she wants to forget, she wants her captain to stop looking at her like an abandoned animal.
She has never considered herself cruel. Not deliberately, anyway. But she has to bite back the anger coiling in her stomach at the little lost looks he keeps directing at her. Like she’s hurting him just for the pleasure of it. She can’t bring herself to apologise. Not when she knows she would say the same things, a hundred times over.
She closes her eyes and tries not to think about anything more complicated than the smell of ash that shouldn’t exist.
Onwards to Chapter 2