Fic: Sunlight and Song (10/11)
Title: Sunlight and Song
Author: Venefican
Pairing: Nanao/Shunsui
Rating: PG
Summary: The battle heats up, and Nanao takes the opportunity to prove there is a reason why she is where she is. Jane Austen's 'Emma' is quoted, and there is a duel.
10
For all the trouble there still is between them, Nanao and Shunsui slip into battle formations as easily as breathing. Nanao on his left and half a step back, just out of range of his smaller sword. The scrape of his swords leaving their scabbards alerts her but she doesn’t need to look to feel the force of his shikai releasing. From this close it makes her skin prickle and her ears ring and in the back of her mind her sword’s spirit stirs, alerted by his reiatsu and the possibility of a fight.
Not yet, she whispers to herself, to her other sharper half, no, not yet.
Adjuchas. There’s at least one hiding in the swarm of Hollow, but she can’t pick it out exactly in the cloud of spiritual pressure.
‘Ready, Nanao-chan?’
‘Sir?’
One black blade swings and the Captain makes the first move. Flickering easily in front of her into the wave of Hollows, already carving a space around himself.
Nanao stays where she is, gathering kidō into her hands. When the first Hollow turns its attention towards her, she is ready.
*
Nanao casts at the speed of thought.
The Hollows are mostly not powerful enough to warrant a full-blown chanted spell, so she casts kidō with silent gesture after gesture and trusts her speed to justify the choice.
She dodges, skips away from claws, avoids teeth. All the while tracking Shunsui’s movements with a small part of her concentration, feeling the power of his released reiatsu pressing insistently against hers. She keeps moving, skimming across the surface, so as not to drown in it.
Between them, Captain and Vice-Captain thin out the crowd considerably, and Nanao has almost forgotten about the presence of the Adjuchas Hollow until her Captain’s shouted warning.
‘Duck!’
She drops automatically, feeling the cero burn the air where her head was. She twists towards the leering white smile of the Adjuchas, looming over where she’s crouched, and shouts her own warning.
‘Hadō No. 21, Shakkahō!’
It’s forced back, not as far as she’d like but far enough that Nanao can straighten up and shake out her hands. Stunned but not down. Kidō has always had a bad reputation for not being as practical in combat as a sword. Too slow. Too risky. Too much skill needed.
When asked about that, Nanao had always tried her best not to laugh. Which usually came at as a terrifying glare. She wasn’t asked that question anymore.
It was slow, it was risky, it took skill. And it always paid dividends.
She can feel, can hear, can sense her Captain a few feet away, trying desperately to finish off the last of the Hollows, speed increasing with every swing until the air smells of bones and flowers and dust. The world narrows until it is just her and the Adjuchas.
The ground gives a little under her feet. The breeze promises rain. The Adjuchas’ arm moves just a little and Nanao dodges the blow than follows with more instinct than thought. She knows, theoretically, about the abilities of the second Class Menos. More powerful and intelligent than a Gillian. Not a Vasto Lorde but a challenge best left to Captain all the same.
Nanao would claim to herself later that she hadn’t met the challenge as a point of pride. But whether that was the truth or not would be a mystery for all.
She could have left it to the Captain, but her duty entails her supporting him as much as she can. Surely leaving him to face a Adjuchas without even attempting to face it would be a dereliction of duty?
At least, that was how she later defended her choice to herself.
Kidō sparks at her fingers and she forces her opponent away with a blast of electricity that makes her skin prickle almost painfully. The Adjuchas shrugs off the damage and Nanao hisses through her teeth. As she thought - she won’t be able to defeat it, not alone, and assistance from the Captain won’t come for another few minutes yet.
And she knows that battle works in seconds, not minutes.
Her zanpakutō slides into her hand as easily as breathing and she strikes with both sword and spell, forcing the Adjuchas back. Its head wavers uncertainly, as if it’s trying to get the measure of her. It leaps; she dodges. It strikes; she blocks. It makes to attack the Captain; she hits it with a blast of kidō strong enough to bring its attention back to her.
She is going to have to make a decisive move, soon. Her reiatsu is depleting far too quickly, and Utagawa’s singing has died to an anxious murmur, a feeling like silken wet hands stroking over her arms. She breathes, and lunges.
The advantage of her little tantō is the quickness of the strike. She passes under the Adjuchas’ arm, slams her blade into its chest and withdraws it as she twists away, both hands already rising as she grinds to a halt.
Two spells, combined. It takes every ounce of her remaining reiatsu, every inch of her concentration. It’s only possible by knowing the spells backwards and forwards, every detail memorised to create them perfectly in synch, combined and harmonised rather than conflicting and exploding the moment she summons them. The words and the taste and the feel of the kidō carved into her memory until they’re as familiar as her own skin.
‘Shō Byakurai!’
Thrust and Pale Lightning. Push the creature as far away as possible. Then destroy it.
Easy as anything, Nanao. Of course it is.
The force bursts from her hands and leaves her body shaking, her feet sliding backwards until she has to dig them into the ground for purchase. The spells explode outwards and hit the Adjuchas, splitting the earth around where it had been standing.
Nanao clenches her hands around her sword, ignores the nagging ache in her knuckles, and waits.
When the dust clears, the Adjuchas is still there.
She spits out a curse she didn’t even realise she knew, and lifts her zanpakutō, ready to fight by hand if needed. The Adjuchas is wounded, staggering and bleeding but it has already proven itself more than a match for her by not going down against her best technique.
And her sword work had always made her Academy teachers sigh wearily. No flaws. That would have been unacceptable to everyone, especially her. But simply not as passionate, as skilful as her co-students. She didn’t know what they were complaining about. If they wanted a sword-driven maniac they could go to the Eleventh.
‘Nanao!’
The alarm, the sheer terror in his voice makes her twist automatically, turning out of the way of claws so they cut instead of behead. Her shoulder burns hot, wet and warm and Nanao knows that any second the pain will hit home and she will have to bite back a scream. For his sake, not hers.
The words for her shikai are on her tongue when the Captain appears in front of her, his smile so genial she knows he’s forcing it.
‘Nanao-chan, let’s trade partners.’ He gestures to the small group of Hollow still left. ‘They’re yours now.’
He attacks in a blur of pink and black, and Nanao can’t bring herself to feel too angry. Fighting would have ended up killing her.
She turns on the Hollows and lets her zanpakutō hum in her hand, revelling in its own steel-sword-song.
After she has finished, she looks back to the fight, just in time to see Shunsui slice through the Adjuchas, the body atomising in front of them.
He flicks his swords and sheathes them, turning to her with a smile that is slightly less tight than it was. He is so entirely focused on her that she sees it before he does. A Hollow, taking advantage of a turned back and a sheathed sword.
Heaven and Earth and everything inbetween, don’t let this be happening.
Her stomach clenches, her mind rebels, and she raises one red-tinged hand, summoning everything she has left into one spell.
‘Drop!’
Nanao’s more than slightly gratified he does so instantly, and the blast incinerates the Hollow that had appeared behind him, claws high in a strike. She’s also pleased that the brief spiralling moment of horror had not frozen her in place. She still has some logical alertness left that hasn’t been devoured by him, yet.
From the ground, Shunsui blinks up at her.
‘I believe...’ she leans on a nearby tree, breathing hard but smiling at the stinging in her fingertips, the satisfied burn of hard-earned victory, ‘I have proved my point about taking care of myself?’
She must look a sight. Her robes are torn and the sleeves are a bit burnt, her hair is falling out of its clip and her glasses are sliding down her nose. She can’t bring herself to care all too much. No one to see her but him, and he’s seen her in far worse states than this.
He stands, brushes off his ridiculous pink haori and approaches until he’s towering over her, sad and solemn and some emotion she can’t put a finger on but seems similar to exhaustion. He raises his hand to her shoulder and drops it in a slightly helpless gesture. She murmurs the chant for binding kidō quietly, lets him add his own reiatsu until the wound is sealed for the Fourth to see to. He doesn’t look any more at ease.
‘Nanao.’ She twitches again at that too-formal name. Hers, but so unfamiliar it might as well be someone else’s. He doesn’t allow her to ignore him - he curls a finger under her chin and tilts her face back up to his, and just this once she lets him. ‘I will allow you to be angry with me, but for the reasons I deserve. You do both of us wrong.
She frowns at him.
‘I meant what I said. Capability was never the reason you were left behind, Nanao. Rather the opposite. I put your name forward because I wouldn’t trust anybody else with the Division, or Gotei 13. You undervalue yourself, who would have been more capable other than the Captain-Commander? I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer, but-’
‘But the world was falling apart and my feelings were nobody’s primary concern at that moment. I know. You could have told me what you had done.’
‘Would you have accepted it? You’d have frozen my feet to the floor before I could tell Yama-jii.’
‘But why?’
‘You have to ask that, Nanao-chan?’
I love you.
It sang in the space between them.
‘So be angry with me for being over-protective, but not for misjudging you. Men will act like fools for beautiful women.’
Nanao huffs out a laugh that is more than half sob. ‘This feels like an Austen novel. Everyone makes assumptions about everyone else, double-guess, are prejudiced and feel like idiots at the end when someone finally manages to say “I love you”.’
She had found Emma deeply frustrating. But Nanao is the kind of woman who would be annoyed at flaws in others that belonged to her, too. If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. And really, isn't that the crux of the entire problem?
As she spoke, Shunsui had released her chin but she’s still looking at him, face almost-smiling up into his, more than a little bit rueful. Nobody had apologised, nobody had repented. But she still feels the anger drain out of her. She is still annoyed, yes, still wondering if he was sincere, yes. But she is still in love and a few minutes ago Shunsui had screamed her name like he was being murdered.
She is tired, and surely she is old enough, surely enough has happened for her to put this away, to settle it as firmly as Rangiku had. Turning away from a house that’s a grave and not looking back no matter the strength of her desire to.
‘But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me,’ she murmurs. Emma again. Why did everything come back to that woman and her own self-deceit? Maybe Nanao’s inside mind understood in a way that her waking self didn’t. And the truth of the matter is that Nanao’s emotions had never been that changeable. Nor Shunsui’s, no matter the fickleness she often accused him of.
Nanao always has insisted on honesty.
‘Captain.’ She pauses, takes a breath, then another. ‘Shunsui. Please tell me the truth. The only one that matters.’
He doesn’t answer, not with words, anyway. But as he bends to kiss her she hears it in his fingers on her hip, his hair on her cheek, his lips on hers, and her soul sings at the truth of it. When he pulls back she has to will her feet to stay on the floor, rather than lean up and chase his mouth.
‘Nanao-chan.’
Her voice is breathless, but she can’t bring herself to care. ‘Sir?’
‘I’ve insulted you. Injured your pride.’
She rolls her eyes. Not this again. ‘Sir, really. It’s not as if you did anything out of spite. Any perceived insult has been proven false by now, I would have thought.’
‘It’s one thing to know it, another to feel it, isn’t it, Nanao-chan?’
She flinches. ‘Feelings are petty, and illogical and not easily changed, sir.’
‘True enough. Well then, there remains only one thing to be done.’ He paces away from her, and when he finally turns he draws his swords in one smooth movement, the air going thick as if a thunderstorm is rolling in over the horizon. Nanao stares at him, and he points the short blade at her. ‘I have damaged your honour. You must defend it, Ise-fukutaichō.’
He has never called her that. Even at her acceptance ceremony she had been ‘lovely lovely Ise Nanao-fukutaichō-chan’. He always had a flair for the dramatic. He always had a talent for mindless stunts even the Eleventh would shake their heads at. He always knew the shortest paths to the part of her mind that controlled her heart. Her zanpakutō’s hushed singing increases in volume, but for now Nanao raises one glowing hand.
‘Yes, sir.’
They clash, in a scream of steel and a crackle of electricity.
Onwards to Chapter 11
Author: Venefican
Pairing: Nanao/Shunsui
Rating: PG
Summary: The battle heats up, and Nanao takes the opportunity to prove there is a reason why she is where she is. Jane Austen's 'Emma' is quoted, and there is a duel.
10
For all the trouble there still is between them, Nanao and Shunsui slip into battle formations as easily as breathing. Nanao on his left and half a step back, just out of range of his smaller sword. The scrape of his swords leaving their scabbards alerts her but she doesn’t need to look to feel the force of his shikai releasing. From this close it makes her skin prickle and her ears ring and in the back of her mind her sword’s spirit stirs, alerted by his reiatsu and the possibility of a fight.
Not yet, she whispers to herself, to her other sharper half, no, not yet.
Adjuchas. There’s at least one hiding in the swarm of Hollow, but she can’t pick it out exactly in the cloud of spiritual pressure.
‘Ready, Nanao-chan?’
‘Sir?’
One black blade swings and the Captain makes the first move. Flickering easily in front of her into the wave of Hollows, already carving a space around himself.
Nanao stays where she is, gathering kidō into her hands. When the first Hollow turns its attention towards her, she is ready.
*
Nanao casts at the speed of thought.
The Hollows are mostly not powerful enough to warrant a full-blown chanted spell, so she casts kidō with silent gesture after gesture and trusts her speed to justify the choice.
She dodges, skips away from claws, avoids teeth. All the while tracking Shunsui’s movements with a small part of her concentration, feeling the power of his released reiatsu pressing insistently against hers. She keeps moving, skimming across the surface, so as not to drown in it.
Between them, Captain and Vice-Captain thin out the crowd considerably, and Nanao has almost forgotten about the presence of the Adjuchas Hollow until her Captain’s shouted warning.
‘Duck!’
She drops automatically, feeling the cero burn the air where her head was. She twists towards the leering white smile of the Adjuchas, looming over where she’s crouched, and shouts her own warning.
‘Hadō No. 21, Shakkahō!’
It’s forced back, not as far as she’d like but far enough that Nanao can straighten up and shake out her hands. Stunned but not down. Kidō has always had a bad reputation for not being as practical in combat as a sword. Too slow. Too risky. Too much skill needed.
When asked about that, Nanao had always tried her best not to laugh. Which usually came at as a terrifying glare. She wasn’t asked that question anymore.
It was slow, it was risky, it took skill. And it always paid dividends.
She can feel, can hear, can sense her Captain a few feet away, trying desperately to finish off the last of the Hollows, speed increasing with every swing until the air smells of bones and flowers and dust. The world narrows until it is just her and the Adjuchas.
The ground gives a little under her feet. The breeze promises rain. The Adjuchas’ arm moves just a little and Nanao dodges the blow than follows with more instinct than thought. She knows, theoretically, about the abilities of the second Class Menos. More powerful and intelligent than a Gillian. Not a Vasto Lorde but a challenge best left to Captain all the same.
Nanao would claim to herself later that she hadn’t met the challenge as a point of pride. But whether that was the truth or not would be a mystery for all.
She could have left it to the Captain, but her duty entails her supporting him as much as she can. Surely leaving him to face a Adjuchas without even attempting to face it would be a dereliction of duty?
At least, that was how she later defended her choice to herself.
Kidō sparks at her fingers and she forces her opponent away with a blast of electricity that makes her skin prickle almost painfully. The Adjuchas shrugs off the damage and Nanao hisses through her teeth. As she thought - she won’t be able to defeat it, not alone, and assistance from the Captain won’t come for another few minutes yet.
And she knows that battle works in seconds, not minutes.
Her zanpakutō slides into her hand as easily as breathing and she strikes with both sword and spell, forcing the Adjuchas back. Its head wavers uncertainly, as if it’s trying to get the measure of her. It leaps; she dodges. It strikes; she blocks. It makes to attack the Captain; she hits it with a blast of kidō strong enough to bring its attention back to her.
She is going to have to make a decisive move, soon. Her reiatsu is depleting far too quickly, and Utagawa’s singing has died to an anxious murmur, a feeling like silken wet hands stroking over her arms. She breathes, and lunges.
The advantage of her little tantō is the quickness of the strike. She passes under the Adjuchas’ arm, slams her blade into its chest and withdraws it as she twists away, both hands already rising as she grinds to a halt.
Two spells, combined. It takes every ounce of her remaining reiatsu, every inch of her concentration. It’s only possible by knowing the spells backwards and forwards, every detail memorised to create them perfectly in synch, combined and harmonised rather than conflicting and exploding the moment she summons them. The words and the taste and the feel of the kidō carved into her memory until they’re as familiar as her own skin.
‘Shō Byakurai!’
Thrust and Pale Lightning. Push the creature as far away as possible. Then destroy it.
Easy as anything, Nanao. Of course it is.
The force bursts from her hands and leaves her body shaking, her feet sliding backwards until she has to dig them into the ground for purchase. The spells explode outwards and hit the Adjuchas, splitting the earth around where it had been standing.
Nanao clenches her hands around her sword, ignores the nagging ache in her knuckles, and waits.
When the dust clears, the Adjuchas is still there.
She spits out a curse she didn’t even realise she knew, and lifts her zanpakutō, ready to fight by hand if needed. The Adjuchas is wounded, staggering and bleeding but it has already proven itself more than a match for her by not going down against her best technique.
And her sword work had always made her Academy teachers sigh wearily. No flaws. That would have been unacceptable to everyone, especially her. But simply not as passionate, as skilful as her co-students. She didn’t know what they were complaining about. If they wanted a sword-driven maniac they could go to the Eleventh.
‘Nanao!’
The alarm, the sheer terror in his voice makes her twist automatically, turning out of the way of claws so they cut instead of behead. Her shoulder burns hot, wet and warm and Nanao knows that any second the pain will hit home and she will have to bite back a scream. For his sake, not hers.
The words for her shikai are on her tongue when the Captain appears in front of her, his smile so genial she knows he’s forcing it.
‘Nanao-chan, let’s trade partners.’ He gestures to the small group of Hollow still left. ‘They’re yours now.’
He attacks in a blur of pink and black, and Nanao can’t bring herself to feel too angry. Fighting would have ended up killing her.
She turns on the Hollows and lets her zanpakutō hum in her hand, revelling in its own steel-sword-song.
After she has finished, she looks back to the fight, just in time to see Shunsui slice through the Adjuchas, the body atomising in front of them.
He flicks his swords and sheathes them, turning to her with a smile that is slightly less tight than it was. He is so entirely focused on her that she sees it before he does. A Hollow, taking advantage of a turned back and a sheathed sword.
Heaven and Earth and everything inbetween, don’t let this be happening.
Her stomach clenches, her mind rebels, and she raises one red-tinged hand, summoning everything she has left into one spell.
‘Drop!’
Nanao’s more than slightly gratified he does so instantly, and the blast incinerates the Hollow that had appeared behind him, claws high in a strike. She’s also pleased that the brief spiralling moment of horror had not frozen her in place. She still has some logical alertness left that hasn’t been devoured by him, yet.
From the ground, Shunsui blinks up at her.
‘I believe...’ she leans on a nearby tree, breathing hard but smiling at the stinging in her fingertips, the satisfied burn of hard-earned victory, ‘I have proved my point about taking care of myself?’
She must look a sight. Her robes are torn and the sleeves are a bit burnt, her hair is falling out of its clip and her glasses are sliding down her nose. She can’t bring herself to care all too much. No one to see her but him, and he’s seen her in far worse states than this.
He stands, brushes off his ridiculous pink haori and approaches until he’s towering over her, sad and solemn and some emotion she can’t put a finger on but seems similar to exhaustion. He raises his hand to her shoulder and drops it in a slightly helpless gesture. She murmurs the chant for binding kidō quietly, lets him add his own reiatsu until the wound is sealed for the Fourth to see to. He doesn’t look any more at ease.
‘Nanao.’ She twitches again at that too-formal name. Hers, but so unfamiliar it might as well be someone else’s. He doesn’t allow her to ignore him - he curls a finger under her chin and tilts her face back up to his, and just this once she lets him. ‘I will allow you to be angry with me, but for the reasons I deserve. You do both of us wrong.
She frowns at him.
‘I meant what I said. Capability was never the reason you were left behind, Nanao. Rather the opposite. I put your name forward because I wouldn’t trust anybody else with the Division, or Gotei 13. You undervalue yourself, who would have been more capable other than the Captain-Commander? I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer, but-’
‘But the world was falling apart and my feelings were nobody’s primary concern at that moment. I know. You could have told me what you had done.’
‘Would you have accepted it? You’d have frozen my feet to the floor before I could tell Yama-jii.’
‘But why?’
‘You have to ask that, Nanao-chan?’
I love you.
It sang in the space between them.
‘So be angry with me for being over-protective, but not for misjudging you. Men will act like fools for beautiful women.’
Nanao huffs out a laugh that is more than half sob. ‘This feels like an Austen novel. Everyone makes assumptions about everyone else, double-guess, are prejudiced and feel like idiots at the end when someone finally manages to say “I love you”.’
She had found Emma deeply frustrating. But Nanao is the kind of woman who would be annoyed at flaws in others that belonged to her, too. If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. And really, isn't that the crux of the entire problem?
As she spoke, Shunsui had released her chin but she’s still looking at him, face almost-smiling up into his, more than a little bit rueful. Nobody had apologised, nobody had repented. But she still feels the anger drain out of her. She is still annoyed, yes, still wondering if he was sincere, yes. But she is still in love and a few minutes ago Shunsui had screamed her name like he was being murdered.
She is tired, and surely she is old enough, surely enough has happened for her to put this away, to settle it as firmly as Rangiku had. Turning away from a house that’s a grave and not looking back no matter the strength of her desire to.
‘But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me,’ she murmurs. Emma again. Why did everything come back to that woman and her own self-deceit? Maybe Nanao’s inside mind understood in a way that her waking self didn’t. And the truth of the matter is that Nanao’s emotions had never been that changeable. Nor Shunsui’s, no matter the fickleness she often accused him of.
Nanao always has insisted on honesty.
‘Captain.’ She pauses, takes a breath, then another. ‘Shunsui. Please tell me the truth. The only one that matters.’
He doesn’t answer, not with words, anyway. But as he bends to kiss her she hears it in his fingers on her hip, his hair on her cheek, his lips on hers, and her soul sings at the truth of it. When he pulls back she has to will her feet to stay on the floor, rather than lean up and chase his mouth.
‘Nanao-chan.’
Her voice is breathless, but she can’t bring herself to care. ‘Sir?’
‘I’ve insulted you. Injured your pride.’
She rolls her eyes. Not this again. ‘Sir, really. It’s not as if you did anything out of spite. Any perceived insult has been proven false by now, I would have thought.’
‘It’s one thing to know it, another to feel it, isn’t it, Nanao-chan?’
She flinches. ‘Feelings are petty, and illogical and not easily changed, sir.’
‘True enough. Well then, there remains only one thing to be done.’ He paces away from her, and when he finally turns he draws his swords in one smooth movement, the air going thick as if a thunderstorm is rolling in over the horizon. Nanao stares at him, and he points the short blade at her. ‘I have damaged your honour. You must defend it, Ise-fukutaichō.’
He has never called her that. Even at her acceptance ceremony she had been ‘lovely lovely Ise Nanao-fukutaichō-chan’. He always had a flair for the dramatic. He always had a talent for mindless stunts even the Eleventh would shake their heads at. He always knew the shortest paths to the part of her mind that controlled her heart. Her zanpakutō’s hushed singing increases in volume, but for now Nanao raises one glowing hand.
‘Yes, sir.’
They clash, in a scream of steel and a crackle of electricity.
Onwards to Chapter 11