Twin Souls: Chapter 4: Atonement
Title: Atonement
Arc: Twin Souls
Characters: Ukitake/Kyouraku/Yamamoto
Beta: incandescens -- without her this would be impossible.
Rating: R -- explicit violence, implied sex
Word Count: 4413
Summary: Yamamoto follows through on what he, Ukitake, and Kyoraku agreed.
Disclaimer: I don't own or make money off of Bleach. Any depicted sex is between consenting adults. It's all fictional. Really.
In the dark pre-dawn of the fifth day of the month of Shimotsuki, Ukitake Jyuushiro woke feeling more relief than anything else.
The last four days had been surreal. They allowed him to go back to the dorm from the military justice hall. They'd just shown him the door. He turned around at the door, went back in and asked if he could see Shunsui, to talk with him. But he'd been told that as a condemned criminal in collusion with Kyouraku-kun, he could not be allowed to see the prisoner until they were punished.
He asked that they at least tell Shunsui that he'd tried to see him, and they agreed to that. He'd tried, unlike before, and that was better than before.
So he'd gone back to the dorms, to his classes, and spent the next four days defending his punishment.
"That's just crazy! How can they punish you for what he did?" asked Kenshin.
"They're not. They're punishing me for what I didn't do." answered Jyuushiro, as he tried to put together a lightning spell that was being pretty grumpy about having to go together. "Remember when you asked me if I should have been taking care of my roommate?"
Kenshin blinked, "Oh. But he was the one that left you holding the bag. How were you supposed to do anything if he was never there?"
"It would have been simple enough to hunt him down through the bars. He left a big enough trail. I could have just knocked him down and gotten him back here or something..." Jyuushiro shrugged, "I never even tried."
"But..." Hoshiko sounded shaken, "But lashes... Jyuushiro-kun, that's a real single-tailed whip Yamamoto-sama is practicing with."
"Well, I'm grateful he decided to take four days, then, to get accurate again with it." said Jyuushiro far more calmly than he felt. But his feelings flashed into the lightning spell and it crackled and spat and lit some of his notes on fire.
Hoshiko said a quick water spell and put it all out, and the excitement wiped out the conversation, much to Jyuushiro's relief.
He found out, though, that she hadn't forgotten the conversation when she showed up at his room that night. He hadn't had the strength or the heart to turn her away. Their first kiss brought tears to his eyes, which she gently kissed away. The sex was sweet, a slow exploration; but simply sleeping with someone who really cared about him to hold him while he was so frightened had been a godsend. She was why he wasn't a complete wreck this morning.
Jyuushiro got dressed quietly in the older of his two academy uniforms. There was no need to get the new one stained or cut. He tucked his academy asauchi zanpakuto into his obi. It always went with him. He decided against eating or drinking, so as to not have any embarrassing bodily functions while under duress.
An hour before dawn there was the polite knock on his room's sliding door. He opened it to see the same two guards that had been in the hearing. They bowed to him. He bowed back and, without any words at all, they walked together out into the chill of the fall morning.
It was a beautiful morning. Clear and calm, cold enough that all the trees had turned into flame, brilliant reds, golds, oranges, all mixed with the last ghosts of green in the flutter of the leaves. Jyuushiro marveled at how beautiful the sky was with the dark and stars to the west, the sky that deep blue just before dawn above, and the eastern edge of the sky gradually grew clear white over a gaudy display of golds and reds at the horizon.
He breathed deep and walked to the commons area, the open area between all the dorms and the classrooms and practice areas. Two, simple, slender posts with a crossbar were set in the grounds. Jyuushiro was oddly glad that there weren't full stocks, somehow the slender restraints seemed to imply that they were here by choice rather than simply as criminals. The posts and bars faced each other, only feet apart from each other. Jyuushiro was surprised by that.
Shunsui came into the clearing with his guards at that moment, and his eyes got big at seeing the setup as well.
"I guess they really want us to go through this together," said Jyuushiro.
Shunsui only nodded, dark eyes hooded.
The guards courteously gave instructions on what to take off, where to stand, and they expertly lashed the young men's bare forearms to the crossbars. Zanpakuto were left hanging from obi. "Yamamoto-sama said to leave them strictly alone," noted the eldest guard.
Now that they were right up against them, Jyuushiro found that the crossbars were actually slightly curved. He wondered at that. The guards made sure the ropes snugged tight against muscles, keeping clear of elbows and wrists. They asked the young men to wiggle their fingers and after just letting them stand for a while, asked if anything was falling asleep.
"I think it's good." said Shunsui, testing the twist and play of the lines.
"Okay, then, we need to do the upper arms and try a hang test," said the eldest of the guards.
Jyuushiro found it awkward to get so close to the central pillar. They adjusted the crossbar, so it was exactly at his shoulder height and then lashed his upper arms to the cross bar as well. The curve allowed them to insure that his elbows weren't locked, but his arms were dead solid secure. They tested his circulation to make sure it was good.
"Now hang from it, just drop your knees and let your body weight go."
Jyuushiro did so, somewhat gingerly, and felt his shoulders take the strain of holding all his body weight. The muscles connected through his shoulders and chest pulled up against his lungs, and he coughed reflexively against getting his air restricted.
"Get back up. You're the one with lung problems, right?"
Jyuushiro nodded.
"We'll need to add a support strap, can't have you stop breathing if you faint."
"No," said Shunsui faintly from where the other two guards were fitting him to his frame, "We can't have that..." He looked haunted.
The younger guard slid a leather strap around Jyuushiro, it went under his shoulder blades. They pulled the ends to the front, under his underarms and lashed it around the pillar and crossbar. The older guard asked him to lean against the strap and go off his feet again. The slender strap supported a surprisingly large amount of his body weight.
"Good," said the elder guard.
"Isn't that going to get into Yamamoto-sama's way?" asked Jyuushiro. "It's covering part of my back."
"Ten thousand gods willing he should never get that high up." said the eldest guard. "If he misses by that much, we're in big trouble."
"Why?" asked Jyuushiro, honestly curious.
"Boy, you have more questions than a squirrel has nuts," grumped the young guard.
"No, he has a right to know," said the eldest guard. "Look... if the old man wraps any part of the last foot of that whip around you, that tip will, suddenly, be going twice as fast as he made it go. Wrapping does that. Do that up in the shoulder area and he'll cut tendon, nerves, and blood vessels. Do it around the ribs, and you're cut up but mostly okay. Do that down by your belly and we'll have someone trying to stuff your innards back in. Do that near your head and..." The old man just shook his head. "So the strap you have on is a good indicator, for him, of where stuff not to cut is."
"He's got a full six feet of whip to manage. That danger of really maiming you is such that we secure you so you can't move, even involuntarily, even if you faint, so he has a solid, steady target. Got it?"
Jyuushiro swallowed and nodded. "Uhm.. yeah, got it."
The old guard muttered, "I wish Yamamoto-sama would have trusted the public executioner to do this, we know he's got aim."
Jyuushiro shivered, "No... we're his responsibility, I think."
The old guard looked Jyuushiro in the eye, "Aye. I think you're right." Then the old man's eyes narrowed. "You fool. You didn't eat anything did you?"
"Uhm... no."
"What, you want to faint even before anything happens?"
"I... didn't..."
The old man rolled his eyes. "Go get some sweet tea, Goro-kun. NOW." The younger guard sprinted off towards the barracks. The old guard pulled Jyuushiro's kimono back up over his back, draping over his front to cover him.
To Jyuushiro's surprise the gentle touch of the old guard caused his body to shudder, great big waves of shuddering he couldn't stop, couldn't control. "I... I'm... I'm sorry," he said breathlessly.
The older man patted him on the shoulder absently. "It's normal. Dawn cold, fear and fasting, what a wild mix." Then, suddenly, "Woah." Everyone who could, stepped back.
Jyuushiro's reiatsu was up involuntarily, high and hard with all that emotion. Shunsui's eyes got big as he was engulfed in that field of power, and his went up as well.
There was nearly a moan of awe from the few that were present.
Jyuushiro was blasted by regret, a chattering, bone throwing regret of lost opportunities, lost dust, lost lives, lost... so lost... He nearly drowned in that, until his own power flared again in response, in protection, and the waves of the sea, of his childhood came in regular, deep, unending. He'd loved swimming in the sea. He never feared drowning from waters outside his lungs. With the waves of his memories surrounding, buoying him up, he could breathe. He took a deep breath, another, and then managed to pull his reiatsu back in.
Shunsui's flare flickered and then went out with a gasp from him. He slumped and then looked up at Jyuushiro, and, for the first time, a grin flickered on his mobile mouth. "You are strong."
"You two are going to be the death of me," muttered the old guard. The young guard who had brought the tea had hung back at the display, the old guard just took a mug from him. "You, give the big one a drink. I'll handle this one... people are going to be coming soon, we've got to get this setup finished and get off the stage."
It was awkward being fed hot, sweet tea by someone else, but the warmth and energy were so welcome, Jyuushiro just did what he could to swallow as much of it as he could get into his mouth. He felt the involuntary shivering in his body slow and then melt from his limbs. He took a big breath and was able to let it out slowly. "Thank you, sir."
"You're welcome, kid. You'll do fine. I hadn't thought of it before, but I guess it would have to be Yamamoto-sama to get a whip through that reiatsu of yours..." The old guard shook his head. "Times they do change." He gently pulled the kimono back down again around Jyuushiro's waist.
"All right, we're set. Tell the classes they can start coming in, now." The other guards ran off in various directions. The old guard sat seiza between them. "I guess it's show time."
The yards around them filled. The presence of the guard kept everyone well away from the pillories. The classes filed in and knelt in neat rows across the grass.
Jyuushiro felt exposed, more helpless than he'd been in all his remembered life. He could hear the whispering, the giggling, and even the sighing and a hint of outrage in some of the voices that talked about him. About them.
"Are you regretting your decision?" murmured Shunsui from where he hung. "Regretting being here?"
Jyuushiro blinked at the question, taken aback. He glanced at the old guard, who looked more like a statue than a living being. It almost looked like he wasn't breathing. He looked back at Shunsui. "No. I don't regret that in the least. I'm scared. I hate being wrong. I hate... getting it wrong, but if I don't acknowledge that I did wrong I'm not going to learn how to do it right, am I?"
Shunsui frowned, "You really didn't do wrong by me, you know?"
"I don't know that. I do know that I didn't do right by you, Kyouraku-kun. Now, I'm trying."
"A hell of a way to try. Getting hung up and beaten."
Jyuushiro wrinkled his nose. "Well.. getting hung up and beaten so that everyone knows that if they don't support you the way I should have that they might get the same."
"Uh..." it almost sounded more like a body blow than a grunt.
"I've been beaten up in fights before. There's one good thing about it with the way I look..."
A blink from those dark eyes. "What..."
"There's no end to the girls who come by to give you sympathy afterward."
Shunsui looked shocked. And then, to Jyuushiro's delight, Shunsui started laughing, a big belly laugh that there was no faking, and in the wake of that laugh, Jyuushiro found himself laughing as well. It went down in school legend for just the next century that Ukitake-kun and Kyouraku-kun had actually laughed while hung on their pillories.
Jyuushiro suddenly realized that the whole yard had gone completely silent. He bit his lip and saw just the hint, the barest hint of a grin on the old guard... and then Yamamoto's presence flowed into the courtyard and all heads turned towards him.
Yamamoto used his cane to make his slow way to the central cleared area where the two young men were secured.
Once he was in the center, before all the student, he banged his staff on the ground three times. Jyuushiro could hear the birds singing in the distance, everyone was so quiet.
"Shinio Reijutsa Academy teachers and students. You are here this morning as witnesses. Kyouraku Shunsui and Ukitake Jyuushiro are here voluntarily to take a punishment that has no means of being mitigated. It will be fierce and direct." There was a soft murmur in the ranks. "Since they chose to accept this punishment, this sentence will not be recorded in the school records. Therefore you need to record their payment on your hearts."
"In essence, the punishment of Kyouraku-kun is in regret for his disrespect of all of you. His dereliction of classes, of his duties, of taking his turns at both learning and teaching. This is his acknowledgment of his wrongs. Take note. If you deem his suffering to be enough, then lose any resentment you have had of him."
"The punishment of Ukitake-kun is his acknowledgment that he failed Kyouraku-kun in his duties to and support for a fellow student and a fellow shinigami. Understand, that by accepting this sentence, he sets an example to you all of how you should support one another."
"I also acknowledge that I have failed you both to this point." The crowd murmured in shock. "I did not pay attention soon enough. I allowed this rampant disregard to continue for too long." The bald old man with the impossibly long beard bowed to the two young men. "I apologize to you." He held the moment, let it sink in and then straightened again. "My punishment is to inflict pain on two strong, bright, good young men whom I would have been proud to call sons. I will do my best."
Yamamoto threw off his kimono and revealed a body thick with muscle under wrinkled skin. Scars crissed and crossed the knotted body, some still thick and red and purple from recent healing. His staff banged once more on the ground, and Yamamoto's reiatsu stretched itself out, slow and lazy, a warming campfire rather than the angry conflagration of his temper. As his power stretched out, so did the old man. He limbered and stood straight, tall, and powerful. His cane scattered, returned as his zanpakuto, wreathed in slow, flickering flames. He put it, point first into the ground, standing until his return.
Ryuu approached him with a long black whip coiled like a snake along his forearm.
Yamamoto took the whip in his right hand and uncoiled it with a hiss. He walked right up to Jyuushiro's back and then took deliberate paces away from him, measuring the distance. Then he took his stance.
"Are you prepared, Ukitake-kun?"
"Yes, sir."
"The mouthpiece, guard?"
The old guard got up and showed Jyuushiro a short length of new, clean pine dowel. "Here... between your teeth than you can't bite anything you shouldn't."
Jyuushiro opened his mouth to accept the dowel. It was hard to swallow around it, but...
The first stroke hissed through the air and then landed. Jyuushiro felt himself jerk against his bindings as the force of it took his breath away. The pain was... he was surprised to find that he could easily handle the pain. It was just a hard, hot blow against his back.
The crowd seemed to groan for him, the gasps and moans rising like the sound of rain on the sea. Jyuushiro could see the muscles in Shunsui's arms rising, tightening, eyes wide, watching. Jyuushiro gave him a small nod.
And then the second blow hissed and fell across the first. Again the shock of the blow, but this time, the pain built up from the steps of the first blow. Yamamato must have crossed the first stripe with the second as both areas now burned, hard and hot. Jyuushiro heard himself whimper against the dowel.
Shunsui looked like he was trying to levitate off the pillory to come to him. Jyuushiro shook his head at Shunsui, trying to reassure him, and then set himself for the next blow.
At exactly the same interval as between the first two, the third one fell. Jyuushiro was expecting it, but how the pain stepped up again as all three stripes burned surprised him. His control cracked and he cried out, tears starting to run down his face. His reiatsu flared, against his efforts, and he felt rather than saw Shunsui's flare as well. The crowd roared louder, more like surf against the beach, and while the pain runneled and flared, he caught glimpses of silver flashing and diving on some other...
The fourth blow came, as regular as the others, though now it smelled of fire, of old ashes. It cut through their combined reiatsu like fire through paper, and hit across the other strokes hard enough to get a real scream from Jyuushiro and the world just narrowed down for him to just the pain, just his body, and... and... something whirled in the depths of his mind. He tried to follow it, follow them...
... when the last blow hit. He heard himself scream with it as if from a distance. And suddenly he was dropped into an ocean, a warm ocean, with swells taller than he could see over. He floated on the surface, riding the swells easily, as the water buoyed him up. Thunderclouds gathered to his right, as black and ominous as the sea was blue, deep and serene to his left. Suddenly, in the water around him, two seven foot long blue fin tuna sped to him, around him, leaping and flashing. They were shaped identically, powerful torpedoes of muscle, but one was as dark as deep water, the other silver and as bright as dawn.
The dark one said, "You are hurt." It said it in a tone of self-reproach remarkably like Shunsui's tones.
"I am," said Jyuushiro.
"But was it just?" asked the silver fish, with a sidelong glance at him, at the other fish.
Jyuushiro thought about it because it seemed important to give an honest answer. "Yes. I think it was for a just cause."
"Ah, good," said the silver fish.
Then the two giant, muscular fish leaped away in an arch of beauty that closed on Jyuushiro's heart...
... and then he fell back into his battered, screaming body.
His reiatsu collapsed about him. He spat the dowel out, and tried to take slow, deep, long breaths, as much to calm his breathing as anything. The pain still half blinded him.
"Jyuushiro, you're..." said Shunsui's voice.
Jyuushiro looked up and everything blurred before him. But he gasped out, between pants that he tried desperately to calm, "I... I... I'm... still... here... Shunsui."
"You are, aren't you?" said Shunsui in a queer sort of tone.
Then Yamamoto moved to stand behind Shunsui and asked, "Are you ready, Kyouraku-kun?"
"Yes, sir."
The guard had a different dowel for Shunsui. Shunsui looked so astonishingly vulnerable with it in his mouth that Jyuushiro almost couldn't watch. Jyuushiro twisted a little in his bonds at thinking of what he must have looked like as well. The tearing and trickles along the burning mass of pain on his back as he stretched whispered that it was a little late to worry about appearances.
Shunsui took the strokes well, better than Jyuushiro had. He seemed to relax into them. Eyes closing, muscles flexing with the momentum of the blows. He didn't even make any sounds until into the eighth stripe, and then it was just low moans until the twelfth and his reiatsu flared again.
Jyuushiro tried something he had never done before, and wasn't even sure was possible. Instead of deflecting that black intensity of despair that radiated from Shunsui, he tried to raise his reiatsu to accept it, to embrace it. He wanted, madly, to let Shunsui know that he was still there, still by him. Shunsui's reiatsu flare during his beating had made him aware of the other man's presence even through the pain, now he wondered if he could do the same.
Having no idea of what he was doing, Jyuushiro reached out with his power and will. Shunsui's eyes shot open when it touched him. His body bucked and then tears started streaming from his eyes. Startled by the reaction, Jyuushiro tried to pull back. When the edge of his power left Shunsui, he saw Shunsui frantically shake his head. Shunsui got out, "Nn... pleez..." from around the dowel.
The thirteenth stroke took Shunsui right at that moment.
Shunsui's scream of despair so unnerved Jyuushiro, he pushed more power than he should have into reaching out again, surrounding Shunsui again. The other man continued to cry, but there was something different in his attitude. It reflected itself in Shunsui's reiatsu which stayed powerful, but seemed to lighten, relax, as if it leaned into Jyuushiro's. It leaned against him as he had, not that long ago, leaned against Shunsui.
All the resentment that had built, all the niggling angers, jealousies, and doubts of the last two months that Jyuushiro had felt towards the one leaning so intimately against his spirit were cut cleanly away by the last two strokes of fire Yamamoto-sama dealt the two of them, together. Shunsui still cried out with each of the strokes, but it was just the cries his body gave at the power of the blows. No longer was there that maelstrom of lostness that had threatened to swallow Jyuushiro earlier, and which, Jyuushiro now knew, had for too long held Shunsui in its dark grip.
And when the last two strokes were done, Jyuushiro finally relaxed his grip on his reiatsu and his consciousness and passed out.
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Postlude
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The classes filed away neatly as the guards cut the two young men down from their restraints.
Yamamoto watched the medical staff load them into stretchers. The older guard watched with him.
"They'll recover just fine, Yamamoto-sama," the old guard noted. "Your accuracy was remarkable. As always."
Yamamoto sighed, "Thank you, Daisuke-san, for your help." Daisuke picked up Yamamoto's discarded kimonos and Yamamoto allowed them to be slipped them back over his gnarled shoulders. Yamamoto walked over to his blazing zanpakuto and pulled it from the ground -- uncharacteristically, with his left hand. It doused itself, and returned to being a walking stick as gnarled and beaten as it's owner.
"You are very welcome, sir." A hesitation and then, "And if I may say so, they are very welcome to the help I could provide as well. They are rather..."
Yamamoto gave a chuckle that sounded more like a cough at the second hesitation.
"... remarkable young men."
"The death of you, hm?" noted Yamamoto.
Daisuke looked taken aback.
"It was the flare. I felt it and wondered what happened. So I saw and heard." The now bent old man looked pensive, "But I understand the feeling." He looked at his knotted right hand.
"You'd better have the medics look at that, sir."
The old man was the one who hesitated this time.
"No, sir," the guard continued in a level tone, "you need to have them treat that now."
Yamamoto sighed. His right hand was a blistered mess, broken blisters vied with charred flesh to cover his palm and fingers. "Channeling fire through the soul energy of something other than Ryujin Jakka, even with his help, is a pain."
"Literally, it seems."
Yamamoto nodded. "But it was worth the doing."
The old guard, who had once been Captain Yamamoto's most experienced sergeant on battlefields older than memory, heard the question no one else would have. "It was worth doing, sir. Painful as it is, it's better than seeing them bleed themselves out on the field later for the lack of it."
"Aye." Yamamoto took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, "That it is." He then nodded his thanks and walked with the medics back to the treatment wards.
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