Chapter Text
子どものために
She comes to you heartsick, unworthiness clasped around her like a set of jaws. “Kuchiki Rukia?” you ask, and you feel her reiatsu trough and waver. Even in this, it’s elegant, dancer-like. She has an instinct for how the soul and body connect. But this is and is not yet her name.
It’s not typical for a captain to be introduced to his unseated officers by way of private audience. But this is the 13th. This is the 13th, and Kaien drags her through your yard, her feet bouncing off the cobblestones as she struggles to keep up with him. He whips open your paper screen with aplomb and announces, “Ukitake-taichou!!! Our newest recruit!”
She hurries to kneel, brings her forehead to the ground before you. This is graceful, though unpracticed.
“Kuchiki Rukia?” you ask.
When she replies, she still has her Rukongai accent—a timbre that has less to do with lilt or dialect and more to do with reiatsu. Her mouth and her aura are carrying on two different conversations at once. A few more years at the academy and she’d have lost that; a few years here will do the same. It’s a shame; you’ve always found the dialogism pleasant.
The point you want to make, though, is that you don’t think this quiet, deferent girl is the real Kuchiki Rukia. Kaien clearly doesn’t think so, either. There is more to her than sadness.
Of course, you find over time that she is that girl. She is just as much that quiet deferent girl as the soldier who barks orders, the swordsman who pursues relentless justice. The dancer, the artist. The girl who cried when she saw her first bunny. The girl who then ate hare from a skewer, gristle and all. The girl, bottomlessly sad. They are all Kuchiki Rukia.
You wonder how many of these girls Byakuya knows, the day he comes to seek your audience. Perhaps none.
He won’t deign to ask a favor, but he also knows that he cannot command you. So instead, Byakuya chooses to ordain the future.
“Kuchiki Rukia will not be seated,” he says.
“She is not Hisana,” you remind him.
“Kuchiki Rukia will not be seated,” he repeats.
He wants to protect her. He will destroy her. Byakuya wants to protect her such that he is willing to let her think she is undeserving of a seat—that you and Kaien believe she is unworthy (and that your praise is only pity).
Byakuya has the pride to know how deeply that will cut. He is cruel enough to think it doesn’t matter, so long as she is safe.
“None of us are safe, Byakuya.”
He regards you, impassive, but as though your swords are drawn, your gazes locked. You glance out at the garden, comment on the blooming pond lotuses, but he never relents. You can still feel his stare. His is not a particularly aggressive assault: He doesn’t increase his reiatsu; he exudes no menace. He’s not trying to threaten you; it’s not that kind of shakedown.
People say scars don’t speak, but you suspect they do. They are laconic, but repetitive. And they are difficult to say no to.
You sigh. “Kuchiki Rukia will not be seated,” you agree.
You remember Byakuya as a teenager, infallible. You’ve known him since childhood—and who hasn’t? A young lordling, the first son of what was quickly becoming the only noble family that mattered. Wedding Hisana certainly hadn’t quieted curious and voyeuristic minds.
But mostly, you remember him widowed.
Hisana had loved Ugendou. Before she’d become too frail to travel, you’d hosted her often. You’d sit together in silence for hours, in conversation without words, because you knew what it was like to be as ill as she. You’d been friends in a way that perhaps only the two of you could be.
And then, after she was gone, Byakuya came to you, too. He’d said nothing; you’d said nothing. He sat where she sat, saw what she’d seen. And you’d left him alone. A stranger might have passed by your garden and assumed he was at peace, but you knew better.
You never imagined ending up here.
—
Kuchiki Rukia will not be seated. Byakuya doesn’t thank you.
—
She has nightmares.
Kuchiki Rukia hasn’t returned to the Kuchiki estate since the night of Kaien’s death. There’s nothing for her here in 13th, save perhaps a shared and pervasive anguish, but there are things worse than nothing.
She fears Byakuya; she fears shaming him.
She has nightmares.
You feel foolish, having told Byakuya that none of you were safe. You’d said it so easily, as though it were some ineffable truth. Worse still, one you had accepted. But there is a difference between making peace with risk and failing wholly to do the work of meeting it. The day Kaien and Miyako died—the whole of it, start to finish—had been that failure for you.
Kuchiki shrieks awake. If her barrackmates hear it, they pretend to stay asleep. You hear only one choked sob, a whimper from beyond another wall. Someone else whose heart you’ve broken, allowing Kaien to die like that.
The funeral is tomorrow. For one hour, time will stop. You all will honor the fallen, as though any of you understand death and know how best to meet it. You are shinigami.
You want more than an hour. You want there to be an investigation. A discussion, perhaps, of what had gone wrong how to prevent wrong in the future. It’s not as though you’ve never lost someone before; the idea is laughable. You’ve lived too long, through too much, to be so lucky. But you’ve found your limit, and you’re suddenly unsure why none of this has happened yet—why all of you have failed so handily at the work of being better.
You’ve lost so many shinigami you shouldn’t have. (You, Soul Society.)
It doesn’t happen. Even Kyouraku asks you to let it go. He wants to protect you from yourself. “No one believes you mishandled the situation,” he assures you. “Not Shiba-taichou. Not even Kuukaku-chan.”
“But she’s angry,” you protest. You should all be angry.
Kyouraku sighs. “She’s raising hell, all right. But she’s not angry at you.”
You know this. You’re not so self-flagellating. It’s not the guilt that drives you, but your altruism. You want to make this right, and you know that larger things than you must change. At first you’re not sure why Kyouraku won’t join you in this; he has always joined you in your crusades. You never imagined ending up here.
But this time, he seems to think that what you’re asking—what Kuukaku is demanding—is more than this place can bear. It’s too easy for everything to crumble, for you’ve only barely managed to rebuild. You can only hold on, white-knuckled, to what you have.
Yet still, you feel—
“Ukitake.” A note of warning, under Kyouraku’s care, and careful zen. “Don’t forget who I’ve lost, too.”
He puts a hand on your shoulder.
You affirm him. You know, you know. You’ve only barely managed to rebuild. In a blink of an eye and only a heartbreak ago you lost too many comrades, their faces obscured by Hollow masks and the rest of you left in the dark.
You remember the look on Rukia’s face as her sword plunged through Kaien’s chest, his tongue made reptilian and grazing her cheek. His blood very much his, but his face not at all.
For now, you can only hold on.
In three hours, just before sunrise, Kuukaku will launch an attack on Seireitei. It will be vicious, fiery, and loud. She wants her brother’s body back; Kuchiki had given it to her, and Soul Society had taken it back for ceremony. It had stolen him again, again, again. More than anything, Kuukaku wants justice. Maybe you would have joined her (but maybe not); in any case, she hadn’t invited you. She probably doesn’t trust you. In the course of her assault, there will be no casualties—but only just.
She will spend Kaien’s funeral in jail.