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Renji wasn’t back in time for dinner.
It served him right, in Rukia’s opinion, missing dinner. That’s what he got for being a fancy-pants show-off, going on special training trips with his fancy-pants friends. The big oaf could probably stand to skip a meal or two, with the way he’d been growing lately.
Rukia regretted that thought the moment she had it. They’d both gone to bed hungry too many times for her to wish that on him. There had been too many times he’d given her more than her fair portion or pushed the last of the rice on her, claiming to be full.
Rukia stabbed at her braised burdock. Stupid jerk. She couldn’t even get mad at him properly.
Surely, the Academy wouldn’t let their prize pupils go hungry. They’d probably have some special meal made up for them when they got back. It seemed like the closer they got to the center of Soul Society, the more ways people found to be elitist. The Advanced Class was constantly getting preferential treatment, extra training, special privileges. They were expected to excel, and then given all the resources to do so. No matter how hard Rukia worked, how could she compete, when the winners had already been chosen?
She could never explain this to Renji. He got worked up enough every time he thought too hard about the injustices of the Academy, which was daily. From his vantage point, it was hard for him to see how far apart his class was from hers, and that was probably for the best. The last thing Rukia needed was that moron going on some sort of crusade and blowing the one tiny piece of privilege he had in this place. But it was so irritating, when he teased her about being behind him. Did he think she didn’t know? Did he really think she wasn’t working her ass off?
Maybe he did think that.
Rukia was clever and sneaky and brave, all things that had helped them to survive in Inuzuri. But here at the Academy, there was so much reading and writing and hitting things with your fists or with practice swords, all things that came naturally to Renji and did not come easily at all to her. The only thing she was remotely good at was kidou, and still, there were those long, awful chants. Her instructor had effusively praised the handful she’d managed to memorize so far, and then promptly lambasted her for not knowing more of them. It wasn’t her fault it took her hours just to read the damn things, let alone commit them to memory.
And then there were Renji’s new friends. It was bad enough that Hinamori and Kira were brilliant, but they were incredibly hard workers as well. Renji had shown her a kidou study sheet Hinamori had made him-- all neatly bullet pointed and color coded, in tidy, precise handwriting. And whenever she saw Renji lifting at the gym or running his awful laps around campus, Kira was there, too, sweaty and pale, looking like he was on the verge of collapse, but hanging in there all the same. The three of them spent their free periods trying hakuda moves on each other or digging through the library for books they hadn’t read yet.
Rukia didn’t feel very hungry, but she forced herself to eat a little rice anyway. She had plans to go to the gym that evening herself, and she’d need the energy.
Suddenly, Rukia noticed that the cafeteria had gone sort of… quiet. She looked around, and noticed that a lot of people were whispering to each other. That was strange. This wasn’t class, it was the cafeteria at peak dinner hour. Something must be going on, like that time one of the Gotei captains dropped by and everyone lost their minds trying to get a glimpse of him.
“Uh, hey, Miss Inuzuri?”
Surprised, Rukia turned her head. It was a boy who was in a couple of her classes, Isawa. She really only remembered his name because he’d been on the same team as her and Renji in a pick-up football game early in the semester, before Renji decided he was too busy to be playing in pick-up football games.
People didn’t usually talk to Rukia outside of class activities, unless they were making fun of her. Her shoulders stiffened. “What is it?” she asked warily.
Isawa looked supremely uncomfortable. “You’re friends with that big guy from Class 1, right? Abarai?”
“Yeah,” Rukia replied. “What of it?”
“Word just got back,” Isawa said slowly. “I guess Class 1 went to the Living World for a training exercise with some sixth years. There was… an accident.”
At first, the words didn’t make any sense. “An accident?”
“A Hollow. Or some Hollows. I don’t think anyone knows for sure.” He glanced around, and Rukia realized that must be what everyone was whispering about. “I just… thought… someone should say something to you. They’re saying that people got hurt. That someone… I hope Abarai is okay! He seemed nice!”
All the sensation seemed to be draining from Rukia’s body. She didn’t even notice Isawa beat an exit. Her brain just kept replaying the words he’d said to her, over and over, yet refusing to assign any meaning to them.
A Hollow. Or some Hollows.
An accident.
People got hurt.
He seemed nice.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure.
Rukia stood in a line outside of the Administrative Offices, hoping to get some information.
Apparently, all the students were returned. Some of them had been taken to the infirmary, and the rest were being held until they had given statements. All Rukia had gathered so far was that a pack of huge Hollows had attacked what should have been a fairly routine training exercise, that by some stroke of luck, Captain Aizen of the Fifth and his lieutenant had been on campus, meeting with the Headmaster, and had been able to personally answer the distress call. People were saying that some students were killed before the captain arrived, but Rukia refused to let her mind go down that path. People would say anything.
“Next!”
Rukia stepped up to the desk.
“Your name?”
“Inuzuri Rukia. I’m here to inquire about Abarai Renji. He’s one of the first-years.”
The shinigami looked up at her over the rim of his classes. Rukia didn’t recognize him. Maybe he taught one of the upper classes, or perhaps he wasn’t a teacher at all. There seemed to be a bunch of officers from the Fifth Division who had shown up to investigate the incident, Rukia supposed. “How are you related?” he asked.
Rukia stared at the man. How was she supposed to answer that?
“He’s just… family,” she said awkwardly.
“You’re from Rukongai,” the man said in a voice that was kind, but firm. “I understand. I am, as well. Did you register as siblings when you enrolled at Shin’ou?”
Rukia thought back on their enrollment, an odd thing the registrar had said that had seemed strange to her at the time.
“No family name?”
“No,” Rukia replied.
“You’re required to use one at Shin’ou. It’s traditional to just use your district name. South 78, that’s…?” he paused, inviting her to answer.
“Inuzuri,” Rukia replied, her lip curling slightly with distaste. “Must I?”
“I can write down anything you like,” the registrar. He jerked his head at Renji, who had gone first. “You two came together, right? You’re family?”
“Sort of,” Renji replied.
“You could use his name,” the registrar selected. “In fact, I can register you as siblings, if you like. That can be useful.”
Renji and Rukia looked at each other for a long moment.
“We’re… not really siblings,” Renji said slowly.
“No,” Rukia agreed. “It’s different.”
Renji scratched his neck. “You… can use my name. If you like. I don’t, um, care.”
Rukia wrinkled her nose at him. “You ought to care who uses your name, you fool.”
“That’s not what I… dammit, Rukia,” Renji huffed. He lowered his voice, “Obviously, I wouldn’t say that to just anybody. But I wouldn’t mind if it were you. That’s what I meant to say. I wouldn’t mind. Not that I wouldn’t care.”
Rukia contemplated it, briefly. Down south, she and Renji had cast names on and off like changes of clothes when they were grifting. A false name had its own magic, the power to turn you into someone else for as long as you wore it. Rukia had never known her own true name, if her living mother and father had even given her one. She had picked ‘Rukia’ for herself because she liked the way it sounded in her mouth, but she had never selected a family name. Without a family name, she belonged to no one. Living without a family name made her fleet of foot, hard to see in the shadows, able to slip free of traps. It had its own magic. But she wasn’t going to be an Inuzuri yokai girl anymore. She was going to be an apprentice shinigami, with school records and a uniform and a future. She would need a name.
She wished she’d known earlier. They could have talked about it. ‘Abarai’ wasn’t any special name in Soul Society, it’s not like it had a family or history to go with it, but Renji had brought it with him from the World of the Living, which Rukia thought was pretty impressive in its own right. Renji didn’t remember his living family, or at least he said he didn’t, but he had a funny way about him, a certain kindness and expectation of fair treatment that a lot of other Inuzuri kids didn’t have, that often made Rukia think that someone must have taken good care of him, once upon a time. In any case, Abarai was a fine name, in her opinion, the name of the strongest and best person she knew. Under other circumstances, she would be honored to share a name with him, but it wasn’t right to do it on a whim, to choose it as though the only reason was to escape being chained to the name of the place she hated the most.
Besides, they’d just rejected the idea of passing themselves off as siblings. How would they explain sharing a name otherwise? It would be a pain, is what it would be. They’d already discussed that it was likely best to maintain some degree of distance at the Academy, that they should try their best to fit in with the other students. No. It just wouldn’t do.
What else was there? She didn’t want to use one of the names they used for their scams. She could make something up, she supposed, but that felt false and fanciful, too. She may have left Inuzuri, but it was Inuzuri that had created her, shaped her soul and hardened her bones through its very mud and rock. “I can change it later, right?” she asked.
“I suppose,” the registrar shrugged. “It’s a bit of a pain, you’ll have to go down to the Central Records Office, but you certainly can.”
“I’ll keep Inuzuri for now,” she declared, even though Renji looked at her funny. Maybe someday, when she made something of herself, when she’d earned a better name, she’d change it.
Regret flooded through her veins, heavy and cold. She should have taken his name, become his sister. But she had dared to hope for more someday, and here it was, back to bite her. “What… what does it matter?” Rukia managed. She knew what the answer would be, but she didn’t want to accept it.
“I’m sorry. I’m only allowed to release information to family members,” the shinigami pressed.
Rukia gaped at him. “I’m the only family he has.”
“I’m sorry,” the man repeated. “That’s not how they see it here in the Seireitei.” He sighed. “I can tell you this much: the students who are being questioned are here in the Administration wing. I sure hope some of them are going to be let out soon. The others are in the infirmary.”
Did people really die? Rukia wanted to ask, but didn’t. He wouldn’t tell her anyway. “Thank you,” she said instead, and returned to sit on the low retaining wall that ringed the outside of the building.
It seemed pretty stupid, in Rukia’s opinion, to survive Inuzuri, to slip past the claws of starvation and exposure, of murderous adults and wild animals, only to get killed on a school trip. She pulled her knees up to her chest.
“You weren’t supposed to do this, dummy,” she mumbled. “I should have made you promise not to die without me.”
Renji was tired.
It wasn’t the physical exertion. The actual fighting had probably only lasted a handful of minutes. Renji probably worked harder most days in zanjutsu class. It was the adrenaline, or more precisely, the sudden absence thereof. This certainly wasn’t the closest Renji had ever come to dying, although it was a strong contender for the scariest. It was over now, though. They were safe back at school, and Renji felt so drained that he kept looking down at his hands to make sure they weren’t shaking. He didn’t understand why the adults kept asking them the same questions over and over again, why they wouldn’t just let him go, so he could crawl into bed and squeeze his eyes closed and not think about masks of cold bone with tiny, flickering ghost lights staring out behind them.
Fortunately, Kira and Hinamori were handling the talking for him. For as terrified as they had been in the moment, they seemed perfectly happy to replay the events over and over, in increasingly nauseating detail.
Kira and Hinamori were better at talking to teachers anyway. They understood the way Seireitei people spoke, saying one thing but meaning another. For example, Renji couldn’t understand why they had been scolded for not following procedure, for ignoring an order from their senpai, and in the next breath, congratulated for their bravery. Were they in trouble or weren’t they? Renji was pretty sure that if he were the one answering the questions, he would probably have gotten them expelled by now. All the more reason to leave it to Kira and Hinamori.
They had handed out cafeteria bentos when they first got back, but Renji’s stomach had been too twisted up to eat. He should have made himself, he realized, as he squeezed the little box on his lap. That’s why his hands were shaky. Dummy.
“I suppose that covers it all,” the Headmaster said, glancing down over his notes. “Thank you for your help. These are exactly the sort of professional observations that Gotei officers are expected to make. This will be very valuable!”
Hinamori and Kira beamed.
The Headmaster looked up again. “Mr. Abarai, you have been very quiet. Do you have anything to add?”
“No, sir,” Renji managed. This was the first time he had ever met the Headmaster. “I just agree with everything Kira and Hinamori said.”
The Headmaster gave him a smile that seemed far too kind for someone he had just met that day. “I hear from Ounabara-sensei that you’re more of a man of action. That’s important, too.”
“Can we go now?” Renji asked.
“Yes, of course,” the Headmaster agreed. “I’ve held you long enough. Go get some rest. You were the pride of Shin’oureijutsuin today.”
“Brrr,” Momo shuddered as they made their way out of the Administration Building. “‘Get some rest.’ As if I’ll be able to sleep again for the next three days!”
Their footsteps echoed loudly in the empty hallways. Everyone else had been allowed to go ages ago.
“You’ll get tired,” Renji said grimly. “When your body realizes you aren’t going to die after all, you’ll get tired.”
“Are you alright?” Izuru asked, moving to put a hand on Renji’s shoulder.
Renji shrugged it off. “I’m tired,” he reiterated.
“I was thinking of going by the infirmary,” Izuru changed the subject off-handedly. “I want to see how Hisagi-senpai is doing.”
“Oh, do you think they would let us see him?” Momo asked as they pushed open the big front doors.
“It wouldn’t hurt to check, I think. Renji, if you’re too tired, we’ll give him your regards.”
Renji was tired, but not so tired that he was going to let someone pass along his “regards”, like he’d ever had a “regard” to give in his entire afterlife. “They won’t let us in,” he grumbled, “but I can come al…” He trailed off as they stepped out into the evening.
On the low retaining wall outside the building, sat a small figure in a girl’s uniform, curled in on herself.
Guilt coursed through Renji’s veins, hot and awful.
It wouldn’t be true to say that he had forgotten Rukia up until now. He had definitely thought about Rukia in that moment, surrounded on all sides, his hand sweaty on the grip of his sword, when he had been sure that this was it for him. But the Rukia he summoned up to keep him company in what he thought would be his last moments had been the Rukia he had been looking forward to spending the rest of his days with-- a happy Rukia, laughing at his buffoonery, smiling at him as she wiped mud off his face with the sleeve of her yukata.
Renji had not contemplated the real Rukia, the one who was going to be furious with him.
“Miss Inuzuri!” Momo called, waving frantically. “Goodness, were you waiting for us?”
Rukia had looked up and was blinking at them. Her face looked weird, sort of smushed and blotchy. Renji wondered if she had fallen asleep, waiting. His chest hurt. She was going to yell at him, and he didn’t have it in himself to yell back at her. Or worse, maybe she wouldn’t yell at him.
For the first time since they left, Renji wished he were back in Inuzuri, where things made sense. Where they would both yell at each other for a bit, and then Rukia would throw her arms around his neck in a gesture that wasn’t quite a chokehold, but wasn’t quite a hug either, and hiss “you scared the fuck out of me, you bozo” into his ear. Where he could just crawl in fucking bed, and stuff his face in Rukia’s hair or maybe squeeze her a bit too hard in order to forget about those nightmare skull faces long enough to fall asleep. At least it would work, and he knew she would have the decency to not say anything about it later.
They weren’t in Inuzuri, though. Maybe twenty meters separated them, but it might as well have been 77 districts, since Rukia wasn’t moving, and Renji seemed to have lost the ability to make his feet work.
Suddenly, there was a strong grip on Renji’s arm, and he was being pulled down the steps.
“Sorry if we worried you, Miss Inuzuri!” Kira was saying as he hauled Renji along. “We’re fine, though, all of us. Not even a scratch!”
“I, uh, I’m so glad,” Rukia said, in a voice that didn’t sound like Rukia at all.
“Izuru, we should get moving if we want to get to the infirmary and back before curfew,” Momo said firmly. She patted Renji’s other arm. “Get some sleep, Renji. We’ll see you tomorrow!”
Izuru bobbed his head. “Good night, Miss Inuzuri!”
Rukia coolly watched them go, clearly unimpressed by their shitty acting skills. Renji kept trying to explain to her that “polite fictions” weren’t necessarily meant to be convincing, but Rukia could be pretty stubborn in her opinions.
Rukia wet her lips. “So,” she said, once the other two were out of earshot. “How badly do you have to fuck up a konsou to end up summoning a bunch of fucking Hollows?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Renji replied grimly. “It was Kira.”
There was a long beat, and then she was laughing and he was laughing, he was laughing so hard his stomach hurt and something wet was leaking out of the corners of his eyes. He moved to sit down next to Rukia, angling his body so that hopefully she wouldn’t see as he wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Rukia,” he started to say.
“Are you gonna apologize? You better apologize. No one would even tell me anything until they started letting your classmates out. I had to talk to people, Renji. I had to pretend to be nice.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Renji replied. “I know how painful it must have been for you.”
Rukia regarded him with hooded eyes. “I heard you were brave. I heard you saved someone.”
“That wasn’t me, either,” Renji muttered. It wasn’t even a lie. “I tried to run away, but Hinamori was brave, and then Kira went after her. So I had to. They aren’t like us. They don’t know how to take care of themselves.”
The image of the sixth-year girl, Kanisawa, flashed through his head, skewered through, tossed through the air like a ragdoll. The big guy, Aoga, trying to… avenge her, maybe, Renji didn’t even know, being swatted aside, left in a bloody heap.
“It can’t be helped, I suppose,” Rukia frowned. “At least on your end. This stupid school! Sending their precious gifted students into Hollow-infested territory! Disgraceful!”
“Hollows can be unpredictable, Rukia,” Renji replied, not even sure why he was taking the school’s side on this. Habit, maybe. He honestly couldn’t agree with her more.
“You can’t count on anyone,” Rukia mumbled, and Renji had no response. Rukia’s head suddenly snapped around, and she jerked her chin at the bento in his hands. “Did they feed you, at least? You missed dinner. It was burdock. I had to leave halfway through mine, to come out here and be told absolutely nothing about what happened to your sorry ass.”
“Ah, yeah, they handed out bento,” Renji shrugged. “I ate mine. This is Momo’s. She said she wasn’t hungry, with all the excitement. You want it?”
Rukia looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Why would you have taken it, if you hadn’t intended to eat it yourself?”
“I was gonna,” Renji replied defensively. “But I don’t need a second dinner if you didn’t even finish your first. I was trying to be nice.”
“You just used a bunch of spiritual energy, if you’re hungry you should eat!” Rukia scolded. “Why do you always lie to me? You know I can tell.”
Renji wondered that, too, sometimes.
“Look, why don’t we just split it, okay?” He wrestled the lid off the bento. It was onigiri. He could probably manage an onigiri. “You can have the pickle. I’ve had enough pickle." He pulled out one of the onigiri and shoved the rest of the box onto Rukia’s lap. She watched him, waiting until she’d seen him take a bite before she fished out the second one for herself.
“I imagine,” Rukia said slowly, smoothing the seaweed wrapper on the rice ball with her fingers, “that this is probably the first time Hinamori has almost died. Kira, too.”
“Probably,” Renji agreed slowly.
“It’s the act of a fool to run headfirst into battle,” Rukia declared. “At least that’s what they teach us back in the dummy class.”
“Don’t call it that,” Renji mumbled around his riceball.
“Maybe they teach you future captains differently,” Rukia sniffed.
“They don’t,” Renji grumbled. “‘Make every move count.’ ‘Attack from behind.’ ‘You can’t save anyone if you throw your life away.’ I know all that.” Even as he said it, he could see Captain Aizen and Assistant Captain Ichimaru striding past them without a care in the world. Renji would bet his sword that they didn’t need to attack from behind.
“I know you know,” Rukia replied coolly. “I’m just saying it’s good that Kira and Hinamori have you around to keep a level head. I’m sure they’ll get it figured out eventually, but it’s your job to be the sensible one until they do.”
“That sounded suspiciously like a compliment.”
Rukia took a big bite of her onigiri and chewed loudly for a moment. “It wasn’t. I’m telling you that this isn’t so different from Inuzuri after all. Those hypocrites are probably going to make a big deal about what a hero you are, and I’m telling you not to get stupid over it.”
It made Renji’s blood boil, the way she said it, as if he hadn’t thought the very same things when the headmaster was talking to them. “You can’t ever just say I did a good job, can you, Rukia?” he snapped. “A guy would have died and he didn’t! Lay off!”
Rukia looked at him again. “A guy would have died and he didn’t. Obviously you did a good job. What difference does it make for me to tell you?”
Renji didn’t feel like coming up with a bullshit answer, so he just made some indistinct grumbles and stuffed some onigiri in his mouth.
Sometimes, usually when he was by himself, Renji would think back on the third day of school, the day Rukia had looked him in the eye and told him she liked the confident way he raised his hand in class, despite the fact that he’d just made a huge ass of himself. Maybe that had just been a fluke, though, or maybe she’d just changed her mind, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d managed to do something right in her eyes. He was trying, dammit, every day he was trying to be better than he was, but it only seemed to piss her off even more.
They ate in silence for a few minutes.
“I never really got the end of the story,” Rukia finally said. “Seems like most of the cowards in your class didn’t hang around long enough to see what happened. Someone said something about captains? Did you almost die?”
Renji licked a grain of rice off of his thumb. “It was pretty hairy for a few minutes there,” he admitted, trying to keep his voice as light as possible. “Before the Fifth showed up. I mean, we probably would have been toast if they hadn’t. But they did.”
“You didn’t know they were coming, though.”
“No. That’s true.”
Renji thought about the gentle way Captain Aizen spoke, the reassuring way he had ruffled Momo’s hair, Assistant Captain Gin’s weird, teasing smile, as though they didn’t even care that they were surrounded by murderous nightmare beasts. He thought about the way they calmly sliced their way through mask and claw without even breaking a sweat. Momo and Izuru thought they were impossibly cool, but Renji couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of someone having that kind of strength and still being a person. They’d read about the captains in class, and Renji had thought he had a pretty good idea of what they would be like. An unfeeling ice prince made sense, and so did a half-wild barbarian. Aizen seemed to wear the skin of a kindly father-figure, but the disguise didn’t fit quite right, the way a hunter might wear the pelt of a boar to fool scent but not sight. Those captains had unsettled him nearly as much as the Hollows had. Then again, Renji hadn’t met a whole lot of kind adults, period. What the fuck did he know?
Rukia regarded him out of the corner of one eye. “The Hollows. They were scary?”
She wasn’t asking if he had been scared. That was immaterial. She was asking for information. It felt weird, in Renji’s opinion, to have seen a Hollow before Rukia. Wrong.
“Terrifying.”
“Mm.”
He wished suddenly, irrationally, that Rukia would never have to see one. He almost said it out loud, but for once, he caught himself first. She would take it the wrong way, the way she took almost everything the wrong way these days. “Someone said this was an anomaly,” he said instead. “They were abnormally large Hollows, and it’s rare for them to appear in large groups like that outside of, like, natural disasters or battlefields.” He tried not to make it sound like a brag, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded. “Worse than the ones most shinigami encounter on patrol.”
“Your astonishingly bad luck at work again, probably.”
“Probably,” Renji agreed, resting his chin on one hand. It had been a joke amongst their friends in Inuzuri, the way things never seemed to go Renji’s way. Renji had always accepted the teasing good-naturedly. It was easier to be the butt of a weak joke than to admit that things in Inuzuri were just unrelentingly shitty. Maybe it wasn’t, though. Maybe there was something about him, some curse that followed him around like a black cloud.
“Hey. Hey.” There was a sharp shove on his elbow where it was resting on his knee, which knocked his face out of his hand.
“What?” Renji demanded.
“Wipe that look off your face. It doesn’t suit you.” Rukia popped the last piece of pickled daikon into her mouth and closed the bento. “You’re exhausted. Let’s go. I’ll walk you home.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Renji sighed, heaving himself to his feet, as if he weren’t immensely grateful for the offer, as if the idea of even something as simple as walking across campus alone felt insurmountably difficult.
“It’s not up for debate,” Rukia replied.
They walked silently most of the way, through the lengthening shadows. As the boy’s dormitory came into view, Rukia started rubbing the back of her neck, and Renji could tell she had something she needed to say.
“Look,” she finally spat out. “Earlier. I didn’t tell you ‘good job’ because I figured enough other people would and your head would get all big and stupid, which you don’t need. We came here to get strong. To stay alive, not to be heroes. But I will tell you this: good job coming home. I doubt anyone else will tell you that, and further, I would hope that would mean something. Coming from me.”
Renji thought about Hisagi Shuuhei, the sixth-year who had stood his ground, wiping blood out of his eyes while the first years beat it. He thought about the fear flooding his chest as he chased Momo back into the breach. He thought about how he would feel right now if he had left his friends to die. He thought about Kosaburou and Mameji and Fujimaru. He thought about Aizen and what sort of person you became if you could manage to burn all of the fear out of your body, how much else got burned away in the process.
He thought about Rukia, skewered through, tossed through the air like a ragdoll.
Himself, swatted aside, left in a bloody heap.
“I don’t want to be a hero,” he said slowly. “But I don’t want to be a coward, either.”
Rukia flushed. “I never said you were a coward! You know I don’t think that!”
In Inuzuri, there was no such thing as a coward. Sure, people called each other cowards, but in truth, every day that you woke up in Inuzuri, you either beat the odds, or you got kicked back into the Resurrection Cycle. There wasn’t room for anything else. Or maybe there was no such thing as a coward in Inuzuri because why would need a word that just described everyone?
He was trying to be better. Every day he was trying to be better. And he loved Rukia, he really, truly did, but he wished that sometimes she would stop seeing him so fucking clearly. He might fool Kira and Hinamori with his bragging and his brashness, but Rukia knew all about the tiny, rapidly fluttering rabbit heart that beat inside the cage of his ribs.
“I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Renji,” Rukia protested. “You know I don’t think that.”
“I know,” he agreed, because he was tired of this discussion.
“You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Probably,” he agreed stiffly.
Rukia blew a long breath out of her nose. “I’m glad you’re okay. I… I was really scared.”
“I get it, Rukia, okay?”
“I’m not sure that you do!”
Frustration was fizzing through Renji’s nerves. “I know what you meant. I understand that you are worried that I am going to forget everything we did to survive in Inuzuri, that it’s all just gonna fall out of my dumb head. I tell you it’s not, you can stop worrying about it. Even if it did-- would it be so fucking bad? To leave some things back in that stupid shitty town?”
Rukia fixed him with a long, hard stare. “No,” she finally said. “You’re right. Maybe that would be better.”
Renji wiped his hands over his face. “I didn’t mean--”
“I know what you meant!” Rukia spat his own words back at him. For a second, Renji thought he must have actually hurt her, and from the way her face started to wrinkle, he thought she might even start to cry, a thing he’d only ever seen a handful of times. She didn’t, though, she took whatever she was feeling and visibly shoved it somewhere else. As quickly as it came, the moment passed, and then she was shouting at him again. “Go to bed, you big oaf!” It was the good kind of shouting, it was the kind of shouting he was glad they hadn’t left in Inuzuri, the kind of shouting his soul needed. “How do you possibly get enough sleep these days without me to stop you from overthinking things for half the night? You’re going to have dark circles under your eyes when they throw you a parade tomorrow!”
“Shut up, Rukia,” he scoffed.
“You,” she returned with a jerk of her chin.
Someday, Renji told himself, he would laugh at this, at his shaky hands, at being afraid of captains, at needing Rukia to yell at him to eat and go to bed. A shinigami had to face death every day, he’d get used to it. Someday, he and Rukia would catch up with Kira and Hinamori after work and they would get a drink and laugh about all the Hollows they hit in the back of the head that day. Someday.
Rukia left. She didn’t wish him good night, it wasn’t their habit. Renji went up to bed. He pulled the covers over his head and squeezed his eyes shut, but it was a long time before he finally fell asleep.