Archive of Our Own

Even in the Rukongai, Rukia loved Tanabata. Experiencing it in the Seireitei, however, is something else entirely. There are festival tents all through the city, and colorful streamers flying from the windows of buildings, and little stalls selling candy and treats and chances to play games for prizes crop up everywhere.

She has even been excused from the family event in the Kuchiki gardens so that she can attend with some of the others from the Thirteenth.

She hopes it isn’t because tensions over her adoption are still high and her presence at family functions is still a source of great friction, but she knows better. She’d been dismissed to attend the festival with a carefully pre-selected wardrobe and strict instructions regarding her behavior, after all.

Her instructions involve staying with the Shibas--a respectable enough family--and not associating with anyone who might know her from the Academy or otherwise be aware that she came from the Rukongai, which includes everyone, because people love to gossip about every little thing that the noble clans do, and Rukia has been a hot topic of gossip in the two years since her adoption.

It especially includes Renji, who is sitting beneath a maple tree laughing with friends Rukia doesn’t recognize. He looks up, and perhaps it’s her imagination, but she thinks he catches her eye and stops what he’s doing.

She turns away and hurries to catch up with Kaien-dono and Miyako-san, who have gotten ahead of her in the crowd. Her heart feels heavy as she leaves.

She gets special permission to attend the graduation party that should have been hers, though nobody in the Kuchiki manor is happy about it. It’s loud and raucous and entirely inappropriate for a Kuchiki daughter, and Rukia is almost, almost having a good time as she searches the crowded bar for Renji. She has a lot to tell him, now that she has this opportunity.

She keeps catching glimpses of him from across the room, but every time she tries to make her way to him, he’s not there any longer.

He’s laughing and throwing an arm around the blonde from the advanced class.

Then he’s drinking sake straight from a bottle being passed between several of their former classmates.

Then he’s laughing at a joke someone else told.

“Ow,” someone says, when Rukia elbows them aside trying to reach him through the crowd. Their entire graduating class--the one Rukia left behind when she became a Kuchiki--must be here celebrating.

Rukia had to get special permission to attend such an undignified event, and permission to swap her patrol shift with someone else in Thirteenth.

She reaches the spot where Renji had been egging on some kid chugging beer to find him missing. She looks around, her heart in her throat.

Across the room she catches sight of him, and for a second, their eyes meet.

He looks away too quickly for it to be a coincidence. He’s avoiding her, she realizes with a sinking, aching feeling in her chest.

She doesn’t even have anyone to make her excuses to as she leaves.

There is no reason she should run into him. She is merely delivering paperwork to Division Five as a favor to Kaien-dono. Division Five is one of the more sprawling compounds, and there are nearly two hundred Shinigami that live and work there.

She slips through Five’s gardens and towards the main office. The building is in sight when she spots the three of them lounging on one of the many porches that face into the garden. He’s with those friends of his, the ones from the advanced class, a blonde man and a woman with pigtails. One of Renji’s arms is slung across the woman’s shoulders, pulling her close to him, and he’s grinning at the man.

That’s… good, Rukia thinks, and carefully does not allow herself to feel jealous. She’s glad he’s found his place within the Gotei 13 and that he has friends. She’s not at all upset at how close he seems to be with them, when he hasn’t spoken to her in years now.

If she hurries a little more, if her head hangs a little, while she delivers the paperwork, well… nobody notices.

She wants to linger, hoping he’ll be gone when she leaves, but she’s just an unseated member of Thirteen, and she has no reason to hang around. She can’t resist looking again as she slips away through the garden. For a moment, their eyes meet.

Rukia is the one who looks away.

She hadn’t known about his transfer to Division Eleven. Perhaps if she had, she’d have been prepared for the sight of him, arguing with a member of the group they had apparently both been assigned to for this drill.

He looks up at her, and his brow creases a little. She looks quickly away.

“Listen up!” the group commander shouts, and Rukia turns away from Renji and tries to devote her attention to his instructions. It doesn’t work; she’s hyper aware of him, mere feet behind her. It would be so easy to just say something to him, anything at all. She could demand to know why he’s avoided her for ten years, ask why he was so eager for her to go with the Kuchikis in the first place, or punch him in between his stupid eyebrow tattoos. He’s got even more tattoos now; she glimpsed them on his arms, not quite covered by his sleeves.

But she is a Kuchiki now, and she can’t risk embarrassing her brother by making a scene.

She’s not much use during the drill, too distracted with deliberately ignoring his presence, and maybe if she weren’t they wouldn’t have failed the drill quite so badly. She’ll have a lot to explain to her brother at dinner tonight, she thinks. She’s hard-pressed to dwell on that, though, when she’s so distracted by the fact that Renji ignored her the entire time too.

She bumps into Renji’s blond friend from the academy quite accidentally and very literally.

“Your pardon, Officer Kira,” she says politely, adding a short bow. She knows his name now that he’s a seated officer, and Officer Hinamori’s as well. She’s kept vague track of them all these years, knowing they were friends with Renji.

“Lady Kuchiki,” he says, looking surprised. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going either!”

She nods and starts to walk away.

“Hey, you were friends with Abarai, right? From, uh, you know…” he looks suddenly sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. Nobody likes to mention Rukia’s Rukongai past, these days.

She nods shortly. “I was,” she says. No use lying. Everyone already knows.

“He just got promoted to Fourth Seat! We’re having a little celebration. I, uh, I know it’s been a while, but maybe you’d like to come?”

Rukia just stares for a moment.

“I’m afraid I’m unavailable,” she says at last. It isn’t until she turns the corner that she realizes he hadn’t even told her when the party was.

She hears from a servant that he’s there, delivering paperwork her brother definitely shouldn’t be doing, and she only just catches him.

“Renji!” she calls, and he turns to face her.

“Hey,” he says. He sounds tired. She can still see bandages peeking out from under his shihakusho.

“I… I heard you were here,” she says, stumbling over her words. How can she thank him for what he tried to do for her? How can she possibly find the words?

“Stay for dinner?” she asks at last. He looks horrified by the idea, and Rukia fights the urge to wilt under his gaze.

“Uh,” he says. And then, to her surprise: “What if we got some noodles instead? Just like old times?”

She blinks up at him, and a shy smile spreads slowly over her face.

“I’d like that,” she says. “There’s this place by Six I keep wanting to try, they’re supposed to have the spiciest noodles in the Seireitei…”

The two of them meander off towards the offices of the Gotei Thirteen, talking quietly as they go.