Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of the characters, etc. They belong to Tite Kubo. Seriously, you think I'd be writing fanfiction if I owned Renji and Byakuya?
Author notes: Constructive criticism welcome. Apologies for any ooc-ness, especially with Byakuya, as he's quite difficult to keep in character. There's one point of this that unintentionally could be seen as hinting at a Renji/Rukia pairing, and although personally I see their relationship as more brother-sister, feel free to interpret as you chose.
Taichou – Captain
Fukutaichou – Vice captain
Hai – yes
Many thanks to JennMel and crazyfaerie for beta-ing this fic.
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Renji stared out of the window into the rain that hammered a steady dirge against the tiled roof of the Sixth Division office. It was the only sound apart from the occasional clink of a brush against a ceramic ink well, or the almost inaudible rustle of paper being moved. On listening to all the sounds, Renji marvelled at how there could be so much noise and yet still be such a suffocating silence in the room.
He glanced up at his taichou, wondering if he felt the same tension in the atmosphere, but it was difficult to tell anything from the typically impassive expression. He swallowed a sigh, gripping his brush and trying to focus on the mundane paperwork in front of him. The working relationship they had established in the brief month before their mission to retrieve Rukia had not been particularly warm, but now it felt so taunt with the unresolved and the unspoken that he wondered if the very air between them would shatter soon. His focus drifted again, and he went back to studying the noble.
Renji had spent too many years watching Byakuya to not be able to detect his mood despite his cold demeanour, and on closer study he could tell that something was 'off' with the older man. Aside from that, however, he could unravel no more of the enigma that was his taichou and so defeated, attempted once more to fix his attention on work.
"Abarai"
Byakuya's voice startled him, breaking through the silence but not the tension, "Hai, taichou?"
"Go find out if we've received the forms from the eleventh." The command was delivered with the same detached tone the noble always used.
Before the Rukia incident, Renji might have grumbled something under his breath about using the word please, which his superior would have aloofly ignored, but it was like treading on cracked glass now and he dare not push against it in case whatever tenuous truce they had broke.
He complied without comment, and on his return was thrown off to find the office empty. A glance at the clock told him that it was indeed past their usual working hours, but never in all the time he had worked with him had he seen Kuchiki Byakuya leave the office before him.
It only solidified the feeling that something was not right with his taichou and before Renji could even begin to think of the myriad of reasons to not do what he was about to do, he found himself walking briskly out into the rain and searching for the feel of the noble's reiatsu.
Isolating the location, Renji headed for it and something in him wasn't surprised to find that his taichou was in an area rife with sakura trees. It seemed the noble's affinity with them stretched beyond his zanpakuto's shikai.
He felt himself inexplicably pause, quite abruptly struck by how sad and lonely Byakuya looked stood in the pouring rain all by himself. Even the delicate pink of the sakura blossoms were somehow rendered colourless and cold by the rain. Then, equally as inexplicably, he found himself walking towards the older shinigami. He watched Byakuya's shoulders stiffen as he approached, and knew that the other had sensed him. "Leave, Abarai fukutaichou" his voice intoned shortly.
For some reason, the cold and dismissive words made something snap in Renji and he felt his temper flare. His reiatsu burst out of him uncontrollably, and his taichou had spun to face him in an instant, hand flying to the hilt of his sword. "Stop wallowing in fucking self pity!" Renji found himself growling out as his hand found the hilt of Zabimaru.
"Do not dare to speak to me in such a manner" Byakuya's usually calm eyes were narrowed in uncommon fury. "Are you challenging me?"
A part of Renji was questioning what the hell he was doing, but another part knew that this had been coming for a while now, an inevitable conclusion of their failure to resolve the tension between them. He wasn't sure who leapt forward first, or whether they both moved, but their naked blades struck each other, sending water spraying away from the point of contact. They leapt apart again almost as swiftly, before striking again and again, creating erratic droplets that cut through the unchanging fall of the rain.
Neither released their blades, the old zanpakuto ban once more in place, but both seemed possessed by a mutual loss of reason as their blades clashed and struggled against each other. Somehow, they seemed to slip into a rhythm that was more like a dance and as the colliding of their blades brought them close, Renji managed to see emotion in Byakuya's eyes. He leapt back, distancing himself and lowering Zabimaru slightly, Byakuya warily pausing also.
They were so opposite, Renji thought; snow and fire, white and red. The stray dog and the moon. We are like mirrors of each other, he realised wonderingly.
But as he stared at Byakuya, stood there drenched and facing him with loneliness and an old, worn-out pain in his eyes, he couldn't help but think that the moon had fallen down to the earth tonight. To splash down and join the stray dog in the rain. Mirror images are in reality just the same image reversed, he thought as he stared, Are we really so different? Was his conviction to see Rukia's execution carried out any different to my conviction to stop it? Aren't we both just weak, stubborn men who stick to our chosen path even when we know we're wrong, hiding behind out facades?
Renji tightened his grip on Zabimaru's hilt…and sheathed him. "We've both gotta let go!" he yelled through the downpour at the other man.
Byakuya was eyeing him, looking entirely thrown off and he narrowed his eyes. "You are making no sense."
"Bullshit. We both gotta let go of the things we can't change. Rukia told me about Hisana. You got to let her the fuck go, taichou. You can regret it and blame yourself all you like, but it won't change the fact that she's dead." Renji took a breath, "All it's doing is making you fucking miserable!"
"You know nothing!" Byakuya shouted back in a loss of control Renji had never witnessed before.
"You've got to move on!" Renji spat back, "Let go of the guilt and let go of her! And…" He swallowed, "I've got to stop regretting that I let go of Rukia, cause it won't change a damn thing. I got to let her go too, and accept that I'm not the one who gets to protect her anymore."
He ignored the fact that the water running down his face suddenly tasted like salt and not rain, wondering if it was his imagination or if Byakuya looked like he might be tasting salt too. "You make it sound easy." The noble had sheathed his sword and was looking to the side, off into the rain and Renji wondered who the words were truly directed at.
"It's not supposed to be. But we gotta, we've got to let go of stupid feelings left over from regret over a past we can't change. We need to look towards the future." He met Byakuya's eyes through the rain, across the gulf between them, and thought that at last, he was reaching him.
Byakuya stared right back, then in an eye-blink he was in front of Renji, flash stepping without warning. His blue-grey eyes connected with Renji's dead on, still sad and still cold, but perhaps holding a flicker of something else, something that held curiosity and hope and desperation rolled into one indefinable emotion. "Tell me Renji, is there anything in the future worth looking forward to?" he asked, soft and bitter.
And just like that, the tension that had been between them was gone, replaced by something else just as thick and heavy, but different. "I don't know," he answered honestly, "But if we look hard enough, maybe we'll find something."
"Perhaps" Byakuya murmured, turning to stare into the rain. Renji turned too, staring out into the weeping sky without really seeing it.
Then suddenly there was a new sensation of wetness against his lips, and after a few moments, he pressed back into it.
Because it wasn't cold like the rain, and it didn't taste like the salt of tears.
It was warm.