Byakuya
More Hollow Than Hollow
Never would the words pass his lips, but almost as soon as she moved into the house, Byakuya was fond of her. It was the way the silence of his hallways was shattered by her footsteps. The way the abandoned rooms became dusted with her reiatsu. How the stale air became touched with her scent. The quiet held her soft, low voice. Yes, those things he liked. And as much as she believed otherwise, he liked her to be with him. Even if it hurt a little sometimes, he liked having her near him.
The execution incident scared him more than he could admit. His promises weighed against each other like stones on his back, equal in weight and too big for him to carry both. That day, he was tempted to stay away from the execution. But even if he would do nothing to help her, he would not dishonor her by looking away from her death. He remembered thinking that she looked too small to be there by herself, with no one to protect her. He was supposed to do that. He was supposed to follow rules, too.
Luckily, Kurosaki was able to take the whole situation entirely out of his troubled hands. He owed a lot to him – he was not too proud to say that. That boy made her more rebellious. But it wasn't a bad kind of rebellious, even he could see that. Something in her – in them both – changed after that day. After he told her Hisana's secret.
Rukia was surprised that he had taken the blow of Ichimaru's sword for her – he silently made a promise to his wife that she would never be surprised again. Any time someone was about to give her the death strike, he would be there. He would always take that strike for her. What was this power – Senbonzakura's power, his own power – for, if not for her?
Between them, something changed on that day. Where it took two of her hands to cover one of his, on a hill where she was meant to die, they changed. Apparently she felt him more approachable.
When she was home, she ate lunch with him and talked nonstop about whatever seemed to cross her mind. He surprised himself by actually responding to her occasionally and following the conversation with her. She left him gifts, too – small presents that would've meant nothing if they were from someone other than her.
In sakura season, he would find cherry blossom branches on his desks or pillows, tied together with white ribbon, filling the air with their perfume. Once, it was a mysterious item called a 'juice box' and another time, it was a picture of her with Renji in a school yard wearing neat gray uniforms. There were other things: a polished river stone that shone like her eyes, a pudding-flavored lollipop, a novel by a man named 'Stephen King'. They were always wrapped in white ribbons.
He realized that he was…happy, then. Rukia had made him happy, in an abstract, content way.
Until that day.
On that day, everything changed. She changed.
Why, oh, why did that kozo have to throw his sister's life away with his own?
They were both still alive, but they had lost their liveliness. He knew Kurosaki had because he knew what kind of man he was. He knew Rukia had because he had to see her wasting away, day after day.
And she did waste away. Her mind and body were fine – her heart was slowly dying, slowly fading away from them.
It was tragically ironic – just when Byakuya was beginning to love her each day more than the last, Rukia was becoming more distant as each second ticked away. It started small – she would space out occasionally, drifting off into her own little universe.
Gradually, it got worse. She stopped laughing, stopped smiling. Her voice never raised above a murmur. Her expression became cool and then cold and then blank. He knew there was no helping her when her deep violet-blue eyes turned vacant. Rukia could be looking at you, but never seemed to see you. Her eyes stared into a distant world long gone, lost someone in her past where she ran with the kozo and his ryoka friends. He could never give her anything better than what she saw in the veiled distance where she stared. She'd become more hollow than any Hollow he fought.
Members of the Kuchiki family who were reluctant to bring in a child from the streets now commended him on his sister's beautiful composure. He wanted to take them into the throat of Senbonzakura.
Ukitake informed him that her fighting style had changed. In the office, she would listen to her orders with a vacant stare, acknowledging her superior's presence only when it was suspected that her attention drifted or when she was addressed directly. "On the battlefield she fights like a lunatic berserker," the white-haired captain told him tiredly. "Other members of the Division think Kuchiki's been possessed by a madman. She takes blows that would kill a man twice her size and keeps going even if the pain should make her pass out or die from the shock. It doesn't matter how severe her injuries are, she just keeps hacking away until the Hollow is dead. I've honestly never seen anything like it, Byakuya. If she lives, she could be my new fukutaicho in the next five years."
Renji was understandably distressed. Rukia was as much his sister as Byakuya's. He wanted to say something that would make her happy again, something that would take her pain away, but he knew there were no words that could do such a thing.
The only thing Byakuya could think of to say were lies. 'It will be okay'. 'It will get better'. They were lies and he knew they were lies. Byakuya respected Rukia too much to give her false platitudes, loved her too much to tell her meaningless lies. This was the one death strike he couldn't have foreseen. The one problem he didn't have the power to fix.
So she was more hollow than a Vasto Lorde.
This helplessness was both unpleasant and unfamiliar. He was afraid he was going to get used to it.