1. Welcome
Music:
Mare - "Start Shootin'" by Little People
Suki - "A Fear Of Being Alone" by The Exies
Chilling out on a weathered stool, a red haired man in black cutoffs and a white wife-beater leans his head back against the crumbling wall, a cigarette dangling from puckered lips. Tattooed head to foot, thoughts sanguine, he pushes the stool onto two legs — an easy balance and sure to irk his companion.
"Crack kills," the lanky girl notes, throwing two bulging garbage bags onto the curb. She pivots on her 3 inch heels, cobalt eyes disdainful and hands on hips. Her hip-hugging leather pants clashes lovely with the rippling cling of her red halter.
"Yeah, so?" replies the redhead, puffing, his response reaching her in clouds of acrid smoke. "This isn't crack. It's getting colder; got to keep warm, you know? Either way, I guess I'll survive."
She runs her fingers through her short inky hair; her pupils contract, then expand, the aperture flickering.
Just the cherry of his cigarette.
Then the whole fucking scene.
Her glare captures the lazy bar behind the redhead, its decaying exterior and the mortar patches running through the cracks like petrified snot. The blued door ajar, the neon sign — not lit up just yet — more than a little askew, four blacked out windows.
Their bar, Gomorrah, is a derelict paradise for addicts, sluts, and freaks to while away their worthless lives under strobe lights. The patrons come to gyrate, losing themselves in the ebb and flow of beating drums and soporific voices. They can touch each other here - feel skin against skin - and become mayhem, their anesthetized nerves buzzing along.
Together.
And to spite them all, it's just another kind of sleep — not dreamless, maybe — but just as bogus.
Vaguely ill, the girl objects, "Smoke, drink, party: whatever. But that stool has a cracked leg, and your ass is more than it can handle. 'Cracking' your head kills." As an afterthought she adds thoughtfully, "Don't know why I bother, though. Nothing I say makes a goddamn dent... like rubber. So go right ahead, Dice; your head'll probably bounce."
Abarai Renji, aka Dice, aka unenthused bouncer.
Ashing his cigarette with a wry smirk and staring idly across the street into a vacant lot, Renji racks his brain for a witty rejoinder. The words 'I'd bounce you up and down anytime' are on his lips when something staggering diverts him.
Not something. Someone.
A petite girl with short black hair weaves her way through that crap-strewn lot across the street, everything from her light footsteps to her overlarge head, even the way she hikes up her backpack, vividly familiar.
Shocked, the redhead's cigarette falls through frozen fingertips, his smirk becoming an expression of base confusion. "Tatsu—Tenura," he beckons, "look over there and tell me what you see."
Arisawa Tatsuki, aka Tenura, aka unamused bartender (who prefers her codename to her real one.)
Tatsuki, lifts a brow, asking, "Look where? What are you on about now?" Eying Renji speculatively, she tilts her head, wincing as the weak leg of his stool finally surrenders, splintering beneath his weight.
And with a sickening "whack," the redhead goes crashing down, ass abused and legs splayed, slamming his head against the wall. His bandanna drops from his forehead, coming to rest on the bridge of his nose, and his long hair falls to his shoulders.
Just as Tatsuki predicted.
"Ouch," she murmurs, though not as sympathetically as Dice might have liked.
But he doesn't complain. Tatsuki is right about one thing: his mind is akin to rubber, bouncing right back to the issue at hand. Pointing across the street, he urges, "No, you don't get it. Look over there!"
Frowning dubiously, she looks over her shoulder, searching the empty lot.
It's a block-long wasteland backed against a cemetery. A few brave trees shade a crumbling concrete slab, striped tires, discarded cans and glass bottles, and other trash indistinguishable from this distance. All drowned in leaves, another layer of decay.
And, of course, the large sign that's been there as long as Tatsuki has had reason to come this way.
The sign reads: This property has been condemned.
Apart from that, nothing.
"..." Tatsuki returns her gaze to Renji, eyes askance.
"Dude," he insists, gesticulating from his awkward position on the filthy sidewalk, "There was a girl. She was right there! Short, skinny as a rail, black hair, breakable-ish. Ring any bells? I swear, Bellado—"
Tatsuki's eyes widen, then instantly narrow. Cutting across him, she warns, "—Don't. Speak. Don't think out loud. Better yet, don't think at all." She scowls darkly, gesturing to the closet beside the open door. "Instead of hallucinating, try being useful, Dice. Get a goddamn broom!" Then, she stalks off, disappearing into the shadowy haze inside the bar.
Renji grumbles curses, standing up and wiping off his ass ineffectually. He's is done with Tatsuki. At the end of his rope. The inky witch isn't worth the trouble, so he is done forever; maybe just for today; definitely for an hour or two.
"What the hell are you waiting for? Move it!" Tatsuki yells — comply or die.
Expression mutinous, Renji calls back, "Yeah, yeah. I'm coming," adding, "Devil Woman," under his breath.
"I heard that, you, son of a bitch!"
Meanwhile, the unnamed object of Renji's hallucination wanders the streets of Sodom.
For almost an hour, the illusive girl has walked alone from uptown, the teeming core of the city. Escaping the epicenter, Sodom Square, where the elitists live to work.
She walks as far as possible from the corporate giants who reign over Sodom. Away from City Hall at the center of the square where the mayor of Sodom pretends to direct the 12.7 million ants living here — the government is a sham, the smoke stacks of Shihouin Nuclear Power looming over that symbol of justice, breathing haze and tainting white walls.
Numb, this girl seeks solitude on the rickety streets of midtown, leaving gilded lies behind. Here, the pedestrian traffic thins, and the cars lessen. The sidewalk caves, haphazard and split. And she wanders these cracked streets to get a grip, a break from the uptown crowd that disgusts her.
The way they breathe and breed scorn for those with less luck.
All the lucky ants, the sneering wealthy, swarm in buildings of steel, glass, and concrete. The colossal expressions of their contempt pollute the sky, the highest floors piercing the ubiquitous smog. Every ant's goal is to snag a corner office at the very top.
To look down on the smoggy city like an insect god.
Exactly the same, each only the slightest variation of the last:
Day light hours for the most upstanding bug: from the office in the tallest skyscraper to the coffee shop with the most expensive soy latte. Back to the office again. Home occasionally to keep up appearances.
In cliques, the sparkly, lucky ones feign friendship and family, trading shallow pleasantries and stiff handshakes — lying gestures to save the faces they paint on each morning. They all dress in black and white, tailored and impeccable garments sought and bought to outdo their peers.
And at night, they look for lives they just don't have — sex with what's her name next door, a line of cocaine on your mother's art deco coffee table, a midnight race in your fancy car. Fucking, snorting, racing what? Looking for some kind of release from the bedazzled prison, a pricey hell from which there is nob escape.
I wonder if they even know, Rukia compares the facts to their fictions, I bet they don't. They probably have no idea what they're trying to escape from. An invisible prison. They want out of something they don't even know exists.
Over and over; the lifeless cycle.
Uptown Sodom is mundane repetition for the lucky ants.
Because that's all they are: ants, Rukia thinks acidly, It's just a lucky hand dealt by chance to rule the hill.
But… not my brother, she amends, feeling vaguely dutiful. Her brother, Kuchiki Byakuya, could never be compared to an ant.
Rather, her brother is entirely 'other,' not disdainful of the less lucky — just utterly indifferent — disregarding the luckiest ants too.
Unilateral apathy.
Amidst other corporate giants and tainted City Hall, the window walls of B. KeyCorp gleam most intensely in Sodom Square. The family's surname — Rukia's surname — is engraved on the granite slab above the revolving doors and mosaicked into the marble floor of the atrium.
B. KeyCorp, a global investment and banking firm, is one of the true gems in Sodom's gilded chain. The difference between diamonds and rhinestone.
Not that Rukia knows much of diamonds.
In an odd turn of luck, she was adopted into the illustrious Kuchiki family a little over a year ago. The adoption still puzzles her.
Rukia had finally broken free from abysmal foster care, returning to the orphanage where she had lived as a toddler, and only three days later, a limousine arrived to whisk her away, a crash course into uptown glitz and glam.
Behind gracious welcomes and extravagant gifts, the extended members of the Kuchiki family never let her forget the filth of her birth. Vitriol veiled in pretty wrapping paper: "Try the lobster bisque, darling. You've never had something so rich, have you? No, poor dear." Subtle cruelty, but no less hurtful than the beatings and neglect she'd suffered at the hands of her fosters.
And every time they shamed her, Rukia looked to her brother for protection, expecting him to inform the lucky ants — to assure her — that she was his sister and deserved the respect of that title. But Byukaya's gray eyes would abandon her, traveling somewhere far out of reach.
He said nothing.
So, Rukia does not look to her brother for protection or assurance anymore. Adoption into the Kuchiki family equates to nothing more than three meals a day, a sturdy roof, clean clothes, and a ride to the condo — not home — when private school's tedium robs her strength to walk there. Her new life, this lucky turn, is just another form of abyss, priceless belongings — sophistry, in her opinion — glittering but failing to light empty eyes.
Rukia does not feel like a lucky ant.
More like an ant on a tight rope, dancing on the line, trying not to hang myself from it.
Rukia's amethyst eyes sweep unbroken lines of decrepit tenements and convenience stores, ignoring the chipped paint and barred windows. This area is an unhappy medium, an older section of Sodom the industrial revolution has yet to annex. Here, structures are smaller, made of brick and plaster.
There are no neighbors to impress or humiliate, no glittering skyscrapers or posh coffee shops. In these shabbier buildings, no one gives a damn, self preservation trumping pretense. The paramount concern of midtown subsist-ers is staying on this side of the last divide: anything is better than the makeshift hovels and ubiquitous liquor stores downtown.
Midtown isn't the same sort of ugly as uptown. It's honest.
Honestly ugly.
But not as ugly as downtown, and Rukia is glad she's seen that the last of that place.
She winces absently, remembering those nauseating smells and blown streets. Downtown is a playpen for the sick and twisted; the cesspool of her birth.
'Ugly, aka Sodom, aka a fucked up city where the lucky thrive, the luckless subsist, and the unlucky die.'
To Rukia, this is the reality of Sodom.
But her highbrow teachers call the socioeconomic division "a wonder of capitalism," and the Kuchikis call it "the natural right of the strong to rule the weak."
Sometimes Rukia wonders — rarely, but still — what her mother or father called it. Today is one of those infrequent days, and so she passes the same streets her parents did, pausing on the corner of Damascus Avenue.
Looking for a connection to her dead family.
Skirting a bar across the street and attempting to be inconspicuous, Rukia steps off the sidewalk and into a large empty lot. With cynic's smile, she eyes the large sign declaring this lot to be condemned.
She is trespassing and defying the empty rules which cage her.
Reveling in it.
As she dances through trash and spiny trees, avoiding the broken glass and needles barely visible beneath the leaves, Rukia bites back a black giggle. This lot is condemned, and she wonders what crime the property committed to earn eternal damnation. This entire block has been empty for as long as Rukia can remember, and no one seems to care one way or the other.
Either way, the situation is convenient for Rukia. The back end of the lot is separated from a cemetery by a chain link fence. Her parents are buried there; the familiar sight is morbidly welcoming.
Reaching property line, Rukia sighs, throwing her pricey school bag over the fence. Placing her right foot on the bottom rung, she reaches up to grasp the top rail with both hands. Swigging her left leg over, she repeats the process in reverse, landing poised.
"Whack!"
Startled, Rukia jerks around, staring back across the empty lot. She spies a red haired man splayed in front of the bar on the opposite corner. Beside him, a thin girl stands rigidly and a broken stool leans forlornly.
Rukia winces. Ouch. Then, she turns away, running one hand through her shoulder length hair and grabbing her bag with the other. She observes the afternoon sun-through-smug tinge countless headstones amber.
Muscle memory guides her as she wanders the maze of graves in meandering rows and crooked columns and unkempt landscaping. Idly curious, she stops now and then to read the epitaphs engraved on a few.
Rukia reads, "Here lies a friend and a mother. A warrior. The Matron."
Puzzled, she rereads the inscription, wondering exactly who this 'the Matron' was. She studies the headstone, noting — aside from the absence of a name — it's mundane in every way: neither large nor adorned. Just a standard marker.
But the grass is bare and well-worn, and a handful of daises, barely wilted, rest against the marker. Rukia imagines — would like to believe — the flowers were placed there by someone who still loves this woman. Someone obviously misses her.
Irrational and stupid, tears well in Rukia's eyes. Who gives a damn what your name was? A friend, a mother, a warrior: that's who you were.
There's an edge to her thoughts — a personal failing.
Rukia wonders if she loves her parents at all. If it's possible to love people she never knew. She clings to a fantasy; fiction not fact, no idea who they really were.
Mourning nothing more than a dream broken by sirens in the middle of the night and a sister she once loved and has since lost. Forever.
Disgusted, Rukia marches off to see the dead strangers she calls parents, and she finds them two rows down. Unlike the beloved Matron's, their plot is bedded with autumn leaves.
A deep breath.
Removing her white school bag and black designer blazer, Rukia kneels down, bending on all fours to brush them into piles. The sound of life elsewhere, footsteps and muffled voices, intrude upon the silence, but she ignores them, continuing her work like the good daughter she wishes she was.
"Dad, I really wish you wouldn't smoke here. You're a doctor; I know you know it's a dreadful habit. You're not even a smoker. And today… now seems an odd time to start."
Overhearing, Rukia raises a brow, thinking, Weird topic for visiting the dead. Then, she shrugs, reminding herself that it's none of her business.
"Ah, but my dearest Yuzu, it's tradition! Your mother thought me rather dashing with a cigarette in my hand. I have to step up my game if she's gonna wait for me in heaven. Can't have her shacking up with some pretty boy angel."
Another male voice grumbles, "Can it, old man, or I'll send you to heaven right here, right now."
Rukia sweeps away the last of the leaves, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. She's tempted to lean around the headstones behind her to these odd people.
"Karin do… something! Ichigo is making death threats again. I don't want Dad to go to heaven." The sweet voice pauses, then adds, "And I don't want Mom to… um, to 'shack up with an angel,'" delivering the last words in a delicate rush.
Rukia can imagine a blush on the girl's face; wonders if such a face would look like an 'angel.'
Another girl — sardonic, almost lazy — replies, "Sorry, Yuzu, but this is out of my hands. I've decided to be a cynic and an atheist. Look at it my way: Ichigo's a pussy, Dad's an idiot, and Mom's as likely to shack up with an angel as she is to have ever thought Dad was cool. So, like, less than zero."
Rukia pauses, incredulous. Are they for real?
"Can it, little sis. You're depressing," the younger male voice mutters.
"Masaki, where did I go wrong? Our eldest children… Would you be angry if I have them committed? A lobotomy would do wonders for Ichigo's personality! And Karin — I fear for her. Oh, Karin, don't look at me that way. You'll only be in a padded room for a few—"
"Oof!"
"Oh, Dad, come 'ere. I packed some tissues just in case Karin broke your nose."
The nose breaker asks, "Seriously? I mean, you were really thinking, 'I'll pack these tissues in case Karin break's Dad's nose?'"
I have to see this. Rotating stealthily and hiding in the shadow of a large tombstone one row down, Rukia pokes her head around the corner, spying on them — she doesn't even try to deny it.
A group of four stands in front of a grave farther down.
Rukia studied there faces, learning them, investing more effort than she does at school or dinner parties. There's a definite resemblance between the father cupping his nose and the daughter standing beside him cracking her knuckles. They share the same dark hair, though the girl's is markedly darker, almost black. The other daughter — the youngest, Rukia remembers — rifles through a large picnic basket, muttering to herself; she looks nothing like her father or sister, hair nearly flaxen and skin faintly rosy.
The last of the four, the scowling brother, stands off to the side, hovering on the edge of his family. His bright hair draws Rukia's attention immediately; under the smoggy sun, it's a dusky orange like rust. The most peculiar color she's ever seen. I wonder if he dyes it?
Applying the names she's overheard to the faces she spies, Rukia knows exactly who's who. Obviously, the older man is the father. The dark haired sister is Karin, and the rosy one must be Yuzu. The scowling boy is Ichigo.
Yuzu replies distractedly, "Maybe not specifically for this purpose. Actually, I thought Ichigo'd break Dad's nose, but that's neither here nor there. Ah ha!" She waves the little packet of tissues high like a prize, stumbling precariously on her way to save the day.
In only a second, Ichigo grabs his sister's forearm, steadying her until she regains her balance. His expression of vague unease changes, not quite a smile, not a smirk either, just soft and warm. Protective and reassuring.
Like a real brother.
Not like my brother. Not like my… relatives.
Because her 'family' would not be the right word. Not when compared to this family.
Hungrily, Rukia watches them talk and move and be together, trying to comprehend. Whatever this is — father, daughters, and brother fighting over the last cupcake — does not exist in Sodom Square.
Not anywhere in Sodom — love is reserved for heaven; frowned upon in hell. Affection is weakness, beneath the lucky ants dressed in muted shades of black, white, and grey. And to find happiness in a mourning family is surreal.
A bizarre daydream mixing and whirling Rukia's perceptions, first this family, then augmented with hers own. Ichigo, no Byakuya. His dad or her dad? Is Hisana bouncing a soccer ball or folding a picnic blanket? Where is our mother?
Borrowed grief and joy. The daydream exists in limbo, the communion shared here and elsewhere. Rukia knows them, and she does not know them.
The father does acrobatics around the grave; rosy Yuzu laughs. The jet haired Karin and the rust haired Ichigo groan at their father's antics. And Rukia aches: jealousy, yearning, bitter disappointment.
It was easier to exist twenty minutes ago when she thought family was a myth.
Not fair.
These feeling knots themselves together, becoming slipknot chaos. But there is color in this coiled mess; these feelings aren't pretty, perhaps, but they are real.
Voyeuristic — unsure if she's courting a dream or hanging herself from a colorful noose — Rukia watches them unnoticed. Just a bit closer, she decides, I'll just a get a little closer, look for a minute, then I'll leave. Edging forward, Rukia's right foot snaps a dry twig.
Instantly, Ichigo jerks around, slightly alarmed like he expects trouble. Instead of trouble, he spots Rukia in her hiding place. Frowning slightly, he tilts his head, confusion and apprehension on his face. Absolutely transparent.
"Hey, you!" Ichigo calls, "What the hell are you doing?"
A moment in flux. What to do? What to do?
Still crouched, Rukia rocks unsteadily on the balls of her feet, nearly falling forward. She hopes the shadow of the headstone hides her face, but it doesn't really matter one way or the other — a fucked up childhood and suck-y adolescence has striped her of expression. None of her fear, shame, or envy shows.
The instinct to flee burgeons and Rukia ducks behind the stone, snatches her bag and blazer, and runs. Thoughtless for her poor dead parents; doesn't even say goodbye. Instead, she listens to Ichigo's family, their confusion exclamations and concerns, die away in the background. And as she runs, Rukia wonders, What the hell am I running from? It's not like people-watching's a capital offense? What am I… why am I afraid? Sprinting to the nearest gate, she imagines footsteps behind her — nerves and paranoia raw.
Finally out of the cemetery, Rukia looks up and down the vaguely familiar street, Nazareth Causeway, nearly despairing as she calculates the distance from here to her brother's condo. Walking uptown from here would add over a mile to her long trek back to glittery hell.
Walking? Um, no… Should I call my brother's office? Ask for a car to pick me up? He'll be pissed — but won't show it — that I broke out of 24ct jail.
Suddenly too tired to give a fuck what her brother won't say, Rukia pulls her cell phone from the front pouch of her bag. She taps the screen impatiently, waiting for the shiny toy to wake up. Her gaze flickers skyward, gauging the time by the degree of orange haze seeping through the smog. It's later than she'd thought. She checks side to side, looking for shady characters, not intimidated, just cautious. Sodom is a dangerous place regardless of district. Watching where she walks is as important as watching who walks with her.
Finally, her cell's screen lights with a chiming "ding." Sighing aggrieved, Rukia scrolls through a hundred names of people she's rather not know, stopping on the name 'Kuchiki Byakuya.'
The residual depression from her introduction to real-family 101 twinges. Don't even have him in here under "my brother," not even just "Byakuya." Sad part is I'd bet my life he has me in his phonebook under "ward" or "mistake."
With a grimace, she presses 'send,' bringing the phone to her ear; but seconds pass, and she hears nothing. No ring. No voice mail.
Frowning, she pulls the damn thing away, glaring down at it.
'Out of Range: Troubleshooting.'
Today is not her day.
"You've got to be fucking kidding!" Rukia hits the sides of the phone, willing it to find a signal. She raises it up while revolving in a circle, hating the world in general. But the phone — several hundred shekels worth of glossy impractically — refuses to work.
Rukia considers screaming, crying, or smashing the device into a million pieces, but decides not to do any of those things. Instead, she takes a deep, fortifying breath, and then searches the nearby buildings for the least suspect and most likely to have a phone that works. Unlike mine.
A convenience store a block down looks promising. The windows are clean and not barred, and the paint's only chipped a little. Rukia pockets her useless cell and strides toward the shop, plotting, In and out. Call non-brother, order car, wait inside. No problem.
Pulling the door open, Rukia congratulates herself, I handled the cell phone-injustice-of-the-universe with poise. Or, rather, poise by her standards.
The door closes behind her with nothing more than the jingling of a bell. The fluorescent lights hurt her eyes, but temperature here is warmer than outside. And Rukia's thankful for that if nothing else.
Thank god I found this place. MacAbee's equals lifesaver.
We do not own Bleach.
However, the Sodom Duet Universe is ours. (We've slaved over it.)
A/N:
1) Suki - (Not here at the moment, but will add later.)
2.) Mare - I'm glad you've read this. I hope you read more. I love this story, our baby (which has grown into a duet, so maybe "twins" is a better cliche metaphor.) It's fantastic, and my writing partner is talented. This will be a worthy read, I promise. If you are interested in reading our separate work, tell me how to add links to profile. Otherwise, stew in curiosity. Actually, it's sort of fun to be anonymous. If you don't like Cataclysm, I'm sorry. I really am because we've tried so hard to make this enjoyable for everyone. That said, "everyone" might be too liberal. The demographic for the Sodom Duet (this story and it's sequel) is 16 or older. If you're a very brave little squirt, go right ahead, but be warned: this story is a black as sin (terrible pun intended.) There is no fluff, no rainbows, and very little sunshine (literal and figurative.) In the hope of barring younger readers, we've chosen difficult vocabulary and sentence structure. The writing is intentionally written for an older, more mature audience. However, if you are not quite 16 and this all makes perfect sense to you, go ahead. We just don't want to upset anyone or taint them with an epic story steeped in ugliness.
`~ Welcome to the Sodom Duet ~