Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The polished wooden planks creaked under her bare feet—there was no danger of splinters there—as the moonlight and the darkness crept all around. The servants were asleep, Rukia alone, and the night dark and utterly silent, quiet and solitary as a tomb.
Rukia's pale hand trailed along the wall as her feet mad muffled not-sounds. Slumber eluded her as it did on many nights, and the cage-like feel of her dark room had become too much to bear. She could not lie down and watch the shadows come down from the ceiling. She took to the cold, hushed halls, praying that no one would hear her as she tried to hunt down the most elusive prey of all.
Sleep continued to remain, as ever, an absent prey.
A soft swish filled her ears as the snowy white silk hem of her night robe brushed the floor with an almost melodic sigh. Rukia let out a low exhale, the breath compounding against the ceiling as if with a shattering boom.
She had never liked white. It reminded her too much of the cold, of the coldness of Rukongai. Rukia had never truly been able to escape Rukongai once the sun set. Even in the spacious comfort of the Kuchiki estate, Rukia huddled under the sheets of her tatami like an urchin brat who slept out in the open, buffeted by the wind and assailed by the elements. Her body would be curled with her back curved and her knees huddled almost touching her chest. A broken fetal position was how she slept, like a baby who's back was cracked and shattered. There was simply no way she could find the security to lay down in peace, unguarded.
There were too many echoing voices in the Kuchiki mansion, all of them belonging to speakers long dead.
.
The lantern at his side cast flickering gold pattern on the wall, like autumn's leaves coming down, dancing and ever morphing into differing shapes, like changelings with burning eyes.
Loose from the stiff, ornate headdress, his hair fell over his face, constantly prompting Byakuya to brush it from his eyes so he could work unhindered, long fingers holding the brush that swept ink across soft vellum pages.
In the Gotei Thirteen, Kuchiki-taicho had the reputation of, as Ichimaru-taicho called it, burning the midnight oil. Byakuya was currently living up to his reputation, sitting, legs folded crosswise on the tatami mat, wooden board on his lap with the vellum parchment perched over it.
Certain things ran in the blood even when the blood was not connected at all.
Byakuya looked up, startled, as the door creaked open just a hair, almost as though of its own accord, and Byakuya would have thought that too, if not for the tiny white fingertips curled around the edge of the door. Large violet eyes, half-hooded in fatigue and uncertain, stared back at him, as though he were a wolf and the small person on the other side was a rabbit waiting for the final blow to come down.
Byakuya felt the color drain out of his face. "Hi—" He stopped himself. Hisana was long dead, her soul gone to God knew where, and the Kuchiki estate was not haunted.
The person was smaller than Hisana had been, small as a child, dressed all in white as the dead were, long, enveloping robe sweeping the ground.
Rukia smiled at him from beyond the threshold, a slight, sad, uncertain smile, lingering in the doorway as she let the shadows shoot in from behind her.
Byakuya started to make the motion of stretching out a hand. "Rukia, wh—" Then she was gone, darting from the door, and the unfinished word was left to catch itself, as Byakuya stared at the place where she had been.