Prompt.12: Duty
"You look..." The word catches in his throat. It does that because Byakuya Kuchiki isn't used to giving praise. Let alone a compliment to the stunning figure before him. "Acceptable." his mind chooses for him when every other emphatic blood and organ in his body screams otherwise.
Radiant - is the word he can't speak. Inappropriate he judges for a brother to speak to his sister. Details swim before his eyes and he found that Rukia didn't compare to Hisana.
Rather Hisana could not compare to Rukia.
Sister - to - sister.
The ignominy won't leave his mind and Rukia smiles, so earth-shatteringly lovely that he wonders why he hasn't noticed the signs before. "Thank you." she whispers and bows slightly, threatening to topple the heavy veil arranged atop her raven locks.
And just like she's slipped through his fingers like Hisana's life dwindled away before his eyes.
...
She hasn't.
Byakuya hesitates in the wake of his 'sister' even now the word remains distasteful to his mind, it doesn't suit his thoughts. Perhaps once it did. When his eye was blind and his mind was enraptured by duty and obligation.
Not yet.
Rukia is like a jewel, multi-facets all shining brightly ensnaring the eye to look past her many inclusions, past the superficial flaws. Byakuya knows instinctively she'll never be the perfect wife and proxy mother of the heir the clan ardently desires. As they deliberate on granting his second - selfish - request in the public eye, so they remain determined to hold dominant sway over Rukia Kuchiki.
They are fools.
Just as he cannot tame Rukia's inner fire, their congratulatory words fall on deaf ears.
"Soon a son and heir, Byakuya-sama."
How correct they are.
...
No one suspects a thing. Byakuya knows he has more than an infamous ice-cold exterior to thank.
They think he's happy - inside, where else? How could he not be? He's turning over the burden he's born for fifty+ years. Rukia will be taken care of, in her own home with the matriarch of the chosen clan relative, presiding over day-to-day affairs.
He lets them think it, continue in their foolish delusions. Byakuya watches the world through cold slate eyes and calculates. Analyzes every motion until he's sure he won't be missed.
Just a few minutes alone in the hallway of the manor and a trusted servant relays the clan's choice to him. Past a doorway, the party continues on, loud with Kurosaki Ichigo's drunken toasts to Rukia's future happiness. Renji seconds it with a cat-call for many babies to be born. Upon hearing it, after secreting the small scroll on his person, Byakuya cannot help the wry twist that contorts his lips if only for a moment.
...
He knows something the others don't.
Understands it like he adheres to duty. When he meets with the bride groom-to be and delivers instructions. Sakurazawa Haruka understands, though young, naive as a cherry sapling. Byakuya already can scent the blood of a weakling in the young heir.
Sakurazawa was awed alone at the fact that Rukia had fought in the winter war and survived.
When it gets to be too much, Sakurazawa's mother intercedes and handles everything with a stern steely eye and nods when appropriate at the various demands.
"Yes, I understand, Kuchiki-sama. It shall be done."
Haruka stared between them and asks aloud if he will meet the redoubtable Kuchiki Rukia-san before the completion of the Omiai. Byakuya's stare in turn causes the brown-haired boy to flush red around the ears and bow his head in shame.
"It would be inappropriate." Setsuka Sakurazawa pronounces in the deathly silence that followed. "For bonds to exist outside of matrimony."
For them to form at all, the Kuchiki heir thought, taking his leave from the sumptuous mansion in the mountains.
...
The day is here.
Everyone whom is friend to the bride attends, none for the groom save for his representatives.
Byakuya sees her in the quarters of the Urahara shoten commandeered by Ishida Uryu for the Shiromuku-fitting. The insufferable tailor himself had already left to attend to his date, Inoue Orihime.
Brother and allegorical sister are alone.
"Are you satisfied, nii-sama?" Rukia asks, a roundabout way that means she seeks his approval even now. Byakuya's throat closes up, his shihakusho chosen for non-ceremonial comfort, remains prevalent, clinging even though he doesn't sweat. It's only a trace of nervousness left in his cold outer shell.
"You look..."
She waits, looking him in the eye, her expression expectant with a hint of pleading. He savors it, wants it to remain fixated there.
She pleads for acceptance - he wants her to plead for more. The thought isn't aberrant. He's had thoughts such as these long enough to not attempt crushing them down. That would be futile.
"Acceptable." and he can't breathe.
She smiles as though it were the finest praise in the realm of the dead and makes one (her second) fatal mistake. She puts her back to him as she walks away.
(walk away from me, will you?)
She trusts him as she trusts her friends, after all her nii-sama would never ever harm her.
Would he?
...
The ceremony goes as planned.
Byakuya gives her away as duty dictates.
The traditional Sake toast doesn't agree with Rukia; Haruka the fool he is, shows the sign of falling the hard way with a woman he doesn't know. With a woman that is bound to him by paper and words alone. Byakuya knew when to prove himself a doting - kind - brother and calmly commands the couple make haste to part to the mountain commune of the Sakurazawa household, omitting the Kekkon hiroen almost in its entirety.
Rukia protests quite loudly and drinks more of the tainted alcoholic rice drink to prove her health fine and instead nearly topples choking. Just enough so that she sprayed Haruka fully in the face when he caught her, with spittle and upended Sake.
The new husband sighed and waved off her apologies, gently quieting her protests and calling for their transportation to be made ready.
Byakuya lets himself drift off into the background and almost smiles when a second carriage is called for.
Everything was proceeding as planned.
...
Nobody notices when he slips away.
Of course they don't. Everyone respects and fears Kuchiki-Taichou. No one misses Kuchiki-Taichou, a fact that he could care less of.
If Rukia doesn't respond to letters from friends, it's because she's a wife now.
If her resignation to Thirteenth's Fukutaichou position is sent by Kuchiki-Taichou, it's because her devoted husband doesn't want her facing needless danger anymore and her brother is just an intermediary.
Gradually the human friends drop off like slow-dying flies.
Another year.
Maybe two.
It's been five years in the living world - just to make sure, Byakuya waits another three.
After all he's waited longer for this.
...
Nine years in total.
Byakuya Kuchiki is a cautious man. He knows for certain that Sakurazawa Haruka's bed chamber is devoid of a warm female body. Poor, poor boy. By title husband, by day and night nothing more than a figurehead. Haruka was never meant to know Rukia Kuchiki's caresses.
her love.
Poor, poor besotted boy.
Farther in from the Sakurazawa estate, lies another, smaller compound set aside for house arrests, dissenters of the Kuchiki clan laws. It's there that the separate carriage carried the newly wedded Rukia Kuchiki to.
That is his destination.
...
"Who are you?" she asks as though she doesn't recognize his face. Byakuya doesn't let it bother him for all their interactions have always retained a modicum of distance. An unbridgeable gap that he now seeked to destroy by proximity.
"Someone whom has been watching over you for a very long time." He answers sedately, calmly as though her eyes don't widen, as if her gasp means nothing. The ginpaku uzuginu coils to a sinuous length of fine white muslin to the polished floor.
My precious, he thinks but doesn't add the hateful 'sister' to the end of that unfinished thought. He kisses her with restrained aggressiveness and very nearly moans into the parting of their mouths. Rukia withdraws almost horrified - but Byakuya refuses to see that and instead pulls the faintly resisting girl closer to the warmth of his cold body.
In time she will come to accept her duty to him - and him alone.
-Finis-
Disclaimer: don't own Bleach.
AN: C possessiveBya-kun! Haha! C
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