Title: Honor & Pride - Byakuya's Heart
Characters: Kuchiki Byakuya, Shihouin Yoruichi, Kuchuki Hisana
Entry Line: "It was a tragedy that no one had a camera to capture Byakuya's expression. They'd probably never see that again."
Contest: The original Bleach omake contest.
About: A little peek into the mind and life of Kuchiki Byakuya, and what kind of man he grows to be.

It was a tragedy that no one had a camera to capture Byakuya's expression. They'd probably never see that again.

Byakuya is a cold reserved man, and few have seen the full range emotions he can truly express. To everyone, he is a prince and yet a snob. Few have ever wished to truly consider what it'd be like to be close to this noble man.

He has been looked upon with admiration and disdain alike more than any other way, and he accepts this without care. After all, who are they to judge him?

He is not an expressive person, he knows this. Sometimes, he wishes he were so. But it does nothing to wish what cannot be changed, and this is something that has been deeply ingrained in his core. Even with those close to him, few that they be, he finds it difficult to do so.

When he was a child, he did not understand the concept of 'play'. He knew rules, obligations, honor. There were no others near his age, except perhaps the child of the Shihouin family, but she was rarely allowed outside of the Shihouin compound, and they met even more rarely. Their two families were allies, but not 'friends'.

Humor and play were two things he learned from that girl though, he admits. He never quite did more than give a small smile at a few of the antics of the hyperactive Yoruichi, and he rarely gave jokes from his own part. The older girl would give a wide smile and smack him on his back whenever he did, and release a boisterous laugh, no matter how unfunny his joke was. She at least recognized the attempt.

He would tell no one, but he's always felt a bit awkward around her, and he hid it so very well. Even as they aged, their bodies growing, maturing, he hid it even as they danced another dance of the game named 'Tag', and he restrained himself from touching the body of the beautiful carefree young goddess with more than a lingering caress.

He'd had a crush on Shihouin Yoruichi.

In hindsight, he believes that she probably knew, sensed that barrier between them, and simply didn't comment on it. It was a self-imposed barrier that he himself had placed on himself, so he would be the one to break it if he wanted something more. It sounds, in his head, much the sort of thing she would do.

He never asked, and never really cared to. If she was his first and last crush, Hisana was his first and last love.

Their love, it was something that simply wasn't meant to be, to exist. He was the noble scion of the house of Kuchiki, she a mere commoner.

And yet it did. She was like a flame, wild and free, and yet contained, as if within a glass lamp, so as to not burn those whose lives she'd shed light on.

And he broke that glass lamp. The flame, eventually went out.

Their meeting began simply enough. It was the beginning of something new that followed the ending of something else.

Three shinigami captains. Rogue. It was unthinkable. Unprecedented. Frightening.

To all others, he seemed to take the news as if any other. Despite his acquaintance of one of the traitors, he did not break down like her subordinate, he merely nodded, and moved on his way.

Inside, he had been a mess.

He'd left that evening to take a walk through the dead of night, a random path that led him to where the Shihouin household gates were tightly shut. He stared up at the gigantic gates, and stood there for what seemed hours, closing his eyes and remembering.

"Emotions are a weakness, boy," his grandfather's raspy voice had once told him as a youth. "They can be used against you, and break you when you least expect it."

He had thought he lived by those words before, but...his heart was so heavy.

He knew he wasn't truly a close friend or confidant of the former head of the 2nd division. He understood that position definitely belonged to the man she aided in escaping, the fugitive genius, Urahara Kisuke.

And still he felt betrayed.

So he stood, senseless to the world. Until another came.

Something heavy began to wrap around his back, and in a flash, he was facing about, sword drawn, his face firm, thoughts of Yoruichi thrown to the back, for the moment at least.

"Eek!" his attacker exclaimed, with a jump before tripping or landing badly, simply falling onto their back, a heavy coat covering their body.

His eyebrow raised, and the tip of his sword dug into an edge of the coat, and raised upwards, pulling the coat off, revealing a girl in dirtied white rags (to his appraising eyes, at least) shivering, her hands crossed over her chest and face in a warding gesture, her eyes scrunched tightly and her lips clenched.

"...you are?"

He waited paitiently for the girl to open one of her eyes and stare at him. Her eye dashed towards his sword, and the shaking seemed to intensify.

He put away his sword. He could quickly draw it again if need be, although he doubted it. "You will not be hurt."

She still seemed so hesitant, but he did not offer much in the way of comfort. It's not his way. He simply stood there, towering over her.

Still, his lack of reaction, simply waiting patiently had the desired effect, somehow. She slowly rose, standing just a half-head shorter than he. Her fingers played nervously around that thick coat, twisting and turning it between her fingers.

"Uhm, I apologize for the intrusion, my lord." She bowed deeply and sharply, uncertainty and a healthy amount of fear present.

"Noted." It was all he had answered with, well that and a small nod of his head was given, but he continued to stand there, as if waiting for more.

Remembering his earlier question, she eventually bowed again. "I...my name is Hisana, Kuchiki-sama."

"Ah."

He paused, and then gave his own bow to the surprised girl, though his bow was smooth and confident. "My own apologies for startling you, Hisana-san," he offered, remembering his manners.

"Oh...oh no, it was my fault. I...I was the one who surprised you with my coat."

"I am a seated officer and heir to the Kuchiki house. I am not one who should have been surprised."

"But you were?"

He gave her a penetrating look, and whatever confidence and comfort she might have gained through their conversation seemed to vanish. He gave a brisk nod. "I was...immersed in my thoughts."

It looked like she understood that he did not wish to speak of his error, and gave another bow. Nothing else was said, on either part, and she turned to leave, slowly walking away.

Whim or fate, he called out to her when she was but ten steps away. "Why did you approach me?"

Her cheeks flushed red. "You looked cold. I...I thought you needed it more than me."

He nodded, in that cold manner of his, and turned away. The girl left soon after, when he did not say anything else. She did not hear his whispered "Thank you, Hisana-san."

They'd had other encounters after. Many thought they were staged by the girl, regardless of how flustered she appeared whenever he spoke to her. It did not seem to occur to anyone that the cold young noble was the one that saw something interesting in the girl.

At some point, that something became love, even if it wasn't easy to tell on his part. Hisana once told him before she died, that she fell in love with him the moment she saw him melancholy looking up those gates. He never once said why he'd been looking up at them. She never asked. However weak her body might have been, he would always envy the strength of her spirit, even after hearing her secret shame.

Many things happened since then, and almost ended quite badly.

His conscience was at war within him at that time. He had set himself up in an impossible place, obligation at odds with duty, and his sorrow and trust tainting his perceptions of how to act.

The girl he promised to protect with his life he was bound to execute. The girl he had begun to love like a sister, that child whom his wife had entrusted the life of to him...would die because of him. Why did he find her and that boy? He almost wished he'd failed.

He felt such relief when that boy appeared, and weak that he was, found triumph after triumph over their forces, until he became his near equal, in combat if not in station. Still, his pride warred within him, his cold face betraying nothing, as he fought with his utmost and almost set himself back in the position of executioner when the boy seemed to falter.

How happy he was when his body fell to the ground, broken, and he knew he was defeated. 'He'll protect her. This boy...he'll protect her.'

An undisguised smile decorates the face of an old man as he participates in a tradition from the human world, starting a murmur of chatter amongst guests.

"Did you see it? The commander-general smiled!" was what most statements revolved around.

He took a deep breath, and blew out the candles on his cake, his family laughing and patting him on the back. Rukia's granddaughter, his relative in name and spirit, moved closer to him looking rather nervous. Her husband held her hand tightly, and motioned her closer to him. "Tell him the news, Masaki-chan..."

"News?"

The girl smiled and grasped the general's hand, placing it on her stomach, surprising him. There was a vibrant feeling of life coming from there.

"...twins," the old man murmured.

She nodded brightly, a dazzling smile that reminded him so much of Hisana that he almost broke in tears.

"Yes, two girls. Yoruichi and Hisana, we were thinking of calling them, grandfather," the girl said with a small proud, hopeful smile, wanting the approval of their house of head.

The commander-general rubbed his granddaughter's stomach gently, feeling the pulse of strong energy coming from the still unborn children within, and then pulled back his hand, stared at it, and slapped it to his forehead, throwing his head back and giving a deep, strong, loud laugh. The 28th head of the noble Kuchiki clan said with a wide smile that surprised many from the normally cold general, especially given the tears that they could see streaming down those wrinkled cheeks. "Those are good names! We can expect much from them!"

When two girls enter the shinigami academy, some many years after, they do so with determined looks, to do the Kuchiki name proud.