Written for Gal in the April round of Bleach flashfic.
Title: Sonatina in A Heart Minor (I &
II)
Characters/Pairings: Kaien, Rukia, Miyako, Uryuu, with
pairings being Kaien/Miyako, onesided Rukia+Kaien.
Rating:
PG
Warnings: Light swearing, angst, references to sex,
het.
Author's Note: The reason I chose the title was
because I noticed that, rather like a sonatina's movements, the two
halves of this fic could stand independently of each other,
but make the most sense when read together and are linked by common
themes and whatnot. And yes, usually there are three movements to a
sonatina, but, uh... I'm taking liberties . There are some
sonatinas with only two. Also, as the previous sentences imply, this
fic has two distinct but linked halves. Also, this is, like most of
my fics, character introspection heavy. Hopefully not unnecessarily
long, though .
I. Allegretto Grazioso - Knowledge (That One Day the Sun Will Die)
Kaien knows.
Kaien knows that Miyako knows that he knows, and he knows that Ukitake-taichou knows that he knows, and he knows that Kuchiki doesn't know that he knows—except he's not too sure about that last one. It's difficult to tell, with her, from whence her occasional reservedness around him, her shy avoidance, springs, because there are so many insecurities in her foundation. It could spring simply from it, that thing which he knows, or it could also spring from the knowledge that he knows and the shame that might accompany that knowledge.
Knowledge, he thinks sometimes, it just too much of a burden.
But then again, he knows for a fact that ignorance isn't bliss. Old Darikawa, their teacher back at the academy, had had many things to say about ignorance: "Now pay attention, all of you—listen closely, because ignorance gets you killed. Ignorance is responsible for you not knowing how that kidou spell that is exactly what you need goes. Ignorance is responsible for you not knowing when to retreat and call for backup—ignorance of your limits, ignorance of your opponent's strength. Ignorance is responsible for your mistakes and you are responsible for your ignorance."
You never said how weighty a responsibility knowledge is, though, Darikawa-sensei, thinks Kaien, glancing over to the side at Kuchiki, his lips downturned and brow furrowed in a regretful frown.
The balmy summer day has encompassed them in its heat, and Kaien fancies that it rather disapproves of their hard work, their training, though of course he knows that it's not as though the day itself has any consciousness. It would be easier if it did—it would be easier if everything had a will and an awareness and they weren't just adrift in a world where nobody could tell them what the right thing to do was. It would be easier if blood refused to flow from that cut you really hadn't meant to give your friend. Easier if the wind refused to blow all the reports you had been working on onto the floor and out of order—and oh, how often that had happened to him. It would be easier if... if... if.
"Kuchiki," says Kaien.
"Kaien-dono?"
Once again the knowledge sinks deep into the core of him, like a stone thrown into a lake, and he wonders if she knows that he knows, and he says, "There will be times in your life when you'll have to make a difficult choice and nobody is going to help you figure out the right thing to do. For all I know there may already have been." He takes a deep breath. "You'll just have to trust your heart, then, Kuchiki. Don't let yourself feel guilty afterwards. Don't doubt yourself."
Don't doubt your heart, Kuchiki. Your heart is good. Her heart is good and strong and pure and kind and he knows. He knows too much, and at the same time too little—Kaien knows that he knows too much because he knows enough that others know him as a pillar of strength. But he knows too little, always too little—he doesn't know how much the others really know, he doesn't know what to say or how much to say, he doesn't know just how much Kuchiki knows of what he's trying to say, he doesn't know how clearly he has to spell it out to her.
So he doesn't know and in his unknowledge he sometimes feels hollow at his core, with all the others and their knowledges of him pressing in upon him due to the knowledge, of the world, they see in him. There's such a disconnect between him as he is and him as he knows and him as others know him and him as others think he knows and sometimes he just stops and stares and open his mouth and has to ask them to repeat the question and the world stops and clicks out of gear, it hiccups, and another moment is lost and he'll never know it again.
But he knows, from accumulated moments where it clicks back into place, that Kuchiki loves him and he doesn't—oh no, no, no he doesn't know, know, know if he can live up to that and the world goes gray.
For the most part, though, the grayness is easy to dispel, which is a blessing—some laughter, some smiles, some loud colour. He spreads his love and his knowledge around and the magical thing is that the others respond, blooming like flowers under the sun. And sure, being the sun is a huge thing and sometimes he doubts himself, but it isn't that difficult, he finds, to burn hard and fierce and bright, and besides, Kaien knows that he was burning like that before he was the sun and that's why he's the sun now so it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy—or something. He doesn't know the term.
"Don't doubt yourself, Kuchiki," Kaien repeats. He doubted himself once, really doubted, for months on end.
Kuukaku lost her arm.
"I won't," she says.
Kaien knows she's lying, but he forgives her. He doesn't look for perfection, because he knows that it's already right there, all around them, in the world, in its people. In themselves.
Most people are just too fucking numb-skulled to realize it.
Kaien knows that Kuchiki loves him and he knows that Miyako loves him and he knows that Kuukaku loves him and he knows Ganju loves him and he knows that Ukitake-taichou loves him. He doesn't know if he deserves that love but it doesn't matter because he does know that if he tries to shrug it off, if he lives it down, if he fails it, he sure as hell doesn't deserve it because nobody who's weak enough to run away from that deserves it in the first place. And maybe that's a bit paradoxical but he has no stomach for philosophy, and—
It makes something in Kaien's chest shatter in a tinkling fall of sharp red and white noise whenever he sees someone who believes that it's their mistakes that make them unworthy. Mistakes are in the mind and in the actions and not in the heart and Kaien knows that it's the heart that matters, and Miyako told him that.
"The heart
is like a garden," she says to him after they've had sex and are
staring at the ceiling, her hand tangled in the long hair at the back
of his head, his arm sprawled over her stomach. "Eh?" "The
heart is like a garden," Miyako repeats, looking over at him, a
long lazy look with a fierce intensity behind it that makes Kaien's
breath catch. "It has to be well-tended, nourished with sunlight
and water and, most of all, hard work. Doubt and guilt and shame are
like weeds—they choke the other flowers, like kindness and joy and
hope. If we have too much guilt and shame, or if our mistakes mar our
gardens, creating great scars in the earth, we can become unwilling
to show our garden to others and lock it up, surround it with great
impenetrable walls. Then there are those who are so possessive of
their garden that, even if the flowerbeds are perfectly tended, will
not allow anybody to enter because they don't trust those others not
to step on a flower, and so the garden never benefits anybody but its
owner. There are those who selfishly hold on to their garden and who,
therefore, find themselves with stunted trees and plants, because one
person's attention just isn't enough." Her tone softens,
acquiring a soft-magnetic caress to it, and her fingers rub little
circles against Kaien's neck, a smile curving her lips, and Kaien
thinks that he has always found that curve of her lips far more
attractive even than the curve of her breasts and hips and ass. "Then
there are those," she continues, her gaze deliberately fixed on
Kaien now, "who revel in their garden and are utterly unashamed of
it, even if it is marred by mistakes, even if it is overgrown in some
places by weeds of guilt and shame, even if in some places it is
bizarre or even potentially repulsive to some. There are those who
share their gardens with others without a second thought, who want
nothing more than for others to take joy in their gardens as much as
they themselves do." Propping herself up on an elbow, Miyako leans
over and kisses Kaien's forehead. The amount of thought she
has put into this metaphor makes Kaien blink. He realizes then that
Miyako is the sort of person who thinks about hearts and falls in
love with her all over again.
"The heart is like a garden," continues Kaien, getting to his feet, absentmindedly holding out a hand for her. "Now, that's enough of a break, I think!" His tone is light, laughing, tinged with some cloud-soft self-irony; they have been sitting, looking out over the countryside, for the past thirty minutes, and he knows that Kuchiki was starting to wonder and he almost knows that she is thinking she should have said something and he suspects that she might be thinking that he might be thinking she's lazy—or she might not.
With Kuchiki it's sometimes so difficult to tell, even though she is fully open to him, her blossoms unfurled and the life-filled golden center of her uplifted to his face. There's something closed in her core and sometimes he watches her and wishes he knew the shape of the key so he could hand it to her as a gift. But he doesn't know.
"It's important," says Kaien as he stretches a bit, "to tend to your body—to train it like we're doing now. And it's important to train your mind, maths and stuff like that." He waves a careless hand... then fixes her with a serious stare. "But what's most important, Kuchiki, is to tend to your heart. Talk to people. Don't just... I dunno, go through life. You've got to think about right and wrong and talk about right and wrong—so many people act like it's some sort of a dirty secret." Kaien pauses, then adds, "Or a foregone conclusion," and the image of long sleek black hair and an expensive kenseikan flashes through his mind.
Kaien knows, and sometimes it hurts, and that hurt crushes the flowers, but new ones keep on blooming because he finds that if he gives his sunlight then others give their water and things grow, grow, grow.
"So,"
says Miyako as they stand together, looking out over the training
field, second seat and third supervising their subordinates—husband
and wife tending to their relationship in the little ways that count.
Kaien does not have to ask her from which spring the contemplative
look that floods her eyes comes. He can read that slightly furrowed
brow, that infinitesimally quirked mouth, that sidelong glance, and
it's these years of well-worn history between and around them that he
never fails to take joy in. The sensation of comfortable knowledge he
feels around her is free and cool and fresh, like wading into
crystal-clear pond naked. "I do love her," says Kaien
bluntly, "but sort of in the same way I'd love Kuukaku if she was
smaller." Miyako touches his arm briefly, an oft-used
gesture which he knows is thanks for his honesty. His heart quivers
again in joy at how familiar these rituals of there are, at how they
have their own private language which has failed them, but in times
few and far between and not once in the past two decades. It's the
way it should be, and it's "Keep on what I'm doing now," Kaien says firmly.
"I'm gonna teach her. I'm going help her. I'm going to protect her.
I'm gonna talk to her and let her talk back to me. I'll be what she
expects. I'll be what she deserves. I'll live up to her by letting
her live up to me. And you. And Ukitake-taichou. And her brother.
And..." He trails off, shrugs. Miyako asked him once,
"Yeah, sure."
"But what... how do you..."
"When I get tired I sleep, dumbass. I know that you're all here to watch my back."
"... I love you."
"Love you too." These days, they don't
even have to say it. The truth is everywhere they look and Kaien
knows it and couldn't ask for anything more.
Years later, Kaien opens his mouth and he finds he cannot speak.
He wants to tell Kuchiki it's all right as he lies half slumped over her shoulder, her zanpakutou through his back (and it is odd how that doesn't really hurt). He wants to tell her keep on growing, he wants to tell her you have a good heart, he wants to tell her don't lock yourself up, he hopes, he hopes, he hopes that the rain falling around them isn't cruelly acidic and that it will nurture her flowers, her plants, her trees, and not kill them. Strange how the flowers of hope are still blooming in his heart even now but he isn't really surprised, because surely Miyako loved him for a reason.
Kaien knows, and he wishes now that he can tell her that he knows, because it doesn't matter if she knows that he knows, he has to tell her (how could he run from it? He let her down! and that's a terrible thing to think as he dies, on this dark wet gloomy night, but it won't leave him alone; it's nagging at him, tugging at the hem of his mental sleeve) but he cannot make any noise when he opens his mouth, so he settles for curling his arm around her back, and hopes, in vibrant shades of blue and red, that his sun is not yet dim enough that the gesture is masked in darkness.
Kaien's last thought, funnily enough, is not of Miyako. Nor is it that he hopes, hopes and prays to everything he believes in, that some day Kuchiki will realize that, at her core, in every way that counts, she is just like him—though both of those things cross his mind.
Shiba Kaien's last thought is that some day had better come soon.
II. Andante - Someday
The leaves are falling outside and the light is cool steely blue, the same colour as the quiet of the nearly empty schoolroom, the same colour Kuchiki's eyes would be if that colour was dissipated and infused into the world.
There is a silence between them and it is making Uryuu somewhat uncomfortable. This sort of immediate wordlessness always distracts him—he feels as though he has to fill it, somehow, and he can't concentrate on his book properly with the awareness of Kuchiki in the corner of his mind, like a red light flashing softly on a computer screen.
Uryuu is reading a book on cnidarians. The brutality of the Portuguese Man of War is mildly shocking to him because the creature doesn't even have a real brain—yet the poison in its long stinging tentacles is enough to kill a fully grown human being. That strikes him as somehow unfair, but not surprising. Such is life. He doesn't think this with overblown, dramatic grandeur, but he thinks it calmly in the same way he would think the sky is blue or perhaps plants turn sunlight into sugar through a process called photosynthesis.
Finally, the silence has stretched on so long that he's shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "Kuchiki-san," he says abruptly. The words feel stunted and pathetic, not enough, laughable, ringing hollowly in the room. What is he doing? Is he such an awkward child that he cannot even hold his peace?
"Ishida-san."
Uryuu lays down his book so that it is open on the desk before him and looks over at Kuchiki, pushing up his glasses with one index finger while the other rests right in the groove between the two halves of the open book. He feels as though he is stepping into something that he shouldn't, perhaps, be stepping into, but he also feels something pulling him out and away and it's not something he can discern or name (Physalia physalis, the Portuguese Man-of-War, also known as the bluebubble…) and this disturbs him, an uncomfortable itch at the back of his mind.
"Is something the matter?" she asks, looking over at him eventually. Uryuu opens his mouth, hesitates, picking at his words mentally in the same way he would pick at a wrongly-stitched seam, trying to tug it out without damaging the cloth, so that he can reconstruct it.
"Are you doing well?" he says after some deliberation. It's not an unreasonable question—he is aware that Kuchiki was in a very bad way when they returned from Hueco Mundo with Inoue, and that whatever was wrong with her went deeper than just her body, too.
"I am well, thank you." Her eyes are deep and smooth with seriousness, like a polished granite tombstone. "And yourself?"
"I am—" He pauses. He isn't quite fine or well, really. Terms such as "fine" and "bad" are irrelevant to him, because he thinks of his life in terms of utility more than emotional comfort. "As usual," is what he settles for.
"I see."
"I shouldn't be speaking with you," says Uryuu. He does not blurt it; he says it very deliberately, very carefully. He does not know why he's saying it (does not know what this faint stirring of warmth and cold in him is) but would like to make it seem as though he does. He and Kuchiki stare at each other, and he sees the gap between them more than he sees Kuchiki herself.
"Why not?"
"After I lost my powers, my father agreed to assist me in regaining them. In exchange, I agreed not to have anything to do with any shinigami." Uryuu still speaks with measured tones, because he still doesn't know why he's doing this but he wants to, with a quiet wistful low-lying want. "Which includes you. Hence, I should not be speaking to you." The words are delivered with the precision adopted by all those who are explaining something supremely logical.
"But you're not leaving."
"No."
"I shouldn't be speaking with you, either. I—there is—was resistance to the idea of me returning to the human world."
"Coming from someone—?"
"Yes."
"I always wonder why." Another matter-of-fact confession.
"I think they're trying to protect us." There is a sharp, but hushed and breathless, edge to their conversation now. They are stripping away their bars and bolts and praying that the other doesn't have a knife hidden behind their back. In a way it's all so ridiculous—Uryuu feels like they're two children, playing, but at the same time he feels like they're two young gods reaching for eternity. And where has this sudden extravagant imagery of his thoughts come from?
"Why would one attempt to protect a person one dislikes?"
"Some are good actors and some have—reasons—for being cold towards those they actually love."
"I don't understand." Shamefully, there is a mournful, wistful note in his voice.
"The heart is a garden," says Rukia.
"Hm?"
"The heart is a garden," she repeats, and Uryuu cannot tell if that is pain twisting beneath her voice—the signals are fuzzy and he wishes his glasses made other peoples' emotions clearer to him. The metaphor sounds interesting, intriguing—the new information, the unseen angle, makes him lean towards her slightly, his gaze intent. "You can think of things such as… such as joy, and love, and hope—those are flowers. Then guilt and grief and shame are weeds or—barren patches." She looks at him, a question in her eyes, and he nods, go on. "Some people are afraid to let other people into their gardens—because they're convinced that their gardens look ugly, or they're afraid, maybe, that whoever they let in is going to destroy the garden and crush the flowers. Some people… I suppose some people are just miserly," she concedes.
Uryuu thinks of Ryuuken and he thinks of his mother and he wonders, then, for the first time, just how many flowers his mother crushed when she fell, dead—when she ran and rampaged, mad from pain, her life bleeding away slowly. He wonders about the payments made to his account regularly—they are generous, he thinks, and for the first time (what a day it is, he notes, for first times) he tries to connect his father with the little line printed on black ink in his bank book.
Scaling walls, he thinks, will do him no good, even if he manages to summon the energy (and looking at Rukia's face as she stares out the window, her eyes dark and her nose brought into sharp definition by the oncoming steely light, he thinks that maybe he will be able to); how does he persuade the gatekeeper to let him through? Honeyed words, a silver tongue—this is not him. This is something Uryuu acknowledged a long time ago (and he had wanted once to write books, the sort of books that never failed to touch him, as a child, like feathers brushing against his soul, so the realization came with a sour taste on his tongue).
"Of course, then…" says Rukia, jolting Uryuu out of his thoughts. Her chin is propped on her fist and she is still staring off (what is she looking at? what is she searching for? and he has to remember to tell someone who had a key when he leaves, as being responsible is the least he can give them for letting them use the classroom after hours) into space.
"Then?"
"Then there are heroes," she whispers, and this time the thing which might be pain comes through more clearly. "People who give—who leave their doors open, who are completely unafraid of what other people may think of their garden, who just invite others in without a second thought." The war is not yet over, her tone is saying, or so Uryuu thinks (and he isn't really sure and he hesitates to ask, and feels stupid all over again). We need these people, and where are they? They need to help us, we need their help—we're dying, we're frightened, we're weak—
Or maybe it is only him who has these thoughts which keep him awake at night when he thinks of Orihime and he thinks of how nearly they failed and he thinks of all the bruises left all over all of them. Sometimes it seems to him that for all that he tries, it isn't enough—no matter how tightly he clings onto his honour and his pride, sometimes it all slips away from him (and maybe it's time to just start letting go? says a traitorous little voice at the very bottom of him).
"There are people…" says Rukia. "I think that is the best sort of strength," she states, "the strength these people have."
Uryuu's brow furrows. One of his hands slides down from the desk to rest on the edge of the chair, and with his other he shuts the book, with its talk of poison and its clean, removed white pages. "Ah," he says, and he marvels at the fact that Rukia is the sort of person who thinks about hearts and heroes. Maybe he should turn his own thoughts to such things (because it is easy to accept, with a cynical smile, the loneliness that kept him here at school when he learned that Rukia was staying late, even though he didn't know why she was staying and he doesn't care—and it is easy to accept the high pedestal of "he's the genius" and it is easy to accept the odd glances and the dismissive sneers and the other peoples' thoughts of "what the hell is his problem? thinks he's so great, what a nerd" that echo in the air whenever he walks by). "You mean people like Kurosaki."
And she looks up at him, and she smiles, and the is that of someone walking barefoot over broken glass. "Yes," she says, "like Kai—like Ichigo."