FURNITURE
Disclaimer: Bleach & its characters are the property of Tite Kubo.
If it isn't obvious enough, this is my first Bleach fic. The Soi Fon/ Yoruichi ship is too interesting to not write about.
1. Lost
"She turns like the ocean;
she tells no emotion;
she's been gunning down the fight - "
- Lonely Nation, by Switchfoot
1.
For several months after the warrants circulate through both the fortress and the outlying towns, Soi Fon finds her office at the headquarters of the 2nd Division stale, uninviting and too constrictive. So she orders the emblem of the Onmitsukido to be emblazoned over the entire length of her office wall in black. She commands aspiring trainees to have the same logo inscribed on the crook of their throats. And when some protest, she warns them she will do it herself with her own blade if they disobey.
For some reason, she is disappointed when they all submit to her gingerly. As she watches them go through the motions, she sees in their eyes a blankly similar look, like that of a puppy that has been kicked: a little defiant, a little sad, but mostly unsure. She spits in aversion when she concludes she was – possibly – once like them. She orders her trainers to step up the intensity.
As the recently decorated commander-in-chief, she insists on planning, supervising and approving all missions personally, taking over such duties from her officers. They do not refuse and soon her office, its grim space overcome by the new mural, becomes a transit point: her officers seeking permission for their missions, and she granting them. They hardly have the opportunity to arrange their requests into words, when she disposes all need for words, and concurs with them with a flick of her right hand.
She wanders the Rokongai when she is off-duty by herself. The Captain of the Special Forces has no need for a personal attachment of guards, she believes. She dissolves into the crowds, flowing through the throngs which populate these districts for days on end. She recognizes walls drenched with warrants and posters of defectors, Soul Reapers turned criminal and intruders – some already in custody, but a greater majority which she recalls tearing apart with her own bare hands.
Then, she sees the two warrants, the names of their subjects outlined and enhanced with warnings from her own Division – she sees the crude list of their crimes, fading with poor ink. She reads the two names aloud. She covers their names with a faint coating of her own rage, but mostly she crushes the warrants herself, or runs her blade through the strata of papers, till it looks as if the wall itself is shedding its skin.
More months past: she orders her wall repainted, the Special Forces logo buried now under a shield of white paint. The missions come and go with predictability, omniscient working machinery rolling on. And when Soi Fon thinks life as commander-in-chief cannot get any more dreary, she receives a short memo that one of her officers has been murdered.
2.
Truth is, the corpse lies nicely arrayed at the entrance to the corridor that leads to her office. She observes the man, a loyal Soul Reaper, with whom she had shared a word with – just a day ago, in fact – sitting upright, decorated by a flower of blood plastered against the wall. His weapon is missing. And so are his thumbs, and his face too which, she notes, took the brunt of the attack. Probably could not even know who killed him, she deduces.
The nature of the death and the proximity of the attack have, apparently, been of great interest to her own officers and other Division members, whom she sees milling around discussing what she thinks are insignificant shreds of gossip. They hush when she passes, her presence stealing the voices from their throats. Her men greet her as they guard the scene, their proud insignia catching light and throwing it back into her face. There are so many people that she thinks she sees among them someone familiar: a stiff face wiped clean of expression – tanned arms a sheet of rich chocolate-coloured shade – head armed with a loose, cocky grin –
No – wait, she thinks.
She blunders her way into the investigating officer, who happens to be talking to her lieutenant. They salute her.
"Report," she directs.
He claims the deceased had been on patrol duty, and had been surprised by an attack. He swears other sentries have not reported anything amiss. As if adding a flourish to the end of these sentences, he adds with a tight smile that every man has been put into seeking the identity of the audacious offender, who dared to strike so near the commander's office.
"Captain," he tells her, and for a moment Soi Fon finds it worthwhile to tilt her head upwards to meet his sallow face, sunken with solemn vocabulary. "It is highly possible the killer was targeting you, personally."
"So?"
Her lieutenant joins in: "So we were discussing it will be better if you had a personal bodyguard."
"I already said no."
"We know you don't want one since –"
She hardens her stare, lowers the tone of her voice till it has the force to make both men flinch: "Lieutenant, I have made myself clear."
"We will send you someone whom you will find suitable." He persists, then flashes a grin. "I assure you, you will like her."
The moment they are finished she turns back to where she had thought she saw her. But in her place, Soi Fon only sees a girl who is a seated officer in her Division. The pack of onlookers disperse to look for more fuss; and there is no one who looks like –
When she reaches her office, however, Soi Fon finds a pair of bloodless human thumbs propped up neatly on their detached ends on her table. She identifies the skin colour and the contours of the cut. She picks them up, and chucks them out her window.
"You don't scare me," she says aloud, to no one in particular.
3.
When she hears a knock on her door for the twenty-seventh time, she assumes another of her officers needs permission to conduct a skirmish, so she flashes two swishing fingers to the door. But a voice – female voice clearing her throat – forces her to bring her eyes to the door where, an officer clad in full Onmitsukido uniform without insignia has her forehead fastened to the ground.
"Yes?"
The girl's voice offers to her in firm, certain tones: "I, Juri Hamatatsu, pledge my life to protect and serve my Captain –"
"Oh. You."
Soi Fon feels mildly irritated because she feels compelled as the commander to ensure the services she is getting are up to standard. So she walks over; the girl's pose remains frozen, her form like a foot-rest, as if she were but part of the furniture.
Soi Fon commands: "Get up."
She inspects the girl, stabs her finger to part her collar and sees the Special Corps logo tattooed there, black in an island of sore flesh. Soi Fon thinks the girl's eyes are too small, but she admires the elfin face, the sheer cliff-like jagged point of her chin, the taut but not bloated biceps, the scar which parts her earlobe (the result of the stepped-up training, definitely) and her eyes which are washed with jade-coloured gloominess. She traces the knuckle-like in the girl's backbone with her finger through the fabric.
"You're good," Soi Fon declares. "My Lieutenant wasn't bluffing."
She returns to her seat, then tosses the girl her rank: the personal guard of the commander-in-chief, a rank not utilized since –
"You will address me as Captain, understood?" Soi Fon tells her.
"Yes, Captain."
"And one more thing." She allows the girl to gaze reluctantly at her face. In return, Soi Fon displays her most wicked sneer: "Try to stay alive."
4.
On the subject of first missions, Soi Fon remembers this: two of her own flesh and blood perished on their introductory skirmishes in the Special Forces. As the current commander in chief, she has done enough reviewing of previous missions to know how disgracefully they fell. So she resolves that if Juri, her personal bodyguard whom she feels obliged to babysit, ever reaches such a condition, she would not hesitate to remove Juri's ability to endure shame.
But she is surprised: their first outing as a team drives them deep into the Rokongai to track down and put down an ex-Soul Reaper suspected of the recent murder. When they corner him, he lashes out with a lance twice his height, with a sharpened edge gruesome enough to impale a Menos. She orders Juri to engage, while she prepares her own weapon.
By the time she looks up, their quarry's face is appropriately smothered in between Juri's legs, his hands clamped underneath her right arm, in a complicated-looking tangle of limbs – a perfect restraint, nonetheless.
Soi Fon finds herself pretending to act unmoved. She steps up to the struggling criminal, kicks his weapon aside and in one swift move, she draws her blade and unfastens his entire left leg from his waist. When he screams, she does the same to his right. She gestures at Juri to release him. Sure enough, he tries to scramble away. But she stamps her foot down onto his back, flips him over and applies weight with her right foot to his throat.
"Any last words?" she asks gently.
She does not wait for a response. But a croaking, incoherent mechanical growl seeps out from his throat as Soi Fon impales her blade through his voice-box. Really a cutthroat, she concludes to herself, satisfied.
"No mercy to the enemies of the 2nd Division," she says to her bodyguard, who stands by her like a dog waiting to extract a pat on the head from her master, or a stray compliment. But all Soi Fon says is:
"Next time try not to get in my way."
Sometimes, on occasions not long after, when Soi Fon knows she is all alone in the debriefing room after a mission, she undresses from her Shinigami captain's robes and steps into the halo of light to survey herself in the glazed, cloistered mirrors. She sees her own unimpressive face, her dual braids snaking from her head and the thin, angular points of her shoulders peeking out loftily like snow-touched escarpments from the uniform she inherited from –
But she does not want to think of that now. Instead, she persuades herself that Juri is a commendable bodyguard who deserves less of her disdain and more of her praise. She wants herself to believe the young, eager girl is really what she needs right now – during an emotionally derelict phase of her life, several months into the most challenging appointment in the Gotei 13, with an assassin stalking her.
She thinks of saying – "that was good skill," – or "congratulations on surviving your first mission," – or even possibly, "I think we might make a good team" – would help to break the almost impregnable formality between them. She thinks she should actually request that bodyguard of hers to accompany in her office.
Instead, she screws her face into a frown – her reflection responds in kind – and slices an arm in front of her eyes block out the sight of her own distraught face staring back at her.
When she returns to her office, however, she finds the new cover of white paint on her wall exfoliating. The unwrapping layers fall out to reveal, written in what she knows is someone's blood, the words: YOU LOOK EVEN MORE DELICIOUS, SLEEVELESS MY DEAR.
"That's going to be the last time you'll see that," she declares to her empty room, a little louder this time.
5.
When the hunt for the infiltrator fails to turn up further leads, Soi Fon takes over control of the investigation, declaring it a top secret inquiry which no other of her seated officers are allowed access to without her explicit permission. She appoints Juri to assist her as investigating officer and tells her Lieutenant to, temporarily, re-assume duties over all the administration.
She orders immediate observation of all members of the Gotei 13 and insists on daily reports on movements in and out of the Rukongai, and on Soul Reapers returning from missions to earth. Juri compiles the findings and when they reach Soi Fon, she scours through them and cross-examines them with those who she knows have access to 2nd Division. The suspect list narrows down from just over a thousand – then to three hundred and twenty-nine – and finally to eighteen, a third of them captains.
When she looks at the names with the criteria the Special Forces describe as suspicious and potentially dangerous to Soul Society,she and Juri narrow it done to one, final name. When her Lieutenant tells her the suspect has just been dispatched to the earthly realm for, ironically, an observation mission, Soi Fon says:
"Good. Juri and I will bring her head back."
Soi Fon tries not to imagine what the other captains will say: rash, unprofessional, dirty, executing a seated officer in your division on the basis of petty suspicion is not what a captain should do etc etc – as the youngest, newest captain she is used to hearing value-laden, value-added advice from her peers. She shuts out their voices and feels glad when, on her first trip in many months to the domain of the humans, it is raining without remorse.
She allows Juri to flank her with an umbrella. As they trudge down a lighted street pockmarked with puddles, the rain beats a steady tattoo on the umbrella's bamboo folds. A fine mist illuminates the deserted street, entangling itself in her hair, greasing the underside of her palm. Up ahead, she hears talking, and then the diminishing presence of people leaving. Their target is, however, still there.
Soi Fon buries one hand behind her and massages the hilt of her blade for reassurance. She looks to Juri, arm clutching the umbrella at a mathematical angle to shade her captain, and says: "This is your second mission. I'll be expecting more from you."
Her intentions clear, Soi Fon steps out from the shade of the umbrella and into the rapidly swaying curtain of rainfall. The first drops lubricate her eyes, cleanse her face, hungrily overwhelm her uniform.
"Show yourself!" she shouts.
It is raining so mercilessly that their quarry appears like a mirage, a blurry smudge of black – a female Soul Reaper in Onmitsukido uniform – against the incoherence of raindrops. Soi Fon can tell she had been expecting an ambush: despite the rain, she can see their target clasping a drawn dagger in her right hand.
"To what honour do I owe a visit by my Captain?" she asks, her voice watery with double-meanings.
"You know very well," Soi Fon replies. Then adds a noun with torrent of loathing: "Traitor."
The traitor chuckles, water shaking off her shoulders. She takes another step forward and asks again, "Will you call me out to fight me, Captain?"
"The names of the assassinated need not be considered," Soi Fon says. "You are and will be known as a traitor, nothing more."
It is the 2nd Division Captain's turn to step forward this time. As she does, she sees the traitor glance beyond her at Juri and remark:
"Is that the Captain's new pet? And a young thing too! You know, you're just like Yoru –"
Silence your tongue!
It takes no other provocation for the fight to begin. In just three strides – one, two, three – Soi Fon is near enough to disarm her opponent. In the ensuing movement, she conjures a current of splashing water and the traitor attempts to sever her fingers with the twin daggers. Soi Fon dodges, counts her steps – one, two, three, four – and flicks her right leg into an arc so swift and so fast the traitor feels the blow to her face first, then the water from the attack.
Before Soi Fon can land a second blow, the traitor breezes past her so fast she can hear her steps like the unsheathing of a sword. Shunpo, Soi Fon thinks.
Her attention swerves back to the direction the traitor headed and watches, Juri block her escape. The traitor defends herself, beheading the umbrella with a swipe of her dagger. Juri, in turn, engages the traitor's wide, ferocious slashes bare-handed, wrist grazing against wrist, both fighters dancing, rainfall outlining their every movement, the crash of disturbed puddles like background music to each step.
When Juri drills the flat plateau of her palm into the traitor's chin, Soi Fon sees the opening she needs. It takes just two strides – two, one – and an additional sweep of her blade as she releases it from her sheath – zero – and she delivers the finishing blow. The traitor staggers, her abdomen parted horizontally with a linear wound.
"You're pretty good at Shunpo," Soi Fon notes.
And with a strike she, like a butcher carving away flesh, splits the traitor's ankles into a shower of crimson splatter, momentarily making it seem as if it were pouring blood.
The traitor, defeated, sinks into ground, one hand supporting herself, the other stuffed into the open wound at the torso, sending a blood-streaked ripple through the puddles pooling on the street.
Soi Fon waits for her to look up, so she can administer the blow in between the eyes. But the traitor chokes out hoarsely, her voice still confident:
"Of course I'm good in Shunpo – she – she taught me herself – Yorui –"
"I never gave you permission to mention her name!" Soi Fon shouts, bringing her foot to the traitor's mouth. But she continues:
"You were nothing – but her pet – and when one gets bored with – a pet – it gets thrown away –"
"Captain, don't listen to her!"
"Thrown away – and left to the dogs –"
But Soi Fon finds her hands sewn tight into fists – she does not know where her blade is, she cannot stand the talking –
Shutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckup –
– she drops to her knees and pounds the still moving mouth, the taunting face of her opponent again and again and again and again – until it ceases to resemble a face – until she is wallowing in a lake of crimson waves, with shiny white fragments of bone for islets – the waves breaking against her knees –
Someone – Juri? – fishes her out from that lake. When she looks up, she sees a female face. Then thick, fat drops of rain wash away the face into nothing but a muddy stain.
Her voice acts on its own accord, and her ears are filled with a screeching mantra:
Yoruichisamayoruichisamayoruichisamayoruichisama –
NOTES: Again attempting present-tense to get the feeling of the action. Rating might go up. More violence ahead.
Next chapter will conclude the short story. Expecting it to be out before end of May. In the meantime I'll be grateful if someone could correct all the information holes my Bleach- canon knowledge.