Characters: Kuchiki estate servants, Hisana, Byakuya
Summary: They don't know.
Pairings: ByaHisa
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Soul Society arc; highly speculative
Timeline: pre-manga
Authors' Note: I don't personally subscribe to this theory, so this is AU from all of my other oneshots. However, I heard of the idea and thought it would be interesting to write about.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Maybe she doesn't notice the slight taste, acrid and bitter, in the water, for all of her lethargy and listlessness, and maybe she does, and is just too weak to give voice to concern or too despairing to want to live past this point.
If she chooses to go along with this, then all the better.
The eyes belonging to people no one ever notice watch carefully, of course. How can they not, considering the delicacy of the task that has been given to them? It has to be done gently; never enough to hurt her greatly or give her a tolerance for it, but never too little to have no affect whatsoever and allow her to get well. Needless to say, the one with the steadiest hands is the one recruited to take the small vial and ladle out less than half a teaspoon into the water pitcher every day.
They all wonder whether the master knows that the water he gives his wife so religiously to sooth her raw and aching throat is not all it appears to be. They all wonder—and fear—how he would react, if he knew that he is the one who administrates the instrument of his wife's death, every day.
It's not something they thought of themselves; they would never dare attempt something of this enormity without the impetus of another, and they have no inclination to it to begin with. Instead, they carry out the dreadful task they've been set to, on order of the elders.
It's not the mistress's status in the world that bothers them so much. One can't afford to be picky about these things in Seireitei; if commoners weren't allowed to marry into noble clans of Seireitei, within a very short time there wouldn't be any noble clans left. The birth rate's just too low to try to be picky about the social status of souls marrying into the nobility.
And there lies the heart of the matter. Though they've been married for five years and both have been given medicine to improve the chances of conception, the master's wife has not become pregnant, not even once that anyone knows of. Perhaps due to some past injury, or venereal disease or even natural sterility, the mistress has simply proven infertile.
This can not be accepted. However long the master may live, he won't live forever; the clan must have an heir, to continue on the name and the legacy. The master won't put his wife aside, and though her health has never been anything but poor there's no telling how long she may live and accidents happen every day. So they give the order.
It's nothing personal. They've learned to live with her blood status, albeit grudgingly, but the clan needs an heir and she has failed. Naturally, the master is not informed.
It's nothing personal for the servants, either. Most of them like their mistress, who is always kind and gentle towards them. She never raises her quiet voice at the sight of an accident or mishap, is always ready and willing to lend assistance herself. Perhaps it is because of her own stark memories of where she started from; she is of the same stock as them and has not learned the deadly lessons of pride or vanity from her life as the mistress of a noble house.
And the master, they all know, loves her in a way that he has never loved anyone before. Totally, wholly. All-consuming to the point that in anyone else they would misconstrue the symptoms as madness. For her, he was willing to risk everything, gambled and won. Her death would destroy him.
And now, it is to come down to this.
If they had a choice, they would not. But they do not; they have their orders, and a promise of what will happen if they don't. So they simply steel their hearts and avert their eyes, and make themselves ready for what is to come.
The mistress's already fragile health makes it easy for it to seem as nothing but a natural physical malady. She has always coughed and been short of breath, always been waxen pale even in the heat of summer and always, always seemed on the verge of collapse even at her healthiest. It takes little to bring her low.
The water pitcher is, of course, replenished dutifully every morning, or evening, or night; whenever the mistress needs it—what is put there loses its fatal effects after a period of sixteen hours, and it is reapplied to the water every time. Thankfully, the master never tries to drink from it himself; though his more robust health would save him from the devastating effects the powder has on his wife, it would wreak havoc on his body, possibly cause permanent damage. And they can't have that.
She is growing weaker, weaker, weaker by every passing day and hour.
The master grows more quietly desperate, more quietly despairing. His helplessness consumes him the way the poison does his wife. He wants to help her and doesn't know how—No one ever even thinks of telling him and he never becomes suspicious, too blinded by his grief to notice the pattern drawing itself out. He watches as she starts to fade away, drawn back into dark oblivion from whence she came, and can not do anything but watch.
The mistress seems to come to some measure of peace and contentment with her death, though her own guilt still consumes her—They have never known what exactly it is she's guilty about but it is a terrible weight of mortal pressure to rest on her slight shoulders, compressing her beyond the limit of what they thought anyone could take. They respect her for the strength she shows, though it won't save her. It's too late now; she would be dead even if they didn't continue mixing the powder into the water.
And the servants watch, and wait. It will all be over soon. Their eyes peek out from the shadows, the ones everyone forgets—they will soon no longer be assassins, but only servants.
And fade back to where they belong, like she will.