Disclamer: I don't own Bleach...I don't even own the detergent :P.

So this is the long awaited sequel, and the first ever Byakuya/Yuzu fic in this fandom...ok, so maybe there are more, but not centered around this couple. Everyone, thank you for reading Re-education and I hope you like this one too, I may not be able to update often, but I do hope you'll like the chapters. Rest assured, I won't drag this for 37 chapters, but I hope this doesn't share the fate of most of my sequels...

So...I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it.

Different truth

What attracted all those guys?

She was too innocent, too beautiful, too giving. Kuchiki Byakuya knew these things and he loved her for it, but these men were only after one thing, and she was too naïve to notice. Yuzu…she needed more saving even than Inoue Orihime.

It wasn't like he was stalking her to know, but you just had to look at her to make out her character. Sweet, caring, never using a foul word, always with the best opinion for everybody. If a car ran her down, she'd think it was her fault and blame herself for it. Thankfully, she had an overprotective brother who chased away the unwanted suitors…

Well, at least when he wasn't around.

He had to be careful, of course. It wasn't some law or arrangement, but there were so many problems, so many things that stopped him from being completely open with her. There was his family (a bunch of ancient dinosaurs, who unfortunately had teeth), her family (read: an annoying brother), the fact that he was dead and a shinigami…the list was long.

But not impossible to overcome. That was the reason why he stubbornly kept loving her and tried to make his world ready for her.

He went up against the elders. The geezers were shocked to the foundations of their ancient souls when he not only allowed his beloved sister to marry that commoner Kurosaki Ichigo (when he expressed his total dislike of the latter from the second he saw him), and then made arrangements for them (and only them), to take over the stead of the clan in case he should die without producing and heir.

For those seven or eight years he went through more scandals, fits and assassins than in his entire lifetime. That, and the love potion a certain mad scientist had created and that was shaking his system up like hell.

But every effort and hard time seemed worth it when he saw her, when she smiled at him and called him Byakuya-san, when they talked about so many different things as he helped her around the clinic. And when he wasn't seeing her under the pretext of visiting his beloved sister, they wrote. He took great precaution with those, and made sure nobody could catch them. For that purpose, he had to let Yachiru in on the whole secret, but since she liked him, she wouldn't tell anybody. Yuzu's letters came through the same way, and as soon as he read and memorized them, he quickly burned them along with the useless reports. Because he knew he couldn't be too careful-the most dangerous of the Kuchiki elders were isolated after their first open campaign to assassinate him and Rukia, but you could never be too careful, right?

It was all worth it, he knew. Just to see her smile, and everything seemed possible for him.

That was Byakuya…

…And now for Yuzu…

She knew that sometimes, fate is in your genes. Sometimes, your life is predetermined. Perhaps that's why she felt so guilty that she was different. She wasn't a glamorous football player like Karin-chan, or had such a noble profession as Ichi-nii, and she certainly wasn't in love with someone so close as Rukia-chan or Sado-san. She wasn't adventurous either, unlike her brother who went to work for the Peace Corps just so that he could be with his wife, or like Karin who turned down more successful offers just to go to a college in Spain and be with her beau.

It was unnatural, yet she couldn't be happy any other way. She was 22 years old, a secretary who was trying to get her diploma in botany and she was in love with her brother-in-law, a man who was a good ten years older than her.

It had all started rather innocently, with him coming to find his sister, and then he had lived for a while with them, had helped out and even saved her life from a speeding vehicle, although her memory of that time was a bit blurry. She liked him, even though he was very reserve. He offered kindness to those who deserved it, and Yuzu loved that. Perhaps at the beginning it was nothing more than an infatuation, a school-girl crush, a shojo-manga type love that wasn't going to last in the real world. But when he had left to work in Osaka, a place that seemed like another world to her, she had discovered that the letters they exchanged were far from satisfactory for her aching heart.

Kuchiki Byakuya…never had she seen a man, so composed and reserved, and again, she had never seen anyone who could hold so much kindness and devotion in one's heart. His presence seemed to have woken her up, from that little timeless realm she had lived ever since her mother died. Her life had been revolving around keeping the family together, with Ichigo's stubbornness and Karin's tomboyisness and Isshin's quirks…sometimes, she felt she was the only "really normal" person in the family, but suddenly, there had been Byakuya, holding her close to him, to save her from a speeding car. She didn't remember much from that day, other than the deafening beat of her heart.

Suddenly, the world startled her, as if somebody had turned on the volume at max and she started to notice the wonderful songs of the birds, the pretty colors on the street, the way everything was ten different things at a time….She noticed how she had changed over the years, how she still was changing, how she started to metamorphose from an ugly worm to a pretty butterfly…no, she noticed how she turned into a woman. And that was probably the most enthusing thing of all.

Sadly, her family still saw her as reliable, sweet little Yuzu, and she thought Byakuya saw her like that too. He was older, he had been married, he had a sister…he probably saw her as a baby. It pained her, but that was probably the truth. He would never see her as a woman unless she made him. Somehow, that had motivated her to make some changes into her future plans.

Of course, somebody had to look after their father, because like Ichigo said: "Somebody has to keep the old goat from setting the house on fire.", and Yuzu knew it. However, she also knew she had to be independent, and moved into her own apartment…not too far away, of course. But the truth was that Yuzu was an incurably romantic. It was a bit shameful, but she had harbored a wildly fantastic vision of her life ahead. She'd work hard to get a good job that would give her some financial stability. She'd follow her own morals and make her family proud of her. Then, Byakuya may fall into some hardship, something that would make him short on staff, and then she'd volunteer to help him out as a….oh, maybe a secretary. Slowly, step by step, thanks to her skills and support, he'd get out of the setback, and by the time he's back on his feet, he'd have realized that Yuzu was more precious to him than other women, and eventually, he'd fall in love with her the way she had fallen in love with him.

Every time she tried to bring herself back to the ground with arguments like: such things never happen in real life, for some reason, that motivated her even more. There was no getting out of it, she was in enchanted waters.

Little did she know that the truth was a bit different.

It was a nice summer evening, and she had just come back from her job, when the phone rang and she ran to get it. Still with her shoes on, a little breathless, she got it and almost passed out when she heard Byakuya's voice on it.

"Did I chose an…inappropriate time to call?" he asked, probably mistaking her heavy breath to be caused by something he had interrupted.

"No, no!" eager to show him the opposite, Yuzu tried to compose herself "How are you, Byakuya-san?"

"I am well…I'm in town for a…business meeting…" he seemed hesitant "Will it be inconvenient for me to come and visit?"

"Yeah, sure…" almost too excited, Yuzu quickly gave him her new address

"Will it be…ok with you if I came tonight?" there was some noise in the background, probably him leaving his brief case on the hotel bed…"I'm sorry, I just have to…I'm not very sure how much time I have."

"Of course! You can come in…one hour, if you like." Yuzu's head was spinning, as he agreed and bid her goodbye courtetiously. Then she hung up, and stared at the phone wondering if this was real, if this was actually happening to her, and if she hadn't been too eager…

And then she realized that she had wasted a whole of five minutes daydreaming, while there was so much to do…Knowing Byakuya, he'd be punctual to the very last nano-second, the apartment was a mess, she didn't have anything in the fridge and she needed a shower, quickly.

Yuzu beat the delivery service of the restaurant showering, and picked up her order in her dressing gown. It was a disaster, she thought as she tried to put some order into the living room, he was coming and she had absolutely nothing to wear. Being the well brought up girl she was, she laid money aside for dark days, but that had definitely had a bad influence on her wardrobe-all she had were outfits for the office. Of course, there were was a dress she had bought when her friends took her on a shopping spree, but she never intended to put it on, and it was not quite something she could wear without giving him the wrong impression.

So finally she settled on a white blouse and a blue skirt, casual, yet when she undid the first two buttons-provocative. Maybe it was a little not like her usual taste, but hey, it was Byakuya.

The heir to the Kuchiki clan took more time to stare at the phone. Earlier that day, he had finally crushed another massive campaign against him. The assassins were rookies, so they didn't have the guts to poison themselves and die, and they sang very quickly. All the people responsible for the plot were immediately sent to exile, but not before Byakuya suggested that they should try and end their lives before they brought more disgrace to the family. They sent for their seconds immediately.

And now he was free…well, not completely, but the biggest threat was gone. A good eight years had passed since that summer when he had first fallen in love with Yuzu, and he knew that if only she could love him back, life…afterlife would be perfect.

So why waste more time? He wasn't sure why was he so stunned even now? Perhaps it was the fact that the moment he'd been dreaming about was mere minutes away from him. Because Byakuya too, was really romantic.

Carefully, he looked at the bouquet of white lilies he had gotten for her. It wasn't roses, but hey, he could shower her with them later. For now, he had to be careful. He still had to go through the hardest part, which was confessing everything, absolutely EVERYTHING to her.

Scary.

At the appointed hour, he flash-stepped before her door. A deer breath to stead the nerves, a check if his breath didn't stink, and then…he knocked.

Yuzu tripped over her own feet as she rushed forward. She stopped at the mirror and ruffled her long, blond locks and opened it.

Byakuya smiled! He smiled! And he had FLOWERS for her! Yuzu hoped she didn't pass out there and then, as she mustered some coherent sentences to invite him and thank him for his attention. Then he went into her kitchen, instead of the living room, and actually helped her find a vase and lay the table. The tension faded as the routine kicked in, and the room was filled with coziness, warmth. Yuzu felt like heaven.

He watched her as she poured them both a soft drink to go with their food, and he thought-god, she's beautiful. The twilight was making her hair look like sunlight, and her eyes were brilliant with…I want to kiss her, he thought. I so damn much want to kiss her!

"Byakuya-san?" Yuzu turned around to meet his intense gaze. For some reason, it gave her chills. Slowly, he walked to her and said:

"I need to discuss something with you."

"You do?" he was mesmerizing her….she was going to faint…she just knew it… "Like...what?"

"But first I need to do something…" he said and came closer "May I?"

"Sure…" she mumbled, not knowing how to react.

Byakuya cupped her face and slowly lowered his body so that their mouths could be aligned. Go slowly, he thought, we don't want to do anything harsh, just press your lips together and go nice and slow…

The plan worked down to the pressing of the lips. Then…everything shut down.

He inhaled her scent and it was driving him crazy. He wanted more, so much more. The love potion kicked in, a thousand times stronger than before, urging him to go further, to take what was so obligingly bestowed on him.

Yuzu's vision dialed. His body was hot, far more hotter than she'd imagined, and all the blood rushed into her face, coloring her cheeks and lips in crimson red. She got on her tippy toes just to get a better access to him, her leg muscles hurt from the tension, and the sweet pleasure that was spilling all over her body was enough to kill her.

His hands were around her, securing her tightly, and she clung to him, holding onto dear life. How could he be so strong, and she so impossibly fragile…it just wasn't fair.

Eventually, the need for air forced them to break apart, and Yuzu had to hold on the kitchen sink so that she would not faint. Byakuya braced himself on the window frame, too disrupted to say anything.

She looked up at him, still panting. She needed to know, she HAD to know...even though it was like all her dreams were coming true, she had to know why…

"Byakuya-san…" she breathed and tried to reach for him

"Not yet…" he rose a hand and looked up "Not yet…I still…I still must tell you…"

"Tell me what?" Yuzu brushed his trembling limb off and held onto his shoulder "It doesn't matter. Byakuya-san…Byakuya…is this really…what I…"

"Please…" he held her shoulders "I must tell you everything…before anything else is said, you must know everything."

"It doesn't matter…whatever it is…" he shook his head and forced her to sit down on a chair. Then he started pacing around the room, like a caged lion, and then, suddenly full of resolve, turned to her and said:

"I am a shinigami."

A/N-Should I continue?