Rukia lay perfectly still on the stone floor of the shrine, the cold creeping into her body. It had never bothered her, the cold. Only the rain. She couldn't bear the rain.
That night in the forest, the storm had not let up. Though Ukitake had tried to persuade her otherwise, she had wanted to carry Kaien's body back to his family. It was a tradition born of respect. A soul-reaper's body, like a hollow's, would not decay, but, within hours, perhaps days, it would lose its form, become no more than slivers of energy, sparks that would burn briefly, then fade. There would be no rebirth; no further death. Just an absence.
Sometimes, if she lay still and concentrated, as she did now, she could still feel the ache in her muscles from carrying his body. She knew the way because he had pointed it out to her time and again on bright days in the mountains: a pass between two peaks, a treacherously narrow path. Yet the journey took the better part of the night and, by the time she reached the path, something that had begun as an act of respect had become a torturous perdition. She wasn't strong enough. There was nothing remarkable in that save for her own stupidity at insisting on the endeavour. She was a slight woman trying to bear the weight of a man more than six foot tall and muscular. Her reiatsu increased her strength exponentially, but it still wasn't enough and, in the end, it was all she could do to bind her hand into the collar of his uniform in order to drag the body forward. If she had stopped for even a moment to realise what she was doing, she might have broken down there and then, but she didn't and she couldn't. By the time she reached the Shiba household, she could feel nothing and think of nothing save for the pain of exertion in every sinew of her body.
And so she had stepped out of the night like a demon.
She had rehearsed, in her head, all the things that she would say, but, in her mind, it had never been like this. His older sister and younger brother, the later little more than a child, stared aghast at her before they even saw the corpse. They saw blood that not even the rain had been able to wash away. And suddenly she could not remember the words. She heaved Kaien's body into the space between them and both woman and boy let out cries of horror. It was ravaged, mud-soaked and barely recognisable.
"Why?" cried his sister.
While the boy fell on the body, the woman, stricken, seemed unable to touch it. She kept staring at Rukia: "Why did you do this?"
How, Rukia wondered, did she know that she had killed him? Then she realised that the woman was referring only to the state of the corpse and that she had no excuse or explanation. "How dare you! How dare you bring him like this, shinigami!"
"Kukaku!" The boy yelled: "Kukaku!" He had pulled back the collar of Kaien's uniform. There was a slash on his neck from Ukitake's sword, but the skin beneath it was clean and white. A single wound in his chest marked the point above his heart where her sword had pierced him: "Kukaku, hollows don't kill with katanas!"
"I killed him," Rukia said before she had any idea that the words would pass her lips. The woman and the boy froze and stared. Then the child let out a howl of rage and flew at her. He was caught by his sister, who lifted him, bawling, into her arms:
"Why?" she said. As she did, though, an ethereal blue light wreathed the corpse and Rukia stepped backwards. "No!" screamed Kukaku. She let the boy go and fell on her brother's body, grasping both of his hands in hers, even as it began to dissolve.
Rukia took another step back into the dark. She couldn't take her eyes from Kaien's face. The blue light bleached away the mud, smoothing out his features. Sparks began to spiral up from the body. No matter how much Kukaku pleaded and screamed, it was too late. His flesh broke apart, streaming upwards like a fountain of brilliant broken glass. The centre of his being erupted like a star and, for an instant only, the plain, the house, even the mountains themselves, were bathed in the light of a second sun.
And then the darkness returned. So much deeper than before.
Rukia turned and began to walk back the way she had come. The sounds of their grief stayed with her long after she knew she was out of earshot.