Sometimes, as he sat on his mansion's roof late at night, under the pouring rain, Byakuya allowed himself to wonder what his life would have been like had he not been born into nobility. Would he be a much different person, having grown free of the heavy weight of expectation, or would he inexorably have ended the same? Would Hisana have loved him? Would he even have met her? And Rukia? Maybe he wouldn't even be a shinigami, lost among the souls of the Rukongai. But it was the most difficult, trying to picture a life without Senbonzakura, without a part of himself.
And yet, soaked to the bone by the ice cold rain, alone in the dark night except for the ghosts of lives unlived and the whispers of words unsaid, Byakuya wished. He wished he could hold his sister in his arms and never let her go, whispering in her ear how much he loved her, how proud of her he was. He wished he could roll his eyes at his Fukutaicho's antics, and that he could freely return the insults of the beast the 11th claimed as its Taicho. Most of all, he wished he could go to the one that had held his heart, and forever lay in those gentle arms, proclaiming their love for the rest of eternity.
But wishes were just that, and it would never be allowed, never be proper, he thought as the cold brought by the crying heavens matched the one in his heart. For he was a noble.
And as much this place seems like a palace, it is nothing but a golden cage. And no matter how much we try to look like soaring eagles, we will never be more than canaries with clipped wings.