Authors's Note: Special thanks for review to Huan (who was Kaze), Icyangel, Shadowpain, Jazzabell, the anonymous reviewer who got excited that they'd had an argument (!) and Goran - in response to the questions - why did Byakuya get so angry and why does Hisana feel that the shinigami are less than human: I think there's more than one possible answer to both questions. Hisana's opinion on shinigami is not my own, but I felt it was true to her character and experiences. Make of that what you will. Thanks also to Splitheart for continuing to review and to Ashes2ashes. Thank you thank you.
Oh gods, chapter 502 - my babies! D: I truly wish I could give him happier times, but, well...
Sometimes, it seemed to Hisana that there existed an unbridgeable distance between them, that she had stepped into a strange land where she trod carefully through gardens made of glass. If her footfalls were too heavy or her words too harsh, she was frightened they would shatter all too easily. At other times, that gulf was the very thing that made her stop, mid-sentence, mid-mouthful or partway down a flight of stairs,overcome with a sense of astonishment that she, of all people, had found her way here. To him. He was nothing less than the sun in her world, the certain return of daylight after a long dark. And if his presence was as basic to her as breathing, still she could not bring herself to take it for granted. His touch; the way he loved her; the hand that slipped into hers; even after four years of marriage, the way he said her name; each was a surprise and source of fascination.
So it should have been perfect. It should have been a fairy-tale, except that Hisana had lived too long and seen too much to believe in fairy-tales.
They were not perfect. Nor were they perfect for each other.
She visited Rukongai every day. He asked her not to; he sent men in her stead; he did everything in his power save for actually forbidding her. Because, in forbidding her, he would force her to choose. And, while she remained uncoerced he could perhaps believe that she was not hour by hour, minute by minute, silently making her choice: a sister over a husband; her past, always, before her present.
He could not give her what she needed. In all other respects, he could be there fully, but he could not forgive the absent child who had taken his wife, and she, in turn, could not step away from a memory without it tainting her. Her atonement was to return, every day, as often as she could, to the place where she had left her behind.
The house was half-painted, the rooms filled with new furnishings lying under dust-sheets. Thoughts of the future were put on hold. They were not a family; they were two of three: incomplete.
In the early winter of their fourth year together, Hisana caught a fever. She hated to spend even one day in the sereitei in case that was the day they found her, so it was a difficult time. Byakuya was in the world of the living. She was housebound and the servants brought her food too often. When fever racked her body the cool winter-time house fell away and she fell into half-waking nightmares of fires that tore through the mansion and the garden.
She recovered slowly, but her chest worsened. Enough so that, on his return, Byakuya remarked upon the change in her. Since they'd shared a bed, he had never known her without the sharp, raking cough that woke her on winter mornings. Now, he worried about her; her breathing was shallow in the night; she woke up choking and would sit, doubled over on the edge of the bed, until the spasms passed.
His concern only served to make her self-aware. A constant source of fear for her was that he might find a reason to prevent her trips into the Rukon. The two weeks she had lost to fever had been bad enough; she simply could not afford to be ill. So on the morning when her coughing left flecks of scarlet on her cupped palms, she hid them from Byakuya. It was a bright day in winter and the air was clear when she left the house, her fine clothes hidden beneath a dull grey riding cloak, the paperwork for the checkpoints, all official now, folded into one of her hands.
Just so, she returned to Inuzuri, to the doorstep of the now-dilapidated house. There was a market at the next crossroads. The usual gathering of lost and dreaming souls had been drawn towards it like leaves in the wind, and, having confirmed that there was no change to this place of pilgrimage, no sign or clue, she went to join them.
The boats must have recently arrived in the docks because the vendors were selling cheap plum wine and rice that they were boiling in vats. Flies buzzed in the air. Those with money and those without gathered to see what they could buy or steal. Standing beside one such vendor, Hisana started as she felt a heavy hand land on her shoulder. She turned. It was a young man, a stranger: red hair, chiselled features; soft eyes in a hard face. She'd seen his sort before: decent folk made rough around the edges.
He blinked as she turned around and snatched his hand back as if he thought she might bite it:
"Uh, sorry, I mistook you for someone."
"No problem," she said, turning back to scan the crowd. And then she hesitated. He had thought she was someone else. Someone he knew.
"Hey!" She started after him through the crowd, but, for someone so large, he was fleet and surprisingly adept at disappearing. Still, she spotted him at the far end of the street as the crowds began to thin, the length of perhaps seven houses between them. If she couldn't close that gap, she would lose him. She broke into a run.
After only fifty paces, the world lurched.
Hisana fell. She had lost her footing, except that she couldn't get up and she couldn't breathe. She'd come close enough to drowning once to know that this was exactly what it felt like.
After several sickening seconds, a breath lanced into her chest like a blade and she started gulping at the air. Get up, she willed herself. Get up. Remember where you are. Across the street, she could see a group of youths, hands stuffed into their pockets. They were regarding her the way that a pack of wolves might watch the lame straggler in a deer herd. Watching. Waiting. Needing only patience. She crawled forward and steadied herself against a nearby wall, heaving herself up. The flash of a silk kimono beneath a grey cloak. She wondered if they had seen, but that was hardly of prime importance since the world was still spinning merrily. Her vision filled with spikes of light. Shit, she couldn't get enough breath and it felt as if her body was already falling away; all that mattered was the thin vein of air she was squeezing into her lungs. She slid back down the wall.
She stayed that way for a long time, slumped in the gutter. The youths remained on the periphery of the scene, while a hundred others passed her without so much as a glance, their figures peppered by the dark spots in her vision. This was Rukongai, after all. No-one was going to help her, so she had a choice:
"Get up, Hisana," she whispered.
Byakuya hated it when she came here alone. If he found out she'd been taken ill, he would put an end to these excursions, she was sure. It was the thought of his anger that made her haul herself up and start placing one foot in front of another.
It took forever. Her every step was less sure than it should be. She didn't turn to anyone for help; not even the shinigami on the checkpoints. If she could just reach the mansion, she could swear the servants to secrecy and let them tend her. For once, she would be grateful for their ministrations. As she passed the last checkpoint, the shinigami there said her name. She knew him and usually greeted him, but today her footsteps were weaving and she did not reply. She did hear him comment though, in scandalised tones, to his comrade, that he believed she had been drinking. They laughed together and their words were lost behind her.
By the time she reached the mansion, she had changed her mind. She wanted Byakuya. She couldn't remember why it had been so important to hide from him, couldn't recall why she was here, in the garden, or where she was travelling from and to. And was it the afternoon already? He would be at his writing desk, surely, unless it was the morning and she simply wasn't thinking straight. The lawn ended. Her footfalls were heavy and uneven on the decking, and her shoulder struck the wall.
Where the hell was she, she wondered. It was somewhere with wooden walkways and a beautiful garden.
You're losing this one, Hisana, said the voice inside her head; there's nothing to face, nothing to fight. And we are so used to fighting.
No-one struck her to make her fall. No force pushed her to the ground. But she did fall. And, in defeat, she was almost completely silent.