Let's face it: it's not canon, and never will be canon. But it should be, dang it all!

1. CATCHING STEAM

Aizen Sousuke was a man who liked to keep things. Not for jealousy—as God he could not be susceptible to such mortal follies—but for foresight and planning. He kept things the way prudent old men keep things, locked in fine oaken boxes and tallied and inventoried and labeled. He would slide them away into his filing system, and pack them neatly for safekeeping. He was careful with his possessions. After all, each one had a purpose, even if it was known only to their owner.

Aizen was also a man who liked to keep people. It wasn't that he was cruel. He was merely intelligent, and his intelligence told him to plan for the future. Like a box of savings, Aizen gathered loyalty from those he know, hoarded it, and spent it for his own ends. Hinamori, for example: the girl's infinite trust was held in storage for years, preparing for the final stages of his plan. And the shinigami of Seretei who looked up to him: each one influenced the others, those who were close to Aizen spreading his the word of his goodness. All just currency to be cashed in later, things to be saved and held.

Unohana knew this about him, but it took a long time to realize that she was one of the things he kept.

The day Aizen left, Unohana found a moment to sit perfectly still, kneeling on a soft green cushion in her office, the door locked and a spell of silence placed upon it. She held a cup of tea in her folded hands, meditating on the way steam rose from it in trailing clouds. You cannot catch steam, she reflected. You cannot manipulate it, cannot lock it away or bind it to you, cannot depend upon it as one more tool in your arsenal of foolish people. You cannot keep steam, you cannot save it, you cannot spend it.

Perhaps that is the best way to be, like steam, with no roots at all. That way you cannot be captured or hurt. But how does one become like steam? How does one shake off the chains and flow away into the air? How does one forget what it is like to be a prized possession?

The clock turned its silent hand to the hour mark, and Unohana stood up and opened the door, her expression never changing. These things could wait for her.

-----

Zaraki was not a man who liked to keep things. Perhaps it was trained into him by years of bloody madness, during which nothing was likely to stay the same for longer than it took to cleave a sword through bone. Whatever the reason, Zaraki had almost nothing he considered his possession. His sword? Nameless, a simple tool that he might happily replace if he could. His clothes? Material things, easily destroyed or undone. His body? A vessel, nothing more, risked daily and battered continually. His life? Well, that was just one more thing in the world, mattering little either way.

Even Yachiru, clinging to his back and sprinting around the knees of the 11th division officers—for all his love, she did not belong to him. She was a person all her own.

So when Zaraki saw the fourth division captain sitting in her office, staring from the window at nothing but the blue sky of Seretei, he judged her merely the way he judged everyone else: was she strong enough to deserve his time?

-----

Unohana opened the office window one day to see Zaraki staring at her, slouched against the wall and twirling his sword absentmindedly in his gnarled hand. She arched an eyebrow; he looked back at her with something short of his normal grin.

"Well, hell, looks like ya caught me," he said sheathing the ragged blade. "Figured that might happen one o' these days."

"Actually, it happened quite a few days ago, Zaraki-san."

"Four, right? Yeah, I knew."

"I thought you might."

"Un." He started to walk away.

"Zaraki-san?" Unohana called as an afterthought.

"Yeah?"

"Did you care what I might think when I caught you?"

The captain of the 11th squad tilted his head slightly, eyeing her with detached interest.

"Nope," he answered truthfully. "Don't really matter watcha do now. Ain't like I own ya or nothin'. Either you give a shit or you don't."

"I understand, Zaraki-san," Unohana said with a slight smile.

"Kenpachi," he grunted in reply.

"As you wish."

She closed the window and watched the man shrug and saunter off. Like steam, that one—uncatchable, untamed.

Perhaps it was time she took that road herself. No need to be bound by the past, after all. No need to belong to anyone. She knew now that Aizen was a man who liked to keep things, but that didn't mean Unohana had to allow herself to be kept. And Zaraki might not have been a man who liked to keep things, but that didn't mean Unohana couldn't choose to be there anyway.

Better to choose someone who didn't have a savings box for a heart.