Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach

Relations (Name Will Probably Change)

Shunsui/Nanao and Unohana/Ukitake

It is only Unohana Retsu who knows how deeply slanted the Gotei 13 is. She knows and she says less than all other shinigami on the subject of relationships among the ranks.

Her captaincy of the fourth insures this knowledge of all shinigami. She knows who is who's sister, who has fathered who's child, and who is the child of someone else. She is a member of the Shinigami Women's Association and hears all gossip of who is dating who, which she does not share, but which prevents her from being entirely shocked when occasionally she meets a patient suffering from something as a result of that relationship. She is meticulously interwoven with every fiber of a shinigami's life through her work, and works equally as hard to insure their privacy outside of the fourth; but what makes her knowledge unique and unmatched is singular and comes only from her acute knowledge of the origins of one eighth division fukutaichou. A knowledge she holds over even the Soutaichou himself.

Fukutaichou of the eighth, Ise Nanao, is Unohana Restu's daughter.

It is on the hush-hush between the four eldest captains that Yamamoto is Unohana's father by blood, with a simple name change to extinguish questions which would have, one day, arisen. It is a relation which landed her in the fourth captaincy to begin with. Her power is old and fierce and anything less than captaincy would be an insult to her efforts, but to say the Soutaichou is not without his faults would be a lie, and it is hard to simply pretend not to care about the possibility of doom one faces in battle.

Strings were pulled with Yamamoto's heavy influence, and to the chagrin of a much younger Retsu, Yamamoto was able to avoid that day-to-day threat by putting her in the only division to deal with the aftermath of such tragedies rather than the tragedies themselves, with the condition that their relationship would also be under wraps, for fear that someone might seek to harm her because of it. This mentality, both knew very well, is what got people killed in times of war, and Retsu was nothing if not immensely intelligent, so she had no choice but to agree. The Soutaichou could not be weak on account of her.

Centuries ago, when Shunsui and Juushiro were just exiting the academy and introducing themselves to the Gotei 13, an organization which Retsu had been a captain in for only slightly longer, the information was so tightly under wraps that one hint and curiosity had prompted Yamamoto's two most favored students to go poking around, and inevitably discover it. It was decided then, that it was not so important to hide the fact, and was determined as an unsaid law that the four of them would simply not speak of it. In plain sight, no one had discovered the secret since.

.

Unohana adjusted the kido she was preforming to sedate Nanao as she ended her treatment, and wondered absently that had Yamamoto not been so adamant of her being the fourth's captain, he would certainly have known by now that he had a granddaughter. No other captain would dare hide such information - not even Shunsui and Juushiro. It was a bit twisted she knew, to put her daughter through the same thing she herself had been subjected to. Unohana had worked diligently and in secret to get the very young girl into the academy, out of the academy and into the only division who's captain she trusted more than any other (based on old chivalrous habits about women and battle, and a decidedly poor attitude toward work) to make sure Nanao did very little in the way of combat. She worked even harder to insure Nanao knew nothing of her parents and Yamamoto knew nothing of her. It was an unfortunate stroke of success on Nanao's part that she'd worked her way up to vice-captaincy, and had been completely unforeseeable to Unohana. She was sure at the time when the young girl had been admitted and Yadomaru Lisa had been fukutaichou that Shunsui would never purpose the test be administered to her, even in adulthood, and had half hoped Nanao might fail it when he eventually did, though she couldn't help feeling proud that she hadn't. Nanao was capable and there was no denying this. Unohana was relieved then, that Shunsui's wounded heart over Lisa's fate had kept the now Fukutaichou Nanao mostly doing administrative work, though all three were well aware it was a waste of her skill. What Retsu hadn't accounted for when this became the new norm was the closeness the heads of a division tended to share.

To discover later that Shunsui had fallen hopelessly in love with Nanao had been an unforeseeable circumstance, as Retsu assumed Nanao would be forever too young for him; and how could Kyoraku Shunsui ever abandon his womanizing ways to pursue someone as straight-laced and so unbelievably different than himself as Nanao was? The saving grace to this was that Nanao didn't know he was serious and was also unwilling to sacrifice her heart to him. Unohana wondered if it would last, but ultimately decided that given the current situation, it didn't much matter anymore.

"How's my Nanao-chan doing, Retsu?" Shunsui murmured, slipping in through the opened door much as he'd been doing all day. He'd brought her in this morning with an insanely high temperature, flaring reiatsu and an unexplainable black-out.

"She will be fine." Unohana stated, not turning away from the young fukutaichou. She wanted badly to brush her hair back and plant a kiss on her forehead, but knew not to and so didn't. It made her heart ache silently.

"Do you know what's wrong with her?" Shunsui asked, sounding very relieved as he made to sit in the chair beside Nanao's bed. Unohana smiled serenely at him, doing very well at masking the underlining sadness, and took several steps toward the door.

"I do." She stated, but was gone before he could ask what that was. Shunsui let it be, and turned to his Nanao, who was pale and shaking, and still looked so very, very beautiful. She was a strong women. He was not surprised she would be fine. Perhaps she'd simply over worked herself.

.

Retsu had been shocked and scared to learn Nanao was spiritually inclined when she had received the letter from her caregiver in the Rukongai a little over a hundred years ago. The place was in a bad district, but she had all the faith in the world in the family she'd left her daughter to, when hollows began attacking them because of Nanao, Retsu knew she couldn't subject her friends to that, and more on her mind, she couldn't let Nanao be hurt. Still, the news had been unexpected. The odds of such a thing were impossibly small, much like Nanao's birth had been. Simply, children born of Shinigami and the Living were not heard of - as Nanao had been - and the very few cases Restu had found of those instances where they were, the children were supposed to be born into the world of the living, as Kurosaki Ichigo had been. If any spiritual pressure was to be had, it would be in death. But Nanao had been born dead and with no indication at all of reiatsu at the time.

The only conclusion Unohana could come to then, was that something had given Nanao reiatsu when she was young and living in the Rukongai. . . and now whatever power she had had - substantial and amazing as it was - was leaving her.

With a sigh the division four captain made a decision; she would need to tell Juushiro about this, and hope that he could help her.

Well, I've had this idea for a very long, because I think Unohana and Nanao are very similar, and they make the very cutest family - Unohana, Nanao, and Yamamoto xD. . . However, this story is actually not about the family aspect so much as a lot of people's pasts.

:P So I just wanted to try and write it out. Tell me, would y'all like it if I continued this story? I'm still iffy about if I want to or not.

Review with your answer. :)