Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. Obviously.

This story is part of the Chaos Theory AU. It probably won't make much sense unless you've read The Butterfly Effect. It takes place between that and The Three-Body Problem.

Triple Point

A Bleach Fanfic

Chapter One: Friend

So I walked back to where I'd once called home
But the rooms were dark and bare and the garden overgrown
And the door was still locked and the windows still shut
And the wall was still cracked
Why did I come back?
And the answer so thin left me hollow within
'cause nothing had changed except the date and my age
And I still have this pain bloating my veins
Thumping in my aching brain

From 'Stray Dog' – Passenger

No more than a month after Ishida had left the Soul Society, the chaos he'd brought with him was still everywhere.

Of course, it wasn't nearly all his fault. Renji knew that. But not everyone had been so close to the happenings. Until all the information was sorted through and released to the general population, a lot of people would probably be thinking that the Quincy invader had something to do with the traitor captains. It was the easy assumption to make, considering how close together everything had happened. And what most people thought about the Quincy as a group.

Renji occasionally put in a good word for the kid, if he happened to be around people discussing it—but honestly not much could be done until things calmed down a bit anyway. Maybe eventually Hisagi would be able to get back to the press and put the truth out there, but considering that the Ninth had just lost its captain… well, Renji wasn't expecting that too soon.

His progress to the Fourth was obstructed by people milling around or trying to get in and out of the area. It seemed like no one really wanted to be by themselves right now—and everyone was struggling to get back to business as usual. He couldn't blame them. Nothing like this had happened in the history of Soul Society, as far as he knew. Most of the shinigami here had had their worlds flipped upside down—and backwards for good measure. A month wasn't enough time to deal with all of that.

Property destruction had been pretty minimal, with the exception of the area around where he and Ishida had fought, and the Sōkyoku Hill itself. But the lack of damage to repair on the surface of the Seireitei was a bad reflection of what was going on inside it.

Turning in towards the Fourth, Renji dodged an outgoing messenger and stepped into the hospital. Ignoring the front desk, he bypassed several plain doors and reached one near the end of the hall. It already sat ajar—he wondered if maybe she had another visitor.

A quick glance inside, however, revealed only Isane, making notes on a clipboard. She looked a little better than she had in the first few days after everything, when the injuries had been major. Only she, Unohana, and a few of the higher seats were really good enough to cope with the wounds sustained that day, so he knew she'd had a lot to do.

Renji crossed the threshold, clearing his throat.

Isane started, clearly not expecting anyone to be there. Something in her hair clanged against the earring on the same side, and she took half a step back. "Oh. It's you, Renji."

He blinked. "Someone else I should be?"

Isane shook her head. "No. Sorry. I just… you're earlier than usual."

"I didn't realize." His feet had just taken him this way.

His eyes shifted to the room's sole bed, and he felt himself frown before he really decided to do so. It was such a bizarre thing, to see Momo hooked up to that many machines and wires and whatever. He almost couldn't reconcile this with the memory of her as the person who'd first stopped running and faced down those Hollows on their training mission. Or even the vice-captain of the Fifth, so proud of her division—and smiling more often than not.

He clenched his teeth, feeling a surge of hot anger. It was his fault. Aizen's. Renji didn't care about thrones or limits or any of the rest of that shit—he cared about what that bastard had done to them. To Rukia. To Momo. And indirectly, to Izuru and Hisagi and Rangiku as well. But this… something about this was worst of all.

"She's stable," Isane said from beside him.

He forced his eyes away from Momo and to the Fourth's fukutaichō. She wore a placid expression—the same sort all the healers had. But Isane's was imperfect, he thought; it was as though she couldn't stop herself from caring quite well enough. Selfishly, he was glad that someone like that was looking in on his friend.

"But we can't say when she'll wake up. It could be tomorrow, or…" she pursed her lips. "Or a long time from now."

"You mean never."

She looked away—but she nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. Aizen's the one who has to answer for this, not you."

Isane's knuckles went white on her clipboard. With exaggerated care, she replaced it at the foot of Momo's hospital bed. "Be that as it may… we will continue to monitor her condition. I could… I could let you know if anything changes?"

Renji inclined his head in a terse nod.

He might have heard her sigh, but it was hard to tell. She paused for a moment, moving her hand towards him in the beginning of a motion she never finished. Instead, she let it fall back to her side and slipped out of the room—leaving him alone with his friend.

"Hey Momo."

He hadn't known what to say to her the first time. He still didn't. But Isane had told him that talking to her might help her. If that was all he could do, well—Renji was damn well going to do it.

Approaching her bedside, he crossed his arms over his chest, shifting his weight a few times. Back and forth, from one side to the other. He was constantly in flux, these days. "Everything's still kind of a mess around here."

Her breath fogged the breathing machine they had her attached to. Her chest rose and fell steadily. But she did not reply.

"Your Third Seat's doing what he can. Some other people are helping out, too. If you're not awake by the time the schedule's back to normal, I'll take your zanjutsu drills for you. I know you don't like teaching those anyway." He grimaced. "I can't help with the kidō ones, though. I'm not sure Izuru's gonna be in any shape, either, but I'll make sure someone teaches 'em."

He might be able to ask Rukia to do it. But that was a whole different can of worms; one he'd have to deal with pretty soon.

The mechanical whirring of her machines was the only sound for a long time. Renji stared at Momo, then stared out the window, then stared at the ceiling for a while. He hated this. He hated everything about it. His hands tightened on his arms until it was painful.

"You have friends, you know," he said, his voice rough. "When you wake up—when—I'm gonna remind you of that. 'Cause you're probably gonna feel like your whole damn world ended. But it didn't. We're still here."

No response.

Renji swallowed. "Wake up soon, Momo," he said.

"We're waiting for you."

He wasn't exactly sure when checking in on everyone had become a routine, but it had. Renji did divisional work in the morning, and then went to see Momo during the lunch hour. After that, he led a training session—which one depended on the day—and after that, he made his way to the Third to check in on Izuru.

Nowadays, the third was functioning about as well as the Ninth, which was to say that the first few months had been really rough, but the edges were starting to smooth down a little bit. Izuru had done a lot of the work for his division to begin with. It wasn't like Hisagi's situation—where the captain had intentionally kept the most difficult aspects of the job to himself.

As a result, picking up the slack wasn't as hard. The mood was about as depressing as everywhere else, but when Renji entered the office, all the desks in the front room were occupied, and people were shuffling papers around. None of them smiled; only a few even looked up when he entered.

The captain's office was sealed off by kidō to prevent entry, but the door to Izuru's on the other side of the hall was wide open. It gave him a view out towards the front. Renji couldn't imagine that was accidental. He knocked a couple times on the frame before stepping into the room.

Izuru raised his head after a moment. By this point, Renji doubted his presence was a surprise. The other man smiled thinly. There was a dark circle under his visible eye; most everyone had them at the moment.

"Renji."

"Izuru." Renji sat on the arm of one of the chairs in front of Izuru's desk, reaching over to grab a piece of candy from the bowl on the corner of the surface. Popping it out of the wrapper, he gave it a casual toss into his mouth.

Izuru had one of those expressions which conveyed nearly-limitless patience. He hadn't used to, back at the academy. Renji personally suspected that it was something his friend had developed because of Ichimaru. The former captain was known for toying with members of his division; it had once been mostly harmless.

"How is she?"

Renji moved the candy to one cheek. It was, of course, peppermint. Izuru would never eat something as cheerful as cherry or orange flavor.

"You should go see her yourself." It was what he said every day. Because it was the question Izuru asked him—every day.

And also as usual, Izuru looked away guiltily, fixing his eyes on the persimmon tree outside his window. The leaves were darkening from spring to summer green—they might bear fruit soon.

"…she's the same. Isane-san's sister brings her flowers." Or so she'd said when he'd asked about them.

"Kiyone-san?"

Renji shrugged. He didn't know her personally, but that might have been her name. Izuru moved his eyes away from the tree at this, pursing his lips.

Renji didn't really understand why Izuru was so hesitant to go see Momo; he supposed it could have been a lot of things. Maybe, like Renji, he'd find it hard to see her like that. Find his anger hard to suppress. But Izuru wasn't usually that kind of guy. With him, it was probably guilt, or shame, or something like that. He bit down on the candy, resisting the urge to grimace when the peppermint flavor flooded his mouth. It wasn't spicy, exactly, but he still didn't like it much.

He swallowed. "You should go see her," he repeated. "She's not gonna get any better if we're not there to support her." Going through something like that… there was no way she wouldn't need her friends at some point or another.

"…I know." Izuru still didn't sound convinced, really.

Renji had a pretty good sense for when he shouldn't push any further, though, so he didn't. Standing, he reached up to rub the back of his neck with his hand.

"Well. I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."

"Goodbye for now, Renji."

The divisional training ring stood empty this early in the morning. The ground was still slick and wet with dew. Renji, preferring to wait until it had dried a bit, chose this time to perform Jinzen.

Crossing his legs, he set Zabimaru over his knees, closed his eyes, and sank into his inner world.

Renji knew that some people were surprised by what theirs looked like. His hadn't been a shock to him at all.

The landscape he was surrounded by had several massive cracks in it, fissures that seemed to be filled by nothing but blackness. Aside from that, though, it was a weird mix of other places from his life. Most of it was just the shack he'd lived in as a kid, and the tree out in front of the place. The ground was hard-packed dirt and dying brown grass. Pushed up against the other side, though, was a ring nearly identical to the one he sat beside in the outer world. It was staffed by a bunch of targets and training dummies, made of wood or straw, drooping slightly in the latter case. Off to the left were pieces cut out from the dive bar he'd frequented during his academy days, clustered together with a riverbank from Inuzuri, complete with five sets of footprints at a campsite with a lean-to. Three of the sets had faded to faint impressions, but they'd never disappear.

The moon hung low and red in the sky, occasionally, as now, hidden behind a cloak of clouds.

Zabimaru himself lounged under the tree, a pile of fruits next to him. Peaches, persimmons, and apples, mostly. His snake-tail lay around one of the roots, but perked up upon noticing Renji's entrance.

"Oh, look who it is." The snake's voice was the higher-pitched of the two.

He still wasn't sure why they both had voices. Then again, Renji wasn't sure about a lot of things, when it came to Zabimaru. Mostly, he was an asshole. But he was an asshole Renji had to listen to.

"I come here every day," he said in his defense.

The baboon looked up at him, then, biting into the flesh of an apple with his sharp teeth. "You're not here about bankai again, I hope."

He shook his head. "Not really." There were enough other things to worry about. Bankai was still certainly on his mind—he hadn't missed the part where there was going to be a very important war in about a decade—but he had to get the rest of this shit sorted out first or he'd never have the right frame of mind for bankai training anyhow.

"Oh? Then what?" Zabimaru bit into the fruit again with a loud crunch, cracking the core with his teeth.

Renji scratched the back of his head, glancing over at the bar/riverside area. The building part looked like it had been split in half, and one of them taken away—it was complete but open to the outside. "I'm stuck," he admitted.

"Stuck how?" Zabimaru sounded disinterested in the extreme, but that was normal. He threw the remnants of the apple core into the river with a flick of his wrist, picking up a peach next.

Renji tried not to roll his eyes. This was, after all, serious. "My friends," he said, watching the ripples from the spirit's toss grow and fade in the slow current of the river. "They're in pain. And nothing I do seems to help."

"Why do you have to help? Isn't this something they should work through on their own?" The flesh of the peach gave easily under the baboon's teeth, bleeding juice onto the ground.

He scowled. "Like hell. These are my friends we're talking about. I'm not just gonna leave them to suffer alone!"

Sometimes, his zanpakutō spirit really pissed him off.

"And what can you do?" The snake asked, flicking its tongue at him. "Your captain didn't betray you. You can't possibly understand their pain."

That was what he feared. Sitting in a quiet hospital room, watching Momo breathe—or seeing Izuru's eyes cloud over when he stared at the tree outside his office. Standing in a corner of the Ninth, and thinking that the ink stains on Hisagi's fingers were too dark. Knowing Rangiku filled one more cup of sake each time they went out with the others. Being able to do nothing. He feared that a distance was growing, one he would not be able to cross when the dust settled.

And he hated it.

"Yeah, I know I don't get it. But…" He ground his teeth. "There has to be something I can do anyway, if I just figure it out." Renji wasn't book-smart like Momo, and he couldn't even say he understood people as well as Izuru did. But he refused to accept that there was nothing he might do to help.

Zabimaru blinked at him, pausing in the act of peeling the peach down to its pit. "Just like there was something you could do when that Kuchiki showed up and took your best friend away?"

"You—" Renji took a halting step forward, upper lip pulling away from his teeth in a snarl.

Zabimaru threw the rest of the peach at him. Renji ducked to the side to avoid it. By the time he'd turned his attention back to the spirit, he'd stood—both heads glared.

"You're a coward," they said together, and the baboon continued. "Fix your own problems first. Then, maybe, you'll be able to do something about everyone else's."

Renji came to in the outer world with a start. Zabimaru had tossed him out on his ass, apparently. He knew the spirit wouldn't be any more help now until he did something worth approval. Sighing heavily, Renji hauled himself to his feet and started pacing back and forth on the field. The dew-slick grass dampened his tabi quickly, but he didn't really care much.

His own problems? He supposed he had a few.

So which one did Zabimaru want him to deal with? The spirit was generally critical of him—things had always been like that. But most of the time, it was just insults and playing devil's advocate whenever Renji tried to make a decision. His zanpakutō liked forcing him to think things all the way through—while actually being pretty impulsive himself. But he never made Renji do pointless things, so it was worth figuring out what he was trying to get at.

Obviously, Zabimaru didn't mean his short-term problems, like the extra work he was doing for the Fifth or anything like that. And whatever it was had to be his problem, not Momo's or Izuru's or anyone else's.

Three immediately sprang to mind. The first was the need to get bankai, or more generally to get himself ready for whatever was going to happen with Aizen. That probably wasn't it. The second was older, more long-term, and that was his goal to make himself stronger than Kuchiki-taichō. That couldn't happen without bankai either, come to think of it.

Then the third… the third was Rukia.

His friendship with her had frayed until they were connected only by their shared childhood; even that was a pretty flimsy thread, really. But… he'd thought of telling her first when he was promoted to fukutaichō, and he knew why. When she'd been condemned, he'd gone to her cell every day, just like he went to Momo and Izuru every day now.

He'd been just as useless to her as he was to them.

That had to be it. That had to be what Zabimaru wanted him to do.

Well… nothing worth doing was easy, he'd heard once.

"Renji?" Rukia looked up at him from her desk.

Her paperwork was only kind-of in order, but her stack wasn't too tall. Not like the one waiting for him back at the Sixth.

But this was important, and he needed to do it while he still had the guts.

"Hey Rukia. You got a minute?"

She looked down at the form in front of her—some kind of requisition, from the look of it—and then back up at him.

"Yeah. Sure. Just let me finish this one."

He nodded, and moved over to one side of the room, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. Like the Sixth, the Thirteenth had desks for its unseated members in a sort of… modular design, he'd heard it called. It just looked like a bunch of little squares lined up straight to him. The seated officers shared smaller spaces—but the captain's office here was usually empty. The vice captain's office always was.

People with the name Shiba had a pretty unlucky record in Seireitei service, actually.

Rukia worked her way through the rest of the form, placing it on a smaller stack of completed stuff before standing. He moved to the door ahead of her—this wasn't something to talk about here. They got a few curious stares as they left. He supposed no one here really had a reason to know they'd been friends, once. That bothered him.

Renji struck out without a particular destination in mind. Rukia didn't ask about it, so he figured it was all right by her. In fact, she didn't talk at all, until they were a decent distance from the offices, on one of the connecting roads between divisions.

"You wanted to talk about something?"

He glanced down at her—she was so damn short. She hadn't always been this small by comparison to him. Maybe he'd just grown too tall.

"Yeah, I…" he grimaced. Putting feelings to words was not a strength of his. Lately, he was beginning to wonder if anything really was. He released a frustrated breath.

"I never thanked you," she said, when it became apparent that he was struggling.

Renji raised his eyebrows. "For what?"

"For helping the others save me." She said it like it was obvious. "For coming to see me in the prison."

He frowned, recalling something that Ishida kid had said. "No one saved you," he pointed out. "You decided you wanted to live, and we helped you make good on it."

She huffed. "I think maybe you have the order mixed up, but… sure. Thanks anyway."

Renji nodded. "Anytime."

And that was really the thing, wasn't it? He'd meant that. He'd always mean it. But somehow, that fact had been lost in all the noise of the rest of their lives.

"I… kinda screwed up," he said. Understatement.

She tilted her head to look up at him more fully. "What are you talking about?"

"After you were adopted." He glanced away, his eyes landing on the roof tiles of the nearby dividing wall. There was an itch on his sternum; he eased it by scratching under his shihakushō. "I… should have worked harder to stay in contact." He regretted that he hadn't; maybe if he had, things would have gone differently. Maybe she'd never have been in danger that way.

But then again, who knew? Maybe it would have just been a variation on a theme, the same with a couple things switched around. It wasn't like Aizen had only one plan. Renji was no genius, but he knew enough about how they worked to understand that.

Even so…

"I was lonely," Rukia said quietly. "You were all I had, until you weren't there anymore."

His throat tightened. "I thought… I shouldn't stand in your way. There you were, you know? Finally where I thought you'd always belonged. I didn't want to hold you back." He'd been afraid she wouldn't want him to, at that. It had seemed better not to even try. Better to let her go.

"Shouldn't I be the one who decides where I belong?"

That startled him; he looked down at her, eyes narrowing. It wasn't that she was wrong, just that believing something like that was… not like her. Not like the woman who'd willingly sat in a cell and waited to die.

"Yeah," he said, grimacing. "I didn't say I was right to think that way, but I did. Nobles have everything, you know? You deserved that, and if what you had to give up was me, well… I figured I'd make that part easy for you."

Rukia snorted. "You're an idiot. I was miserable without you."

"Yeah, well… I was pretty miserable without you, too." So much so that'd he'd devoted his attention to climbing upwards, hoping to reach her again someday.

She pulled in a deep breath, turning a corner to keep them away from the Twelfth's grounds. Probably a good idea.

"I got by. I found other people to be friends with. My division's vice-captain, Kaien-san, helped a lot. But then, he and Miyako-san…"

Renji frowned. He'd heard about that whole mess, though he didn't know how deeply Rukia had been involved. If they'd been friends and then Shiba had died… shit.

"I'm sorry. I should have been there." His chest felt heavy.

She shook her head. "You didn't know. And besides… I'm just as guilty of not reaching out to you. We… we lost ourselves a bit, didn't we?" Her smile was rueful, but it was a smile.

"Yeah." At least until some kid with a hero complex had managed to shove them both back on the right track again, however unintentionally. Renji figured he might owe Ishida for that.

In any case, he'd been given a chance he didn't intend to pass up.

"I know you're different now, Rukia, but… if we can, I think we should be friends again." If nothing else, the events surrounding her execution had proven to him beyond a doubt that he still cared about her like he always had. She was still in that group of people he'd go all out for. The one that was like his family and his friends and his colleagues all rolled into one.

She considered that for a bit, but then she nodded, nudging his arm with her elbow. "Just so you know… I don't think we were ever not friends. We just got a little lost on the way through something, is all."

The knot in his chest loosened, and Renji breathed a little easier.

"Glad to be found, then."

Notes: Thus ends the first chapter of Triple Point. In keeping with the title, it will have three in total. Each one will focus on a different aspect of Renji's identity. As you may have guessed, this is the chapter about Renji as a friend to the people he cares about.

I do like Renji—and I feel like he gets pretty shafted in canon a lot. He spends most of this time playing second fiddle to someone else (be that Byakuya or Ichigo), and doesn't even get his true bankai by himself. Here's my attempt to do him some justice as a person. I hope you like it.

Reviews appreciated, but not mandatory.