Title: Left Behind
Word Count: 863
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Kuchiki Byakuya, Shiba Kaien, Shiba Kuukaku, Shihouin Yoruichi, Urahara Kisuke
Warnings: Spoilers for theSoul Society arc and Hisana, some rampant speculation on the history of the heirs of the Four Noble Families, alcohol abuse
Summary: Kucihiki Byakuya wasn't always alone.
A/N: I really don't know where this came from. This is my first time writing any of these characters, so if I'm waaay off, please tell me. This is based on the animeverse for the most part. Anyways, this is marginally longer than the others in this collection, so much so that I actually debated making it it's own oneshot, before I realized that I am a very lazy person and why create a whole new story when I can just make this one longer? So enjoy.
At the very beginning, there were four of them: Shiba Kaien, Shiba Kuukaku, Shihouin Yoruichi, and Urahara Kisuke. Four heirs to the most powerful noble families in Seireitei. Then the Kuchiki clan had a child and there were five.
Byakuya-bo was assimilated with ease, and the foursome soon became a quintet. Kaien and Kuukaku were loud, Yoruichi and Kisuke brilliant, all four were obnoxious, and all five were powerful. Byakuya was always amazed that these were the people who would eventually become the leaders of all of Soul Society. He was also very aware of the fact that if this group had consisted of any other four people, noble or not, he would have slaughtered them all instantly.
He always considered them his best friends, and still does. When his parents died, two days apart, the week before his eighteenth birthday, it was Yoruichi and Kuukaku with whom he cried. Kisuke and Kaien took him out afterwards and he got drunk for the very first time in his life. During the funeral, it was only the presence of those four that got him through the service and subsequent reception.
Then Kisuke and Yoruichi disappeared without a word, and the world fell apart. Kuukaku disappeared inside the house, losing herself in sake and her pipe. Byakuya and Kaien were not granted that particular luxury. By this time, they were both vice-captains in Divisions Six and Thirteen respectively, and the loss of two of the three most powerful captains in the whole of the Gotei 13 was causing all of Seireitei to fall into disarray.
Kaien remained certain that they would come back some day, though whether he really believed this or it was just a front for his sister, Byakuya was never sure. He, however, was a realist, and accepted the fact that Yoruichi and Kisuke would not be coming back. It did not, however, stop him from hoping that they would.
And so the quintet was reduced to a trio.
They recovered, if they didn't quite heal, and life moved on. Byakuya and Kaien were each other's best men, and they established some semblance of happiness.
And for a while, it seemed as if things would remain that way. Then Hisana died, and it was the Shiba siblings' turn to watch as their best friend drowned his sorrows in liquor.
It was finally Kuukaku and Kaien who brought him out of his misery. Byakuya still winces at the memory of the bruises his surrogate older brother inflicted upon him. They had sparred for hours, and finally, Byakuya had done the unthinkable and released his shikai on his friend. Kuukaku found him later, clutching Senbonzakura like a lifeline and sobbing brokenly on the ground.
He was never able to repay Kaien for what he had done. Soon after Rukia was put into Kaien's division, he died. Rukia never knew about the relationship between her brother and her fukutaichou, and Byakuya was determined to keep it that way. So at the funeral, he donned the poker face he had so long ago mastered, back in the days when they were still a quintet and their only worries were who would pass out first and how much money did they have for poker.
He and Kuukaku mourned quietly, and, as she always did in such situations, she turned to alcohol to numb the gnawing emptiness left over by Kaien's death. Byakuya became sort of a stand-in for Kaien in some respects.
Where once Kaien had done these things, it was now Byakuya who held her at night as she sobbed over the loss of her beloved aniki, pulled back her hair when her body finally rebelled against the rice-wine that was slowly poisoning her. People talked, of course, and called what they were doing inappropriate, but even then Byakuya stayed, rocking her to sleep and protecting her from the haze of nightmares that haunted her.
But the sweet Shiba Kuukaku of old, who had begun to fade with the disappearance of a Shihouin princess and an eccentric prodigy, died with her brother, leaving a hard, bitter shell of the woman she had once been, who drank and smoked too much, in her stead.
And the kind, humorous, youthful Byakuya-bo, who had begun to vanish with the loss of a beloved brother and sister, finally grew up with the death of his last remaining surrogate elder sibling.
The day his kenseikan finally become too heavy to bear, the day the Shiba house begins to migrate around the First District of Rukongai, is the day that Byakuya finally realizes that he has been left behind.
EDIT- After much thought and consideration, I have decided to take this story and its companion, "Kyrie Eleison" out of the Dictionary collection and make them each into their own one-shots. There were also some edits to fit in with the continuity in Kyrie Eleison.