Title: Kyrie Eleison
Word Count: 1168
Rating: PG13
Characters: Kuchiki Byakuya, Shiba Kuukaku, Shiba Kaien, mentioned Shihouin Yoruichi, Urahara Kisuke, Kuchiki Rukia, and Shiba Ganjyu
Warnings: Spoilers for the SS arc, rampant backstory speculation,
Summary: Lord have mercy
A/N: Companion fic to "Left Behind". This is dedicated to Alaena Night with much thanks for betaing. You're amazing!!

Shiba Kuukaku didn't believe in God. She stopped believing a long time ago, with the loss of her older brother. No kind god, she reasoned, would take a light such as Kaien out of such a dark world.

There had been a time when she had loved the Shinigami almost as much as her brother, a time when little Ganjyu had not been terrified of her. A time when there were five of them, all young, all powerful, and all completely devoted to each other.

There had, of course, been different dynamics to each relationship. Kisuke and Yoruichi had been inseparable, each the center of the other's universe. Byakuya had been the naive little brother, although he had lost his innocence rather quickly under Kaien and Kisuke's tutelage. Yoruichi and Kuukaku had been the only girls, so it fell to them to make sure the boys didn't kill themselves.

And there was the actual brother-sister bond between the elder two Shiba. Kuukaku idolized her brother, worshiped him almost.

Then Kisuke and Yoruichi left, shaking the foundation of their own small world to its very core. The remaining three had drawn even closer together, and Kuukaku began to wonder what kind of god would take such important people from their lives. Her brother had smacked her when she voiced this opinion, and then hugged her and told her not to be stupid, of course there was a god. And even at their age, Kuukaku had believed her brother.

So life had moved on. Kaien got married and Kuukaku found another older sister in Miyako. She was no replacement, of course, for Yoruichi, but someone to help fill the void left by the Shihouin princess and her brilliant, exiled lover. But while Kaien had gone away somewhat, she and Byakuya had come even more together.

Then Hisana came along, and she and Kaien were finally able to put their status as nobles to use. They went to the wedding and subsequent reception, and afterwards, the three had gone back to the Shiba house and gotten absolutely smashed in celebration. And she was happy for her friend, she really was, but Kuukaku couldn't help but feel that she was being left behind. Things just wasn't the same without the sounds of rowdy laughter and the warm scent of sake and tobacco permeating the house.

But Hisana died, and again things changed. Byakuya remained stoic throughout the entire mourning period and funeral, and finally cracked. In that instant, he was no longer the venerable captain of the Sixth Division, but little Byakuya-bo, hurting and lonely.

Kuukaku remembered the incident clearly.

Kaien, in his obnoxious, blunt way had been trying to get his little brother out of the depression that gripped him. Eventually, the Kuchiki leader had lost the tight rein he kept on his temper and set Senbonzakura on him. Kuukaku had worried for almost thirty seconds before she realized that the swirling pink blades would not harm her nii-san.

She found him sitting by the koi pond behind the house, and it wasn't until she got up close did she see the tears running down his face. She sat down beside him silently. If he wanted to speak, he would.

Finally, he did. "You know, we're not alive. We're just souls. So tell me something. How the hell do we die?"

The raw anguish in his voice was enough to make Kuukaku want to cry herself. But she didn't. Instead, she picked up a rock and threw it into the pond, saying, "I don't know. But Kaien told me that we go to the real world when we die here."

"That doesn't make it any better," he grumbled, throwing a rock at a koi, who swam away, startled.

Kuukaku wrapped an arm around his shoulders, wishing that she could somehow take his pain away. "I know, Byakuya. I know."

Not soon after, Rukia was adopted into the Kuchiki clan. The Shiba siblings were possibly the only two people in all of Soul Society who knew how much her distance bothered Byakuya. She was transferred into Kaien's division, and the depth of their relationship was something only Kuukaku knew of.

Then Kaien died, and for a third time, everything changed. This time, it was Kuukaku's turn to utilize her carefully crafted poker face and brave the funeral of the most important person in her life. Ganjyu, of course, was too young to understand what was happening, which only served to make everything worse.

Just like she had done for him twenty years earlier, Byakuya found her by the koi pond, head resting on her knees, shoulders shaking slightly. He sat down beside her and threw a rock onto the glassy surface of the pond, startling the fish.

He was not surprised when she said, "I thought they'd come back. I don't know why, I just...I dunno. I thought that maybe, just maybe, they would have loved him enough to come back, even if it was only for a day."

"Perhaps they don't know," he said flatly, throwing another rock.

"They do. You know they do, Byakuya-bo. They just don't care."

"Kuukaku," he murmured, trying to soothe the woman who was just as explosive as the fireworks she created.

"Dammit, no! You may be an unfeeling bastard, but I sure as hell am not. Kaien's dead. Gone. Never coming back. Why am I the only one acting like he didn't just step out to the real world for an hour?"

Byakuya sighed and placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to soothe both her and her rapidly rising reiatsu. "You're not," he said quietly.

"And Ganjyu...How am I going to explain this to him? He's going to hate us," she moaned.

And for once, words failed the great Kuchiki Byakuya. And all he could do was wrap his arms around her and try to still her shuddering body as she sobbed.

But with no Kaien around to shake some sense into her, Kuukaku stopped believing in anything, too bitter and resentful over the loss of one of the only three remaining sources of light in a world full of darkness to care.

She and Byakuya tried to stay close, but with his increased workload, his visits became more and more infrequent, until finally, they stopped.

It wasn't until many years later that Kuukaku began to ponder the existence of god again. Yoruichi came back, though it was not until much later that she heard the explanation she desired. With her, she brought a young shinigami, almost identical to her brother, and she finally learned exactly what happened to the souls that died in Soul Society. Her brother was right.

But as she watched Kaien's reincarnation shoot through her cannon with her last living relative in tow, Shiba Kuukaku muttered, "God have mercy."

It was the closest she had come to praying since the day her cat-like best friend and her misunderstood asshole of a genius had vanished into the real world.

EDIT- This is a repost of a fic formerly posted in my Dictionary collection.