Author's Note: Thank you for so many reviews on the last story: Kaze, for always reviewing, you star! Icyangel, Splitheart, Isle of Solitude - I'm so happy you like the couple and thanks for listing the squees; I might print that review! Guest 1 - It is a long series, but you're coming in towards the end, as it started with Rukia, but has now moved on to Hisana; Pen-aine, Chelly, who's still here *happy dance*, Guest 2 - sorry the chapters are short; Ashes2ashes - it doesn't end with Hisana, but will return return briefly to Rukia; WriteFF13 - sorry for fluffiness; they deserve a little fluff, though, right? Shadow Pain for enjoying the proposal; Goran and Byakkun. THANK YOU!
They were married on the last day of winter, beneath the plum blossoms. Hisana would remember the thin cast of sunlight and the crowd of dignitaries, the assembled captains and vice-captains of the Gotei Thirteen. She had known that Byakuya, as a shinigami would be married as a shinigami. Unohana had been right. It was not a vocation, but the deepest and most abiding part of his being, and the others were not their as colleagues or kin, but rather as witnesses to a change that rippled out amongst them. In men like Ukitake, whose faces were smooth and ageless, she saw eyes that had watched centuries pass. They had endured by luck, skill, obstinacy or a mixture of all three, but always subject to the same immutable and incomprehensible laws.
She would never be a part of that, but she sensed, in their curiosity, the possibility that she was as much a threat to them as they to her. An aberration had stepped into their world and they wanted to know how she would change it.
Her strongest memory, though, would be of Byakuya, dressed in white and gold. He could have worn his uniform. Amongst the Gotei, an officer's apparel was considered the finest mark of their status, but he had forgone the white haori and the zanpakuto on his hip in favour of robes of the finest silk. There were gold chains in his hair that matched the gold threads in her own, though these were hidden beneath the hood of her dress. She was entirely contained within the swathes of fabric that formed the bridal gown, the hood blinkering her field of vision, so that, throughout the ceremony, she could see only him and the uncertainty in his eyes, as if he expected her to run from him, even now.
As the ceremony ended, he kissed her lightly. The speeches were read. Her hand crawled into his as she listened with only half an ear to the praises his men bestowed upon him. They knew only a part of him; the rest, he kept back for her. She might never understand every part of him, but this was enough, she thought. Right now, his fingers folded into her own, were enough.
In the evening, they feasted and, when it was over and she felt sated and dizzy with wine, full of the noise and laughter, and tired in a way that made the day complete, Byakuya and his grandfather, led her to a dusty room at the back of the house where Ginrei took a seat at a writing desk. Byakuya retrieved a leather-bound book from a cabinet. It kicked up dust as he set it down on the desk, and his grandfather coughed irritably, opened it and leafed through page upon page of spidery diagrams: lines connecting name after name, dating back centuries. He found the final page and cleared his throat:
"Kuchiki Hisana," he said. She blinked at her new name, and watched as, with a simple stroke of a brush, he linked it to Byakuya's. Then he drew a second line that arced out from her own: "What is your sister's name, Child?"
"Rukia," she said softly and he looked up:
"Is that Japanese?"
"It's from the Latin. It means 'light.'"
"Unusual name," he commented.
"You don't have to" – she began, but Byakuya stopped her:
"Our families are one now. They can't be separated. The records must be complete."
His grandfather wrote the name in katakana, closed the book and looked up:
"Let none be forgotten."