As the ghostly, smiling captain stepped forward, raised his sword and gave the release command, Rukia felt nothing. The blade flashed towards her.
A shadow fell across her. A shape. A figure. A sense of familiarity. In the instant when the sword should have struck her, his arms encircled her, lifting her, pulling her out of the way. And in that same instant, she heard him choke as Gin's sword punched into his lungs.
Time resumed. Suddenly she could feel again and it was terrible. She screamed and dug her hands into his haori, which was already crimson with blood.
"Nii-sama."
The plateau, she realised, was now crowded with shinigami, amongst them, the white-cloaked figures of the other captains. Their outlines blurred and the three traitors, Aizen, Gin and Tousen, found themselves locked in combat.
Rukia turned away from the clash of blades and, for the first time in her life, buried her face in her brother's shoulder. His grip on her had slackened and she could feel his breathing growing laboured. He had always seemed to her such a vast and imposing figure, yet, where they had fallen together, she found that she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and almost completely encircle him. "Why?" she whispered, but he didn't answer. The light was fading from his eyes.
Rukia looked up as three beams of light burst out of the storm clouds above and locked on to the figures of the three traitors. As she watched, they were borne into the air, away from their opponents on the plateau. The sky above them was torn open and, in an echo of the events she had witnessed only a few months before, in the world of the living, from out of this fissure leered the grinning masks of menos grande. All those on the plateau froze, watching the scene unfold, but Aizen and the others were not drawing the menos into Soul Society. Instead, they were ascending to join the hollow themselves. On the other side of the broken sky was the demons' world, Hueco Mundo, the place in which hollow were born.
Into this darkness, the figures of the three captains ascended, and then the sky closed again; the only sound was that of the rain, falling on the bare stone all around. The shinigami on the plateau stared at the sky.
A flash of lightning and a roll of thunder.
"See to the wounded."
It was a woman's voice, breaking through the silence. Unohana-taichou, captain of Fourth Division. She walked fearlessly between the bodies of the fallen towards Rukia and Byakuya. Her squad followed, several breaking away to attend to Captain Komamura. She gave orders as she walked: "Please attend Abarai Renji," she said, without looking back to see if they did. She knew, without checking, that they would obey her: "And the ryoka. You," she called to one man: "Come with me."
When they reached Rukia, Unohana knelt down and studied Byakuya's injury. The wound was deep. Gently, she lifted him from Rukia's embrace: "What you did was extremely rash, Captain Byakuya," she said. Though his head nodded forward as she and the other shinigami bore him up, his eyes did focus briefly on Unohana with a flicker of something like irritation.
And then Rukia was alone.
There was activity all around her. Small crowds gathering. Faces still lifted to the sky, where the fissure had long since closed. The rain began to abait and the last rays of the day's sunlight broke through the thick clouds, bathing the plateau in a strange orange light as the storm rolled westwards. She watched Unohana and the other shinigami treating her brother. She wondered if she was meant to feel happy or sad or even relieved. She felt none of those things. Just tired and empty and aching on the inside.
"Are you injured?"
She started at the question. A shinigami from Squad Four stood beside her. He too was watching Unohana and Byakuya, but he glanced down as he spoke to Rukia: "Are you hurt?" She didn't know what to say.
"No," she answered after a moment, but she sounded so uncertain that he reached out and touched her shoulder. There was at once a soft, white light all around her, and the warmth of his kido made her shiver. He was checking to see that she had told the truth. Finding no trace of injuries though, he withdrew his touch and smiled:
"You're very lucky."
She stared at him.
He stayed with her a while longer, then drifted back into the crowd. Rukia was standing alone again, the rain drying on her back.