When I was younger I saw my brother cry, and curse at the wind
'I give up. This place is ridiculous,' Rukia huffed quietly to herself, and promptly sat down in the middle of the walkway, curling her legs up to rest her head against her knees. This was the third night since she'd been officially adopted into the Kuchiki family. The third night she'd been sleeping in a new place. The third night she'd gotten hopelessly lost trying to find her way back to her new bedroom.
She'd exchanged words with her new "brother" exactly zero times.
On the first day, she'd been escorted around the manor in a dizzying, in-depth tour by one of the elderly man servants. After they had returned to their starting point, Rukia had plucked up the courage to ask what had been weighing on her mind since she'd first met the lord of the Kuchiki family: why her? She wasn't anything special. A nobody from Inuzuri, with shinigami skills that were only a little above-average.
The elderly servant had chuckled in response.
"Do not let it bother you. Byakuya-sama's wife, Hisana-sama, recently passed away, and you simply resemble her to an astonishing degree. I believe it's something of a solace to him."
And he'd bid her good night and left.
'"Do not let it bother you," my ass!' Rukia thought angrily. Who in the right mind wouldn't be at least a little bothered by that?! What an expectation to live up to! You don't just offhandedly say to someone that, oh, you only look like the person they were married to, so you were adopted into the family.
That kind of logic only filled her with more reasons to ask why she had been adopted. What kind of role was she even supposed to be playing here?
What did they want from her?
What did…her brother want from her?
Rukia sighed, moving to stand up, 'It's not like I know what it's like to have a sibling. Maybe Nii-sama is being a model brother, and I just can't tell,' she thought, walking towards the end of the walkway, 'But aren't I supposed to talk to him? I guess I could tell him about my placement in the squad, after my assessment tomorrow…'
She found the thought of maybe impressing this perpetually unimpressed man somewhat exciting, and felt her spirits lift a little. She'd just have to make sure to do her best tomorrow—make a good impression on her squad superiors, and also—
"I am at a complete loss."
Rukia jumped at the sudden voice cutting through the night air. Who was that? She crept closer to the corner of the building, to hear the man more clearly.
"I promised you, and I kept my word. But to be perfectly honest, I never gave much thought to what I would do afterwards."
She risked a peek, edging around the corner just enough to see no one but her brother standing in the middle of the room, his back to her. He appeared to have been talking to something in his hands.
"The more I think about the situation, the more I—," his voice cracked, and Rukia cringed back. He seemed considerably less than alright.
His voice dropped, until it was almost a whisper. Rukia strained to hear it. "I cannot…without you, this just isn't…"
'Who is he talking to?' Rukia wondered, 'Or I guess…about?' She still couldn't see what he was holding, but...her icy-eyed brother looked like he was going to sit down and cry at any moment, and she was nothing if not at a loss for what to do. Had it been Renji, maybe, she would have gone over and tried to comfort him, but Kuchiki Byakuya was…
He moved suddenly, to the front of the room, where he placed what he'd held in his hands on a shelf among some flowers. Rukia gasped when she saw him turn around to leave, ducking back around the corner.
'Should I run?' she panicked. 'I don't want him to know I was—'
"You couldn't have let her live for another year?!" Byakuya yelled at the night air, and Rukia's heart stopped in her chest. She knew then that even if she had shown herself to try to be of some help, there would have been nothing she could have said to comfort that sort of agony.
She felt her heart rate slow as his footsteps disappeared in the opposite direction, and when she was sure he was long gone, she finally stepped into the room. The object that had been in her brother's hands was front and center on an array that Rukia now understood was a family of iei, with photos of the deceased staring back at her.
She stepped closer to the middle picture and felt her breath catch. She might have been looking in a mirror. The woman in the picture was, beyond a doubt, the Hisana-sama that everyone had been saying Rukia resembled so closely, and now she understood why.
And now she felt like she was a little closer to understanding why she had been adopted by her brother. He had clearly loved his wife dearly, and to find her look-alike…
"I understand, Hisana-sama," Rukia whispered, "I know there's not much I can do, but…I'll do what I can to be like you."
She bowed to the smiling woman in the picture before turning around and resuming the search for her room, absently wiping at her eyes.