I've had this rotting on my hard-drive since probably chapter 395, it was the next major stort I started after I got most of the way through Chasing Shadows. It's actually two stories, or rather two distinctive ideas I had been toying with at the time and neither of them was working alone so I tried putting them together and they worked! Unfortunately it was one of those things... I was never quite satisfied with it so it never got posted. I thought I'd try it here to see if there was any interest. Let me know what you think.
Just because he knew why they'd had to do it, didn't make it any easier to take.
"Reaper Abarai," he muttered bitterly under his breath.
The trip to Hueco Mundo with Rukia to go and rescue Orihime Inoue had been not only unauthorized, but actually forbidden. He and Rukia had been personally fetched back by Captain's Kuchiki and Zaraki to gear up,along with the rest of the Seireitei for the upcoming war. That they had chosen to follow thier own path was on them.
Everything was still being sorted out from that long terrible war. Aizen's Rebellion, also being called the "Winter War" There were a lot of soldiers who hadn't made it back. Eleventh was missing a fair-sized chunk of its lower-level forces, a third of First, Fifth and Tenth had bit it in a trap set by Aizen to whittle down thier forces; they'd recived word of a force of arrancars deciding to launch a surprise strike on one of the remote outposts in HM, and had gone in to make a pre-emptive strike, except that the network of caves that they had supposedly been hiding out in had been rigged with a series of traps, no-one had made it out alive. Eighth had lost a lot of seated officers in a raid early on in the ground war. So had Ninth, and Thirteenth, Renji would be happy to hear the sound of squabbling from that squad again if it would mean that Sentaro would still be alive. There had been casualties even among the first and second seats in the squads as well.
"Momo..." he said sadly as he stood in stoic greif. Nothing was going to be the same anymore.
He sensed the presence of now-Captain Hisagi walking upthe hill behind him. Kira's grave was located in his family plot, in a place of honor, where he would be remembered. They'd both bought it in the last battle; Momo had faced her former Captain and former love and been killed by him, Kira had avenged her. They'd both died but not before Renji and Zabimaru (with the brat's help,) had managed to help the other Captains to land the killing stroke.
"This should never have happened," Hisagi said, looking at her memorial picture of the young woman.
"She chose to fight, just the same as the rest of us," Renji said roughly, unwilling to sully her memory with pity.
Pity was what you felt for people who'd had no choice, like his friends in Rukongai, they'd had no chance of escaping thier deaths there on the streets, a warrior always made thier own choices. She had died well, in such a way that no-one would ever call her weak again. He was glad of that but at the same time... Renji was sad that she was gone.
They'd come there every day since the war had officially ended a month ago, each trying to find solace in a world that was very different from the world they'd lived in before the war. For one thing, there were a lot of new names and faces within the ranks; fresh faced little boys and girls just out of the academy. Everything seemed different, and not just his demotion either. There was a feeling of "so now what?" around many of the squad halls and most of them were getting used to new commanders. There had been a sea change there in the Seireitei.
Captain Yamamoto had been poaching among the more promising upper officers of the various squads, sniping long-time subordinate memebrs with the potential for excellent leadership skills to become the new Captains. Hisagi, naturally, was now the official Captain of Ninth, but he had yet to pick a second-in-command. Fifth squad, missing both its Captain and its Lieutenant, had been given over to the former Lieutenant Nanao Ise (over Shunsui Kyoraku's vehemently vocal protests). Third Squadron, also known as Despair, had been reluctantly taken over by the infamous top duo of Eleventh Squad; now-Captain Ikkau Madarame and his new Lieutenant Yumichika Ayasegawa (Renji had heard the wild rumor that they'd tried to refuse the honor and Captain Zaraki had told them he'd only let them do so if they could defeat him, they hadn't, so they were stuck for it). Eighth had a new lieutenant, a man this time, another studious sort to do all of Kyoraku's paperwork no doubt. And all the rest of the squads had suffered losses within the ranks and were trying to refill their missing personal from the war with noobs fresh out of the academy. As for Renji, he was a bit at loose ends with what to do with himself now that he wasn't even a Seated Officer. Sixth had a new Vice Captain and Renji detested the guy (and not only just because he had taken his spot). The new Vice Captain, Morii Korin, was about as big a prat as they came, and there was something about him that Renji instinctively didn't like, or rather, didn't trust.
"Heard you got assigned to the Front ," Hisagi said, more to fill the silence than anything.
"Yeah," Renji said. "I hate red-zone missions."
"Everyone does," Shuuhei replied.
Red-zone missions were those kinds of missions that existed in active battle zones. No-one liked getting assigned to them for obvious reasons; for one thing, they were dangerous. Nothing spawned Hollows of the most viscious sort quite like the horrible things that happened on a battle zone, or even worse, a massacre site. The welter of hated and fear and anger there among the fighters and fallen could create resentment among the newly dead, which in turn created the most terrible Hollows. A Reaper had to be constantly on his guard when assigned to Red-zone missions. It was enemy territory. Until Renji had run up against an Arrancar, he'd never encountered a Hollow as viscious as the ones that appeared in the Red-zones.
The other facet of Red-zone missions that were difficult for even the most experienced reapers to deal with was the... the horror of war. To say that war was hell was in no way an exaggeration. People didn't just die, they died horribly, and tried to terrible things to other humans before they went. They'd gladly hackoff limbs, fill one another full of little pellets of metal from thier guns, send biological weapons that did excruciatingly painful things to thier gigai's, and that didn't even count the methodical torture of the body that took place in a lot of the more primative prison camps. Neither did it count the terrible way that people could be rounded up like so many sheep and then simply methodically slaughtered like cattle and buried in mass graves.
All of them were terrible, but the battlefeilds were probably the worst, just the sheer senseless and needless destructuion, people dying in thier own blood and the churned up mud, partially mangled corpses littering the ground, the sheer noise; screamsof the dying and the wounded, of weapons being deployed or going off around them. It was hellish in every sense of the word. One of the worst parts about it was when a soldeir was newly killed unexpectedly; they just sort of looked down at thier bodies in a sort of shocked disbelief. What was really sad were the ones that kept trying to report in, trying to get back into thier shells so they could go help thier buddies, or make it back to thier loved ones. The konsai ritual was always something of a relief for those ones. As for the rest...
Renji sighed, not looking forward to his next mission, so he turned his mind away from it to focus on other things. His recent demotion was like a poison-tipped barb in his pride, making him question himself. He didn't regret his decision to follow her into Hueco Mundo exactly, he knew that, given the same situation he'd do it again without hesitation because it was the right thing to do. And knew going into it that Kuchiki was going to have to punish him, Renji was surprised the Captain had held out for so long in fact, but at the same time, he had worked soo hard!
Rukia had more or less gotten a slap on ther writsts for disobeying an order and heading to Hueco Mundo on her own. Her dear brother had expressed his disapproval at her for her recklessness, but everyone could tell that underneath it all he'd been simply glad she'd made it out alive. Her own Captain, Ukitake, was inclined to be lenient. Renji didn't have the same luxuries.
He had worked so damned hard to gain his rank...
But it was because he was an upper-level officer, one rank below the highest rank that a Reaper could attain in the Seireitei, that he'd been punished so severely. For one thing, he he wasn't noble so there was no-one in the background to speak for him, no-one to pull strings or drop names or whisper in ears to get his sentence lessened. Secondly, his Captain was a stickler for the rules, and because he'd had to compromise so much for his sister, he'd had to save face by showing that he would not tolerate insubordination from his underlings.
That was why Renji had been divested of his rank. He was no-longer Sixth Squad Lieutenant Renji Abarai, he wasn't even Twentieth Seat (which he had graduated right out of the Academy into) he was merely Reaper Abarai, a common Reaper with no rank or status. After everything he'd done, after how hard he'd worked, he was now not only back where he'd started from, but actually doing worse. He could have handled that just fine; sure he would have been upset, but he understood why they'd done it, he'd have just picked himself up and started climbing the ranks again. Except now...
Renji felt his chest clench in helpless agony and his soul writhed around in his skin. Rukia was to marry someone else and there was not a damned thing Renji could do about it. The ranks of the Seireitei were not the only things changing, a grand council of all the noble families had been called to decide upon the new members of Central Forty-Six, and he'd heard that the ensuing power struggle resembled a tank full of pirhana's with a bloody chop thrown in it. It made him glad that he wasn't a nobleman, because politics really wasn't his thing; he was just too straightforward for that nonsense. Kuchiki, being the last Head of one of the Four Noble Clans still living in the Seireitei, was up in the politics right up to his aristocratic chin. There were a number of nobles that would give thier eye-teeth to marry into all that wealth and privalage, and both Kuchiki's, it being just after war-time, were considered eminently on the market. The scuttlebutt around the Seireitei was that the Kuchiki Elders were weiging over who it was best to marry her off to.
It would have been business as usual for the two of them most likely, except that there was a young man from one of the lesser branches of the final Noble House, the one that wasn't Shihouin, Shiba or Kuchiki (Renji couldn't recall the name right off the top of his head since he didn't keep up on things like that) that stood a good chance of becoming the successor once the Elder Head of the Clan finally kicked over.
By all accounts he was a fine and upstanding young man, an able politician and a commanding leader but Renji had also heard other rumors about him... that he had led and in-House insurrection and coup d'etat against his own Noble Family and that he was devious and ambitious. Still, Renji thought that the elder Kuchiki might have little choice but to bow to politics then because the lesser houses were gaining more power and influence by manuvering to fill Central Forty-Six with thier candidates this time. There was even some crazy talk about engaging poor Rukia to that idiot Ganju Shiba! Renji shuddered, Rukia would fight it tooth and nail and if they did force it on her, he didn't lay long odds on the prospective bride-groom lasting through the wedding night... intact that was. Still, it was pretty much a forgone conclusion now that the younger (adopted and disposable) member of the Kuchiki Clan would be sold off into marriage to someone, and that someone wouldn't be him.
The Captain of Sixth Squadron hadn't been seen within the walls of his own Squad Hall for weeks. By all accounts the Squad was being all but run by the new asshole because the presence of the Head of Clan Kuchiki was required at every single one of those meetings of the Nobility, and they went from dawn until late in the evening if not the night.
:And more power to him,: Renji thought with a small pang of sympathy for his boss.
He couldn't imagine many things that were worse than being cooped up with a bunch of bickering, power-hungry, conniving old men all trying to argue, manuver and manipulate thier way into more power. It made Renji very glad that he was a simple soldier, he'd take a battelfeild full of Hollows over than nonsense any day!
But still, the fact that he wasn't nobility of any sort meant that the little he did have to offer as a potential suitor for Rukia, his (former) rank within the soldeiry of the Seireitei, was of little value when compared to a potentially very advantageous marriage-alliance.
No rank, not even the hope of a someday with the one he'd loved for as long as he could remember, Momo was dead, Kira was dead, and to top it off, he was assigned to red-zone missions for the foreseeable future.
"You gonna be okay man?" Shuuhei asked.
:No, you know I really don't think I am this time,: Renji thought dimly.
Always before he'd had hope. He'd had the hope of climbing to a place where he could be by her side again and all would be right with his world, but now, he wouldn't even have that luxury; someone else had well and truly stolen the place he'd always thought was reserved only for him. It hurt. It hurt worse than anything he'd ever imagined.
"You know what they say," Renji lied with a wry grin. "Ya can't keep a good dog down."
Shuuhei looked relieved at his display of normal behavior (for Renji) and gave him a manly commiserating buffet on the shoulder and went his own way. Renji stood staring at her memorial portrait etched so carefully into the gold plate that bore her name and the post humous honors she'd been given for her sacrifice. Momo would have seen right through the lie but they'd been friends since the academy. He also had the feeling that she would have understood too, she would at least have had something to say about it; more often than not she had this way of putting things into perspective that had helped Renji see his way through a tangled up mass of problems and goals that seemed impossible. Kira too, his razor intelligence and calm (some might say morose) demeanor had always semed to make even the most impossible task seem commonplace. Renji wondered a little bit what he was supposed to do without them.
He was suddenly struck by an odd thought. Here he was, back on the bottom of the heap and he was already thinking about how long it was going to take him to climb back up... but now he had no reason to do so. Rukia was as good as married off, the Kuchiki Elders were only deciding on who it would be most benefial to have as the groom. His place was no longer at her side or at her back, those positions had been taken up by others and even Renji was too proud to accept being placed at her feet.
No home, no family, no star to guide him, his friends were dead, what did rank and status matter to him anymore?
:I could just stay down here,: Renji thought with a humor that was laced strongly with black despair. he had nothing anymore, no hope or anything to dream about.
:It's just me an' Zabimaru,: Renji thought.
His sword would never respect him if he didn't try to get a little stronger.
:Well that's a hell of a conundrum,: Renji muttered to himself.
He had no reason to get stronger anymore. There was no goal, nothing waiting for him at the end, no hope for the future so what was the point in making the climb. Being a lieuteneant had been awfully damned inconvenient most days, paperwork, and training, and thousands of irritating little tasks. The respect had been nice but... was it really worth it now?
:Zabimaru's gonna think I'm a wimp,: Renji thought.
The sword would probably be right too. But right then, Renji wasn't sure that he cared anymore if he was a wimp. He was just so fucking tired, tired of everything. Right then, he wasn't sure he had the strength to wake up and face another day, nevermind trying anything so ambitious as climbing ranks again. When he thought about all the madness of his first frantic dash to the top; the hours he'd spent honing his skills, training until he dropped only to haul himself up and do it all over again, the punishment of getting his ass beat day in and day out by taking on opponents way stronger than he was so that he could learn to fight properly... it all just made him feel exhausted.
:Maybe I'll just stay down here a while,: Renji thought whimsically.
He'd never been a no-rank Reaper before. He'd graduated from the academy with scores that were high enough to get him a seated position (he suspected that Aizen might have had something to do with it) right into Fifth Squad. Sure it had been twentieth Seat, the lowest ranked one, but it had still been a rank. He'd never once been no-rank, he'd always had responsibility.
:Even before I entered the academy,: he realized.
In Rukongai Renji had been the undeclared leader of their little gang. He'd been the one to organize when and how meals were stolen and water aquired, the one to defend thier flop against incursion, the one who tried to make sure that all of his people had what they needed to get by, the arbiter of disputes, the lead scout... it had fallen on Renji's younger shoulders when one of his own had come down sick or been caught in a raid. He'd looked after Rukia too, or at least tried to, in the Academy. He'd always had people looking to him, silently expecting him to think of a way through.
:But now, I guess no-one exprects anything of me,: Renji thought. His soul felt numb. It was such a new and strange concept.
:Heh, I'm the only no-rank Reaper, aside of the substitute brat, that has a bankai!: Renji thought torn between hysterical laughter and despair.
Still, it might be nice to have a break for a change. Let others do things for a while. Just take orders, no cares or responsibilites. So what if he'd get cleaning duty or something like that? It was a holiday compared to the crap he was used to putting up with. Maybe he'd just slack off for a while, kick back and just be a regular no-rank asshole with no pride or ambition. All the other losers seemed to like it well enough, and Renji had always been kinda curious as to how in the hell they could go through life with swords that were barely even shikai'ed and never want to be or do anything other than what they already were? It had never made any sense to Renji, who had always had responsibility and the ambition to be with Rukia. Now he had neither anymore and was at loose end for perhaps the first time in his life.
He didn't have to do anything or make anything out of himself; they'd still feed him as long as he did his job. There was no reason for him to climb up and he was tough enough that no-one would dare to try abusing him. He could just slack off.
Renji heard his sword grumble at this. This sort of nonsense was the exact opposite of what Zabimaru wanted but now Renji was a little tickled by the notion. Recognized, deep down, that it was nothing more than a sign of him giving into depression, but he just could seem to muster up the energy to care.