It might have been a mere coincidence that she remembered her old life, but a happenstance of that nature is rare, so rather, many who are aware of the extraordinary nature of thier bond would probably simply call it destiny.
It happened during one of the now-frequent Hollow attacks that happened in the Rukongai since the War of Aizen's Rebellion had hit a lull at the end of winter. In the final battle against the massed forces of the Hollows in Hueco Mundo met against all of the Soul Reapers, powerful and powerless alike, there had been a large price to pay on both sides... Aizen was beaten but not defeated, he and his two lieutenants had managed to evade capture and escape in the confusion while the Reapers had their hands full with the Hollow army. The massive loss of forces had meant that there were less reapers int he feild to protect against incursions against the Soul Society, and now the poor inhabitants of the Rukon Districts had to worry about Hollow attacks in addition to their already difficult afterlives.
It had been during one such attack against the noodle shop where she had found work that her mind was flooded with memories restored, of another time and another life, before she had ever lived the life in the Mortal World that had killed her slowly in her prime. Her mortal life had been relatively short but not entirely unhappy, so she had crossed over with relatively few regrets and had found work easily in that incarnation afterward. She'd been content, up until that point, to simply live and work out there in relative obscurity, owing nothing to anyone and being owed nothing in return, and awaiting for her next turn on the Wheel of Rebirth. She had thought that the strange emptiness inside of her heart had been mere longing for the world of the living, with its rich textures of life and fleshly immediacy. She had assumed that everyone felt that yearning emptiness in their souls for misremembered loves that shadowed the edges of their dreams for that feeling was part of her normality. She had always thought that it was normal to awake at night, aching for the caresses of strong, delicate hands with tapered fingers and thick silken locks, for a hauntingly familiar warm body and a and soft bed lit by the golden glow of a single candle. She had thought that the pull on her essence, gravitating her body towards a peace and comfort she knew but did not fully remember, was something everyone felt and never spoke of. She had not known that her tantalizingly close yet forever veiled shadow of memory that haunted the edges of her sleep was something unique to her.
The morning her former memories came flooding back to her, filling all the empty shadowed crevices in her mind, had started like any other. She had woken up in her thin, futon, covered by her worn and patched blanket, in the tiny closet of a room that was nonetheless all hers above the noddle shop where she worked. The sun was not quite up yet and dawn was a mere pale line along the horizon as she pulled on her warm outer wrap over her sleeping yukata and crept downstairs before the master of the shop woke in order to lay the fire, then she headed out to the well to fetch the water for the days work.
Her life in the afterlife wasn't so bad; she had a bed that was warm enough, she had clothes that were no too much the worse for wear, the old man she worked for, while often crotchety, was kind in his gruff way, and she had enough to eat. She would easily have described her existence as one of contentedness except for the strange dreams that haunted the edge of her waking. Dreams of a soft and beloved voice, of hands warm and gentle, of lips murmuring her name in tones of deep affection... But she had assumed that that was normal. The day had started out average enough, but as she was drawing up the second bucket of water from the common well, her life changed in an eyeblink. A massive Hollow appeared in the courtyard and began to thrash around, destroying many of the somewhat flimsy buildings surrounding the bare dirt yard, it flailed its limbs indiscriminately, wrecking the surrounding properties, seemingly without realizing that it had done so. What had started out as a peaceful morning erupted into screams and violence. She instinctively shrunk back against the stone side of the well, ducking her head down and trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible, when the Hollow, by some inner instinct, paused in its rampage and turned its attention her way. It advanced on the place where she cowered, shivering and praying that it would pass her by. Its massive bulk and mantis-like scythe-limbs clawing up the hard-packed dirt and sending tremors of presence that grew ever-louder in the chill dawn air. A curious instinct had prompted her to raise her head and peek up out of shut eyes, looking up in fear and alarm as it loomed over her. Her whole body seized in terror and she curled up as tight as her tiny form would allow, her gaze captivated as any mouse by the hypnotizing compelling stare of a predator.
:I'm going to die here,: she realized distantly as the empty-eyed stare of Hunger itself looked back at her with pitiless desire.
At that moment, a strange feeling of calm washed through her. At the instant she almost gave up on her life she felt the echo of a similar feeling reverberate through her. Her body and soul seized up in one moment, feeling like a harpstring that the universe had plucked.
:I want to live!: her soul cried. Followed swiftly by
:I don't want to go, I don't want to leave him!:
Leave who? her mind questioned herself... and that was when it came. Visions of a life lived before, a life saturated with undeserved happiness and the inability to enjoy it, or to even return the love so generously bestowed upon her unworthy self, flooded every corner and she remembered.
It was when she remembered that precious love that she had once had, and the abandoned duty that she had turned away from in a moment of frightened weakness, that her life became too precious to lose again. She looked back up at the Hollow, staring down at her with a hungry anticipation and her terror melted away, replaced with a single conviction.
:I cannot die here,: she knew right then. :I cannot die here, not without making my way to him, not without at least apologizing for my weakness and my selfishness, not without telling him that I was wrong... that I did love him. I loved him. I loved him with all that was left of my heart. With all the tattered remains of my guilty soul, I loved him. I didn't want to burden him further for if he'd known how I had truly felt, he would surely have followed after me. He deserves to know the truth. I cannot leave this existence before I tell him.:
That conviction gave her a strength and courage she had never known herself capable of. Rising to her feet, she stared back at the lost soul who presumed that it might consume her, consume her!, who presumed that it would keep her from his side, keep her from her rightful place that the universe had given her. She was perhaps a rabbit before a lioness, but she was a rabbit who could move faster and hide better than any lioness could ever hope to find. Not fear but strength and love gave her feet wings as she dashed to the side to seek shelter in any place that offered it. The wreckage was a shamble of wood and stone, a dangerous labyrinth of jagged edges and splinters ready to impale her at a misstep, but she plunged in, scrambling over the wooden remains of walls and pillars, ducking under collapsed doorways, scrabbling over fallen walls, squeezing through any opening that seemed remotely small enough to accommodate her tiny form, with all the nimbleness of any Rukon brat. She stayed just barely out of the swiping claws and desperate lunges of the Hollow, feeling the cool air of its sharp limbs passing just short of her neck on occasion as she remained barely out of its reach. She could feel its crashing footsteps behind her, the noise of its approach. Her heart pounded in her chest and she moved with the instinct of prey, abandoning cloth tattering on the edges in her desperation to escape. Just as she felt that she couldn't possibly run another step, her lungs burned and ached and a solid wall loomed up in front of her, she sensed that ephemeral pressure along the edges of her senses like sunlight on her skin.
"I got it's right side," a voice from above her head said.
"Fine then, I'll get the mask," another voice remarked casually.
Crouched on the top of the walls were two forms garbed in black, swords tucked through the belts at their waist. They darted in, faster than she could perceive them, and were upon the masked menace in pursuit of her. In a time that seemed anti-climatically short in comparison to the sheer overwhelming terror of her escape from its clutches, they had disposed of the creature. Acting as though nothing more important than a leisurely stroll in the park had just taken place, instead of their having saved her life, one remarked to the other
"What's that, the third one this morning?"
The other nodded.
"About that, yeah. Uppitty bastards, they've got some nerve showing up this close, this district's in the twenties."
"They're getting bolder, even without that bastard in command."
Hisana, for that had been her name and was her name and would always be her name, took a trembling step forward with the intention of thanking them but they blurred and disappeared before she could even begin to speak, not once even looking over at her. She wasn't sure if she should be grateful to them for saving her life, or think them very rude for not seeing if she was really alright.
:Well!: Hisana thought to herself, hardly knowing what to make of a world turned on its side.
When she had woken that morning, she had been one person, and now she found she was someone else, someone with a real purpose instead of a vague calling in her soul. She had to see him once again. That was all she knew and all she wanted to know. Even if, after all this time, he had found someone else, he deserved at least to hear the truth from her own lips, that she had loved him, dearly.
In addition to that, if her beloved Byakuya had yet to find her little sister, Hisana had a quest to continue. It had been many many years and it was vanishingly likely that her little sister was still alive if she was still out in the Rukon Districts, especially in a place like the lower districts, but if Rukia was still lost, Hisana would find her this time. Maybe she'd never be forgiven for leaving her behind, but she would make sure that Rukia was safe, just as soon as she made her apologies to her beloved former husband.
That was when an obstacle to her self-imposed goal reared it head. Yes she had loved him dearly even though they were of two separate worlds, the point now was that they had been (and still technically were) of two different worlds. She was out in the Rukon District, while he remained tucked away inside the Seireitei, completely out of her reach. She doubted very much that if she were to simply walk up to the Gate and present them with her story that she would find very many ears sympathetic to her plight (and more importantly willing to risk the very formidable and scary wrath of Byakuya Kuchiki if she was lying to them) or willing to believe that it wasn't some kind of a scam on her part.
So then, how was she to get to where he was? It was vanishingly likely that he would spend his time strolling about the Rukon District for her to find and reunite with. So if he would not be available to come to her, then she was simply going to have to find a way to go to him. But how?
Hisana looked over at the noodle shop where she worked, which had miraculously managed to escape destruction, though the old man who ran it was busily cursing fate and his ancestors for the minimal amount of damage that had been done to it, and knew she was at a crossroads. She could go back to her comfortable familiar life where she had all that she needed, or she could turn down a different road, one that might possibly have some danger to it (for not all, or even many, of the Kuchiki Clan had been a friend to her and there had been no few that Hisana had felt would not flinch at turning to poison or assassination to remove her from their midst) in the hope of recapturing a beautiful love she had let go.
:Byakuya...: she thought, now at last having a name for that aching yearning deep within her essence.
She was not complete without him. She had a choice, but in her mind it was no choice at all. She needed to see him.
:Even if it's just a glimpse of him, I have to know that he's okay.:
If he had found happiness with another that was his right, and she would not begrudge him that happiness. She would satisfy herself with the knowledge that the one she loved was content, but she had to see him with her own eyes, she had to know that he was alright. So... how to get to where he was in order to see him?
Her love was an impetus that had unconsciously moved her feet without her being aware of it; she had drifted silently out of the courtyard that had been her home for uncounted years since her lingering, cancerous death in the Mortal World. She was now walking down an unfamiliar street, her feet automatically pointed in the direction of the great walled city at the heart of the Soul Society.
:I can't just walk right in and present myself at the front gate of the Kuchiki manor,: she thought to herself, her foreknowledge of all the various rules and restrictions about who was permitted to go where in the Seireitei floating up from the depths of her memories.
:Scratch that, forget the Kuchiki Estate for now, I can't even get into the Seireitei, never mind getting into the hallowed halls of the estate of its greatest nobility.:
First things first after all.
She continued her journey on foot, part of her mind distracted by sorting out what was what, and, being not altogether an unclever woman, Hisana slowly began to formulate a plan.
Getting into the Seireitei was not impossible. The place might be impregnable to attack from the outside, but there was some small degree of fluidity between its Gates, so long as one had proper authorization. There was a potential weakness she could exploit, a way to take advantage of that fluidity and find a way inside the Gates. Soul Reapers often went to bars and taverns (and the red-light districts) that existed mostly for that very purpose just outside the Gates. Being soldiers, of a sort, the first thing many of them chose to do once put on liberty was to find a place to drink as much as it took to become inebriated as quickly as possible... with the result often being that the owners of such establishments proving a service of having their inebriated customers delivered back to their racks or risk losing custom by developing a bad reputation among the soldiery.
That gave her a potential way in, and once she was inside... well, she might look like a civilian but Hisana had that wide-eyed helpless-little-bunny-rabbit look to her, if anyone thought to question her she could just give them her best wide, helpless stare and claim to be lost or something.
She looked down at herself, her already work yukata was dusty and torn. She'd stand out like a sore thumb, no-one would possibly believe that she was anything but trash from the Rukongai if she tried to sneak in looking like this. It seemed a change of dress was in order.
:And I wouldn't want to meet with him looking like a frump after all.:
Make that definitely in order.
She pulled out her purse on its string from a hidden inner pocket in her robe and counted coins by the weight, a trick she'd learned after one too many times of having her hard-earned money stolen right in front of her eyes when she paused to count it in a busy street. She had enough saved up for one nice, new yukata and a meal if she was frugal. Frugal was her middle name. Hisana tucked her purse back securely and picked up her pace, heading in a ground-eating fast-walk to the forbidden city in the distance.
:I'm coming, Byakuya,: she thought, wondering if her hope would somehow reach him through the thread that connected thier fates.
:Just wait a while and I'll be there soon.:
My other favorite pairing besides my OTP Renji and Rukia. I've had this forever on my hard drive (it was supposed to be a Valentines Day fic for last year!) and I decided to stop putting it off and just post it already. I hop you all enjoyed the first chapter and look forward to reading more. Please let me know what you thought.