The Losing Side

A/N: I've done up the last chapter to include Chizuru and so truly justify its new name. It was hastily meshed together; if the result is sloppy forgive me.

Chapter Nine: Can of Worms

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Renji bounced on the balls of his feet and made Byakuya uncomfortable. It was too early in the afternoon for him to request naptime and too late to order lunch. The Kuchiki lord prided himself on being able to anticipate and deny everything his deputy desired. Not knowing set the captain on edge, and Renji's inscrutable grin wasn't helping matters at all.

"What is it, Renji?"

"I've filed the week's reports, sir."

"Go oversee training for the new recruits."

"We haven't got any, captain. The Academy's in the middle of a semester."

Byakuya trailed his hand down the document he was reading. "The cafeteria menus for next month need your seal of approval."

"Done. We'll be having more red snapper meals due to a surplus of that fish. Also the price of tomatoes has gone up but I've adjusted the budget to compensate."

"The budget! What have you compromised?"

"Laundry. We're using a cheaper service from now on."

"Hmm. The barracks maintenance schedule…"

"Is up on the notice board."

Byakuya was starting to become a little peeved. "Meetings with the seated officers. Watering the grounds. Soul burial detail."

"Undertaken, accomplished, accounted for. Sir."

A silence trespassed upon the scene. Byakuya's hand reached the end of the document, and signed with a flourish. He set it carefully aside and picked up another from the endless pile awaiting him. Soul Society had become a sort of parliamentary monarchy with Genryuusai leading state affairs and the noble family heads throwing their weight and opinions around. Every day Byakuya received petitions to reinstate the Council of 46 and remove the title "Captain Commander" from Seireitei's hierarchy. Everyone was paranoid of power and secrecy. Gotei 13, however, was largely unchanged. Turmoil raged around it but each Division remained loyal to its captain, and each captain to the commander.

Byakuya looked up. "What do you want?"

"I'd like the next two days off, sir."

"What on earth for?"

Renji scuffed his feet and aggravated Byakuya further. "It's been a long time since I've been with Hinamori and Kira and Hisagi-san."

"I see. What are your plans?"

"Kira made us all take a vow to be sober," the redhead said glumly, "So there won't be any booze. I think he got scared of his own behavior when Matsumoto-san taught him…anyway, Hisagi-sempai said we should go camping."

Byakuya understood. Lieutenants and captains were on call even when they were off duty and needed special permission to leave the city limits for personal reasons. He waited for Renji to ask.

"So, um. I can have the time off, cap'n?"

"Yes." And, because his deputy was showing a strange reluctance to beg for what he wanted today, the nobleman went a little soft and generous with fondness for his foolishness. "I'll draw up your permission in a moment. Wait here."

Renji caught on swiftly and held both hands up, palms out. "That's okay, sir. We're not crossing the Wall."

"Camping within city limits?" Byakuya frowned.

"Oh, we'll find some clump of trees."

The breezy assurance and the spring in Renji's step as he left only deepened Byakuya's frown and misgivings. Not everything was alright in his world. Still, he shoved his deputy's deeds to the back of his mind and concentrated on his work. Less than an hour later he took a little break from the increasingly stuffy room to nip outside and interact with his men and women, the valiant soldiers that would lay their lives down for others' salvation. It did his heart good to be able to count on them, and know that they could count on him. It also prepared him for that moment when he returned to his office and found Kyoraku Shunsui and Hitsugaya Toshiro sitting in it.

Neither Shunsui nor Toshiro shared Byakuya's soft outlook of their soldiers. The former was ancient and had seen his command change many times, faster than he could develop feelings, fresh souls replacing fallen ones before their names had faded from his mind. The latter was too young, too new to captaincy and its pressures, and trying too hard to love his lieutenant to spare affection for the rest of his underlings. Still, they were both good captains—maybe better than the Kuchiki lord.

As far as personal preferences went, Byakuya bore no great tolerance towards Genryuusai's star pupil. Shunsui to him was a distant super-sempai, to be accorded a modicum of respect and not much besides. The promising and proficient Toshiro, however, shared a more cordial relationship with Byakuya than the rest of the brunet's colleagues. They had in common prodigious talent, draining deputies, and a sort of smug dignity. Toshiro was the kind of youth the Kuchiki family often adopted. Coming from the Rukongai, he was no less regal than the oldest strain of noble blood.

He had no business in the 6th Division's headquarters, especially in the company of someone as disreputable as Kyoraku Shunsui. And yet he stood in front of the great windows behind Byakuya's own seat, sunshine splashing on his face. He twitched away in irritation, shying towards the shade and Shunsui. The drunkard was seated with his back to Byakuya, carefully pouring out measures of sake from a china bottle into three saucers set on the desk.

"Ah, Kuchiki." Toshiro nodded, gestured. "We've awaited you."

Mystified and rather miffed, Byakuya moved towards his desk. "But why? No one even informed you were coming. Your lieutenant," he addressed Shunsui, "thinks it best to warn me of your visitations."

Shunsui grinned. "Ah yes. Nanao-chan is snippy and efficient and entirely too disenchanted with me. Well, I can still sneak past her when I feel like it, Byakuya. Come, sit. Sorry—it's your office. Hope you don't mind—it's perfect weather for a drink with friends."

Byakuya sniffed and took his seat. They were gathered around the low table, kneeling on cushions. The captain of the 6th preferred this to the tables and hard-backed chairs that Toshiro used. Shunsui wasn't sure what his office was furnished with. He hadn't visited it in many years. Nanao had him do his work wherever she could persuade him to stay still.

"Well?"

Toshiro and Shunsui exchanged glances. The former began to speak as the latter handed out their saucers of sake. "Do you…hmm. That is to say, are you pleased with—no, rather—what do you think of. Er, ahem." He faltered and looked abashed and hid his face in his drink. Shunsui leaped in to rescue him.

"Kurosaki Ichigo's an interesting boy, wouldn't you say, Byakuya?"

Since his shameful shattering at Uryuu's house the other day Byakuya had grudgingly come to accept that Rukia could court and wed whomsoever she pleased. He wouldn't cause neither his sister nor himself the sort of heartbreak he and his parents had gone through during his lobbying for his own love. There weren't even any grounds to reject Ichigo as an unsuitable man on—the Kuchiki household loved the star of Soul Society. The entire city loved the fruit of Isshin's loins. Byakuya, Renji, and some other dissatisfied weeds of dissent simply suffered the greatness of the boy. He mulled the question over, having long been one who was loath to speak without thinking.

"He's the hero of the Winter War," he settled for saying blandly, "Who else is more interesting? At the moment."

Toshiro and Shunsui looked at each other again. Toshiro flicked his eyes away and then back to his companion; Shunsui kept his gaze steady and apparently eloquent. Toshiro gave the vaguest of shrugs; the whole parody of subtlety took mere seconds. Byakuya wondered when they'd gotten close enough to be that communicative.

"The thing is," Shunsui resumed, "We were hoping to get your personal, dirty feelings on the topic."

"I won't mince words with you, Kuchiki." Toshiro looked Byakuya dead in the eye. "Do you like Kurosaki?"

"What a strange thing to ask. He's a likeable boy."

"Our grievance precisely," Shunsui murmured, "It's the likeable ones that often grate on a man's nerves. Well, Byakuya? Is the boy to your taste or not?"

The younger man lost his patience. "This is ridiculous. Will you tell me outright why you're here? It can't be to conduct a popularity poll."

"There wouldn't be any need to," Toshiro said darkly, "Kurosaki holds the hearts of Soul Society in thrall. And that is our problem—no, Kyoraku, let me get it out. Our lieutenants," he told the uninformed captain, "adore Kurosaki. And we don't like it one bit."

"Good grief," Shunsui shifted uneasily. "You make us sound like jealous lovers."

Toshiro snorted. "A lover? To Matsumoto? I wouldn't wish that upon any man."

"And yet many men wish it upon themselves," the 8th Division's commander arched an eyebrow. "You don't see the appeal?"

"She's a great abhorrent beast I can hardly rein in long enough to fulfill her duties. What use would she be in a committed relationship?"

"She was committed enough to Ichimaru," Shunsui said cheerfully—and wished he could take it back. That was a touchy topic even after a year, and would be even after twenty. Byakuya was silent; assessing their conversation and wishing Renji hadn't taken time off. There had to be some way to extricate himself from these two before he broke again and began a rant on Ichigo's many faults. That was why they were here, of course. Either they thought he was losing his lieutenant to Ichigo's right honorable tendencies (Byakuya smothered a sneer at the thought) or they suspected he himself was cross about the prospect of becoming a brother-in-law to the boy. It was proven to be the former when Shunsui turned him and said:

"Abarai's fought by his side for a long time, hasn't he? He must be head over heels for the squirt."

Byakuya saw an opening and lunged. "Actually, Renji finds him appallingly shortcoming of a proper man. You might find a more sympathetic listener there."

"Meaning you're not much inclined to sympathy, I suppose." Shunsui opened his eyes and saw a certain hardness around Byakuya's jaw. It signified his self-control, his refusal to slip into a diatribe against anyone. Shunsui assumed that the aristocrat was stopping himself from breaking out in defense of his kin-to-be. Toshiro nudged him softly.

"Then do you think there's truth to that rumor? That Abarai had an anti-Ichigo party at his quarters?"

"Seems to be," Kyoraku Shunsui somberly said, "Seems to be."

Byakuya's heart nearly stopped. "What? Where did you hear that?"

His older colleague grinned. "I heard from Ukitake who heard from Hisagi Shuuhei who was there for a while and talked to Ayasegawa Yumichika about it. Last week was quite a lot of fun for some people and I am most disgruntled to have not been invited."

Unsure whether Shunsui knew of his attendance there and was withholding it to wield it later, Byakuya eyed him with some suspicion. Toshiro, though, had had enough. He nodded again to Byakuya and made as if to take his leave.

"I told Kyoraku you were above this sort of thing," he said with some satisfaction, and the man whose superiority he had vouched for felt a twinge of guilt, "Anyway, we are not. We will go find your lieutenant, if you don't mind."

"Wait," Byakuya said, "Why aren't you above this? Matsumoto and Ise's affections are their own business."

"That's what I thought at first," admitted the teal-eyed dynamite, "Matsumoto caught her gigai forcing itself on Ichigo a while ago and rescued him; she's been mooning ever since over his…body. It wasn't any more aggravating than the usual drivel she spews to get out of work. Yet, somehow, it's less healthy. Less decent. I suspect." He hesitated and sought the comfort of Kyoraku Shunsui's mellow gaze; Byakuya waited for him to finish. "I suspect she's somehow channeling unfulfilled feelings she harbored for Ichimaru towards Kurosaki."

"There now, Hitsugaya," Shunsui seemed pleased, "You do care for her, and you do have good eyes."

"Silence, man. Kuchiki, we'll be going now."

Byakuya did nothing to stop them.

000

"You know how I know you're gay?" Hisagi Shuuhei asked his junior as he gathered firewood from the forest of white trunked trees, "You smell like ass most of the time."

"You know how I know you're gay?" Abarai Renji wiped a hand across his forehead as he manfully struggled to put up a tent on the plateau of execution where Kuchiki Rukia had nearly lost her life, "You wear sleeveless clothes."

"You know how I know you're gay?"

"No. How do you know I'm gay?"

"You make out with Kuchiki-taichou when no-one's looking."

"You know how I know you're gay?" Renji smirked, "You picture me makin' out with the captain."

They both turned to Kira Izuru, who was unpacking beignets and a thermos of hot milky coffee. He swallowed and said, "I don't think either of you are gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Hinamori Momo, having long since set up the other tent with Izuru's help, timidly ventured a calumny. "I know Kira-kun's gay because he wears his hair like a girl."

Renji and Shuuhei howled uproariously while Izuru turned rufescent. Momo apologized for muscling in on the men's joke, but Renji waved it aside with the proviso that she always be this forthcoming in questioning Izuru's masculinity.

They were camping on prohibited grounds. It wasn't on any bulletin board or in any of their job descriptions but it went unsaid, assumed—no one was permitted on the plateau of punishment where the great bird of destruction, Sokyoku, lay dormant. The weird woods on the far corner of the mesa where they'd come up that long ago day of Ichigo's fight with Byakuya were discouragement enough, or so the higher ups had thought. None of them had counted on Shuuhei, though. Being close to Ukitake Jyuushiro he had always heard tales of the past generations, and no generation was more vivid in Jyuushiro's mind than the generation best forgotten—the generation of Kuukaku, Yoruichi and Kisuke. Those three scoundrels had broken more laws than the Council of 46 had thought to instate and gotten away with it. Those three hooligans never did anything without first checking to make sure it would cause the maximum amount of inconvenience for the maximum amount of people possible. Those three kids, Jyuushiro remembered fondly with the folly of hindsight, could never be outdone.

It got to Shuuhei, who had led a gang of urchins in the Rukongai into various sorts of trouble until a hollow ate most of them. He had led a gang in school too until a hollow ate most of them. He was leading a gang now that could eat hollows for tea. Kuukaku, Yoruichi and Kisuke? Shuuhei could've snorted at them. It was about time there was a new bunch of irritants in the delicate nasal membranes of Seireitei.

So it had been his bright idea to set up a slumber party here in this most desolate of places in the city walls, on the hill where great and terrible reprobates had perished.

Really, it was the height of stupidity in more than one way.

"What's going on here Hisagi-kun?" asked Shunsui pleasantly as he stalked out of the forest with Toshiro in his wake. "Not a sleepover on Sokyoku Hill?"

"Why ask when you already know?" Toshiro seemed a bit irritable. "Abarai, why are you not alone?"

Shuuhei turned to his buddy with an indomitable air of triumph. "This is how I know you're gay. Kyoraku-taichou and Hitsugaya-taichou wanna be alone with you."

"Good grief Hisagi-kun," Shunsui smiled, "What exactly does that imply about us?"

Toshiro was less bothered about the doubt cast dubiously on his sexuality. "Leave this place right now and come with us."

Hisagi Shuuhei immediately put himself between the redhead and the red hot chilli pepper. "It's my fault, sir. I'm the instigator; they were under duress the whole time."

"If this is what I think it's about," Shunsui said, warming his hands at the fire Izuru and Momo were frozen by, "You're doing it wrong. Kuukaku-chan would've sold out Yoruichi-chan and Kisuke-kun in a heartbeat."

"How do you—" Renji began sharply.

"That's not what—" Toshiro started to say crossly.

"Could the captains please—" Shuuhei hissed urgently.

A dozen black-clad Special Ops officers and their commander surrounded them. Toshiro twitched in irritation. Momo fainted and Izuru caught her; Shunsui took his hat off in respect to the woman that led their discoverers. Renji groaned, and Shuuhei finished:

"…keep their reiatsu down."

000

"Desecration! Of the most feared and revered and severe of all sites in our city! Sokyoku Hill and its forest, despoiled by a bunch of lieutenant-level numbskulls! And the captains of two Divisions have the gall to join them at their game! Captain-Commander. Soutaichou-sama! I will remind you of that long-ago day after Kurosaki Ichigo's rescue of Kuchiki Rukia and what I said to you. Our deputies must be taken into hand.Not only could they not subdue the invader Kurosaki or his friends, most of them are uncouth, arrogant alcoholics with little to recommend!"

Yamamoto Genryuusai-Shigekuni listened with palms joined at the fingertips and eyes closed, but Hitsugaya Toshiro had had enough. He wasn't some new recruit dragged up for damaging doilies, he was a captain of Gotei 13 and if he was to be impeached he would not have it done by an annoying wasp like Soifon. He stepped out of the line-up he had thus far deigned to stand in and spoke for his boss to hear, and the bitch to take heed.

"This is history you're dredging up, Soifon. Our failure to respond to the invaders efficiently was due to a great many things, and we've already fought about them and decided that our lieutenants are the least of it. In fact they are the ones who acted most honorably when compared to examples like Kurotsuchi Mayuri or Zaraki Kenpachi." His cool aquamarine eyes took some wind out of her conceit, conveying to her that she was an example too.

"Furthermore," Shunsui always had an easier time building an argument once the ball had begun to roll, "neither Hitsugaya nor I were joining any game. We simply noted their reiatsu and came to see what they were doing. It was our presence that alerted Soifon's good men to the intrusion upon Sokyoku Hill."

"Finally," Genryuusai spoke and everyone listened, "There is no written law that any of them were breaking."

Renji and his cohorts breathed sighs of relief. Shuuhei looked appalled with himself for overlooking such a basic requirement. Soifon was apoplectic, but had to release her prey in the end.

On their way out, Shunsui and Toshiro inveigled Renji away from his herd and over to a small pub under the shadow of the city's great wall. Having secured a booth in the back, they settled him on one side and sat facing him. The redhead, aching with curiosity to know what the great men could want of him, leaned in to listen.

"So," Toshiro leaped into conversation, "We hear you hate Kurosaki."

"Who talked?" Renji demanded, and immediately regretted it. He continued with a little more nonchalance. "It's a lie."

"That's not what Kuchiki thinks."

"The captain set you on me? My captain?"

"Your captain," Shunsui agreed, "Be honest. Do you want a lager or ale?"

The manager of the store that had come to ask that same question looked taken aback, and assured them that they had at their disposal a much wider range of drinks available. Renji asked for beer; Shunsui opted for his current flame, vodka. Toshiro gnawed on the salted peanuts that came with their beverages and refused to take his eyes off of Renji.

"It's true. I'm not a fan," admitted Byakuya's man, "I…I guess you must not be crazy about him either?"

Toshiro cleared his throat and wiped his fingers on a napkin. "No. We're not. What's your beef with him?"

Renji was hardly going to confess his deep, abiding love for Rukia to them. "He's just…annoying."

"It's Kuchiki, isn't it," Shunsui deduced, "The sister. His betrothed."

"It's okay," Toshiro told the aghast officer, "Our own lieutenants like him, so we're sort of in the same boat."

"I think not," Shunsui dissented, "Abarai's got a bit more on his plate to stomach."

"True," Toshiro assented, "Nonetheless, the next time you get some people together to bitch about him, don't hesitate to invite us."

"I never did that," Renji said sharply, choosing to neither confirm nor deny the accusation that he desired a promised woman, "That really is a rumor. Ichigo happened to be a topic that came up. And. And! Hitsugaya-taichou, you of all people want to sit around sneering at someone just because Matsumoto-san likes him more than you?"

Toshiro's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't look down on me, Abarai. I'm not jealous of him, if that's what you mean. I am irritated though, and these days there's not a place in Seireitei where you can speak ill of Kurosaki Ichigo without being drowned in disapproval. We have to vent our feelings somehow."

"We're not above sneering," Shunsui summarized.

"I heard Kurotsuchi Mayuri was there. Why shouldn't we come too?"

"I heard there was booze," complained the captain of the 8th, "It must've been top notch to tempt down Zaraki. How could I not have known about it?"

Stifled by their rank disbelief that last weekend had been anything but a pity party for victims of Ichigo's appeal, Renji put his head in his hands and sighed, and wished Uryuu was by his side to commiserate with him. If things continued in this vein he would definitely be ousted as a mean-spirited man. He could already see the future: every man in Seireitei standing on his doorstep on Friday evenings waiting to vent, as Hitsugaya put it. One day Ichigo would know. Renji was half-tempted to tell him straight away and so avert that nasty confrontation when his old comrade found out from someone else.

"Abarai, are you listening?"

"Oh, I am," he muttered.

"What do you think? If we move the location of the gathering every week from your place to my quarters to Kyoraku's then it would be better. We could rope in Iba and disguise them as Shinigami Men's Association elite meetings."

Renji stood up. Shunsui and Toshiro looked at him in some surprise.

"Do whatever you want and disguise it however you like, sirs," the man snapped in disgust, "I'm through with going around Ichigo's back and whining about him."

"Don't think badly of us, Abarai," Shunsui soothed both him and Toshiro with his tones, "We know he's a good man. That's part of why—"

"He's so intolerable. I know. All the same, I'm done." He put some money down for his drink, and Toshiro's lips went very thin. "Excuse me. I should go."

When he left, Toshiro looked to his companion.

"Are we really being dishonorable enough to deserve that sort of derision?"

Shunsui sighed. Wasn't that a question to be pondered?

x.x.x.x.x.x

Thank you so much for your patience!