Many years ago, Hisana had put up just as much of a fight as Soifon-taichou, he remembered. Only Hisana was far less polite in her continual rejection of his offer. Which, in his callow youth, only made her more appealing.

"Why do you keep coming here?"

He gazed up at her from his seat, frowning. How dare she? "I want some dumplings," he said.

"You drive out business," the girl continued, paying no attention to the sake stains on her kimono or the the rough skin on the little hands she waved around while she berated him. "Shinigami scare people around here. Can you not at least be honorable and mindful of the situation here? Some of us must work to live."

"I have as much right to a meal here as anyone else," he said, "so long as I pay. I would offer to pay double to placate you, but considering your rudeness, I do not feel inclined to do so."

"Hisana-san!" The owner hissed at her from the kitchen. "Do not insult paying customers!"

Hard violet eyes met the paying customer's. "This is no customer, tenchou. This is a bad spirit and I am attempting to exorcise it."

"Hisana," the bad spirit said.

She scowled. "What?"

"You have a beautiful name. It is clearly wasted on a girl of singularly bad temper."

The thirty-seventh day after she caught his eye, the third day he came to her place of employment to observe her small, wiry body and raven-dark hair, she dumped a plate of lukewarm dumplings on him. She was fired within seconds, and the shock induced her to accept his sudden proposal—sudden being four days after she'd been turned out of the boarding house where she'd been staying—before she had really thought it out. He had waited just long enough for panic to set in; it had long been clear to him there was no other way besides trapping her to possess her. He did not care that it was underhanded, so solid was his determination. And after a long while, she no longer minded. So she told him, and Hisana never lied. So he thought. The one lie was the secret she decided against carrying to her grave, and that was how he gained a sister.

A sister, as it turned out, who was conveniently present to push him out of the way before a flock of throwing stars could embed themselves into his torso. What had he been thinking of, to leave himself so vulnerable that she had to protect him? He looked into Rukia's startled violet eyes and was reminded of two other women. The first was her sister. The second was her sister's would-be successor. Flat on his back and quite undignified, he took a deep breath. His sister crouched over him like a startled cat guarding a kitten. He nudged her a little with his knee.

Rukia scrambled immediately to her feet. "Nii-sama, are you unhurt?"

Byakuya rose, frowning. This made four attempts on his life. Soifon was serious. Deadly serious.

"Thank you, Rukia," he said as he rose and dusted off his haori.

"What was that? Who is doing this?" his sister demanded.

"You needn't concern yourself with that." He looked around himself. They were outside of the first division compound, which was surrounded by trees. There was no telling where the projectiles had come from and the assassin was probably long gone. It may even have been Soifon herself.

"Please do not tell me that," Rukia murmured. "It is my concern if someone wishes to harm you."

He looked at her. "No," he corrected curtly, "it is Abarai's. Your concern is your captain. I understand he has had problems of his own lately."

Rukia shook her head. "Problems like the one he's having are best resolved with diplomacy. Shihouin-san doesn't want to kill him, she wants to marry him."

"Isn't that the same thing?" Byakuya snapped.

Rukia frowned. "Only if they let it be."

"Is it because you are in love that you think of it so lightly?" he asked, not thinking for once.

"Nii-sama, didn't you love my sister? Don't you remember how it was?"

"Perhaps it was too long ago. I have had too many examples of love ruining people lately not to look at it with a wary eye. "

"That's not right, Nii-sama," Rukia said calmly. "I am not so old or as wise as you or my captain, but I know this. Love does not ruin people. They ruin themselves by fighting it."

He could only stare at her. It was the first time she had ever contradicted him.

He didn't know whether to hug her for being so simple or strangle her for being right. Of course she would know. Her own experiences were plenty to back up her argument. But that aside, he was not interested in hearing her out. That would only lead to him having to explain to her what sin he'd committed to put him in his current predicament. That would have been utterly unacceptable. And humiliating.

After all his hard work, Kuchiki Byakuya had balked. This fact on its own was enough to curdle his blood. But then there was the other thing.

Kyouraku-taichou did not laugh at him. Not a chuckle, not a snicker. He merely shook his head. "So forty years of solitude was not enough for you. Please tell me you have not done anything inappropriate with Soifon-taichou that will make her or her clan want your head. That would be an inconvenient mess to clean up."

His office was a small space, Byakuya had noticed. Even without Ukitake-taichou hibernating in the corner. This was the last place he had intended to come, after slaughtering a phalanx of ninjas out for blood twelve days ago. But he could not possibly report it to the first division without making his private problem an issue of public knowledge. It made sense to report to his most senior colleague, but somehow he doubted Ukitake-taichou would be sympathetic, or even in a state of mind to offer advice. Especially if he'd already been captured by Shihouin Yoruichi. Unohana was out of the question. So he had trudged to the eighth division compound with his heart sinking every step. The reception he received when he got there was not the one he had anticipated.

Kyouraku motioned him to sit and he obeyed. "Take this." The older captain said pouring him a cup of sake. "Are you unhurt?" he asked, gazing at a large spot of drying blood on his haori.

Byakuya looked at it and blinked. "It's not mine."

"Perhaps it should be. Did I not tell you to drop this suit if you were not serious?"

"I was serious."

"If you had been serious, you would not be here."

Byakuya was silent.

Kyouraku groaned. "You came here for help in smoothing this over, did you not?"

Byakuya quietly drank his sake.

"I will not aid you if you cannot ask properly."

Byakuya finished his sake and set the cup gently on Kyouraku's desk.

"I will not only not help you, but I will encourage Yoruichi to lend her considerable resources to Soifon-taichou so she can regain her honor."

Byakuya glanced up at him.

Kyouraku's patience was clearly wearing thin. "Can you not at least admit you brought this on yourself?"

"Why should I say it aloud when it is the general consensus?"

"Because if you cannot do that, you cannot begin to rectify the situation. Right now that woman thinks you were toying with her out of capriciousness. That could not be further from the truth, but you must face up to your rash actions if you are to explain that to her. And you must explain it to her. She may be hurt, but she'll come to understand and she may even forgive you, in time. So tell me, will you spend the next hundred years as a moving target, or will you do the honorable thing?"

"I will speak with her, when I have the right words," Byakuya said after a long pause.

"The right words?"

"I have made an error. I wish to rectify it, but this is a delicate situation. It is not merely my fate, or her fate that hangs in the balance. I am not confident that anything I do at this point will help. I will remain silent and make every effort not to provoke her. I only wish for time to determine the best course of action."

"You're procrastinating. I hardly thing that to be the best course of action." Kyouraku tilted his head. "What are you thinking?"

Byakuya's face went slightly pink. "I cannot face her now."

"Is it shame or fear?"

Byakuya closed his eyes. If he had to spill his insides to this drunken old lout, best to get it over with quickly. "Both."

"Who would have thought it? Quite the little head case, isn't Byakuya-bo?" Yoruichi stretched and curled up on the floor in Soifon's office. "Shaolin, I can hear your teeth grinding. If it bothers you so much, why do you keep missing? Just kill him like you want to."

"I am not missing on purpose," Soifon growled.

"Of course you are. You're the best assassin in Soul Society and even if your target is this strong, you wouldn't fail to dispatch him more than once. So tell me. Are you hoping to bully him back into where he was before he made that half-ass attempt to make out?" The Shihouin heir was clearly enjoying this.

Soifon sighed inwardly. She was not interested in explaining herself anymore. And why should she have to? She was the injured party here, dropped like a rag doll whose owner had inexplicably lost interest. She waited a week for an invitation that never came. Another two weeks of staring him down in captain's meetings—an act he failed to acknowledge in any way, shape or form, his eyes on Yamma-ji and nowhere else—convinced Soifon that she had been forsaken. By that point, she was beyond the howls of adolescent dejection she had anticipated. Perhaps the century she'd spent pining for her mistress had sucked that capability out of her. She had moved from shock and disappointment to sheer, unmitigated rage in half a heartbeat. And she was not alone in the sentiment.

As she sat here in her office, roughly half her underlings were silently engaged in plotting the systematic destruction of Kuchiki Byakuya. The first two phalanxes dispatched themselves, alarmed and angered that their tiny mistress had been so dishonored. The third she had sent to observe and map his movements—she wished to take him out herself—but they were overcome by the temptation and set upon him with an emotionally sloppy attack mixed with kidou and hakudou. Of course they were all cut to ribbons, which led Soifon to summarily order all of them to stand down. This was not the first time she had been disobeyed; there was still a lone wolf or two that hoped to end the business on his own, and the rest seethed with vengeful thoughts.

Soifon would have been comforted by the outpour of affection if she could forget the cause of it. She frowned. "Killing him now would disrupt the peace. Do not think me so selfish as to put my own wants over the needs of Soul Society. He is a capable and honorable captain and it would be a blow to lose him."

The blow to the back of the head was so quick that by the time she turned to look at Yoruichi-sama, she had already sat back down. "Idiot! I should have known you were still this childish. You're just salty because you finally came to care for him and he could not return the feeling. And you toying with him like this is just some passive-aggressive form of giving up with dignity. Out with it, do you still want him or not?"

It was good that Yoruichi was in her own form. The cat was expressive in voice, but her human form was far more clear with her narrowed eyebrows and indignant scowl. Soifon knew she could lie to the cat, but not to the woman.

She took a breath. "I do."

"Well then," Yoruichi grinned, "you shall have him. I'll help you."

A/N: A thousand and a thousand more apologies for the delay here. My head went "poof."