Revamped, redone, rewritten, reposted.

I hads a cookie but I ated it.

_XxX_

Renji felt a rather overwhelming mixture of nervous and stupid as he stumbled along after his taicho. Just as the Kuchiki nobleman said, he had signed Renji out the next day into his care. Unohana had come by to wish him well, and remind him of his check up in the next few days. Renji had the distinct she was smiling, though he had no idea what about.

He was having serious trouble keeping up with the nobleman as he led Renji towards his home. Between trying to figure out where he was going, keeping up with his taicho and dodging incoming objects, Renji felt like a fish out of water. He was always horrible at the blind training they had in his Academy days. Hisagi had told him he had the skill and grace of a drunken elephant. Kira, on the other hand, was brilliant at blind fighting. The blonde could fight just as well without his sight as he could with it.

Renji seriously hated Kira in that moment.

Renji stumbled on the footpath, reaching for the railing to catch himself. It seemed that the railing was farther away then he expected and he began to topple. A steel-strong yet soft hand wrapped around his bicep to steady him and then steer him out the way on an incoming shinigami. It was fairly obvious who that hand belonged to, and Renji could feel the suppressed reiatsu of his taicho beside him.

What actually surprised him was that hand on his bicep stayed there, leading him towards their destination. He wasn't going to spoil the sensation of that smooth hand on his rough skin, but Renji couldn't help but be amazed by the display. The guiding touch made him move in a little closer to the nobleman, where he found himself walking side by side with the Kuchiki clan head. Kuchiki Byakuya was not the sort of man to walk beside anyone, so the little gesture made Renji's heart leap.

Renji had no idea where they were, but it didn't take a moron to guess where they were going. The Kuchiki home was really more of a mansion or an estate, with extensive gardens and a big stone wall surrounding the grounds. He had only been inside the grounds once, to escort Rukia home after a night of drinking with Matsumoto and Kira. He could only remembered small slivers of the interior, like the expensive silk drapes covering wide windows or the flowering trees in the courtyard.

There was a pond somewhere in the gardens, that much he knew. He had gotten intimately acquainted with the body of water when Rukia insisted they take a shortcut through the gardens. Renji had inadvertently pulled her into the pond when she tried to haul him out, where she promptly clobbered him. It ended up with them laughing loudly in the pond, trying to ignore the koi nibbling their toes.

Renji tugged on the sleeve of his hospital issued yukata, pulling the material over his splinted arm as he tried to get his bearings together. He froze, however, when the guiding hand disappeared from his arm. He felt a vague and completely unnecessary wave of horror and began to blindly grope in the direction of his taicho with his good hand.

A fleeting touch on his good shoulder stilled his scrambling, easily identifiable as the same hand that had been wrapped around his bicep moments before.

"Ohayo, Kuchiki-sama," an unfamiliar voice echoed.

Renji could hear a gate opening, the wrought iron edges squealing as it scraped against the stone wall. The redhead vaguely remembered going through the same gate with Rukia.

He supposed it made it more of an estate than a house.

"We have prepared a guest room on your order, Kuchiki-sama," the voice said again.

"Very good. Lead Abarai-fukutaichou in and to the room," Byakuya ordered.

Renji could feel the older shinigami's reiatsu grow weaker as the sound of his waraji faded. It left him with an odd, empty feeling in his stomach, one that Renji could, not for the life of him, identify. There was something overly comforting about the taicho's reiatsu while Renji was in this state, and he had become so used to it in the last day that he almost felt empty now.

And just like that, Renji found himself completely alone. He must have drifted off into thought and missed his cue to follow the Kuchiki servant. It made an almost painful anxiety blossom through his body and pull at his muscles. Renji tugged at the front of his pale green yukata that Hanatarou had bought him. Dipping his hand inside the front of the yukata, moving between his braced arm and hip, he wrapped his hand around the hilt of his hidden zanpakuto. Unohana had told him quite firmly that eh wasn't allowed to wield a weapon in his state, but he couldn't be without the sword right now.

Besides, Renji was never really one much for rules.

"Abarai-san?"

Renji visibly jumped at the voice, feet actually lifting an inch off the ground. He spun around to where the feminine voice had came from, reaching out violently with his reiatsu. He quickly stopped himself before his reiatsu could inflict damage on the woman, nullifying the deadly edge to it before it met the woman. It just ended with a blast of pressure, one that everyone on the estate would have clearly felt.

Renji felt a wave of shame steel through his body, making his face heat up and his head hang. He had been caught off guard by a servant and had very nearly attempted to kill the woman. His blush spread from his cheeks to colour his whole face when he felt the spike of reiatsu coming from his taicho.

"Sorry," Renji mumbled.

He pulled his reiatsu back down to its normal level slowly as to not alert the Kuchiki noble once again. He felt the responding reiatsu fall back down to a suppressed level, knowing full well he'd have to explain this to the older man.

"It's okay, Abarai-san," the woman said kindly.

She had a pleasant voice with a slight accent, one that Renji could not put his finger on. Her voice was smooth and aged, holding the telltale sounds of wisdom that was older than him. Renji judged that she was older than him and his taicho. He felt her hand, small and soft, touch his arm gently while the other went to the small of his back. She led him in carefully, walking slightly behind the fukutaichou to better judge the path they took.

Renji allowed the woman to lead him up three steps until his feet hit wooden flooring. He could still feel the crisp breeze of the outside air die as she moved away to pull a door open. She returned her hand to his back and gently pushed him over the threshold. Renji could smell a mixture of wood, incense and flowers as he was led down the hall. It felt long and winding, and he could hear the whispers of passersby.

He felt suddenly paranoid that they were whispering about him. He was led around a sharp corner and Renji had wonder if the interior of the house was built like a maze. He couldn't put it past his taicho's sense of humour to do that, or Rukia's for that matter. He stretched out his left hand and let it trail over the walls as he was led around another corner. The hand on his back slowly pulled away and Renji came to a stop.

A door opened on his left, slightly behind him and on the opposite wall. The servant's hand rested on his bicep and gently tugged until he followed her over the threshold of the door. He could tell the room he had been led into was large, just by the echoes his feet made on the wooden flooring. He had to figure that the room was easily as big as his own apartment in Rugonkai as he padded forwards until his feet met a thick rug.

"This will be your room while you're staying here," she told him.

He heard the thunk of the door sliding shut behind them as he shifted. Renji nodded vaguely in her direction and stretched his good arm out in front of him. It was five short steps until his hand connected with the wooden frame of a western bed, clearly from the human world. He followed the footboard around to the side, eyebrows furrowing at its sheer size.

"'s big," he said.

His head bobbed around like he was analysing the décor, but he was carefully pushing his reiatsu out to get the layout of the room. The general layout was fairly uncluttered, almost as if someone had come in and moved the furniture just to accommodate his injury. Renji tapped Zabimaru's hilt and felt the baboon-like chimera shift in his mind, making him grin.

"Thanks," he said, turning back to where he thought the older woman would be.

Renji got the distinct impression that the older woman was smiling.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

He could hear her stepping towards him, overly loud so he would know where she was. She said it in such a way that Renji would have thought that they were old friends. It was similar in tone to how Momo or Kira would ask, caring and concerned at the same time. He didn't ask immediately, instead mulling it over. He had never felt her reiatsu before, and the need to ask was building up.

"…better, thanks… Ah…have we…met?" Renji asked, trying to phrase it politely.

Rukia had often told him that he had a bad habit of saying the first thing that came to mind, usually being crude or offensive or both.

He got the impression she was smiling again.

"No, we haven't. Saki Atsuko," she said, touching his good arm gently as a greeting.

"Abarai Renji," he replied, unsure of how to react to her.

"I know," she said.

And he just knew that her smile got wider then.