CHAPTER 13: MERRY GO ROUND

Juushiro was right, Byakuya thought: he was in a strange mood. As he crossed the moonlit garden, it seemed that everything had taken on an exquisite clarity, as if he might trap it all in a glass bauble and keep it locked away safely. His home, the garden: was it his imagination or did they not feel quite so empty as they usually did. He could recall days spent here as a child when he had been surrounded by family, and the lawns had seemed to stretch on forever. He'd pulled wooden toys on string across this grass; he'd dipped his toes into the cool pools. As a young man, he'd courted a woman between the silver branches of the sakura trees.

And now that they were gone, there remained only Rukia. Tonight, even she seemed very far away. He would know if she was dead, he thought. He'd not admitted such to Ukitake because he wasn't certain of the mechanism of it; he couldn't feel her reiatsu: it was too weak for him to trace between worlds, but she was alive. Definitely alive.

Crossing the decking, he paused at the door to her quarters. He didn't know why. Suddenly, the quietness of the house left him ill at ease. When she left, and suddenly he felt certain that she would leave, would this be how it was every day?

Had he really wanted her dead? He thought of her smile, which was rare, but as gentle as Hisana's had been. He'd grown accustomed to her silence, the way she moved from room to room as if afraid to catch his eye. Tonight's silence was entirely different and filled with memories. He pushed aside the screen to her quarters.

She guarded her privacy keenly in a way that he was not accustomed to. She didn't even let the servants into her quarters most days. She dressed alone, bathed alone, put up her hair alone, even though she had little skill at such things. She'd only had one house-guest in all the time she'd lived with him and that had been four weeks ago: his own vice-captain; apparently a childhood friend, though he couldn't recall either of them having passed the time of day in all the years that Abarai had worked for him.

Before she'd left for the real world, it had occurred to him that he wanted to clear out some of the unused rooms at the back of the mansion. It had been a day when another odd mood had taken him. He'd left it to the servants to clear the rooms, but had later found Rukia, with one of her dresses hiked up over her knees, picking among the boxes like a seagull on a scrap-heap. Indeed he'd caught her just as she had paused, straight-backed, in rapt contemplation of a tiny object in her hand. As he watched, she gave it a small shake.

"It's a kidonno," he said. She managed to move with extraordinary speed to tug the kimono out of its make-shift knots and down over her legs. She often turned a fecthing pink at such times, but now she just brushed herself down and crossed the room to where he stood in the doorway, still gently shaking the device and holding it to her ear as if she expected it to speak:

"Are you throwing it out?"

"It's a toy," he said, by way of explanation, and she held it up so that it was inches from his face:

"It has a dragon and a rabbit and the dragon is chasing the rabbit. Ah!" She squeaked as the little contraption began to move. There was indeed a dragon, fashioned from copper and tin, and it span round and round on a circular track, its back arching and its body prickling with tiny lights. Rukia's face lit with delight.

"I believe the rabbit is a hollow, but yes, if you like." She was testing the device, moving it up close to him and then away again. It sped up and slowed down dependent on its proximity to his person.

"It's activated by Nii-sama!"

"By spiritual pressure." He took it from her and sealed down his own spiritual pressure tightly. In his palm, the small toy's motions slowed and then stilled. Her eyes were round. When she was enraptured by something, she had a delightful habit of entirely forgetting herself. Now that she took the trinket back, it began to move again, slowly. "Channel your own energy into it," he advised her.

She did and the dragon whisked round, its body sparkling, forever circling the white rabbit that may or may not have been a hollow. She almost shivered with delight, then glanced up with sudden concern as if she might have done something wrong:

"Can I keep this?"

"It's just a toy," he said, and then, seeing that she might have taken his reaction as somehow demeaning of her own, he added: "It might make a fair ornament if you wish to take it."

"Thank you!"

And she had bowed and darted away across the decking.

That same toy now stood proudly atop her writing desk. She had few possessions. It didn't seem to be in her nature to want to hold onto things, but there was a stack of notebooks on the desk, of the modern kind that might pass for affectations of the human world. She kept her work-notes in these, but insisted on doodling on almost every page so that they looked like the musings of a nursery school child. There were her clothes, but these were locked away in cupboards, mostly unworn. She lived in her uniform. If she ever did wish to marry, he thought cynically, she would probably do so still wearing that damned uniform. An ornate chest of drawers, a rail for kimono, a stool, another stand for her sword if she ever decided to take it off. Why did that bother him? She loved her work; she wanted to do well. Those were all things he should encourage, so why did it feel, sometimes, that she did them to spite him. He gazed down at the kidonno. If he stepped closer, it began to spin and the colours along the dragon's back began to change. In the silent room, there was something chilling about its eager motion and, reaching down, he placed his finger on the mechanism. The little dragon stopped.

Strange. She had pulled this from the boxes of rubbish. She had stood there, straight-backed. It had reminded him so much of Hisana.

It had been their wedding night. He'd stepped back into the room and she'd been standing there over their wedding gifts, wearing nothing but a gold and ruby bracelet. In the candlelight, her body was brown. She'd put on weight since he'd found her. Like many of the residents of Rukongai, she had been painfully thin: all jagged lines and angles. He preferred the soft curves her new lifestyle had bestowed on her. She had been so still, standing at the end of the bed with her back to him, staring down. He'd crossed the room and put his hands on her waist. She'd been tense. That had surprised him. And suddenly, she had shuddered and put one hand to her brow.

"I don't feel well."

He looked down. She had been gazing intently at one of their gifts: the little kidonno that could be activated by spiritual pressure. He couldn't even recall who had given them that. It wasn't to his tastes, but she had liked it when he'd first shown her how, even with her weak spiritual pressure, she could power the little toy. Now she brushed past him and seated herself on the end of the bed.

He poked idly at the trinket, then turned and joined her. She leant against him, skin to skin, and her breath fluttered against his chest.

"How much were you trying to put into that thing?" he asked. Her spirit actually felt a little weaker than usual. It was just like her to overeach herself on something inconsequential and, as he passed his hands over her shoulders, he enriched her reiatsu with his own. The healing spell was so low level she was oblivious to it, though she did shiver and pull back so that she could kiss him on the lips.

When her eyes looked that way, as if they were a dark liquid inked with reflections, had she any idea what she could do to him? She could have asked him for anything. He'd have given her his home, his life, his soul. Love, he had discovered, was not gentle or elegant; it was dangerous and it demanded nothing less than constant sacrifice.

In the months leading up to their marriage, she had grown distant and that had been unbearable. Since she had revealed to him her past and the little sister that he had vowed he would find for her, the distance between them had vanished, but, in many ways, this was even worse. He had a desperation for her that no amount of intimacy seemed capable of quenching. It drove him mad that she was anything other than his, completely and in her entirety. He was jealous the moment she turned away, the instant she found fascination in anything else but him. His hunger was unreasonable, so he held it back and would not act, but, somehow, he would have to possess her. Not just her flesh, not just her heart, not even her devotion, but her every moment. Each instant that passed by left him hollowed out by his desire for her.

"Was it what you wanted?" she asked and he realised that she meant the wedding. It was he who had planned every detail of it. Against tradition, he had worn civilian clothes for her. She gazed anxiously into his face.

"Of course. You were perfect." She smiled, her expression languid, and rested her head against his chest while her arms wound round his neck:

"Not too ashamed of a girl from Rukongai?"

"Proud."

"Byakuya-sama."

"Hisana." Their names were like a mantra. It struck him that, to anyone else, this display would seem foolish, but he lifted her hair to his face and breathed it in and she pushed herself closer until they both fell back onto the bed and he was lying, facing her, just far enough apart that they could see one another's faces and bodies. He let his eyes move over her, drinking in her colours. He could not have paid more attention to her if he had painted her, but this was not a painting. She was vivid with imperfections that an artist, in all their austerity, might have missed: the messy fall of dark hair across her face, the slight tightness in her breathing, the uncertainty in her eyes as if she feared something and desired it all together.

Proud.

Why was that so surprising? He had found something precious beyond words.

He began to kiss her, persistently delighted by the way her body responded to his touch. He had longed for this moment, made all the more intoxicating by the staid tone of their ceremony. She'd been dressed in a traditional gown,w hich had swaddled her delicate figure, obscuring the more fragile lines of her body. Those blue eyes had watched him uncertainly throughout as if to follow his lead, but there was nothing that she could have done wrong.

Something fell from the shelf of gifts. Somewhere, a screen door rattled.

Byakuya pulled away from her so suddenly that she gave a little cry of surprise. He turned to look over his shoulder.

"What's wrong, Byakuya-sama?"

"I don't know."

She curled up on her side as he rolled off of the bed and pulled on a gown, tying it loosely around his waist.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm not sure. I just have to check" – he frowned and stooped to retrieve the kidonno where it had fallen to the floor. He stared at the toy, then replaced it while the tiny dragon danced to the rhythm of his spiritual pressure.

"It doesn't matter," said Hisana. "Byakuya-sama – where are you going" - ? She sat up and wrapped her arms around her body in the semblance of something like modesty, and, with slightly less sympathy, added: "Whatever it is, can it wait?"

"I'll be right back," he said. Then, somewhat unnecessarily: "Stay there."

"Hey!" she called after him angrily, but he had already left the room.

He walked through their living quarters. Nothing was out of place. At the shrine in the anteroom, the incense had burnt itself out. Everything remained in darkness. A thin slice of moonlight crawled in through the screen door. Strange. He never left it unlatched. He must have been distracted this evening. Still, he peered through the thin crack at the silent garden. It was empty, the revellers having long since departed. Nothing stirred, and he pulled the door too and latched it before turning back into the room. He refilled the incense-holder and lit it again. Always the last thing he did before he slept.

Back in their bedroom, Hisana was standing over their wedding gifts again. Her expression was troubled.

"It was nothing," he reassured her. "I'm tired; I'm chasing shadows."

"It's strange," she said, without looking up: "I think one of them is missing."

"Which one is that?"

"It was a pendant. I think it was a pendant. It was given to me by that man who smiles all the time, though I don't trust the way he smiles. Still," she said idly as he wound his arm around her waist: "He is one of your friends."

"Ichimaru Gin is not a friend of mine. He is an aquaintance only."

"It is odd though."

"I'm sure we can find it. What did it look like?"

"It was about so big," she said, making a circle with her thumbs and forefingers: "And I was certain it was in a bag beneath the dragon toy. It had a design on it: a peacock, I think. Save that the tail looked like a rainbow. It" – she hesitated, catching sight of his expression, and, suddenly, she was gazing right at him: "What's wrong, Byakuya-sama?"

"Nothing." He picked up the kidonno again and began searching through the boxes and bags beside it. Hisana stood, her arms straight at her side, watching him. Eventually, she hooked one finger into the belt of his gown and said softly:

"You know, it doesn't matter that much. We can look tomorrow. Tomorrow, Byakuya."

He stared at the gifts, without really seeing them and only came back to himself when she stood on tiptoes and planted a chaste little kiss on his lips. After a moment's hesitation, he returned it with a passion that surprised her. She wouldn't understand. He needed more than her company tonight. He needed to lose himself in her. It was absolutely paramount that he forget what she had just told him.

Because she had just described to him, not a pendant given as a wedding gift, but the very same noble seal that he had once traded for the elicit transfer of a woman from Rukongai into the Sereitei.

It was strange. He had no idea, even now, whether Ichimaru's wedding gift had been a threat or a promise or a message he hadn't properly understood. He and his wife never did find the so-called pendant that Hisana swore he had handed to her and Byakuya was never certain whether Gin Ichimaru had been the intended recipient of the item or whether it had simply, at some stage, fallen into his hands. One thing of which he was certain though was that Ichimaru knew what he had done.

He lifted his finger from the kidonno in Rukia's room and watched as it sprung back into life, the jagged clockwork motion filling the darkness with a soft clicking. Things that had seemed so important a lifetime ago now held very little reality for him. Hisana had described their marriage as a dream and, all too often, it felt that way to him too. Only he had woken to discover she had never existed.

If he had made her happy, she would not have sought Rukia, day after day. She would not have become ill, if he had made her happy.

He knew he must not let his mind wander down that road. He had thought it many times before, but it left room only for self-pity and despair, emotions that, ultimately, lacked all purpose.

Yet that did not change the fact of what Rukia had become to him: a reminder of all the ways he had failed to help Hisana, an atonement, and the embodiment of his regrets. For a long time, that was all she had been.

Not now though. Now, for the very first time since he had taken her into his house, he wished that she was here and that the house was not quite so empty of comfort and full of memory.