"Oh hey Rukia," I said.
My voice came out sounding raspy because I hadn't had anything to drink in a while. While I was under it seemed that the sun had gone from an early morning slant to a mid-afternoon point high overhead. I looked over to see Rukia sitting near me under the other plum tree. The branches of the two trees had grown out and spread far enough to entangle with each other, and their roots had both grown together too. She lay cradled in the gaps between the roots of the trees at the base of the trunk. She looked upset, and beautiful.
She was dressed formally in a very intricately embroidered silk kimono of a pale bluish-purpley color with white and pink blossoms flowing in the breeze embroidered on it. Her obi was a contrasting but harmonious dark blue wrapped around her waist and tied in a butterfly knot around the back. She wore a matching hair ornament in her hair and carried a silk bag around one wrist. Her face was delicately powdered with white rice powder and her lips reddened with rouge so that she more closely resembled a delicate little doll than my rough, tough, tear-away best friend who threatened to beat me up when I'd done something particularly stupid. I tried not to gape like a landed fish, I really did, but I don't know if I succeeded very well.
Was she crying? She looked distressed, and an upset Rukia had no place in my world, not while I was here. I sat up, ignoring the stiffness in my limbs and crawled over to sit down next to her. Her head was down and forward, trying to hide her unhappy expression and preserve her pride. I knew her better than that. Women tended to talk about things, and Rukia didn't really have any girlfriends (besides, I knew that if she did have someone to talk about important things with I'd only feel jealous about it... And I did.) But I was here now, and I could fall back into the place where I belonged, at her side, helping her. I could be that close to her at least.
I knew women often saw the world different from men, they went at everything sideways, making everything more complicated than they had to be, but even so, there had to be something I could do. I had all the subtlety of a baseball bat to a window, but there were time when a certain amount of bluntness was called for, besides, I couldn't think of any clever openers, so I just stepped right in it.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Her reaction was to stiffen and try to pull herself back together.
"There's nothing wrong with me," she said, but the tightness in her voice betrayed her.
"I didn't say that," I grumbled.
As usual, it seemed I'd screwed it up somewhere. Sheesh, and women claimed that men had fragile egos, she didn't have to get all defensive an' shit. I was tryin' ta help!
"I asked what's wrong, I wasn't sayin' there's somethin' wrong with you," I clarified. "Do you need me to go and beat the shit outta someone for ya? 'Cause I will, just say the word."
It'd be my pleasure. Hopefully she'd say that brat she was dating in the mortal world had an ass beating coming to him.
"You'd only make things worse," she said, a note of scorn in her voice. "It's not the sort of problem that you can beat down with a sword dummy."
"So you admit that there's a problem," I said, having caught her out.
I tried to keep the triumph from my voice but apparently didn't succeed very well, for she looked sharply over at me. Even when she was angry, she made my heart skip a beat.
"C'mon Rukia," I said, my tone conciliatory with her. "How long we been together? I know you. If there's something wrong, I want you to be able to tell me."
I couldn't really claim we didn't keep stuff from each other, after all, I'd been keeping a real doozy from her for a lot of years in the fact that I was deeply in love with her. Still, our relationship had always been one of openness and honesty. Because the world we'd lived in had been full of lies, we'd always tried to be honest with each other, to be there for each other and help each other. I was relying on that openness to get her to tell me why she was upset.
"It's stupid," she muttered.
I caught that she was afraid I'd laugh at her. She could be unwittingly amusing, but I wouldn't want to hurt her feelings.
"I won't laugh," I promised. "Whatever it is, you can tell me."
"Well..." she hesitated and looked up at me, and apparently, whether it was habit or a desire to tell someone what was on her mind she told me why she was hiding out here in this courtyard with me.
"It's a meeting of all the lateral lines of the Kuchiki Clan and everyone's looking at me... funny," she finished unhappily. "I've been part of this family for almost half a century and they all still look at me like I'm something the cat dragged in out of the rain!"
I had to restrain myself from reaching for Zabimaru and laying on the smackdown to a bunch of noble assholes for treating my Rukia badly.
"And the Matriarch..." she said, her expression turned even more distressed. "She all but said that I was better suited to a position as a servant, that I was too weak and pathetic to attain any rank, that I should never have been brought into the house and that I had only brought shame to the Kuchiki name."
That was it, the old bitch was a dead woman.
"The worst part about all of it was that everyone except Elder Brother seemed to agree with her. The fact that I'd been locked in the tower and nearly executed has been held up as a fine example of why outsiders should never be brought into the Kuchiki House."
"You were arrested and tried because you were trying to do your job," I tried to comfort her. "That's not exactly a terrible crime y'know. Besides, you're part of the family, whether they like it or not. If they want to hang around like dried out old sticks, they forget the important fact that dried out old sticks snap under pressure."
She looked up at me like I'd lost my mind, so I tried again.
"What I mean to say is that they cling so damn hard to stupid traditions that they won't pull their heads out of their asses, take a good look around, and realize that the world they think never changes is already different."
I could point out a whole bunch of things, the Seireitei had been betrayed, there was no longer a Council of the Forty-Six, there was a substitute Soul Reaper running around as a mortal, there were more common-born Reapers in positions of authority in the Seireitei than there had ever been before, a group called the vizards were active, there were more Espada than there had ever been before and they were all organized now... the list just went on and on.
"Besides, why the heck do you care what they think anyway?" I asked next.
"They are my family," she pointed out.
"So what? It doesn't mean they know you. If they were any kind of family, they'd be rallying behind you. There's a kinda strength a person c'n get from followin' all th' rules, but it takes 'nother kinda strength ya get from following your own path and doing what you feel is right. Guess which one takes more courage?" I demanded firmly.
Rukia stared at me, wide eyed.
"But... Renji," her voice was barely above a whisper and she looked genuinely afraid. "What if they're right?"
I stared at her, dumb with shock. She was kidding, right?
"What if I'm really not good enough?" she continued. "What if they're right, and I really don't belong as a Kuchiki? They're right in that I don't even have a low-ranked Seated position, I completely screwed up my very first mission in the mortal world... I've nearly been executed for heavens sake!"
I held up a hand to slow her down.
"You're only looking at the surface of things and so are they. If you only look at the things you've done and not at all the stuff going on behind it then of course it's gonna look bad. You gave yer power to a mortal and broke the rules, but without yer intervention that Hollow woulda killed his family. As fer yer execution, you an' I both know there was a lot more going on with that; Aizen wanted the Hougyoku and he had to kill you to get it, so you shouldn't feel bad about being a victim o' that rat bastard's manipulations."
"I...guess," she said slowly and with great reluctance.
This was gonna take a little more, because I could already tell by her tone and expression that she didn't really believe me. I leaned in closer and draped an arm around her and pulled her up against my side, this wasn't just because I wanted to hold her, this was because she needed the comfort and support of a good friend, even when she was too proud to say so.
"Rukia," I said seriously. "Yer lettin' them get to ya and ya don' need to. Sure they're yer family, and o' course they're gonna matter to ya. O' course yer gonna want their good opinion of ya. But their opinion isn't the only one that matters, it's not even the one that's the most important..."
"Then whose is?" she asked.
I couldn't help but feel happy about the way, after some initial surprised stiffening, Rukia relaxed against me and fitted her tiny form into the hollow created by mine to fit her. I wasn't arrogant enough to think I was sheltering her or anything, but I allowed myself the small vanity of thinking that maybe she drew comfort from my strength.
"It's yours," I said simply, imparting to her the lesson that had so recently been hard-won for me.
I loved her, and I'd share with her all that I was and all that I had, unstintingly, if she'd let me.
"Ya don't got nuthin' ta be ashamed of," I said firmly. "You followed the path that yer heart told you was right."
"But they," she protested immediately.
"Don't worry about what they think of you," I said fiercely. "Sure they're yer family now but they don't own your soul. You've been Rukia fer a whole hell of a lot longer than this Rukia Kuchiki has existed, an' the Rukia I know don't take no shit offa nobody. Straighten yer spine woman! Ya gonna let 'em push ya around, tell ya what's right an' what's wrong, or are ya gonna go out there and live, believin' in yer own possibilities?"
She pulled away and looked at me, somewhat surprised.
"Renji--" she said.
I cocked my head up at her, giving her my best confident smirk.
"Don't let anyone, not them," I gestured back to the main house. "Not even me, determine what your worth is. Only you can do that."
She just stared at me wide-eyed, like I was suddenly speaking in a foreign tongue or something.
"But it just seems like... no matter what I do or how hard I try, it's never enough. It always feels like I'm a failure," she said, distressed.
I gotta admit I was a little surprised to hear some of my own hang-ups comin' from her mouth. Still, what kind of a friend was I, what kind of a man was I if I didn't try to help her out?
"Well," I said, rubbing the back of my neck while I tried to think of what to say.
"Y'know, yer gonna fail. That's just the way life is. Just because you don't get things right away doesn't mean that you're not a good person, or that yer not worth nuthin' it just means ya gotta pick yerself up an' keep workin' at it, that's all."
"But..." she said sadly. "I'm not like you. I've never accomplished anything on my own. It feels like I got my position because Elder Brother interceded on my behalf when he adopted me. I don't have any rank, I'm not assigned field missions as much as the other Soul Reapers, even the new ones until recently..."
I quirked my mouth to one side. She had a good point. As a Soul Reaper she wasn't as experienced as some I knew that were only half her age, that, added to the fiasco that her first chance to get out and get some real experience had turned into probably ate away at her confidence as surely as I was guessing the Kuchiki Families continued alienation did. I thought about what I could say that might convince her that she had it in her to move past her failures and mess-up and keep trying. My mind turned back to a memory and I abruptly brightened.
"Hey, remember that time you came across that birds nest that one year in Rukongai?" I said, sort of abruptly.
"Yeah," she giggled. "I also remember that one little barbarian wanted to eat those poor baby birds, and I had to rescue them from your stewpot Renji."
"Well yeah, I still think they'd have tasted great," I said unapologetically. "Anyway, you remember what happened the first time their mama bird had ta push 'em outta the nest?"
"They fell," she replied.
We'd both been there the day it had happened, I remembered that she'd held tightly to my hand in excitement as she'd cheered for the babies to get up and fly. They'd been a lumpy mess of fluff and partly fledged wings, fluttering and hopping around, trying to get airborne. It had been comical in a cute sort of way.
"If they'd given up the first time they went tumbling from the nest, would those birds have ever flown?" I asked her, trying not to feel like a terrible sap the moment I let the words exit my mouth. This was so far from bein' cool and manly that it was ri-frickin'-diculous, but it was for Rukia so it was okay. Even a manly man like me couldn't expect to keep all his cool points around Love.
"I guess not," she said mildly.
"No-one who's lived the kinda life we have can ever really say that they've been sheltered from anything, but as a Soul Reaper and a Warrior there are some feathers that you just haven't have the time or experience to grow in yet, that's all."
"Do you think my wings will ever grow in?" she asked wistfully.
"Yeah," I replied seriously, bending down to rest my chin on the top of her head. I added softly
"An' when they do, you'll own the skies."
We sat like that for a while, I didn't want to move because... I liked being close to her. I always had, and I'd missed it. Who knew how many more chances I would ever get in the future to be like this with her, just her and me and our bond together. Maybe I was cheating, but hey, I was a Rukon thrief, we all knew how to get while the gettin' was good.
"It's strange," she said quietly, breaking the silence after a while. "The way this family works."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Well in some ways it seems like they can't wait to see the last of me, but in other ways it feels like they want to keep me here. I can't figure it out. On one hand, every time I have to speak with the rest of the family, it always feels a little bit like they look at me like I'm a stray cat that Brother let in to their nice clean house on a whim and they aren't sure if I have fleas or not."
I'd wanted a lot better for her than that when I'd given her up to let her go become a noblewoman.
"But on the other hand' she continued. "I know they're exerting their noble influence to keep me from advancement and out of danger, I don't know if they're doing it out of concern for me, or if they're just afraid I'll make an even bigger mistake than the first time I went on a field assignment in the mortal realm. I think they're afraid I'll embarrass them."
"Hn," I grunted under my breath. "I thought family was all about bein' supportive an' shit, even if yer family member is a little bit odd."
"I'm not odd!" she huffed.
"I didn't odd-weird or stupid, I meant odd, like kinda "square peg in a round hole" odd," I replied. "I'm just sayin that, in my opinion, if ya gotta worry so much about them havin' a bad opinion of ya that it preoccupies ya when ya go ta battle or hangs like a shadow over yer work, then there's somethin' wrong with that. Back in Hangdog, even if we were a family based on necessity, neither me or any o' the other guys woulda dared ta tell ya what ya can and can't be."
You couldn't be a whole lot in that place, Renji," she pointed out.
"That's not the point," I said irritatedly. "I'm tryin' ta tell ya that, even if they're family or even nobles, there certain things they are and are not allowed to do, certain boundaries that it's not their place to cross. They might think they have the right to put a younger family member in her place or manipulate her life for their own ends, but I firmly believe that they don't now and never will have the right to tell Rukia what she can and cannot be. It ain't their place, or anybodies, to determine Rukia's worth."
She looked dubiously at me, like she wasn't sure if I was right.
"Maybe I'm talkin' outta my ass, I mean, what the hell would I know about it?" I muttered. "No-one's ever wanted me ta be part o' their family so what the hell would I know? But speakin' as a dog outside the fence, I c'n tell ya what I see. It seems ta me that ya got two choices, ya c'n keep obeying them and trying to gain their approval by followin' all o' their rules... and that's not necessarily wrong, though it does kinda smack of you being a dog trained to perform tricks. Or, you c'n stand up on yer own, tell e'm what you think and feel and let them just deal with it, an' live yer life accordin' to yer own rules. Yer tryin' ta do both right now, it looks like, an' it doesn't seem ta be workin' so well for ya."
There was a long silence as she seemed to consider what I was saying. Finally she asked
"So what should I do?"
I wanted so badly just to tell her ta say screw 'em all fer bein' a buncha prats, come back over to my side and be with me (or whoever) instead! But that would be wrong somehow, I couldn't place my finger on how exactly, just that it would be. So I did the hard thing and said
"That's sumthin' ya gotta figure out fer yerself."
"Well that's no help," she grumbled.
"You sayin' you want me makin' all yer choices for ya?" I replied with in an unpurterbed tone... then I decided to go for the dig just to ruffle her feathers a bit.
"I thought that was what your dear Elder Brother was for."
Rukia gasped at me in offense.
"Hey!" she snapped. "You take that back!"
"I call 'em like I see 'em," I replied grinning over at her in a challenge. She caught the gleam in my eye, able to read me as easily as she ever had, and whacked me on the shoulder with the little bag on her wrist. I don;t know what she kept in that thing, rocks maybe, but her little swing hurt a bit. She pulled back for another move and I held my hands up in surrender.
"Okay, okay! I give! I give!" I said, smiling at her. It was part of the game we played between the two of us, it was ours and I couldn't help the happy feeling that expanded in my chest at the old familiarity between us. Maybe I couldn't get all I wanted, but at least this much was mine.
"You don't look sorry enough to me," Rukia said, rising up.
As usual, she was not content with unconditional surrender but she had to have total domination in her victory. She climbed over my back with one arm around my neck and rubbed her knuckles into my hair. I could easily detach her and turn the tables around if I'd wanted to, but Rukia's pride had always been a fragile thing and it was just easier to let her have what she wanted now rather than risk her taking a more subtle (and far more humiliating) revenge later.
"watch the hair!" I said, after a long moment, deciding that she'd had enough fun.
"So you surrender then?" she demanded.
I looked up at the branches above me, just coming into blossom, and came up with an idea. I recalled something that I'd read in a book somewhere, and smiling, said
"Well, according to the old code of chivalry, for your valiant defeat of me in battle I would owe you my mount, my shield, and my armor; but since I have no mount but my own feet--"
"You can keep those."
"No shield but my virtue--"
"What virtue?"
"And no armor but my wits--"
"Don't burden me with you non-existant wits, I'd be forever at a disadvantage," Rukia replied, eyes shining in amusement.
I reached up and plucked a sprig of plum-blossoms from the tree, knowing full-well that she couldn't reach them on her own.
"You'll have to make do with this," I said bowing down to her in a courtly manner. I smiled at her over the top of the blossoms and she smiled back. I chose to ignore the fact that my heart was doing that pounding thing again. It was stupid, but I lived to make her happy.
But I couldn't leave it at that and decided that she deserved just one more little reminder of the difference between us.
"A prize plucked from heights that you can't climb, brought to you by yours truly."
She caught the dig and scowled at me, even as she looked delighted by the present. I wanted to keep things lighthearted and carefree between the two of us, even though it was hard being only her best friend when I wanted so much more, I didn't want to give up the little place in her heart that I had staked out as my very own. I wanted to be the one she went to when the world just didn't make sense, I wanted to be the one she talked with and laughed with, the one who could cheer her up. So, I could stuff down those feelings and play the fool if that was what it took, Ancestors knew that I'd had plenty of practice at it.
"And would her ladyship like anything else of her lowly and unworthy servant today?" I asked, keeping my tone deliberately light and slightly mocking as I said in an overly courtly tone. "Shall I take over China for you so that you may have silk fresh off the worm? Or fresh pearls from the bottom of the ocean perhaps? Shall I fetch for you a jewel from the sands of the moon? Or a--"
"Okay, sheesh! Idiot!" she said, laughing.
I grinned back at her, happy that she was happy. Maybe the contentment that I felt inside of me when I made her smile and laugh was a pathetic sort of contement, but dammit, it was all mine.
Sorry about the lateness of the update. The ending of this thing was different in the original, but I felt that it would drag on too long so I snipped it out and put it in the next chapter. I meant to update yesterday but I found a whole treasure trove of un-read Renkia fics and that's what I did instead of posting this chapter. I'm sure you guys will forgive me. It's Renkia!