CHAPTER 21: AN ORDINARY GIRL

Orihime slipped her hand into Rukia's and squeezed it as they crossed the lawn:

"I can't believe you live here!"

They'd spent the afternoon training in the grounds of the Thirteenth Division barracks and Rukia was more than happy with the girl's progress. She didn't understand the nature of her powers, but she was capable of a number of interesting techniques, including potent wards that shielded her against attack and the ability to reverse some of Rukia's spells: something she'd never encountered before. They'd agreed to both think hard on the best way to utilise her talents. She was not physically strong. Her attacks were unlikely to do much damage, but the reversal: now that, surely could be put to use against their enemies.

Byakuya had emerged from his quarters to greet the girl. Though Rukia had made no effort to tell him of her return to Soul Society, it came as no surprise to her that he already knew. Orihime let go of her hand and went on ahead, bowing from the waist as she reached him. Though clad in a pale blue kimono and haori, he nevertheless retained all the dignity and presence of a captain of the Gotei Thirteen.

"Nii-sama, this is Orihime Inoue. Inoue, this is my brother, Kuchiki Byakuya-taichou."

Byakuya nodded. Then Orihime straightened and a strange thing happened: she looked straight at Byakuya and gave him the most open and honest smile Rukia had ever seen. It was like a ray of sunshine and she offered it to him as a gift, given freely. Byakuya's expression never changed, yet Rukia found herself wondering if there was an echo of uncertainty in those grey eyes.

"Your house is so beautiful." Orihime effused: "Would it be possible to take a look around the grounds?"

"Of course," he said; then, with barely a moment's hesitation he added: "I'll show you myself."

Rukia stared. Had she heard right? Yes. To her astonishment, it seemed that Orihime had just fallen into step with her brother and they were walking away from her across the lawn. She shook herself, wondering if she had been meant to join them.

"I'm going to get changed," she called before either could invite her, but they already seemed to be lost in conversation.

She had never brought a guest back to the house. Visits from members of her squad didn't count. In recent times, Renji had visited, but he was as much her brother's lieutenant as he was her friend. She had been nervous of bringing Orihime here. She had always felt anything but welcome in Byakuya's house and Orihime had seemed like the type who might just shrivel under his cold gaze if she weren't offered some kind of protection. Clearly though, that wasn't going to be necessary. From where she stood, she could see them at the far end of the garden. He was showing Orihime the flowers: the white buds that bloomed so late in the year that they were still fresh in winter, and the beds that would be full of colour in summer; the plum trees, which would flower earliest and mark the advent of spring. The girl was smiling and listening as he talked.

I should probably have shown an interest in flowers, Rukia thought. I don't really like flowers though.

The servants chose that moment to bring her tea. She drank it while writing up a very brief report of her time in the human world and, by the time she finished, Orihime had crept into her quarters, pulling the screen door shut behind her. Her face was flushed and radiant as as she glanced around:

"Oh, everything here is so old!" she said, then caught herself and her hand flashed to her mouth: "I don't mean that your house is old, Kuchiki-san. I mean it's like stepping back in time. Honestly, everything here is like it would have been a few hundred years ago at home. I don't know my history all the well, but" – Rukia pressed a cup of tea into her hands and she smiled – "Thank you!"

"How is my brother?"

"He seems very charming."

Rukia probably allowed a little too much incredulity to show through in her expression because Orihime hurried on: "I mean, polite. Like somebody in a storybook. A prince or something!" At that, Rukia chuckled and led the girl out onto the decking where she lowered her voice, as if afraid that Byakuya would hear: "I don't think there are people like that in my world anymore. Maybe there were, a long time ago, but not now. It's strange; Ichigo told me he was" – she caught herself – "Ah, that is, I don't think Ichigo likes your brother. I'm sorry." Rukia laughed softly:

"That's fine. Ichigo wasn't looking at flowers."

"I shouldn't have said that."

"You're not so far from the truth though. He can trace his family back to the Spirit King, so I supose it makes him royalty of a sort. There were once four noble households; now there are only two and Byakuya is the last of his line."

"What about you?" Her eyes widened and she gasped, spilling tea over the side of her cup: "Kuchiki-san, you're a princess!"

"Me? No. I was adopted into this family." Rukia started to tell her about Rukongai, the academy, her adoption into Byakuya's household, Hisana and the Gotei. She was easy to talk to, listening with empassioned interest to everything that Rukia described. As the sun set, the light changed to gold in the garden, picking out the delicate shadows of fallen leaves. Yet the day was perfectly still and it was not yet cool enough to force the two of them back inside. Inoue sat on the decking, her arms and legs threaded through the trellis, so that her feet hung a little above the lawn. Rukia knelt beside and a little behind her, speaking as she sipped tea. Periodically, the servants refilled the pot and the air was fill of the warm scent of stewing leaves. The shadows grew long and spindly and the grass was mottled by the dusk, and Rukia spoke of Kaien. It was easier now. Some things were clear in her head; others, she glossed over quickly. She heard the girl's reactions to the tale in the changes in her breathing. This was something Rukia had never told Ichigo. It was harder for her because Ichigo had an idea of what it felt like to kill. He would know that it stained you somehow, and she didn't want him to see her in that way. When she finished, the moon had just blanched the horizon and Inoue was quiet for a long time. Eventually, she said:

"Why don't you stop?"

"Hm?"

"After the war, when everything's peaceful again, you wouldn't have to keep on being a shinigami. I mean, surely you have everything you want here."

Rukia glanced around. The moonlit garden was very still. She supposed that, when it was laid bare like that, her life as a shinigami had not been the most successful one. Kaien's death was a shadow that stretched over everything; then there had been her disappearance in the human world. And, most recently, she'd been forced to acknowledge that Ichigo, despite everything they had been through together, did not need her now:

"Battles end, but not the war against hollow," she said at length: "There will always be people who need protecting and the balance between the worlds" –

"But Kuchiki-san" – the girl turned and grasped her hand with an expression of genuine distress – "I don't understand. We never really did get to know each other at school. If you'd told me all of this then, I'd have thought you were mad, but I can see it all now. You have a beautiful home, a family, money, beautiful clothes, all the food you could ever eat, and friends. You have us now too. We're friends. So, if being a shinigami doesn't make you happy, why don't you stop?"

Rukia took her hand back:

"Why would you think I'm not happy?"

"You look sad….. sometimes." Inoue searched her face, but it had closed on her like a book: "I know that you were happy with Ichigo" –

"Ichigo has nothing to do with this!" She pulled her knees up to her chest, but, as she moved, the sleeve of her kimono swept one of the tea cups over and she yelped as scalding liquid touched her hand. Fortunately, she then had every excuse to turn away from the girl and start clearing up the mess, swearing softly under her breath. Inoue could not see that her face had coloured. She was angry, but she didn't know why. And perhaps it wasn't anger at all. Something in Inoue's words had cut too close to the bone; something had hurt her and she didn't want to find out what it was. She straightened with the tea tray in her hands.

"You make Ichigo happy."

Rukia froze. Not even a breeze stirred the garden. She steeled her expression as she turned back to the human girl:

"My mission was to keep track of the substitute shinigami and prepare him for the upcoming war."

"Okay."

"I didn't need to….. make him happy."

Inoue climbed to her feet, her expression sad:

"But you did, and you do. He always seems lost when you're not there and – and you're the same, Kuchiki-san! I used to think I was imagining it, but when you're with him, it's like you both shine. I thought I would hate you, but I don't – I really don't!" She took a step towards Rukia and the shinigami knelt again to replace the tea tray, then straightened, her head down, her hair falling across her face. She was steadying her breathing and, when she looked up again, Inoue's face was frightened, as if she thought she had said too much.

Rukia's smile didn't quite touch her eyes:

"He's an idiot, isn't he?" she said: "Inoue, can you promise me something?" Inoue nodded. "I need you to look after him."

The human girl's eyes widened until they were round as dinner plates. Rukia nearly knelt again, to pick up the tray, but was stopped as the full force of Inoue's hug caught her off-guard. After a moment, the girl's body shivered. "Are you crying?" asked Rukia. She realised, too late, that the bluntness of the question sounded less than compassionate, and tried to amend it: "Why are you crying?"

"I don't know! Don't you ever cry and you don't know why?"

"No, I" – She hesitated, realising that no explanation was necessary. The girl's hair smelt of strawberries and human soap. For all her sweetness, she had a crushing embrace, which let up only when her weeping relented and she stepped back. Rukia stared at her.

"You must think me such a fool," Inoue cried: "But I really thought you'd be angry with me, Kuchiki-san!"

"Why?"

"For saying all that about Kurosaki-kun and for asking why it was you wanted to be a shinigami."

"No." Rukia held her hand out to the human girl: "If anything, I think things are a little more clear to me now."

"Oh, good," she said uncertainly, taking Rukia's hand and squeezing it. "Because, it always seemed to me, Kuchiki-san, that you were just an ordinary girl. And we'll be friends still, won't we? Like we were at school."

"Sure," she reassured her, but, in her heart, she thought: friends who are about to go to war; how can we be anything but extraordinary?

That night, she made a decision.

When she had first met Ichigo, he'd been completely reliant on her to learn what it was to be a shinigami, to learn how to fight, to understand the spirit world, follow spirit ribbons, trace reiatsu, sense hollow. She missed that. She'd become fond of him.

No, even she wasn't stupid enough to couch it those terms. She loved him. It wasn't fairytales or drama; it wasn't songs and parades. For her own part, it had turned out to be quite quiet and straightforward: nothing like the storybooks would suggest. But that didn't change the facts. She was sure of it because seeing him again had shaken her to the core. Her loss of focus; her shambolic performance against the arrancar. He split her straight down the middle. One moment, curled up on his sofa as he offered her coffee in the morning; the next, trying to fight alongside him as if it didn't matter to her if he lived or died, or if there were no more mornings when he offered her coffee.

She hated coffee.

And, because these things mattered, they got in the way. It was just that, up until today, she'd thought it was only her that was getting distracted.

You make Ichigo happy.

But she didn't want to make him happy. She was meant to be making him stronger. She couldn't do that because, when she was with him, she cared about all the other stupid little things that ticked along in his life, like whether he finished his schoolwork and if his grades had dropped since they'd last met, and the new poster in his room, which she'd studied at length, but still didn't understand, though he said it was something to do with a band. A band of what, she had wondered. He was the same. She made him happy and that meant that he found it hard to fight alongside her. They weren't equals after all; she was by far the weaker party now. He was constantly afraid of taking his eyes off her. She saw it in the way he checked on her, in his fear when she'd insisted on confronting the arrancar alone. In his blind rage when she'd been injured. Because of her, he took risks. To protect her, he was willing to make sacrifices. For the first time, she realised, they were both afraid of dying. Not because death frightened them, but because it would mean one losing the other.

The first lesson she'd ever been taught at the shino was that you could not fight if you feared death.