Disclaimer: As always I own nothing but the original characters and the situations I put everyone in. Everything else belongs to somebody else and that's just the way it's going to stay. Thanks to all my reviewers out there, I hope you like and review this latest chapter!

Lay In Your Arms

Isane wasn't at all sure about the sanity of what she was about to do, but what else could she do. Turning she watched Yas and Chika walk off towards their barracks, having accompanied her to Shu's house just in case. She still wasn't allowed to wander anywhere alone, as they'd reminded her multiple times on the way here. So now here she was, standing in front of Shu's door, waving them off like an idiot seeing as their backs were turned anyway. Procrastinator am I, Isane thought with a sigh.

Once they were out of sight Isane gave up on the waving and turning around stared stupidly at his door, like it would somehow melt away if she looked at it long enough, or better yet, would tell her if she should knock at all. She was feeling more indecisive than a child who'd just walked into an amusement park and caught sight of all the things there were to do. Yup, she really needed to focus here.

When she did finally get up the nerve to knock, no one answered. Normally she'd have looked at this as a gift from the gods, a perfect excuse, but for once this just worried the hell out of her. Why wasn't he answering? It was only ten o'clock at night, there was no way he was asleep already. And he was definitely in there, she could sense him. Of course he could just be being rude, it wasn't like Shu couldn't be inconsiderate, he was a guy after all, but it wasn't like him. He was a captain after all now, he had responsibilities and he took them seriously. Of course he could know it was her too and simply be avoiding her. That idea pissed her off, enough that she reached down, wrapped her fingers around the knob to keep her right hand from possibly splintering the wooden door with the force of an angry knock. It was by sheer chance that her hand slide against the cool metal knob just enough to turn it and reveal that the door was unlocked. A chill running down her spine Isane didn't even think, she simply reacted. Unsheathing her blade Isane opened the door with her other hand and carefully slipped inside, her senses on high alert. Of course some part of her brain reminded her that she was just a glorified medic, but that voice was totally over ruled by the stronger voice that said that if anyone was in there with the intent to hurt her Shu she was going to knock him out, drag him back to the twelfth division, and volunteer the son of a bitch to be experimented on. Leaving the front hallway Isane checked first the main parlor area, than the kitchen, finding nothing out of place other than the usual guy stuff men seemed unable to ever put away in their proper places. Moments later she slide open his bedroom door, took one quick scan of the room which ended when she caught sight on the lone figure, sitting out on his balcony, just visible through the partially open screen door. Sliding her sword back into place Isane went out to join him.

He sat with his knees drawn up against his chest, wearing only a simple pair of black pants. His head was bent, but she didn't have to see his face to know how he was feeling. The aura of pain and misery was taking a seat in front of him, Isane rested on her knees as she waited for him to acknowledge her.

"You know what bothers me the most?" Hisagi finally asked, not bothering to look up at her.

"No, what?"

"I don't care that Ichimaru is missing an arm or even that the bastard might be dead even as we speak. Fact is, the only part that would make me sorry about his demise would be that I wasn't the one to kill the son of a bitch in the first place for all the pain he caused Kira and Ran. What bothers me, if you can believe it, is that it isn't my captain's arm."

Thinking that over Isane caught on quick. "You're hurting over why the arm was sent in the first place."

"Ichimari is, was, a monster. A heartless, gutless, honor less bastard who didn't deserve to breath the same air as people like you. Everything he ever did in his damn life was because it suited him, because he profited from it in some way. And HE was the one who warned us. HE was the one who risked his life to get us that message and HE was the one who saw something wrong with letting that bastard Yami loose to rape and pillage. HE did something...and my captain didn't. MY captain sat back and let a man like that come here and try to hurt you and Ise san. HE let Ichimaru die for doing the right thing. HE might have even been one of the people who killed him. MY captain, the man I aspired to be and looked up to...has less..is less...than a moral less monster like Ichimaru."

Reaching out Isane placed a hand on his shoulder, the muscles under her fingers wound so tight it was a wonder they didn't tear from the pressure they were under, the weight they carried. "Maybe he didn't know. Maybe Aizen skewed it somehow so that Captain Tosen didn't understand what was truly going on, Shu. And even if he did understand, even if he is no better than Captain Ichimaru...that doesn't make the man you've made yourself into somehow less. He helped mold you by example and he's still doing that, if only by his bad example. I know you and Captain Komamura blame yourself, that you think you should have been able to save him..but you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved."

Finally raising his head Hisagi's eyes were tortured and brimming over with emotion. "Did you know the only reason I took over the division was so that no one could take his place? I always had the idea that somehow he'd come back, somehow we'd make everything right and we could just slip back into the way things used to be. I'd go back to being his lieutenant and that would be that. But now...now I think I hate him so much I could kill him myself. For the looks on Ran and Kira's faces, I could kill him for that alone. Even if he didn't know...he chose to follow a man who would do that rather than stay with us. Who would send them the arm of someone they love just for the hell of it." He was quiet for a moment. "So now I'm sitting here...and I'm saying good bye to all those happily ever after ideas I had about him coming back. I'm joining Hinamori in the 'May My Former Captain Burn in Hell Club'. After tonight..I'm never calling him my captain again. I'm going to burn everything I have that he gave me or reminds me of him. Will you help me do that?"

Leaning forward Isane pressed her forehead against his in a silent show of solidarity. "Of course I will."

The first thing that came to Zaraki's mind was that this was wholely unexpected. The second was that this was likely to end badly. Very badly. Watching her leave his bedroom balcony to come inside Zaraki remained horizontal, his only acknowledgement of her presence the fact that he had his head turned in her direction, watching her every move. He got quite the eyeful too, as she stopped a metre or so away from his futon and began stripping in that economical, no fuss way of hers that always did delightfully destructive things to his hormones. That tough, toned body, tanned a light gold, visible to him alone from the faint lights from outside the balcony. She was small, almost delicate looking if one was looking from the neck down, Zaraki mused. The honed and well used muscles hidden behind silky smooth skin, unmarked despite her occupation, the tiny hands and feet, like a child's, though they were lethal weapons when required to be. High, perfectly shaped breasts, a mark of her femininity she could not hide despite her otherwise boyish body, so slim and angular was it. But really, as soon as you looked into those dark, almond shape eyes, you knew exactly what you were dealing with. And it was those eyes he'd fallen for, first in lust and than in love. He'd looked into them that faithful day so long ago, alight with fire and passion, and known he wanted nothing more than to look into them until he drowned there.

Unaware of his thoughts Soifon left her clothes where they lie and skirted around him to take her place on his right, thus situating herself between him and the bedroom wall. On the rare occasion she'd slept here, he'd always insisted on that. It had taken her longer than it should have to realize he did it to protect her rather than a stubborn refusal to give her a say in sleeping arrangements. Anyone entering the room would have to get to him first, before they could get to her. Unless of course they came through the wall, which he'd not been amused to have pointed out to him. Sliding under the measly cover he used Soifon shifted over to press up against his side, noting that he'd already shifted so that he was now facing her, still not saying a word. Moving closer she pressed up against him, placing her head under his chin so that her face was up against his neck. Breathing in his familiar scent, Soifon closed her eyes in contentment.

Not moving a muscle, it took a great more restraint then he'd like to admit to not wrap his free arm around her, the other needing to remain free out of necessity, in case he needed to grab his sword from its place beside his bedding. "Is this payback for earlier?" He finally asked, when it became apparent she wasn't interested in talking. He had to hand it to her, she was damn creative in the torture department and torture this was. Deliciously agonizing was the term that best described it, he thought with typical dark humor.

"No."

Well that didn't help much. If she wasn't here to torture him than why was she here? Unless of course he'd whet her appetite before, and she'd decided to come for round two. But in that case, why the hell wasn't she all over him like Yachiru on candy floss?

She didn't have to be able to see his face to get some idea of the thoughts and feelings that were proably running through them. "Do you want me to go?"

Talk about your dilemmas. But no, it really wasn't a hard choice to make. He'd rather suffer with her than without her. By way of answering his arm under her and around her tiny waist, anchoring her to him.

Making a sound of contentment Soion snuggled a little closer. "Hard to believe we pretty much hated each other on sight, huh?" She asked softly, absently kissing the side of his neck out of habit rather than design or intention.

"You hated me. I just wanted to pick fights with you." He corrected, a faint smile crossing his scarred face. Always ready for a fight, he'd been more than eager to test his strength against the other captains, particularly those in the second division who were elites in the ass kicking arts. Soifon had still been a lieutenant than and he'd had a lot of fun squaring off against her captain, but Soifon had refused to rise to his baitings. She'd considered herself so far above him that it made their height difference that much more humorous. It was pretty hard for anyone to look down their nose at him but she'd managed it somehow.

"Typical bully." Which was pretty much how she'd seen him. A violent, brawny, egotistical ass who was as brainless as he was unattractive. She'd pretty much labelled him a blight upon the Gotei and avoided him like the plague, feverishly hoping that he picked a fight with someone who would do the world a favor and send him back to the hell he'd come from. She'd felt that way for a long while before she'd learned differently. It had all started with a fight, which was so often the case with Zaraki. He'd come upon her 'training', i.e. picking a fight with six or so Hollows, ones that were seasoned enough to be at least a little challenging. Just to annoy her, he'd butted in. Before she could so much as glare at him he'd dispatched two of the remaining three, the two simultaneously finishing off the third so that its executioner was debate able. Annoyed and stressed after a very bad day, she'd finally given in to her feeling and gone at him.

It certainly wasn't the first time she'd called him a bully. She'd called him a hell of a lot worse, often in Chinese so that he could never quite be sure what exactly he was being called or accused of doing. She'd certainly had a number of things to call him the night he'd finally gotten her to face off against him. She'd been like a hellcat, out for his blood and so angry she could spit. The fact that he could take her punches and kicks with little show of pain or even annoyance had certainly put the blood in her eye. It had stayed in them when he'd finally managed to pin her between him and a rock wall, flattening her up against it with her arms pinned down at her sides. He'd seen the violence and dark intent in her eyes, just as he had watched them change to awareness, then something that, for the first time in his life, excited him more than battle. Those damn eyes of hers.

God she loved his body, Soifon thought as she relaxed, her mind on old memories. It was that which had first spiked her interesting in something other than killing the son of a bitch. He'd trapped her up against that rock wall and held her there by the strength of his massive body alone. He'd held nothing back in their little skirmish, treating her as he would have any of the men in his division. It had been that which had set him apart from the other men in her life, who treated her different, even knowing that female or not she was their superior upon the battlefield. There was always this sense of disapproval that she didn't fall into acceptable gender lines, and she'd hated to regulate herself by them when she could be behaving as she wished. But all fighters were genderless to Zaraki, he could care less how they were shaped or made so long as they weren't a waste of his time and physical prowess. So with fire in her veins, heat in her blood and a desire to conquer in her mind, she'd been pressed up against that warrior's body and been silently asked to admit defeat with that damn smug grin of his. And somehow that battle of wills had changed, so that rather than wanting to beat each other bloody, they'd instead desired a more dangerous battle of a more physically pleasurable sort. Of course after she'd justified it as miss directed blood lust but the bastard had, as he put it, 'gotten a taste for her', and she for him.

"So does this mean you're rethinking the no sex position? Because if you aren't, you're gonna want to move hands."

Relieving absently that her hands were stroking the hard abs of his stomach, Soifon considered the ramifications than thought what the hell, she had started this. "Call it a temporary suspension due to circumstances."

"In plain English?"

"If you want sex get it now, because it won't be available come morning."

When he was done with her, they'd both be too tired to move even if Aizen and all his annoying minions came bursting into the room, Zaraki thought with a decidedly roguish grin. "If you're in any condition to be conscious for sex come morning I've lost my touch."

"Right back at you."

Hitsugaya and Himamori sat companionably side by side, each silently watching over their sleeping charges. Stretched out on the floor, Kira's head lay in Momo's lap, her hand gently stroking his head as he slept undisturbed for the moment. Though it had to be uncomfortable for her, in her kneeling position, Momo made no move to move his head or shift from her position. Matsumoto was curled up in a loose fetal position in front of her captain, her head pillowed and a blanket around her shoulders that her captain had fetched for her. He simply sat by her head, guarding her against the darkness and the nightmares that loomed in the dreams of the two sleepers.

"You may go if you like." Hitsugaya offered, turning his neck to meet his friend's gaze. "I'll stay with them."

"I'd prefer to stay here." Was her soft response, her fingers drifting lazily through the silky blonde strands of Kira's head. "I want to be here for them."

Nodding his understanding Hitsugaya didn't push the matter. Perhaps she saw some atonement in staying, and if it brought her some comfort and resolution, who was he to stand in the way of it.

"Do you..think he could be alive?" She finally asked, her voice a quiet whisper.

Considering it Hitsugaya shrugged his shoulders faintly. "We'll know soon enough. They won't tell us of course, but we'll be able to see it on their faces. We know them too well after all."

"You think he'll come for them if he's alive."

"I'd bet my life on it."

"I'd rather you not." Giving him a faint, small smile, Hinamori reached out with her free hand to take Hitsugaya's in her own. "I would hate to lose you too."

Looking from the joined hands to her Hitsugaya made a show of rolling his eyes at her. "As if I dared. Lord only knows what trouble you'd get into without me around to keep an eye on you."

"Well it's your own fault that Matsumoto san and I just can't do without you."

"Of course it's my fault. It's always my fault according to you two."

"Because it always is."

"Women. Can't live with them, can't continue the species without them."