Title: Power Gap
Words: 408
Characters: Renji Abarai, Byakuya Kuchiki
Summary: Renji doesn't understand at first.
This moment is worth all the alcohol he had to buy for Ikkaku. It's even worth working odd jobs to get a bottle of that expensive crap that Yumichika drinks. He can feel it as he drops into the stance he learned from Yumichika. It was only last week that he mastered because of how awkward it had felt in comparison to the old one he used. He grips the hilt of his weapon, knowing that this stance prepares him for anything. Nothing can break it. He's sure of it.
This is his first match against his captain. Obtained after many prolonged months of refusals, many long suffered days of requesting and being denied. But if there's one thing Renji Abarai is, it is persistent. It's his most valued trait and the most effective.
Even the great Byakuya Kuchiki is not immune to his constant crusades and has granted him this private match. He gazes at his captain who is mere yards away. He can't help it. He can't hold back his smile.
Excitement courses through his body and his fingers twitch eagerly on the hilt. Suddenly, all those nights spent away from his warm bed getting bruised and bloody by a drunken bald bastard made sense. Suddenly, the frustration of acknowledging that a certain fuzzy-browed annoyance knew more than he did wasn't important. None of that mattered.
He gripped the hilt of Zabimaru, intending to pull it free. Today was the day Renji Abarai stood equal to Byakuya Kuchiki. He was ready. He was prepared.
He was dead. Or would have been had not Kuchiki-taichou halted his blade.
Senbonzakura protruded ever so slightly into his skin, hovering menacingly behind his heart. The skin on his back prickled, sending signals of pressure to his brain, where an instant before there was none. He hadn't comprehended anything, hadn't even felt the wind as the other man passed him to strike his vitals from behind.
Incredible.
Unbelievable.
Foot steeps echoed behind him growing fainter, yet he cannot bring himself to look at the other man's retreating form, as he could not all those years ago. He just stands there, eyes lingering on the hand resting upon the hilt of a weapon he never drew.
It is only after a long moment that his mind is able to process what happened and tell him in words what Kuchiki-taichou showed him in actions.
The power gap is too great. You cannot traverse it.