AN: Hello! I'm back and posting this mere hours after arriving back to my home. Thank you for the reviews – the wedding will be cropping up in a future chapter, no worries – and I'm glad people think I'm doing a good job on this! This project is something I do love. Anyway, here is theme twenty-eight, chapter sixteen! Enjoy!

28. Wada Calcium CD3

After the event with the letters, Hisana kept finding herself smiling for no reason, which served only to make her smile more. In Rukongai, where true smiles only came from the innocent children, smiling was usually a bad sign. They usually turned up in the forms of leering characters who soon drew some weapon and began threatening people.

Hisana had spent her day scrounging some food to get her through to the night. She considered Byakuya's offer to spend a little more time at his house, but it still sat uncomfortably with her. Even though his feelings for her were becoming clearer, the idea of being in the Kuchiki house alone made her feel sick.

She walked along the dusty streets, weaving her way through the crowd.

"Alright! Hand over your goods, old man!" a voice bellowed, and Hisana heard screams.

Peering through the crowd she spotted something that made her heart stop: swords.

"Run!" someone else screamed and the crowd went crazy. Hisana turned and began fleeing, but her small stature made things difficult. She looked about desperately and spotted a pile of crates. In an instant, she ran for them, hopped onto them and pulled herself onto the roof.

From her newly gained height, she could view the situation. A small group of three men and two women stood in a circle, each with a sword, their lower faces covered with rags threatening two local market traders.

Hisana knelt out of sight and began pulling at the roof tiles. She slowly tugged them out and shuffled closer to the situation. The men were overseeing and beginning to move the little goods the two threatened men had while the women used their swords to keep the market men in check.

'Is this an act of bravery, or stupidity?' she briefly wondered before taking aim and hurling a roof tile at an unsuspecting thief.

"Arrgh!" he yelled before collapsing to the ground.

"What th--" one of the women began before getting a tile in the head.

To say Hisana was taking pleasure in these people's pain was a bit of an understatement.

"Hah, take that, scum! You're what makes Rukongai a bad place!" Hisana shouted, hurling her remaining tiles. They failed to knock out their targets, who glared up angrily at her.

'Time to run.'

She turned and fled, dashing over roofs. As she ran, she looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to set. Once she lost the sword wielding thieves, she'd seek out the bridge and wait.

Then her foot slipped.

"Shi--"

She tumbled off the roof. Her hand shot out for some sort of ledge, but failed to grasp anything. Hisana screamed and instinctively put her arm out to break her fall.

The sickening crunch her arm made followed by the blazing pain was something Hisana hoped never to experience again. Tears poured down her face but she gritted her teeth; she couldn't afford for those thieves to find her like this.

She pulled herself up, clutching her swelling arm to her body, and headed for where Byakuya would eventually turn up.

When Byakuya arrived, he was surprised to find Hisana sitting off to the side of the bridge at the riverbank. He began to frown when he noticed the way she was half curled up and swiftly approached.

"What happened?" he asked stonily, anger simmering inside.

Hisana forlornly looked up at Byakuya and unsteadily stood, trying not to cry. The pain was almost unbearable – it hadn't diminished since she first injured it.

"I… I think I broke my arm," she whimpered, biting her lip. She refused to cry in front of him.

"Hisana, you're coming with me. Now," he ordered.

In too much pain to care, she allowed him to pick her up, making sure her broken arm wasn't against his body, and used shun-po to take her to his house.

Byakuya had told her he wasn't very good at healing, so had called out a relief shinigami, who dealt with her. The female shinigami had brought the pain and swelling down completely, healed as much of the damage as possible and explained her arm would be very weak for a while. A brace had been placed on her healed, but frail, arm and she'd been given a little bottle.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Calcium. It'll help strengthen the bone. Take one of those every day, alright?" the woman had said and Hisana nodded. The female shinigami gave an encouraging smile before departing.

Byakuya entered and sat down beside her. Hisana couldn't help but smile at his expression of concern. Carefully, she reached out with her good arm and took hold of one of his hands.

"Sorry if I worried you, Kuchiki-sama. I'm fine now. Got these calcium pills and everything. So, I'll just go-"

"No."

Hisana sighed.

"Excuse me?"

Byakuya gave her hand a gentle, if slightly warning, squeeze. Hisana felt like she was trapped in his gaze.

"No, Hisana. I ask you, will you stay here with me?" he asked, his eyes intense.

She was at a loss for words. He was asking her… to live with him?

"Kuchiki-sama…"

"I would wish you to call me something more informal, as well," he said with a trace of amusement in his eyes.

Hisana tore her gaze away from his and thought. She couldn't simply dive into such a situation, but the offer was very attractive. She finally met his eyes once more.

"I'll do a deal. I'll give it a test run, and if I'm satisfied, I'll stay. How about it?"

He leaned forward and Hisana's breath caught in her throat. With a shadow of a smile, he captured her lips. Hisana settled into the kiss with relish, yet wondered if that was an agreement.