Title: Curse of the Zanpakuto
Author: c2t2
Part: 2 of 2
Disc:I still don't own Bleach or make any money. Anyway, reviews are the closest thing I have to getting paid, and YIKES are people ever stingy!
Curse of the Zanpakuto
c2t2
Part 2: Academy
Each life contains a few watershed moments.
I am silent and still because no reaction would be sufficient for the magnitude of this event.
It is a paradigm shift. It is catharsis.
I am sane.
Few words are able to describe how it feels to learn that the world is insane, and I am not.
I try the unfamiliar concepts once again: I am sane. The madness is in the world around me.
The woman I speak to in Academy admissions asks me about my dreams, and then sees straight through me when I lie.
She tells me that shinigami don't rely solely on magic, they have living swords. The white rabbit is my sword. The dreams and the silky voice are her way of calling my name. I tell the woman about the frost covering our home. She tells me that uncontrolled elemental types can be dangerous to powerless souls. Fire-types are the most dangerous, she says, often trapping their wielders and families in burning buildings as they sleep. If not contained, the fires can spread and devastate a whole neighborhood, an entire district.
Something about her words feels important, but it is lost in the sudden and inexpressible relief that the other children died before my dreams began. If my zanpakuto had called me sooner, the ice might have hurt or frozen the others. I could not bear it if I had injured or killed my own brothers.
Then I really would go mad.
-.-.-
Something about Renji must have impressed his admissions interviewer. He is placed in advanced classes, and I am not. My insulted outrage knows no limits.
That night I hold Renji to the floor between my knees. I use his long hair to yank back his head, and I scrape my teeth down the exposed column of his throat; not too hard, but enough to make my point.
Renji never submits without a fight, and the strength of his grip on my thighs and the powerful thrust of his hips is telling me it won't be that easy and to try harder. I expertly pin him to the ground because I will not be on my back tonight. I run my nails firmly down his body, from shoulders to hips, and enjoy watching each muscle jump and flex under the sensation. A moment later Renji also decides he won't stay on his back, because he stands and lifts me as if I weigh nothing. Then I am pressed against the solid wall and my legs are over Renji's shoulders and he sets such a frantic pace that we soon find oblivion and sink back down to the floor.
Sometimes when we are together like this I can hear echoes of Renji's inner voices. Now I know they are his zanpakuto. The hulking beast that lurks in his shadow is also his zanpakuto. The ice, and the rabbit with the voice like silk, is my zanpakuto.
We are sane after all.
I pull Renji into a deep kiss, possessive and demanding. Although I did not truly follow him into madness, I was willing to do so to keep him with me.
Again I extract his promise not to leave me.
The silky voice of the madness – or rather, my zanpakuto – whispers something in tones of warning. I only manage to catch one word. I hope someday I will be able to hear all of her words.
For now, I push her voice to the back of my mind. Renji and I break apart, gasping for breath and every inch of our bodies dripping with sweat. We will see which of us can recover faster, and the winner can pounce on the other for round two, or is it round three? I have already lost count.
The memory of the voice whispers from the depths of my mind.
"Unhealthy."
-.-.-
It is only after enrollment that I understand the distance between the shinigami Academy and everything else that I have ever known.
There is food. So much food. More food than I can ever eat. I marvel every day at the seemingly endless variety, and I despair at the thought of never being able to try it all. The mountains of food nearly make up for the sides of Academy life that I was not prepared to face.
There are rules. So many rules. I have never had to follow rules before, and now my entire future hinges on my ability to comply.
Academy students are discouraged from forming 'relationships'. We are expected to pour our energies into study and training. All first-year students must be in our assigned rooms by curfew. We are not allowed overnight visitors.
By the end of the first week, I am ready to tear off my own skin.
Rather than helping me focus on my schooling, Renji's glaring absence is the worst kind of distraction. Instead of a lack or a want, his absence feels like an endless, piercing scream channeled directly into my ear - only one ear. Unbalanced. I am not allowed even the faint mercy of symmetry.
During the day I am distracted and exhausted. At night I toss and turn, my subconscious panicking at all the emptiness in the bed around me. In my dreams the white rabbit speaks, whispering things that I cannot hear. The only times I feel like myself are when Renji is nearby, and that comes with its own set of problems.
I cannot sit near him in the lecture classes we share. Across the room, his familiar presence feels like home, and I am actually able to focus on the class without effort. But if he is too near, my body is well-conditioned and also deprived. One whiff of his familiar scent turns me on so hard it hurts. As it is, the need is constantly pulsing just under my skin. My only consolation is the hunger in Renji's eyes when he looks at me. My only solace is in knowing that he feels it too.
Unlike me, Renji has found a productive outlet for his energy. He quickly gains a reputation as brutal and merciless in every fight, even in supposedly friendly sparring matches. I hear the other students and even a few of the instructors whispering. They call him the mad dog from Inuzuri. Somehow, Renji still manages to befriend the top students in the advanced class. He tattoos his eyebrows. He learns swordplay as if he was born to it.
I can't understand how he does it. This new world makes so little sense, and I often feel as if my only remaining support is slipping out from under me. I have always been Renji's equal, and usually superior, but now he is moving forward in so many ways and I am struggling so hard just to keep up.
I begin to wonder how I can survive the rest of my first year when I start to notice something.
The wrongness in my world is eased when Renji is near, and I can finally see beyond the howling emptiness and pay attention to my classmates. I notice many students casually breaking the Academy codes of behavior and appearance. At first I assume they are reckless individuals or that they do not desire to be shinigami, but when I see Yuka, one of my hardest-working classmates, sneaking food into a lecture, I realize that even ambitious and dedicated students also break the rules. I am unable to stay silent, and I approach her after class.
Yuka laughs at my questions. She says that some of the rules are 'trivial' and would not be enforced. When I ask how to identify such rules, she only laughs at me harder.
In any other circumstance, I would walk away from her mocking tone. But this is something I have to know.
"The rules against fraternization between first-year students, the curfew, banning overnight guests... are those rules trivial or enforced?"
She gives me a knowing smirk, and begins to speak slowly as if I am simple-minded, "Those rules would be enforced, but that only matters if you get caught. I suggest leaving the Academy grounds before you bang your boyfriend with the funny eyebrows." Yuka's smirk becomes a sneer, "Let me guess, you prefer it doggy-style? Just find an alley somewhere and make sure none of the wrong people find out."
I struggle not to lunge at her as she walks away in a swirl of black curls. I don't know whether the rules against attacking another student are trivial or enforced, and I cannot take the chance. I clench my fists and grit my teeth so hard I am amazed that I do not damage my own body, but I do not tear the dark curls out of her head or wrap my hands around her neck. I do not cut her throat and expertly avoid the spraying blood.
When the rest of her words finally sink in, I have another breakthrough. A paradigm shift, catharsis. My second watershed moment.
Rules are unfamiliar to me. But I am very, very good at not getting caught.
-.-.-
I search for the next available opportunity. With careful planning, I find one and use it to drag Renji off the Academy grounds. I don't even remember travelling to the empty Rukongai hovel. By the time we arrive we are both so desperate that our Academy uniforms are nearly torn to shreds in our haste.
The first round isn't even enjoyable in our desperate rush to be together. Afterwards we are both winded and gasping for air despite our improved athletic ability. We stay pressed together, skin to skin. Both of us are overheated yet unwilling to break apart or lose contact even for the few minutes it would take to cool off.
For the first time in months, I feel right again.
We finally unleash the pent-up frustration from eight months of unwanted abstinence, combined with the energy of eating regular meals. We do not rest that night.
Renji has never treated me like a pretty flower or a fragile eggshell. He has always respected my strength and trusts that I will not break. We are both even stronger now, and if my mind was functioning properly I might worry about the structural integrity of the building. As it is, Renji leaves deep fingerprint bruises on my bottom and my thighs, and I come down on him so hard that I bruise his hips and leave other parts inflamed and sore for days. He does not object. In fact, his hands tighten on my waist to pull me down even harder. He picks me up to push my small frame against the wall. When I want to go back to the floor and he resists, I sweep his legs out from under him. He rolls on top, resting his entire weight on my small frame, trusting me to hold it. Later, standing tall, naked and glorious, he grabs a fistful of my hair and pushes me to my knees. To pay him back for the hair-pulling I use quite a bit more teeth than he likes. Renji throws back his head and growls, but he doesn't pull me away. To reward him, I grip his thighs for leverage, and after taking a moment to marvel at the feel of the corded muscle, I swallow him whole.
Each round is slower and gentler than the one before, and by dawn, we are barely making love at all. The frantic pace has become a languid, almost reverent exploration of the changes in our bodies over the months. My fingertips memorize all the new muscle that Renji has gained, and he seems fixated on tracing and re-tracing my new scars with his lips and tongue, they are so small and nearly invisible that no one but Renji would notice them. I take every opportunity to run my fingers through his hair, which is both longer and thicker than I remember; glossy and strong like it had never been before.
Just before we sneak back over the wall, I pull Renji down for a final kiss. Even though I know it is only the last kiss of this night, I drink in the experience like a person dying of thirst; trying to carve each sensation into my memory forever. Every texture, every sound Renji makes deep in his throat, every emotion I feel in his presence surrounded by his reiatsu.
We sneak back into the Academy and go our assigned rooms, and no one ever suspects a thing.
-.-.-
I find the story of the nue in the library archives, in a battered book of mythology. I immediately recognize the shape. I have seen it many times in Renji's shadow.
I read that Nue are omens of misfortune, bringers of plague and nightmares.
Plague.
No matter how I struggle against the realization, my mind draws the connections.
Renji.
Renji's zanpkauto began to call to him. Shortly afterward, the children sickened and died.
He killed them. He killed them all.
I expect anger. I expect tears. But nothing comes but a terrible moan that brings the librarian rushing to my side.
She asks me if I am alright. She tells me that I look ill and have become quite pale. I tell her I am aware of the sudden cool in my cheeks, the lightness in my head. I tell her there are moments in life when a person does not react, simply because no reaction is sufficient to the occasion.
He killed them, and I only made it worse. I tried to end his madness with food, because food helped to heal every other illness and injury.
I only made him stronger.
-.-.-
The empty room is still and quiet. I am still and quiet as well. I do not expect to be interrupted, so the rustling behind me comes as a surprise.
I can sense that it's not Renji.
I turn around and see kenseikan.
Kuchiki.
I cannot imagine what brings Soul Society's highest nobility here, to this room.
-.-.-
Renji barrels in as they finish with me. He is loud and enthusiastic and he does not know that he killed our brothers and destroyed everything I loved.
I tell him about the adoption. At any other time, I would have pulled him into a kiss and demanded he renew his promise to never, ever leave me.
I can't do it.
I can't even meet his eyes.
"Renji... what should I do?" He doesn't realize that I'm asking him about everything.
He only hesitates for a moment before he wildly congratulates me on my windfall. Too loud. Too exuberant. His hands are on my shoulders. My shoulders.
So this is how it is.
That bastard.
I remove his hands with a gentleness that surprises me, and I flee the room. I cannot bear to be in his presence a moment longer.
I will not let him see me cry.
-.-.-
The old man and the headmaster finalize my graduation papers. This is the last day of class, and I don't even attend the final lecture.
As we leave, I try to strike a conversation with the old man, to get a feel for my new life. Fortunately, he is pleasant and chatty.
"There is no need for you to attend the lecture. It is no casual goodbye speech for the first years, but a warning. The sensei will explain that over the summer, some of the new students might experience the first stirrings of a zanpakuto spirit. Talented souls - especially children in districts without regular shinigami patrols - sometimes kill the people around them by accident. There is no need for you to worry about that, my dear. No one in the Kuchiki estate is quite so frail."
The old man spins stories peppered with wisdom and advice as we make my first journey to the Kuchiki estate and my new life.
-.-.-
Renji was the first student out the door after the final lecture.
His classmates tittered that the mad dog was finally off his leash for the summer, but Renji was too far gone to hear them.
He barely made it to the edge of the grounds before he was forced to stop. There he doubled over, trembling arms braced against a tree, and lost this morning's breakfast.
He was heaving his guts out. Renji was seeing spots as his vision faded.
In the span of three hours, Renji had lost Rukia, and learned that he had personally killed a house full of orphans.
Another hot wave of nausea took away his ability to think. When his reason returned, his thoughts were no more optimistic than before.
Darkness clawed at the edges of his mind.
"You," he spat.
And the deep, rumbling voice inside him answered.
-.-.-
End
-.-.-
Well, that's that. Stay tuned for the Renji sequel : "Kneel to the Baboon King". It's the polar opposite of this story in tone, style, structure, even genre. I could not, in good conscience, combine them under the same title.
As always, author notes and explanations can be found in my livejournal, linked in my profile.
