Hello, I'm back! Firstly, can I just say how much I absolutely love you all? I was happy with fifteen reviews for the first chapter, and then I got twenty-four for the second. :') You guys are the best encouragement, thank you all of you that followed, favourited, and reviewed.
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Don't own Bleach, etc. Hope you enjoy the chapter!
The second day after the first flowering of that year's plum blossoms dawns clear and bright, a brisk winter chill capering through the early morning air. The sharp little twist of wind pirouettes over the sloping roofs of the Kuchiki manor, dances past a lone servant sweeping floors, lingers for a half-beat under the darkened eaves, before slipping through an open window and ruffling a certain captain's violently orange hair.
Kurosaki Ichigo jerks awake, haori billowing around him from the force of his muffled sneeze.
The next moment, a cacophony of aches and pains forces Ichigo's half-asleep mind to full awareness as he tries to bite back a groan.
What on earth happened to my back, and my shoulders, and my neck…
Ichigo blearily tries to review events in his head – has he been fighting an over-excited Zaraki recently? No. I think. Excessive training then? Errr. Too much paperwork for training… Did Rukia beat him up? Did she?
Rukia.
His eyes fly wide open as he bolts upright, all the previous day's events rushing back into his head. Urahara. Machine. Fifty-five years…
Ichigo bites back a groan as a migraine and screaming muscles all the way down his spine indicate a severe overstress for both brain and body the day before. A glance backwards reveals the hard-backed wooden chair that had obviously served as that night's bed.
No wonder my neck's killing me.
Trying to ignore the fiery cramps in his shoulders, Ichigo half-hobbles towards the bed, where Rukia lies, still and breathing evenly. He ignores the dent in the mattress where his head had laid at an awkward angle – he must have held her hand all night while they slept – and lays a gentle palm on her forehead.
A soft smile touches Ichigo's face as he finds Rukia back to a healthy warmth, a faint tinge of pink on her cheeks showing that yesterday's blood loss has no long-lasting effect on his fukutaichou. Rukia unconsciously leans into his hand and the comfort that it provides.
Ichigo decides to let her sleep a while longer, for she probably needs the rest. Kneeling, he lets his hand stroke her raven hair away from her face, stifling a yawn with the other.
He lifts his gaze to the window set in the wall opposite, where the first golden rays of morning light sift through the open sill. If he remembers correctly, the plum blossoms should be visible from this room.
Kuchiki Byakuya's furious slate-grey stare fills the entirety of the window, intense and unblinking.
"WHAT – CRAP!" Ichigo yells, tipping backwards on his heels to land with an undignified thump on his backside in the middle of the room, feet scrabbling at the floor in his attempt to get away from the vengeful statue.
Rukia rolls over, muttering half-coherent phrases. "Baka Strawber…." She falls right back asleep again.
Byakuya's glare impossibly grows even more deadly at his sister's near-awakening. Ichigo fires back an equally venomous scowl, even as he pulls himself to his feet, straightens his haori, and yanks open the sliding door.
A sweeping glance at the garden suffused with early morning light shows that Byakuya has already shunpo-ed into the center of it, clearly wishing to hold his conversation away from the ears of his slumbering sister.
An eyeblink later, Ichigo stands nose to nose with the Kuchiki noble.
"What is your problem? It is your hobby or something, standing like a zombie outside people's rooms very early in the morning? You are going to be the subject of my nightmares for the next half century!"
Ichigo would have gone on if not for Byakuya's raised cultured eyebrow that shows a complete inability to understand the meaning of the word "zombie".
This is strangely deflating. Ichigo loses momentum.
"You-you- ARRGGHH!" Ichigo vents in frustration, throwing his hands into the air.
Byakuya sniffs, his expression akin to what one's face would be like after seeing a street tramp attempt to talk to high society. The sleeves of his sleep yukata drape over his bandaged hands – remnants of yesterday's brush with Zangetsu.
"Why," Byakuya begins quietly, "do you scorn the rules of my clan?"
"Eh?" Ichigo's brow furrows in sudden confusion.
The first hint of anger shows itself in Byakuya's steel eyes. "Do not mock me, Kurosaki Ichigo. Taichou you may claim to be, and guest of my household you may be, it is a severe breach of the rules of your stay to even step into the room of any member of the Kuchiki clan, male or female. Kuchiki and non-Kuchiki stay in separate wings. You, of your self-claimed status as captain, should know this."
Ichigo narrows his eyes. From how Byakuya had phrased that last sentence, he was obviously more worried about clan rules than anything else.
When Ichigo next speaks, it is in a dead, dangerous tone. "Is that all she is to you?" he asks. "A Kuchiki. A clan member."
Byakuya starts, surprised. He begins, "I – she is adopted into the clan. The clan's code–"
Ichigo practically snarls, "She is your sister. Now I don't care that you only adopted her because of a promise you your late wife" –Byakuya blinks– "but from where, no, when, I'm from, you treat Rukia like she is your closest family."
Ichigo looks like he is on the verge of grabbing Byakuya's collar, but stops himself. "I've heard from Rukia what you were like in the past. She called you cold. Unfeeling. Empty." He looks Byakuya right in the eye. "Seems like that was an understatement, softened as always by her love for her nii-sama."
Byakuya finally finds his voice. "Don't you dare place your presumptions on me, boy–"
"Rukia has many demons in her past." Ichigo's eyes are flinty. "She grew past them." And here his voice turns soft. "And I will not allow those demons to resurface because of a scientific experiment gone wrong."
Ichigo spins on one heel, stalking towards the kitchens. But a mere two steps later, he turns his head back. "For your information, Byakuya, Rukia is my subordinate and best friend. She was injured, and I don't give a crap about your clan rules." A pause. Then, a sudden change of subject. "And, just so you know, if I ever wished to court her, I would ask your consent." Ichigo executes a curt half bow. "Don't take it as a compliment. You are a better man in the future."
And Kurosaki Ichigo turns his back on the Kuchiki noble, striding away.
Byakuya is left alone in the courtyard, the mocking wind hooking the edge of his yukata sleeves and sending them fluttering in the cold air.
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The sun has not quite reached its zenith along its great arc circumscribed on the heavens when the temporary silence that has descended upon the Kuchiki household is broken by the arrival of three distinct guests. Two of them, one short with dark blonde hair, and the other, fiddling with his short goatee, stop their squabbling for a few precious seconds as they are ushered in through the front doors by a pair of servants, only to chatter away again once the gates click shut.
The remaining figure is also clad in a shihakushuo, but his left arm sports a fukutaichou's badge. Tall and with a sauntering gait, his black hair meticulously untamed and a happy smirk on his face, the man strides into the Kuchiki manor with a practiced ease, as if he owns the place or simply can't bring himself to really care about the nobility who actually do own it. The servants scramble out of his path, expressions of distaste hidden under carefully submissive façades.
Shiba Kaien is a man with a certain…presence, after all.
Behind him, Kiyone and Sentaro's argument begins to reach gale-force proportions, as in the absence of the actual root of their petty bickering – Kaien has noticed that for the past half hour they seem to have forgotten what they were arguing about in the first place – they degenerate into ever more childish name-calling.
Approximately thirty feet later, Kaien abruptly halts, swivels on the spot, and in a single, graceful movement, takes ahold of the heads of the shared-third-seats of the Thirteenth Division and whacks them together painfully.
The clack of skull hitting skull echoes across the courtyard.
Kiyone and Sentaro stop shouting and revert to muffled mumbling as they rub their foreheads ruefully.
"Right, you fools," Kaien says with a significant look at both of them, "I only allowed you to come with me to meet our Rukia from the future because I knew you idiots wouldn't shut up about it if I didn't."
He is about the same height as Sentaro, but somehow seems to tower over both his subordinates. "Let me make this clear. As Ukitake-taichou told us, she was injured yesterday. So when we see her," and here he reinforces his point with a classic glare, "you are not to pile excessive questions or, dare I imagine, your excitement, on her, do you understand? This is an order." He taps the hilt of Nejibana.
Sentaro nods repeatedly, a drop of sweat running down into his headband. Kiyone cowers under her fukutaichou's shadow, and similarly nods her assent. They both know that Kaien is not to taken lightly on matters involving Kuchiki Rukia, future version or not.
"Good. Let's go."
As the three approach the wooden door marking the entrance to the guest room, Kaien frowns as he notices that only one of the many guest rooms is in fact occupied. Ukitake had specified two people from the future…
Kaien's unvoiced question is answered as a tall man garbed in shihakushuo and haori, complete with the most obscenely bright orange hair he has ever seen slides open the door, wooden tray of empty teapot and cups in one hand.
The three approaching shinigami's footsteps are silent, but some unidentifiable intuition makes the man look up, the bright sunlight cascading over his face.
Guarded green eyes meet wary brown irises.
A moment's pause.
"You must be Kurosaki Ichigo-taichou," Kaien says, crossing the distance between them in two strides and extending his hand in greeting. "My name is–"
"Shiba Kaien," Ichigo cuts in immediately. The wary look in his eyes has doubly increased. But he does shake Kaien's hand, albeit with a firmer grip than usual. Kaien does not flinch, returning the pressure. They both realise at the same time that they are almost exactly the same height, indistinguishable to a hairsbreadth's difference.
As they release the handshake, Kiyone bounces beside them and announces, "Wow. You guys look really, really similar. Are you, like, related in the future or something?"
Sentaro peers closely at each of their faces, and is rewarded by two equally irritated glares. But this only serves to intensify their likeness. Sentaro yelps, "You even scowl the same. You look a lot alike."
At this, Ichigo breathes a world-weary sigh. "Yes we do," he says, rolling his eyes, "as I've been told many, many times, Kiyone. Sentaro."
The dual-third-seats lean forward in tandem, saying simultaneously, "You know us!"
"Yes," Kaien says uncharacteristically quietly, narrowing his eyes, "do we know each other?"
Ichigo gives the dark-haired man standing in front of him an appraising stare. "I don't know you," he says carefully, "but I have heard of you. Let's just say your reputation precedes you." So this man is Shiba Kaien, the Kaien-dono that Rukia sometimes mentioned almost by accident, always with a shadow of regret marring her face and a wistful twist to her lips.
Even now, years after Rukia had first fixed on him that disbelieving stare tinged with recognition that night he killed his first hollow, Ichigo sometimes still catches her staring at him but not at him, with a glazed look of longing for someone that isn't there. The moment Ichigo saw this man, he had known why. It really was like staring into a mirror.
Ichigo feels an unbidden stir of something resembling jealousy in the pit of his stomach.
Shiba Kaien, his cousin. His reiatsu signature is an unsettlingly familiar fusion of Ichigo's father, Shiba Ganju, and Kukaku-nee, as if their soul signatures had been thrown into a gigantic melting pot of…family.
Of course, Ichigo hadn't known that until the night his father had decided to tell him about the Shiba clan and his mother, long after Kaien's death. It is a bit surreal, seeing the ghost half-sketched by Isshin's vague comments and Rukia's whispered references standing real and alive before him.
First Byakuya, now Shiba Kaien. Ichigo steels himself. The many phantoms of Rukia's past are coming one after the other.
Suddenly he is glad that Rukia hasn't awoken yet.
Ichigo is aware that Kaien has also sensed something amiss, or hidden, in his diplomatic words. There is a calculating flicker in the man's sea-green eyes as he runs a hand through his black hair.
"We've come to see Rukia, if you don't mind." Kaien is as straightforward as Ichigo expected him to be.
No way she's waking up to a ghost.
Ichigo tilts his head to one side. "You know about our…situation?" he asks as way of distraction.
"Ukitake-taichou informed us. The general policy handed down by the Soutaichou is that most high-level seated officers are to know of who you are and the nature of your arrival into our time. Naturally, it is an A-class secret."
Ichigo accepts this, and says nothing in return. Kaien returns his gaze levelly.
"No," Ichigo states blandly, shifting the tea-tray from one hand to the other and scratching his nose absentmindedly.
Kaien shifts, a carefully neutral expression on his face. "Why?" he returns, just as simply.
"Because I say so," Ichigo says. There is no raised inflection, nor anger in his voice. "She has been unconscious since our first moment in this time, and she's not even awake yet. As her taichou, and friend, I cannot let her first waking moment be loaded with useless chatter." He gives Sentaro and Kiyone a glance, using them as an excuse.
Something unspoken passes between the two men, and suddenly Kaien turns to his subordinates. "Well then, I guess that much is true. We can't impose that on our honourable taichou here, so you two will have to go. Get back to the barracks."
Kiyone and Sentaro look to complain hotly, but a tap of Nejibana's sheath sends them scampering away.
Kaien watches them leave, and languidly turns to face Ichigo again. "Now they're gone. But I suppose there's more to this, isn't there?"
A shadow passes over Ichigo's face. Finally, he sighs. "Look," he says reasonably, "I've heard enough from Rukia to know that you are not the type of man to be turned away at a half-truth. It's not your fault, but you and Rukia have a...complicated...history."
Kaien's eyebrows twitch into a mildly sardonic curve.
"Anyway," Ichigo flounders on relentlessly, "for Rukia, it cuts deep. Very deep. I know I can't prevent you meeting sometime in the next few days, but can I ask that when it happens, it happens on her terms, by her choice?"
Kaien ponders this strange request for a moment, noting that the determined gleam in Ichigo's eyes comes from something more than a habit of command. There is worry, and care, and an overwhelming need to shield and protect.
To this particular feeling, the fukutaichou can relate.
"Of course," Kaien answers, forgoing his usual brash sarcasm for a straight answer. Ichigo's shoulders slump in relief, his fingers gripping the tea tray so tightly that his knuckles shine white.
"Although it sounds a bit ominous," Kaien adds after a half-beat, grinning.
"You have no idea," Ichigo snorts, hand rubbing the back of his neck on reflex. "Thank you, by the way."
"No problem –"
A searching voice from the room behind them cuts across their conversation, still with traces of weakness lacing its words.
"Ichigo? Is that you outside?"
You, on the roof. Now. Ichigo's free hand rapidly runs through the coded hand signals that are a staple academy course for all shinigami initiates. Not that he ever attended the academy, of course. The hand signals are courtesy of Yoruichi.
A sharp nod later, Kaien has landed soundlessly on the roofing tiles, sandaled feet bent in a crouch.
Ichigo draws a steadying breath and slides open the door.
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Whirling, scattered dream-images flutter and dance across the landscape of Rukia's mind, as she tiptoes on the far boundary between sleep and wakefulness. She half-imagines cool, gentle fingers on her brow, and someone holding her hand. It is this hand that grounds her to reality, and prevents her from tipping over the edge of that mental chasm filled to the brim with a thousand vibrant butterflies of every colour imaginable, no, not butterflies, sakura petals, pink and shimmering…
A startled intake of breath, and Rukia's violet eyes open as she jolts awake.
Her fingers twist in the white cotton of her pillow as she frowns. Something is different about that morning. By all means, it smells like the Kuchiki compound, a muted musk of pinewood floors and fresh grass, and it sounds like her home, the afternoon cicadas beginning to rasp.
The afternoon cicadas? She usually wakes at the crack of dawn.
Alarmed, Rukia raises her head. A shift of her body reveals that she has slept in the comparatively rough cloth of her shihakushuo, her feet still clad in socks. Her gloves are gone.
Rukia springs upward into a sitting position, but an unwelcome jab of pain in her temples is almost enough to cause her to slump down again.
Dratted headache…
A horrifying conclusion leaps into Rukia's fuzzy mind.
Did I go drinking last night?
Rukia goes rigid with terror, eyes round, fingers drawing the light blanket to her chin. That would certainly explain the headache. But the fact that she slept in her workclothes must have meant that she had gotten so out of it that she wasn't lucid enough to go home by herself.
Oh no. Did Renji have to carry her back? And her nii-sama…
A nightmare image of her nii-sama dressed in nightclothes accepting a drooping bundle of very drunk sister from a hiccupping, swaying Renji, and the probably having to carry her into her room, and having to take her shoes off for her and tuck her in…
Rukia throws the blanket over her head in trembling embarrassment, reducing herself to a very small blanketed bundle, although there is no one to see her.
Breathe. Don't panic.
Rukia clamps down on her overactive imagination and takes a breath she didn't know she had been holding.
A peek outside her blankets shows a strange fact – she isn't in her room. A lone chair sits very close to the bedside – who sat there? – and the desk is empty of her Chappy adornments.
A faint residue of reiatsu from the chair determines not her nii-sama, but Ichigo? Glancing at the headboard, she sees Zangetsu and Sode no Shirayuki leaning intertwined against the wall.
The swell of voices outside the door prevents any further thought. Leaning forward, she catches small gleanings of the conversation.
"Prevent…meeting…her…choice…ominous…"
Rukia's frown deepens. The voices are barely discernable, but one is definitely Ichigo's. The other sounds familiar – the other – she stifles a gasp. That voice is over a half-century dead.
"Ichigo? Is that you outside?" She is surprised by how rough and sandy her voice sounds, and coughs into her hand.
The voices stop abruptly.
The door slides open, and Ichigo's tall form is briefly silhouetted against the blinding noonday sun before he eases the door shut.
Seeing her coughing, he drops down on one knee so that they are level, rubbing one hand in soothing circles on her back as he peers concernedly into her face, warm brown eyes crinkled with worry. "Good to see you're finally awake, how do you feel?"
The coughing subsides, and in between gasps of air, Rukia ignores him completely and asks, "Who were you speaking to?"
Ichigo shifts uncomfortably, finding her violet gaze intensely unblinking. "Uh," he replies a tad too quickly, "no one. I was talking to myself." He tries to hold her unwavering stare, willing the lie to hide itself.
It is a futile endeavour. Rukia knows her Strawberry-taichou better than he does himself. Unknown to him, such an attempt to lie is so blatantly obvious to her that he might as well have been trying to convince his father that his new favourite thing was High School Musical.
Rukia looks at Ichigo, and sees the telltale signs – the twitch of his eyelashes, how his fingers fiddle with the silky edge of his haori, the tensing of his shoulders – and is disappointed and more than a little hurt. She would have thought that they were past secrets now, ten full years after she first laid eyes on that shock of orange hair. The second emotion, running on the coattails of the first, is anger. Anger at his infuriating coddling, that inability to trust her to handle herself.
But she reins herself in. Flashing him a smirk, she hides her scoff at the relieved sagging of his shoulders as she allows him to believe that she was fooled.
"What happened, baka?" she asks, gesturing at the room and her clothes in general.
The look of caring concern on Ichigo's face would have been endearing in other circumstances, but now only serves to increase the slowly boiling pit of anger in her chest.
"Don't you remember anything, Rukia? You hit your head quite hard." An extended finger ghosts over her forehead, and a glimmer of past fear.
She jerks back from his touch. "About what?"
"Urahara. Mayuri. The machine."
A flood of memories crashes into her as she remembers the experiment, Ichigo's reiatsu, the panic-danger-horror moment as he is sucked in, and her determination to not let him go alone.
"Where – when, are we, Ichigo?" Rukia says, a genuine touch of fear entering her voice for the first time.
Ichigo's hand creeps towards hers, but stops before they touch. "Fifty-five years back," he answers shortly, painfully direct.
"How–"
He spares her the questions and fills her in the details about Urahara's promise of a rescue in a few days, his encounter with the captains and their probation status, missing out the key details about bumping into her younger self at night and that grating talk with Byakuya that morning.
At the end of his explanation, he finds Rukia spaced out, staring past him. He assumes that this is due to some post-injury information overload, and gives her a moment to collect herself.
Ichigo is wrong.
What is running through Rukia's mind is the unimaginable possibility that the voice she had just heard conversing with Ichigo was who she thought it was. Fifty-five years was just far back enough.
And along with that possibility, the significance of Ichigo's lie.
Rukia moves so fast, her hands are a blur as she flings the blanket off her in one whiplash motion, hurling it with a fwap into Ichigo's face.
"Mmpfhwah?" Ichigo blurts in shock, clawing at the cloth.
"We're going sparring." Rukia announces with her usual aplomb, flicking her feet under her so she is in a tense crouch.
"What?" Ichigo flounders, trying to keep up and failing. "You're still not one hundred percent, you got hurt pretty badly yesterday, you need to rest."
But Rukia has leapt off the bed and closed her tiny hands on Zangetsu's long hilt, feet bracing on the floor as she heaves with all her strength. "Here." She sends the gigantic blade careening towards his face, Ichigo barely able to catch the flat between his palms before the tip crashes into his nose.
Zangetsu gives an audible snicker.
"Get out, I need to change." Rukia's next order is unequivocal. Before Ichigo can so much squeak a protest, small hands have already driven themselves into his back as he is bodily shoved from the room. "Meet me on the training lawn."
She somehow manages to slam a sliding door.
In his face.
Ichigo clutches Zangetsu, staring with a dumfounded look not unlike a kicked puppy.
Is she mad at me? It didn't make sense.
Kaien's reiatsu, tightly bound so as not to alert Rukia of his presence, fluctuates as he tries to reign in his amusement. Ichigo glares malevolently at him.
A flash of hand signals from the roof.
You – are – so – dead.
Ichigo has to mentally restrain himself from shouting a decidedly uncourteous retort at the laughing green eyes.
Hefting Zangetsu onto his shoulder – Ossan seeming to share in the joke he doesn't understand – he strides in the direction of the Kuchiki training grounds.
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The warm sunlight, wreathed with the scent of a dozen newly bloomed plum blossoms, glints off the many kenseikan in Kuchiki Byakuya's hair as he paces through the hallways of his house.
It had taken longer than usual to put the hairpieces in that morning, his bandaged hands cumbersome and robbed of their usual delicate grace. As a result, he had nearly, but not quite, been late to work. However, he had refused all help from servants, and they had known better to offer, leaving the clan head to fumble with his black locks himself. It is no secret why he refuses aid in such a simple domestic chore.
Hisana used to put in his kenseikan for him.
Byakuya would not let a servant girl, no matter how handy with the hairpieces, to take the presence of his wife. So he does it himself.
The noble suppresses a sigh. Breakfast with Rukia that morning had been…trying. The arrival of the two strangers from the future had cut off any possibility of even an attempt at rigid conversation between sister and brother. She had barely touched her food, hands fluttering between different utensils – still unused to the etiquette of nobility – and breathed an audible sigh of relief that Byakuya had most definitely heard as he left the table.
Byakuya did not blame her. He knows that he is cold to her, after all, a byproduct of her unsettling likeness to his late wife. Sometimes a tilt of her head would cause his throat to constrict in painful nostalgia, and he would have to excuse himself directly. He knows that it hurts her, often.
His pondering thoughts are brought to an abrupt halt as pattering footsteps around the corner reach his sharp ears.
Rukia flies around the corner, hairpin in her teeth as she brushes her fringe away from her determined eyes, shihakushuo sleeves flapping behind her and Sode no Shirayuki belted securely by her side.
She nearly runs into Byakuya with a muffled yelp, even as he takes in her shorter bob of hair that identifies her as future Rukia. He should have known. The younger version would never have the gall to run in his halls.
"Gomen! Ah, ohayo, Nii-sama!" she cries, bowing quickly. It is not a bow of deep respect bordering on fear such as he is used to. This bow is a residue of formality, done out of habit more so than actual meaning. It is a bow between brother and sister.
Byakuya does not miss the faint nostalgia in her eyes as she takes in his kenseikan and carefully neutral expression.
"Hn." He reaches out to steady her more out of courtesy than anything else.
Her smile falters, worry flashing across her face. What she does next is so unexpected that he almost jerks backwards.
Rukia reaches out and takes his bandaged hands in her own.
Her touch is unbelievably gentle and tender, reminding him of someone else's…
Byakuya's heart aches.
"How did this happen, Nii-sama?" she asks softly, caressing his burnt fingers.
"Zangetsu," he chokes. It does not occur to him to not answer.
Something flares deep within her violet irises. "Ichigo?" The anger is unmistakeable, adding to a grudge already in place.
But the next moment, her voice is gentle again as she admonishes, "Knowing you, you haven't been to Unohana-taichou. You must go, Nii-sama."
Did she just give him an order? It is an order stemming from care – no one has talked to him with that tone since, since…
Rukia looks up at his face and notices that some of the kenseikan are awry. Without any prompting or asking for his permission, she steps into midair so she can reach, showcasing an admirable control over reishi, and touches the hairpieces.
A few deft twists of her fingers before he can voice his dissent pulls the kenseikan into perfect place.
She's done this before, Byakuya thinks. Her hands in his hair feel achingly reminiscent of his wife.
It is too much to handle at once, and as Rukia steps back down to ground level, she flinches backwards at his expression.
Byakuya sees the emotions that fly across her visage – hurt disappointment pain – and is forcefully reminded of his conversation with Kurosaki Ichigo in the morning.
It is not her fault.
He tries to smile, to stop the pain scrolling in her eyes, but it comes out more as a grimace.
The girl looks at him, and understands. She steps backwards once, formally, and bows at the waist. It is a proper bow this time.
"Gomene, Nii-sama," she whispers, "I had forgotten."
And she is gone in a whisper of cloth.
Byakuya swallows past the lump in his throat.
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Kaien lies flat, his stomach pressed against the ridges of the tiled rooftop, peering down at the pacing figure on the training lawn. He grins to himself as he shifts to a more comfortable position – marginally – Nejibana clasped in one hand instead of belted to his waist.
Ichigo has been walking the same ten feet of the training lawn for the past fifteen minutes, his eyebrows sharpened together in a frown of discontent. He displays none of the calm that should be present before any sparring match.
Kaien smothers another round of laughs at the captain's lamentable blindness as to the exact reason for Rukia's sudden wish for a fight.
"Any more of that and he'll plow a new rut for Byakuya's flowers," he says to himself.
An obscenely happy voice sounds right next to his ear. "Yo! Nephew-of-mine!"
Kaien doesn't even blink. He reaches beside him and yanks the offending relative's sleeve downwards.
"Oof," Shiba Isshin pouts, a loose tile jabbing him in the ribs.
"Quiet," Kaien says.
Isshin props his head up on his hands, chewing a blade of grass. "Am I disturbing your perusal of what is clearly a chronic case of teenage-angst-due-to-stupidity? Or am I wrong, and you are merely sunbathing?" He stretches in the bright sunlight, kicking his sandaled feet in the air and flicking the grass stalk at the pacing young man below.
"When are you ever not disturbing anyone, Isshin-nii?" Kaien shoots back, elbowing Isshin in the gut.
Isshin pulls the hem of his captain's haori over his head – looking like a petulant child in the process – but takes on a sudden serious tone as he asks, "So. You have noticed that our new arrival Kurosaki Ichigo is more than he seems? He does look very much like you, nephew."
Kaien gives him a glare. "Don't you dare say it."
His uncle puts on an impression of innocence. "Well, it is possible. That boy could as well be my first nephew-once-removed, undergoing the vale of his teenage years without his daddy's guidance, boo hoo hoo –"
"Shut. Up."
Isshin grins.
"Not possible." Kaien answers. "He doesn't know me, we met this morning."
Isshin pouts.
"Then again," Kaien continues, a slow grin spreading, "he might still be a relative. You are not getting any younger, Isshin-nii. Perhaps in the near future you settle down with a nice girl, and the poor boy gets to grow up in the shadow of a sadistic man."
"You're mean."
Kaien shrugs nonchalantly.
Running footsteps approach, and by silent consent both men lie lower to the edge of the roof.
Ichigo looks up just as Rukia steps into the light. He had hoped that the sudden sparring match may have just been a facet of her need to get back into training after her unconscious spell, but one glance is suffice to reveal that it is not true.
There is a definite fire in her eyes now.
Gulping, Ichigo recognizes that fire. It is usually the ominous precursor to a pain-filled punishment.
Rukia is expressionless as she comes to a stop twenty feet in front of him. Ichigo also schools his face into something less resembling fear and more readiness. He tries to, at least.
"Touch and win?" Ichigo calls hopefully, inquiring as to the rules of the spar.
"Death, unconsciousness, or yield," Rukia answers without batting an eyelash.
From up above, immature giggling drifts downwards.
Taichou and fukutaichou bow with smooth grace.
Ichigo sinks into a ready stance, but does not draw Zangetsu.
Rukia draws Sode no Shirayuki with a steely rasp, her fingers lightly playing on its razor-thin edge.
Ichigo clears his throat. "On my count." He is the senior in rank, and so it falls to him to initiate.
Both tense.
"Begin."
Please don't hate me for the cliffie! I update regularly anyway and so there really isn't a danger of it hanging there forever. I had to cut it somewhere, and there was the best place. I couldn't have a gigantic 8000 word chapter. So next chapter you get the Shiba boys all together and Rukia kicking Ichigo's butt! Did you like the chapter, anyway? I hope you all enjoyed it :D
Please review! As always, it makes me write faster, and I reply to every single review :)
Replies to guest reviews:
Guest: Haha did you intentionally make the smiley coincide with "Dude"? It made me laugh lots, thank you for reviewing!
Dark Shadows: Thanks! I'm glad you liked it, I hope you liked this chapter too!
bakapock: Thank you for reviewing! Here's the "next" you were looking for :)