Supernova
By Willow Athena
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or any of its characters, but Rien and this story are definitely mine
Author'snote: Well over a thousand people read the last two chapters, but I have received no feedback. It's very demotivating, and I'm not sure if I should continue bothering to publish any more chapters. Did all my readers hate the new chapters, and their silence was a way of letting me down easy? I wouldn't know. I will decide whether or not to continue publishing based on the response, or lack thereof.
CHAPTER 26 – Personal Growth
Rukia would not tell Rien and Inoue anything more about her date, even though they pestered her for the better part of an hour before they had to return to the Kuchiki manor for dinner.
"Neither of you breathe a word of this. Nii-sama has this way of getting things out of people – don't look directly into his eyes," Rukia warned.
"Can I tell Ishida, he will know I'm keeping something big from him," Inoue pleaded.
"Probably not a good idea," Rukia denied her request. "I would like to speak to Ichigo first, before anyone else finds out. I know he will be disappointed," she guiltily looked away. "We also have to figure out what we are going to do about Nii-sama, I don't think he will allow it, but we must find a way, I love Renji so much – and thanks to you Rien, I will not let anyone take my happiness from me," Rukia said with determination.
"Yeah," Rien fist pumped into the air as Byakuya and Ishida entered for dinner.
"Someone is feeling better," Ishida remarked, sitting down next to Inoue and gently kissing her waiting lips.
Rien turned away, her jealousy flaring up again, only to lock eyes with Byakuya and once more feel the constant rain pour within her – she had momentarily been distracted from it, but it had never stopped pouring. "I feel fine," Rien softly spoke, only to smile when Rukia grasped her hand beneath the brand new dining table.
Ishida and Inoue were sickeningly in love, their affectionate behaviour was nauseating to Byakuya and Rien, the only single people in the room. Their affection was not inappropriate in any way, but was just always in stark contrast to Byakuya and Rien's cavernous distance. After dinner, Ishida and Inoue, left for the world of the living, leaving Rien with an open invitation to come visit them whenever she was free, hinting that sooner would be better than later. Rukia also excused herself, saying something about paperwork she needed to finish, but Rien knew she would meet Renji. Byakuya was about to interrogate Rukia when Rien interrupted him, and threw herself on the coals – to a hidden smile from Rukia.
"Byakuya, will you walk me?" Rien had never requested it before; she usually just trailed behind him as he left the dining room. If she couldn't be happy, at least her friends were, and she would do all she could to distract Byakuya and keep Rukia's secret.
"If you wish," Byakuya tonelessly stated, slightly confused about the obvious request. Rukia took this opportunity to quickly shunpo away, to Renji at the 6th squad's barracks, as Byakuya was efficiently occupied.
Rien couldn't be sure, but thought they had made a few wrong turns somewhere, this was at least not their usual route, perhaps Byakuya had grown tired of the same scenery. After ten minutes they were at his bedroom door. Rien looked more than confused.
"I will momentarily return," he informed her, before disappearing inside his bedroom. Rien patiently waited, shaking the tension from her corded muscles, and hearing many clicks that should not have been there as she stretched in every direction. As she bent backwards, the inverted picture she saw could not be real, causing her to suddenly snap up and turn towards him.
"You...," she swallowed, her racing heart hurriedly consuming her words before they escaped.
"I do not think the accessories make that much of a difference, but unlike you, I do not fight against every request you make, just to pick a fight with you. I have decided to prove you wrong, I will not behave any differently without the adornments," Byakuya informed her. He had walked out of his bedroom without his kenseikan, or his windflower scarf, or his captain's haori – just his plain shinigami uniform. He was breathtaking. Heartstoppingly handsome in every way. Even his usual expressionless stare looked so much less severe without all that constant weight weighing him down. Not the physical weight of the accessories, but the mental weight of everyone else's expectations of who he should be.
"Thank you," Rien finally said after a long unshameful stare. She read his familiar micro-movements, and recognised a flicker of confusion before he hid it. "For hearing me, even though you don't agree with my assessment," she explained.
"I have always heard you, but it has been harder for me to learn to listen," he flatly admitted. "You understand that my appearance will not make a difference...,"
"It already has," she assured him, "It has made a difference to me," she finished as his hint of sakura and something unexplainable wafted her way, now unhindered by the lack of constricting layers. "Your behaviour may or may not be affected, but my respect for you has increased tenfold, and I will no longer fight you if you believe strongly enough in your view," she revealed.
"I am pleased to hear it," amusement leaked into his expression.
"Don't expect me to always give in, respect is a two-way street – you must trust my judgement at times, and you will never be able to forbid me from doing things, but you may request that I seriously give your position thought," Rien suggested.
"Perhaps my approach this morning was...incorrect," he begrudgingly admitted, walking past her, implying that they should continue their walk. She took his lead and walked beside him. Her left arm went across her front and held the right against her body, she tried to focus on her fisted right hand to control the shaking her excess adrenalin produced. She almost regretted her earlier request for him to look like this; it was not an easy sight to behold while maintaining the distance she had promised him.
He was partly right, on the surface he behaved no differently, but they would never have entered into their earlier conversation if he was constantly reminded he was Kuchiki Byakuya, 28th head...blah, blah, blah. Rien had never wanted him to be different, just more like his true self that people rarely got a glimpse of.
"You need not answer if it makes you uncomfortable," Byakuya began.
"As you know, I rarely do things I don't want to," Rien reminded him, though her voice had nervously quivered at the end.
"Were you jealous of the Quincy's relationship earlier?"
Rien immediately stopped in her tracks, the unexpected question threw her off guard. Byakuya turned, seeing her suddenly stop. "You need not answer," he informed her, staring straight into her electric blue. "Forget the question," he instructed as he turned away from her to continue walking.
"Yes," she admitted, halting his steps in the beautiful garden.
"You don't have to humour me," he reassured.
"It caught me by surprise as well," she continued undeterred, looking up at the clear night sky and all the beautiful stars shining down on them. They both usually walked in silence until their walk was over, not seeing anything around them and then hid away, both in isolation. She missed the beauty of the night, she realised, she found it difficult to sleep here, and the night had been her constant companion – but she had neglected her friend for a while now.
"It is only natural to have felt something," Byakuya informed her. She looked at him, surprised and confused. "He should have behaved more honourably and married you," Byakuya flatly explained. Though the Quincy's marriage to her would have assured the Quincy's untimely death.
"I did not want to marry him, that is not why I was jealous," Rien walked closer to Byakuya and explained.
"So, you refused him?" Byakuya inquired.
"No, he never asked me. We were not in a relationship," she confessed.
"I know the world of the living follows different codes of honour, but once he accepted your gifts, he should have, at the very least, offered you the chance to refuse his hand in marriage," Byakuya coldly stated.
"My gifts? What are you...is this your way of asking if Ishida and I were physically intimate?" she laughed through her sudden irritation with him.
"Do my values amuse you?" anger evident in his tone.
"No, but they way you try to underhandedly get information from me does," Rien admitted.
"I do not require any information from you; I was informed of your relationship with the Quincy. You had the option of not discussing the topic, if you want to suddenly invoke it," he angrily informed her.
"Perhaps you should not believe everything you read in surveillance reports," she angrily countered.
"You need not lie – I saw you with him," Byakuya accused inches away from her.
"I knew it!" she said, poking him in the shoulder. "You believe whatever the fuck you want then," she said as she pushed past him, she walked with determination, trying to remember how to get back to her room. He followed in her angry wake.
"I'm...sorry," he finally said from behind her. The apology had stuck in his throat as he realised what he had said, and he wanted to let her know that he had heard her. She had not given herself to the Quincy, as he had mistakenly assumed.
"For what, for spying on me or for calling me a liar," she huffily asked.
"Both," he conceded.
"When you kissed me…," she trailed off, never having spoken about it after promising him. "You and I have been more intimate than Ishida and I ever were," she admitted. "Why were you there? You robbed me of any happiness I could of felt in that moment," she angrily revealed.
"I had been concerned for your safety due to the sharp rise in hollow activity at the time, and my squad was assigned to night patrols in the world of the living. I was stationed at the Quincy's home because of the reports of your affection for him, and we hypothesised some sort of a link between your presence and the rise in hollows. I never attempted to look inside his home, I would often see you leave, but never arrive. Perhaps I let curiosity get the better of me when I saw you standing on his balcony, and I allowed myself to move too close. I noticed your injury, my only thought was to protect you, I did not mean to intrude on your time with him. At one point I thought you looked straight at me, so I shunpo'ed away, it was not easy in a gigai," he off-handedly admitted.
Rien stared straight at him, her lips slightly parted as though she wanted to say something, but she said nothing. She closed her mouth, and looked everywhere but at Byakuya, like she was trying to make sense of his confession and how she felt about it. "You don't need to worry about me so much," she finally said.
"Believe me when I say I have spent countless hours trying," he admitted. "But you somehow manage to attract danger," he declared.
"It's not that bad," she argued as she began following him in the correct direction.
"Many would beg to differ," he countered. They walked the rest of the journey in silence, until they reached her room. All his words rolled around Rien's head and she had been lost in thought for a while, not immediately noticing they had stopped outside her room.
"Wait, I want to give you something," she suddenly said, running into her room. She quickly returned to the door, inviting him in, full of nervous optimism, and holding a gift-wrapped box.
"I was gonna save it for your birthday in a few weeks, but I can't wait, and you may need it considering...open it," she thrust the present towards him. "If you don't like it, don't feel obliged or anything, not that you would ever feel obliged," she nervously rambled as he opened his birthday present. "It's hard to figure out what to get a guy who has everything and wants nothing," she added, as he looked at his present, discarding the box on the floor of her room.
"At least try it on, you don't have to keep wearing it if you don't want to" she encouraged. "You probably already hate it, it was a stupid thought anyway," she continued to anxiously ramble.
Byakuya thoroughly inspected every detail of the captain's haori she had given him. It was beautiful, different than his usual one, but he could see the thought she had personally put into every minor exquisite detail. It was sleeveless, just like his old one, had the mandatory lines and diamond shapes that all the captain's haori had around the bottom edge, it also had his squad's number on the back within the large diamond that framed the number, but everything was done with better stitching and felt more well made and durable, he noted.
He began putting it on before Rien's rambling led her to take the gift back all together. This haori had a thin elegant collar rising up to frame his neck, as well as feathery 'tassels' protruding from just beneath both corners of the collar. He fiddled while looking into her mirror before he turned to her, for her opinion.
"Do you like it?" she asked his opinion first, but did not wait for an answer. "You don't have to like it, I won't be crushed or anything," she assured him once more. "I just thought it would be a little ironic, and funny, and kind of like our inside joke...you know, coz of...," her gaze was downcast by now.
"And I owed you a haori after ruining one of yours...," she just couldn't stop talking, and his silence certainly wasn't helping.
"You owed me nothing," he suddenly spoke, effectively shutting her up. "Thank you for the gift," he added.
"No problem," she replied, inspecting her feet at her doorway. "It was nothing," she quickly added.
"Even so, I appreciate it," he assured her. "It looks and feels like something I would have chosen for myself, so...thank you," he acknowledged as he walked towards her.
When she lifted her eyes, he was closer than she expected, closer than he should be, in any situation. She instinctively crept backwards, out of the restricting doorway – she was probably blocking his exit, she assumed. He followed her out, still standing closer than he should. Her eyes would not meet his. "It was made with what was left of the white windflower silk harvested for my coronation kimono, I don't know if you remember it," she nervously rambled as she straightened his collar to perfection, and then quickly withdrew her hands as she noticed them lingeringly rest on his chest. That's what he looked like in this moment with her.
Perfection.
"I will wear it from tomorrow, if you don't mind," Byakuya's voice vibrated so close to her. Was he leaning down? Rien did not look up to check.
"Only if you really like it," she nervously whispered, her voice noticeably shaking. "Please don't tell anyone I gave it to you," she suddenly requested.
It surprised Byakuya, and he moved back to read her expression. Was she joking?
"I handsomely bribed one of the old Shihouin tailors who is fond of me to make it for me in secret, so he won't say anything. It's taken him five months to finish it in his spare time," she added, inspecting a spot on the floor and nervously playing with her own clothes.
"Promise you won't tell anyone," she slowly brought her eyes up to his.
She was serious. "I promise, if that is your wish, but...," he began to protest, but was cut off.
"Good. Neither of us would ever live it down. It would just stoke a dying fire in everybody's mind. I would like you to enjoy your present without all the suspicious glances attached," she revealed.
A dying fire. Did she no longer want to be with him? This would explain her maintained distance and her retreating behaviour tonight. He knew he had pushed her away, frequently, and with unwavering dedication, but her affection had remained ever constant. Until today, until the Quincy's arrival.
"Since you have never been intimately attached to the Quincy, why were you so jealous of their relationship today?" Byakuya flatly asked, changing the subject and pulling her out of her thoughts.
"Oh, um...why wouldn't I," she stated, as though it were obvious.
"What do they have that you do not have here with me?" He was hurt.
"You stay at my home, we eat all our meals together, we spend more time with eachother than anyone else, what more could they have?" Byakuya earnestly asked.
"You can't be serious," Rien's eyes filled with pain and anger and pierced his quicksilver. "He loves her back, Byakuya," she shouted this time, and stormed past him, slamming her bedroom door shut.
Author's note
I tried to paste a link to what Byakuya's new look in the manga and anime should look like, it is what I am referring to in this chapter, but the links got lost in the formatting every time. If you wanna check it out, just google 'Byakuya's new look' and the image will pop up.
I still want to thank my solitary reviewer from the last two chapters I uploaded, all three of these chapters only sprung to life because of your support and kind words. It all rests in your hands now.
If we never meet again, then adieu...
~Willow~