Byakuya Part II
The first two parts aren't too bad if you read them out of order, but from here on out, I really recommend the corresponding Byakuya parts prior to the Hisana parts. Everything will make a lot more sense then.
Byakuya: Faded Crocuses
NB: Since the zanpakuto arc is anime-only, I blithely ignore it as not part of canon. Senbonzakura is a [snarky] female for the purposes of this fanfic, and I do not consider it AU as the gender has yet to be specified in the manga.
It was one of those days, he knew immediately. Two Kuchiki branch family heads had nearly come to blows over whose child had rights to some insignificant plot of land. Helping resolve that meant he arrived late for the fukutaichou morning debriefing and had to endure a humiliating reprimand. The lowly commoners who somehow had managed to rise to fukutaichou in the third and ninth squad snickered, and he nearly lost his temper.
Then there was his punishment - naturally, his least favorite task: evening surveillance of south Rukongai. Although every Shinigami skimped on the Rukongai circuits, never venturing past the first twenty districts (Byakuya learned from Ginrei every generation of Kuchiki had abided by this unwritten amendment well before he was ever assigned the task), it was still close to intolerable. There was far too much dust, waste - human and animal - and noise. Vendors shouting, children screaming, splintering wood as dilapidated carts and huts collapsed. Having been raised in near constant silence, he always returned from Rukongai with a throbbing headache and nausea from the stench. Hollows had their own hideous odor, but it was a kind of cold rot embedded in their reiatsu that vanished with them. In the hazy heat of Rukongai, the fumes of its filth seemed to permeate his clothes, and well after he was within the sanctuary of Seireitei, the smell of feces and urine lingered.
The shadows lengthened; streaks of violet ran free through the edges of the sky, dodging between protrusions of towers and steepled roofs. He turned his eyes away sharply, hating himself for the surge of anger.
A jigokuchou fluttered into his field of vision. Almost certainly a message he would not care for, he thought grimly. As if on cue, he heard Yamamoto's brusque voice.
"I'm quite aware of the fact that it is accepted policy to take rather liberal shortcuts in the Rukongai surveillance missions." He paused for a brief second, but Byakuya said nothing. Lying was both dishonorable and pointless when dealing with the soutaichou.
"I did not want to disclose the following this morning before the other fukutaichou. The academy contacted me yesterday: several of their young recruits from South Rukongai have gone missing within the past two months. I sent a recon group out early in the afternoon. They will report to you tonight at Hikonyuto's office."
"Yes, sir."
The jigokuchou did not fly off. Finally, he heard the general commander, oddly hesitant, say "Although more than four decades have passed since...that incident, the disappearance of anyone with substantial reiryoku is a cause for inordinate concern."
The dark patches of purple had spread through the entire darkened sky, so he forced his eyes to the ground.
"You have not heard anything from the former Shiho-"
"No!" he spat. "Soutaichou," he added, trying to level his voice.
"Very well. I have alerted the Sixth division squad patrolling the south watchtower to be ready for summons if the situation requires immediate attention. I trust knowing this you will perform your duties tonight more meticulously than is your wont."
"Understood." The butterfly finally flapped away, and he began making his way toward Shuwaimon. He nearly tripped when a roof tile shattered from his unsteady Shunpo exerting excessive force.
Well, that takes head over heels in love to another level, Senbonzakura remarked sarcastically.
He clenched his teeth.
Well, are you done sulking yet? I don't much feel like babysitting extra tonight; it's wilting season - very tiring you know.
He stayed silent. Arguing with her was invariably a losing proposition, and he didn't need her jibes to add to his growing headache.
Good boy. We can go kill a few cats tomorrow if you don't screw up too badly tonight.
He stood atop the Shuwaimon guardian's office, though given the nature of the job, it was primarily used as storage space. He had intended to receive the report prior to doing his round, but now he wondered if that was a mistake. The lights had one by one vanished from the shacks. At this rate, he would barely manage four hours of sleep.
After briefly stretching, he began methodically scanning the first district. Faint reiatsu, but nothing on the level of a recon squad.
Nothing in the second district. Or third. He halted at the ninth. The squad had started early in the afternoon. He had never done a full circuit, but he had never spent more than an hour on the first twenty districts. They had been out for over eight hours.
Call for backup.
He sent six squad members off to scan the next twenty districts. The most junior two he sent with the seated officer to examine the middle twenty districts. He headed by himself toward the final thirty.
As he ventured further in, roofs - and many could hardly be called that, riddled as they were by holes - became scarce, until they ceased to exist at all. Quietly casting a cloaking spell, he had no choice but to take to the streets. After a few alleys, he gave up on attempting to dodge the piles of excrement, the scattered shapes of corpses in various stages of decay and dismemberment. By the time he was at the seventieth district, every dusty path was grimy with recent bloodshed.
Beasts, he thought. He would need to burn his uniform.
Just as he entered Inuzuri, he felt a sudden burst of reiatsu. He turned just in time to see the distress flare fade in the distance.
He found the ninth seat officer and his two squad members in the thirty-second district. "Wasn't us," panted the officer. "Pretty sure it came from around the mid-twenties."
"I'm going in first. Update the soutaichou and call for reinforcement while you catch up."
The building appeared deceptively harmless. A neatly tiled roof, shoddily painted walls but at least there was paint.
A candy shop, she said disgustedly.
With one hand over Senbonzakura's hilt, he stepped inside. A quick survey confirmed what he had already discerned from a preliminary scan outside. There was nothing on the first floor but bins of candy. He pushed open the door in the back corner, and found neatly stacked boxes. He immediately fixed upon the last row, the end slightly askew. Sure enough, as he stepped over it, he sensed layers of barrier kidou, meshing together to both guard the entrance and conceal the spells' presence.
He began gathering reiryoku in his hand, but she stopped him short.
Wait for the rest. That's no ordinary set of spells.
Someone stifled a strangled shriek. Hasty footsteps echoed up the stairs, but not far enough to hide the sound of vomiting. Another retched right there, collapsing on the spot.
The limp corpses of the squad members and recon group were unfortunate though expected, but behind them lay scattered heaps of disfigured remains of what they all knew had to be children.
I've never- Senbonzakura's voice gave out. His own stomach churned, and in his many decades in the Sixth Division, he had witnessed his fair share of gore.
He stepped closer. None of the faces were discernible. One was smothered behind a thick layer of pus, limbs shrunken like dried out leather. Another was half blown away, charred bits of innards stark against pale bone. Another was covered in boils so swollen they had burst leaving behind sallow splatters. Jagged bone lacerated through skin. He nearly closed his eyes; bile scalded his throat.
Then he saw the broken shards by the bodies - that unnatural bleached white, interrupted by the occasional black or red. The sharp inhales told him the others had come to the same conclusion.
"How could something like this be kept secret for so long?" someone whispered.
He picked at small fragment lodged in a crack in the wall. "Sekkiseki walls. They've already removed that layer. Notify the twelfth division and the soutaichou immediately," he barked. He gestured at the two nearest him. "Come with me. The rest of you, secure the perimeter until the others arrive."
He had noticed in the storage room a dangling rope from the ceiling which he suspected was the entry way to the upper levels.
Sure enough, with a light tug the ceiling gave way to reveal a ladder. He crept up. He felt no trace of reiatsu, which made him even more uneasy. But halfway up, he heard furtive steps. Leaping to the top, he saw a small figure flattened against the wall beside the aperture in the floor. She was so small he would have thought her a captive child were it not for the knife she was gripping. And her eyes. There was nothing young about her eyes.
Before she registered that he was already beside her, he struck the pathetic blade away. She had no reiryoku and attempting to stab him would have only injured her, but he couldn't quite reign in his rage completely.
She whipped around to face him in shock. Suddenly, it wasn't cold ruthlessness that hardened her eyes. There was something far uglier as she hissed, "What the fuck is your kind doing here?" He nearly recoiled at the venom in her voice.
He recovered quickly enough, but he was struck by the thought that her reaction didn't quite add up. Although he could understand malevolence toward her captors, where was the fear of the impending punishment? And the shock was mixed with bewilderment, rather than the wounded sort of conceit at being found out that one usually found in apprehended criminals.
It was too late to begin interrogations tonight. He was both physically and mentally exhausted.
He was in no shape to spend hours facing a pair of deep amethyst eyes wild with anger, the very shade he had seen twisting through the borders of the sky earlier. How he hated that color
He ground his teeth in frustration. The meeting with Yamamoto and the twelfth division had been worthless. There was little to report that he did not already conclude last night. It was the same sort of hollowfication experiment from decades earlier, but this time, performed on mere children with infinitely more ghastly results. But through what means was unclear. And there was no hard evidence tying it back to Uruhara. Scouring the area had not revealed any trace of his reiatsu. Besides, it was well-known his connections were all based in West Rukongai. There was nothing to do but to hope that the interrogation of the woman had been more fruitful.
He found the detention cell overflowing with idle watchers crowded around Kichida, his fourth chair, and a tiny figure curled in a fetal position. He hadn't noticed last night, but he saw now the lavender crocuses dancing across the unevenly faded blue yukata. He cursed under his breath.
Aloud, he snapped, "I was not aware interrogating a single Rukongai rat without a shred of reiryoku took a roomful of Sixth Division members."
Within seconds the area had been emptied amidst frightened apologies.
"Who were you working for?" Kichida was shouting. The woman gasped, quite obviously choking.
"She couldn't answer even if she wanted to. Control your reiatsu."
"Goddamn bitch hasn't been willing to say a fucking thing all day anyhow," Kichida fumed.
"So you've learned nothing?" Byakuya bit out.
Kichida turned on the woman suddenly, lifting his hand and striking her across her face. But she reached out, gripping his hand and sinking her teeth into it. The shinigami cried out in rage and flung her against the bars. His control snapped, assaulting her until she was dangerously close to asphyxiation.
"Do you plan to kill our only source of intelligence simply because of your own deficient interrogation methods?" he demanded coldly.
The pressure subsided.
"I'll take over from here," he said flatly, gesturing toward the exit.
Kichida looked mutinous for a moment but managed to bow perfunctorily. "My deepest apologies for my failings." As he left, he could not restrain himself from a sharp kick to the woman's ribs.
Byakuya half-expected her to be unconscious, but as he reached down to gather her in his arms, her eyes snapped open. Fixing him again with that cold glare, she spat in his face. He nearly dropped her but managed to bring her to her chair.
"If you find your present conditions so objectionable, I suggest you begin cooperating with our questioning," he said icily, wiping away her saliva with his sleeve. Another uniform to burn. He would need to order more spares soon.
Her only response was a derisive snort.
"What is their hold over you?"
She laughed harshly, though judging by the pain that twisted briefly in her face, it cost her. "They're not shinigami assholes?"
He watched her closely. Her loathing was palpable, far too intense to be artifice. "You're mistaken. They had to have been highly trained shinigami to have setup such a complicated set of kidou barriers and obtained enough Sekkiseki to plaster over the entire cellar."
"Come again?" she stared blankly at him for a moment before defiantly turning away.
"You expect us to believe you were unaware of the cellar?"
"Look, dumbshit, you came barging into my attic. Why are you going on about some fucking cellar? Plus, if we had one, why the hell would we store all our crap above ground?"
"Who's the ‘we’?"
She said nothing.
"You have an unusually high ability to endure pain. Did they prepare you to withstand torture?" She whipped her head around to face him and there was raw fury in her eyes. For a moment, he thought she would spit at him again. One hand reached up a sleeve. She must have kept that knife concealed there.
"Are you concerned that if you reveal anything, they will eliminate you?"
"In here? How the hell are they gonna get in here?" she said scornfully. "Oh, I forgot. You're trying to trick me into thinking they're your kind."
"I assure you we will not let you come to any harm from them."
"Yeah, you fuckers have a full schedule of beating me up yourselves," she replied scathingly.
He moved directly before her, holding her gaze. He had looked into the eyes of Hollows, but the hatred there was that kind of blind, primal hate. He had never seen it so sharp, so focused. At him. It unnerved him. There was no script, no rulebook for this, and he let his frustration show. "Have I struck you a single time? Even when you spat in my face?"
She flushed and dropped her eyes.
"As the heir of a noble clan, if a member of my household had behaved as you had, it would have been within my right to execute them." He had meant to impress her with how strictly he adhered to the protocol of interrogation, but instead when she looked at him again, there was pure contempt added to the antipathy.
"You're all such hotshots you get to decide who lives and dies, huh?" her voice catching on each word, as if she could barely force it out through her ire. Abruptly, she turned away again, fixing her eyes on some distant point in the single barred window. There was no use questioning her further for the present.
He was surprised that she seemed completely unaffected by the silence. He had thought, given the raucous atmosphere of Rukongai, the unrelenting quiet broken only by the occasional shuffle of the papers he had ordered brought down to the cell would intimidate her, perhaps even cause her to babble a bit. But she remained perfectly still, steadily staring outside, until he was the one to finally speak.
"What is your name?"
No response. He saw her jaw muscle twitch in irritation.
"Your name?" he repeated.
"Why the hell should I tell you?"
"It is necessary for several documents I need to file," he said with far more patience than he felt.
"Why don't you just use Rukongai trash?" she retorted.
He nearly snapped his brush. He was terribly behind on paperwork. He was worn out. He hadn't slept more than a few hours in the past two days, and the last night's attempt at rest resulted only in a barrage of gruesome nightmares that woke him every few minutes. He finally gave up, soaked in a cold sweat and feeling violently ill. And there was no chance of sufficient sleep for the foreseeable future.
It was times like these he wished he still drank sake. Of course, he noted sourly, it would be a woman who had ruined that for him as well.
I believe her, his zanpakuto said suddenly, jolting him awake just as he was drifting off. He hated when she did that, which was, he was sure, precisely why she continued doing it.
He sighed.
Her behavior has been far too irrational for her hatred to be anything but the truth. She would never have willingly cooperated with shinigami.
If she were merely ignorant of that fact yet aided them nonetheless in that despicable operation, would it make her any less guilty? He pressed his lips together tightly.
Do you really judge her to be that inhuman? On the contrary, I find her fault to be that she is entirely too human.
At least in slumber, the woman let slip her fierce bravado, leaving behind a petite frame curled in the corner. He was struck again by how small she really was. There was something almost fragile about her slender fingers, brushing against the patterns of pale crocuses, iridescent in the dark.
I never knew you to be such a sympathetic fool, he replied coldly.
She was a noiseless sleeper; she did not shift or speak. Were it not for the small hitch of pain in her breathing, there would be no evidence of her presence.
He was still working through reviewing the reports from several days ago. He knew of certain senior officers who bullied their subordinates into an unfair share but thought it poor form to and a dangerous compromise of the records' accuracy.
A light gasp interrupted his brush stroke. Again.
In all fairness, the labored intake of her breath was so soft rustling his papers more loudly would have drowned it out. But it was always the quietest sounds that echoed the loudest in his mind. Irritated at his own pathetic lack of concentration, he slipped into the cell and tried recalling as best he could the rudimentary healing kidou that he had not used in decades. Hesitantly, he lifted his hands over her. Her ribs were cracked but not broken. His skill was nowhere near sufficient to treat that. There were pallid scars crisscrossed in a lattice pattern everywhere: reiatsu burns. Kichida must have spent the better part of the day whipping and throttling her with it, knowing full well she was utterly defenseless against it, he thought disgustedly. There were a few bruises, but the reiatsu burns would last far longer, and there was no known treatment. Exhaling nervously, he tried a simple pain-relief spell. Slowly, her breathing eased.
Just as he was settling back down with his papers, she cried out weakly as her ribs strained under the force of a dry cough. He recalled that she did not need food, but she did need water.
When he returned with a jar, he was surprised to find her awake. There was still the rosy haze of early dawn in the light streaming in.
Her eyes widened when she saw him, and her hands shook. She shrank from the glass he offered her, her hands still trembling in her lap. There was no hate in her eyes for a change: just a haunted loneliness, just stark branches leaving shadows in the distance that one could never catch.
Could she really have led those children to the cellar? he thought unsteadily. A woman with such feeble resistance against her own memories, her own feelings? Could she have contained the guilt? Kept it from overwhelming her sanity?
Slowly, the more familiar animosity returned to her gaze. She stiffened, peering at the liquid dubiously.
"It isn't poisoned," his voice came out harsh.
Grudgingly, she accepted the water.
"You been here all night? You plan on watching me forever?" she demanded.
"If that is what is necessary," he answered calmly. She looked furious but said nothing, so he turned back to his reports.
A jigokuchou interrupted him as he was working through a particularly suspect expense report. He sighed, knowing what was coming.
"Progress?" Yamamoto barked by way of greeting.
"Little."
"Have we tried any of the interrogation zanpakuto?"
"She has no reiryoku. Neither those nor kidou would be effective. She would simply be struck unconscious."
He could nearly hear the soutaichou grimace. "Do we need to involve the Detention Unit?"
"No," he said sharply. "She would not last more than a moment in their facility."
Yamamoto slammed the ground with his cane in frustration. "Get something. Soon! I can't keep this from the Academy forever, and as soon as that happens, this will be public knowledge. I need a name by then." The butterfly was gone before he could make any reply.
"Good luck with that," she smirked.
He flipped open his account books without a glance in her direction.
He thumbed through the scanty dossier. The building for the candy shop had been leased at a remarkable premium. The trail of who had paid the rent involved nearly a dozen shell companies and their subsidiaries, but ultimately ended at the accounts of a large group that operated several pricy hotels in the best districts of Rukongai as well as many shabbier ones in the middle districts. They also happened to own nearly a fifty teahouses, some with rather questionable reputations. He scrutinized her closely. She was young and attractive enough, but he had to admit there was little chance she ever engaged in that line of work. The shinigami of low birth were far too frequent patrons, and he suspected her reaction to their propositions would have been far more violent than her reaction to being interrogated.
"Who offered you the position at the store?"
"How do you know it wasn't mine?"
"We traced the rent to the mother company. None of the board members are female."
"Well, maybe you should ask them then."
"None of them were aware of the expenditure. It was packaged within a larger real estate transaction rather opaquely executed by a subsidiary. The employee who had organized it resigned quite some time ago and has vanished. I suspect it will be extremely difficult to find him."
She offered no reaction.
"We were unable to find any of the store's account books."
"That wasn't my job."
"Whose was it?"
"Why the hell would I know?"
"Did you not keep receipts of purchases? Who did you turn them over to?"
She remained quiet.
"What are three sevens?"
"What?"
"Five nines?"
She rolled her eyes.
"They are simple questions, are they not?"
"I don't understand a damn thing you just said."
"How were you able to purchase the inventory for the store without knowing even basic arithmetic?"
She gritted her teeth. "I didn't. They just got delivered to the store room every other week."
"And I suppose you wouldn't know who made the orders?"
She shrugged.
As a matter of fact, he already had the purchase record. The shipments were all paid for in cash with a healthy sum on top to cover delivery services.
"Have you any idea what the shop cleared on a daily basis?"
No response.
"How many transactions were there on an average day?"
No response.
"Did it even turn a profit? Or did anyone care?" he continued, glancing at her pointedly.
"Are you retarded? No, I don't know a damn thing about how stores are run. And I don't care. Someone offered me a job that was going to let me stay alive. Why the fuck would I have cared about anything else?" she shot back in a hard voice. "A pompous ass sitting nice and pretty in your little Seireitei may not get it, but for some of us, living ain't that easy."
"And who offered the job?"
She stood shakily and retreated into a corner with her back towards him. He stood as well and returned to his desk to transcribe their conversation.
He waited until she had dozed off to reapply the pain-relief spell. He fell asleep with the rhythm of her breathing in his head. He woke to her coughing and stepped out to fill the jar. Taking the chance to splash cool water on his own face, he wondered how long this routine would last.
"Are you drugging the water?" She had not touched the jar.
"We have little use for drugs as kidou spells are the preferred method of healing."
She blinked rapidly, and he saw a series of still-shots of eyes bright with anguish so intense it hurt to look at, like staring directly into the sun. He didn't understand - not her anger, not her hate, not the flash of vulnerability yesterday as she shuddered when he offered her the glass, and not her vulnerability now. He felt no triumph at her weakness. Instead, it shook him. Nothing about her behavior fit the profile of a criminal, yet he could not rid himself of the conviction there was something to be gained in breaking her silence.
"Don't bother," she muttered finally. "Don't waste time on someone you're gonna kill anyway."
He was tempted to swat the jigokuchou away when it came or better yet, squash it and its annoyingly perky flapping between his hands. Unfortunately, that would be a level three infraction.
"Update?"
"Nothing to report, sir."
He could hear the Yamamoto's thinning patience in the pause. "Two more days. Two more days, and if she doesn't give us a name by then, I'm bringing in the Detention Unit."
"Understood, sir."
"You had no qualifications for the job. What induced you to take it?"
"Hey asshole, in your stuck-up opinion, am I qualified for anything?"
He ignored her biting answer. "Why did you migrate to the district illegally?"
She blinked quickly, and there it was again - the haunted despair. She swiftly recovered and settled into a stony silence.
"You have not given us your name, but the district does keep a photograph archive of registered residents as well. You do not appear."
She gave no indication she heard him.
"In fact, there are no photographic records of you in any of the districts where such data exists."
He sighed. "It's clear you must have arrived from the outskirt areas. How did you manage to enter into the gated districts and escape all registrations?"
She gave a mirthless smile. "That was the only way to get in. They thought we were trash to keep out at costs." She gave him a cutting look. "Like you guys think of anyone from Rukongai."
"Is that your assessment of my treatment of you?" he asked sharply.
She had the grace to flush a bit. "That's just 'cause you need me now, and as soon as you're done with me, you can dump me on that Detention Unit," she retorted.
"If you were willing to cooperate, I assure you I will prevent the Detention Unit from access to you."
She laughed hollowly. "Don't waste your breath. There isn't a death horrible enough that I'd rat out someone to a shinigami."
He thought of the tortured bodies of the children and pierced her with a wintry stare. "Even if they aided in unspeakable atrocities?"
She snorted. "Dude ran a shady store. Shinigami..." she stopped, the bitterness choking her. She brought her hand to her mouth and bit knuckles so hard he saw a thin trail of blood, but she was past noticing such things.
The reports came back from the interviews with those who lived with the murdered children, and others who lived nearby. Yes, they recognized her. She ran the candy store. She never mentioned her name. She was nice enough to the kids - didn't chase them out if they didn't buy anything within the first few minutes, but she knew how to teach the ones stealing a lesson. No, she wasn't overly friendly with the kids. Kind of distant actually. She went out very rarely, and usually in the afternoons. No, they never saw her with any adults. She didn't really seem like she ever associated with anyone.
She didn't know anything. She didn't try to ingratiate herself with the children. he thought. She was just a pawn. Without reiryoku, it would have been effortless to conceal everything from her.
He was surprised to find her watching him instead of gazing grimly out the window. He waited, but she seemed disinclined to say anything. Just a cool stare, a haughty lift of a chin. It would be so easy to crush her, he thought. In fact, it took such effort to reign in every bit of his reiatsu. Even a small amount would inflame the scars she already had. But that would not shatter her will, her anger, her fragility, all entrenched around her secrets like a maze without entrances.
What could he say to make her believe he did not want her at the mercy of the Detention Unit, he did not want her dead? That he did not believe her a criminal?
But just then, a familiar arctic voice cut in, "Have you forgotten your pride as a Kuchiki?"
Did he think it excusable that a fukutaichou be utterly stymied by a tiny slip of girl without a drop of reiryoku?
No sir.
Did he have an explanation of why a Kuchiki heir was flummoxed by a lowbred slum dweller?
None, sir.
Did he intend to make a mockery of their name?
No, sir.
Did he think this mission a joke?
Absolutely not, sir.
So why after three days had he made no progress?
He has yet to convince her to answer his inquiries.
What nonsense was that? Was he an imbecile? Deprive her of water! Deprive her of sleep!
It is against the interrogation procedural rules, sir.
Had he sustained a concussion? Had he gone daft? The protocol had clearly only been intended for shinigami! Did he think Rukongai rats deserved such consideration? Did he think they were his equals?
No, sir.
What was difficult about this? He hardly was conscious of using any pressure and she was already screaming. Who are you working with, scum?
All the reiatsu was going straight to her scars, tearing them open. Oh god, stop it, stop it. His throat was raw, why could he hear only her screams?
What? The rat still won't speak? He would just add a fraction more pressure. He still could barely tell he had released any reiatsu.
She couldn't breathe, her ribs couldn't handle her spasms of pain, oh god, they were going to snap...stop it! Stop it!
Pathetic. Already unconscious. Well, he would leave it to his worthless fukutaichou. A few more rounds of this, and she would crack. He guaranteed it. And he expected a mission succeeded debriefing by the next day at the latest. Was he clear?
Yes, sir.
Skilled healers could construct a layer around their hands to dissipate the pain they siphoned off, but with his rudimentary abilities, the pain pooled at his fingertips, chafing them until they split open. He bled through one set of bandages, and then another.
"I thought I told you, don't bother," she whispered.
"Don't speak," he said tiredly. "You are still weak."
She lifted one hand and he froze as she touched his heavily wrapped fingers. Such a tiny hand, so seemingly frail. But it was his that trembled.
"Why do you care? Why can't you just let me be?" she burst out, but she did not push him away. She swallowed hard, and though she was looking at him, he knew she did not see him.
"What's the point? You're just healing me up to get beaten by that old bastard again. Or the Detention Unit," she said more quietly. "And the next time, I'll die."
"No," he stated flatly. "I will not permit it."
"You won't permit it? Permit what? You won't permit me to die now?" she tried to laugh, but only managed a thin wheeze.
He set her hand down and began adding a second layer of the pain barrier spell over her ribs. "I will not permit you to be killed by Kuchiki-taichou or the Detention Unit," he clarified.
"That's not really up to you."
"I beg your pardon? This is my mission," he said coldly.
"And the dude that sends you those freaky butterflies and your asshole captain are your bosses! You plan on standing up to them? For me? A low-bred slum dweller?" she snorted in disbelief.
"I do not stand by idly while the innocent die," he replied firmly.
She stiffened and slowly closed her eyes. She swallowed again and again, but when she opened her eyes again, her lashes were damp. "There's nothing crueler than making promises you can't keep."
He heard the soft soughing of spring drift through the branches laden with sakura, mingling petals and the tiny droplets of rain.
"From all directions
Winds bring petals of cherry
Into the grebe lake." [1]
Remember this, she had said. Remember my voice, remember my name, remember the tiny flecks of frosted pink dispersed far and wide before they fall forgotten to the ground. Remember, because no one else will.
Chire, Senbonzakura.
Remember the tempo of her faint breathing, remember the rise and fall of her chest pressed so close he could feel her heartbeat. Remember the way her lashes fluttered open, and he thought he heard thick clusters of flowers rustling in the breeze.
Remember the petite figure who should have been submerged by the vast space of the room, but she would never let anything smother her. Even hobbled by her injuries, she flitted about, examining the few pieces of furnitures, peering out into the dimly lit hallways of the inn, studying the shadowy fronts of buildings lining the deserted street below her window.
Remember the hands tanned and calloused and alive plucking at frayed threads of the embroidered crocuses on her yukata. Remember the amethyst eyes rimmed with gold like the clouds catching the waning light of sunset at their edges.
"Along the mountain road
somehow it tugs at my heart,
a wild violet" [2]
"My name is Hisana," she said. "I've only ever told one other person. He died protecting me," she added after a moment.
Remember this.
[1] By Matsuo Basho
[2] Also by Matsuo Basho
Byakuya: Faded Crocuses
NB: Since the zanpakuto arc is anime-only, I blithely ignore it as not part of canon. Senbonzakura is a [snarky] female for the purposes of this fanfic, and I do not consider it AU as the gender has yet to be specified in the manga.
It was one of those days, he knew immediately. Two Kuchiki branch family heads had nearly come to blows over whose child had rights to some insignificant plot of land. Helping resolve that meant he arrived late for the fukutaichou morning debriefing and had to endure a humiliating reprimand. The lowly commoners who somehow had managed to rise to fukutaichou in the third and ninth squad snickered, and he nearly lost his temper.
Then there was his punishment - naturally, his least favorite task: evening surveillance of south Rukongai. Although every Shinigami skimped on the Rukongai circuits, never venturing past the first twenty districts (Byakuya learned from Ginrei every generation of Kuchiki had abided by this unwritten amendment well before he was ever assigned the task), it was still close to intolerable. There was far too much dust, waste - human and animal - and noise. Vendors shouting, children screaming, splintering wood as dilapidated carts and huts collapsed. Having been raised in near constant silence, he always returned from Rukongai with a throbbing headache and nausea from the stench. Hollows had their own hideous odor, but it was a kind of cold rot embedded in their reiatsu that vanished with them. In the hazy heat of Rukongai, the fumes of its filth seemed to permeate his clothes, and well after he was within the sanctuary of Seireitei, the smell of feces and urine lingered.
The shadows lengthened; streaks of violet ran free through the edges of the sky, dodging between protrusions of towers and steepled roofs. He turned his eyes away sharply, hating himself for the surge of anger.
A jigokuchou fluttered into his field of vision. Almost certainly a message he would not care for, he thought grimly. As if on cue, he heard Yamamoto's brusque voice.
"I'm quite aware of the fact that it is accepted policy to take rather liberal shortcuts in the Rukongai surveillance missions." He paused for a brief second, but Byakuya said nothing. Lying was both dishonorable and pointless when dealing with the soutaichou.
"I did not want to disclose the following this morning before the other fukutaichou. The academy contacted me yesterday: several of their young recruits from South Rukongai have gone missing within the past two months. I sent a recon group out early in the afternoon. They will report to you tonight at Hikonyuto's office."
"Yes, sir."
The jigokuchou did not fly off. Finally, he heard the general commander, oddly hesitant, say "Although more than four decades have passed since...that incident, the disappearance of anyone with substantial reiryoku is a cause for inordinate concern."
The dark patches of purple had spread through the entire darkened sky, so he forced his eyes to the ground.
"You have not heard anything from the former Shiho-"
"No!" he spat. "Soutaichou," he added, trying to level his voice.
"Very well. I have alerted the Sixth division squad patrolling the south watchtower to be ready for summons if the situation requires immediate attention. I trust knowing this you will perform your duties tonight more meticulously than is your wont."
"Understood." The butterfly finally flapped away, and he began making his way toward Shuwaimon. He nearly tripped when a roof tile shattered from his unsteady Shunpo exerting excessive force.
Well, that takes head over heels in love to another level, Senbonzakura remarked sarcastically.
He clenched his teeth.
Well, are you done sulking yet? I don't much feel like babysitting extra tonight; it's wilting season - very tiring you know.
He stayed silent. Arguing with her was invariably a losing proposition, and he didn't need her jibes to add to his growing headache.
Good boy. We can go kill a few cats tomorrow if you don't screw up too badly tonight.
He stood atop the Shuwaimon guardian's office, though given the nature of the job, it was primarily used as storage space. He had intended to receive the report prior to doing his round, but now he wondered if that was a mistake. The lights had one by one vanished from the shacks. At this rate, he would barely manage four hours of sleep.
After briefly stretching, he began methodically scanning the first district. Faint reiatsu, but nothing on the level of a recon squad.
Nothing in the second district. Or third. He halted at the ninth. The squad had started early in the afternoon. He had never done a full circuit, but he had never spent more than an hour on the first twenty districts. They had been out for over eight hours.
Call for backup.
He sent six squad members off to scan the next twenty districts. The most junior two he sent with the seated officer to examine the middle twenty districts. He headed by himself toward the final thirty.
As he ventured further in, roofs - and many could hardly be called that, riddled as they were by holes - became scarce, until they ceased to exist at all. Quietly casting a cloaking spell, he had no choice but to take to the streets. After a few alleys, he gave up on attempting to dodge the piles of excrement, the scattered shapes of corpses in various stages of decay and dismemberment. By the time he was at the seventieth district, every dusty path was grimy with recent bloodshed.
Beasts, he thought. He would need to burn his uniform.
Just as he entered Inuzuri, he felt a sudden burst of reiatsu. He turned just in time to see the distress flare fade in the distance.
He found the ninth seat officer and his two squad members in the thirty-second district. "Wasn't us," panted the officer. "Pretty sure it came from around the mid-twenties."
"I'm going in first. Update the soutaichou and call for reinforcement while you catch up."
The building appeared deceptively harmless. A neatly tiled roof, shoddily painted walls but at least there was paint.
A candy shop, she said disgustedly.
With one hand over Senbonzakura's hilt, he stepped inside. A quick survey confirmed what he had already discerned from a preliminary scan outside. There was nothing on the first floor but bins of candy. He pushed open the door in the back corner, and found neatly stacked boxes. He immediately fixed upon the last row, the end slightly askew. Sure enough, as he stepped over it, he sensed layers of barrier kidou, meshing together to both guard the entrance and conceal the spells' presence.
He began gathering reiryoku in his hand, but she stopped him short.
Wait for the rest. That's no ordinary set of spells.
Someone stifled a strangled shriek. Hasty footsteps echoed up the stairs, but not far enough to hide the sound of vomiting. Another retched right there, collapsing on the spot.
The limp corpses of the squad members and recon group were unfortunate though expected, but behind them lay scattered heaps of disfigured remains of what they all knew had to be children.
I've never- Senbonzakura's voice gave out. His own stomach churned, and in his many decades in the Sixth Division, he had witnessed his fair share of gore.
He stepped closer. None of the faces were discernible. One was smothered behind a thick layer of pus, limbs shrunken like dried out leather. Another was half blown away, charred bits of innards stark against pale bone. Another was covered in boils so swollen they had burst leaving behind sallow splatters. Jagged bone lacerated through skin. He nearly closed his eyes; bile scalded his throat.
Then he saw the broken shards by the bodies - that unnatural bleached white, interrupted by the occasional black or red. The sharp inhales told him the others had come to the same conclusion.
"How could something like this be kept secret for so long?" someone whispered.
He picked at small fragment lodged in a crack in the wall. "Sekkiseki walls. They've already removed that layer. Notify the twelfth division and the soutaichou immediately," he barked. He gestured at the two nearest him. "Come with me. The rest of you, secure the perimeter until the others arrive."
He had noticed in the storage room a dangling rope from the ceiling which he suspected was the entry way to the upper levels.
Sure enough, with a light tug the ceiling gave way to reveal a ladder. He crept up. He felt no trace of reiatsu, which made him even more uneasy. But halfway up, he heard furtive steps. Leaping to the top, he saw a small figure flattened against the wall beside the aperture in the floor. She was so small he would have thought her a captive child were it not for the knife she was gripping. And her eyes. There was nothing young about her eyes.
Before she registered that he was already beside her, he struck the pathetic blade away. She had no reiryoku and attempting to stab him would have only injured her, but he couldn't quite reign in his rage completely.
She whipped around to face him in shock. Suddenly, it wasn't cold ruthlessness that hardened her eyes. There was something far uglier as she hissed, "What the fuck is your kind doing here?" He nearly recoiled at the venom in her voice.
He recovered quickly enough, but he was struck by the thought that her reaction didn't quite add up. Although he could understand malevolence toward her captors, where was the fear of the impending punishment? And the shock was mixed with bewilderment, rather than the wounded sort of conceit at being found out that one usually found in apprehended criminals.
It was too late to begin interrogations tonight. He was both physically and mentally exhausted.
He was in no shape to spend hours facing a pair of deep amethyst eyes wild with anger, the very shade he had seen twisting through the borders of the sky earlier. How he hated that color
He ground his teeth in frustration. The meeting with Yamamoto and the twelfth division had been worthless. There was little to report that he did not already conclude last night. It was the same sort of hollowfication experiment from decades earlier, but this time, performed on mere children with infinitely more ghastly results. But through what means was unclear. And there was no hard evidence tying it back to Uruhara. Scouring the area had not revealed any trace of his reiatsu. Besides, it was well-known his connections were all based in West Rukongai. There was nothing to do but to hope that the interrogation of the woman had been more fruitful.
He found the detention cell overflowing with idle watchers crowded around Kichida, his fourth chair, and a tiny figure curled in a fetal position. He hadn't noticed last night, but he saw now the lavender crocuses dancing across the unevenly faded blue yukata. He cursed under his breath.
Aloud, he snapped, "I was not aware interrogating a single Rukongai rat without a shred of reiryoku took a roomful of Sixth Division members."
Within seconds the area had been emptied amidst frightened apologies.
"Who were you working for?" Kichida was shouting. The woman gasped, quite obviously choking.
"She couldn't answer even if she wanted to. Control your reiatsu."
"Goddamn bitch hasn't been willing to say a fucking thing all day anyhow," Kichida fumed.
"So you've learned nothing?" Byakuya bit out.
Kichida turned on the woman suddenly, lifting his hand and striking her across her face. But she reached out, gripping his hand and sinking her teeth into it. The shinigami cried out in rage and flung her against the bars. His control snapped, assaulting her until she was dangerously close to asphyxiation.
"Do you plan to kill our only source of intelligence simply because of your own deficient interrogation methods?" he demanded coldly.
The pressure subsided.
"I'll take over from here," he said flatly, gesturing toward the exit.
Kichida looked mutinous for a moment but managed to bow perfunctorily. "My deepest apologies for my failings." As he left, he could not restrain himself from a sharp kick to the woman's ribs.
Byakuya half-expected her to be unconscious, but as he reached down to gather her in his arms, her eyes snapped open. Fixing him again with that cold glare, she spat in his face. He nearly dropped her but managed to bring her to her chair.
"If you find your present conditions so objectionable, I suggest you begin cooperating with our questioning," he said icily, wiping away her saliva with his sleeve. Another uniform to burn. He would need to order more spares soon.
Her only response was a derisive snort.
"What is their hold over you?"
She laughed harshly, though judging by the pain that twisted briefly in her face, it cost her. "They're not shinigami assholes?"
He watched her closely. Her loathing was palpable, far too intense to be artifice. "You're mistaken. They had to have been highly trained shinigami to have setup such a complicated set of kidou barriers and obtained enough Sekkiseki to plaster over the entire cellar."
"Come again?" she stared blankly at him for a moment before defiantly turning away.
"You expect us to believe you were unaware of the cellar?"
"Look, dumbshit, you came barging into my attic. Why are you going on about some fucking cellar? Plus, if we had one, why the hell would we store all our crap above ground?"
"Who's the ‘we’?"
She said nothing.
"You have an unusually high ability to endure pain. Did they prepare you to withstand torture?" She whipped her head around to face him and there was raw fury in her eyes. For a moment, he thought she would spit at him again. One hand reached up a sleeve. She must have kept that knife concealed there.
"Are you concerned that if you reveal anything, they will eliminate you?"
"In here? How the hell are they gonna get in here?" she said scornfully. "Oh, I forgot. You're trying to trick me into thinking they're your kind."
"I assure you we will not let you come to any harm from them."
"Yeah, you fuckers have a full schedule of beating me up yourselves," she replied scathingly.
He moved directly before her, holding her gaze. He had looked into the eyes of Hollows, but the hatred there was that kind of blind, primal hate. He had never seen it so sharp, so focused. At him. It unnerved him. There was no script, no rulebook for this, and he let his frustration show. "Have I struck you a single time? Even when you spat in my face?"
She flushed and dropped her eyes.
"As the heir of a noble clan, if a member of my household had behaved as you had, it would have been within my right to execute them." He had meant to impress her with how strictly he adhered to the protocol of interrogation, but instead when she looked at him again, there was pure contempt added to the antipathy.
"You're all such hotshots you get to decide who lives and dies, huh?" her voice catching on each word, as if she could barely force it out through her ire. Abruptly, she turned away again, fixing her eyes on some distant point in the single barred window. There was no use questioning her further for the present.
He was surprised that she seemed completely unaffected by the silence. He had thought, given the raucous atmosphere of Rukongai, the unrelenting quiet broken only by the occasional shuffle of the papers he had ordered brought down to the cell would intimidate her, perhaps even cause her to babble a bit. But she remained perfectly still, steadily staring outside, until he was the one to finally speak.
"What is your name?"
No response. He saw her jaw muscle twitch in irritation.
"Your name?" he repeated.
"Why the hell should I tell you?"
"It is necessary for several documents I need to file," he said with far more patience than he felt.
"Why don't you just use Rukongai trash?" she retorted.
He nearly snapped his brush. He was terribly behind on paperwork. He was worn out. He hadn't slept more than a few hours in the past two days, and the last night's attempt at rest resulted only in a barrage of gruesome nightmares that woke him every few minutes. He finally gave up, soaked in a cold sweat and feeling violently ill. And there was no chance of sufficient sleep for the foreseeable future.
It was times like these he wished he still drank sake. Of course, he noted sourly, it would be a woman who had ruined that for him as well.
I believe her, his zanpakuto said suddenly, jolting him awake just as he was drifting off. He hated when she did that, which was, he was sure, precisely why she continued doing it.
He sighed.
Her behavior has been far too irrational for her hatred to be anything but the truth. She would never have willingly cooperated with shinigami.
If she were merely ignorant of that fact yet aided them nonetheless in that despicable operation, would it make her any less guilty? He pressed his lips together tightly.
Do you really judge her to be that inhuman? On the contrary, I find her fault to be that she is entirely too human.
At least in slumber, the woman let slip her fierce bravado, leaving behind a petite frame curled in the corner. He was struck again by how small she really was. There was something almost fragile about her slender fingers, brushing against the patterns of pale crocuses, iridescent in the dark.
I never knew you to be such a sympathetic fool, he replied coldly.
She was a noiseless sleeper; she did not shift or speak. Were it not for the small hitch of pain in her breathing, there would be no evidence of her presence.
He was still working through reviewing the reports from several days ago. He knew of certain senior officers who bullied their subordinates into an unfair share but thought it poor form to and a dangerous compromise of the records' accuracy.
A light gasp interrupted his brush stroke. Again.
In all fairness, the labored intake of her breath was so soft rustling his papers more loudly would have drowned it out. But it was always the quietest sounds that echoed the loudest in his mind. Irritated at his own pathetic lack of concentration, he slipped into the cell and tried recalling as best he could the rudimentary healing kidou that he had not used in decades. Hesitantly, he lifted his hands over her. Her ribs were cracked but not broken. His skill was nowhere near sufficient to treat that. There were pallid scars crisscrossed in a lattice pattern everywhere: reiatsu burns. Kichida must have spent the better part of the day whipping and throttling her with it, knowing full well she was utterly defenseless against it, he thought disgustedly. There were a few bruises, but the reiatsu burns would last far longer, and there was no known treatment. Exhaling nervously, he tried a simple pain-relief spell. Slowly, her breathing eased.
Just as he was settling back down with his papers, she cried out weakly as her ribs strained under the force of a dry cough. He recalled that she did not need food, but she did need water.
When he returned with a jar, he was surprised to find her awake. There was still the rosy haze of early dawn in the light streaming in.
Her eyes widened when she saw him, and her hands shook. She shrank from the glass he offered her, her hands still trembling in her lap. There was no hate in her eyes for a change: just a haunted loneliness, just stark branches leaving shadows in the distance that one could never catch.
Could she really have led those children to the cellar? he thought unsteadily. A woman with such feeble resistance against her own memories, her own feelings? Could she have contained the guilt? Kept it from overwhelming her sanity?
Slowly, the more familiar animosity returned to her gaze. She stiffened, peering at the liquid dubiously.
"It isn't poisoned," his voice came out harsh.
Grudgingly, she accepted the water.
"You been here all night? You plan on watching me forever?" she demanded.
"If that is what is necessary," he answered calmly. She looked furious but said nothing, so he turned back to his reports.
A jigokuchou interrupted him as he was working through a particularly suspect expense report. He sighed, knowing what was coming.
"Progress?" Yamamoto barked by way of greeting.
"Little."
"Have we tried any of the interrogation zanpakuto?"
"She has no reiryoku. Neither those nor kidou would be effective. She would simply be struck unconscious."
He could nearly hear the soutaichou grimace. "Do we need to involve the Detention Unit?"
"No," he said sharply. "She would not last more than a moment in their facility."
Yamamoto slammed the ground with his cane in frustration. "Get something. Soon! I can't keep this from the Academy forever, and as soon as that happens, this will be public knowledge. I need a name by then." The butterfly was gone before he could make any reply.
"Good luck with that," she smirked.
He flipped open his account books without a glance in her direction.
He thumbed through the scanty dossier. The building for the candy shop had been leased at a remarkable premium. The trail of who had paid the rent involved nearly a dozen shell companies and their subsidiaries, but ultimately ended at the accounts of a large group that operated several pricy hotels in the best districts of Rukongai as well as many shabbier ones in the middle districts. They also happened to own nearly a fifty teahouses, some with rather questionable reputations. He scrutinized her closely. She was young and attractive enough, but he had to admit there was little chance she ever engaged in that line of work. The shinigami of low birth were far too frequent patrons, and he suspected her reaction to their propositions would have been far more violent than her reaction to being interrogated.
"Who offered you the position at the store?"
"How do you know it wasn't mine?"
"We traced the rent to the mother company. None of the board members are female."
"Well, maybe you should ask them then."
"None of them were aware of the expenditure. It was packaged within a larger real estate transaction rather opaquely executed by a subsidiary. The employee who had organized it resigned quite some time ago and has vanished. I suspect it will be extremely difficult to find him."
She offered no reaction.
"We were unable to find any of the store's account books."
"That wasn't my job."
"Whose was it?"
"Why the hell would I know?"
"Did you not keep receipts of purchases? Who did you turn them over to?"
She remained quiet.
"What are three sevens?"
"What?"
"Five nines?"
She rolled her eyes.
"They are simple questions, are they not?"
"I don't understand a damn thing you just said."
"How were you able to purchase the inventory for the store without knowing even basic arithmetic?"
She gritted her teeth. "I didn't. They just got delivered to the store room every other week."
"And I suppose you wouldn't know who made the orders?"
She shrugged.
As a matter of fact, he already had the purchase record. The shipments were all paid for in cash with a healthy sum on top to cover delivery services.
"Have you any idea what the shop cleared on a daily basis?"
No response.
"How many transactions were there on an average day?"
No response.
"Did it even turn a profit? Or did anyone care?" he continued, glancing at her pointedly.
"Are you retarded? No, I don't know a damn thing about how stores are run. And I don't care. Someone offered me a job that was going to let me stay alive. Why the fuck would I have cared about anything else?" she shot back in a hard voice. "A pompous ass sitting nice and pretty in your little Seireitei may not get it, but for some of us, living ain't that easy."
"And who offered the job?"
She stood shakily and retreated into a corner with her back towards him. He stood as well and returned to his desk to transcribe their conversation.
He waited until she had dozed off to reapply the pain-relief spell. He fell asleep with the rhythm of her breathing in his head. He woke to her coughing and stepped out to fill the jar. Taking the chance to splash cool water on his own face, he wondered how long this routine would last.
"Are you drugging the water?" She had not touched the jar.
"We have little use for drugs as kidou spells are the preferred method of healing."
She blinked rapidly, and he saw a series of still-shots of eyes bright with anguish so intense it hurt to look at, like staring directly into the sun. He didn't understand - not her anger, not her hate, not the flash of vulnerability yesterday as she shuddered when he offered her the glass, and not her vulnerability now. He felt no triumph at her weakness. Instead, it shook him. Nothing about her behavior fit the profile of a criminal, yet he could not rid himself of the conviction there was something to be gained in breaking her silence.
"Don't bother," she muttered finally. "Don't waste time on someone you're gonna kill anyway."
He was tempted to swat the jigokuchou away when it came or better yet, squash it and its annoyingly perky flapping between his hands. Unfortunately, that would be a level three infraction.
"Update?"
"Nothing to report, sir."
He could hear the Yamamoto's thinning patience in the pause. "Two more days. Two more days, and if she doesn't give us a name by then, I'm bringing in the Detention Unit."
"Understood, sir."
"You had no qualifications for the job. What induced you to take it?"
"Hey asshole, in your stuck-up opinion, am I qualified for anything?"
He ignored her biting answer. "Why did you migrate to the district illegally?"
She blinked quickly, and there it was again - the haunted despair. She swiftly recovered and settled into a stony silence.
"You have not given us your name, but the district does keep a photograph archive of registered residents as well. You do not appear."
She gave no indication she heard him.
"In fact, there are no photographic records of you in any of the districts where such data exists."
He sighed. "It's clear you must have arrived from the outskirt areas. How did you manage to enter into the gated districts and escape all registrations?"
She gave a mirthless smile. "That was the only way to get in. They thought we were trash to keep out at costs." She gave him a cutting look. "Like you guys think of anyone from Rukongai."
"Is that your assessment of my treatment of you?" he asked sharply.
She had the grace to flush a bit. "That's just 'cause you need me now, and as soon as you're done with me, you can dump me on that Detention Unit," she retorted.
"If you were willing to cooperate, I assure you I will prevent the Detention Unit from access to you."
She laughed hollowly. "Don't waste your breath. There isn't a death horrible enough that I'd rat out someone to a shinigami."
He thought of the tortured bodies of the children and pierced her with a wintry stare. "Even if they aided in unspeakable atrocities?"
She snorted. "Dude ran a shady store. Shinigami..." she stopped, the bitterness choking her. She brought her hand to her mouth and bit knuckles so hard he saw a thin trail of blood, but she was past noticing such things.
The reports came back from the interviews with those who lived with the murdered children, and others who lived nearby. Yes, they recognized her. She ran the candy store. She never mentioned her name. She was nice enough to the kids - didn't chase them out if they didn't buy anything within the first few minutes, but she knew how to teach the ones stealing a lesson. No, she wasn't overly friendly with the kids. Kind of distant actually. She went out very rarely, and usually in the afternoons. No, they never saw her with any adults. She didn't really seem like she ever associated with anyone.
She didn't know anything. She didn't try to ingratiate herself with the children. he thought. She was just a pawn. Without reiryoku, it would have been effortless to conceal everything from her.
He was surprised to find her watching him instead of gazing grimly out the window. He waited, but she seemed disinclined to say anything. Just a cool stare, a haughty lift of a chin. It would be so easy to crush her, he thought. In fact, it took such effort to reign in every bit of his reiatsu. Even a small amount would inflame the scars she already had. But that would not shatter her will, her anger, her fragility, all entrenched around her secrets like a maze without entrances.
What could he say to make her believe he did not want her at the mercy of the Detention Unit, he did not want her dead? That he did not believe her a criminal?
But just then, a familiar arctic voice cut in, "Have you forgotten your pride as a Kuchiki?"
Did he think it excusable that a fukutaichou be utterly stymied by a tiny slip of girl without a drop of reiryoku?
No sir.
Did he have an explanation of why a Kuchiki heir was flummoxed by a lowbred slum dweller?
None, sir.
Did he intend to make a mockery of their name?
No, sir.
Did he think this mission a joke?
Absolutely not, sir.
So why after three days had he made no progress?
He has yet to convince her to answer his inquiries.
What nonsense was that? Was he an imbecile? Deprive her of water! Deprive her of sleep!
It is against the interrogation procedural rules, sir.
Had he sustained a concussion? Had he gone daft? The protocol had clearly only been intended for shinigami! Did he think Rukongai rats deserved such consideration? Did he think they were his equals?
No, sir.
What was difficult about this? He hardly was conscious of using any pressure and she was already screaming. Who are you working with, scum?
All the reiatsu was going straight to her scars, tearing them open. Oh god, stop it, stop it. His throat was raw, why could he hear only her screams?
What? The rat still won't speak? He would just add a fraction more pressure. He still could barely tell he had released any reiatsu.
She couldn't breathe, her ribs couldn't handle her spasms of pain, oh god, they were going to snap...stop it! Stop it!
Pathetic. Already unconscious. Well, he would leave it to his worthless fukutaichou. A few more rounds of this, and she would crack. He guaranteed it. And he expected a mission succeeded debriefing by the next day at the latest. Was he clear?
Yes, sir.
Skilled healers could construct a layer around their hands to dissipate the pain they siphoned off, but with his rudimentary abilities, the pain pooled at his fingertips, chafing them until they split open. He bled through one set of bandages, and then another.
"I thought I told you, don't bother," she whispered.
"Don't speak," he said tiredly. "You are still weak."
She lifted one hand and he froze as she touched his heavily wrapped fingers. Such a tiny hand, so seemingly frail. But it was his that trembled.
"Why do you care? Why can't you just let me be?" she burst out, but she did not push him away. She swallowed hard, and though she was looking at him, he knew she did not see him.
"What's the point? You're just healing me up to get beaten by that old bastard again. Or the Detention Unit," she said more quietly. "And the next time, I'll die."
"No," he stated flatly. "I will not permit it."
"You won't permit it? Permit what? You won't permit me to die now?" she tried to laugh, but only managed a thin wheeze.
He set her hand down and began adding a second layer of the pain barrier spell over her ribs. "I will not permit you to be killed by Kuchiki-taichou or the Detention Unit," he clarified.
"That's not really up to you."
"I beg your pardon? This is my mission," he said coldly.
"And the dude that sends you those freaky butterflies and your asshole captain are your bosses! You plan on standing up to them? For me? A low-bred slum dweller?" she snorted in disbelief.
"I do not stand by idly while the innocent die," he replied firmly.
She stiffened and slowly closed her eyes. She swallowed again and again, but when she opened her eyes again, her lashes were damp. "There's nothing crueler than making promises you can't keep."
He heard the soft soughing of spring drift through the branches laden with sakura, mingling petals and the tiny droplets of rain.
"From all directions
Winds bring petals of cherry
Into the grebe lake." [1]
Remember this, she had said. Remember my voice, remember my name, remember the tiny flecks of frosted pink dispersed far and wide before they fall forgotten to the ground. Remember, because no one else will.
Chire, Senbonzakura.
Remember the tempo of her faint breathing, remember the rise and fall of her chest pressed so close he could feel her heartbeat. Remember the way her lashes fluttered open, and he thought he heard thick clusters of flowers rustling in the breeze.
Remember the petite figure who should have been submerged by the vast space of the room, but she would never let anything smother her. Even hobbled by her injuries, she flitted about, examining the few pieces of furnitures, peering out into the dimly lit hallways of the inn, studying the shadowy fronts of buildings lining the deserted street below her window.
Remember the hands tanned and calloused and alive plucking at frayed threads of the embroidered crocuses on her yukata. Remember the amethyst eyes rimmed with gold like the clouds catching the waning light of sunset at their edges.
"Along the mountain road
somehow it tugs at my heart,
a wild violet" [2]
"My name is Hisana," she said. "I've only ever told one other person. He died protecting me," she added after a moment.
Remember this.
[1] By Matsuo Basho
[2] Also by Matsuo Basho