Spoilers: If you're not familiar with the manga all the way through chapter 248, then this entire story is pretty much a spoiler.

Timeframe: The first section of this story takes place between chapters 197 and 198 of the manga. The second section is set (obviously, I hope) at some point in the distant past. The third section takes place between chapters 228 and 230. The fourth takes place sometime before chapter 248. All of which should, I expect, be obvious to one who is familiar with the recent manga, so I apologize for this quite possibly totally unnecessary author's note. :)

Disclaimer: As usual, nothing belongs to me except my obsession.

Karakura Town, Kurosaki Clinic

Before the Storm

oo

Trying to wrap his head around the fact that they're all here, in his bedroom, is almost too much to handle. It's almost impossible to imagine that once, not so long ago, he had learned to feel comfortable with Rukia living in his closet. Now she is camping on the bed as though it's her own, while Soul Society's smallest Captain sits on his windowsill, its largest-breasted woman starts picking through his drawers, and Yumichika keeps expressing his amazement for the fact that he doesn't seem to own a single mirror.

If his mind weren't so full of the sobering image of rampaging Menos Grande armies, Kurosaki Ichigo doubts he would be able keep himself from drop-kicking them all out the window. Even Rukia, right along with her nightmare-inducing drawings…

"Oi, Renji," he says, sidling over surreptitiously. "How can you – hey! What are you doing?"

"What?" the tattooed freak asks innocently from his crouch, where he was about to peer under the bed. "I'm just looking for your magazines."

"What magazines?"

Renji smirks as he straightens. "You know, the kind with naked – "

"Shut up! I don't have those kinds of magazines!"

"Sure you do! No need to pret - "

"I don't, so stop looking under my bed! Anyway, I want to ask you a question."

"Yeah, what is it?"

He peers out of the corner of his eye to make sure that Rukia is busy talking to Matsumoto – and tries to convince himself that they are not having a conversation about the contents of his underwear drawer – before deciding it's safe to whisper to Renji, "Can you really make sense of her drawings?"

"What, Rukia's?" Renji asks, scratching at the back of his head. "Sure."

"Are… are you serious?"

"Yeah. She's always drawn like that," Renji says, his expression unexpectedly serious, his gaze on the back of Rukia's head. "We learned how to read and write just fine, but she's always liked communicating with pictures best."

Ichigo realizes his mouth is hanging open.

Renji looks back to him, then suddenly grins. "It's like even now she's still a snot nosed brat deep down insi – oomph."

Rukia doesn't even bother to say a word after her kick sends Renji sprawling. She turns back to her conversation with Matsumoto as though nothing violent had just happened.

Ichigo can sympathize all too well with Renji's plight, and is half tempted to help the idiot pull his torso back in through the window Hitsugaya Toushiro silently vacated in time to let the Vice Captain's limp body go past. But he isn't quite that generous. Besides, Rukia might decide that means he was agreeing with Renji's opinion, and he really doesn't need a kick to the head.

"Oh, Kurosaki!" Yumichika suddenly chirps, so loud that Ichigo winces, sure that his family downstairs is going to figure out what's going on up here at any moment… as if this house needed more lunatics…

"What is it? Can't you keep your voice down?"

"Kurosaki," Yumichika goes on, putting a hand to his face in manifest dismay while flapping with his other hand at something on the bed. "Don't tell me that you actually sleep with that hideously old and dirty thing! I certainly do hope that you don't keep it under your pillow like that regularly, do you?"

"So it's back again, is it?" Matsumoto says brightly, almost as though she's looking forward to the opportunity to pound Kon into the floor again.

What is it about Shinigami women?

Better question – why didn't Kon have the good sense to stay hidden after the first beating?

"What?" Ikkaku spins around so fast that he nearly knocks the lamp off the desk with the bokuto he keeps tapping against his shoulder. His grin is the stuff of nightmares. "Are you telling me that you sleep with that thing, Ichi – "

"Shut up! I do not sleep with anything, all right?"

"Oh, well, that explains a lot," Matsumoto hums, examining her fingernails for a moment before buffing them on the exposed skin of her breasts.

Renji, recovered from his brush with Rukia's heel, leans down and snatches Kon out by one stuffed leg.

"Let go of me, you monkey! Don't you recognize a mighty lion when you see one? I can make you pay, I can – "

Renji's grin promises even more misery than Ikkaku's. "Nothing wrong with monkeys."

"Ichigoooo! You won't let them do this to me, will you? Not to your faithful companion! Haven't I been a good friend? Haven't I taken good care of your body all those times, and I swear I only tried the peeping tom thing once, I swear I – "

"WHAT?"

"Nee-saaaan!"

"Just who were you peeping on, Kon?" Rukia asks curiously.

"OI!"

"What the hell does it mean, taking care of your body?" Ikkaku asks, grin still widely in place.

"Ichigoooo!"

"Yeah right, see if I help you now, after a confession like that!"

"A mod-soul," Toushiro says coolly from his resumed perch in the window, watching Kon's torment through the corner of his eye. "How long have you had such a thing?"

"TOO LONG!"

Rukia gives him an all too familiar look.

He's missed that look more than he wants to admit.

"Ichigo," she says sharply, "if you don't stop yelling, your family is going to come back up to see what's going on."

He's changed his mind. When he kicks them all out of the window, Rukia is going to be the first to go. Followed by her deranged drawings. He's never been one for cliches, but she's walking proof that art really does reflect life...

"Relax," Rukia says then, suddenly at his side, while everyone else, except for the white-haired kid, leans in to inspect Kon.

"How can I relax?" he hisses back.

Rukia smiles.

Against his better judgment, against every instinct of pride, he feels the tension in his shoulders seeping away.

"Everyone is here to help you. Even if they're loud, it's always good to have friends at your back." Her voice lowers, and though she looks away from him now, her words convey… everything. "Isn't it."

He hesitates for a moment, but now is not the time to try to come up with any sort of deep reply, not with all these freaks hanging around. Maybe not ever. He's no good at that deep stuff. He's already told Rukia everything he knows how to tell her, all on the edge of his sword.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess it is."

"ICHIGOOOOOO, HELP MEEEE!!!!!!"

Then again, he wouldn't mind having them at his back very far away.

Kicking them all out the window in fact rather than fantasy probably isn't really an option. But one way or another, they are going to have to leave.

Preferably before his family gets a look at Matsumoto.

Before the Sword

oo

It didn't take long for him to realize that Rukia liked to take charge of things. She was bossy and a loudmouth, but they'd all realized that from the first moment she appeared, kicking a man's legs out and giving them orders. It wasn't until a week later, when they'd gone on another water raid, that Renji began to suspect she was going to be bossy all the time.

By the third raid, he realized he had a leadership crisis on his hands.

"So first we're going to – "

"The first thing you're going to do is shut up and let me make the plans!"

"Oh?"

It had only been a month since Rukia had invaded their lives, and already he could recognize that look, that tone of voice. It was all challenge and haughty disdain. If she weren't a girl, he would have kicked that smile clean off.

"I know this area better than you," he insisted, crossing his arms and sticking his nose up pointedly in the air, the better to look down it at her.

"How do you know that?" she asked slyly. "I might have been living here just as long as you."

"Yeah, well we'd never seen you before last month, so as far as I'm concerned that means you weren't here."

"What kind of logic is that? Because you didn't see me I didn't exist?"

"You can't just walk in here and take charge like you know better!" he hollered, abandoning condescension for outright rage.

"You have a plan, then? All right, what's the plan?"

"Of course I have a plan! The plan is to do just what we did last week. It worked once, so it will work again."

"Ah… Renji…."

"What?"

He rounded on Jin, and even though the spikey-haired boy was the only one in their group who was his equal in height, Jin cringed back, managing to hide nearly all of himself behind Hiko's round body.

"Well," Jin said hesitantly, peeking around the short topknot on Hiko's pumpkin head, "w-we did almost get caught last time…"

"Don't worry about it, Jin," Rukia said calmly, hiking her hem up in order to crouch down in the dirt. "I have a better plan."

"Don't just ignore me!" Renji yelled at her turned back.

"You can always join in the planning, Renji. I'm sure it would be even better if you contributed to it."

He wasn't stupid enough to fall for that. Her tone of voice would have given it away, even if he didn't already know she was a devious little…

"That's right," he muttered, stomping over to crouch down beside her, determined to sound like this had all been his idea to begin with. He couldn't be seen giving in to a girl. "You need my help."

Rukia was leaning forward on one palm, already using the index finger of her other hand to draw things in the dirt. But past the fringes of her hair Renji could just make out the corners of a smirk on her face.

"So this is where the water vendor is," she said, stirring up dust. "This is the clothes merchant. Rai, you're going to come around the corner here and pass the vendor going this direction."

"Uh…" Rai dug a hand into his bushy hair and scratched at his temple. "Rukia-chan… what if he…"

"Don't worry, he won't recognize you, because you're going to be – "

"What's that?" Hiko asked, his fat lips pursed in confusion as he pointed at a spot in Rukia's diagram.

"That's the herbalist. Can't you tell by the plant?"

"That's a plant?" Hiko asked stupidly.

"I thought it was a porcupine," Jin murmured.

Rukia's face twitched.

Renji saw it, and grinned. "No," he said, "that's obviously a chicken. Don't you recognize the little finger things on its head?"

"Those are roosters, you moron!" Rukia glared at him. "Besides, it doesn't look anything like a chicken!"

"I thought it was supposed to be a rooster," Hiko said.

"Shut up, Hiko," Jin said hastily, putting a hand over the shorter boy's mouth, his gaze darting between Rukia and Renji as though he was expecting things to get bloody very fast.

But Renji just shrugged, scratching at an itch inside his shirt. He kept the grin on strong and told Rukia, quite magnanimously, that she could continue, because he knew it would piss her off.

In the end, it was a good plan. Rukia's plans usually were. And because a fresh store of water and an extra bonus of raided sweets lulled him into complacency, it took Renji a while to fully realize that he had given up a part of his undisputed authority as leader of their group. There was to be no getting it back.

But that didn't really matter. Rukia knew how to share things, when it counted.

Two years later, there was an established order to their strategizing sessions.

Rukia crouched in the dirt and sketched out their tactics while Renji supervised, pointing out flaws in her reasoning whenever he could because it made her angry, and because their fights made Jin and Hiko and Rai laugh. And he knew that Rukia rose to his bait for the same reason.

Not that it stopped her getting a kick in whenever she could, of course, because she really was a demon when it came right down to it. A smart demon. On nights after she'd gotten in a few really good knee slams, she always knew to hide out in her favorite tree until after Renji had fallen asleep.

"So wait a minute," Rai said one day over their planning, looking as small and confused as he had two years ago; the only thing about him that seemed to have grown was the size of his bushy hair. "I'm supposed to hide behind this… this… what is this again?"

"Dumbass," Renji said, planting his foot between the smaller boy's shoulder blades and pushing him closer to the dirt sketch for a better look. "That's the lantern shop, obviously."

"That's a lantern?" Hiko said skeptically, as slow as ever. "I thought it was a hippo."

"Yeah?" Renji said dryly. "And we get a lot of hippos wandering through town, do we?"

"Renji's right," Rukia said with stubborn dignity. "It's the lantern shop. Obviously."

"Er… obviously," Jin said.

Renji sighed, but rather than kick anyone else around he just stood up straighter and made sure to tighten the strap holding back his hair, getting ready for action. He and Rukia had been talking about teaching themselves and everyone else how to read, but it might just be hopeless with fools like these.

Well, that was fine. He and Rukia would figure it out, and take care of things for everyone else. Just like they always did.

That was fine.

That was the way things were supposed to be.

After all, you had to share the things that really mattered.

Before the Parting

oo

At first, Orihime hadn't been sure how to feel about going back to Soul Society. She would be happy to see Yachiru-chan again, of course, and Unohana-san, and the vendor near the 11th Division compound who made those delicious sweet rice cakes. But most of the Shinigami she'd come to know best were all back in the living world now. This time, her only companion would be the one person who had always seemed just out of reach on her previous visit, even in the week after the final rescue.

Orihime was having so many feelings about Kuchiki-san's invitation to Soul Society that she didn't even know where to begin sorting them out. But Kuchiki-san could work her magic on more than just Kurosaki-kun, because the very idea of refusing her seemed impossible.

No one had ever shown so much confidence in her as Kuchiki-san was showing now.

Of course Tatsuki-chan had always been there for her, and her brother before that. Orihime knew how it felt to be loved and protected, and she appreciated it with all her heart. But always in the past her loved ones and protectors had said to her, "I'll be there for you, Orihime," or, "You need to be stronger, Orihime! You can do it."

No one had ever before said, "Let's get stronger together," as though she were someone worth standing shoulder-to-shoulder with, rather than in front of.

It was good to have someone willing to stand in front of you, to think of you as something worth protecting. But it was different, somehow, to have someone who wanted you at their back for another reason. Different, and good. Especially after Urahara-san's words.

Kuchiki-san had offered her a hand, and it didn't matter that she knew Kuchiki-san's small hand could touch Kurosaki-kun so freely, with no fear of impropriety or inadequacy. It didn't matter, because even through tears, Orihime could recognize magic when she saw it. Kuchiki-san's words were like magic words, always the right ones. Special enchanted words to open doors to treasure troves hidden deep inside you.

Or to Soul Society, which might be the same thing.

Or at least, that was what Kuchiki-san was hoping.

"We can do this, Inoue," she said fiercely, at the end of almost every day, as they trudged back from the training field to the 13th Division buildings for baths and rest. "We can get strong enough to make Urahara and everyone else eat those words!"

And almost every day, Orihime would smile, wipe the sweat from her forehead and temples, and say, "I'll have to eat them first if we don't get dinner soon! I'm starving!"

Or if Kuchiki-san said grinned wolfishly, her own hair lank with sweat, and said, "That was a good technique, Inoue. You'll surprise more than just the enemy with that one. It will do those insufferably smug bastards some good," then Orihime, who knew that Kuchiki-san wasn't talking about the Arrancar, would try hopelessly to smear the dirt stains from her cheeks and laugh and say, "At this rate I don't think anyone would recognize me under this dirt in order to be surprised! Maybe they'll think I'm some kind of new swamp spirit conjured up by the enemy!"

But before she could start constructing in her mind the way a swamp spirit ought to look and smell, and just how Kurosaki-kun would have to go about killing one, Kuchiki-san snorted and said, "It would be impossible not to recognize you, Inoue."

Orihime laughed again, and even though it was one of her careful laughs, no one had ever managed to notice when she was faking it before, not even Tatsuki-chan. "I know," she said, pointing at her chest with one dirt-stained finger. "I'm always easy to find."

But Kuchiki-san didn't smile. She just stood in that way that made her seem tall even though she was so small, and shook her head. "No, not because of that. That's not what people who really know you remember."

"Eh? Do you mean," she said, shifting easily with the flow of inspired thought. "like how you can always remember the smell of a sweet-and-sour custard with whipped cream icing better than you can remember the way it looks?"

"Er… not exactly. But close enough."

But she never really missed the meanings of comments like that, even though other people thought she did. She just took some time digesting them, just like you would a good meal.

There was something both painful and wonderful in knowing that Kuchiki-san thought highly of her. For the first couple weeks they spent in Soul Society, she felt caught between the two emotions, tossed back and forth like a mutely flailing tennis ball in a game being played by angry purple-haired gorillas.

But sometime in the third week, the gorillas finished their game. Kuchiki-san chased them off, maybe. Or Tsubaki-kun did. Or maybe even her own determination did it, her own strengthening spirit. Orihime was willing to give herself credit, if only because Kuchiki-san kept insisting that she feel proud of the progress they were making.

One night, when Kuchiki-san had left the room they were sharing in 13th Division in order to get them some dinner, Orihime had been lying on her back under the window with her arms spread out wide, her mouth slightly parted in order to better suck in lungfulls of cool evening air sweetened by the taste of nearby water lilies.

"Mo is for mochi soup, warm and a good and lumpy," she murmured to herself, in no need of a real tune. "Tsu is for – "

"Tsubaki, isn't it?"

"Eh?" she exclaimed, scrambling up to find that the door had been left open, and the 13th Division's white-haired Captain was peering in with a gentle smile.

"The name of one of your fairies, right?" he said.

"Oh! Yes!" She blushed, then giggled. "Tsubaki-kun has a terrible temper. He'd be ever so mad if he thought I was putting his name in songs. But how in the world did you know his name, Ukitake-san? That's amazing!"

"Oh, not so amazing," he said, a slight blush obvious on his own pale face. "I confess that I've watched you train a few times."

"I guess you do have to watch the people in your division train. Thank you so much for letting Kuchiki-san take time away from her duties to help me. It means… it means so much to me. I don't know if I can thank her enough, or you, Ukitake-san."

"No, no, it's I who should be thanking you."

"Me?"

"Yes. I know my subordinate well, and she's not the best person at putting these sorts of things into words. But you're doing more for Kuchiki-san than you may know, Inoue Orihime."

But if he had meant to say anything more, he had been forestalled by Kuchiki-san's flustered return, and it had taken a complex dance of polite invitations and refusals before the Captain was on his way and Orihime was left to think the words over while dinner settled in her grateful stomach.

Still, that was nothing compared to the awkward contortions they had to go through in order to manage dinner at the Kuchiki mansion. Orihime knew she'd made a terrible mess of things. She stuck her elbow in a sauce dish, spilled tea all over one of the serving maids, and exclaimed loudly over how good that strange green swirly thing on top of the cutlet had been only to have Kuchiki-taichou reply calmly that it was the first time he had ever seen someone eat the decorative garnish instead of the main course.

"Don't worry," Kuchiki-san said to her later, as she escorted her to the opulent guest room prepared for their night's stay at the manor. "He was only… joking."

"Do you really think so?" Orihime asked desperately. "I know I can be a terrible idiot sometimes, really. I'm so sorry."

"Well, I mean…" Kuchiki-san said, looking a bit dazed herself. "It must have been a joke. Nii-sama has been… harder to predict, lately."

But the next morning, as they were leaving, he stood tall and silent like marble under the blossoming plum trees, and looked straight at Orihime as he said, "I hope your training goes well," and Orihime could see into him at last, the way she could usually see into people, and even his eyes like still water weren't veil enough.

"Don't worry!" she said cheerfully. "Your sister is amazing! She's teaching me so much, and every day I see her getting stronger too. Kuchiki-san is one of the strongest people I know!"

During their fourth week in Soul Society, they took their training to an entirely new level. Orihime had never pushed herself like that before – not training karate with Tatsuki-chan, not even discovering her powers with Yoruichi-san. It occurred to her one afternoon – as she leapt back just a heartbeat ahead of Kuchiki-san's sword, and felt ice crystals blossoming around the edges of her sacred shield, brushing against her arms just enough to sting at every scrape and bruise – that one month ago, even when she had still been recovering from the terrible wounds that big Arrancar had inflicted on her, she had not imagined herself training like this.

And somehow she knew that she would never have come this far with anyone else, not even under the guidance of someone as amazing as Yoruichi-san.

Because Yoruichi-san didn't know how to speak the magic words. Sometimes you just needed the magic words.

"That was fast, Inoue!" Kuchiki-san said breathlessly, leaning on her sword in a moment of weariness, and wiping at a trickle of blood on her temple from when Tsubaki had grazed her. Then she said, "Here, I have an idea." All signs of weariness disappeared as she swung the dirt from her sword and sheathed it.

She crouched down, and Orihime knelt in the dust beside her, breathing hard but not tired. Not really. She had learned that she could go on like this for hours. It felt good.

Kuchiki-san began to draw in the dirt, and Orihime watched her magic hands move, thinking how pretty her fingers were – graceful and hard all at once. Her own hands still felt slow and clumsy, but then she thought of Ishida-kun and how he had once complimented her on the evenness of her cross stitching in handicrafts club, and thought that maybe it wouldn't be impossible after all, to someday have hands like that.

"Why don't you try using both Tsubaki and your sacred shield in a combined attack? It's a risky move, leaving you without a defense, but if you sandwich the opponent like this…"

"Oh, Kuchiki-san, that's a great idea! But I think you'd need to change the angle like this… umm… here… no, like that… well, maybe you can…"

She was so busy scribbling in the dirt herself, drawing lines over Kuchiki-san's diagram, that it took her a moment to feel the other girl's stare.

"Eh? Kuchiki-san, is something wrong?"

"No… I just… Inoue, you can understand my drawings?"

"Hmm? Of course! Why wouldn't I be able to understand your drawings? I always thought that Tsubaki-kun's hair sometimes made him look a little bit like he had ears myself, you know."

"Inoue… you…"

"But we should probably erase this before he comes out again, if you don't mind. I don't think he'd appreciate the joke. He's so moody sometimes!"

Kuchiki-san smiled.

And it really was like magic, because Orihime just couldn't hate her for that beautiful smile. She had never wanted to, but it had occurred to her more than a few times that hating her would be easier. But she just couldn't do it.

Some people were special. They could open doors inside of you and help you find your hidden treasures. Orihime had always liked the idea of treasure hunts. Kuchiki-san was a good guide, too. A bright light, a magic smile, a strong warrior.

Even when your heart was hurting, the world seemed a little bit easier when you had a friend who was willing to stand beside you.

Together.

Let's get stronger together.

Orihime didn't think she would ever be as strong as Kuchiki-san, but maybe that didn't really matter. She didn't know if she would ever be able to change Urahara-san's mind, or if Kurosaki-kun would ever see her as strong, but at least, now, she knew for sure that there was one person who didn't think of her as a burden.

One person was enough.

Orihime stood, clapping the dirt from her palms with an emphatic gesture. Then she looked down at Kuchiki-san, still crouching in the grass and smiling, and Orihime held out her hand.

"Come on," she said. "I feel like the gorillas have really gone! Let's keep getting stronger!"

"Gor… never mind." Kuchiki-san took her hand and stood. "Let's do it."

Before the Rescue

oo

It has been easy, after the last few months, to fall into the trap of believing that nothing will ever surprise him again.

After the execution chaos and everything it entailed, nothing has seemed shocking enough to get to him where it really matters, where it can really hurt.

Espada? Pain of a different of a kind, but not really surprising. Urahara's sick sense of humor? Definitely painful, but he can cope. Besides, kicking Sado around a bit helped take the edge of that irritation. There's nothing quite as relaxing as beating up on a friend, and he found, over the course of that training, that he genuinely liked that big, silent, stubborn bastard.

Sado, of course, is undoubtedly in Hueco Mundo right at this moment. He'll follow Ichigo anywhere. So, once again, no surprise there.

That Aizen wanted that girl kidnapped is more of a surprise, but the unpredictability of it isn't surprising. He has accepted that Aizen makes no sense to him, because that hurts less than facing the truth of his past. Inoue's kidnapping seems senseless, but why should the evils of the enemy come as a shock?

But of course, as always, one man can tear all of his illusions about complacency apart. One man will always prove him wrong.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about it, really, is that he's done it in a good way this time.

Renji can picture his Captain perfectly. He's somewhere in a dimly lit room right now, sitting perfectly still in an artistically selected beam of moonlight as though he's got the usual marble rod up his ass. Maybe with a cup of tea. Maybe not. Probably he's just sitting there staring off into the candle-lit shadows in his best imitation of a holy sage, freezing the very air with his pretentious, tight-assed, I can kill you with a look, peasant, breathing alone.

Sitting there calmly, waiting for them to make their choice, as though they're deciding on a dinner selection. As though he isn't breaking every unwritten rule in the book by doing it.

"Arrogant bastard," Renji snarls as he stalks down the hallway and out a door into one of 6th Division's courtyards.

One hand on his sword, he leaps to the roof and starts the long trek to 13th Division over the rooftops. This isn't really his style. It takes more concentration than he wants to admit to make sure he makes the distance on each leap, and to keep his footing on the tiles. They never worried about mastering crap like this in 11th Division, and even brushing up on shunpo basics for his Vice Captaincy didn't make him any more sure-footed. Fast and nimble has never been his style. But tonight, he doesn't want to run into anyone on the streets. No questions, no witnesses.

"Son of a bitch," he snarls, making another leap, trying not to let lingering disquiet over his Captain's behavior make him any clumsier. "What the hell does he think he's doing?"

It's almost impossible to believe. The expression on Rukia's face, when she heard her brother's words, was simply pathetic. Under any other circumstance Renji would have harassed her about it, but not this time. He doesn't even want to imagine what his own face looked like. At least the Captain kept his back turned. It was the first time in his life that Renji appreciated the haughty gesture.

But Rukia believes him. Renji knows it. Her eyes never lie.

Renji wants to believe him. He's just not sure how he feels about it.

But there's no question about the choice he's going to make.

By the time he reaches 13th Division, he's already begun cycling through the tried and true round of insults for a third time. He's had forty years to develop a whole library of things to call Kuchiki Byakuya in his mind, and he's drawing on that collection now with abandon.

Getting over the 13th's walls proves too easy, no alarms raised. He'll have to have a talk with Kotetsu and Kotsubaki when he gets back.

When. Not if.

After the agony of those days of indecision, with Rukia stuck up in that tower, hating himself, wallowing in the fear of loss, Renji has promised himself he will never deal in ifs again.

He knows where her living quarters in the 13th are, of course. She probably doesn't know he knows. Since the failed execution, they've met mostly in 6th Division rooms, or on the streets, or outside the Kuchiki mansion. He even went with her to Shiba Kuukaku's house once, and he's had dreams since then that would get him killed in ugly ways if Shiba or Matsumoto were ever to find out about them.

But he learned where Rukia's quarters were a long time ago. Under any other circumstance, he would have been more cautious about revealing how much he'd worried about her during those years, and how silent he'd kept about it. But tonight, there's no worrying about caution.

No caution. Not when a friend's life is on the line.

The girl doesn't mean much to him personally, but there are things he can't ignore. She came to Soul Society to save Rukia. She's been fighting the Arrancar without hesitation from the first moment, even though she probaly shouldn't have. She healed Hitsugaya, she healed Matsumoto, she even cheerfully ignored Ikkaku's bitching, and his blushing, and worked some healing there. She saved Sado Yasutora's arm.

She saved Rukia's life, after that Arrancar ran her through.

And Ichigo is going to try and save her alone.

The way Renji sees it, it isn't really matter of a choice. Not a matter of if. You try to save people worth saving, and you back up your friends. Even when they're morons like Kurosaki.

He nearly loses his footing on a loose tile right over her room, and has to do some frantic scrambling to keep from making an entrance ass first. As it is, his swing down through her window isn't as graceful as he would have liked.

"Renji," she acknowledges his arrival, her back turned to him, kneeling on the floor in front of her sword stand.

For the first time, he thinks that she truly has come to resemble her adopted brother.

And for the first time, he discovers that he doesn't find a comparison to Kuchiki Byakuya distasteful.

Then, safely behind her back, he grimaces and rolls his eyes. Feeling sentimental about his Captain is absolutely the last thing he wants to be doing right now. Or ever. Even if the bastard is giving them one hell of a gift tonight.

Renji's eye is suddenly caught by a motion that Rukia is trying, unsuccessfully, to hide. She is slipping something under the stand. He frowns, tilting his head to get a better look, to no avail.

"So?" he says.

"I'm ready," she replies, standing and retrieving her sword. She slides it expertly into place through her obi as she turns to face him.

She's glaring at him. He grins back. If she's irritated with him, then he must be doing something right.

"You came all the way here – did you really think I might be too afraid to go?" she demands.

"I just thought you might need the authority of a Vice Captain escort, if someone stopped us on the way to ask questions."

"Your authority is pretty much shot right now, you know," she points out with a smirk, scorning his claim at rank as usual.

"You don't know anything about it, so shut it! Now are we going or what?"

"Yes," she says, striding past him, toward the window through which he entered.

He wonders if she made the choice consciously, or if even forty years in the Kuchiki mansion haven't been enough to erase the streets from her bones either. Windows are the best doors for streeth urchins with sticky fingers, especially when moving around at night.

But she stops with one hand on the frame, her head bent.

"Renji," she says quietly, not looking at him.

And because her tone of voice has changed in a way he doesn't like, he keeps his reply mellow. "What?"

"Renji… we… we have to save her."

"We will."

"She's… she's my friend."

He stares at her bowed head and shoulders for a moment, thinking that he never wanted to see her like this again. Fortunately, he's close enough to put his hand on her shoulder without having to take a step.

"Rukia. We'll save her."

She stays unmoving under his hand for several moments, then finally lifts her head and shoots him a fleeting glimpse of a smile over her shoulder. "Right. Let's go. Ichigo will be waiting."

Renji holds it in until she's disappeared out the window and above the eaves, but then he gives a doubtful snort. He'd like to think Ichigo wouldn't be stupid enough to go without them, but that jerk is pretty damn stupid. When Renji told Yamamoto that he'd go to Hueco Mundo in pursuit of Inoue, Ichigo looked at him like it was the biggest shock of the century. Like hell! What did the moron expect? Does he think he's the only one who knows what it means to be loyal to friends?

He gets a hand on the windowsill himself before he stops, and turns back to the other end of the small room where the empty sword stand sits. There's a tiny corner of paper sticking out from underneath the polished wood.

On impulse, he pads over and slides the paper out.

At first he thinks it has to be one of Rukia's drawings, but there's a distinct curliness to the ends of the lines that he knows aren't her work. A few seconds aren't enough for him to make sense of the whole mess either, further proof that it can't be Rukia's. From one angle it looks like it might be some sort of tactical schematic. From another, a portrait of a dying cat in a flower bed.

Whatever it is, it reeks of rampant feminine nonsense.

And if it's in Rukia's room, but it's not Rukia's art, then there's only one other explanation.

"Friend, huh?" he murmurs, and slides the paper back into place. "Just one more reason to go."

"Renji, you idiot!"

"What?" he growls, spinning around, trying to put some quick distance between himself and the evidence of his snooping. Rukia's head is hanging upside down in the window, and she's glaring at him again.

"Get moving!"

"Yeah, yeah, get your head out of the way!"

They make the trek back to 6th Division without conversation, each of them concentrating on making the rooftop journey silent and invisible. He trails after her, scowling at her steady silhouette and her perfect, graceful steps. This time, comparing her to her adopted brother is a matter of good and familiar spite.

By the time they slip back into the 6th Division compound, any sign of smirk or impatience has vanished from her face. She's back to quiet and trepidation, and on any other day knowing the cause of this change in her demeanor would conjure up all sorts of old resentment toward the man who has managed, somehow, as usual, to be waiting for them on their return, as though he read their minds and predicted every step of their journey.

"Nii-sama," Rukia says softly as she approaches.

Renji says nothing. His Captain isn't watching him – nothing new there – but that doesn't mean he isn't watching his Captain. Nothing new there either. He knows Kuchiki Byakuya's face far better than his own.

"There are cloaks waiting for you inside the office," Kuchiki Byakuya says without inflection, his eyes half-lidded in the evening darkness. "There is a great deal of sand in Hueco Mundo. You do not want it to get in between blade and sheath, or affect your movement."

Renji has to clamp his teeth down on his tongue to keep from expressing the opinion that his Captain probably just doesn't want them to get their clothes dirty and make a bad impression on the enemy.

"Nii-sama…"

"Go," Byakuya says, stepping aside so that Rukia has a clear path into the compound proper. "I will be busy with paperwork for the next hour. The hellmoth caretakers and gate operators are currently engaged in clerical duty as well."

And without even a lingering look of farewell or a word of caution for his sister, he turns and begins his usual glide, heading off into the shadows. The typical drama of it is almost enough to give Renji an instant headache. If only he didn't have to fight the urge to hit the floor in a bow of gratitude at the same time.

Tonight, he would be able to do it honestly.

Rukia bows her head for a moment, but if she gives her brother a final sidelong glance, Renji can't see it past her hair. Then she lifts her head, steps resolutely over the threshold, and moves on.

Renji is about to follow, but even in the shadows he can see that his Captain has frozen in his tracks. A faint glimmer of moonlight caught in steel eyes tells him that he is being watched over a scarf-draped shoulder.

"Taichou," he begins gruffly, then stops, caught between desires.

"Renji," Kuchiki Byakuya says, and his Vice Captain blinks to hear his name spoken, once more surprised. Byakuya turns his face away again, showing only his back. "Do as you will. But I wish her to return alive."

Safe in the shadows, behind a turned back, Renji smiles. Not quite a smirk, even though he would like it to be.

He may only be a stray dog, but the dog on the street is nothing if not adaptable. It may be stupid, it may never be more than a stray, but it can learn. And if Kuchiki Byakuya keeps this up, pretty soon he won't be able to surprise his Vice Captain anymore.

"Believe in her," Renji says, flips his Captain's back a casual sort of salute with two fingers, then heads off after Rukia.

You have to believe in the people who matter to you. No one can watch your back without trust. You have to believe they will be there. You have to believe they will come to rescue you.

It seems like Rukia has finally learned that lesson. Learned it, and turned it right around on the world, just like always. At least this time, they can go into the fray together.

Just the way things are supposed to be.

And somehow, they'll come out together. He and Rukia and Ichigo, and Sado, and Inoue too.

They will, because Abarai Renji no longer deals in ifs.

There's no way he's going to let Rukia go through what he went through, seeing her in that tower, knowing she was destined for death.

And if a stray dog can learn a few new tricks, so can stupid orange-haired jerks with too much power for their own good. He doesn't deal in ifs, but Ichigo doesn't even deal in questions. They've got some experience in rescues going for them now. Time to do this thing properly.

"We can do this, Renji," Rukia says, as she hands him his cloak.

"You bet we can. Who's going to heal your sorry ass the next time if we don't get her back?"

The punch he gets to his gut promises, in nauseating waves of pain, that he won't be able to eat anything for days. Breathing might even be difficult, at least for a few hours.

But that's all right.

Some things are worth the pain.