Author's Note: This is the first of four stories that deal with the events at the end of the Soul Society Arc. There are, however, references in this story to events that took place in my ByakuyaxHisana arc (there are links on my profile if you'd like to read it). Please enjoy.

It was dark outside. A single oil lamp illuminated the upstairs room where Rukia knelt at the bedside of the man who had asked her to call him 'brother.' She had let him continue speaking despite the obvious cost to his strength. His face was flushed now, as if with fever. He tried to sit up and grimaced. At least his pain gave her something to concentrate on in the whorl of her thoughts. She took a pillow from beside the bed; then, with one hand about his shoulders, took his weight to slip it between his head and the rest of the cushions. He sat back, breathing hard through gritted teeth and, without thinking, Rukia took his hand in both her own.

She wasn't used to this: not to seeing him like this, or to knowing the things she now knew. She felt so pummelled and numb from her experiences on the sokyoku, she wasn't yet sure what to do with the information.

"I broke the law when I took Hisana from Rukongai," he said, breaking the silence of a sudden: "I broke it again when I married her, but I promised her that I would find you and protect you with my life. Saving you from Rukongai; it should have been the last time. I swore on my mother's grave that I would never break the law again even if it cost me my life to do so, but when the order came for your execution….. Can you forgive me?"

"You are my brother-in-law, my sister's husband."

His grey eyes widened and he let out a ragged sigh. He needed to sleep. Rukia felt nothing but relief when, moments later, those same eyes closed. This man she had been sure was immortal: did he have any idea what he had done? Within the space of an evening, he had rewritten her life.

He'd had good reason to hate her: the woman who, in his eyes at least, had taken his wife from him. A lot of things were falling into place now. His resentment, yes, but also the way he looked at her. She'd taken it for disappointment and had been too self-aware to look further and notice that he had never been disappointed in the things she was; only in the things she was not. Because she was not Hisana.

Strangest of all was the knowledge that he could love. Yes, she had been wrong about him, just as she had been wrong about Renji who had not despised her for Kaien Shiba's death, as she'd believed. Station, tradition and, in truth, their own pride had kept them apart, but, despite everything, he had not forgotten her.

She had been wrong about them both. And wrong about herself.

She had been human once.

She stood up and went over to the window, which looked out across the labyrinthine streets of the sereitei, her home. A human girl. The thought was strange and precious.

She did not yet feel any sympathy with a baby who had died in a war in a distant world. Nor yet with the child abandoned in a Rukongai street. But she could feel the disparate parts of her life reasserting themselves: shifting, rearanging, forming a pattern. She had existed, from place to place, from time to time, without a context. With no sense of belonging anywhere. Yet, all this time, there had been somebody searching for her. There had been an empty space she had been meant to fill. There had been a family.

"Hisana was right about you," Byakuya said and she turned back to him. She'd been certain he was asleep: "You are stronger than she was. But she was wrong in thinking you would need someone." Rukia didn't answer. She didn't think he was talking about saving her life today. "I didn't understand at first. She loved the house. She loved the garden. In everything, she saw beauty, but you – nothing I gave you made you happy."

"I am sorry," she said softly.

"You're obstinate."

"I was not ungrateful."

"On your first night in my house, you destroyed the room in which you slept."

"Oh. Yes," she said, remembering. In hindsight, she probably hadn't made the best of first impressions. She tried to see it through his eyes. He had let a stranger into his house. He had taken her from nameless poverty into a life of privelege and she had done nothing but sabotage it. She must have seemed delinquent to him.

"You are not her," he said, somewhat unnecessarily.

"No." She turned back to the window and tried to see Rukongai beyond the network of gates and alleys: "But I wish I could have met her. I don't know if we would have seen eye to eye, but I might have learnt something from her."

"Knowing these things, Rukia, would you still have chosen the life of a shinigami?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation.

"Then she was wrong."

Rukia closed the drapes on the deceptively peaceful cityscape, then crossed backt o his bed and knelt down:

"I guess we all make mistakes about people." She pulled the blankets up over the ugly wound on his side. His grey eyes held hers a little too long. He looked as if he had been about to say something, then dismissed it. Rukia leant back against the wall: "What did my sister look like?"

"So much like you," he said softly: "That was never a lie. She was a little taller. Very slight. She smiled often, even if she was sad. There is a picture of her on the shrine in my home. I hid it, fearing that if you saw the resemblence, you would ask questions, but if you wish to see her, it is there."

"Thank you."

They sat in silence for a time until he closed his eyes and his breaths became long and deep. There was so much to think about. So much she needed to do, change, say. Tonight had seemed like a moment outside of time: his words, his story and her past still filled the room. But what she wanted, more than anything, was to tell Ichigo what she had learned. That she was human. That she had lived.

She stepped out into the corridor, and it was as silent out here as it had been in Byakuya's hospital room. Ichigo's chamber was three doors down. She counted them and knocked softly. When there was no reply, she tried her weight against the wood and found it unlocked. She would have entered had not a hand landed on her shoulder, making her start.

"Rukia."

"Unohana-taichou!" She bowed, remembering herself: "Sorry!"

"Why don't you give him a chance to rest? He's sleeping now."

"Is he" - ?

"Healed? Yes. No permanent harm done." Unohana reached past her and closed the door: "And you?"

"I – no. No harm done."

"Hm." Unohana's gaze was long and searching: "You should get some rest."

"I will, but I have somewhere I need to be. Thank you." She bowed again and started off down the corridor.

"Rukia!" Unohana stopped her and approached again. Gently, she laid one hand on her throat and the next thing Rukia felt was the cool flow of kido from the woman's fingers, winding round her neck. A sense of release. When she looked, Unohana was holding the red collar she had been wearing since the first day of her imprisonment. Rukia reached up and rubbed the skin of her neck. She'd become so accustomed to the device that she'd forgotten it was there. "Go then," Unohana said, folding the thing up and slipping it inside her robe: "Wherever you need to go."

"Thank you. With respect, thank you." Another bow and she hurried away, feeling lighter on her feet than she had in months.