CHAPTER 1: THE GIFT

There was nothing to say, Rukia thought as she stepped out of the senkaimon two paces ahead of her brother. Ukitake was not waiting for her; the guardians of the portal barely glanced in her direction, though they straightened and bowed from the waist to the captains. And so it was that, barely having set foot within the sereitei, she broke into a shunpo and left them all behind her. Drizzling rain had left puddles in the streets. She moved too quickly to be noticed by most of the citizens and those who could see her passing only assumed that she was about some urgent business. She reached the gates of the mansion, the rain having barely touched her hair, and called to the servants within, who, at her command, unlocked the gates. She ran over the glittering lawn.

It had been morning in the world of the living: a bright, clear morning. Here it was dusk and clouds the gold of corn husks obscured the horizon. She drew shut the doors to her quarters and stood panting. Only a day ago, she had shared this space with Orihime. They'd talked and laughed and worried about the future without ever realising that it was already upon them. With a snarl of anger, she tore the sword from her belt and slumped down on her divan with the zanpakuto cradled in her arms. Damn him. Damn him and damn the Old Man too. Nothing had changed. Byakuya claimed he wanted to protect her, but he didn't see how his actions burned her or how it was not her he protected, but his own honour. Damn him to hell.

"Rukia."

His voice was infuriatingly soft. He must have hastened after her, but not too much. He could easily have overtaken her had he wanted too. That he'd left her ten minutes' grace was almost irritating. "Join me for dinner." It wasn't a request. Nothing was ever a request, with him. He didn't open the screen door and she didn't move from the bed, but she did try to make her voice light:

"I hope Nii-sama will forgive me if I cannot attend."

"I must insist upon it."

"I am not well."

No answer came from his side of the door.

After a time, and when she was sure that he was gone, she set the sword aside and changed out of her uniform, choosing the plainest kimono she could find. No-one had told her she was off-duty, but nor had they said she was meant to be anywhere, with the obvious exception of dinner. Was it dinner time here? Probably, she thought idly. The banality of dressing and tying the obi in a complicated knot at her back left her feeling a little calmer, so that, when she opened the screen door, her mood only felt heavy, like the storm clouds gathering in the north.

Byakuya was standing to one side of the doorway, watching the sky. Nothing in his stance suggested he had been waiting and she might have believed that were it not for the fact that he'd have had to consciously conceal his presence to make her think he'd gone. She hesitated on the threshold. It had been a long time since his company had felt like a grindstone around her neck. Eventually, she compromised; polite but cold: "I am not hungry. Did you intend to wait for me all night?"

"Do you blame me for the girl's fate?" He sounded curious, but not regretful. Still, she started at the bluntness of the question and, despite herself, coloured. "Don't worry," he said hastily: "There is no need to answer that. She was a friend to you. I understand. You have few enough friends here." She looked away. That too, she realised, was not meant as a sleight. He was merely stating facts. No matter that she didn't want to hear them. "I cannot force you to eat. I wanted to discuss your earlier exchange with the Captain Commander, but, if you are not well, then you should probably rest. Were you tested in that last battle?" He finally turned towards her, away from the dark garden. His eyebrows arced up into a delicate question and it seemed to her that her cheeks coloured further. She had a sudden vivid memory of an arrancar preparing to decapitate her with a cero and wondered how well that might pass for small talk over their supper. Perhaps not:

"My energy was spent in healing Ichigo."

"You were not caught up in the fighting?"

"A small part only."

He made a soft sound in his throat that suggested he might have heard reports to the contrary. She sighed, looking around for a way out. It was times like this when she felt she didn't belong here. Her thoughts were unruly, running over all the things she wanted to say and couldn't, skipping back and forth between a stricken self awareness and a desire to tell him to leave. Given the intense quiet of the house they shared, she wondered that more of this place had not rubbed off on her. It was his house still; not hers. To impinge on his world was to tread heavily on something so delicate it might fracture at her touch. This strange quiet he seemed content to live in.

"I have something for you," he said suddenly, making her look up: "I was going to give it to you later, but – You will wait here, Rukia." He turned from her and strode away across the decking. Rukia stared after him. For a brief instant, she had thought she glimpsed uncertainty in his eyes.

She closed the door behind her and stepped out onto the decking. The weather was strange tonight; it was warm for the winter and the air seemed poised on the knife-edge of a storm, unreasonably still.

After a short time, Byakuya returned, carrying a pile of linen in his arms. At first, she thought there must be something wrapped in it, but then he handed her the whole bundle and she realised that the fabric, though it looked like rough linen, was, in fact, soft and fine to the touch. Something of this kind did not come cheap.

He had purchased items for her before, as gifts, and had even had some pieces made. She suspected he had the notion that women liked clothing. All women. All clothing. For all of his sophistication, he could not grasp certain subtleties of Rukia's taste and yet, this did not look like a fancy gown. It was unusual for him to give her gifts out of the blue too; usually, they would be presented as part of a formal occasion: a birthday or festival. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that this might be an act of contrition, in light of recent events, but that, too, would be strange. She shook it out. A cloak. The weave was fine though appearing coarse. It was otherwise completely plain. Even the clasp was sewn into the fabric, its design obscured. She frowned. "It's very cold," he said by way of explanation and she glanced around. She had just been thinking how mild their winter was this year. "In Hueco Mundo," he added, and her breath caught in her throat. He was staring at her, she realised. Waiting. But what could she say? The words wouldn't come straight. Then, of a sudden, as if to fill the silence, he knelt down, took the cloak from her unyielding hands and draped it around her shoulders, fastening it with the hidden clasp. Without meeting her eyes, he brushed out the creases. And she stood there, like a clothes shop dummy, letting him dress her. She stared at his hands as they smoothed down the fabric. "There," he said. When she looked up, he was frowning. "If it is of no use to you, it doesn't matter." He was lying, but she didn't understand why.

"They are sending us to Hueco Mundo?"

"I am sending you to Hueco Mundo," he said, straightening: "Along with my lieutenant."

She looked sideways at him. There was a possibility, a small possibility, that this was all a ruse and he had found a really very elaborate means of keeping her out of the way:

"The war effort" -

"A battle is fought on many fronts, Rukia. I am entrusting you with this. We will need the girl's healing powers and we will need the boy."

"Ichigo?" Her eyes widened.

"He intends to go to Hueco Mundo," Byakuya explained: "And I have no doubt that Urahara will find a means of facilitating his journey. He will be of no use to us if he gets himself killed. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"It is foolish to send a large force when the mission is merely one of retrieval, so it is just yourself and Abarai Renji. I trust you are able to work together."

"Yes."

"Good."

They had reverted to being soldiers again. She was standing with her hands straight at her sides and she half-expected him to turn on his heel now that they had come to some resolution. He didn't. He remained standing, a little in the shadows now. Though she knew it was impossible, he looked, for all the world, as if he were lost: as if he expected something from her. She fingered the fastening of the cloak idly. "Do you wish to keep it?" he asked and she looked up. "The cape?"

"Oh. It's just that I don't feel the cold," she said sadly. She began to loosen the catch.

He stood there, in the shadows. She didn't know why, but the effect of his eyes on her was to make her all fingers and thumbs over the delicate fastening, and she cursed softly as she tried to unclip it. By the time it was loose and she had begun to unwrap the material from her shoulders, she felt as if her ears were burning red under his gaze. It was a silly thing. He must have forgotten that she didn't get cold. Of course there was no real reason for him to know because his own zanpakuto had no alignment to the elements in the way that hers was aligned to ice.

She folded the cloak up, then hesitated, her hands resting on the material that looked coarse, but was really fine, that seemed cheap, but was probably worth her own weight in gold. She didn't care for those things. She never had. She didn't like it when he spent money on her. Luxurious silk kimono, embroidered gowns for the summer, intricate filigree ornaments that she was meant to wear in her hair: those were the gifts she had become accustomed to. Now she stared at the plain bundle before her and it struck her suddenly that this was the first gift he had ever given her that was even practical. Of course, it wasn't. It wasn't practical at all. But he hadn't known that.

It was plain; it was practical. Not for a noblewoman, the sister of one of the most powerful men in Soul Society. But for a shinigami .

He'd reached out to take it back from her when she suddenly snatched it up to her chest, and he frowned:

"I thought you didn't want it."

"Why would you think that?" she asked, her throat so tight that it came out as little more than a squeak. "I like it!"

"Good," he said, in a voice that suggested her behaviour was baffling him but he had no intention of querying it. If he did think she'd gone mad, he didn't seem too bothered by it because he crossed out of the shadows to the edge of the decking and glanced up at the now moonless sky. She must have done something right because the tension had drained from him and his composure, in turn, rubbed off on her. She relaxed a little, no longer feeling the need to clutch her present with both hands. Unfolding it again, she tried to get a better look at it in the low light and, when she looked up again, he was watching her, his expression soft. She cleared her throat:

"Nii-sama?"

"Yes?"

"You're going against orders for this?"

His expression hardened:

"No. I am not."

"But you were meant to prevent us from entering Hueco Mundo, weren't you?"

"My orders were to return you to Soul Society. Nothing more and nothing less."

"Isn't that a technicality?"

"Yes, it is." This time, his smile did not touch his eyes. The effect was sinister and she decided not to press home her point. She bowed, a little lower than usual and he sighed. The conversation was over. By the time she had straightened, he had bid her good-night and turned away. She watched him now, his figure leaving overlapping shadows against the walls of the house as he passed beneath hanging lamps.

Forty years had passed since they'd met and he had barely changed at all. She saw small differences though: a gradual filling out of his features. He had seemed almost gaunt when she'd first seen and his eyes had looked always into the distance. Now they carried a searching quality, as if he was seeing things for the first time. Her, for a start. And did he smile more often than she remembered?

She went back into her own quarters and sat cross-legged on the divan, the new cloak spread out over her knees.

Hueco Mundo.

Shinigami did not go to Hueco Mundo. Like the hell dimension, it was out of bounds. It would be hostile, she knew: hostile in a way she had never encountered before. Frame it however she might, it seemed that she was genuinely being entrusted with something important. She sighed deeply. There was so much on her mind, from the nightmares that still prevented her from sleeping to her shambolic performance in the human world. It wasn't the best time to be taking on greater challenges, if she was honest, but it wasn't her place to pick and choose. These things rarely came to pass when it was convenient. She sighed and curled up on the divan, one hand still resting against her brother's gift.