Chapter 19: Cast in Gold and Silver Arc: White Petals Fall

Summary:

In which Nariko wraps up (almost) all the loose ends of Kinsawa and Shinju goes to heaven.

Notes:

Theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMii9q4qz0E ("Finest Hour" by Extreme Music)

Chapter Text

"What," I said softly, "was that?"

Shinji glared. "Ya tell me."

We stood in one of the few private areas of Shin'ou, a recess formed by the intersection of a courtyard and two lecture halls. The lighting was absolute shit, but for once I appreciated it. Shinji hurt to look at. I told myself it was because his hair was too bright on such a sunny day.

"Tell you what?" I replied. "That you're getting upset over something that didn't even happen to you?"

"But it did happen," he said flatly, folding his arms, "and ya lied ta me about it."

I clenched my fists and made myself breathe rain instead of thunder. "I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you. You never asked."

"Are ya fuckin' kiddin' me?" Shinji burst out. Wind kicked up around him, laced with gold. Despite the fact that his back was against the wall, facing Minoru and me, I got the eerie feeling that I was the one on the defensive. Which was ridiculous. I shook it off and shoved back, hard. His eyes narrowed. "Who in their right mind would ask that shit?"

"You could've," I retorted lamely.

"Stop evadin' what ya did!" he said. "Ya lied! I had ta take revenge for ya after the fact!"

My turn to fold my arms, tight like armor across my chest, across my heart. "What I did? I didn't ask to be targeted by some thugs!"

"Thugs?" Minoru said. His voice barely hovered above a whisper, but it was nowhere near as soft.

I half-turned, fixing brown with hazel. "Shiba Isshin was there. It's nothing to do with where they're from."

"A Great Noble Clan's involved in this? Shit! Was I the only person ya shut out?" Shinji growled.

I whirled, closing the distance between us in a step. "You were never shut out, idiot! You were never part of this, because my business is not your business!" I stabbed a finger at his chest. "You aren't clan head yet. I don't owe you information. And I definitely don't owe you gratitude. Stop picking fights for one second and listen to our parents. They'll be happy to tell you that I'm the only person allowed to get hurt."

I stepped back and looked to the sliver of sky. Was it raining? I felt water on my cheeks. For an instant my spirit soared up to meet the clouds, free of my heavy heart. But there was too much shit to shovel, and Shinji was only one piece of the pile.

I was halfway to the mouth of the recess when I remembered the whole stinking reason we were here.

"Don't lay a hand on Nanase-san," I bit out. "You saw to it that he won't be hanging around us anymore. Fine. You see to any more than that and you're out of the study group."

It was all I could do. Shinji was smart and sociable; losing the study group wouldn't kill his grades or social life. It'd hurt more just to have his big sister shut him out for real.

I turned my back on him, breathing broken there, and left.

Had I hated being on unfamiliar ground before? Well, I needed to be off familiar ground now. I needed whatever the opposite of family was. Business. I needed its cold, impersonal emptiness, not the hot, suffocating ties of blood.

Shinju it was.

My first thought was that she was living it up—as much as one could in the furtive we're-not-dead celebrations that didn't really qualify as parties. But every single huddle of students I wormed my way into gave the same answer: "she said goodbye a while ago."

Goodbye implied she'd had a destination in mind. If she did, it was one I could find. But after searching through now-empty dining halls, dojos, and Kidou ranges—which earned me singed hakama—I couldn't imagine what it had been. Even checking Mizuchi and our bedroom turned up nothing. It was utterly ridiculous and paranoid to assume that she'd meant goodbye permanently, but I was a psychic reincarnation from another world who carried around a scroll centered around the adventures of a Shinigami-Quincy-Hollow hybrid. Forget throwing probable out the window; it had never been in the building.

"Ugh!" I said to no one, though I was surrounded by students getting out of class. "She's not an onmitsu! How can I not find- bleh!" The spring breeze, which had been playing with my hair, batted particularly hard and got my hair ribbon in my mouth. I extracted it and examined the moistened red ribbon with only slightly played-up disgust. Blood was one thing. Spit, from the same mouth that chewed food and probably swallowed spiders in my sleep, was another.

Hey, I was a teenage girl. I was allowed to be grossed out.

A red ribbon... why is that so familiar? I peered at it for a second before the answer came to me. Spirit ribbons. Torisei had tugged on mine and Ishida had used them to demonstrate his knowledge of Ichigo's substitute status. They were good tracking tools, though you'd know if someone grabbed yours. But I had more reiryoku to spare for flash-step than Shinju. If she ran—which I doubted; too unseemly—I'd probably be able to catch her.

I inched free of the flow of traffic. For a second I thought about trying to use my spirit-sight, but it was too risky with everyone around. The onmitsu here weren't even trying to hide, not to mention the sheer number of people would blind me. Ribbons it was.

Reiatsu was all around us, all the time. It was so basic we'd talked about it on the first day of Reiryoku Manipulation. We weren't overwhelmed by it because it was so omnipresent, like air. But that was inaccurate. Reiryoku was air, while reiatsu was wind. It was like breathing—so obvious and simple that you didn't think about it until someone reminded you. Sometimes I wondered if my spirit-sense just an extension of it, like my consciousness of honorifics, the result of all this having once been utterly alien and indescribable. But unlike spirit-sense, unlike honorifics and breathing, mastery of sensing reiatsu only came when you weren't trying. It was tough, trying to not be trying, but in a way it was like meditation. You were aware of everything when you focused on nothing.

I shut my eyes, letting the hubbub of the crowd wash over me. Ever so slowly and slightly I relaxed my death grip on my reiatsu, letting it cloak me. The 'wind' of ambient reiatsu lapped at it, tugging my mind this way and that. I nudged my focus back to my breathing until it stopped. The movement of air lay in many currents, but I only needed one breeze.

Shinju. Once-stranger, then-friend, now-enigma. Ice between us, freezing me out and her in. Shinju clad in river jewels and dyed silks. Shinju who walks through wisteria at twilight. Shinju born under the auspices of tradition and commerce, Shinju treading the path her family laid out for her. Fujikage Shinju. I let the words unfurl in my mind like an incantation. As with Kidou, they didn't really matter. The important part was evoking Shinju. There was no formula for identifying a person's soul, but rationality only took you so far.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

With every word, every recollection of everything that Shinju and no one else was to me, the river of reiatsu dried up until only a trickle remained. I lifted a hand, letting it run through my fingers. Sweet perfume filled my nose, slightly too faint to cloy. Shinju, distant but very much alive.

My eyes snapped open as I seized the current, which drew taut with a crack. A ribbon the color of my family's light plum pink dye was pinched between my index finger and thumb.

There were also eyes on me. A fair few. I tensed, ready to make embarrassed sounds and slip away, and stopped myself. The only way to effectively play a part was to stop playing it and start being it. So I shook the stiffness from my muscles, laughed, and chirped some nonsense about wanting Shinju for a slumber party. That it was true, in a roundabout way, didn't stop me from flash-stepping out of there the second I saw a gap in the crowd. The kernel of me I kept for myself was redder than the maples around Shin'ou.

Shinju's spirit ribbon led to some of those maples, though she was—as was becoming a trend—nowhere to be found beneath their scarlet leaves. Her ribbon, if anything, led up. I followed it to the base of a lone cherry blossom tree, where a pair of tabi and geta lay next to a perfectly folded, expensive-looking kimono. The ribbon had become so vertical I was starting to wonder if my reassessment of her fate had been wrong.

A delicate, ladylike cough sounded from above me.

Shinju sat on one of the lower branches, barefoot and wearing only a nagajuban. Somehow I'd expected to find her sitting seiza, or at least yokozuwari, but she sat the way I would've sat Before, back against the tree and legs outstretched so her body formed an L shape. Though her hair was gathered in an elegant shimada-style bun, her face was plain and tired.

"You know, it's rude to do that to a person outside of a tracking mission or a superior-subordinate context," she said.

Oops. Yet another rule I'd breached without knowing it, even as Shinju was acutely aware. I released it into the ether, scratching the nape of my neck sheepishly. "Sorry. I couldn't find you anywhere, no matter how hard I looked. I got worried."

She blinked. "Worried? You? I had thought you would be too busy."

"You mean with Shinji and stuff?" I huffed a laugh. "I love the boy, but there's only so much I can take of my annoying little brother, you know? Besides, he can be such a hothead. I needed to cool off." A thought tugged at me and I gave voice to it because my mask- because I was the sort of person to say things that crossed my mind. "That's some professional-quality folding you did of the kimono. I remember getting drafted into cloth-folding duty too, but I was never as good as you are at it."

She laughed—a real laugh, not the polished noblewoman's giggle. But it was too real, an aching laugh dredged up from a bitter place deep within. Shinju hugged her sides as if to hold it in. "Too busy for me, I meant." She looked down at me, angle stripping her gaze of its grey veil. "You really are the strangest girl, you know? But I don't think you do."

I beamed because hey, defending people was weird in this world. It might as well be a compliment. "So people keep telling me. I happen to think I make perfect sense." My neck twinged. "Hey, any chance I could join you up there, study buddy?"

She nodded, and after some examination of my options and a half-dozen false starts, I made it up to a branch near hers.

"Tree-climbing! Who knew it was a skill of such an elegant and refined noblewoman as yourself!" I grinned at her.

Shinju pursed her lips, giving me a long and searching look. "Are you making fun of me?"

It was good I was slightly out of breath from the climb, or I would've denied it and lied without meaning to. "A little bit," I said when my sides had stopped heaving. "But I am surprised that you of all people are up a tree. Aren't you going to get dirty?"

"I'm careful," she said primly. "Besides, I've removed my outer layers, as you've managed to notice."

I rolled with the jab, shrugging. "Even so. Didn't you tell me you wouldn't break someone's nose because it was too crude? If someone'd asked me who I thought would be shimmying up trees, I wouldn't say you."

Looking out at the grove, it was obvious why this was the only cherry blossom tree now. A burn scar marred its back side, not readily apparent against dark brown but not the perfection you'd expect from Shin'ou. I could only guess at the story behind it; maybe the rest of the grove had been irreparably damaged and the lone survivor left standing for sentimental reasons.

"Because it was too cruel," Shinju corrected. "I wouldn't have thought you'd be joining me. You don't need me, you know. After what I said to you in Kinsawa, you don't even have sentimental reasons to keep me around."

I gave up trying to break off a piece of bark as a fidget and folded my hands in my lap. "Don't I? We're roommates. Living with an enemy for the next six years would be torture. Even living with someone who couldn't care less would be awkward."

"I'm not on your level, let alone Shinji-san's," she countered. "We're nothing like each other, you know? You pretended to be Quincy and kidnap me. I denigrated you and your family. We haven't understood each other from the day we met."

All perfectly logical. All obstacles to my objective in coming here. "That's common ground," I pointed out. "We've both attacked each other. Not to mention we're both noble, both girls in training to become Shinigami, both interested in cloth, dye and clothing. I'd say we're at least a little like each other."

"All superficial," she said. I waited for her to offer more, but no luck.

So I went with bluntness. Bluntness softened by perkiness, but still. "Yep! Isn't that a little sad, Fujikage-chan? That we mostly know superficial things about each other? That over those, we've mistrusted and fought each other? That you really think I'd leave you behind because you aren't 'on my level'?" I made air quotes around the words with my fingers. It was an appeal to her romantic, sentimental side, one heightened by my irritation at the lack of real information I had on her. Information was power, bargaining power. If I wanted to get something worked out with her, I needed that. "And it all comes back to what you just said: we've never understood each other."

She frowned, twisting a lock of hair around a finger. "I know you're a-a radical," she dropped her voice low. At a normal volume, she added, "I know you have the power to be a great Shinigami, but none of the right attitudes. I know you doubt the very person you want to become."

"No," I said, gaze skittering away, "you don't. I've been rethinking. Considering. But that's not the point. If we were close, I would've told you that. We aren't. And as it stands right now, we can't be. We've already fouled things up, always being on different pages, reading different messages in the same characters."

She inhaled sharply. When she collected herself, she was as composed, as stone-faced and bright-eyed, as I'd ever seen her. "Then you've lost me again. How can you find our situation sad while you don't think it fixable? How can you suddenly be okay with the state of things?"

I clicked my tongue, letting the smile I'd barely been conscious of holding widen. Here it was, the clincher. "That's exactly what I mean by being on different pages. I'm not suddenly okay with anything. I'm just... stepping back. Re-evaluating. That's why I think we can't fix what we have right now. So let's start over. Make something better. Something more open. You tell me what's been eating at you, I tell you what I'm mulling over, and we go from there. Instead of holding on to what we have, give and take. Reciprocity." You can't have English, though, I thought mulishly. The day I give that away is the day I stop being me and start being just a girl who knows too much. "I'll start." I twisted, bending at the waist in a clumsy bow. "Hi. I'm Hirako Nariko. Nice to meet you, roommate."

She sputtered. "Y-You can't just-"

I held up a finger. "Ah-ah. We just met. I don't even know your name."

She rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth twitched. "I'm Fujikage Shinju. Please treat me well."

I spread my arms wide and nearly fell off the branch. "Augh! Um. Ahem." I rebalanced myself and made a smaller gesture. "See, there we go. Something new. So, Fujikage Shinju-san, what's this thing between us going to be? An alliance? Friendship? Or just a 'candles out at this time, here's your side of the room' sort of relationship?"

Shinju bit her lip. "I would prefer a friendship. Logically, with our being under different clans, that opens up more possibilities."

I flowed, water instead of lightning, and took the shape of the situation, because it was what my persona- what I would do. Shinju spoke the language of diplomacy, where every word was important, and every implication more so. Shinju was more sentimental and sensitive than I; logic wasn't necessarily what drove her. Nor, with her hang-ups about family, were her individual preferences, even if the possibilities she spoke of were clearly special political and commercial arrangements eased by genuine closeness. "That's true," I agreed airily. "What are you going to suggest instead?"

Her eyes widened fractionally and settled in the curve of a smile. "An alliance. You have demonstrably more practical skill than I, in Hakuda and Zanjutsu, at least. Not to mention- well." From the way her gaze traced my face, I could guess. Shinji was an asset who'd only stayed out of the spotlight by being a Hirako. "Your academic intelligence has been useful in our study group as well. Perhaps you possess intelligence regarding other matters, as in Kinsawa?"

So that's how it is. She wanted training in the physical zankensoki and some of my knowledge. Whether she meant it in the sense of information from my family or simply wild card knowledge like my English I couldn't tell, but now wasn't the time to come out and ask. "You're rather adept at the manners and rules of high society," I noted. The ones I miss, the ones I need as rungs on the political ladder. "Of course, it was in Kinsawa that you displayed skill at flash-step. We would've been lost without your knowledge of the binding way." Teach me flash-step and Kidou. It was clumsy, childish dancing around what we were offering, but it was something I knew she'd appreciate.

"Then it's sealed," she murmured. "An exchange of skills and knowledge." She glanced over at me, almost shyly. "Perhaps as we continue, we may—what was the word you used? re-evaluate?—our relationship."

I nodded. "I'd like that very much. So, our first transaction. You or me first?"

She sighed, reaching up as if to take her hair down, then letting her hands fall into her lap. "I think it's only right that it be me. As enigmatic as you are, you have a sincerity of spirit, you know?"

"I'll take your word for it," I answered, setting my internal scribe ready. "Whenever you're ready."

She laughed that aching laugh again. "I don't know that I'll ever be 'ready.' And yet... it's only proper."

"Fujikage Akira and Fujikage Sango begat and brought up three children," she began in the methodical lilt of the traditional lineage recitation. "The first, set out and confirmed as heir, was Fujikage Kohaku. The second was Fujikage Keiko and the third Fujikage Shinju. Traced back through the father, back through centuries of splendor and order, clan records recount Fujikage Iwao, Fujikage Takara, Fujikage Naoki, Fujikage Kinsuke, Fujikage Itsuki, and Fujikage Ren." She paused at the expected place, after reaching a lucky seven generations back from the start, but something painful flickered in her eyes. "I am a third child and a second daughter. Or... I was. My sister is no longer with us."

I jerked back, thankful for the tree to hold me there. "I'm so sorry."

She shut her eyes. "It was her choice," she said with the tired certainty of someone who needed to believe what they were saying. "She ended her life for a variety of reasons. I hope you understand why I'd prefer not to be specific. But they amount to putting her passions before the needs of the clan and being distraught when the sword of the Shinigami cut away the rot."

I bowed my head in acknowledgement. I had no wish to carry it back to my family, but clearly whatever it was was so bad for the Fujikage that they didn't just want it forgotten, they wanted it to never have been known.

"My brother will, at some point, marry," Shinju continued. "But it will be against his will, and his bride lonely in bed. As a result, when my parents learned that I possessed a substantial amount of reiryoku, they were thrilled. 'A child entering your house is a pearl on your neck, a Shinigami a black pearl,'" she quoted. "I want to be a Shinigami more than anything, Hirako-san. To help people by upholding the law is my perfect path. My family wants the same thing. But they want it to increase my chances of connecting our clan to a more prestigious house. And the longer my brother goes on without wedding a woman, the more time my family has to decline."

I wanted to interject, to ask if that was why she had seemed so desperate to progress quickly and so dismayed by my 'outshining' her. But it would've been inappropriate. This was a confession, not an interrogation.

Water sank into the bark of her branch. "What you said in Kinsawa, about doing what works for me, about not pretending to be perfect... I considered it. My family doesn't agree, you know? In my earlier letters to them, I may not have given you a glowing description. They filled the gaps there with their opinion of your family, and, well...it infuriates them that while you race ahead, I remain at the pace of my peers. You scare people more than you know, Hirako-san. And you scare them most of all, because you eclipse the person on which they've put all their hopes. Their belief... and until I came to Shin'ou and met you and your brother and Fugai-k- Fugai-san," she corrected herself to the more polite honorific, flushing pink, "and Aizen-san, my belief, was that noble blood ensured progress beyond that which those from the Rukongai could make. It puts a certain level of pressure on a person when they can't measure up."

I couldn't help interrupting this time. "I'm sorry, I'm just confused—Shinji and I are all noble, as far as I know. Where do we fit into that?"

She swallowed hard. The pink deepened to red. "Not all noble blood is equal, they say. Your patron clan's ancestral ties to war-clans don't help."

I frowned slightly. War-clans were vital to Soul Society's history, the product of people of different origins—whether Rukongai or born here—coming together out of necessity or in furtherance of a common goal. So vital, in fact, that the statues governing them were still on the books. All clans were born from them in one way or the other, I suspected, but the ones whose beginnings weren't as polished as the Kuchiki's tended to be looked on with slightly less respect than normal nobles. A lot of the Shihouin clan's strength came from having forged, by marriage, adoption, or contract, ironclad ties with a variety of powerful people who might've been overlooked as little better than rounin. But that wasn't important right now, so I held my tongue.

"I've been considering what you said," Shinju repeated, "and more. Our clans' mottoes. Mine is 'flourish on that which those before you have set forth.' Community and cooperation. Yours is 'see yourself in the flat of the blade, accepting the cruel edge and protective duty.' Pragmatism and awareness. I've been raised to accept that my family knows the right path for me and will carve me into the masterpiece I can be. But here... I think your clan has the right of it. I know myself. My strength is not, and never will be, what yours is, and my family's influence will not aid me here." She lifted her chin. "That does not mean I won't be the best I can for them. But I must walk my own path to that end."

I waited for her to continue, but the only sound in the grove was the sigh of leaves and petals in the wind. It was my turn. But first...

"Lean towards me a bit," I commanded, easing myself to the edge of the branch. She did so uneasily, but it was enough for me to wrap an arm around her shoulders and squeeze.

When we were settled on our respective branches again, I explained, "I promised to give you a hug after we got out of Kinsawa. Consider that an installment, given our location."

Shinju giggled, still without the noblewoman affectation. "Yes, I'd prefer not to fall out. Though I think I have the edge there, you know?"

I shrugged. "How are you so good at climbing trees, anyway? I'd expected your hidden talents to be more... I dunno, fancy."

She smiled softly. "My brother taught me. We used to run around together all the time, when we weren't being tutored—and sometimes when we should've been being tutored. Even when he came back from Shin'ou on break, he'd make time for it. We'd climb the trees and wisteria trellises, being small and light enough to do so, and laugh at how funny everything looked from up there." Her smile took on a sad edge. "He told me why he won't easily accept betrothal in a tree much like this one. I hated him for it at the time, but now... I think not. I do love my family, Hirako-san. They want the best for us all, even when fear and prejudice color their outlook."

I glanced away. "Me too. Even when it stings, I know they love me." I shrugged, palms up. "Clan life, right? Sometimes someone has to get left out."

Shinju bit her lip. "Your turn," she said after a moment.

I sighed, drumming my fingers on the bark. "Are there bugs in this tree? I hope not. So distracting, and I'm not nearly as focused as I pretend..." I pushed her patience just to the breaking point, then pulled back. "I have faith in people," I said. "More than they deserve. But I don't really... understand them. Systems and rules, those I get. Easier to navigate and process."

Another sigh, this one filled with pent-up frustration instead of distraction. "I won't explain that idealism. I can't." Not when it's tied to Living World values. "So I'll just say that on the clan estate, the only systems and rules I ever had to deal with were academic. The Hirako pride ourselves on only keeping a toehold on the system." I gave her a tiny smile, acknowledging that she had me beat there. "When the only people you encounter regularly are family or friends of family, that faith in people is confirmed. Everyone's friendly; the ones who aren't are civil. Talking it out works more often than not. And when it didn't, I ran to the library and read about people who were better. Tales of noble samurai and brave heroes, people who helped everyone no matter where they came from, people who did the right thing and had it mean something. I thought if I worked hard, if I set out these grand plans and stuck to them, I could be one of them."

Shinju's forehead creased ever so slightly. It was as close as she'd come to interrupting me with a 'but.' So I obliged.

"But I came here. I met teachers who weren't what I thought they were, in good and bad ways. I made friends who were from places and circumstances I can still barely imagine. I fought with Momohiko. I got to know you." At her half-startled, half-taken aback blink, I hastened to reassure her, hands waving, "Not lumping all those people together. I'm just saying you all were... different. More flawed, more real people, not from stories. Training sure wasn't like what I read about." My hands lay palms-up in my lap, calloused evidence of that. "Fighting wasn't either."

A laugh tore free from my throat. "I thought my first kill would be a Hollow. Nice and neat, you know? Dissolves into reishi, souls are free, everything's objectively better for them being gone. Well, I almost got it. A tortured, remorseless monster with a taste for souls, only born from the sword I can't imagine living without and people-shaped. Life is better. I barely even think about it anymore. From there, people." I worked my jaw, ready to clench in anger. In self-defense. "I used to believe the system was unequivocally wrong. I still don't think I deserve the life I've led more than, say, Minoru. But the people I killed in Kinsawa... I don't regret it. The way they went about change was wrong. If that's the sort of people that are going to rise up, the suppressions I used to rail against when no one was around can't all have been wrong. There's no way we did the wrong thing there, no way I can say similar situations in the future are wrong. Not for sure."

My breathing, harder and faster than I would've liked, drowned out the whisper of leaves. I yanked it back under control. My face hadn't slipped yet. I wouldn't let my voice betray that.

"Right and wrong," I mused aloud, since those were my favorite words today. "Black and white. I always knew grey existed. But lately I've been wondering whether I've had some things on the wrong sides." A deliberate shift to a fresher smile, a lighter tone. "I still believe in stories. They're how we understand the world, and how we tell them, how we write them matters. Standing here in the real world, I think my arc's changed."

Cool wind sighed across the back of my neck. I shivered. Looking around us, the sky had gotten darker than I'd realized. It was nearly dinner, nearly night. As I thought it, the gong rang out.

I almost didn't want to hop down. Hidden in the shadows, among the wind and the moonlight, I felt more myself. Among people and lanterns I had to smile wider, laugh louder, act stronger. I had to participate instead of observe.

I slipped off the branch, landing heavily in the grass. What was I thinking? Staying out of the light, uninvolved, that was a relic of my past self, my weaker self who clung to old ground as her 'element.' I was more now. So much more.

With Shinju at my side I set off for crowds and warmth. Far from chilling and shattering me, our business had tempered me, made me stronger.

The results of our test came out tomorrow. Then it would be all confirmed. I would be stronger, surer. Ready to stop running and meet with Aizen.

Tomorrow, in the day, in the sun, in my element.