The Noble Sort

A/N: This is the night before the battle. We'll get to see some of what's going on in the Seireitei before the final conflict with Aizen.

And something I've noticed and will hopefully get to go back and fix—Kyouraku has had four fuku-taichou in this story. I noticed at one point I said Minako was his second, but I meant the second he had lost, not his second total. There was most likely one before Lisa that we haven't seen. I apologize. All I can say is that my meaning is clear in my head but doesn't always translate into the proper words. That and I'm inventing histories that Kubo hasn't given us and it can be hard to do with guys like him that have obviously been around a looooong time.

As always, R & R. I'd especially enjoy some constructive criticism considering I'll be publishing whatever I write in NaNoWriMo this year.

Now we begin this chapter with a blast from the past. Hope you guys paid attention to her conversation with Isane...

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"The Noble Sort"

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The door opened slowly, grey hair being the first thing she saw in the now-visible space between the door and the doorway.

It almost took her breath away.

For a man reaching fifty-six next year, he still looked pretty good. He was still fit, not nearly as wrinkled as some of the men she had seen boasting about being the same age, and his hair, while graying, was distinguished on him instead of aging. He reminded her of the hot professors many of the local university students were always giggling about in the restaurant.

She smiled softly, and his eyes widened in shock and recognition.

"Minako?"

He let out a funny little laugh but opened the door, gesturing her in. She dipped her head toward him and stepped in, grateful he was going to allow her some privacy to explain everything. He gestured again, this time to the plush sectional sofa in the middle of the very large living room, and she moved to sit down. He sat close but not near—a distinction he had learned early on, thankfully.

"I can't believe—what are you doing here?"

She smiled and dropped her head, her eyes closing. It had been so long since she had seen him in person, at least six years. They had talked, yes, and e-mailed, but they had kept their distance for years.

"I needed to talk to you. I'm glad you haven't moved."

He nodded, his hands coming together and clasping between his knees. She could tell he still had calluses in just the right places—still practicing kendo, obviously.

"I just—I really wasn't sure I would ever see you again."

She opened her eyes and looked at him, really looked at him.

"I'm not…intruding, I hope?"

"Of course not!" he exclaimed, a bit of amusement in his voice. So he was still a bachelor, then. At least there would be no jealous wife asking who the young woman was. "You look—great, Minako. Beautiful." He grinned at her. "I thought I told you to quit with the plastic surgery?"

She giggled.

"A girl has to keep herself looking good."

"You look like you haven't aged a day," he said, the awe and appreciation clear in his voice.

I haven't. You just don't know it.

Their eyes locked and they stared at each other, hard, for a long moment. She could feel old emotions racing through the connection, traces of lust and what might have been love at some point. Soon, though, she cleared her throat, hoping to break the sudden tension the emotions had evoked.

"I, ah, have something I need to give you, really," she said hesitantly, pulling a small box out of her coat pocket. "I know—I know you said not to, but I have to."

She placed the small black velvet box on his table, glaringly out of place amongst the normal possessions. It drew his attention like a magnet, and she could almost feel the shift in the atmosphere, the change in his posture as he slumped a little on the couch.

"You shouldn't have," he muttered, his jovial mood gone now, "you really shouldn't have."

"I know, but with everything that's going on, I have to."

"That's not how it works." She saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "It's bad luck, you know."

His eyes were still drawn to the box, even though he had tried to turn his body away from it slightly.

She hated this. She hated that, almost fifteen years after everything had happened, she still had this pull over him. It wasn't right. And she definitely could not go into what would most likely be a mortal battle with this unresolved issue lingering. At one time, it had been a chance. Something she could dangle in front of herself to challenge her to find that future, to reach for something more than a half-assed existence. But now…

"I have to, though."

He looked up at her, finally.

"Why?" he said, his voice low.

"Because there are things," she choked on the words, forcing them out, "things—going on. Most likely, you won't hear from me again."

His head snapped up and he glared at her.

"Are you in trouble? Do you need my help? Minako, there's no one in this city I can't—"

"No. You can't help me with this. Seriously," she said, knowing he would protest. "You can't. This is so beyond the realm of your—dealings—you just can't. But chances are, I won't be able to see you again, and I can't leave this like…this."

"Still no hope, then?" he asked wistfully, as if he had always known the answer but hoped to have to never ask the question.

"No hope," she said quietly, despair and guilt rising inside her. She wasn't just talking about their failed relationship anymore.

He was truly a good man, deep down, and she had always kept it to give him hope—to give herself hope. But there wasn't any left to give. And he wasn't—he wasn't her dream anymore.

"Minako."

He leaned over and picked up the box, flipping it open and staring at the beautiful diamond inside. She knew, she always knew, that he had hoped she would wear it one day, even if he was sixty when it finally happened. He had been a confirmed bachelor when she met him and he had stayed that way. As far as she knew, she was the only one he had ever offered to change that for.

"I'm sorry, Matsu."

He looked at her, his eyes shining.

"Why? We were good, once, and we've been good friends." He snorted elegantly. "It's the height of what I usually hope for."

But not with her; they both knew it. She reached over a gave his hand a gentle squeeze before rising from the couch, moving to make her way out of his apartment and most likely his life.

"Minako?"

She stopped, but she didn't turn around.

"Is he worth it?"

She snorted.

"You assume it's a man," she said dryly, still not looking at him.

"There's a man involved, I know that," he muttered.

She turned slightly, looking over her shoulder at the man that she had once been sure she loved, and sighed deeply. She still loved him on some level, but it had never been near enough. Never what she really wanted. Finally, she walked over toward him and gently kissed the top of his head.

"You always knew me way too well."

He chuckled—a dry, self-deprecating laugh if she had ever heard one—and gave her waist a small squeeze with his unoccupied hand.

"Tell him to treat you right, or I'll come looking for him," he said, the dark tone he was known for in his younger days present in his voice. It was a hint of the man he once was, the criminal that had drawn her notice in the eighties.

She nodded, ruffled his hair, and silently exited the luxurious apartment.

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Night had fallen at least two hours ago, but Nanao couldn't bring herself to retire to her rooms and sit about, waiting for sleep to come. To be honest, she couldn't fathom sleep at this point.

The most likely scenario for the next day was that most of them died. If it were true, then she couldn't bring herself to waste the few precious hours she had left on sleep. While she knew she needed it—you never went into battle without being rested if you could help it—other things seemed more important.

She stepped out onto the wooden planks that rounded the division's courtyard, expecting to hear sounds of revelry, even some laughter from her taichou's rooms. Instead, everything was silent. Not even crickets could be heard, considering the temperature and the frost beginning to form on the grass. She cocked her head, listening intently to the silence emanating from his rooms. That was unusual. She knew Ukitake-taichou had been over just an hour ago; usually they were still drinking at this time of night.

Obviously, he wasn't here.

Her footsteps were soft and slow, barely a brush of sound against the night, and she stopped to lean against the railing of the porch right in front of his door. Not a sound.

Wait.

There was sound, it just wasn't very loud. A swish of fabric, the scraping of a page turning.

She would give anything right now to hear those noises for the rest of her life. She knew tomorrow could be her end, but it could also be his end. He would be right at the front, right in the face of the Arrancar that had not yet been defeated. She could see it, in her mind's eye—frightening. The idea of him no longer being here, all because of Aizen…

Part of her screamed that it was her duty to protect her taichou; part of her knew he wouldn't appreciate her protectiveness.

But those sounds—they were life. As long as she heard the clinking of a sake cup, the scratchy noise accompanied with a page being turned, she knew he was alive and in this world. It gave her something of him not to just feel, but to hear.

She glanced at the large moon in the sky. Not quite full, but not just a sliver of light, either. Just enough silver to bring back a memory of meeting him in this courtyard when she was just a child and him the larger than life leader she would willingly die for. She never could have predicted it, although she should have seen it coming. He had always left her in awe, left her craving the next moment she would spend with him. Even when he was driving her insane, she wouldn't trade him for anything in the world.

Footsteps.

They were heavy, undoubtedly masculine, and she closed her eyes against the intrusion and sighed. In her dreams, it had never come to this. It never happened like this. She wasn't sure if she wanted to let it happen this way.

Maybe the choice wasn't hers to make, though.

The door sliding open was jarring in the serenity of the night, but she welcomed his intrusion when she felt the warmth he gave off heat her back as his arm slipped around her waist, pulling her even closer, towards him, into him. As if she didn't gravitate toward his presence already.

"It does no good to worry, Nanao-chan," he murmured against her hair.

She felt a shiver down her spine but said nothing.

He surrounded her form with his own and began to shuffle backward, a graceful movement she could have never pulled off. She was compliant, though, thoughts of what the sunrise might bring finally taking all the fight out of her. As he moved her backwards and into his rooms, she softly shut the was already tugging softly at the collar of her kimono, his fingers trailing fire across her skin as he went.

At least, no matter what happened the next day, she would have her one night.

Sometimes, there really wasn't anything left to say.

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The gate had been easier to organize than she had ever imagined. A quiet word to Yoruichi and she had one open and waiting, Urahara just staring at her. He most likely assumed she was going through early, going to see her uncle and wait on everything to begin.

He was wrong.

Yoruichi, though, she was smart. Even if she didn't know who Minako was going to see, she knew this gate had little to do with an early arrival for battle. She might visit her uncle, yes, but there was someone else involved. Knowing Yoruichi, the black woman knew exactly who Minako was going to see.

She gave each of them a jaunty little wave, acting as if the weight of tomorrow's battle wasn't truly pulling her down, and stepped through the gate.

There were people to see. There was no way she would let what would most likely be the last night of her life flit past without at least making a few things plain.

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The words on the documents in front of him were blurring and bleeding together.

He knew he needed rest, that the lukewarm amber tea positioned far enough away on the desk that he didn't risk the paperwork couldn't keep him awake and alert long enough to finish this last stack, but he tried. Like many of his soldiers, he didn't want to waste too much of this night on sleep.

He sighed, rubbing his forehead and fighting back a yawn. He was definitely too old for this now.

He opened his eyes fully, blinking to remove the blurring, and his vision was caught on one of the pictures piled beneath his desk lamp. Minako and Arisu, smiling, some sort of human gathering going on around them.

Had he really failed everyone so tremendously? His family splintered, traitors threatening to bring them down, corruption in Central, disloyalty all around…was he this bad of a leader?

A wrinkled hand slowly approached the photo, tracing the ebony hair of his niece visible in front of the strange electronics in the background.

Hikaru had taken some of them, her old eyes sparkling as she saw the two women laughing and smiling in the photos, and she had framed them. Placed them all over his home. There had been a token resistance, of course, but nothing serious. He wasn't too worried about someone seeing pictures of his niece around his home, even if they knew she had fled Seireitei. It was his right, and it wouldn't matter in the long run.

He knew his fate.

The next day would undoubtedly bring his death, the end of this existence he had found in the afterlife. It didn't bother him, although he wouldn't mind one last chance to speak to her, the child he had never been able to have himself.

He had lived too long as it was.

He could barely remember his human life. There was a glimpse of memory, a feather against the back of his brain every once in a while. And then his life here: he could see his brother, his long-dead sisters; he could see a brilliant blue coast he must have visited at some point when he wasn't too old to travel to the human world himself. But with age everything was fading; he didn't even have memories of his early years here, only knew that he had woken up in the mountains with his siblings and they had made a name for themselves.

Few knew he wasn't born into Seireitei but brought here by an early death.

He was so old history did not remember his time in the human world and Seireitei saw him as the beginning of an era of history. When you got to be so old you could not remember your age, it was time for it to be over. When you were the only one left, you were ready to go.

He propped the photo up against his lamp, took a sip of his now-cold tea, and continued on. It wasn't even midnight, yet, and some of this could still be completed before he forced himself to rest for tomorrow.

He allowed himself to continue a little more lightheartedly, forcing himself to remember all those younger than himself he was fighting for.

Even with his frequent glances toward the picture highlighted by the soft light of the lamp and sitting at the front of his consciousness, he never saw the shadow that played upon his window before flicking outward, joining with the darkness of the night.

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Her uncle would be fine, that much was obvious.

She would have loved to stop in and say—something, who knew what. But he was working diligently, even though he had to be in the same state she was in, knowing tomorrow probably brought death.

Some closure would be nice, but she felt they had ended on a good note so far, even if everything that needed to be said hadn't been voiced. Sometimes it was just understood. She forgave him, understood him, and he was finally past what she had done.

It was enough.

She quickly, but quietly, stepped back into the shadow of the large tree outside his study, silently wishing him a good night of rest. He would need it to face Aizen the next day, and for once she was thankful she wasn't going to be on the front line. Seeing him up close would be too much.

From here she had to head south, through at least a quarter of Seireitei. She knew that he had been to the Eighth earlier, drinking and visiting with his oldest friend. But she could tell he wasn't there now; there was someone in her former taichou's rooms but it definitely wasn't a male he had for company.

She grinned in the silvery moonlight.

Good for you, Nanao.

She was truly happy for her young friend. The young woman had apparently learned the first rule of battle: never leave anything left undone. You never knew if you would come out alive and get another chance.

She flitted across the tops of buildings and through trees at a breakneck pace, almost in disbelief that no one had stopped her yet. They were all either spending their last night with loved ones or no longer worried about her considering her uncle's almost nonexistent search for her after her latest disappearance.

She finally saw the buildings of the thirteenth approaching in the distance, and she smiled with a genuine joy she hadn't felt in decades. It might be wrong, and he might not welcome her intrusion, but she had to do this.

The wall was easy to pass over, and she finally came to a stop in a frosty courtyard. The door to his quarters—she had been here so many times when she was fuku-taichou of the eighth—was across the grassy area from her.

She was thankful she had the foresight to land far from it.

It took a few minutes to regain her breath, and he would have heard her exhalations if she had been even thirty feet closer. He was taichou for a reason, something she knew many here forgot due to his innate kindness—his childish demeanor hid the inner soldier, she knew. She had never made the mistake of truly forgetting exactly how powerful he was.

There were no lights coming through the windows, and as she slowly crept forward, she couldn't hear anything either. He was most likely—no. Not asleep. She could barely hear it, but he wasn't breathing the shallow breaths of the sleeping. He was close to the floor, yes, most likely on a futon, but he wasn't asleep. She prayed to whatever deity might be watching over her that the crinkling from the frozen grass wouldn't alert him and crept even closer. She was finally close enough to be able to take a small step and be on the wooden planks that surrounded the building.

One foot at a time.

She could hear Hidaruma in her mind, huffing about her wariness, but now that she was here her nerves were flaring, igniting along her skin and spine. She could have read this completely wrong—not that it would matter, considering what awaited them the next day—and be rejected.

Not if he has any sense, onna.

She smiled again, softly. It would have been uncomfortable for anyone that knew her.

Could you, um, you know, go away? If this goes the way I want, I don't want you involved.

He snorted.

Believe me, onna, I have no wish to be involved in your sexual depravity, although you act like I won't know what is going on anyway.

She just knew she was blushing now.

When I am proven correct, as I always am, I will give you the privacy you desire. He huffed. Stupid human etiquette.

Oh?

I'll even leave the room. Perhaps I can find something to snack on while you—she felt him cough in her mind—do what you need to do, as such.

She grinned at the sudden and unusual reticence he was showing.

Thanks.

Don't mention it. Really. You're making this into too big of a deal.

As she stepped up to the sliding door blocking her from the man she had come to see, she felt the weight of Hidaruma leave her belt. She quickly glanced behind her, not surprised to see the black form of her zanpakutou spirit on the grass near the pond.

Early, aren't you? She asked wryly.

He just huffed, a large breath out of his nostrils and forming a cloud of white sparkling air in front of him.

She slowly, very gently, slid the door to the left.

Their eyes immediately met.

She slid the door closed behind her, barely entering the room. She could feel the slide of the door against her back, the soft, sanded wood not catching on her clothing but rubbing against it.

To be honest, the nerves were starting to get the best of her; she wasn't sure if she could really bring herself to approach him.

Finally she gathered her courage and pushed herself a few steps forward, toward the now-sitting man on the futon to her left. She cleared her throat—it was loud in the silence of the night—and balled her hands up at her sides tightly enough that she could feel her nails biting into her skin.

"You know why I'm here," she said gruffly, although her voice held a tint of weakness, a bit of a question.

He nodded.

One of her arms came up, grabbing for the other one and crossing her chest as if to ward off any sudden verbal blows he might deal. She couldn't help but feel defensive considering she'd been in his room for almost four minutes now and he had said nothing. "I—I have to say this. I can't not say it, not with tomorrow—"

"Minako-san," he said, his voice low.

She glanced up at him from the wooden floors that had held her attention during the beginning of her rambling confession, but she ignored it and continued. She couldn't be sidetracked or she'd never get it out, and it had to be said.

Even if the honorific—oh, the fear of rejection was climbing higher in her stomach now. He couldn't even just say her name, and she was sure he would push her out of here soon. But it had to be done. Everything else was taken care of; this had to be taken care of as well.

The lump in her throat, now solid and stuck to the tender tissue, was swallowed down so she could force the words out.

"I—I don't want to make you uncomfortable. And I'm sorry if that, if what I say makes you uncomfortable, but tomorrow we could all die and I can't not say it. Does that make sense?" She shook her head, mumbling. "Probably not."

Finally she locked eyes with him again, this time not letting her fear push her gaze toward the floor in front of her.

"You—you have to have known—"

"Minako," he said, the time dropping the honorific and using a force she had rarely heard from him.

His hand was slowly rising from his lap, and after a period of time that felt like a decade she realized what he was saying, what he wanted. Hope surged brightly in her belly.

She stepped forward tentatively, almost dragging her feet, but in the space of a moment her toes were next to his futon and his hand was grasping hers, pulling her down to the soft mat. She landed on the soft futon next to him, his hands now softly playing with her hair as she untied her boots and set them to the side. Next was her jacket, thrown onto the boots and crinkling softly as it landed on the hard leather.

As he pulled her down to stretch out beside him, she realized there was nothing left to be said.

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A/N: By Yamamoto wishing for a "true death" or "final death," I don't mean one where he disappears. I mean he's tired, that he's ready to return to the cycle and forget what he has been and what he's done in Seireitei. According to the databooks, people who die in Soul Society return to the human world without their memories. It's the reincarnation cycle, basically, and he's ready to move on if he dies in battle.

And for those of you who are going "Who the hell is Matsu?" Look back to the chapter where Isane, Minako, and Nanao are discussing everything while waiting on the taichou meeting to end. They discuss a man in Minako's past-Matsu. We'll actually see more of her old lover later in the story.