Black-and-Red Conflict

~~~Twenty-Five~~~
Friend

“Wait!”

Ukitake stopped at the door he was about to pass to follow Byakuya, and looked back. The urgency had been clear in Rukia's voice and now she shook her head ever so slightly, her eyes pleading with him.

“Taichou, I really don't think he... I don't know... I don't think you should follow him.” Rukia wasn't sure how to explain the premonition, but she didn't think it was very safe going after Byakuya right now.

“She's right. Don't.”

It was Renji who had spoken quietly and all eyes fastened on him, but only between his own and Rukia's passed agreement and understanding. The 13th squad's captain hesitated and then objected. “But he cannot just be left alone like this. There is obviously something wrong with him.”

Ukitake sounded worried and turned towards Unohana-Taichou as if seeking her assistance. But the healer was undecided. Basically her instincts told her the same as Ukitake's. She wanted to help, wanted to make sure her colleague was alright, but as she looked at Rukia and Renji she sensed there was more going on behind all this than was obvious to her eyes. She remained silent, choosing to take on the role of an observer.

“Wrong? Yeah...”
The fact that it was Renji saying that, and in a tone that sounded hurt in a way that could have nothing to do with physical pain, didn't make the situation any easier for Ukitake. It didn't suit well into his philosophy to just leave people to their own when they had a breakdown as the one he had just witnessed. Especially not people like Kuchiki Byakuya, who were supposed to never even come close to acting the way that had just happened. But as Ukitake looked back and forth between Rukia and Renji he realized that they shared some understanding that he himself did not have. Beneath the worry, part of him was relieved. Obviously Renji had let Rukia in on whatever was going on. So maybe, with the knowledge they had, it was acceptable to leave Byakuya alone, but to Ukitake, nonetheless, it simply didn't feel right. His eyes betrayed his feelings as they moved back to the door uncertainly. Then he felt a careful touch on his arm and looked down into Rukia's face.

“Taichou, please.” Her eyes asked for trust. “I will talk to him,” she added and finally Ukitake let out a resigned sigh.
“I hope you know what you're doing,” he said, turning back to the room and directing the sentence at her as well as at Renji. Rukia nodded, but the lieutenant looked away.

“So, it seems a lot is going on here that none of you will be willing to tell me about.”
Unohana had stepped up to the redhead's bed while following the scene with her usual calm. Her customary, small smile was spread over her lips but her voice sounded comparably stern. Suddenly all of them searched very hard for something interesting on the white walls or their own hands. The healer was kindness itself, but you did not become captain of a squad if you weren't able to keep your subordinates in line when they needed to be. Renji and Rukia had only heard rumors about the fact that she could be scary, even when she smiled. Ukitake, being in a more frequent contact with her because of his illness, knew it for certain.

“There have been some... problems...,” the white-haired captain offered sheepishly, scratching the back of his head, avoiding her eyes.
“Yes, I noticed. I just hope that won't interfere with the recovery of my patient?”

That smile was scary, most definitely so. It assured you that the healer didn't only know exactly how to ease all kinds of ailments and sicknesses, but also how they were caused. Not that she would ever do anything like that on purpose, but just the possibility, the fact that she knew, was enough to make one want to stay on her good side.

Renji could feel her gaze on him as she waited for an answer and he fidgeted. “'t won't,” he said, glancing up at her.

“Good,” the 4th squad's captain retorted and then pulled back part of the covers to have a look at her patient. Rukia and Ukitake kept a polite distance until she was ready, then they stepped up to the bed, too. She hadn't needed more than a few minutes and looked pleased.

“As I had hoped, with the return of your Reiatsu your healing has sped up considerably. You should be alright in a few more days.” Most of the small wounds would be gone the next day, she estimated, his shoulder should be mainly healed in two more. Even with a cut that deep, it had been a flesh wound and a Shinigami of lieutenant level should not be hindered long by it. His left arm though, was another thing.

“Cool. Can I go then?” Renji was about to sit up, but he winced as she prodded his broken limb lightly.

“No,” she answered, smiling. “You won't move anywhere for two more days. The splint stays on for five more at least.”
“Two more days? And five for the arm?” Renji burst out incredulously. Two more days in bed in hospital sounded like the ultimate definition of boredom. When his eyes fell onto the healer's face though, he swallowed anything else he would have liked to say and sunk back into the pillows very quietly. She did not even bother to repeat herself, for her smile did not accept any objections whatsoever.

“I will be on my way then,” she said, as she turned to Ukitake and Rukia. “Still, I would like him to get some rest.” Which was her polite way of saying that she would rather not meet them in the room anymore when she came back later to check on her patient.

“Of course,” Ukitake answered and all of them returned her bow as Unohana-Taichou left the room. Then the white-haired captain turned to Renji and, smiling cheerfully, said, “So there we are. Glad to see you well again, Abarai-kun.”

“Uhm... thanks.” Renji wasn't quite sure how to react to the captain, and looked at him rather warily, then glanced at Rukia as if expecting her to give him some clue to whatever Ukitake-Taichou was doing at another lieutenant's sickbed. She didn't offer more than a small shrug.

“Don't worry, I won't bother you any further,” Ukitake said as he noticed Renji's uneasiness, then his smile faded and he looked thoughtful. “Just...,” he resumed but then stopped and waved whatever had been on the tip of his tongue away. Maybe it was on them now, he decided. As much as he would have wanted to, there was nothing he could do. They were probably the only ones who knew enough about the whole thing to act.

“Ahh... nothing. Never mind. Get well soon!” He grinned once more and then nodded at them before he, too, left the room.

“He's just worried,” Rukia said as the door closed behind her captain, anticipating Renji's question. “He's noticed something for quite some time, I think. Kyouraku-Taichou has made some comments, too. But I don't think any of them could guess what's really going on.”

There was a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice, but Renji didn't blame her, after all he knew best how weird this whole thing was.
“Yeah... wouldn't b'lieve it myself 'f someone told me.”

Then Renji looked at the door. Strangely enough, at the moment he didn't even care so much about other people suspecting something. What occupied his mind most, what made him chew on his lower lip and frown, was the way Byakuya had turned away from him, had ran from the room the moment he had seen Renji wake up. Rukia followed his gaze and with the certainty of an old friend knew what was on the redhead's mind.

“I meant it when I said to Taichou that I'd talk to my brother,” she offered, not quite sure how to console Renji. Byakuya's reaction had been so untypical, so illogical, that she had no idea how to even accept that it had really happened, let alone try to interpret it in any way. In case her brother really returned Renji's feelings, shouldn't he have been happy to see his lieutenant awake? And in case he was interested in the redhead only physically – she carefully maneuvered around any more specific thoughts – shouldn't he have been his usual stoic self then?

Renji frowned and turned his head away, looking troubled. Then he suddenly snorted. “Don't bother. Won't use a damn thing,” he said quietly.

She looked at him with wide eyes, growing tense as she perceived the resignation in his voice, the weariness. As he turned back to her, the hurt in his eyes together with a hint of defiance was even worse. She had hit him on the side of the head before she could even think about it.

“Ouch! What the hell?!”
“Stop being such a quitter!”
“Quit...? What? Ya gone crazy?” Renji wanted to rub his head but cringed and curtailed the movement of his arm as his shoulder complained. “Fuck! 'cause of you I'm going to be here even longer!”

He looked at her accusingly but she only glared back, standing at the side of his bed with her hands in fists, brows narrowed, chin lifted challengingly. She knew she was overreacting, but seeing Renji give up and being this sullen about it, just like some little brat not getting what it wanted, had made her act automatically. For all the time they had known each other, hitting some sense back into him had always been far easier than trying to convince him with words.

“Then stay here! If you've given up, you shouldn't care! I'm tired too! First you're not telling me anything, leavin' me to wonder and worry what the hell's wrong with you. Then you tell me the impossible, putting a hell of a load onto my shoulders that I've had enough trouble just getting into my head and now that I wanna help you...”

She waved her hands about in exasperation but stopped as she noticed how Renji shied away from her a bit, looking surprised, offended, but hurt, too. She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly.

“Sorry...”
She refused to actually look that way but did back up slightly. “But you can't give up.”

It was almost like an order. She knew she had no right to demand from him to fight on, since she realized that whatever had been going on between him and Byakuya must have been hell for Renji to become so desperate. But she just couldn't let him surrender. It was impossible to imagine. Renji had always been fighting until the very end, had always pushed on, never caring what might stand in his way.

“Can't give up? Waddaya know! You've no idea what happened!”
Renji sounded angry at being attacked from his friend like this, but then it did make his pride flare and raised his will to fight, even if it was only directed at her right now.

“Coz you hardly told me anything! I'm here now! I'm still your friend! Get a grip and tell me what happened and I'll help you!”
She wasn't letting go. As long as he argued with her he would at least be himself and wouldn't look at her desperately or hurt, like someone she didn't remember having as her friend.

He glared and she glared back. He snorted and she answered the same way, lifting her chin even higher.

“Fine!” he eventually almost spat at her. “If I can't get rid of ya 'therwise!”
“Fine!” she said just as sharply and then pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and sat on it, arms crossed before her.

They still looked at each other angrily for a few seconds before Renji closed his eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath. He opened them again, now looking at the room in general, trying to find a way to start. Fine! He would tell then, tell everything, even though he still doubted it would help anything.

And he did.

After the first hesitant sentence the words came more easily and soon he almost forgot about Rukia sitting at his side. She watched him, shocked or surprised, angry and touched, but stayed silent, careful not to say a word, not to interrupt him, now that he was finally relating all that had happened more or less calmly. It wasn't easy, especially because he had never been a man of words and wasn't sure how to express feelings that were so difficult and complicated as his own when it came to his captain.

To tell about how it had all started, how he had noticed he felt more for his superior than he should, how they had fought, how he had driven Byakuya to vanish for two days; it wasn't easy. But then it was nothing compared to talking about the night the noble had appeared at Renji's door to retrieve Senbonzakura. To express the anger and humiliation he had felt, but at the same time the burning desire that had, even that same night, still haunted his dreams, was incredibly difficult. It also brought the memories back more vividly than ever before.

To recount that he had, not so much later, forgiven Byakuya for it, was almost too strange and doubtable to even voice. But he explained it and everything else as well as he could. How happy he had been for that short blissful time after they had made up in the mansion after the clan meeting, how painful the disappointment had been at realizing how Byakuya did not trust him after all and never agreed to give in to the redhead, Renji's inability to stay away from the captain even though he knew full well that it would have been the only sensible thing to do.

Although he didn't consciously realize it, the time he talked to his best friend in that hospital room, finally getting out everything that had been haunting his waking and dreaming mind, his conscious and subconscious, his emotions and his reason for the last months, was the greatest help he could have got right then, the greatest relief.

He did not feel it at first when he looked back at Rukia after he had finally finished. He was still worried and desperate, for outwardly nothing had changed. But then, through talking about it, through re-living what had happened, but now seeing everything in its entirety, he achieved a more distanced point of view. He had always followed his emotions and he realized now that that simply was who he was. That however stupid it might sound for an outsider, he would not stray from that way of living his life. He could not change his feelings, he could only accept them, and with them all the trouble that would come through them. He could only be himself.

“Wow...,” Rukia finally breathed, after a few minutes had passed in which the two Shinigami had just looked at each other. Renji felt nervous, now that he had finished and the fingers of his right hand unconsciously moved over the white sheets.

“Still wanna go talk ta him?” he asked, all the annoyance or anger he might have felt before now vanished.

She lowered her eyes and seemed to be seriously rethinking that plan. But then she stood up and nodded once. “Yes,” she answered, even though she didn't actually have the slightest idea of what she would say to her brother. But it was the only thing that seemed right to do.

She didn't really feel like knowing Byakuya, nobody did for that matter. But she just somehow felt, on some strange sixth-sense-level kind of way, that this whole thing was troubling her brother as much as it was Renji. Just that those two were unable to get it together on their own, so if she had to knock the sense back into both of them to get her friend and brother back to acting normal, then she would definitely try. Though maybe she would rethink the “knocking” part when it came to Byakuya. She wasn't suicidal, after all.

Renji looked doubtful but then nodded. The fact that he had really told her everything was proof enough that he really had no ideas left about what to do. Maybe Rukia could change something. Maybe she was the only one who could.

“I should go now. Don't wanna be here when Unohana-Taichou gets back,” she said and stood up.

She estimated they must have been talking for at least an hour and she felt numb with all the information, some of it also having been a little too explicit for her liking. She knew she should talk to her brother as soon as possible, but for that her head needed to be clear and her mind needed to be calm. Right now she wasn't either, so it was best to go and leave Renji in the 4th division's care for now.

So she left after pushing him back into the pillows, warning him that she'd kick him as far as the Real World if he dared leaving his bed before he was supposed to. It made him stick out his tongue to her as she left the room, and that display of the old Renji, the loud and brash one, made her so angry at Byakuya that she stopped in her tracks for a second, surprised. It was hard, feeling anything else for her brother than that, after what her friend had told her. Of course Byakuya had always been cold and selfish, but this...

She shook her head. She really needed some time alone right now, for she knew that approaching Byakuya with anger, attacking or accusing him, was probably the most dangerous and also most unhelpful thing to do.

The small, dark-haired woman walked away in deep thought, wondering how in hell all this had happened and how on earth it could be solved.


~~~