Become A Ghost

Become A Ghost, Chapter Sixteen

Such was his his relief, such was his gratitude and pleasure, that he did something he had not done in years. In decades, in over a century, in fact.

He smiled.

Orihime turned back to Byakuya, and found him... smiling at her. Smiling. Byakuya. 

It was a thing of glory. 

It was nowhere near Renji's wide, reckless grin; it bore no resemblance to Uryuu's faint upturn of a smirk. It was a modest smile, hesitant, a little shy, and Orihime felt like she was approaching a wild animal, like a sudden move would scare it away. 

Oh, if she hadn't already been in love with him... this would have sealed the deal. As it was, Orihime's heart felt near to bursting. She clasped her hands together over it to keep it from leaping out of her chest and flying toward him. She wanted to go to him, to kiss that smile, to touch his face and wrap her arms around his waist and rest her head on his chest and listen to him breathe.

She knew she could do none of that, not one thing of it. Because she also knew, now, that he loved her too, or something very close to it, and he would let her. And once they had declared themselves to each other, he would want to be with her, probably in a really public way that they couldn't hide from the Kuchiki elders, who would then depose him as head of the clan.

And that would humiliate him beyond bearing. He had been reared to think of nothing but his family for the entirety of his life; even more than his vocation as a soldier and captain of the Gotei 13, it was his reason for being. The shame of being stripped of his title and duties would crush him in a way that Orihime could not bear to be the catalyst for.

She had to protect him. She had to think of his well-being, had to put him first, since no one else did and he deserved it, he'd earned it with his two centuries of duty and dedication and honesty and obedience and devotion and loyalty.

But then that glorious smile faded. 

"Why are you crying?" he asked quietly. His hand came up to cup her face, and his thumb swept the teardrops away.

Orihime rubbed her cheek into his palm in a kittenish motion, pressing his hand to her face with her own for just the briefest moment before stepping away to turn in a circle, her gaze directed skyward once more, following the moon.

"I'm not crying!" she said with a hard sniffle, swiping her sleeve over her cheeks to mop them dry, and forced a ditzy smile to her lips. "You just surprised me! I was beginning to wonder if you maybe didn't have any teeth, and that was why you never smile."

She hazarded a glance back at him; he was doing that tiny half-smile thing he did when he was amused in spite of himself. "Is it always nighttime here?" At his nod, she commented, "It's lovely. I never saw so many stars... where does the path lead?"

"Around the pond, past the tea house, around the far side of the pond, and back here. It is not a large circuit." For the first time, Byakuya felt that perhaps its modest size, which he'd always attributed to an appropriate level of the restraint that ruled him, was more an indication that he'd unnecessarily limited himself to a smaller life than he'd had to. He hearkened back to his daily routine, which hardly every varied: work, dinner, family business. Sleep. The occasional clan meeting. The odd attempt by power-hungry madmen to overtake Soul Society (now that he put some thought into it, he had to say that Aizen's war had, at the very least, livened up what he now had to admit was a damnably dull existence). 

No one had done that to him. No one had put his life on a leash and forced him to play by the rules. He had done that to himself. He had been a hellion, in his youth, hot-tempered and passionate, and he'd let the elders and their expectations choke it out of him until he was left with an inner world that might be exquisite, but it was small, and dark, and he had a sudden, shocking sensation of claustrophobia. In the back of his consciousness, he could feel Senbonzakura's alarm.