Chapter Text
Yoruichi doesn’t mean to find her.
She’s out in the woods to go for a run, not to go looking. She hasn’t gotten to really push herself in a century; she’s had to be careful, in the human world, not to draw any unnecessary attention by shooting over the rooftops of a city faster than any other shinigami in existence can run. Personally, Yoruichi is sure she’s perfectly skilled enough to do so without anyone noticing, but Kisuke had wanted to be careful, always careful, and Yoruichi could hardly blame him. She’s limited herself to short, slow flash steps and roaming freely in her cat form, and she’s been bored. She’d missed this. The wind rips at her fast enough to threaten to make her cry, and for once, she’s actually a bit out of breath.
She’s so focused on her running—and Sui-Feng is so good at hiding her presence these days—that Yoruichi doesn’t notice until she’s already alighted on a branch to take a breather that Sui-Feng is standing in the clearing below, facing away from her.
Now that she’s looking for it, Yoruichi can sense Sui-Feng’s presence: a quiet pressure on the edge of her mind. Still, it’s easy enough for Yoruichi to miss, meaning it’s likely imperceptible to everyone except her. That’s not a feat Sui-Feng had ever been able to achieve before. She’d been talented at hiding herself, of course—it’s a bit of a requirement for joining the Stealth Force—but nowhere near the limits of Yoruichi’s perception.
And it’s a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Sui-Feng’s zanpakuto is in shikai. Instead of a blade, a stinger wraps itself around her hand, and as Yoruichi watches, Sui-Feng takes a deep breath and leaps into a series of attacks. Yoruichi recognizes them as forms—specific move sets taught to shinigami in training, with the intention of training response time in an actual battle. Sui-Feng does them better than any student or unseated officer ever could, of course, smooth and fast and deadly. She isn’t wearing her captain’s coat (Yoruichi spies it folded atop a fallen tree across the clearing) and Yoruichi can see the muscles of her back flexing with the power she puts behind every move.
Sui-Feng comes to a stop, her hand outstretched in the final blow of the form, and Yoruichi calls from her branch, “You know, you’d probably get more out of training with a partner.” Sui-Feng says nothing for a moment, doesn’t turn, doesn’t twitch. She gives no indication that she’s surprised by Yoruichi’s presence—and maybe she isn’t. Yoruichi hadn’t been making a conscious effort to hide herself, and while unconsciously suppressing her spiritual pressure has become second nature over her century in exile, she’s usually hiding from unseated shinigami patrolling the human world. Not the captain of the Stealth Force.
“It’s not particularly safe for me to train with a partner,” Sui-Feng says finally, lowering her hand and turning halfway around to look up at Yoruichi. “Not with my shikai.” Yoruichi hops down from her branch and lands lightly on the ground. She doesn’t approach Sui-Feng. She doesn’t know if it’s totally safe to. They haven’t spoken since Sokyoku Hill in the minutes after Aizen’s departure—the day before yesterday, now. When the dust had settled, Sui-Feng had gone back to the Second Division, and Yoruichi had stayed with the children. Ichigo had been so badly hurt. It’s not like he needed her around; in fact, none of them had paid Yoruichi’s presence much mind. But she had stayed anyway. On some level, it’s her and Kisuke’s fault that they’ve all been dragged into this, and they’re all so young. Ishida, especially, having to fight Kurotsuchi…Yoruichi had listened in from outside a window while he had given Ichigo the bare bones of the story. Even that much had been too much.
Yoruichi shakes off the thought. The children are fine; Ichigo will heal and Ishida has lost his reiatsu. He won’t be pulled into this again. She has nothing to be mulling over.
“It’s the second strike that kills,” Yoruichi points out, leaning back against the tree. “Unless you manage to hit someone in the same place twice on accident, is it really that dangerous?”
“Perhaps not,” Sui-Feng says. “But there are very few people who can present enough of a challenge to me to be worth training with, and we can’t afford to lose any captains. Or even those who might be captains someday. Especially not now. It isn’t worth the risk.”
“…Mm.” Yoruichi doesn’t debate that. Three captains down, with not a lot of promising candidates as far as she can tell—the Gotei Thirteen haven’t been this disadvantaged in a century, and with the threat of Aizen now out into the open…Yoruichi still doesn’t think Sui-Feng’s worry of accidentally killing is rational, but she can understand it.
“Well, you could always spar with me.” The minute the words slip out, Yoruichi wonders where they came from. There’s still something in Sui-Feng’s eyes that she doesn’t know how to read, and it’s a little bit menacing. And more fighting isn’t going to fix anything between them.
“Do you want to?” Sui-Feng asks, tilting her head slightly. For a moment, the mannerism draws up memories, and Yoruichi sees Sui-Feng’s younger self overlaid atop her features: gentler eyes, longer hair, less sharpness in her features. Maybe that’s what makes Yoruichi follow through on her offer.
“I don’t know if I feel like fighting,” she says, and pauses. Sui-Feng just waits, perhaps used to her dramatics still, even now. “I was running before I got here, and I’d like to keep going. But you could always try to catch me with that stinger of yours.” Yoruichi smiles at her. It comes out wistful, instead of teasing, and Yoruichi finds comfort in the fact that Sui-Feng will never acknowledge it. “You did used to love playing tag with me.”
“Do you think you can outrun me?” Sui-Feng asks. It’s not a challenge. It’s a genuine question.
“I was underestimating you last time,” Yoruichi says. “I won’t make that mistake again.” She pauses, grabbing the bottom of her orange sweater and pulling it over her head. She tosses it onto the tree next to Sui-Feng’s captain’s coat. Sui-Feng’s eyes, as always, do not waver from Yoruichi’s face. “Catch me if you can,” Yoruichi says, and without warning, flash steps away. She’s a hundred yards into the woods before she hears Sui-Feng start after her.
Yoruichi lets Sui-Feng win, in the end.
She grows bored of running somewhere in the woods that run alongside the 50th Rukon district, miles and miles from the clearing they had left, and abruptly turns around, sailing straight past Sui-Feng in midair. She sees Sui-Feng’s eyes widen in surprise, and laughs as she leaps into another flash step, leaving the sound trailing behind her. Before they near the clearing, though, Yoruichi begins to slow down—slowly, carefully, each step just fractions of a moment slower than the last. It’s calculated, and Yoruichi has better control than she would expect after so long, because it’s just before she hits the ground in the clearing that she feels Suzumebachi tap lightly against her back. It doesn’t even draw blood; it’s just a touch. As Yoruichi comes to a stop, she twists, looking at the back of her left shoulder and finding a homonka.
“You caught me,” Yoruichi says, looking up at Sui-Feng with a delighted grin.
“You let me,” Sui-Feng says, sounding distinctly unhappy about it. She’s significantly more out of breath than Yoruichi; her words are slightly labored, her shoulders slumped. Yoruichi takes it as a point of pride. It’s been a long time since she felt this specific kind, the kind of warrior pride that comes with being the best at something. She doesn’t voice it, though—not because she’s learned not to brag, because she definitely hasn’t, but because she isn’t sure how Sui-Feng would take it.
“Eh,” Yoruichi says instead with a shrug. “I got bored.”
“Mm.” Sui-Feng straightens up, catching her breath, and lets her shikai drop. They look at each other for a moment. Yoruichi tries again to identify the look in Sui-Feng’s eyes, and fails yet again. “Do you need something else from me, Lady Yoruichi?” Yoruichi blinks.
“No,” she says, a little taken aback. Had she needed this? Is that what Sui-Feng thinks?
Had she needed it? It had been nice, certainly. To run and to have Sui-Feng chase her, a game like they used to play without any real violence behind it. Sui-Feng hms again, walking back over to the tree and retrieving her captain’s coat. She tosses Yoruichi’s sweater to her, and she pulls it on.
“How much longer will you and the Ryoka stay in Soul Society?” Sui-Feng asks as she slips back into her captain’s coat. Yoruichi can’t even imagine the girl she knew overtop anymore; Sui-Feng is a different person wrapped up in that thing.
“I don’t know,” Yoruichi says. “Until Ichigo is ready to leave, I guess.”
“That boy makes the decisions for the rest of them?” Sui-Feng asks. Yoruichi shrugs, wordless. Sui-Feng inspects the blade of her sword, wiping a few spots with the sleeve of her coat, before sheathing it. Yoruichi just stands there and watches, suddenly feeling a bit foolish. Sui-Feng’s movements are practiced, ritualistic—as had her forms been before. This is clearly something she’s done before, over and over and over, and Yoruichi has interrupted something, here. She’s intruded. And Sui-Feng is just…letting her. Brushing off her teasing, playing her games, acting like Yoruichi is a part of this and not a glaring symbol of all of Yoruichi’s own mistakes.
And not looking at her. Sui-Feng has moved to cleaning the hilt of her sword, and she isn’t looking at Yoruichi.
“Can you look at me, please?” Yoruichi says, surprised by how level her voice sounds. “I want to see you.” Sui-Feng’s hands pause, and it takes a long few seconds for her head to rise to meet Yoruichi’s gaze. Yoruichi looks at her, examines her, and finds…nothing. Sui-Feng’s face is carefully blank, even that residual something gone from her eyes. She’s worn this expression in front of Yoruichi before, many times. But it has never been unreadable to Yoruichi before. Always, she’s managed to decode it, and now, she can’t. She can’t find anything in Sui-Feng’s eyes, and that’s so much worse than the anger from a few days before, worse than seeing something and being unable to name it.
“What else do you need from me, Lady Yoruichi?” Sui-Feng asks. Yoruichi takes in a breath and fails to find words. She stares for a long minute before she finds her answer.
“Do you think that you’ll ever forgive me?” Yoruichi wants to scream at the sound of her own question. It’s been two days, two days and one deathmatch weighed against a century of pain. She has no right. She has no right to ask. Sui-Feng should be angry with her for it; Yoruichi would only half-blame her if she took her sword back out and ran Yoruichi through. Instead, Sui-Feng just breathes out slowly and looks away again.
“Some things are not forgivable,” she says. Yoruichi should’ve expected it, but still, it hurts.
“And is my leaving one of them?” She’s pleading now. Sui-Feng doesn’t soften to it.
“Not the leaving,” Sui-Feng says. “Not exactly.” …Not the leaving? Yoruichi doesn’t know what else she could’ve done.
“What, then?” she asks. Sui-Feng says nothing. She says nothing for long enough that Yoruichi asks again, “What is it that you can’t forgive?”
“You knew,” Sui-Feng says quietly, “how I felt about you. Before.”
Oh.
“Sui-Feng,” Yoruichi whispers, her heart dropping. She did. Of course she did. They had never spoken about it, not in so many words, but Yoruichi had known. She can’t lie and say she didn’t; Sui-Feng would know. Yoruichi had never learned how to properly hide things from her. So instead, she just says, “Sui-Feng,” again, quiet and sad. Sui-Feng does not look at her.
“So I’ll ask you again, Lady Yoruichi,” Sui-Feng says, “why didn’t you take me with you?”
“I—“ Yoruichi has several excuses prepared. She hadn’t wanted to ruin Sui-Feng’s future in the Gotei Thirteen (a blatant lie; she had severely underestimated just what Sui-Feng was capable of, and had never imagined her rising above the rank of lieutenant—Yoruichi’s lieutenant). She didn’t want to make Sui-Feng a criminal in the human world, dragging her away from her home (a half-truth; exile was hard and lonely, but if Sui-Feng had been with her, they would’ve been together, and loss of home would hardly matter then, not when they were closer to each other back then than either ever were to their families). She didn’t want to force Sui-Feng to choose between Yoruichi and the Gotei Thirteen (this being the closest to the truth, though Yoruichi knows exactly what Sui-Feng would’ve chosen).
That, perhaps, is the crux of it, though it doesn’t feel quite right to admit it. Sui-Feng would’ve chosen Yoruichi in a heartbeat, and that…that…
“I was scared,” Yoruichi says. “The lengths you would’ve gone to for me back then—you would’ve abandoned this place in an instant if I had asked you to. That scared me.” Still lying. “You scared me.” Her gentle tone doesn’t make the words any less harsh. Sui-Feng nods, exhales long and slow and quiet. She doesn’t look at Yoruichi.
“If that will be all, Lady Yoruichi,” she says, “I have a division to run.” Yoruichi blinks. She had expected something. A flinch, a snarl, a flash of rage. But Sui-Feng does not betray anything, and before Yoruichi can respond, she flash steps away.
“Where’s the ninja brigade?” Kukaku asks as Yoruichi slides the door shut behind her. Kukaku has clearly started without her, a bottle of sake resting on the floor in front of her criss-crossed legs.
“I ditched them,” Yoruichi says, settling on the floor across from Kukaku. Really, Kukaku should’ve guessed before she even asked; Yoruichi does this all the time. She wouldn’t be much of a captain if she couldn’t. Her bodyguards are mostly a formality. They’re incredibly easy to leave behind, looking for her in a cloud of empty dust.
“Even your stalker?” Kukaku asks.
“Sui-Feng?” Yoruichi doesn’t blink an eye at the descriptor. Half of Seireitei has noticed Sui-Feng’s adorable hero worship at this point, and the other half just hasn’t run into the two of them in the same room yet. “I gave her the night off. She tried to get mad at me for it. It was cute.”
“Uh-huh.” Kukaku sounds amused. “You know that girl is in love with you, right?” Yoruichi snorts.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “Give me that.” She grabs the bottle of sake, drinking straight from it and entirely disregarding the cups on the floor between them. Kukaku makes an irritated noise. “Sui-Feng is just…she’s starved for attention, that’s all. I’m nice to her and that’s enough for her to get a little obsessed, since no one else in this damn place is. She’s not in love with me.”
“Yoruichi.” Kukaku’s tone is uncharacteristically serious. “You know damn well she is.” Yoruichi sticks out her tongue at her friend over the bottle before raising it back to her lips.
“I came here to get drunk, not talk about feelings,” Yoruichi says. “Should I go?” Kukaku raises her hands in defeat.
“Fine, fine,” she says. “I just think you should tell her to back off before it gets worse.” Yoruichi makes a face. “Unless you want it to get worse?”
“It’s not worse,” Yoruichi says. “Don’t say it like that. It’s not bad for her to like me. She’s not doing anything wrong, she’s just…feeling something.” She truly does not have the patience for the shinigami way of endless repression and guilt over feelings, not tonight or any other night. Her family had tried to instill it in her as a child and it had never stuck, not even a little. Maybe she’s the universe’s way of balancing for Kuchiki Byakuya. However she got here, it just isn’t her style—and she hadn’t thought it was Kukaku’s, either.
“Fine,” Kukaku agrees, “but you didn’t answer my question.”
“What’s that,” Yoruichi says, taking another sip. The bottle is, unfortunately, mostly empty. Kukaku must’ve started very early.
“Do you want her to feel this way?” Kukaku lets the question hang, even as Yoruichi drains the bottle to avoid answering it.
“I don’t care either way,” she says eventually, setting the empty bottle on the floor. “It’s not my business how Sui-Feng feels. It’s not like she’s ever going to bring it up and make it my problem.” The idea is laughable—tiny, stuttering Sui-Feng working up the nerve to tell Yoruichi she loves her? No. It’s not going to happen, not in a hundred years. “She won’t bring it up, so I won’t either. She’ll get over it, and someday I’ll give her shit for it. It’ll pass.”
“Hm.” Kukaku picks up the bottle and frowns when she finds it empty. “Keep telling yourself that, whatever. Just don’t come crying to me when you wake up someday, five years into whatever arranged marriage your family nets you, and find your lover in a pool of blood beside you because that girl got jealous and slit their throat in their sleep.” Yoruichi stares at her.
“Kukaku.”
“Mm.”
“You’re insane.” Kukaku cracks a sharp-toothed smile at the insult—though is it really an insult when Yoruichi says it with such affection? “Sui-Feng isn’t going to—you’re insane. That isn’t going to happen.” Kukaku shrugs loosely, doubt sliding from the movement of her shoulders. “That was so specific. Where did you get that?”
Yoruichi pulls her mind from the past with an effort. She’s lying on a rooftop in her cat form, the tiles cold beneath her from the fading night. The sun is just barely peaking over the horizon. Yoruichi has been out all night. A consequence of a century of life as a stray cat, she no longer really holds herself to a schedule of days, nights, sleeping and waking hours. Not that she ever liked the schedules in the first place. She’s been wandering most of the night, enjoying being a fly on the wall—or a black cat in the shadows—in Seireitei. Not much has changed since her time as captain. The familiarity is both comforting and disturbing.
Because she has changed. She feels more human than she used to. The nature of a shinigami’s long lifespan prevents any of them from truly being human, from understanding the desperation with which humans live their momentary lives. But the speed at which the human world moves is impossible to avoid when surrounded by it. The entire world, all of human society, rearranged itself completely a dozen times over while Yoruichi wandered its streets. And so she had rearranged herself, too, had grown and shifted to keep up with it faster than any shinigami in Soul Society ever could. She feels like the last time she was here was three lifetimes ago. Seireitei looks like it was yesterday.
Yoruichi gets to her feet and wanders across the roof. If anything in this world has felt the time the way Yoruichi has, it’s Sui-Feng. And it’s Sui-Feng that Yoruichi intends to seek out. Their conversation yesterday hadn’t felt…complete. So Yoruichi had known, back then, how Sui-Feng felt; so what? That can’t be news to her. And Yoruichi had been scared, yes, but is that it?
Why wouldn’t Sui-Feng look at her?
Yoruichi slips into the Second Division unnoticed with disturbing ease. Either she’s better than she remembered, or the men are worse. She finds her way to the old captain’s quarters, and would frown if her cat face allowed it when she realizes Sui-Feng’s presence is not inside. It is somewhere, though, hovering on the edge of her senses, and Yoruichi is close enough now that it’s not hard to track it down. It only takes a few minutes of stalking along the rooftops until she finds it directly beneath her.
Yoruichi hops from the roof to the ground and then up into an open window. The dawn light is flooding through it, and she takes in the details of the room quickly. It isn’t nearly as luxurious as Yoruichi had made her own quarters in the past, but the bed looks soft, the bookshelf is full, and there’s a sliding door to a private washroom in the corner.
And there, sitting in the middle of the floor with her sword across her knees, is Sui-Feng. She’s already dressed for the day in her uniform and captain’s coat. Her eyes are closed, her head bowed slightly. Meditating, clearly, and likely with her zanpakuto? Yoruichi shouldn’t disturb her, then, as much as she wants to.
“Good morning, Lady Yoruichi,” Sui-Feng says without opening her eyes. Well. There goes Yoruichi’s polite consideration.
“Good morning,” Yoruichi says, unmoving from her spot on the windowsill. How had Sui-Feng sensed her, anyway? Her cat form suppresses her presence almost entirely.
You really have gotten so much stronger.
“Is there a reason you’re here?” Sui-Feng asks, betraying no reaction to Yoruichi’s altered voice. Yoruichi sits down on the sill and thinks of how to proceed.
“About yesterday,” she begins, and then falters. Sui-Feng exhales quietly. It’s almost a sigh.
“Yes,” she says. “What about it?” She opens her eyes finally, looking up at Yoruichi.
“I…” That is the question, isn’t it? What about it? “I just want to be sure that I understand,” Yoruichi says. “What it is that you can’t forgive me for.” Sui-Feng gets to her feet, sheathing her sword and holding it in one hand. “It’s—I was afraid, and I let that control me, but is that it? That’s enough to…”
“You are a coward,” Sui-Feng says softly. Yoruichi flinches at the present tense. “Cowardice has no place in a soldier’s heart.”
“I’m not a soldier.” Sui-Feng examines her for a moment.
“No,” she says. “You never were much of one, I suppose.” That makes Yoruichi bristle, her claws popping into the soft wood of the windowsill unconsciously.
“That’s uncalled for,” she says. Whatever Sui-Feng’s feelings towards her may be these days, whatever mess they’ve made—Yoruichi had been damn good at her job. And she’d thought she’d shed her pride in that years ago, but the insult makes her realize that some of it stayed.
“I’m sorry,” Sui-Feng says. “I don’t mean that you weren’t a good captain, or a good shinigami. I only meant that you were more than those things. More than all of this.” She gestures around the room, at the walls she shares with the barracks, at the training grounds outside the window, at the captain’s coat on her shoulders. “You were a good captain. You are a good warrior. But you are not a soldier, Lady Yoruichi, and I am. That is what I can’t forgive.”
“Talk to me like I’m stupid,” Yoruichi says, starting to feel like she really might be. At least when they’d been fighting, Sui-Feng had been honest. The way she’d screamed at Yoruichi’s feet at the end of it had ached, but Yoruichi had understood it. This—the talking in circles, the unreadable feeling in her eyes, Sui-Feng turning away just when Yoruichi needs to see her—is impossible.
“I wanted you, then,” Sui-Feng says. It makes Yoruichi shiver. It’s the only time either of them has said it like that, out in the open, no implicit meaning or half-truths. Even barer than the day before. “And because of that, because you were so much more than me and you let me want you anyway…I started to want to be more, too.”
“Sui-Feng,” Yoruichi says. She isn’t more than Sui-Feng. Older, stronger, yes, but not more in the way that Sui-Feng means it, not up on a pedestal looking down. And she hadn’t let Sui-Feng do anything. She wouldn’t want that to be up to her.
“You wanted an answer,” Sui-Feng says, refusing to let Yoruichi interrupt. “That is what it is. You made me want to be more than I am, and then you got scared and took that away from me. I thought—because of you, I thought that I could be a person who loved, and was loved, even if it wasn’t—“ Sui-Feng cuts herself off with a deep breath. “It was cruel of you, Lady Yoruichi,” she says, “to allow me to delude myself like that. And it hurt me when you stopped.” Yoruichi says nothing, trying to figure out what part of that to respond to first. The fact that Sui-Feng doesn’t think of herself as a person worthy of love, maybe even a person at all, or the way she’s still thinking of Yoruichi as better, even after the betrayal, after all these years.
Instead, Yoruichi says, “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you call it hurt.” It’s the first time Sui-Feng has put what Yoruichi did to her in honest words. No lies about honor or loyalty to the Gotei Thirteen. Thoughtless, personal hurt.
Sui-Feng looks away and stays silent. Apparently, she has nothing to say to that.
“I think you’re wrong, though,” Yoruichi says. Sui-Feng crosses her arms and looks at her again. “It’s not about me. Whether you’re more than just a shinigami has nothing to do with me.”
“Who else would I bother with?” Sui-Feng asks.
“Yourself?” Yoruichi points out. Sui-Feng clenches her jaw and says nothing. “The other captains all take time to themselves. Ukitake, Kyoraku—“
“The other captains are fooling themselves,” Sui-Feng interrupts viciously. “Kyoraku abandons his men to drink himself numb, so he can pretend that he isn’t sitting doing nothing while the Rukon district devours itself, while Kurotsuchi tortures his own men, while Ukitake rots in his hut because he’s too sick or too stubborn to do anything about any of it. I—“ Sui-Feng stops, cutting herself off with a sharp sigh. Yoruichi watches quietly as she takes a few deep breaths, calming herself and clearing the anger from her face.
Yoruichi realizes that, for all of the strength she has gained over the past century, Sui-Feng is barely holding herself together.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sui-Feng says eventually, a hint of rage still hiding in her tone. “What matters is orders. The rest of it is not my responsibility.”
“Clearly it does matter,” Yoruichi says. “It bothers you.”
“What bothers me is the hypocrisy,” Sui-Feng says. “The Gotei Thirteen are not heroes. We allow these things to happen. We’re barely even human. Kurotsuchi certainly isn’t. At least I am honest about the fact that I’m a tool.” That hangs between them while Yoruichi searches for words. All she can find, though, is a vague, inescapable sadness. She should’ve expected this.
“That’s part of why I left, you know,” she says. “For all of the strength that it takes to be a captain…you don’t really have any power.” Sui-Feng lets out a sharp breath.
“Please leave, Lady Yoruichi,” Sui-Feng says. Yoruichi blinks. Sui-Feng is clenching her jaw so tightly it looks painful, and her arms crossed over her chest look less commanding and more like she’s holding onto herself.
“Do you really want that?” Yoruichi asks.
“I am about to be very upset.” Sui-Feng’s voice trembles a bit. Yoruichi hasn’t heard that in a hundred years, and she rarely heard it before then. Sui-Feng had never liked showing emotion, vulnerability, even with Yoruichi. More shinigami nonsense that Yoruichi had almost forgotten about in the intervening decades.
“That doesn’t bother me,” Yoruichi says. “Does it bother you?” Sui-Feng doesn’t respond. She sits down on the edge of her bed and doesn’t meet Yoruichi’s eyes.
“You know,” Yoruichi says, standing up on the windowsill and stretching, “in the human world, they have therapy animals.”
“What are you talking about.” It’s not a question. Sui-Feng’s voice is too strained by her rapid breathing for that.
“Therapy animals,” Yoruichi says again. “Calm, well-behaved animals for people who are going through hard times. Humans find it comforting to spend time with them.” Despite her obvious anxiety, Sui-Feng manages a quiet, disdainful laugh.
“Would you describe yourself as calm and well-behaved, Lady Yoruichi?” she asks. Yoruichi is—frankly, Yoruichi is delighted. It’s exactly the kind of snarky, mocking comment that Sui-Feng rarely gave voice to before, but Yoruichi knew had always been on her mind. It’s why she wants to fix this. It’s why she’s trying so hard. So that Sui-Feng will talk to her like this.
“I can stay,” Yoruichi says. No matter how much she wants to engage in the banter, this is not the time. “I can even pretend to be asleep, if you want.” She almost leaves it at that, but Sui-Feng looks like she might say no. “I don’t want to leave you alone.” A long moment passes, and then Sui-Feng nods.
Yoruichi leaps from the windowsill into Sui-Feng’s lap. She circles for a moment before lying down, curling up into a ball. Sui-Feng’s hesitant hands find her, running carefully over her fur. Yoruichi makes good on her offer, not saying a word as Sui-Feng cries mostly silently, the occasional teardrop landing on her fur.
“I hate you,” Sui-Feng says softly. Yoruichi risks a glance and finds Sui-Feng looking away, head tilted back to look at the ceiling as her hands stroke blindly down Yoruichi’s back. “I hate you. Why do you still know everything about me?”
Yoruichi says nothing, and pretends she didn’t hear.
Yoruichi can’t stay away for long. She left the Second Division barracks that morning, when Sui-Feng had once again asked her to leave, this time in a steady voice. She’d wandered Seireitei for awhile, checked in with the children. Ichigo is healing at a frightening rate. Yoruichi is glad that the kid is so stubbornly caring, or she’d worry for the future of the universe. At the rate he’s gaining power…
But that’s a pointless worry, and Yoruichi has somewhere important to be. She’s returning to Sui-Feng’s quarters in the barracks, this time armed with takeout from a noodle place that they had frequented a hundred years ago. It’s still sitting in the same place in the first district of Rukon, still operated by the same old man. The food even smells the same. Once again, Yoruichi feels different. Older, almost, for being the only thing here that’s changed.
She’s in human form now, and decides to take the slow route through the Seireitei, bag in one hand as she wanders the endless maze-like streets. She passes quite a few shinigami on her way, none of whom she recognizes. Unseated soldiers, all of them, and none of them old enough to remember her. Weaker souls don’t tend to survive that long in this line of work, after all. Mostly, they give her strange looks for her clothing, recognizing her as one of the pardoned ryoka, but nothing more.
No one even stops her in the Second Division. The training grounds are empty at dinnertime, and the shinigami Yoruichi passes in the hallway pay her no mind. They avoid eye contact and say nothing. Even the guards she knows must be hiding somewhere near Sui-Feng’s door do not emerge to disturb her. The order to leave the ryoka alone does not extend to unaccompanied strangers wandering the innermost reaches of division barracks. Sui-Feng must have given her own order.
Yoruichi knocks on the door. She realizes as she waits for a response that she has no idea if Sui-Feng is even here. She could be at the mess hall, or in her office, or quite literally any other place in Soul Society.
“Madam Shihouin.” Yoruichi cringes at the address, but turns to face its source. A masked shinigami stands beside her, only his eyes visible behind his uniform. “The captain is in her office, if you are looking for her.”
“Thanks.” The shinigami nods, and flash steps away immediately. It’s an impressive speed, even for a seated officer—which Yoruichi assumes he must be, if he’s responsible for guarding Sui-Feng—but it’s as slow as a casual walk to Yoruichi’s eyes. She tracks him easily as he slips out a window. The roof, huh. Not the best place for a bodyguard. It would be hard for him to get to Sui-Feng fast enough if something went truly wrong. Yoruichi had always preferred to have Sui-Feng close to her, kneeling just inside the door to her bedroom when it was her turn to take the overnight shift. But then, there had been…extenuating circumstances. Yoruichi can admit that much to herself.
Unbidden, Yoruichi recalls another conversation she had had with Kukaku, once, circling much the same subject as her memory from this morning. Do you like it, Kukaku had asked, that she looks at you like that?
Yoruichi had laughed it off at the time. Now, she can admit that she had liked it. Some part of her wants that back. But why? Maybe she just likes the attention. Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe she’s selfish, at the end of the day, and just misses being worshipped.
Or maybe that’s not it at all.
Yoruichi knocks on Sui-Feng’s office door.
“Enter,” Sui-Feng’s voice calls. It’s short, terse, almost angry in tone. The kind of tone one takes with subordinates when having a bad day. Yoruichi listens to it, tracks the burst of warmth it causes in her chest, and concludes that no, she isn’t selfish. At least not the way she had wondered. It isn’t about the worship, she just wants Sui-Feng back, in whatever form she can get now.
But what to call that?
“Hey,” Yoruichi says as she slides open the door. Sui-Feng’s eyes widen slightly as she looks up, registering Yoruichi’s identity. “I brought dinner.” She holds up the bag.
“Come inside,” Sui-Feng says after a moment. “Close the door behind you.” Yoruichi obeys. She carries the bag of food across the room and sets it on the edge of Sui-Feng’s desk, in a spot clear of paper. The stacks look organized, but there are many of them. Yoruichi slips into the lone chair on this side of Sui-Feng’s desk and leans it back on two legs. “You didn’t need to do this,” Sui-Feng murmurs as she opens the bag of food.
“I wanted to,” Yoruichi says with a shrug. Sui-Feng looks at her.
“You’re trying to make me feel better about this morning,” she says.
“So?” Yoruichi says defensively. “You’re supposed to say thank you. Haven’t you ever had a friend try to make you feel better before?” Sui-Feng looks at her silently for long enough to make Yoruichi uncomfortable.
“I don’t have many friends,” Sui-Feng says finally. “My job is not conducive to it.” She’s finally found something Yoruichi can’t argue with. Assassin isn’t the most personable job description. She’d been lonely, too, when she’d been captain, at least until Sui-Feng came along. “I have tea with Captain Kuchiki occasionally,” Sui-Feng says, which draws Yoruichi out out of her thoughts and nearly makes her choke on air.
“Byakuya?” she says. “Seriously?” Sui-Feng raises an eyebrow at her. “He’s a dick.” The man had nearly killed Ichigo just for the chance to kill his sister less than a week ago.
“Hm.” Sui-Feng returns her attention to the bag of food, handing Yoruichi her container of noodles and taking her own. “He understands me in many ways. We have quite a bit in common.”
“What could you and Byakuya possibly have in common?” The moment Yoruichi asks the question, she starts to find answers for it. There’s a veritable list, really. Both he and Sui-Feng cling to their cold, angry affects like life preservers. They both have an unwavering loyalty to the Gotei Thirteen that borders on dogma. They both revere the noble families and the traditions of Soul Society, even if Byakuya’s reverence comes from his superiority complex and Sui-Feng’s comes from her inclination towards servitude. They both care deeply about what they think should be held sacred.
They both carry great loss.
“More than you might expect,” Sui-Feng says, and turns to her food. Yoruichi sits in silence for a moment, the magnitude of her actions once more weighing heavy atop her.
“I’m sorry for leaving you,” she blurts. Sui-Feng stops, chopsticks halfway to her mouth. She does not move. Yoruichi’s resolve cracks. “For leaving you to Byakuya’s company,” she amends, half of a joking tone falling flat in her voice. Sui-Feng’s eyes flick up to meet hers. She offers Yoruichi a small smile at the joke. Yoruichi recognizes the emotion in it as pity, and the smile as an olive branch. Yet another olive branch that she has no right to. Here Sui-Feng is again, letting Yoruichi into her office, her space, letting her interrupt Sui-Feng’s work with distractions and apologies that she can’t even commit to.
They eat in silence for awhile. Yoruichi can’t think of what to break it with. She tries to imagine what Byakuya and Sui-Feng might speak about, and comes up with nothing but their shared interest in the honor of the Gotei Thirteen. Do they just sit around discussing the great Gotei Thirteen’s great achievements? Given Sui-Feng’s burst of anger that morning, Yoruichi kind of doubts it. Do they discuss the things they find an affront to that honor, then? They may actually agree on that, and with that thought, an idea occurs to Yoruichi.
“Byakuya and Kurotsuchi probably have no love lost between them, huh?” she says. Sui-Feng eyes her curiously. “What with Kurotsuchi being a stain on the great honor of Soul Society and all that.”
“What’s your point?” Sui-Feng asks. Her eyes flash, and if Yoruichi were a bit smarter, or perhaps a bit more attuned to Sui-Feng’s body language these days, she would note it for the danger sign that it is. She does not.
“Ukitake and Kyoraku aren’t his biggest fans, either,” Yoruichi continues, gaining momentum. “And I doubt Hitsugaya likes him, he’s a nice kid. And Unohana has had to patch up enough of Kurotsuchi’s failed test subjects to want him gone.”
“What,” Sui-Feng says, “exactly are you getting at, Lady Yoruichi?”
“Nothing, really,” Yoruichi says, and she can hear the satisfaction in her own tone that belies the words. “Just that if seven of the thirteen captains—or ten captains, now—can’t stand one of their colleagues, there might be grounds for getting rid of him.”
“There are not,” Sui-Feng says. “That is not how the Gotei Thirteen functions, as you well know. Kurotsuchi’s decisions in leading his division are entirely his own, no matter if others find them despicable, no matter if they break laws. So long as his actions aren’t treasonous, he is free to do as he pleases. Even to his own subordinates.”
“Well then, maybe the Gotei Thirteen should change,” Yoruichi says, and realizes as she’s saying it that she sounds just like Ichigo. Maybe the kid has had more of an impact on her than she thought. He’s an idiot, true, and a child, and utterly insane for taking on all of Soul Society for Kuchiki Rukia without even understanding her importance, but he kind of has a point.
Sui-Feng scoffs.
“Where was all of this enthusiasm for change when you were a captain?” she asks. Yoruichi flinches back.
“Kurotsuchi wasn’t a captain then,” she says.
“We both know that the Gotei Thirteen’s problems did not start with Kurotsuchi, or any other one person that you dislike.” Yoruichi can’t argue with that. She’s particularly incensed with Kurotsuchi right now, given what she’d overheard from Ishida, but he is not the source of Soul Society’s rot. Yoruichi slouches in her chair, feeling smaller underneath Sui-Feng’s gaze. There’s truth to what Sui-Feng isn’t saying—that Yoruichi had been unwilling to push for the changes she’s telling Sui-Feng to push for. That instead of trying to fix things, she left.
So maybe Sui-Feng is right. Maybe Yoruichi is a coward.
“So we’re the same, then,” Yoruichi says, crossing her arms. “You won’t try, either.”
“It is not my job to.” Sui-Feng leans back in her chair, closing her eyes for a moment. “I do not want to fight with you, Lady Yoruichi. I never—“ She cuts herself off.
“You never,” Yoruichi repeats.
“If we can’t eat in peace, could we at least eat in silence?” It’s almost a plea, and Yoruichi relents. She doesn’t want to fight, either; she just can’t seem to stop pushing, and every spot is a sore spot with them now.
“Tell me about something else, then,” Yoruichi says. “When did you discover shunko?”
They make it through the rest of the dinner relatively peacefully. Yoruichi restrains herself from expressing just how proud she finds herself while listening to Sui-Feng’s recitation of the arduous process of inventing shunko for herself. She has a feeling the sentiment wouldn’t be welcome, no matter how earnest it is. Eventually, she leaves Sui-Feng to her work, and decides to count the evening as a success. Proof that, with enough work and enough careful sidestepping, the two of them can enjoy their time together again.