fic: letters (bleach x-over)

LETTERS

?

Satoko,


They say you’re happy now.


Are you happy… Having scorned me like this, are you happy? Despite everything that we have shared since childhood, the elegance your father taught me and the love that you showed me, you still agreed to this marriage to Kuchiki Byakuya. I didn’t know you were so greedy. Then again, the other night I went to a brothel in Rukongai and quickly realised, in that way you’re no better than a common prostitute, willing to sell yourself and your ideals for coin. It was obviously my own mistake, to think you raised above such lowliness.


Then again, everyone knows where Kuchiki Byakuya’s first wife came from. You might be just to his tastes.


I see only one way of rectifying this mistake. If you haven’t been truthful to your new husband about where you come from, and I don’t imagine you have, for what happy marriage can possibly start with you leaving me in this manner, I suppose you give me no choice but to tell the truth on your behalf.


Listen for your name in the streets tomorrow, into which I have sent Iinuma just now to talk as he does best, you won’t be able to escape your connection to me anymore. Let’s see what happiness lies for you in trying.


Matsugae Kiyoaki.



A week later.



Satoko,


They no longer call you happy, have you heard? They call you something else now. They say that you serve two masters, that you belong to two men at once, the same way a dancing girl in Rukongai can belong to four or five, perhaps you should consider upping your count, if you’re really that greedy.


Just know, it’ll take a lot at this point, if you should wish for me to accept your feelings again – and I might not do so without putting some money into it, since apparently that is the only language of love that you understand.


Really, I’m only returning the lesson you taught me.


And don’t worry, I do not expect your thanks, and I do not need your gratitude either. The one thing your family truly showed me was that upper nobility do not put much stock in fairness, you will all rather be rich than righteous.


Let’s see where that lands you, in the end.


Matsugae Kiyoaki.

fic: developments (bleach x-over)

DEVELOPMENTS

?

Although it is Byakuya-sama who breaks the kiss, he doesn't leave her feeling wrong or out of line for her initiative, not with the way he leans their foreheads together afterwards, their noses aligning, his bangs hanging soft - like reminders of a constraint he is no longer wearing in any physical sense - against her skin. Brushes of softness that match the light of the setting sun and the quietness of the next half hour where she simply sits close to him, feeling the outline of his body that she would give herself to in an instant, but he isn't asking it of her, and perhaps she can be grateful for that, too. Perhaps the way he doesn't force her onwards, neither of them, truly, is what sets him apart from anything and anyone she has known before.


And once the half hour is up, she gracefully rises from her kneeling position, taking her wringed, wrought cloth with his blood, holding it like another gift between her fingers, as she bids him goodnight much the same way she did upon arrival.


Some things start where you would expect a natural end, she thinks, walking back the way she came.



*



The next day, she sends Ume to her parents' house to ask her mother for the recipe for dry-fried maitake with sprouts and Ume returns with one of her mother's usual, extensive lists that she, then, gives to the Kuckiki manor's own kitchen staff, asking them to prepare the meal without straying from the recipe. Follow it precisely, she says. The cook bows to her with the utmost astonishment, it is the first time he has seen her in his kitchen, after all, and she tells him to pack up the food in a bento and have it sent to Byakuya-sama for lunch at work. Please have it done no more than a half hour in advance, she instructs him, it is best lukewarm.


Yes, mistress, he replies, bowing a second time.


She goes back to her quarters quietly, Ume helping her change into her daytime kimono, styling her hair, and all the while Satoko stares at herself in the mirror, at her eyes that have livened up and her complexion that looks more glowing, so even Ume dares to comment on it, and she thinks, I'm someone's wife now, reaching up to push a stray lock of long, dark hair out of her face, where it's draped itself across her forehead, the same place he touched the night before. It's the first time...


Ume smiles at her, holding the second mirror up, so Satoko can inspect her work on her hair. Until recently, Satoko always wore her hair loose, perhaps held up by a bow, but the elaborate, intricate styles of married women were like a future she could barely envision herself living. Now, her neck is left bare to the elements, her floral face cream making her skin shine with moisture and life.


It's a part of herself she no longer minds displaying to the world.



*



A week later, Ume and a couple of their security accompany her to the nearby market. That, too, is a first. She hasn't left the house on her own for anything but to cross the district to her parents' home for more than six months.


As she walks among the stalls, she can hear her name, her full name, her new name, whispered excitedly amongst vendors and visitors alike, while every stall welcomes her with free samples and tiny bamboo plates of food to taste - and she is gracious about it, of course, as she has been brought up to be, she has Ume carry everything and she only ever takes one bite, so as not to get too full or spill on her clothes in the process. Ume whispers to her about the quality of the fabrics they're contemplating, beautiful patterns of cherry blossoms for spring, a tailor could have a kimono ready before winter.


The vendor bestows them enough yards of it for a whole set, kimono and matching obi, free of charge. It would be my honor, Kuchiki-sama, if a woman of your beauty would wear this lowly design, he tells her, when the pattern is much more intricate than just that. It looks like a thick cluster of cherry blossoms across the middle, cutting the pale blue background in half. She would drown in blossoms, wearing it.


Satoko thinks of Byakuya-sama and thinks, perhaps that would be a sweet fate.


Leaving with an armful of silk, Ume smiles at her, head bowed discreetly, as they both catch the vendor muttering excitedly to his assistant, didn't Kuchiki-sama look beatiful? So glowing, she shone from happiness, don't you think?


The assistant's reply doesn't travel the distance, but just the notion that it can be seen on her face, how she feels, it fills Satoko with a sense of pride that she hasn't known before. Something more integral that pride in family and pride in position or name. It's more personal than that. It comes from a more deep-seated place.


I'm proud of who I am, she realizes, halfway on her way back to the manor. I'm proud of who I am, when I'm his.


Like the kiss, days prior, the thought leaves her body warm. Satisfied.

fic: narratives (bleach x-over)

NARRATIVES

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He is waiting for Honda by the marketplace, when he sees her.


Since her attack on him months and months prior, Kiyoaki has steadily pushed her from his mind, an exercise he's rightly proud of. Although he doesn't go with his father, of course, he has begun frequenting the same brothels in Rukongai and perhaps as a result of that, he has started feeling a certain distaste for women altogether. None of those cheap girls display half the elegance that Satoko possessed, that emblem of high-class and noble birth. He has looked high and low for it, but not found its match anywhere.


That little detail has irritated him to no end.


Then, he hears the people around him excitedly mutter, Kuchiki-sama's wife, look! - and although he knows who he will see, Kiyoaki cannot help look. She is wearing an early fall design on her kimono, as if she alone is the herald of the changing seasons, it would be like her, to see that as her job, wouldn't it? Kiyoaki follows her with his eyes, far enough away that he can easily watch her in discretion from behind a vendor's stall.


She is whispering to a servant girl, looking at silk fabrics while tasting a small portion of seasoned rice, scooping one bite up with her fingers before the servant takes the plate and gives her a cloth to wipe her hands in. The journey from hand to mouth makes Kiyoaki feel suddenly swept away on a wave of ceaseless desire. He's done things with the girls in Rukongai that Satoko never let him do back then, out of respect for her family's wishes for her, and now that he knows what it feels like, he can't help imagine... wonder...


If she'd just have given herself over to him, wholly and fully!


Behind him, two elderly ladies, sitting in a soup stall, are leaning out to look at Satoko, too, one whispering to the other, it must be a sign of a successful marriage, when a wife looks so beautiful, what do you say, Yuumi-san?


She must be very happy, Yuumi-san replies.


Kiyoaki stares and stares at the "happy wife" until she disappears around a corner, silk fabrics in tow. Things he'd never been able to even buy her, she now gets for free, merely due to some noble bastard's name?


Before Honda arrives, Kiyoaki has left without a word.