Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. It is the property of Tite Kubo; I merely borrow the characters for my own amusement.

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Suite Mort

i. Allemande

When Urahara Kisuke first came into contact with his diminutive vice-captain, his first impression was petite and how in the world does she manage in battle? His customary, simpleton’s expression must have spoken somewhat to his thoughts, for they were abruptly cut off by a vicious, sandaled kick to the face, which could not have been much bigger than the palm of his hand.

That is not to say that it didn’t hurt.

(Which it did. A foot in the face tends to.)

dichotomy

Kisuke knows that he is not a good person. Far from it—in fact, he will admit that he is what some people call evil. He can ignore their whispered murmurings and their hushed speculations, because what he trying to achieve is inherently good. Science and research can only be for the good of all human-and-shinigami-kind.

(But ask him what good is, how something can be good and the answer received is no answer at all.)

Kisuke meddles with the rhythms and rhymes of life, and if that is evil then so be it, because that is what he does. A scientist who meddles and discovers something new is perhaps evil, but that is what he is.

And there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

discord

Hiyori is a wild force unbridled, set loose in a maelstrom of chaos and confusion in his otherwise systematic and logical world. Where he walks, Hiyori storms, where he talks, Hiyori yells – at the top of her lungs – where he merely exists—

Hiyori lives.

Kisuke examines the wreckage of his ideals, his acknowledged environment with a critical eye – hers, both naïve and jaded – and realizes a smile rises unbidden to his features.

The world exists with science, but the only science which exists in her world is the simple mechanism of living, as violently, as chaotically as possible, and quite frankly, the more mess left behind the better.

He sees her bludgeon her way through day after otherwise-monotonous day and Kisuke begins to wonder, as scientists do.

He wonders that his reasoning – so intricate, so carefully conceived – appears as but folly against her simple truth.

Hiyori turns up her nose and scoffs at his goals – that now seem somewhat superfluous – and Captain Kisuke Urahara, Genius Scientist Extraordinaire—

He almost agrees. Almost, nearly, not quite.

Almost.

ii. Sarabande

Hiyori’s fighting skills are drastically disproportionate to her tiny stature. When she has finished terrorizing her way out of his office – talking to him always seems to put her in a bad mood for some odd reason – and he has picked up all the pieces of his door – the fourth one this week – Kisuke has time to sit down and maybe think.

As the dust settles, he has time to do what he likes best, thinking his way around the mysteries of life, and everything in between.

Hiyori happens to qualify amongst the top three.

deportment

Hiyori is incredibly small, notably so, and the hypersensitivity her height engenders leads to many a bruise for the offender, and many a quiet chuckle for him.

Kisuke sees that she is delicate, a miniature figurine that could be set aside and admired. But in the next second, he quickly sees that she is so much more than that, not merely a doll upon a pedestal, set upon a stand so that others may decide her future, no.

Like a rampant river, Hiyori charts her own course, cutting a swathe through those who aspire to force her otherwise, with the edge of her tongue or the blade of her sword.

Most of the time – nearly all – a distinction between the two doesn’t even exist.

desire

He sees her every day after all, and it is only natural that he be able to describe her down to the minutest detail.

(He is – secretly – the most renowned scientist throughout the Seireitei, which is why, or so he tells himself.)

Her face is like the rest of her – tiny, finely chiseled – with a light smattering of freckles across her small, button nose that he finds inordinately charming. Her clavicle is dainty, like the kiss of a butterfly’s wing, barely protruding from her skin. A thin layer of muscle covers her humerus, over the radius and ulna, to stretch over the carpals and phalanges, all spanning the length of his own forearm.

(He ascertained this one suicidal moment one dreary office hour, taking her hand and holding her arm up next to his, which in turn earned him a bruise that lasted for a month.)

Hiyori isn’t just small and skinny, her bone structure is thin and slight and featherweight, as if they were hollow, like a bird’s. Her miniscule form seems to take no space at all, to weight nothing, as if the next second she would float away and never come back.

But for all her looks there is nothing breakable, gentle, delicate about Hiyori—her manners are atrocious and her speech vulgar, but Kisuke sometimes thinks that even the graceful swing of the Shihouin princess, or the gentle beauty of the Healer Captain has nothing that remotely compares to the clumsy, careless way his vice-captain bulldozes her way through everything, be it people, furniture, buildings, even him.

Hiyori is the explosion of an experiment gone spectacularly wrong, a hypothesis only applicable to the most impossible of trials, Hiyori is—

Hiyori.

And not for the first time, his learned vocabulary fails him—for the first time, one of his analyses holds no conclusion.

iii. Gigue

His office rings out each day with a chorus of slaps, bangs, yells that don’t emanate from any building but his, and no other division causes more complaints from others than his.

Even though the division building lies outside the main complex. Far outside.

Kisuke realizes belatedly at times that it really doesn’t befit a genius of his stature to continue provoking his diminutive lieutenant as he does. As he dodges the next sally of test tubes, beakers, bundles of notes – basically everything she can get her hands on that has been replaced since the last spontaneous barrage – he often has to work to smother the almost silly, cat-with-cream grin from his features.

In case she sees and starts with the kidou next.

(in)direct

When he isn’t looking, when she thinks he isn’t paying attention, Hiyori looks – upwards – at her captain and a scowl creases her brow, a customary expression made common with the institution of this new, curious, indecipherable captain.

Somewhere deep down, she resents his presence where her beloved mother-figure should be. There is nothing giving, nothing warm about Urahara-Shmahara.

Nothing special. So she says.

But the more she spends in the office overtime, the more she sees his wholesale devotion to his work as he works alongside his subordinates, without complaint. The more often she leaves the division building, eyes blurry with fatigue at an ungodly hour of the morning, the more often she returns to duty and sees him, Captain Urahara, busily working away at the same tedious experiment, alone and quite without assistance. Completely absorbed.

And slowly, hesitantly, Hiyori begins to respect him, this scatterbrained excuse for a man, for a replacement captain. Gradually, grudgingly, Hiyori begins to heed his words, worry for him, care for him, in the unfeeling, shriveled little lump that she likes to believe acts as her heart.

Kisuke sees this and the façade – that of the silly, air-headed idiot – he maintains for his colleagues appears more often, and stays for longer. He looks at Hiyori, diminutive, minute Hiyori and he is satisfied.

She may not think so, but her heart may be the biggest part of her. When Hiyori feels, she feels with her entire being—there are no in-betweens.

And so too is he happy. Deliriously, unabashedly so.

damned

The vice-captain often dances attendance upon their captain, but Kisuke has often forgone such a tradition for the sake of her strained sanity (a state that progressively worsens at further contact with him). But more and more he feels her at his side, more than the companionable chill of Mayuri, fellow scientist, fellow twisted-being.

More and more he realizes that Hiyori hardly reaches past his waist, in a distressingly drastic difference in height, and likely in ages. He never asked.

She never offered.

iv. Dirge

Now, when he thinks back, he can almost hear her cry of pain, almost smell the blood – her blood – almost feel that damnably sharp blade bite into her flesh, ripping into that petite, dainty form.

He wasn’t there, and the gore, the nightmare is likely residing only in his imagination. It’s a bit of a problem at times, when the jar of sake is several cups short, and the stinging fumes aren’t enough to drive from his mind those images, sharp in Technicolor.

The real problem is that he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there to see, and the events exist only in his imagination.

He wasn’t there.

v. sans Encore

He expects that there is a gaping hollow now – and he never puns – where her heart (the biggest, largest, most beautiful part of her) used to be, and each day he spends in a gigai drives the realization deeper home, where he still has his.

It was his fault—he wasn’t there. When she needed him most, he wasn’t there—he couldn’t stop the blade, for all his perceived talent, for all the power he had accumulated.

He failed her. And of everything he had done, had blundered, that alone tolls the eternal rings of shame, resounding forevermore in a dance-step about that immutable monument of regret.

And Captain Kisuke Urahara, Genius Scientist Extraordinaire, finds that his intellect fails him—

Again.