Byakuya stares in disbelief as Renji breaks binding spell and lunges at him with his sword raised.

Blood splatters against the earth.

A broken blade tumbles to the ground. Renji's sword wasn't strong enough to pierce Byakuya's chest.

Zabimaru shatters completely and blood erupts from Renji's body.

He falls forward, grasping at Byakuya's scarf in a desperate attempt to keep fighting even as his body is giving up on him. "...God dammit..." He coughs up blood before collapsing.

Byakuya's face is marred by a few drops of Renji's blood and there is a larger stain on the scarf he always has around his neck.

He looks down at Renji, "How admirable." He pulls off the scarf, a priceless family heirloom, and tosses it over Renji as a form of respect... or perhaps as a sort of death shroud. "Your fangs actually reached me."

Byakuya turns away, abandoning his former vice-captain to the ruins of the battlefield.

Renji lays there, lost in memory...

"It's best not to get close to her any more," Rukia walks away with Byakuya by her side. Renji watches this while listening to Izuru's advice. "That's both for your sake and for her sake. She should know that she's no longer like the rest of us."

"Heeh, those are some high goals. Stronger than Kuchiki Byakuya... huh," Ikkaku downs a saucer of sake with a grim look. "That's speaking of hardship."

"Don't you hate that?" Yumichika sits nearby him, back when Renji was a member of the 11th division. "It's more easy to destroy than it is to create. It's always been more difficult to bind together than it is to unravel."

The ties between Renji and Rukia unraveled on the day she was invited to join the Kuchiki household. Renji tried to encourage her decision with false cheerfulness and Rukia walked away, dejected.

Renji stares at his left hand, the same hand he had placed on her shoulder when he told her how great it would be to join the Kuchiki family.

His vision blurs as everything falls into an abyss.

~*~*~

Rukia stands still near the middle of the long bridge leading from the White Tower to the Dual Terminus. She looks off the side with a lost look. "...Ren...ji...?" she whispers.

It can't be... she breaks away from the shrouded guards surrounding her. Up to this point, it had been too large to tell whose it was... but now there's no mistake that the spiritual pressure that vanished just now was Renji's...

The guards grab her and try to hold her back. "Why... Why did you... RENJI!!" she screams.

The floorboards of the bridge creak ominously as a visitor approaches the execution procession. Rukia looks up with a sense of foreboding.

"Mornin'," The 3rd Captain strides toward her with a vicious smile. "How you doing, Rukia-chan?"

Rukia stares at him in shock and fear, "Ichimaru...Gin...!"

Note:
-The first part of the chapter is silent and very dramatic, so it doesn't matter how hard I try - the summary would pale in comparison. So as you can tell, I wasn't trying too hard... Gomen. ^^;
-"Redder than a rose, Brighter than a lily" This chapter title was taken from a latin love poem. Check out this earlier post made by myth720.

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