Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

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Considering how little time he spent talking to her, most people would have been surprised to know how much time Kuchiki Byakuya spent thinking about his little sister.

He thought about how much like Hisana she was, and how it would have been if only he'd found her before he lost his wife. He thought about how lighthearted she could be when she thought he wasn't looking, and wondered if that was something he should try to dissuade, or to encourage. But mostly he thought about her responsibilities as a Kuchiki, which was a topic she didn't seem to be thinking about at all.

From almost the day of her adoption, he'd taken it as a horrible, inevitable fact that she would someday marry Abarai Renji. It was written in the way that the kid looked at her and the way that every time Byakuya tried to converse with her at dinner Rukia would inevitably begin to talk about Abarai—and then abruptly change the subject when she realized how indecorous it was to enthuse about Abarai's childhood aptitude for petty theft.

The problem wasn't just that Abarai was from Rukongai, although of course Byakuya would have preferred someone from a noble family. It was the way that Byakuya would visit the Academy and see Abarai race around a corner, slam into a couple of first-years when he wasn't looking, and then emit a stream of curses. It was the way Abarai seemed to view delivering a hearty kick to a classmate from behind as a valid form of friendly greeting. It was how Byakuya had once spotted Abarai asleep in a tree. Who would sleep in a tree? In the middle of the day, no less.

And then, of course, there was the unavoidable fact that the kid had showed a total inability to master even the most basic kidou. That was the final straw that left Byakuya praying that Rukia would meet somebody, anybody else that she could enthuse about at dinner; it was one thing to have a potential Kuchiki who was an unmannerly, careless, disrespectful, reckless, loud, brutish, ungovernable ruffian, but it was quite another to have a potential Kuchiki who was all these things and also could not perform a simple Red Flame Cannon without causing bodily injury to himself.

Still, he'd had hopes. He'd kept an eye on the boy, and had been reassured for a little while by the fact that at least Abarai had been in the advanced class. See? he'd thought. He'll become a captain, and Rukia will marry him, and everything will be fine. Then Renji was chosen by Captain Aizen's division, and if anyone was a model for proper behavior, thought Byakuya, it was Aizen. So surely everything would turn out all right after all.

"Yes, it was a shame," Aizen had said to him over tea, with that gentle smile of his. "But I think Abarai-kun will be much better suited to Zaraki-taichou's style of leadership."

"I see," Byakuya had said.

He'd gone home that day with a headache.

Weren't there plenty of young men available who ought to have leapt at the chance to marry into the Kuchiki family? For a while, Byakuya had his eye on Kira Izuru, who seemed ideal: he was from a minor noble family, polite, a vice-captain—and Byakuya approved of his hairstyle, to which he thought kenseikan might make a fine addition. Unfortunately, though, every time Byakuya brought Kira up in conversation, Rukia just began talking about how Abarai and Kira were best friends, which inevitably led back to talking about just Abarai, until Byakuya gave up that tactic.

But there were others, that was the point. Hisagi Shuuhei, a perfectly nice, responsible vice-captain . . . unfortunately, all his good points were offset by the fact that he'd felt the need to tattoo that on his cheek. Kuchikis didn't do that. And, well, if they did it one time, on their birthday, they certainly didn't tattoo it on their face.

Or Oomaeda Marechiyo. He was wealthy, and a vice-captain, so surely he had some kind of competency not immediately apparent, even if he did eat crackers in the officers' meetings.

Byakuya tried bringing up their names over dinner. (Perhaps Hisagi would be willing to change his tattoo into an 88.) But Rukia just said, "Oh, Nii-sama is thinking about who will be chosen next to be a captain?"

Byakuya began to despair.

In the meantime, Abarai became sixth seat of the eleventh division, and also began wearing various forms of pointless and overpriced eyewear over his unusual hairline (Byakuya secretly desperately wanted to know if Renji actually shaved it that way or it was just a very odd manifestation of male pattern balding), in imitation of Iba, the one vice-captain Byakuya would least want anyone to imitate.

Byakuya would often pass by the eleventh division's training yard and hear Abarai yelling "Howl, Zabimaru!" at the top of his lungs, and then go to the fourth division and ask for yet another headache remedy. Did it have to be "howl," of all things? Couldn't Abarai have a more refined release command, like "scatter," or "dance," or "sit upon the frozen heavens"? (Byakuya thought Hitsugaya-taichou's release command would work especially well for a Kuchiki; it was a shame he was so young.)

Please, Hisana, he found himself thinking on his increasingly regular nighttime walks. Anyone else. Someone from Rukongai, even—as long as it's not Abarai. Just anyone, anyone who's not Abarai Renji.

Selecting Abarai as his new vice-captain was his last, desperate effort to save Rukia. If he could just get Abarai away from the eleventh division's influence, perhaps Abarai could learn by Byakuya's example. Of course, it would be hell for Byakuya, but he was willing to do it for his little sister.

Then Rukia disappeared, and Byakuya was so busy worrying about other things that he forgot to worry about Rukia's marriage. But it had never occurred to him to think about who this boy was who had grabbed the edge of his hakama or exactly why Rukia had stayed in the transient world—because it was simply so unthinkable that a shinigami would have a relationship with a human. It just absolutely had never been done, ever. It was unimaginable.

Until the point when Byakuya was recovering in the infirmary, with Abarai at his side, as it happened, and then Kurosaki stuck his head through the window and said—well, shouted—that he was looking for Rukia.

And then Byakuya got it—somewhat late, he had to admit.

The way Kurosaki had shouted "Rukia!" when he came to save her.

The way Rukia had said "Ichigo!" in reply.

The "anybody other than Renji" he'd been praying for had arrived . . . and he was Kurosaki Ichigo.

This, this human, with the shikai like a ridiculous oversized meat cleaver and the bankai that was an insult to all proper bankai, who addressed him as Byakuya, who apparently gave no more thought to any action than "Can I do it? Okay then!" and who was incapable of speaking below a shout and who jumped through windows without the slightest thought for propriety or dignity—

This was the person for whom Rukia apparently now had feelings.

Even Renji noticed the expression of horror that Byakuya couldn't quite repress.

It was like some terrible cosmic joke, he thought, lying in bed with his eyes closed. If it wasn't Kurosaki Why-Am-I-Named-Like-A-Strawberry Ichigo, it was Abarai Angry Eyebrows Renji. If it wasn't Abarai Eh,-I'll-Shower-Later Renji, it was Kurosaki A-Door?-What's-That? Ichigo. Either way, one of the two was going to become his—he twitched—brother-in-law. He groaned.

"Are you okay, Captain Kuchiki?" Renji asked from his bedside. "Should I call Captain Unohana?"

Byakuya ignored him, hoping he'd go away.

After it was all over, Byakuya noticed that Rukia was still hopping over to the human world frequently, with Renji often accompanying her. Byakuya wished all her affairs weren't quite so obscure to him, but he couldn't exactly go up and ask her, "So, did you pick the idiot or the other idiot?"

But at dinner, he did try to praise Renji as much as he could without seeming suspicious. At least Renji still called him "Captain Kuchiki." And . . . well, at least he could still kick Renji's ass.

It just went to show, you never knew how much worse things could really be.

A/N: Please review!

Also, I don't necessarily share Byakuya's views. He is a snob and I actually like both Renji and Ichigo (and Byakuya too).

I based almost all of this out of the chapter -17 flashback and the flashback parts of the anime, so I did my best to keep it true to canon. Academy!Renji does appear to have quite a fondness for kicking people, as Byakuya says, ahem, "from behind." Of course Rukia is equally violent with her friends, especially Renji and Ichigo, but I think Byakuya has a bit of a blind spot regarding that. :3