Pairing: Kukaku Shiba x Yoruichi Shihoin

Music: Reconstructing Alice, by The Melting Clock

Word count: ~ 4200

Rating: T

A/N: This is a product of insomnia, crossing too many time zones, and a comment the lovely pinksnowboots made a while back about exploring this pairing. I claim no part. Well, not much of one.

Prompt 58: Enemy Gate

Soul Society was the perfect fairytale kingdom. Its king was wise and handsome, and had once been a prince who went on grand adventures. Its queen was beautiful and kind, and had once been a princess under an evil spell. They had three daughters, each lovelier then the last, and all well versed in the art of being proper damsels in distress.

The kingdom also had evil sorcerers and magicians beating at the gate, as any in that realm should have had to be proper. There were enchanted woods with unicorn's pools, gryphons' aeries high in the mountains, and dragons' caves filled with gold and the bones of fallen heroes.

Witches lived in swamps, fairies in meadows, and princesses in the castle. Soul Society was the perfect fairytale kingdom.

Kūkaku hated it.

According to tradition, she should have been old, hunchbacked, warty, and ugly. Quite the opposite was true, though. She was young, tall, had clear skin, and was in fact considered rather pretty for all that she was a witch.

As she was supposed to, she lived in a small cottage in the deepest, darkest part of the woods. She brewed potions until they came out her ears, practiced her cackle until her throat was sore, placed curses on unsuspecting maidens, and gathered enough belladonna and nightshade to stuff a bed several times over.

Kūkaku didn't care for the act one bit. She loved to fly on her broomstick, true, but she also liked helping people, taking long walks in the sunlight, and singing to or playing with the animals that lived around her cottage. She kept up the pretense of being a normal witch as best she could, but her heart wasn't in it.

She was working in her garden—another thing she wasn't supposed to enjoy, but did—when the envoy to the Witches' Council arrived. He was a proper envoy, straight out of a child's nightmare, with a craggy, lined face, a hunched back, straggly grey hair, and a long beard.

Kūkaku sat back on her knees and inclined her head. "Envoy Yamamoto. To what do I owe this honor?" Her words dripped with sincerity, but the envoy heard the bite of sarcasm beneath the politeness.

Yamamoto shook his head irritably and thumped his staff on the ground. It would have made more of an impression on stone, but the feeling was still there. "There's no need for that, Witch Kūkaku." His words sounded defensive, but he winced slightly at Kūkaku's name, which was a dead giveaway. "We both know that this was a long time coming."

Kūkaku stood and brushed her hands off on her black skirt. "Why? I've done everything I was supposed to! People are scared to even venture into the woods anymore because of the Wicked Witch who lives here." Wicked was the highest title a witch could claim, and was much sought after. Kūkaku knew that people used it about her not knowing its true meaning, but it had to count for something.

"Many, not all," Yamamoto was quick to point out. "Those who have seen you laugh at the ones who call you wicked. You're just…too pretty, Kūkaku." The old envoy shook his head. "We have standards, you see. Can't have one witch getting laughed at, or it makes the rest of us look bad. I'm sorry, but if you don't do something absolutely awful before the next full moon, we're going to have to take your magic." Without another word, he turned away, flourished his staff, and vanished.

Kūkaku watched the glimmers of his magic fade from sight, and then bitterly tore her eyes away. She stood for a moment with her head bowed, but then she looked up. Dark green eyes flickered with resolve, and she squared her shoulders. "All right. Something absolutely awful. That's easy enough." She walked inside her neatly kept hut and firmly shut the door.

"It's impossible!" she snarled an hour later. Her one-room hut glowed cheerfully with firelight, the flames flickering dangerously close to the books that were strewn everywhere. Kūkaku finished flipping through another witchcraft tome and tossed it over her shoulder despairingly. She slumped, burying her head in her arms. Her voice emerged somewhat muffled. "Spells to turn princes into frogs, to set a princess to sleep for a hundred years, and to poison an apple, but nothing that hasn't been used a thousand times already. I want something new. I need something new. I have to be a witch!"

She stood and tripped her way over to the bookshelf, where only one book remained. With a grimace, she pulled it down and staggered over to the table with it, groaning under its immense weight. It slammed into the wooden table hard enough that Kūkaku feared it would leave a dent. She couldn't move it again to check, though.

"The Wytche's Booke," she read quietly. "Oh, you'd better have what I'm looking for, or else."

As she was about to lift the cover on her last hope, a great wailing rose from outside, sounding like several small animals being roasted alive. Kūkaku bolted from her seat and ran for the front door, grabbing her broom. Not so that she could flee, but so she could beat into submission anyone who was trying to harm innocent creatures.

She had a soft spot for animals.

But nothing was being tortured outside her door. Instead, two of the foxes that often visited her sat at the base of one of the smaller trees around her garden, grinning up at the other animal they had trapped in the branches. Kūkaku could only see the bristling tip of a dark grey tail in the darkness, despite her rather excellent night vision.

"Shoo!" she said emphatically to the foxes, waving her broom at them. "Go on, scat! Don't you know better then to abuse your fellows in my garden? If you don't learn, I'll turn you into statues, hear?"

The vixen shot her a disbelieving look. Like all the other animals that came to Kūkaku's home, they knew she would never carry out her threat. Still, they left as she ordered, and Kūkaku turned her attention to the creature they had driven up the tree.

"You're safe now," she called up softly. "You can come down. I sent them away."

There came an affronted yowl, and a cat's dark gold eyes peered down at her indignantly. "I didn't need help," she informed Kūkaku crossly. "And I wasn't up here because of them. It just seemed like a nicer place to be then the ground at the moment."

Kūkaku bit her lip, trying to hold back a smile. "Of course not," she said solemnly. "But if you wish to come down now, I can give you some milk inside. But only if you feel like it."

There was a sudden scrabbling as the cat nearly fell out of the tree. The incredulous silence that fell over the clearing lasted for all of twelve seconds before the golden eyes appeared again, looking huge in the light of the rising full moon. "You can understand me?" the cat asked in shock. "What are you, an animal speaker?"

Kūkaku's lips thinned and an expression of annoyance crossed her pretty face. "No. I'm a witch."

There was another disbelieving silence, and then the cat ventured cautiously, "Aren't witches supposed to be old and…well, ugly?"

With a huff, Kūkaku turned on her heel and stalked back towards the house, muttering angrily, "Standards! Everyone has standards! Do you think I wanted to be the Busty Beauty of Briar Canyon when I was younger and be a witch as well? Can't anyone think of a witch as something other then the ancient crones in the stories? Bats' bones and lizards' eyeballs!"

Just as she was about to slam the door of the cottage in the proper style—and show the cat just how much of a witch she could be—there came a scrabbling from the tree, and the cat jumped down. She landed rather unsteadily, with nowhere near the grace most cats had, and then streaked over to Kūkaku as fast as her long legs could carry her. Her front claws sank into the witch's skirt before she could duck inside.

"Wait!" she yowled. "Let me in! I can help you!"

Kūkaku gave the cat an arch look. "I believe that I'm not the one in need of help at the moment, Miss Cat. But thank you ever so much for thinking of me." Her parting words, delivered with a scorn that would have made the king himself wither, stopped the cat cold. She didn't seem to know what to think. But when Kūkaku started moving again, the cat regained her wits in a rush.

"Stop!" Her growled order, sounding like it should have come from a much bigger cat, made Kūkaku hesitate, though she didn't halt. Her next words changed that.

"I was a witch's cat! I know spells that other witches don't! I can teach them to you."

The cat lurched against Kūkaku's leg as she stopped suddenly. Kūkaku looked down at her, a hopeful light coming to her eyes.

"You wouldn't by chance know how to curse a princess, would you?" she asked.

"I'm not sure about this," Kūkaku muttered, leaning over the cat and peering down at the spell she was showing her, in a book she would never have thought of looking in. "That's a pretty major spell, and while I'm a pretty good witch, I do have limits."

"Are you a witch or not?" the cat demanded. "Use emotion for a focus and you can't go wrong. It's a variation of the classic spell that's most commonly used on princes. It should work for whatever you're planning."

"It should be wicked enough," she said doubtfully. "But I don't know if I can pull it off."

The cat yowled in annoyance. "It's easy, witch. And I'll help, so you don't have to be scared."

Kūkaku scowled at her. "I'm not scared, cat, just apprehensive. And what is your name, anyway? I can't keep calling you 'cat' all the time."

The cat looked away, as though embarrassed. "It's Yoruichi."

Kūkaku blinked at her. "'One night'? That's not very cat-like. Most of you have names like 'Wind-That-Leaves-the-Grasses-Silent'. Or something in that vein. You know, hunter names."

Yoruichi gave her a look and turned away, showing Kūkaku her back in affront. "You will notice that I haven't said anything about your name, Kūkaku. 'Crane of the sky'? That doesn't sound witchy at all. In fact, it's downright serene."

"Oh, shut up, mouse breath," Kūkaku muttered, turning back to the book. "I sure hope you meant what you said about helping me, because we have a lot of work to do if this curse—and this tale—is going to turn out smoothly. It's time to get started."

The cat sighed and twitched her whiskers. She turned back and started describing the workings of the spell.

To her surprise, Kūkaku actually enjoyed having Yoruichi around. The cat was touchy, rude, sarcastic, and…well, sweet. She could spend an hour helping Kūkaku get the smallest part of the spell right, picking over details until the witch was ready to scream, and still have the patience to teach her the next part with the same distinction. Yoruichi was funny, too, with her comments and stories about the witch she had lived with before. That witch had been the textbook version of a witch that every maiden and young woodcutter was taught to avoid. Yoruichi had hated her. Soon, Kūkaku could see why.

"Aren't you glad that not all witches are like that?" she asked on the third day, after the cat had finished telling her about the time the witch had tried to lure a couple of children into her house, only to have Yoruichi foil her plans by leading the pair into the woods around the swamp.

Yoruichi looked up at her, and there was something definitely un-catlike in her eyes as she watched Kūkaku mixing herbs.

"Oh, yes," she said quietly. "I'm very glad, indeed I am."

Kūkaku felt two patches of color rising in her cheeks at Yoruichi's tone, and promptly dropped the spell book on her foot.

The yelp she let out seemed to startle Yoruichi from her un-feline contemplations. She leaped away to get the next bunch of dried herbs, leaving Kūkaku alone with her thoughts.

Yoruichi crouched on the top of the boulder that sat by the path, keeping an eye on the road as Kūkaku scrabbled on her knees in the dirt. She was trying to get the final bit of the spell in place, and it wasn't cooperating.

"Are you done yet?" the grey cat demanded, looking down at her briefly. "Come on, Kūkaku. It shouldn't be that hard."

"Then you come down here and try to stuff a kicking frog's leg into a hole in the ground," Kūkaku snapped. "Because I'm not having very much luck at all right now."

Yoruichi yowled out a single word, and the leg Kūkaku held went stiff. She stuffed it into the hole she had dug and shoved dirt over it just as it came alive again, kicking away with a vengeance. Kūkaku sat back on her heels and looked up at Yoruichi. "Tell me again why the frog leg had to think that it was still alive?" She didn't question the cat's use of magic; after all Yoruichi's time living with a witch, she would have been astonished if the cat hadn't picked up anything.

"So that the spell would have some sort of focus," Yoruichi explained. A faint glimmer of respect came into her dark gold eyes as she looked at Kūkaku, though it was well hidden. "This spell is actually very wicked, since it's meant to focus on a princess. While lots of princesses will kiss frogs in the off chance that one of them might be a prince, no self-respecting prince is going to willingly kiss a frog for no reason. With your power behind it, the spell should pack quite a punch."

Then she seemed to hear something, and swiveled around. Her ears twitched. Kūkaku didn't wait for her to say what it was; she leaped up from her crouch and hastily pulled on the ancient brown robe she had found. It covered her black dress—of the kind only worn by witches, it was a dead giveaway—and made her seem old and frail thanks to the illusion spell she placed on it. In seconds, an old woman with white hair and wrinkles sat on top of the rock at the crossroads, waiting for someone to come along.

As luck—or Fate—would have it, the very first person to come riding down the path was none other then Soul Society's eldest princess, in all her princess-y glory. Kūkaku had to hold back a growl at how perfect the older girl was, all long red-brown hair, big hazel eyes, and pouting rosy lips. She made Kūkaku feel positively ugly.

And then a sharp set of claws dug into Kūkaku's lower back, making her hiss in a sudden breath.

"Focus!" Yoruichi hissed, and Kūkaku took comfort in the fact that not all the creatures in the area were staring at the princess with dumb, lovesick expressions, as most of the princess's escorts were doing. Though, in the long run, their distraction only made Kūkaku's task easier.

She scrambled down from the stone and tottered into the center of the path, effectively blocking it. The party pulled to a sudden halt, all of the fancily dressed nobles staring at her with something akin to horror.

"Might you have a bit of bread?" Kūkaku whined in her best crone voice. "I'm so hungry, and they turned me out of my village, as I'm too old to work."

One of the handsome knights moved his horse forward and tried to push her out of the way with his highly polished boot. "Move along, grandmother," he ordered. "We haven't the time to waste here. Important matters hold our attention at the castle."

"Have you a copper, then, to spare for an old woman?" Kūkaku asked in a wheezing voice, trying to hide her growing anger. That anger was exactly what she needed to power the spell, though, so she didn't move.

"Who is this rabble?" The princess's voice was sweet and vapid as she eyed the (supposedly) helpless old beggar in her path. "Clear her from my way immediately. I must go on to the castle without delay. The ball is about to start."

Another lord drew his rapier and poked Kūkaku with it, none too gently. "You heard Her Highness, the princess of Soul Society. Get yourself to the side of the path, or we will be forced to run you down."

That was what Kūkaku had been waiting for. Those words gave her enough anger that her power all but exploded inside her, hot flames of it leaping into her eyes. With a flourish, she stepped back and flung off her disguise. The party stared.

Though she didn't know it, they weren't staring just because of her sudden—and magical—appearance, but because of her beauty. Even Yoruichi stared at her, transfixed by the sudden brilliance of the witch in front of her. Later, when he had been disenchanted, one of the lords described her as "So beautiful it hurt to look at her, and the breasts didn't hurt either," promptly followed by a loud croak. Habits gained as a frog were hard to lose.

"I am the witch of the Soul Society Woods," Kūkaku snapped, not knowing their thoughts. "You have invaded my land and showed needless cruelty. And for that, you must be punished."

Kūkaku brought her hands up and spoke the words for the first part of her spell. There was a flare of jade-green light, and shouts rose from all around the princess as pure chaos broke loose.

With a word from Kūkaku, the knights' horses threw their riders and bolted home, leaving the men cursing on the ground. The green light caught them, swallowed them, and spat out animals. A small army of woodland creatures left the path at a run, deciding that they could blame animal instincts later if they were called cowards, and choosing the woods over the angry witch.

The princess screamed in very good distressed-damsel form as she was knocked from her sidesaddle by a swirl of jade light. As she fell, though, she began to change. Her skin took on the color of the magic around her, her eyes bulged, her hair fell out, and with a sharp pop, she turned into a frog.

Kūkaku lowered her hands, allowing the magic to fade as she surveyed her handiwork. Very wicked for a day's work, she decided. The Witches' Council would have to let her keep her magic now.

And then she heard a sound behind her. She twisted and stared in absolute shock as one of the knights rose from the ground with anger etched plainly in his face.

"Witch," he bit out. "You know not who you deal with in this. You shall pay for what you have done to the princess!" With that, he pulled a black necklace from around his throat and hurled it at her before she could do anything to counter the hex she knew the amulet contained.

"Kūkaku! NO!" Yoruichi yowled. The cat launched herself off the boulder. She leaped in front of Kūkaku, and the curse hit her full on. There was a blinding flash of ugly red light, and she was catapulted back into Kūkaku's arms.

Kūkaku gripped her tightly, feeling the limpness of the small body, the fading, wheezing breaths, and sank to her knees with a whimper of shock and disbelief. "No," she whispered. "Yoruichi, why did you do that? You didn't have to."

The cat didn't answer, and Kūkaku closed her eyes. Grief welled up in her throat, a sharp and stabbing pain, followed closely by anger.

Kūkaku looked up at the knight. Anger glowed in her eyes, and her wild hair swirled around her with a life of its own. Grabbing her anger, her fear for Yoruichi, she wrapped the power it had given her around herself and stood to face the knight. He was gaping.

"That—that wasn't supposed to happen!" he stuttered. "The kindly wizard always defeats the witch and saves the princess!"

Kūkaku's hands clenched into fists. "Looks like you chose the wrong fairy tale. And haven't you heard? No one rescues the princess the first time. It just isn't done." With that last word, she hurled all of her magic at the knight.

Kindly wizard he might have been, but no one could have withstood that sheer volume of power. There was a wrenching sound and a scream, and a cockroach suddenly sat in the center of the road, staring up at Kūkaku with all the incredulity a bug could muster. Kūkaku smiled nastily as she raised a foot.

The cockroach moved so fast it seemed to disappear. One moment it was there, and the next, it was gone.

Problem successfully dealt with, Kūkaku dropped to her knees next to Yoruichi again. The cat lay deathly still, and she didn't seem to be breathing.

"Oh, Yoruichi," she whispered. "Thank you." She leaned down and kissed her gently on the head.

The moment her lips touched the cat's head, there was a sudden flare of magic that knocked the surprised witch back into the bushes next to the road. A large yelp of shock and pain erupted from the shrubbery as she landed in a gorse bush. Stunned, she tried to push herself to her feet, unable to grasp what had happened.

A warm, slender, human hand closed gently around her arm, and she was pulled to her feet by a firm grip. Kūkaku found herself gaping into the face of an extremely beautiful young woman with the cat's dark gold eyes. She smiled at Kūkaku and pulled the witch into her arms, careful of the scratches she now sported.

"You saved me, Kūkaku," she said with a grin. "You broke the spell!"

Kūkaku rocked back on her heels, still staring at her. "I don't understand. Who are you?"

"Oh, sorry. I'm the Sorceress-Princess Yoruichi of Karakura," the young woman said, curtseying slightly. "I made an old witch angry when one of my spells interrupted hers, and she put a curse on me. I was to be a cat until my true love kissed me."

Kūkaku felt the two patches of color return to her cheeks, burning like fire. "You mean I'm…"

Yoruichi nodded, smiling at her. Even for a princess, she really was exceptionally lovely. "Yes, Kūkaku, you are. And haven't you heard? The prince always marries the maiden who frees him from his curse. Why should a princess be any different?"

"That's a stupid rule!" Kūkaku pointed out, not sure why she was. But if she didn't say something, she would start to babble. "What if you don't even like the one who rescued you? You would be stuck marrying someone you hated."

"But I do want to marry you," Yoruichi said. She looked sideways at the witch. "That is, if you want to. If you don't…"

"I think it's a very good idea," Kūkaku said emphatically. She smiled. "But surely I'm not supposed to be content with just kissing a cat, am I?"

Yoruichi laughed. It was a pretty laugh, too, Kūkaku thought. "No, I don't suppose you are," she said, and kissed her.

Kūkaku decided that maybe fairy tales weren't so bad.

And so Kūkaku, the young, beautiful, clear-skinned witch, left the perfect and magical kingdom of Soul Society and moved to the less perfect—but just as magical—kingdom of Karakura, where things were not all as they should have been. In Karakura, dragons protected the fields from rampaging unicorns, gryphons were the preferred mounts of the people, and damsels went on grand adventures and rescued handsome heroes in distress.

Yoruichi and Kūkaku were married, much to the delight of the princess's kind redheaded stepfather and selfless twin stepsisters, as well as her slightly insane scientist father, who had once married a beautiful princess he rescued from a curse and had regretted it for years.

Later, the sorceress-queen Yoruichi and her witch-consort Kūkaku lived in Karakura for the rest of their days (except for a few adventures, of course), and though the rest of the perfect kingdoms avoided their land, they lived happily ever after.

Mostly.