I Won't Say I Love You Part 2: The Lost

By Spunky0ne

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Their marriage shattered by a heartbreaking loss, Byakuya and Ichigo are still in love, but unable to connect until a devastating attack yields a clue that could change everything. But can Ichigo convince his former flame to trust him again? Can Byakuya trust himself?...yaoi, mpreg…Ichigo/Byakuya, Renji/Tetsuya, Kisuke/Tama, Hinata/Satoshi.

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Chapter 1: Broken Home

Kuchiki Byakuya laid quietly in his bed, taking slow breaths of the sweet air that seeped in from the fragrant gardens and trying to coax his body into enough relaxation that he could finally fall asleep. Out of the corner of one solemn grey eye, he observed the empty place that first Hisana, then Kurosaki Ichigo had once filled. He tried to only remember that happiness he had shared with each, but although he had long ago made peace with his wife's passing, Ichigo's departure from his life was more recent and, considering the circumstances, inherently more painful.

Not that losing Hisana was less meaningful, he mused inwardly, but the weight of losing a child finds all of the cracks in a bond and seeps in like water, where it freezes and causes the cracks to widen into larger rifts. The relationship that Ichigo and I had was strong, but it was always fraught with deep passions. And once ignited by our loss, it burned us both.

He blinked slowly, focusing on the open garden doors and remembering the night, six years before, when his former husband had passed through them for the last time.

"Ichigo, please do not leave," he pleaded softly, keeping his voice carefully lowered so that their remaining children would not hear, "I was not being offensive. I was simply reminding you that while not giving up hope, we have to think of Suki and Torao. They have lost their younger brother and it is horribly difficult for them to bear."

"You think I don't know that?" Ichigo snapped, "I get that they're hurting too. But if we don't keep looking…"

"I am not asking you to stop looking," Byakuya insisted, "I am only asking that you come to counseling with us so that…"

"But you know that means I won't be able to search for him the way I need to," Ichigo objected.

"Ichigo, you are not thinking straight," Byakuya said, laying a hand on his husband's arm and looking into his furious ginger eyes, "You are diving on every hint of his presence, however small, not considering the sources properly or the validity of the claims. And you are gone for weeks at a time, while Suki and Torao…"

"Suki and Torao are handling this as well as can be expected!" Ichigo shouted, "The one who isn't handling it is you!"

Byakuya stared at Ichigo, lost for words. Reading his espression, Ichigo felt a measure of his anger fade and his took his husband's hands in his.

"I know you feel guilty because you were the one with Soujun when he disappeared, Byakuya. You know I don't blame you for any of that. But it seems like ever since that day, you afraid to let them leave home, to let them out of your sight for a second…to live, Byakuya!"

"Don't you dare…!"

"Suki and Torao are right here," Ichigo argued, "They are with a mountain of house security and you know damned well that Tetsuya and all of the staff aren't going to let anything happen to them. But you won't even…"

"I am focusing on the things that I have some control over!" Byakuya said heatedly, "You read the report, Ichigo. Soujun's reiatsu did not just recede. It disappeared. And despite every thin fiber of a clue you have followed, there has never once been anything that countered the Gotei's official conclusion that our son was killed!"

"I don't give a damn if the sources or the little hints don't meet your approval," Ichigo roared, "I am not giving up on my kid! HE IS OUT THERE AND I'M GOING TO FIND HIM! And if you wanna sit here and ignore the fact that he may still be alive, go ahead. But you're going to do that without me."

"Ichigo…"

"Dad?" a girls' trembling voice called from the doors he had been staring at blindly.

Byakuya caught his breath as he spotted his twelve-year-old daughter standing in the doorway, her arms wrapping around her slender body as though to protect her from the cold, and a fearful look in her grey and golden eyes.

"Suki," he greeted her quietly, sitting up in the bed and motioning for her to join him.

The girl shivered and pulled her robe more tightly around her slender frame as she crossed the room and sat down on the other side of the bed, sliding her legs under the covers to warm her lower extremities.

"You had a nightmare?" Byakuya asked.

"Mhmm," Suki admitted, sighing in relief as he felt her father's powerful reiatsu wrap around her, "Sorry, Dad. I tried the breathing and focusing that we worked on with Nao-san. It's just that the dream was so scary."

"Why don't you tell me about it," Byakuya suggested, sliding an arm around his daughter.

Suki shivered again, but managed a shaky smile as she felt Byakuya's warm, strong arm and sweet scent curl around her protectively.

"It was dark," the girl recounted, "I couldn't tell where it was, but I was there, only no one could see me. I tried to get up, but something was holding me down and I couldn't get it off. I could see you standing with your back to me and staring at something that was so white it was blinding me. Someone kicked a rock behind you and I screamed at you, but it was like you couldn't hear me. You didn't move and something hit you and made you fall!"

Byakuya hugged the girl against him and ran soothing fingers through her ginger hair, teasing the black ends as they fell away from his fingertips.

"It's all right," he assured her, "I am right here. I am not going anywhere, Suki."

"I know," the girl said, hugging him back and wiping away the threatening tears, "and I know it's probably just because Soujun died and Daddy Ichigo left. It's like Nao-san said. I guess I'm worried you'll leave too, even though I know you won't."

"Your concerns are perfectly reasonable," Byakuya said calmly, kissing the top of the girl's head and squeezing her hands, "Loss is never easy, and everyone grieves in his or her own way, child."

"But it's been a really long time," Suki said, sniffing softly and rubbing her eyes again, "We were little kids when it happened. It's getting harder to remember exactly what he looked like…how his voice sounded. Daddy Bya, I feel like I'm forgetting Soujun, even though I don't want to!"

Byakuya rubbed his daughter's back gently.

"It is true that, with time, the details in our memory fade, but you will never forget Soujun, and neither will the rest of us."

Suki bit at her lips and forced a nod into Byakuya's shoulder, breathing in his comforting scent as she began to relax slightly.

"I wish Daddy Ichigo would come back."

She stiffened as the unbidden words escaped her and her eyes sought Byakuya's apologetically.

"S-sorry!"

Byakuya yielded the ghost of a smile.

"Why are you apologizing?" he chided her affectionately, "I wish the same, every day."

"It…it doesn't mean that you're not doing enough," Suki stammered.

"I know," Byakuya assured the girl, hugging her and resting his chin on the top of her head, "It is perfectly natural that you would want all of us to be together. You are not wrong to want that, Suki."

"It's just never gonna happen," a boy's sulky voice said from the doorway, making the two look up at him, "So, you should stop being such a baby, Suki, and crying about it all of the time!"

"Torao," Byakuya said, an edge of warning in his voice as he observed the boy was standing stiffly with his arms crossed on his chest, "There is no need to be cruel to your sister."

"You know he's not coming back," Torao said angrily, "and it's because of you!"

"Torao," Byakuya repeated sternly.

"What?" the youth asked stridently, "I'm not allowed to say the truth in front of you? You want me to lie and say it's not true, when we all know it is?"

"Shut up, Torao!" Suki shouted, pulling free of Byakuya and the gold in her eyes glinting threateningly, "Don't talk to him like that!"

"I'm allowed to say the truth!" Torao snapped furiously, his grey eyes flashing and the ginger strands among the black in his hair starting to catch fire, "Ichigo wouldn't have left if he would just have helped to look for Soujun!"

"He did help!" Suki objected, "He just couldn't drop everything and…"

"He barely did anything!" Torao argued, "Stop making excuses for him. You know what I'm saying is true! Ichigo left because of him, and he's not coming back. So, you might as well stop making a fuss about it all of the time and grow up!"

Torao paused, sucking in a surprised breath as Byakuya's reiatsu swelled warningly and his father's stern eyes transfixed him.

"Do not speak to your sister that way," he warned the boy, "You are entitled to think as you will, but you are also to respect others. It is past your curfew, Torao. Go back to bed."

Torao's hands clenched, and Byakuya was stricken with a mental image of Ichigo taking the same stiff stance and wearing the same angry expression.

"Man, you always take her side!" Torao yelled, flash stepping away before Byakuya could answer.

A moment later, Tetsuya appeared in the doorway, dressed in his nightclothes and with a tiny red-haired baby girl in his arms.

"Is everything all right, Byakuya-sama?" he asked.

"Ah, Tetsuya," Byakuya greeted him, "It is all right. We are fine. Torao was just…venting his frustrations."

"Heya," Renji yawned, appearing behind Tetsuya and wrapping an arm around his waist, then kissing his husband on the cheek, "what's all the racket?"

"Sorry, Renji-san," Suki said, peeking around Byakuya, "Sorry, Tetsuya-san, Torao was just being mean."

"Your brother is angry," Byakuya corrected her, "His manner of showing that was inappropriate, but you must understand why he is acting that way."

"He misses Daddy Ichigo," Suki sighed, "but why does he have to always blame everything on you?"

"I was Ichigo's husband," Byakuya said sadly, "and I did disappoint him."

"That's not Torao's business," Suki pointed out, "He shouldn't be mad at you. At least you stayed. Daddy Ichigo left us."

"You see your father frequently," Byakuya said firmly, "He has not left you, Suki. He left me."

"I know," Suki sighed, leaning against him again, "and I wish he would come back too. I just don't see why Torao always has to be so mean about it."

"Your brother is hurting inside," Tetsuya said sympathetically, "and he is young. It's hard, at his age, to contend with so much emotion."

"Not to mention, coming out of Ichigo, he's got that hothead gene," Renji added, shaking his head.

"So does someone else," Tetsuya said, smirking down at the baby girl he held, "She is also from a rather spirited parent."

"Right," Renji chuckled, patting the baby's cheek, "I guess I'm guilty of that."

"My apologies for disturbing the two of you," Byakuya said quietly.

"I was up anyway because Akane was being disagreeable," Tetsuya assured him.

"And I can't sleep without him," Renji said, smirking, "It's fine, Byakuya-san. Sorry the boy is giving you a hard time. You want me to pull rank on him…take him out and…"

"We will be fine, Abarai," Byakuya sighed wearily, "thank you."

He waited as the others left, then met Suki's eyes again.

"Why don't you go and climb in with your cousin?" he suggested, "I sense that the noise awakened Tora as well."

"Okay," Suki said, hugging Byakuya, then exiting the bed, "but will you be able to sleep, Dad?"

"I will," Byakuya answered, nodding, "Go on, now."

Suki disappeared out the doorway, leaving Byakuya looking out into the still dark gardens. He listened to the soft night sounds, his mind going back to Torao's angry words, then Ichigo's. His eyes closed and his melancholy deepened.

Torao's behavior may have been inappropriate, but he is right to blame me. I am the reason that Ichigo left.

He started to lie back down, but paused and stared as a hell butterfly arrived.

"Kuchiki taichou," his fourth seat's voice spoke out of the hovering insect, "apologies for waking you, but I thought you would want to be informed. We discovered signs of some kind of training facility in Hueco Mundo, section 14-21. The hollow governer, Harribel Tier assures us that it was not a legal operation. We attempted to gather useful evidence from the site, but it was carefully cleansed, as the others have been. We found only a very small trace of reiatsu. When analyzed, we found that…it seemed one of your children had been there, or at least had come into contact with someone or something who was there. The sample wasn't large enough to identify which of your children it was, only that the person carried Shiba and Kuchiki blood."

Byakuya gazed at the hell butterfly, tracking its path as it floated out the doors and into the darkness.

This is indeed disturbing. It suggests that someone involved in these training camps that we have been finding has come near to Suki and Torao. We may have an enemy hiding among us.

Or…

Byakuya blinked slowly.

"Or…could it be…?" he whispered, hardly daring to entertain the thought.

His mind turned back to a night six years before.

He hurried along the pathway, holding his five-year-old son on one arm and keeping his eyes on the pathway ahead of him.

"Is Daddy Ichigo going to be okay?" Soujun asked softly, "Did Suki and Torao get hurt too?"

"No," Byakuya assured the boy, "Suki and Torao are fine. Ichigo was injured in the explosion at Urahara Kisuke's shop, but he will be all right. Come now, we must get there quickly."

Byakuya had taken only a few more steps, when a passageway opened suddenly to the side of him and blinding white light and a shocking roar filled the corridor they were passing through. Soujun screamed and Byakuya flash stepped away as the cleaner rumbled in behind them. He felt a sudden, strange disruption, as though something had hit his body with great force and was vaguely aware of an exit door opening, then he was shocked with some kind of errant power and his senses scrambled. All he knew was that he was falling.

"S-soujun!"

"DADDY!" the boy howled, his voice disappearing into the blackness that suddenly claimed him.

Byakuya's breath caught and a deep throb of guilt blossomed in his insides. He breathed slowly, focusing on each breath, and relaxing gradually.

What happened was a freak accident. This is not likely to be him. But…I had best investigate it, just to be certain.

He slipped out of bed and dressed quickly in a plain shihakushou, then exited his bedroom and moved silently across the gardens. He passed through the back gate and headed down a quiet forest trail, heading out to a moonlit meadow before pausing and looking around. He just missed seeing two small shadows that followed him.

"Get down!" Tora hissed, pulling Suki closer to her, "He almost saw us."

"He's going to sense us," Suki whispered back.

"Not with my mist disturbing the air around us," Tora assured her, "It's good that it's a little foggy."

Tora squinted her large blue eyes to watch as Byakuya extended his sword in front of him, opening a family senkaimon.

"Where do you think he's going?" Tora asked softly.

"I don't know," Suki said worriedly, "but he was dressed like this in the dream I told you about. Tora, what if it wasn't a dream? What if he's…?"

"Shh, we'll follow him. We'll make sure he gets back safely."

"I know I sound stupid. I don't want you to get in trouble because of me."

"You're both gonna be in trouble," Torao growled softly, appearing out of the darkness behind the two girls, "You're not supposed to be out here."

"Neither are you!" Suki fired back, "Get out of here, Torao!"

"No way. I'm gonna see where he's going," he brother insisted, sneaking forward as Byakuya entered the senkaimon.

"Man, I'll be glad when the Shiba clan takes him away to train him as their heir!" Tora huffed.

"You'd better just hope that they don't make you marry him, Tora-chan," Suki said, smirking.

"No way they'll do that," Tora snickered, "Daddy Renji is a peasant and Daddy Tetsuya's only half-noble."

"Well, Tetsuya-san is family and he's powerful. Renji-san has a bankai also," Suki reasoned.

"There's no way I'd marry that stuck up jerk!" Tora sneered, taking Suki's hand and pulling her towards the closing senkaimon, "Come on. We'd better make sure that idiot doesn't get himself killed!"

Ahead of the three children, Byakuya paused in the darkness of the precipice world, looking around as he thought he heard a footstep behind him. The senkaimon closed and he remained still, forcing his mind not to focus on the memory that again tried to rise up into his thoughts.

That was a long time ago.

He headed quickly towards Urahara's shop and dropped down into the underground training area, where he used the apparatus to open a garganta. He flash stepped into the underground cavern, laying out a reiatsu path as he went and thinking again about the strange findings of his officers. As he moved closer to the coded coordinates, he quieted his mind, focusing carefully on the reiatsu in the area and finding nothing troubling. He passed through the noted exit point and touched down in a little cluster of boulders, from which he scanned the area again and once again found no sign of an enemy. He left the cover of the rocks and walked out onto what looked to be a large cliff, overlooking a steep drop and a stony valley. His sharp eyes peered out across the divide to the other side, his body stiffening as he realized that a tall boy with black hair and large blue-violet eyes stood on the other side of the ravine, staring at him with a curious expression. Byakuya heard a strange hissing, then screams from behind him as his body was jolted with some kind of impact.

"S-suki!" he gasped, watching in horror as the heads of three white arrows poked out of his chest and blood exploded around him.

He pitched forward as kido blasts erupted behind him.

"N-no!" he managed, choking on blood as he dropped to his knees.

The cliff shook with heavy impacts and he heard a dread cracking sound as the part he knelt on gave way. Heavy dust blinded him, and it was all he could do to use what reiatsu he could gather to both break his fall and keep the stone that fell with him from crushing him. He landed on unforgivably hard ground and felt his ribs crack violently, but was lucky enough that the rock that crashed down left a slight space over him and didn't crush him beneath it. He suppressed a cough, closing his stinging eyes and listening as the rumble of falling rock disappeared.

Quincies, he thought, his mind's eye refocusing on the boy he had seen.

I was foolish to let his face distract me. Maybe, I just wanted so much to find Soujun. But now, things are worse. Suki, at least, is up there, without any idea how to fight a quincy.

He tried to move, only to find that the rock pinned him so that he couldn't pull free. He tried to gather his reiatsu, but sensed quickly that the steady flow of blood and reiatsu from the wounds in his chest had weakened him substantially. Byakuya's head swam and blackness began to close in around him.

I am sorry, Ichigo.

I only pray that my error doesn't cost our other children their lives as well.

I feel their presence now…Suki, Torao, and Renji and Tetsuya's Tora…

Children…RUN!

The boy backed into a clump of rocks, staring as Byakuya was swallowed up but the swirling dust. He swallowed hard, remembering the way the shinigami's dark eyes had looked at him. A moment later, his mentor's hirenyaku brought him back across the divide and into the cover of the rocks.

"Well, that was a bit messy," his companion snapped softly, "Do you want to explain why I was forced to kill him?"

The boy looked back at him silently.

"You may be a little prince, but you are required to hone your skills like everyone else, Lord Aric!"

"I am…s-sorry," the boy apologized.

"Why did you hesitate? He wasn't an officer. Did you see his clothes?"

"I did," Aric stammered, "But…he was looking me…l-like he knew me!"

"Ridiculous!"

"Captain, there was something strange about him," Aric insisted.

His companion let out an infuriated breath.

"I ought to make you go and kill the others who were hiding in the rocks, but we've attracted enough attention. I hope you at least remembered not to leave any signs."

"I was careful," Aric assured him.

"Come on, then," the elder man said impatiently, "We should go back and make a report. Don't expect me to lie about your incompetence, you little fool! You need to understand, there is great expectation…when one wears the name Bach!"