Breakthrough these barriers of pain,

Breakthrough to the sunshine from the rain,

Make my feelings known towards you,

Turn my heart inside and out for you now.

If I could only reach you,

If I could make you smile,

If I could only reach you...

That would really be a breakthrough

*******

Chapter Two

*******

October 18, 1980 - Kanagawa

The kitchen of the Kurosaki family's main house was uneasy. In truth, the entire household had existed in a state of unease for just over a year, and if one wanted to be completely precise, the whole of the Kurosaki family had been overshadowed by unease for generations. However, on this particular night every shadow of worry and discomfort plaguing the house seemed to have converged with a vicious edge of anxiousness and taken up residence in the kitchen, supported by nearly every servant of the house congregating in the same spot.

For those who had served the family long, for many of them had in fact served for generations, it was a climactic evening, but not a particularly spectacular one in the long history of secrets and sacrifice that went with the Kurosaki name. For the girls who had been there long enough to have known the kind, if brief, mistress of the house, Kurosaki Kasane, the entire affair seemed somehow sordid. It was disturbing, unnatural, madness even for a man to marry the identical twin of his late wife, and before there was new grass over the poor woman's grave no less. No good could come of a grieving man trying to replace the woman he'd loved so entirely. They were wary of Kurosaki Rui, and wary of what was now going on rooms away, and Nobiki, who had been Kasane's private maid before joining the kitchen staff to avoid her uncanny replacement, had cut herself twice in the last hour while trying to chop vegetables.

No doctor had been summoned. But then, it had been done that way for generations, and as the older family servants did not comment on it, neither did the newer. What was unusual was that neither had anyone else been summoned. In fact, they had been individually, unarguably forbidden against sending any word of the situation to Iwao, the Kurosaki Nagare's brother and the coming infant's rightful uncle. The implications of this and, moreover, the inevitable repercussions only served to heighten the malaise of the congregation.

It couldn't be much longer, the elder assured the younger . . . Kurosaki Rui had taken to her bed pleading pains only halfway through breakfast, and labor had been diagnosed before noon. It was now past eight o'clock and the sky was dark. Kurosaki Nagare had left the site of his wife's childbed for a sum total of perhaps an hour and a half during the course of the day, and despite the break from tradition and arguable impropriety of it, was vehemently insistent on remaining there. But then, the poor man had been away on business when his first wife had given birth to a child that hadn't lived and drowned herself in grief, and so they shook their heads and pitied him and Old Ayako, who had helped birth Nagare himself, let him stay.

Little Seto, the groundskeeper's son, who was two years old and more interested in running up and down the hall than in waiting for news of a new baby, cried out from beyond the doorway, commanding attention from the room. A moment later he rode across the threshold on Old Ayako's hip and was returned to his nervous mother, and all faces turned to the gnarled old woman. Old Ayako, who was becoming stooped in her old age, drew herself up to her full height, basking for a moment in the power she held and the respect it momentarily commanded before speaking.

"Rui has borne a boy."

The kitchen erupted with tangible relief, accompanied by sighs and comments and other audible notes of elation.

"Is he healthy?" a voice carried anxiously.

"Healthy enough, if his lungs are any indication. The little thing just didn't want to come, and he raised quite a fit at the indignity of it all. I do believe he consciously held being born against me." Her statement was met by both celebration and laughter, and she knew her time of importance was over as she was chided for such a silly thought. Joy bled into hope, and into musings on the future.

"Thank goodness, a healthy boy."

"Were you worried?"

"A Kurosaki heir, someone should bring the news into the village."

"Perhaps now Iwao-sama will be summoned?"

"A healthy baby will bring some life back to this house."

"And happiness back to Nagare-sama."

"Do you know the name, old woman?"

Old Ayako raised her head once more, lifting herself from her bent stance as she had been petting little Seto's head. "The name?"

"The child's name."

"Nagare-sama has deigned to pass on the name Hisoka, as his daughter never had time to make good use of it."

Once more silence prevailed over the room, as those assembled absorbed this small piece of information. Kurosaki Nagare had now not only married his wife's twin, but renamed their child together what he had intended for his first child.

"Perhaps . . . it will all be for the best. As if the tragedy never happened." murmurs and nods agreed hesitantly with this cautious assessment.

"It will be for the best, that child will be nothing but good for this family." Old Ayako spoke firmly, commanding attention once again before she continued. "That child, that baby knew his father. He entered the world all anger and screaming, screaming and flailing while he was cleaned and while he was bundled . . . but the moment I placed him in his father's arms he was quiet. In all my life, I've never seen the like, just suddenly quiet and calm, and then sleeping perfectly happily. And Nagare-sama, he won't let the infant go. Not even for Rui to hold, though I told him he must. I left him just sitting there, holding him, and the baby just sleeping."

*******

April 6, 1998 - Meifu

"You're so mean!" That was not an uncommon complaint to be heard in the halls of the Diet building when Tsuzuki was on duty. Nor was it uncommon for the complaint to be directed at Hisoka, as it was now. What was uncommon was for anyone, particularly Hisoka, to take it as seriously as he was in this instance. The younger partner stood up from his desk abruptly, knocking a few pens to the floor and lunging for his empty Styrofoam cup.

"I don't want to discuss this here, I'm getting coffee."

"Hisoka!" Far from his endearing whine, Tsuzuki's low yell was demanding, laced with an edge of genuine irritation as he darted after the boy on his attempted escape to the break room. "I would have thought you'd have preferred discussing it in private and not out here." he hissed as he caught Hisoka's arm, once reaching his destination had forced him to stop.

"I would *prefer* not to discuss it at *all*." Hisoka replied sharply as he shook his arm free and grabbed the coffee pot, sloshing the hot liquid sloppily into his cup.

"I'm just trying to help-"

"Well who asked you to!" the boy cut him off sharply, a faint cracking in the back of his throat testament to both him perpetual pubescence as well as his emotional state.

"Didn't you?" Tsuzuki stared at the back of his denim jacket and the slope of his narrow shoulders with a beseeching look that his partner could feel rather than see.

"Not like this!" The boy hissed as he whirled around, catching himself against the edge of the cheap card table that served as their snack counter and leaning back against it and away from Tsuzuki as he faced him, "Not behind my back! I never asked you to turn around and tell Watari everything!"

"I didn't tell Watari everything, I just asked him about scar tissue." the older shinigami protested defensively.

"And I'm sure he won't jump to *any* conclusions." Hisoka snapped back, tightening his grip on the edge of the table until his knuckles were turning white.

"You know, people besides me in this office care about you, when are you going to accept that?" Tsuzuki was growing equally peevish, crossing his arms across his chest as if that were some kind of barrier between the two of them. It was usually a good idea to maintain some distance from the empath when emotions ran high.

"You wouldn't understand."

"That's angsty teenager cliche number three, you want to stop being stigmatized for the way you look? Stop acting like a kid." Tsuzuki could feel his irritation rising and gritted his teeth to curb it while Hisoka glared at him worth bullets. The subject of age and, ostensibly, appearance was touchy at best, and Tsuzuki was dangerously close to hitting below the belt.

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm an angsty teenager. What you see is what you get. My frontal lobe is underdeveloped so I'm never gonna be any good at self-restraint. My hormones are spiking so I'm always gonna be an emotional roller coaster. I've got all kinds of unbalanced chemicals that are never gonna even out so I'm always going to be irrational."

"Sounds more like you're making excuses."

"I don't want to get into a whole 'nature vs. nurture' debate with you. And I don't *want* them to care about me, I want them to *respect* me. I don't *want* to be everyone's little brother figure, I don't *want* to be looked out for, I don't *want* to be pitied and comforted. I don't *want* to walk down the hall and see all the sympathetic, knowing looks and feel all the 'poor boy, what he's been through'. I am *not* a kicked puppy, or a charity case, or made of glass. All I want is to pull my own weight, do my job, and not get any special treatment. I don't need Watari breathing down my neck to be able to cope."

"So caring automatically means pity?"

"People only start to care about things they start sympathizing for, that's human nature."

"What about me?"

"It's different."

"Why?"

"You . . . understand me. There's a big difference between sympathizing and empathizing."

"Only because you *let* me, Hisoka! If you would just . . . people can surprise you. You call them friends but only because you keep them at arms length where it's safe." Tsuzuki was unable to suppress a tired sigh as he regarded his partner with all the patience he could muster.

"I don't want everybody and their brother to know what happened to me." The quiet statement was a reiteration of something he'd never directly vocalized before, and something in Tsuzuki snapped, driving him to move forward and grasp the boy's arm insistently before going on in a low voice.

"You must think we're all pretty stupid because knowing Muraki, it isn't really hard to figure out. The only one dwelling on it is *you*. That's *why* I talked to Watari, I just thought . . . If we can't break the curse, if we could at least get rid of the scars on the surface, maybe it'd be a little bit easier for you, you know, without the constant reminder, without having to think about it every time you bathe or change clothes or . . ." or try to be intimate. Tsuzuki didn't say the last part, it sounded so selfish to his own ears, whether it was something Hisoka also wanted or not. His younger partner understood where he had been going anyway, but his expression was cool and unreadable. Two heartbeats went by in silence, except for the rattling gurgle of the coffeepot. Then it was three. Then five. Then Hisoka spoke.

"It wouldn't make everything magically okay, you know."

"I know. But if it would make it just a little better . . . it would be worth it. Muraki put them there and made sure you could never do anything without suffering, didn't he? If we *could* get rid of the scars . . . wouldn't it be easier to let go of?"

"I wouldn't forget."

"I wouldn't ask you to. But you wouldn't have to remember either. At least, not every time you looked at yourself." For another long moment they regarded each other in silence, until Hisoka broke it to turn away and add cream to his half cup of black coffee.

"What did he say . . . ?" Tsuzuki's face softened into a faint smile that might have been relief.

"Let's go back into the office and discuss it in private before someone walks in on us." Hisoka glanced around the empty room dully, and then nodded, straightening to let Tsuzuki take the lead back down the hall, but for a long moment Tsuzuki only watched him, with an expression of searching and faint hurt that Hisoka didn't understand. "One of these days," Tsuzuki added, with only a hint of his usual playfulness, "I'm going to get a smile out of you."

Hisoka didn't know how to say that he didn't remember how to smile.