Pairing: Byakuya Kuchiki x Ichigo Kurosaki

Music The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie, by The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Word count: ~ 2100

Rating: T

Prompt 17: Missing Time

That house has no memory.

Byakuya heard the words, but he could not understand them. Maybe it was because he was new in the town; maybe it was because he did not share the same creeping superstitions as the others in the small community. Maybe it was simply because he did not pay attention when they were spoken. After all, such fallacies were simple to write off under the bright sun, passing the borders of the once-grand estate on the way to school and never having to pause and consider the words.

That house has no memory.

But they were strange words, that much he could recognize. Memory? Houses? He could not see the connection there, nor make sense of the tone—reverent, whispered, fearful, ill at ease but still completely awestruck—in which they were spoken. Did they fear it? Worship it? He couldn't tell. Perhaps it was both, or perhaps neither, and he could not pick out the underlying emotions.

If he had been a little less taciturn, a little more outgoing, Byakuya might have asked someone. As it was, he passed the wrought-iron gates twice each day, looked at the gapingly dark windows like countless eyes in an expressionless face, saw the strangling, snarled ivy crawling up as though reaching insidiously for some unknown victim, and he said nothing. Even when, despite the light of day and the presence of others, he looked at the house and swore something was looking back at him, watching with quiet intent. If that strange gaze had been angry, or vicious, or even emotionless, he would have asked, or avoided that road along the edge of the estate. But it was not angry, or vicious, or even emotionless. It was sad, and lonely, and something very near despairing.

That, more than anything else, intrigued him.

Byakuya was not one to give in to anything, but this curiosity he felt grew deeper every day. Whenever he passed the silent house, standing like some hulking beast on top of the hill, he would pause ever so briefly and look up at it. Sometimes, the tattered curtains in front of a window would flutter slightly, and he would wonder if it was simply wind, or if it was something more.

His head told him that there could be no one there, that no one lived in the crumbling, collapsing house no matter what he thought he saw, and that it was most certainly the wind or a stray animal.

His gut told him that it could not be the wind, not when every window appeared shut tight, and it only happened when he first looked and then never again.

After the first few months, the group that accompanied him home began to notice his fascination with the old mansion. At first they said nothing, because saying something to Byakuya when unsure of his reaction was akin to prodding a particularly irritable cobra with a short stick. But, after a while, Shunsui—the leader of the group, as the oldest, and the grandson of the mayor—could not contain himself anymore. That day on their way home from school, when Byakuya stopped to stare at the faceless house, Shunsui stopped, too.

The very first thing he said was the very thing that Byakuya had not-heard from the others townsfolk so many times.

"That house has no memory."

But unlike the other townsfolk, Shunsui actually spoke the words without fleeing afterwards, as though the mere act of speaking them would bring the wrath of—Of what? Byakuya often wondered. The house? Its missing memory? Whatever lives inside of it?—something down upon them. Instead, Shunsui simply stood there, with the autumn-chill wind whipping his brown hair and a grim look in his grey eyes.

And Byakuya finally gave in and asked the question that he had wanted to so many times before.

"What do you mean?"

The silence between them stretched so long that Byakuya almost thought that Shunsui wouldn't answer—which was strange, since from what he knew of the other, Shunsui could not stand silence. But then the boy sighed and returned his gaze to his companion, the look on his face one that Byakuya could not read, a strange expression sitting awkwardly in place of the smile Byakuya had never seen him without.

"It's an old story," he said softly, so softly that Byakuya could barely hear him over the hiss of the rising wind. "There used to be a family that lived there, more than a century ago. But they were killed. The next morning, people found the bodies, all thirteen of them. Only one was missing, the youngest son." Shunsui hesitated over that, as though it were the one piece of the puzzle that he could not fit in, and then shook his head to dismiss it. "They removed the bodies, and had funerals for them, and then came back to clean the estate and sell it. But after they finished cleaning it each day, and left, everything would go back to the way it was before. They couldn't change anything. The house wouldn't remember it."

A shiver that he would never have admitted to crept down Byakuya's spine. He looked up at the mansion, wondering that he did not feel horror, only a strange, empathetic knot of pity in his chest. Despite the fact that he cared nothing for anything but family and honor, despite the fact that there was no one there to feel pity for, he felt it all the same.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that his curiosity should lead him up the long, straight drive, three weeks after his conversation with Shunsui and two after graduation. He did not hide the fact that he was going there, did not sneak in like a common criminal, but walked tall and proud up the drive. Shunsui and Juushiro knew where he was going, and hadn't even tried to talk him out of it. Instead, they had told him everything he needed to know.

The door would be unlocked, they had said, just as it had been all those years ago, and it was. Byakuya pushed it open, and it didn't even creak, just swung silently inward. It was midday, bright enough that sun streamed through the bubbled glass in the warped windows and fell like brilliant prison bars across the floor. Dust spun in the shafts of sunlight, disturbed by his nearly-silent footsteps as he made his way down the hall—but it was not the dust that Byakuya would have expected for a house that had rarely been disturbed in the hundred years it had stood empty. Instead, it was a normal amount, as though no one had gotten around to dusting yet that week.

At the foot of the stairs, Byakuya paused and considered. He had not come in with a plan, nor any idea of why he had come in the first place, but…

His gaze strayed up the stairs. The fifth window from the left corner of the house on the third floor. That was where he always saw the moving curtain. If nothing else, he wanted to be certain that it was simply his overactive imagination. If it was not…

Byakuya brushed away the thought. It was. There was no doubt. It couldn't be anything else.

The stairs didn't creak underfoot, which was somehow eerier than if they had. Instead, everything was in perfect repair. The wood shone as if polished, the paintings hung straight and devoid of dust, and the air was not heavy with the repressive smell of age, but alive with the lightness of cedar and clove. It was as if the house was occupied even now, kept lovingly clean and beautiful by a meticulous owner.

Byakuya had been prepared for age and weight and filth.

He was not prepared for beauty.

The third floor was the same as the second, a long hall with rooms opening off of it, some doors shut and others open. They were the only indication that the house was older than t appeared, furnished in the style of a century past, though everything still breathed freshness. Byakuya passed them without pausing, though his gaze was drawn to linger more than once. There were sketches on the wall, too, done in pencil, ink, or charcoal, and all were exquisite. Some featured a man, elegant and noble, with square glasses and without. Others showed a group of people, older than teenagers but not yet quite adults, of varying ages.

(An emotionless man with blank eyes. A man with wild hair and a wilder grin. A man with braided hair and a cloth tied over his eyes, as though he were blind. A woman, beautiful and elegant, with spiky hair divided into long tails. A tall, skinny man with a piano-tooth grin. A man sleeping in the sun. An older man laughing. A younger man with a wide grin and slitted eyes. Three men playing cards, one fat, one stocky, and one skinny. An elegant man with a sharp smile and neat glasses, standing over a microscope.)

Thirteen, Byakuya remembered Shunsui saying. Thirteen people were found dead in this house, with the youngest son missing. Thirteen people lovingly remembered in black-and-white portraits, with only one figure missing—the one who had drawn them.

The fifth door from the left-hand corner of the house opened slowly, beckoning him in.

Byakuya stepped forward, drawn by something far more powerful than curiosity, and froze.

The curtains were drawn completely back, letting sunlight spill into the room unchecked, and a young man—younger than Byakuya, at least—sat on the window seat, knees drawn up, a sketchbook resting on them. He held a piece of charcoal like it was an extension of his hand, and smiled at whatever he had drawn. Then, slowly, he looked up, and turned that small smile on Byakuya.

"You came back," he said simply.

And Byakuya remembered, remembered kisses and caresses, long walks at midnight, the appearance of close friendship while in reality their feelings went much deeper. Remembered being young and foolish and inlove and thinking that simply feeling that emotion could lead to acceptance. Remembered stepping into the house with the smell of blood heavy on the air, of seeing what had been done, what the thirteen had tried to do—beat it out of him, kill the other, the perversion must die, YOU must die—but not seeing the one who had meant everything, absolutely everything to him. And the breath rushed out of him in a long shuddering sigh of relief and heartache that had been unacknowledged until now, and he slumped against the doorframe, a single word escaping like a prayer.

"Ichigo."

In a heartbeat, Ichigo was at his side, the sketchbook fluttering to the ground, and his arms were around Byakuya, and Byakuya was holding him up, tracing long, lithely muscled lines that he had forgotten he remembered, and their lips were fusing together, sharing breath, sharing the taste of loneliness and solitude and rebirth, and Byakuya wondered how Ichigo—bright, sarcastic Ichigo, with his magnetic personality and fierce loyalty and absolute kindness—could have survived for so long trapped in this house, outside of time.

He wondered how he could have survived, with such a large piece torn out of his soul.

"Byakuya," Ichigo whispered, breaking apart so they could breathe. He wrapped his arms around Byakuya's waist and buried his face in his shoulder, and if he was crying, Byakuya said nothing. "Byakuya, you're here."

Byakuya still said nothing, but wrapped his arms around Ichigo in return, winding one hand in his brilliant orange hair.

"Yes," he agreed softly. "I am here. Forever."

A week later, a stranger walked into town, side by side with the Kuchiki family's eldest son, and moved in with him. In the midst of the rumors and gossip this created, almost no on noticed that the estate on the hill had begun to crumble, no longer trapped in time.

Only Shunsui and Juushiro saw, and connected the two, and never spoke of it. Instead, they smiled at the couple, and threw them a housewarming party, and if anyone noticed that the newcomer's manners were a little out of date, they didn't mention that, either.