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Sleeve of White Snow: Variations on a Theme
by afrai

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Otorongo

In the days after she had been released from her long wait for death, Rukia trained -- trained with an empty sword in an empty room; trained from sunrise till nightfall, ignoring the acid burn of exhaustion in her muscles; trained alone, silent as a world draped in fog, slipping smoke-like from kata to kata. It was not as easy as it should have been: lack of practice told, and that time in the white tower --

But she did not think of the time in the white tower. She dreamt of it sometimes, but she would forget. And then it would not matter anymore: just another scar to hold inside herself until death took it from her.

She had trained like this after Kaien had died, but she had a different purpose now. Then it had been forgetting that she sought. Now she was waiting. Meanwhile, she trained.

It was a day like any other when her wait ended. The setting sun glowed orange outside the practice room; her shadow had grown long, and imprecise as memory. She had gone through fatigue and broken out the other side into an unreliable hyper-awareness -- the chirp of crickets rang in her head like a gong, but tiredness had carved a gap in her guard that could have let a truck through. It was pure luck that spun her out of the way of the attack, instinct moving her arm up and sword out before her mind caught up.

A gust of chill wind, then warmth. Teeth clicked on the naked blade before her heart. Sodeno Shirayuki looked her in the eye, then, deliberately, closed her jaws.

The broken pieces of the blade clattered on the floor.

"Slow," hissed Sodeno Shirayuki. "I could have torn your throat out without even trying. Where have you been?"

She dropped lightly onto her paws and licked her chops delicately, with a faint air of dissatisfaction.

"You -- " said Rukia. She took the big white-furred face in her hands -- it was heavy and solid and bristly, whiskers twitching lightly against her wrists. It had been so long. "I could ask the same of you!"

The jaguar lashed her tail angrily.

"That foolish little boy pushed me out," she said. "He dared -- why did you give me to him? That child!"

"I didn't," said Rukia. The cat's face was warm against her own; she pressed her cheek hard against it, feeling the deadly ridge of teeth through the flesh. "I didn't mean to. You weren't supposed to go."

"He took all of it, and I had to leave you," said Sodeno Shirayuki. "I will bite his heart out. I will claw him to shreds and eat his intestines -- he and that ugly, furless baby with its black staring eyes -- "

"You're not going to hurt Ichigo," said Rukia. Her back was sore, her calves wound tight with several days' unrelieved strain, and her left ankle was almost certainly sprained: the effects of her unrelenting training were settling in, as the numbness that had hung over her fled. Her eyes stung. Every part of her hurt gladly.

"It wasn't his fault," she said. "I was foolish, I let you go, I should have taken more care."

But Sodeno Shirayuki was ignoring her -- cat-like, she had no problem with giving orders, but she had never done much listening.

"And now your blade has grown dull! And you are weak as a kitten, and I have been so alone, and you have been playing with that Zangetsu and you have forgotten me and now you cannot even fight. I will snap his spine, I will shatter his sword -- "

"Hush," said Rukia. She buried her face in the warm stink of her side, the heat welcome in the sudden cold of the room.

"You were never a coward before," said Sodeno Shirayuki reproachfully. Then, when no reply came: "Rukia, do you weep? Rukia -- Rukia -- " The big head nudged Rukia in the side anxiously. "Be of good heart. You are not that weak, you only need training, and my teeth are still sharp. Now I am here, there is nothing we cannot defeat together. Rukia, it will be well, I am here. Rukia? Rukia, do not weep!"

"Shut up, idiot cat," said Rukia in a muffled voice.

The jaguar bridled.

"You are very rude, Rukia -- "

"Beautiful, beautiful idiot cat."

"-- but maybe I will forgive you anyway," conceded Sodeno Shirayuki.

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Mistral

Rukia woke up in the middle of the night tasting snow.

The air was frost-cold on her face, and when she stood up and stepped off her pallet, her foot crunched on snow. It lay inches deep on the floor, piling up in the corners. Snowflakes whirled in from the open window, yet Rukia was not cold.

The moonlight was a silver beam, a length of white steel cutting through the darkness. There was a full moon, Rukia saw, and thought, distantly, as one caught in a dream: but it has not been fifteen days since the last.

It lit a circle of ice on the floor, and with that -- the light and the ice and the bold face of the moon -- the speechless howl of the wind fell into words Rukia could understand.

"I speak," she said, and to her said the moon, the snow, the wind:

We hear and answer. Tell us our name.

A sword made of winter and the night: what could she not do with such a blade?

"Sodeno Shirayuki."

We are here.

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