Current mood:	silly
Current music:	"The Best in Me"- Sherwood

garden (Bleach; Urahara Kisuke & Shihouin Yoruichi; theme #11)
Title: garden.
Author: beneathabridge/ yes. this is sarah.
Pairing: Urahara Kisuke and Shihouin Yoruichi
Fandom: Bleach
Theme: #11- Gardenia
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or anything else of Tite Kubo’s, including, but not limited to, his house, his car, his mother, or his soul. Tragic, I know.

----------------------------------------------

Shihouin Yoruichi was sitting on a bench in the garden of her family’s large home, relaxing for a moment amid the chaos of the household. The gardens were peaceful and quiet, and here she could gather her thoughts better there than she could in the house, where people were constantly moving around and making noise. Yoruichi’s mind was in a whirl. She was only a few days away from entering the academy, an event that she understood would change her life. Yoruichi was largely looking forward to it, but was still slightly apprehensive. It was a totally new place, with brand new people, and Yoruichi had a tendency to bristle when first approached by someone.

As consuming as these thoughts were, Yoruichi pushed them out of her mind in the light of the fact that it was a beautiful day, a real stunner, and unhappy thoughts simply cannot survive when the sun is shining brightly on the leaves and blooms of the small kuchinashi trees and the wind is light and fresh, coursing through the garden in a playful manner. Even in the midst of all this beauty, however, Yoruichi could tell that something wasn’t right. She could feel a disturbance in the air around her, and it seemed powerful. A reiastsu, maybe? It seemed different from others that she had felt, though. It was as if the world had suddenly tipped a little, and this small loss of balance was causing the entire body and everything on it to slip off into the unknown.

As if to confirm her suspicions, there was a crunching noise to her left, and a blonde boy tumbled out of the bushes and landed on the ground next to the bench that she was sitting on. Well, she had certainly found the source of the disturbance in the atmosphere. This boy had “disturbance” written all over him, in fact. He had smudges of dirt across his face and kuchinashi leaves and petals had attached themselves to his locks; he looked to be about the same age as her, Yoruichi thought, but he certainly wasn’t acting like it, what with the whole “hiding in other people’s bushes” thing.

The boy looked up at her from his place on the ground, an intense light in his eyes that caught Yoruichi off guard. “Sorry,” he said simply, before pushing himself to his feet with his large hands and setting off with nary a backward glance at the stunned girl.

“Wait!” Yoruichi called after him, getting up from her bench and following him down the pathway that led to her house. “You can’t go that way! Do you know where you are?”

The boy stopped and drummed his fingers on his chin. “Well, I took a left at… and then a right… and then those bushes really disoriented me… no, actually, I have no idea where I am.”

Yoruichi rolled her eyes. “You’re in the Shihouin gardens. The path that we’re on right now leads back to the main house, which is a direction that you probably shouldn’t head in, genius one.”

The boy smiled a self-assured grin. “You know, I think you’re right. The Shihouins might not like it very much if some stranger came walking into their house… they might even, you know, do something really mean like have me thrown in jail.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Yoruichi said, thinking of her parents and not understanding that he was joking. She began to lead the strange boy toward the garden exit, the one that wouldn’t take him past members of the Black Ops. She noticed out of the corner of her eye that he was looking at her strangely, as one would look at a newly discovered seashell that had just washed up on shore. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked him sharply. If he was thinking what she thought he was thinking, there was going to be trouble. When people who didn’t know her found out that she was the Shihouin heir, and tried to flatter her or hit on her… well, bad things happened. Fingers were crushed, noses were broken, and complaints were made. And if there was no physical bruising, them there was at least an exceedingly awkward moment. Yoruichi had lost a lot of friends that way; nobody seemed to be able cope with the idea that she was a princess, and people just walked away from her instead of trying to deal with the issue.

“The matter with me?” he echoed. “Oh, nothing’s the matter with me. I’m fine. And how are you?”

Yoruichi was rather taken aback by his dismissal of her question. “I’m great.” She eyed him suspiciously for a moment before continuing, “C’mon, let’s just hurry up and get you out of here before someone sees you.”

“Well, surely, Yoruichi-san.”

She stopped in mid-step to turn and look at him. He was grinning, looking as if he had just said something terribly witty. “What?” he asked in response to her wide eyes. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Yoruichi stood stonily silent for a moment, trying to think of how she should handle the situation. Her pause gave away her uncertainty, so the blonde boy jumped in.

“Well, I know your name, so it’s only fair that you know mine. I’m Urahara Kisuke.”

Yoruichi was shocked, but she was getting angrier by the second. “And you knew who I was the whole time?”

Kisuke shrugged. “I recognized you as soon as I fell out of those bushes back there.”

Yoruichi narrowed her eyes dangerously, daring him to say something that would allow her to lash out at him.

“Hey now, don’t get mad!” Kisuke said, becoming aware of the danger hovering in the air. “I’m not going to make this awkward or anything. You just get me out of here, and I’ll go home, and you’ll stay here, and no one will be the wiser! I think it’s a simply wonderful plan.”

Yoruichi was speechless with happiness. He wasn’t going to make it awkward or make a big deal out of it. Here, finally, was someone who understood. She could have cried, but instead she smiled her catty grin and led him the last few steps to the gate. “Here we are.” she paused, opening it for him. “Get going, Kisuke-san,” she added playfully, her anger of a few moments ago forgotten.

He nodded, then stepped towards her and dropped a kiss on her cheek. When he was close, Yoruichi could smell the kuchinashi on him. It suited him, she thought. “Thank you very much for your help.” His eyes twinkled mischievously as he pulled away. “I’ll see you later.”

She didn’t answer, just nodded. He turned and walked out the gate.

What does he mean by “I’ll see you later”?

--------------------------------------------------

Yoruichi was ecstatic. Finally, the first day of her life at the academy had arrived. She gazed at her new surroundings, giddy with joy. She looked at the unfamiliar faces, all the new people that she was soon to meet, trying to remember not to be standoffish when people wanted to talk to her. As her eyes scanned the crowd, however, Yoruichi realized that there was something familiar about the twist in the air. A peculiar feeling… His reiatsu just seemed to tumble out of thin air; Yoruichi likened its movement to someone tripping over their own feet. This seemed to make sense, she thought, as she saw him stumble out of a crowd of people, tipping dangerously before regaining his balance and walking towards her. She could the see the smile in his eyes, but it did not show on his lips.

“Hello, Yoruichi-san! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” he said very seriously, extending his hand for her to shake. It suddenly dawned on Yoruichi in the glow of his hidden smile that their encounter a few days ago might not have been an accident or any manner of coincidence. He meant to meet me, she thought. He hid in my bushes on purpose…I’ll kill him. Yoruichi swiftly acted on this impulse, reaching up her hand and delivering a thump to the side of Kisuke’s head. He recoiled from her, covering his damaged cranium dramatically and looking at her reproachfully.

“Now was that really necessary?” he asked patronizingly.

Yoruichi was interested now. How had this boy known who she was, where she lived, and when she was starting her time at the academy? Had he known that she was going to be in the garden that day, or was it simply luck? Had he even been looking for her, or was it just a twist of fate that had sent him flying out of her bushes and into her life? Well, these were things that Yoruichi was going to have to find out. She couldn’t bear to leave a mystery unsolved.

“Don’t be stupid,” she told him. “Come on, Kisuke-san, let’s go find our classes.” She turned and began to walk away from him, moving just slowly enough for him to have the time to decide whether he wanted to follow her or not.

“Well, yes ma’am,” Kisuke said with a smirk before jogging to catch up with her.

--------------------------------------------------

When Yoruichi though back to when they had first met, she often laughed at her own naivety. She understood now that any hopes of knowing Kisuke’s motives were futile. Even now, after they had spent centuries together, she never had managed to weasel out of him those answers that she vowed to get so long ago. They didn’t really matter any more, though. She was too busy being glad that he had known those things, however he had known them, to truly wonder about his sources of information. Even if she had still cared to know, he had probably forgotten the answer by now. The things that he kept secret built up inside him, and Yoruichi thought that he probably couldn’t differentiate one fact from another anymore.

He was a mystery, even to her, the one who knew him best. In fact, if she did know at all, which she sometimes doubted she did, it was simply through a series of unrelated words and experiences that made no sense apart, but when brought together formed a clear picture of a person. Who exactly that person was, Yoruichi wasn’t sure that she would ever truly know. Something told her though, that he was revealing himself to her piece by piece, and all she had to do was pay attention to the little things: the kuchinashi leaves had clung to his hair, the very first kiss on the cheek, the smile that stopped in his eyes, and everything thing that had come after. If she did this, maybe, just maybe, she might un-build his mystery.

-----------------------------------------------------
AN- IT’S THE DRABBLE THAT WOULDN’T DIE! Oh well. I knew this one was gonna be long, just by virtue of that fact that the gardenia is my favorite flower.