#i rewatched the unohana-zaraki fight for this and all i gotta say is: muken needs better lighting

[recurring-polynya]

Hi! I know you don't write her very often, but I love your Unohana. I don't know if this is an extra scene request, exactly, but re: your Renji joins squad 4 au, you've mentioned that he's probably seen Unohana's bankai. How would that even go down, and how unhinged would Unohana get? In this au, does Renji ever learn more about Unohana or does she just skirt around the topic forever? (If this is a no go then no need to publish, or, heck, even if it's fine I'm a nervous wreck just sending this)

I really did try to stick to the prompt this time, but it ended up being more about what Unohana knows about Renji, instead of the other way around. Thanks, queen who gives us nothing!! Anyway, here you go, just a lil story about a very normal relationship between a guy and his very hinged captain.

| read on ao3 |

(This takes place between Part 1 and Part 2) TW: Blood. Lots.

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Unohana Retsu looked on, gently, but attentively, as her Fifth Seat poured her a cup of tea.

He had hands that were meant to grip a sword. Long fingered, knobbly knuckled, criss-crossed with scars, not a few of which she had given him herself. Nevertheless, his pour was steady, graceful, even.

"I know that you and Third Seat Kira are friends," she said, "so I suspect you've already heard the news."

Fifth Seat Abarai waited until he had placed the teapot back on the tray before responding.

"About his offer from the Third?"

Retsu nodded. "He told me this morning that he had accepted it."

Abarai nodded back, as if he was confirming the information to himself. "He told me he was gonna. I wouldn't--" He stopped himself and cleared his throat before continuing. "It's not a position I think I would like, but he seems excited about it."

"It's been wonderful having him here," Retsu observed, "but I've known for a long time that the Fourth wasn't a home for him."

Abarai's brows furrowed momentarily. Retsu wondered if he objected to this characterization of Kira, or if perhaps he was pondering a different unstated implication. "I guess you don't want me to try to talk him out of it, then." Or maybe he was just trying to figure out what any of this had to do with him.

Retsu took a sip of her tea. It was too hot, slightly oversteeped and worst of all, had a strange phantom sweetness to it. How?? They were her own tea leaves. She had watched him brew it. How did he do it? She placed her teacup back down on the table again. "I want you to take his seat."

Abarai blinked at her for a moment, owlish behind his thick-rimmed glasses. "Can't, ma'am. I haven't passed my Level 12 Kaidou Certification. Third Seat has to be able to run the Relief Station if you and Lieutenant Kotetsu get called away. And I don't think you should make an exception for me. Not for this."

The Fourth Division had a rigid set of exams and certifications that qualified its members for various positions. Retsu was not in the habit of granting exemptions generally, but Abarai wasn't the sort of person that rules were made for.

He was hardly her first involuntary transfer. Retsu was all-too aware of her squad's reputation as a dumping ground for underperforming shinigami. In his first three months at the Fourth, Abarai had cast zero kaidou, avoided three-quarters of his medical shifts, and submitted sixty-two transfer requests (Retsu still sometimes wondered about four that had come in on the same day. She never asked him about it. It must have been a Hell of a Tuesday.)

Exactly one month after she made him a deal--if he actually started trying, she would arrange for Isane to give him swordfighting lessons, and promised to transfer him if he was still unhappy at the end of a year--Twelfth Seat Aoga came to her and in a hushed voice told he that he thought Abarai might be a prodigy.

"Prodigy" wasn't exactly the right word for it. Abarai was just good with bones. Aside from herself, Retsu had four medics who could perform a full skeletal reconstruction, all senior officers, brilliant surgeons with distinguished tenures. Now, she had a fifth who couldn't otherwise heal a skinned knee. Everything he did was like that, though, backwards and out of sorts. He was excellent at chest compressions and setting bones and anything that required physical strength, but he struggled with the basic healing spells most people learned at the Academy. Long before he could do an anesthetic or antiseptic kaidou, the trauma surgeons were squabbling over him, simply because he was an incredible battery. When he couldn't get the hang of the common cold relief kaidou, he dug up one of Kirinji's horrible old techniques from somewhere in the depths of the library. It had been developed for highly infectious diseases that shinigami sometimes brought back from the deep Rukon and involved using your own immune system to turbo-charge the patient's. (Retsu had forbidden its use because there was a high probability of fatal backslash on the healer. Abarai usually just ran a high fever for a day or two afterward.)

That was all years ago, though. Abarai had grown into a perfectly competent healer. He wasn't the fastest or the most delicate, and his flesh healing still had a tendency to leave scars, but if there was one thing he excelled at, it was keeping people alive. No one could figure out exactly how he did it, or replicate his technique, but he was exceptionally good at pulling people back from the brink.

The real reason, though, she'd started giving him the exceptions that let him take on shift supervisor roles before he had the healing qualifications, was that Abarai was a natural leader in exactly the way that many of her subordinates were not. He had steel nerves. He was decisive in a crisis. He had a loud voice and people listened to him.

But shift supervisor wasn't the same as Third Seat.

"I agree," she said. "But I think you can get that certification. You've come a long way since we made our deal, Fifth Seat Abarai."

Abarai's cheeks colored, and he took a quick slug of his tea to cover his embarrassment. "I think I've pretty well held up my end of that bargain," he managed with a sheepish grin. "Level 12 Kaidou certification seems a little beyond what I agreed to."

"You have already gone quite far past what you agreed to," Retsu acknowledged. "But why stop now? You're hoping to make vice-captain yourself someday, aren't you?" She didn't point out that he was perfectly capable of passing the vice-captain's exam any time he chose to take it. He must be aware of this; he'd spent the better part of a year helping Kira through his own preparations.

Retsu chanced another sip of the tea while she waited for him to answer. It had not improved.

Abarai sucked his teeth for a long moment, then sighed in defeat. "There's a self-healing portion on the Level 12. I can't do it. I've tried and tried, but I got nothing. Can't heal a single scratch if it's on my body. Ask Kira, he's given up on me."

Retsu stared at him in amazement. "That can't be true. Everyone knows that your healing system--"

Abarai shook his head and shrugged expansively. "It's all involuntary. I'm a fast healer, but I got nothing to do with it. No kaidou involved."

Impossible. Abarai wasn't just a fast healer. His recovery ability, both in speed and magnitude, was a topic of hot speculation among her top officers. The very specific circumstances where his kaidou was above average were generally attributed to some form of leveraging off his own natural talents. She herself, who was quite familiar with his zanpakutou, had long assumed that it had a secondary healing aspect. Nevertheless, she had also assumed--

"Last week," she said, more curtly than she had intended, "when the Eleventh's Third Seat put his spear through your shoulder--"

"I mean, I cleaned it and bandaged it," Abarai admitted it. "Then I just slept it off."

And had been on shift eight hours later. Retsu closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "What do you do after our spars, Fifth Seat? That thigh wound I gave you last time. The one you said 'only looked bad.'"

"Oh, yeah. That was a poor judgment on my part. Kira and I were sposed to go out later, though, so he. Uh. Found me passed out from blood loss in the hallway and gave me a patch-up. I woulda woken up eventually, if he hadn't! My body is very good at making blood!"

Retsu gathered her inner serenity. Abarai was not, by far, the most worrisome of her officers, but she had to worry about him in very different ways than her other officers. "Don't you find it strange," she said slowly, "that you have so much natural ability at healing, and yet you're unable to take control of the process yourself? That's all it is--a matter of mind over reishi."

Abarai's eyes clouded, and he looked away. "I know. It should be. But it's certainly not the first time something about my healing doesn't make any damn sense."

"That's not true," Retsu reminded him. "Everything about your healing makes sense. For you." She knew he didn't like it when she brought these things up. He was more willing to talk to Isane about feelings-related things, and Retsu was usually content to leave it between the two of them. But there were times where more directness was necessary. "It's a mental block, most likely."

"It's quite common to not be able to heal yourself, actually," Abarai prattled back emptily, a notch too loud, as though he hadn't heard her at all. "Most people got something or other they just can't do, right? That's why that 12th level certification is so rare! But you know who does have one?"

Retsu narrowed her eyes at him. Of course she knew.

"I'm sure Fourth Seat Iemura's been looking forward to Kira leaving for a long time," Abarai went on. "He'd be pretty mad at me for leap-frogging him, I think." As if Abarai didn't drive Fourth Seat Iemura to the edge of apoplexy on a daily basis, primarily by the mere crime of existing. "Besides," he said, sincerity returning to his voice, along with a slight edge of desperation, "now's not a good time for me to be thinking about exams. I'm so close to bankai, I can almost touch it. I know it."

Retsu knew it, as well. And she knew that his goals were not her goals. His earlier point had been well made--he had been more than fair to her.

"I understand," she said. "I have been thinking about that, as well, you know. There's a special training I have been considering, but I wasn't sure you were ready to get serious about it."

Abarai's eyes widened. "Really? I mean--I am! I really am! I'm ready!"

Retsu smiled sweetly at him. "In that case…when is your next day off?"

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Abarai was quiet from the time they left the eastern gate of the Seireitei shortly after dawn on Saturday morning. Isane and Kira both had a habit of getting very chatty about nature whenever Retsu took them out of the city to train. It wasn't just the lack of conversation, though. Straining her ears, Retsu could still barely hear Abarai's footfalls. Despite his size, the leaves and branches rustled no more at his passing than at her own.

It was easy to think of him as a city boy. After decades in the Seireitei, Abarai's accent had been worn down to an occasional colorful expression, although it occasionally flared back to life when he was putting an unruly patient from the Eleventh in their place. He knew every street of the Seireitei, though, could name every player on the city football team. He was generally a cheerful and boisterous presence around the Coordinated Relief Station. You tended to hear him before you saw him.

Retsu knew as well as anyone, though, that you could change yourself on the outside, but you never really lost the old versions of yourself. You just covered them over, like an oyster creating a pearl. And she knew well what lay at the center of Abarai's soul. She had been to the deepest depths of the Rukon. Places where reality became thin, where time looped back on itself. Most Souls didn't survive long there, and those that did were…something else.

Abarai had grown up at the frayed edge of Soul Society. Still within the borders. Still in a place that resembled civilization, she reminded herself. He was the soul of a human child who had died and taught himself survive against all odds, a soul who had learned to move silently through the woods and chose to fight with tooth and claw for every drop of blood in his body. He wasn't a monster-boy created out of the bloody, ragged edges of Soul Society itself, the love of fighting made into the shape of a person. He just reminded her of one sometimes.

The sun was high in the sky when Retsu found a place that she felt would do. A wide, grassy clearing was ringed by a stand of stately pines. They were tall, but the trees were still young by the standards of Soul Society. Younger than her. She and Abarai set their packs off to one side, took a drink of water, did some stretches.

"You said we were doing something special?" Abarai asked as they lay on their backs, each hugging one knee to their chest.

"Hmm," said Retsu, switching legs. "Maybe that was a lie."

He turned his head to look at her.

"An exaggeration," she clarified. "It's not that special. We're just going to fight."

He narrowed his eyes at her, clearly not buying this.

"You've already done most of the preparatory work," she explained. "You're strong enough. You've fully mastered your shikai. You can externalize your zanpakutou spirit." She stretched both legs out in front of her and sat up. "All that is left is to convince them that you need it. You need a challenge. A rock to crash up against, something that will break you to pieces without their intervention."

Abarai sat up and frowned. "I thought that was what fighting Captain Kuchiki was for."

"That's theoretical," Retsu replied. "You need something more imminent. You could go fight him, I suppose. I am not sure Zabimaru would be sympathetic to your cause."

Abarai stuck out his lower lip. "I'm pretty sure they wouldn't."

"It's no matter," Retsu said, rising to her feet. "That's never been your plan anyway, remember?"

Abarai nodded. "Right. You're right. Gettin' ahead of myself, as usual. Captain Kuchiki's had his bankai for ages. I need to master mine before I can face him. Which means I gotta get it, first."

What was it like, Retsu wondered, to be so impossibly young? To have so much laid out before you, to want so badly. She could hardly remember it.

"Just so," she said, striding to the center of the clearing. "And to do that, you will fight me."

Abarai rolled to his feet in a smooth motion. "I've fought you before," he grinned.

"I haven't been serious before," she replied, drawing her zanpakutou and examining it in the sunlight. There was an eagerness in her sword today, one she hadn't felt in a long time. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Abarai, "whenever you are. Look, there's really nothing special about this? Just a regular ol' fight? There's nothing you want me to focus on or try to--"

"Try," Retsu replied, " not to die. Bankai." The blade of her zanpakutou began to loosen and sag, dripping between her fingers to form a thick pool of blood-like ooze around her feet. "Minazuki."

If this were Kira, or perhaps even Isane, she would have given them a moment, let the impact sink in. But this was Abarai, who had grown up on the edges of the world, breathing violence into his lungs like spores, letting it spread through his blood and marrow and bloom from his skin. He blocked most the first volley of Minazuki's blood whips before his sword was even fully from its sheath. She still got in a good lash across one cheek, another against his calf. He had Zabimaru unsealed in time for the second round, and managed to block it completely. Minazuki was fast, though, too fast for Renji's shikai. The third attack hit before Zabimaru could reorient, severing the elbow tendon. Next, both knees. His legs hadn't finished buckling beneath him when she laid a deep gash across his gut, and one on the chest to match.

The wounds were carefully chosen. They both knew it. Immobilized and laid open, a sure death by exsanguination. Well. A probable death. Retsu stepped closer and placed the tip of her sword at his throat. His superhuman will to survive might be able to regenerate blood fast enough to keep pace with the torso wounds, but she didn't think that even he could outlive a slashed throat. Minazuki's ooze slithered around them, fencing in the growing lake of blood that poured from his body, soaking into her socks and sandals. "If you yield," she said, "I will heal you."

Stubborn as ever, Abarai tried to prop himself up on his good arm, which caused a fresh gush of dark liquid to fall out of him. Retsu waited. The arm failed him. He fell back down in his puddle again, then rolled onto his back. "After you heal me," he groaned, "can we go again?"

"No," replied Retsu. "That will be it for today."

Abarai was silent for a long time.

"Renji," she said. "You need to make a call. The patient is dying."

An angry growl rattled through his chest. "Save 'im," he finally sighed. "I yield. Whatever."

Retsu flicked a hand, and ropy tentacles of Minazuki clambered up onto him, sealing over his wounds with loud, wet slaps.

Abarai squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment and made a distressed noise in his throat. After the initial discomfort passed, one eye opened and swiveled to regard her. "This is just Minazuki's usual goop, ain't it?" he wheezed. "Does it change? Between fighting and healing? Chemistry-like?"

"Is now really the time to be thinking about this?" Retsu asked. She didn't usually use Minazuki's bankai form to heal people, and honestly had never thought about it much. Also, unlike Abarai, who practically had a summer home there, she, herself had never spent much time in Shikai-Minazuki's stomach.

"If I only get to fight you for twenty seconds at a time, I gotta learn as much as I can from it," Abarai said, closing his eyes again. Retsu's heart thumped in her chest. He wasn't anything like any of her other children, not even the lost one she kept trying to make him into, and for a brief moment, she loved him more than she could stand.

"When can we do this again?" he finally asked.

"Next week, if you like. If you feel ready to go again."

He let out an irritated whine, or possibly a whimper of pain. "Took…two hours to walk out here," he said, sounding more than a little petulant. "This is really how it's gonna be?"

"Yes," she said. "I don't like to release my bankai where people can feel it. This is how it's going to be."

He was quiet, and they both listened to Minazuki glorp and blorble away at his injuries for a few minutes.

"I need to fight your bankai to get bankai, but I'm gonna need a bankai if I'm gonna last long enough to figure out what kinda bankai I need to fight yours," he mumbled, more to himself than to her.

"Well," she said, "you only have to yield if you want me to heal you. If you want to heal yourself, I'll give you as many time-outs as you want."

Abarai's eyes shot open and his head rolled to the side, so he could regard her fully. "Time-outs?"

She nodded sweetly. "Mm-hmm."

"If I…I if heal. Myself." He took a deep breath, closed his eyes again, and rolled his head back to face the sky. "Fuck." Another deep breath. "Sorry for the language, ma'am."

"Don't worry about it," she replied. "And I know you can do it. I believe in you."