It was dark outside. A single oil lamp illuminated the upstairs room where Rukia knelt at the bedside of the man who had asked her to call him 'brother.' She had let him continue speaking despite the obvious cost to his strength. His face was flushed now, as if with fever. He tried to sit up and grimaced. At least his pain gave her something to concentrate on in the whorl of her thoughts. She took a pillow from beside the bed; then, with one hand about his shoulders, took his weight to slip it between his head and the rest of the cushions. He sat back, breathing hard through gritted teeth and, without thinking, Rukia took his hand in both her own.
She wasn't used to this: not to seeing him like this, or to knowing the things she now knew. She felt so pummelled and numb from her experiences on the sokyoku, she wasn't yet sure what to do with the information.
"I broke the law when I took Hisana from Rukongai," he said, breaking the silence of a sudden: "I broke it again when I married he
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