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*
Ichigo is decidedly quiet, sitting at his desk. Rukia perches on the edge of the bed, her toes edging along her sandals.
“So?” she asks at last.
He glances at her, eyes dull and dark. “So what?”
“It’s a check-in,” she says, exasperated. Her feet slide into her sandals.
“You said that already.”
Her mouth twitches. She can still feel the scrape of his teeth at her throat, her jaw. “Don’t be a child.”
Now he looks at her fully, brows raised. There’s a sharpness to his gaze she’s missed before. “Because I shouldn’t be pissed when you disappear.”
“Says you,” she shoots back. She rises from the bed, crossing her arms over her chest. Her Shinigami uniform is heavy against her skin, too coarse; she finds herself missing the light dresses and layers of this world already. His leather jacket now hers drapes across the end of the bed, awaiting her return.
Shrugging, he leans back in his desk chair. “Yeah. Says me, I guess.”
Outside, it’s dark with spring twilight, purple-blue; they are colors that never reach Soul Society. She hums and looks down at the worn floorboards of his room, the familiar tread.
“It’s just a check-in,” she says again. This time, it’s for her own benefit.
The wheels of his desk chair squeak as he rolls back from the desk. “It better be.”
“I’m assigned here, you idiot. I have to come back.”
He smiles then. It isn’t friendly. “Because they give a shit about it.”
“It’s you, so yes. They do,” she murmurs, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“Unless you don’t want to come back,” he says, and this is the crux of it at last, she thinks. He’s still watching her, gaze dark and narrow. There’s a strange curl to his mouth, a twist she knows just from darker moments.
A flush builds at her throat, curls up. She tilts her head, stretching her arms out at her sides. Her fingers settle at the weave and fold of the thick black robes, belted too tightly at her waist.
“You think I don’t want to?” she asks dryly. The pad of her thumb rubs across the cool metal band sitting at the base of her finger.
He shrugs. His unease, his tension, it radiates against her, leaving a sour taste in her mouth. Time is ticking away; the gate will open soon, and she will have to leave. But not like this.
“I think things are different now,” he says at last. The twilight casts strange shadows across the room, his face. They are all so much older than they once were, she thinks. “You’re a lieutenant, and no one knows what the fuck is going on with me, and – “
It’s then that she moves to him. She stands in front of him, reaching out to touch him, sliding her fingers along his temple into the thick spikes of his hair. He doesn’t look up at her, but his hands come to her waist, bracing her there. She fits between the space of his knees, her thighs press against the edge of his chair.
“It is,” she says. Her fingers sink against the nape of his neck, into tense muscle. “But we have choices now.”
“We’ve made them already,” he murmurs. He turns his face, his mouth catching at her bare wrist.
She smiles slightly. “Obviously.”
“I don’t trust them,” he says quite plainly. He looks up at her, eyes narrow and dark. “I don’t. They’ve fucked shit up so badly before, and you –“
Her fingers slide over his mouth, stopping him. They never talk, but they talk too much, she thinks as her fingertips curl into the line of his lip. His breath is warm against her skin. She can feel as his hands tighten at her waist.
“You worry too much,” she says.
It’s quiet and soft and outside of who they usually have to be beyond the privacy of his room and this house. She remembers breakfast two mornings ago, with Isshin sobbing over her leaving and delaying the party he’s been planning for them for weeks now. They flush and settle and keep a distance under prying eyes, but here, they can breathe and reach out.
She misses it when she’s gone.
“You do,” she adds when his mouth moves under her fingers. “No one is going to hurt me. They know better.”
“You bet they fucking do. I’m even a little scared of you,” he cracks.
Rolling her eyes, she pushes at his lips. “I meant because of you, idiot.”
Ichigo shrugs. His hands tug and pull her into his lap, her knees settling and pressing into the sharp wood of his chair. “Nah. You can fuck people up, now.”
“Now?” she drawls, the color flushing her throat. She has never been one for praise. It is a luxury for those who do not have to fight for every breath and moment as she has.
The smile curls under her fingertips, sharp and amused. He bares his teeth and bites at the pads of her fingers. “I’ve always known. It took everyone else too long to figure it out.”
Her hand shifts to cup his cheek, feeling the hard line of bone there. She leans in and kisses him, sharp and sweet and brief. There is a pull towards the door, towards Urahara and the gate; she feels the moments sliding away from her.
“Sometimes, you’re sweet,” she murmurs.
His face heats against hers, the warmth flushing her skin. “Am not.”
“Sometimes,” she laughs.
“Fuck off,” he mutters.
His teeth sink into her lip and he pulls her close, into the breadth of his chest and shoulders. His glasses press against her cheeks. It’s all very soft and warm, and impermanent. Someday, it will be different, settled; for now, they take what they can get.
The internal timer in her mind ticks, rings. She smoothes her hands over the line of his throat and pulls back, shaking her head. “I have to go,” she sighs.
Ichigo tilts his head up, gaze dark and heavy. His hands smooth over her hips, dig into the rough of her robes. “Yeah,” he murmurs.
“At least we can say goodbye this time,” she says with a small smile.
“You and your bizarre silver linings.”
Shrugging, she leans in and kisses him one more time, easy and light. His mouth chases hers as she pulls away and slides off of his lap. His hands remain on her hips, tight against the jut and press of her bones.
“Do you want me to come?” he asks. It’s the first time he ever has. Every other time, the departures have been so quick or too painful that there wasn’t the opportunity. She swallows hard.
“No,” she murmurs as he stands, towering over her. His hands skim up the curve and give of her spine up to her shoulders. Her hair is starting to grow out again. “It’s okay. I’ll be back in a few days. Five, tops.”
“Promises, promises,” he murmurs, leaning in and kissing her. His mouth is heavy and hard on hers, his lips opening over hers. She shuts her eyes, startled. Her mouth parts and there is the slide of his tongue across her bottom lip, the dig and press of his fingers into the flat of her back. Stretching against him, she lets him pull her close, lets him kiss her for a long hard moment. She will keep it as a reminder, a promise.
Her fingers curl into his t-shirt. She feels the bend and press of the ring against her knuckles, and sighs.
“I mean it,” he grits out against her mouth.
She opens her eyes. His gaze is dark, flecked with gold. A shiver settles over her.
“If you’re not back, I will come get you,” he finishes.
A flush curls up her throat towards her cheeks. Rukia wets her lips and leans her brow against his, just for a moment. “I know,” she says, and she does. There is precedent.
Together for a moment, they breathe. It’s goodbye enough.
*
The other side of the gate is quiet. Her brother is not waiting, as promised. Neither is Renji, or Nanao, as they usually are when she comes back through the gate. Old friends are hard to shake, she thinks. The sky is too heavy and too grey for mere clouds.
Rukia swallows and touches her palm to the hilt of her sword. She edges forward into the wide open plain, eyes tracing the silent lines of the compounds. In the back of her mind, Shirayuki shivers.
Something is wrong, she whispers to Rukia.
But the gate is closed and there's nothing to do but press forward. Rukia feels Shirayuki unlatch from the sheath, but she does not draw. There's an acrid taste at the back of her throat, collecting as she breathes.
"Ah, Rukia."
The casual, smooth voice curls over her. The scar at her sternum stretches with the sound.
"Aizen," she says after a beat. She doesn't turn around. Ice slivers at her fingertips. Shirayuki is cold and wild, the sharp chill of it unraveling in her belly.
"You remember," he murmurs, and there is a ghost of a hand at the nape of her neck.
She does not move. Shirayuki is all but a low growl in her mind, the cold sweeping through her veins. There is even the quiet vestige of what she knows as Zangetsu, as Ichigo, lingering at the pit of her belly.
Her toes curl in her sandals. The lieutenant badge is heavy on her arm.
"They've given you their due, I see," he says, still behind her. She can hear the careless smile in his voice. "And -"
It's almost out of her control, the way the ice slips from her palm and back. She turns as it sharpens and cools the air. It catches him at the throat and knocks the breath from him.
She runs.
*
Every corner of Soul Society is deserted. A thin layer of snow, cold and sharp, covers every inch.
Rukia sits in a grove of trees, in the branches high over the gardens of the Kuchiki mansion. She leans against the tree trunk and breathes. A cut is open at her thigh, her shoulder, her cheek. Dried blood flakes at the graze of her fingertips.
We need to keep moving, Shirayuki murmurs. She is suppressing herself, suppressing Rukia’s spiritual energy, in an effort to cloak her from Aizen’s gaze.
“Not yet,” Rukia breathes. Snow catches at her eyelashes. It’s been a day of cat-and-mouse, back and forth with Aizen. He is weaker than she remembered, but still strong enough to keep up the chase.
She thinks he likes it, the game of all this. He thinks it's funny and ultimately useless, of course. The gate is shut, firmly in his control, and there’s no way to let anyone on the other side – Urahara, Ichigo, Isshin – know that anything is wrong. All of them have grown complacent in the quiet of the last battle, in the transition between what Soul Society has been and what it will become, with Ichigo coming into his own. They’ve been too soft, and now, now –
They are not dead, Shirayuki murmurs to her.
Rukia shuts her eyes and pulls the collar of her robes away from her throat, a moment of relief. The fabric sticks uncomfortably to her skin, her hair matted at her throat with two days of sweat.
The snow started this morning. She can feel the rise and fall of it in her belly, a slow unraveling.
“Okay,” she says, opening her eyes. “Now what?”
Bankai, Shirayuki breathes, shivers.
“Not yet,” Rukia murmurs. The snow isn’t thick enough, the air isn’t cool enough. For the bankai she’ll need against him, she needs it all, the weather and the environment and the sharpness of her steel. “I should try and get to the jail cells.”
Alone?
“There’s no one else here. I don’t –“
Shirayuki hums, laughs in the back of her head. Rukia shifts against the tree, bones aching and muscles tightening under her. Aizen is near, but he has yet to find her. This is the first time she’s been back to the mansion since the chase began. She thought it would be too easy to go there for the first. Now, she is left without options. She knows it better than he does, in any case.
There is another way, Shirayuki murmurs. There’s a shift, a cool pulse in her chest.
“I don’t – what do you mean?” Rukia breathes, pressing her fingertips to her temple.
Let me go.
Rukia shuts her eyes. Her hand slides over the hilt of her sword. “Can we do that?” she breathes.
Through the snow, there is a low sort of laugh, cold and high.
“You may be a lieutenant, Kuchiki, but you are not your adopted brother,” Aizen drawls from across the courtyard. “I will have you, with the others.”
Shirayuki shudders, an uncontrolled surge of power. Rukia’s palms ice over, her toes curling in her sandals. “Will we both be all right?” she asks softly.
I believe so.
The air whistles; out of the corner of her eye she sees the dark flash of kido approaching. He is toying with her, still. But she has lasted longer than he thought she would, she knows that much. Pushing onto her feet, she skids along the damp branches and back into the air. Snowflakes melt against her mouth and her skin, pale against her dark robes.
“Shirayuki,” she murmurs as she touches the ground in a crouch.
“Admirable,” Aizen says, suddenly in front of her.
She raises her head, her fingers sinking into the soft ground. There should be flowers here, and green grass, she thinks absently. Now, it is all snow and ice. There is a muscle memory here, the phantom lingering of the red thread at her throat, his hand in her chest. The scar burns, and she swallows.
“Useless, really. I knew you would hide, and dodge,” he says breezily. The kido edges at his fingertips. He is a waste of the captain he once was, but she says nothing. Strength comes in many forms, she knows that much.
Abruptly, she stands and skids back, sliding her hand along the snow settling on the ground. She can taste ice on her tongue.
“Have I shocked you into silence again, Rukia?” he teases, voice low. “Can you still offer no resistance?”
She watches him, rising to her full height. Her hand settles on the hilt of her sword. Shirayuki is ready, pulsing and humming and stirring under her skin.
“I speak when I need to,” she says at last. The ice settles in her fingertips. The majority of her words are for herself, and Ichigo. Aizen has nothing of her anymore.
Aizen smiles. His hair is shorn, his face haggard and pale. But there is power at his palms; she can feel the heat of it, the buzz against her skin.
“Let’s finish this, Rukia. Just as I should have years ago.”
Second dance, Shirayuki murmurs.
“You said you would have me with the others,” she says, a stalling mechanism. Her sword clicks free, loose in her palms.
“Or I will hang your body in front of the gate to the other side. It will be the first thing Kurosaki sees when he finally comes for you,” Aizen drawls. He does not draw his sword. “I have time to decide.”
She wets her lips. A chill shudders through her, but she does not move. “As you say,” she murmurs.
“You bore me now, Rukia,” he says, annoyed. He holds out a palm and a dark ball of energy forms there, licking at the snowy air. “But then, you’ve never been wholly interesting. Just a means to an end.”
Her mouth curls sharply. The time for words is over.
He lazily flings the kido at her. She pulls her sword and slides back and back, digging into the ground with the tip of her blade. “Tsugi no mai,” she murmurs, as the energy flushes her skin. The ice spins and soothes around her, cutting off his blast. She can see the widening of his eyes; he has never seen this dance. “Hakuren.”
Sword digging into the ground, she pulls back and slides her grip around the hit, lifting it into the air at her ear. The ice sings and hums as it pushes forth towards Aizen, a hard wave of glitter and shadow. It will not do much harm, she thinks; but it’s enough.
There’s a release from her, a lightening; she does not feel weaker, just easier. Cool fingers slide at her cheeks as the ice falls over Aizen; they are a reassurance.
“Now, we move,” Shirayuki whispers, and is gone from her side.
Rukia pushes into the sky and moves into the trees once more as Aizen is swallowed by the ice. She watches as Shirayuki, fully formed and just as she remembers her, pale and blue and deadly, pushes off in the opposite direction. Everything is distraction and stalling now. There are two of them to deal with, she thinks grimly as she moves onto the rooftops.
Aizen’s howl of displeasure is harsh, a sign of a man weakened and cold. It is muted in the snowy air.
The wind picks up.
*
Shirayuki goes to the jail cells, to see who she can free. It’s the right choice; Rukia is still strong enough to evade and distract Aizen. She is all that’s left now – with any luck, it will be enough time.
The snow is falling heavier now, responding to the shift and change in her energies. Wind sweeps through her hair, the hems of her robes. It is the third day, early in the morning; Rukia waits in the empty eleventh division, moving from room to room. She leaves lingering breaths of ice and reiatsu in her wake, as a trail. Aizen is close; along the way, he has found a sword. It is not his; he had decided to be beyond those long ago. But he still wields it.
Rukia creeps through an open window, looking over the wide vast courtyard. From here she can see the remainders of the Sokuyo Hill, the edges softened through the white snow. These are the moments she remembers, above all else; Ichigo can never erase or push away the betrayal of those she trusted, of those she worked with side by side. As much as she thought she had deserved it for all the supposed sins on her conscience, she still remembers their faces, watching her on the Sokuyo.
The worst part of all of this, she thinks as she moves through the window and sweeps through the air, is that Ichigo will have been right about it all, after all.
“Something is different.”
She lands heavily in the snow, glancing over her shoulder. Aizen waits, a sword in his hand, his robes loose and dark at his limbs. Already she can see his face changing, his hair lengthening; he is growing stronger the longer he remains free of the cross seal.
“Hurry,” she murmurs, thinking of Shirayuki. It’s instinctual to speak to her, even when there is only the lingering vestige of her in the back of her mind.
“What are you trying to accomplish?” Aizen asks her, voice slow and light. The tip of his sword drags through the snow.
Rukia stands, edging back into a fighting stance. Her heel presses into the cold ground. “Nothing,” she breathes.
“But something has changed,” he muses. The sound of his voice grates on her ears. “Your zanpaktou – “
“Walks free, yes,” she says, bold and sharp.
His gaze narrows on her, his fingers tightening at the hilt of his blade. “If you’re trying to outsmart me, you will not succeed.”
She tilts her head and steps back. A cold wind settles against her skin, fluttering through the snow. It catches at her eyelashes, wet at her cheek. “I wouldn’t dare,” she drawls.
Mouth turning, he launches a sharp burst of kido at her. She ducks back and flies to the left as it leaves a dark smoky mark of impact in the snow and the courtyard.
“So you believe you can outlast me?” he says, voice rising in pitch. “You are a match for Kurosaki, indeed. Overconfident, the both of you.”
The ring at her knuckles seems to seethe and chill. She flexes her fingers and straightens. “You have yet to catch me.”
“If you haven’t realized this is a game by now, you never will.”
She flushes, drawing her blade back close to her side. “Then finish it,” she retorts hotly.
There’s a distant peal of warning in the back of her mind, but she ignores it. She has to; she’s tired and on her last moments of strength, and there is enough snow for a bankai to immobilize him, and perhaps, by then –
The kido catches her off-guard, heavy thick tendrils of energy wrapping around her stomach. The scar at her throat burns. She slices it off and jumps back, aches licking through her muscles and at her temples. The weight of his kido is like his hand at her throat, the press of his fingers into her chest, searching; bile rises at the back of her throat.
“You asked me to finish it,” he says, cold.
A cough catches at her throat. Rukia shuts her eyes for a moment, just a brief moment. There’s a harsh sour taste on her tongue, as her fingers tremble.
No, she thinks, opening her eyes. Aizen tilts back and launches towards her, that cool sharp smile on his face that sometimes haunts her sleep.
She raises her sword to parry. Her wrist shakes.
The blow never comes. A dark cloak sweeps into her vision, warmth enveloping her, and suddenly she is in the air, borne aloft in strangely familiar arms. Below her, Aizen curses and begins a chase. The trees and the deep grey snowy air hide them.
“Ichigo would not be happy with you.”
Rukia looks up, mouth wide and catching snow at the lips. “You’re –“
Zangestu nods, short and sharp. He is a dark line of ragged cloaks and wavy hair, sharp lines and angles. He is the mirror of her own sword, and it strikes her deeply, the recognition. This, this entity – she has carried him before, in some heavy way and shape. She did not know his face, but she knows him, just as she knows Ichigo.
There is a scar she carries that knows his name.
He takes her to the empty barracks of the tenth and sets her down. She leans against the wall in the corridor, watching him. He lingers at the edge of the window, watching for Aizen. The visor shades his eyes and glints in the grey light.
“How did you –“
“Swords know,” he says, voice rigid. He is the balance, she thinks; he holds Ichigo in, restrains his wild impulses – or tries to, in any case. “Shirayuki’s materialization triggered my own.”
“And Ichigo?” Rukia asks. Her knees still tremble from the lingering effects of Aizen’s attack, and her own exhaustion.
Zangestu turns his head to her, his hands ghosting through the air. “He comes. There is a barrier on the gate that they must surpass, but he is coming.”
She keeps her weight heavily on the wall, her hands tight around the hilt of her sword. “Shirayuki is freeing the others. She –“
“I will assist her. You stay hidden, Rukia,” he says, voice steady and low, nearly a growl. “Ichigo – he is –“
“I know,” she murmurs.
“No. I do not think you really do,” he says, catching her off guard. “He is beyond the usual.”
There’s a strange sort of reassurance behind the cool words. At a distance, she hears Shirayuki laugh, coo.
“I’m fine,” she says at last.
“It’s not about that,” he says gruffly, and she knows that much. But there are instincts and defense mechanisms to fall back on, and she is always fine. She has to be.
“Go,” she murmurs.
There’s a brush of warm wind against her cheek and he’s gone from the corridor. She does not linger in the tenth barracks from long.
The snow is thick now.
*
There is only so much time she can waste and stall by evading him. In hours, she is bloody and bruised, facing him on a broad snow-covered plain. Behind them, Soul Society is a mess of ice and smoke and flame, another stretch of repairs ahead of them. Hollows have started to crack through the sky, delaying everyone from reaching Aizen. Shirayuki is with her again, a humming cold strength in her veins.
Still, Ichigo does not come.
Blood lingers in the corners of her mouth, at the flat of her tongue. Rukia drags herself up to her feet, facing Aizen head-on. The snow is speckled dark scarlet under her feet.
“And still you get up,” he says. There is almost admiration in his voice she thinks. Explosions sound behind her, the smell of smoke heavy in the air. Hollows split and swallow the sky, roaring through the clear air.
Inside her, Shirayuki hums. Bankai, she breathes.
“Not yet,” Rukia murmurs. Her bloodied fingers curl around the hilt of her blade. She can feel the others, her brother’s bankai, Nanao and her kido – they are all fighting, and she is alone.
“They will not reach you in time,” Aizen says, walking towards her. His power is growing, thrumming through the air.
She steps back, further into the open field. Snow is wet and cold under her bare feet. “That doesn’t matter,” she says. “As long as they’re free. They will stop you.”
“They couldn’t before.”
“Things are different now,” she retorts, digging her blade into the icy ground. Third Dance, she thinks.
Then, she tastes it. In the air there is a heavy sharp power, tangy and hard on her tongue. Within the smoke and ash and hard taste of fire, there is a familiar curling of Ichigo’s reiatsu against hers, searching her out. He is here, and Shirayuki is singing for her partner sword. Their meetings are secrets but the longing is fierce, an echo of what Rukia is just barely beginning to understand. The ice is close against her skin, the energy of it unfurling in her belly.
“Things are different now,” she repeats, meeting Aizen’s dark eyes. “I am different.”
“The more things change,” Aizen drawls, and lets it loose.
She is fast, but not fast enough. The kido catches her at the legs and she tumbles to the snowy ground again. Shirayuki slips from her damp fingertips and slides across the wet snow, away from her. Rukia pulls herself up and dashes for it, for the blade –
Aizen gets there first.
“You’re tired,” he clucks, taking it in hand.
Rukia stops, wetting her lips. Shirayuki in the back of her mind is a cold anger, licking at her insides and unfurling at her fingertips.
Bankai.
“Not yet,” she says to them both, even as her breaths come slower and more strained. “Not yet.”
Aizen smiles. His fingers drag over Shirayuki’s blade and she feels it, surely as she felt his hand in her chest reaching for the Hogyoku. Bile rises in her throat.
“It will be much more enjoyable killing you in front of Kurosaki,” he drawls, his palm tight around the hilt of her sword. He pulls it close to his side.
Now?
Rukia, the lingering sting of his kido needling her limbs, slides back on her heel. “You’ve tried this once before,” she says, voice clear and strong. “You know how this ends.”
Now, she thinks.
In his hand, Shirayuki shivers and shifts into a hard ice. Rukia watches coolly as he opens his hand from the burn of her sword. It clatters to the snow. She reaches out and it comes to her just as the ice rises around her. She feels the shift of her robes into the pale kimono, laying flush at her thighs and knees. Shirayuki lengthens and sharpens in her palm. The scythe she knows, has felt the weight of before; very few others have seen it.
When the ice settles, Aizen is watching her without any sort of smile.
“Bankai,” he says.
She remains silent. Her bare toes sink into the snow. Her reiatsu is shifting, reaching out; Ichigo can feel the change, feel the rise and fall of her power as the bankai form settles.
Then, Aizen’s mouth turns, a slight quirk. “Now. Now, it becomes interesting,” he murmurs. The dark kido licks at his fingertips.
He charges first. The air becomes her friend.
This battle is borne of sheer physicality. She is not trying to stall or run; she is here to prove something, to herself this time. She will not run from Aizen now, not when Ichigo is near and she is weakening him, bit by bit. Shirayuki’s scythe is wide, shielding and striking for her. The ice that spins out of her every breath is silently called, catching him by surprise. Still, he lands hits, and so does she. It’s a hard breathless dance.
Finally, they drop to opposite sides of the courtyard. The sweat slides cold and wet down her neck, her collarbones. She stands up straight, staring out in front of her. Blood drags down her arm, her thigh. She breathes in and out, Shirayuki slippery in her palms. The snow is dotted scarlet at her bare feet.
Aizen, bleeding from the shoulder and brow, laughs. The sound grates at her ears. “He is taking his time.”
“He doesn’t need to hurry,” she says sharply. The ice is heavy as it falls between them, sharp shards that break dully against the snow-blanketed courtyard.
“I can only toy with you for so long, Rukia,” he murmurs.
She shakes her head, lifting the long light hilt of Shirayuki. Her lengthened blade glints hard against the grey light. Smoke is everywhere, heavier than the snow and ice in her nose.
“You’ve never understood,” she murmurs.
“Whereas you have?” Aizen drawls.
Rukia tips her head back. Her temples are pounding, her fingers trembling, but she does not move. Her heel slides back into fight stance. “The power you seek can never be yours,” she says steadily.
His eyes widen, dark and sharp. There is the solid base of knowledge she has now, from Urahara, from Isshin, from her captain and her brother; she is no longer in the dark when it comes to what’s on the way, and what the scope of change will be.
“What do you know of power?” he sneers.
“Enough,” she says softly. She feels it, the heavy desperate press of Ichigo’s reiatsu. He is close. “It was never meant for you, and it will never be yours, no matter who you kill and what you try to invent.”
She watches him carefully. His mouth twitches, his eyes narrowing. There is a tremble in his hands, visible and reassuring. Blood slides sluggishly down her bare skin. The cold settles, the wind easy. She is calm now, with Ichigo close and bankai icy on her tongue and fingertips.
“It was always him,” she says, bold and cool. There are vestiges of memories for her here, lifetimes ago and lifetimes past, where it is always him, and always her. For her now there are certainties.
“That’s a foolish girl’s answer,” Aizen snarls, and lifts his sword.
She doesn’t move. The ice settles at her feet, ready. Shirayuki hums with power and sharpness, a sweetness curling through her.
“No,” she murmurs.
There’s a sharp sort of whistle in her ear. The dark heaviness of Ichigo’s reiatsu swallows her as he appears, landing silently and close behind Aizen. She doesn’t meet his eyes as Ichigo grabs Aizen by the throat and throws him to the ground. Shirayuki coos and sighs as Zangestu answers. Her fingers relax at the hilt of her blade, her scythe.
“Foolish? Nah,” Ichigo says at last, his wide black blade at Aizen’s throat.
Then, she looks at him. The gold is heavy there in his eyes; it is him, but the others as well.
She smiles, the tinny taste of blood on her lips. “Took you long enough,” she drawls.
Ichigo smiles grimly. He’s angry; she feels it prickling over her skin, a hard bitter lingering at the back of her throat.
“Yeah. Well, I was detained,” he says, pupils blown wide. His face is flushed and bright, teeth bared. “Are you –“
“I’m fine,” she says, as the others press and fall into the wide arc of her reach; Nanao, Kyouraku, her brother – they are here, and whole. The Hollows are screaming their last, and dying. They are coming.
Ichigo watches her, and then looks at Aizen, immobilized before him.
“You know what I have to do,” he says, voice low. “I’m not leaving this to a fucking committee again.”
She wets her lips. Her head is throbbing, her muscles shaking with the effort of constant exertion. “I know.”
He doesn’t hesitate; there are no last words between the three of them. When he brings down his blade into Aizen’s chest, and the power explodes there, red and dark and hot against her skin, she does not look away.
She has never looked away from Ichigo.
*
Captain Unohana keeps Rukia in the Fourth barracks for hours. The smoke still rises into the sky, but the chill in the air has receded. There are scorch marks where Hollows were reaped, and blood on her hands.
Ichigo doesn’t leave. He is impossibly sharp and angry; it radiates through the entire room, so much so that Unohana finally has to say something, to ask him to relax; there are others hurt as well, who cannot handle the press of his reiatsu the way she can.
No one says a word about Aizen.
It’s only after her brother is assured of her well-being, and Renji, and Ukitake, and Nanao, that the two of them are alone. The barracks are quiet and she sits up in her bed pallet, sore and tired and aching, but settled.
His gaze is sharp on hers as he leans against the wall, across the small room. “Is this where I get to say I told you so?”
Rukia rolls her eyes. The robes of a fresh uniform are soft against her fingertips as she smoothes her hands over the belt. There are no new scars; she has enough. “You got to kill him,” she says evenly.
“Still. It’s always something,” he mutters.
“Stop it,” she says, suddenly tired. “I’m just – I’m glad it’s done,” she murmurs.
He pushes off the wall and all but falls down to sit on the pallet next to her, his arm hard around her waist. He pulls her into the long line of his body and she breathes in. Her nose tucks into his robes at his shoulder. There is the weight of his ring on her finger, a constant. He is warm and steady and smells of his room, of the real world.
Rukia shuts her eyes then and takes a deep breath. His mouth glances at her brow.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t faster,” he says at last. The guilt seeps between them, heavy on his tongue and against his skin.
She shakes her head. “It’s not about that.”
“It is for me. What good – what fucking good is any of this if you get stuck here and I can’t help you?” he asks. Frustration laces through his voice. It reverberates against her skin.
“You always do, though. Even when I don’t want you to,” she says. “Don’t be an idiot, Ichigo.”
“You’re such a comfort,” he drawls, his hand curling at her hip.
Tilting her head up, she watches him carefully. “You got here. That’s all that matters.”
“But – fuck, you were –“
“I was fine.”
He snorts, and she has to slap his thigh. “We like that lie, eh?”
“You’re an idiot,” she says.
It’s abrupt when he leans in and kisses her, his mouth heavy and warm over hers. There’s a strange headiness to him here in Soul Society, on this side of the gate. She shuts her eyes and breathes. His hand finds hers on his lap. Their fingers intertwine, their rings clinking together against the other.
She is tired, now. The last few days press on her, the memories of Aizen from now and before, the phantom aches from scars she shouldn’t have. It’s against her nature, but she leans against Ichigo, into the steady weight of him. What she wants is to go home. She knows what that means.
He bites lightly at her bottom lip as he pulls away, his lips just grazing hers.
“I’m taking you home,” he says, steady and firm.
She opens her eyes, watching as the gold seeps into the amber of his gaze, the steady thrumming of his energy against hers.
He knows what it means, too.
“They’ll want to talk to me. And you,” she says first.
Ichigo’s eyebrows twitch. His mouth curls, a cool smile. “Yeah. And I’m taking you home.”
Rukia tips her head back. In the back of her mind, Shirayuki is soft, easy, cool.
“Okay,” she says at last. His hand tightens around hers.
Things are different now, after all.
*