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Kurosaki-kun…
Her light voice called him, ringing in his ears like a bell would.
Kurosaki-kun…
He knew this dream. He’d dreamed this dream many times before. In moments, Ulquiorra would come along, brush his cold lips against Orihime’s cheeks, mutter ‘I’m sorry,’ and then kill her.
Ruthlessly. Heartlessly.
Her hair would clash gruesomely with the colour of her blood, bright, vibrant, and more alive than she could ever be again. Orihime had died, looking at the man she loved.
She had died looking at her cold killer, her arrancar. Her Ulquiorra.
She had loved him more than anything else. And he had loved her. And that was why, while her blood was still flowing onto his hands, he turned his emerald eyes to Ichigo and asked him to take his life.
Begged him.
Had those been real tears, glistening over the black marks on Ulquiorra’s skin? Or was it another trick? Another illusion?
Whatever it was, Ichigo had gladly taken the life of the espada, silencing him immediately. Rukia had entombed Inoue in ice. A pillar that would last forever, giving her the impression of sleep.
The espada had no tomb.
Ichigo turned his attention from his memories to the dream. He prepared himself to watch Inoue die, just as she had died before, with him unable to save her.
But as his eyes focused back on the image before him, it was not Inoue who was about to die.
It was Rukia.
And it was himself who was killing her.
Or more accurately, it was the much darker, much more violent… much more unknown half of himself.
A bestial grin spreading itself across his visage, Hichigo pulled Zangetsu out of the raven-haired young woman’s torso and disappeared with a laugh.
--
Ichigo awoke with a foreboding feeling. There was some dark kind of pressure pressing down on his senses, dulling them, numbing them. He could barely swing himself out of bed to stumble to Rukia’s closet. It was stupid. Of course she was there.
He opened the closet.
The rumpled blankets, the discarded school uniform Rukia was always too lazy to hang up properly. A glass with the remnants of milk still at the bottom, along with several books and an alarm clock.
He took these all in, as well as the phone lying on her empty pillow.
The phone that was beeping.
The phone that was indicating the arrival of a hollow.
A hollow that Rukia had obviously gone to take on herself.
Immediately Ichigo hurtled across the room, throwing aside several objects before he reached the small, yellowish pill he was searching for and popping it into his mouth. Instantly, Kon took over his body and his shinigami self seemingly morphed out of the flesh.
“Stay here. Don’t move,” Ichigo commanded, then he leapt out the window, Zangetsu already drawn.
“Wait, Ichigo, what’s going o-!” Kon scrambled across the room to find the window slam shut in his face. “Argh,” He muttered, and reluctantly sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed and waiting for Ichigo and his Rukia-nee-chan to return.
--
Rukia ignored the sweat running down the side of her face and leapt into the air again, attacking the hollow with Sode no Shirayuki, slashing a huge gash diagonally across it’s chest.
This hollow was surprisingly small, she thought, gasping for breath. It almost resembled an arrancar, and the reiatsu she felt emanating from it was enormous. How had it gone unnoticed for so long?
She found out soon enough.
The hollow, which had taken on the form of a lithe woman, half panther, half human, and just a bit of something else, grimaced at the pain and sprung into the air, spinning and … vanishing.
Just like that.
There was no reiatsu, no presence, no nothing.
And then Rukia felt a burning pain in her back and she turned immediately, Sode no Shirayuki’s ribbon swirling behind her. Ignoring the blood dripping down her robes, she raise the zanpaktou.
“Some no mai, tsukishiro,”
A white, glowing circle formed around her opponent and almost immediately a pillar of ice shot up and engulfed the hollow – but only its arm.
The hollow had made a surprisingly fast dodge to the side, but now one limb was frozen dead into the ice. Rukia watched on for a few seconds with cold eyes.
The pillar shattered, taking the arm with it.
The once-trapped hollow fell to its knees, filling the air with a high keening noise. Up till now it had done nothing but hiss and screech, but anger filled the high, trilling, soprano-like voice as the woman (for it was undoubtedly that) spoke.
“You will pay. I have power at my hands that you cannot imagine.”
Rukia frowned and slashed her zanpaktou again, driving the creature backwards.
“I can know your moves…”
She slashed again…
“I can know your mind…”
Again.
“I can know your heart.”
And with that inky blackness overcame her eyes and the next thing she knew, she was on her knees, but the pressure was so great on her shoulders that she couldn’t even lift her head to see the familiar figure before her.
Sode no Shirayuki clattered to the ground beside her from her limp hands. Her blank eyes stared straight ahead. Utter hopelessness suddenly gripped her heart, but, fighting the effects of the hollow’s technique, she forced her head upwards.
What she saw there made her breath rattle in a sharp gasp.
“Kaien-dono…”
A long tongue, coated with slime, emerged from his mouth, tentacles erupted from his back, claws from his fingers.
She couldn’t let this get to her. She couldn’t.
But love and hopelessness weaken the mind and the body, and the opponent that the young woman was facing knew how to use both to her advantage. No individual feeling like Rukia did at the moment – hopeless, hopelessly in love, worried, afraid… guilty. Nobody feeling that way could have withstood such torment.
The shinigami almost welcomed the tentacles wrapping around her arms, gripping them so that they hurt. The tongue, foraging through the air, towards her face. Kaien-dono’s blank eyes searching for her without sight. Searching, searching…
“Rukia!”
There was a crashing noise behind her that stunned her out of her reverie and she jerked backwards from the tentacles with a sharp cry. Ichigo stormed towards the hollow, wasting no time whatsoever.
“GETSUGA TENSHOU!” He bellowed, sending waves of red and black curling towards the enemy, ploughing into the ground and blowing apart half the street. The hollow dodged and jumped and Ichigo growled in sudden frustration. All of a sudden his temper, his impatience flooded back, along with the blood of battle pounding through his veins.
All because of a certain raven-haired girl who knelt, slumped, on the ground behind him. Depending on him to be protected.
And Ichigo never gave up.
“Bankai,” He commanded in a double-layered voice, pushing the limits and simultaneously drawing a hand across his face, till a skeletal mask eerily resembling a hollow’s replaced it. Yellow pupils stared out of black eyes, towards the suddenly apprehensive hollow. Then he leapt towards it, trails of black and red spiralling from the end of his zanpaktou.
Rukia watched as they traded glancing blows, hoped that Ichigo could best the hollow, but the ground was fuzzy and was suddenly rushing up to meet her…
Until a strong arm caught her.
“Rukia! Hang in there,” Her orange haired saviour told her sternly. But the few seconds of distraction cost him and the hollow immediately hit him with the same technique that it had used on Rukia.
All of a sudden he was seeing the dream again.
Ichigo.
But it was different this time, this time it was not Inoue’s voice that called him. Inoue was dead. Now it was somebody else’s life that depended fully on him, somebody’s life he wanted, needed to save.
And I’ll be damned if I fail this time as well.
Rukia lifted her head up wearily to see Ichigo standing in front of her, shoulders bowed. He was gasping sharply, fighting against it. The hollow mask covering his face faded away and he suddenly blanched, writhing and twisting as his skin turned a bleached white and his eyes refused to return to their original amber colour.
Soon it wasn’t Ichigo, but Hichigo who stood before the hollow. And, like all things that only half-exist, and dominate only half a brain, Hichigo’s heart was that much harder to grasp. His mind was that much harder to control.
One slash was all it took with Zangetsu to eliminate the threat.
White pulled back, melting back into a colour of skin. Those amber eyes Rukia saw so often reappeared, filled with a triumphant look that she hadn’t seen in too long a time. Too long.
She shuffled over to him on her knees and grabbed him just as he toppled to the ground, exhausted. After all, he hadn’t gotten a decent wink of sleep for a long time… and, truth to be told, neither had she.
She pushed back his orange hair and managed to half drag, half carry him to the pavement, where she set him down and leant against a conveniently situated wall, settling his head in her lap. A snowflake landed on his chest.
Then another.
She pulled Sode no Shirayuki close and waited for him to awake so that they could return home. Return to somewhere warm. She stared sorrowfully at his closed eyes and pale face. His heart had been frozen way too long, she realized.
And frozen hearts always need help to thaw.
