A/N- Just a warning, this is drabbling to the extreme.

She'll always be his (dead) butterfly

She's wearing his shirt again; the old red one with the rip in the sleeve that she always tells him to fix. It's much too long, as it falls to her knees and the sleeves reach her elbows and swallows her tiny figure when she moves around his room with unearthly grace in her lively steps.

He's happy their friends aren't there because he hates her when she's with them. Always pretending when she smiles her fake smiles and talks in that sugar sweet voice of hers that makes his ears bleed. Except around him she doesn't pretend to be anything but what she is (dead) and he likes it that way because now he doesn't have to pretend either. He doesn't have to the hide the blood that stains his hands and the monster that lurks in the shadows of his soul.

She smiles up at him as she scribbles on old paper and thrusts the poorly drawn rabbits in his face (Isn't it beautiful?) and when he answers yes he's not actually talking about her stupid bunnies, but rather the rare smile that graces her face; the trivial show of happiness that she so seldom expresses.

It's been so long since she's graced him with her presence, almost an entire month. (Not that he's counting.)

She says it's because of all the chaos in Soul Society (rebuilding an entire empire is no easy task) and picking up the pieces of the once great nation is taking up the majority of her time. She has a duty, she explains, as much as she doesn't want to she follows the oath she made to help reconstruct the dysfunctional heaven she calls home.

He gets it, he says with a tightlipped smile, but he doesn't have to like it.

She grabs another blank sheet of paper and continues to scribble away like a child, and he leaves her be because he knows this is the only time she's allowed to relax and just be Rukia and not some noble robot shinigami who knows the answer to every problem and looks at the world though dead, emotionless eyes. He's content to simply sit and be with her, knowing that hopefully one day she won't have spend every spare moment sneaking away in a cumbersome body so they can be together. If she would allow him back into Soul Society he would gladly take up residence with her, but she refuses to allow him to do so. (You're so young, you're alive, don't waste your time here. You'll have plenty of time to do that when you're dead)

He doesn't want to wait until his death to be with her forever but he doesn't tell her and instead chooses to be the shoulder she cries on and the hand that helps her up when she falls. It's not a lot but it's enough for them; two people who never really should've fallen in love anyway.


Review? :)