Hello peeps!

A new idea is here. This is a Soulmate AU, but it takes place after canon-verse.

Things may seem confusing initially, but eventually everything will be revealed.

So sit back, and enjoy the ride!

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Rukia has always known herself to be strange.

Stranger than the humanity surrounding her every morning on the streets, every afternoon on the campus, every evening in the cafe; flowing and parting in waves of diversity, leaving whispers, laughter, hurried footsteps, in its wake. Stranger than the balding man who routinely shows up at the door next to hers, pacing and mumbling and longingly staring it down before making his way back. Stranger than the freckle faced kid who talks to swings and slides in the garden that can be overlooked from her window. Stranger than her brother-in-law who endorses the kids' idol "Seaweed man" with the same stoicism he deals his petrified clients.

Well, some habits die hard. Apparently even when crossing over a lifetime.

She looks to her right, where a girl is peacefully snoozing off, her blonde locks splayed and drool collecting on her open notebook. The professor is droning about Egypt and hieroglyphics and trade, his voice soothing almost the entire class to sleep. There is little she can say in her defense, the bunny doodles spilling all over her notes. She does not find the subject boring, no, and nor him, but maybe Mr. Higgins could do with a voice a little less benign and maybe a bit more rousing.

She thinks of her piano, the symphonies playing in her mind. A glance at the clock shows she is mere five minutes away from recreating the music filling the insides of her mind with her fingers in that dusty, rarely visited on campus room.

Five minutes lag on, slow but sure, and the bell has barely finished ringing before the entirety of her class rouses from the spell of the languor, hurriedly shifting and pushing and filing out the doors into the sea of students. Rukia takes her time, carefully arranging back the chappy pencils in her box, one two and three, side by side, picking her shoulder bag and making her way ahead of the last few students lingering about into the long, beige walled corridors.

She is thinking of the 55th Chappy anniversary festival bonanza beginning in a week at the Karakura Mall to the highs and lows of Beethoven's fifth symphony floating in her head, and even though her eyes are trained ahead, she is looking and not seeing, body dodging people and lockers out of mapped memory of weeks.

And for some reason, her eyes suddenly focus, focus on a ginger head – no wait, orange, that is a ridiculously bright mop of orange, and a ringing begins in her ears. Beethoven notes bleed into this cacophony, chappy's face disperses into nothing, and her entire being is filled with vibrations so immense she stumbles and keels over. It is not unfamiliar, it is not shocking, it is not scary, but it is ridiculously loud compared to the other times, and she is afraid, so very afraid of letting her eyes map out the face atop which rests that bright orange mane, but much like the other times, this is not in her control either.

So her eyes follow the tan complexion, climbing across the frown to the amber eyes, to the thin lips, to the clothed flat chest, to the strong biceps covered in white cap sleeves, to the denim-ed legs carrying him towards her.

Her breathing is getting shallower, the ringing louder, the vibrations stronger, and when she snaps her eyes back to his face, that scowling face is flashing in her mind, in front of her eyes, just not scowling, but smiling, then grinning, then crying, then yelling, then glaring, then saddening, then calling, then laughing, and then those lips are opening, mouthing R-u-k-i-a-

And then she knows she can't distinguish reality from memories anymore, so she stumbles back, one step two steps three steps and squeezes her eyes shut, turning around and blindly charging into the thinning crowd, far, far away from him.

Her brain is weighing from all the buried memories and feelings gushing over, floodgates of emotional hell wrecked open by a man she doesn't know in this life, but knew in the last one. It is so strong, the whiplash, the waves, the flood, that she knows he is different, he is not her brother, nor Renji, nor Kaien, nor her squad-

He is Ichigo.

And in this life, he is her soulmate.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Congratulations on your wedding."

Rukia opens her eyes, the surprise in them thinly veiled. She twists her head from where it is resting in the grass to the left, seeing him standing there, in all his Ichigo glory, not looking a day older from when she last saw him.

Two years ago.

There is suddenly a rock weighing heavily in her chest, the rock she thought had faded into nothing from the happiness of her marriage.

"You never showed up for it."

Ichigo is giving her that smile, the one he did the first time she told him she wanted to stay back in Soul Society. And then that smile is gone, replaced by a lopsided smirk.

"I was busy getting married myself."

Rukia rolls her eyes. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But you didn't have to go so far."

Now he is scowling. "I didn't marry to copy you, stupid."

"I know." She grins. "How is Inoue?"

"She's good." A pause. "Yuzu keeps bugging about you. Says it's been a while since she saw you."

"That was such a roundabout way of saying you miss me."

"What? That was not-"

"Lies. Such lieeeeeees." Rukia sings, smile on her face and laughter in her eyes.

But for some reason, the rock remains in her chest and if she listens closely, she can feel it sinking further in.

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Note: Italics indicate memory snippets that Rukia experiences in that moment.

The next update is exactly a week from now. Chapters will be much, much longer.