note: Spoilers for the last...five? chapters of Bleach.
—
—
a body stained by yours
That first night, the first time she saved him, the panic in his chest had been an old, familiar echo. The blood in his eyes felt like warm rain, and he swore that he would do anything to save his family, that he would do anything to repay the girl who had jumped into the jaws of a monster for him.
She'd given him power, and a sword. He would never let anyone spill blood for him again.
—
—
But:
She does it again, and again, and again; fights for his sake, bleeds for his sake, jumps, leaps, walks with head held high to death, for his sake.
"You fucking idiot! Fuck, Rukia, you fucking idiot, just hang on—!"
The Senzaikyu rises white in the distance.
They are kneeling in the wreckage of Soukyoku Hill, and Rukia is dying.
For a moment, Ichigo's memories blur and he's not sure if he's fifteen or seventeen, if the blaze of heat against his back is the fire of the phoenix or if it's of Seireitei burning to the ground.
He clutches her to his chest with his arms, and his soul, as if he could—with his hands and his reiatsu and sheer force of will—put her back together; undo the hole in her heart and the slash bisecting her torso.
But Yhwach has won. Rukia's body is empty; her soul has fled.
She is gone, and Ichigo breaks.
—
—
The Hogyoku contracts into itself in a blaze of light, and Yhwach's future shatters.
"Kurosaki, get out of the way!" Ichigo stumbles, because that's what you do when the world is ripped from under your feet and built anew in a matter of minutes, and nearly gets impaled by Ishida's arrow in the process.
Someone yanks him back by his tattered shihakusho, and it's Rukia, it's Rukia and she's shoving him behind her, instinctively trying to shield him from the force of the arrow's impact. From, Ichigo realizes, the force of Yhwach's death.
He can't help it, he grabs her arm and spins her around, ignoring Rukia's indignant yell and running his eyes frantically over her body and shit, Rukia's whole, she's alive, that's her reiatsu vibrant and strong against his, and her hands trying push him away so she can get in front of him again, still trying to save him after all this time.
"Ichigo—Ichigo, what are you doing—!"
Another blast rocks them backwards, Ichigo instinctively turning their bodies and tucking Rukia under his chin. He ignores her protests, holds her close and grits his teeth against the stinging pain of hot ash and reishi ravaging his back.
He can't quite believe it; Ichigo still isn't sure what's real and what's not, if this is another trick or if Aizen of all fucking people had helped save them. Rukia must have sensed something different in his desperation or the clutch of his fingers, because she pulls back and spares a moment to really look at him.
"Ichigo, I am fine," she looks him steady in the eye, and waits just long enough for the grief to clear from his face, "I am fine, but we have to go, we need to help Ishida and Inoue—"
Another rumble, another blast, and she's off.
Ichigo trusts Rukia, he respects her, and she can still kick his ass any day of the week, but she had died not five minutes prior, and he still feels her weight dead in his arms and he still sees her face slack without expression, so he has to fight the urge to grab her and take her somewhere safe. She would never forgive him, he knows.
So Ichigo does the only thing he can: he follows.
—
—
In the end, the Hogyoku saves them, and Zangetsu feels right in his hands again, but it had been far too close and far too costly. In the aftermath, there are still missing to be accounted for and dead to be buried.
Ichigo helps with the rebuilding. He's good at it, at the simple physical act of laying brick after brick. He knows he has more important things to deal with, but the council leaves him alone for the moment because they're preoccupied with their own.
Mostly, Ichigo spends his days under the relentless Seireitei sun because the monotony of the work helps him forget. Mostly, he can't stop trembling at night from the emptiness in him, from the glimpse of a future that almost came to be.
(Sometimes, he wonders what future Rukia had seen, if she too had felt herself die and his world end, or if that horror had been reserved for Ichigo alone.)
After the last battle, Rukia spends all her time behind closed doors with the rest of the Gotei 13. Ichigo tries not to be bothered by it, because she's safe and he knows she's got official shit to do, but her absence still grates on him.
He becomes increasingly irritable until the other shinigami all conveniently duck away if they see him coming, until physical exertion isn't enough to take the edge off of his agitation anymore.
Word of his curtness (okay, fine, rudeness) must have spread through the ranks and to the ears of a certain Thirteenth Division vice captain, because one night, the window to his second floor guestroom slides open, and the next thing he knows Rukia is standing in the middle of his moon-drenched room.
Ichigo stares, and even forgets to wear a mulish expression for a few seconds.
"Finally decided to show up?" he knows he's said the wrong thing even before the line of Rukia's mouth tightens and her eyebrows draw together; the punch she lands on his arm confirms his brilliant deduction.
"You know that if I could have, I would have come," her voice is hoarse, scratchy from overuse, and when she brushes past him to sink down on the messy futon in the corner of the room, her body immediately folds inwards. The curve of her spine reminds Ichigo of a wounded bird.
Frowning, he walks to the bed and drops to his haunches in front of the other shinigami, "They haven't let you rest at all, have they?"
"This is no time for rest, Ichigo," she says. She still won't look at him.
Overwhelmed with a sudden urge to see her eyes, Ichigo's hands move of their own accord, one slipping loose strands of hair behind a dainty ear and the other gently tipping Rukia's face toward his own.
"Ichigo—?"
Rukia stares at him, her eyes wide as he examines her with a focused intensity. Ichigo quietly catalogues: the thin skin under her eyes bruised with exhaustion, the ashen pallor of her face; then the warmth of her exhale ghosting across his lips, and her reiatsu, which he knows with a soul-deep familiarity.
"We're alive," he finally says, and guilt colors his voice, "No thanks to me."
Rukia's expression softens with understanding, and the small hands suddenly gripping his arms are uncharacteristically gentle.
"Idiot."
Ichigo nearly falls over from shock, "W-what? I'm trying to be serious here, Rukia! If it hadn't been for Ishida's arrow…"
Rukia sighs once, a long-suffering sound, and then she's leaning closer, so close that he can count her tangled lashes, so close that he has to fight to keep his eyes from crossing.
"Idiot," she repeats, and he feels like he's eating her words rather than hearing them, like he's breathing them in. "Nobody ever expected you to defeat him alone. Ishida is your friend, and he is a Quincy. It was as much his fight as it was ever yours, and even if it wasn't, we have all fought to be strong enough to stand by your side."
She takes a breath, sliding her hands up, up, and up to rest on his shoulders. The contact burns, and Ichigo wonders vaguely if he is on fire.
"Do not insult them. Do not insult me. You would die for me, and I would die for you," he immediately tries to protest, but Rukia hushes him with a look that cuts straight to his erratically beating heart. "This is how it will always be."
Ichigo is speechless, but he realizes—she's right (always right, goddammit) because this is who they are and what they do: one will always try to protect the other, and sometimes they will fall. He just has to make sure he'll always be there to catch her.
"Do you understand, now?"
And he does, and the question within the question too. In fact, he understands so well that Ichigo ignores how his heart is stuttering in double-time and brings both hands up to cup Rukia's face. His thumbs skim over her cheekbones, sharp and pale in the moonlight, and they both stop breathing.
He marvels: they know each other, soul-deep.
Then Rukia moves, and as always, Ichigo follows.
Together, they meet in the middle.
—
—
In this world
love has no color
yet how deeply
my body is stained by yours.
—
—
end
note: And then they made out.
I started this fic more than two weeks ago, so obviously my depiction of the final battle is very off (and I took some pretty big liberties with how Yhwach's power functions/how the Hogyoku works). Anyways, a little something to commemorate the end of Bleach this week! Fingers crossed for some serious character, plot, and emotional resolutions. Thanks for reading, and concrit or comments are always appreciated! The poetry is by Heian poet Izumi Shikibu.