Written for the January round in LJ's bleach-flashfic community.
DISCLAIMER: Characters/setting/etc not mine liek whoa. All your base are belong to Kubo.
Rukia was restless.
It was very unsettling, to be sitting around and waiting for your execution. The first days were surreal, sitting in the Sixth Division's holding cell, seeing no one except for the few people sent to clean the cell out or bring her food, which she was never hungry for. Renji would come by occassionally, and it gave her great delight to tease him the way she used to, long before she'd become a Kuchiki. A part of her sometimes wondered why she wasn't taken to her own division's prisoner barracks, but the rational part always voiced the logic that she was a wanted criminal, and the Sixth Division's captain and vice-captain was who had captured her, so it was their prison she resided in.
Damned if it wasn't boring as hell. Prisoner or not, she wished she at least had something to do.
It was late, and only the moon illuminated a portion of the wooden floor, very poorly. Everyone had gone away for the night, leaving only a night guard who was dozing at his post. It wasn't like she was going to try to escape anyway. Assuming she could manage it, she had no where to go, let alone anywhere to hide. It was simply pointless. But she felt restless and unable to sleep, so she'd gotten to her feet and was pacing the length of the cell, slowly, from one end to the other. At her normal pace – eighteen steps. If she ran, twelve. If she shuffled along as if she wore a tightly closed kimono, she lost count at twenty-two. And that was just across the length of the bars.
She idly thought that they made the cells so big to be intimidating. It was a little daunting, being in a gigantic room with only a chair in the center (which she could move, but she rarely felt like doing so), a window high on the wall that showed nothing, and those closely-spaced, thick bars. It was a cage, albeit a very spacious one.
She stopped in a corner, leaning back with a shoulder on either side, and tipped her head back to look up at the darkened ceiling. She had known from early on, almost from the moment she realised that Ichigo had received all of her powers, that she was going to be in big trouble for it. Quite this big of trouble... perhaps not. What a predicament she was in now. A part of her wished that anyone else besides Nii-sama had delivered the news. He had all the personality and gentle demeanor of a dead fish.
The sound of the door opening distracted her from her reverie. She lowered her head to see why it had opened; only the same pale moonlight threw illumination across the floor, but only for a few feet. Her guard was still sleeping soundly; he'd progressed into snoring. She narrowed her eyes. Someone was there... but who?
"Psst," came out of the darkness, from the far corner of the bars near where her meager bed was. "Psst! Rukia! Wake up."
It was Renji, the fool. What was he doing here in the middle of the night? For a moment, she debated answering him. But, well, he may be rash and uncouth, but he generally had a good head on his shoulders. "I'm over here."
His surprise was tangible even in the darkness, and it gave her some perverse amusement to have startled him.
"What are you doing over there?" he hissed.
She made a face and crossed the cell to stand by the bars. "I couldn't sleep. So what?"
Now that she was close to him, she could sort of see him in the very dim lighting. She could see the white collar of his juban and the pale cloth wrapped about his head more than anything. He glanced from side to side, taking in the guard and the open door. "I'm busting you out," he said quietly, hand wrapping around one of the bars.
Rukia blinked, and before she could really think about anything, she said – "No."
He stepped back again, clearly confused. "Why not?" he demanded, at his normal level, which was quite loud in the quiet night. The guard snorted a couple times before falling back into the steady snore.
"Where would I go, Renji? I can't go anywhere that I couldn't be found, and then I'd be in even more trouble, and so would you, for helping me –"
"Who cares!" he demanded, gripping the bars with both hands and pressing his face into the narrow space between them. "They're going to kill you, Rukia! It doesn't get worse than that!"
"Then what's the point in escaping?" she countered, folding her arms over her chest. "I'll take my chances now, thanks."
She could feel his glare as clearly as if she could see it. "Quit being stubborn. I'm bustin' you out."
"I'm not going," she repeated, taking a couple of casual steps back.
He was quiet for a long moment, staring at her. She realized that she may have stood out a lot more than he did, dressed entirely in white. When he spoke again, it was with a dangerously low voice; she knew that tone. "You were all set to run away earlier," he growled. "What happened to that determination?"
Rukia felt a little like a trapped rodent. She had said that, hadn't she. "Well, I've had some time to think and it doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Tell me where I could hide where I couldn't be found and maybe I'd consider it."
He made a scornful sound. "You're so dense. I said I was gonna bust you out. That means I'm gonna protect you too."
The silence stretched between them for a long moment, broken only by the guard's continued snoring. "You... Protect me?" Rukia asked slowly, feeling anger rising.
"Yeah."
"Well, you already suck at it. Get out of here, fukutaichou-dono, and leave me to die in peace." She retreated to the corner again, shaking with an emotion she couldn't immediately identify.
If Renji had anything else to say, it was cut off by the guard, whose own snoring had woken him up. There was a flutter of cloth and his presence was gone. The guard got up, muttering to himself about fools leaving the doors open before he moved out of range for Rukia to hear.
That Renji... how dare he! He had a lot of nerve, coming to her now with words of... of... How dare he.