"It's not always the easiest thing to be the centre of so much spilled ink."
She towered above the twilit city, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she surveyed her surroundings, searching for disturbance in the peaceful city. The city that had recently become her post, her responsibility. For a part of the human world, it was unusually densely populated by spirit forms, though thankfully for the most part they were the innocent and confused wholes. But something spiked at the corner of her senses, the dark dangerous presence of something that didn't belong in this world.
She departed smoothly from the telegraph pole, gracefully cutting through the night sky toward the danger. The presence led her to a small clinic at the outskirts of a quiet neighbourhood, and to her confusion the reiatsu seemed to be swirling around the entire area. She frowned as she entered through the wall of the second floor, unaware of just how her actions would change not only her own life, but the entire course of history for both Karakura Town and the Soul Society.
…
She sat in the branches of a tree, lost in her thoughts, legs swinging back and forth in the breeze. Gazing out over the school, the buildings and surroundings that would soon be naught but a distant memory to her, pondering just how wrong everything was.
She should not have grown so attached to this place, to this life. Her feelings should not have developed like this; she should not be dreading the return to her world, her rightful position.
She didn't want to go home; she'd been dead for so long now that she'd forgotten how good it felt to be alive. And that was the problem. In living she had betrayed her position, but most of all she had betrayed him. How could she face him now that her feelings had changed? What if upon her return all she could see when she looked at him was a shock of orange hair? What if the lines upon his skin no longer formed the same pattern that they used to?
She made a decision.
…
She placed a note upon her dear friend's desk.
'Thank you for everything.'
And she ran from the life she dared not let herself love.
Her breath came in shorter and shorter gasps and she could feel those eyes on her back; dark irises burning into her surrogate body, straight through to her soul. And she ran, suddenly terrified beyond belief for the meeting she had been waiting for, both dreading and longing for that moment.
"Fooound ya!"
Above her in the sky a dark figure crouched, ready to pounce. He towered above her, standing as she had upon that same telegraph pole, sword raised in his hand as though she was a hollow to be cut down, just another wrong existence to be erased. A demonic grin split his face, furrowed eyebrows inked black as the night, blood red hair drawn back into a spiked pony tail, eyes narrowed to slits.
The sword strike split the ground between her legs; the shockwave froze her body and mind.
"Don't just stand there and stare at me with that human-like expression!" He snarled, hurt and rage contorting his pleasant and so familiar features.
The look on his face tore apart her heart. He despised her. She had fallen far from the high realm of the Soul Society and become human, and now she was disgusting to him.
And the look upon his face when she tried to save Ichigo was like a physical pain in her stomach, the way in which the human boy tried so desperately to save her only driving the metaphorical knife in deeper for them both.
When his hands closed around her throat, pinning her to the wall and physically holding her back from the dying substitute she could feel the hatred in his grip, the pain, the frustration and betrayal. And when she turned to the boy with tears in her eyes to deliver words of faux hatred he could not even bring himself to look at her.
…
It was dark in her prison cell, the walls as black as the marks upon his skin.
"Renji… I wonder if I'm… really going to be executed." Her voice felt small in the darkness, her very existence lost in that space, drowning in the ink.
"Kuchiki-taichou is on his way to headquarters to give his report right now." He leant against the bars of her cell, his gaudy pink kimono slipping open to reveal bandages obscuring the flowing black designs engraved upon on his chest. His voice was soft, softer than he meant it to be. "While he's there, he'll most likely appeal for the commutation of your sentence. That guy is your big brother. There's no way he would just stand by and watch you die."
"No…" She sighed almost silently. He had never fully understood the strange dynamic between her brother and her and perhaps he never would, so caught within the dynamic of admiration and fear that he held for her brother. "That person is going to kill me."
His narrow eyes widened slightly, he'd never imagined that she would open up to him again after what happened. It felt as though the bridge of trust had collapsed in, the bond of emotion between them broken, and he wasn't sure if he could stand to rebuild it.
The numbness was all that was keeping him going now.
He didn't want to feel anything for her anymore. Not after she had turned her back on him and lost herself within the world of the living, the world that they knew very well that they could not return to. Not after watching the way she pleaded with her brother to spare the human boy that she was prepared to sacrifice her very life for.
But when the intruders landed, fear shot through his veins. They were here to take her away from him again. He wanted to crush the other redhead, to grind him into the dust to make him see that she belonged only to him.
He'd rather die than let her be with that arrogant substitute.
But he failed; he lost to the man that he had sworn as his enemy. And as he screamed at the far off sky he knew what he had to do. He had lost her once before; he had left her to find her own family, but in that moment he decided that he wanted more than anything to be part of hers again, even if it meant putting her life and love in someone else's hands.
He begged a man he hated to save the one he loved.
"Please! You have to save Rukia!"
As he collapsed upon his knees he saw his blood mixing with the red of his hair, running down his body and obscuring the ink lines of his skin, dripping down to splash against the battleground.
And as he joined with that man, and saw the determination to save her burning in his soul, he wondered if perhaps he really had succeeded in stealing away the emotions that she swore to give only to him.
So he faced his captain, and he in turn swore to him.
"I'm going to save Rukia."
But he was drenched in red. Blood and flesh exploded across his body, ripping apart the black patterns upon his skin.
"Even now, do you still dream of saving her?" That cold voice taunted his weakness as he crouched upon the ground. But he would not give up.
"Of course... I swore that I would save her, I swore to my soul!" he screamed. Blood painted more dark patterns upon his skin and splattered the ground as he fell, his life blood draining away with the shattered remains of Zabimaru.
She turned on her journey from her cell to the execution grounds, feeling a terrible loss in the atmosphere.
"Ren…ji." Her eyes widened in utter fear. "Why? Why you?!"
'This bloodshed can't be happening. Who could had done such a thing? Surely Ichigo would never have…?'
"Renji!"
She screamed to the sky as she reached out for her oldest and dearest, but was met with nothing but silence.
Tears dripped from her eyes as she faced death; however she feared not for her own. As she stood before the sōkyoku and faced the flaming halberd, she felt no fear, just a terrible sense of regret that she would never again trace her fingers along bold lines over defined skin and muscle. And he would never know that despite everything that had changed within her the one feeling that never faltered was the way she felt about him. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed out of her chest as she closed her eyes, waiting to feel the blade pierce her fragile body and take all her life and love away.
But the blow never came. And then she was caught within his arms once again.
"Protect her with your life!" Screamed the orange haired boy who had cost her so much. But now it was his turn to be the one to save her.
And they ran, and this time she was not alone. She was with him once again, standing together on the same side. They barely spoke, but she understood the feelings thrumming within his body as acutely as she did her own. She turned her face into his chest and let herself be carried, sinking into the redhead's embrace like an old friend.
Whiteness encircled them as he held her tiny body in his arms, the intensity of the traitor's revelation bearing down heavy upon them both. And he thought his heart would die, just stop beating in his chest when he watched the traitor impale her upon his demonic arm.
He just kept failing her and, once again, it was not he who managed to save her.
But she was saved, her brother removed her from danger, and that was what mattered. She was alive, even if she now loved another. He had always admired her from afar and if that was all that he was left with he would be grateful just to be allowed to look upon her, to know that she was safe.
She turned to smile at him from her hospital bed and he could not help but smile back, her small hand contained in his own, merging with the lines upon his hand.
Those slim fingers traced his dark ink, and all of a sudden her lips met his in a motion so soft its meaning was unmistakable. He had not lost her after all. The blue ink of her eyes swallowed him, their colours merging and mixing together as one, staining everything they touched.
Like the ink upon his skin, he found that he welcomed that stain.
And she decided to stay. When the time to make the choice came she decided to stay with him. The human world would always hold wonders and draw a deep longing from her, but this was where she belonged. With fingers intertwined between his. And his long red hair fell across her body as they finally joined together, cutting the silk expanse of her skin like a knife, red against white.
She laughed as they came together, her voice tinkling like a charm in his ear. It was a more beautiful sound that he had ever imagined, the rise and fall of her breath against his own. Her mouth against his, her scent in his lungs. He breathed deeply of her, scared to exhale should he lose her again.
And they lay together in the night, and spoke of many things the like of which had not passed their lips since their days in the academy where they hid behind closed expressions and shut off hearts. But here the gates had finally opened, and the light was shining through for the first time.
Renji drifted off to sleep as Rukia's thin fingers worked a passage along the lines of his ink, stroking softly the battle scarred skin of his torso and abdomen. The thick arm around her pulled her small body close to his own and she breathed softly against his chest as she dreamt.
As he fell into unconsciousness one last thought drifted in his half-awake mind,
'Byakuya is going to fucking kill me.'
But all things considered, with him holding the only person he had ever wanted so close in his arms, right then he found that he didn't really care.
After all, she was why he had been fighting all these years, clawing himself up from the bottom of the pile. She was the strength in his bones, the breath in his lungs, the ink upon his skin. She had seeped under the layers of his skin to paint herself upon him like life, like love.
Byakuya and bureaucracy be damned, he had no intention of ever letting her go again.
A/N: I found this in my old files the other day, literally wrote the majority of this back when I first started writing FF about five years ago. Never finished it off so I re-wrote and added in the ending here. I think it's the only RukiaxRenji I've ever done, but they're a secret favourite paring of mine.
Would love feedback if you enjoyed!
K x