A/N: Written at 4 in the morning, left as it is. This is my mind in its unedited (and very exhausted) form, so it may feel like a disjointed and incomplete story (well, it technically is, I apologize). Hope you don't mind, and enjoy!
"Ichigo, it's alright," Rukia spoke gently, her skin growing colder with each labored breath she took. Her pale hand slipped from my chin and came to rest at her side. "I'm going to… leave my heart with you now. I can trust you with it, can't I?"
My grip on her tightened instinctively, to brace for what I could not deny was coming. I tried anyway. "Rukia, stop. Don't talk like that. The 4th Squad will be here soon and you'll be fine, just wait a bit longer!" My voice sounded unnatural, the pitch wavering weakly as I choked out those empty words. I couldn't fill her again. Her life was seeping away between my fingers like the sands of time. This one girl had swept into my life and changed everything so suddenly, and now she was going to do it again. She was emptying her heart and soul into me, leaving her with nothing.
Rukia's lips formed a small smile. "Thank you, Ichigo… I don't have to die alone. Thank you…"
And those were the last words ever spoken by Kuchiki Rukia.
I admit even now, 16 years after her death, I'm still on the lookout for her soul. I know we'll find each other again in another lifetime. She promised, and I know she's here in the Living World again. I can feel it. But scouring the weekly newspapers for familiar names was not helping, and my friends hated to see me slipping like this.
I haven't mentioned this yet, but things have changed drastically in the world during those 16 years. A strange new kind of human had made themselves known in that time. They were simply called living weapons. I haven't yet met one, but they sounded an awful lot like zanpakuto. I don't understand it, but it intrigues me. They had somehow managed to elude the rest of the world for a long 800 years. Now they were yesterday's knowledge.
The Death Weapon Meister Academy had made a name for itself in recent years, due to a spike in weaponized bloodlines and average people who wanted to become something more. This Academy is where those living weapons congregated. I could feel the never-ending pull at my soul, but it took me a long time to make the decision to see it for myself.
And so I went to Death City for the first time.
The air was stifling in this barren desert land, and I failed many times to keep my mouth shut to avoid choking on the sand that inevitably whipped at my face. Exhaling sharply through my nose, I squinted and finally spotted in the distance what I could only describe as the most bizarre castle I had ever seen.
Was I surprised to find that the student body of Death Weapon Meister Academy was shockingly young and had a high mortality rate? I would probably tend to agree. This can't be right, can it?
However, the more I considered it, the more it made sense. Of course Rukia's reincarnated soul would gravitate towards a place like this, where people learn to become heroes and protectors of the world. It made me smile despite my aching heart.
I settled myself into this macabre city and began my soul searching.
Her dark, midnight colored hair hung in a familiar way around her face and I knew. That tugging sensation I felt deep inside had finally sated, which only meant one thing. I had found her at last, my other half. She was young, just around the age I had been when Rukia and I first met. But she didn't have that painful, haunted look in her eyes. She had grown into the body of a young woman, rather than stunted by malnutrition and death as her previous incarnation had. She was smiling and laughing and was so unnervingly polite. Her voice rang in the air like a bell as she spoke with her friends. She was so unlike Rukia and yet exactly like her.
It took about 4 days of observation before I learned her name in secret. Tsubaki. Like the blood red camellia flowers that bloomed on the hills of Karakura. It took another 4 days to learn that she was of the Nakatsukasa Clan. Eager to devour and decode this information, I rushed to Death City's public library, seeking more knowledge of this family. What I found couldn't have been a coincidence. This was an old family, practically considered nobility amongst the living weapons. I learnt that the eldest child of each generation was bestowed the great gift of receiving the family's unique ability to transform into multiple weapons. I soberly wondered whether or not this Tsubaki had an elder sibling. A sister, like Hisana? A brother, like Byakuya? I wet my lips in excitement, hoping desperately that this girl I never knew had found happiness in a real family.
4 weeks into my observation had dashed all those hopes. I learned more about Nakatsukasa Tsubaki during this time, and what I learned was not happy, not at all.
She did indeed have an older brother, one who boasted an alarmingly similar appearance to Kuchiki Byakuya, but hollow inside and out. His skin was sallow and stretched eerily taut over his seemingly once handsome cheekbones, while his eyes were blackened with madness. And worst of all, he tormented his sister deeply. I watched from the corner of that rainy little village as Tsubaki unleashed her power to take down her own flesh and blood, and I could not be more heart-broken. Rukia didn't deserve this. Tsubaki. Rukia. One of them. Both of them. I sank to my knees in the muddy outskirts of that village and wept with the girl I did not know.
I returned home soon after that. I had stayed long enough to be sure that the girl would be alright. Her ability to shoulder pain and smile and beat down anything that got in her way was that small glimpse of Rukia that I didn't realize I was waiting for. She would be alright in her next life. After all, though she didn't know it, I was going to protect her heart forever.
A/N: Was this a bit creepy? Perhaps! XD But it was fun. Leaving this as a one-shot for now… May continue it if I truly have the desire to let these two meet for real. Ichigo will probably be back. Probably. (My god, I turned him into a stalker, didn't I?)