Whenever she wanted to be alone, Rukia went to high places. Her earliest memories were of seeking out such sanctuaries. Always in plain sight, but always where no-one would ever look: the highest, thinnest branches of trees, the crags of hills, and mountains that no-one else climbed, the peaks around Rukongai where she had grown up. She had spent too much time in the gutters back then and it had always seemed to her that the open sky offered a sweeter solitude than time spent lost in a crowd. The world of the living was full of such places. The humans had built great tower blocks, but they very rarely ventured to the highest points. When she had been on duty, she had spent her time looking down on this world, from rooftops, telegraph poles and trees. Her gigai body was a little limiting, but she could still reach the rooftops and this was where she went when she needed to think.
She had scaled the fire exit of this particular building. The roof was flat, without railings. She could sit on the edge, her legs hanging over the drop, her feet swinging above the headlight trails of cars below.
Another week had passed. Urahara had healed her wounds. He'd been uncharacteristically ambivalent about the episode, having neither scolded her nor warned her to be more careful. She suspected his silence was a symptom of pity and that, in some ways, was worse than reprimand. She was growing uncomfortable in this body. Gigai were for short term use only; it was the nature of body and soul to become attached to one another, but, for a being made out of spirit, that synchronisation was discomforting. Bodies were slow, dull things. When she flexed her arm now, she could feel the sinews moving, the shunt of the muscles and the creek of the bones:
"This is wearing out," she murmured to herself: "I'm running out of time." Inside the gigai her soul felt paper thin.