Author: Auditory Eden
Rating: T
Warnings: None...just T for safety really. Well, there's a little tiny moment that implies sex, but then again, it's really, really vague.
Notes: because Ichigo is as much Kaien's reincarnation as Kagome is Kikyo's. And if InuYasha can be in love with her after being killed and reborn, Rukia can love him.
First Love, Second Love
Kuchiki Rukia's first love was Shiba Kaien. He was strong and cheerful and taught her things she'd never known about life (on purpose) and love (completely by accident).
Her second love (and last), was also, technically speaking, Shiba Kaien. True, he was a redhead now, and far younger than her, instead of far older, but still. He was strong and cheerful and taught her things she'd never known about life (by accident), and love (absolutely on purpose).
Well, he'd taught her about love by accident at first. Then they kissed, and he knew exactly how to help her, teach her, just like Kaien had, but with the advantage of being single.
Correction. He wasn't single, not anymore. Kuchiki Rukia had seen to that nicely.
In reality, her second love's name was Kurosaki Ichigo, but anyone could tell from the start that Ichigo and Kaien were one and the same. Besides the startling similarity of looks, they were both strong, cheerful, perseverant, and deeply, passionately loving. In a guy way. Really.
Actually, she hadn't known that Kaien was Ichigo, for many years after his death (age twenty-two, when his college dorm collapsed in an earthquake), centuries even, when his twin sisters had arrived, when Karin was no longer prone to blushing around Hitsugaya, when Yuzu had settled in at the fourth division, when Ichigo had finally learned osme basic semblance of reiatsu control and made it to fifth division captain.
Then one day, as they sat together, captain of Fifth and vice-captain of Thirteenth, she looked at him and he cracked a joke, his reaction cheerful, but not explosively so. He grinned at her, and she did something insanely girly.
She gasped. Because suddenly she was two, three hundred years younger, speaking with Kaien, her first love, and he had red hair.
In that moment, she knew—Kurosaki Ichigo, whatever else he might be, was the reincarnation of Shiba Kaien, and this time, he'd reciprocated her love.
Very shortly afterwards, Rukia changed her name again, becoming a Kurosaki, and marrying the beautiful, wonderful, perfect man who'd been her first love. And her second.
And as she fell in love with him again and again, he became her third love, fourth, fifth, thousandth, and when she lay in his arms on one hot, sticky summer night, the sweat still drying on their bodies, she rolls over in his embrace and kisses him, and from his eyes, she can tell that she was his as well.
xXx
Parting Comments:
So I boarded the corny train with this one. I did. But it was short and sweet, so I like it.
Do you?
Hugs and Kisses,
Eden