She closed her eyes.
Gradually, her awareness of the human world faded. The cold of the railings beneath her fingers and the sounds of the crowd all around, they were replaced by the overlay of a world more familiar to her, the world of spirits, of streaming energies and the small yet infinitely bright points of human souls, making a starfield out of the darkness.
Yet her instincts were failing her. All this she saw as through tarnished glass. Where once it had been clear and present, it seemed to her, now, to be a distant vision. Fear wormed its way into her gut. What if her powers were gone? Completely gone? These were the last vestiges of what she had been. When they were gone too, what would be left? Something neither human nor shinigami.
Concentrate.
Since the day she'd met Ichigo and recognised that his reiatsu was of such a strength that it muffled her senses, she had become accustomed to it, accustomed to looking past it to sense the other souls, human and hollow. So accustomed, in fact, that it seemed now to be a part of her, burned into her mind. That wasn't so surprising. Part of what she was sensing within him was her own powers.
Now, though, she made herself concentrate fully on the traces of his energy. At her side, Urahara was another source of vast reiatsu, but, where Urahara's energy was like a flat lake, Ichigo's ebbed and flowed with his emotions. She had no psychic link with him, but, by the fluctuations in his energy, she could sense his moods as he fought. Fear. Anger. Relief. It was hard not to tense with him, but, when she did, she heard Urahara say her name, and that was enough for her to check herself. Urahara would be sensing her own reiatsu slong with Ichigo's. he would start to suspect the emotional investment she had in the human boy, if he hadn't guessed it already.
Ichigo was inside the building. For a time, his reiatsu was a wild tide, rising and falling; at times, seeming to peak even higher than Urahara's, though Rukia knew that to be impossible. "He has no control," said the shopkeeper at her side. She dared not open her eyes for fear of losing her fragile grasp on the spirit realm. But she nodded in agreement. "Dangerous, Kuchiki-dono. Dangerous." Yes, she wanted to answer. But that doesn't give you the right to destroy him.
She sensed Urahara's curiosity and opened her eyes. The man was looking at her sideways, his smiling façade replaced by an expression of genuine concern that stoked her anger:
"I don't need you to tell me my duties and I don't need you to protect me."
"Is that so?" he asked softly.
"Ichigo is perfectly capable of handling that hollow. Even if I don't have my powers" –
"Ah." His eyes twinkled as he turned and smiled at her: "Perhaps we're not entirely clear about what I am protecting you from."
His smile chilled her to the bone.
The battle, she realised, was over. She could no longer feel the cloying reiatsu of the hollow. The crowd cheered as Don Kanonji appeared, waving at them from the top of the hospital. He had led the cameramen on a merry trail of destruction through the building. No doubt their equipment would have picked up those elements of the battle visible to human eyes: doors opening and closing, dust raining from the ceiling, footsteps and voiceless screams. It would have made a good show. She spotted Ichigo standing a little behind Don Kanonji, his sword slung casually over one shoulder. It was probably too far away for him to be able to see her, but perhaps he sensed her the way she sensed him. She let herself smile.
When she looked back at Urahara though, he was already gone.
