A/N: I've decided to make this post a 100 drabble challenge. For this challenge, I have uncovered a site that provides 100 different words to influence the drabbles. Five of the drabbles are writer's choice sooo chapter 1 shall be Writer's Choice.

Hello, Goodbye, & Forever

By angelwings1

Word Challenge 014: Chair

Chapter 2: Still Running

..

The next person who came into the room would be executed. She was ready for it. She had the triplet paperwork sitting on the edge of her desk. All she had to do was leap over the mountain range of other paperwork separating her from her "Go to Execution" papers. She might knock half of the mountain to the floor in the process, but it would be well worth the effort after her recent Hellish week. It had been so bad that she was deeply considering forging her own papers so she could be sent to jail, again.

Rukia bit down on her tongue to keep from cursing and grabbed another form from her desk drawer. She needed to stop day dreaming. The only way she would get any progress in her workload was by focusing completely on the irritating black letters typed across the multi-colored papers. It was her eighth day straight of paperwork and her brain cells were permanently fried. She was beginning to see a hidden code in the daily reports. Luckily, she had enough sense to dismiss the code as her imaginary. Who would put 'the strawberry is a fruit' in the middle of her report on soul traffic? What use was that?

Course, she would never admit her stamina was breaking under the pressure. No, she would press on, bite her tongue, and pretend she was able to handle the work load no matter how many people offered to help. She was not a damsel in distress. She was a lieutenant who had lost her captain.

Her pencil broke in two when a loud knock thundered from the other side of her office door. She glared furiously at the traitorous writing tool. The blood vessel above her left eye began to throb as she reached for the cup full of sharpened pencils. Her violet eyes leveled with the door. When would be the best time to schedule an execution? Was sunset too soon? Surely, she could get pass all the red tape if schedule a private killing. Either way, the person on the other side of her office's door who was still knocking as if she was deaf was so dead.

She carefully reached around the stack of papers for the forms. "Enter."

It was only a small surprise who pushed open the door. Out of the fifteen billion visits she had over the past week, half of the visits had been by a single, infuriating carrot top.

"What, Ichigio?" she growled darkly as she wrapped her fists around the execution papers. She ignored the fact that she was crumpling them the forms. She was ready to just murder the idiot right in her office.

"Don't give me attitude!" he hissed back at her as he slammed the door close. Rukia's eye twitched as she watched him stomped forward. He leaned down on the edge of her desk and brought his angry face down to her level. She gave him clear warning with the dangerous look she was shooting at him, but he dared to ignore it. He cocked his eyebrow like he did when he was too confident and smug for his own good and calmly looked her square in the face. "You were supposed to be at the training yard two hours ago."

His tone was teasing out the headache that was begging to be let loose in her head. She glowered and pressed her forefingers against her temples. Slowly she rotated the pads of her fingers in a clockwise motion around the aching area and bit down harder on her tongue. Blood was going to be on the floor before he left the room. She didn't how long it would take to get the stains later out of the carpet.

"You said you would be there," he accused stonily. She looked pass his orange spikes and saw the storm in his eyes. She didn't care if there was a hurricane waiting inside him. She understood why he upset. Maybe later she would agree that he had good reason to storm into her office and yell, but at the present moment, she was a lethal lieutenant who didn't give a crap that her husband had been forced to substitute a bunch of newly inducted Shinigamis.

She gritted her teeth and pushed the crumpled ball of execution forms to the floor. Calmly, she grabbed another form and continued with her work. If she inhaled through her nose, there was a slight chance that she would able to keep her blood pressure down long enough for Ichigio to escape her wrath.

"I told you I might be there," she hissed through clenched teeth. "I said there was a good chance Division Eight would throw another load of paperwork at me since there was a massacre in South Africa."

"Rukia!" he interrupted loudly, causing her to snap her pencil in half. She stared at the broken yellow object with disdain and began to count backwards. Ichigio didn't seem to notice. "I dealt with two hours of the stupidest questions—"

"If you dare compare your suffering with mine I will promptly castrate you."

He stilled when he heard her tone. There was no doubt from the sound of her voice that she was willing to knock over her week long of work in exchange for spilling his blood. Even so, his jaw locked with fury and he kept pushing the dangerous line she had drawn. "You're lieutenant! Not me!"

Rukia's eyes snapped open upon hearing the icy comment. Ichigio recoiled when he saw her violet eyes had changed to sky blue and was glowing with inner light. Her spirit force was mounting dramatically fast. The air inside the hot room began to shift. He knew she was about to explode. Seventy-three hours in one room for eight days would destroy most people's patience. Ichigio was counting on it.

"You've been here for over a week, Rukia," he stated with sudden coolness. His eyes swallowed her up. "You need a break."

He saw the punch coming. Even though he had only been in the Soul Society for three years, his abilities greatly surpassed his wife's. If his level of spirit force could be compared by tablespoons of water, he was an ocean compared to her river. So when she threw the punch at full speed, he had the chance to duck. He could have crossed half the building before her fingers could have completed a fist. That's why it was startling for her to have her fist connect with his face.

The glow in her eyes quickly dimmed as she blinked rapidly. She had expected to connect. She knew she was well out-classed by her husband. He might still be of lower rank, but there was no way to deny that he could best her in a real match.

Slowly, her hand receded from his face, a satisfying cut of red marring his pale skin. Her fist uncurled and she stared expectantly at her husband. He had succeeded in capturing her attention.

Ichigio didn't bother to brush away the blood. He didn't care about that. He cared about the exhaustion hiding in his wife's violet eyes. "You need a break, Rukia."

She pulled away and scanned her messy desk. Hastily, she found the stack and began organizing the papers in order. She quickly discovered she had already organized that stack and switched to another messier one.

"I have too much to do," she explained stonily. "These forms need to be—"

"Can be done later," he insisted softly. She turned her back to him slightly. She was uncomfortable with the way he so easily read her. It had taken years for them to grow comfortable around each other, but now with in the world of dead, he was always around. It was a wonderful thing to have him there, but at the same time he stepped right on her toes. She had no where left to hide. All the things she could pull a veil over were exposed once he had become her husband. She didn't like hiding things from him, but there were times she wished she didn't have to call on support. She didn't want to be the wimpy damsel. She was stronger than that.

"I'm the only one here who knows how to do them," she replied softly. Her eyes were cloudy as she stared at the letters on the forms. "It needs to get done."

"This is helping anyone." He walked around the desk and stepped up close to her. She could feel the heat between their two bodies, but her eyes stayed down. Ichigio scowled. "The students are talking. They want to see their Lieutenant."

"Handle them," she snapped. "I don't have time—"

"The Captains are ready to pull the seat out from under you and temporarily put Kiyone or Sentaro over the 13th Division." His voice was hard with warning.

She swallowed, "So soon? It's only been a week."

"You've been here for thirty hours straight, Rukia. You can't keep hiding." He whispered.

"Hiding?" she stated hollowly. "You use to hide."

"I don't now. Not from you." He gently lifted her chin and studied the tears sparkling in her eyes. "Please, don't hide from me."

Go back fifty or so years, and a person would wonder how words like that could escape the man's mouth. He had always been rough around the edges. Emotional things had never been his strength. At least not until, he started seeing Rukia romantically. She had tried to evade him when he had turned thirty. She had explained the rules of the spiritual world saying it was one of the greatest taboos, but he had refused to listen. He had yelled out that rules were meant to be broken. She had calmly tried to wash away the tension between them by playing the emotionless maiden. In the end, he had slipped farther into his emotions in an attempt to find her feelings for him. It had been one of the greatest dramas they had endured.

Now further up on the timeline, he was asking her to open up once more. She wanted to hide from him to save herself from revisiting the pain, but she didn't want her husband to deal with that road again. He deserved her honesty, especially when she hadn't come home in the last few nights.

"It's just so different here when someone dies," she whispered, eyes looking pass his face and off into world only she knew. "When someone dies in the living, you have an idea where they'll end up. You have ways of reconnecting with them."

Her heart squeezed. "But when they die here. We don't know what happens next. Not even the Soul Society has all the answers to the afterlife."

Her eyes refocused on his face. He was watching her closely, offering all the silent encouragement he could with his hard expression. She was grateful that she had him there. She didn't know what it would have been like if he hadn't been there to stand beside her. Even if only now she had begun to lean on his shoulders.

"I just keep thinking about where Captain Ukitake could be right now. He had barely lived here in the Soul Society and then he was just gone. I became his lieutenant several decades ago, but there was so much I didn't know about him. I didn't even see the signs that the illness had gotten worse."

Her throat grew tight as she remembered that horrible day when she had entered his office and found him unconscious across his desk. His white hair was skewed across the papers and there blood staining the wood.

Sickness was a rare thing in the afterlife. The only explanation discovered by Soul Society was that illness in the community was a result of a person's spiritual force decaying. Only a handful of people had suffered the oddity and even fewer had passed on because of it. Now her captain had become another number of an ever pressing statistic. It was fate no one deserved, especially her captain, a man who been through so much with her.

"It's my fault," she voiced the words she had been running from for the last eight days. "I should have noticed. If I was a better lieutenant—"

"No one could have known, Rukia."

"I should have," she persisted darkly. "I was by his side ever day. I talked with him. I heard him cough, but I didn't think it was life threatening. It's so hard to understand how a soul could be in danger of dying a second time."

"You're a good shinigami, Rukia. The Captains believe you deserve the seat."

She pulled her face out of his warm hand and headed for the door, "They've been wrong before."

Miles stretched between them as she reached for the door to make a clean getaway. He knew she was in a great deal of suffering, far worse than even he had dealt with back in the living world. Rukia was very proud of her place in the society and had worked extra hard ever since she had made lieutenant to prove others and herself that she was worthy of such a seat.

Renji once admitted to Ichigio that Rukia should have made lieutenant much sooner. He explained that back when they were younger, Rukia had always been better at using her spiritual force than he ever did. She had progressed through the classes faster and had rarely screwed up in training. She had been top seat throughout most of her schooling. But her adoption and Kaien's death had done a real number on her. She had practically given the seat away and only barely kept to Soul Society standards. The only reason she had stayed as a shinigami was because there were still souls out there that needed help. At least, that's what Renji had said.

"Why are you running again?" Ichigio blurted.

Rukia stopped halfway in the door. Her shoulders had gone rigid. "What?"

"You're not useless, Rukia." He soothed, stepping forward. "If that wasn't true, you know I wouldn't be here."

Her face swiveled around and stared at him with uncertainty. "I only awakened what was already there, Ichigio. You know that."

"Why won't you take freaking compliment from me," he grumbled. He stepped over to her side and towered over her. "I don't understand why you're so ready to run."

"Someone else can do my job," she whispered. "I'm not the only shinigami here worthy of this position. You could do a much better job than I could."

His eyes widened, "Rukia—"

"I'm planning to resign after my paperwork is finished."

The statement was like a blast of cold air on the perfect sunny day. He could almost imagine the rain hitting down on them. He straightened and stared down at his wife's defeated face. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I wanted you to take my place."

"Rukia."

She shoved her chin upwards to look him dead in the eyes. She was able to hold back the tears, but she didn't know how long it would be before she broke down. The long hours were beginning to hit her. "You are an amazing shinigami, Ichigio. You always have been since the day I transferred to you my powers. You went through years of training in two years and took a place in my division in less than a few months."

She inhaled deeply, "I've heard the rumors. People were beginning to wonder if you might push me out my seat."

He grabbed her shoulders frantically, "Rukia, I would never—"

Her hands covered his, stopping his protest. She smiled sadly. "I know you wouldn't. Yet, the fact remains that there is someone better for my position. This has grown more apparent with captain's passing."

"Rukia, please—"

"I'm sure they will consider you as captain and in way, I would be protected from being forced out. But I don't want it to be that way. I want to deserve my position."

He watched in disbelief as she pushed away his hands and strode quietly out of the office. As she walked out, she kept back was bone straight the entire time. He had ever urge pressing into his muscles to run after her, but he couldn't find anything to say that wasn't cliché bull. He could spout stuff about what she had done or who depended on her, but in the end he knew it would sound like he was covering up for her. She wasn't the only one who had heard the talk passing in the halls and at the meetings. He had known for a while, but he was still so new in his marriage with her that he was concerned what the topic might do to their relationship. He had been stupid and had run from the problem. Even after learning to open up to his girl, he still had issues.