Monday, July 29, 2002

They looked out onto the city without saying anything for about a half-hour, lost in their own thoughts next to one another. Rukia eventually stood. "We should go."

Ichigo stood up beside her without complaint. "Where?"

"First we have to get what I ordered earlier," she said, making her way back to the door.

He raised an eyebrow before following, putting together that it had something to do with the 'special account' she'd talked about on the soul pager. After they were back inside he said "Hey, wait up a minute," and rapidly set about locking the door.

"Why are you locking it again after you went to all that trouble to unlock it?" she asked with no less skepticism than she had when he'd opened it.

"Because we're done up here and I don't want some salaryman or kid or something to wander up here and throw themselves off the building," Ichigo said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Rukia felt her mouth form something like a smile at his thoughtfulness and gave him a moment. He finished quickly enough and they were soon on their way back down. They descended another floor before getting in an elevator. Rukia pulled out her cell phone once they were aboard. "I said I'd keep everyone updated and finding you is what they've been waiting for," she said, looking to Ichigo.

"It was your promise," he replied, "so go ahead."

She opened her mouth before shutting it, considering something. "They're going to want to know why we're staying here and they'll probably ask if they can talk to you and if they can come here to make sure you're okay. I don't have good answers for those questions; not good enough to speak for you, anyway," she said, letting her eyes meet his.

He held her sight for some seconds before saying "Yeah, I see what you mean."

She gave him a thin smile as she added "Plus if you talk to them you'll wind up apologizing and I'll have to punch you again."

He smirked for a moment and turned to watch the floor count drop. "A real puzzle then." He closed his eyes for awhile until a memory occurred to him. "Do you remember when we met up in Hueco Mundo and you lectured me about trusting allies?"

"Of course," she said, before muttering "I had to punch you in your dumb face because you didn't get it."

"And you told me you didn't ever want to have to do it again," he said.

"Yes," she said.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Then I guess we don't have any choice but to tell them the truth and trust they'll understand," he said, before holding up a finger "It's a good thing I remembered, because I had something that was true enough and would've done the trick." The elevator came to a halt and the door opened, and they walked out into the lobby. He led her toward the front door.

"And what would that have been?" she asked.

"You're already going to punch me for apologizing to them, I don't want to get punched another time for something I came up with before remembering your lesson," he complained mildly.

"Maybe I'll punch you for not telling me," she said as they went through the front doors. It mostly sounded like a joke—mostly.

"Another real puzzle," he said, rubbing the back of his head. They walked out into a plaza that among other things had a copy of a somewhat famous piece of pop art: the sculpture LOVE, in red letters. Ichigo knew it because it'd been parodied on the cover of Rage Against the Machine's album Renegades. He looked at it curiously as they took seats at a table to finish their conversation. "My first thought was if you told them I'd had a nervous breakdown, didn't know what I was doing would make people worry, and that I needed time to recuperate, that would be quite close to the truth and less likely to make them ask questions or worry," he said after awhile.

Rukia stared at him for awhile before she looked to one side. "You thought it'd be easier for them to accept that you went a bit crazy and it's okay because I'm here . . . than it would be to say 'Sorry, I just needed to get away and don't really want to be around you right now'?" she asked. She felt she already knew why he'd be willing to do that which was why she wasn't outraged by him voicing it, although she still didn't like it one bit.

"One is telling somebody the fault lies with you, the other is telling them that maybe the fault lies with them," Ichigo said plainly, before looking up at her. "Which of those would make you worry more?"

She met his look and said nothing before looking away again. Ichigo, would you really take such a burden upon yourself just for a little more peace of mind for others? . . . Of course you would, that's what you always do . . .

"Yeah, I guess it is kinda twisted," Ichigo said mildly, "so that's why I'm glad I remembered what you said so you never had to say it again. Go on and call them already, the sooner you hit me the sooner I'll stop being sore."

"I'm not really going to punch you for apologizing to others, fool," she said, looking back to him. "Just . . . don't be weird about it and stop apologizing to me."

Ichigo gave her a small lop-sided smile before his eyes slid away to apparently consider a tree.

Rukia looked at her phone before placing it on the table. "Ichigo—" she began to say.

"Uh-uh," Ichigo said, suddenly looking at her again and wagging a finger. "No," he said with conviction.

She blinked at him in confusion before becoming a little incensed. "You didn't even listen to what I was going to ask!"

"That's because it's not your turn," he said.

"What?" she said, not understanding.

He pointed up at the building they'd recently left. "You asked last time and so I told you something. Now it's my turn, and I'm not going to ask you anything because . . ." he remembered the gist of her words to him yet again, "I don't have a method of stepping into the depths of your heart without getting it dirty, so I'll wait, and when you want to talk, you tell me something."

Her eyes widened a bit in recognition before she looked down, suddenly feeling chastened at having forgotten her own rules.

"Hey, don't feel bad," Ichigo said reassuringly as he saw her sudden change of mood, "we didn't set the rules at the start and that was awhile ago, so it's okay if you forgot." He smiled at her mildly. "Let's call them now, yeah?"

Rukia looked at him again before picking up the phone and calling Ishida.

"Moshi moshi?" said the Quincy's voice.

"Ishida, it's me. Are you with the others?" she asked.

"Yes, Kuchiki-san, we're all here. What's the news?"

"Could you please put me on loudspeaker?" she asked. There was a pause and she heard something change as Ishida presumably enabled both loudspeaker and speakerphone on his end.

"You should be good," he said, sounding somewhat different.

"We found Ichigo, he's alright," she said, looking at him as she said it. She could hear sounds of relief from the other end and thought she heard Urahara as well.

"Can we talk to him?" Inoue asked.

"Yes," Rukia said, "hang on." She held the phone out to Ichigo.

He took it from her and held it up to the side of his head, not once breaking eye-contact with her. "Hey, everybody, sorry for making you worried like this," he said with humility. He stopped, waiting to hear out any recriminations.

Predictably it was Ishida who obliged, although his tone was pedantic rather than angry. "What were you thinking, misleading everyone like that?"

"You're absolutely right. There's no excuse for my behavior," Ichigo said solemnly. Rukia found she couldn't turn away from the look in his eyes. "All I can do is tell you why and trust that you'll understand and forgive me for troubling you," he added, pausing again.

There was no response that time.

"I needed to get away for awhile, by myself. It's nothing personal; I just needed to think things over. I felt that if I said that directly everyone would try and stop me, so I lied. I assumed that no one would notice and nothing would come of it. I should have thought better of you all and trusted that you would understand my decision if I brought it up directly with you," he continued.

"Kurosaki-kun . . ." Inoue said.

"It's not like you weren't coming back," Chad said. There was a surety in the way he said it.

"Are you coming back now?" Ishida asked.

"No," Ichigo said softly but firmly. "I'll make this up to you all in whatever way I have to, but my reasons remain unchanged."

Rukia saw something in his look change but couldn't place it exactly.

"No, that's not quite right," he corrected himself, "There's something I have to do here now. I couldn't leave until then even if I wanted to."

"Let us help," Ishida said.

Ichigo closed his eyes. His tone of voice and expression didn't change at all. "If you could, I'd let you. This isn't like that. Not right now anyway. Maybe it will be soon, but maybe not. Despite my untrustworthiness, I have to ask you to trust me," he said.

"Kuchiki-san is in the same way as you are," Urahara said calmly out of nowhere. Ichigo hadn't been aware he was there with his friends. He realized it wasn't actually a statement for his benefit, but for the others.

"Yeah," Ichigo affirmed without explaining further, opening his eyes again to look at her. A very long silence passed in the conversation.

"Do your best, Kurosaki-kun," Inoue said gently.

"Yeah," Chad added.

"Call us if you need anything," Ishida said, "anything at all."

"I will," Ichigo said, before pulling the phone away from his head and ending the call. He closed it and lightly tapped it on the table in thought before sliding it back over to her. He looked up at her with a small smile, finding she was looking elsewhere. She couldn't have heard what Urahara had said, but he knew she could piece it together even so. "Well, that wasn't so bad," he said, scratching at the back of his head "I'm pretty stupid for not having just trusted them to begin with, huh?"

Rukia inhaled rather sharply and then let it go before looking at him with a resolute expression. He said nothing and waited. "You were right that I didn't want to be here," she said at last.

Ichigo looked aside for a moment before sitting back and returning her gaze, listening.

"There are so many things to do as a fukutaichō," Rukia continued. She looked to a column behind and above Ichigo as she fell into thought. "Earning the position was easy after what happened, but the position itself . . . there's so much paperwork relating to everything from training regimens to logistics reports. There are so many personal and personnel problems to oversee. Managing Kiyone and Sentarō alone is a full-time job. Doing it all while practicing at zankensoki, while working toward bankai, while having time for oneself . . . requires a lot of diligence and fortitude. I worked for months to get ahead, to get on top of it all," she said, pausing.

He could see her again then as he had earlier: Rukia as a soldier, as a hard-nosed no-nonsense commanding officer doing what was necessary to keep her subordinates in fighting condition, to keep them alive. She was a warrior seeking to improve herself to carry their burdens when they themselves couldn't. He could hear in her tone how much she'd worked to harden herself to the rigors of combat and command. He could hear the brittleness it had engendered as well, and had already seen the same.

"When it was revealed you'd gone missing, I was worried about you. I also looked forward to seeing you because I was sure nothing truly terrible had happened or would happen to you," she said. The way she said 'sure' told him that it was standing in for something else. "But I also thought you must have been acting out to get our attention. I couldn't imagine that even you would do something so reckless, and I didn't think that you would believe we were just done with you. And so to me this was just another mission, one that distracted me from the actual work I had to do. That I still have to do."

Ichigo felt his jaw clench involuntarily and very deliberately loosened it again.

Rukia's eyes came back down to meet his again. "It wasn't fair to you to make those kinds of assumptions. You had no way of knowing how things have changed because of you. Nobody ever told you. The last time you really talked to anyone higher up off the battlefield it was the sōtaichō telling you not to pursue Inoue, so you probably still saw Soul Society as being not much different from when you went there for the first time . . . as being callous."

He looked away from her then. The fundamental crux of his post-Aizen worldview had just been shattered and most of the things he'd built upon it tumbled down along with it. Even if that was actually welcome news it was no small thing to watch months of thoughts and assumptions collapse like that.

"And so . . . although I didn't want to be here at first," Rukia concluded, "I will be, and not just because I was ordered to, but because you're my ally and I'm yours."

Ichigo's eyes snapped back to her then. He found her smiling softly at him and he couldn't help but mirror it as wreckage rained down around him inside his mind. They looked at one another for some unknown time, and even as it felt to him like the world was collapsing again, his smile only grew. He watched as hers did the same until they were beaming at one another.

"What?" she finally asked with a small laugh. It was wonderful to hear.

"I was just thinking that this is how it should've started, that's all," he said.

"Fool," she said gently, standing. "Come on, we still have to get something."

Ichigo rose and followed after her. "This has to do with the 'special account', right?"

"Yes," Rukia said, pulling out her soul pager. She searched for the nearest branch of Mizuho Bank and it reported the nearest one was the Shinjuku Shintoshin branch which was . . . right across the intersection from them in the Shinjuku Center Building. "Well, that makes things easy." She led Ichigo across the two street-crossings between them and it.

"Your replacement card, Kuchiki-dono; please do be more careful with this one," the assistant bank manager said as he handed her what looked like a debit or credit card.

"Thank you very much for giving this matter your special attention," Rukia said, politely bowing. Ichigo bowed slightly too although he was still unsure exactly what was going on.

"No, thank you for your continued patronage, Kuchiki-dono," the man replied, bowing deeper before taking his leave.

"So, what exactly is that?" Ichigo asked.

Rukia held it up for him to see and it still looked to him like some kind of financial card. It was black overall with an interesting pink and white pattern of streamers and sakura blossoms on it. It had Rukia's name on it along with the usual numbers and was emblazoned with the JCB and Mizuho Bank logos. She just as quickly pocketed it. "This gives me access to the special account."

"So did you actually lose the last one or . . ." Ichigo began.

"Don't be a fool," she said, crossing her arms, "I've never had access to the special account before."

"Alright then, what is the special account?" he asked instead.

"The Shinigami special mission finance account! You didn't actually think that we're all beholden to bumming around in the Living World like a bunch of vagrants, did you?" Rukia said haughtily.

Ichigo rubbed the back of his head. He was remembering Rukia's reliance on his bedroom closet and the desperation of the Shinigami team that responded to the Arrancar when it came to finding places to sleep.

"That didn't merit using the special account!" she said, divining what he was thinking and kicking him in the shin for his impudence.

The action drew a few glances from the other bank patrons and so he politely pulled her along outside so they could talk less conspicuously.

She only halfheartedly resisted.

"So, wait, how much money does that have on it and how does Soul Society convert kan or whatever into Yen?" he asked.

She looked at him like he was stupid.

"Forget it," he quickly said, "I don't want to know anyway." He finally noticed she had been toting around a small purse-like bag the whole time. "What's in there anyway? You never wear a purse."

"How very forward," she said, disapproving of the fact he would dare ask a woman such a thing before stating "Spare clothes."

Ichigo raised an eyebrow before realizing it must have been related to the search. He arrived at the logical conclusion with only modest dread. "Well, if we're staying here for awhile I guess there's no choice but to take you shopping."

Rukia's eyes lit up slightly as if she hadn't thought about it before. If there was anywhere she would ever be able to find clothes that actually fit it would be in a city as big as Tokyo. She was brought back to reality as a thought suddenly struck her. "Wait, where are your bags anyway? There's no way even you would wander around in the same clothes for over a week."

"All of my stuff is still in the hostel I was staying overnight at," he said, not rising to her insult of his hygiene. He watched as she assumed a contemplative look, presumably applying her skills as a fukutaichō to plan what they would do.

"We'll get your things first, move them to wherever we're going to say, and then go shopping," she quickly asserted.

"The nearest subway station is Shinjuku Station," he said, "I was staying in Nakano and took the Tozai line to Ochiai, walked to Higashi-Nakano to get on the Oedo Line, and got off at Nakanosakaue instead of Shinjuku to stretch my legs a bit. We can go to Shinjuku and otherwise do the reverse to get back to the hostel."

"Eh?" Rukia said. The entire idea of the subway system was confusing to her and she was beginning to regret having let Renji handle it.

"Don't worry about it too much, just follow me," Ichigo replied, leading her east from the bank. Shinjuku Station was only a few blocks away.

She deferred to him and walked alongside him.

"So, Rukia," he said after they'd walked awhile, "Byakuya wouldn't approve of his sister staying somewhere cheap, right?"

"I can already tell you're planning to take advantage of Soul Society's generosity," she said, looking askew at him in disbelief.

"I just don't want to get in trouble for being small-minded about finances when it comes to the treatment of a member of the Kuchiki clan," he said grandly.

She peered at him suspiciously.

"Here, let me see that fancy soul phone thing," he said, asking for the soul pager. She turned it over after only a moment's hesitation. Its touch screen was initially confusing but surprisingly easy to use, although some of its terms for things were obscure and archaic. He hadn't really looked at luxury information about Tokyo for obvious reasons but he knew enough to know what to look for. After a minute he handed it back to her with four recommendations highlighted: the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, the Imperial Hotel, and the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel. They were all five-star establishments in good locations and were unimpeachable in terms of class. "Pick one of those; which and what level of accommodations is up to you, Kuchiki-dono."

She glared at him for the apparent slight but began to review the suggestions without comment. They continued in silence to the station and on to the hostel he'd been staying at and she remained deep in consideration the whole way. It was a tough choice.

Ichigo was walking back out of the hostel with his bags right as she made her decision. "Grand Hyatt Tokyo, one room, grand executive twin," she said conclusively.

"Eh?" was all Ichigo said.

"I don't have to explain myself to you! You said it was my choice and I'm the one who's paying! Well . . . I'm the card-holder anyway!" she declared dictatorially.

"Yeah, but, one room?" he asked.

"Don't say that like we didn't sleep less than two meters apart from each other for two months!" she said, kicking him again. The simple truth was her mission was to watch over him and find out what was up with him, her duty as a friend was the same, and she could tell that earlier he'd decided something similar with regard to her; separate rooms didn't help with any of that. It was the optimal balance between expense, luxury, and practicality; if she was ever questioned on it she could defend it as such. She found the Imperial Hotel and Cerulean Tower too plain, and the Park Hyatt Tokyo too sterile.

Ichigo subtly rolled his eyes and said "As if I could forget. The simplest way to get there is to take the same route back, but go past Shibuya Station on the southern leg to Roppongi."

"You don't have to explain the route every time if you know where we're going," she chided.

"I want you to understand where we're going too," he said, starting to walk back to the station.

She exhaled and followed along after him.

A/N: I found out the Grand Hyatt Tokyo opened in 2003 after writing this but, well.