x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
A voice said, "Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul and body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth."
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
The first time Rukia had flashed, she had been an infant.
She would dream of blood and tears mixed in rain, of lightning and a white tower enshrouded in darkness, of a gigantic bird screeching and blazing in fire. Sometimes there would be cherry blossom petals, sometimes muddy swords, but there was always the smell of death.
She would wake up crying and Hisana would come rushing, pulling her out of the crib and into the safety of her arms, mouth emitting a steady stream of soothing words. Her early childhood was a series of nights spent reliving nightmares she couldn't comprehend the familiarity of, but at some point they shifted. They took form, they started looking like people she knew, started feeling like sensations she had experienced.
She never flashed on Hisana.
She flashed on Byakuya when she was twelve, right after returning home from Hisana's funeral.
He had been bloody, nearly armless in her dream. But he had been smiling, and caressing her hand, talking about Hisana, telling Rukia how much he had loved her, and how guilty he was for having left Rukia alone.
She had been inconsolable, Byakuya at a loss. Hisana was no longer around to tell her stories, to draw her into the safety of her arms, to magically turn her tears into laughter. She was not there when Rukia flashed on Kaien, nor when Kaien died in her arms, much like her dreams.
Flashing on memories was unheard of. No known phenomenon in their universe had an explanation, except for the occasional anomalies who turned up claiming to recall their past life. So Rukia kept this strangeness to herself, for all of her twenty two years of existence, confiding only in Byakuya, Hisana, Kaien and Renji.
But now, when she thinks of having a soulmate, a person she is doomed to love one-sidedly, she realizes she had it coming all this while.
People with soulmates don't flash on anyone except for their soulmate, but it would figure that Rukia was the exception to the rule.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Rukia ditches the next study session.
Momo obviously does not buy into her excuse of having prior commitments, and she says as much. She seems confused, because things had finally seemed to be looking up the last time they were at the study session, and that is precisely the problem.
Rukia knows the rule was broken.
She knows she crossed a line, the invisible barrier she had set between them. She had created the line, the line that she had stepped out of, and now it was her turn to set back the barriers stronger, harder, and tougher. There was no way she was seeing Ichigo again, definitely not till he forgot she ever existed, and something told her it would not take a long time. She was not even a blip on his radar.
She tells Renji as much over dinner in his apartment that Wednesday, even as her stomach swallows in on itself, and he looks nothing short of sceptical. But his eyes, they are still her childhood blanket, her safe place, and she knows there is no culpability there. He asks about her brother, and she tells him about his plans to stay over at Rukia's that weekend.
The week goes by in a flurry of classes and assignments and avoiding the south corner of the campus - where the Literature department sits – and the weekend is upon her even before she realises it.
Byakuya had refused, but obviously Rukia is going to pick him up from the airport. So she gets ready by five in the morning, putting on her warmest clothes, picks up a frappe mocha from the Starbucks en route, and makes it to the airport a whole ten minutes earlier. It's six in the morning, yet the airport is filled with people busily making their way about aisles and trolleys. Some are yawning, some intently staring down everything in their path. A toddler is wailing in his mother's arms, her frantic attempts at shushing him yielding only louder wails. Everyone is dressed in warm clothes, colourful mufflers and scarves and sweaters abound.
It is another 15 minutes of mindlessly gazing at the people around her before Rukia notices Byakuya making his way through the glass doors, suitcase at his heels. Before she can walk forward to meet him, another man is barrelling through the door, yelling hot on her brother's heels. His expression, which had been a mask of indifference, crumbles into something of a grimace as he tries to keep walking, unmindful of the other man's loud presence.
She studies the man trying to keep up with her brother. He has black hair greying at their roots, an unkempt goatee, a perpetually smiling face and dimples. His mouth is open, engaging her brother in possibly a one-sided conversation from what she can make of Byakuya's expression. Byakuya catches sight of her – she knows this because of the brief nod in her direction – and he is increasing his speed, the man beside him easily doing the same.
As they get closer, she starts catching snippets of their conversation. "- and then, my son, my cruel, cruel son, simply thundered up the stairs! Not one glance, not one apology! What have I done -"
He looks at her when Byakuya hails to a stop, and his eyes light up even more. "Well well well! Such a beautiful daughter you have, Byakuya!"
She can't decide whether to be scandalised or die laughing right there. Byakuya makes the decision for her, looking suitably unaffected even as his voice colours with immense contempt. "She is my sister."
The other man, to his credit, laughs loudly and pats her brother on the back with a loud smack. "Seriously? I would have never guessed! Not when she looks like your carbon copy!"
You should see my sister, the words are there, right there, on her tongue, but somehow she abstains herself. "Hello. I am Rukia," she says instead, extending her hand. "I take it you are an acquaintance of my brother's?"
The man readily engulfs her hand with his much larger one, shaking it with a ferocity that has her teeth rattling. "Acquaintance is a light word! We interned in the same firm. In fact," and here his smile dims slightly, "my brother used to tutor you."
The question is past her lips, even as she makes the connection, even as her heart plummets to the dark abyss somewhere lower, her body a lot colder. There is no air for a moment, someone has punched her in the gut, and she waits for the moment to pass, knowing from experience it will, before resettling her smile and nodding once.
"Isshin is my name," the man continues, his speech the unstoppable tsunami of all the wrong things to say. "And I have had a word with Byakuya; you both are coming over to my place for dinner!"
Rukia is too numbed to say anything, and her brother makes no effort to retort, so she figures it is alright.
The ride to the man's house has a dream like quality to it. She does not recognise the neighbourhood, it is somewhere more suburban, and she lives uptown. Isshin is gleefully talking about everything under the sun, only too happy to talk to a non-responsive audience. A few times Rukia tries talking, saying a polite word, murmuring an assent or smiling a little, but every time she looks at his face, Kaien's face surfaces, his smile is Isshin's smile, his eyelashes blinking with Isshin's and then suddenly her voice is rolling into a lump in her throat.
They make it to his house in under an hour, leaving the luggage in the car and the door has barely opened before Isshin is rushing in with a dramatic wail of "Daddy's back!" Rukia exchanges a glance with her brother, trying to give him a reassuring smile she knows he doesn't need.
"Dad stay out of here!"
The wail startles Rukia into coming to a stop, just as she is stepping over the threshold. She looks back questioningly at her brother, who spares her a glance before brushing past her into the house with the gait of one who has done it many a times before.
She suspects he has.
The house is painted in beige walls and paintings. Brown sofa lines surround the television in the living room, a matching dining table with four chairs placed next to it. The ceiling is covered in chandeliers and small light bulbs. It has the feel of a family living in there.
It feels like a home.
She is introduced to two young women, one a feminine looking brunette, the other a rather peeved looking raven. Both are fraternal twins, she is told, their personalities and looks a sharp contrast to each other. It is then that she notices the life sized poster of a smiling woman on the wall. They tell her it's their mom, and even as she stares at the woman, she feels an uncanny sensation of having been here before, of having seen the woman before. Her feet have carried her to the portrait, and her fingers are tracing the rough texture of dried paint, mind trying to place the unfamiliar sadness welling within.
"She is beautiful," Rukia breathes out, the feeling of nostalgia swarming her senses.
"That, she is." A male voice comes from right next to her, and she is jumping a few feet away, fearful eyes taking in the visage of the man she has been avoiding since the past week.
She should have anticipated it, really. This was Universe's way of telling her that it was not leaving her alone till she got her heart broken and stomped and shattered into a million pieces a million ways a million times over. She belatedly notices that Ichigo is not looking at her, but at the portrait, his eyes such a dark shade of misery she has to resist rushing there and taking him in her arms and protecting him from the portrait.
"This is my mother," he clarifies, his eyes ditching the painting in favour of pinning her with eyes, eyes a stormy shade of sadness, and Rukia has to dig her nails into her elbows before she does something stupid.
She tries nodding briefly, brain wracking to come up with something. "This is my brother," she says, trying to shut her mouth. "He knows your father, so we, um, happened to come here."
There is a silence so awkward she wishes the floor would swallow her, and when she looks up at her brother, she notices Isshin's eyes appraising her shrewdly, all traces of the idiocy gone. That is, till the maniac gleam returns.
"So are you Ichigo's-"
He has been injured severely in the family jewels by the time they sit down to have dinner, which is a whole new level of awkward. Her brother is silent, Ichigo keeps grunting, the twins are occasionally passing rude remarks while their father can't seem to stop talking. There is an empty seat at the head of the table, but no one comments on it, or at the empty plate and glass placed before it. Her eyes keep finding it, and inevitably she thinks of the empty room back in her brother's mansion in Seattle, the lavender walls and unchanging bedsheets gathering dust. It is too much, thinking of two people she has lost in a span of few hours, so she tries distracting herself by looking about.
There is constant commotion at the table, Isshin asking all grades of inappropriate question to her brother who is artfully focused on the food. The light-haired twin is looking upset, the raven-haired annoyed, and Ichigo can't stop kicking his father in the foot. But she knows.
She knows this is a family.
It is too much emotions in one day, so much so that even Ichigo's presence is not overwhelming her senses for a change. So she excuses herself from the table, quietly slinking out through the backdoor of the house, onto the dark street. There is a flickering street light, and she stares it down in a losing match. The street is absolutely empty, save for the snow which is piled everywhere like a pristine white blanket. The sky is clear tonight, stars littering the dark.
Rukia closes her eyes, breathes in deep through her tiny nose, exhaling just as noisily. Her heart is lead, and it is growing bigger and bigger from where it rests in her chest. She is drowning in air, right there, in the middle of the street, in an unknown universe.
"Do you have asthma?"
His footsteps are loud, like blaring speakers in the quiet of the night, and she has to hold back a smile. There it is, the unpredictable, the unanticipated, the one who makes her drown and reach for the surface all the same. It is funny how she feels a lifetime of emotions for someone she doesn't know at all as a person. Her heart is still lead, but it is beginning to melt.
"I just like breathing from the stomach," she says. "It is the secret to a long life."
He snorts from where he has come to stand next to her. The heaviness in her heart seems to ground her, for she finds it in herself to tease him. "Missed me so much?"
His head whips around to stare at her indignantly. "Obviously not. Who do you think-"
"Relax. It was a joke." She interrupts, still staring up at the sky. There is silence then, a silence that stretches into seconds, then minutes and then Rukia knows no more. Her thoughts are beginning to settle down from aggressive black splotches to a persistent buzz. Ichigo is standing next to her, stock still, breathing calm breaths. She thinks they could stay this way for a long time maybe, if no one interrupted, if nothing disturbed this silence.
And quite unwillingly, but not surprisingly, her eyes find Ichigo's profile silhouetted against a surreal sky and a grounded civilisation. He looks beautiful, and she thinks how she could spend her whole life staring his way, staring at eyes that will never meet hers halfway.
And in that moment, something in her snaps. She knows nothing about this man. She doesn't know his birthday, if his laughter sounds like a bray, whether he is Team Jolie or Team Aniston, whether he eats ketchup on everything, when he calls it a day, what makes him tick. All her feelings, this coagulation of immense attraction and teenage die-for-you humdrum is so shallow, driven by the unknown memories of a past that is no more. It is driving her crazy, these feelings, this attraction, this gravitation towards him.
She has tried her hardest to stay away, turn away, and run away from this man. But this anomaly of cosmic origins has been a complete bitch, throwing him at every turn she takes to avoid him. After all these weeks of running away, if there is one thing she has realised, it's that running away is not the solution. Maybe it is a karmic thing, maybe the unknown is indeed putting him in her path so she does not get out of this life of redemption.
And an insane idea occurs to her. If she can't run away, why not stay? Why doesn't she try to get to know him better? Find more about the mystery that sings familiar in her being? The grass being greener shebang has some credit to it, and she is willing to take up the chance. It may be similar to the Westermarck effect, and maybe being close enough is all she needs to develop immunity to this insanity that has become her emotions. It is crazy, insane, but lately that is all her life has been about anyway, so why not?
So she smiles at him, a smile that blooms from the flight her heart takes off on, and says the words she has been dying to say since five weeks, three days, eighteen hours and forty minutes now.
"Do you work out?"
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
When Byakuya and her get home later that night, she takes out a notebook, stares at it, and starts writing the title.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x
The hollow is towering menacingly, its shrill screech reverberating in the closed compound, but Ichigo has eyes only for her, his body turned her way, unmindful of the hollow behind him.
Rukia stabs a thumb in her chest, the burn from behind her eyes cascading into blurriness. "That is the kind of man you are in my heart, Ichigo!"
Ichigo is still staring at her, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and she wonders what he is so surprised about, but then he is smiling, his face is the morning sun, and he has turned away before she can look beyond all the brightness. He is smiling, she can tell from his voice as it lies about wanting her to shut up.
Later that day, Rukia is lounging in the kitchen, wondering where the cucumbers are, when she feels a heat behind her. She turns around, her confusion directed at a staring Ichigo. His gaze is unwavering, and she can't stop the smile from appearing on her face. "What are you looking at, creeper?"
The retaliation she expects never comes. Ichigo is staring at her, even now, his face set in stone, and so Rukia stares back, arms crossed, an eyebrow tweaked.
"Man in your heart?" he asks, voice quiet.
And then something changes in the way Ichigo is looking at her. His eyes are boring into hers, reading deeper than she is used to. The words are on her tongue, but her tongue is sand, dissolving into her throat and she doesn't understand what this emotion is. He is looking at her soul, at her heart, at her existence; the air is charged and everything has faded away into nothingness. Gravity is crushing her in that moment, something is coming fast at her, her heat is ripping a tornado within, and very briefly she sees Kaien's smile, Byakuya's gaze at Hisana's picture, Renji's back, and –
and she hates this.
So she picks the nearest spoon and chucks it at his head, creating a commotion loud enough for the rest of the house to intervene in.
Ichigo doesn't look her way again, for the rest of evening.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Rukia starts spending her days barging into Ichigo's life.
It starts with stalking. Complete with the nerdy glasses, muffled face and oversized clothes, she casually stalks the south campus at lunch time, eyes peeled on every passing face for the familiar orange head. She does this the first two days, till she realises her outfit gets her the very attention she is trying to escape. Eventually she compromises on the muffler, choosing to blend with the greenery every day instead.
She finds Ichigo to be a man of great precision. The man exits his building exactly at a quarter past one, and casually strolls to the canteen. Where, to her great disappointment, he seats himself with Ishida Uryu. They have no one else at their table, though Ichigo seems to have a lot of random students pass him casual greetings.
After lunch he attends classes on two days of the week, the remaining three he opts to go home.
She, of course, stalks him all the way home.
That's how she discovers that he hums Green Day and Nirvana while walking, eyes trained on the footpath, with little interest in his immediate surroundings. Curiously enough, he never uses the headphones uselessly slung on the handle of his sling bag. She thinks how she has never seen him listening to music, whether in the study sessions or while casually strolling, and it strikes her as something to be stored away for now and pondered upon later.
Stalking is going well enough, and Rukia starts feeling content with the routine, with this degree of one-sided interaction with the object of her pithy desires. Which is why, when she is standing outside Ichigo's house, silently settled between the bushes, the finger that taps on her shoulder surprises the living daylights out of her. She turns about, hand blindly flinging a punch on a scrubby face, which she finds to be belonging to a very amused looking Isshin.
"Want to come in for some tea?"
She refuses, very insistent and appropriately embarrassed, but then Isshin is hollering loudly and the next thing she knows, she is in the house, amidst an overexcited man and two puzzled teenagers. The raven-haired one is giving her suspicious looks, arms crossed defensively across her chest. "What are you doing here?"
Rukia has a sob story ready, one she knows this smart head won't buy but the majority in the room will, but before she can get out the fake tears Isshin is pushing her away, towards the dining room, waving off his daughters. "I invited her over for some quality time with her father figure!"
Rukia doesn't understand, can't comprehend this man's sudden affection for her. She sits puzzling over it and Ichigo's absence – had he shut himself somewhere in the house? - through tea, polite pleasantries gliding over the confusion within her with the smoothness of polish, and it is only when the siblings have retired to their rooms that she starts seeing the reason for her invitation into the house.
"Do you visit Kaien?"
The tea cup in her hand is shaking, and she is about to drop it, but Isshin gently pries her fingers from the cup, silently placing it back in the tray. His eyes find hers again, the smile no longer on his face though a shadow of it remains in his eyes.
Her words have abandoned her, her heart is tearing out of her chest, and she has to get out of here, out of this forsaken place, this man is going to kill her-
"When was the last time you went to see him?" his voice is gentle, deceptively so; the words feel like a knife stabbing in her chest, twisting itself. One two three one two three one two three-
"Breathe." Rukia blinks, vision clearing to show Isshin's palm on hers, face stern. She realises she is not in the sanctuary of her thoughts, in the caged prison of her solitude, and hence she must control.
So she withdraws her hand from his, smiles a little and says she is fine. Again. Again. Till Kaien is a box locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind and her words are once more slickly gliding miles above the surface of the box. "I am alright," she reiterates. "No, I haven't visited him. Not once since that day."
Isshin is studying her now, his face unreadable, and she has the vaguest feeling it mirrors hers. "You know you can, right?"
She can't say anything to that, anything that wouldn't lead to unsolicited emotions running amok and so she just smiles slightly, shrugging her shoulders a little. They sit there for a few seconds, hearing the creak of a door shutting up somewhere upstairs, till she has to say, "I should leave."
Isshin nods, but then his hand is on her head, ruffling it heavily. "You are always welcome here, kiddo."
The smile is on her face, but in her heart, she knows she won't be returning here.
x-x-x-x-x-x-
"Is he still unconscious?"
She turns around to see Isshin staring at Ichigo, arms crossed across his chest. His face is unshaven, hair messed up, and he looks like he came out of a war.
He looks the part.
She nods at him. "Yes. Urahara said we can expect another day, at the very least."
Isshin says nothing, and they stand there in silence, looking at Ichigo. Rukia can't look at Ichigo anymore, not when she has spent nearly every minute of the past two days staring at his face and the knowledge of the loss that awaits him on awakening. So she walks to the closet, opening it and removing her limited belongings.
There is no point delaying it anymore anyway.
"You are leaving."
It's not a question, but Rukia turns around and answers anyway. "Yes. He won't be able to see me anymore anyway." She isn't sure why she is stating the obvious, even though there is no accusation in Isshin's words.
Isshin's face is sombre, but the lines around his mouth relax a little. "Thank you for everything you have done for my son."
The protest is on her lips, but then Isshin is shaking his side, continuing on. "I mean for being in his life. By his side, through everything."
There is a lump in her throat, and her words are wet as they stumble past it. "No more than I am towards him. He," her eyes involuntarily find Ichigo, blissfully oblivious. She has no words, because right now she is the sum total of her emotions. But she has to say something, and so she pushes her emotions right where they belong, in that little black box in the far recesses of her mind, and says, "He has changed everything for me."
"And yet you are leaving?"
She looks at Isshin, and there is no accusation, but he is staring at her, eyes so sad, and she remembers the poster downstairs, the woman with the blinding smile and kind eyes.
"I need to." She says, her tone final. "But I will be here to bid him farewell tomorrow."
Isshin's shoulders slump a little, and she nods, making it to the window and leaping out.
She is never returning here. Not after tomorrow, she thinks.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Rukia decides to change her strategy.
Following Ichigo home is completely out of the question, so now she decides to corner him into conversations during the study session.
Which still doesn't come easy. Ichigo seems to have leftover resentment of sorts from the time she tried erasing his existence from her sight. For instance, she once asks him about his family.
"You saw it," he responds disinterestedly. "Three people. Why ask redundant questions?"
Another time she asks him about his birthday. That gets her a suspicious eyebrow.
"July fifteenth. But why do you want to know?"
Or the one time she asks him about his favourite band, and he gives a very rude, "Bad Religion. Though I doubt you know anything about music."
He gets a coffee cup in his face for that one.
But now she greets him, smiles when he catches her eyes, and looks his way every time she feels like it.
It is therapeutic.
It feels like the floodgates of a dam have been opened. The heaviness, the surreptitiousness, the lying – all of it has stopped, and now she can easily follow the instincts her body has been fighting all along. She can smile at Ichigo, laugh at him, ask him questions, and just listen to him talk without having to pretend otherwise. She feels lighter than she has in months, and it feels like everything is finally going right.
One such Wednesday evening, they all are seated in the coffee shop, carrying on with their usual routine. Rukia is chewing the pen tip in her mouth, determined to make conversation today.
"Which is your favourite book?"
Ichigo looks up, his beautiful eyes hazy and Rukia has to bite down a smile. He blinks once, twice, a slight wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. "Romeo and Juliet."
She can't help it. Laughter escapes before she can cover her mouth, and the damage is done in the way the wrinkle deepens. Momo is also smiling, head slightly bent. "Are you going to be sexist about this?"
"Oh please. I am a feminazi."
Momo nods. "I can vouch for that."
"Then why the hell are you laugh-"
"You said it with such disdain."
He glares at her. "This is my natural expression."
She furrows her brows, eyes hostile, voice an attempt at a deep baritone. "I love Romeo and Juliet. Such romance. Much tragedy."
"You didn't even use that right."
Only after Ichigo storms off at the end of the study session does Rukia think that maybe she went the wrong way about it.
But when he shows up the day after, all frowns and grouch per usual, she snorts the coffee through her nose.