Never did we think that everything would turn out alright just because we loved each other

A/N: ahh, I feel that my case of writer's block has finally alleviated in the slightest.

I hope the wait hasn't been too long. Please enjoy and review.

Never did we think that everything would turn out alright just because we loved each other. But then again, we have nothing else.

"Inoue."

Ichigo stared at the woman in his living room.

It was like meeting an old friend at the airport. No matter how many faces you sketch out in your mind and compensating for the long years since you have seen him last, there is always a certain shyness when he finally emerges from the crowd of people. It is at that precise moment that the abstractions of life and time materialize before you. He wondered if this was what veterans feel when they see their old war buddies.

Only a faint gasp notified Ichigo of the Rukia who walked into the house behind him. Like him, she stared at a listless Inoue with equal intensity. Ichigo looked at her with an overwhelming relief, as she was a timely distraction in the suffocating space that he and Rukia were trapped in, Rukia however strained to see through her presence the nameless thing that scared her beyond rationality. But before she had the chance to fully process the sight, she was caught by the twins' more than eager welcome. Surrounded by the two girls' chatters, Rukia's gaze could not help but continue to drift to the woman standing slightly nervously in the middle of the room. Yuzu noticed her wandering attention to Inoue, and spoke to introduce them.

"That's Miss Inoue, she is a new teacher at our university. When she saw our name, she asked if I knew Ichi-nii. Apparently they were classmates in university."

Both Ichigo and Inoue, who was staring at Rukia to the point of rudeness, seemed to be shaken out of a similar stupor at Yuzu's words and sheepishly confirmed the fact.

"It has been a while, Inoue." He smiled genially, suddenly seeming a little shy. Rukia might have slapped him if she had been on the other side of that smile.

After all these years, Inoue still rebuked herself for the slight blush that the sight of him brought. If it was possible, it made her even more conscious of the Rukia who stood behind him. "Yes, hasn't it." She could not help but smiled in return.

Yuzu's hasty introduction of Rukia before shoving her toward the kitchen along with Karin naturally came without any surprise, but something in her eyes made Inoue feel as if she knew something was out of the ordinary with her, a suspicion so evident that it left her unsettled.

Ichigo though was inexplicably oblivious to Inoue's unease and Karin's lingering words about a new sister-in-law or something to that effect. Isshin's absence seemed to be the more dubious circumstance that night. Despite the string of small talk and pleasantries they fell into during their conversation, he was genuinely glad to be able to speak to her again. It was an ease brought by the considerable distance but clarity between them, in which he felt more liberated than even with Rukia.

Even though it was already the 20th century, Rukia found that the kitchen was still an inescapable domain for her sex. Pushed by the twins into the steam filled room, she was discovered by a Masaki who was surprised in the quiet way that Rukia found so familiar and a more than ecstatic Isshin who was regretfully, bound by probably Karin in a chair.

Rukia found herself setting almost unnoticeably back in with her mother and sisters, save for the occasional groans of Isshin against his constraints that notified his presence, amidst a fine mixture of soups bubbling and speculation about Inoue's sudden arrival.

Despite the growing ease of her smile and even laughter, Rukia's eyes could not help but drift to the kitchen door. By the envious look on Yuzu's face and sound of Karin's mocking confirmation, it almost seemed for a fact that they were witnessing Ichigo's initiation onto the road of happiness. Even marriage, at that moment, was a tangible prospect. Rukia could only let out a dry laugh. How could she explain how wrong that is, while the explanation itself veers on the obscene? It had never occurred to her while she was alone with him, but it suddenly nauseated her to be reminded that she had the same blood he did.

For the first time that night, she was incredibly tired.

Dinner was served without trouble. Isshin behaved surprisingly like the adult he was due to Ichigo and Karin's stern gazes from time to time. The air too was amiable enough, though it was hard telling who the guest was between Rukia and Inoue.

Ichigo felt lighthearted enough that night. Troubles of the past and future were put on hold while insignificant conversation roamed on about everything and anything. Rukia seemed civil, whose expression reminded him with a start of how competent an actress she once was. His eyes traveled between his sister and Inoue, and it obvious that both sensed that something was wrong with the other, but a thin veil of uncertainty prevented anything beyond pleasantries be exchanged.

Was it by the second helping of the curry that he began to see the slightest haze around Inoue's face? He at first assumed that it was just the wine that Masaki broke out, but he still found no relief when he downed a glass of water. By the time that the plates were replaced by cups of coffee, the sensation grew to a full vertigo and Ichigo was embarrassed by the clattering of his cup against the saucer whenever he tried to pick it up. Seeing that no one had yet noticed his discomfort, he quickly left the table with an excuse.

In the bathroom Ichigo turned on the water and let the sound fill the small room. Tentatively, he held his hand under the tap and was relieved in the slightest as the cold stung his fingertips. After washing his face briskly, he looked up in the mirror and caught the sight of his feverish face distorted through his watering eyes. It did not look quite like himself, he thought. Then a soft knock came on the bathroom door.

"May I come in?" Inoue's voice floated in.

"Y-Yes."

She walked in looking uncertain, and was a little taken aback by the water that was still dripping off of his face. Catching a glimpse of his hand that was still clutching onto the bathroom counter for balance, Inoue picked up a towel from the rack beside her and handed to him. Ichigo was a bit embarrassed to be caught in such a disheveled state, she could see. Watching him sheepishly dry himself off with the towel, she said in her quietest voice.

"Is this what you have decided?"

It took him a while to understand what she was talking about. Ichigo frowned, how could he have almost forgotten?

"That was him, wasn't it?"

It was not a question, and she knew it. A silence heavier than any word spoken fell, and he turned to once again study himself in the mirror. Behind her back Inoue wringed her hands, at a loss of what to do. Ichigo blinked a few times to himself and finally straightened up to say:

"You are going back to Tokyo tonight?"

"Ah- yes. I suppose it is getting late already, I should go."

"I'll walk you to the station." As if it was the most natural thing, he left the bathroom expecting her to follow him.

Instead, she gazed at the half open door without moving and wondered with a stubborn blush. After all this time, he still had no idea. If neither of them were who they were, she might have slapped him. Did he really think that he had not a single care in the world, not even for his own soul?

"Would she be alright?" Inoue cautiously asked beside Ichigo, evidently a little guilty that Rukia had to walk home alone because of his insistence to accompany her to the station.

"It's fine."

Somehow she was even beginning to dislike herself. She knew that it was just his habitual kindness done out of reflex, but she could not help but feel like if she let her guard relax for even a second she would be back to the fool she once was, cheating him out of the affection that was really meant for Rukia. But she allowed herself that least bit of selfishness, as she prepared her words. To have consciously known that whatever she says would be her last words to him made her chest ache. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the movement of his feet as they walked toward their parting place, and she almost wished for the world to end at that moment. If it did, she would be spared from the agonizing speculation of what she could and could not have said or done, and Ichigo would be from… Well, she was afraid herself to sum up all that waited for him.

"Urahara came to me a few months ago." It was when they were at the station Inoue spoke. In the lazy air of that summer night, her whisper seemed thunderous. He could tell that it surprised even herself to have finally been able to say it.

"Oh."

"He…He asked me to give this to you."

She handed him a crumpled envelope. Ichigo seemed puzzled as he regarded the item in his hand and then looked up at her.

"I'm sorry." It was far too torturous to wait for a response from him, so she gritted her teeth and turned around to walk into the train station.

It felt like the worst treachery that the prospect of tomorrow still held hope for her and the sweet night air still made her heart swell.

It was the thought of Rukia that shook him out of his stupor. Realizing that he was still in the same place as Inoue had left him, he took one last look at the envelope and stuffed it into his pant pocket. There was not much point in reading it, not when he knew what it entailed.

The black night solidified around him as the hour grew late, and it occurred to him suddenly that Rukia could be walking alone in such a darkness. Her reassuring smile as she refused Inoue's offer to forgo Ichigo's company and her imperceptible tug to tighten her jacket around her as she walked out the door, he knew better than anything that he must return to her side. Thankfully the station was not a great distance away from her apartment, and so Ichigo broke into a run. A bit embarrassing at his age really, sick with regret like an adolescent.

He himself even jumped at his sharp knocks on Rukia's door. Like the scorn he wanted to yell to Rukia for running away, like the apology he wanted to mutter to her ear for the cowardly way he himself tried to run away from her, the sound reverberated in the dully lit corridor. When she finally opened the door to his relief, Ichigo wrapped her, eyes watery and red for whatever reason, in his arms and made it so that she could never forget his sincerity as he wished:

Please never let me forget how I once loved another soul, how we once loved each other.