In This Part: The three deal.
x x x x x x
Thirty-Three: Steadfast
Ichigo keeps walking. The sun stabs through the foliage and into his cinched eyes.
This is dumb. They're gonna catch up.
I don't care.
"Ichigo!" That is Rukia, her footfalls pattering towards him. "Ichigo, wait!"
Not a chance. He doesn't care how they found him—not that he can't guess, and he owes old goat-chin a foot in the face for that—nor why they have come. He wants them to go back to Soul Society and leave him out of—of whatever this is.
"Hey! Are you listenin'?" The heavier thump of Renji's feet drowns out hers.
No.
The path dives into full, unscreened sunlight. The white cliffs ahead reflect the brilliant day through a haze of cloud. After the umbra of the trees, the open air all but blinds him.
He is grabbed by the shoulder and spun about. "Hold on a damn moment." Renji's sentence falls deliberate like a blow. His hand stays on Ichigo's shoulder.
"What do you think you're doing?" Rukia scampers up to them, her breath choppy and hair blown every which way. "I almost reported you missing to the Twelfth—"
" 'Til I said to ask 'round first," Renji adds. "Was it so damn tough to leave half a word?"
Great. So now everyone from Karakura to Seireitei knows they're here.
Ichigo jerks himself out of Renji's grip. "Who the fuck asked you to follow me? If I don't tell you, maybe it's a subtle hint to leave me alone!"
"Yeah, yeah, I get you don't want us here." Renji's eyes flash with something barely contained—anger or disappointment. "The thing is, it's not just your decision."
"Appreciate you both coming to annoy the fuck out of me. Good work, mission accomplished, now go away."
Rukia stomps on his foot. His hiking boot barely muffles the impact. "I didn't realise we were so unwanted."
"Weren't you over this? The whole leavin' your friends in the dark, marchin' off to the sunset shtick?"
A snap of temper overrules Ichigo's confusion. "How's it a capital offence to want some space? Didn't get enough of living in my pockets when–" When you were the two things that got me home. He steps back, as if the rushing of his heart might be audible.
"You owe us a few words, so we came to find you. Simple as that."
Ichigo rubs a trickle of sweat from his eye. He could still walk away. Renji might not even ultimately stop him. The real question is, where would he go? "How the fuck did you even get here?" I even left the substitute badge at home...
"We took a train." Under her irritation, Rukia sounds pleased with the fact. "Multiple trains, and then a bus. Your father was very helpful."
Is it too late to force himself out of his body and fall on his own sword?
"Will you quit dancin' around?" Renji's voice is laden with purpose. "Talk to us or don't, but make up your mind."
"What about?"
Rukia tries to hide her flinch at Ichigo's retort, but he reads her better than that. Right now he wishes he didn't.
"You do know," she says.
I do know.
He takes a few steps back under the trees. The sun can be harsh in this altitude, especially with exertion and dehydration creeping up to compound it. His movement draws Renji and Rukia along. Renji slumps down to sit, long limbs askew, while she seats herself more delicately next to him.
Ichigo pries a water bottle from the straps of his rucksack and splashes his face. "Fine then. Shoot."
"I cannot do this if you're standing over there."
"Huh?" He is barely four steps away from her.
"Sit your ass down, Ichigo. Might take the edge off that haunted stare you got goin'."
"I said I'd listen!" With too much show, Ichigo crouches in the grass. Rukia's stillness is that of a duelist, measuring the air, but her hands clench together. He hasn't spoken to her in weeks. While he shirks from facing Renji because of what happened, with her it's the other way around. Absence and inaction may have wreaked just as much havoc.
"You wanna start?" Renji nudges her shoulder.
"Very well. If you are sure."
" 'S the least I owe ya." Something passes between them, in the pregnant look before she raises her eyes to Ichigo. He returns the gesture and braces himself: too late to bolt.
"You both," she begins, sucking in a rib-straining breath. "You are both incorrigible, stubborn, aggravating fools beyond any hope of redemption, and I–I do not know what to do with you." She tugs her knees up, the heels of her boots dragging in the ground. "I can only say what I think, and let you do the same. Right?"
Ichigo would at least grin, but his throat is thick with hesitation. Renji makes an acqueiscent noise.
"It may sound like a poetic exaggeration, but..." She fiddles with her sleeve. "There are parts of my life I'll never get back. I know the facts as they're written down—I was sentenced to death once, for one. And you came to my rescue."
Ichigo wanted to leave; he doesn't think he could even twitch as she fumbles for a continuation.
"I believe I dream of it. What I feel then... that seems real to me. What I've felt since we met again, that is real to me. I'll never know, but I try to understand."
"I get it bothers you," Ichigo finds himself saying. "You know things got better from there on out, right?"
"I have gathered no amount of reprimands would deter you from doing it again. That isn't the point."
Renji chortles. "You figured out the important bits."
"Yeah." Ichigo can tell the differences that her partial memory loss makes, but the heart of her, all the reasons he cherishes her, have stayed the same. Even without her misty memories of him, he might have... fallen for her. That seems a frivolous description for the depth to which she touches him.
"I see." A patch of sunlight frames her face as she smooths it into calm. "You both would have died for me."
"You had to say that out loud? Doesn't make it any less true."
He got that right. Ichigo leans his cheek into his palm. "I know you're coming in for the late showing, but it's not that big a deal, Rukia. If... if you mean the Soukyoku, there's no war, no sentence, no conspiracies now."
"I know. I didn't mean to derail the conversation."
"You got yourself in trouble, I came to get you. That's all there is to it."
"You mean we came to get her." Renji aims a mock scowl at him. Again there is a glimmer of a sore and dark emotion in the companionable gesture. It flits away when Renji turns to Rukia, but surfaces every time his focus is on Ichigo. "That aside, stop stealin' my lines, you jerk."
Ichigo deflects his own worry and the quip in one go. "Fine, we did. After I pounded some sense into your thick skull."
"You wanna talk to me about sense?" Renji's face hardens, hurt and slow fury unfurling. "Fuck, listen to you."
In the space of a few words, Ichigo has tripped over a line. Rukia is, has always been, sacrosanct: her needs push aside whatever conflicts exist between Renji and him. Her happiness is paramount, and they come together to preserve it time and again. Renji's rough words crack the old accord.
"Pull your head outta whatever hole you've stuffed it in, Ichigo."
Rukia has sat up straight. Ichigo swallows a heated riposte. This isn't how they work. Caustic, blunt, offensive, yes, but the terse, acid edge in Renji is as unsettling as it is unfamiliar.
"What the hell'd I say? One word and you're huffing like some scorned—"
"Don't. Finish that. You've got some nerve." Renji jabs the syllables like needles into pressure points. "We're not exactly here to sightsee, you son of a bitch. And I sure as hell am not here so you could mess with me some more."
"Renji—" Rukia sounds reedy, stunned.
"A minute, Rukia. He owes me this."
"Oi! Don't I get a damn say in what I—"
"You left," Renji snaps, an accusation. "You stood up and walked the fuck away. Bastard. What did you think was gonna happen?"
"What the hell was I supposed to do?"
"Somethin'. Whatever. I thought we were... clear. Even." Renji rises as he speaks, his shoulders hunched, the lines of his body taut.
"Well, excuse me!" Ichigo jolts onto his feet, too, feeling a step behind in more than the physical sense. "It's not that easy to swallow... and so help me if you get witty now I'm going to break your nose."
"You can try." Renji's voice dips. "Keep talkin'."
Affront is preferable to befuddlement. Attitude is the only thing that glues him together. "All right, I will. Whatis your problem? Rukia's got something to tell us. You cut her off and try to crawl dowl my throat with some grudge you won't even explain!"
Not that he really needs to, Kurosaki. You know what he means. You just have to pretend, right? 'Til you can't.
With a guttural breath, Renji snaps forward, one arm sweeping back to gather momentum, fingers curling tight.
x x x x x x
Rukia gasps in involuntary alarm. She almost flies in Renji's path before he stops, as suddenly as he moved. The fury bleeds from his expression. She isn't sure if he was going to seize Ichigo or strike him; by the way he stares, neither is Ichigo.
Her hands fisting, she holds still. Ichigo's chin rises slowly in defiance that would be flawless if not for the quiver in his jaw. Renji's back is tight, as if both of them were digging in their heels and preparing to hold ground.
Is this the only way they can face each other? Challenging, defying, at constant loggerheads?
"I told you," Renji says. His voice seems too loud after the charged stillness. "So... I'm supposed to grin an' bear it so you can pretend nothin' happened?"
It is like a game of go with invisible stones, Rukia thinks with gently rising panic. She is building a chain piece by piece, but is thwarted by her opponent at every turn, because only they can see the entire board.
"You're asking me?" Ichigo crackles with incredulity. "What the fuck do you think I know?"
"Your own mind, for starters!" Renji bellows. "This isn't exactly advanced kidou theory, so quit playin' dumb, or did you run into a wall one time too many with all that speedin' round in bankai? I thought you had the balls to own up to your shit! What do you want? From me?" He swings a hand at Rukia. "From her?"
That cost him. Both of them, the analytical part of her mind says. The rest is preoccupied with gawking at Renji.
"I..." Ichigo deflates, at least partway.
"I told you," Renji repeats, the stress on the word almost raw. "That I was... serious. Told you what happened."
Ichigo looks up, but not at him; at her, mouth open and head reeling with trying to keep up. His eyes darken with blatant guilt, whether directed at her or Renji.
He isn't stupid. Or, he is, so idiotic I could kidou him senseless, but he knows what is going on. He knows why Renji is so hurt. For all his gruff exterior, Renji wears his heart on his sleeve. Rukia remembers the floating sense of contentment she found when he tracked her down after their falling out. He considers Ichigo equally important in his own way.
She only has Renji's halting explanation of what happened between the two, but it is enough. Renji has paced back and forth around Ichigo's premature departure ever since, while the youth shrinks from the whole issue.
She is no closer to a solution as Ichigo makes a funny, muffled noise and folds into himself.
"Okay," he sighs. "You win. Since you came all the way up here to ambush me."
Her borrowed boot chafes at her heel. She kneels down to keep the shoe from pressing at the spot, motioning for Renji to do the same. Ichigo's belligerent front has mellowed. It will not do to charge in, but let him go at his own pace, if there is any hope of them reaching an understanding.
"I dunno about Soul Society," Ichigo begins, "but... this kind of thing isn't done here. Just Rukia would be weird enough, but..."
"I am strange?"
"Not as weird as him!" Ichigo waves a hand at Renji, then lets it fall abruptly at the stricken face he makes. "Fuck, look, I'm having some trouble here. I said it. Happy now?"
"You have machines on the street that sell shunga made with real people, but it is forbidden to practise..."
"Holy shit, Rukia!"
"It was only an observation!" She has been tumbling headlong into epiphany after realisation after further confusion. Surely she'd be forgiven for voicing the thought before she could filter it. "Well, I understand your world is different. I'd simply expected that with all the... progress, you would have such basic liberties."
"Happy?" Renji echoes, interrupting her. "No, I'm not. Save the social commentary. It's not like you shout on street corners you saved the world from soul-eatin' monsters, is it? Why the hell would this be anyone's business but yours?"
"It's not that simple. I kinda live in this world."
Rukia gives her head a hard shake. This may be the crux of the problem. It is not Ichigo's own emotions, it is not what he wants. He knows those things. The aspects beyond his control frighten him: the reactions of his friends and family, perhaps. In contrast, Soul Society affords its guardians certain freedoms as long as they are not flaunted. Personal relationships belong largely in the private sphere, but there, few look to hard at what goes on once the doors are closed.
"Yeah, maybe Rukia an' I have the easier part," Renji says. "I just don't think it changes too much. We're your friends. Hell, you're the first guy I kissed stone cold sober. That means somethin'. It's important."
Bless him, she thinks. Bless his utter lack of delicacy, maybe he's getting through to Ichigo. The plain truth becomes a battering ram the way Renji wields it, whereas she would have turned her insight into a scalpel, to carve open the precise right spot. That helps with Ichigo, of course, but sometimes, Renji sees what the matter is while she is still sorting the possibilities.
"An' Rukia's as much a part of it as you or me. You said so yourself. Gonna take that one back?"
x x x x x x
A part of Renji dreads the answer. It's beggared by the part that will wrest answers from the young man if necessary. He is tired of running in circles when all the pieces of a solution are laid out in front of him.
He hasn't had many distinct goals in his life. Stay alive in Rukongai. Get out and become a shinigami. Surpass Captain Kuchiki and win back Rukia, who never wanted him to let her go in the first place.
Now he has a captaincy in all but the letter. He has Rukia.
The other half of what he wants glowers at him from his right.
"Well?" This is the that gamble Renji takes. Either Ichigo will break or he will rise to the occasion, but the stalemate will end in either case.
"No, I just—" Ichigo makes to rise. Renji's hand shoots out to trap his wrist; he feels his muscles shiver with tension.
"Don't."
"Renji?" Rukia looks from one to the other.
"High time someone takes him to task for unfair tactics." He clutches Ichigo's wrist to keep his own hand steady.
"Fine, I get it!" Ichigo wrenches his hand free.
"Then stay right there. You're actin' dumber than should be legal, but you had one thing right. She's gotta hear this, too."
"Why, thank you!" she says pithily. "I thought I hadn't had time to grow a cover of moss yet."
Despite the torrent of emotions in the air, most of them only casual acquiantances to him in normal conditions, Renji lets out a hoarse laugh. "Nope, don't see any."
"Very well. Go on."
He looks at Ichigo again. "So, you were serious. Or just tryin' out somethin' to see how much you wanted it?" His throat clenches on the last words.
Ichigo looks like a hundred things all at once, eyes wide and anger clinging to the corners of his mouth, his heart on his face and no way to go. "No," he mutters. "Not that."
"Then what's the catch?" Renji has to press this one and not care how much it hurts. "Were you gonna make her choose? Make me choose, now there's a fun new idea—"
"Renji!" Rukia admonishes. "That is enough! Let him speak."
"It damn well is!" Ichigo scrambles to his feet, fumbling for his rugsack. Rather than furious, he sounds watery. "I'm going now. I can't do this. Fuck this."
"Hey!" "I can't do this." "Ichigo, wait a minute—"
Ichigo ignores him as he tosses the backpack over one shoulder.
Before Renji can formulate a coherent response, Rukia moves past him and, with a single decisive motion, catches the retreating youth in a hug from behind. Her arms wrap around him, her temple pressing into his shoulder blade. With a soft outlet of breath, Renji halts, only to see Ichigo follow suit. He drops the rugsack with a thud. It flops unheeded in the grass.
Yeah, I must still figure he's indestructible, Renji tells himself. He grits his teeth and gets back up, and fuck how much it hurts. There's room for the realisation in the silence that forms. The fight flows out of him like wine from a leaking skin. Until it hurts too much, I guess.
"Is it so terrible, then?" The sound of her voice breaks his reverie, but the question isn't for him.
It takes a moment for Ichigo to react. "What?"
Renji can see the tightening in her muscles. "That I look at you both and feel the same thing each time."
Ichigo doesn't so much pivot as slide around, the movement slack with astonishment. She releases him without moving back. Renji takes that as his cue for a couple of steps closer, scarcely daring to look away from them. It feels entirely possible that he stumbled off the mountain path and all this is unfolding as a rock-induced delirium while Rukia tries to patch up some massive head trauma he's suffered.
He hears his patience stretching with the silence. If this is the alternative to Ichigo countering with a barrage of combative questions, he prefers the former.
"Pretty sure there's a tacit limit as to how long you can keep a lady hangin' after an inquiry like that," he says at last, though softly.
"Please." Rukia makes the entreaty an order. "This is all a great deal to take in."
"C'mon, he's hopeless. You confessed to him." Beneath his nerves, Renji is fine with this, more than fine. He was included. "If he's gonna keep moanin' about propriety..."
"As a matter of fact, I don't think that will be as difficult as..."
"Guys!" From Renji's left, Ichigo waves a hand between them. "Can somebody finish a sentence around here? Like, maybe me?"
His eyes are a tad bright. The glare that lingers on the both of them could spark a forest fire.
x x x x x x
There is a reason Ichigo hasn't yet exited his body and flash-stepped out towards Siberia with all haste. Well, more than one reason. At least two. Two stubborn enough to climb a fucking mountain after him, break him open with nothing more than words, and make him piece himself back together.
That's the weirdest sort of dedication, but it's as good as theme with them. He went missing. He should have known they'd come—sent by his father, no less. He'll settle that with dear old dad at a later date.
"Please do," Rukia says after a tiny pause. "I did ask you a question, after all."
"Try a couple dozen of 'em." Renji has folded his arms over his chest. The stern posture isn't entirely convincing.
"Then file a damn questionnaire. 'Please rate your annoyance with these inane inquiries on a scale from "mild irritation" to "landscape-levelling spleen".' "
He gets his reward when Renji guffaws in his throat. "Right, right. I am gonna add a few points 'bout the shunga."
"Hey!" He can feel heat creeping up his neck. "You think I know a thing about those?"
"Oh, they are easy to find," Rukia supplies. "Orihime showed me this one manga..."
"Not. Another. Word." He makes a two-handed warding gesture. "Does it look like I want her to feature in my nightmares, too?"
"Oi! Anyway." Renji's stance shifts even as his voice drops a notch. "About that answer. Sorry, I don't much care what your world thinks. I just care a damn lot what you think. Nobody here to hear it but Rukia and me."
Ichigo rakes a hand through his hair. They've all been wrung nearly dry for Renji to be able to speak that frankly, that freely. If someone asked, he would name Renji and Rukia both, along with Chad, as the people he could talk to about almost anything. It's not something he ever dwells on, but a simple fact of his life.
Perhaps this is, when he gets down to it, just as simple a thing.
"I look at you both and feel the same thing each time."
"It's not," he says. "When... when it's only me, it's not terrible. Hell, you both know this, though okay, I kinda suck at explaining things, and I should've talked to you—" He indicates Rukia with a quick swipe of his hand, then averts his eyes. "I'm sorry. I really am. And... if you gotta know, I agree with her. It's the same. Right now. For some time now."
For a lingering second, he listens to the rustle of their faint movement, to the wind in the trees. Renji lays a hand on his shoulder, fingers chafing against the fabric. "Nobody's askin' you to tell the future."
"I do not think this can be rushed." Rukia comes close, clasping the side of his hand. "In fact, I... would prefer to keep this between us, for the present."
Should there be—a revelation? Parades and fireworks? Dramatic drumroll? A mental sledgehammer blow to brand the impact of this in his brain? Their hands on him are warm, and steady like you could prize a small planet from its orbit by using them as points of leverage, and now that metaphor has run away from him.
The bout of laughter doesn't ask his leave. It rises past the dregs of anguish and self-doubt and second-guessing and bursts from him. There's more than a little overwrought emotion in it, but there are worse ways of lightening one's mind, so Ichigo leans his face into his hand and laughs. Renji joins in with huskier, coarser chuckles and slaps him on the back until Rukia, too, is muffling peals of mirth in the palm of her hand.
"What?" she finally demands. "Wasn't that a perfectly reasonable request? It isn't as if any of us has prior experience of affairs such as this."
"Oh?" Renji arches a brow. "So sure, are ya?"
Ichigo punches him in the ribs for the joy of being able to do so. "Ah, shut up. You can't harbour any dark secrets past the sixth cup of saké and we all know that."
"Like you've ever got properly trashed with me, smartass."
"I'm curious," Rukia says, pushing between them. "How did you two ever have a conversation that didn't devolve into complete lunacy while I was missing?"
"Hard work and dedication," Ichigo deadpans.
Renji hugs her to his side with one arm, and she presses close without hesitation. "That's why we need you, you know? Somebody needs to draw a few lines. Keep things in hand. Show the way."
"Ichigo has a way with that," she says softly.
"Well, yeah, he was lookin' for you."
"I'm still here! Since a couple certain someones wouldn't let me leave." The crusty affront is easy to affect. Stranger is watching Rukia and Renji's uncomplicated intimacy, the way she relaxes at his touch, the open warmth in his gaze. He hasn't really seen them like this before.
The thought doesn't bother him. It makes him lucky, he has to conclude, as foreign as the blossoming reality of them together still is. The sun dappling the ground glows with the gentler cast of the lengthening afternoon. He's lost all sense of time, of the whole concept that he was climbing a holy mountain here.
Personal illumination, huh? Don't think this is it in any orthodox sense.
"You might want to get used to that." Suddenly Rukia is there, her thin, supple frame leaned into him, combing his hair back from his temple. "I think we've spent enough time looking for each other to last us all a few decades."
Because she is there, Ichigo links his arms around her, only to have Renji drape an arm about his upper body and tug him back against him. "Fuckin' signed."
For once, Ichigo doesn't even attempt a witty riposte. His heart leaps with the nearness, but the moment persists, neither of the others seeing the need to move or speak. Rukia is right, as in so many things: they have all nearly lost the others more than once. Renji carries his own shadows, as does Rukia, the phantoms of her execution dragging behind her. Ichigo supposes the same goes for him.
He crashed into his double life as a substitute shinigami. By the time Renji and Byakuya took Rukia back to Soul Society, he'd already chosen it. He made that choice again and again during the war, and once more after it when the faint, silken trace of Rukia's life led him to Renji's office in the middle of the night.
Now he makes it again, because of something he cannot fully name or comprehend, but he knows he wants, for himself, for these two. He has not lived in only one world since the night Rukia followed a Hollow into his bedroom. If that's his burden to bear, he can think of worse ones—this is, at least, one he embraced himself.
"I'm not leaving," he says low, staring out over Rukia's head. "Not college, not my family, and not you. That work for you?"
"I would consider these conditions." She holds on to him a little tighter. "Your apology is accepted. We can see about earning forgiveness in due time."
"Fine." It comes out a mutter into her hair tickling his nose. "I'll take that."
"Troublesome bastard," Renji grumbles with breathtaking affection. "If that's your final offer, what the hell am I gonna do but accept?"
Ichigo elbows him in reply, but agrees with all of his furiously beating heart.