Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Amity

Hollow AU. Rukia's POV.

Time was immeasurable in Hueco Mundo.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into nothing.

So, Rukia wasn't exactly sure when this particular incident occurred, but she did remember what she felt when it happened. She had been an unholy cross between disturbed and incensed when she found that the stalker that had been trailing her for the last few days had the form of a little boy.

Rukia tended to strike first and look second. It's what kept her alive during her long years traversing Hueco Mundo. So, before she even saw the boy's form or face, Rukia held him high in the air with her ice-cold fingers bursting dangerously with sinister energy. Each digit wrapped around the child's throat. She didn't attempt to suffocate him, but she might as well have. It would've certainly been less scarring for the young Arrancar.

Rukia still recalled how her nails dug so deeply into the boy's jugular that if she had just added a little more pressure, she would've broken skin. The weak hollow would've bled all over the pristine sand, tainting it a red dark enough to appear black. Rukia hated the scent of rust. She hated the pathetic sobs of small hollows even more, so she was glad that she had restrained herself at the onset.

She remembered looking into the boy's one visible eye—a rich turquoise—beneath his mask and seeing her reflection. Rukia's gaze was cold and wrathful after so many years. He had exposed the lethality that she tried so hard to keep hidden underneath a veneer of composure; the same one that made her such a mighty Espada. The boy was little more than an infant in comparison to her. An errant lad that had suddenly realized that the lean woman he'd been trailing after was actually a beast, wary from experience and impatient from stress. The boy couldn't even find it in himself to scream when Rukia dropped him.

"What do you want?" Rukia asked, low and casual with power.

"I—I…" the boy swallowed in the hopes that the action would ease his stammer. To no avail. "I saw you a few days ago. You had no one with you. I wanted to be," his voice went small, and she had to strain herself to hear it, "your Fracción."

Rukia stared.

Well, she hadn't been expecting that.

She looked at his disheveled hair—it was the color of snow. Half of it was obscured by his bone-white mask that started from his left cheekbone and went all the way up to cover the side of his skull. It looked like a broken helmet to her. Before she could stop herself, Rukia toyed with a particularly deep ridge that he had on the side of his head. It extended outward into a spiny tusk. The boy stood perfectly still, though he did shut his one visible eye when her hand neared, as if afraid she might hurt him anymore than she already had.

Rukia killed to survive, but she still couldn't stand the sight of tiny hollows flinching. What kind of life did I lead previously for me to still retain such banal emotions?

When the boy opened his eye again, Rukia crouched so that they were eye-level.

"What's your name, boy?" Rukia asked.

"I don't have one."

"That's fine," she said, unperturbed. "But if you really want to follow me, if you aren't terrified by my strength, then… come."

Rukia walked off—to where, she didn't know. It took a moment, but she quickly felt the boy's presence as he trailed after her, rubbing his sore neck all the while. It was harder for him to climb Hueco Mundo's sandy dunes, small as his legs were. He grabbed her hand when he was close enough. She looked down at him as soon as he did. Her fingers twitched with the urge to get away from his closeness.

"It's hard to walk," he admitted with childish ease, still not learning his lesson after she so swiftly held him up by the throat barely a few minutes ago. He pointed in the unknowable distance. His expression wasn't excited, but his eye did shine with something that looked a lot like it. "There are lots of dry trees over there. Can we go?"

A/N: Please review.