yvkihime said: saw your tags and I'M BEGGING YOU something about the rukia vs as nodt fight maybe just a drabble however you see fit ?

This ask was in reference to a Tumblr post about the fears Rukia experienced during the As Nodt fight. I honestly don't know why I have never seen another fic about this, but if you know of one, send it my way! In any case, I don't usually write dark stuff, but I am good at it, actually, so this one gets a

TRIGGER WARNING: Intrusive ideation of the gruesome death of a loved one. Eight times. Probably some spoilers for the TYBWA.


Rukia is running, her filthy bare feet pounding against the hardpack. She can hear the echoes of other feet behind her, but she can't tell how many. She skids to a halt, panting, and turns, eyes wide and panicked, ready to count one, two, three, four heads. Four plus her means that everyone is safe.

She is alone.


Rukia flinches, waiting for the lead pipe to splatter her brains across the dusty Inuzuri street. But there is no pain, only the sound of bone crunching, followed by a soft grunt.

She has been rescued. Renji, as is his way, has placed himself between herself and the consequences of her actions once again. His arm now hangs uselessly at his side, dripping blood steadily onto the ground. "Screw you!" he screams at her attacker, who raises the pipe for a second swing.

This isn't right, Rukia tells herself. This isn't how it happened.

Hot blood splashes across her face.


They stayed too late in the 77th. Renji kept eying the pale clouds gathering overhead, but Rukia thought she could score a few scraps of food as the vendors in the market were shutting down. Not only was she wrong, but the snow had started falling when they were still a mile north of the Inuzuri border.

Now they are huddled against the bole of an old, half-rotten oak, under a pile of what little brush they were able to gather before the visibility went down to nothing.

Rukia's brain feels fogged and sleepy. She honestly can't tell if she's hot or cold, temperature has become some alien concern. Renji's arm, wrapped around her, pulling her close, feels heavy, too heavy.

"Renji," she mumbles. "Renji, don't go to sleep."

Her eyelashes are crusted with snow, she can barely see. She shoves her ear against his chest, and listens for his heartbeat.

There is nothing.


It is raining, but she can still hear shouts from the courtyard.

"I just want to see her, you arrogant jerk! I just want to know that she's okay!"

Rukia tries to make her way to the front entrance, but the hallways of the manor are foreign and seem to reconfigure themselves as soon as she picks a direction. It isn't right, she tells herself over and over, trying to control the feelings of terror that course through her. I sent him away. I sent him away so this wouldn't happen.

By the time she gets oriented, Brother is returning inside, his haori dotted with rain. He is wiping down his sword with a cloth that is stained very, very red. "The disturbance is dealt with, Rukia," he informs her. "You may return to bed."


"I won't let you take her," Ichigo snarls, and plunges his sword into Renji's heart.

The rage melts from Renji's face, leaving only disbelief behind. His eyes meet Rukia's briefly, before they roll upward and he falls, face-first, onto the street.

Her feet are frozen to the ground, a scream is lodged in her throat, unable to come out. She didn't want Ichigo to die, but she doesn't want this either.

"Unfortunately, that is not up to you," her brother's voice echoes in her ears, and suddenly, there is a sword tip protruding from Ichigo's chest, and an equally surprised expression on his own face.

A strangled sound, not yet a scream, emerges from her throat.


Rukia is walking across a bridge. Her thoughts are wrapped up in her own pending execution, when she feels it like a stone plunging into a lake.

Renji is gone.

She grasps frantically for his reiatsu, for a trace, a wisp. The guards are prodding her, yelling at her. Her reiatsu sense is becoming flooded by Ichimaru Gin, walking steadily toward her, smiling his snake-like grin, but she sifts for the tiniest sandgrain, trying to find some evidence that Renji lives.

There is none. Renji is gone.


Renji's body cants forward, he can barely hold himself up, but his grip on her does not falter. Aizen's shadow falls over them both. Aizen is talking, talking, talking, but his words are just empty buzzing. Rukia is pushing against Renji's arms, his chest. She's not sure if she's trying to get him upright again, or trying to free herself from his grasp.

Just once, she thinks. Just once, let me put my body in front of yours, you moron, just once.

"Please, Captain Aizen!" she begs, her voice desperate and shrill. "Please, I'll-"

"No." Renji's voice gurgles in his chest. One of his lungs is punctured. "I told you to shut up… Rukia," he murmurs, and she recalls that he often says "shut up" when he means "I love you."

Not again, I can't take any more, please not again.

"I'm not letting go of you," he curses her, before raising his eyes to Aizen. "I'm not leaving her," he swears. "You monster."

"I see," Aizen replies. "That's unfortunate."

This time, no one intercepts the blow.


Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez saunters down the empty Karakura Street. "So, which is it?" he drawls. "Which one of you three is the strongest?"

Renji sidles a step in front of Rukia.

"No," Rukia murmurs. "No, you weren't there. You were off getting gored by Yylfordt Granz, you bonehead."

"Not you," Grimmjow decides, ramming his hand through Renji's guts.

It's not pleasant to watch, but Rukia forces ice through her veins and refuses to look away. It's not real. Renji lets me fight my own fights.

Renji coughs once. His body hits the ground with a wet smack.


The Arrancar, this pulsating mass with Shiba Kaien's face, levels Nejibana at her, when Rukia feels Renji's reiatsu storming through the hallways of Las Noches, his footsteps pounding like a heartbeat against her spiritual senses.

"Give it up," Rukia growls, forcing herself to remember clasping his hand in the desert, making him promise.

"I swear on my sword," he'd agreed, reluctantly.

"Say it. Say the whole thing."

He rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically. "I swear on Zabimaru that I won't die for you, okay, Rukia? Of all the stupid-"

"It's not! It's not stupid! I can't fight all-out if I have to worry about you throwing your stupid body in front of me the minute I start to lose! I'm strong, Renji, you have to have a little frigging faith in me!"

"I do!" he had protested. "Of course I do! I always have! That isn't why… that's not… I…"

"It's not the time for that." She couldn't meet his eyes. "But I know why. You don't have to say it."

One side of his mouth quirked up in a humorless smile. "Yeah. Well. You got your way. I promised. Do me a favor in return and at least try to stay alive, would you, Kuchiki?"

The promises were real, and Renji kept his. She didn't then, and she doesn't now, either.

"Sorry, Renji," she sighs and throws herself forward onto the trident.


Rukia is screaming. She is screaming and screaming and she can't stop.

Suddenly, there is a loud crack, and As Nodt's Tatar Foras begins to shatter around them. Daylight leaks through, at last. Rukia has access to her senses once again.

She scrabbles, desperately feeling out with her reiatsu, trying to find Renji. She doesn't know exactly when it happened that she became perpetually aware of him. Maybe sometime during the Winter War, she spent so much time groping around for him that he became lodged in her head, a half-forgotten song she couldn't knock loose. Since the Royal Realm, though, he's been a noisy, omnipresent companion, a rhythmic bassline steadying the tempo of her own soul.

He is halfway across the Seireitei.

He was napping, but he's waking up now.

Napping.

It wasn't Renji that came to her rescue at all, but Brother, whom she supposes also has a right to a piece of As Nodt.

Renji is sure to get in another fight sooner rather than later, but at least if he dies, it will be because he wasn't strong enough, not because she wasn't. That's a bit of a weird thought, Rukia realizes, as the paralyzing fear slowly recedes from her body. She doesn't want Renji to die at all.

The solution is obvious. She and Byakuya will just have to finish this quickly, and then she can go protect that bonehead with her own strength. He will likely chew her out and then she can tell him to shut up.

"Do you still have any fears?" Byakuya asks her, trying to gauge if she has shaken the aftereffects of As Nodt's spell. "Rukia?"

Rukia adjusts her grip on her sword. "No!" she replies.