A/N: Happy IchiRuki Month everyone! This is my first of this year's contributions (and my first IR Month fic eva), answering day 15's prompt: love is so short; forgetting is so long.

In the category of "information no one asked for but that I'm sharing anyway": while writing this fic I listened almost exclusively to "1000 Miles Away from You" by Anneke van Giersbergen. 20/10 recommend for the post-686 IchiRuki vibes.

Hiyori had a point: Kazui could run, and he could run fast. It was very cute to dwell on how he had inherited his speed from his father, but now that Ichigo was in the thick of it, running back and forth across the Kuchiki gardens, under the beating summer sun, in his black shihakusho —it was anything but.

"He's comin' for ya, Ichigo!" Renji called out from across the lawn.

"Get him, Kazui!" Ichika shouted from the same direction, forever at her father's side.

Ichigo grimaced as he put on yet another burst of speed. He could easily shunpo out of Kazui's reach, but Rukia had made them promise not to "for the children's sake," knowing full well it was Ichigo who needed the energy reprieve. Of course she'd put others before any advantage she could give herself. That was part of the twisted reason this was only a visit, rather than a homecoming—

A tiny hand slapped him on the shoulder, preceding the rest of Kazui's body before he jumped onto Ichigo's back and wrapped his arms around his neck. "Tag, you're 'it'!" Kazui shouted, giggling as he clung to his panting father.

Ichigo forced a smile as he slowed to a halt, bending over half to catch his breath and half to let Kazui down easier (not that the kid hadn't managed to jump up on him in the first place). "Well done, Kazui," he said, gripping his knees with sweaty palms. "But maybe we should—"

"Ch, don't tell me you're tapping out now," Renji said, approaching the two of them with Ichika beside him. "You can't honestly be that exhausted. You just don't want to be 'it.'"

Ichigo lost any pretense of a smile. "I'm a translator, not a full-time Shinigami. Excuse me for not sharing your endurance anymore."

Renji smirked, thinking Ichigo's irritation was just part of their old rivalry, rather than their new one. "You humans are so weak."

"He's not human, Renji."

Ichigo spun around. Now he had to force a smile down, for only Rukia would come so readily to his defense. So long as he didn't focus on her hair, she could've stepped right out of his best memories. She was wearing just her shihakusho, having shed her captain's haori for their game of tag, and her violet eyes were bright and round in the sunlight. Her mouth opened in a grin as she approached them, and Ichigo finally gave into his own smile when he heard her panting lightly. Take that, Renji.

Renji naturally saw nothing, which somehow made it all worse. "I know he's not a human," he said to Rukia, rolling his eyes. "He's a Quincy—"

"And a Vizard!" Ichika chimed in. "Sensei told me!"

"Your dad's not a Vizard or a Quincy," Kazui responded, a demure smile on his face but pure spite in his eyes. "No one had to tell me that."

"Kazui, play nice," Ichigo said, squeezing his son's shoulder.

"Ooh, you're 'it' now!" Ichika shouted, and away she ran back into the Kuchiki gardens.

"I'm sitting this one out!" Ichigo announced, holding up his hands in surrender as Kazui turned back to him.

Kazui gave him that demure smile before lunging after Renji, who barely managed to jump out of the way.

Rukia chuckled at the scene. "I better go referee…."

Ichigo smiled at her. "Just don't let Kazui—"

"I know. Your wife has messaged me twice a day since you two arrived to make sure you're not letting Kazui be…well, Kazui."

Ichigo frowned as Rukia stepped after the children and Renji. What the hell was Orihime's problem? She didn't want to visit the Soul Society in the first place. There was no need to intrude now on his peace, especially in such a roundabout way. And if she simply had to check in on Kazui, why not ask him directly? Why drag Rukia into it? Did she want him and Rukia to raise Kazui? Because if she was ready to relinquish her parental claim, she didn't have to tell him twice.

Lightly seething, Ichigo marched to the engawa and the low table a pair of servants had brought out. He sank into a cushion and roughly brushed the sweat from his forehead, forcing himself to calm down. This wasn't the time or place to remember how all he wanted was to stay in the Soul Society forever.

"Might I offer you some green tea?"

Ichigo looked across the table, his gaze lingering briefly on the teapot and cups on top of it, at Byakuya. The man was insane. "In this heat, after running from my kid?" Ichigo said. "Yeah, just some water, please. With ice, if you have it."

Byakuya snapped his fingers, and a servant materialized beside him as though from thin air. "Ice water for Kurosaki-sama," he told her, and she nodded before heading into the house.

Ichigo rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Byakuya, but seriously, just call me Kurosaki, or Kurosaki-san if you insist," he said.

Byakuya glanced at him. "You are an important guest, Kurosaki. There is no need for my servants to think of you as anything less."

Ichigo grunted and nodded out at the latest round of tag. "There's a slot open, if you want to join them now," he said.

Byakuya sat up straighter, haughty as ever. "Let the children enjoy their games," he said.

"Rukia and Renji are out there too—"

"I said, let the children enjoy their games." He glanced at Ichigo, his face in full dead pan.

It couldn't be helped: Ichigo laughed heartily, and even more so because he knew the truth of Byakuya declining to join in: the last time he'd played tag, Kazui had smoked him.

Now that he was out of the game, Ichigo settled back into appreciating his progeny's skill. Like an orange dart flitting across the grass, Kazui weaved between his three targets. Within moments he'd tagged Ichika, and she immediately went after Renji, who wound up tripping over his own feet and found himself the next "it." As for Rukia, well, she made it perfectly clear she wasn't about to let her husband tag her, and Ichigo smirked on her behalf.

An arm suddenly stretched down to set his ice water on the table, and Ichigo jumped. "Oh, uh, thank you," he said, sipping from the glass just as he finished his thanks. The cold water slid down his throat and flooded him with cool relief.

But there was another heat in Ichigo that couldn't go out as easily. Indeed, it only grew when he returned his gaze to Rukia, who was dodging Ichika, once again "it." Rukia was smiling ear to ear in an image of perfect relaxation, quite unlike the false, almost manic-looking happiness she'd met him with at the Senkaimon. Ichigo instantly recognized the look from his college days: the woman was exhausted, and not in the "haha I just need a good nap after finals" way either.

"You seem rather attentive to the game, Kurosaki," Byakuya said.

Ichigo lifted his chin in Byakuya's direction, never looking away from the garden. "I'm just enjoying the view, is all," he responded. And really, he was.

Byakuya sipped his tea, showing no sign of disturbance from the heat. "It is refreshing to see children playing on these grounds again."

Ichigo frowned and turned his gaze to Ichika. The game of tag had finally ended, and she was now pulling flowers from the edge of a flower bed; if Byakuya minded that his niece was uprooting part of his well-groomed garden, he didn't let it on.

And then, a question formed in his head that managed to pull him away from both Rukia and her child. "Did you and Hisana ever want kids?" Ichigo asked.

For a second, he wondered if he'd made a mistake. Without even looking at him, he could feel Byakuya go rigid, but then he seemed to relax, giving away his surprise more than anything else. "We had discussed it," Byakuya said at last.

"What was the verdict?"

Byakuya frowned and looked away. "We…did not have time to extend the conversation."

Byakuya's meaning was clear, and Ichigo did not pursue the question further. "It must still be nice to have Rukia around to see what could've been," he said, turning his gaze back to her. She was sitting beside the pond running through the garden, entirely still as she admired the water.

But for all the serenity of Rukia, her adopted brother had gone rigid again, and there was no surprise in the steel of his low, firm voice. "They might bear similar features," Byakuya said, "but Rukia and Hisana are not the same. I thought you might understand that without having to be told."

Ichigo immediately gave Byakuya a look of apology. "Sorry," he said, looking back out at Rukia. "You're right. I might not have known Hisana, but there's…." He trailed off as Kazui approached Rukia, who offered him a smile and patted the ground beside her. "There's only one Rukia…."

The woman herself and Kazui were now sitting with their backs to the engawa, and the sight morphed into a vision both beautiful and brutal. From this angle, it was too easy to pretend Rukia was sitting beside a boy, their son, who'd inherited his father's hair and his mother's face. The bitter truth was that Kazui was a son who'd indeed received those traits from his parents—and Rukia was not one of them. It was not she who had carried Ichigo's boy.

Across the table, Byakuya cleared his throat, and ripping his eyes from Rukia and Kazui, Ichigo met his stone gray gaze.

"There was a time," Byakuya said quietly, "when I thought it would never get easier to accept Hisana's death."

Not knowing how to respond, Ichigo returned his gaze to the garden. Kazui was just plucking a puffy gray dandelion that had somehow managed to sprout on the manicured Kuchiki lawn, and he presented it to Rukia. She beamed in the sort of surprise reserved only for children, the kind that convincingly but never patronizingly conveyed that you had never seen something before, or if you had, that the one before you was the most amazing of them all.

Oblivious to Ichigo's thoughts, Byakuya continued. "I have now managed to accept that she is gone, but that does not mean that I have moved forward from her passing. I speak with her every day, and while I make that enough, I would much rather have her at my side."

Ichigo frowned, but not out of irritation. "I can imagine—"

"Look, Tou-san, a dandelion!" Kazui shouted across the garden. He'd turned to Ichigo and was holding the flower up high. At this distance, the gray seedhead was indistinguishable from the pale walls surrounding the manor.

What was highly distinguishable, however, was Rukia's smile as she, too, turned to face Ichigo. Her eyes were still tired, but there was something renewed in them. Because she wasn't with her own family, perhaps? Because she knew who Kazui could have been? Because she was also envisioning a child who looked like her and not Ichigo's wife?

Ichigo forced himself to smile, gripping the table tightly. "It's beautiful!" he called back, grateful once they turned their attention from him. But the moment was short-lived: near instantly, Kazui and Rukia leaned into each other, presumably further examining the dandelion, but in truth feeding right into the fantasy Ichigo knew he should never have even tempted himself with.

Fully ignoring the interruption, Byakuya cleared his throat once again, and with all his might, Ichigo forced himself to look away from Rukia and his son. "Y-you were saying?" he said.

Byakuya found Ichigo's gaze and held it. "I had to learn just how much of a lie it is that people say not to dwell on the past, because the past is where I had everything. Here in the present, I may as well have nothing."

Something struck him then, telling him that Byakuya had not been so ignorant to his thoughts as he appeared. "But…that can't be true," Ichigo said. "You just said you still talk to Hisana, so you still have everything. It's just…it's just not yours anymore. It's right there."

Byakuya was staring at him, hard. His gaze was impenetrable and coarse, and Ichigo prayed he hadn't gone too far, or worse yet, been wrong.

Then, for all its rigidity, Byakuya's face fell. Slowly, at first, but then rapidly into a sadness Ichigo did not remember Byakuya ever letting him see. But there was more to his sadness than that, something deeper, not quite a yearning, but…oh.

It was sympathy.

Ichigo swallowed. Byakuya knew. Of course he knew. He was the only other man alive who had loved and then lost a short, black-haired woman from Inuzuri, one who had changed his life and who he would throw everything away for, especially if it meant being with her again.

Leaning toward Byakuya, Ichigo took two sharp breaths. It was the dumbest thing to say aloud, but he had to know. "Does she feel the same way?" he asked quietly.

Blinking slowly, Byakuya looked toward the garden, away from any of the four people moving within it to a small, sandy boulder near the pond. It was entirely nondescript, though its top was relatively flat; it might have made a nice place to sit for someone petite.

"I would give anything to see Hisana one more time," Byakuya nearly whispered, shattering their silence. "I would do anything to tell her how things are—how they really are—and hear her voice in response."

He carefully returned his gaze to Ichigo, his mouth taut and his eyes imploring.

Ichigo kept his eyes firmly on Byakuya's until he heard Rukia's voice from the garden, telling Kazui to show the dandelion to Ichika. He turned away from Byakuya to follow his son over to Ichika, who was tucking the flowers she'd plucked into Renji's braid. Swift confirmation told him he was finally free to look back at Rukia and her smile—except, it was no longer there. In its place was pure concern as she stared right back at him, and she tilted her head as she approached the engawa.

For her sake, to tear away the exhaustion he would never have let take hold of her, Ichigo smiled his reassurance, even as he heard nothing but howling, felt nothing but the rain.