Author's Notes: Thanks for all reviews and the delish cookies! This is set after Byakuya and Renji take Rukia back to Soul Society. Angst Alert: This was conceived after sitting through a rather sappy Korean love drama.

Characters: Ichigo, Rukia and a teensy bit of Ishida

Seen from Ichigo's POV. This is the proper version.

Passing Shadows

Yesterday, at approximately 10.15pm in the night, it has been exactly four months, sixteen days, eleven hours, twenty minutes and fifteen seconds since Rukia came into my house and crashed into my life. I try my best to keep track because I have never experienced a force such as she is. She is larger than life, she is irritating and she is Rukia. I try to label our relationship, keep it neat and stow it away tidily, as orderly as I can be.

Something as simple and clean as a relationship and I'm failing. Failing horribly.

If Ishida could see me now, he would have a good laugh.

I know my feelings for her. They are twisted and dishevelled, entwined and awry, a mess that sneaks into my heart and my head when I am not watching them closely. Yet, I can clearly and objectively separate them into a few.

I care for her. I worry for her. I'm annoyed with her. I love her. I sometimes desire her. Especially when she forgets to close the bathroom door when she bathes. I hate it when she does that because she knows how much it gets to me.

That is what scares me.

That a tiny Death God in my sister's old clothing who barely comes up to my chest can evoke such strong and intoxicating emotions in me. Frankly, it scares the hell outta me. How can she make me feel this way? I remember each and every single bit of her.

In fact, I catalogue every single word she's ever said to me.

"Ichigo. Get me a drink."

"Ichigo, get your ass over here."

"Ichigo! Are you injured?"

"Ichigo, get out of the way! I'll handle this."

It strikes me how every sentence starts with my name.

She is domineering and random. She leaves her clothes all over the floor for me to pick up after her. She constantly drips jelly on my clothes when she eats in the closet. And she never, ever fails to irritate me by doodling Chappy rabbits on my textbooks. Sometimes, she jerks me around by threatening to tell Ishida I envy his sewing skills.

It is empty without her. The room suddenly seems too quiet and too alone. Nothing is right and I can't seem to make it work out the way it was before she gatecrashed my life and demanded my closet as her bedroom. I realise that all the memories I have accumulated over fifteen years cannot compare to the four months that she spent here with me.

Everything that she has touched has changed and I cannot see the world the same way again.

I can't even hang out with my friends anymore because I can't drink from a packet of juice and not think of her, because I can't walk into the arcade and bear being next to a girl carrying a stuffed rabbit toy, because I can't talk to them about Rukia since they don't even remember her.

And now they look at me weirdly with a hurt expression on their faces because I am so far away.

Yet I can't stop myself. It is an emptiness that gnaws through my throat right down to the pit of my heart and it keeps on growing and growing. I can't even sleep properly in my room because I can still smell her scent and hear the soft sounds she makes every night turning and tossing inside the closet.

I wonder if she dreams about sleeping in a closet in Soul Society. Occasionally, I wonder if she hates me and I realise I would feel less guilty if she does.

It has come to this that I am halved without her. There is no Ichigo without Rukia. It is no longer 'me' but only a 'us', an 'us' that was ripped apart by two Death Gods coming under the cover of night.

Pain feels like this.

It has been fifteen days, ten hours, twenty minutes and forty seconds since Rukia left. Left without saying a word, left without saying goodbye, left with shattered rain streaking down her cheeks. I was protected till the end and that eats at me. Every single day.

That I never got to save her. That I let them take her away the same way I let that Hollow slide its sword into her.

Forty-one seconds…

Now I sleep with the sound of blood trickling down into drains and awake with her screaming in my head.

Forty-two…

With the awful realisation that I sent her to her death.

Forty-three...

Were we just passing shadows in each other's lives?