This fic is rated R because of language, violence, and sensuality. If any of the aforementioned offends you, please do not read.

Review if you like. No flames, please.

kaerichi
Chapter 9

Rukia couldn't say anything after his words had passed; she couldn't do anything for fear the hunters would hear. And yet…there was an emotion caught in her throat that she couldn't quite find words to express.

For when Hitsugaya had said "We're going to save you, Rukia-chan," her first thought had not been Finally, about time! or I wonder what brought all this on? or even This is going to be one hell of a bloody mess.

The first thing that popped into her mind was: What about Ichigo?

And she felt like screaming at herself if she'd been able. So WHAT about Ichigo? Did she give a fucking damn about him? NO! So why the hell was she thinking of him when she should be rejoicing, thinking that the vampires – her friends – were about to take her away at last?

Ichigo's hand had tightened exponentially on her shoulder when Hitsugaya had given her the hug; perhaps he thought she might break away, but her legs had suddenly turned to lead. She couldn't fly or run properly if she tried.

The meeting commenced.

"Good evening, Shihouin-san," Urahara began to say, "I knew you had not counted on another meeting…well, quite so soon, shall we say…but I am at the assumption you saw my rather wild friend's handiwork, of which he was very gratified." His hand indicated Kenpachi, and Rukia was not surprised in the least that it had been him to carry out the slaughter. In the heat of battle, he was an unstoppable monster – but a strong monster, granting him the third-seat chair of the leader division.

"Yes, I did see it. I thank you for making our hunters' deaths…fairly instant."

"Ah yes, there's much one can do with blood with a slashed throat." Urahara seemed to reminisce for a second or two before snapping down to business. "All right! Now then, onto the purpose of this third – and be assured, final – meeting."

Ichigo, at her side, was silent…but was he sweating?

She could hear his breaths since he was so close to her, and they were harder than usual – almost panting. His breaths were harder than that first night he had chased her down twenty city blocks, and that was saying something.

"This meeting…" Urahara said, with a glint in his eye, "is to tell you that we will have Kuchiki Rukia back at any cost, even if it should resort to playing with an extra ace in the sleeve, shall we say. I know you, Shihouin Yoruichi, and you would not give Kuchiki-san up even should I bomb the entire of the hunter's main headquarters."

He paused. There was something hard and determined in his eye, but all the same, Rukia thought it looked regretful. "Attack."

With the grace of moving shadows, all of the vampires at once attacked the group of captains. The captains had the advantage of their weapons, but some were sweating heavily and others were having trouble breathing. And suddenly Rukia wasn't so sure if there was nothing in the air, after all.

A few gun rounds and flamethrowers went off, and in an instant it had caught a bottle of vodka and set the wooden bar aflame. Much of the liquor cabinet had shattered. Suddenly, there was thick, dark smoke in the air, and Rukia stopped breathing and felt all right – such could not be said by the humans in the room. Some were still shooting wildly.

It was so reminiscent of the night she had been captured – some of the humans were screaming and she could hear the wet squelch of blood forced out of the body.

But her eyes were no humans'. She could see well enough in the smoke to see that the vampires were still attacking the hunters, taking advantage of the fact that the smoke wasn't affecting them as much. If anything, it was only the heat that would be their downfall, but it hadn't gotten hot enough yet to make much of a difference in the power factor.

A bloody, flaming body stumbled past her, screaming, and Rukia dodged while trying to keep the bile down in her throat. The door opened; she had the impression that the hunters were stumbling out, forgetting all about her.

"Rukia…! Rukia…!"

She turned her head slightly. There was someone calling out to her through the smoke. And that person didn't stop.

Ichigo.

Then suddenly she saw him, as he tumbled through the smoke and trying to clear his burning eyes, calling out for her and searching through the smoke vainly. He was so far away from the only door, and he was already probably half-blind from all the smoke...

And then, on the opposite side, she saw the balcony door and the night beyond, as clear as if she had been standing right there , right on that balcony . The breeze was already on her face ; she could taste the freedom as unmistakably as if she were already gone…

There were her friends silhouetted against the night, breaking through the glass balcony doors. The flame that divided them was nothing; she could easily fly over. "Come on! Rukia!" they called out to her. Renji had already extended his hand, and Hitsugaya was hovering at the threshold, black wings spread to embrace the wind.

Perhaps Renji saw the sudden pause in her eyes and got scared, for he suddenly thrust his hand at her again, violently, and all but commanded, "Come on, Rukia! Come here! Let's go! We have to get out of here!"

And then before she could reply, or even think, there was a hand on her shoulder that came down so hard that she nearly became unbalanced. Her head whipped to the side.

"Ru – Rukia…" her orange-haired hunter rasped, coughing, "come on, we have to get out of here…!"

"Ichigo!" she said worriedly, turning to him as he let out a series of violent coughs. "Ichigo, don't breathe! You'll only breathe in more carbon dioxide!"

Her hands gripped his shoulders as he almost sank to the ground. She was looking at the top of his orange head, and feeling the coughs wrack his body; her head flew over to Renji and Hitsugaya, still waiting for her. But she could see the disbelief in their eyes, as evident as the flames that were closing in around her ankles.

"Rukia, come on!" Renji yelled, snapping his hand at her again, though the flames were nearly lapping at the skin. It was now so hot that she could feel her own sweat burning. "Come on, Rukia! Dump him! Come ON!"

But Rukia just stared at him with despair in her eyes, clutching Ichigo closer to her, and she shook her head desperately at him just a second before the wall of flames licked the ceiling and grew into a thick barrier.

"Ichigo! Ichigo!" she shook him to see if he was still conscious. "Ichigo!"

"Rukia…" he rasped. He coughed. "Rukia…"

"Don't breathe!"

"Idiot…then I'd really die…"

Ichigo may have been an extraordinary hunter, but he was still just a human and needed to breathe. The smoke was so thick that she could only see his face in front of hers…all the rest was lost. There were flames all around, burning the chairs, floors, walls, and greedily following the rivers of liquor that had spilt from the cabinet.

Ichigo coughed.

"Ichigo!"

There was no helping it. Rukia placed her mouth to his.

Ichigo was so out of it that he didn't even try fighting back – at first – but then his eyes widened a fraction before he realized she was breathing into his mouth.

She had stopped breathing long ago, but there had still been oxygen in her. There was no time to be surprised by the action – if they didn't get out soon, they'd both die!

Pulling her mouth away, Rukia put Ichigo's arm around her neck and tried lifting him. From the little oxygen that she had provided, he was able to stand a little without falling. Rukia ran through the fire, through the balcony. Renji and the others were gone, as she suspected they would be – fire was just as dangerous to vampires as humans.

They rushed over broken glass, heard the crunch of it underfoot, and then were out on the small balcony, where Rukia spread her wings and jumped off the balcony. The air cleared even her head instantly – not because of the smoke inhalation, but mostly because she had felt hemmed in by all the smoke.

The wind rushed past her ears. She was not flying – she was too heavy for that, without having had any momentum – but at least she could flap her wings anxiously to try and slow their descent eighteen stories to the ground.

Thankfully, it was late at night, and there were very little humans around…almost none, actually. Rukia felt her feet touch the ground at the same time Ichigo let out another cough. She had just let his arm fall from her neck when she was jumped from out of nowhere and put in a chokehold. There was no reason to really warrant it. The three blue bands and one silver still kept her aura so totally divided from her that she just couldn't reach it.

A swarm of other hunters surrounded Ichigo and helped him to stand, but Rukia was still in a chokehold and someone had pinned her beautiful wings back, cruelly clenching the arch until the bone fractured. Apparently, her small cry of pain reached Ichigo's ears, for the next thing she knew, the hunters surrounding her had been beaten back and Ichigo was standing next to her…one arm gently around her shoulder, the gesture obviously protective.

"I hope you realize that this vampire saved my fuckin' life," he spat at them, hot, raw anger making his words sharp and callous. "I was up there in the room, surrounded by smoke, and she could have gone and escaped and left me there to die but she didn't! She helped me escape from that building, which none of the rest of you did! If it wasn't for her I'd be on my fuckin' funeral pyre by now!" His voice echoed down the deserted street, but no one stopped him in his rage. "So I'd think for you to at least treat her with a little more fucking courtesy and the respect she deserves!"

He broke off then, breaths coming hard, and then started coughing again. Rukia just watched him and tried to support his weight. She didn't know what to say, or if it was even safe to say anything at all.

Yoruichi had managed to get out alive, coming forward with an oxygen mask for Ichigo and giving her a strange look. Rukia didn't like it. It was too…calculating.

"So the vampires betrayed the truce…" she said softly, never diverting her eyes from Rukia's. "They call us out to the meeting first, and we come willingly, but they choose to stage an attack that catches us completely off guard…who would expect an attack on neutral ground?"

Don't look at me like that. It's not as if I knew what was coming, either.

"And five of my unit division captains are dead from the attack…" she said, looking away to the remaining. "And how many vampires lost?"

Probably none.

"Probably none," Yoruichi said, in an eerie echo of Rukia's previous thought. She seemed to be thinking before shaking her head. "Ishida, Tousen! Rush Kurosaki-san back to the base. I think he'll be all right with a little more oxygen, but I'd like to have him examined more thoroughly back at the medical ward, and I don't want him going to a hospital. Is that clear?"

They nodded, and Ishida came forward to take Ichigo's arm off of Rukia's shoulders of support.

Yoruichi turned to the man next to her, flashily dressed with a large flower-print kimono loosely over his casual dress shirt and pants. "Kyouraku. I'm putting you in charge of damage control here. I don't care about the bar. Talk to the owner in the morning and pay whatever reasonable price he asks for. Find if any other humans were around and take care of them."

He nodded. The man's usual joviality was gone from the seriousness in his face. As the first captain, he was second only to Yoruichi and Ichimaru, and so he would be a good choice in leading the cleanup effort.

"And Ichimaru and I will personally be returning the vampire to base before we return to assist you," Yoruichi added . She didn't even give Rukia a chance to comprehend the information before she tugged sharply on her arm and walked off in the direction of a white van.

Ichimaru was already inside and Rukia guessed that Yoruichi was to be driving, but the same blindfold was slipped over her again and her neck was loosely tied to the headrest, so she couldn't move much.

They didn't even play the radio. For almost two hours they just sat in silence, listening to the car's hum and the start of early morning traffic.

Then she was hustled out of the car, into a building, up and down elevators and stairs and all manner of things that Rukia was sure was just being done to confuse her sense of direction. The blindfold only came off when she found her face-to-face with her cell in detainment sector 13-1. Ichimaru pushed her inside and shut the door.

"Now, you just stay there like a good little vampire," he said, grinning at her. "I don't know about Kurosaki-kun's condition yet, but rest assured, he'll probably live. Not that a vampire like yourself would care too much about a hunter, eh?" He laughed, and she hated him.

But there was nothing else to do. Her mind was too keyed up to read. So she just stood there for hours, placing her hands against the smooth glass and resting her forehead on it. It was cool. Eventually it warmed up against her skin. She was getting slightly cold again but didn't really care too much about it or the fact that she'd need to eat soon…she wondered how Ichigo was doing.

She remembered the smoke, the flames, the sheer heat as it surrounded her like a fortress with no means out. Renji's face came to her clearly in the moments before the flames had obscured it. It was in a state of disbelief, urging, hoping – maybe even begging – that she would come to her senses and leave the hunter behind.

She had really tried. Really.

But she thought of leaving Ichigo behind, deep in the fiery room while it burned his skin to a crisp, his corpse becoming just the shell of the man he'd once been. And Rukia found that she just couldn't do it. At that, she had brought him closer to her without thinking, shook her head at Renji without thinking…how many people had she managed to hurt tonight? All because of her…

Closing her eyes, Rukia might have then slipped into something resembling sleep – it was a deeply contemplative state of mind. Time could pass both in an eternity and in the blink of an eye when she slipped that mode. And because so, she did not know how much time had passed when she heard the shuffle of approaching footsteps.

"…Rukia?"

She lifted her face . "Ichigo!"

He didn't look too much worse for the wear – there was a bandage around his wrist and a band-aid around his finger, but that was it. The only evidence that remained of the fire was the charred edges of his coat.

"Ichigo, you're okay? You didn't get hurt in the fire?"

"No. But I had to be put on pure oxygen for about an hour because all the smoke inhalation was life-threatening." He had an unusual expression on his face, rather gentle, somewhat chagrined. He approached the cell a little more. "Anyway, I can't stay long. Five captains were killed – almost six, if you include me – and so we've got to get captain trials underway so the positions can be filled as soon as possible." His eyes hardened. "That's vampires for you."

Rukia's eyes were sad. It was true.

"But…that's fine. Not all of them are like that, I know. Just like not all hunters are so noble as we like to believe."

And suddenly he was smiling at her and she found herself smiling back, small as it was, but a smile nonetheless.

"Anyway, I…I came in here to…" he shifted weight a bit, eyes on the floor. His hands were inside of his charred coat pockets. "I just wanted to say, that for saving me tonight…" he trailed off, trying to find the words.

"You don't have to say it," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because you're a hunter. I'm a vampire. You don't say those things."

"I don't care about that anymore," he said forcefully, and her eyes widened, though he didn't see it because his eyes were off to the side. "I just wanted to say…thank you."

She stared at him. Her hands were cool against the glass.

"I know I would've died in there tonight if you hadn't helped me, and even if everyone else is acting like I'm the big hero who caught the vampire while she tried to escape, I know what really happened. And I really want to live." His eyes finally caught hers. "I want to be with my family, I want to continue training, and I want to face all of my life the best I can. That would've all gone up in smoke – no pun intended – if I'd died tonight.

"So before anyone else can tell you what they think my opinion of you is, I just want to tell you myself, Rukia…thank you."

She smiled, and closed her eyes. "You're welcome, Ichigo."

He accepted the answer.

"Well, I should go now…I have to attend the first trial meetings, you know, won't be allowed to sleep until it's all through," he said lightly. She waved to show she understood.

"Bye," she said.

"See you tomorrow."

And that left her with a greater sense of peace than she had ever felt…ever.

"I can't believe her! I can't fucking believe her!" Renji yelled loud enough to wake the undead, stomping around Hitsugaya's apartment while he sat placidly on the bed. "We spent so much time trying to get the rescue plan perfect, and what does that bitch do? She stays with the fucking hunter!"

"Look, Abarai, what happened already happened. We can't change what Rukia did. And besides, the meeting wasn't a total loss," Hitsugaya replied. Hinamori came in from the kitchen with a pot of tea and five teacups.

"Wasn't it?"

"Nope," Urahara said, as he stood against the glass doors of the balcony. The sun was almost rising, and against the background of light, his form was darkened into nothing more than black shadow. "I know we killed at least four hunter captains. I got one, Byakuya-san got one, and Zaraki-san got two."

"Overexcited bastard," Renji muttered, but Urahara continued on.

"And also…"

Renji blinked.

Urahara turned his gaze from the sunrise and held up a small, rectangular white walkie-talkie with a blinking light that went off in the most bizarre shades of red to blue to green to orange.

"Recognize one of these, Abarai-kun?"

tsuzuku