In Japanese, there are two ways to say "I love you": suki and aishiteru. "Suki" is the more widely-used term, common between boyfriends/girlfriends and even best friends, and (because of ingrained culture) even husbands would be more likely to say "suki" to their wives rather than "aishiteru." So, I suppose one can see "aishiteru" as being the serious, meaningful love.

On another note, sorry for the delay. As you all know, I'm guessing, I was on vacation and just came back, and school starts tomorrow for me...but this chapter had to come up sometime. Yaye :-) And I also just added chapter titles, for your viewing pleasure ;-p

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 15

For having always had such an amazing memory, what Rukia could actually recall about that night came in snippets, like short jerks of film. But it came with an overwhelming sense of calm – maybe even completion – and so she didn't mind the fact that she could not remember every single detail.

What she did remember was enough.

His hand catching her trembling fingers.

Whispered assurances against her ear.

The warmth of his body on hers.

Panting.

Finding the strength to unclench her hands from the sheets.

When she woke, in his arms, it took but a second for the night to flood back to her – that and the implications of what had been done. The implications that she knew could be possible now that she had gone and surrendered to desire. It wasn't a matter of regretting having given her body away, it was that he was a hunter.

But as she looked upon his face, relaxed in sleep, Rukia found that she couldn't draw her will to make herself properly ashamed, or even hate him. Because she did care about him...very much. More than she ever thought she could feel for anyone.

And it was there did the thought just float up, so easily that Rukia had thought it before she realized she thought it.

She loved him.

Ichigo's eyes blinked open, and his vision blurred for a second before he realized that Rukia was right in front of him, his Rukia with her beautiful violet eyes. She'd been looking at him, waiting for him to wake up. The reality of the situation overcame Ichigo as soon as he noticed her bare skin; that meant last night had not been simply his imagination. She had the sheet pulled up to preserve some of her modesty, but the way the sunlight hit the gentle slope of her shoulder, illuminating the upper portion of her body in a soft halo, was breathtaking.

"Good morning," Rukia said softly.

"Morning." He smiled, and suddenly sat up, impulsively catching her wrist with his hands and flipping her onto her back. It was in that way did he lean down to kiss her shoulder, smiling into her perfect skin, trying to ignore the fact that her breasts were pressing against his chest.

"Ichigo? What's with you?"

"Nothing." He closed his eyes, smiling, and withdrew. "What time is it?"

Rukia glanced on her clock on the far side of the room. "My clock says 9:40."

"Huh, no kidding. I haven't been awake this early in ages."

The two of them spent a relatively normal morning together – well, as normal as it could be for two people very unused to sleeping at night and getting up during the day. After a much-needed shower, Rukia went about brewing some coffee and making a grocery list for what human food she needed to buy herself. Even Ichigo managed to make some toast. He'd just turned to ask her if she had any butter or jam when it struck him.

Rukia was right next to him. He'd known that, of course, because she was looking through her cabinets, but his thoughts were as if had always expected her to be there, at his side, so unlike any other time that he had spent a first morning after a first night.

Did that mean he already felt such a high level of familiarity in Rukia's presence that he no longer had to separate it into an unfamiliar category? But sometimes his mind played tricks with him; that had to be it, right? Or did he suddenly feel as if this was so normal, like a regular morning, and that everything was right and good and fine?

Deep down, that disturbed him.

On one hand, he wanted to stay with her. And on the other…

He wasn't supposed to be so relaxed, so off guard. If she wanted to Rukia could have killed him at a million different intervals by now. And yet he never felt the need anymore to put up a guard in her company, to filter all his secrets before he told them to her, to want to kill, or to hurt,or sometimes wonder what his pathetic existence was about. She had shown him a side of vampires he had never known – perhaps a side he'd never wanted to see, but it had been forced before his eyes nonetheless. And, even with that knowledge of their continuing war, all Ichigo wanted to do was make her happy. She made him want to be better than he was.

In short, Rukia made him live. To really want to live. And because she was the first person to ever, ever do so, Ichigo didn't know what to do.

She didn't deserve to keep leading him on this way. Ichigo had never spoken of where exactly their relationship was leading them, but Rukia knew it would never last. She knew it from the beginning, the first time Ichigo had ever managed to worm his way into her heart. They were too different, their horizons too vast. She was immortal, he was mortal. She was dead, he was alive. She was a vampire…he was a hunter. Opposite on all counts, they should never have come together.

But by some miracle, they had. But now all her doubts were sneaking up on her, silently and craftily, and usually making themselves known in some unusually painful way.

For instance, Rukia found herself noticing the quirk of his eyebrow, or the angles of his hand – some small thing like that – and he would catch her eye, and the thought that she would soon betray and leave him would burn her heart. Or sometimes, when she looked to her side and he was somewhere else, she felt disappointed, but guilty at the same time for thinking that he should have been there.

Ichigo was a hunter. She was a vampire. He had hunted her. What had made him so different, so special?

Because Ichigo was Ichigo. She loved him for who he was. And hunter though he might have been, that never seemed to carry enough weight whenever she weighed her past choices.

But Ichigo had to go back to his hunter base, and then he would become a hunter of her kind again. And she would go back to her base, and take up her chair of leader division, first-seat again. And if Urahara ever died, it would be her against the hunters, and then if they ever met in battle the only thing that was supposed to happen between a vampire and a hunter was…

She was getting too attached to him. She already had. It was already too late for her.

But maybe it wasn't too late for him. Maybe, if she pushed him away, then he wouldn't come after her…and if one day they did meet in a face-off, not as Ichigo to Rukia but as hunter to vampire, then he wouldn't have to pretend that he was hurting someone he cared about.

She would have to pretend, though, all the way until he died, that this orange-haired hunter meant nothing to her. It was the only way she'd ever manage a clean break. However, acting opposite of her true emotions, especially with the years of Kaien's torture under her belt, was nothing.

For the first time ever, Rukia was thankful for that past cruelty. What she was about to do would be nothing new. She already knew what it felt like to suffer, to agonize in silence and wonder if there was some other way, all the while knowing that there was none. It had just never occurred to her that it was possible to take that past feeling a hundred steps higher.

Swallowing with difficulty, she finished her coffee in burning silence.

Rukia tried to make moments to tell Ichigo what she felt, but that perfect moment never came. Each time, she would look at the profile of her face, and her nerve would falter; then it was back to pretending as if nothing was bothering her in the slightest.

If Ichigo was thinking as much as she was, he did an excellent job of hiding it.

They separated that day, saying nothing of the next time they would meet, and Rukia's heart lifted a little in thought that he would never think of her again. She admitted, his casual goodbye had hurt, but it wasn't anything she wasn't unused to. And in any case, never speaking of another meeting wouldn't make her look forward to it. Rukia had to forget him.

She tried for two days.

And then he came to her house.

Rukia had aligned herself back to her sleep-during-day and awake-at-night schedule, and had just finished dressing herself to go out and find some human prey. She hadn't eaten in a couple of days, and hunger pangs – a very human trait – made her think too much of Ichigo.

But she could sense a hunter aura approaching her door. And she knew it was him.

He knocked.

She wanted to pretend she was out.

But that didn't seem to work; after two sharp knocks there was a jiggling at the door, and suddenly it swung open, the dim hall light outlining Ichigo's dark form like a menacing shadow. The key he'd used to open the door was in his hand.

A skeleton key…Ichigo has a skeleton key…

"…Ichigo?"

"…I had a feeling you'd be still at home," he said. "Sorry about coming in like I did…I just wanted to make sure that you were all right."

"Yes, I'm fine…" His closeness was too much. "Ichigo – "

The kiss was not unexpected. Sudden, and perhaps early in the conversation, but not unexpected.

And when she fell onto the bed, that wasn't unexpected either.Without the troubling, almost virginal fear that had been present in their first time together, Rukia was able to take notice of many more things about their midnight trysts – and now she could see every contour of Ichigo's body, the sweat, the muscles of his defined form…

Afterward, she lay in that bed and wondered how much longer she would let this continue on.

A couple more days and nights, and he'd come, but they never met outside like that first night…that was until one day she woke up before him. She watched him sleep. It was very much like their first time.

He didn't seem as bothered as she did…he didn't seem to be thinking as much as she did…if she left him, he wouldn't be hurt by it. Yes, it would all be for the best. Yes, it would.And then she could go back to being a vampire and he could go back to hunting them…and she would love him, and watch him fall in love with someone beautiful and pretty and human, and watch him grow old and forget all about her…

Rukia scrubbed at an itch on her eye.

And that was why, that day, she left her own apartment, with a note addressed to him on the bed.

And so, at the culmination of those days, that was how Rukia found herself on a quiet side street of town, all the small little businesses closed for the day. She had just fed, and so, with the absence of blood hunger, she was beginning to feel nervous.

But she was doing the right thing. She was doing the right thing.

Off in the distance, she could hear families preparing for dinner, a few mild arguments, bicycles pedaling, dogs being fed – all belonging to another life that she no longer had any claim to. But Ichigo did. Being selfish was not in her repertoire; it was not who she was. She couldn't keep him all for herself, hiding him away, especially when he had so much more to offer life.

Rukia's eyes lifted. Ichigo's aura approached long before he did; he never bothered to keep it hidden now. Arrogant and stupid, at the same time – any vampire could have tracked him to kill. She smiled, in spite of her morbid thoughts.

"Rukia."

"Good evening, Ichigo," she said. Her voice was a perfect match to the gently darkening sky, a dusky orange with gray pulling at the horizon, dying rose-colored beams of sunlight feebly streaking through.

"What did you want to meet all the way out here for? And at such a weird time."

She wanted to meet him somewhere quiet, unhurried…a place where no one would hear their conversation. Her hand clutched at the sleeve of her black coat.

"Ichigo…" She cleared her throat; her voice was a whisper. "I…"

"Rukia? Is something wrong?"

"This…it…it can't keep going on."

"This? What are you talking about?"

"This…thing…between us."

She saw the way his fist tightened, even shoved into the pocket of his loose, baggy pants. And when spoke next, the clueless edge to his voice was gone; now, it was low and rough.

"What about it?"

"I said…it can't go on." she said. Why was he making this so difficult? Couldn't he see she was already…hurting, dying?

"Why not?"

Her eyes met his, in both incredulous shock and carefully concealed happiness. Because, for him to challenge her statement, that meant he wanted to be with her…at least to some degree…

"…because…you're a hunter, and I'm…what you hunt. I'm a vampire, Ichigo. You hate my kind, don't you remember?"

"Why are you bringing this up now?"

"Because" – I want to see you happy and you'll never be happy with me, because you're a hunter and I can never change that about you, wouldn't want to change anything about you, because you're absolutely perfect the way you are now… – "you're a hunter. I...I hate hunters."

He let that statement sink in a prelude to the slowly building explosion.

"So what, then?"

Tentatively, she raised her eyes to his.

"So you mean it all – everything – that was all some joke to you? Something you could brag about to your other vampire friends?" he said, voice rising. "Was that all? You meant it was nothing, right? Nothing. Not all the time back at base, all the time we spent out, all the nights…and the days…" He sucked in a breath, and turned away from her. "I should have suspected it. Damn fucking bloodsuckers…all they ever do is destroy your life. My life."

He turned his back to her with an ironic laugh. "I trusted you, Rukia, do you know that? Go and brag and tell whoever you fucking want, I fucking trusted you. And yet you're just a little vampire bitch, always after some bigger prize. Let it be the joke of the month! Kurosaki Ichigo, trusting a vampire!"

"Ichigo, I didn't want it to be this way!"

"Sure, I know you didn't…that's why you hate me, right? Because I'm screwing up your grand eternal life. So sorry to have been a mar on your perfect record."

Her temper rose at that last remark. "Don't you dare patronize me, Kurosaki Ichigo," she seethed, the hand on her coat arm now rigid. "You know fucking well that if you were a mar, you would being neither the first of them nor the worst."

"Sure," he said, his head turning to the side, his back to her. "And Kaien's probably the name of the first bastard who left you. Sure, I get it now."

"Kaien was real!" she shouted at him. She could take hits at her with no comment; but when it came to Kaien, there was no mocking her past. "Don't just brush off my side of our conversations just because you're feeling wounded, damn you! He was real! He did all the things to me I told you! You think I would've wanted the first century of my life under the thumb of fucking Kaien?"

How had this exchange of hurtful words grown into something so huge and ugly, a thing so determined to destroy him as well as her?

"Don't even talk to me about your life, Rukia! It's all a fucking fake, just like you," Ichigo said as his head turned back forward. He almost took a step forward, and Rukia heard something that shattered her completely. A small,quiet whisper.

"I really did trust you…"

And he inhaled his breath and let it out in way that sounded almost like he was…

In that moment, her eyes welled up, and even as her heart screamed for her logical mind to take over, Rukia found herself embracing him from behind, his stiff back against her chest, and mute tears disappearing into his dark shirt.

"Ichigo…" she whispered, a salty tear falling into the corner of her mouth.

He was quiet. "…Rukia?"

"Ichigo, please, I…you don't understand…" This was all going so very horribly. It had been fine before, cruel and vindictive, but still fine…he would have walked away from this night and hated her, and that was the way it was supposed to be. But instead…

She turned him around and reached up to his cheek.

Why was she the one breaking, when it was supposed to have been the other way around…?

"Ichigo…you don't understand…I had to push you away…"

Oh god…no.

"…I can never see you again…"

He was silent, but it was encouraging silence. "…why?" he said, in a voice just a decibel above hers.

"…because…"

Why couldn't she stop crying?

"…because I…I love you." Rukia looked up at him, the tears misting her vision so that she couldn't read the expression in his eyes well. "…do you see, Ichigo? This is why I can't stay with you…we were never…no vampire and hunter were ever meant to be this way."

"…Rukia…you…you love…" She could hear the disbelief in his voice, probably from her unexpected words and from the level of confession she had chosen to say to him.

"So now you get it," she said, her voice subdued. "I can't stay with you any more. I love you, Ichigo. Can you imagine what they'd ever do to you if they found out you were fraternizing with a vampire?" She was babbling, trying to make this into more of an excuse for his feelings than her own. "Anyway Ichigo don't ever call me again, don't come near me, don't look for me, don't even talk to me! Because I won't talk to you, and it's all for the best, you know it–"

Ichigo suddenly pulled her into a strong embrace. "Rukia, shut up! I–"

"No!" she yelled, pushing herself out of his arms forcefully. "I won't listen to what you have to say Ichigo, because yes I already know you don't feel the same and this was all just for f – fun! But now you know how I feel so that's fine. It's all right. Just don't ever speak to me again! Don't come to my apartment with that damn skeleton key of yours. Just forget you ever knew me and we'll both be better off!"

Backing away from him , she started to run down the street, trying to ignore the fact that Ichigo was following her and trying to instead concentrate on her aura.

"Rukia, wait! Fucking hell, stop running! I want to–"

Ignore him ignore him ignore him… Rukia chanted to herself, a sense of relief washing over her as her wings responded to her aura and unfolded. She was running at breakneck speed – almost at the level of shunpa – and lifted herself off the ground without another thought. It didn't matter who might be watching, or the fact that someone could be…all that mattered was getting away from him.

That way, she'd never be hurt again.

tsuzuku