Perceived Truths

Setting: Post Chapter 215, 217
Word Count: 500

Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor. - Robert Frost

Dinner at the Kurosaki's is a quiet affair.

Or at least it is after Karin shoots down Kurosaki-san's billionth attempt to cheer Yuzu up. Yuzu doesn't seem to fare so well in the silence, staring forlornly at the meal she set for Ichigo. She's a little like Ichigo in that way, adamant in her belief that he'll return. Karin ignores Yuzu's expression, helps herself to more vegetables. "It's so peaceful for once," she says nonchalently, and Rukia hunches over her rice, unsure if she should read into the accusation she sees there.

Rukia's never expected to be in Ichigo's world on her own.

Her plan was simple really. Go on this mission and sort out the mess she'd left in Ichigo's life. Attend his school to keep an eye on him. Make herself known to his family so that it'll be easier to help Ichigo protect them. Do her best to avoid suspicion.

Without Ichigo, the façade seems ridiculous. She didn't go to school today. Instead she searched through the town again for some hint, any hint of where Ichigo had gone. She traced down every stray imprint of his spiritual aura, went to places familiar and new. Some brought back memories, wistful and distant despite the distance of only a few months. Others were foreign, leaving the nagging thought she didn't know Ichigo as well as she'd believed. Back at his house, the nagging thought gnaws its way deeper as everyone dances around the ragged raw hole Ichigo's left behind, and the older hole Rukia has no right to know about but does.

She steadfastly avoids thinking about the hole that would have resulted if Ichigo had fallen in Soul Society.

She excuses herself from the table and heads upstairs before the rest. She means to go back to the room she shares with his sisters, but unintentionally pauses in the corridor. Ichigo's room is practically imprinted with his aura and the vague trickles drifting through the door draw her in. The room is both familiar and yet not: she's more used to climbing in through the window, to hearing a disgruntled greeting as she enters. It startles her, this expection.

It was foolish, she realises, to think there was space in Ichigo's world for her. She's displaced not only Ichigo but his friends as well, if Sado's training with Urahara was any indication. Their lives all changed after they met her, when she brought the weight of her world into theirs. And instead of backing away gracefully she disturbed their lives again and again, trying to fit into places she had no right to be.

She has imposed for long enough. He has people who need him, care for him.

"Don't worry Ichigo," she says aloud. "When you come back, I'll leave for Soul Society." This truth rings around the empty room and she grimly shuts the door, heads to her own borrowed bed.

After all, there was no place in her life for half-truths, closets and juiceboxes.