Believe it or not, I had meant this to be a five chapter deal, like the last one. It's gotten out of hand, and I'm just now getting to the real story.

This chapter, also, has gotten out of hand. It's waaaay long. I just couldn't figure out a way to break it up. It is also, just possibly, a wee bit on the melodramatic side. Sorry. Couldn't help it. This is how it played out in my head.

Also, for you sensitive souls ... there is death in this one. I don't know quite how to put this ... if these things bother you too much, or, well, if these things don't bother you AT ALL, I encourage you to look away. Just don't read the italic bits. Next chapter will still make sense.

Not mine.

Chapter 6

Dust

He circled around, noiselessly. His body hurt everywhere -- it was all he could do to put one foot in front of another. Surely it had only been a few hours since the last one. Surely... maybe it was longer. It might have been days, it had felt like ... He couldn't ...

Hitsugaya shook his head, trying to think clearly. He couldn't let himself drift again, not now. Now he had to fight.

The arrancar stood quietly in the middle of the street, its hands folded before it. It wore a vast, billowing white robe. The mask covered all of its eyes, nose and hair -- only its lips were visible. It made no aggressive moves; it did not bellow or threaten. The dark eye sockets stared straight ahead, not even making any effort to look for him. Hitsugaya's fist closed around the katana. The quiet ones were the worst.

He looked down at his hand, surprised. He had a weapon. How... ?? Oh. That last one... pinned ... must have passed out...

It didn't matter. He crouched in the shadows, his green eyes suddenly entirely focused on his enemy. On his prey. If they were going to leave him sharp things, he was going to use them.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Hitsugaya Toushirou sat on the edge of Soukyoku hill, his thin knees pulled up to his chest. Behind him and a little to the side, Matsumoto knelt. It was obvious that the young man was deeply upset; his lieutenant could feel his reiatsu fluctuate and tremble, as if with suppressed pain. She wanted to talk to him, to comfort him. But she had no idea what to say, and she held her peace.

They could see the Seireitei ranged all around them, a carpet of glittering lights. One could barely make out the Rukongai from here as well. To the west lay the richer regions -- in that direction the city seemed to fade into the quiet glow of hearthfires and torches. To the east, the brightness stopped in a sharp circular line, bordered by total blackness.

Matsumoto looked up from her brooding captain. To their left rose the white Senzaikuu -- the tower of repentance -- huge and empty and strangely sad. "Repent," Matsumoto said under her breath, looking up at its dark windows, "and you shall be saved." She couldn't remember where she had read that. Surely, she thought, it can't be that easy.

She shuddered. There always seemed to be a gale up here. And then she felt a slight coldness in her hair. She held out one hand experimentally. Sure enough, two raindrops pattered onto her fingertips.

Not for the first time, Matsumoto marveled at the ancient technology of the Seireitei. The city was surrounded, above and below, by an immensely strong barrier of death stone. No spiritual or physical being could touch that barrier without total annihilation. And yet the wind and rain passed through as if it were not there.

She lifted her head, letting the cool sprinkle fall on her face. Above them, the stars were disappearing rapidly, swallowed up by the eastern darkness.

"A storm?" she murmured. Without thinking, she turned again towards her captain.

Hitsugaya shrugged, his eyes fixed on the gathering clouds. "Not mine," he said. Of course, Matsumoto chided herself. He had lost his sword -- he couldn't control the weather any more. All the same, she heard the tension in his voice; she could see the tightness return to his shoulders. She felt it, too.

Something was horribly wrong.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Rukia could barely breathe. They walked down echoing corridors, bare and dusty and endlessly monotonous. Aizen said nothing, his arms tucked into his sleeves, his smile never fading. She scurried after him, her mind racing. Turn after turn, past empty chambers, past closed doors. She felt lightheaded, and couldn't pay proper attention to where they were going. While Aizen seemed to move noiselessly, Rukia thought she could hear her footsteps, her breathing, her very heartbeat, caught and carried along the walls.

She stopped abruptly, and put her hand to her empty chest. Then she put two fingers to her left wrist. How ... she wondered, how do I still have a heartbeat?

"Ah," Aizen said, stopping a few feet in front of her. "I see you've noticed."

Utterly confused, Rukia made a querulous little noise. Aizen looked over his shoulder at her. "A shinigami, you see, draws power from the heart. A hollow's power comes from the heart's absence. From the emptiness."

"And an arrancar?" Rukia couldn't help but blurt out. Do I still have a heart? she wanted to cry. Are these just phantom emotions, the memory of severed feelings? Where--she choked back the words as she choked back the tears--was Inoue?

The warlord opened his hands, palm-upward. "That is a mystery," he said. "You have no physical heart, and yet you have a pulse. In the same way, an arrancar wields both the power of a shinigami and that of a hollow, which are opposite. Mutually exclusive. You possess the fullness and the emptiness, both completely, at the same time. If I understood that," he chuckled disarmingly, "I suspect that I would be unstoppable."

The small woman stared up at Aizen, her eyes narrowed. "Is that why you've made so many of us?" she asked slowly. "To figure out how it works?"

"Oh, no, no!" the former captain laughed, patting her on the head. She resisted the urge to pull away. "I've made so many of you so that we can crush Soul Society. And create a better world, right?"

"Of course, Aizen-sama," she murmured, dropping into a deep bow.

He sighed and turned away again. "Tell me, Kuchiki-san," he said pleasantly, "how much longer do you hope to fool me?"

Still bent at the waist, Rukia froze, her bangs falling over her face. She did not dare raise her eyes. "I ... I don't know what you mean, Aizen-sama."

Stopping at a blank stretch of wall, Aizen gestured slightly. An opening appeared as if by magic. Red light and red dust spilled out into the corridor. A horrible stench followed it -- a smell of death and long illness. "I mean," he said patiently, "how much longer do you think you can hide your true self? Your continued allegiance to the Seireitei?"

Rukia stared at the swirling dust, and then turned, looking around. Strangely enough she felt entirely calm. She knew where she was, now -- she had passed this way earlier that day. "Yes," Aizen nodded his confirmation, "this is the dragon's lair. You heard the fight this morning, I take it? Arrancar 52. I'm afraid our Hitsu-chan lost rather badly."

Deliberately, Kuchiki Rukia pulled herself to her full height. There was no point in dissembling any longer. "I heard it," she said shortly. "52 is a bloody-minded, savage bastard who will one day spend all eternity in Hell.

"I also heard," she looked Aizen full in the eye, "that Hitsugaya-taichou has never given you the satisfaction of hearing him beg." Her chin came up defiantly. "Neither will I."

Aizen fingers cupped gently below her chin, his thump just brushing the line of her jaw. "I don't want you to beg, Kuchiki-san," he said. Rukia's brow creased, perplexed. He didn't sound mocking. He sounded ... normal. A little exasperated, maybe. "I want you to see the truth."

A crash and a small cry came from the red chamber beside Aizen -- he glanced inside. When she started forward, however, he placed his body in the way, holding up one hand to check her. "I sent a message to the Seireitei last week," he said, reaching into his sash and pulling out the scroll, "offering to free you and Hitsugaya."

Rukia felt an electric shock shoot up her spine, but she said nothing. Aizen continued. "This was their reply." He pressed it into her hands, his face grave. "I'm truly sorry."

Her heart in her mouth, Rukia opened the scroll and read it. It was short, to the point and very, very final.

There wasn't anything to say. Meticulously, she rolled up the scroll, diligently avoiding Aizen's eyes. It was true, after all. She had disobeyed orders. She had volunteered to stay. She couldn't expect ... Despite her best efforts, though, a great blackness seemed to spread before her vision. Her fingers felt numb.

The overlord watched her, careful not to intrude upon her grief. Only when she straightened, wiped her eyes, and handed back the scroll did he speak. "The shinigami believe," he said quietly, "that they are better than us. They have always believed it. They have never bothered to see themselves for what they are. Bigoted. Self-serving. Arrogant."

Hold on, Rukia told herself. Be strong. "The laws of Soul Society," she whispered, falling back on old mantras, "exist for the good of human kind."

"The laws of Soul Society exist for the good of Soul Society," Aizen said roughly, for the first time showing what seemed like real emotion. "The shinigami speak prettily enough. But when push comes to shove, they will always act in their own interest. Always!"

"Not all of them," she said, trying, unsuccessfully, to blink back her tears. Not my nakama, she thought, as fiercely as she could manage.

"No?" Aizen's face softened and he reached for her. Without another word, he drew her into the doorway, into the stifling heat of the red room. The place was bigger than she had imagined. They looked down over what looked like a ruined city, magnificent in its desolation, terrifying in its silence. She almost choked on the dust, even though the long platform on which they stood must have been forty feet in the air. Another catwalk crossed the room, six feet below them, and another stretched ten or more feet above. Going from nowhere to nowhere, Rukia thought with a shudder.

Aizen led her almost to center of the chamber, where all of the echoes converged. Echoes of tiny, indiscernible noises, magnified a thousand times over -- falling peddles, cracking stone, tiny scratching feet. Ragged breath. "Look over there," he said, pointing down to the far corner of the room. Squinting, Rukia caught a flash of white against a broken stone wall. Another figure, darker, huddled over it.

"That is what a shinigami is," the overlord intoned, "stripped of his pretensions."

Rukia's eyes widened. Within a split second, she had vaulted from the platform, landed on catwalk below, and was running as fast as she could.

Aizen smiled.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Rukia walked alone through the weird shadows of Division 12. Cylinders of luminescent liquid bubbled quietly on the shelves. Wheeled carts held nasty-looking instruments; desks were covered with mountains of untidy papers. Grey mannequins hung on bars against the walls, loose-limbed, covered with strange child-like symbols. The lab would look sinister in the daylight. Now, with dim moonlight streaming in from the narrow windows, filling the place with inky shadows, it looked diabolic.

She found what she was looking for eventually -- a small desk with an embedded computer console. Nothing distinguished it from eight or ten similar stations scattered through the room, except an almost imperceptible number scrawled on its base. Confirming that this was the right one, Rukia pulled a small gem-like cube from her robes. Carefully, she placed it in a fitted slot on the console. It began to glow, very faintly, from the bottom up.

"If you're looking for the prisoners," a gruff voice spoke from the doorway, "I think they're probably in the lower levels."

"I've already seen them," she answered, not looking up. "Like Yama-jii said, they're heavily drugged. Hardly there. Not exactly up for a mad-dash escape."

The shinigami stepped into the room. Backlit by the hall lights, his hair glowed like a spiky orange halo. "Rukia," he said, "you're not here on any rescue mission."

Unconsciously Rukia brushed out the wrinkles in her kimono and faced the newcomer. He looked a little taller, she thought. Not much, but a little. His frame had filled out, as well -- no longer a skinny teenager, but a grown man. " ... no, I guess I'm not." She paused, and then said playfully, "But you are, aren't you? Have you come to save me again?"

Ichigo scowled. "Damn you, Rukia," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Of course I have. You just have to make it difficult, don't you?"

"How did you find me, anyway?" she asked, weaving her way through the cluttered laboratory towards her old friend. "I had my spirit power really well controlled."

He looked away. "I wasn't tracking you by your shinigami side," he muttered.

"Ah," she stood only a few paces from him now, almost close enough to touch him. "So you can navigate the emptiness, as well?" She cocked her head at him, folding her hands behind her back. "You know that's dangerous. If you want to stay in control, that is."

Ichigo swallowed. How typical, Rukia thought -- he has no idea what to say. No plan at all. But still he rushes out to me, heart on his sleeve. Still a child after all. She stepped forward and put her hands on his chest, her eyes never leaving his. "Do you want to stay in control?" she murmured.

His large hands closed on her small ones, and he pushed them away. But he did not, she noticed, let them go. "What are you doing here?" he asked gruffly.

"Do you mean here in the Seireitei?" Rukia slipped her hands free. Backing away several steps, she lifted herself onto a desk, where she sat swinging her legs. "Or in Division 12?"

When he didn't answer, Rukia simply continued. "I'm here in this room," she said, waving around, "because this is the spiritual center of Soul Society. This is where the shinigami created mod souls, and this is where they destroyed them. This is where the shinigami tortured the souls of the Quincy," she picked up a slender tool beside her, something convoluted and sharp, "right after wiping them off the face of the earth. How's Ishida, by the way?"

Ichigo took the instrument from her hand. She looked up, surprised -- she hadn't seen him move. He had gotten better. "Ishida hasn't spoken to me," he said, carefully laying the instrument back on the tray, "since we lost you."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not," Ichigo grumbled, his head down. He always had been a terrible liar. "Dumbass."

Rukia took her friend's hand, and held it in her lap. "I'm here in Soul Society," she said, hesitating a little, "to talk to you."

She could not look him in the face as she continued. "You're right, of course. Aizen-sama has no interest in arrancar prisoners. He sent me with a proposal for you." He stiffened and almost pulled away, but Rukia clung to him with one hand, while she touched his face with the other.

"Join us, Ichigo," she said, staring into his startled brown eyes. "Aizen promises to protect your family, when Karakura falls. You can name your terms in the new order. You can protect whomever you want to. Ichigo," she pleaded, "you know it's the right thing to do."

The young man didn't answer. Tentatively, he reached out one hand, and brushed back a lock of black hair. All of these years, he'd missed Kuchiki Rukia. He'd hated himself for not trusting her, for letting her follow him, for not sending her back, for not protecting her. For not having told her, for not having touched her. All these years, he'd held her memory in his heart. Now he practically held her in his arms, and she was asking the impossible from him.

"Idiot," he said.

Rukia looked up at him, and he was startled to see tears in her eyes. "Why would you fight for Soul Society?" she demanded. "You know they're corrupt! You fought against them, once, with all your heart."

"Don't give me that crap!" he snapped. Ichigo always had, she reflected, a certain crude clarity of vision. "They've done bad stuff, yeah. But there's no way you'll convince me that they're worse than the Hueco Mundo. I've been there, remember?"

The small woman glowered at him, tightening her grip on his hand and his neck. "Are you really going to throw your life away," she said through clenched teeth, "on the lesser of two evils?"

He glowered, his face turning stubborn. "I'll fix Soul Society," he said, "when I'm finished kicking Aizen's ass."

"There are always going to be monsters, Ichigo!"

Ichigo's chin came up, and his eyebrows knit together. He looked so like a caricature of his old self, Rukia almost laughed despite herself. It was if he was imitating Inoue imitating him. "Then I'll always fight them!" he yelled.

Then Rukia did laugh, though the sound was damp and brief. She let go of him. "You haven't changed at all," she sighed. "I'm glad."

There was a soft snap behind her. They both turned. The small cube she had placed on the computer monitor had turned bright red. "Ah," she said, smiling into Ichigo's horrified eyes, "finally."

Even with flash step, they barely made it out of the building before the explosion tore it down.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

The arrancar gave an involuntary cry as the archway collapsed about it. Then, as it staggered, a dark form materialized from behind, and drove a katana through its back. Hitsugaya pulled out the blade, and gave the arrancar a savage kick, sending it against the wall. Then he lifted its mask, intending to stab it through the eye.

"No." The blade dropped from his nerveless fingers.

Inoue smiled up at him, wiping the blood from her lips with shaky fingers. "I'm sorry, Toushirou-kun," she murmured. "I just ..."

"Why ... why didn't you take off the mask?" he croaked, kneeling beside her and pressing his hands to her wound. His throat was utterly parched; it hurt like hell to talk. "God, Inoue ..."

Inoue must have known what he was thinking. She frowned a little. "It's not ... suicide, or anything" she whispered, sounding honestly embarrassed. Orihime didn't hurt people, not even herself. "I just didn't know... you might have anyway... I didn't want you to, you know, have to live with ..." She coughed, and sank a little lower, resting her cheek against his knees. "I just..."

"Shut up," Hitsugaya ordered roughly. He grabbed both of her hands and held them over her chest. "If you have energy to talk, you have energy to heal." He drew a shuddering breath and lowered his head. "Heal yourself." He lifted her hands and drove them down again. "Dammit," he cried, half whimpering, "heal!"

"Ah heh heh," she said drowsily, "I can, can't I?" But she didn't. Instead she lifted one hand and rested it lightly on Hitsugaya's chest.

"Please, Inoue," he whispered. "Don't. Please."

Hitsugaya could feel her power moving through him, like a radiant light, like a blessing. His shoulder, his hands, the lacerations on his back -- he could feel his body relax as the pain spilled off. Even the worst of it -- the constant, maddening, agonizing thirst -- seemed to fade.

"I'm sorry, Toushirou-kun," she said again. Her hand reached up, and brushed his cheek with the back of her fingers. "Forgive me." Her eyes closed with a sigh, and she drifted away.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

He didn't know how long he sat there, Inoue's golden hair in his lap, his mind a blank. It couldn't have been long, though. Rukia landed in front of him with a thud, uncharacteristically clumsy. Her face was contorted with grief as she looked down at the body. The body of her one and only friend.

Histugaya didn't move, didn't speak. After all the time Rukia had spent worrying about him, there wasn't a scratch on him. "That's it?" she cried. An ocean of rage seemed to beat against her soul. "It was that easy? You kill her and you can't even pretend to be upset?"

The boy just stared at her, his face resigned, as if he welcomed what he knew would come next. "I don't have any tears left," he said quietly.

Rukia reached for her katana and advanced on him. Her eyes were entirely black, and the darkness was spreading under her skin, over her entire face. "If you can't cry," she snarled, "maybe you can scream."

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

"You're not here to talk to me," Ichigo spat. He didn't know what was worse -- his anger or his embarrassment.

The great fire roared next to him, consuming the 12 Division lab. The conflagration cast strange orange light on Rukia's features. She shrugged. "Not exclusively."

"What ... was ... THAT?!!?" he cried, gesturing at the burning building. He could hear the alarms sounding throughout the Seireitei. And then another sensation, a cold horror, stole over him. Alarmed, he looked up at the sky.

"That is the mechanism that generates, or rather, that was the mechanism that used to generate, the deathstones," she said calmly. "...the barrier around the Seireitei."

With both sides of his soul, Ichigo felt a presence -- no, many, many presences, above and around the city. His throat tightened. Half of the shinigami, at least, were on earth evacuating humans from his hometown. "Your army," he wheezed, "the arrancar you pulled away from Karakura..."

Rukia threw him a very nasty smile. "Well," she said, "we had to put them somewhere."

TBC

...

OK... sorry, will have to put in some author's note. Please pardon my melodrama; I don't know what's wrong with me today (agh! I really need to work! Why do I do this to myself!?)

I want to stress that Inoue did NOT commit suicide. She was given a choice: to hurt Hitsugaya or to let him hurt her. She didn't take off her mask because she was afraid that he'd kill her anyway. She didn't want him to have to make that choice, or live with the guilt. She healed him because she couldn't not heal him -- he was in pain. Also to show him that she could have, and that he shouldn't feel bad. Doubt it worked, though :)

This is a fine philosophical line, but it's very important to me. I'm not just saying this to cover my butt (don't commit suicide, kids!) There's a BIG DIFFERENCE between killing yourself and letting yourself die when it's your time. Suicide is cowardly, and Inoue is NEVER cowardly.

I've been kind of jerking you guys around, with the "choosing sides" thing. Truth is, I don't know what to think anymore. I do know that there are two types of courage that I admire:

One is (at least in this fic) Ichigo. He is what I would call a pure warrior. He fights against what he believes to be evil. He doesn't manipulate; he doesn't scheme. He also doesn't vacillate or kowtow or delegate responsibility. He simply does what he believes to be right. He has what the Mahabharata would call dharma -- righteousness.

The other (once again, my interpretation of her character) is Inoue. She is the pure pacifist. She will not harm anyone, even if it means that she is herself hurt. She doesn't judge others, nor but she doesn't abandon her morale sense. If she has to choose between healing another person or saving herself ... well, as you can see. She has what the Bible calls grace.

Oh, so .. hm... what do you think? Good chapter? Pretentious blowhard pseudo-philosophy? Did you notice that Aizen is a complete bastard?

Ack .. must sleep...