Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
Rukia, breathing rapidly, took stock of the situation. She was sitting in Ichigo's lap, pinned with a zanpakutou wielded by a hollow who currently had complete control of Ichigo's body. Sode no Shirayuki protruded from the tree beside his head, just out of her reach. The hollow followed her gaze.
"Not gonna happen, Rukia-chan," it said; she looked up at it, her attention diverted, and gasped. It was grinning, cruelly, insanely: on Ichigo's brow, white bone began to piece itself together.
"Ichigo..." she breathed; what was the hollow doing to him? A hand fisted itself in her hair; the hollow dragged her head back, bringing her face close to Ichigo's, hissing in displeasure.
"Don't say his name," it spat. "From now on, Ichigo doesn't exist; I'm the only one in this body now!"
Rukia, eyes tearing from the sharp pain, could see Shirayuki's handle out of the corner of her eye, could feel Zangetsu now across the back of her neck.
"He doesn't matter anymore," the hollow was still saying, Ichigo's face stretched into a grin of savage exultation; Rukia gave it a murderous glance through the haze of pain. "Finally, it's what I want that matters!"
Something clicked in Rukia's mind, very suddenly. "And what do you want?" she demanded of it. "Now that you have the body, what are you going to do with it? You don't think you can just get away with this, do you? Soul Society will -"
"Fuck Soul Society," it snarled, and Rukia fell into silence; white bone encircled Ichigo's eye, streaks of red running back towards the top of his head. It looked barbaric. "Soul Society can't stop me; they'll never catch me, and I'll kill anyone who comes after me, one by one..."
It loosened its hold on Rukia's hair, and her head fell back to be cradled against Ichigo's large hand. "You didn't plan this out very carefully, did you?" she said softly, and it looked at her with burning eyes. "Even if you kill me now, they'll know what happened, and they won't come after you one by one. They'll come after you squad by squad, tracking your reiatsu, and if I live, I'll be leading them."
It stared at her, and Rukia sensed that it was at a loss; she ground pity to dust under the heel of her loyalty to Ichigo. It was a hollow. Hollows didn't feel confusion or helplessness. Hollows didn't suffer.
"You'd lead them?" It asked, ignoring the possibility of her death, its distorted voice empty almost of the question itself. The bone crept down to Ichigo's jawline. "Why? Surely seeing him like this must disgust you, hurt you, knowing that you'll never get him back...I might as well kill him now; at least so I could know what it's like to be the only one in a body, for once."
Rukia caught her breath; it continued, voice lilting, sneering. "It would be mercy, for both of you, Rukia-chan. Could you lead the hunt, knowing the quarry was Ichigo...could you really be the cause of his death?"
Rukia, for one moment, teetered on the brink, protests forgotten. Kaien-dono... The hollow caught the flicker in her eyes.
"Wouldn't it be simpler to let me go? Knowing that Ichigo was alive, even in a small way, knowing that there's a chance you could bring him back..." Golden eyes bored into Rukia's. "I could make a deal with you, Rukia-chan. I'd buy your silence, your complicity - " bone teeth formed, and the mask began to creep over the right side of Ichigo's face - "I'd let him live, Rukia-chan, as long as you called off the hounds of Sereitei. You let me live, and I will let him live...I would even let you see him, every once in a while." It began to snigger.
Kaien-dono... What if she'd had the chance to make a deal? To see him again, just once, alive and well? Rukia had turned the what-ifs over in her mind countless times, wondering endlessly if there could have been a different ending, if she hadn't killed him, if there could have been any other way... would she accept the consequences?
She watched helplessly as bone closed over the entirety of Ichigo's face, as the hollow chuckled in cruel delight, as the phantom of Shiba Kaien superimposed itself over Ichigo, his face kind one moment and a leering, defiled mockery the next. She shook her head to get rid of the image; Ichigo looked down at her with stubborn brown eyes, defiant and strong as he stood with her on the crossbeam of the Soukyoku.
The vision vanished as the hollow stopped laughing abruptly; it pulled her forward sharply, so that she was almost nose-to-bone with it. "So what's it gonna be, Rukia-chan?" It ground out from behind the mask, cocking its head to one side in an aggressive mockery of curiosity. "Is Ichigo gonna live, or is he gonna die?"
Reiatsu, sharp and ragged, ran through the air around her; Rukia desperately wished for her sword, knowing it was no use. So close to it now, she was nearly kneeling astride its lap, held up only by its one hand at the back of her head, and it was unfair that it was Ichigo's hand, large and warm and full of strength that the silly boy didn't know what to do with. Yellow, pupil-less eyes bored into her own from behind the mask, and the hand became alien, constricting, threatening to crush her skull. It wasn't Ichigo's hand anymore; no shred of the boy she knew and loved was left before her, replaced instead by a heartless being filled with haphazard, aimless wants and needs.
"Monster," she whispered.
"What?" It gritted out, voice laced with threat.
"Monster," she said again, her voice marginally stronger, still wavering with emotion, "How can you accuse me of pretending to listen to you when you were lying to me all along? You said you were different, you said you were not a monster, yet here you are, forcing me to choose either a helpless death or a life of slavery for one of my friends." Her voice wobbled and cracked; its eyes were inscrutable, the rest of its face covered by the blank mask. It lowered her slowly, until she was sitting, legs either side of its torso; she looked up at it, not knowing what to say anymore.
"Slavery." It regarded her for a long moment and then laughed bitterly. "And I'm the monster, who makes you choose between death and slavery for him -" venom dripped from the word - "when it's the exact same options which lie before me. But you don't want him to die." Its hand, no longer holding her up, had slid to hold her shoulder, fingers splayed on the back of her throat, thumb running along her clavicle, stroking her skin roughly, absently.
"Would you want me to die?" It asked, and Rukia was numbed. The answer should have been clear. "Don't I have a right to live and be free, just as Ichigo does? He imprisons me, forces me under, and you're happy; I do that to him and you threaten to send armies after me. How is it any different?"
Rukia didn't say anything; it grasped her hard enough to bruise, thumb digging into soft tissue under bone, and she cried out in surprised pain.
"Tell me, Rukia-chan, why is it any different when he does that to me?" it snarled, rage colouring its voice, black reiatsu surging and reverberating through Rukia, her eyes pinched shut, the hand on her shoulder marked in fire. In the aftermath, she looked up: howling reiatsu knifed through her, bitter and lonely as cold ash, and she felt her throat run dry under the condemning heat of its gaze.
Ichigo... did this truly come from your own feelings? It was rage and sorrow, want and need, and Rukia felt a surge of pity for it, coupled with horror at how human she felt it to be. She couldn't let this break down who she was: a shinigami, she fought hollows, they were the enemy. A thousand hollows could not compare to the worth of a plus. She could not afford this grey area, not when Ichigo was being pulled further and further away from her reach. Hollows were different. Hollows were monsters.
Shinigami training forced Rukia's thoughts into a straight line, and she followed it.
"You have no heart," she said to it, and it was a struggle, pushing back her feelings, pushing back her thoughts, pushing back the reiatsu which was frozen and wrong and yet tugged at her with its familiarity. Rukia spoke words hard with conviction, bitter and brittle and unsure whether she was speaking to condemn the hollow or convince herself. "You can't ever be human, you can't ever feel guilt or remorse for what you do, but Ichigo can. You may be strong, and you may be cunning and smarter than other hollows, but in the end, that's all you are! You're just a hollow!"
She hadn't been aware that she was shouting until she stopped. A ringing silence followed, and Rukia panted to catch her breath, emotions in turmoil under a blank yellow stare. She waited for it to speak, to shout, to snap her in two in a bout of rage, to kill Ichigo then and there.
"Hollow." Its voice was hard, deliberate. "Yes. Hollow. And you're a shinigami...to the last." Rukia stifled a gasp when it suddenly dropped Zangetsu, wrapping both hands around her upper arms and leaning down to shove its masked face in hers once again.
"Since that's all I am, just a hollow, what's to prevent me from killing Ichigo right now?" it demanded of her, and Rukia shrank back from the alien surface of the mask.
"Don't." She hissed, and wondered how she could still threaten it, even now.
"You love him, don't you?" Rukia felt the accusation behind its voice. "You'd die for him, wouldn't you?"
"Yes." She said simply, unwilling to think about which question she was answering, or if perhaps she meant both at once. Its hands clenched convulsively around the tops of her arms, then let go suddenly; she fell back onto its crossed legs, her spine banging painfully against bone, but before she could prop herself up, its hand was around her throat, keeping her lying horizontal, its torso between her legs.
"Shinigami," it growled, and Rukia could feel its arm over her chest, its rapid breathing brushing its sides against her thighs with each inhaled breath. "Beg for it, shinigami. Plead with me; scream, cry, grovel for me to let your precious Ichigo back. Shinigami, beg for mercy from a hollow, and so be it I will free him."
Rukia, helpless, enraged, humiliated by the position it had forced her into, wanted to tell it to go to hell, she would never, not in a million years - and then remembered, with sobering clarity, that Ichigo's freedom, Ichigo's life, hung in the balance. Tears of fury sprang to her eyes...her sword was so close...
"Just do this one thing," the hollow was murmuring; its other hand wove itself through her hair, toying with the strands in a strangely gentle gesture. "Rukia-chan, you can save your Ichigo, I will not kill him, just for you, Rukia-chan, ask me..." A chill went up Rukia's spine; her rage was tempered by a trickle of fear, honing it to a sharp point, and she began to think.
It was a small favour, really. A small thing in return for Ichigo's life; the boy who ran the gauntlet of Sereitei's most powerful in order to save her from obliteration. No one would ever have to know that she had lowered herself to beg a favour from a sworn enemy, no one would ever have to know that the enemy was within Ichigo himself...
But still...she hadn't missed the insinuation in the hollow's voice when it asked her to beg; would she just be playing into its hands? Its arm on her chest rubbed the material of her robes over the nicks and scratches from its first assault of the night, carved there by Zangetsu as it had used Ichigo's face to giggle and grin. It had seemed prepared to kill Ichigo and take on the entire Gotei 13 if she'd made the choice.
So why now -
"I'm waiting, shinigami..." the hand around her throat tightened just a little bit more.
Rukia closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath. "Okay..."