Evening lowered slowly over the French countryside that was snugged up to the German border, descending on the woman who'd recently freed herself from the tree, but not without a fight.
Rukia had spent ten minutes easing up on individual parachute straps to create enough slack in the taut nylon straps in order to unbuckle the snaps at her waist, shoulders, and straddle strap of the harness. After the last waist nylon was freed, she was allowed to drop the twelve feet to the root-riddled ground of oak and elm trees, which left her with a slight limp for the first half hour of her wanderings. She had little choice of avenues, and as her eyes rested on the tops of the mountains over the treetops where she'd last seen the Huey head, she chose that direction.
Her wanderings led her eventually to a railroad track that opened up along a wide gulley where the forest thinned after nearly an hour of foot travel. In that time her mind had covered more ground than her feet. Foremost in her thoughts, after the scrapes and scratches on her arms and chin from her ascent into treetop hell, was Ichigo with-no-last-name.
She closed her eyes, fighting tears as she stumbled up the bank the railroad track was perched on in the thickly weeded gulley. "You can't be dead, Ichigo," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. "Please don't be."
She wiped her hands on her skirt, the hem hanging torn in a few spots, her purse still intact, but the straps frayed and twisted from her freefall. She clutched it closer, feeling the pouch of stones and packet of money inside. Everything was still there. She'd checked it.
Her eyes went down the tracks heading south that disappeared around a curve into the treed gulley of high weeds, and then to the tracks going northward into the growing dusk where the gulley dissolved away to higher sides of the foothills, running as far as she could see into the trees.
She sighed and headed off north.
"Oh, I'll go with you to France," she said aloud, mimicking herself chidingly as she recalled her own words from a few days back, scowling as she made her way over the uneven ties crossing the track rails amid the large gravel. "I can't wait two or three weeks. As long as Michael doesn't find out." Her frown intensified, fingers gripping the purse tighter. "Damn you, too, Michael."
Rukia cussed him out over and over for the next half hour, each time replaying words from his last confession, his last heartfelt apology, his last affair with that tramp from down town. She mumbled the words aloud until her mouth was dry, her lips tired from four letter words, their impact still leaving her numb.
She took the slight turn of tracks that made an elongated gentle bend into the darkening hollow of tree-lined rails that closed tunnel-like into the foothills near the German border. Quiet night slowly fell over the tracks, deepening thoughts of assorted fears in her mind, the only light coming from half a moon overhead in the clear heavens.
Sounds of gravel shifting ahead in the dark made Rukia halt, her senses tensing as footsteps approached. She didn't breathe as she darted hastily down the raised track bed and into the thick thickets of bushes to the side. She crouched low as the steps neared, a two-legged animal, she knew.
A tall figure became visible a moment later out of the darkness, male in form. Rukia estimate its bearing for a few steps more, and then stood up slowly.
Ichigo stopped abruptly on the railroad tracks, attentions snapping to the short outline of someone in the thicket to the side. After a few seconds he grinned and jumped off the tracks and half tumbled down the bank to where she stood.
"Hey! You're all right!"
Rukia had no chance to move as he reached her before she was certain it was even Ichigo, and then her instincts took hold. She shoved his chest with both hands, which did little more than make him take a step back.
"Ugh! All right?!" She glared up at him in the moonlight. "What is your idea of all right?!"
His voice changed to concerned. "Are you hurt?"
"You pushed me out of a helicopter!" She made another shove at him, but he caught one of her wrists.
"You had a 'chute on, Rukia. It's not like --"
"I don't know anything about parachutes!" She made a wild wave, throwing off his hand, her fierce look lost on him in the poor light. "You didn't even tell me how to open the damn thing! What if it didn't snag?"
"It didn't snag." He reached for her wrist again, this time in a tighter grip that she didn't shrug off, pulling her with him as he climbed up the bank back to the tracks. "It's designed to open on its own. The static line connected to the 'copter pulls it for you." His hand moved from her wrist to her hand, closing firmly around her fingers so they were cupped in his. "Well, Division Five knows we're here. Don't worry about who they are. The less you know the better."
They followed the tracks back the way Ichigo had come, the moon lighting their way well enough to follow, but not showing the unevenness of the ties and gravel, making Rukia slip a few times. Ichigo steadied her gait as they walked, sounds of night insects around them increasing.
"We can't go back to Paris," he said after a moment. "We've got to get you home."
"What about the buyer in Germany?" she asked, fingers gripping his tighter as she stumbled over a tie.
He sighed. "Not now. There's too much attention on us. I'll get the money and buy the stones from you later." He looked down at the top of her dark head. "But we've got to get you out of here."
After a few moments they fell into step together, her shorter strides not matching his longer ones, but he slowed hi pace to keep with her. She looked to her hand locked in his, her eye catching the rips at his short sleeves, the few tears at his collar.
She looked up at him, able to see little of his facial features in the dark. "Are you all right, Ichigo?"
"Yeah." He gave her a grin.
Her attention returned to their progress on the next slight curve in the tracks ahead. He was alive, and it set her mind more at ease than she anticipated, bringing a slight smile to her face and a small giggle.
He looked at her, hand squeezing hers. "That's what I thought."
Her attention shot to him. "What?"
He nodded, grin widening at her look of confusion. "You liked it."
She made a mock sigh of exasperation. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ichigo."
He leaned down and said in her ear, "The jump. You liked it."
She smiled more, blushing in the dark as he straightened beside her. "Well, when it opened ... I was still scared, but -- It was so quiet coming down," she said with a wistful sigh, her steps bringing her closer to his side. "I've never done anything like that before."
His eyes went to the side of her face and he picked a few loose twigs out of her dark hair. "You did fine."
The helicopter had crashed just France side of one of the shorter Vosges mountains on the border with Germany, leaving metal and glass debris scattered over acres of angular siding for the emergency crew to rummage through.
They'd found little that helped Aizen and Esparo as they stood among the French medical personnel, but the few things they did not find were of more assistance. Aizen looked over the crash site where temporary high beam lights were erected to illuminate the crushed body of the helicopter and mangled debris.
Around him medical staff was jabbering in French, largely ignoring him and Esparo, most shaking their heads at the piles of bodies on two stretchers to the side of one ambulance van. Aizen joined Esparo at one of the stretchers where the younger agent was speaking by phone with Shoren.
"They already identified that one as Grimmjow," Esparo said to Aizen with a thumb jerk to the stretcher nearest the van's rear doors where a body bag lay with remains. "Badge and all."
Aizen nodded, eyes on the lump of distorted flesh that was a human body on the stretcher at his feet. "This is either Kurosaki or the pilot." He knelt beside the body bag that was half unzipped. He took a pen knife out of his pants pocket. "Let me speak to her."
"I'm turning you over to Aizen," Esparo said into the phone before handing it to Aizen. "D5 dispatch is sending over a kit to I.D. this one."
"Don't need it." Aizen held the phone to his ear. "Hold on, Shoren."
Esparo squatted beside the stretcher, a grimace forming as Aizen finished unzipping the bag.
"Kurosaki's tag is still active," Aizen said, using the knife to pick through the bulkier lumps in the bag where the skull was still in a larger piece than much of the rest. The tip of the blade lifted a few pieces of red and white substance as Aizen made a cursory search.
Esparo swallowed down his repulsion and glanced to the older agent before his eyes went back to the blade searching through the matter.
"He's heading for Germany, according to the last scan five minutes ago, on foot, judging from the slow progress," Aizen determined, intent on his digging. "When he reaches there we can extradite without problem."
"He's making more progress than that," Shoren said over the radio. "An American sounding like Kurosaki just purchased a train ticket under the name Robert Taylor, Aizen. Station is four miles from your location, dinky little town. We'll lose him if he takes an underground."
Aizen raised the tip of the knife blade, on it resting a spent bullet covered in red and white matter. "There it is, Ryan," he said, holding the flattened round closer to his partner. "I doubt Grimmjow capped the pilot." He held the phone closer, flicking the bullet back into the pile of soft flesh that had been the pilot. "When does the train leave, Shoren?"
"Fifteen minutes, with ten minutes in he'll have access to an underground junction."
Aizen stood up, sending an irritated glance around at the emergency crew milling around in the usual crash scene confusion. "Dammit, okay, have train security hold him on charges of killing an American pilot on French soil, Shoren. I'll deal with the politics later."
Ichigo and Rukia reached the train station at the base of the Vosges Mountains after dark, both looking less than par, in clothes that appeared to have been taken off the nearest homeless couple, and more than a little irritated at their trek. Ichigo raided the nearest snack machine and supplied them with packets of peanuts, stale candy bars, and a tepid liquid passing for hot chocolate after they'd made an effort at cleaning up in the public restrooms.
The station that popped up at the borderline village of a town they'd happened upon was small but adequate for the tiny town, barely a stop on the infrequent runs of passenger trains, the lobby no more than a few benches and the ticket counter that resembled something out of a an old film. Ichigo waited for Rukia to get as comfortable as possible on the wooden bench before approaching the ticket counter, where the elderly lone clerk watched them suspiciously, eyes narrowed as he patted his sparsely crowned head of hair.
Rukia held her purse in her lap, pulled close to herself as she hungrily devoured the nut infested chocolate covered candy bar, cheeks bulging as she watched Ichigo at the ticket counter. They were the only passengers waiting besides a huddle of three obese men at another bench against the far wall who were sleeping off the effects of a drinking binge, and there was little to look at in the small out-dated room except for posters and signs on the walls written in French and German.
She felt only a little less grungy from their three mile hike along the dark tracks, and her feet were aching from walking out all the sensibility of her low-heel flats. She raised the paper cup of lukewarm chocolate beverage and inhaled it in a slurp, coughing some at its weak flavor.
"So much for European cocoa," she mumbled, casting a glance at the decrepit-looking security camera parked in one corner of the ceiling, angled at the double-door entrance with a clear shot at the dark sidewalk outside.
Not much going on in town, she thought. There'd only been a few lights on in the tall buildings as she and Ichigo had arrived in town, and those were all at the tavern.
Ichigo finished up at the counter and sat down near her on the bench, sighing as he tore open his own candy bar from the snack machine. "We've got the next train out, departing in twenty-five minutes. Not that I think it'll be on-time," he said, biting off half of the chocolate bar in one chomp. He made a face of disappointment and looked disdainfully at the candy. "This is awful."
She scooted his hot cocoa that was on the bench between them closer to his leg. "This is worse."
He nodded, eyes falling over her face for a long moment as he chewed. "You look more put together." He put a finger to her chin, estimating the small scratches there, turning her head. "Not too bad for your first jump."
She rolled her eyes, one hand combing her hair still mussed from the long walk as his hand went back to his beverage. "I want a shower."
He nodded and sat back on the bench, one arm resting behind her along the wood. "We'll get across the border and find lodging at a nicer place than they've got here, Rukia."
"I hope so." She ripped open the bag of peanuts, glancing to the doors as a commotion was heard at the sidewalk outside. "Maybe the train's early."
Ichigo was watching the doors, too. "Maybe the bar crowd."
They watched as four policemen appeared on the sidewalk outside, all looking in at the pair on the bench before pushing through the doors. The blue-uniformed men looked to Ichigo for a moment, and then to the sleeping men farther on, before passing them and proceeding to the counter.
Ichigo didn't turn to watch them, but his senses pricked as they passed, hearing their low murmurs in French quicken. He finished the candy bar and crumpled the wrapper in his hands, leaning closer to Rukia as his arm dropped behind the bench backing.
"Don't say anything," he said in a low tone as she ate the last few peanuts, eyes wide on his as he spoke. For a moment he fought the urge to say other words, but time was of the precious so he said, "Remember, you don't know me."
"What are you talking about?" she asked, eyes searching his as she turned to look at the policemen behind her at the counter.
Two of the policemen were facing her, watching them without expression while the other two spoke with the clerk there, all three nodding in agreement. The two looked up from the clerk and leveled their attention on Ichigo, hands on their night sticks and gun holsters. There was a short command in French, and all four men advanced on the pair at the bench.
Rukia looked to Ichigo, who was still watching her with a peculiar interest, and was about to speak when a shout went up from one of the policeman.
"Hands in the air, please!" he said briskly in precise, heavily accented English, drawing his gun as Ichigo reached for Rukia's hand on the bench.
She made a whimpering sound as another man drew his gun and barked a command in French. Ichigo leaped to his feet and snatched Rukia around the waist, pulling her in front of him and facing the men with her as a shield.
His tight hold nearly knocked the breath out of her. "Ichigo, what are you --"
"Shut up and act scared. Back up," he said, burying his words in her hair by her ear, dragging her backwards as he withdrew toward the door.
"Halt!" the first man called out as they slowly closed in on the pair, matching Ichigo's slow retreat as he forced Rukia's stumbling steps. "Let the woman go!"
Rukia's hands clawed at Ichigo's tight embrace behind her, feeling his face still at her ear, confusion engulfing her plight. "I don't --"
"Don't be afraid," he said, his words belying his actions. "When we get to the door, run. Fight me. Get on a flight home later."
"Halt!" the first policeman demanded, taking several brisk steps as the other three drew their guns, spreading out across the room as the clerk ducked behind the counter. He looked to the officers and gave a command in French. All three men holstered their guns, leaving him alone armed, still brandishing the gun at Ichigo. "Let her go!"
Rukia frowned, trying to twist to see Ichigo better, but he only pulled her closer to the door. "But, Ichigo --"
"Shut up and do it," he said, arms tightening roughly until she squirmed against him, fingernails etching into his arms at the bruising hold. "Understand?"
She nodded and tried to push his arms from her waist. He bumped back against one of the doors as her struggles increased, letting her break away after she elbowed him in the ribs.
Against her fleeting judgment, Rukia bolted past him, through the door out onto the dark sidewalk as the policemen rushed Ichigo and descended on him with their night sticks. She looked back as he was tackled to the ground, and then obeyed his last words to her.