tw: abortion.
The Search for Delos
"… and I now decree that the goddess Leto shall not have any respite; not on terra firma, or the mainland, or any islands at sea, or any place under the sun…"
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They make an odd sight: a couple running into Narita Airport like they're being chased, drenched from the rain outside. There's water dripping from the woman's veil, plastering it to skin that's as porcelain-pale as her kimono. The only pop of colour on her is her vivid red lipstick, like a slash of blood. Her arms are wound tightly around the man's neck, whose hair is an eye-catching shade of orange; when he places her down, gently, on one of the many benches that dot the airport, she winces. The passersby can't stop glancing out of the corner of their eyes. It's evident that the woman just came from a wedding— but to whom? Surely not to the man who is barely dressed in a t-shirt and trackpants, sneakers on his feet and a worn travel bag hoisted on one shoulder. But when he lifts his hand to sweep the veil from the woman's face, the ring that glints on his finger is a match to the one on her left hand.
He presses a careful kiss on her forehead, and the people who have been watching them furtively feel the need to look away; such a chaste gesture, this, but there are entire worlds in it that they are not privy to. Her eyelids flutter shut, and when she opens them again, it's to chide him softly about how they mustn't waste time. Even as he leaves, his gaze lingers, and suddenly, everyone else can piece together the narrative themselves.
He asks for two tickets on the next available flight to Korea. There is one in three hours. He pays for it upfront, cash, counting out the crisp, new bills.
There is a story here, plain as day, old as time. The people in the airport do not ask. It is their only gift to the newlyweds, who, clearly, were not supposed to have wed each other.
Incheon International Airport is large and anonymous. Neither of them speak a lick of Korean, but Ichigo's English, three years rusty, is just barely enough to get by. They manage to catch a bus to the city, and once in Seoul, cheap hotels number by the hundreds. They fall into a room and into each other, tired and weary to their bones.
There's nothing said between them as they undress with trembling hands. His palms slide under the veil and peels it from her skin, replacing its cold, wet embrace with the soft touch of his lips. No confessions, no apology; no swearing of everlasting love in the face of all adversary. They've said all they need to say to with the weight of their shared history, with the wordless exchange of the rings. Ichigo's hips grind an impossible promise into hers, and she responds in kind; when he finally slides into her for the first time, inch by inch, the sob that leaves her is more relief and aching pleasure than fear or worry. Here, in this little stretch of infinity, there is nothing else in the world; they are their own universe, the beginning to the end.
In the aftermath, however, it is she who asks the question first. In the protective (possessive) cage of his arms, she utters the words with a finality, a dull sort of hopelessness; the resignation in her voice bleeding over like ink on paper.
What now?
Ichigo curls his hand around hers, clinking their matching gold bands together.
Now, he breathes, we run.
Her ankle will need a doctor, or at least, more kido than either of them have proficiency with; Ishida is on exchange at Seoul University. He meets them in the dead of the night and tells them just this once. They will need to run again, as soon as possible. Soul Society keeps tabs on him, or had they forgotten—?
Just this once. Everywhere they go, burning bridges behind them. Urahara's face when he'd caught him sneaking a gigai away is etched into Ichigo's mind. Just this once, Kurosaki-san, I'm looking the other way. Byakuya, who had let him pass without a fight. Just this once, I will let you go. Tatsuki, who had been indignant even as she packed him some of her clothes for Rukia. I can't believe you're doing this to Hime, but just this once— you better be happy, Ichigo. Karin, Yuzu, Goat-chin. Just this once, son. Onii-chan, be well. Ichi-nii, goodbye.
Soul Society will be after them for threatening the fabric of the universe, the Zero Squad calling the shots. There is no chance of outrunning death itself, but impossible fights have always been a forte of theirs. One day, they will run out of connections and options; but just this once, they allow themselves to believe they will get through it together.
They hide out in the outer reaches of Siberia for a while. Then, two months in India, and onto Vietnam; they decide on a primarily english-speaking country next, and spend six months in America. They can't settle in one place for too long; rogue shinigami always stand out, their very presence a disturbance in the spiritscape that any idiot with reiatsu can detect.
This life was not the one that he had wanted to offer her; always on the run, no purpose to their lives beyond staying alive and free another day. Two years into the running, he takes her hand and asks her, voice broken with anguish: are you happy, Rukia? Are you happy?
No, she tells him, and she twines her fingers with his. No.
But at least I am still me.
This gigai, this frustratingly, needlessly human shell; susceptible to all sorts of diseases. Rukia empties her stomach for the third time in three hours, and Ichigo calls off work for the day. She sits by the cistern, tired and dehydrated; he hands her a bottle of water and she can barely lift it to her lips.
It's nothing, she says, go to work, Ichigo. I'm taking flu medicine — I'll be better soon —
Rukia, he says, and something in his voice makes her look at him. It's been two weeks now.
She doesn't answer. She doesn't have the strength to.
… Rukia, he says again, and she closes her eyes. The smell of his breakfast wafts in from the kitchen, and she feels like hurling again, even though there's nothing left to throw up. She puts a hand over her mouth and doubles over.
When was the last time you menstruated?
Her eyelids fly open. No, no, no, no, no, no—
Slowly, he hands her a small plastic tube and explains how to use it.
Two lines.
Two lines.
Are you happy, Rukia? Are you happy?
Yes. No. Yes.
She doesn't know.
… can stay another three months here, max. Then we could try Egypt—
Ichigo.
— have to fly out before you get too big for the plane. I think most airlines have restrictions—
Ichigo.
He cuts off mid-sentence to look at her, really look at her. He already knows what she's going to say. They both knew the only option from the start was—
Rukia is crying.
We can't keep her, Ichigo.
They don't bury her anywhere. They can't afford to have a marker, a checkpoint tying them down; there's not much of her anyway, barely a mass of cells and blood. They don't even know yet if it was a she.
They name her anyway. They mourn her anyway. They burn her remains and scatter her ashes over the sea. Neither of them voice the trite hope that it's because this way, it'll feel like they'll have her close by so long as the ocean is near.
… Ichigo, she asks him when they get back home. Why are we running?
Why are they running? Ichigo doesn't remember. He pulls Rukia to him and breathes in sea salt and tears.
They named her Yuki, happiness. When they leave the country, they leave every memory and trace of her behind.
Days pass, and blur into weeks into months into years. Ichigo grows a beard and cuts it off. She picks up snatches of languages from all over the world. Ichigo may have been the human, born and bred, but nobody knows how to survive like she does. She picks up local mannerisms and assimilates with the best of them in record time; Inuzuri does a number on you and she is still shaking the street out of her despite forty years of Kuchiki schooling. She doesn't remember a time when she hasn't been surviving.
Are Soul Society still looking for them? She doesn't know; they cannot risk finding out. Half a step's hesitation, and they could be both dead. They cannot risk lingering on the off-chance that they have called off the search.
(And who is she fooling, Soul Society is relentless, an undead army of nearly immortal beings who have all the time in the world to comb through it for a single needle, they will never be able to outrun them—)
They pack their bags and move on. If they linger, they are dead.
(If they linger, and nothing happens, then what was Yuki's death even for—?)
It takes ten years and the first gray hair on Ichigo's head for the reality of the situation to finally catch up to them.
Ichi— Ichigo— she stammers, fingers halted in their combing, Ichigo, look.
What? He snorts, waving away her finding, the terrible realisation forming in the back of her mind. Did you think I'd be young forever, Rukia?
Yes. Aging is a concern so far removed from a shinigami's everyday life that the thought hadn't even crossed her mind. She had just assumed — incorrectly — that they could go on living this life indefinitely. But Ichigo is human; not a soul parading around in a gigai. Ichigo is still alive.
Which means that, despite their best efforts to the contrary, he will one day inevitably die.
Her breath is coming short in her lungs. Ichigo—
He sits up properly, concern etching his features. He grips her shoulders and makes her face him. Rukia, are you ok—
Ichigo. She looks him directly in the eye; Ichigo flinches back from her intensity. Why are we running?
He looks surprised. ...Rukia? You know why.
No. No, she doesn't. The past ten years, the uncertainty, Yuki— she doesn't know what it was all for. Not when he'll die, in ten years or fifty, when his mortal lifespan runs out—
Dead people go to Soul Society.
Maybe Soul Society has been chasing them all along; maybe they haven't. Maybe they are biding their time, simply waiting for the moment Ichigo draws his last human breath. He will wake up in Soul Society because that is where dead souls go and if they have him, they have her also. Her heart is always where he is and she does not know why they have been running.
They could run for the rest of their lives and it still wouldn't change a thing.
Are you happy, Rukia?
No. No. But at least I am still me—
— am I?
She manages to sneak in thanks to the last bridge they haven't burned, the only person they have yet to call in a favour from just this once. The first bridge she has ever burned is now her last; there is a sort of symmetry in that that she can appreciate. Shiba Ganju leads her through the back alleys of the Seireitei, masked in a cloaking device, and Rukia breathes in nostalgia and stagnation. She has missed them. She hasn't missed them.
The layers of protective enchantments fall away at the touch of his hand. The Shiba clan are a kido specialist house; the records forget, but they remember. It is one of the reasons they have never got along with the Kuchiki clan, keeper of a forgetful history.
He doesn't ask where Ichigo is. She hadn't wanted to leave him behind, but she cannot involve him in this. In truth, she isn't sure that she can involve him, even if she had wanted to. Sode no Shirayuki is fainter than a memory at the back of her mind, and Ichigo hasn't called upon Zangetsu in years. They can't do this alone, not anymore.
She thanks Ganju, and he warns her that it's just once. You need to run, Kuchiki, he tells her, and she shakes her head.
I am done running.
He leaves, and she steps into the pitch black. The voice slithers out, disembodied; she has no idea which direction it's coming from. It's everywhere, above, below, all around her— with a start, she looks back, and realises she can no longer see the entrance she just stepped in from. She wonders if this was a miscalculation; if she will get out alive.
Well, well, well. In the dark of Muken, blindness is absolute; but somehow, Rukia knows he is smiling. It seems we are truly out of options now.
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That's the end of the story. I have no plans for a sequel. The story of Leto is an old Greek Myth; she is the mother of Apollo and Artemis, the twin sun god and moon goddess of the Greek Pantheon. According to legend, Hera decreed that Leto will not be allowed to give birth 'on terra firma, or the mainland, or any islands at sea, or any place under the sun'. Nowhere on earth would accept her, so Leto had to keep running from place to place while heavily pregnant. Delos is the tiny, untethered island that finally took pity on her and allowed her to give birth.