AN

Okay, first of all, you guys have nothing to worry about. Hanataro is most definitely not the killer, though by the end of this chapter you will be surprised at who is. Your first clue is that the killer's eyes are brown while Hanataro's are blue. Anyway, thanks for all the support and here's the next Chapter!

Disclaimer-I own nothing.

Warning-Character death.

No Escape

Chapter 9

The night wind was cold on Rukia's face as they left the restaurant. Ravioli sat in her belly like a pile of wet cement. Even the smell of the takeout she was bringing home for Kon's evening snack turned her stomach. All she wanted to do was go home, spend some time with Kon as soon as he got back from his study group, and go to bed. Maybe things would look better in the morning.

Then again, maybe she'd lie awake all night trying to figure out what to do now. She'd done what she could to help her friends, and she'd continue to do whatever else she could, but it wasn't enough.

At least Hanataro would be safe. She could count that as a win.

"You look cold," said Ichigo. He put his arm around her and pulled her close as they walked side by side to the car.

It felt good to have him near, and not just because of the warmth radiating from him or the way his hot body fit hers so well. It was more than that-the support of another person who didn't think she was crazy was a precious gift.

"Try not to worry," he said. "I'll find a way to convince the police to keep an eye on Momo's house and places of work. Renji, too," he added with a slight grimace.

Rukia feared that wouldn't be enough. "Maybe after they have some time to think about it, to be afraid tonight, they'll come around."

"I hope you're right."

As they neared Ichigo's car, Rukia felt him slow. Three young men stepped out from where they were crouched behind his car. One of them opened his long coat and took out a baseball bat.

Rukia was staring in shock when Ichigo stepped in front of her and held her behind him with one firm hand on her arm.

"Evening, guys. Admiring my car?" asked Ichigo.

"It's a fine ride. Toss over the keys and no one will get hurt," said the man with the bat. He couldn't have been more than twenty, had light-blue spiky hair and eyes, and an angry glint of violence lit his dark gaze.

"Here you go." Ichigo tossed his keys near the feet of the closest man. "Rukia, go inside."

"No, Rukia," said another young man. "Stay and play with us. We'd love to take you for a ride."

"Go." Ichigo's order was harsh and unyielding.

Rukia backed away, fumbling for her cell phone, which was buried somewhere in her purse.

Before she'd moved five feet, all three men charged Ichigo.

Rukia let out a terrified squeak and tripped over a concrete divider. She sprawled to the ground and a sharp bite of pain tore at her back.

The first man reached Ichigo, who stood in a loose-limbed stance, ready for him. Ichigo went through a smooth series of motions that were nearly too fast for Rukia to see, and the man was left in a moaning heap on the asphalt. She had no idea how he'd moved like that, but he was beautiful in his violence, as if he'd been born for it.

For a moment, Rukia was too shocked to do anything. She'd never seen anything like this before, not even in the movies. Ichigo was incredible. Deadly grace, personified.

This couldn't be real.

The next two guys saw what had happened to their buddy, so they came in at the same time, one wielding that heavy wooden bat. He took a swing at Ichigo's head. Ichigo ducked to the side as if he'd known for a month the blow had been coming. He used his momentum to knock the second guy down with a hard jab of his elbow, but not before the other guy managed to slam his fist into Ichigo's head.

Ichigo stumbled and shook his head as if trying to clear it.

Rukia's hands were clumsy with fear and cold, but they found her cell phone. When she pulled it out, the battery was missing. It must have been jarred loose when she fell on it.

Sirens blasted through the night, getting louder. Someone's hands closed around her arm and she screamed and batted them away.

"Easy," said an older woman. "I'm just trying to help you up."

Rukia looked over her shoulder at the three women who had just walked out of the restaurant. Two of them were talking into cell phones, hopefully calling 911. "Someone needs to help him!" she shouted.

No one moved. Then again, they were all women at least twice her age. What were they going to do?

"Go inside and get help," Rukia ordered the woman at her side.

She pushed herself up, though something along her spine protested the movement. She grabbed a fistful of landscaping stones and shoved them into her purse. No way was she going to sit by and watch as Ichigo got hurt!

She knew he was tough, but three against one? Those were really bad odds, even for a tough guy.

Ichigo was holding his own, keeping his distance from that wicked bat, but he didn't see the man he'd knocked down first rising to his feet behind him.

Rukia took hold of the strap of her purse and started swinging it like a sling. She didn't have to get close enough to reach him-or more importantly, for him to reach her-only close enough for him to worry she might and distract him. If he was forced to deal with her, it would give Ichigo a few more seconds to take care of the two men he was facing.

"Behind you!" she shouted the warning to Ichigo as she neared her target.

Ichigo shifted to cover his flank but didn't look away from the guy with the bat and spiky hair.

The man who was about to go for Ichigo turned and saw Rukia coming for him and, behind her, the crowd of onlookers.

"Shit!" he cursed and lunged for her.

She swung her purse at his arm, but she missed. Her blow glanced off his shoulder and he turned toward her. He was pissed. She could see it in the vicious sneer twisting his mouth and the promise of violence in his eyes.

As he advanced on her again, she took another wild swing. This one connected rather hard against the side of his face, causing his head to jerk to the side and blood to begin trickling from his nose.

"You stupid little bitch!" he shouted and came at her before she knew what was happening. He grabbed her arms hard enough that Rukia thought he might have broken one of them, then he slammed her against the hood of a car. Her head bounced off the hood, stunning her and making stars dance in her now blurry vision.

Security lights floated around overhead, blinding her for a moment. Then she saw the man scramble away, running toward the drycleaner's.

The next thing she knew, Ichigo's furious face filled her vision. His eyes were too bright and a trickle of blood dripped from a cut on his cheeek. "Don't move," he ordered.

Rukia's back ached and her arms throbbed, but there was no serious damage. If she kept lying in this awkward position of being bent backward over the car, that might change. "Let me up."

Was that her voice? It sounded faint and raspy and desperate, not at all like it should have.

Ichigo's fury faded to concern, but his mouth was tight with anger. "Are you hurt?"

"Lying like this hurts. I need to sit up." She pushed against his hold, but all it did was make her back hurt worse.

"All right. Let me help you up. Slowly." He helped her sit up slowly, doing most of the work for her.

Moving hurt, but the pain was already easing. The same could not be said of two of the men who'd attacked. They were lying facedown in the parking lot. Neither one of them moved.

Flashing blue lights and sirens filled the night as several patrol cars pulled in, blocking off the exits. Policemen swarmed the scene. While the first responders checked out the men on the ground, Officers Ukitake and Madarame arrived and headed straight for Ichigo and Rukia, while still more officers began to question the crowd of onlookers.

"You two are magnets for trouble," Ukitake stated. "Wanna tell me what happened here tonight?"

Madarame held his pencil at the ready.

Ichigo's voice was hard and cold. "Three men were waiting by my car when we came out. They attacked first. I fought back."

"I only see two, and there's not much of them left."

"The third one ran off that way," said Rukia. She pointed in the direction of the drycleaner's, but her arm felt so heavy and weak, she could barely hold it up for two seconds.

She was shaking. Cold. Ichigo held her tight, but it didn't help.

Ichigo could have been killed tonight. So could she. Who would take care of Kon if she was gone?

"Were they armed?" asked Madarame.

"Just a bat," said Ichigo.

Ukitake nodded his head in the direction Rukia had indicated. "Check it out, Madarame. See if he's still hanging around."

"I'm on it," said Madarame as he jogged off to cordinate with other officers.

"You all right, Miss?" asked Officer Ukitake.

"Fine," she said, as Ichigo answered, "She needs to be checked out."

"So do you. That cut on your face will need a stitch or two, most likely."

"It'll wait."

Ukitake radioed in that they were going to need an additional ambulance, then asked them, "Any idea why they attacked you?"

"No clue," gritted out Ichigo. "They said they wanted the car, but it was a cover story."

"What makes you say that?" asked Ukitake, narrowing his eyes.

"I gave them my keys and they didn't leave."

Ukitake looked unconvinced but said nothing.

"They might be friends of Yammy," offered Rukia. "If he thought he could get Kon back by taking us out of the picture, he would."

"Did you see Yammy tonight?" asked Ukitake.

"No."

"Have you seen him since last night?"

"No."

"Has Kon?"

"If he has, he said nothing."

Ukitake nodded. "Okay, you guys sit tight and we'll have a paramedic look you over. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Cold wind blew over them, but it wasn't nearly as cold as Ichigo's silence. He was stiff, brittle with tension.

They watched as the two attackers were loaded into ambulances. They still hadn't regained consciousness.

A paramedic came over to them and said to Ichigo, "I'd like to check you out."

"Her first."

The young woman balked at his hard, cold tone but didn't offer any resistance. "Okay. Miss, if you'd come with me."

Rukia didn't want to leave Ichigo, but he urged her forward with the arm around her body, so she went.

Maybe he just wanted to be alone.

The paramedic sat her in the back of the ambulance. She was a pretty girl, maybe twenty-five, with a tall, lean figure, gray eyes and short silver hair.

"Are you hurt anywhere?"

"I scraped my back when I fell, but it's fine."

"Can I look?"

Rukia lifted the back of her jacket and shirt and showed the woman. There were a few dots of blood on her shirt, but no more than she'd have from a skinned knee.

The paramedic gave a sympathetic, "Ouch. That's gotta sting. I should probably take you to the hospital for some x-rays, just to be sure nothing's broken."

"Nothing's broken. I'd know."

"Not always. Adrenaline can mask pain."

A sharp sting radiated out from the small of her back where the concrete had scraped away a patch of skin, but it wasn't that bad. "I'm not even really bleeding. I'll patch it up when I get home, and if I start to hurt, I'll go see my doctor."

"Are you refusing to let me take you in?"

"Yes."

She frowned in disappointment. "Guess I'll check out your boyfriend, then."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Oh yeah? Then why is he looking at me like he'd kill me with his bare hands if I so much as make you wince?" asked the paramedic.

Rukia glanced over at Ichigo and her breath stilled in her lungs. He was staring at her, his jaw hard, his eyes narrow and glittering with anger. His body was tense, and his fists were balled up tight as he stared across the parking lot, giving the paramedic a warning glare.

"That's just his way. He's overprotective."

"Well, hon, I'd suggest you hold on to him with both hands, then, cause guys as hot as that that care as much about you as he clearly does are few and far between."

The paramedic was clearly too young to know the truth. It didn't really matter how much a man cared. They always walked away in the end.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Hanataro packed quickly, taking only a few changes of clothes with him, a few pictures of Rukia. He'd always been a neat person, so gathering his things hadn't taken long. He called his boss's work phone and left a message, claiming he had to leave town for a family emergency.

No one at work knew he didn't have a family, so the lie would work fine. He'd learned a long time ago that people saw him differently-as an outsider-when they knew he was an orphan. As it was, they thought it was odd that he hadn't married, but Hanataro wasn't interested in anyone but Rukia, and she wasn't interested in him.

He accepted it and went on with his life, loving her from a distance, which might not have seemed like much of a life to others, but it was important to him. There was no way he was going to stay here in town with the possibility of a murderer on the loose. If only he'd had the courage to ask Rukia to come with him. He wouldn't have minded leaving town at all with her by his side.

Hanataro had just zipped his suitcase shut when he saw a movement on the far side of his bedroom. He looked up and, reflected in the mirror, he saw a large man covered from head to toe in black, standing in his hallway, right outside the bedroom door.

Panic struck Hanataro statue still, and a pathetic squeak squeezed past his tight vocal cords.

"Don't fight me and this will be a lot easier on you," said the man.

Somewhere in the back of his brain Hanataro found the voice familiar, but a detail like that didn't matter right now. He had to run. Get away.

The only way out was past the masked intruder, so Hanataro made a run for it, hoping his momentum would carry him through.

The man stepped aside as if to let him pass, but just as Hanataro got near him, he lifted something that looked like a small can of Mace and sprayed it in Hanataro's face.

The medicinal smell assaulted his nose and burned his eyes. Almost instantly, his legs went numb and he started to fall. The man caught him before he could slam into the doorframe. "Easy," he said in a mockery of concern. "I don't want you to hurt yourself."

Hanataro tried to move but couldn't. He couldn't even speak. Nothing worked, though his brain screamed at his body to obey.

The man picked him up easily, which scared Hanataro more than not being able to move. Even if he could move, there was no way he'd be able to defend himself against a man so strong.

A sick feeling of helplessness crawled around inside him, taunting him to give up and let go as he'd learned to do as a child. He couldn't do anything to save himself. Whatever the man wanted to do to him was going to happen. Better to accept it like a wounded animal than make things worse by fighting. Prolonging the inevitable.

At least that's what he tried to tell himself so the panic wouldn't eat him alive.

"That's better," said the man as he settled him on the bed, arranging his limbs to a comfortable position.

Recognition sparked again at the sound of his voice, but who he was wasn't nearly as important as what he was going to do.

When he had Hanataro arranged to his liking, he went about unpacking his suitcase, item by item, putting everything back in its place as if he'd lived here for years.

Maybe he'd been watching Hanataro. Maybe he'd been in the house before. Both of those thoughts sent new waves of terror streaking through him. A sour sweat broke out over Hanataro's body.

Slowly, feeling started to return in some of Hanataro's extremities, but he still couldn't move. "Please," he managed to slur out.

The man stopped unpacking and came to the bedside. "It's wearing off already, huh? Well, I guess I'll have to finish straightening up after."

Hanataro didn't have to ask after what. He already knew the man intended to kill him, just as he had the others who had lived with Aizen. "Please don't." It was hard to understand the barbled words, but the man seemed to hear him clearly.

Then again, he'd done this before.

The man leaned down so he was only inches from Hanataro. Tattoos. His killer had tattoos. Familiar tribal tattoos.

Dear God. He did know the man.

It was Renji Abarai.

Hanataro's brain ground to a halt as he tried to assimilate this new data. It didn't make any sense. They'd known each other for years. They'd played together as children. Cried together, too. How could he do this?

"Why?" managed Hanataro.

Renji gently stroked Hanataro's hair with a gloved hand. "Because you need my help to escape. We're brothers. I won't let you suffer anymore."

Suffer? Hanataro had no idea what he was talking about. He tried to say it, but his mouth barely worked. He was too panicked, and his throat just clamped down, refusing to let out any air.

Hanataro told himself to be calm. Relax so he could speak. He could figure a way out of this, maybe convince Renji to let him go. "Not suffering."

Renji frowned. Hanataro saw his cheekbones shift under the thin black mask-not a ski mask-something else that was smooth and lightweight, covering almost everything but his eyes. "You've been suffering so long you don't even realize it anymore. But I know. I was there." He leaned down close enough that Hanataro could see tears welling in Renji's eyes. "I should have helped you escape before. I'm sorry about that, but I was too afraid. I didn't want to get caught before I could finish helping all of you." He swallowed and blinked back tears. "I'm not a coward anymore, Hanataro. I've learned a lot from the criminals I defend. I know how to not get caught now, and I'm going to take care of you."

Renji was insane. Hanataro had no idea what he meant by all of that except for the fact that it made him certifiable. He stopped wasting valuable energy trying to talk and screamed instead, hoping a neighbor would hear him.

Renji clamped his hand over Hanataro's mouth, but not hard. "Shhh. Be still. There can't be any bruises. I'll spray you again if I have to," he warned. "I can stay as long as it takes."

As long as it takes. That was possibly the most frightening thing Hanataro ever heard. No one would look for him for days. Weeks, maybe. The thought of dying was horrible, but not nearly as bad as dying slowly, painfully.

He couldn't let that happen.

Hanataro screamed until he was out of breath, and Renji's hand over his face made it even harder to breathe. Soon he was dizzy and on the verge of passing out. He was panting when Renji moved his hand from Hanataro's face. "Are you done now? Or should I get the spray?"

Hanataro said nothing but stayed quiet. He didn't want another dose of that stuff, not when the first one was finally wearing off. If he couldn't move, he had no chance of getting out of this.

"Good," said the man. "You lie still and I'll be back in a minute."

He disappeared into the bathroom, and Hanataro heard him going through the medicine cabinet. From the bathroom, he said, "I would have taken you for the antidepressants kind of guy, Hanataro. You surprise me." He came out and stood in the doorway with the belt to Hanataro's robe hanging from his gloved hands. "Don't worry. I know how to improvise. You won't suffer much longer. I know how hard it is to wake up to the nightmares every night. To feel the weight of his body holding you down again. Hurting you. To smell his excited sweat and feel his breath hot on your skin as he pants like a dog."

Hanataro knew what he was talking about now. The images Renji painted were all too familiar. Sosuke Aizen must have molested Renji, too, only it had apparently driven Renji over the edge.

Hanataro's mouth was starting to cooperate, though his speech was slurred. "I got help, Renji. The nightmares are gone. I'm better now. You can be, too. Let me help you."

Renji's eyes welled with tears. "There is no help for me yet. Not until all the others are free."

Hanataro struggled to move. If he could just push Renji away, he might be able to make a run for it. "Please. You don't have to do this."

His arm twitched, but that was all he could coax from it.

"Yes, I do. If you were sane, you'd see that."

"You're the one who's insane."

A bright, cold light spilled from Renji's eyes. "I'm saving you, and you thank me by insulting me? How dare you?"

Renji looped the fabric belt around Hanataro's neck and tied it. "You're ungrateful. Just like the rest."

Tears slid down Hanataro's face. "I want to live."

Renji jerked the belt tight, cutting off Hanataro's air. Through the thin mask, he could see the determination harden Renji's features. "No, you don't. You're just afraid to die. You're a coward."

Renji lifted his hand and sprayed another dose of that stuff in Hanataro's face. His body went limp. Numb. He couldn't seem to pull in enough air.

"But don't worry. I'll help you. You're my brother. I love you too much not to."

AN

Does that answer your questions. I will say right now that I'm very sorry for the Renji lovers, hell I love him too most of the time, but just think about him when we were first introduced to him in the anime when he was attacking Rukia. Don't tell me he didn't seem just a bit crazy. Anyway, I've seen Renji be the villain in other stories before and I needed the guy to be someone very close to Rukia. This story is very far from being finished, so I hope you don't stop reading just because you don't like the villain. I'm sorry if that does happen, but there's still much more strife as well as passion in store for Ichiruki. Well, I've said all I could say, so please review.