Chapter 3: Desire is a Fickle Thing

Beads of sweat rolled down the curve of Rukia's neck as she ran as far as her legs could carry her at maximum speed. After alerting the prison guards of the traitor, she bolted out of the prison as quickly as she could to get Ichigo some medical attention. If anyone could help him out of his current state, it was probably Urahara, she thought. The eccentric shopkeeper probably knew more than anyone else what Aizen was capable of and this made Rukia all the more certain that she needed to get to him, fast!

'Aizen, you bastard!' She cursed as she shunpoed non-stop across the night sky over Sereitei. She cocked her head to the side to get a better look at her companion's face which was still hanging over her shoulder, paralyzed with a look of despondence.

'I really hope that this isn't something he can't fix.'

Upon reaching the gate to the human world, she skidded to a halt to catch her breath. She was fighting hard to not cave into the fatigue that was caused by the prison's spirit-absorbing stones, but try as she might to hold her ground, her legs were beginning to buckle beneath her.

'Stay strong,' She urged herself.

She ordered the guards of the Senkaimon to quickly unseal the gates. They had barely opened it by a crack when the small vice-captain mustered up what little strength she had left and made an impressively mad dash right through it.

"Hang in there, Ichigo!" she implored, as the pitter-patter of her feet against the ground echoed throughout the Senkaimon in tune with her repetitive mantra of 'please...please...please…'

She eventually spotted the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and a large wave of relief instantly washed over her. Almost there! With a burst of energy, she tumbled through the exit, and found herself just miles above the shoten.

'Thank goodness.' She let out a sigh, and was about to take another step forward when her vision suddenly began to blur.

"No…" she groaned, upon realizing that Muken had stripped her of so much energy that she was already at her limit. Seeing that they were going to fall, she used the very last of her strength to reposition Ichigo so that she could shield him from the impact of hitting the ground.

'Ichigo.'

Rukia held him tightly, her heavy lids drifting shut, as she braced herself for the impact.

To her surprise, she did not feel her bones crack into a hundred pieces, instead her body had actually hit something soft, warm, and nothing like the concrete that she was expecting.

"Kuchiki. Ichigo. Can you hear me?" a strong female voice commanded.

A gentle but firm hand shook her shoulder and Rukia feebly cracked open her eyes to see none other than the former captain of Soul Society's covert ops kneeling over them with a stern, worried expression on her face as she tried to assess their situation.

"Pl-please. We need to see Urahara," Rukia managed to choke out.

Yoruichi's gaze wandered over to the young man in the noble girl's arms and paused when she noticed his unresponsive demeanor. She placed a palm over his forehead. There was something definitely wrong, but that was all she could tell.

With a sigh, she turned her attention back to Rukia, who was struggling to not pass out again, and gave her a weak reassuring smile.

"You did well, Kuchiki." She placed her hand over the vice-captain's eyes and casted a kidou to make her sleep. "Now rest. We'll see what Urahara says about this."

"I can't do anything about this."

The mysterious shopkeeper kept his face hidden behind his wooden fan as he said this. If he was right, the lovely Yoruichi-sama was not going to be pleased with his answer.

As expected, something, particularly a sandal, flew past the shopkeeper's ear, and lodged itself into the wall behind him, leaving a huge crater in its wake.

"What do you mean you can't do anything about this?" Yoruichi berated, readying another sandal in her hand to throw at him.

"I'm saying I personally cannot do anything to save him, but…!" he quickly added the 'but' when he saw Yoruichi raise her hand again. "On the other hand, Kuchiki-san can!"

"Kisuke, quit beating around the bush and explain yourself!"

"Aizen has induced a coma in Ichigo with the remaining particles of the Hogyoku. I'm not sure how he managed to do that within Muken but anyway, as you know, the Hogyoku grants one's deepest desires. With such a power fueling his coma, it's only fair to assume that Ichigo-kun is trapped in his fantasy. And I believe that only the people who appear in this fantasy are the ones who can reach his consciousness and wake him up."

"And so...Kuchiki comes into play because this boy is most likely stuck in a dirty dream about Byakubo's sister?"

"Yoruichi!"

Urahara exclaimed with mock indignancy as he began to fan himself rapidly at the steamy suggestion. "I implied no such thing! But even if I didn't," He flashed her a handsome smirk, "you and I both know that if anyone's bound to make an appearance in Ichigo's fantasy world, it's likely Kuchiki-san, no?"

The cat-woman sighed.

"That's true." She admitted, shaking her head and clicking her tongue, "This boy can take on the very best of the Gotei 13 AND Aizen, but he can't even confess his feelings to a girl? Such a shame…In any case," her golden eyes flickered over to the unconscious boy once again,"what does Kuchiki have to do?"

"You will see very soon, my dear Yoruichi." The blonde ex-captain replied with an enigmatic look on his face. "Ichigo-kun's life is not necessarily in any danger so time is not of the essence. We'll let Kuchiki-san rest up first. Then we shall begin the infiltration!" He explained somewhat cheerfully, looking a tad too excited, as he left to go find some long-lost invention of his that was buried somewhere among his other infrequently-used knick-knacks.

The violet-haired woman merely scratched her head in confusion and shrugged. Well…it seems like he knows what he's doing.

She looked back at the comatose young man, and a tinge of worry began to tug at her heart.

'Kisuke, this better work. Isshin's not going to like this, not one bit.'

"Ichigo…Ichigo..." A sweet alto voice purred into his ear, slowly drawing him out of his slumber. His eyelids quivered as they began to crack open but cringed shut again when the sight of a blindingly white room came into view.

"Ugh...where am I?" He groaned, rubbing the back of his stiff neck, as he forced himself to a sitting position so that he could get a better look at his surroundings which consisted of nothing but the incredibly plush, white-and-black, emperor-sized bed that he was currently resting on, and an arched door to the left of him. Strange… but wherever he was, it felt safe.

"You're finally awake," he heard a most familiar voice sigh, as he felt their warm body shift next to him.

Glancing down, he was met with none other than the sight of his petite nakama peering back at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Rukia!" The strawberry-blonde daikou yelped in surprise, earning an amused giggle from the woman.

"Did you rest well?" she uttered, as she reached up to cup his face with her soft dainty hands.

Surprised by her tenderness, Ichigo instantly shied away from her touch, but it didn't stop his face from reddening from the intimate contact.

"Oi! Wha-what's gotten into you?" He stammered, unable to meet her eyes, but was soon met with a completely different predicament of figuring out where else to look since she was only wearing a loosely-tied white yukata that was revealing way too much skin for his heart to handle. Much to his surprise, she answered him by letting her small dainty fingers grip onto the black collar of his Shihakusho, and with a strong sudden tug, she pulled his entire upper body closer to her own.

"Rukia, what are you...?" he wondered aloud, but was quickly cut off by her warm soft lips moving hungrily against his own.

For a good second, his brain was completely numb. The woman he loved was kissing him! Kissing him, of all people! The thought itself made him feel dizzy with both shock and euphoria, but he quickly overcame it as he found himself embracing her in return.

Almost instinctively, he tightened his arms around her tiny waist to close the remaining distance between them and roughly returned her feverish kisses with his own. Despite his lack of experience, he managed to coax a throaty moan out of his fair-skinned lover. Pleased with her reaction, he kissed her again and this time he took his time to relish in how sweet and soft her lips were. Again and again, he ravished her lips until they were both almost breathless. It was only then did their osculation slow down to gentle playful nips at each other's lips before they completely parted and rested their foreheads against each other.

"Rukia..." he groaned, licking his bruised lips, "That was…"

"Not bad." She smiled contently with a pretty flush on her face.

He furrowed his brows at her in mock-hurt.

"You can never compliment outright, can you?"

"Of course not," She replied cheekily, before pulling away from him to give him a prodding kick to the caboose. "Now get out of bed. Soul Society is going to suffer if its king continues to be a sloth." She laughed.

In his lovey-dovey state, Ichigo goofily chuckled out a "...yeah" but then did a double take when he finally realized the full weight of her words.

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"You have work to do, what else?" she replied haughtily, shrugging her yukata more tightly over her shoulders, as she crawled out of the bed to properly tie the garment in place.

"No, I mean, what does the soul king have anything to do with us?"

Rukia shot him an incredulous look before it morphed into one of worry.

"Did you hit your head, Ichigo? You're the soul king." She asked, cautiously.

"Since when?" He yelped, his eyes widening in shock.

"Since the Quincies assassinated the previous one?" Rukia explained, her tone wary and confused by his odd questions. "The Soul King chose you to be his heir and willed you his powers, you know that."

She placed a soft hand against his forehead.

"Are you sure you're not sick?"

"I…" He felt dizzy. None of this made any sense. The last thing he remembered doing was...he paused. What WAS he doing before he awoke in this room? His eyes scanned around its white walls in hopes of searching for something to jog his memory but nothing came to mind. His gaze eventually landed on the room's only exit.

If what Rukia was saying was true, then…

In an instant, he kicked off the remaining bed sheets and scrambled out of bed as he clumsily fumbled his way out of the room only to end up stepping foot into a hall held up by giant pillars of ivory. He rushed to take a look at the view in between the pillars, and what he saw confirmed everything his companion had told him.

The endless landscape of white fluffy clouds against a blue sky almost took his breath away.

"This is really the main palace of the Royal Realm," he uttered, and in an attempt to assure himself more than anything that he wasn't imagining things, he pinched himself hard.

"Oww!" Yep he was still here.

As he rubbed the sore spot on his arm, he felt a tug at his opposite sleeve.

"Ichigo, if you are not feeling well, I think you should rest." Rukia suggested out of concern. "I'll tell the Royal Guard to continue their duties as usual until you feel better."

"No, I'm fine. I…" he placed his hand over hers, then paused. He had a nagging suspicion that there was something amiss here and he intended to find something, anything, to prove to that he was right. To do that, he couldn't confine himself to an empty room, now could he?

"I'm going to take a walk around," he stated firmly. He looked back down at Rukia and flashed her a small shy grin.

"Care to join me?"

The vice-captain returned his smile with a playful one of her own. "Well...you do seem a little disoriented at the moment, so very well. I will accompany you."

With that said, she laced her fingers through his and together they headed towards the light at the end of the hall.

A/N: How did Aizen pull off a spell in Muken? What is Urahara going to do? How are they going to wake up Ichigo? And what purpose does Ichigo's fantasy serve in Aizen's plan? So many questions! But surely I'll answer them all in the next few chapters, so stay tuned!

P.S. Reviews and critiques are much appreciated. Don't hesitate to let me know if there's a mistake or if you think there's something I should improve on. I'll do my best to keep any advice in mind as I write the next chapter. Thanks!