When you mess with fate

Chapter 18

A/N: I do not own Bleach and its characters. If I did... Never mind…

"Where were you, Ichika?"

"Okaa-san..." Ichika gasped.

Rukia crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes travelled to and fro between the two people standing outside Ichika's residence.

"What are you doing here?" she asked the male shinigami.

"I'm just dropping Ichika off after dinner at my place," he replied steadily.

Rukia glanced at her daughter. "You didn't tell me you had an appointment with him."

Ichigo scowled at the displeasure in her voice. "Isn't she adult enough to make her own decisions?"

"She's my daughter. I wanted to take her out for dinner but I found her missing when I came to look for her," she replied.

"Okaa-san..."

"Don't you have that thing called a jigokucho you could use to find out where she is?"

"Otou-san..."

Upon hearing the way Ichika addressed Ichigo, Rukia pursed her lips and sent a soft glare at him. "Thank you for bringing her home. You may leave."

Ichika glanced timidly at her father who stared back at the small woman with her intimidating stance.

"Please leave, Kurosaki. I need to speak with my daughter," Rukia said, quietly.

Ichigo continued to regard her in silence for a moment before he nodded and turned to walk away in reluctance.

As she exited her daughter's home after a brief chat, she felt a jolt as the edges of her reiatsu was gently brushed with another, beckoning her towards its owner.

Inhaling deeply, Rukia shut her eyes to let her senses guide her to where the other spiritual energy was tugging at hers. "The Sokyoku Hill," she whispered before she flash-stepped to that place she hardly visited anymore. Almost 50 years ago, this was the place where she broke the news of the sealing of the senkaimon to him.

"Promise me you won't freak out?" she requests.

He scoffs. "When you ask me that, it simply means you know I will freak out. I can't promise you anything, then. What is it?"

She drags out a breath, steadies herself, and says, "Kyouraku-soutaichou has issued a decree to seal the senkaimon tomorrow."

He furrows his brows as he looks at her. "Meaning?"

She touches a palm to his face. "Ichigo, they are ceasing all travels between the human world and the Seireitei after you leave."

"For how long?" he asks, his voice trembles a little. From the look on her face, he already knows this is going to have a horrible impact on their relationship.

"No one knows yet. It is to prevent Yhwach's deadly reiatsu from going across to your world," she replies. Your world, she says. Because that's how it is, still. They are both from two separate worlds. The man who wanted to merge those two worlds, they had already had him killed.

Ichigo shakes his head very slowly, it almost looks like he doesn't move at all. "The guy is dead. I'm sure his reiatsu will eventually die with him."

"Yes, it will. But what's left of him is huge and it's scattered all over the Seireitei. It will take many, many years for it to completely die off. And because Seireitei is struck so bad, it'll take even longer for that to happen," Rukia explains.

"So, what now? I'm not allowed to come back here to visit you?"

"I'm sorry," she chokes.

He takes her hands in his. "I'm going to find a way to come back. It's what I always do."

"Ichigo..." She draws his hands up to her lips and kisses his fingertips. This time she can feel the stinging in her eyes. It is so hard. They are both trying to stay calm. Ichigo is trying to think of a solution. But she knows there isn't any except to wait it all out. "I know it's not going to be easy. But I need you to do something for me."

He swallows. He doesn't nod. He knows Rukia is going to suggest something incredulous.

"Please go home and live a normal life. You deserve that. You don't even have to be a shinigami anymore. There will be some Visored stationed there to perform konso. The Arrancar has agreed not to enter the human world anymore and feed only on the souls that are sent to Hueco Mundo. A small gateway to cross over here will be built but it is only for those plusses with very little reiatsu. So, don't even think of dying prematurely to get here. That gateway won't be able to hold yours," she pleads.

He takes his hands back and folds his arms across his chest. He wants to shut her out because he cannot accept what she is telling him to do. "What normal life? Right now, this is the only life I know that's normal to me. How long did they say it would take for that damn energy to disappear, Rukia?"

"Maybe even a hundred years." She, too, crosses her arms. She does it to prevent her walls from crumbling. She can almost hear the cracks now.

"No," he says defiantly. "I'm sure Mayuri will come up with something."

"He is trying to but it will take time. We need to repair his lab before he can start his research. And even if there is a way he can speed it up, it'll still probably take one lifetime of yours before the senkaimon can be opened again." She grips the sleeves of her shihakusho.

"I cannot live like that. I cannot go back and think everything is okay when I know I may not see you again. If that's the case, I'd rather stay here."

Why is he so stubborn? Then again, it is this part of his character that attracts her to him. He is always so determined, so persuasive.

She smiles but her lips twitch as she tries to hold back a sob. "You're not dead yet, idiot. You can't stay here. It will interfere with the balance of souls. Besides, your sisters need you. Our friends need you. You need to go home," she pauses as her voice begins to quiver. "Continue your studies. Get a job. Date. Marry a human girl. Have a bunch of kids and live till you're old and grey before you die a happy death."

A tear escapes Ichigo's eye. It's not fair. They just started this thing that they have always wanted. Their promise. Their covenant. Why is fate such a cruel thing? "You're asking too much of me, Midget," he says through gritted teeth.

Rukia stepped onto the familiar plane on top of the hill where she was once condemned to die. She often wondered what would've happened if the orange-haired hero never showed up to intercept her execution. That same orange-haired hero who had defeated Aizen. The same orange-haired hero who had destroyed Yhwach. The same orange-haired hero she had fallen for once upon a time. The same orange-haired hero who had proposed to her even when he knew they couldn't be together. That same orange-haired hero who's standing at the edge of the hill, whose reiatsu had called for her to come to him in this very place where he knew she used to find peace.

She stood at quite a distance behind him, not trusting herself not to break down if she got any closer. She had missed seeing him like that; the wind ruffling his long mane and the black shihakusho that he always looked so at home in. She hadn't noticed how he looked earlier tonight when he had dropped Ichika off at her home.

The slim but well-built, tall figure turned around to smirk at her. "Hey."

Rukia crossed her arms over her chest, her fingers fiddled with the fabric of her white haori. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she returned, "Hey."

Ichigo's lips tilted a bit as he started to move closer to her, but her rigid posture stopped him a few feet away. His reiatsu once again reached out to her even though hers was keeping still around her form. "I'm glad you came. It's good to see you again."

Rukia nodded as her searching eyes glanced around him before returning to his serene features, which ironically looked more alive than when he was still human. She had not seen him like that in a long time. This was the look of the old Ichigo who had just returned from a mission of some sort with relief that the threat had been taken care of and people were safe again.

"Sit down with me," he said. As always, he never asked. It was always an invitation. Because he knew she could never turn him down.

The two sat beside each other, Ichigo with his knees propped up and Rukia in a seiza, with the slippers – which she had removed from her feet – to cushion her knees from the rough surface of the ground. For a long moment, they enjoyed the familiar silence from years ago. Ichigo had not planned his speech because he thought he never needed to, with Rukia. Even if they were to stare out into the distance under the starless sky with only the sound of the cool breeze rustling past them the entire night, it would've been enough for him. He missed this. He missed them. He missed her.

"I'm sorry," she exhaled.

Ichigo turned his head to gaze at the woman beside him.

"For not telling you about Ichika," she continued. "I know it wasn't fair to you that I kept it to myself but I couldn't tell you when I heard you were happily married with your own kid."

"You know you got two things wrong in that sentence, right?" he snorted.

She huffed, "I know now that Kazui isn't your son."

"And that I wasn't exactly happy."

Rukia pursed her lips, unsure of what to say to that.

"I'm sorry, too. I should've waited," said Ichigo.

"We didn't know."

"Ishida said I should have had faith."

"He's only saying that because Orihime chose to marry you."

"I asked her to."

"So did he."

"How did you know?"

Rukia decided not to answer his question. Orihime's letter in the pocket of her haori was weighing her down. She had been carrying it around with her – a reminder of the part she played in her friends' empty marriage. "Why did you do it?" she asked. "Of all the human girls in the world, why did you marry her when you knew you could never love her?"

Ichigo shrugged. "I could never love anyone. Ever. You... I couldn't think straight at that time. I was going crazy, visiting Urahara every other day just to check if he heard anything from you or if there were any news about the situation here letting up. I walked home disappointed all the damn time. So I thought maybe I just had to accept that the gate was never going to open and I would never be able to come here until I've passed on. I thought maybe if I did what you told me to do – if I got married and led a normal life, maybe time would pass me by much faster and I would be able to see you again. That was all I could think of. So when she got pregnant, I thought I'd just adopt the kid. I was messed up. Dad was against it. He told me from the beginning that it would be wrong of me to do it and warned me not to screw things up but I know I did, if Kazui's defiance of me was any indication."

Rukia remained quiet, letting her mind process all his words before she said her piece, "I didn't send you any messages because I couldn't. After Renji and I were engaged, I moved to the Kuchiki house at the Second District where I gave birth to Ichika. We were not allowed to tell anyone that Ichika was yours and the Elders did not want people to make speculations. So we stayed there until the Elders felt that the gossips had died down. Sentarou-san and Renji did all the paperwork at the 13th Division and Nii-sama oversaw the squad while I was away. When the communication lines between Soul Society and the human world was restored, I was told you were married with a kid. I didn't feel it was right to tell you about Ichika because it would certainly ruin your family."

"Would you have told me about her if you knew why I married Orihime?" he asked.

Rukia let out a bitter laugh, shaking her head. "No. Remember that talk we had at the rooftop? I felt that we had made our choices and I really meant it when I told you I was glad you married Orihime. Revealing our secrets then would've made everything complicated. It would've hurt too many people."

Ichigo nodded, not that he agreed that they should've kept all those things from each other but rather that he understood what she meant. "Did you ever find out why we shared the same vision that day?"

Rukia shook her head again. She never brought it up to any of the scientists because she was too afraid of the answer.

"I did," he began. "Yesterday, at my checkup with Mayuri, he asked me if I had encountered anything un-human during my reiatsu suppression and I told him about what we both saw. He said the vision couldn't have been mine. It was yours. I got a sneak peek of it because our souls were once connected and it happened when we were having an argument. But because my reiatsu was not active at that time, the level of my reiryoku was not enough to handle your spiking reiatsu. So I was sent into a trance."

"You said you saw Kazui's hand and a black hole," she reminded.

"I was wrong. I saw a child's hand. Now, that... Now, that I know who Ichika is. I think it was hers. Because the vision was ours. Mayuri said the black hole was our seal of fate."

Silence.

Rukia sighed. "I knew it was Ichika's hand. I'd recognise it anywhere. But I didn't know what that black hole was."

"If we had compared notes, we would've found something," Ichigo commented.

"And what would that have achieved?"

The male shinigami leaned back with his hands on the ground behind him. "For one thing: a better understanding on my part of where we stood in each other's lives. I thought there was no hope anymore for us, Rukia," he replied, causing her to flinch at the sound of her own name coming from his lips. "When I heard the senkaimon was going to open much sooner than we expected, I think I had a nervous breakdown. I knew immediately I made the mistake of not waiting. If I had already been uncertain about the choice I made to marry Orihime, I was pretty damn sure, then, that it was a mistake. My fate of being a human husband and father was sealed because I was being brash again."

Rukia stood up, putting on her slippers and crossing her arms. "I ruined everything for her. I ruined you for her."

"What are you talking about?" Ichigo also got up to his feet. He walked to stand completely in front of her.

"I shouldn't have come into your world. The two of you would've led a perfectly normal life together," Rukia said, still unable to look at his face.

"I don't think so," he disagreed. "I couldn't reciprocate her feelings and she knew that from the beginning of our marriage. She knew my intention to marry her was to help her raise Kazui."

"But if I had never existed in your life, you would've been able to return her feelings," she argued.

"Rukia, I knew her much longer than I knew you. I would've at least liked her way before I met you if I really could return her feelings. But I didn't because I couldn't. I never saw her as anything more than a friend."

"Your feelings could've grown. I was in the way."

Ichigo scoffed, too baffled that she was trying so hard to go against him. He knew she was not that stupid to think he could ever love another. Why was she being so stubborn? "I was a broken person until I met you. I wasn't capable of feeling anything until you came. After the numbness caused by my mother's death, the first feelings I had was directed at you. I was annoyed. I was curious. I was irritated. And then, I was..."

"Overwhelmed by my presence in your life which led to that night and maybe it shouldn't have happened," she summarised for him.

Ichigo crossed his arms; insulted by the way she looked at their relationship. "Are you regretting all that? Those years we were together..."

"We were not together."

"Oh yes, we were."

"We were nakama. We were friends."

"We were never just friends," Ichigo growled, pushing his face forward. "There was always something more between the two of us. You cannot deny that, Rukia. And after all these years, it has not changed one bit. You're shutting yourself in. You're shutting me out. But you cannot ignore what we have."

"How would you know what I am doing?" Rukia tilted her head up, this time she managed to send a challenging glare at him.

"Because I know you," he replied.

"You knew me," she corrected. "You don't know me anymore. It's been almost half a century since the time you thought you knew me. I've told you this before: people change. I have changed."

Ichigo snorted, shaking his head. "You think you have changed. Your reiatsu tells a different story."

"What do you know about what my reiatsu is saying? You're horrible at reading reiatsu."

"I can read yours just fine. Because it's the only one that ever mattered to me."

Rukia was silenced by his declaration. The memory of her near-death experience in the fight with Aaroniero flashed through her mind.

"Besides, Renji said he had to break up with you because you couldn't focus on him."

"Renji is an idiot!" she snarled, turning her face to the side.

"He's an idiot and so are you. But he's a lot wiser than you," he countered before he sighed, "And I owe that guy a great favour for stepping in for me all these while."

Rukia tugged her bottom lip between her teeth as she swiped at the strip of hair that always hung between her eyes, failing to keep it behind her ears for even a second.

"I still can't believe you were able to keep her from me for so long," Ichigo said quietly.

"I told you we weren't allowed to..."

"I know that. It's just... I should've seen it. The resemblance and all."

Scoffing, she faced him again in disbelief. "Ichika does not look like you."

"Ichika has the personalities of both Karin and Yuzu. She has my mother's hair colour. I don't mean to burst your bubble but the only thing Ichika got from you is the colour of her eyes," Ichigo chuckled. "And a bit of that Kuchiki training."

The short shinigami glared at him as she kicked him in the shin.

"Fuck, Rukia! I'm still recovering from your brother's slicing!" he snapped, bending down to rub his sore spot.

Eyes widened, she gasped, "You fought Nii-sama?"

"I didn't even get the chance to. I was not allowed to summon my shikai before my checkup but he went all chire at me anyway," he replied, his hands moved in wide gestures to show that the petals had attacked him all over his body.

Her eyes scanned him from head to toe, actually studying him for the first time since she arrived at the hill. She noticed the healing wounds around his neck and the top part of his chest which was not covered by his shihakusho. They were tiny but a lot. There was also a gash across his cheek. She would've seen it if she hadn't avoided looking directly at him. "You didn't get the Fourth to fix you?"

He shook his head. "They were mostly just shallow wounds I got from charging towards his mushoken. Nothing that wouldn't heal in a day or two."

"Why did you let him cut you?"

Ichigo smirked when he caught a hint of concern in those violet eyes. He reached a palm out to touch her cheek but it was quickly slapped away.

"What are you doing?" Rukia asked accusatively.

He scowled as he retrieved his hand, now clenched in a fist. Sighing, he decided to answer her other question. "I didn't want to fight him. I wanted to ask him to let me see you. The guards told me he ordered them not to let me in when I went to the mansion."

She nodded. "The gifts..." she muttered, glancing away from him.

"Don't mention it," he cut her off. "I finally got to get rid of that awful drawing."

Rukia's hand shot up to hit him on the head but he was quick enough to grab her wrist before it reached him. She grunted at his interception, "Let go of me."

Ichigo tightened his hold on her when she tried to twist her hand out of his grasp. She cast another glare at him and brought the other hand up to attack him only to have that one caught as well.

"I said, let go!" she growled, glaring harder at him causing him to chuckle at the sight of her – a shinigami captain – struggling against him. "It's not funny. Ichigo, please!"

Still keeping her wrists in his grip, the man tensed when she said his name. He lowered their arms and slipped his fingers to intertwine them with hers and pulled her close to him. Rukia was too stunned to fight the motion and soon found herself standing toe-to-toe with him.

"Can we start over?" he murmured as he touched their foreheads together.

Rukia's eyes slid closed, her heart pounding within her chest, and her mind screamed at her to remove herself from him. It wasn't right. His wife had just died not too long ago. What's worse was that for so many years when he was married to Orihime, he couldn't even try to love her because he was still hung up on Rukia. This was all wrong. "I can't," she whispered, shaking her head, taking a step away from him.

Ichigo tightened his fingers around hers, not allowing her to move another inch. "Why not?"

"I cannot get over the fact that I ruined my friends' marriage."

"What are you talking about? Orihime died. It's not like we were divorced or anything."

"But the marriage was not fulfilling for her because you couldn't get over me," she snapped, yanking her hands from him. Immediately missing the warmth, she shoved them into the pockets of her haori. A mistake she made as one of them held Orihime's letter. The corner of the envelope stabbed into her skin as if mocking her.

"Who said it was not fulfilling for her? She knew when we got married that it was only because of Kazui. Yes, that was a mistake that I am fucking sorry I made but she knew I couldn't return her feelings. She told me it didn't matter. She even said she would understand if I wanted to leave when the goddamn gates opened again. You did not ruin anything, Rukia. Stop saying that! You and I hardly even talked when you visited the human world." Ichigo's voice was loud now, echoing across the silence of the midnight.

"She said she was happy but she wasn't. I ripped her off that chance of happiness, Ichigo. She was my friend. She was my comrade. I hurt her. It was clear even in her letter that she was in pain but she kept it to herself."

Ichigo narrowed his eyes at the woman in front of him. "What letter?"

Rukia chewed her lower lip in apprehension. She did not realise she had let it slip.

The orange-haired warrior noticed the tension on her right shoulder and the flinch of her elbow. "Give it to me, Rukia," he ordered, his voice deep and angered. He wanted to know what Orihime wrote that got Rukia rambling all the negative stuff about herself.

She shook her head and took a step back. Ichigo grabbed her elbow to keep her from moving farther away. "No!" she cried, trying to jerk his hand off of her but also not wanting to remove her hand from her pocket for fear that the letter would drop out of it.

Ichigo sighed as his expression softened. "Renji and Ichika told me you've been closing up since you got back from seeing Kazui. So I'm guessing right now that it has something to do with what Orihime wrote. I just want to know what she said that got you all upset."

Rukia's violet eyes searched his blazing amber ones. Seeing the concern in it, she relented and handed the letter to him.

The man regarded the envelope as if it were something that would explode before taking the letter out to read it.

The shinigami woman remained where she was with her arms crossed, biting the nail of her thumb in uncertainty as she stared off into the distance behind Ichigo. It didn't matter what he thought of the letter. Her emotions were based on the fact that she had anchored Ichigo to herself, preventing him from having the freedom to love other people and in turn, causing hurt to one of their dearest friends. The guilt was still so raw because Orihime was already gone and Rukia felt there was no way she could make it up to her.

She was snapped out of her thoughts at the sound of paper being shredded. "Ichigo!" she shouted angrily as she tried to stop him from tearing the letter.

Ichigo moved abruptly away from her, mumbling something that she couldn't hear. She watched as he placed the shredded pieces of paper on one palm, his eyes locked on hers before a small flame lit up to consume what was once Orihime's letter to Rukia.

She gasped, "How did you..."

He smirked. "I had a lot of time to pick up on some kido spells after my reiatsu suppression was lifted. This is one of the very few I can successfully control."

"But that was my letter!" Rukia snapped as her fist connected to his jaw with a hard blow that sent him stumbling backwards a couple of steps. Blood oozed from the laceration on his cheek that was caused by Senbonzakura two days earlier.

He turned back to see Rukia glowering at him in hurt and anger, her fists clenched at her sides. But there was something else behind that hard mask. She looked like she was about to cry. "Rukia..."

"That was the only thing I had left of her," she muttered, blinking away the tears that were threatening to slip out of her eyes.

Ichigo pulled her into his arms, mildly surprised that she didn't resist him this time. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and tucked the crown of her head under his chin, noticing how she was quite a bit taller than before. "I can't let you keep something that would hurt you and deceive you into thinking you did something bad when you didn't."

Rukia sighed, staring at her hands that were fisted on the fabric of his shihakusho. "I don't really know what I'm feeling. There's a lot of guilt, that's for sure. But I think I'm more pissed at how fate has played with all of us after what you did to Yhwach. He was still very much alive, albeit not physically, for many years after the war."

He pulled away from her to gaze into her eyes, still keeping their proximity as his hands came up to cradle her jaw. "It's over, now. Our family can finally be together."

She stared softly back at him before lifting a hand to hover over his cheek where the cut was. She watched as he shut his eyes, leaning his face into the warm energy emitted from her palm that was sealing his wound.

"It's been too long since I've felt this," Ichigo murmured, remembering the times when she used to heal him years ago.

After making sure there was not a trace of the cut left, she lowered her hand, placing it on his chest as she was still trapped within his hold. "Ichika seems accepting of you."

"I hope that's a good thing," he chuckled, thumbing circles on her cheeks.

Rukia lowered her gaze to the white stripes of his black collar, mechanically smoothening out the cloth that covered his chest. "She had always wanted to know who you were. But she was afraid that the Elders would do something separate us."

Ichigo encircled her waist with his arms, pulling her closer to him. "Do you still have that ring I gave you?"

She took one glance at him before she wrapped her slender arms around his torso, laying her head on his chest. "Ichigo..."

"Hm?"

"Give me some time, please. I'm happy you're finally able to come into Ichika's life. But I don't think I can just disregard the past and hop into a relationship with you right now. There are too many things that we should let heal first."

Shutting his eyes, Ichigo tightened his hold around her and swallowed the lump in his throat. It was happening again. Fate kept putting them together only to break them apart, letting them meet again but they could not be together.

No, this time they had eternity. He would make sure fate didn't get in the way again. So...

"I'm going to wait. I don't care how long it'll take for you to come back to me. This time, nothing's going to get in our way, Midget."

Despite herself, Rukia felt herself smiling at his personal nickname for her.

I'm sorry...