Sorry for the wait on the update! School became pretty hectic as per usual and this got pushed to the backburner. I have the next few chapter mostly written and I'm about to be on Christmas break so hopefully the next few updates shouldn't take too long.

Rukia Kuchiki sat idly in front of her small, outdated television watching whatever trash reality show was on. She hated watching TV like this but she found that there was nothing better to do on the weekends now that she had practically put herself in isolation.

Her phone chimed beside her and she didn't even have to look at it to see who had texted her. She knew that as she kept on ignoring him, he would get more and more suspicious, but she found that she didn't really care. Not talking to Kurosaki was the only way she could think to protect him now that Aizen was indirectly controlling her from a distance. Every time she spoke a word to Ichigo, she was terrified she would say something that would put them both in danger.

Even though she knew she shouldn't, her curiosity got the better of her and she looked at her phone to see what desperate message Ichigo had sent her this time.

I'm getting tired of this, Rukia. You need to tell me what's wrong. If I don't know what I did, I won't be able to fix it.

Rukia sighed at that. Poor guy was beating himself up thinking that he had done something to jeopardize their relationship. She wanted so badly to tell him that he had done everything right and that this was all her fault, but she knew she couldn't. Who knows what kind of hack Aizen had on her cell phone. She had no doubt he would be able to read whatever conversation she and Ichigo had via text.

She switched her phone over to silent mode and placed it back on the table by the couch. She tried not to let the ever-present tears waiting to fall from her eyes leak out as she resumed her mindless television watching.

"I don't know what the hell to do, Uryuu. One minute we're having a great time out together and the next she's refusing to answer any of my calls and texts," Ichigo said in frustration as he paced back and forth across his living room.

Ishida, instead of offering any kind of consolation to his distressed friend, continued contemplating the events of the past few weeks silently. Rukia had become more and more detached from the both of them. The last time they'd had a meeting to discuss their next move with Aizen, she'd barely said anything. Uryuu had his suspicions, which is why he tried not to say anything incriminating while Rukia was still with them. Given the way he had seen Rukia and Ichigo act around each other right up until the incident at Rukia's apartment, Uryuu could guess that Rukia's silence had nothing to do with his best friend and everything to do with their current enemy.

"I let her have all the control. I let her dictate the pace. I kept my distance until she reached out to me. I did everything she wanted and now all of a sudden I'm getting the silent treatment? It doesn't make any sense," Ichigo continued on.

"You're right about that," Uryuu finally commented, though he was thinking less about Ichigo's love life and more about Aizen.

"Gah! This is so goddamn frustrating. I don't know how I'm supposed to reach out to her when all she does is shut me out," Ichigo exclaimed, his hands inching toward his hair, practically ready to pull it out.

Uryuu sighed and decided he should voice his thoughts, given how close Ichigo was to punching something. "Kurosaki, have you given any thought to the possibility that this may have nothing to do with you?"

Ichigo paused in his furious pacing to turn a questioning glance toward his friend. "What do you mean by that?"

Ishida sighed, exasperated that his friend had absolutely no common sense. "Did you ever think that maybe she's shutting both you and I out for a specific reason?"

"What kind of reason?" Ichigo asked curiously.

"I'm not exactly sure, but my gut feeling is that this is more about Aizen than it's about you."

"Aizen? So you do think she's talked to him," Ichigo commented, bringing up the current hot topic between the two of them. After Rukia had refuted the fact that she had been contacted by one of Aizen's men, Uryuu and Ichigo couldn't decide whether or not she was telling the truth. Uryuu was almost positive she wasn't.

"I think it's foolish of us to assume she hasn't. Why else would she do something like this?"

"So you think she's not talking to us because…" Ichigo trailed off, hoping his friend would put the pieces together for him.

Uryuu sighed and finished for his friend. "Because maybe she's trying to protect us."

Ichigo let that sink in as he finally sat down in one of the nearby armchairs. "Jesus Christ. So you think Aizen has something on her?"

"He has to. Maybe it's naïve of me to think this way, but I have a feeling Rukia wouldn't just change sides because Aizen offered her something better than we could. He's probably got some kind of collateral on her. The real question is what it could be."

Ichigo mulled this possibility over in his brain. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. It also made him become angrier by the second when he thought of Aizen using something precious to Rukia against her so she'd do what he wanted her to.

"If all of this is true, what are we supposed to do?" Ichigo asked after a few moments of silence.

Uryuu sat up in his seat. "I think from now on we have to be suspicious of everything Rukia does or say. We don't know what she's doing because she wants to or because Aizen is telling her to. We don't even know if this silent treatment is from him or from her. At this point, I think we need to assume that Rukia is our enemy."

"What? You're just going to throw her under the bus? She's getting controlled by some rich bastard and you think we should blame her for it?" Ichigo asked, angry at his friend's suggestion.

"We're not blaming her, we're just being cautious of what she does."

"We're alienating her. We can't turn our backs on her after everything she's done for us. We should help her get away from him."

"If we do that, we'd probably play right into what Aizen wants. Think about it Ichigo. We knew he was going to try and use her against us. The only difference now is that we think Rukia is forced to go against us more than we originally planned. We were foolish to not try and have a safeguard in place for this."

Ichigo silently steamed, but he knew that his friend was right. If he tried to help Rukia, he'd probably end up hurting the both of them in the process.

"We don't even know if any of this is true," Ichigo commented weakly, his mind running out of scenarios. He didn't want to admit what he knew was true. Aizen had done exactly what he was afraid he'd do: he'd gotten to Rukia and made it so that they couldn't reach her.

"Come on, Ichigo. You told me yourself what she did on your date. You told me how she acted. She obviously cares a lot about you, despite how she used to feel. What reason would she have to shut you out after everything was going so well? She has to be trying to protect you," Uryuu reasoned.

Ichigo sighed. "I hate this."

"I know you do, but right now we only have so many options. Rukia is a threat to us, whether she wants to be or not. Don't forget that."

Rukia flipped through the files littering her desk, mindlessly organizing them as she went. It had been a week since she had last gotten any kind of contact from either Ichigo or Uryuu. It seemed they both either figured out what she was trying to do or just simply gave up trying to get her to come around. Though she hoped it was the first option, neither one made her feel any better. A number of the very few people who she actually trusted weren't speaking to her. Even Orihime, who was busy starting a relationship with Uryuu, was falling slowly out of her life. Rukia no longer felt comfortable talking to her coworkers, her boss, or her friends. She felt isolated and completely controlled. She hated every minute of it.

Even her one escape-her dance lessons with Yumichika-were getting cut short as Rukia was busy fulfilling whatever wish Aizen asked of her. Every so often she'd get a text or email from an unknown source she knew to be Aizen or one of his cronies asking her to do small tasks. Up until the most recent request, she hadn't been asked to do anything too large or incriminating. That, however, changed when she read a text yesterday morning that instructed her to do two very specific things.

The first was daunting enough. Aizen wanted her to go snooping around in Ichigo's office. Apparently, Aizen was sure that Ichigo had suspicious files hidden somewhere on his computer or elsewhere in his office. Even if they weren't particularly incriminating, Aizen knew he could use them to bring Ichigo's company down in some capacity. Rukia was the perfect tool to accomplish this as it wouldn't be particularly suspicious if either Ichigo or someone else caught her in his office. She could make up some witty excuse and Ichigo would probably buy it hook, line, and sinker. Plus, she could easily track down information about when Ichigo was away from his office long enough for her to have the right opportunity.

There was a problem, however, which is what led to Aizen's second request. Before Aizen got a hold of her, she would have had no problem sneaking in to Ichigo's office as she always knew when he was and wasn't there and he would probably have no reason to suspect anything should he catch her. But, now that she had stopped talking to him, that was significantly more difficult. Aizen knew what she was trying to do by keeping her distance and apparently wouldn't even let her have that much of a safeguard in place. He wanted her to apologize for her silence, blame it on her getting scared of the path her and Ichigo's relationship was taking, and start to act like everything was normal again. Rukia didn't know if she could handle that.

But she knew she'd have to do something. The threat of Aizen killing her brother hung over her head constantly and she was terrified of what would happen should she fail in any of her tasks. Aizen's second request was still too daunting at the moment, so she did her best to accomplish the first one to try and procure the appropriate information to have ample time to snoop around Ichigo's office. She had found out from Ichigo's secretary that he had an important lunch meeting with another high business executive and would be out of the office for a few hours. As soon as Rukia was sure he'd be gone, she would go up to the top floor, sneak past the secretary, and try and find something to give to Aizen. She hated every minute of it, but she knew she had no other choice.

When the time came to try out her plan, she put things away on her desk to make it seem like she was going out for lunch, grabbed her purse, and went to the elevator. Once she was sure no one was looking, she took the elevator up instead of down and waited until she got to the appropriate floor. When she stepped out of the elevator, she sighed in relief when she saw Ichigo's secretary was also gone, as it was the middle of the lunch break. She nonchalantly walked across the floor to where the double doors leading to Ichigo's office were. Making sure no one was looking, she pulled the key that had mysteriously shown up on her doorstep a few days earlier out of her purse and stealthily unlocked the doors, entered the office, and shut the doors behind her.

She let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding in as she leaned against the doors and surveyed the dark office. She had been in here enough times to know the general layout. She wanted to search through some paper files that Ichigo kept in cabinets on the right side of the room, but her first step had to be the computer. She wasn't quite sure what Ichigo's password would be, though she had a few guesses, but, she knew that he was the kind of person that would make sure the password was available should someone need to access his computer in case of an emergency. She was positive he kept a sticky note or something with it somewhere in his desk. Thankfully, she still had plenty of time to search for it.

She walked further into the room and set her purse down on one of the couches situated in the center. She took one long, deep breath to steady herself and prepare her mind for what she was forced to do and began to walk toward the desk where the computer lay.

She took only a few steps before a large hand covered her mouth to muffle her startled scream, a strong arm wrapped itself around her body to trap her, and a familiar voice whispered in her ears.

"And just what do you think you're doing?"

Sorry it's short and I left on kind of a cliffhanger but I hope to have the next chapter out real soon! Let me know what you thought!