a/n: moody
She's happy with her friends, despite living poorly and unfashionably that others would cringe at the depravity of her place, she's happy that they can laugh together, steal together, run together, everything together and real.
(but it's her home)
She learns quickly that home quickly falls apart by strangers and friends betraying and dying and leaving and dying, dying, dying.
(they all eventually die, but the stronger ones survive longer)
She doesn't know whether it's a curse or luckiness that she and Renji are the last ones alive in the surrounding graves. His gaze is full of sorrow and it prompts her to say: let's become shinigamis together to not lose anyone anymore so they'll know how to protect.
(and yet what sounds beautiful to them isn't the message really, it's the indication to get the fuck out of here before they too, die-
-though she thinks they're accursed to live anyways)
He agrees whole-heartedly.
...
...
...
...
A season later and she re-visits her friends laying in their graves again on a shinigami patrol. She sits and tells her story:
Renji is no longer by her side since the day she's admitted to the Kuchiki.
She sees through him, she knows that he wants her life to be better since it's the Kuchiki, even so, the words stab through her as he says empty words that hold too much weaponry and cowardice and fear (and these, these pathetic characteristics aren't who she remembers), so she has to leave-
(-or go crazy)
She looks back now and wonders why, if she knew exactly what he's saying, why she left him. She stares at the graves sitting in front of him and ironically, she knows: Renji and the rest, they never meant much to her after all, not enough to save (save me), not enough to chase after.
He's (they) no longer family. no longer someone she can depend.
She should've known he'd die in her heart too.
One day, she screams. The screams bring in all the Kuchiki servants and the elders and people people and people who don't give two fucks about her unless her "brother" helps. They hold her down and punch her in places where her "brother" can't see until she's numb and she doesn't feel anymore.
She stops.
They leave her on the floor and agree to keep it a secret since it's such a disgrace to the Kuchiki name.
She fucking hates them all-
-yet she doesn't blame them.
(contradictions, contradictions, contra-)
She stops and sinks into numbness.
Strangely, even in the hell she is in, even if she hates it so much, she still strives to please her "brother", even the Kuchiki.
Why else would she stay quiet in meetings and obey them all and not say a word against any of them even if she strongly disagrees with them- ah, of course.
Her heart died.
It isn't until she gets a seat in the 13th division that she speaks up (albeit politely, unlike the cursing in her head) against the Kuchiki.
Getting into that division had taken a large amount of work on her part, even though many believe it was due to her status and shit like that. Then the Kuchiki decides they don't want her, a girl, to go into that work force and should just be married off to the men they've gathered.
Something had switched off, and she'd spoke sharply and clearly enough for them to shut up and back off, maybe it's the Kuchiki glare she'd developed after receiving it so many times from the entire Kuchiki clan (though it was mostly a lack of faces or ignorance); either way, they shut up.
And she's happy.
But then once she gets in, she finds herself ostracized again, and she should be used to it, she really should-
-it doesn't hurt any less though.
Then Kaien-dono pops out of nowhere and it's the first time in a long time that she's treated normally and benevolently and it feels like home again.
She's happy.
She doesn't know when but she develops a liking towards him, really does, but-
-he has a wife.
(and her virtue is to never never never bring in trouble and trouble to Kuchiki clan and her brother and then hurt Kaien-dono and his wife. she'd never allow herself.)
So she holds the feelings in, and it's funny- how she admires his wife instead of feeling- no, there is a little she admits.
Even so, she's happy.
Then, he dies.
(she should've known that by now too.)
What she knows she wouldn't have known: she'd kill him herself, literally, and would still have the numbness and courage and stupidity to bring it to Ganju and Kuukaku Shiba.
The rain pours, and she's numb again.
Rukia stands up and stretches, and she looks back down at the tiny stones of a gravemark and the dead and turns away decisively without looking back.
...
...
A month later of hard, hard pushing and working and working and working and she wants a break from it all-
-so she decides to go to the World of Living.
a/n: tbc