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Chapter 17

When Ichigo got to the station the next morning, he'd almost tripped over himself when he saw Rukia typing away at her desk.

She turned, blinked once then said 'Good morning, Kurosaki.'

So, he was back to being just Kurosaki now. Needless to say, but he hated it.

'Morning,' he said, unable to steady his voice like she did. She turned back to her typing and he knew then that she was going to pretend like nothing had happened.

He stared at her from the doorway. She had covered the marks on her throat with make-up, and used her hair to cover the stitches on her head, and she'd worn a long-sleeved shirt to cover her arms.

Half of him wanted to pick her up and take her to his apartment where he could dote on her and feed her and care for her. The other half of him wanted to lock them both in the room and capture her mouth with his.

But he knew she wouldn't let him do either of those things.

'Rukiaaa!'

Ichigo moved just in time to avoid Rangiku barrelling into him. She bounded straight to Rukia, bent down and flung her arms around her. Ichigo clenched his fists at his sides so that he wouldn't pull Rangiku off her.

'Can't breathe,' came Rukia's muffled voice.

'Oh, sorry,' Rangiku said with a wince. When she let go, Ichigo relaxed some and went to his desk.

'I just missed you, you know. And have you lost weight again? I swear, Rukia, if you don't start eating three full meals day, I will force feed you!'

Ichigo smiled as he turned on his computer. Having Rangiku show her concern for Rukia released some on the tightness in his chest.

'Ichigo, didn't you miss her?' Rangiku asked with and odd glint in her eyes.

Yes. He missed her. He missed having her in his arms with no spaces between them.

Without turning away from his screen, Ichigo just shrugged like he didn't care.

'Oh, right. I forgot. Mortal enemies and all that.' She sounded disappointed.

It made two of them.

'So, everything okay?' Rangiku asked, her tone serious.

'Yeah, just some family stuff.' Rukia replied, her tone stilted.

'I'll see you for lunch and we can talk then. Right now, I got a dealer to stalk.'

And then they were left alone.

He should talk to her, before Chad and Uryu arrived. Ask her if she was okay. Ask about that kiss. Ask why she kept pushing him away.

But in all honesty, he was too much of a coward to bring any of it up. So, he left things as they were and a few days had passed like that.

They kept to their usual antics, arguing like they didn't have this big thing looming over their heads; like they didn't know what the other tasted like.

And although he was confused and often dreamt about that kiss, he didn't want to do anything that would take her away from him completely.

So, if she wanted to pretend like nothing happened, he would pretend. If she wanted to argue, he would argue. He would do anything if it meant he could stay in her orbit.

However, his patience was soon put the test when Ashido had come to see her one day.

'Yes, Officer Ashido. How can I help?' she asked, standing at her desk, with a fresh cup of coffee.
Her tone grated on him. Why did she have to be so nice to him?

Ashido's face was already red, his eyes full of adoration. It was enough to make Ichigo want to put himself between the two of them and growl like a beast.

Ashido fidgeted nervously, unaware that Ichigo was ready to toss him out by his collar.

'Out with it. We don't have all day,' Uryu commanded, leaning forward at his desk. Ashido turned to find all three men staring at him; waiting.

Rukia gave Uryu a pointed glare.

'Don't mind them. What is it?'

'Err, well. The detective's exam is around the corner. And I've been studying really hard. But, um, I was wondering-hoping-that I could shadow you until then. Get some real practice you know. Instead of just rolling out the police tape and talking to the neighbours. If it's okay with you, that is.'

She narrowed her eyes at Ashido, 'Why me?'

' 'Cause you're the coolest, smartest detective I've ever met! I mean, no offence to you guys.'

'I'm sure it helps that she's pretty,' added Uryu. He looked like he was having too much fun at the boy's expense.

'No! No, that's not why! I mean you are pretty. Like really, really pretty. Like wow pretty-'

'Ashido.' Rukia brought him back to focus.

'Ah, right sorry. I want to shadow you because you're great at your job, and I want to be great like you. '

There was no way she was going to agree to this. This was different from just following her around a crime scene. He would have to be with her throughout every step of a case. Rukia would only see it as a hindrance.

'Okay. I'll allow it. If Lieutenant Tessai says it's okay,'

Ichigo clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw began to hurt.

'I'll go talk to him right away!'

She gave a small nod, and he left the precinct with a smile that nearly tore his face into two.

'I thought he was going to ask you out,' Chad said, his eyes flicking to Ichigo once and then back to Rukia.

Uryu agreed. 'I was getting ready to take him to the emergency room.'

Rukia rolled her eyes and went back to work without evening looking at him.

It bothered him.

Really bothered him that she would let Ashido around her all the time while she kept him at a distance with sarcasm and withering looks.

But he kept up the pretence, until Rukia arrived at work a few days later-late, her hair loose, t-shirt hanging on her shoulders. She looked so exhausted that Ichigo's ever-present concern for her spiked. More so when he saw that her right hand was wrapped in a fresh, white bandage.

He tried to catch her gaze, but she wouldn't look at him.

'What happened to your hand?' Chad asked her before he could.

'Hot pan,' was all she said, her eyes fixed on her computer screen.

When Chad turned his attention away from her, Ichigo took out his phone and typed quickly, angrily.

Did you really burn your hand?'

Rukia looked at her phone, then shot him a bored look.

Yes, she responded, then stashed her phone in her desk drawer, closing it with a pointed slam.

Rukia sighed into the nothingness that was her apartment. She was lying on her couch, staring up at the ceiling regretting every decision she had made since coming to Karakura.
If she had just said no.
If she had given herself a chance to live, she wouldn't have to keep pushing Ichigo away.

Ichigo who was so good, and kind, and caring, and gentle in a way men usually weren't. She closed her eyes and flung an arm across them.

She couldn't stop thinking about him.
Even long before she kissed him, he was there, circling her thoughts. He had always taken space in her head ever since that first day she met him, when she thought that he was a just an annoyance in her life.

But now...now Ichigo made her dream of things she had long since given up on. She allowed herself to imagine a life with him-the two of them together happy and smiling-planning for a future she would never get to experience.

A banging on her door startled her out of her imagination. It was probably one of her neighbours who thought they saw something lurking in the dark. That was the problem with being a cop: everyone assumed you were always on duty. She didn't even bother changing out of her pyjamas. It was probably nothing anyway.

She schooled her face into a neutral expression and swung the door opened.

'Ichigo?'

This time he didn't wait for her to invite him in. He grabbed her right wrist and walked her backward, slamming the door shut behind him.

He was livid.

Her heart thudded in her chest.

'Let go of me,' she demanded, trying to wrench her hand from his grasp, but Ichigo held on tight.

And then he began to unwrap the bandage around her hand.

Fuck.

'This doesn't look like a burn, Rukia.'

He held her palm up, revealing the crooked stitches across her palm.

'What happened?' His voice was hard like steel, his gaze matched.

It had happened last night. The burner phone buzzed with an address. She dressed and armed herself with her knives and set out. She was supposed to find someone named Aizen. She had pushed and pushed but short of killing the man, she couldn't get the lone Menos to talk. She had cut her hand when he tried to lodge her own knife in her throat. She has caught the blade end just before it sunk into her flesh.

Rukia desperately wanted to tell Ichigo all of this. But she couldn't risk it. Ichigo was too good to entertain the idea of acting outside the law.

'None of your business,' she ended up saying, even as the voice inside her head swore at her.

'So, I'm good enough to treat your wounds, but you still won't trust me to help you?'

She flinched at his words. Of course he trusted him. But that didn't mean he wouldn't change his mind about her if she told him the truth.

'I told you that I would,' he continued, 'No explanations needed. And yet you still-' he dropped her hand and raked his fingers through his hair roughly. A vein throbbed at his temple.

'You show up at my door, bleeding and beyond exhausted, begging me not to take you to the hospital. Against all logic, Rukia, I didn't. And by some miracle, you're alive. Now this?'

He grabbed her wrist again. 'It is hard enough to pretend like you are okay. It nearly kills me to let you go around walking as if you aren't in pain. How long am I supposed to keep turning a blind eye? Huh? What happens when you show up half-dying again and I can't do anything? What happens if you die in my arms because you were too fucking stubborn to let me help you?'

She pulled out of his grasp, and he let her this time.

'You don't have to worry about. I won't be showing up at you place anymore-half dead or otherwise. And I didn't even want to involve you in the first place. If you recall, it was Renji I was waiting for. Not you.'

Now she had truly done it. She could see it plain on his face-she had shattered him.

'Not me…right. Anyone one else but me, huh. Gotcha loud and clear, Detective Kuchiki.'

And then he was gone.

She wouldn't cry, she told herself. She wouldn't cry for all the possibilities that she had so thoroughly destroyed.

She wouldn't cry -even if she was utterly and irrevocably in love with him.

'What's going on with you and Ichigo?' Chad had asked her in the break room. She took her work there when the sight of Ichigo made her want to weep.

'What you do mean?'

'The silence.'

It was a week after he had come to her apartment, and since then, they hadn't said a single word to each other.

'Oh. I don't know' she lied; eyes trained on the document in front her. 'Guess we're both tired of the arguing.'

'I see,' was all Chad said.

'Yep.'

The breakroom door swung open, and Ichigo's head popped through the frame. 'Hey, Chad, I'm going to meet a witness at that apartment opposite Karakura High. Wanna come with?'

Rukia kept writing, kept looking at her papers.

'Can't. I got a suspect in lock up. Just came up for some coffee.'

'Okay then. Good luck.'

And then he was gone, and all the oxygen returned.

'You could've have gone with him,' Chad told her.

'He didn't ask.'

Chad just made a humming sound, as if he knew something she didn't.

With Ichigo gone, Rukia gathered her work and went back to her desk, afraid that she would break under Chad's stare and tell him everything.

She had worked until her neck stiffened and her eyes itched. It was well past clock out and Ichigo still hadn't returned. She stayed for an hour more, reading over case files and organizing her desk for the tenth time. It was 8pm when she decided to go home.

Ichigo had probably gone straight home after his shift-seeing as how he could no longer bare to look at her. Not that she blamed him.

In her apartment, she took a long shower, letting the piping hot water sting her skin. Then she ordered a pizza that she couldn't bring herself to eat. She then flopped on the couch and switched the TV on and promptly fell asleep.

There was blood. So much blood.

'You're going to be okay,' Rukia said pressing both her palms over the hole in Kaien's chest. 'Just stay with me.'

She blinked and suddenly black hair turned to bright orange and it was Ichigo's hazel eyes that were staring at her.

Lifeless hazel eyes.

Rukia gasped and pulled him onto her lap.

'Ichigo, wake up,' she pleaded, hysteria rising 'Please, wake up.'

Her tears fell on his handsome face, leaving steaks through the blood from her hands.

She gathered him to her chest and begged him to wake up, even as his blood soaked through her shirt.

'Ichigo!'

Rukia gasped awake.

That awful, awful dream again. She had long since stopped dreaming of Kaien's death, however these days, it was Ichigo's demise that woke up her at night.

She scrubbed a hand across her face and moved to switch the TV off, but a news story of a burning building caught her attention.

'…sources say a policeman may have still been in the building as it went down in flames,' the pretty woman at the news desk was saying.

The building on fire…it was the apartment building opposite the high school.

The same one Ichigo had gone to.