Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Moving Forward ❯ To Sin ( Chapter 4 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

By: melitza

In which Rukia moves both forward and back. Violence, language, hints of smuttiness.

From the empty pain within

Contrary to popular opinion, Orihime was not dumb. Quite the opposite, really; she was perceptive - sometimes painfully so - of others and their inner workings. Her ditsy demeanor put them at ease, made them drop their masks and shrouds and allowed her to glimpse into them and observe things would otherwise have ever known - things that the rest of the world never would know.

In their first hours back from Soul Society, too much time had passed - too many trials had been faced, too many dangers narrowly escaped - for the common, comfortable lies to continue between them. They were all exhausted, physically, mentally - emotionally. Too tired for confessions, too tired to make an effort to maintain faÃ§ade. Too tired to do anything but lay it all bare for all the world to see.

Orihime had wept openly and without pretenses, her tears unassumingly wetting Uryuu's bloodstained Quincy cape in her saline sorrow, though the vermillion simply refused to fade. She had wept for herself, certainly - she had been through so much, and had certainly never expected such an outpouring of devotion in saving her. She had cried for Uryuu as well, so tired and worn and battered, so close to death and yet still shimmering in his faithful determination to save her. For Chad, who had come through the portal so soundly defeated, so injured.

She had cried for Keigo and Mizuiro, who had been left so alone in their dejection while everyone had come for her.

She had cried for Tatsuki, though she was now able to realize that those tears were different from the rest. They were rooted in not sorrow, but in joy. Tatsuki had not been able to come to Hueco Mundo for her. Tatsuki was safe all along, and it wasn't until she was back - until the opportune time had slipped away and Tatsuki had remained unharmed for the duration - that Orihime recognized those feelings.

When the karate-champion had rushed into Urahara-san's training basement, she did two things that she had never done before:

First, she struck Orihime across the face.

Orihime froze for a moment, her head snapped to the side even as the offended cheek burned and tingled from the force of the open-handed blow. For one terrible second, she wondered: was it possible? Could she have misjudged the other girl and her relationship with her, so very, very much-?

And then, Tatsuki spoke. “Don't you know I would die for you?”

Like a deer blinded in headlights, she was uncertain and entirely incapable of processing the claim. The pretenses were gone - everything was different now, the world was different now, and suddenly Orihime wasn't sure what to do about it. But Tatsuki had never been the more patient of the two of them, and growing quickly agitated with Orihime's hesitance, yanked her into her strong arms, and did the second thing she had never done before: she kissed Orihime.

It was all salty with her tears and angry as it was relieved, but in the back of her mind, Orihime had thought, `I think I could get used to this.'

“Never leave me again, Orihime - never again, please -“ Somewhere in between, the anger morphed and twisted into desperation - into shameless begging, and Orihime's heart twisted painfully in her chest. “I would die for you… You know that, don't you?”

Orihime smiled around the tears filling her eyes; this time, she did not cry for Ichigo, but with him, because she thought she might finally understand his grief - understand his sudden emptiness, and understand the way he now just sat, removed from the rest of the group, hollow and alone after Urahara had been unsuccessful in reopening the gate.

“I know you would, Tatsuki-chan,” she whispered, burying her face into the brunette's shoulder. `But I would never want you to…'

`Kuchiki-san...' she had thought, and closed her eyes.

She opened her eyes just as the shoji screen to her room slammed open. The wood of the frame cracked loudly from the excess use of force, but Rukia did not flinch.

She blinked owlishly at him, nonplussed by the way his face was red with exertion and his chest heaved while he struggled with his breath.

Their eyes caught, his smoldering in a turmoil of emotions while hers remained carefully calm. Her room (though modest and relatively small for a Kuchiki's quarters) was a massive, cherry-wood desert stretching between them, but in spite of that, for a blissful moment, the world seemed to right itself. (He's alive, he's alive, he's alive, her soul chanted, and for the first time since she had died, she truly felt alive.)

“Rukia?”

Just as quickly as the exhilaration came, it left. His gaze branded her, licking in painful fire across her skin. (Does he know what's inside of me? Does he know I now house Kaien's killer - my killer? That the darkness is a part of me?)

“Oi - Rukia - look at me -“

Huffing a sigh of impatience, she finally turned her gaze upon him. “Most would be fighting to get outside the ring of guards,” she noted with idle derisiveness. `Most are afraid of me. As they should be,' that inner voice mocked.

Her own words set something in motion and when it clicked into place, the realization unsettled her for a moment. Her stomach knotted to ice as she remembered their eyes, so filled with fear and disgust. `Were they able to see before even I did? Just by looking at me, could they know… what's inside of me?'

There was something about her eyes that made him flinch, and all at once, her question was answered, though she wished it hadn't been. Suddenly agitated, she turned her head; his gaze was too stifling.

“I wish for you to leave.”

“Rukia -“

When she averted her gaze - wouldn't look at him -something about the rejection killed him inside for the second time this week. `Please don't,' something pathetically needy and wanton cried within him. `Please don't go away like that, when I only just got you back.' He wasn't even thinking - couldn't think - so instead he leapt.

“OI! LOOK AT ME!” he shouted - wanted to throttle her, kill her (kiss her)…

Ichigo froze the instant he touched her.

“Y-you're cold -“

As if those were the magic works to unlocking the enigma known as Kuchiki Rukia, her head whirled and her eyes were suddenly on him. Only they were not her eyes - they were white, cold, and held not even a trace hint of the humor and playfulness, or even the haughty confidence that was her. Instead, it was all replaced with that barren, barren cold…

He would hate himself forever for letting his hands slide off her so easily. He would later realize that he did not only let her go physically in that moment. Things would never be the same - things could never be ok again…

“W - what did you do -?” he stuttered - halted - froze, horrified and aghast and amazed all at once.

When he - the mortal boy who had fought all of Soul Society just to save her from a premature death sentence that she had deserved all along - let her go, she realized the change was more than just inside of her. (Don't look at me, please don't look at me…)

And all at once, it was all she could do to lash out - to hurt him, for hurting her. To hurt him, by telling the awful truth. “There was no trick, Kurosaki Ichigo. You did not think Kuchiki Rukia died. She did. And a great many things died with her.” She watched him carefully from the corner of her eye, and wondered who her words hurt more: him, or herself.

If she had only the slack, broken look in his eyes to judge from, she undoubtedly would have voted for him. She, however, was privy to the anguished screaming of her own soul, and the wrenching gut in her stomach as she dragged the words out from behind her perfect, hollow mask of poise.

Their eyes met - his beseeching, and hers echoing the notion in a convoluted, distant way. Outwardly dispassionate, she raised her chin and prepared herself.

Seppuku. Forever honorable - she would rather die than besmirch his untainted brightness; endure torture rather than endanger him ever again.

“I have no use for you, Kurosaki Ichigo.”

The words might hurt him, but they were killing her.

(I cannot be weak. But because I am, you must go, Ichigo; far away from me.)

When Keigo came bursting through her apartment door, screeching that Renji had just come to tell Ichigo that Kuichi-san was back, Orihime had smiled (truly, honestly smiled, without weights tugging at her heart for having the audacity to make such a gesture) for the first time since she had been saved.

“Sugoi…” she had breathed. “Sugoi!” And before she even remembered moving, she was on her feet, dancing, yanking an unwitting Tatsuki to celebrate along with her.

`Everything is going to be ok,' she thought. `Kurosaki-kun is going to be ok!'

She had given him some lead time to be alone with Kuchiki-san before finally losing her seeming endless patience. “Come on, Tatsuki-chan!” she had cheered. “We have to go thank her - Kuchiki-san helped save me!”

“Ano, Orihime -“ Tatsuki seemed uncertain, but Orihime refused to let her mild confusion tarnish the moment.

“Urahara-san will make a gateway to send us, just like he did for Ishida-kun and Sado-kun and Kurosaki-san and I the first time - only after all the research he's been doing on the portals, I can't imagine it'll take him days to prepare - probably only hours by now! I mean, he managed to figure out a way to open a gate to Hueco Mundo, and Urahara-san is smart, so, it'll be like last time… only faster. Only this time, we don't need to go to save Kuchiki-san! Because she saved us this time!” She giggled madly, and when Tatsuki only stared at her blankly, she grabbed the girl again, forcing her into the dance. “Kuchiki-san is safe - we're all safe - Kurosaki-kun is going to be ok - everything is ok!”

Belatedly, she realized that Tatsuki's blank look wasn't from any deliberate party-pooper-ing, but rather from genuine confusion. It hadn't even occurred to her that no one had caught her up on everything that had happened. Sobering (but only a little bit), Orihime clasped the other girls calloused hands and held them tightly to her chest. “It's ok, Tatsuki-chan! I'll tell you the whole story on our way there!”

`I'll tell you everything that's important to me from now on, Tatsuki-chan - I promise.'

Maybe the first time around Urahara had only stalled to give them more time to train. Orihime wasn't a deceptive kind of person like that, but somehow she had an inkling that Urahara-san's mind worked in ways that she would never understand. It was just as she predicted; he was able to open a gateway in surprisingly little time. He insisted that he had actually been preparing to open it since he had expected all of them to want to visit Kuchiki-san when she returned, but Orihime didn't really believe him. She had overheard his attempt at comforting Kurosaki-kun over Kuchiki-san's death what seemed like only hours ago; he had expected nothing.

But just the same, none of that mattered now - not even a little bit. Kuchiki-san was alive; everything was ok now.

They made it all the way to the entrance of the Kuchiki estate before running into Kurosaki-san, who was trudging (for lack of better description) a hesitant retreat. The second she saw him, she knew something was wrong.

“Ano, Kurosaki-kun…?” she had started, and he jerked, startled - hadn't even been aware of her presence until she spoke.

He faltered, hand suddenly rubbing agitatedly at the back of his head - eyes everywhere except hers. “I… don't think you should go in right now.” There was something wrong about the way he toed awkwardly at the ground - shifted uneasily -

About the way his eyes, even though averted from her, sparkled suspiciously with tears.

Orihime's joyful expression faltered. “Kurosaki-kun?”

“I think… she needs some time to sort things through,” he replied, and as if sensing her uneasiness, he smiled. The gesture did not even attempt to reach his eyes. “But… everything is going to be ok,” he continued, and it was clear from the faraway expression in his eyes that the words were not meant for her, but rather for himself. “Everything is going to be ok…”

And though Orihime knew she was not dumb, she suddenly felt it, because she could not understand for the life of her how things could have gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

When days turned to weeks and weeks to months, Rukia's heart twisted oddly when the first blossom budded bravely on a plumb branch. The cold had passed, the world continued to turn. The Winter War had never even truly come to pass and somehow, that left her feeling oddly bereft and resentful.

She had struggled for everything she had ever gotten in life. She had fought like a mangy, starved dog over every last meager scrap of power she had earned. Every sword trick was etched into her in a corresponding lacework of scars, and every step of footwork by a mangled ligament long since healed, but never quite forgotten.

Nothing had come easily for her, ever. But now, with vast resources beyond her wildest imagination idling at her fingertips, she realized that without that eternal struggle… life was empty. Boring.

When the last breaths of winter began to whisper hints of the turning season, Rukia began to split her time.

At first, she roved the real world, desperate and hungry for something more (something harder, something to challenge her - something to defeat her). But these days, the only hollows that came were weak, useless - barely worthy of her attention, much less her time. She dispatched of them ruthlessly, but found the accomplishment only left her more jaded in the end. The only purpose the hunt seemed to serve was to keep her away from the Kuchiki estates, conveniently missing his every trip to visit her.

(His every trip to try and fix something that would forever be broken.)

Three weeks and four days after the last mound of snow had disappeared, she opened the gate to Hueco Mundo. It came as no great task to her, disappointingly enough. Over time the portal started to become as familiar (and far more comforting) as the way to Soul Society.

She spent her waking hours slaying Hollows at their source. And her other time… she spent within.

Time seemed to move quicker in her domain than in the real, even though in reality she knew the exact opposite was true.

As real-world weeks passed, Metastacia began to assimilate into Kaien's persona. It started with a slip of the tongue - a `Kuchiki-sama', then a `Kuchiki-san', and then, just `Kuchiki.' Sometimes, he even called her `Rukia' with a certain playful edge to his tone, and in a logical corner of her mind, Rukia realized he did it because he knew it secretly pleased her.

After two months, Rukia visited her inner world one day to be greeted not by Kaien's visage, but Miyako's. It unsettled her, at first, forcing her to remember that Metastacia was a Hollow, not a male or female, and most certainly not Kaien or his beloved wife. But those were trivial details, easily forgotten in the wash of familiar a smirk or a motherly tone.

Shirayuki remained silent at her side, not questioning when her mistress began to choose to spend more time in her inner world than the real one. Once, she tried to speak with her about it, but Rukia was was quick in meting out an unduly harsh response (she realized later, when lying sleepless and alone on her thin futon in the Kuchiki manor).

Shirayuki did not attempt to address the situation again. In point of fact, Shirayuki did not attempt to address any situation much these days; the sword remained quiet, impassive as she idly watched Rukia come (and stay, and stay, and stay) with emotionless white irises.

Once when Rukia had come to her inner world, Shirayuki had been her white shadow - always at her right side, never straying but for a few feet. Now, she was the moon. She stayed on the high grounds, watching silently as Rukia's shadow became black, wearing a shihakushÅ and a familiar smile.

Perhaps the novelty of Rukia's visits had worn off. Or perhaps it was something else.

Whatever it was that kept Shirayuki atop the hill and Rukia alone with him, didn't really matter anymore. Rukia was adept at nothing if not assimilating into new situations, and as time passed, she learned to appreciate her new company (cherish it, crave it, need it). As time passed, Rukia began to forget things had ever been any other way.

It started with a slip of the tongue - at first he was “Hollow.” Then, he was “Metastacia.” For some time, she called him nothing, and there was something comforting about the anonymity between them.

Then, she called him Kaien-dono.

She froze, horrified that he might have heard - that her guilt might be multiplied through his witnessing. He had, of course, but said nothing, and that only expounded her shame. She lashed out, and stormed away back to Soul Society, but she was ever as empty there as she was in her own internal world. And at least in the internal world, there was no one there to give her such piteously fearful stares.

She went back to her own world, and they acted as if nothing had happened. The second time she called him Kaien-dono (too soon, she had slipped too soon), he said nothing - and this time, she didn't either.

The third time she called him Kaien-dono, she kissed him.

`How many times have you called him Kaien-dono?' she tried to accuse, but somehow the thought came as an idle musing instead, mind pleasantly hazy as their rocked hips rocked together in beautiful, perfect harmony. She might have actually tried to count, but then her head tilted back and she moaned his name again and again, and in her blissful stupor, she realized she had forever lost count and couldn't bring herself to care.

“There is another facet of Aaroniero's power that you have yet to touch.” He spoke mildly, his attention seemingly fixated squarely on the steaming tea he was pouring rather than the words themselves. But despite the raptness of his soft brown eyes, Rukia easily heard the careful phrasing in the words, and knew they were not spoken flippantly.

She refused to ask; refused. She would not request to hear a single word about that loathsome espada. “Oh?” And yet all the same she was left resenting herself for prompting the information in so many roundabout ways.

If he sensed her misgiving - the way she loathed the mere thought of hearing anything about the espada, and yet desperately craved it just the same, he did nothing to indicate it. “Materialization,” Metastacio replied conversationally. The teapot clicked delicately as he artfully set it back upon the table. “He could give physical form to any of the hollows within him.”

“I see,” Rukia replied cooly, and the quiet settled quite comfortably back over them as each was lost in a separate train of thought.

She told herself it would be reckless to have powers she knew nothing about. Who knows when she might enter a battle into which she might need that power - and god forbid she enter one and accidentally unleash it. Having facets she knew nothing about was like having deadly weapons strewn carelessly about a dark room. Without having full knowledge of each one and her position in regards to it, they were far more dangerous than useful.

And so, Rukia told herself that she was learning this power simply for the sake of mastering it. Materialization was a means to an end. It was just another blade she was sharpening.

It wasn't as if she cared whether or not she could materialize him (see his broad shoulders and confident smirk with Soul Society as his backdrop). He just happened to be the one she was the most familiar with - the one who was most receptive (eager, even?) to the tentative experimenting.

When she first brought him from her inner world, she couldn't understand the tears rolling down her cheeks. But perhaps, by now, he understood her better than herself, and so to distract her from her guilt (her pain - her relief?), he drew his sword and goaded her (with teasing and smirks and playful arrogance) into practicing.

Though materialization exhausted her, and at first she was only able to maintain it for minutes at a time, these minutes easily became her most joyful ones, and soon, her life was dissected again:

Into time she was with him there, and time she was with him here.

Renji's reiatsu flooded her senses in an abrupt rush. It surprised her that he had managed to get so close as to already be on an overlooking cliff before she noticed him. Quickly, she waved her sword, and he-who-was-not-Kaien disappeared in a flourish of snow with a look of mixed surprise and irritation frozen on his face.

Renji cleared the distance between them in one weightless leap from the top of the expanse; it was only when he hit the ground and was right there that she suddenly felt self-conscious beneath his seeking mahogany gaze. “Why do you feel the need to call that… thing… to practice with?”

She hesitated, not wanting to answer because she didn't want to hear the answer herself. In the end, however, she settled with a comfortable half-truth. “He does not shrink away from me.”

`Like all living things should,' her mind finished, and she winced. His eyes darkened when she said `he' rather than `it', and realizing her own folly, she looked away.

She didn't sense his approach, and had she been a lesser controlled person, she would have jumped when his hand touched her shoulder. “And I do?”

She meant to make some derisive reply highlighting the fact that he had, in fact, made himself quite scarce lately, but the words died in her throat because she knew they were unfair. Renji had been kept busy with the squandering farce that was the `winter war' (more a lesser controlled dribble of adjuukara and left-over arrancar into the real world than a real war). On top of that, he was filling in more and more for Byakuya as his Captain's attention was taken up smoothing the wrinkles that Rukia's continued existence was creating within the Kuchiki estate.

And in spite of these distractions, he still managed to come around, though be it in short and infrequent bursts, flicking on and off her radar at the most unexpected of times. Like this one.

Rukia eyed him warily, and when she spoke, she was only relatively certain none of her apprehension shone through her tone. “You aren't afraid?”

“Of what?” Zabimaru was draped across his shoulders as he eyed her cockily, all pomp and mouth and show, as usual. “A shrimp like you?” He sounded surprised, though his wry smile belied the acting job.

Her return smile was grudging but genuine. She was relieved by the way he had somehow managed to slip back into their old ways. Of everyone, Renji probably had the most reason to act unsettled around her. Their relationship had been strained even before this. She had not even gone to him in Hueco Mundo before sending him away with Ichigo and Orihime and the others. He had had only their words to assure him she was alive for all those three days she had remained behind.

And yet out of everyone, he was the one able to revert back to better times.

“Paralyzed by your fear of me, Rukia?” he mocked boastingly, puffing up his chest and quirking his lips with that false pride. “And who could blame you? I am one of the most powerful shinigami in Soul Society. I even have bankai.”

`He likes to say that,' an idle part of her mind noted, and she felt the stirrings of fond bemusement, so foreign in her chest. `He never passes up on an opportunity to brag.'

The grudging in her smile was gone entirely. It took everything within her to keep from leaping on him and smothering him in hugs. “Then let us test this bankai of yours, Abarai Renji.”

Their sparing was honest and hard, though in the back of her mind, Rukia realized she was holding back. She would force herself to only run when she knew she could fly; to slash when she knew she could cut.

She imagined Renji realized this too, though if he did he certainly allowed no reaction. For that, she was thankful.

It was only coincidental that a hollow entered the real world just as she was about to enter Hueco Mundo. She was mildly surprised, but it was a pleasant kind of surprise - like when you went looking for trouble, only to have it find you.

The hollow was giving chase to a living girl. Her reitsu flared in panicked shades of powder and cerulean blue as she ran, a tantalizing beacon unknowingly luring her attacker on. With a little luck, the shinigami posted to Karakura town would be more careful than she had been some time ago, and the child would be spared the world of the dead for at least the span of her meager life, unlike Ichigo.

Rukia swept in between the hollow and its prey as a gust of wind. It reared back, and her blade only chipped and sliced too-shallow across the bone mask - not killing, though certainly injuring. It reared its head and pierced the world with its hollow scream, and the girl shrieked in abject terror somewhere behind Rukia.

She smiled as she lunged, and this time Shirayuki did not falter - this time, the hollow did not scream.

It was only when the girl's continued wails reached her ears that she realized her sin: she had gone for the kill rather than the save. She had not been screaming from fear of the hollows wails; she had been screaming in terror of the other that had appeared suddenly behind them.

Rukia dreaded turning to look, but knew she had to just the same. And when she did, she knew she could no longer hide from her shame.

Once, she had nearly severed her arm, throwing herself bodily in the way of harm to save a foolish schoolboy and his family from a hollow. It wasn't the first time she had taken injury to protect another, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. No; the last time she would take injury to protect another was apparently when she took a trident to the gut on her way to rescue a dear friend.

The little girl's head was caved in. The second hollow had gotten her while Rukia had tousled with the first. She stood near her body, confused and wailing and clutching at the broken chain link protruding from her chest as if it was her safety blanket, and all this a bad dream.

Only it wasn't.

This time, it was Rukia's turn to scream; the second hollow never got the chance.

When the blood and the bone mask and the flesh faded, it took her a moment to realize she was no longer shinigami. She had no hilt with which to perform konso, and realizing she could not do even this for the girl, Rukia fled.

Her legs didn't take her far before she staggered to her knees, clutching painfully at her gut as she heaved and retched. `I killed her,' she realized. Not with her sword, perhaps, but she may as well have. `I could have saved her - I could have protected her, but I chose to kill first.'

She knew that the bloodlust that had driven her from the girl was not entirely her own, but her reverberated from the spot deep within her where they were - the Hollows she had absorbed, the monsters that fed her otherworldly power. She borrowed their strength, and she had thought she understood the price - but never once (not once, she would swear on her own life - on the life of her nakama, on the life of… him) had it ever occurred to her that they might affect her - distract her - stay her hand…

`What have I become?'

When Ichigo came hot on the tail of the disturbance he had felt, he was baffled to find no hollows when he got there, but instead a dead human child.

When the girl refused to be consoled, he decided to just hold her for a little while - offer her at least some little comfort before sending her on to the other side. Eventually, her babbling slowed to words he could make sense of, and gradually, she calmed and began to speak of what had happened.

“She must have been an angel. Mommy and daddy told me stories of God's helpers - and she was very pretty and dressed in white and was fighting the monster that was chasing me. But her hair was so black, and she fought so mean… and she scared me,” she finished in a whisper. “Do you think maybe she - maybe she wasn't an angel?”

It was hard for him to speak around the sudden lump in his throat. “Maybe she - maybe she's an angel who just lost her way?” he offered.

The girl brightened instantly at the thought, unperturbed by his words and far more impressed by the fact that an adult had all-but-confirmed her own theory. “I saw an angel! Wait until I tell mommy and daddy! A real angel!” she cheered, and Ichigo only wished the heaviness in his heart would subside.

I bequeth my sorrow and my regret to thee

Cannot cross so wide a sea

Author's Notes: Gahhh, started losing my steam on this one. I'm trying really hard to finish it for you guys. Your support and encouragement is appreciated, as well as your criticism and critiques.

I pushed hard to get this one done as a Christmas gift for you all - hope you like it! Of course your reviews would be a welcome return Christmas gift!

Standard nod, glomps, and all-around thanks to Kilonji for beta-ing for me. Go read her stuff and give her some reviews too, eh? She's sugoi!