Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Bleach featured herein.
I'm finally writing a Renji/Rukia fiction. It's taken me ages to find a good scenario and some inspiration for this fic, so hopefully the waiting will pay off. Ichigo is also featured heavily in this story (he's actually the main narrator) but it's not a love-triangle situation. I've seen that done before and done better than I could do with these characters, so he's more of a not-completely-uninvolved witness to the whole thing. You'll see why I needed him as you read.
Warnings: het, set during and post Soul Society arc
Enjoy.
Ivory Tower
Things didn't start getting complicated until they reached Soul Society and managed to get split up.
Everything was so clear-cut before: save Rukia from the evil shinigami who don't appreciate her and are trying to execute her for doing her job — albeit in an unorthodox and forbidden manner. It was easy to distinguish the bad guys: everyone who wasn't them. They even wore black. See, evil! What was even better was that Ichigo could take all of his frustration about the whole situation out during his fights. His emotions had always improved his skills and so did using them to protect someone else. He was in the best fighting form he'd ever been in and loved it.
It was like a fairytale, there was even a tower. Rukia would probably hate the comparison to a helpless princess and Ichigo knew he wasn't exactly prince charming, but it was enough to get the blood racing and make the fighting just a little more exciting.
Then Abarai Renji had to come along and destroy the script.
"I'm begging you: save Rukia!"
The bad guys weren't supposed to say that. In the script, it's always a dying friend of the hero who's appealing to one of the more honourable bad guys. Not that Ichigo wanted one of his friends to be dying and begging — it just wasn't how the story was expected to go. And if this part of the story was wrong … would the ending still even be the same?
Here was the enemy — clinging, bleeding, pleading — desperate to save Rukia even when he had taken her away in the first place. Renji's pride was shoved away forcefully as he latched on to the only hope he had left. Head bowed, tears forming, at the mercy of his foe and Ichigo could only stare as he listened to the broken voice saying Rukia's name with so many emotions that Ichigo could barely recognise, much less understand the depth of.
Renji loved her.
Ichigo felt the whole fairytale shatter with Renji's tenuous grip.
Ichigo couldn't be prince charming. He didn't love Rukia. Not with an encompassing eternal passion that connected their souls so deeply they barley needed words to communicate everything they felt. She was a friend, a sister, someone he owed his life to, the changer of his destiny, part of his nakama. He loved her, and maybe before he might have mistaken some of that feeling for attraction, but this was different.
There was pain and loss and bitterness, but there was warmth and devotion and utter surety in their bond — all of this in Renji as he let down his barriers because Ichigo needed to see. Ichigo loved Rukia and would die for her, but he wouldn't die without her. She wasn't the centre of his universe — everything he did wasn't done for her. Ichigo wasn't sure he could ever love someone that much. It was frightening to consider … it was even more frightening to consider if you failed that love.
The real prince charming could barely stand, had failed and Ichigo knew it was more than once. He had no one to turn to, to lean on but Ichigo and maybe that was why he'd failed. Renji had put everything on his own shoulders, didn't open up and ask for help and it was almost too late.
So maybe Ichigo had his own reasons for saving Rukia. He couldn't play the prince any more, but maybe he could be a knight, carrying more than just his own motivations. His armour wasn't exactly shining, but it was worn and scarred and as strong as his zanpakutou.
Ichigo looked at Renji and said the only thing he could:
"I'll definitely save her."
He was going to do it anyway and there was nothing wrong with having more reasons to save Rukia's life.
It was interesting to see Rukia so flabbergasted.
Ichigo had defied all odds to save her, had taken beatings most shinigami would never walk away from and still managed to win his battles in some form or another. His power was growing and even he didn't realise the extent of his actions and abilities. So he stopped the stupid flaming bird from killing Rukia. He was here to save her; some stupid released zanpakutou-deluxe-execution-version wasn't going to stop him. So what if he had destroyed the execution stands, he didn't know any other way to get Rukia down from there. He'd saved her, like he said he would, what was so astonishing about that?
Whatever the cause of her silence, and the unexpected stupor of the witnesses, Ichigo was just glad to have a few moments to see how Rukia was doing — really doing. She looked fine, a little thinner and paler than when he last saw her and she seemed so tiny in his arms. Maybe that princess metaphor wasn't as inaccurate as he'd first thought. She was shaking and her hands battered weakly as she struggled a little in his grip. She was angry, but it was as though she couldn't quite gather the energy to yell at him with all her fury.
It was strange; Ichigo wanted her to go back to normal. She was still in shock — no matter how much she might protest about her rescue or that the situation would never be shocking to her later — and nothing Ichigo could say would bring that spark back. She was frightened and it scared him because Rukia had never seemed weak to him, even when she lay bleeding in her gigai. There was strength in her that he couldn't reach this time. Too much had happened. They'd both changed — even if only a little, it was enough. Ichigo knew that later all would appear as it once was, but this moment would stay in his mind forever.
He'd saved her, but then that's exactly what he'd said he'd do and, whether it was only subconsciously, what she had expected of him. Her belief in him hadn't waned, but she'd still been hoping for something more as well.
"Rukia!"
Both rescuer and rescuee turned to where the coarse voice emerged from. Ichigo almost smiled. Of course he would have made it here; he was just as much a dark horse as Ichigo in this race — perhaps more so. The unexpected prince given yet another chance.
"Renji! You're alive!"
Ichigo looked at the tiny girl in his arms and understood completely why only now that spark returned to her eyes and the joy to her voice. It was never about him. Of course Ichigo was going to succeed; his motivations were never in question. What Rukia had truly needed reassurance about was whether Renji would defy all expectations to prove how much she truly meant to him.
She needed to know her hoping and love wasn't completely in vain and unrequited. "Renji! You're alive!" You're here! You fought for me! You came to save me! It was all there and Ichigo heard it all.
"Yo, glad you could make it."
Renji grinned.
"As if I would miss this and give you all the credit. Someone's gotta make sure Rukia's rescue goes right."
Ichigo did smile then, just as he lifted Rukia in the air.
"Take her."
He almost laughed at the twin picture of horror and fury Renji and Rukia made sprawled together on the ground but he pushed it back.
"Take her and don't let her go."
Renji stared. He understood what Ichigo was trying to tell him — not just to run and take Rukia away from the execution ground and keep her safe.
Ichigo watched from atop the former execution stands as Rukia clung to Renji as he ran.
"I'm going to stay here."
A tiny part of Ichigo's soul cried out as Rukia proclaimed this with no hesitation. He stared at her, searching, and for the first time he saw her true smile.
It wasn't as though Rukia had never smiled honestly for him before, but Ichigo knew — from the first moment he saw her — that sadness occupied a very large part of her soul. Even as they grew closer and joked and Rukia learned to let down her barriers around him that sadness could never be washed away. When she had been taken from him by Byakuya and Renji he'd seen how truly deep that wound had infected her being. She cried for the first time in front of him, despairing and hopeless. Ichigo had accounted most of that to her brother betraying her, but he'd known later that it was not just the Kuchiki who had hurt her terribly.
Now it seemed, though, that her sadness had lifted. The barriers Ichigo had spent months trying to break through were faded and solid only to those who sought her harm. The rest of the world was being given a chance. She'd been given another chance — one she thought had been lost to her forever with a misunderstanding years ago.
Ichigo didn't know whether to feel uncomfortable knowing so much about the past Rukia had never told him about — the adoption, Rukongai, Shiba Kaien, Renji. She didn't seem to mind though. Ichigo had always been able to understand her to some degree and she seemed glad for the opportunity for him to know more and deepen their bond. He'd shared so much of his life with her, now it seemed she wanted to reciprocate.
It was that knowledge more than anything — her smile that told him how truly joyous she was to be home, to be accepted, to be loved — that allowed him to accept her decision and to be honestly content with her choice. Because it was her choice and he knew it was the right one, that she'd be happy, that there were others he could trust to take care of her and love her as much — if not more — than he did. Her smile told him that they were going to see each other again and that everything would be all right.
Maybe that's what he needed: to know he made the right choice himself. She was happy, he was a hero but there wouldn't be a sunset for him to ride off into with her on the back of his horse.
There was a palace though, where the princess recovered from her ordeal under the watchful eye of a protective older brother, and a prince to take care of her. Ichigo knew there would be a beautiful kiss under falling sakura though he would not be participating in it.
He looked over his shoulder once before jumping into the gateway to his world and saw Renji come up behind the smiling Rukia and place a gentle hand on her shoulder. He saw the way they glowed together, the way Rukia shifted so she leaned on him completely, the way Renji's macho stoicism washed away completely with just a look. He saw Renji nod in his direction and knew that his job was done — there'd be no more need for a knight any more.
It was probably just as well anyway. Ichigo had never really been a big fan of romances.