Title: Five deaths Kuchiki Rukia has never seen, and one she might.
Author: Commie
Word-count: 1621 words
Rating: PG-13 to R
Characters: Rukia, Renji, Ichigo, Hisana, Byakuya. Renji/Rukia, Ichigo/Rukia.
Spoilers: Lots.
Summary: Rukia is not afraid of death.

The Hollow makes it difficult for him to see, now. Every so often, the mask will slip, and he can see her, just for a moment, a flash of pale and black and beautiful, bloodstained, glittering white, and it's in those moments he charges.

There's a sick sort of symmetry to this, he thinks, as his sword whips out and catches her leg and he lurches forward, one hand reaching, locking around her throat, slamming her against a tree to try and snap her little neck, and he's sorry, he's so fucking sorry, and he can feel her throat working against the palm of his hand as he crushes harder and harder, and she's trying not to cry, and shit, Rukia, if you could see me, he thinks, and knows that the only reason the mask slips is because he would be howling if he could speak.

He stabs Zabimaru into the ground, and with his other hand reaches down; there's an abrupt look of horror in her eyes – Rukia, do you think I've fallen that fuckin' far?, he thinks – and he seizes her sword-hand, rough fingers smoothing around her wrist. Her pulse is fast; he can taste it in the air. The Hollow leers, grinds the palm of his hand against her neck.

Fuckin' typical that he'd spent his unlife destroying these bastards, and at the end of it all, he becomes one. It's almost fitting. Almost. His thumb ghosts around the bone in her wrist and it's a signal that she recognises, a brief tenderness that the Hollow can't begin to understand.

Shirayuki is through his heart, and Rukia, hoarse, choking, encases him in ice.

The mask shatters along with her shikai, pieces of bone scattering the floor around him as he collapses, his chest gushing blood onto them both.

"Rukia," he says thickly, quietly, as he's choking on his next death as it rises in his throat. "you know where to bury me, right?" She nods, says his name in that broken voice he's hated for decades, and all he can think is 'shit, Rukia, don't you look at me like that'.

She doesn't offer to come and find him. Renji is okay with that. A warrior must die, and the others must go on, because there will be other fights that he would never have been strong enough for. He can't hold her hand or use his thumb to wipe away the blood on her face; he's never been a gentle man, and even now she's too far away as he sinks into the black. But he watches her for the last time as she's covered in him and she has never looked more beautiful.

If he had had less (or more?) mercy.

"Even if you leave him alone, he won't live for very long."

"Then, Rukia," her brother says, with slow, rolling elegance as he draws his sword. "it would cruel of us to allow him to suffer."

Kuchiki Byakuya turns, flourishes his sword, and there is a crunching sound as Senbonzakura breaks through Ichigo's spine and through his throat. The boy (and he was only a boy) makes an agonised, choking sound, and then the fading reiatsu is gone completely.

Rukia is sure she is screaming, but Renji stops her, lets her hit him instead of his captain, picks her up in his strong arms and they are through the gate before she can say she's sorry.

If they had (all) been too late.

Rukia had never been afraid of dying. She had found it an illogical fear, and the odds of ending up in the lower Rukongai had just been against her the day she had last died.

There were far more logical things to be afraid of. Such as heights, and of fire.

Of nothing.

Rukia faces Soukyoku, the flames painting green flashes onto her vision, and the heat sears her face. She is not afraid of dying. Death means rebirth, another life, another chance. She knows this better than many people.

She is afraid of the nothing that she will face, alone, when Soukyoku burns her out of existence. She has no wishes for herself anymore. She knows that Ichigo will be safe. In the back of her mind, she can sense Renji somewhere; weak, but still alive. She doesn't blame her brother. Perhaps it was because she so resembled his wife that he couldn't bear her presence. Perhaps it was something else altogether.

Her only regrets are the ones she is being executed for.

For not apologising.

Soukyoku's giant, burning beak plunges towards her and she lets her reiatsu leak a peaceful 'goodbye' before she is obliterated into nothing, not even dust.

The hougyoku lands half a minute later, hissing with smoke in its' own personal crater, such was the height from which it fell.

Ichimaru-taichou picks it up, and, as always, he is smiling.

If one day it all gets too much.

Rukia hovered outside of the Division with the other unseated officers, a small, milling crowd of black that contrast sharply with the whitewashed walls inside Seireitei. Some gave her a wider berth – half of her suspected her name was at fault, the rest of her suspected it was the blood still on her hands that made people fear her.

She didn't blame them. She had murdered their fukutaichou; why wouldn't they suspect her of playing in their taichou's downfall, as well?

The third seats came out slowly, Unohana-taichou behind them, and Kyouraku-taichou behind them. Kiyone's stiff collar was dotted with blood. Kyouraku looked sober. The twelfth seat spoke up, his voice muffled from where he was chewing his hair.

"Is he—"

The leader of the fourth division smiled softly. "He went easily."

If she had stayed.

"Hisana is sorry she couldn't be a better sister."

Rukongai winters were particularly bitter, and felt much more keenly by those living in the outer districts. Rukia had knelt by her sister's side, in some small shack on the far east of Inuzuri and watched Hisana's last breath hang in the air.

She builds the pyre herself, and lights the fire herself, and nobody in Rukongai will help her (though they will threaten her, occasionally, when they catch a small hand lifting blocks from their woodpile, and she will reply by throwing the one she holds at their face, and taking two just to spite).

Rukia has no love for Rukongai, but she does love her sister.

And the scorched, frozen ground on the river-bank where Rukia gave her sister her funeral stays there, an eternal scar on the landscape until it is covered by the sakura blossoms that blow in from the upper districts. She debates moving them, for a moment, once a day, and then sits on the bank, and wonders what life would have been like somewhere better, district fifty, maybe.

"Oi."

The boy – almost a man – who is standing next to her speaks in a loud, brash voice, and as she looks up, she notes that he also has loud, brash hair. "What," she asks flatly, and looks back to the riverbed.

She doesn't see the boy fidget with his feet, but she does smell the fire-burned fish he is holding behind his back, as though he knows what can ease the stabbing aches in her stomach. "Here," he says sullenly, holding it out, and tries to act as though it is a hardship, even though today was a good day for fishing. "You look like shit. What's your name?"

A decade passes and more people die, and more friends are made, and soon enough they share the same bedroll and he makes her toes curl at night with strong hands and a hot, wet mouth, and one day, so much later, they make something of themselves.

If they all live (except Death and the Strawberry).

Kurosaki Ichigo had noticed something was wrong when he was standing behind the car in his shihakushou, and Zangetsu rolling his eyes in the back of his head. He swore, ran to where his body was lying in an awkward pile in the middle of the road, and tried to pick it back up.

Instead, he just made an ass of himself.

The paramedics showed up, carted him off to the hospital with Isshin in hot pursuit: the old man gave Ichigo a critical look and Ichigo realised, with his jaw dropping, that the old bastard had known all along, before Isshin headed after the ambulance playing Concerned Father.

So, this is what it's like to be dead, huh?

If he's honest, it's one hell of a letdown. A headache as his body dies, then nothing. So he finds himself sitting on the pavement waiting for someone to come along, because hell if he's going to Urahara's, because of course the perv will try and sell him some Soul Society shit before letting him through.

And he doesn't much feel like running for his afterlife anyway.

"You're an idiot, I hope you realise."

First thing he's going to do when he gets to Soul Society: learn about this sensing shit. He can't be assed thinking up ribbons all the time otherwise. He lets his mouth curl up into a typically Ichigo smirk and stands up. "You're late."

Rukia gives him a look that is just dripping in smugness and steps off of the bus-stop, landing as though the air itself makes her a cushion. "You're early. I've been here all morning. Let's go. You start at the Academy tomorrow."

The butterfly lands on his shoulder, and his hand lands on hers, and for the first time, together they step through the gate.

----end----