"I hate planes." A raven-haired woman snorted to herself, glaring out the tiny window as the roaring of the engines finally began to quieten down. The man beside her nodded slightly, before pushing his glasses up and taking a sip from his drink.

"No.." Rukia said more to herself, than her dark haired companion. "Kids these days throw that word 'hate' around so much that its lost all its meaning. I have to find a new word to describe how I feel about them... "

Ishida Uryuu arched an eyebrow. "Detest?" He offered calmly while watching the women before him drift off in deep thought. She was an odd one. Not that he was without his fair share of oddities, but from all the years he had known said woman, the only thing he was able to determine without an ounce of doubt was that she was an enigma. An enigma amongst enigmas.

"I mega-loathe them." She offered finally. Ishida choked a little on his drink in response. Silence descended upon the two, the only sounds being heard were the staff offering drinks to the business class customers. Rukia sunk back into her first class chair, her eyelids drooping closed.

"How much longer?" She asked at last, interrupting Ishida's blank staring at the window.

"We've been flying for 5 minutes." He responded, picking and choosing a meal from the food cart beside them.

"So?"

"7 hours." He responded calmly, choosing a croissant off the rack before placing it on his plate, before taking another sip of his drink.

Rukia sighed heavily, as she watched Ishida take another sip of his drink.

"Can you get drunk on that stuff?" She asked suddenly, as he jolted in surprise at her seemingly random question.

"Can you get drunk on water?" He asked with an eye roll, the rhetorical meaning behind his question obvious.

"What does water have to do with anything?" Rukia asked curiously, furrowing her brows in confusion. "Besides, that's blood not water." she added as an afterthought, as he took yet another sip.

Tiny fangs jutted out from his closed mouth, as he wiped his chin delicately.

"No. To us, blood is just like water." He answered, nodding to himself, satisfied with his answer. Rukia sighed once more. Ishida was boring. Nice guy, good friend, even better vampire, but he was boring. Well...most of the time.

"So, pervert. Excited to see your partner again?" She asked, winking as her companion spluttered as a torrential blush rained across his cheeks.

"Oh lord, not this again." Ishida muttered to himself, still trying to stop his face from looking like a very ripe tomato. You see, vampires mate for life. Sort of like the average werewolf. The problem with this is simply that neither species has any control over who their mate is. It doesn't sound too bad at first, but the vampire / werewolf also knows exactly who their mate is as soon as they lay eyes on them... No matter what age, said mate is.

Simply put? He managed to encounter his mate for the first time when she was 3 years old. So, since then, he has sort of played the protector from the shadows. Sure, he followed her home from school every day for almost a year, but in his eyes, he was just being a good mate.

But then Rukia had discovered where he had been sneaking off to. It probably didn't look very good from her eyes, discovering her best friend had been shirking their plans for almost a year, just to follow a 7 year-old girl home every day.

That's when he got the nickname pervert. Perhaps not the most creative name, but she did like to yell it in public, forever ruining his reputation wherever he went.

"You'll meet her when we get to Karakura." Ishida said with downcast eyes. Since he was turned when he was only 17, he was easily passable for a high school student, and he had been going to school with said mate for the last year and a bit.

As much fun as it was never aging, and all, the fact that no matter how many years passed, bartenders still refused to sell him drinks, coupled with the fact that people always questioned why he was not in school made him wonder whether it was worth it or not.

"I'll be living with Kurosaki, right?" Rukia asked, piling her plate full of food.

"He's really nice. I think you'll like his family too." Ishida answered, taking a bite out of his food.

Rukia raised an eyebrow at the response. "I know he's nice. He was the alpha of my pack before he deserted." She said without flinching. Ishida glanced at her questioningly. He knew this piece of information of course, but she never talked about it casually. Now that he thinks about it, she never mentioned it at all. He had always assumed it was a difficult subject for her, but hearing it being mentioned so casually raised more than a few questions.

"How long did you know him before he...you know." Ishida asked cautiously, not wanting to say deserted again.

"Abandoned us you mean? I stopped counting when it reached triple digits." She joked light heartedly, before she began wolfing down her chosen breakfast.

"You say that word with such ease. May I inquire why it doesn't seem to affect you?" The plane had finally risen above the thick layer of clouds blanketing the city. Pale sunlight filtered through the window, leaving Rukia's eyes glinting in a way he had never seen before. She looked almost...reminiscent.

"That's easy. It's because I know what it feels like to have found your mate." she answered with finality, before looking away with downcast eyes. Ishida's eyes widened. She had found her mate? but how? When? So many questions flew through his mind, with only one definite answer. She spoke in past tense, and her mate was probably no longer there.

"Is that why you tease me about Orihime?" He asked at last, when the silence that had fallen between the two became almost unbearable.

"Pretty much, but on another note, Orihime's her name? Congratulations. You're marrying a princess." She said with a smile, before she relaxed. Ishida blushed once more, before looking away and finishing his glass of blood.

"Kurosaki-san has twin girls, who I think you'd like."

"That's odd." Rukia said to herself, shooting a questioning glance at Ishida. "I thought he had a son too?"

Ishida's expression turned bitter, as he practically spat the next sentence.

"He does. His son happens to be on the receiving end of my mate's affections." He growled, narrowing his eyes and glaring at the empty glass.

"Hah! A love triangle already! I love it." She chuckled shortly, before all the humour in her expression fell away, leaving blank eyes that had the world and all its horrors, very much out of place on a 16 year olds body. "If he's Kurosaki's boy, then he should be a werewolf, and thus should know how sacred the idea of a 'mate' is, right?"

"That's where we hit a snag." Ishida sighed, rubbing his temples with a soothing motion. "Kurosaki-san doesn't want to tell his son about...well, everything including that, until he turns."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait." She stopped him, flailing her arms about to stop him. "You mean the kid's not even 16 yet?" Ishida shook his head sadly.

"He turns in June. Until then, I have to watch my mate fawn over another, all the while acting indifferent while he is too damn thick to see how she feels about him. Though it is painful for me to watch her get hurt, over and over again, there is a part of me that is glad he is so clueless. I don't think I'm strong enough to watch them be together." Ishida admitted at last, fists clenched, looking anywhere but his old friend's eyes.

"You're plenty strong if you can admit your weakness out loud." She said at last, her expression warm but her eyes oddly blank. She reached over and patted him on the shoulder lightly, her hand quivering.

His solemn expression soon melted away, and before long he couldn't control his laughter. His stomach ached as he held his ribs and laughed and laughed and laughed. And pretty soon, she was laughing too.

"That was hard for you, wasn't it?" Ishida snorted, referring to the light pat on the shoulder.

"Oh shut up, you know that I'm not good with this whole feelings crap." She replied, before grabbing a pastry and taking a bite. In her own defense, if you spend hundreds of years in a pack, learning how to be a werewolf, being forced to learn how to be human in less than a week is more than impossible.

"I can try help you learn how to act... human, if you'd like." Ishida offered, watching as she devoured the countless pastries on her plate.

"I'm sure I'll do fine." She replied nonchalantly, raising her glass and drinking the entire thing in one gulp.

Ishida simply chuckled sarcastically.

"I'm sure you will."

Author's Note; I haven't written anything in a looong time. Trying to get back into the swing of things.

This story is fun to write. :B