note: also crossposted from tumblr; from august, maybe?
(prompt: it will never be the right time, will it?)
The white of Rukia's bridal robes reminds Ichigo of her bankai. She'd shown it to him once, just to prove that she'd done it, and the beauty of her had wrecked him then, too.
He thinks about just saying it—just tucking her under his arm like he'd done years ago at Sokyoku Hill, and whispering i love you after all. He could do it; she might even let him.
Ichigo scoffs, because even the thought of Rukia "letting" him do anything is absurd.
He puts out the cigarette (filthy habit, she tells him in his head, and he tells her to fuck off, she isn't the fucking boss of him, she's leaving him—) under the heel of his stiff, expensive shoes, and pretends to watch the ceremony with the rest of the guests.
It's not the right time.
He takes Inoue out on a date. He gets married. He has a kid.
And still, still every time he sees her, her face looking exactly the same as the day they'd met, he wants to grab her and run and tell the rest of them all to fuck off, but it's not the right time; it wasn't the right time when they got married to other people, and it wasn't the right time when they became parents. It can't ever be the right time when it's always Ichigo-and-Orihime and Rukia-and-Renji.
What is he waiting for?
Ichigo realizes he'd been approaching it as a question of when—of an unavoidable, inevitable date, but:
"It will never be the right time, will it?"
Rukia finishes tying the laces on Ichika's sneakers in silence, and Ichigo wonders if she'd even heard him when she pats the completed knots with a satisfied smile and sends her daughter off to join Kazui.
The smile is absent when she finally turns to look at him, and the brittleness in her voice is something that he hasn't heard in a long time: "Ichigo, the right time was fourteen years ago."
"I would have let you," she continues, the racket of their children and their spouses and their family a distant din in the next room. "I would have gone anywhere with you."