Time Travel
For Afrai

"So your 'scientists' have not really come up with a way to turn back time and change the past?" Rukia asks, brows drawn.

Ichigo thinks he's going to kill Keigo for turning into Rukia's latest shoujo manga supplier. Crazy shoujo manga supplier. "No!"

"Hmph. They can't be good for much then," she says, returning to her book. Ichigo snorts.

"It's a stupid idea," he says, irritably. "The time paradoxes would never work out. Why're you so set on it anyway?"

She looks up, eyebrow quirked just so. "So you've never thought of changing the past?"

He stiffens at that. She studies his reaction, then closes her book. "You could change things so we never met," she points out, calm. "You could still be a normal student then. Our war would be none of your concern."

Ichigo looks up. "Would you?" he asks.

She looks at him for a long moment, turns to the window. He doesn't think she'll answer, but then she says, "If I could change my past... there are many things I would want to change." A pause. "But perhaps not you. You are not yet the worst thing to have happened to me." She admits it like one conceding a great truth. Her chin is up, her profile ice-sharp against the afternoon light.

Ichigo turns back to his homework. "Probably not," he says.

"Hm?"

He glances at her, then shrugs. "Guess you wouldn't be the worst thing to have happened to me either," he says.

"Is that so." He doesn't turn to look, so he couldn't say - but maybe she even smiles.

end

April 2006