A/N: There's always a chance. . . no?

Disclaimer: If I owned them, the world would plunge into chaos and disharmony. . . like my room.

Summary:

She was sitting there, all pretty and strong and overall tall in all her petiteness. She was a dab of lip gloss, a subtle smirk, the most violet shade of naïve. She was everything and nothing at once, blending into a crowd and yet standing out in a way only she would know how to.

She was chaos on the wings of a butterfly.

She was Rukia Kuchiki.

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The first time was a mistake. . . at least that was what he told himself. He was drunk and she was there, and the world was a blur of pain and anger and an agony he didn't know existed until his long-time girlfriend decided that he wasn't worth nearly as much as her career.

"You look down."

She was a collision.

When he first kissed her, she didn't relent like he figured she would, afraid of the strength and calculated coldness he put into his touch.

"Hmph."

She met him head-on.

When he pinned her to the wall of his dark apartment room, she didn't back down, she didn't even flinch, but just smirked that little smirk he had yet to understand, and then she shoved him back onto his own bed, and then things were a blur again as the anger faded into a contest of wills.

"I found my boyfriend with a friend of mine. . ." She hesitated, a tired smile on her features as her gaze lazily drifted to her reflection in the mirrors behind the shelves of liquor before them. "Heh. I guess I had it coming."

He didn't know when his tie came undone, or when his shirt ended up on the floor next to her dress, but for the first time in ages, he truly didn't care. There was chaos and confusion and yet it all seemed right in some way, drowning not in sorrow for once, but in recklessness and a deep sense of escape he had forgotten even existed before this-before the darkness that had smothered him the whole of three agonizing months.

"I don't know you, I don't care."

She was a shallow breath, a shiver down his spine, a long caress that didn't melt the ice but actually pierced it through the core and shattered it to bits effortlessly. Still, Rukia was herself in some ways the epitome of a snowflake's seeming frailty- and the very picture of a snowstorm's sharp touch.

A clinking of ice as she shook the cup, and then a smirk. "I'm glad we agree then."

It was freedom.

Silence, a glance, and then the realization that her cup had gone empty. Gesturing to the barman, he jerked his head in her direction. "On me."

She smiled.

Even when he awoke the next morning to an empty bed and Momo's picture turned facedown on his nightstand, he couldn't help but wonder if she had been a dream. Because no matter how many times he told himself it had happened (in a very logical look at his memory and the whopping hangover), he couldn't help but feel that she wasn't real at all, but a figment of his mind in a desperate attempt for warmth through the ice that Momo had left behind.

"So what's your name?"

There was a lingering scent of cherry blossom perfume, but that was about the only trace of a visitor ever being in his apartment.

"Toushiro Hitsugaya." He answered. "You?"

"Rukia Kuchiki." She answered. "I like moonlight poetry and long walks on the beach."

So he went to the restaurant again.

He couldn't help the subtle lopsided grin at her sarcasm.

While sitting there alone, waiting, watching, he didn't really need to turn to look for her. There was something about her gaze that he could pick out, something that irked him last night and yet no matter how he tried to ignore it, it never ceased to give him chills to the core.

And he liked it.

"You came back." She said in a nonchalant voice as she leaned up against the bar counter.

He didn't like her skirt today. It was a black pencil skirt that reached to about her knees, but the way it hugged her body sent the wrong message out. . . it mystified his already muddled head. There were more eyes on her when she had walked over than he thought she realized.

It bothered him for some reason.

"So did you." He retorted effortlessly as he took a sip of his vodka.

When she sat down next to him, it surprised him. He wasn't supposed to be right; he should have been able to come in and take a drink, and be able to deduce he had been stupid and having very VERY vivid dreams. And that her talking to him had just been. . . his head playing tricks on him again.

But that perfume was unmistakable.

"So what brings you here?"

It was that smirk again, the same little spark of defiance evident in her gaze as her eyes met his. She knew-it was just that easy, she knew. And no matter how hard he had tried to stay away, he couldn't do it for the sake of proving himself wrong (even though in a deep dark corner of his mind he silently hoped to just see her again).

His hand clenched around the cup he was grasping, and for a second he hesitated before his icy turquoise eyes fell on her.

"The escape." Her gaze didn't waver under his cold scrutiny. Instead, the depth of her violet orbs held a challenge that surprised him.

It should've ended there, she should've walked away, things should've died that night.

But they didn't.

Because she was there, and she wasn't a dream, and dear God, she was real. And no matter what happened, he just couldn't not come into the restaurant every night to find her there.

But the worst part was, he didn't want to stop.

"You're like a dragon." Momo had told him once, "You're strong, and fierce, and so powerful in your own way."

She had confessed to loving him for that once.

But now, here, with a butterfly in his grasp he couldn't help but feel like the dragon he had been envisioned to be. He felt strong, he felt powerful, and he felt for once, in control of something.

He became addicted.

He'd take her out on dates, he'd spend time with her, he was obsessed with her to the point of no return. Because unlike Momo, she matched his power, she didn't flinch when he yelled but instead grew angry herself, and when she felt that he was wrong, she let him know it.

And when Toushiro thought about it, running a hand through his white hair, he couldn't quite pinpoint when it had happened, when he started caring how short her skirts were, or how revealing her dresses were. It was just something that couldn't be helped at this point. Granted, when he demanded she change she wouldn't, but he couldn't help but wonder if she really wore those clothes for the sake of making him go insane with jealousy whenever someone so much as even glanced at her.

Because she knew it.

And it scared him sometimes, how easily he had fallen to his knees for her.

But there was something there, some unexpected and undefined challenge she held that just captivated him and plunged him in a curiosity that was completely insatiable.

Can you handle my defiance, Toushiro? Can you bring me to my knees?

And no matter how much his lips ran over her porcelain skin, or how deeply he drowned in the depths of her violet eyes, he couldn't quite figure it out and it kept him coming back for more.

I am a dragon, I am power, I am the embodiment of a challenge, Rukia.

Her eyes became his light, her hands his strength, her body his eternal fascination.

And I will defy chaos itself on your butterfly wings.

She was everything and nothing, the very definition of complete chaos and beautiful disharmony.

Love is such a pathetic word for this. . . don't you think Toushiro?

But most of all. . .

Love is overrated, Rukia.

She was his.