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Rukia's never known what it's like to be whole.
She's used to being broken into pieces - fragments of who she is on the shiny edges of the shards of who everyone else needs her to be: the spiritualist, the heart, the voice of reason, the shinigami, the adopted heiress, the unseated officer, the traitor, the criminal, the pawn. This is no different. This is just another piece to be broken into - another warped reflection she'll have to become used to staring out of.
She's been through worse.
She's lived in every approximation of hell: raised in brutality and surrounded by violence in the Rukongai, and oppressed to silence, to nothing in the Seretei. She's used to struggling, and scrambling beneath the crush of her existence whether she was barefoot and homeless, or kept like an ornament in a golden cage. No one's ever asked her if she was okay, and for the most part, she convinces herself that she is.
After all, if no one ever asks, it surely must mean no one actually cares, so then, why must she?
She's been through worse. She's only getting married.
Even if - even if it’s not - it’s not what she wants.
She isn’t sure what causes the panic to rise, why it feels like she's being suffocated: why her vision has gone grey around the edges, or why she can hear her every heartbeat in her ears, or why it feels like she’s shaking so much it’s like she’s managed to encase an earthquake beneath her skin; like something has been taken from her and her very being grasps frantically at the absence in its place. Choice, she thinks to call it, that's what she's mourning; the farce that they've made it out to be.
It's ridiculous.
She didn't choose to be "born" in Rukongai. She didn't choose to be adopted by the Kuchiki clan. And even then - even then, it hadn't felt like this: like hopelessness, like giving up. She wants to scream back at the voices in her head, who she names Duty, who names Responsibility, and who all sound like the faceless strangers who've found it fit to punish her with their will that this isn't fair, this isn't right - I don't want - I don't want -
She didn't like the solution the council had come up with to marry her off, hasn’t liked it since the day she'd be forced to agree to the prudence of this plan. But. But. Is it really agreement, is it really choice when she felt like she couldn't say no? When the only thing that stopped her from saying no was the weight of the potential fallout, the actual Apocalypse?
I will come for you when you are at your happiest, he'd said, and Rukia hates him. She hates everyone. She hates Ichigo.
But, at least, she thinks, delirious, that she’s glad, so glad, that the floor is so close right now because she doesn’t think she can stand on her own anymore. Doesn't think she wants to. And isn't that a frightening thought? Even when she'd been at her lowest, she never wanted to just give up. She thought about it, entertained the notion of peace, however, temporary that would come with it, but Rukia had never seriously thought about it as much as she had since this whole thing began.
Coward, she hears Duty and Responsibility hiss.
Never strong enough to be anything more than a decent fighter. Never useful enough to be a true pawn. Never enough to be a good sister. Do as you're told. Play your small, insignificant role. What is your happiness against everything? What are you against everyone?
She wants to scream back, but it would be a wordless noise. It would be less pathetic than the whimper she feels trembling in her throat, but too much of a reminder that she's nothing but cannon fodder in a war she's fought too long in to be anything else.
Rukia has known sacrifice her whole life; has always chosen others over herself; their lives, their safety, their happiness. But then - it had been easier, hadn't it? To believe you deserved to be alone. To believe that others would be better without you.
It turns out, that wasn't true. It turns out she made one person happy, and they'd made her happy in return and it's not - it's not fair.
“Rukia -”
Belatedly, she notices how cold she is, which is odd, but also not, Ichigo’s always run a little too hot.
His hands feel like brands against her arms, and she shivers at the contrast, almost pulls away from the shock of it, but he's holding her tight, solid and real, and here, and god, why is she so cold?
She feels him talking against her cheek as he pulls her to his chest. Which is weird, she’ll admit, but she can’t really make out his words like he’s talking underwater and all Rukia can feel is the bubbles of his breath as they poppoppop against her skin. She thinks he’s trying to be soothing, and it works until it doesn’t - until she tries to tell him I’m fine and her chest hurts to lie.
“Can’t breathe,” she realizes, and her voice sounds weird too, muffled and wobbly and wrong; Rukia wonders if Ichigo knows it too, if that’s why he stiffens up around her, why she feels his breath - shaky and loud like the rush of a tide coming in against her ear, her neck.
He adjusts her and she finds herself clinging to focus on the rhythmic lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub of his heart.
She doesn’t know how long she listens to it, only that she eventually notices the firm press of his palm against her back, moving in slow circles as his breath rustles her hair. She can hear the words better, a disjointed assurance and patient, tender reminders in, out, in, out. C'mon Rukia, don't go under. Don't give up.
Her chest hurts so much that she thinks it’ll cave in on her, but Ichigo’s keeping her safe from the collapse, holding her together, Ichigo is -
“You shouldn’t be here,” Rukia finally manages, and her head bounds with the voices of Duty and Responsibility that tells her that Ichigo is only going to make this harder. He knows she doesn't want to do this because his happiness is the reason why she's even here - why she can't breathe - why she thinks that this is one sacrifice too many - because his happiness had been hers, theirs so inexplicably linked together, so reliant on the other that they had to be separated, and it's not fair, it's not -
She isn’t as startled as she should be to find that she’s straddled on his lap. That when she looks up at him, their noses brush. That even as she tells him he doesn’t belong, her fingers tighten telling him stay, stay, stay with every fistful of his shirt and - Rukia huffs out an awful laugh.
He isn’t even dressed for the occasion. Rukia doubts he was even invited. Or maybe - maybe they thought that devastating him with her marriage to someone else would guarantee that the end of the world would not arise, that he would take comfort in his part in avoiding it. Maybe, she thinks, maybe they thought that he'd just sit there and watch it happen even though he's proven time and time again that he would burn everything down to get to her - to bring her back - to take her home.
And she wishes, god, she wishes that he would.
Like some damsel in a story. Like some fairytale in a book.
Rukia won't even yell at him this time if he could promise that this didn't have to happen; that they can just go back to Karakura and take up space in his family's home, belong with them, be with them.
Ichigo can explain public transit to her again, can be bewildered when she successfully sneaks into his lectures and passes the tests, can soak up his family's camaraderie, bask in the half-smiles he only manages around them - around her. Rukia wants to go back to hogging the blankets while they lie side by side, taking inventory of each other's hearts and prompting does this still hurt, do you want to talk about it, what can I do, how can I make it better? She wants to go back to pressing promises and praise with loving hands, and warm eyes, and soft lips, and teasing him warnings in whispers that we have lifetimes, and eternities, and infinities. Because even when she loved him then, even when she felt happier than she knew what to do with, she knew she wasn't whole - knew that Ichigo could cut himself on all the pieces she's learned to exist in, and she didn't want to him to bleed on all her sharp edges, all the warped, distorted bits.
But always, his replies, murmured with aching sincerity against her skin come steadfast, unwavering: I want them all, and I want them with you. None of it would be worth it otherwise. If you don't love yourself enough today, I'll love you enough for the both of us. I'll do it for lifetimes, and eternities, and infinities.
She always laughed it off because the magnitude, even then, in just platitudes, was too much, even then, she wouldn't let herself dream. Rukia remembers the way the rising sun behind him cast a halo over him, how he'd looked like he was touched in honey, dipped in gold; looking just as much as salvation then as he does now, too bright, too perfect, too whole in the face of Rukia's fragmentation.
“You shouldn’t be here either,” he tells her quietly, and he doesn’t need any more words for the pleading in his eyes, the hard swallow he pushes down his throat before he hesitates, drifts closer like she would push him away, like she has the strength to say no to the one good thing she's ever gotten to have.
She doesn't. She can't.
She goes pliant, goes soft: one kiss, two. In her head, she keeps counting, keeps telling herself this will be the last one, this will be the last time, make it count, make it last. Every press of his mouth, every flex of his hand, every beat of his heart that pounds against his chest to bounce off hers, is what she imagines hope is like: renewal and devastation at once, even as the voices are silent, Duty and Responsibility without reprimand, without power.
Against his lips, Rukia whimpers at the relief of it, and he murmurs, “Don’t do this, don’t.”
It's automatic to say, “Can’t, have to, Ichigo, I have to -”
“No, no you don’t,” he tells her fiercely between one kiss and another. Don’t stay, Ichigo tells her with one swipe of his tongue, don’t marry him.
And she knows this is only a temporary reprieve, she knows they can’t, that she has to but-but it’s always been easier to breathe with his mouth against hers. It’s always been easier to feel whole with Ichigo beside her.
The voices in her head have no argument to the contrary, but with the little strength, the little control she still has left, she pulls away. Her chest heaves with the effort and as she looks at him seeing the tenderness, the pain reflected in his face, she says out loud without ever meaning to, "I want it to be you at the end of that aisle. I wanted it to be you."
"It was always going to be you."
"Ichigo -"
"I know what he said, and I don't - I don't fucking care." The same man who torn through Soul Society, through Hueco Mundo; who reached Bankai, who lost his powers and got them back; his determination and strength of will. Of course, he doesn't care. Of course, he was going to come for her. He'd said lifetimes, and eternities, and infinities, and he meant it.
"We'll end it all," she says quietly, "if we choose you and me, and us. We'll...we'll burn it all down, Ichigo."
He huffs out a breath, and even though he smirks, his arms around her tighten; refuses to let go. With a glint in his eye that promises hellfire for anyone who tries to take her from him again, he replies, "I've got matches and a bad temper. We're already halfway there."