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Rukia is used to being left behind, forgotten; passed over for a better chance of survival by a sister she's never met, or better prospects (Renji), for duty (Byakuya-niisama).
She doesn’t take it personally, learns early enough that when given the opportunity, one must choose the best path for themselves, and sometimes those paths will not involve her. It's a bitter realization to think she wouldn't do the same, but just as freeing to realize that the universe will give and take at its whim, and like the moon, she can only do so much to affect the turning of the tides. The sense of inevitability in loss is almost comforting, it is perhaps the only constant she's truly known.
Rukia is happy for them: For the longer life her sister was able to eke out for herself, for Renji finding his place in the world, and for Byakuya-niisama finding comfort in his after all he's lost. She's sad, of course, that she couldn’t have been more convenient to take along, more necessary in their world, more important in their decision, but she doesn’t hold it against them.
Tries not to, anyway.
She’s used to being surrounded by feelings of self-pity, hurt pride, resentment, and anger, both in the Rukongai District and in the Court of Pure Souls.
She’s seen the way it destroys people and how they, in turn, destroy others. She doesn’t want to succumb to it too, refuses to. Because even if Rukia is not meant to be important to those she cares for, she is important to someone.
Even if it isn’t her specifically.
In a way, being left behind has given her life meaning, purpose. She knows shinigami aren’t perfect, that most have forgotten why they exist at all, but Rukia won’t. She helps people, and in turn, they help her.
Her life is long, practically never-ending in its duration assuming she's careful enough, cautious enough, strong enough. A life without a path is torturous enough to drive someone to the very feelings she's sought to avoid being crushed under, and even if the other shinigami have called her a fool for the ideals she holds, the souls she purifies have slotted into all the spaces she's learned to leave vacant. That exchange of need and fulfillment is temporary, Rukia knows that, is more than aware of it. But she's used to it.
It hurts so much less when you know they're always going to leave.
That way, the mourning is easy, the grief passes, she can move on.
Rukia doesn't think of the stories about Byakuya-niisama's wife, how she'd supposedly died from a sadness that festered like an open wound and ate her up from the inside the way Rukia has seen anger burn like a fever in many in Rukongai. She doesn't want either fate for herself, and its almost ironic how, when, at the Academy, her Zanpakutō manifests as the numbing cold of a beautiful woman who dances in the flurries, untouched and distant from even Rukia herself.
But that just figures, doesn't it?
Even her Zanpakutō is steps away from leaving her too.
(And when she saves Ichigo, her Zanpakutō does just that.)
Ichigo shouldn't have been any different.
With all his complaints, Rukia's always thought that he was one foot out the door. He's the one with the powers, all he'd have to do is ignore her; send her away. Bask in his newfound strength and squander it as the shinigamis back in the Court of Pure Souls have.
Of course, he doesn't.
He bitches and grumbles, and does what she says.
He takes her living in his closet in stride, and he takes her coming to his school and mixing up his normal life with that of a shinigami with begrudging agreement. It doesn't even occur to him to tell her to leave, or for him to pull away.
Rukia doesn't fool herself into thinking it won't happen because it will. It always does.
This time though, she languishes in it; this connection, this camaraderie. She might never get it again. She hasn't had it in what is probably decades, after all, and she wants with it, aches with it. Selfishly, she hoards what she can of their moments: of Ichigo teaching her about public transit and juice boxes and movies, of sneaking around the Kurosaki home and giggling at the trouble she causes that Ichigo ineffectually tries to explain away, of Ichigo stealing clothes for her from his sisters, nabbing food she likes when they get lunch, making sure she doesn't give herself away that she isn't quite like everyone else; of living in a world without the need to fight, where loss is cyclical but gentle by turns; this strange life she's managed to create in what was once a routine mission to the World of the Living to the closest thing she's had to home in what is possibly ever.
It's exhilarating - like the drop that comes before the rollercoaster she dragged Ichigo on, scary in the face of the danger it all poses, but freeing too, hopeless with the need to experience it all in one big gulp before the air is pulled from her lungs.
She knows its an awful idea to try and hold onto it, white-knuckled with the strain of it similar to the way Ichigo fights to get the basics of his training down, wrestles with the lessons of life and death all shinigami battle with.
But unlike him, she's grasping at sunshine and her hands are already tingling from the coolness that's started to settle like a warning in her bones, like ice in her veins that poke holes at her insides from the way he looks up at her: blood trickling from his temple, lashes inky and heavy with storm, and breath ragged like he's breathing with a weight that's growing in tedium to the one in her chest.
She doesn't understand it because after Grandfisher his mother's death had been avenged.
He wouldn't say, in so many words, that he's done having her powers and the responsibilities that come with it because he isn't, really. Ichigo is the best shinigami she's ever met through sheer force of will to protect the souls thrust into his care with the powers he's gained. But he doesn't need Rukia anymore. And with Soul Society banging at her door, Rukia knows their time has come.
Until he looks for her.
Until he finds her.
Until he tries to take on Renji to save her.
Fool, she accuses, it wasn't supposed to be like this. You weren't supposed to -
Ichigo closes his eyes, and Rukia’s ready for him to let her go so he can choose his path away from her; steels herself for it because he must especially now, given that he can't ever just take the easy way out she'd given him by leaving in the first place with no goodbyes required.
Instead, through his grimace, Ichigo grits his teeth and hisses through the rain, “Don’t. Don't."
And Rukia thinks it's cruel to have to leave someone that doesn't want you to go, that you don't want to leave, but-but.
The path between people will diverge, and sometimes you can't take the ones you want most with you. She understands now. With tears stinging her eyes, she curses, Fool, fool, fool - "Rukia," he breathes out, eyes furious and pained and - it wasn't supposed to be like this.
Turning resolutely on her heel, Rukia steps through the door and wills herself not to look back the same way everyone else in her life has, even as she trembles with the need to comfort him, lightly tease, It's only me, Ichigo....It's only me.