Disclaimer: Bleach and affiliates do not belong to me. No profit is being made from this work.

I still have a fixation with scars and the story they tell. I've been obsessed with time lately, and a growing sense of lost time plagues me, hence an experimental introspection in present tense. Thoughts, critique, questions, comments, concrit welcome.

Standstill

Heartbeat

By Tanya Lilac

The streetlamp outside on the street flickers for a moment before deciding to switch off. The world seems to be at a standstill; a precious precipice of time between the dead of the night and the awakening of the day, when the air holds its breath, waiting for the sun. The sky is clear but washed out and gray, unsure of whether or not to be night-blue or day-blue, settling with a weak mauve already awash with peach.

It happens every day, but for once, Ichigo and Rukia have found that they have this moment all to themselves. Although silence reigned a moment ago, the one that has settled about them now seems fragile. Important.

Rukia smiles as she runs a hand through his hair, impeccably messy as per usual. Ichigo shakes his head under her touch as if to evade her and she scowls. His brow furrows in response and the tension is held, string pulled taut for a moment before falling, yet another grin crossing Rukia's face as he chuckles quietly.

Ichigo wordlessly pulls her in for another kiss, relishing her taste and the scent of her skin, despite spending the entire past few hours enraptured with her body. Her milky skin is no longer flushed in ecstasy, and lacks the thin sheen of sweat, but Ichigo can't decide which Rukia he likes more. He loves the fact, however, that he's the one who can make her look that way – her eyes darkened with desire and lust, half lidded, her hair clinging to her neck, falling across her cheeks or splayed like dark flames on his pillows. Her lips would be swollen, cherry red and parted as if she can't get enough of him, or air… or both. Her hands, so tapered and slender, often fist in his sheets or his hair or she takes a perverse delight in leaving bright red scratches down his back as she climaxes, breathing harshly against his neck.

Despite tiring some time ago, Rukia feels her body stir in response to his once more, and her arms snake around him, and he hisses as she traces cool fingertips over tender, newly-inflicted wounds. It's just for show, though, and her hands slide lower down his back. She is warm like always, and her skin is still fragrant from her bath, taken a few hours ago after a late night of patrolling. Ichigo wonders briefly, as he plants a kiss on her forehead, if he smells like her. His sheets most certainly do.

They pause for yet another moment, and Ichigo decides to catch her lips once again, sweet and chaste before moving down to her jaw, sheets rustling and Rukia sighing with quiet pleasure as her fingers run over his skin once again. The shinigami is pure, Ichigo notes to himself, but not without scars. He skims over her breasts, trailing soft kisses down to her stomach where there are three jagged scars, dark against her moonshine skin. Urahara always supplies a new gigai whenever she returns to the Transient world, but some marks on her soul are indelible, untouched by time.

Rukia stops twining her fingers through his locks and looks down at him as he meets her eyes and places kisses upon her stomach, her muscles tensing beneath his lips. He knows she could probably have them removed somehow, but she's chosen to keep them for a reason. It reminds her of the things she wants to protect – the heart of her friends… and her own, for the sake of those she loves.

Ichigo doesn't linger long before he travels upwards again, kissing, tasting, licking back up to her shoulder.

She is unblemished here, whereas Ichigo has remained proudly scarred by their first encounter. Looking back solemnly, neither of them could have predicted the profound differences they have seen and made in each others' lives, and their own. One can only dream of being a world-changer, but that is rare in itself. It cannot be decided, or planned… how the gears of fate and destiny work are mysterious, unknowable.

In a way, Ichigo is glad her soul has healed over, that he carries, above his heart, the beginning of everything. Rukia has once said, very quietly, that Sode no Shirayuki has whispered to her that she has never forgotten the moment herself. They have seen many things they will not forget – blood staining the earth as the rain falls, refusing to mix with scarlet, a phoenix against a bright blue sky that promises death absolute and an eternal crescent moon in a desert of emptiness and solitude. The shinigami knows exactly where his thoughts are and she twines her fingers with his as he settles his head against her chest, her heartbeat soothing him.

They have stood too many times on the edge of life and death, returning each time a little wiser, broken, but the stronger for it. In fractured moments, their mortality dangled in front of them on a painfully fragile string, they have come to realise that time waits for no one – and that moments like these, where the sense of a incessant ticking of an invisible clock somehow fades away, are worth protecting.

The realisation leaves peace in its wake, and as the world breathes again, the sun rises and the world reawakens for another day. The sky has yet to gain a firm hold of itself, the warmth of the sun spreading across the horizon. Time breaks free from its standstill, but Ichigo is beyond care. He's stopped counting time – he counts only his heartbeat, Rukia as his guide.