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On the run
by afrai

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Renji woke up with a start. The room was dark and unfamiliar. For a moment he could not remember where he was: then it all came crashing down upon him. The escape from the Temple and Rukia's master and Rukia --

He whirled around. Rukia was sitting up in the bed, her black hair in disarray. In the thready light from the one small window her skin was white as bone, and her eyes were great shadowed hollows. As he watched her she got out of bed and came across the room to kneel beside him.

He expected her to shout at him for falling asleep on his watch, but she only said,

"You should have woken me up. It's past my turn."

Renji shrugged. "You were sleeping."

"Yes, I know. That's why I wanted you to wake me up," said Rukia.

"You're awake now, aren't you?"

"Never mind," said Rukia, as if she hadn't started it in the first place. "Has anything happened?"

"Since you went to sleep? No." Renji glanced out of the window. There wasn't much to see. The only room they'd been able to get was deep in the bowels of Coruscant, lower than either of them had ever gone before. Walls rose on every side, and the only light filtered down from an unimaginable height. Now they were here, it was hard to believe they had ever lived above it all.

"One more night," said Rukia. "Then we can get away. Ichigo says we can find work on his planet. His father would give us jobs, he said, but that might be too risky."

Renji shifted uneasily.

"I don't see why you trust this Ichigo so much," he said. "He's only a trader's brat. How do you know he's not going to tip us off to the Order?"

Rukia put on one of her multifold annoying expressions. This was the one that proclaimed exaggerated astonishment at the fact that anyone could even think of disagreeing her, when it was so obvious that she was right.

"He won't."

"Why not? What's in this for him?"

"Ichigo," said Rukia, "likes me. He won't betray us."

Renji remembered the few exchanges between Ichigo and Rukia he'd witnessed. They had involved a lot less Jedi calm than he suspected Rukia's master would have approved of.

"Didn't look like he liked you," he said.

"I would not expect you to understand," said Rukia primly. When she curled her lip and hooded her eyes like that she looked like Master Kuchiki, and Renji looked away.

"Rukia -- "

"No," she said.

"You should go back. It's okay, I can -- "

"I can tell you, as a matter of feminine intuition, that Ichigo doesn't like you," said Rukia. Renji caught her arm.

"I'm serious. I'll go back with you. It doesn't matter, okay? I'll just -- I'll get used to it, it doesn't -- "

Rukia yanked her arm away and wheeled on him.

"You would hate being in the Agricorps," she said. "We promised each other! We wouldn't leave each other behind!"

"Force, we were in the creche then -- "

"And you'd break the promise? If I was the one who hadn't been cho -- " She cut herself off before she could finish the word. "If I hadn't got a master -- "

"That's different."

"I will not go back on my word," said Rukia, white to the lips. "Not for you. Not for anyone. You presume too much, Abarai."

"You forget too much, Padawan," said Renji. "The Jedi aren't supposed to have attachments, remember?"

Rukia raised her hand, as if she was going to forget years of training and hit him. Then she clenched her fist and lowered it.

"I thought we agreed we weren't going to be Jedi anymore," she said.

They stared at each other across the dark.

"I'm not gonna ask this of you, Rukia," said Renji. "You can't make me -- "

"I do this for myself," said Rukia.

"Yeah, okay, so why don't you just run along back to the Temple for yourself?"

"You fool," said Rukia, but she spoke almost absently, as if they had already settled the quarrel. Not looking at him, she said, very low, "I will have no master after Master Kaien. Master Kuchiki honoured me when he chose me, but I cannot -- I cannot live on honour alone."

"Rukia," whispered Renji.

She looked up, and he saw that she was smiling. Somehow it felt like a 'sabre thrust between his ribs.

"I wasn't much good at it anyway," she said. "You were always a better Jedi than me, Renji."

He did not know what to say. She put her hand on his forearm, fingers moon-bright against his skin, and he thought of something.

"Nah," he said. "I sucked at the no attachments thing."

Her face was like starlight.

"True, you were terrible at meditation," she said musingly.

"Better at sparring than you, though." Her small palm was cold against his.

"Hmph. If it makes you happy to think so ... " She took her hand back and slipped it into her sleeve -- an instict she would have to learn to override, thought Renji, but he wasn't going to point it out to her now. "Sleep. I'll wake you when it's time to meet Ichigo at the port."

"Rukia -- "

"Sleep."

"How are we even gonna pay the fare? Say what you like about him liking you, it's his dad's ship, not his."

"I sold our lightsabres," said Rukia calmly. "But don't worry. I can handle his father."

Warmth crowded around her kneeling form by the window -- flares of Force, like little licking tongues of flame. The Force loved Rukia, though she never seemed to notice the power coiling around her. Renji could have told her, but it didn't matter. He'd never believed in anything as much as he did in her.

"If you say so," he said. Nothing else was even half as real.

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