unburden | waiting for a shock to bring me back to life

There's an instability to the city that drives itself down on Rukia's nerves, wearing them down thin, sharp, brittle. Even though the city's returned back to normal, the mixture of spirits in the air remains unsure, ghosting past Rukia's skin and sight, forcing her to pay closer attention than ever before in Darrow. These days, she spends most of her time in her true form, lingering on rooftops, the evening chill passing through her body as she watches the shadows cast by the moonlight, waiting for the next Hollow to emerge. Hoping, each time, that she'll know exactly how to suppress it.

Somewhere in the distance, Ichigo's patrolling as well, reaching out with his presence — from it, Rukia draws a softer relief, calm encouraged by solidarity.

The howl of a Hollow still trickles down her spine like cool water as Rukia gets to her feet, quickly darting over to where the fledgling spirit scratches uselessly at concrete. Sensing the fleeting movement in shadow, the creature starts to turn around, sending an almost plaintive cry through the night — too human for a Hollow, almost, and it makes Rukia wince — but its movements are too slow to keep up with Rukia's zanpakutou, which drives itself directly in the soft, exposed span of skin over the back of its head.

Expression even, she shakes the few lingering drops of blood off of the blade before stalling, belatedly feeling a gaze turned on her from the distance.

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He strolls out of the dark bowels of the alleyway, hands folded into the front pockets of his buttoned suit coat. His expression is placid, but in an emotionless way that is visibly forced. He isn't trying to disguise his expression, so much as disguise his thoughts with non-expression.

Robin waits by they alley mouth until she's finished, waiting, wanting to know - will she acknowledge him, whatever she is, or move on without?

He wants to know about that thing she destroyed. But more, he wants to know about her, and just waiting can tell him more than some might imagine. He's unstartled, undisturbed by what he's seen. Nevertheless, he's never seen anything quite like it, and that ... bothers him. Very, very much. It always does when Darrow confronts him with novelty. He is unaccustomed to novelty at his age.

There's still a chance that he won't hear her if she speaks. A chance that he is only minutely attuned to her spirit, enough to catch her general location, but not enough to see, not enough to hear. But in spite of all that, Rukia thinks that odds are, she's been spotted. His curiosity, piqued. And it seems more prudent to address it than to leave the man, or creature, or whatever he is to his own devices.

So she turns her own gaze, looking him squarely in the eye.

"Were you planning on saying anything?" she asks, an almost authoritative tone in her voice as she glances with no small amount of aplomb. He may be larger than her, he may even be older than her, but that doesn't mean that she's in any way helpless.

When they meet eyes, there is a moment of electricity like little else Robin has felt in this place just yet, like a taste of home mixed with a foreign flavor, and his brows raise up his noble forehead as he takes in a breath and releases it slowly before spreading a grin across his face.

It radiates confidence, and he feels enough of it to not worry she has an upper hand. Despite the sword that she carries. He's carrying himself, after all, though he has no intention of making it a you show me yours sort of conversation.

Not unless pants are no longer involved.

"No," he answers with flippant truth. "Are you aware that your fashion is centuries outdated? But you make it work, so whatever."

"Centuries outdated by whose standards?" Rukia asks easily in return. By the way he's looking at her, he knows. Knows something, at least, even if it's as simple as the fact that Rukia is something other than human, something that doesn't quite belong in their surroundings. The fashion comment probably isn't even scratching the surface of what he wants to say.

But Rukia doesn't plan on sharing any more until he comes out with it and asks directly.

So she hops onto a window ledge jutting out from the nearest building, no light shining from inside, instead quiet and vacant.

"Mine," Goodfellow replies with flowing, confident ease, though there is a note to the voice which suggests it's more joke than bragging. A puck's way of breaking ice.

"A puck's. One who is curious about the other things sharing his stomping grounds. Such as yourself?"

He follows her with his eyes, sharp and canny, even while the expression on his face reads as a placeholder, a pleasant, slightly smirking placeholder, waiting for a real, honest expression to take its place once he's heard enough to form a real, honest opinion.

"Calling a woman a thing isn't going to earn you any favors," Rukia says, nose wrinkling slightly at all of it — the tone, the presumption, even the small smile on his face that doesn't seem to run deep. Something, though, tells her that he's not underestimating her potential ability.

And that's the saving grace.

"I'm a reaper," she tells him, using the word that seems to resonate most with people in the city, natives or otherwise. "Guiding the souls of those who have passed away over to where they're meant to be."

Her protest at being called a thing only gets a dismissive snort from a Goodfellow who is only interested in playing semantics when he is the one initiating the game. There's too much to lose in playing, right now. Too much potential information.

And he's been in need of more of it since arriving in Darrow. Constantly feeling out of his element has gotten very old, very quickly.

Giving a toss of his head, running a hand through his wavy hair to gather it out of his face, he addresses what little information she has given him in return for opening his own mouth. "A lot of work for someone like that around here?" he asks, before following the tease up with a disclaimer. "I haven't met a psychopomp in a very long time. They tend to be too serious a bunch for my tastes, in my neck of the woods. No fun at all, actually."

Narrowing her eyes, Rukia levels the puck with an unamused stare, not caring to dawdle too long on the idea of shinigami being especially serious compared to the living — a statement that Rukia would personally consider false. "Or maybe we just weren't fond of your type of humor," she says, making sure her zanpakutou rests neatly at her hip before crossing her arms over her chest, sizing him up.

A long life is a good weapon all its own, and that's reason enough to be careful.

"There's as much work around here as you'd expect for a place of this population," Rukia says, tilting her head. "Why?"

The idea that someone would dislike Robin's jokes is, of course, entirely justified. But he won't let it show that he agrees, naturally, and responds only with a snort of mild offense.

He watches her, measure him for size, without fidgeting.

"So they don't always stay here after their expiration date? The dead? They don't all linger?" The look he has on her sharpens - this information means something to him. Perhaps even that he's found a way out, of sorts.

Rukia shakes her head at his question, worded specifically enough that she finds her own suspicions raising about her like rising water, her gaze sharp. With her arms crossed over her chest, she leaps easily onto a nearby ledge, sitting down with her legs dangling in the air.

"I don't know for certain where I send them," she tells him honestly, a weakness carefully exposed. "Because I can't follow them. This city doesn't let me do that. But they don't stay here, that much I know for fact. I don't feel any trace of their souls left after I send them away. Take that as you will."

"I take it as a good sign," he says, honestly. He doesn't follow her, the way she's flitting from place to place. Perhaps he could, but there's no need, and it isn't his style to needlessly risk a high perch when the ground works for him.

Not unless he has a reason to make an impression, anyway.

"A sign that this place, at the very least, has something of an immune system. Not a great one, not a normal or natural one, but if it works ... one has got to assume it works. That's good enough. Relief enough for me."

"That's a funny way of putting it," Rukia remarks, pausing to give it some thought, her gaze arching over the sky before settling back down on the puck. Huffing a small breath, almost in laughter, she leans forward and rests her elbow on her knee, chin coming to a rest in the palm of her hand. "But then again, I guess I've never spoken to a puck before. I'm not sure you even exist, where I typically do my work."

Knocking a heel briefly against the wall, she presses on, curious enough to linger, although she keeps an ear out for any other Hollow that might surface in the area.

"So you're feeling pretty trapped, huh?"

waiting for a shock to bring me back to life

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