Lazarus Heart
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. However, should you like to give it to me for my birthday/graduation/Christmas/whatever, you are quite welcome to do so!
A/N: Yes, another Sting-inspired ficlet. And it's Ichiangst again, though hopefully more mild than last time. But read the lyrics to "Lazarus Heart" and try to tell me you don't think of Ichigo.
He traced the skin where, the day before, a gaping wound had been. Though it was gone—Rukia was a good healer, even if he was loathe to admit it—he could still feel a ghost of it, a deep-running twinge that made him shudder.
It wasn't as though he had a low tolerance for pain. He'd gotten plenty of injuries over the course of his still-short life, mostly from fights. And some of them had been almost as bad. But this one was different.
His mother—no, that thing using his mother's face—had impaled him. His hand shook over the ghostly injury, and he stilled it by making it into a fist.
It was hard. There was no way around that. But knowing the truth of the matter, knowing the hollow that had killed his mother, gave him a sense of freedom.
No. Freedom wasn't the right word. He didn't know the word for this feeling. He scoured his mind and nearly a decade of schooling, and the closest word he could find was determination.
By all rights, he should be dead. Most people don't survive being impaled. That's not to say he wasn't glad he survived. He was more than glad. The fact that he was still alive meant that he could keep going. Keep protecting those around him, and even those he had never met. Keep fighting hollows, and in turn keep getting closer to killing the one that had taken his mother away.
He had a sword to protect himself, but the wound, which still ached in a way somewhere beyond physical, would give him power. The very memory of it, and all things associated with it, would be a reminder of why he was fighting. Instead of crippling him, it made him stronger.
The sunlight was shining in through the window, and the morning sounds of his family filtered in through the walls, reminding him he had to go to school. With a sigh, he got out of bed and dressed, knocking on his closet door to remind its tenant that it was time to get up.
A few minutes later, and he was outside, his bag carried carelessly over one shoulder. A cacophony drifting from the roof of his house made him stop, and he looked.
A big black and gray cloud of birds had settled on the roof in the night. Idly, he cast a look about in search of stones to throw and scatter them. There were none.
He sighed again, and kept walking. And he couldn't help but notice that nearly every roof of every house was home to birds like his.
A mother was shooing a few of the birds away as she walked her elementary schooler to the bus stop. She looked tired and weary, but still smiled at her child as they walked.
That was who Ichigo was protecting. All of them.