Themes: Contest theme #2, lyrics from Hero by Darren Hayes:
Outside confidence is king
I am all that you're projecting
Inside feel the rising tide
And the revolution's deafening
#18, "crossing the borderline"of the 100 themes at ichiruki (on Livejournal)
Rating: Teen/PG-13 (language, mention of blood and violence)
Category/Genre/Pairing: one-shot, drama, angst. IchigoxRukia, although it really is Ichigo's show this time.
Timeline: Between chapters 213 and 214; spoilers up to those chapters.
Summary: After the attack on Karakura, Ichigo has some hard thinking to do. Rukia is not helping. (4,153 words)
Note: This story follows the timeline of Holes in the Rain and Girl in the Box, but stands on its own. One of Ichigo's lines is a quote from the Manga7 translation of ch. 214.
x
'Get up, Rukia.'
Ichigo's thoughts focus on that one point of clarity as he crouches down over her. She lies bathed in Inoue's healing, arms askew at her sides on the sidewalk. Ichigo is dimly aware of Renji's presence next to his shoulder, of Hitsugaya standing nearby. Rukia's gigai squats on the steps of Inoue's house, sniffling. All around them, the mesh of spirit pressures stirred by the recent battles is falling little by little.
That is all white noise next to Rukia there, blood in sticky patches on her uniform, eyes shut as if merely sleeping. Even Grimmjow's parting words, hammering at the edge of his thoughts, subside into the hum.
'Damn it, Rukia. You have to get up. I could really use a kick to the head right about now.'
Momentarily, he thinks about taking back the last part.
Then Rukia groans and he loses the thought. The blood ebbs and fades away from view. She draws a hitched but full breath into lungs that are intact again. Ichigo echoes her gasp, not realising he has held his breath.
Struggling for another breath, Rukia convulses. The shell of light shimmers, but holds. Inoue tenses to keep it together. Ichigo grits his teeth, ready to... do something: to surge forward to Rukia, to bolt from the scene altogether.
"Kuchiki-san?" Inoue calls out. Renji is standing up beside him. Then there is a reedy noise that grows into a quite respectable snarl.
"Shit."
With that, Rukia pushes herself up onto her elbows, leans over and gives a dry heave. The sound is loud in the silence as all eyes turn to her.
Ichigo gets to his feet and turns away. The others cluster around Rukia. Renji's voice barks out in surprisingly gentle tones, but Ichigo cannot take it just now. He fucked up, and now Rukia lies there, hopelessly crushed.
She had not been breathing when Matsumoto found her. Matsumoto murmured that to Hitsugaya before taking her leave, just as Ichigo arrived with Renji. Ichigo was probably not supposed to hear that.
"Kurosaki-kun, let me see that."
"Huh?" Ichigo's gaze snaps to Inoue too quickly: she doubles in his vision as she points at his head. He had forgotten the pain; the blood has crusted in his hair and on his cheek. Woodenly, he nods and follows her a few paces away from the others.
He sits down on the concrete steps leading up to her front door as she presses a light hand on his shoulder. As soon as he is off his feet, exhaustion rushes him. His head dips forward into his hand - just for second or two, he swears to himself. However, a moment passes before he again hears Inoue's voice. She is talking by his shoulder even as she gingerly pokes at his scalp.
"It's so good Kuchiki-san is well enough to heal Renji-kun, because I'm a little tired already, and - and -" Her hand trembles against the side of his head. She looks past him. "Everyone was hurt. I hope Rangiku-san finds Ikkaku-kun soon, too. Toushirou-kun is back on his feet, thank goodness. His ice flowers kept melting, but he's okay now, I patched him up as much as I could, although I wonder if the flowers would need dirt and water to perk up again... Would that really work, what do you think, because they're made of ice?"
Ichigo gives a rough, acquiescent sound. Her prattle is soothing. It tells him some part of the world is still the same.
"Please stay still now, Kurosaki-kun." Liquid warmth spreads over him, soaking to the bone as her magic envelops him. He is perfectly happy not moving an inch.
On her knees to the side of him, Inoue shifts. Her eyes are closed, brow furrowed. The heat of her healing creeps lower, to the bruises on his side. The whole of her seems tensed towards her open hand. It is strange to see her, bubbly, whimsical Inoue, so... taxed.
"Luckily you're not hurt so much, Kurosaki-kun. I guess you wouldn't be, you went into bankai after all, and they couldn't have been as strong as Kuchiki-san's brother..."
'They're stronger.' Still cradling his head, Ichigo breathes noisily through his fingers.
"They still had me a bit worried. Rangiku-san told me to hide, and I-I - I think I wouldn't have been much use anyway, and Tsubaki-kun would've scolded me again and hit me upside the head, and he really is kind of lovable when he does that, but don't tell him, because..." Her voice peters out even as the glow of her healing dims away.
"Inoue?" Ichigo looks up. His head has thankfully stopped wobbling. Inoue stares down at her lap. Some way to the side past her, Rukia bellows out something, and a yelp sounding suspiciously like Renji trails her outburst. He almost turns towards the voices, but keeps his gaze on Inoue.
"Mm-hm?" She lifts her head. Her eyes zero in on something past him. "Oh, Kuchiki-san looks so lively again. Renji-kun, too. They seem really close, don't you think, Kurosaki-kun, with the way he lets her..."
"Inoue," he says again, with more stress this time. Now she bothers him, and what she is saying might bother him more, if he let it. He tries to speak clearly, giving each word a weight. "Thanks. For helping everyone."
Her eyes flick to him and then away. She nudges her lip with her teeth, chuckling uneasily. "No, Kurosaki-kun - thank you. You've - you've spent so much power again, to - to keep everyone safe."
'Damn it, Inoue, how can you say that? I'm the reason they came.'
He barely stops himself from shaking his head and looks down instead. Inoue offers that faith so freely, he can neither refuse nor accept it.
'I'm the one who nearly lost control again. Even after Rukia warned me. Not that she would've stood a chance against Grimmjow...
'Fuck this. This... can't happen again. Ever.' This time, Inoue was there to mend everyone. This time, no one died. The Arrancar will come again, and - the thought sends a sudden, hungry thrill down his spine. His pulse leaps up like an uncoiling spring. The taste of blood fills his mouth and it is all he can do to remain still and not be sick.
'Breathe. Don't think it. Don't call it. Breathe.'
He breathes. Rukia and Renji bicker in the background, Hitsugaya cutting in with some sardonic comment or other. The sounds seep into his mind and he lets them sink in and anchor him.
This cannot go on. The Arrancar will come again, and the raving creature at the back of his mind will not leave so easily then.
Inoue's hand on his shoulder pulls him back to the night-time street. "Kurosaki-kun?"
"Yeah, I'm okay." He nods shakily. With a wan smile, she rises and goes over to the others, her steps swift and small.
The air is cleaner now - so it feels to him as he walks after Inoue. The bone-coloured moon gloats at him with a ridged smile. It gains a malformed mask as a tattered sliver of cloud glides across the lower part of its crescent. Rukia is speaking to Inoue, even as her gigai continues to shed profuse tears at her recovery. Renji has stepped back, but his eyes follow Rukia.
Ichigo clears his throat before speaking up. "So, you better now, Rukia?"
x
His room is dark and quiet as Ichigo hauls himself in through the window. It is a small mercy that he finds his body mostly where he left it. Kon has dozed off, sprawled all over his bed. The world blurs and then aligns itself as he flows back into his body. He plucks the mod-soul candy from his mouth and sets it on the nightstand. Just now, the last thing he needs is Kon going ballistic over Rukia's ragged state. She is whole, but she is not healed.
He knows the difference himself: the worn, out-of-breath feeling that drags on even after the damage is undone. It takes time for the body to bring itself back up to speed. Rukia must know that. Then why the fuck will she not admit she is not fine yet? Does she think he doesn't know why she refused to enter her gigai?
He switches on his nightlight. The window rattles. Ichigo breathes in and does not turn to look as Rukia, still in soul form, clambers up to the windowsill. Her sandals tap on the floor, but what Ichigo hears is the gasp that escapes her in a sharp rip of breath. She used to climb to his window in a gigai, spouting a lecture at the same time. Now, she is breaking a sweat at the same task. He wants to shake her.
Instead, he turns to his drawer to find his pyjamas. Not that he is expecting to sleep; he just needs to occupy himself until she is out of his room.
He has moved on to rifling through a different drawer when another set of footfalls sounds on the floorboards: her gigai.
'Good. Now, just get back in your body, sneak away to bed, don't make me sit here and not come and help you.'
Rukia whispers a few words. Then there is the swish of his door opening just enough for a slim girl to slip through. Ichigo stares steadfastly at his socks and waits for the door to close behind her.
He drops his pyjamas onto the floor and leans on the drawer. It slides in as his head inclines forward. It's been a fucking long night. His head is a merry-go-round crammed full of unwelcome faces: Grimmjow in ghoulish white with the smile of a nightmare; Inoue with downcast eyes that hid things he could not name; Renji, subdued by his side, eyes on Rukia; Rukia screaming at him to go, Rukia toppling in a splatter of blood...
His head snaps up at the chink of metal. Rukia, legs folded beneath her, back against a corner of his bed, tugs her sword from her sash and unsheathes it. She has sent her body away.
His non-involvement stops dead. Right there. He glowers at her. "What the hell're you doing here?"
"Your sisters are sleeping." She twists the pommel-cap of her sword free, carefully sets it down, and begins unravelling the braided silk around the hilt. "I can't clean her there."
Ichigo cannot stop his eyes from widening. "Your... sword?"
He is hoping for that look from her that says he really is clueless beyond belief. It would give things some semblance of normality. But Rukia unhooks a steel pin from the hilt, squinting as if she had trouble seeing the delicate part. "Of course. She fought well tonight. It is only courteous." Her face is a mask of closed spaces that all conceal things unsaid.
He remembers that tone. This is Rukia of House Kuchiki speaking, and he had better remember his place. The last time he heard her like that, he was near-dead and delirious with pain on a wet sidewalk, and she walked away between Renji and her brother. Now the words are gentler, but the tone still raises a bright spike of alarm and anger in him.
'Don't you dare get high and mighty on me now, Rukia -'
A pair of socks still clutched in his hand, he snaps at her. "Well excuse me! I was a little too busy saving your ass in Soul Society to pick up any social niceties!"
Rukia starts. The sword twitches in her lap. The guard-piece tumbles from her grasp and her hands clench - but she makes no sound as blood wells through her fingers.
His anger drains away; for a moment he is well and truly clueless. Rukia sits still, her countenance unchanging as she unfurls her fingers. A streak of blood runs across her palm like a macabre lifeline, dripping away in beads that soak into her hakama.
Ichigo has two younger sisters and a doctor for a father; some things become instinct in such an environment. His brain still grinding, he grabs her hand and stuffs the nearest clean cloth onto the wound, tucking it over the bleeding spot.
Rukia starts to yank her hand away, but he is already gripping her wrist. "We need to stop the bleeding," Ichigo mumbles at her, eyes glued to the sock around her hand.
She huffs and her hand relaxes. Leaning forward, she almost bumps her head into his chin. Both of them seem unable to look up.
Staunching the bleeding takes a while. Ichigo settles on enduring; Rukia follows his lead. He keeps his hand fast around her palm, pressing down on the wound and trying not to think of how thin and cool her hand is against his.
'This is so damn stupid.' The Rukia he knows does not fumble. Neither does she sit docilely and let him carry out such whopping idiocies as tonight.
Rukia interrupts him with another tug of her hand. "It's fine now, Ichigo." Her voice is inscrutable. "I can fix it up."
He lets go. She peels off the damp sock, and her palm lights with a telltale wisp of kidou. Rocking back on his haunches, Ichigo watches as the skin crawls in over the wound, leaving only a fine, pale line where the sword bit in. It is over in seconds; Rukia breathes a little harder with the stress of the healing.
The anger made things easier. Now there is only wordless unease. Ichigo draws his hands to his sides.
"I, uh, sorry about that," he says at length. 'About what, Ichigo? Yelling at her? Her hand? About helping her?' Maybe all those things.
Rukia, for her part, seems bent on ignoring him again. She has produced a piece of white fabric and a small, flat flask of some kind; where from, he must have missed. Methodically, she dabs a spot of oil onto the cloth and begins swiping the metal parts of her zanpakutou. Her motions echo years and years of practice, as if she had memorised the task - or ritual, as it appears to him - to the last detail.
Watching her now, it is difficult to imagine those nimble fingers making the slightest wrong movement. He must have really startled her. The thought bends his head again. Words will not come. Neither does Rukia seem to be offering any.
"Ichigo," she finally says. "The Hollow needs to be dealt with." She hooks the silk twine back into place with the hilt collar and begins winding it around the hilt.
His shoulders slump. 'You're really fucking good at this, Rukia, got to give you that.' If he only knew if she really is cutting to the heart of the matter, or just evading some other issue.
"You can't fight as you are now," she continues. "Every time you go into bankai, you run the risk of losing control to that thing." She folds the burgundy silk around the hilt in flawless angles. "Urahara has the best idea about what it even is." She is rock and black ice now, her voice as restrained as the motions of her hands. He hates it when she does that: submerges hi- the Rukia who lived in his cupboard beneath the untouchable soldier-noble.
"It's really the only option you have, Ichigo. If this keeps up, that thing - it will consume you." A beat of tension passes over her. Ichigo swallows through a dry throat, but Rukia is already moving on. "It's been demonstrated you can't fight it on your own."
The only thing that leashes a venomous comeback from him is the knowledge that she is right. However, he already owes Urahara. What is more, Rukia is a living, breathing - thank God for that - example of what happens when others get involved. Grimmjow cut her down to get at him. His nails score into his palms. As Rukia squares her shoulders, his eyes stray to her stomach, where he can still see the viscous smear of blood.
'You almost died on me.'
"Rukia... it's not gonna work." He has to make her see. "If Urahara-san knew something, he'd have told me."
She gives him an acid scoff. "You don't know Urahara Kisuke." She pauses. "But he still is your best chance. He doesn't want to kill you, for one."
Jamming his hands in his pockets before he does something rash with them, Ichigo makes a face. She is right again, in a sense she - he hopes with all his heart - is not aware of.
Urahara is not his only chance. Somewhere in Karakura hides a bony character with a madman's leer who knows what he now needs. The thought sends a jolt of apprehension through him, but he stuffs it back down. He will rather bargain with this particular devil than see anyone, ever again, fall trying to fight his fights.
With a melodious sound of steel, like the chime of a falling icicle, Rukia snaps Shirayuki back into the sheath. He realises the silence is becoming strained just as she raises her head, her eyes flinty, her voice barbed as she speaks. "What is your plan, Ichigo? We sit on our behinds and wait for your Hollow to come calling? Maybe set out a tea table for it?"
She stands up, nowhere near his eye level, but suddenly her presence forces his every sense upon itself. How does she do that, fill so much room with such a tiny figure? "Well?"
He pulls a veneer of exasperation over his tension. "I don't know, Rukia! And you won't lay off for long enough for me to even think!" Drawing up to his full height, Ichigo fixes her with a glare.
"You're one to talk!" Rukia folds her arms, her expression merciless. "You sure are doing a stellar job of this. Judging from what you've been up to while I was away, there's not a lot to think with under that mop you call hair."
Her words are hot needles punched into his flesh. His voice rises before he manages to stop it, rises with anger and unexpected hurt. "You have no idea what - no fucking right to talk to me like that!" Looking at her is unbearable, but he cannot stop himself now. "Have you got a thing inside you trying to - to eat you alive? No? Didn't think so!"
For a heartbeat - it reverberates through his skull like the peal of a great bell - darkness rises over his face. He could swear he hears the gravelly chuckle again, as if in an empty, echoing space. 'Did it hear me just now?'
Can a nameless thing come when it is named? The answer comes too easily. His fingers clutch at the bones of his face, nails digging into his temple. 'Go away.
'Go. AWAY.'
Then steady hands find his; fingers wrap round his wrist, clasp the back of his rigid hand. Reflexively, he resists, but with two hands, she pries his grip loose. "Ichigo." Rukia says his name like a charm, like a word of power. "Ichigo."
Keeping his eyes closed, he relaxes his arm, then his shoulders, muscle by muscle. Her fingers fall away as soon as his hand slackens in hers. Ichigo strains his senses until he can draw her aura out of the quiet, vast susurrus of the world; soon she is there in his sight, vivid, sharp, constant. Sighing, he flops down on the floor.
Rukia scuffs her foot against the floor. "Ichigo?" she asks, as if to check that he is still with her. He gives a hasty nod, not daring to speak.
She is near now, hakama rustling, hovering above him. His eye socket still throbs distantly, no longer painful, but he will not look up now. Then Rukia whispers, "I... I do know."
She crouches down before him, so close that her curbed spirit pressure enfolds him anyway. Her artificial body must have suppressed her aura somewhat. There is a pleasant crispness to it that he has never noticed before, like a breath of air felt on a flushed cheek. After a pregnant pause, she goes on, in a strange voice, "I know what it's like to be alone with your demons."
Ichigo opens his eyes. Rukia is looking straight at him. "I know what it's like to speak to the dark and hear it whisper back at you." Breathing deep, she bites her teeth together.
Ichigo rests his wrists on his raised knees and returns her look squarely. Her pupils are enlarged by the twilight; his nightlight is a poor substitute for the wrecked ceiling lamp.
"This is one of those times when I don't ask, right?" he says.
"We're already beyond asking permission, Ichigo," Rukia replies. "I... didn't wait for your leave. For that... I apologise." Her eyes are shifting, as if there were a fathomless depth to her that he could not hope to measure. It occurs to him how much longer her life has been than his. It used to be easy to think of her as just Rukia, who upset his world and hunted Hollows with him. Still, there are the others hiding in the shadow of his Rukia. He barely knows them, but they are a part of her. The thought is sobering, if sad.
He coughs a bit. "S'fine."
Rukia nods, then sighs softly. Breathing seems easier for both of them.
"But you still won't tell me, eh?" He quirks his mouth to one side.
Her hair slants forward to cover her face. Her thumb rubs circles on the end of her sword's hilt. "I will in time, Ichigo."
That sounds like the end of a discussion if he ever heard one. It also untangles his thoughts. However much Rukia messes with his head at times, she has a unique knack at setting him straight. 'Guess I got that kick straight and true, Rukia. Though you won't be too happy about the end results.'
In the back of his mind, an image is forming. Hirako Shinji grins at him. The Visored's reiatsu spins like a whorl of blood poured into water; a red-black, coppery taste, shot through with velvety streamers of white tissue. It is a rare kind of spirit pressure, neither shinigami nor Hollow.
He can find it again. There will be no need to involve anyone he cares about.
Rukia smooths the pleats of her hakama with her hands as she gets to her feet. She has mellowed down a good deal, judging by the softness of her tone. "We'll be no wiser tonight, will we?" However, the way she stresses the last two words is unsettling.
"Don't think there'll be any more of 'em, no." If that Tousen guy was right, at least that is true.' His limbs feel lighter as he stands up, but his chest is heavy. His mind is set; that is liberating, but he is acutely conscious of what he is going to leave behind.
Just for a short while, he tells himself.
Rukia at last hums agreement. "Not tonight."
He shrugs. "They show up again, they got 'nother thing coming."
Rukia's voice is like he has never heard before, a mixture of derision, tart mirth and, shivering beneath, deep-seated kindness. "After your outstanding performance tonight, they'll be ravening for an encore?"
Ichigo's head drops. Helpless amusement and bitter realisation vie for forefront in his mind. "Damn, Rukia. You're just... too much sometimes."
She places her hands on the small of his back, her palms splaying into the cloth of his shirt. Her temple comes to rest below his shoulder blade.
He stiffens. A part of him utters, Remember this. Remember her. Where you're going, you'll need every piece of you that you can keep.
'Rukia's not... a piece of...'
He should know better than to try and argue with his subconscious about this.
"You can handle it, Ichigo," she mutters into his shirt. He is tongue-tied, a Gordian knot in his mouth, but Zangetsu is not at hand.
Rukia's fingers leave his back one by one. She moves away to the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies her slipping out of the lamplight. Meeting her gaze as it turns to him, over her shoulder, seems impossible. He does not.
Rukia shuts the door behind her. Only then does Ichigo look up, up at the shadows on the ceiling, flat and impermeable.
He did it. He did not speak of what he will do. He resisted the promise of comfort there, in the faint imprint of her hands that lingers on his skin.
x
Notes: I wouldn't be here without Raynos and Tenebris, who practically brainstormed the 'fic up for me. After that, they put up with my lateness and tetchiness and hammered the damn thing into shape. Ten also provided a wicked Rukia line. Much, much obliged, ladies. (Also, chainsaws.)
The title of this story was stolen from Planescape: Torment, a sadly underappreciated cult classic game by Interplay.