Rukia stares out the window and out into the pouring rain. Books fill her room mostly with a side table full of tools, a mussed-up bed, and a wooden chair. Usually, she'd be up and out and walking endlessly without a plan -there's so much time here- but, not today.
She senses something is here, and not a good one, she adds.
She decides not to go out today.
.
It's a week later that she finally feels- whatever is there dim down to a pitiful level that she decides that now is safe enough for her to go out.
She pulls on her shorts and t-shirt and takes an umbrella with her.
.
.
.
She finds the source of change sitting on the lone bench ahead of her.
(she hasn't seen anyone for a long, long time)
The few who did come, she'd ignore and watch them flitter away, or send them back, with force if necessary. But the way he sits on the metal bench, unmoving and bent over- almost looks like her reflection.
She steps forward and reaches the hooded figure who's facing the ground: white skin, white hair; a black metal uniform stained with red-brown.
Ahh, she muses with a reluctant sigh, they're still fighting over there; she raises her umbrella in the air and swings it down.
He looks up at her.
(and he sees a human, probably one who escaped the war to this dreary place; coward, he muses. still, he hopes there are no others.
because then the program would kick in.)
.
She stops half-way and sees his black eyes with yellow irises, empty and faded and flickering. They stare up into her violet irises. She stares back for a moment and notes there is none of what she expects-
-and he really does resemble her, she muses, dying out in the rain.
(but, she wonders if he came here for the same reason she did. well, she lowers her weapon, only one way to find out.)
She offers a hand.
He continues to sit.
She sighs and grabs his hand from his lap and pulls his hand-
-the chords extend from his hand and she takes a longer look: the metal is rusting and stained with a crusty red too -that's probably furthered the rusting process- then back up at him. He doesn't move still, only staring back at her unflinchingly, or she muses, he can't. She walks closer to him again and whispers into his ear, sorry, and quickly races off.
He feels very, very heavy.
(he blanks out again and listens to the rain)
...
...
...
thunk
He flickers awake and sees the same girl set up the large umbrella shade -meant for beaches and sunshine- and nears him, the tools and chunk of metal placed beside her.
She sits beside him and starts replacing and reattaching his hand, a color of white. He focuses his blurring vision and sees details: pale skin, black hair tied into a bun, and -she pauses and gives him a reassuring smile before continuing- dark blue eyes.
(she reminds him of the moon)
Minutes later, she asks him to flex his fingers and move his wrist, and he does, his eyes widen when there's not even a creaking sound in place and that it's easy to move and flex-
-almost like a human.
She smiles at the slight surprise and stands up. She carefully lifts his arms up and pulls the t-shirt up and over his head and nearly falters at the sight of rusting and beaten-up metal, and it hurts. He looks away, and waits for the expected.
Silence.
He looks up again and finds her very determined with her stance and the color in her eyes flicker with fire. She races off-
-and this time, he waits.
...
...
...
...
...
...
She comes back with metal in her arms she'd collected from abandoned buildings and places them on the ground. Then she begins unscrewing his metal body parts one by one and replicating them with her new metal by molding it into shape. She drills holes into them and screws them onto him until night falls (-she'd learned by observing the darker shades of the world around her in the rain, she'd know, after living here for so long).
Hours later, she stands up and nearly falls back from the cramp in her aching legs until he grabs her arm and steadies her again. She says her thanks and studies him. The metal is all in place and all right now that she's done, but, something is missing. She frowns and stares at him very intensely, then jumps at a bright idea and demands him to sit and wait for her. He nods; she races off again.
He stands and faces the direction she ran off to.
...
...
...
She races back with paint and excitedly tells him to sit. He does, and she stands on the bench, pulls out a brush, and dips it into orange paint and begins painting his "hair". She doesn't stop until she's done and then she jumps off and stares at him and nods with satisfaction, brighter is better on you, she tells him.
He looks up at her blankly and tells her he thinks it's a gangster-ish color. She laughs and tells him he's an interesting guy.
(guy she'd said, not cyborg; he peers closer at her and she seems brighter and freer than before.
strange.)
She holds out her hand again with a smile, and thinks it's the prettiest he's seen in this dreary world.
He takes it and stands.
...
...
She hums a faint tune that reaches his ears, and he's certain he's heard of it from his world somewhere before he accidentally fell into this world and instantly malfunctioned because of the rain.
(he hates rain- for plenty of reasons, he can't go out, he's handi-capped, he's hopeless and needs another's protection even though he should be protecting-)
She eyes his umbrella in hand with a raised eyebrow and he immediately shakes his head nervously, nonono, you don't understand, i can't survive in the rain because i'm a-
In his monologue, she easily snatches his iron grip on his umbrella and flings it away to somewhere up, up, up, and far off that he can't hear its crash. The rain hits him instantly and he grimly awaits for the blackness to take over his vision and for everything to fade out-
...
...
he's still conscious. He moves his fingers, an arm, then a leg, then everything, and he's in complete awe. Then, there's a giggle behind him, and he turns and watches her burst out into laughter.
He scowls reflexively, and there's something rising- he looks at the reflection in the puddle, and he remembers -an expression of furrowed eyebrows, a downturn of his mouth- irritation, but there's something light in him as she grabs his hand and leads him to her- well, wherever the hell they were going.
(she'd probably make miracles out of nowhere in hell or heaven-
-as long as she's around.)
.
.
.
tbc