Unsteady

by SunaT.U

Kubo led his characters down paths that their old selves would never walk on their own. Now that they are free to wake up, they have their current lives to figure out. Nothing is right, nothing is easy, everything becomes painful. There's no right answer when they have more than ten years to reconcile with. What has Kubo done?

1. Wake up, Ichigo

Ichigo woke up. It was the ceiling, it was the temperature, the scent of the air. It was the soft mattress, the silky covers, the warm body next to him. He was out of place, out of time. Such a surreal feeling, such an unreal experience. To be so lost in one's own life. He had to keep his eyes on the ceiling to feel grounded, to feel fixed in time. The artificial ticking of the digital clock by his bedside was another point of focus. He counted the timed seconds until he lost his place in the thousands. He felt pain in his chest. Not physical pain, a wave of all the emotions that should have been contained within the confines of the past… past how long? Years, years for sure. They were all swirling around in his heart, and he had no context to give to them. What was the last thing he could remember? He was lost. He lost his place again. He should count the ticking again. He needed to fix himself in time again. He was awake, he was here, he was in this moment he told himself.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…

He had memories, they just bled into each other, and with blood mixed with blood, you can only tell the difference under a microscope. His clear memories were from so long ago, he couldn't be sure they were relevant to his life as it was now. It hurt. It hurt because he knew his current feelings would hurt people. His life… was it even genuinely his? It was too surreal. All of it.

How long had it been raining? Oh wait, there was no rain outside now that he focused beyond the clock. But it was like he could feel the cold of the drops falling on him through the ceiling. He needed to fix himself here again, the clock wasn't working anymore. He looked to his left. Slowly. Gently. Beautiful eyelashes, beautiful hair, beautiful face. Her face had been that close to him before, but it was the first. He was looking through her to a time before.

Inoue. But his mind told him that he hadn't called her that in a long time. Still, the other part of him was uncomfortable calling her anything else. He knew that it was inappropriate by now. A new wave of pain came to him and met his heart in a sorrowful note. With her as his new fixed point he had to restrain his tears. She was breathing softly, deeply, and the well of his heart was swelling as he watched, listened, felt.

She loved him. It hurt. It hurt so much. Why had this happened? He cared for her, so how could he have given her something disingenuous? He didn't understand the steps he had taken that brought him here. She looked so comfortable, so warm, perfectly fine with her vulnerability. This was wrong. He couldn't stay. Not right now, not while he had so much power to hurt her.

He got up feeling as if all the warmth between them was a string being stretched, fraying in the middle and tearing, being led in two different directions. He was stumbling through someone else's life, these were someone else's steps as he grabbed his wallet and walked through someone else's house to the entrance. He put a coat around his shoulders from the hall closet and stepped into shoes that fit him. The door was opened and then closed after walking through it, but he was lost in time again. He would never remember all of those steps in the dark. Certainly it was his routine from his bleeding years that got him out the door without searching. Certainly this life had been his. But he needed to abandon it.

He didn't know how to live there. In his bleeding years with his bleeding heart, how could he keep steady? He wasn't seeing the city, he couldn't see beyond his mind. He was too focused inward to see the fading lights, to hear the fading sounds, to instead see the trees, to instead hear soft chirping, the humming of a breathing forest. He was going away. Not to disappear, no. He needed to find his time, and he wouldn't come back until he could see now and look it straight in the eyes.