Disclaimer: Bleach and its characters are not mine. I'm only playing, and will put them back when I'm done.
Street Rat
by Netherwood
When she lived in his closet, sometimes Rukia stayed up reading Ichigo's history textbook. Sometimes she made him read it to her if she didn't feel like dealing with a kanji dictionary to handle the ones the mortals changed in the last fifty years or so.
She read about industrialization near the turn of the century, about democracy, about Japan's post-war reconstruction and how a bombed-out wreckage became one of the most modern nations in the world. She thought about the Rukongai, about hunger and thirst, about how she only survived because she had a gang of friends to watch her back and because she learned when to duck and when to fight and when to steal. She thought about the districts that were even worse off than hers.
The noblewoman in her thought about political games and necessary infrastructure and knew that it would never work. The bladeswoman in her thought about life's inevitable pain and the uselessness of the hopes swirling around her head.
But the street rat kept reading anyway.
OoOoO
