Disclaimer: No, I don't own Bleach. But I miss it. So I wrote this.
Their Forever
Russet eyes looked to the sky, watching the setting sun that glimmered past the horizon. Its last rays of light painted the heavens with cerise colors before night cloaked the world in a blanket of stars, blinking in the intangible distance. There was no moon, he noticed. Somehow, it was stolen from the sky.
They had visited the same beach years before, he remembered. It was then that she had asked him, "Do you believe in forever?" Well that was Rukia, always asking the impossible.
She was the impossible.
He had no memory of how he responded, whether if it was a quick turn of his head or a sharp exhale of salty air through his nose, he had forgotten. But what he did know was that forever was as malleable as the shoreline, molded by the sea of fate. Forever was as evanescent as the sky, changed constantly by the sun, moon and stars. Forever was as ephemeral as them.
It was not the same seashore they stood upon as they gazed past the horizon. It was not the same sky that looked over them that day they so desperately wished to return to. Even their fates changed. They changed.
But somehow, they stood alone together creating an ephemeral eternity.
Rukia stood solemnly, her shoulders ever so slightly angled downwards, tired after hours of chasing and running from the waves that she was never able to pin down upon the shore. Her breaths were long like the tide as they spread against the shore and rapid like the waves when they sped to return to the sapphire sea. It was the only thing he heard along with the rolling surf, harmoniously blended into each rise and fall of her chest.
She took a step into the water, gracefully lifting her dress with her fair hands as she descended into the rippling waves that locked around her ankles and seemed to pull her deeper and deeper into the cerulean unknown.
Ichigo felt his fingers twitch, reaching for her, to pull her away from the lulling force of the waves, but it was no use. A cold breeze swept over the shore as his hand fell to his side, knowing nothing could cease the ebb and flow of the ocean. He ushered a disheartened sigh as the wind stirred the onyx strands of her hair and the folds of her pale pink dress that fell too long on her slender frame, causing the soft material to tangle with the water and sand.
"Is that what makes the waves come and go?" She whispered, her voice carried gently with the breath of the fleeting air and into his ears, "The wind?"
There she goes…
"No," he answered, looking back to the ocean, "the sun and moon moves the tide."
She pondered his answer for a brief moment, and then furrowed her brow in confusion, turning to him. "But how? The moon and sun are so far away."
"It's the positions of the sun and moon relative to the earth."
She muttered, "Idiot."
His eyes widened with a tinge of surprise, then relaxed under his scowl. "I answered the question, how am I the idiot?"
"Because," she hissed tartly, "Your answer makes no sense."
"It makes sense if you think about it."
She groaned, "But you can't even see the sun or the moon, it makes no sense at all."
"Whatever, Rukia."
She glared at him and crossed her arms defiantly. "Yeah, whatever," she said, before gathering her dress in her hands as she turned away from him and walked briskly down the shoreline. He followed her with his eyes, watching her pink silhouette fade into the dusk with each step she took down the seashore, her bare feet leaving footprints in the sand.
And time moved on.
The sky glowed then dimmed. The moon was returned to the sky and the waves came and went, erasing the tiny footprints that held the only remnants of her brief visit to the real world. And like the tide, she left.
The pink dress she wore he never found, like the seashell she discovered and held so tight in her hands.
"You can hear the ocean," he began, holding the shell to her ear, "If you listen."
Ichigo found himself on the beach, remembering. He stood alone.
"Do you believe in forever?" He asked to the shore, to the waves, to the sky, to the moon. There was no answer except that of the gentle crashing song of the sea.
And it was then that he decided that forever was impossible. He smiled.
-phew- This seems like I tried stuffing way too many things in here. But whatever. The ending has a hidden message, if you read the third paragraph sentence and then the last one, things will make sense. And I added the smiling bit because Ichigo smiling happens like, never so wouldn't you say that its ephemeral? Thank you for reading this. Comments are definitely appreciated!
Thanks!