Characters: Orihime, Ishida
Summary: No more fairytales.
Pairings: IshiHime
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: Post-manga
Author's Note: You can consider this sort of a predecessor to Afflict, though it can be just as easily read independently.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The blood's crusting under her fingernails and her heart pounds like a sledgehammer on stone, lips drying out as fast as she licks them to bring back some moisture.
None of the blood's hers.
"You're an idiot," Orihime whispers, her smile weak and trembling, as she reaches out and touches his blood-smeared cheek. The grit of the ground beneath them digs into her bare knees; the cold wind buffets them both.
The only response to her touch on Ishida's part is a small smile and a tinge of color into his cheeks. "I'm sorry you think that way, Inoue-san," he whispers, and the smile is like Death glistening on an icy window—so beautiful, but chilling and eerie, and the tips of her hair are brushing his skin. He takes in short, sharp gasps of breath at the feel of them.
The cold seems so far away now; Orihime doesn't notice how it chafes and bites at her skin. The monstrous reverse-reiatsu has long since fled since she found him like this and Orihime wonders if Ishida often ends up in this position. She wouldn't be surprised if he does.
This smell of blood is murderous; reality crashes in on her and she knows she has to do something. His dark eyes are growing dim, and Orihime raises her hands and prepares to focus her will.
"Hey!"
A new voice comes from down the road, a man, running. Orihime looks up at the newcomer; she's never seen him before, he's just another resident of Karakura Town.
He stares, wild-eyed, at the scene before him. A young man lying prostrate on the ground, covered in his own blood and gasping for breath. A girl leaning over him, her fingernails stained cherry red with his blood.
"What happened?" He yells, panicked.
Orihime bites her lip. "My friend's been hurt!" she shouts in reply, feeling strangely disconnected from the whole thing. Maybe it's Ishida's eerie calm starting to affect her, as she feels his fingers slip into hers, cold and wet and tight around her much warmer hand.
The man nods forcefully. "I'll call an ambulance."
What? Orihime knows her own methods would be quicker than a human hospital, and she shoots a brief glance at Ishida, going to bite her lip again as his fingers nearly cut off the circulation to his.
He nods.
"Alright!" Orihime replies, still feeling disturbingly calm. She pauses. "Please hurry!"
They are alone again, and once Orihime is sure there's no one watching, she gently extricates Ishida's fingers from her hand, limp and yet vise-like, and raises her hands, getting ready to channel her will again.
"'s not a good idea."
This time, it's Ishida who stops her, barely audible, slurring his words. Orihime notes with alarm how quickly he has gone to alert and cognitive to mumbling and listless, heart starting to pound even harder in her chest.
"I don't follow your logic," Orihime murmurs shakily, feeling his forehead briefly; the skin's clammy and doused down with cold sweat. Now, she's starting to feel the cold again.
"All the blood," Ishida whispers, the light gleaming off of his glasses, askew on the bridge of his nose. "People will wonder…where it came from."
He's right. She hates to admit it, but he's right.
Orihime bites her lip; the pause between words is grim and opens up like a vast abyss. If he's going to insist upon being stubborn…
"Okay," she whispers. "Okay." A sharp nod feels like it will tear her apart. "Do you think you'll be alright until you can get to a hospital?"
He can't nod but smiles slightly—it's odd how much he's smiling lately. Orihime wonders if he's getting delirious. "Wouldn't be the first time," Ishida manages to croak. That doesn't reassure her at all.
A crow's sharp caw brings her back to reality like the stench of blood and the rising actuality of the way his eyes are dimming that stamps fear back on Orihime's mind. "I'm going to get you help," Orihime promises, face growing milky waxen, voice dropping low.
This time, Ishida's smile is both whimsical and a little sad. "I…" He hesitates and breaks off.
Orihime frowns and smiles slightly, tilting her head. "What is it?"
"I…love you." He whispers out the words as though he's said it a thousand times, though at the same time he seems to sense the futility in his own words, because Ishida closes his eyes and grimaces after speaking, and then looks away and won't look at her again.
Ah… He must be delirious, for his buttoned mouth to have let those secret words fly loose.
Somehow, it violates every sappy cliché Orihime's ever come across in romantic movies. Then again, she's never liked those movies too much. They all sound the same in the end.
She reminds herself that the eyes below her are blue, not brown.
There's no sound in the air; no more crows, and no sounds of sirens yet. Not even the sound of howling pre-winter wind, ghostly and uncanny and strangely sad and forlorn. Orihime bites her lip an almost-smile sick and weak, reaching out and putting a hand against his hair with fingernails red with his blood. "I'm going to get you help," she repeats herself, tone the same as before.
She can taste reality in her mouth, sour and bitter.
The ambulance had better get here soon.