You and Me, Two Have Spoken
By NocturnalFerri
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach
Spoiler for Chapter 195.
AN: Yeah, I know the title was taken off a much disputed lyric in the opening song. I dunno. It just seemed to fit.
AN: takes place during the last 2 pages or so of Chapter 195 when Ichigo see Rukia in the window. I wasn't sure who said "Dumbass! Those are the guys that tried to kill you yesterday." It was probably Rukia…but, um, I didn't realize that when I wrote the fic. I don't think it matters really. Besides…; I kinda like my opening paragraph.
I don't know what made me turn around at that moment. Maybe I heard the touch of a hand taking hold of the window ledge. Maybe I sensed a familiar reiatsu nearby. Maybe I felt one of my heart strings slacken from being pulled at for so long. I don't know what made me turn, but I was sure who I would find behind me.
She launched herself into the air, landing perfectly on the window ledge, arms crossed.
I tried to breathe. I exhaled and my breath sounded suspiciously like her name, "Rukia."
She smiled at me. "Long time no see, eh Ichigo."
Rukia. She was back from the dead...in a matter of speaking. I stood, staring at the petite woman framed by the window, the breeze teasing the hem of her pleated uniform skirt. There were a hundred things I wanted to say, but none of them reached my lips. They were too "unIchigo-like". Too embarrassing. Too sappy for the tough guy image I had tried so hard to build. All those words I couldn't bring myself to say hung in the air, and all I could do was stare.
In a flicker of a second, maybe two, my mind created another world where none of those unspoken embarrassed words and actions existed. I saw Rukia hop down from her perch and crossed the classroom to us. She walked by me, as if to meet with Renji and the others, but she didn't. She stopped, her shoulder touching the front of my shirt so lightly, I would not have noticed if I hadn't felt the faint press of my own shirt against my skin. She turned her face up to look into mine. She raised a hand to my cheek and traced the edges of one of the bandages on my face. Her fingers we like the soft down of feathers, but warm. "You'," she whispered. She smiled. I smiled.
And the vision was gone.
I was back in my body, frozen, staring at the girl in the window, like Peter Pan in Wendy's window. Damn Karin and her bedtime stories.
Rukia hopped down from the window and crossed the room to us. My heart caught in my throat, remembering my half-dream. Would she press against my chest and look up into my eyes? Would she caress the bits of tape and gauze plastered to my face? Would she smile at me? Would I smile back?
She walked slightly past me, facing the other Shinigami. I half turned so we were perpendicular, her shoulder just grazing the front of my shirt. I swallowed, feeling the light touch of her sleeve against my chest. She turned her head up to me. Would she...? She broke into a grin. "That's a lot of wounds you have there."
In an instant I knew my half-dream was no more than what it was. A half dream. A half thought entertained but without a bit of reality behind it. It wasn't an Ichigo-like thing to do, or a Rukia-like thing.
"Baka," I growled. "They're just scratches." I scowled even harder. "What are you doing here."
She walked to the group of Shinigami "students". "Didn't they already tell you?"
"Yeah, yeah," I said, "To fight the whatchacallits."
"The Arankaru," repeated Renji impatiently. "The guys who tried to kill you yesterday."
"You said that already," I said.
"So listen," shot back Renji.
"We're preparing to fight against the Arankaru," said Toushiro, hands behind his head, looking bored. "
"Yeah, we went over this already," I said, "That still doesn't explain why you're here in my school."
"Oh, said Rangiku-san. She smiled. "We just wanted to see what the inside of a high school looked like." She looked around. "I always wanted to try being a high school student in this century."
"I don't think I like this uniform," said Yumichika, holding his arms out. It's not as comfortable, and it's so bland."
"And all black and white isn't?" I frowned. "There was no way in hell you five could pass off as ordinary students."
"And what's wrong with how we look?" demanded Yumichika
"That," I said, pointing at his…eye…thingy…whatever it was. "And your shirts are definitely not normal," I said, looking at Renji and Rangiku-san.
"Its not may fault my uniform didn't fit," huffed Rangiku-san. Her shirt looked like it was going to pop open and let…um…everything spill out. At least Orihime kept hers buttoned up.
Renji shrugged. "I think I look fine."
"Not that many people have that many tattoos," I pointed out.
"How we look in the spirit world is how our reiatsu shapes our gigai," explained Renji. "All the better for me," he said with a grin. "I hear women this day and age like guys with tattoos." Rukia smacked his arm.
"We're supposed to be working, not picking up girls," she scolded.
"How do you know what girls these days like, anyhow?" I asked.
Ikkaku drew out a thin volume from his back pocket. "Rukia has been teaching us.
Oh God...
"You gave them your hentai manga!"
"I learned a lot of current day customs from that!" she said defensively.
"Anyway," said Renji. "We're having a meeting after school. All Shinigami stationed in this area…that includes you, mister I-have-a-substitute-Shinigami-license."
"Why didn't you just send me a message or something," I asked.
Ikkaku grinned at me. "We just wanted to see your face when we showed up."
"It was priceless," giggled Rukia. I turned to her.
"And what about you?" I demanded. "What was with your entrance? Couldn't you just have barged through the door like the others?"
She shook her head. "No, I wanted to surprise you."
I was special? I could only hope.
"Come on, Kenpachi-sensei is waiting," laughed Rangiku-san, taking Ikkaku and Toushiru by the shoulders and guiding them towards the door.
Shit. Not that maniac. "He's here?"
Renji rolled his eyes. "Kusajishi managed to con him into playing dress up too."
"So where are they now?" I asked. "He can't be a student."
"He's teaching gym," said Renji. "Kusajishi is his student assistant."
I gaped at him, images of the maniac turning the class into a dodge ball to the death battle flooding my mind. I grimaced. "That must have taken a lot of memory altering.
"A bit," Renji admitted.
"Let's go, Abarai," said Ikkaku, throwing a leer over his shoulder. "Let's leave those two love birds alone."
"Love birds?" I yelped. Rukia looked just as appalled.
Renji followed the others out, but paused at the door. "Yo, Ichigo."
"Yeah?"
"Don't do anything to my Rukia."
"Your Rukia?" I demanded.
"What do you mean, your Rukia?" I demanded.
Renji shut the door. What the hell? How does he get off-
"Ichigo?"
In an instant Rukia had defused me. "Yeah?"
She grinned and hopped up to sit on one of the desks, "What's up?"
"What do you mean, what's up?"
"You know…" she said, kicking her feet. "What's up? Isn't this what young people today say for chitchat?"
"Baka," I muttered. I leaned against the desk next to her. "You know damn well what is going on if you're here."
"Its just chit chat," said Rukia with a shrug.
"You're a Shinigami."
"So are you."
"I'm not exactly sure about that." I said, thinking back to my conversation with Hirako.
"What?"
"Nothing. Nothing." I shook my head and grimaced as a frown tugged at one of the cuts on my head.
"Baka," said Rukia. "How could you let yourself get hurt so badly?"
"They're only scratches," I grumbled.
Her head dropped down to examine a pleat in her skirt. "Are…Are they deep?" she asked quietly.
"Eh?"
She turned to me, no longer smiling, capturing my eyes. She didn't repeat her question. Damn stubbornness. Once spoken, it wasn't repeated unless she wanted to. She didn't. I looked away.
"Some are shallow," I said. "Some are deep." I thought of Tatsuki in a cast. I thought of Orihime, just returning from her week of recovery. I thought of how I couldn't protect them. I thought of mom. I couldn't protect her either.
Warm fingers touched my cheek. I startled and found Rukia standing in front of me, one arm reaching up to touch the bandages on my face again. Her fingers were warm. They tingled when they met my skin. Then...pain?
"Yow!" I clapped a hand to my cheek. It stung. "What are you doing?" I rubbed hard. I blinked, looked at my hand and touched my cheek again. No scab, no blood, no bandage.
Rukia grinned and dangled the band-aid in front of my eyes. She had ripped it off. No wonder it had stung. I glared at her. She just laughed and reached for my face again. I pulled back. "Baka, I'm not going to rip them off again," she said. I eyed her suspiciously then allowed her to touch my face. She gently peeled the remaining bandages off after sending that warm tingly feeling into the shallow cuts. I guess she had her demon magic back. Or maybe that was just how the touch of her skin against mine made me feel. It had to be the demon magic.
After the last was peeled she dropped her hands to her lap. "Hey, Ichigo."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
I rubbed at my newly healed wounds. "What are you talking about? If anyone's supposed to be saying thank you, it's me."
"I wasn't talking about healing your wounds," said Rukia.
There were those unspoken things again. It could have meant any number of things. But somehow, I sort of knew. I sort of knew she wasn't thanking me for the rescue, but for the fact that I went to rescue her against her wishes. I could have argued that it was for her own good. I could have argued that I couldn't just let her die. I could have argued that I cared too much about her to let go that easily. I could have argued that I didn't want to leave her side when we left Soul Society but left because I thought that was what she wanted. I could have argued, but I didn't. I had too much to be thankful for than to argue. I huffed mildly. "I know. I wasn't talking about that either."
We locked eyes once again. There was that smile on her face again. The one that held the delight of a child during Christmas and the weight of a person hundreds of years older than me at the same time. I felt those unspoken words and actions pooling just behind my lips. One sneaked through. I smiled.
Rukia blinked at me, surprised by the smile. She must have understood. She blushed. The unspoken pulled back into me, and I ducked my head, carefully returning my face to its usual frown. There was one more…just lurking. One more thing that needed to be said. "Thanks…for coming back."
Back to the world you had lived in for less than four months. Back to the ordinary non-Shinigami set of friends who care about you. Back to me. But I would never say those exact words. This was close enough. She seemed to understand that too. She nodded.
The school bell chimed. The unspoken would have to wait once more. I cleared my throat. "They're probably waiting for us."
"Right," she started for the door. "Kenpachi-sensei is probably starting the dodge ball battle to the death game already," she teased
Images of dodge ball fireballs of death flying through the air, taking down players left and right with Kenpachi standing at the sidelines egging them on filled my mind. I groaned and followed her out. "This is going to be hell."
I grasped the edge of the classroom door and pulled it shut. I didn't think anything like what happened just a few moments ago would happen again. The unspoken would remain unspoken. Until then, it would have to ride the air around us, waiting until it was time. Until the both of us broke down. Maybe the time wouldn't come. Maybe it was all in my mind and this is all adolescent infatuation. I fought that idea. It felt like more, but what adolescent couldn't say the same of their first love. Was it love? If it was, it was one of those unspoken things again. One of the many. But between the two of us, it didn't really matter. We have spoken.