Characters: Ishida, Nemu
Summary: Why did it always come back to this?
Pairings: IshiNemu
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: Post-Soul Society arc
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
The frosty night air hits the same strange, straining note as it always does, a repeating note that never fails to leave Ishida with the sort of emotion he can't quite put down. It's not happy, but not sad, either, a serious sensation that makes his fluted, insubstantial bones feel heavier and more leaden than they ever had before.
Nemu has no sense of timing, never has. It's just not something she was ever programmed to know, but Ishida can't complain when she appears, melting out of the prolonged darkness out of the night, and tonight he wonders why she doesn't feel the cold as much, with her long bare legs.
A lamp above lighting up the sidewalk flickers and Ishida remembers the thick layers of foundation under her cheek and brushing it away—mottled bruise here, small abrasion there—and registering with that familiar mixture of exasperation, rage (not against her) and sadness when her emerald green eyes are just as blank and impassive as they ever are.
Frost was crystallizing on her long eyelashes. Ishida can remember that. The light refracted off of the ice like little stars.
She is silently inquisitive when he notices, burning with curiosity. She's always intensely curious, he's noticed; nearly every word from her mouth frames a question. And tonight, the question left unspoken new but still old.
Why?
Now, she walks away, and he watches.
Tall and straight-backed, with a long stride but strangely shuffling walk, in the manner of one used to keeping to the shadows. Nemu is frail but resilient, delicate but durable. All the bruises and gashes can't keep her from standing with her blank but curious, inquisitive eyes wide open to the world, drinking it all in like a keenly investigative child.
Everything about her is a contradiction. She has never died, but is dead by definition and still learning how to live. She may never live at all. Uninterested in the world around her yet made deeply curious by it. A limp, pale flower battered by the wind yet still standing straight.
They stand apart, growing further apart, black and white, as she fades back into the deep frost of the night.
It's a bizarre pulling feel in Ishida, regret at watching her leave. Time is too short, falls away from them, and Nemu leaves as swiftly, abruptly and silently as she came, blissfully unaware of her own esoteric strangeness.
It has been, will always be like this, but she will be safe for tonight.
Of this, he is sure.