FF(dot)Net Title: Black/Dragon – 30 Kisses
Chapter Title: No Matter What
Author: livejournal username: brightredglow / ff(dot)net: puaena
Characters/Pairing: Tatsuki/Ichigo
Fandom: Bleach
Theme: #1 - Look Over Here
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Bleach and the characters of Bleach are the property of Kubo Tite.

A/N: Written for the LJ Community of 30Kisses. I'm going to try to go in order. I'm creaky at writing and it shows. I hope to get better. Still, I didn't want to wait for perfection before posting or I would run the risk of never posting. Yet aside from being rusty, I tried to stay within Bleach canon as much as I understand it, which can go up and down (Kubo is sneaky like that). With that said, I apologize in advance for any errors in both proofing and characterizations. Thank you.
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No Matter What
(Theme #1 Look Over Here)

"Look over here!"

Tatsuki's head snapped up in curiosity. Being the new student, she knew the boy wasn't talking to her. Being the new student and a girl meant the boys didn't talk to her unless forced to. And because she was a fast learner and the youngest girl in the dojo meant the other girls didn't talk to her unless forced to.

And that made for a lonely one-hour life for one 4-year-old girl, but that's the way things were no matter what age you were or no matter how much the sensei told all the kids that as long as they were part of the dojo, they were brothers and sisters. The truth of it was that kids made up their own minds when they decided to like someone.

Maybe that was why she got up to look at what the others were staring at. For just a few moments, she wanted to belong and besides, instead of staring at her, it was a relief that they were looking at someone else.

"Look at his hair, Masa," one of the older boys whispered, mindful of where their teacher stood. "Its orange. Its freaking crayon orange."

"And he's like Momotaro small," the boy named Masa snickered back, a little too loudly.

"Sato! Fujishiro!" the sensei called out, abrupt and fierce. The old man's ears were keen and his eyes, black and beady like crows. "Run!" he commanded. "Now!" The two boys stifled their groans and went swiftly outside. Their punishment was enough to make the other children drag themselves back to their pre-warm-up routine.

Tatsuki barely took notice of the boys as they left and she didn't return to her warm-ups. She couldn't pull her eyes away from the boy with hair as spiky as her own but color that was the direct opposite of hers.

The new boy was small just as they said, but that wasn't unusual. There were others just as small and some of them were older. And yes, his hair was a bright and unusual color. Tatsuki did not know many boys but of those that she did know, none of them had hair the color of orange fire. But even then, his weird hair wasn't what caught her attention.

It was his smile. Tatsuki had never seen a smile so big and goofy before and she blinked in confusion at its oddity. "What's wrong with him?" she wondered as she scratched the back of her head.

He stood with his hand firmly entwined with his mother's as she spoke with sensei's wife. With an innocent expression, his open gaze scanned the big room with awe and wonder until his eyes entangled with hers.

Tatsuki frowned but didn't turn away. It wasn't just his hair that was an strange color, but his eyes, a mixed up kind of yellow and brown, was strange too and in spite of herself, she felt her cheeks grow warm. "Stupid boy," she muttered, agitated and not happy about it.

He was too far away to hear her but at her scowl, he laughed. He laughed as if he already knew they would be friends and Tatsuki did not know whether to be annoyed or grateful. Annoyed that he would think they could be friends when they didn't even know each other or grateful because she wasn't the new student anymore and that had to be worth something.

Before she could turn away and ignore him the same way the other kids had ignored her on her first day, the new boy was being brought to her. "Arisawa, this is Kurosaki," one of sensei's assistants told her. "He'll be your sparring partner."

And that was the sum total of the first introduction between Arisawa Tatsuki and Kurosaki Ichigo. Plain, to the point and completely unavoidable.

Those first weeks of partnership were torture for Tatsuki. It was an indescribable awful. It wasn't that he beat her because he didn't. He couldn't even land a hit. And it wasn't that he didn't learn because he did. As sensei often said, Ichigo had a good sense of eye hand coordination, his legs were flexible and supple and although he was small, he was fast which forced her to be faster and she didn't have any problem with that.

Her problem with Ichigo was that he cried. The first time he did it was when she landed a solid blow to his upper body. That had made her smile in triumph. Being a girl and making a boy cry was equivalent to being the toughest girl in the world and that was Tatsuki's goal.

On the second and third time, her ego still felt good, but on the tenth and eleventh and twelfth time, it started to wear her out, not to mention it was embarrassing because everyone would look at them as if they were both crying instead of just him.

"Ichigo, you can't cry every time I hit you," she grumbled.

"But it hurts," he sniffled.

"Do you cry when you stub your toe?" she snapped.

"Hai."

"No! You're supposed to say no! Ichigo, boys don't cry. Don't you know that?" she questioned in frustration.

"You're a girl and you don't cry," Ichigo reasoned as he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his gi. "Aren't girls supposed to cry?"

"No."

"Then why can't boys cry?"

"Because you're just not supposed to. When girls don't cry, it is a special thing. Like not screaming when seeing a spider. But boys are not supposed to cry," she told him solemnly. "At anything."

This oft-repeated lecture from one four-year-old to another was futile and at least one of them knew it because no sooner did the lesson begin to barely sink in then class would be over and sensei would say, "Kurosaki! You're mother's here!" and Tatsuki's weekly lesson in toughening up Ichigo would burn to cinders in the wake of his fire orange hair and blinding smile as he flew to the side of his mother.

Tatsuki would sigh every time this happened and wonder why it was that Ichigo was even there. If she were caught crying, her mother would have said, "Stop crying, Tatsuki. We didn't pay for these lessons so you could cry." So Tatsuki never dared to cry but not so Ichigo. Ichigo cried at the end of nearly every session and his mother, impossibly beautiful, patient and kind, was always there to give him a hug and more important, she always brought him back with his hair full of fire and his smile full of sunshine.

And Tatsuki, tough girl that she was attempting to become, grudgingly admitted to herself and only herself that she was glad. Ichigo may have been a crybaby but at least he wasn't full of himself like some of their classmates and she never felt lonely as long as Ichigo was around.

As months passed, Ichigo got a little better. With her help, of course. Sensei was so busy with all his other students that he often told her that she needed to help Ichigo. Tatsuki took this task seriously. After all, someone had to help him. They were almost 5 and he still cried, although not as much.

After a particularly hard sparring match, Tatsuki was elated. She'd not only beaten Ichigo, but better than that, Ichigo hadn't cried at the end. "See," she said with a grin, "you don't always have to cry."

Ichigo gave her a shy smile. "Yeah, but I'd rather get a hit in."

"Maybe next time," she told him.

He took off his head gear and went to where his mother was standing. With her was Ichigo's father, a tall man with hair as dark as Tatsuki's. He looked a little frightening to the young girl until he smiled and she saw that his smile was as big and goofy as his son's.

Tatsuki giggled a little at the thought and turned away to put her head gear in her bag before she went to look for her own mother. As she began to half-carry, half-drag her bag across the floor, she heard a voice call out, "Look over here, Tatsuki-chan."

Confused, Tatsuki turned and saw Ichigo coming back to her. "What is it, Ichigo?"

He held out his hand. "This is for you. You said you liked mine so I got one for you." He opened his hand and in his palm was a three-star pin.

"What is it for?"

"For you."

"I know that but why?" Tatsuki had seen the star pin on Ichigo's bag and she had told Ichigo that it looked cool and she wished she had something like it to decorate her bag. She hadn't thought that Ichigo would remember. He had problems remembering the day of the week. Even she knew the days of the week and she was two days younger than he was.

"For being my friend. For helping me and not laughing at me and my hair and my crying..." he trailed off, embarrassed at his admission and he looked away from her.

Tatsuki blinked hard at him. She'd never thought that his hair bothered him or that he'd noticed when others were teasing him. She wondered if it was harder on him than he showed. She wondered further if his big smile hid big hurts. She blinked again and realized that she didn't like the idea of Ichigo being hurt by anyone. Not even herself.

Quietly, she opened her hand, palm up. With an unaccumstomed hint of shyness, she said, "Arigatou, Ichigo."

As he placed the pin into her hand, the tips of his fingers glanced off hers. It reminded her of a brush of kiss that her mother sometimes gave her. As they often did whenever he was around, Tatsuki felt her cheeks grow warm and she coughed to hide her sudden discomfort. "Friends or not," she stumbled in an effort to regain her usual bossy bravado, "you still cry too much and you haven't beaten me yet."

He grinned, not fooled by her tough talk. "But I will," he promised resolutely. "One day, I'll beat you." He started to go to his mother and father who were waiting at the door. Before he'd taken two steps away from her, he said with an eagerness that she felt herself but could never express, "And we'll still be friends, won't we, Tatsuki-chan? No matter what?"

Even at the tender age of almost five years old, Arisawa Tatsuki knew that the words 'no matter what' held no guarantees, but when his smile grew bigger and brighter than the sun as he waited for her answer, she found that she didn't want to think about that far off time when 'no matter what' came and went. So she nodded. "Yeah, yeah. We'll still be friends. No matter what."

Then he laughed as he went to meet his mother and father while Tatsuki gripped the three-star pin and vowed that they always would be friends...no matter what.

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A/N #2: The three star pin was inspired by its appearance on the cover pages of both Ch 9 Monster and Transfer (It appears on Ichigo's jacket) and 20 Face Again (It appears on Tatsuki's hat). Details like that are why I love Kubo and Bleach even when it drives me crazy. So while I made up the story why they both have the pin, I didn't make up that they both had the pin. ;-)

Next: Theme #2 – News; Letter