Characters: Ishida, Orihime
Summary: My heart's a battleground.
Pairings: IshiHime
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: No timeline needed
Author's Note: Short piece; couldn't resist. Obviously doesn't have to connect to any specific event in the manga.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
They are both looking for a safe place to weather out the storm. Hands clasped and wringing together try to push away fear and uncertainty and anything that could leave them wavering. Both are unsure but there's no room for doubt now, not when the final plunge has to be taken. There's no time for doubt when all that can be done is take a deep breath and dive.
Lives gripped by turmoil can never go back to what they were, what they weren't, what they never were in the first place—Ishida's not sure what peace is or how to frame the word in his mouth since it's never been applicable to him. No peace for those who walk the road he walks, no rest for the watchers.
Orihime keeps her head down and her eyes fixed on that one point on the horizon to cope. That point far off in the distance she has labeled "Hope", the thing she strives for and lifts her hands towards the sky in the attempt to reach it, praying to some god to give her strength to go the final mile to reach it. Light spills all around her, glitters, pools at her feet like watery ponds of light. She keeps walking.
Neither frame peace. Turmoil is reality, not always the painful chaos but always that which shakes and spills their lives and forms it into something different and somehow the same, something familiar and yet unrecognizable.
Brown eyes glimmer and white teeth flash in a quicksilver smile; Orihime works her magic with the same finesse she's always possessed.
Ishida isn't sure what brought them to the same sanctuary, to the same safe place in the desert.
He just knows he's glad he and Orihime ended up in the same place.