Fly, Birdie, Fly
A/N – Written for the FLOL Holiday Exchange for Vergiltheart. I'm sorry for this gift being super late, I had to modify my original idea because it sucked. Hope you like this!
Warning – This is a slightly AU fic, therefore I would need all you lovely readers to pretend that the characters possess no supernatural powers of any sort, and shinigamis apparently have yet to exist.
When Ichigo was just a little boy, his mother told him stories about the bird that got its wings shot while flying majestically in the air and fell to the ground. His mother told him of the bird's great pain, of the bird's longing to reach for the sky again, her desperation to not lose to the broken wing, and Ichigo cheered in his heart when his mother told him about how the bird flew again after being shot to the ground.
Ichigo wanted to know what happened to the bird - if it would be able to continue its journey, soaring high in the sky and never get shot again. So he asked his mother if the bird could reach its desired destination, whether it could find its lady birdie who would marry him and would they have many, many little birdies that would be as strong as the bird that flew again after being shot. His mother had let out that little laugh that Ichigo loved listening to, and she answered him by saying that the bird who was supposed to be shot was also supposed to be a female and therefore she wouldn't be able to find a lady birdie to marry.
Ichigo's mother continued telling him stories of the little bird, how she was such a little pretty one when she was still under her mother's care; how the bird grew into a beauty; how the bird found her friends – seagulls, peacocks, hornbills – and how she forged eternal friendships with them and Ichigo's favourite part was when his mother told him about how the bird healed herself.
I wanna be like the bird, he had once said to his mother.
She can fly up, up, in the sky, he insisted, and she can fall and still fly.
His mother had said to him with a smile brighter than the sun, "You will, Ichigo."
"It will be the story of your life."
Ichigo woke up one day; a few years after his mother had perished in a freak accident, with the story of the little bird resonating in his mind.
"Onii-chan!" Yuzu hollered from downstairs. "Breakfast's ready!"
Ichigo whined a response, even if he knew he would be the only one who heard it. He rose from the bed and caught the sight of his phone's mildly lighting notification of a few missed calls. There were two from unknown numbers (which Ichigo assumed were from public phones) and a few from the usual suspects (Murakami from the baseball club, Hirata from the karate club, Fujiwara from the ping-pong club to name a few) and one from Tatsuki (probably calling to yell at him and remind him that he had yet to return the manga he borrowed from her since 3 months ago). Having a reputation as a volunteer-for-hire could be really nerve-wrecking, especially when the missed calls were seriously the last thing he had needed after a night of uneasy sleep.
He collected all his books and homework which had been partially arranged on his desk, and pulled himself to wash his face in the bathroom next door, then made his way downstairs, ready to leave his home to the school.
He hastily took the bread Yuzu prepared and muttered "itterasshai" under his breath (and he vaguely heard Yuzu's non-verbal protest that sort of sounded like she was disapproving his yet another breakfast-skipping antiques), punched his father in the face and began dragging his feet on his tiny journey to the school.
He didn't quite expect that this seemingly uneventful day would commence with him discovering a tiny lump of fluttering wings on the sidewalks.
He knelt and gently flipped the struggling little creature only to see the little one bloodlessly suffering from a wing that had been twisted at a very odd angle. Ichigo doubted he could help – the little bird looked like any external pressure exerted to any part of her would do nothing but hurt more.
"GOOD MORNING KUROSAKI-KUN!"
Ichigo was not surprised to hear the cheerful sing-song voices of Orihime – they had bumped on their ways to school way too often to be a rare occurrence.
"Oh, Inoue", Ichigo greeted, thinking that she might be able to help.
She inched close and squatted next to Ichigo. "Is she hurt?"
Orihime swept her hair behind her and gently shifted the bird to her palms, but the bird's wing vibrated anxiously and she let out a very pained moan.
"I'm sorry, birdie-san!" It was so Orihime to apologize, Ichigo had thought.
She faced Ichigo. "Kurosaki-kun, does your father treat birds?"
Ichigo's mind flashed to the way his father fumbled with an injured cat Yuzu brought home and Yuzu's nervous cries and he immediately disqualified his father.
"My father's not really the veterinarian type," which was totally true, "Actually we can have anyone from the Zoology Club, do you know of anyone?"
"There's Nagasaki-kun-"
"Ugh, I don't want to talk to him, he is an asshole who constantly thinks he's better than everyone."
"Sorry, we can call Tamura-san-"
"She's got her nose buried in her books."
"What about Ishida-san?"
"That Ishida?" Ichigo's penchant for forgetting names never cease to cause him troubles, but he loved blaming it on Ishida being a far too common family name.
"No, no, it's the senior." Ichigo "ahh"-ed, remembering about the girl named Ishida who was a year older in physical age but much younger in mental age. In his opinion.
"I don't remember anyone else," Orihime hesitated, "but we cannot leave her here."
Orihime's face was of a calm, collected person, but Ichigo could see the rumbling tides rushing within her. She was trying to inaudibly console the bird, almost like she was cooing a small child. The little bird calmed, albeit a little, making Ichigo feeling majorly relieved that Orihime showed up. He had quite likened this side of Orihime to a war healer he saw in movies than a maternal figure, despite her being a complete mother to the bird. It was times like this that Ichigo wished supernatural powers exist (not that Ichigo harboured any fantasies about having any supernatural power) because if there was one thing Ichigo hated more than anything, it was getting defeated despite struggling against it.
The bird represented that, and so much more.
Orihime's repeated, but the increasingly desperate pleas in her attempts to magically heal the bird with her voice did nothing but to augment that sick little feeling in his guts.
Before Ichigo could snap himself out of the trance he had placed himself in, Orihime carefully crawled to place the bird in the sanctuary of a grassy ground. "It might help," she said.
She picked up her bag and rushed past Ichigo.
"Kurosaki-kun, let's get to school now! I'll get someone from the nurse's office to tend to her!"
Ichigo had never seen her ran so fast.
But fast she was - probably frantic and furious too.
She arrived at Karakura High School a few minutes before Ichigo did and by the time Ichigo found her, she was already speaking to another girl (if Ichigo's memory didn't fail him, it was the Ishida senior, but he wouldn't count on it) flailing her arms and insisting that she would be doing the nature a huge favour by saving the little bird and she would offer herself to help out with every club Ishida-san was in (Ichigo winced a little as he hear her promising that; Ishida the senior was notorious for being ridiculously active in extra co-curricular activities).
Orihime offering her services seemed to have helped tremendously. Ishida the senior promptly agreed to the proposition but took her offer back immediately after Orihime insisted that they leave to tend to the bird right that moment. After Ishida not-so-politely turned her down (reminding them that there was only 10 minutes before school starts and Ishida herself, being a student of great discipline would never ever risk her perfect reputation to tend to an ailing, insignificant, probably untreatable little bird).
They went through (to Ichigo's increasing wariness and Orihime's increasing desperation) three other known Zoology Club members before Orihime ran out of names and the warning bell for the first period rang. None of them seemed to be attracted to Orihime's offer in exchange to ditching school for probably half a day (to be honest with himself, Ichigo would be more than astounded should any of the academic-bound, examination-driven, and results-obsessed seniors with their minds on the university entrance prospects actually offered to help).
Orihime sounded like she could read his mind when she finally said, "Kurosaki-kun, it's hard, right?"
"Why won't anybody help Miku-chan?"
Ichigo had no time to be startled by how Orihime had actually named the bird, because Orihime had dashed towards the gates. Ichigo chased after her, ignoring Tatsuki's "ORIHIME, WHERE ARE YOU GUYS GOING?" and past Keigo, whose jaw gaped a hole large enough to fill in both his fists, and a rather puzzled Chad.
They reached the grassy pavement where they left the bird in what seemed to be just a few seconds, and to their surprise, they couldn't find her right away.
Orihime, in a state of justifiable panic, searched high and low and slithered her way through every nook and cranny of any visible area huge enough to allow her, while completely forgotten that she was wearing a very short skirt.
(Ichigo could even see the color – it was pink with scarlet dots – and he decided that this was a fact better kept to himself. While he could beat Tatsuki in any sparring, he'd rather not face her vitriolic tempers.)
"Kurosaki-kun!" Orihime called, her voice muffled by the bushy layers of rustling leaves. "Come here!"
He heeded her calls, and found himself looking at a glimmer of shiny feathers fluttering, this time not with throbbing, anguish pain but with glistening pride and elation.
He shot Orihime a stealthy gaze. Her eyes were gleaming, both from the evident admiration and the tears that couldn't quite stream down.
Orihime took Miku-chan the bird into her palms again, this time leaving behind all cautiousness and concern, and settled herself on the pavement and stroked the tiny bird lovingly.
"You scared me, Miku-chan!" Ichigo half-suspected that Orihime's suspended tears might just relieve themselves off the "suspension". "We have been so worried!"
She offered Miku to Ichigo. "Isn't she the strongest bird?"
Ichigo couldn't help but agree.
Quite much later that day, long after they took Miku to the Karakura riverbank, Miku flew to the sky against the bright sunshine rays, hovering in the air, glad to have found her wings.
"Do you think we should go back to class, Kurosaki-kun?"
Ichigo raised her left arms and twist his wrists. It was almost 12 noon.
"Sorry, Inoue." He couldn't tell what exactly was he apologizing for, but it had seemed to be the right thing to do at the moment.
Orihime was apparently doing anything but expecting an apology.
"Haha, why?" She messed her hair in an awkward but natural response to Ichigo. "There's nothing to apologize for. I would be crying if I couldn't see Miku-chan turning out to be alright."
Ichigo couldn't help but smiled a little.
"I wish I could be like Miku-chan," Orihime stretched her necks to observe the sky despite the glaring rays. As she leaned back and supported herself with her stretched arms, Ichigo thought that she looked like she was bathing in the sunlight.
(That was also something he wished he had never thought about, as with the pink panties with red dots.)
"Too bad we missed how she recovered herself," she continued with a sighing tone. "I had wanted to ask her so many things. Like, if she has any brothers or sisters, where did she come from, where is she going, what will she be doing after this .."
Orihime went on and on listing things she would have wanted to ask if she could speak to Miku the bird but Ichigo had his mind drifting elsewhere.
When he finally spoke, Orihime did a little leap.
Ichigo remembered a story his mother once told him - a story that he had pushed out of his mind as he grieved for her death a few years later, a story that once motivated him and had come back to remind him of one of the greatest lesson of life his mother ever blessed him with.
"My mother once had a Miku," Ichigo started, realizing, all at once, how his mother probably came up with the story.
Orihime listened intently.
When the story ended, Orihime surprised him by saying "It's like the story of our lives".
"Kurosaki-kun, your mother was a very wise person, wasn't she?"
Miku flew back down and perched herself on Ichigo's shoulder.
"Yes."