Disclaimer: Bleach isn't mine. Go figure.
Characters: Rukia, Ichigo
A/N: My first fic, and somewhat on a whim, too.
Tacit
The way she sees it, one day, he isn't going to make it.
It won't be his fault. Only, how often can one arrive just in the nick of time? To save the same white damsel from the same horrible death? She can't even begin to recall how many times the thunder of bloodshed has gotten so near to her ears, only to have the sound of his voice cut through the air.
Her name. He always just calls her name.
It's just not possible. One of these days, he'll come away with her lifeless body, and there's nothing she'll be able to do about it.
She doesn't know, just doesn't know why she's somehow become the petals that shrivel up and turn to dust with each new autumn. Someday spring will come and the tree will have died.
"Ichigo," she says one day. He's trying to do homework. She's sitting against the closet door. It's the same scene. It's all they have.
"What is it now?" He doesn't look at her.
And she can't form the words. How do you tell someone – how do you tell them that it will be okay, if they don't save you? That it's too much to ask, to always be there right when you need them? That she couldn't ask him to keep up like this?
"Rukia?"
More than anything, she thinks she's only afraid of what it would do to him. Dying is something that stopped scaring her long ago. But is it right, to live only to save him from the pain of her death? It's too bad that she has no control over such things.
"Hey, what's with that face? What's wrong?"
He's turned around in his seat now, perpetual scowl fixed with genuine concern. The expression wouldn't make much sense on anyone else. She smiles, despite herself.
"It's nothing. How long are you going to be working on that?"
"I'd be done if you didn't keep saying stuff that didn't lead anywhere."
"You could always ignore me, you know."
He rolls his eyes and turns back around. "Yeah, because ignoring you would just solve all my problems."
It's funny, she thinks, how one truth belies a multitude.
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