Characters: Nemu, mentions of others
Summary: Her face is a blank slate so it's easy to see others there.
Pairings: slight Ishida x Nemu
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: Post Soul Society arc
Author's Note: I love Nemu.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
Nearly always superimposed over her own features is the painted face of someone else, a memory someone thinks of when they see Nemu's neutral features and pale, impassive face. Her face is never her own, is always reminiscent of someone else or something in the observer's past.
This was Mayuri's intent when he made her, to create a face that is hardly unpleasing on the eye in the sense of aesthetics and beauty, but otherwise so generic that it will be nothing for Nemu to fade into a crowd, for no one will be able to see her without seeing a haze of something or someone else above her own features. It's a useful tool to have, to be able to melt by having no distinctiveness, no unambiguously unique features.
And it serves Mayuri's purpose by giving her no identity of her own that is independent of the memories of the person looking at her, to make her more dependent on him for any sense of self at all.
Ukitake-taicho sees one of his young sisters when he looks at Nemu. She's fragile and somewhat sickly, a pale girl with finely shaped cheekbones and translucent skin.
Ikkaku knows a pretty girl he knew in life when he sees Nemu. That girl was significantly more outspoken than shy, withdrawn Nemu, her bright green eyes sparkling with life. Ikkaku sometimes has to shake his head and spell out the girl's name in his mind to remind himself that she and Nemu aren't one in the same.
Nanao and Ishida see different things when they slap Nemu's hand away to examine a bruise on her cheek.
Nanao sees the poverty of Rukongai, children who died of starvation with their delicate skins mottled with the marks those who stole food from them rained down on them, without mercy in their own struggles to survive. Nanao sees Nemu and the injustice of Rukongai as one in the same at these times.
Ishida tentatively fingers the black mark, lifting his hand if Nemu so much as twitches and remembers all too vividly a time when his skin wasn't bruised but everything else was, from heart to mind to pride, and Nemu's not sure but thinks that this may be he takes such vehement offense to Mayuri's treatment of her. She's simply unsure.
No one ever sees Nemu, simply Nemu, in her face. She knows why in the most detached sort of way, but does not know why, can not understand deeply why someone can't look at her face and just see her, unvarnished Kurotsuchi Nemu.
She starts to gain a little distinctiveness as time goes on, the beginnings of a personality. She grows like a child, like a slow-blooming flower whose unfurling journey towards stretching out to the light of the sun is slow and painful and has its falls, but never quite stops. Born in pain, born in adversity, born out of the kindness of those who show concern, maybe one day she will have a personality that is such that people can think of her when they see others, instead of seeing others in her.
Nemu hopes, hopes in the only way she knows how: without much optimism, but enough to think that it may be so one day. There is nothing to do but hope, and in the meantime try not to get crushed underfoot by the passers-by. Survival is the most important thing for now, observing obedience today and harboring her own germinating seeds where they can take deep root and not be torn up by any unkind hands.
Until that day comes, she will remain Nemu, indistinct, and the blank slate where people see other faces in hers, but never her own.