Someday, a bleach fanfic

Someday

"And you are old enough". A childhood. Ishida Uryuu & Ishida Ryuuken. A few other cameos.

RATING: PG-13 for mild gore. Also warning for pretentious 2nd Person POV and Present Tense.

DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Kubo Tite. He's the BLEACH man.

You live in a house. It is large, with many rooms, with furnishing you know to be "tasteful", which means delicate, which means do not touch. You do not touch. The house you live in is not empty, but it feels empty. You do not sit on the couch, which is big, you do not linger in the living room or the kitchen or the dining room. You do not watch the television, though you want to, though you're allowed an hour if you have finished your schoolwork and extra studies, further reading. All of it is easy, you finish and have hours, but you read more, you study more. You know father doesn't like it if you watch television.

In the morning you wake up, you brush your teeth, you wash. You put on the clothes he or one of the women bought you. You fix yourself breakfast, like you've been taught, because you are six, and you are old enough. You make your lunch and you lock the door behind you; father has usually left before you wake. You know how to get to school.

Father isn't there when you come home. Sometimes, he doesn't come home at all.

People are screaming. There is a monster ripping up the concrete, licking blood from its exposed teeth. It is larger and uglier and more horrible than anything you've ever dreamed, than the dragons in the books, and people are running and screaming and bleeding, but they can't see it. A storefront collapses, folding, like a house of cards, but louder, louder. Father pulls you away, breaks your stare, and you don't understand, he's a doctor, he should be running to help. You don't understand how he doesn't see it, how he doesn't hear it, until you realize, his hand so tight on yours that it hurts, it hurts, it really hurts; until you realize, he looks straight ahead and not at it with such determination, you understand, he sees it.

He forces you around the corner, your head turned around, gaping, as a figure in white unleashes something blinding.

Women come to clean and cook. Father can cook: you remember one morning, one so long ago that someday you will choose to believe that you imagined it, he slept in and let you sit in the kitchen as he toiled at the stove, let you try samples, did not smile but looked at you while he ate, while you ate. He can cook, but he is a surgeon, he is in high demand, on the quick path to something big at Karakura General. You know where the hospital is, like you know where most major landmarks are, like you know most of the roads. You know the phone number. Just in case, but there won't ever be an emergency, you won't ever trouble him. Father can cook but he has no time, but he doesn't come home. They cook and clean and check your homework, not for answers but for completion. You know what is expected of you: out of sight, children should be neither seen nor heard. Let them do their work and go.

They don't look at you, either. You understand: they are not caregivers, they are not paid to entertain you. You come home and do your work in your room, and read in your room, and study in your room. When it comes time for dinner, you sit at the table, sometimes with a woman and sometimes not. She never eats and though you know their names, though you greet them and thank them and say goodbye at the door, it feels as though you sit alone. You aren't comfortable at the table.

Mayumi-san isn't like that.

Father lies you when you ask what it was, if he saw it, what happened. He tells you never mind it, he tells you it was a stage production, he tells you it was nothing and nonsense, and he sends you to your room. You close the door and stand and shake and want to cry, remembering it, want to be sick, remembering it. Both are messy, both you know you shouldn't do, but you cannot forget it, the pavement slick and sticky with red, the air reverberating with howls, the people you should not but do see with chains swinging from their chests, weeping beside their bodies, weeping without bodies.

You wonder what to do. You sit on your bed and hug your pillow to your chest; you try to forget but you can't. You don't cry and you aren't sick.

Mayumi-san waits at the door after school and smiles, bright and sunny, sunny like it hurts to look at, too, though you know that doesn't make any sense. She tells you it's Friday so don't worry about homework, you can do it later. You do it then. She doesn't let you study, pulling you into the living room, onto the couch, turning on the television to a program called Super Sentai. After a transfixed hour, you spend the rest of the afternoon with a sheet tied around your neck, racing through the halls, vanquishing evil. Your cape is too long (the sentai hadn't worn capes, but you know better) and you trip, crashing into a stand, tipping a vase to the floor where it shatters. The way it breaks terrifies and exhilarates. Terror wins and you insist on helping Mayumi-san clean it; it was your fault. You know better, but in your anxiety you hold a piece too hard, and your palm splits. She frets, but it was your fault. She's impressed when you know how to clean and wrap it. Mayumi-san tells you she's impressed and you almost smile.

Father leaves late in the morning; you wait for him to say something, you try to apologize, but your mouth opens and closes, and closes. If he would ask about your hand, it would all come spilling out. Father never mentions the vase, but you think he sees your hand, though you take to trying to hide it, to pretending to be right-handed.

You wonder if you could break anything, if he would care.

Mayumi-san does not come back. It is your fault.

Earlier that day, he takes you with him on errands. You are quiet and obedient and a careful shadow; you stand near him and watch his back, watch him negotiate, watch him more than you do the aisles and buildings and other people. He makes an unusual stop, just as you begin to mind the trees and roads, because they are different, because you don't recognize them. Leaving you outside, Father doesn't need to tell you not to move as he enters the clinic. "Kurosaki" you mouth, and look into a tree and count the leaves, until you notice him. You feel him first, in the way you aren't supposed to feel things, and then you hear him, talking in a happy way, about karate and a girl who beats him and his mother. After ten minutes, you take the step that you know you shouldn't, closer to the sidewalk, close so you can peer down the street and see a boy with bright hair.

He talks to a boy, a little bit older, who drips and is soaking with no indication of drying. An older boy with a chain, and you realize that the boy with the orange hair is like you. You clench your hands until you manage to raise one, preparing to walk over.

Then Father is there and you drop your hand, and you try not to notice the disapproval in his eyes.

You dally on your way home. You stop at a manga shop and walk along the rows, peering at the colorful covers, dreaming up the stories that match them, the stories behind the plastic. All the heroes have glasses, even if the covers showed otherwise. You had to bargain to keep them from breaking yours today; you did their homework and even used most of the right answers. Tomorrow, you pretend that you will silence them with your light saber, that you transform into a Super Sentai and they will all feel very silly, and they will all apologize, and you will pretend to think about it until you say it's all right, and they will eat lunch with you and share with you the sweets you are not allowed. You are caught up in this, so caught up you almost bump into the girl who, rounding a row, has her nose deep in Jump. You sidestep, in sync with her, and she only looks up when the collision sends the magazine to the ground. Sorry, she gasps, and it is a moment of disconnect: you don't understand how she can look at you, as if you might be angry, and she doesn't understand the incomprehension in your eyes.

The moment passes and she recovers first, suddenly bubbling, I get it! She bends to scoop the magazine to her chest, and nods in the direction of your shoes. I get it, you come in peace! But, I'm a warrior alien princess, so I... can't!

Turning, she runs, and you watch, feeling as if Queen Hedrian had punched you. Only, punching probably doesn't feel as good. Later, you remember less the weird things she said, and more the familiar way her eyes looked. You never realize that you remember them from the mirror.

You think that you'll have an allowance soon, and you probably won't buy any books with warrior alien princesses. Probably.

An old man waits at the school gate. You realize he is waiting for you when he smiles. He smiles at you.

On the nights when you know father won't be home, you let yourself into his study. Knowing where he keeps the key, you fish it from the drawer you aren't supposed to open, beneath the matchbooks and lighters and electric knives. You open the door and you turn on the light, and you are in your father's study, where he goes when home. It smells of his cologne, of smoke. In the closet hang wrapped, dry-cleaned lab coats. Sometimes, one is draped over his desk chair. You put it on. The sleeves hang past your hands, but you do not roll them, knowing he would wonder at the creasing. You press your hands, lost in the cloth, to your face and inhale; you inhale his cologne and cigarettes and rubbing alcohol. You sit in his chair and your feet don't touch the ground; you pull open the drawers and sift with meticulous fingers through the papers.

Once, you find a photograph of your father and a woman, an old man beside them. You should recognize the old man but you don't, because he hasn't been allowed to visit, to see you for years. The woman is beautiful and you think you understand, and you sit with your knees to your chest, in your father's jacket, staring at the picture until the window's shade lightens.

You don't look at it again. You can't find it again.

Most of the time, you look through the periodicals, through the medical digests. You don't understand most of it, so you tug free the encyclopedias, the dictionaries, the textbooks. You trace muscles and try to pronounce diseases, you imagine your father helping people, making them better. You wonder if he likes them better than he likes you.

You are six and you know that your father doesn't love you. You've read about love in stories, you've learned the myths, learned of men who so wanted children, who so loved their children. When you understand love, you understand the absence, understand why sometimes your chest aches, why you pull your arms through his sleeves and read what he reads and wonder that if he can do anything, because he can do anything, why can't he love you.

You swear: someday, you'll be enough.

You don't know that when you were five, your teacher noticed you talking to the air in the classroom. It was not air: it was a person. You knew she wasn't like the other children because of the chain, because sometimes you could see through her, because even though you could feel a kind of heat from her, even though the blood spilling from her open side seemed to splash and spread on the floor, you knew that she was dead. You knew, but you weren't frightened, because she was happy. She was so happy to talk to you, so happy that you talked to her. None of the other children talked to her, she said, and you understood; they didn't talk to you, either. You told her you can't talk during class, but after is all right, and you walked together.

You don't know that your teacher called your father. When he met you at the gate, you were anxious to tell him that you could do what the other children couldn't, that you were special. You had seen them before, spoke before, but now you knew, you knew it was only you.

Father looked at the girl, then looked through the girl, and looked at you, as if looking through you. Father, you began, I can, but he interrupted, no, you can't. You can't and you won't.

Not long after father began to work more, to look at you less. You understood and you understand: the living shouldn't see the dead. It doesn't make you special; it makes you a freak. More than that, it disappointed and disappoints father. You wish you could take it back, but you can't.

When you sleep, you dream strange dreams. Later you consider them lucid but no less fabrications, and eventually you forget them, these impressions. Of a figure overhead, of nicotine stained fingers in your hair, brushing strands from your forehead, tucking them behind your ear. Of a gentle touch and restrained warmth, a feeling you press to yourself in the morning, a feeling you try to keep.

It is the only one you lose.