FOREWORD: This has been sitting in my folder for a long, long while. I think I just felt like opening a small window on Ichigo's would-be thoughts after the whole losing-his-powers thing. And yes, it hovers towards would-be feelings for Rukia. I do like the idea of them very, very much.
I do not own Bleach, or any of its characters.
I will not miss you.
But I'm not sure,
living without you
is something I can learn.
.
His eyelids did not budge much when he tried to open them, but they parted slightly. The morning light dancing through the slit where his curtains did not quite meet hit him directly in the eye. He groaned and turned away.
He had had his first peaceful night in... Damn it, he could not even remember. And he had never felt so tired. His limbs were heavy, and he struggled to move his body. His brains seemed to be knocking against his skull, ready to explode out of his ears. Was his body physically complaining? Was this the after-effect of losing his powers?
His powers.
He paused and listened intently, just to make sure. All he could hear was sporadic rattling in the kitchen indicating that Yuzu was already up, busy preparing breakfast, and the sound of his own steady breathing. The spirits' presence was gone. He knew they existed for he had lived too long and too much around them, but he could not hear nor see them anymore.
He was normal... and that felt strange.
He thought he had accepted it. He thought he had been ready. But he had not been prepared for the look she had given him. He had not been ready for the weird sensation in the pit of his stomach, pulling and hurting, when she vanished completely from his sight. He had not anticipated the sick feeling that took over his body, when he could not sense her anymore.
He had wanted his abilities gone, but he had not come to terms with the fact that losing them meant losing her.
Even now, he half-expected her to pop out of the goddamn closet like a bogey-frigging-sprite, and punch him in the face for breathing wrong or something as dumb.
It was not about her not being there with him. How many times had she left before? How many times had she been away for indefinite periods of times? He had not missed her then, and he was not going to start now—so he told himself.
But the difference between then and now, was that he had always known how to find her and he had always known she would return. It was a certitude he did not have anymore, and it made him uneasy.
In many ways, she had been like a rush of wind—swift and unsettling at first, but pleasant when you learnt to go with its flow. He had felt her presence, her anguish, her serenity in the fluctuations of her reiatsu. He had grown used to her, used to the way she would sometimes gust up a storm of fury. And how she had somehow also been the cool breeze that had ruffled his hair and calmed his nerves. And now that she was gone, he felt like he was suffocating in this stillness. He was struggling.
This silence around him was something he could grow accustomed to. He had never liked the spirits' constant hum. He had learnt to tune it out, but it was better now that it was not there at all.
This absence, however, this void, this feeling that something was amiss—he was not sure he could ever learn how to deal with.