Bluebirds on the Line
She watched as she pulled back from his face, blood bridged between her knuckles and his nose like crimson strands of spider's web. "Oh no." She whispered. (Orihime-centric)
People wanted all of our favorites to get a chapter like this. So, I'm going to do it! I almost didn't, but ugh, I keep writing the same stuff over and over. Like, this is seriously JUST LIKE The Nerves Girl. Less Ulquihime, I guess, but still. So I had to find somewhere to make it fit; it just can't stand alone. I DO NOT ship IchiHime; this chapter is about their friendship. Just friendship. And Orihime being fucked up. Something I'm growing way to found of as of late. Sue me.
There's this guy that follows Ishida around. One of the thugs who wanted to get at Kurosaki, but knew he couldn't, and thus went after those close to the boy. Ishida probably seemed like an easy target. He wasn't tall and imposing like Chad, and he didn't have a reputation at the dojo like Tatsuki did. He could handle himself.
But Orihime was fiercely protective. "Mama bear syndrome," Tatsuki called it. Orihime didn't think it was true. Bears were all fury and teeth and power. She was just a girl who'd somehow managed to come back from Hueco Mundo alive after three months. ("No human has ever survived so long in this realm." Rukia told her. Orihime was sure, at the time, that she was only being nice. "You're tough as nails.")
Ishida knows that the punk is following him- there's no way he couldn't. Orihime is aware that Ishida is only waiting for a good place to privately beat the snot out of the knife-wielding moron. Logically, she shouldn't have to worry.
The creep pulls the knife from within his pocket.
Not this time.
The school watches with wide, horrified eyes, as Orihime calmly reaches out and wrenches a man's arm around, unflinching as he screams. When she pulls the man to the floor she throws herself at him, eyes wide and crazy as she snarls.
"Don't touch my friends."
Ishida catches her and pulls her back before she can do anything more. They both scurry away, Orihime shaking and Uryu shaken, two sides of the same coin, both pale as a sheet.
Students make a mental note to remind friends that Orihime graduated from her karate class at the same rank as Tatsuki.
The talking begin.
"I saw her changing for gym today. Her shoulders are covered in scars."
"She doesn't have any family. Sounds sketchy to me."
"No- no, Orihime has been so nice to us for years, she couldn't hurt a fly."
"I hear she broke that guy's arm."
"Yakuza."
"Wait, no, we know her-"
"Do we, though?"
"Yeah. Do we?"
Like one pluck on a string, it vibrates down the cord. With one startled cry the rumors take flight, all falling after the other. Dominos come to life. She's seen this before- displayed just outside her apartment by winged creatures on the power lines. Yeah. Just like that. Like bluebirds on the line.
Orihime, had she been an adult, probably could have gotten away from any further incidents scot-free. Teenagers, however, seem to feel the need to push. To find just how far down the deep pits go, which buttons are there- what they do. She doesn't notice the way they tiptoe around her at first, but she starts to realize pretty early on when kids start toeing the line of her comfort zones.
Someone play-punches Tatsuki in the shoulder. She stares the man down, waiting. She feels too much like a wild dog. In her mind, she can logically say that no one is capable of hurting any of her friends, but there is something about the way they wait for her to move that makes her feel like they want to hurt those who are dear to her.
It's all in her head. She knows it. But she can't stop it.
Ichigo spends more time with her than ever, now that Rukia is gone. For some reason, she can't bring herself to enjoy his company. She feels the absence of his hollow, but it puts her on edge- it reminds her that it lived there. Ulquiorra used to repress his spiritual pressure around her. Reaching out with her senses, Orihime finds Ichigo feels as empty as the dead arrancar did.
He says odd things to her. He asks her if she'd noticed people's haircuts; he notices hair, now, but he can't remember faces. He asks her for tips on how to cover up bruises. He asks her how she manages to stop biting her nails until they bleed- doesn't she do that?
"Chap stick." She answers. "The taste reminds me to stop."
One day he asks her, "How would Clark Kent react if Superman died?"
It takes her a moment to realize what he's talking about, and then she has to choke back an ill-timed laugh. Ichigo really was super man, wasn't he? He'd been as ridiculously over-powered, as adored, as strong and confident. And now what? He was doing news reports on the weird accidents in town for extra credit in journalism class.
She smiles. "He'd jump off a building." She says. He would. Anything to become Superman again- Clark Kent would leap from a skyscraper because even if he was empty, he'd hope there was one last drop of something- of someone in there- that would make him fly. She looks up and realizes Ichigo is staring at her in horror and reviews what she'd just said.
Ah. Suicide.
She stares at the ground, allowing her smile to slip away for a moment. No one else is looking at her. She can feel it when they do. "Not... not necessarily to kill himself. He'd do it to see if he could fly."
Ichigo gets this look in his eyes as he nods. She regrets saying anything.
Well. If he jumps from the roof next time they'd up there eating lunch, she can put him back together. She can see it now. Looking down at his hopelessly mangled body, she'd say, "I've seen worse." She'd patch him back together, one strip of blood-soaked skin at a time.
She notices his knuckles are still bandaged from a couple of week's ago- he'd gotten in a fight and she'd not been there to see it. In the old days, he'd have asked her to heal him. Now, though, there is something about her powers that clearly puts him off.
She knows why.
She was the one to resurrect his hollow, after all.
"I could try it, you know." She tells Chad. "I could try to un-do what's been done to him. I could make him powerful again."
Chad wasn't there for the fight on the dome. But he knows that Orihime's powers are a force not to be reckoned with. He shakes his head, silent for a beat, and then says, "If it's not broken, don't fix it."
Ichigo is broken; just like she is, she wants to argue. But she understands what Chad is saying. Ichigo isn't as broken as he could be. And if she attempts any resurrection of power inside of him, she could end up tearing him apart.
Again. It's nothing she hasn't done before.
She's bitter about being alone. Ishida has nightmares like she does, but he has the constant presence of his father behind his wall- a steady thrum of spiritual pressure that lets him know everything is going to be okay.
She has nothing. The only people who ever bothered to be there after her nightmares night and night again are dead. Both, incidentally, hollowfied- and then aided in death by her would-be-lover.
Sora and Ulquiorra were about as different as two people could have been. Still, she writes their names side-by-side on the underside of her wrist. She keeps her sleeves pulled up over her palms, never mind that its hot outside, and hopes no one notices.
At the same time, she kind of wishes they'd look. She wants to smile at anyone who asks about it and say, "They're dead." No one knows. She has to carry the burden alone. She's alone.
She burns her hand once when cooking. For a moment, she stared at her fingertips while they turned red and swelled, ring finger forming a nasty blister before her very eyes. The smell of burning eggs pulled her out of her trance as she hurried to turn off the fire on the stove.
She stares again at her blistering fingers. She has a burn scar on the tip over one ear from a time when a cero went whistling past her; just a little too close for comfort.
She reaches out and touches the hot pan again, eyes wide. It hurts. It burns.
It feels right.
It wasn't right. The burns on her hand last longer than her sudden self-destructive mood. The blisters pop when she's sweeping and she has to fight back a dizzy spell. They burn enough to make her eyes well up with tears in the hot water of the shower, and then as she's washing her hair, she actually does cry because the shampoo stings the open wounds on her hand so awfully.
Hadn't the scars taught her anything? She can't heal herself, not physically. You can't un-do what's been done. What feels right in one moment can be something that lasts far into the future, hurting more than it did in that moment.
She needs help.
"Hi, Tatsuki?" She swallows. "I need... I... I need..."
"Are you okay, Orihime?"
She takes in a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just got distracted. I need your notes. I spaced out last lecture."
"Who do you think you are, acting so high and mighty?! Apologize, worm, or I'll rip out your throat right here! Right now!"
"L-loly, are you sure we should-"
"Shut the fuck up!" She yanks harder on a fist-full of orange hair. "Apologize!"
A hand clamps around her arm.
She doesn't hear herself scream, but she can feel it. Her heart kicks into motion so fast she can't see for a moment as she stands and then kneels like she's supposed to- like a dog in the dirt. "I'm sorry!" She puts her hands up over her head, hoping that they're not going to pull her up by her hair again- hoping they're not going to break another one of her ribs, hoping, hoping, against all hope that somehow Ulquiorra will come around for her before he's supposed to. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She presses her head to her knees, hoping they won't see her crying, even though they can probably hear it.
She can see, suddenly. Tan knees, a grey skirt. Not white. Not Hueco Mundo. From the corner of her eye she can see desks. Ulquiorra is dead, and she's home, safe and sound.
She watches as her attacker is overwhelmed by a rage-blinded Ichigo. She can feel the hollow bubbling up from under his skin, even though it's not really happening- it's like on the dome, it's over kill- it's going to be actually kill if- if-
"I-" She forms the first syllable of his name and then gets stuck. Her throat is dry and she's dizzy. Is this real?
"Ichigo!" Tatsuki. Oh, thank god, Tatsuki. "STOP!"
She watches the blood slid down over Ichigo's cheek. She should be healing him, right? No, wait, they're... they're at school. She can't. Or can she? She forgets, do people know about her powers, or is she a fake? Or are her powers fake? Who is she, really?
"That's enough." Tatsuki says. "It's over now. It's done."
Sometimes, Orihime is alarmed to recall that she is the one they call childish. Because oh, silly, silly Tatsuki-chan. It's not over. With things they way they are, well. It may never be.
She'd once told Chad that, "One day we'll look back and realize the start of the war just never came." Now she's older, and she has no idea what she was talking about.
All of her friends- every last one from the war- has a berserk button. She just didn't realize she had one too. Maybe that's what happens when you go out knowing you might die. You grow a big shiny red button on your back that makes you turn crazy when someone pushes it.
It was during a game of basketball. Girls versus boys. The girls had won five in a row, and since Ichigo was their lead player, his 'friends' had turned on him, angry.
"Why are girls beating us?!"
Ichigo scowled. "Because they're more capable than you are. They're actually working together."
"Are you saying I'm weak!?"
"I didn't say that." Hands up, Ichigo scowls. He clearly doesn't like this new kid. The boy is obviously a troublemaker. "But if you're mad because of gender, then... well, yeah. You're weak-minded at the least."
The boy had swung a punch.
Ichigo didn't even have time to block.
A feral scream echoed off the walls of the gym. Ichigo stared, untouched, where he stood. The bleachers let out a loud clang as they were smashed into. The class stares, almost in awe- mostly in horror.
Orihime has the boy by the collar. He's down on the ground, smashed back against the bleaches. She hits him in the face, holding him in place with the hand that's pulling him up by his shirt. She punches him once, twice, his nose breaks, a tooth come lose, three times, four times, he screams but she doesn't stop, pinning his flailing legs with her own as she dodges his weak attempts to push her off of him.
"Don't touch!" She screams. "Don't touch my friends! Don't touch them- don't hurt- don't- don't look at them- ARGH- stop!" She plows her fist into his stomach hard enough that he coughs, spraying her face with blood. Any second now he's going to be out, but no one can seem to move.
It's not until the boy screams a desperate, "HELP ME!" that anyone is able to move. Instantly, the class all back up, scared stiff and pale. Ichigo wakes up and moves forward.
"I-Inoue-"
She ignores him and his the boy so hard in the face that one of her knuckles loudly cracks. Broken. She doesn't seem to notice.
"Stop." Ichigo says, stronger. "Inoue- no. Orihime! Stop!"
She doesn't hear him.
"Orihime!" He grabs her underneath her armpits and hauls her to her feet, flinching as she tries to struggle away from him, back to the boy coughing up blood. She murmurs something that sounds like a release spell- like she's going to summon her fairies. On instinct he lets her go and she falls back on top of the boy slumped against the bleachers, hitting him one last time-
From the crowd of onlookers, Chad mutters a broken, "Orihime..."
She stops.
She watches as she pulls her fist back from his face, blood bridged between her knuckles and his nose like crimson strands of spider's web. "Oh no." She whispers. She looks up at the mess she's made of his skin. "Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh... oh no..." She stands and stumbles back from the boy, colliding with Ichigo. She jumps away from him as though she'd been burned.
He watches her with a sad frown. People around them are starting to unfreeze, now, so she lets him put a hand on her shoulder. Chad takes up her other side, hand on her back as he gives her a small reassuring smile.
"I want to go home now." She whispers. She's trembling.
He looks down at her- broken in the same ways she is. With his dead almost-lovers and his war scars, his breakdowns and orange hair. She's never disliked Ichigo before, but she's never actually liked him for who he truly is until this moment.
"I know." He says. And he does know. "I know."
She'll write his name on her wrist when he's gone, too. Until then, though, she'll stand in the background, waiting with him. Waiting and watching, searching for Superman.