Disclaimer: If it's got anything to do with Bleach, I don't own it.
Author's note #1: I wonder if anyone will forgive me for this one.
4th Thing Tatsuki Did Not Do: Hold a Grudge
If you listen (If you listen)
Listen close (beat by beat)
You can hear when the heart stops (I saved the pieces)
When in broke (and ground them all to dust)
-Bleed Black
by AFI
Seven weeks. Seven weeks they had been gone, seven weeks she had stewed over their absence, seven weeks she had stared at their empty desks and had to fight her warring feelings of fear for their lives and anger for their betrayal.
Then, three days ago—the Friday night just passed—she felt them return. The tension in the air had suddenly released itself, like a cloudburst, and she had known that they were safe. Breathing a grateful sigh of relief, her head had flopped to her pillow. The anger that had built itself a home in her heart was overruled, and she was surprised to find herself more than a little eager at the prospect of seeing her friends again.
Secretly, she hoped Orihime would visit her that very night, despite the late hour. Ichigo she expected would have…other responsibilities, but maybe, just maybe Orihime would be as keen to see her as she was. In a way she didn't quite understand, she needed flighty girl's friendship. Orihime's gentleness softened her; smoothed her edges and kept her fiery temper in check. Beyond missing her friendship and company, she could feel the difference in her behavior getting worse—and she was sure everyone else could too in her ever shortening fuse and edgy, easily irate demeanor.
She was a little disappointed when she woke the next day and realized Orihime had not stopped by. She was probably just exhausted, Tatsuki thought. She had no idea what the girl had been through, after all, and in the end she had to admit that it was an unreasonable expectation.
In any case, the whole weekend was ahead, and that meant there was plenty of time for Orihime and Ichigo to each come and finally let her into their world. After the altercation she had with Ichigo before he left, she didn't see any way around it for them, after all.
She stayed around the house all Saturday, and was further disappointed when no one called or visited. She began to worry that something was keeping her friends away that she wasn't aware of—could they have been injured, and were even now healing in bed? She could feel that they were both alive, so she knew that it wasn't time to panic. But still she could not bring herself to seek them out. She wasn't sure if it was pride, or a need for reassurance of their regard for her, but something in her demanded that they be the ones to come to her.
When the night had fallen on Sunday, Tatsuki could feel the anger beginning to return, but squashed it down the best she could. She told herself again and again that she did not know what had happened, and couldn't hold their absence against them on such shaky grounds. Meditating in order to still her frustrated nerves, she went to bed more anxious for the morning to come than she had ever been in her life.
All that anticipation had led to this moment now, Monday morning, which found her standing in the doorway to class. She could not properly describe the feeling she had as she walked in to see Orihime sitting between Ishida and Chad, the boys looming over her as if silently daring anyone to approach her. It was not the boys that gave her pause, but the look on the girl's face, as if she was savoring every moment of a simple morning, being at school.
A torrent of feelings flooded her. She was relieved to see the girl wasn't physically injured, as she feared. Her chest felt swollen with gratitude to any pantheon of gods that would claim her that she had her friend back.
There were also darker feelings, running a slight undercurrent in her blood: disappointment that Orihime hadn't visited her since the return, jealousy that the boys by her side clearly considered it their duty to protect her. But those thoughts quickly fell silent as Orihime turned to face her, her smile lit up like the sun.
Tatsuki didn't realize that she had stopped in the doorway until Orihime was rushing towards her, practically knocking over her desk in the process. "Tatsuki!" Enveloping her in a hug, she thought the ginger-haired girl would squeeze all the breath out of her in short order. There was nothing she could do but squeeze back, tears threatening to leak from her tight hold.
"Orihime." She had no words. What could she possibly say to convey everything she had felt?
"Tatsuki, I'm so glad to see you. I've missed you so much." If possible, the hug was getting stronger.
"I've missed you too, Orihime," she had never heard her own voice sound so weak.
"I'm sorry that I left so suddenly."
That's when it happened. The thing that ruined everything. Just as Tatsuki was about to tell her that it was all right, that there probably wasn't anything that she could have done, that she's just so glad that her best friend is safe, Orihime continued, "My grandmother took such a sudden turn for the worst. I had to rush to be with her. I'm the only family she has left."
She kept talking, but Tatsuki could not hear her. All she could hear was the blood falling in her brain, beating a furious tattoo on the insides of her skull. "What?"
"My grandmother," Orihime prompted, for the first time sounding unsure. "The one I went to stay the summer with a while back." Her voice held a note of uncertainty that, more than anything, drove Tatsuki to almost irrational anger. She's wondering if I'm buying her lie.
She needed Orihime to soften her edges. Seven weeks had left her temper very sharp and erratic indeed.
A bit more roughly than she meant to, she unwrapped her limbs from Orihime and held the girl at arm's length. "Your grandmother? Your grandmother?!"
She couldn't control the volume of her voice, and the rest of the students in the classroom were beginning to stare. She did not know when Ishida and Chad had moved to their side, but she knew they were involved in whatever…this was and they would not be spared her wrath. "Her grandmother!" she leveled at them, like it was a curse. "Orihime says that she's been at her grandmother's," she growled at the boys. "Is that where you've been too? Have you been at her grandmother's?"
Tatsuki knew she sounded completely insane to the on-looking class, but it didn't matter. She knew by their downward gazes that they knew, and that was all that really counted in the end.
"Tatsuki?" The voice came from behind her, past the doorway, and she couldn't help but know who it was. Whipping around to glare at her oldest friend, she caught the wide-eyed worry in his face.
"Were you at her grandmother's too?! Is that were you've been going all this time, dressed like a freak?!" She could see the shift on his face as the pieces clicked together, and realized that he had not told them that she knew, and that had made Orihime feel compelled to make up a lie.
"Maybe we should take this conversation to the roof," said Ishida, who was seriously concerned about their audience. Class would start any minute, but they would miss it if necessary; Tatsuki's "dressed like a freak" comment itself had started a dangerous tide of murmurs among the rest of the students.
"Don't tell me where to have my fights, and I won't tell you how to drop-stitch, Ishida!" the class let out a collective "oooooh," but Ishida's only response was to frown and push his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. He didn't know Arisawa Tatsuki all that well; perhaps he should have stayed silent.
"Tatsuki, please calm do-"
"I will NOT!" she interrupted Orihime's plea. The other girl reached for her but she stepped back—directly into Ichigo, who had taken a step forward.
"Tatsuki," his voice was serious as he dropped his hands onto her shoulders.
Tatsuki didn't like how things were starting to feel. With Orihime directly in front of her, Chad and Ishida to either side, and Ichigo caging her in from behind, she started to feel like a cornered animal. In a room full of spectators, no less.
I'm not in a fucking zoo, she thought furiously. This is not the fucking Tatsuki show. She had had enough.
She brought her foot squarely down on Ichigo's instep, and while his balance was impaired she lunged upward so that the top of her head savagely connected with his jaw. In his surprise, she dodged away from his grasp and slipped through the door, into the hall.
Four faces stared at her from the doorway. "Stop looking at me with those stupid expressions!" she roared. "Stop looking at me like you're all sorry now. Now that I've called you out!" Her feet were already moving her backwards. Her voice sounded wild to her ears, but she couldn't stop it. Everything was falling apart.
"Tatsuki—" Orihime reached one shaking hand towards her, but the gulf between them was already too wide.
"Let me give you all some advice a friend gave me once," she said snidely. "Don't concern yourselves with me anymore." The look on Ichigo's face when she said those words gave her a twin rush of satisfaction and guilt. She quickly brushed the guilt away as she turned and booked down the hallway.
Her feet carried her outside the front doors of the school, but still she couldn't stop. She hadn't put enough distance between her and Everything. She had always considered herself an adaptable person and a loyal friend, but this was simply too much. She couldn't abide Ishida's arrogant presence in the fiasco, acting so intimate with the friends that had pushed her away. She couldn't stomach Orihime lying to her about being kidnapped—to her face and with a smile, no less. But most of all, she couldn't bear the looks on their faces that suggested they were just as sorry for her as they were sorry for hurting her. How unfortunate she's not a part of the group, their eyes said. How sad we've had to leave her out.
She would have taken their apologies, but she would be damned if she would take their pity or swallow their dishonesty. She was done.
She didn't realize where she was heading until she was already there. The first thing she saw was the river's swollen banks. The second thing she saw was Ichigo, standing at the water's edge in his Shinigami attire. Without explanation, she knew what had happened; he had ditched his body at school in order to beat her here. It was hard to say if he knew she would come here or if he was simply fast enough to have checked other places first.
Either way, his was the last face she wanted to see at the moment.
He held up his hands in the universal "I surrender" pose. "Tats, please, just hear me out for a min—"
"NO!" she growled. "No, Ichigo. You had your minute! I gave you your chance!" He took a step forward, and unconsciously she slid into a defensive karate stance. "Don't you dare come one step closer, or I'll make sure you have more regrets than you do right now." She could barely believe the malice in her own voice, but she couldn't control it, either. Something had snapped.
He stopped advancing, but he held out his hands again, this time reaching towards her. "Tatsuki, just—"
"No." This time her voice was less hysterical, but no less threatening. "No. I asked you, Ichigo. I asked you to tell me everything. I asked you to stop keeping secrets from me. And you didn't. I practically begged you, and you left me in the dark anyway." She swallowed, and was proud that the waver she felt in her heart was not heard in her voice. "But I waited. Because I still believed in you, and because I knew you were always a dumbass that had weird ideas about how to protect your friends.
"So I waited. And I worried. And I felt when you all came back—on Friday. And I waited even longer, for you to come and finally explain everything, so I didn't have to feel all alone with these strange…things I've been seeing. But you didn't come." Her heart hurt to see the look on his face, but her heart hurt so much these days, she couldn't distinguish the individual wounds anymore.
"So I came to school this morning ready to hear the truth. Ready to let everything go. And what do I get? Her grandmother's house? Hergrandmother's house? They all think I'm an idiot, and you didn't even tell them." She ground her teeth, "You had all weekend, and you didn't even tell them!"
"Tatsuki—"
"Shut up!" she commanded, fire in her eyes. "You sure didn't say anything when I asked, and now I don't care. I don't want anything to do with any of you any longer." Her next words were said like a curse, "Stay away from me, Kurosaki Ichigo. I don't want to see your face ever again." She turned away to make her exit.
She didn't know what happened, but one minute he was twenty feet away, the next minute he was holding her wrist in a death grip. "I'm not going to let you leave without hearing me."
"You don't have a choice," she ground out, twisting in his grasp. No matter how she tried, she could not slip her wrist from his tight hold.
"You think I'm just going to let you run away from eleven years of friendship?!" he yelled. His voice held a tone of anger and disbelief that only desperation could create.
"OUR FRIENDSHIP IS DEAD!" She roared in his face. "Let go of me now, before I hate you too!" The harsh statement was enough to startle him into dropping her arm. She took the opportunity to put some distance between them.
"I'm leaving now," her voice sounded like the slam of a door closing. "Don't follow me, or I swear you'll regret it."
She looked into his eyes as she said that last statement. She didn't know that would be the last time she would look him directly in the face. If she had, she might have tried to remember it more carefully, in spite of the wounded look she saw there.
She turned and stormed away, and in the wake of her wrath, even he didn't dare to follow.
Ichigo didn't give up right away. After all, he had stormed the gates of Soul Society and Heuco Mundo. He wasn't going to balk at challenging her either.
For a month, he tried to corner her at school. He tried to visit her at her house. He tried to catch her at the dojo and make her listen, because he was sure if he could just tell her everything—what had happened, what he did, why, and how he felt—if he could just tell her, then he was sure he could make her understand.
But she was not a willing audience. His very presence enraged her, and if he tried to use force to restrain her and make her listen he only made it worse. For a month he tried to find the crack in her resolve that would let him in, but every way he tried he came up against stubborn refusal.
Staring at the ceiling above his bed, he decided that maybe the best course of action was to let her cool down for a while. A handful of weeks, and he could get her to come around, he was sure.
He wasn't willing to accept the consequences of a failure on this point. They would be too dire indeed.
It was two months after their last official fight, and one month after Ichigo had stopped endlessly harassing her, though he was still staring after her when he thought she wasn't looking. It had been two months since she last talked to Keigo, Mizuiro, Chad, or even Orihime, since she had accepted that Ichigo's friendship was a package deal, and it had been a long time since Orihime was a part of her package and not his.
She was walking home from the dojo late in the evening when she felt it at the edges of her consciousness: a bright flare in the night, followed by a profound darkness where light once used to be. In spite of everything, her heart clenched; she could not breathe.
She just so happened to be by the river when she felt it. Unsteady on her feet, she climbed down the banks to collapse on the ground, face angled up to the stars.
She despised their happy twinkling. Didn't they know Kurosaki Ichigo was dead?
She had never been as nervous as when she stepped into the funeral home. She had debated with herself back and forth whether to come or not—What good will it do now?—but in the end she decided that she would regret it forever if she didn't go. It didn't matter that it felt like wading across a river because the bridge had been burned down. I didn't matter that she had made herself an outsider, and everyone's faces would show it.
It wasn't about anyone who still had eyes to see, anyway.
She needn't have feared complete estrangement. The minute that she walked in the door, a wailing Yuzu collided with her and locked her small arms around Tatsuki's waist. "Tatsuki!" she sobbed.
Tatsuki ran her hand through the girl's hair and remembered when it felt like Yuzu was her little sister, too. "I'm sorry, Yuzu." For so much.
"Tatsuki," came a serious voice from her left, and there was Karin; too aloof to latch on to her like Yuzu, but holding her forearm in a tight grip that belied her feelings. Years ago, Ichigo had told her that Karin looked up to her. She silently hoped that wasn't true—Karin deserved a better role model.
Tatsuki gently pulled from her grasp and put her arm around the girl's shoulders. "I'm sorry, Karin."
"The prodigal daughter returns," said another voice from behind her. She knew it well, although she had never heard it as serious as this. "Hello, Tatsuki-chan."
Isshin Kurosaki looked like he had frayed along every possible edge, but was holding together strongly enough to give one the sense that he was an anchor for a ship in a storm. Likely, it was for his daughters' sake.
With both Yuzu and Karin still attached to her, her eyes cowardly dipped down to his feet. "I am deeply sorry, Kurosaki-san."
Isshin frowned at "Kurosaki-san" and studied her carefully. "You look like you haven't eaten in days. Beloved daughters, would you please fix a plate for Tatsuki-chan in the kitchen? There should still be some leftovers from dinner." Tatsuki had not thought about it, but it dawned on her that Isshin and the girls had probably been at the funeral home the entire day, and had food delivered in order to stay.
As the girls headed towards the back, Isshin turned to her and managed the best smile he could. "I know a lot has happened, Tatsuki-chan, but you've never called me 'Kurosaki-san,' and now doesn't feel like the time to start."
He was right. When they were little, Tatsuki was around so much that she had started calling him "Uncle Isshin." She hadn't done so in quite a while, but then again, she hadn't seen him in quite a while either.
When she did not look up at his face, he continued. "I know it was hard for you to come today, but you have my thanks. The girls are beside themselves, and without much family here, it's been difficult for them without another familiar face."
"How can that be," she asked, looking him in the eyes at last. "There are so many people here that knew him." Her eyes swept around the room, but she was careful not to let them linger on any one person, lest they look back at her. "Orhime, Chad, Keigo, Mizuiro. Even…" She trailed off before mentioning the Shinigami present, but they were there, lining the walls. "They're here. I mean, why wouldn't…"
Isshin shrugged. "Those people were never around the same way you were, Tatsuki-chan. The girls never bonded with any of them. They will be grateful for your presence. They always looked up to you." He put a hand on her shoulder, "Ichigo did too."
She swallowed hard and looked away. "Did he tell you?" she asked, ashamed to discuss it with his father, who was, in a way, like a father to her too. "Did he tell you what happened?"
Isshin nodded. His face was serious, but not accusatory. "He told me he messed everything up," he said matter-of-factly. "Though I must confess, I always thought everything would work itself out in the end."
She could do nothing but nod in acknowledgement. Somehow, she had felt that too. In the last month—a month with his presence, but without his friendship—her anger had substantially subsided. She could feel his anxious desire for her friendship on the back of her head while they sat in class, in the stare he thought she couldn't see, but also in the spiritual pressure he could never suppress. It was the proof that he cared about her that she had always wanted, but he was never able to provide.
She had felt it softening her temper, and the grudge she clung too. She hadn't seen it before, but in hindsight, she would have forgiven him soon.
And now it was too late.
Refusing to let tears form in her eyes, she had to ask the question that had been gripping her heart since she felt the flare at the river, "He's not just dead, is he?" She couldn't say how she knew, but Isshin would understand her question.
His voice was solemn, with the undertone of a broken heart. "No."
"That's why the Shinigami are here. That's why they look so sad, too," she said, her voice breaking with the realization she had known, had felt, but had not wanted to accept. "It's not that he's dead—his soul is gone."
Isshin nodded gravely, and did not look her in the eye, lest she see the tears his voice refused to give away. "His soul was consumed by an arrancar. An Espada." He shook his head and looked at a point of nothingness up and to the left. "If he were merely "dead," he would continue on as a Shinigami in the spirit world. But this is what it means to really be dead—to have your soul obliterated."
He looked at the empty body of his only son, and grasped her hand—as much to reassure himself as to reassure her. "True death isn't when the heart stops."
Tatsuki could only nod in agreement, for she knew exactly what he meant. Her heart still went on beating in her chest, thudding like the pound of a war drum. But the substance of her life was already growing cold.
Author's Note #2: Think of these first five chapters as cleaning out a festering wound. It really hurts, but you've got to do it so that things heal properly. Trust me, these will all come full-circle in the end.
Thank you's go out to xSTALKERx, Xx Trinity xX, and Marie Darkholme for their reviews. Thank *you* for sticking with this difficult, angst-filled story. Comments/critiques always appreciated. Even if they're just to tell me, "STAHP TEH ANGST!"
