Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach and the characters. The song used is Iris by Goo Goo Dolls.

Title: Iris

Word count: 2362

POV: 1st person, Ichigo.

Genre: Romance/Drama/Angst

7. Iris

Angels.

I knew nothing about angels. They are always said to be holy beings, the servants of deities. Pictures of them always show some winged creatures that resemble humans dressed in oversized white clothes, sometimes holding musical instruments in their hands. Angels are there to help you, to lighten your burdens and to wipe tears away from your eyes.

But still, I didn't believe in the existence of angels. They were too good to be true. If angels really existed, then why hadn't one come to save my mother's life?

Angels were only part of fairytales to me.

And I'd give up forever to touch you

Cause I know that you feel me somehow

You're the closest to heaven that I'll never be

And I don't want to go home right now

Angels were fairytales.

Until heaven and fate decided to send an angel into my life.

This angel came in the form of a new student in my class. Her name is Kuchiki Rukia. She wasn't the most beautiful girl ever existed, neither she was the kindest person God had ever created. Actually, the more you knew her, the more you realised how evil she was. God, she kicked, she screamed, she yelled and she ordered you as if you were her servant. But, people loved her. She had this aura that softened people's hearts when they were around her. She was appealing, and no matter how hard you tried to ignore her, you couldn't help but getting more interested in her.

And when I got close enough to her, I accidentally unveiled her clandestine true identity.

She was not a human being.

The first time I knew this was when I saw her floating in the sky, staring at the sun sadly. And…she had wings, for God's sake. Wings. No human being had wings. At first I thought my eyes were doing tricks to me, but no. It was her. She looked as if she was on the verge of crying, but I didn't know why. She always looked content and jolly every time I saw her at school.

I really wanted to fly to her side and asked her why. But…I didn't have the wings to fly. And also, I actually partly believed that I was daydreaming.

I knew it—I had to ask her.

The next day I approached her and surfaced my curiosity and much to my surprise, she admitted it. At first I thought she was only joking, that she only tried to add more fun to my illogical thesis. But from the look in her eyes…I knew she was more than just serious.

Later she told me all of her perfectly covered secrets.

She was an angel exiled from heaven temporarily because she had done a task wrongly. But the more time she spent in human world, the more attached she became and the more reluctant she was to come back to heaven when the time finally came. She admitted that she never thought the mortal world could be this fun, compared to heaven. Heaven, according to her personal opinion, was not a land of milk and honey like people usually fantasised. Heaven had its own battles and conflicts too, and what surprised me the most was when she said that human world was much better than heaven that people usually exalted.

I couldn't help but consoling her, telling that it might only be a false feeling, because an angel would never belong to a human world. Angels are divine beings, and they forever belong to heaven. How shocked I was when her tears fell was beyond explanation.

She said she didn't want to leave this world. She said she wanted to stay, even if it meant that she would be a mortal, sinful human. She said that she didn't care about sacredness anymore, all she wanted was love and someone to care. Apparently, in heaven nobody gave her enough love to survive. She told me that she had an older brother, yet he didn't even care about her feelings. She also happened to have a good childhood friend, who forgot everything about her when he was promoted into an angel with a higher position.

All she wanted was love. And she found it here, in the human world, where sinful beings threaded their life path before meeting the end.

It was out of my logic, but I believed in her.

Ever since that fateful encounter, we were getting closer and closer. All my theories and beliefs about how angels were only fairytales evaporated into the thin air. She was my sanctuary, the rock in the middle of the storm, a tower from which I sought my solace. She was everything. And before I could do something, I had fallen deep into the ravine of love. I was irrevocably head over heels in love with her.

And one thing I would forever be grateful of was that she loved me too.

And all I can taste in this moment

And all I can breathe is your life

And sooner or later, it's over

I just don't want to miss you tonight

While life could seem to be a bed full of roses, there would be a day when the roses wilted and left nothing but dying petals and vicious thorns.

Not all realities are kind to you. You just have to be prepared to get any kind of fate, be it good or bad. In my case, fate had done enough to drive me insane and curse the heaven.

Love between human and angels was forever forbidden.

When I learned about it, I felt like my heart was crushed into uncountable pieces. I was fully aware that it might sound out of logic and strange, but why, why was it forbidden? Wasn't it…wasn't it only love that mattered? Even though we were not and would never be the same?

But reality refused to go just like Rukia and I wanted.

No matter how much we cared for each other, no matter how much we were in love with each other, it didn't matter. Angels are holy beings. Humans are sinful, dirty beings. There was no way a human could lay a finger on an angel and defile her. It was like committing a sin enough for three lifetimes.

I didn't understand why. I refused to understand why. Rukia loved living in this world. She felt belonged to this mortal world. Never even once she said that she wanted to go back to heaven.

She had become too attached in this world it was unimaginable to think of her leaving.

But the day had to come and she had to be back. The once exiled angel had to return to a place people thought she belonged to. The once my lover had to go away to a forever unreachable place. Her existence, her memories…would soon be gone together with the night wind into oblivion. No matter how much we tried, we just couldn't make a twist in our once beautiful life.

I didn't want to let her go.

Rukia knew this. The look on my face when she told me that she would be gone soon was enough to tell her to leave secretly without saying goodbye to me. She knew that goodbye meant goodbye, that all we once had would come to an end. She didn't want to end it. She left without saying goodbye, holding a small glint of hope that maybe someday, she would be able to be back to me.

She left without saying a word to me. One night, she was gone.

I quickly hit the road, desperately praying that she was still here, in the human world. I needed to see her once again, to touch her once again, to kiss her and assure her that it would be okay—she would never have to go back. I finally found her flying aimlessly in the air, eyes locked at the white full moon. The moonbeam fell on her beautiful face, showing her divine beauty. She had never looked more beautiful. Her wings slowly flapped, bringing her away into the darkness of the night.

I ran as fast as my legs allowed.

I called her name and she turned to look at me, her face was unfathomable. I screamed at her that I would never let her go, but she pleaded amidst her tears that she had to go or else I would be put in danger. Love between human and angel is a crime.

I didn't care. I loved her and if I had to suffer for loving an angel, I didn't care. I would happily receive all the torment and torture if it meant spending more time with the girl I had fallen in love so deeply with. I would accept all the punches and kicks if it meant I would be able to touch her once again. She was the moonlight that shone deep into my heart. She dried the rain in my world. She was a sanctuary, where I found peace and protection.

She saved me from everything that I couldn't be.

I was about to call her once again when the gate of heaven opened before my eyes majestically and two male angels came to take Rukia away. I could only see a brief bright light before she went into the world I could never reach. She was gone away. Forever.

Falling onto my knees, I felt hot tears sprang to my eyes. Rukia was gone. My angel, my shelter, my happiness, my moon…she had gone and left me in the darkness alone.

She had gone and protected me.

A soft, fluffy feather fell from the sky above. I fingered it carefully, knowing surely that it was one of Rukia's wings. It was wet of her tears. I stared at the tiny drops of crystal coloured tears lacing the fine white feathers and felt as if my throat was burned. Asphyxia came to take control of my body. A string of sobs escaped my lips as I held the pure feather close to my heart.

Angels never leave footprints, because they always fly.

But my angel left uncountable footprints in my heart that mingled together with the memories of her existence in my mind and the concrete truth of her love to me which came in the form of this small, white and precious feather.

You can't fight the tears that ain't coming

Or the moment of truth in your life

When everything feels like the movie

You bleed just to know you're alive

The world had decided that it would forget her existence.

The day after she left, all of my classmates officially held no memory of her. I received a handful of weird looks when I asked my classmates about someone named Kuchiki Rukia. They thought I was insane. Nobody with such a name had ever enrolled into our school. My friends wondered if I read too much manga.

I didn't. I just fell in love too much with an angel named Rukia.

It felt so wrong. It was all lie. My heart was wounded by unexplainable agony that numbed my body and soul. The scar it left would never heal even until death and beyond. Rukia was the only person I ever truly loved. Nobody else could ever make me feel this way.

It felt like a bad joke. Like a romance movie with a sad ending. I didn't want to believe any of it. Rukia stayed here. She didn't go anywhere.

But those were only my crazy fantasies.

I was fully aware that Rukia had gone to another world and she would never come back, no matter how much tears I cried or how loud I shouted to the heaven. I learned not to cry over her, instead I learned how to cherish her memories that were eternally fresh in my mind. I wanted to learn to remember her only with a smile, not forlornness and sorrow. I remembered her as an angel, smiling at me in the middle of the night, protecting me from the dangers lurking around the corners day and night. She was with me forever, my guardian angel.

Rukia.

You're my angel for eternity.

"So, how was it?"

"Awesome." Ishida smirked as Inoue handed a bouquet of honeymoon tulips to my hands and from the tail of my eyes, I caught sight of Sado nodding approvingly. "I never knew that you are a great actor."

"That's all because of Shakespeare." I couldn't help but smirked back, thanking Inoue for the bouquet. I saw the names of my friends on the card—Inoue, Ishida, Tatsuki, Sado, Keigo, Mizuiro, Chizuru…and some others I couldn't see because the vermilion petals of the tulips covered them.

"Ah. I see."

"Where's the angel?" Tatsuki asked, looking around to search for the familiar raven tresses. She was nowhere in sight.

"She said she still has something to do in the changing room. Maybe she got problem with the angel wings. They are quite a trouble to detach." I replied nonchalantly.

"Oh, okay then." she shrugged, grinning a bit. "We'll be waiting outside, okay?"

"Sure." I replied, then quickly added, "I'll go there as soon as Rukia finishes with her business."

My friends only smiled understandingly then left. I waited outside Rukia's changing room, groaning playfully, "Rukia! Are you finished now? I'm tired of waiting!"

"Oh, shut up, Ichigo! You don't know how much of a pain these wings are!"

"Want me to help you?"

"Thanks, but supposedly you're not with me to help? I'm already in heaven, Ichigo."

I snorted, "Yeah, heaven, my foot. You're more of a devil, Rukia."

"If I'm a devil then what are you?" she giggled. "The devil of devils?"

A chuckle left my lips then I sighed. "I lied. You're not a devil."

"Ah. Finally. You understand now?" she replied triumphantly.

"You're not a devil." I smirked, blushing furiously. I thanked Kami-sama that she couldn't see me now. "Cause…you're my angel."

I don't want the world to see me

Cause I don't think that they'd understand…

Author's note: Finally! :D The next chapter of Footprints! I really love the song Iris…I hope I did a good job there. By the way, this is so far the longest of Footprints series! This was quite hard to write…I apologise for any OOCness here. Anyway, please review!! Thanks a lot for reading (and reviewing, if you're willing to spend two minutes to tell me your two cents) and I hope you enjoy it! :) PS: Honeymoon tulips are the flowers my friend gave me and my other friends in choir after our concert a few weeks ago. It has interesting name so I decided to use it here.

PPS: I have a poll on my page about which story of mine I should publish first!! Please vote...thank you :)