The Dragon's Queen
by Jo Terry
A/N: I do not own Bleach and its characters.
Chapter 7
'I'm home. Going out to patrol after shower.'
'So late? It's 2.30 am.'
'It's a Saturday, Dragon. The bar closes late on weekends.'
'Oh, right. Taxi?'
'Yessssss.'
'Sorry! See you at home.'
Rukia turns off her phone and heaves a long sigh as she falls heavily down on her bed. Ishida has been on night-shift the past two weeks and every night, he would call to check if she's home safe if he doesn't hear from her at a certain time. Most of the days, she beats him to it. Tonight, though, he must've forgotten that it was a weekend. The bar closes at 1.30 am on weekends. The other days, 11.30 pm.
She is glad Nii-sama has no clue about her nature of work in the world of the living. She doesn't think she can deal with another sis-con in her life. And I thought Ichigo was overprotective, she inwardly scoffs.
Ishida does not understand why he has to check up on the death god whenever he is not able to fetch her home from work. He thinks it's probably because she's staying in his apartment that he feels the need to make sure she's safe. Like she's commissioned under his care or something.
He can tell she gets slightly miffed by his calls or texts by the way she replies although she tries not to let it show. Heck, even he is getting annoyed by himself. But his hand automatically goes for his phone at midnight to check if she has texted him. If she hasn't, he would try to call.
I don't need this. The whole point of not getting close to anyone is so I don't have to make unnecessary phone calls at ungodly hours of the night. This is the worst. I'm supposed to hate shinigami but now I'm calling and texting one more than I've ever done for anyone else ever since I got my first mobile phone more than ten years ago… in just three short weeks! he berates himself as he opens the door to his apartment at 5.00 am after his last night-shift of two weeks. He's been granted two days off until the next day-shift begins. He's probably going to sleep the entire two days away. It's the first time he's had such a long break. One that he willingly accepts, that is. Usually, he'd still go back to the hospital to look for something to do.
Shutting the door as he removes his shoes at the genkan, he hears the sound of a Japanese alternative rock music playing softly from the dining area. "Shinigami," he calls out, just loud enough to be heard in the still of dawn. All he gets is a hum of acknowledgement before he finds the girl bent over the table, cutting a large fabric pinned under a pattern. He tilts his head to make out the shape of the cutting as he stands next to her and realises that it's for a long bias skirt. "You're majoring in fashion design?"
She nods, not bothering to look up. "Did you think I would make it as an artist of any other kind? I can't draw a stickman to save my life."
"Sounds fair," he mumbles.
That makes her straighten up to glare at him.
"What? I've seen your drawings," he smirks with a shrug. The look on her face tells him she is not amused. At all. Clearing his throat, he asks instead, "Why are you doing this instead of sleeping?"
She huffs and gets back to her shears. "Because there is only one machine free in the tailoring room from 9.00 to 10.00 later and I haven't finished cutting. I'm afraid I won't be able to wake up in time to do it. It's due on Monday."
"Could've told me earlier," he says, disappearing into his bedroom. A few minutes later, he comes back to the dining table and places a Janome computerised sewing machine beside the fabric she has just finished cutting.
"Kami…" she gasps. The university doesn't even use such a high-end machine in their lab.
He chuckles. "Get to sleep. You can use this anytime you want," he says with a yawn as he leaves her to return to his room.
Ichigo is surprised when Tatsuki shows up with his son at his door. He turns his wrist to check his watch and realises it is 4.30 pm, an hour since Kazui's class has ended.
His childhood friend shrugs, nudging the little boy into the clinic. "Hime told me to pick him up."
"And did she tell you where she is?"
"Nope. Only that she has a huge order of cupcakes to deliver to some kid's party at 5.00. So I suppose she's at the apartment? That's where she does all her home-baking, right?"
Ichigo nods, taking the school bag off his son and telling him to go upstairs to wash up.
"What are we having for dinner?" Kazui pauses at the stairs to ask.
"Yuzu-obachan is cooking yakisoba tonight," he tells him. Just a wild guess, actually.
The boy yells excitedly as he runs up. Yakisoba is his favourite food. Of course, anything by his aunt is better than anyone else's cooking in this household. His mother can bake because that's her profession but her cooking is just weird. And whenever his father cooks, he can only expect some kind of omelette dish with nothing fancier than onions in them.
Tatsuki smiles, still standing at the door. That boy is exactly like Kurosaki Ichigo when he was five. Cries like him, too.
"You want to come in?" Ichigo asks.
"You're done? No more patients?"
"The last appointment just left before you arrived. Go get some coffee or something in the kitchen. I'll be right with you," he says, making way for her to enter before closing the door.
Tatsuki nods and wordlessly walks into the house while Ichigo returns to the attached clinic to close up. She sees Yuzu busy, preparing the buckwheat noodles. Ichigo was right about the yakisoba, after all.
The brown-haired girl greets her and invites her to stay for dinner with them.
"I can't. I postponed one of my classes to 6.30 so I could pick up Kazui. Sorry, Yuzu-chan."
"It's okay. There'll be a next time," Yuzu says. "You brought Kazui-kun home from school? It's kind of late. Thought my giri no shimai is picking him up today."
Tatsuki takes a seat at the dining table and pours out a cup of tea from the teapot already prepared by Yuzu at the centre of the table. "I guess she has an urgent order she needs to deliver."
Yuzu remains silent as she continues to work on her cooking. She doesn't like to comment much about what's going on in her brother's little family but lately, she has a growing concern for her sister-in-law's frequent absence. She helps out whenever Orihime asks her to and doesn't question her because she loves taking care of her nephew.
"How's Karin-chan?"
The younger girl sighs, glad for the distraction. "She's doing well, coaching football in Osaka. Coming back for a couple of days next month to collect the rest of her stuff. Did Onii-chan tell you she got her own place?"
Tatsuki shakes her head. "No. That's good for her, isn't it?"
"Yes. But that also means she won't be coming back as often anymore."
"Who?" Ichigo asks as he pulls out a chair opposite Tatsuki and also pours himself a small cup of tea.
"Onee-chan," his youngest sister replies, tossing the boiled noodles with the fried vegetables in the wok.
"You're all right with that, Ichigo?" Tatsuki arches a brow. He has always been overprotective of his sisters. She remembers how Karin had to fight with him before he would let her move to Osaka on her own. The way she sees it, Yuzu is definitely not leaving town.
Ichigo shrugs. "What can I do? She's stubborn but she's proven that she can take care of herself the past three years."
Yuzu rolls her eyes. "We both can take care of ourselves better than you can. I'm not allowed to leave this house because you'll all starve if I do."
Tatsuki chuckles. There's so much truth in what the girl says that it's borderline pitiful. Isshin was the better cook after Yuzu but he couldn't come back after the war because his massive shinigami powers returned in full force. He is currently running the revived-Shiba clan in Soul Society. Sometimes, he would visit the world of the living but he can't stay for too long.
There is silence in the kitchen as the two childhood friends take quiet sips of their tea with the sizzling sound of the noodles as their background music. After a while, Yuzu turns off the stove, scoops the yakisoba into a huge serving bowl, and leaves it on the dining table.
"I'm going to take a shower," she declares, removing her apron. "Scoop some for Kazui-kun when he comes down, Onii-chan."
They listen as her footsteps travel up the stairs, the tension in the room grows as they get softer until they can't hear her movement anymore. That's when Tatsuki decides to speak up.
"Do you know if Hime still visits Hajime-sensei?"
Ichigo sighs and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "He called a couple of times to ask why she missed his sessions."
"Did you ask her about it?"
"Nope."
Tatsuki frowns at her friend. "Why not?"
"Because it's not something she would tell me. And I thought she was getting better."
"Ichigo, Hajime-sensei told us right from the beginning when she had her first psychotic break that she cannot miss a session unless she has a valid reason and one of us is there with her. By not attending a therapy session without us knowing, she's actually withdrawing from treatment on her own. Do you know if she takes her medication?"
Ichigo's minute-long silence frustrates Tatsuki. She knows the couple does not communicate well with each other but she always hopes that Ichigo would at least try to work on it, being the one that is mentally stable between the two.
"Have you noticed anything different with her lately?"
The orange-haired man shrugs. "She seems to get a lot of orders for her home-baking side business. Sometimes, she drops me a text to tell me she would go straight to the apartment after she finishes off at the bakery. Then, I would have to fetch Kazui myself."
Orihime works at a well-known bakery in Karakura town. But she does special orders for customers who want personalised catering for parties as well. She has her own baking equipment at her old apartment because she doesn't want to get in Yuzu's way in the kitchen at home.
"I don't understand why you would let her do her baking there. She should've sold that place a long time ago. That's where it all first started," Tatsuki grumbles.
"Tatsuki, that place belongs to her. She inherited it from her brother. I have no say in it. How do you force someone to give up something they hold dear to themselves?"
"But you know if she doesn't get rid of the apartment, she will never get rid of the hallucinations. Every time she tells me she has spoken to him, I know she doesn't take her medication. I can't check up on her all the time, Ichigo. You're her husband. You need to make sure she does not get back into one these episodes."
"Don't you think I've tried? Three times, Tatsuki. Three times, she almost signed the sales and purchase documents for the apartment. And three times, she walked out of the lawyer's office without a stroke of her name on them. And I can't keep checking her intake. She may be unstable but she's smart enough to flush the dosage down the toilet if she doesn't feel like taking them. The only thing I can do is make sure Kazui is not around when she has a breakdown. I can't let him see his mother like that," Ichigo insists.
Tatsuki stares up at the ceiling. It tears her apart to know that her two closest friends are going through such an ordeal. She knows she can't blame Ichigo for everything. Despite the fact that he has entered the marriage without having any feelings for Orihime, he really has tried to be supportive of her treatment for schizophrenia.
It all started with her mumbling to herself even when she was still in high school. Tatsuki used to think that it was quite adorable that the little bubbly girl talks to herself when she's excited about something. But after coming back from Hueco Mundo, the auburn-haired girl confided in her about a strange man she was quite fond of - whom she thought she cared deeply for. It went on for six months, all these talks about a guy with permanent streaks of tears down his cheeks who showed no emotions but she worried about him and even had nightmares that he was killed by a two-horned Ichigo several times. Tatsuki didn't understand a thing. She was just there to listen to her because she knew Orihime needed someone to do that for her.
Tatsuki thought her friend's condition couldn't get any worse after the Quincy war. She would receive calls from the Inoue apartment where Orihime kept crying, "The knife broke! I can't put them back together! Tatsuki-chan, what do I do?" That's when Tatsuki started making appointments with a psychotherapist for her but Orihime kept cancelling, saying she was busy with finals and assignments and whatnots.
The first major psychotic episode happened a week after Kazui's birth. Tatsuki rushed out of the dojo when she got a call from a frantic Ichigo who said Orihime was missing and their newborn had been shrieking for two hours. He told her to look for Orihime while he went out to buy formula. It was a lucky thing that Yuzu was back from school that day to help look after the baby.
Tatsuki knew the only place she would find Orihime was at the apartment. And she did. It was horrible. She found her talking to the bathroom mirror. When she pulled her away, Orihime insisted that her brother had returned to her. She was hospitalised for two weeks following that incident and has been on several types of antipsychotic medications since. Her therapy sessions started off as day-treatments where Hajime-sensei would make sure she took her medication and get her to talk to him. After six months, they gradually reduced the frequency of her sessions to three times a week, twice, and now, two hours every Sunday.
For the past four years, there hasn't been any relapse or occurrence of any episodes. So, they reckon she has been faithfully taking her medication. Lately though, her last minute change of plans and sudden disappearance have been worrying. Tatsuki wishes she knows what's going on but Orihime seems to be withdrawing even from her - the best friend she keeps no secrets from. She can't imagine how it is with Ichigo.
"Look, Tatsuki, I'll go through her medication with her tonight. Maybe she's been too busy with all the extra orders that she doesn't realise she misses her dosage. If she has only one delivery to make, she should be home soon," Ichigo tells her, trying to sound as convincing as he could. But even he isn't so sure himself. For one, he has no idea how he's going to talk Orihime into letting him see her charts without sounding suspicious.
The kendoka nods in a resigned manner. That's all she can expect of Ichigo. Orihime can be quite stubborn but if he can at least make sure she takes her pills, that's good enough to get her back on track. "Crap. I'm late for my class. Kuchiki is not going to like this because I was the one who postponed our session," she blurts as she gets up from the table to leave his house.
Silence.
Fuck…
"What did you say?" The words tumble out of Ichigo's lips in staccato.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
"What's that smell?" Ishida asks, coming out of his bedroom in a t-shirt and basketball shorts after a whole day of sleeping on Monday.
"I cooked." Rukia shrugs as she places two bowls of omurice on the counter. It's funny how they still haven't used the new dining table for meals.
The man takes a seat opposite her and quirks a brow. "You can cook?"
"Of course, I can," she huffs, obviously offended.
Ishida chuckles. "All right. What's the occasion?" he asks as he takes a mouthful of the rice with his chopsticks, nodding in surprised approval of the taste. Not bad. This noble princess can cook.
"Managed to submit my assignment today. So I just wanted to thank you for letting me use your machine."
"Okay. But I'm going to let you use it from now on because I hardly have the time to do any sewing these days. So does that mean you'll be cooking every time you make an outfit?"
"No! I'll buy it from you, if that's the case. This model is currently out of stock," she says.
Shoving more rice into his mouth, he nods again. "Sure. Just pay me with food."
"Uryuu!"
"Eat your rice or I'll take my second instalment from your bowl right now."
Well, there you go. A little more on Inoue's condition and the Kurosaki household. And some light IshiRuki goodness.
