Chapter 54
Word Count: 798
Timeline: pre-series, post-239 flashback
Author's Note: Hellooo, new semester. My goal is to clear out the massive backlog of half-finished drabbles on my computer. Mostly Bleach, a few other random fandoms (heh, rhyme) as well. So far results have been mixed...


Tonight, the ice on the floor hasn't spread much past Toushiro's own sleeping mat, but the temperature inside the cottage has dropped enough for him to see his breath condense.

Ever since the Shinigami woman's bizarre visit, Toushiro has refused to keep sleeping next to his grandmother. The next morning he dragged his bed as far across their cottage as he thought he could without raising suspicion. As it is she chooses to assume he's just growing up and looking for privacy.

And since then Toushiro has been forcing himself always to wake up before his grandmother does (not that he has to force himself, since he can never sleep for more than a few hours anymore), terrified that one day she'll wake up and see what he's been doing to her.

Please, please melt, he begs silently; the ice vanishes, but rather than turning to liquid it disintegrates into tiny specks that glimmer faintly as they dissipate into the air.

He still hasn't gotten over the shock of finding out that all those kids who whispered about him were right. I am "just like ice," he keeps thinking numbly. I am like a jinx, something abnormal that doesn't belong around ordinary people. All these years he's walked around obliviously with this cloud of strangeness around him, scorning everyone who feared him when he should have been paying attention, reading the signs marking him unfit to take up residence with anyone – instead of having to find it out like this.

He should have taken that Shinigami's advice when she gave it to him. He should (and very well could) have packed up his few possessions and followed her out the door that very same night, but he'd been scared and shocked, paralyzed under his blanket by her words and her fingers over his heart.

He was still like that by the time she was tripping nonchalantly out the door again, and then instead of following he huddled back down into his bed and hoped all of this was just another bizarre dream.

At first he waited for that woman to return, thinking that if his case were really so urgent, she would come back for him, at least to offer some advice beyond "You hear a voice, you should become a Shinigami."

Now he's given up on that plan, but he's still waiting – for someone else to come and take charge of him, for this thing that's happening to him to pass like some new variety of illness. Maybe he can learn to control his mind somehow, keep himself from freezing the room in his sleep. Maybe if he ignores the dreams and the voice, the voice will give up and leave him alone.

Maybe, somehow, he can stay. Just a little longer.

His eyes stray to the softly breathing mound on the other futon. What will I say to her? What can I say? What words could possibly ask forgiveness for what I've done? he wonders, knowing no more answer will come tonight than did night after night before this.

Meanwhile there's another part of him, the part Granny calls wise-beyond-his-years, arguing with relentless practicality that he already knows how to find food and avoid dangerous people on the roads, and that it'll be easy to find the home of the Shinigami (directions: keep heading toward wherever the buildings are nicest-looking). It doesn't matter what you say, because soon there won't be anyone to say it to. You have to leave, and it has to be now.

When this part of his brain takes over, Toushiro feels horribly selfish, a selfish little boy slowly killing the woman who has loved him like family, for what? Fear of the unknown? Fear of being alone? (Stupid. What's the sense in that, anyway, when he's alone here already?)

Still he hesitates, realizing the unfairness of making her wonder and worry over his disappearance. (Fearing that she won't worry – that she'll find his disappearance a relief, the way everyone else in the village doubtless will.)

That Shinigami, though … she wasn't afraid of me at all. She talked like she meets children like me all the time.

Not jinxed. Only misplaced, another thought cuts in. Saying you don't belong here is not saying you don't belong anywhere. He can't tell whether this is the elusive voice from his dreams, or just his mind conversing with itself.

The air temperature is inching back toward its normal level. Toushiro's arms begin to tremble with the effort of holding himself half-upright and tensed. He barely dares to move again, knowing any movement will mean a decision has been reached, and he is not ready, not yet, please, not yet…

The moon's light creeps across the floor, like a sheet of ice.