Orihime would always remember this moment. The first few rays of the sun and the way the biodome's force field shimmered above head; the hollow pit of her stomach.
'I'm going to end it.' That's what he said to her before walking away. 'Up there; everywhere.' He hesitated, knowing the weight of what he was asking, 'Can…you take care of her while I'm gone?'
She had thought she had made peace with everything that had happened to him, how he was changed. But even now, she felt that pit in her stomach deepen.
If he came back—when he came back, it would be to her. But did that even matter? Wasn't it still better for him to survive and come back?
'Inoue-san, can you take care of her while I'm gone.
The words were stuck in her throat, nearly wordless. Later she would wish that she had said it aloud when he was near. And even later than that, she would wish that she had known if would've said yes or no.
But maybe he knew the answer before she did. Or maybe there were words in the exaltation she had made. Because even with his back turned to her, even as his form grew smaller and smaller, he lifted his arm towards her in thanks.
. .
On today of all days, Orihime had found him sitting on the steps of the abandoned bunker with its caved-in roof and walls overladen with vines. And in the distance, miles and miles away from this edge of Nippon, the skyscraper-tall walls of the biodome. Not useless but unneeded in a time of intergalactic peace; unactivated, but still standing tall in the island country's waters as a reminder.
But right now, in this vicinity, this was more about the boy who had chosen to run away here. The one she had spent an hour searching for, the one who was stubbornly refusing to meet her gaze.
Errant drops from the morning's rainshower splattered against her umbrella. Her geta clacked against the ground as she, oh, so carefully made her way towards him. Wet, green leaves brushed against the yukata she wore, and she was grateful that her dress for the ceremony, cream with silvery beads embroidered down the sides in rose patterns, was still safely back in her closet.
When she finally reached him, she didn't bother to speak; just sat down beside him. She took note of his adolescent face, the reminder that she was no longer as young as the day she first learned that he would one day exist in the world. And she watched the colors that shrouded his shoulders like bird's wings: cobalt and navy blue, indigo and a smattering of silver. Nearly every color of night cloaked him.
Except black, she thought absently. Just like his mother.
The thought only brought her some comfort. "Tensa-kun," she finally said, her voice tender, "your mother has been looking for you."
Tensa looked like his mother: small-framed and slender-limbed, barely toasted skin and silver-white hair. But with his honey-brown eyes and that scowl on his face…he looked so much like Kurosaki-kun.
He looked over towards her. "Did she say anything to you or Ushoda-san?"
"No. But she did the shine for me."
Shine. Shine was Orihime's word for what Rukia-chan did—what she could still do. She had rushed into Ushōda-san's basement, the space where he had long ago decided to store the materials for his apothecary, her silver-white eyelashes shining with tears. Rukia-chan had long been able to speak in the same way Orihime did, but it was her panic and worry that made her foregone doing so. An arch of ice-blue light had materialized in her pleading, open palms—even the one with the scar grooved across her palm—and their colors had stretched and danced across the ceiling and walls of jarred herbs and flowers.
But it wasn't until she made a lurid orange color that Orihime could understand.
"She finally told me what had happened to him," Tensa-kun continued, "what they say really happened to him. How he had done this," he lifted his arm and the shroud of colors he had made around himself responded, rising like steam, "and ended everything—the war."
His eyes focused on the alien ability he possessed. "I'm happy that she finally told me. But, I got mad, too. It had taken so long for her to just tell me, when she told me, I couldn't believe that all this time he's just been. I said…maybe it was her fault that it happened."
It was rare for Orihime to ever feel anger towards the younger boy, but she felt her face pinch. "Tensa! How could you?"
Truly, he adored his mother, and always had, but it seemed like even adoration lost its potency in the face of teen angst. The colors spiked around his shoulders. "How could she not tell me something so important? I've asked for the truth for years—for years—and every time, it was the same thing: he's a hero because he ended the war; the biodome shields they created turned off because he got rid of the Quincy.
"Meanwhile, the truth was that he wasn't supposed to be able to do that. That he was only human like—like you. But she did something to him to make him leave."
Orihime sat silently for a few moments. And once she was sure that he was calm, that the colors of his shine were no longer spikes and curled against her arm. "Tensa, your mother didn't do anything to your father, except save him." And then it was her turn to make a confession. "He told me so himself before he left."
Tensa-kun stared at her in shock and reverence. "You never told me that before. That he said he saved her."
"I made myself wait until Rukia-chan told you about your father. So you could have the whole story. I can tell you now if you would like..."
. .
Before Kurosaki Ichigo, First Lieutenant of the Nippon Division of the Central 46 Army, had abruptly, mysteriously, brought peace back to Earth, there was the Thousand Stars War.
To this day, no one knows exactly where The Quincy, that alien race, had come from. Only that they announced their arrival via radio broadcast, a hijacked frequency picked up in Mexico. Earth was technologically advanced enough to pick up on the message, the threats and comic-book era dialogue. And the message was bounced and uploaded from prismgram to prismgram, faster than governments could block the signal and faster than the media could speculate that it was a hoax.
And then they had launched their first attack on the planet.
Despite prismgrams and spatial travel and the touted military might some of the old, powerful countries boasted of, the Quincy had a technology no one on Earth had yet had access to. It had wiped out most of the Southern Hemisphere and key places in the North: southern Europe; Northern Africa and Middle Eastern countries. The coldest parts of Canada, the Caribbean and the United States' Eastern Coast.
Whatever little remained of the old world powers declared peace. And then they began to ban together, smaller countries becoming one once more and larger countries picking up the pieces of what was left, until there were 46 world countries left. The Central 46.
It was The 46 who collectively built the arm to declare war on the Quincy. And when the Quincy landed on a barren wasteland they made, it was the Central 46's scientists who created the biodomes, the force fields that kept whatever was left of Earth safe from the rest of the world.
With every innovation, the war continued. With every generation born came the same scrape for survival.
Kurosaki-kun, like Orihime, had become an orphan when he was 12. It had been a reverberation of an attack from the Quincy: a missile that had punctured Nippon's biodome and sent waves like earthquakes across the island. It shouldn't have been possible but had been, and for Orihime, the one she lost had been her nii-sama; for him. And for Kurosaki-kun, it had been his father, a doctor, and younger twin sisters. But unlike Orihime, who had accepted the kind offer of shelter and medical education from her brother's sensei and the province doctor, UshōdaHachigen-san, Kurosaki-kun had chosen to enlist.
After Kurosaki-kun brought peace, it would be written that Kurosaki-kun had fought in over a hundred battles. That he was a brilliant tactician whose actions had led to the defeat of a certain Quincy that had caught The Central 46's attention, if for no other reason than the body cam Kurosaki-kun wore had depicted his face—a blurred image marred by the site of hundreds of eyes; Orihime feared the nightmares it would bring—a first in the history of the war. They would say it was that battle that helped The 46 change the tide of the war, and his involvement in that initiative had been decisive.
But no one would mention how he, soon after reaching the ranks of First Lieutenant, was mysteriously removed from the front lines and made to come back to his hometown of Karakura to rest.
They wouldn't talk about how he had changed. He himself had made the request to be put under Ushōda-san's care. It was his decision to occupy Ushōda-san's bunker, the stonewalled house located a mile away into the woods, the path leading to it well-worn. Their piece of Karakura was in the province's outskirts, away from where soldiers stationed in their area slept and mingled. He kept no company and ventured out only for weekly physicals with Ushōda-san. They met behind closed doors, but from the reports the doctor made her send to Kurosaki-kun's superiors, she knew some of his symptoms. The reports spoke of strange markings on his body—the dash marks that slashed the form's blank, faceless anatomic diagram—and dreams of battles he had never fought against creatures she didn't know he knew how to describe.
She delivered a bento box of his meals to the storage house's doorstep each day. Some days he ate and when he did, he was sure to wash every dish he had eaten from. But other days, the box never moved from where she left it.
Only once did she use their shared past as an excuse to make her way into what was his temporary home. She told her wildly beating heart that it was to check on him, nothing more. But he had grown taller and broader. And while he was polite, he seemed distant. He listened to her—her stories of the old days, her stories of her apprenticeship—but his responses were detached. It was only when she finally made to leave and stepped outside that she realized there had been a heaviness in the air around him.
She never tried that again. But still, from where the largest window in her window was, she could still see the bunker within the forest's expanse.
And then, one evening, during a snowstorm, an alert came through the area: Karakura's biodome had been penetrated and civilians were to stay inside and await further. But moments after Ushōda-san stepped to the window—for just a moment, to view the gray-white skies—there came a beam of light zapping into their receiver cube.
It was Kurosaki-kun. Asking for help.
Someone was with him in the warehouse.
Someone.
A woman. A woman with silver-white hair lying atop the table Kurosaki-kun had repurposed for eating. Belatedly, Orihime realized that this woman, aside from her feathers, was nearly unclothed, save for the feathers covering her shoulders and back: white feathers and cream-colored feathers tipped copper and black; and still more colored blood-orange and gray and dark teal. Kurosaki-kun half-held her in his arms and she clung to him, her small hand fisting the front of his knit sweater, and the other holding a glass shard to his side. Her gaze alternated between Kurosaki-kun and she and Ushōda-san, pale lavender eyes were alight with anger.
As strange as the scene was, the sight of them as close as lovers, Orihime couldn't help but notice the look in his eyes, the flash of familiarity. But then she was listening to his explanation: there had been a crash outside, and when he went to investigate, he found her. She'd been crawling in the snow, shufflingamong the rubble of trees and some weird pod. She had tried to run from him but had stumbled.
'Her leg's broken,' Kurosaki-kun said of its mangled and…bleeding appearance—if that the woman was experiencing, then her blood fell in rivets of stark white—'and we need to help her.'
Ushōda-san had been oddly preoccupied by his medical bag upon their arrival, and though he knew its contents better than Orihime herself did, he had yet to find what he was looking for.
'Have you ever seen this…creature before, Kurosaki-sama?'
His brow furrowed. In a way, he had.
'In our sessions, you've described traits such as hers before. Traits that you've seen from the battlefield.'
'I have. Do you want me to guess what the problem you have is, Ushōda-sensei?"
Kurosaki-kun's gaze did not stray from the woman, but his brow furrowed. He was saying that she needed medical attention—nanobot administration, stitches, whatever.
Orihime had been so caught up in wondering if the nanobots could repair the woman's wound that she was surprised when Ushōda-san turned away from his medical bag; a flourished move that was not like him. But, what was in his hand was not anesthesia or the administrating device for the nanobots, but a military-issued gun pointed straight at the woman.
'Orihime-chan, do not move,' the doctor warned her.
The beep of its activation startled the woman, and she turned, pointing the shard in the Ushōda-san's direction. A pair of wings extended from her shoulder blades and fluttered in warning towards the doctor. She inched away and her weight landed on her damaged leg. The sound that burst from her lips—maybe it was language with pitches and tones and notes—but its echo off the walls reverberated deeply in her ears and Orihime covered them to fend off the sound.
Ushōda-san's hand shook, his face tight with pain until the sound tapered off.
'Ushōda,-sensei' Kurosaki-kun said to the other man, 'you have to lower the gun.' He shifted, extending his left arm until his hand enveloped hers. 'Lower the gun.'
'I do not wish to raise it at all, First Lieutenant. But whether she realizes it, or can understand us, she is an Unclassified Non-Earthen Lifeform that is threatening an officer of The Central 46 Army. And her appearance is like that of our enemy.'
A UNL. 'Is,' Orihime began, 'is she—'
'She's not a Quincy,' Kurosaki-kun answered.
Beads of sweat had broken out across the doctor's brow and his bushy mustache had darkened in matted sweat. It was hard to tell what the cause of his discomfort was: the woman's wail or what he held in his own hand. 'Then what is she, First Lieutenant?'
'Kurosaki-kun…how do you know her?'
'From a dream… someone else's memory,' His hand enclosed around the shard and he slid his palm along its edge. Blood—but darker than what Orihime had ever seen—dripped from his wound and unto her bleeding leg.
But even curiouser, the droplets began to recoil upon contact.
Orihime gasped a tiny whimper that went unnoticed.
'Ushōda,' Kurosaki-kun said, his eyes never straying from the woman, 'I ignored the order to stay inside and injured myself during this snowstorm. I misjudged the state of a fallen tree.
'As I'm under your care, your priority is to address my injury, but that attention extends to any others in the area who were harmed.'
There was a pause. And then slowly, Ushōda-san lowered his gun. Despite the situation, relief washed over Ushōda-san's face. 'Yes, of course. And as a doctor, I have taken the assessment that others in the area are in greater need of my direct care.
'Orihime-chan, please help me tend to our patient.'
Orihime obeyed.
'Hey,' Kurosaki-kun said to the woman now, 'it's okay. 'That, human and that human, and me. We're not going to hurt you.' He tilted his head back far enough to see her face. ' I know you. Let me save you.'
Slowly, her wings lowered.
Ushōda-san tended to his wounds with Orihime's help, but at no point before the doctor declared the procedure finished did Kurosaki-kun ever remove his hand from hers.
"That's how they met?" Tensa-kun asked her after some moments.
"I suppose so."
"But you're saying that he said he knew her from before…"
She shook her head: no, not yet. "Your father requested Ushōda-san keep Rukia-chan with us while she healed," continued Orihime. "And he made us both promise to leave mention of her from any of Ushōda-san's reports, and he did.
"And it made it easier for Rukia-san, too."
. .
Kurosaki-kun told them that her name was "Rukia."
"'Hmmm. Someone has been brushing up on his Latin.'" That was what Ushōda-san had said in reply before escorting Kurosaki-kun into his office for his examination.
Her name being something like Latin—even before that, the things she said being decipherable to him—was the first of many revelations he would say of her, of Rukia. But that wasn't all; he looked at Rukia so often. Sometimes, he would look at her with awe or surprise—which made sense: Rukia was otherworldly, clad in feathers the way she was and unbothered with clothing, and graceful with every step.
But there was desperation in his gaze sometimes. And expectation.
And not just from him: sometimes it felt as though she was expecting something of him too. Because no matter how fascinated she was by everything—by every inch of the bunker, by the food Orihime placed before her, by the felled trees outside and the hard crunch of snow and the curious sounds birds made—Kurosaki-kun seemed to fascinate her most of all. He was still as healthy as ever but had physically weakened. Dark bags under his eyes…always tense. Even his clothing seemed to hang off his still-powerful frame. And Orihime knew it was strange, but Rukia seemed to know as well; she seemed to be always watching him.
It was foolish of Orihime to try to come between whatever was happening, to ignore the electricity in the air around them; to feel as if she could know him as closely as Rukia seemed to in mere weeks.
And yet, she did—or, at least, tried to.
It had been the day after a light snowfall. Orihime had come to the bunker without any bento, on the pretense of finding deer—not to hunt, but to feed like they had on old school trips.
Despite the bags under his eyes and their bleary look, he agreed. And with him came Rukia.
'Oh, Kurosaki-kun! I think these are the deer tracks! I think that's what they looked like. I don't think my prismgram would work this far into the forest…' Orihime's words trailed again. He had fallen back on their trek for a second handful of times, leaning against a tree trunk for support. Rukia, as otherworldly as she looked, unaffected by the cold against her bare skin and her feathers a swatch of colors against the snow, walked paces before him. She was always looking over her shoulder at him, the look on her face like she was waiting.
'Kurosaki-kun, is something wrong?'
'No," he panted around his answer, but straightened. 'It's okay.' He pulled in a deep breath of air. 'We're close to deer. They're…there.'
Orihime tore her eyes away from him and peered into the blinding whiteness around them. He was right; within the protection of tall fir trees was a herd of deer. Quietly, quietly, she pulled a bag of deer crackers from her bag and quietly, quietly, she approached the group. 'Kurosaki-kun, look it's…I think it's a fawn.' She felt more than saw him looking over her shoulder at the youngling slowly making its way towards them. Orihime stilled all but the hand that held the treat, beckoning it to come closer, closer and gasping as it began to eat from her hand.
It stayed for one cracker and then another after that, licking her empty palm for any crumbs. By then, more had followed behind, seeking her treats.
'Oh, Kurosaki-kun, do you want one—' Orihime's question trailed off as she turned and suddenly saw Rukia standing beside her with wings outstretched, almost protecting her. A low sound came from her mouth, a warning that made every deer around her still.
But a warning to whom?
Kurosaki-kun.
His arm was spasming, jerking about like it was tied to a string. A noise burst from his lips a yelp, as he fell to the ground gripping his forearm, teeth clenched in pain.
The limb swelled and ripped his coat sleeve into shreds. And then something burst into being: a flat, glassy then another, and then another.
They spun in asynchronous circles, around and around, in what seemed a never-ending circle without focus.
Orihime screamed—of course, she screamed—but not as loudly as Kurosaki-kun had.
'What's wrong?! What's happening?!'
'I-I, I don't know. Inoue-san, just stay over—'
His arm jerked up as if pulled by a string and one by one, those spinning eyes found focus: Rukia. Rukia, who had begun to burn with color. Flames of red and gold licked up her shoulders and thighs the tips of her ears and gone was her dancer-like movement; her stance was like that of a fighter, her talons poised to attack. Her head turned towards Orihime and from her lips came a sharp noise. It was possibly a warning, an entreaty to run, but she was too rooted in fear to stop.
Galloping filled Orihime's ears—the herd of deer running away—
Kurosaki-kun's arm lurched forward and dragged him along with it. Whatever-it-was had morphed, the fingertips fusing together and sharpening into talons. And Rukia stepped forward to meet it, her flames tailing behind her.
For every move of offense his arm made, Rukia sidestepped and dodged or, worse still, she met it. Her cries of pain punctured the air, sharp trills that lost their echo among the trees. The fight felt like a lifetime until finally, her talons made true contact against her opponent, running up the length of that eye.
The thing reacted again, splintering and flailing like a snake that lost its head. Yet, despite the reaction of pain, it was Kurosaki-kun's yell that did Orihime in. He fell to the ground once more, gripping his forearm once more. Rukia stood triumphant above him, still burning in that strange way.
'PLEASE, DON'T HURT KUROSAKI-KUN!' Orihime heard her voice make its plea.
What she asked for went unacknowledged. Rukia clasped her hands together for a brief second—long enough to draw a question from Kurosaki-kun ('What …are you doing?')— before releasing them again. She offered the sight of her now-bleeding palm. Her flames burned all the brighter; even the drops that fell caught light before extinguishing.
She touched him with her self-injury, and his arm spasmed. She gripped it tighter, and its tips lashed about more frantically, flicking up layers of snow.
And then Rukia spoke. They were words that carried notes of birdsong; words that Orihime could not, could not understand.
The thing that was his arm coiled and receded, sheathing itself back into his skin.
Orihime felt her feet start to move, closer and closer to the two. But she was a world apart.
Rukia lifted her bleeding palm to him and clenched her first. An offer.
Kurosaki-kun nodded. Acceptance. "Ok. Ok."
Orihime watched as he opened his mouth and those burning drops of fire and color fell to his lips.
. .
"That's how she did it?" Tensa-kun asked after some moments.
Orihime nodded.
"What do you think she said to him?"
"You'd have to ask her."
He considered it but began to shake his head once more.
"If I had to guess," Orihime began, "it may have been to make him see reason: to keep him from hiding away what was happening to him."
"And what was happening to him?" The teen answered before she had a chance to: "He was changing."
"He had already been changing, but had spent so much time hiding it." She lapsed into silence, remembering how he made her promise to not tell Ushōda-san what had happened that day. Rukia-chan had been there, already serving as sentry.
Orihime hadn't thanked her, but she had kept that promise.
Everything that followed happened from afar: flashes of colored light, coming into being like firefly light deep into the night. The sounds of birdsong she could hear whenever she approached the bunker now, what she knew now to be Rukia speaking…and a different voice. And the changed way Kurosaki-kun ate—she'd lift the containers of his meals to see that only the meat she had prepared was touched. (She had even tested him once, making onigiri and later discovering he had gone so far as to dig into the meals and scoop out the protein inside.)
And then, there was the night she saw two…winged figures rise from the forest's treetops.
Newness rolled off Kurosaki-kun in waves, and although she never knew how much Ushōda-san suspected, the doctor never spoke his thoughts to her aloud. At least, not then.
"So when did he and Kaa-san…?" Tensa-kun's question trailed off and a blush appeared on his face.
It took all of Orihime to not laugh. "I don't know. You would have to ask her."
He blushed harder at the thought of doing so. "Maybe it was because he was becoming like her," he grumbled, "they were the only ones around."
She shook her head slowly. "No. Your father truly cared for your mother." What felt like a hundred memories of the way Kurosaki-kun looked at Rukia-chan, like he was always suddenly realizing that he felt like he'd known her for lifetimes, sprang to mind.
"Kaa-san gave me a picture of him. How he looked during the last battle." Tensa-kun's arm parted from the shroud of colors, and Orihime found herself looking at a memory. Kurosaki-kun, a half-blur captured from someone's bodycam. In the midst of that final battle, that battle that ended the war, there stood Kurosaki-kun, maybe forever changed.
Kurosaki-kun. But not how he was before, or even exactly as he was the last time they had spoken. He was massive, towering feet above the fighters around him, The Central 46's soldiers. By that time, glossy, raven-black feathers covered his body, and even his hair had darkened to the same hue. His wings were outstretched to meters. Large enough for everyone to see the pair of eyes his feather pattern made.
Not human—or just human. Or just any one thing that existed in the universe.
Maybe it was the tender way she outlined his silhouette that made Tensa-kun finally ask. "Orihime, did you have feelings for my father?"
She should've been expecting this question, and yet she felt the heat rising on her cheeks just the same. "I suppose I did."
"Did he know?"
"Maybe. But if he had still been the same, I don't think it would have mattered. I know your father felt love towards someone else. And I'm grateful to your kaa-san; she saved Kurosaki-kun, even if I didn't see it at the time."
. .
'Are you scared, Inoue-san?'
There was a quaver in her voice: 'Yes.' There was no point in lying; she had just painted the side of a tree and, upon closer inspection, her own shoes, in vomit.
Two months had passed: spring would be coming soon. And though Ushōda-san never voiced his thoughts about Kurosaki-kun and how different he was now, he had continued his reports.
His superiors had sent a response: if by the doctor's observations First Lieutenant Kurosaki Ichigo's condition has changed and appears to be of sound mind and body, then he was to return to his battalion.
If Orihime were brave enough to protest, she might have. But she didn't. And if the doctor had believed in arguing against the decision, he hadn't; after all, Kurosaki-kun was fine.
But Orihime could feel that "fine" didn't mean "the same."
And now she knew why she had felt that way.
When he had called on her that morning and invited her to the forest alone, Orihime hadn't known what to expect. But it wasn't this.
He stood before her in the same clearing from before with the beginnings of spring making itself known: green patches of grass peeked from patches of ice and buds of leaves ready to unfurl. But his were the strangest changes of all.
If she hadn't known him, if he still didn't look the same, she would have believed him to be like Rukia. Feathers sprouted from his shoulders and back: beautiful glossy-black feathers with their tips speckled in burnished orange. She had been caught between awe and aghast at the sight of them. Because despite how utterly beautiful they were, each tip was adorned with the flat, white image of an eye, so different and, yet, as familiar they were in her nightmares.
And the clearing. She seemed doomed to always remember it with feelings of horror. After what he had done to it—what he had just shown her, that horror—it would always be different.
Would those trees ever remember their splendor, being as tall as they were?
Would the rest of the grass ever grow after being raked over by such blackness?
'Inoue-san,' Kurosaki-kun said, gently, 'it's okay; you can look at me now.'
Even his normal…human…voice held timbres of music now.
As scared as she was, as much all of her told her bolt from him, to let him go—He chose to be like her and not like you,—she still looked at him. And it was like she had dreamt the whole thing. But she hadn't: the slashes she had seen in those reports, the slashes where—she kept the bile in her stomach down—were all still present, but closed now. His feathers were ruffling in the wind, yet he was as unaffected by the chill in the air as Rukia may have been.
"What did she do to you?"
He settled on the ground. 'Nothing that wasn't going to happen anyway.' He stared at the damage had done, the gashes he had made to the clearing.
'Inoue-san, can I tell you something that no one else on Earth knows?'
She shook her head no…and then nodded yes.
'Do you want to know what The Quincy really are? Parasites.'
She stilled. 'What do you mean?'
'They believe they were part of a whole organism once, but it was one that constantly fought itself. And one day, it conquered itself and split apart. But those pieces…when they find a new planet has no opponents to dominate, The Quincy conquer it without if there's something on a planet to dominate, they try and conquer it.
'They've done it to thousands of planets—they're doing it even as we speak.'
Orihime sunk to the ground, overwhelmed at his words. At all this new information. 'How do you know that?'
He shook his head: not yet. 'But, at some point, they came to Rukia's planet and for the first time, The Quincy found that they couldn't easily overtake her people. That there was something about them that's different than what they've encountered. So they stayed longer than they would. Like with us.
'Rukia's said that The Quincy exist in her peoples' history. And that's maybe why some of them can shine the way she does.' He pantomimed Rukia's open palm from that day with his free hand, but he made no flames. And he didn't do that other thing. 'That maybe her people adapted… which meant The Quincy adapted too.
He sighed with the weight of heavy things on his mind, 'The Quincy are using Rukia's people to invade us.'
Despite herself—her fear and feelings about the easy way he said her name—she felt her heart pang in sympathy. '…Using them?"
'Like puppets. Rukia's people have a word for what they do, but I don't understand it, so I just been calling it shining. When she shines, she's kinda,' he grasped for the words to explain, 'bringing something in her blood out. And it's poisonous to The Quincy.'
'But, they started thinking—their first new thought in…too long—The Quincy realized that thing goes away with death. So they started…integrating themselves into those corpses. They thought taking over the bodies could defend them against the thing Rukia's people can do.'
'Kurosaki-kun, how do you know that?'
He shook his head: not yet. 'One day, at one point, they realized they couldn't win. Rukia's people saw the corpses as being just another type of alien to fight. And so, The Quincy left even with their new bodies… they still went around conquering in their new bodies, and came across us.'
He looked at her. 'Her brother was one of the ones that fell in battle and taken by The Quincy. He was the one I fought against—The Quincy that was using her brother. I'd done something in that fight, blown us off course outside of the battlefield's safe zone. I had wounded him—her brother's… body—but The Quiny cracked my helmet and went into me.'
'Went…in you?'
A distant look came to his eyes. 'I remember screaming. And seeing it, that thing that we saw' he lifted his arm,' come out of him. I remember feeling like I was on fire, and then all of a sudden, I was waking up in the sickbay. Been given a medal I didn't think I'd earned. And I'd feel it; I started dreaming of things I'd never seen before; its memories. It had been too weak after being in someone else for so long; I kept hearing it say, I was taking too long to take over.
'I didn't tell my superiors about why I wanted to come back to Kurakara. I just didn't want it changing me. That snowstorm that night was going to be when I… and then Rukia came.
'She'd been tailing The Quincy looking for her brother. To…free him even though it meant that if she found him, she would never be able to go back to her planet. And then she found me.'
He fell silent. But then—
'She saved me. I want you to know that if I were still human, I'd be dead." His eyes found Orihime's. "But now I'm not just human.'
'But Kurosaki-kun, what does that mean now? That you're not human?'
His lips curved up. But he never gave her an answer.
. .
"He left soon after. And fought. And then, a few weeks later, two soldiers came to the apothecary. We were told that he ended the war, but something had happened."
His wings.
Those eyes.
"The men who gave Ushōda-san and I this photo…they said that Kurosaki-kun had done something; had taken in every Quincy on the battlefield. That he had worked for hours. That they'd only ever remember watching him. And when he was done, he just…kept going."
"They gave us this photo, and then I gave this photo to your mother. By that time, you were already on the way."
"…Did he…know about me?"
"I don't think so. But I know that if he had, he would've only been spurred to leave faster. To end everything The Quincy was doing for you."
"Kaa-san says he never told her what he was going to do, but that she knew that he was going to do it. And that when he's done, he'd come back."
"Mmmhm."
"Do you think he will come back?"
Orihime smiled. "Yes. Your mother changed everything for Kurosaki-kun…and I believed him when he said he wanted to make sure that those changes are meaningful."
. .
Rukia had cried the day before the men came to Ushōda-san's shop, making the mournful wails deep into the night.
Orihime had stayed away, not even leaving bread loaves for Rukia to eat. But maybe it was being given everything Kurosaki-kun's things, the badges and medals, and that photo of him that sent her running.
Or maybe it was just the silence.
The storage bunker door had been left wide open, and its insides were in shambles: cracked and broken jars, and Kurosaki-kun's old futon with its insides gutted. Rukia lay prone on the ground. She was still crying that one sound, but the sounds she made were hollow, tired.
Every single one of her feathers, white feathers and cream-colored feathers tipped copper and black, and still more, blood-orange and gray and dark teal, were scattered to the ground. And what she had not been able to pluck out cleanly patched her shoulders, matted from her white blood.
'Rukia-chan!' Orihime threw the things the men had come with and despite everything she felt, she scooped up her body. Her skin was bare, truly bare, and shivering. She was shivering so badly.
'Rukia-chan,' the honorific fell from her mouth again, 'what did you do? Why did you—?'
'To wait.' Orihime stilled at the sound of her voice, at the words she made. She sounded weak; tired. But there was a lilt, a note of birdsong. 'If I have wings, I will go to him. But he says stay. He says he will come back.' Tears pooled from her eyes and her fingertips danced on her stomach. Already that part of her seemed softer, rounder. 'We will wait.'
There would be things they would talk about later after Orihime cleaned her wounds. And Rukia-chan would cry again at seeing the photo. They would talk about Kurosaki-kun, of the fall of The Quincy in this little corner of the universe, and his name now being on the lips of the world. And they would talk of the baby growing inside her.
But for now, Orihime brushed away her tears.
And as weak as Rukia-chan was, she brushed away Orihime's own tears as well.
'Okay.' Orihime would say, finally answering the call of promise.'We wait. Together.'
Lifetime 700, a lifetime where Ichigo doesn't exist.
A/N: Thank you for reading The 005 Lifetimes. This was an idea I had probably had since first reading Orihime's "five lives" monologue because depicting Ichigo and Rukia's relationship in 5 completely different ways really appealed to me. I truly believe that for the most part, and despite her own feelings, Orihime is a strong witness to and supporter of Ichigo and Rukia's bond.
While I absolutely love writing IchiRuki and there were some one-shots that I wrote that I could see expanding into multiple chapters, I think after this is it for me.