Thank you, xXaLwAyZ-LosTXx, White Ninja Spy, Wakazakari, Akemi, seal-chan, and StormBlazer (I say in chapter four).
An oddly written chapter, mind you. Symbolism galore! Don't feel bad if you don't see it, I barely see it.There's a bit of spoiler in here. Erm, if you don't know who Renji is, read at your own risk. The singing mentioned (and in italics, by the way) are lyrics from various songs by the Paperchase band. This fic is so awesome. I can find a while to randomly insert lyrics from whatever I'm listening to at the time!
Chapter Three
Once upon a time, in a school on an island named Japan, a beep was heard mid-way through class.
"Cell phones aren't allowed in school."
Rukia plucks the 'phone' out of her bag, and nods to show the teacher's heard her warning, and has understood. She opens it up and glances in it, nonetheless. "Oh, excuse me!" she cries, getting up, her chair flying backwards and slamming into the desk behind her, and running out of her room.
Ichigo sighs. Not again, he thinks. "Um, I have to go with her because . . . um . . . her grandfather choked and had a . . . stroke. And I have to go get my father. You know, him being a doctor and all. And stuff. Bye." And he's out of the room, and running after Rukia.
"Thanks for leaving me to make an excuse, Rukia!" He yells as they push through several doors.
She ignores the comment, and takes a left at the end of the street. "Take out Kon, the Hollow's nearby."
"Kon? I thought you brought him today!"
Rukia growls at him. "Fine! I hope your body gets stolen, Ichigo!" She slips on her glove, and quickly pushes his Shinigami self out. As she does so, the smell of cherry blossoms envelops her. Aika.
"I thought you didn't like fighting Hollows," Rukia says casually to the faerie on her shoulder.
"I don't," the faerie response easily, sliding her arms around Rukia's neck, gripping tightly so as to not slip off when the two of them begin running again. "This isn't a normal Hollow."
Rukia wants to ask the faerie more questions, but Ichigo's grabbing her arm before she can open her mouth, and they've set off.
Rukia finds herself remembering the story, as she's been doing the past week. Ichigo could definitely fit the description of the man, with his determination to save as many people as he can, for completely noble reasons. Could she become the woman for him, the one to try and take away his pain?
She brushes those thoughts away as soon as they come. They won't help her in fighting the Hollow, they'll only be in the way. She pulls ahead of Ichigo, leading the way through the streets of Karakura.
Suddenly, it smells like new books, like cigarettes on clothes, like cookies baked downstairs. Rukia finds herself stopping, and expects to feel Ichigo slamming into her from behind. When he does, she glances back at him to see that he's stopped too. "Ichigo? What's that—"
Then it all goes black.
where am i it still smells like smoke where is ichigo
rukia is that you i can't see you
ichigo
yeah it's me
thank goodness where are we why can't i open my mouth and say anything
it smells like honey
Ichigo is holding a bouquet of flowers, but they're biting at him. He looks down at them, with their little teeth, nibbling, nibbling at his hands, like they're trying to get at his bones. The pain is separate from him, and he just stares at the blood dripping from the wounds on his hands, bloody red hands.
Suddenly dozens of black butterflies flutter past, and their wings sound loud so loud. He looks at them, and they're surrounding him. Around and around and around. They seem to be merging together, forming some black black dark shadow blur.
The flowers are still biting, but Ichigo still doesn't feel it. He doesn't even look down at the red water spurting from his hands, because in truth, he doesn't really notice it. He's watching the figure immerge from the darkness. It's coming out slowly, slowly and—
She's pulling the flowers from his hands, and they wilt and fall from her grip in pieces. He doesn't react when she picks up his hands as well, his blood staining the smooth white pallor of her hands.
She is pulling them up to her lips, and she is kissing the blood from his hands. He feels the slight brush of her lips against his skin, and this contact is enough to cause his heart to start thumping wildly. Is this beating of his heart making the blood pump out all the harder?
The blood is gone, he notices. The butterflies are too. It's just him and her, with her lips on his hands and his eyes feeling glazed.
It smells like bubbles
The bunnies are chasing and chasing and hop hop hop, they aren't stopping. They're singing, she notices.
I want your head I want your wicked parts
She's not wicked. Her head? Why in the hell would they want her head for? Are they . . . Shinigami in disguise? That must be it. They've found her, and they're going to kill her for her crime.
I wanna wring out your evil thoughts I wanna eat out your bitter heart
They're getting closer, and closer, and closer. She's running, running, but not getting any further. The bunnies are giggling wildly, they're playing with her. She gasps for breath, but she knows she can't run for much longer. She wants to call for help but she doesn't know who to call.
Alone, alone, alone.
Down the rabbit hole, she goes. Swoop, and she floats down the hole, her skirt like a parachute. This is familiar.
The rabbits are far above her, and she laughs and laughs and says hears a voice say do you love me, do you love me?
Who are you? She doesn't say anything, but she wants to ask. The aroma of water surrounds her, and she is surprised she can sense it. It's a mystery that's been hidden for her, but suddenly revealed.
She's in heaven right now the voice sings again. Who is she? Rukia wonders who is singing. It sounds like a thousand pebbles falling down the cliff, with the wind blowing through the trees. It's cold in this hole, deep and deep and falling so deep.
Come to me, come to me, come to me.
Where are you? And then she's in a pile on the ground, dirt on her legs and on her hands, and dark eyes looking into darker shadows. No one there. Alone, alone alone. Bunnies twittering above. Waiting, waiting, expecting her.
And then the flash of orange, the swish of robes, the cold, cold, cold metal of a sword against her cheek. she's a wonderful actress.
Breath against her neck, cold, and her heart is like rabbits running, thump, bump. She reaches out with her hands, but there's only cold air there. Smells like strawberries. Smells like death. Smells like flowers in hair.
Then hands on her face, and they're warm, so different from this dark, dank place she's kneeling in. She places her own hands over the hands, big, big, big hands.
We all too must die one day, but the thing about it is, will you be ready?
Just don't go, she wants to whispers, low, so low that even the bugs in the dirt would not be able to make out her words, even if they had ears. I'll be ready, she wants to murmur, so softly, the words barely off her lips.
And there are lips against her own before she can say a thing, but they are killing her, dead, dead, dead. It's an oddly comforting feeling, this feeling of dying. All her willpower and strength is being sucked out of her, like a juice through a straw, but she loves this feeling. She's going up, and up and up, but she knows she shouldn't want to die. She'll just go again, up to the sky with the people in black and poor and hunger and bad, bad, bad.
And Renji.
She misses him. But she likes this feeling more.
It smells like mid-morning
The two of them awaken, their heads aching dreadfully.
Aika is hovering over them, smirking in a horribly condescending and haughty way. "You two are lucky I knew that faerie. She would have eaten the two of you!" After a short pause, in which she laughs, slightly maniacally, she continues slyly. "You two owe me your lives."
"Don't tell me I just had the strangest dream because of you," Ichigo groans, and hold his head in both hands. Just another wonderfully appropriate reason to hate this damn faerie.
"Not me! Haku!" She points a little ways off to the right. Balanced on a thin tree branch sits a faerie with bright orange wings, thin limbs and a white mask that is the trademark of a Hollow.
"It's a Hollow!" Rukia cries in surprise.
"There have been less than fifty faerie Hollows ever. Most have been killed, as normal Hollows are, but a few, such as Haku, here, have managed to escape death. I don't think one faerie Hollow will really make such a difference" She flutters over to the faerie Hollow on those thin, wispy black wings of hers, and sits down next to her dear 'friend'.
"We're off to catch up, then" she announces loudly to the two Shinigami on the dirt nearby. Haku laughs in a strangely high-pitched voice for a Hollow, and the two faeries wisp away in the gentle breeze, leaving Rukia and Ichigo to their own devices.
"Damn her," Ichigo curses, and lifts himself off the grass. It was soft, and rather comfortable, but it was also wet, and despite the fact he was in his ethereal body, he knows Rukia isn't. He also knows she's too proud to complain about it, especially if she thinks he might need the rest. He reaches over to help her up.
Just the contact of her hands on his makes a shiver crawl up his spine. He hopes that she doesn't notice, and he knows there's a good chance she won't. She's fascinatingly ignorant at times.
At the same time, he doesn't notice her own reaction to their touch. She had been reminiscing her past, the friends she had once had, but had lost, the—and then Ichigo touches her and all those thoughts had grown wings and she felt the wind their wings made as they flew up towards the clouds, away from her.
She pulls away from him, and grunts. She doesn't like this, her gigai is acting up! It could be sick. Yes, that's it. It's very, very, very sick. She must go find medicine. "Ichigo, I'm sick."
He glances at her carefully, an eyebrow cocked. "Why? What is it?"
"My stomach hurts," she mutters, which isn't exactly true. It doesn't hurt, really. It's just incredibly irritating . . . in a good way.
He sighs despairingly, and crosses his arms over his chest. "Did you eat something off the ground, again? Damn it, you're such an idiot!"
She launches a kick at him, yelling at him angrily in response. He instinctively tries to dodge, and fails. A woman walking her dog nearby raises an eyebrow at the sight of a girl—at noon, wearing her school uniform—kicking at air.
"I guess it doesn't hurt that much if you're kicking at me," Ichigo snaps several minutes later, when the two of them are lying on the grass once again, worn out.
"Let's go get your body, then," she replies curtly, and jumps up. She feels the damp fabric rub against her skin and she groans in irritation. "Damn it, Ichigo. Look what you made me do! I'm so wet." She glares at him, and stomps off by herself in the direction of Ichigo's body.
Ichigo finds himself growing red at her words, and is extremely happy she walked off when she did. Now he doesn't have to explain why he was blushing. Get your mind out of the damned gutter, he scolds himself as he follows Rukia's retreating form.
Not too far away, a presence lurks. It finds itself crowded, and it hates this hush. The silence feels like stone, like a large boulder, smothering him to the earth with its weight. He's trapped, but it's the first time in millennia that it's even noticed. It wants to escape, to rip, tear, bite, kill the bastards that locked it up in this cage made of earth and salt and truth.
Those Shinigami. They dared do this to it. They should have known better than to think they could keep it locked in forever, though. It would get its revenge on those black-robed assholes. The cage is melting, has been for centuries, sinking into the sand earth underneath it. No one had taken care of its cage, and so the cage had left, feeling its purpose had been completed.
The creature is free to go. Free to seek vengeance. Free to teach those Shinigami about the price of arrogance.
It spreads its slender, black wings and rises up up and up, through the darkness, towards the exit and much much nearer to the two young Shinigami that smell like prey.
Blegh, not my best chapter. But the plot has advanced a smidge, though!