AN: Originally written for the 2005 fall contest at the ichiruki LJ community.
Sous la Citadelle
If dread had a colour, it would probably be a muddy sort of yellow, Ichigo thinks.
The moment he finds out that Rukia is probably going to die something thick explodes in his bottom of his stomach and he can feel it echo through his veins, curl between his fingers, meander in and out of his lungs and wrap around him like a cobra, thick and deadly. In Soul Society he doesn't seem to breathe, because the air there is toxic, the air there is suffocating, just like the dread clogged in the back of his throat. Everything was different there, confusingly so, and that different usually wasn't a good thing. It's like being stuck underwater.
So when he finally comes home he gasps and gasps for breath, even though there are still scars where Zaraki's sword pierced through his lungs and bruises where Ikkaku hit him in the chest. The air back home is acid and eye-watering, soaked in car-exhaust. An air that Ichigo has learned not to breathe but to get used to, curling his collar up to his eyes.
Maybe, if he tries, he'll get used to waking up to the smell of Rukia's nightmares every morning, too.
White - the colour of the Tower, the colour of her nightmares, the colour of skeletons, the colour of the steadily falling snow by the window. Except when it melts, it becomes soggy and greyish.
It's supposed to be peaceful. It's supposed to calm you down, that blasted white, but it doesn't, it doesn't, and Rukia finds herself suffocating in melting greyish-white every night. There's scream that never makes past her throat, there's a same roundabout of images and sounds, there's a reel of film from a horror movie rewinding in her head. But even a horror movie becomes boring if you watch it too many times.
If fear had a colour, would it be winter-cold and marrow-like?
"Is it okay?" she asks tentatively.
He blinks, blankets pulled up to his chin, and stares for a second or so. Then he shifts to the side of the bed and tries not to answer too quickly.
"Yeah. Sure."
Rukia isn't afraid of the dark, Ichigo had always been certain of that. He's certain – because he's seen her once – that she's acquainted with midnight missions and made friends with the moon, but then she pulls open the cupboard door and tugs on his pyjama sleeve. 'I can't sleep', she says, and he lets her crawl into his bed reluctantly, fingers curling stiffly around blanket, trying not to notice that his chest tightens when her hand brushes his bare arm.
And with his back flat against the wall, stiff and tense with all his bones numb, he watched her sleep, chest rising up and down. For the first time, he didn't wake from the muffled fumbling and turning behind the cupboard in the middle of he night, but from acid sunshine in his eyes. He got up, neck aching, and decides not to think about.
But then she comes to him the second night, tugs on his blankets and asks "it is okay?" and Ichigo suddenly realizes. Rukia isn't afraid of the dark; she's afraid of nightmares.
She comes to him the third night without saying anything and feels grateful when Ichigo doesn't ask. He shifts aside, annoyed (and the frown on his face was more obvious in the dark, she thinks), silent, and turns towards the wall.
It was slightly cramped as usual; she fits very awkwardly between the crooks and angles of his knees. But there is a trace of comfort here, and she searches for the warmth of his body and the steady heartbeat and almost finds it. Stifled by a heavy blanket and the wind, slightly invisible, slightly unreachable, the soft thud-thud feels soothingly true and solid.
She wakes to the smell of winter the next morning and smirks when she sees Ichigo's expression as he sleeps stiffly on his side with his whole body rigid.
There was almost no way to break out of routines when you go into them. The untraceable start and end of a circle, the hands of his watch moving from a tick to a tock, they were all part of it, setting his days and nights by the second. Fourth night, and he can't breathe again.
"Can't you go sleep in your cupboard!"
He could feel the words coming; they taste both bitter and acidic at the same time, and slip out before he can get a proper grip on them – he can feel his fingers grabbing at it and slip through and a heavy hand settle over his throat.
"…What?"
"Go sleep in your cupboard! Why the hell do you have to sleep here every night?"
Rukia doesn't say anything when she leaves, only turns and climbs out of his bed with the long-practiced expression of a muted something. If he could find his voice, he would scream in her place, filling out every stifled note and every suppressed tenor.
Then he notices that the window is open and he tries to not to feel the wind's icy fingernails. Just like he doesn't feel his whole left side seizing up when her hand brushed by his knee, the trace of warmth where she lay and lack solid weight pressing down on his mattress.
Uncoupled on a single bed, he thinks. Something must be ironic here.
Blue patterns curling on red paper, autumn-ish leaves in the lower left corner and a line of text along the top. It was one of those cheap notebooks that you could find in the corner store (Useful for Times for Small Price Only), screaming faulty English phrases in bright letters. Bright Stars Night Make Dream True. Always Close Be You Side. And her favorite: Sunshine Come after Gray Weather Day.
She buys them mainly to annoy Ichigo, who hates everything that is forced and false, but has really started to like them a little. Or maybe she's just become more alike them than anything else.
Ichigo knows Rukia is the only person who can fall apart and still be full of grace.
He was proven wrong though, because Rukia doesn't really fall apart exactly; she dissolves.
It must be many years of keeping silent and holding pride and practicing to bite back pain that makes her that quiet. Or maybe just not using your voice for too many days makes it fade. And it's quite painful, really, watching as she filters in and out of his view, expecting her to disappear any minute, and with each second she becomes slightly more transparent, slightly more invincible. She's becoming like autumn, he thinks, a few months behind her time. A little like early rain, a little like fireflies, a little like scattered leaves and in the end maybe that bastard Byakuya has something to do with it too; maybe his sword shapes her bones.
And watching her is useless, because they both know that he's the last person that can make her real. Translucent perhaps, and maybe more solid, but she won't allow any pity from him.
There is silence that settles between them, heavy and lead-like, slipping between the crack of her lips and in the crook of his elbows. It's a game, she thinks, a game that didn't need explaining, a game that you just knew how to play.
Ichigo breaks the rules first by mumbling something under his breath.
It could be: I'm sorry. It could be: I love you. It could be: this is stupid, let's just forget it ever happened.
It was one of those things anyway, and Rukia doesn't really care because Ichigo lost the game for the twelfth time in a row now.
Even if he squeezes his eyes shut, he can feel the solid spoon of warmth beside him that radiates off Rukia's skin. Fifth night, and he takes a sudden notice of everything; every square inch of moonlit skin and every golden gleam of snow that floats past the window.
The clock on the wall, tittering, has lost its minutes. Everything that happens now is in another time.
She edges closer.
It could be a mere millimetre or an inch or she's closed off the whole feet between them and it wouldn't matter - all that matters now is the stifling air in his lungs, the empty space in his head and the heart beating loudly in his ribs.
It's more of an instinct than common sense, because there is no place for the latter right now. Try not to breathe too fast and keeps your hands balled up.
Just lie still. Like this. And keep quiet. Like this. And wait. Like this.
In the dark, her face shines with a smug sort of laughter.
When she falls, she knows he won't catch her. It was the way that she was brought up, the grace that makes your skin thick and your blood clot quickly, the pride that you pick up and learn not to depend on anyone. That's what she likes about Ichigo sometimes, that they can have a silent agreement on these things, because it in the same way that she won't heal his scars.
She'll bandage around them clumsily (and smirk as he yells 'It's too tight, dammit!') perhaps bring him a healing potion from Urahara's, just like he'll lunge out for her and miss and mutter 'clumsy idiot' as she gets up, brushing dust off her knees.
Here, squeezed against the wall, between the awkward angle of her hips and his elbows, Rukia's finger curled around his pyjama collar, here is a place to breathe.
FIN.