Happiness and Pain
"Losing Face"
By Nessie
He is read over and over again like a book, but no one really understands. It's like Ichigo is Greek and everyone else is not, and the meaning gets lost in translation.
Rukia is one of the few people who really get him; what it means to be someone who risks everything they have because of everything they do.
"If I were to displease my brother again, who's to say I will not be tossed back into the street?" Her eyes dim as she asks the rhetorical question.
His jaw hardens. "If I make a mistake, if I suddenly didn't win…my family could be taken, my friends could lose their faith in me. That's why it's so hard."
"To what?"
Ichigo looks at her but she keeps staring forward. He knows her eyes though, and they would be serious. "To keep being the one they all expect to be saved by. It's—"
"Embarrassing. I know." She turns to him then, a smile faint but just as real on her lips. "You've saved me." Her hand finds his, and he starts but doesn't move. "You have me."
And the false faces, the masks they wear to keep each other unworried and believing, slip away. Ichigo cups her cheek and kisses her, and this, at least, is not at all embarrassing.