Title: From the Heart
Author/Artist: Norrowa
Pairing/Characters: Kira Izuru, Hinamori Momo, mentions of Hisagi Shuuhei, Ichimaru Gin, Aizen Sousuke and Abarai Renji, with Izuru/Momo and implied Izuru/Momo/Shuuhei.
Fandom: Bleach
Theme: Snow's Theme, #31: D.I.D.
Rating/Warnings: PG? Some mention of kissing and mooshy stuff like that P This time, lots of narrative, no dialogue and thoughts. Again, though, pretty crappy . Sorry.

Sometimes Izuru isn't really sure just who he is. Sometimes, he finds himself saying words which aren't his own—words which are Ichimaru's, Shuuhei's, Renji's. Sometimes he looks at the world, and he blinks, and the past catches up to the present with a painful lurch, and everything goes gray and weak. It's like riding a bicycle with broken gears down a narrow, twisted road. It seems to him that there are two parts of him, the one which serves Ichimaru Gin and the one which doesn't. He's like an animal in a cage, so crazed by the confined space that it half-believes it's out in the wild. He is at war with himself, and sometimes he snaps at Renji because he can't figure out where he begins and other people end.

It seems to Izuru that he is a collection of other peoples' mannerisms, other peoples' guilt, other peoples' mistakes. Every time he speaks, every time he thinks, every time he acts, he's putting himself in another person's shoes, although they may be too small or too large and although sometimes he may just want to fall to his knees and never walk again.

Sometimes—worst of all—he forgets what the grass, wet with morning dew, feels like beneath his bare feet.

But then there's her.

She comes along, and she reminds him that there was a world before Gin. There was a world where his parents' death wasn't his burden to shoulder. There was a world where he laughed without restraint, loved without suspicion, and simply was without doubt. She comes along and she pulls him close, stands on her tiptoes to kiss him, fleetingly, shyly, and just runs her hands through his hair and says nothing. Asks nothing. She's showing him something, and he trusts her in a way he can't really trust anybody else, so he believes her. She cries silently sometimes, when she remembers Aizen, and she doesn't ask for comfort. The arms which slide around her, the hand which rubs a circle on his back—those are his, and his alone. He loves her, and she never told him to do it. He just does.

And she loves him, so there must be something to love.

Shuuhei is his rock, his island, his place to step back to when he needs to remove himself from the world. Hinamori, though, is the one who brings him back. She doesn't call him, she doesn't tug his hand, but he likes to think that she needs him just the same and something in him which is wholly his would die for her. She fills him with confidence, but it's not in the way water fills a cup. It's more in the way of a billion electrons exchanging, countless chemicals reacting, and starting to glow as a new star is formed, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. The warmth is slow, and the thing is that it comes from him and not from her so he knows it will always be there. It will never leave him with nothing but memories of a razor-sharp smile, because it is his to tend. His.

But most of all, she's lost, too. She reminds him that there's nothing shameful about needing Shuuhei, that there's nothing shameful about being guilty, that there's nothing wrong with him for not stopping Ichimaru, because he sees that she's as pure and good as can be and she's doing it too. She doesn't place those any judgments on him. She just smiles at him when the tears have stopped and, wordlessly, reminds him that, despite everything, he is… himself.