A/N: I'm sorry for the extremely slow update. S.E. was about to kick my butt, weren't you? Hope you guys will enjoy the chapter!
What're you thinking?
Chapter 4
Due to these economic factors the living standards of the middle class were…
Were…
Were…
Ichigo let the pacer drop out of his hand and threw back his head in frustration.
Above him, a moth circled the ceiling with desultory sluggishness. Intermittently it collided with the light with a quiet ding, dislodging from its pudgy body an iridescent powder that vibrated in the air.
It wasn't like he was a bad writer, but Ishida had basically massacred his previous draft. In some places he could hardly see his own sentences beneath the thin, fastidiously spaced red of the archer's handwriting.
He turned in his chair, staring at the foot of his bed where Ishida had been just the night before. He remember himself darting forward impulsively when he saw Ishida begin to slump to the side –and when he had reached up to steady his head, that ebony hair was so soft that it had slipped between his fingers like sunlight through venetian blinds.
Stooping over him, with his other hand resting against a bare, alabaster arm, Ichigo had felt incredibly confused.
This Ishida, with sleep-softened features and a yielding body that was not quite warm enough, who watched the sky with lugubrious silence, who laughed about little dogs and smiled like he didn't quite know how to…
This very human Ishida, to whom his mouth and his body so naturally responded, made Ichigo realize that for all this time –he had cared.
His reason for not letting Ishida fight was not that he felt like he needed to protect him; because Ishida was not someone who could easily be protected, and he was not someone he could protect when he had seen him bleed from his own Zengetsu.
He had fought alone because he wanted to fight for him.
He couldn't even see how thoroughly and unresistingly he had been drawn in until his proximity to Ishida's soul stunned him into recognition.
It was a feeling of simple, faultless intensity that patiently watched him from beneath the turbid nimbus of his own anxiety.
And yet the moth hit the light, again and again.
"Frankly, it would be easier if you just rewrote the whole thing."
Having proferred those words, Ichigo glanced up to see Mizuiro staring at him with a mixture of misery and outrage on his face.
"Ichigo, I asked you to help me improve my essay, not dismiss it altogether!" he wailed. "Oh god, it's due on Monday and I don't even understand the topic."
Ichigo sighed. "Why didn't you get your girlfriend to help you? She's majoring in sociology, isn't she?"
His friend fixed him with an incredulous glare. "You can't be serious. Do you want me to look like a complete moron in front of a university student?"
"Hey, no one told you to date somebody who's smarter than you."
"Ugh, what kind of friend are you?"
Ichigo had finished his own essay a few hours ago, and had been on the way to the video store when a desperate Mizuiro had called him. Now they were sitting across from one another in the corner of the local library. Reference books were stacked precariously at Mizuiro's elbow, and his essay was strewn across the pockmarked surface of the table, pale and sad like shed reptile skin.
"Anyway," said Ichigo, "Why don't we start with deconstructing the essay question? You've got some good ideas in there, but on the whole it lacks structure."
Mizuiro looked amused. "Wow, Ichigo, you have no idea how snobbish you sounded just then."
"You know what? I think I actually had other plans for today…"
"Wait, I take it back! Don't go, my essay needs you!"
This wouldn't have happened if you had started working on this three weeks ago, Ichigo almost said –but he realized with some horror that those were almost the exact words that Ishida had spoken to him the previous night.
But like the Quincy, Ichigo coached with a limited patience. When he sniped in response to Mizuiro's groans of incomprehension and defeat, he would recall how Ishida would snarl and bite when he was at his wit's end, and finally would silently fold his palm over his forehead as if to wipe away the delicate creases that had formed between his brows.
It was a while before Mizuiro put aside the anxiety of meeting a deadline, processing and applying Ichigo's instructions with begrudging diligence.
A few hours later a completed, thorough essay outline rested on the table between the two students with the quiet dignity of a peace treaty, and when Ichigo looked out the window the sky was already dark.
Mizuiro rubbed at his eyes, looking deceptively innocent. "Damn, I haven't been this tired since me and Keigo had that AV marathon."
Ichigo made a face. "Don't tell him I helped you, or he'll whine and bug me all week."
His friend smiled and said, "Oh, he won't. He's way more hard-working than people give him credit for."
"That guy actually studies?" Ichigo chortled.
"He's smart, he just didn't make much of an effort during junior high," answered Mizuiro with a shrug. "After all, senior year's going to flash by before we know it. It's the right time to start making some pretty important decisions."
"Says someone who left their essay till the last minute."
"Hey, I can't help it if I hate the subject… anyway, let's get out of here, I'm starving."
He gathered together his things, and Ichigo stood to follow him out.
They stepped into the moist air of the late afternoon, Ichigo kneading the stiff muscles at his neck while beside him his friend stretched languidly like a panther.
"I thought I was going to have to pull an all-nighter on Sunday," Mizuiro said. "I owe you a big one, Ichigo."
"You being in my debt somehow sounds dangerous," Ichigo observed, and the smile Mizuiro flashed him confirmed it.
"You know Kurosaki," Mizuiro said, "It's sad that a lot of us won't be seeing each other anymore after we graduate. I bet a lot people will be moving out of Karakura town. Ishida-kun, for instance –with grades like his, he'll probably be aiming for somewhere prestigious."
The small raven glanced at Ichigo, who made a noncommittal noise. Then he continued, "People who have laid out their whole future ahead of themselves can be pretty lonely, don't you think?"
Ichigo had an inkling of what he meant, so he didn't answer.
Mizuiro's brows furrowed and he looked as if he was about to speak again, but Ichigo abruptly turned away, looking eastwards where he had felt the sudden flare of a reiatsu.
"Sorry Mizuiro, can you take me home?" he said hurriedly.
The boy looked baffled, but he quickly nodded.
Mizuiro's eyes widened in wonder as he watched the substitute shinigami leap out of his body –then he gasped as his knees buckled under the dead weight of his seemingly unconscious friend.
Ichigo shouted out his thanks, and heard Mizuiro's faint 'Be careful!' as he sped off towards the hollow.
Where is she?
Ichigo parried a blow from the hollow's thorny tail.
You can't possibly understand how I feel!
Beneath their piercing wails, hollows, too, spoke of human loss and pain.
Ichigo could understand their cries better than most, so he could never forget that these 'creatures' once lived and breathed like him.
He flash-stepped to his left and brought his sword swiftly down its right shoulder. The lightness of the zanpakuto in his hand and the minimal resistance in the cut were marks of his steadily growing strength –a strength given up once and twice lost.
From the hollow's severed limb flowed a thick, acrid blood.
It was black like the icy despair that had brought him to his knees when he had recognized the crushing truth that it would never be enough to live only as a regular human being.
Kugo and Tsukishima's cold, fading footsteps, the thundering rain, his friends and family who have seemingly forsaken him, Ishida who lay helplessly behind him, wounded because Ichigo had hesitated in trusting him…
Strength was unforgiving.
He felt this the most on nights like these when the final pleas of a slain hollow resonated on the blood-warmed blade of Zengetsu.
I want to see her. I want to see her so badly.
The creature lay before him now, its immobilized body heaving laboriously with each breath.
"Please have faith," Ichigo said softly, and he pressed the hilt of his sword to its forehead, sending it to 'heaven'.
It dispersed into a billion specks of cobalt powder that shimmered faintly before being drunk up by the inky night.
Ichigo sheaved his Zengetsu and flexed his hand. He looked for the slight tremor of fatigue in his fingers, but there were none. Somehow, this disturbed him.
"Grandpa said he'd be here!"
He turned abruptly at the outburst. A small girl of four or five was marching her way into the park with a lithe young man in tow.
"You made me late, and how he's not here anymore!" she exclaimed, and angrily she pulled with her little arm, tugging her companion out of the shadows.
Ichigo started. "Ishida?"
The raven hastily glanced at him before turning back to the girl. "I know. I'm sorry. But it wasn't safe for you to stay. Something very bad was coming."
She looked away, wriggling her feet so that the pools of reflected light swam on the enamel surface of her black mary-janes. "Now I won't ever see him again."
Ishida pressed his lips into a thin line, and his eyes narrowed into glints of troubled dark blue. He could not bring himself to speak, to deny those words, and it pained him immensely.
Ichigo suddenly understood.
Stepping forward, he gently spoke the Quincy's name. Those eyes quivered, but remained downcast.
"That's not true. Tell her that, Ishida," he implored.
Five long seconds passed before Ishida slowly, quietly said to the child, "You will see him again."
She turned her limpid eyes toward him and asked, "How?"
"Your grandfather really wanted to come here to meet you today. But then he realized, if he had done that, then there would never be a second time."
She quickly shook her head. "I don't want that!"
"Neither does your grandfather," he agreed, solemnly. "That's why he decided to wait until you were ready to seek for him on your own, with your own strength."
"When I'm big and tall like you?"
Ishida crouched down to her height and firmly grasped her shoulders. "Remember, size and strength are two very different things. You must be patient, and work hard to become someone who you and grandfather would be proud of. Do you know Shakespeare?"
She shook her head again.
"'Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.' Hold those words close to your heart, live by them, and surely you will find him again. Do you understand?"
The girl frowned, thinking deeply before reciting, "'Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.'"
"Exactly," said Ishida with a faint smile. "Now, let us get you home."
The girl nodded and said, "I'm hungry."
Ishida stood and took her hand, letting her lead him. Ichigo followed at a distance.
The archer trod with a noiseless deliberation, as if he were an angel in procession. It wouldn't surprise Ichigo if Ishida's shoulder blades suddenly sprout wings and took him up and away, because most of the time he was so frustratingly distant and unreadable.
Ishida was distant only because he was lonely, not the reverse.
His loneliness was an environment of a closed regularity, and Ichigo was a particularly persistent variable that had stuck half inside –shouting out orders and generally rude things so that Ishida might find the courage to say words that he couldn't really believe in to comfort and encourage a little girl.
Watching the mother cry out in relief as she pulled her child into a tight embrace, Ichigo felt an echo of sadness.
The girl's parents thanked Ishida profusely, her father bowing low enough to make Ishida blush in mild embarrassment.
Telling them it was enough to see the girl safe, Ishida bid the family goodnight, exchanged a knowing smile with the child, and took his leave.
The street lamps flickered on like the fluttering eyelids of a waking dragon. Ishida's pace did not have its usual briskness, as if he were giving Ichigo silent assent to walk alongside him.
"Are you okay?" Ichigo quietly asked.
"I'm fine," Ishida answered curtly.
"Are you really?"
The archer turned to glare at him.
"Why are you asking me if I'm okay? You were the one who had to kill, not me –
Suddenly Ishida clamped his mouth shut, his eyes losing their fire as he looked away.
He was the one who had to kill. Not Ishida.
Something clicked in Ichigo's head.
Ishida had gotten to the park before him. He could have easily defeated the hollow, but instead he had taken the child and ran.
Because of the fundamental difference between Shinigami's and Quncies.
The words 'soul sleep' formed on his lips but disintegrated before he could say them.
Ishida had put a child's happiness not only above the way of the Quincy, but also above his moral code and sense of duty.
It was an act that spoke of an incredible trust, in him.
Ichigo was so stunned that for a while he did not realize that Ishida had begun to speak again.
"Is it wrong to instill so much faith in a child, when faith alone is rarely enough?"
The question was colorless like Ishida's expression as he watched the shadows form a motley of shapes in the streetscape.
"I don't know," Ichigo admitted. "But at the very least, it's wrong to leave her to live with no faith at all."
"Soul society is exactly that –a society no different than our own, where souls have to struggle and face pain and loss like humans," Ishida said bitterly. "It is no utopia."
"Are you regretting what you did?"
"No. I would have only regretted it if I had taken away her chance because I had none –
He fell quiet, the light and shadows sighing over his skin and dying it the color of tears on concrete.
Ichigo felt the urge to fold him into his arms, and he did not fight it.
Ishida stiffened, but he did not push him away –as if he was simply too tired to even resist.
The archer's back was warm and firm beneath his palm, his black hair smooth and cool against his cheek.
"You trusted me that much," Ichigo murmured.
For the longest time, he only heard Ishida's heart beating steadily beside his own, quiet and unassuming like the basso continuo of a cello.
Then finally, in a mist-like whisper he replied, "Yes."
To be continued
A/N: Not the intended dum-dum-dum, but then, it gives me more time and space to drag it out over the next chapter. If you liked it or hated it or remain neutral, I'd really appreciate it if you pressed the button below and typed a word or two!