Chapter: Viet Nam Air
Shalan's Note: Hey guys… OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR REVIEWS! Anyways… I know you reviewed me but I have a short memory span so thank you whoever it was that said the rain sounded like the rain you remembered. I try. My father is a Nam vet so I get a lot of my information from him… but the rain was only in my imagination… I just put myself into a soldier's shoes and tried to imagine what the rain would smell like.
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Ichigo sighed softly as he sat up in the soft cot that was in the hospital wing. He looked over at The woman sleeping next to him and cocked an eyebrow. She was curled on his chest, her head resting on his heart. One hand was placed against his muscled abdomen while the other was curled near her head. He knew she hadn't slept that night. She wasn't used to Viet Nam yet.
She hadn't spent the sleepless nights listening to the restless earth that was Viet Nam. She hadn't heard the ghouls from the muck rise up against the winds whipping through the trees. She hadn't smelt the hot and heavy air of Viet Nam jungles.
Her tired eyes opened as he lit a cigarette. Her hand slid down the muscled area of his chest and abdomen lightly. "It's so loud here…" she said softly and he nodded. The silence in the area was deafening. So much so that your brain would try to fill the silence with noise.
Ichigo didn't speak, he tried not to break the spell that her voice had on him. She rested her cheek against his breast lightly then scrunched her nose as his dog tags pressed against her temple. She moved them over before replacing her head. He watched her with a light smile on his face. She was so peculiar.
"Ichigo… you aren't talking…" She whispered before looking up at him. He smiled again. He was content to sit there with her for the rest of his life.
"Yeah… I was waiting for you to talk again…" He looked down, their eyes meeting. High school sweethearts. They knew each other inside and out. He had grown up down the street from her… and during their younger years they played together. In middle school they hated each other. In high school they loved each other. In the war they had lost each other. And now they had found each other.
"You haven't said a word…" Her eyes searched his. Indigo melded with amber.
"I've got nothing to say," he shrugged as he drew on the cigarette again. She closed her eyes again and listened to his heartbeat.
"You have everything to say… and I already know what you have to say…" she smiled and kissed a scar on his chest tenderly. He used his free hand to brush her hair back from her face as she kissed his neck.
"That's good… I don't want to talk… I just want to listen…" He whispered and buried his nose into her hair. She closed her eyes and listened, like he told her. And there it was again, the steady thrumming of his heart. She steadied her breathing to match his and suddenly they were one being. He stubbed out his cigarette and rested his other arm across his own body, leaving a hand on her cheek. It had been too long since he had held her this close.
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His body told him that it was warm and fuzzy, happy, it said. He smiled, letting his nose brush her cheek. Her hand brushed the side of his face, pressing their bodies so close together that they were symmetrical. "You remember where we met?" Kazumi asked softly.
"Pie In The Sky… downtown Boston." He replied, opening an eye. She nodded.
"I was a waitress there…" Her face lit up. "And you'd come in everyday to see me…"
"Or maybe I just came in for the pizza…" He teased she slapped his arm playfully. He had built up much more muscle than before. She had noticed that his stomach was slightly sunken in.
"You look like you could use a pizza…" Her hand graced the hard muscles of his stomach. The six pack abdominal muscles were verging on an eight pack down onto his navel. His powerful arm muscles flexed lightly as he shifted. He was happy that they had decided to stay in the cement infirmary of the compound. This meant that he got to sleep in a regular bed without the worry of bugs or water seeping in.
"Yeah… right about now…" He smiled softly.
"You're all leathery and hard… like a rock…" she slapped his stomach teasingly.
"I asked you to be my girl… so I could write to you…" He smiled. She nodded as their lips met tenderly. He smiled down at her.
"Then I said yes… and you made love to me that night…" She grinned.
"I wanted to know what your body tasted like… So I could come over here and say, hey I've gotta dame of my own…" Uryu smiled. He then stood up and dressed himself, yanking his white t-shirt over his head and shoulders. He pulled his green fatigue shirt on and then walked outside. Her eyes grew sad. She knew he was trying to distance himself from her.
He took in a deep breath of the wet, rotten air of Viet Nam. It coated his nostrils like smoke, filling his lungs like a toxic poison. It smelled like earth, tasted like blood and felt like pea soup. He rubbed his head with his hand, his hair was getting a little long.
"Ishida." Byakuya nodded to him as he walked by. The tired lieutenant nodded to him and went back to staring out over the compound.
"Viet Nam smells like death…" Kazumi said softly as her arm hooked through his. He looked down at her.
"That's what I was just thinking…" He looked beyond the wall shielding the compound and focused on a tree in the distance. The air smelled like bloodshed, like rotting flesh. It was heavy and hot, damp like sitting in a steamy bathroom for too long.
"You won't have to smell that for too much longer…" She smiled softly and he looked over at her.
"What do you mean?" He breathed again. This time he took in the smell of coffee rinds and rotten fruit.
"I mean… you're being relieved. In October…" Her eyes were lit. "And I'm going with you…"
"What about Ichigo?"
"You're going to Okinawa… all of you… the entire platoon." Kazumi smiled at him.
"We're going to Japan?" He looked as though he couldn't believe it. She nodded. His hands gripped her and he swung her around, before squeezing her up against his body. "Jesus Kazumi why'd you wait so long to tell me?"
"But I'm leaving before you… we were just here on a resupply mission… but Rukia and I'll be waiting…" Uryu smiled down at her. Just the fact that they were leaving that hellhole was enough for him. And the fact that she was there. Uryu kissed her, pressing his lips to hers, trying to breath in some of her beautiful scent, trying to be worth of her love… trying to make her proud of him.
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"So we're going to Okinawa huh?" Byakuya leaned back in his chair in the conference room. Renji sat on one side of him while Kisuke sat on the other. Ichigo and Uryu, sitting next to each other smiled. They knew. They knew they were getting out of that damn hell hole.
"Yeah it would seem so…" Kisuke looked at the registered letter.
"So how are your girls?" Renji grinned. He had grown up with Ichigo and Rukia down the street, and he was just as close to her as Ichigo…
"Good…" Uryu grinned.
"You look like the fuckin' cat who ate the fuckin' canary…" Byakuya told him from across the room.
"He ate something last night but I don't think it was a canary…" The men at the table snorted. Uryu frowned and set his feet up.
"No, I fucked my girlfriend, and that's a whole hell of a lot more than you're getting." Uryu ran his fist up and down in the air. Byakuya opened his mouth to reply but Uryu stood up, a catty grin on his face and walked out. Ichigo, Renji and Kisuke snorted into their coffee mugs.
"Shut up you three…" Byakuya stalked out and Ichigo stood. He couldn't wait until he got into Okinawa to see Rukia again.
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"This damn rain won't stop!" Uryu grouched from the front of the line. The others laughed. It was two weeks until their departure, two weeks since he had seen his girl and two weeks of nonstop rain. Viet Nam was water logged. And it was disgusting.
"Get over yourself Ishida…" Another shouted from the back. Ichigo sniggered.
"Fuck you!" Uryu shouted in reply and Byakuya made a noise in his throat that meant for them to shut up as the gates to the compound opened.
"Yeah shaddap Ishida!" Came another call from the back and Ichigo patted his best friend on the shoulder with a grin. As they marched out in silence the Viet Nam air seemed to close in around them and devour them before they could even think.
Ichigo tried to breathe; the air was full of blood and smoke. The scent of a battle was nearby. Ichigo could feel it. The air was filled with haunting moans and images of death. For all they knew… the air around them was blood red.
It was stifling, traveling in the dark with that disgusting air all around. Blood and dirt and wet warm wood was what the boys were breathing in. And the scent of the Viet Cong. They could smell them. They could sense them. They were all around them. In the trees in the ground in the air… even in their heads… they were everywhere they didn't want them.
Several of the men carried gas masks in case they were gassed but that wouldn't help against the deathly hollows that they were walking through at the moment. Ichigo cocked his gun upwards and kept a sharp eye on the trees, waiting for any sign of movement that wasn't from the rain or from an animal.
Uryu held his breath, just waiting for the gunfire to start. He just waited. He wasn't sure when it was going to happen but he was sure that it was. The air, so filled with blood, drowned their lungs in an array of poisons. Napalm and agent orange filled the air, or at least, the scent of them lingered. The it happened. A bullet flew out from the trees and hit his best friend in the thigh. Ichigo took it and swung his gun over and shot the shooter. That was it.
"GET DOWN!" Byakuya's voice sounded an the group hit the mud. The gunfire sounded and Ichigo growled and fired back as the medic worked on his leg. He was going to kill someone for this. The gunfire was relentless, blood splattered from all sides, warm, hot blood that filled their senses in the rain.
Uryu's blood smattered face was not covered in his own blood. The steamy blood that dripped from her cheek was a Viet Cong guerilla's a man that he had shot with his handgun from about two inches away. He looked down at the dead man. Killing people wasn't his choice, it was just a way of life for them.
"Ichigo!" Uryu ran over as he was lifted up by Renji and another man in the platoon. The carrot-top gave him a thumbs up. His leg was tied tightly with a tourniquet.
"Hey man… I'm going to Okinawa before you are…" he grimaced as blood soaked his fatigue pants. The blood was shiny and thick, pulsing down his legs in short bursts. Uryu nearly gagged. His stomach turned as he looked at his best friend. The gash on Ichigo's left cheek was streaming blood down his cheek and neck, but they weren't worried about that, they were worried about the bullet wound in his thigh. Ichigo was sweating, profusely and again his screams rang in Uryu's ears.
He had never heard his best friend scream like that before. He had never smelt his best friend's blood before. He had never thought about his best friend getting hurt before. He had always assumed that Ichigo would be there right beside him though everything. He felt warm liquid and pressed his hand against his temple. When he drew it away he opened his mouth to scream only to have a hand clap over his mouth. Blood was streaming down his face and neck, his own blood this time.
Shock set in, his body hummed, he screamed, muffled by the hand now but it happened and the shock that his body went into made his entire physique contort. His eyes widened, his heart pumped, his brain whirred. He fell into a blank space where nothing existed other than himself. And he was screaming in a vacuum.
Ichigo stumbled forward. "Stupid ass medic! He's going into shock, let him go!" The soldier slammed the stock of his gun into the medic's head and knocked him away just to get to Uryu. "Damn it! Call a duster!" Ichigo commanded the radio operator. He nodded and began speaking. Ichigo patted Uryu's cheek. "C'mon man… fuck c'mon don't die on me…" Ichigo pleaded with him.
There was nothing, just darkness, his body had stepped into the threshold of pain. Stepped past the threshold of insanity and into the threshold of death. Ichigo's voice was a mere echo in his head. His body ceased to function.
"Get him on the chopper…" It sounded ghostly, far away, as if in a dream. "Move!" Ichigo growled. It sounded as though it were from a different sound entirely, but there is was, still lingering in his lungs, the Viet Nam air, now filled with his blood and his best friend's blood… filled with the blood of a million men… the blood of the human race… Viet Nam air.
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Done… what'd you think? The next chapter should come soon… after all I do have Monday off too… so I'll get some more chapters posted. Please read and review…
Shalan