Standard disclaimer applies.
Author's notes: Exams period makes my life hectic, really. It's been only three days into the week and I can say I'm officially tired... and there's still one more test to go and a speech I must present. Fortunately, I'm giving myself a little break to update (and to watch Ouran, yay!). Warning! This is a future-fic of some sorts. I wrote the outline for this in April, along the months I added little bits, but the muse finally hit me in August, just when I decided to focus more on school... I couldn't stop myself… So much for my resolve. Not that any of you have any complaints about that, ne? Read and please review if you liked it. See you soon!
Encounter
14.04.2006/04.08.2006
Usually, he never wanders by himself in Tokyo and much less at such hours. The sky is dark but every corner shines with neon lights.
Ever since he came to this place he never goes out other than to assist medical school or to restock his groceries at the small convenient store by the corner of the apartment complex where he lives now. He has visited some places here and there, but at night he makes it a point to stay home. It's not like his studies let him otherwise: they keep him pretty much either at school studying his ass off, at the hospital for practices, or back at home studying some more while trying to sleep at least some four hours each night. Besides, he still has issues with handling his spirit pressure and hollows are still attracted to his soul's power. He doesn't like messing with those things when exams are up.
He usually doesn't take the subway to some random place somewhere near Tokyo. He usually doesn't make such rash decisions, but today he doesn't care.
He needs a break from everything, he needs some rest and fresh air, and to see friendlier faces that he didn't think he'd miss so much when he left home for his university studies. There is a big test due next Friday and he has to memorize all the bones in the human body, their locations, and their function, as in every single one of them, but his mind is plagued with other things other than the human skeleton. He'll probably fail it anyway. Stress is your worst enemy, he discovers.
Usually, he sees ghosts floating and drifting away.
They come and go and like before, back at his little hometown, he doesn't think much of his 'gift'. Of course, the number of spirits has increased in such a large and crowded place, yet he is already used to it. They are part of what he calls his routine. The ghosts are all of regular people, old and young. He does not meddle in their affairs as long as they don't meddle in his. (Like that spirit of a girl who had a crush on him once and that followed him around for two weeks. Then she'd found out his lab partner was actually a girl and hell broke loose. When she didn't listen to his explanations that she shouldn't chase him or his partner around, he had to perform konsoh before she cursed his lab partner for eternity.) There is also a larger amount of hollows, but it's nothing he can't deal with if he has to face them.
But today something extraordinary happens: he sees a monster, and then an angel clad in black, flowing robes. Her hair is black as a raven's feathers and her skin so pale that it resembles the snow in the winter.
It's been so long and yet so little since the last time he saw her. She is still as small and fragile-looking as ever, but he knows better than judging the book by its cover. He has plenty of experiences concerning that, the freshest on his mind being that time when he even dared of thinking something good would come out of kicking her ass when they met. One impression hadn't been wrong though; from the very beginning he knew he was in for trouble. It had been a hellish trip after that first, fateful reunion, now that he thinks about it. Not that he'd been unwilling to be part of it, either; he'd been conscious of what he'd been doing, most of the times.
Usually he doesn't think of her and usually he only sees her in his dreams. But today he is there not thinking or dreaming about her but seeing her with his own eyes, for real.
When he does think of her, however, he always finds himself daydreaming in the end, for the memories he has engraved in his heart of her are so strong and vivid that it's almost like he is dreaming, like he is being part of it all over again. And when he dreams of her, the colors of those memories are even brighter than his daydreams. That's why he rather not think of her and why he is glad he forgets most of his dreams right after he wakes up. It's not a good thing if you end up being snapped at for being dazed in class by the fifty-seven year-old geezer he has as his Biology teacher.
She glances his way for a millisecond, after slashing the huge monster; their eyes meet and it is enough for him. He is certain that it's her.
The blue in her eyes is the same shade as the one in the image in his mind: so deeply blue that it was almost purple but not yet, a midnight tone like the night skies after sunset. He also recognizes that look of mild shock in her face. He'd seen it more than enough to remember the way her eyes widen a bit, how her lips quirk barely a couple of millimeters, and that her brow furrows almost imperceptibly when she is surprised. And then, there had also been that sword in her hands that could chill the air with one movement of her wrist. He'd even caught a glimpse of the intricate pattern on the hilt that resembled his in ways no one ever dared to comment about and that inevitably signified the bond between them.
Then she is gone.
She is always like this, drifting in and out of his life like a butterfly posing on flower to another flower, to one time to another. He never catches her, he realizes with some sort of amusement. He's always watching when she leaves; just once he'd been fortunate enough to be the one to turn his back on her. That time hadn't been as bitter… nostalgic, at the most. For some reason, he'd rather face her wrath, which was a lot to say the least, than watch her back as she leaves him once again. But wouldn't it be better if neither of them left at all? Wouldn't matters be easier then? Probably not, but he can try.
Usually, he will not care. But today he can't pretend.
He wants her back.
And because he is Kurosaki Ichigo and because she is Kuchiki Rukia, he will get her back.