-These two drabbles are continuations of the storyline I introduced in the 101st drabble from 100 Words I Would Say. I've had several reviewers request continuations, which I had intended to write anyway. But, in appeasement of my beloved readers, I am thus presenting the 201st and 202nd drabbles for 200 Days of Our Lives. Now that these have been posted, 200 Days is now officially complete, and will be marked as such. I apologize to all of you who have been waiting for me to write something; I went home for Spring Break and was distracted by my parents and friends, but then also got a huge kick in the gut from my employer when they told me I didn't have a job for the summer like I thought I did. Thus, for the past week I've been panicking in an attempt to find a job before all the high schoolers do, because if I don't find one, my plans for Sakura-con and for the majority of my summer are shot to hell. So, needless to say, I'm still kind of panicking, and still getting over the tragedy in Japan, which has affected me, my future and prospective careers, and my professor, whom I love dearly, in a very drastic way. I've already donated a small sum of money, blood, and plasma since then, but sitting and watching is very hard to do when you know there are people out there, and over here, hurting over such a huge loss.
1: Port
Ichigo couldn't help the incredulous look on his face in spite of his lingering suspicions. He knew that after a few weeks the Soul Society was bound to check in on their prodigious Captain, and he had been wondering when they would finally come looking for him. But he'd been going through a strange mix of avoiding those thoughts and trying to embrace them when Toshiro talked to him about it that morning over a pot of coffee. Admittedly he hadn't been too subtle about it; perfectly honest as he always was. Open, undemanding, and clear. But to Ichigo, the thought itself was what was bothering him.
Because, in spite of every proclamation he would have denied, he had gotten quite used to the presence of another person in his house.
Well, not even that, he supposed. He'd gotten quite used to Toshiro's presence in his little apartment in Tokyo. He'd acclimated himself to the sound of quiet feet padding down the hall early in the morning as they made their way to the kitchen for a cup of morning tea. He'd gotten used to coming home to the smell of something cooking, and seeing Toshiro's little figure leaning against the counter as he waited for something to boil or warm. He'd also gotten used to coming home from breaks to find the other passed out on his couch for an afternoon cat nap; a habit that his health encouraged, yet didn't necessarily demand, and Ichigo couldn't help but admit it was cute in a kind of humorous way. Especially when considered with his usual behavior, which was a strict regiment of not-so-belligerent yelling and orderly, generally captain-ly things. Which, as far as he knew at that point, never involved heavily dozing against a pillow half his size.
So, the fact was that when Toshiro told him that morning that Urahara had gotten a hold of him, he'd at least come to accept the fact that he didn't want Toshiro to go. Not that he wouldn't be coming back; Toshiro had actually expressed his suspicions about the call being just for a status update on him rather than a status update on the Soul Society's cure for him. But nonetheless, Urahara had asked him to return to Karakura for the weekend at least; so that Captain Unohana could inspect him herself without having the travel time to hassle with.
And that tiny fact, that Toshiro was going to be gone, which bothered him unto no end, was the cause for most of his prominent shock. Which, currently, Toshiro was laughing at for from over the rim of his coffee mug.
"You can't exactly say this wasn't sudden," he griped for a moment, taking a sip of his own sweetened coffee. Toshiro even already knew that he liked Irish Cream creamer; it was almost scary. "Besides, did you think I could let you leave with a clear conscience? You're still torn to shreds and you want to travel all that way by yourself? Toshiro you must be crazy."
The white head bobbed in agreement, but the amused smile never left. "So you've told me before," he said, in that voice that surprised Ichigo every time with how much older it sounded. He hadn't exactly sounded young when they'd first met, but now he sounded legitimately aged. And it complimented him in respite, regardless of how much or little Ichigo liked the idea of change. "But that doesn't change the fact that I need to go. And how I get there or in whose company seems to only really matter to you, so I figure you'll be the deciding factor in changing any of the current conditions of my little jaunt," he said, with a bit of a wry tilt to his smile that Ichigo had gotten to know quite intimately over the past few weeks; mostly because he was on the receiving end of it quite a few times.
But his acquaintance with that look didn't change the fact that it still took him a decent amount of time to even figure out what it is that Toshiro had implied with his quickly stated, connotatively heavy words. But that's part of what made him so fun, Ichigo had decided after the first two days; figuring out what the hell it was he actually meant by what he said. And, thankfully for Ichigo, this time he was at least able to construe that the young Captain was implying that if Ichigo was so worried about the trip, he could go and do something about it.
So he did.
"Alright then," he'd replied as evenly as he could after a long dreg of coffee that excused him from the amount of time it had taken him to decode Toshiro's jargon. "When are you leaving?" Considering Toshiro had at least had the decency to tell him two days ahead of time, hopes for getting a train ticket were reasonably high. Or so he hoped in the back of his head where the small child anticipating adventure stood jumping up and down with excitement.
"Saturday morning," Toshiro replied. "At about 5 AM."
That was a sucker punch if he'd ever heard one. "Five in the morning?" he repeated with a bit of a growl. He set his coffee cup down on the table rather harshly, making the ceramic piece clink in complaint of the unfair treatment. "Toshiro, you know I don't get off shift until midnight on Friday!"
"So I am aware." He didn't even get a raised eyebrow that time. He must have really been losing his game. "However I was not the one that made the arrangements; Kisuke was. And if I didn't know better I would say that it was a total accident that he scheduled for me to leave so early. But because both you and I know that man has the tendency to know way too much about everything, it can be assumed that my leaving so early was very purposeful." Then, however, one pale eyebrow did rise, if only in response to Toshiro's own thought. "Almost as if he were attempting to keep you from coming. Can't imagine why…"
"Sod it," Ichigo had growled. "I'm coming."
He was barely able to catch the smirk hidden behind Toshiro's mug of black coffee. However, he did managed to catch the "figured as much" that was said mere seconds before Toshiro indulged himself in a swig of the piping confection. When he finished his gulp, however small, he looked back up at Ichigo with an amused look. But, as Ichigo recognized, it was not the generally amused expression that he seemed to wear whenever in his presence, it was the specialized humor that was only available when Ichigo had done, or was in the process of doing something vaguely inane or even outright stupid.
"What?" he asked a bit defensively, suddenly racking his brain to try and think of what exactly he had missed. When he came up unsurprisingly blank, Toshiro humored him with an answer.
"One," Toshiro said, probably deciding to start off simple in order to keep the compounding dread from completely steamrolling his host, "you should probably make the purchase of your train ticket sometime soon; otherwise I will end up going alone." He paused for a moment, as if foolishly holding onto the vain hope that Ichigo would actually remember what it was that he was missing.
Finally, Ichigo had to drag it out of him his own damn self, because obviously the young, sometimes sadistic young Captain had no intention of stopping the entertainment he seemed to get from watching the med-student squirm. "And?"
"Two," Toshiro continued just as lightly, as if he had never once even thought of stopping, "unless you catch the train, you're going to miss your shift as well."
Ichigo wasn't sure how to feel in the train ride back to Karakura. Admittedly it wasn't a very long one, and the road traveled was not one that was unfamiliar, but he had the strange feeling that he was walking back onto sacred ground: ground that had changed in his absence, and was now ground he had no business being sentimental over. And yet he felt entitled to go back; the city of his birth and the place he still intended to move back to, it still sat like a beacon on every map he ever looked at, as if always beckoning the unheard "welcome home" that the recognition of the place gave.
But as those thoughts trundled through his head, he began to wonder how Toshiro felt about going back to their old stomping grounds. After all, he had, other than perhaps Kisuke and his father, been one of the Captains most frequently posted there for safety and security reasons. He probably knew it like the back of his hand, and it made Ichigo wonder if there was any sentimentality in that knowledge at all. He wondered if Toshiro missed those simple days; back when the world was ending.
Finally, after a good half hour of appreciative, dozy silence between them, he mustered up the courage to actually ask about what his musings just so happened to be musing about.
Toshiro had looked at him almost blearily for a moment, as if confused as to where such a question had come from. But quick as a whip that nebulous thought seemed to clear in his eyes, as if he immediately understood where Ichigo's own wayward train of thought had mistakenly wandered off to.
"I suppose of all the places in the World of the Living I've been to," he started, "Karakura is the one I know best. There are others I have vague recollections of; missions, perhaps, or even memories. But none of them outweigh the time that I spent there. Fighting, laughing, even living in a sense. So, yes. I suppose going back is always a bit sentimental for me." He chuckled to himself for a moment.
"It is for the others too, you know. They long for the days when they could shirk their duties for an afternoon and run away to the beach like we all did that one day. Save for perhaps less genetically modified watermelon, but that was part of what made it so fun in the end." As he spoke Ichigo couldn't help but burst out laughing. He had almost legitimately forgotten about that foregone day spent on the beach. What with Ikkaku's crab incident and the poor dead shark that had been washed ashore, he would have thought it rather hard to forget.
He would have thought it rather hard to forget any of those times, considering how vivid they were; and yet it seemed time still had managed to cleave its wily fingers into his head and slowly pull at what he could and could not remember. So then, the question he'd said only in passing had come to conversation in the forefront:
"How could I have forgotten?"
Toshiro had looked at him sharply for a moment, and he'd gone immediately still for one split moment. It wasn't an angry gaze; not accusing or assuming of anything. It was just brutally clear; far-seeing, and knowing. It had stunned him into stillness; by no real surprise. It probably would have unnerved anyone to have someone, a close friend or otherwise, take a good, long, unwavering, fearless moment to look and actually see you.
"Do you know what scared me the most, Ichigo?" Toshiro had asked him, and in spite the suddenness of the question, Ichigo remained blissfully unperturbed. Mostly because he had the keen awareness that whatever Toshiro had to say about whatever had come to his mind in those wayward moments was relevant to the process of Ichigo getting to know who this young man had turned into.
"What?"
"I don't know how old Head Captain Yamamoto is," he stated bluntly, still keeping his gaze locked with Ichigo's in that hearty, steadfast way that he had the tendency of doing. "I don't know how long I have before I deteriorate into that point of age where humanity no longer matters. Where only protocol matter; and exceptions are something to be punished regardless of whether or not they affect positive change in an already flawed system." When he spoke next, it was he who looked away, his voice suddenly quiet, devoid of conviction, and wavering between being very much afraid, and yet very much angered and frustrated.
"I don't want to be that man, Ichigo. No matter what it takes. And as I watch the years pass by, I feel as if the sands of time are mere seconds away from sweeping me off the doorstep of my own identity and out into a gray unknown where there is nothing, I am nothing, and all that is on this Earth unto the next is worth nothing."
'Relevant indeed,' was all Ichigo could think to himself after he let the words settle in the air around them until finally it seemed the very air itself would not ignite. He could have sworn unto the heavens that he would have had no response to a tirade like that; even though its vehemence had not been directed at him. And yet, the words came to him naturally; as they seemed to with Toshiro most times when things of importance just needed to be said.
"Toshiro, do you remember what I told you before?" he asked, starting slowly if only to not lose himself in his own words. He needed to stay tethered; so both of them could tie and hunker down somewhere safe, and somewhere real. "I said that you and I were at the crossroads; standing staring down the rest of our lives, and that whatever path we chose, the road would be dark. Well now, Toshiro, we're looking at those paths. The crossroads is no longer the issue; it's the way ahead." Toshiro held his gaze, and for that Ichigo was very thankful. "And just as I said before, I'm not too keen on the idea of letting go just yet. So whatever path you choose, whatever wind comes to sweep you off your feet, you can at least know you won't be going alone."
Toshiro was smiling thinly; but there was a genuine peace and happiness behind it that let it remain wan without being worrisome. "So I see," he said, his voice calm and strong again. "And I hope you know that whatever strength I borrow, I will reciprocate to you with every fiber I am yet made of, if you'll so have it."
"Toshiro," Ichigo said with a smile, "I'd take your fibers any day."
2: Starboard
If Ichigo had Unohana as his pediatrician when he was young, he was sure that he would have been stone cold dead by age five. He knew that she had the patience and talent of a saint, but Toshiro's "check up" had been anything but what Ichigo had anticipated it to be. He'd expected a short trip at the beginning; the train ride and their conversation on it had been proof enough of that. Even Urahara's welcome, and a visit to his own family while Toshiro was in with Unohana had made it seem like the business would be light and their return to Tokyo swift.
He'd been proven wrong when he returned to Urahara's shop that night to find Captain Unohana predictably gone; having already completed her work. But she'd left a very worse-for-examination Toshiro behind. Apparently she had been making progress on the antidote that was still keeping Toshiro's wound from healing at any reasonably mortal pace; though it was still a "ways off" from being good enough to use on him.
However, she had deemed it pertinent to judge just how much the wound had actually healed, and had thus proceeded to scrub off every inch of scab and scar that Toshiro had to offer until it was spotless, and the wound available for her knowledgeable examination.
He'd come to check back in on Toshiro, with the intending of at least relaying the news that he was most likely going to spend the night with his family; seeing as they were so strapped to see him again after so long. However, his plans immediately changed to staying to make sure Toshiro stayed breathing all night when he got the news from a relatively dour looking Kisuke.
So he'd proceeded to call his father and apologize for the change in plans, and set out his bed roll in the room where Toshiro was sleeping a little less than remotely soundly. He generally looked alright; his wound re-bandaged by Unohana's knowing, yet apparently steely hands. But his breath was a bit short from the pain he was probably in, and his sleep seemed even more restless than usual.
Because, of course, Ichigo had become very familiar with the smaller man's insomnia over the past few weeks when he would wake up to the sound of those feet walking almost soundlessly down the hall. He'd asked Toshiro about it, and had only gotten the answer that the smaller man "never really did sleep well", and a promise to try and be quieter, which was unnecessary but appreciated nonetheless.
But the fact was that he was still uncomfortably asleep, and Ichigo's intent was to keep him that way, and perhaps give him a bit of peace of mind with a friendly spiritual pressure close by.
After the long hours of the night had wound a bit too far around the clock, the rest of the lights in the house went out. Tessai had come into check on them one last time, and Ichigo had assured him that the windows were still shut, and his gikongan pills close at hand if need be. Satisfied, the behemoth had shut the door with a surprising gentleness, and the house had settled into silence.
And in spite of the fact that Toshiro's once stiff breathing had opened up some into an actually easy sleep breathing pattern, Ichigo still found himself concerned. Not over Toshiro's health directly; that was a can of worms he had no intention of getting into, in spite of his career choice.
What he found himself worried about most was what he and Toshiro had discussed on the train. And perhaps not even that; all the topics they'd covered had come to peaceable, resolute conclusions, and left little to be wanted or missed should they never be brought up again. Rather, what Ichigo was worrying himself over was the fact that Toshiro was being almost uncharacteristically open; even for this "changed" person he had become. He'd told Ichigo once that his priorities had been rearranged; and that had been made blaringly clear by his words about Head Captain Yamamoto. But Ichigo couldn't help but find himself wondering just how far that went.
And, if Toshiro seemed to be so inclined to not wanting to let himself sink unto those things, if he would be willing to consider options that Captaincy couldn't allow him. Which, in the broad strokes, was quite a lot of things. But Ichigo was less inclined to push that on the younger man than he was to go give Aizen a Valentine's Day card, hand-delivered down in the cells beneath the Soul Society where he was being "housed".
Because he didn't want to be that wind that Toshiro had spoken of that would push him off the doorstep of his own identity and off into the gray void of not being someone you knew anymore. He wanted Toshiro to remain Toshiro; whoever that person had developed into and would develop into in the future. He wanted to see where Toshiro's path would take him; and be alongside him every step of the way, because, as it seemed, many of their steps were similar, and their lives, though unique, of an almost identical cut and make.
He fell asleep on those thoughts; not realizing that he'd curled up and rested his head on a good patch of Toshiro's stomach, comfortable in the fact that he at least knew there would be one morning more where he would have the opportunity to match pace with the young Captain.
-These might be rushed, delayed, and incomplete, but they are what they are for now. Mostly I'm okay with leaving them like this because they will continue on later. And because I'm tired, want to go to bed, and have to get B2B done and up by Sunday. Haha, I know, right? Very funny; gotta haul ass for the next three days to do it, because I want to try to write the first chapter of My Darkness Are You Lonely on the last few days of March next week so I can still be on schedule in spite of slacking over Spring Break. Anyways, 200 is now officially done, and I will see you guys soon with other various updates, one of them eventually being the first set of the 300! Till then, biffles. Peace off.
8-90s love,
crypto