I'm disappointed with myself. You all will all find out at the end of the chapter. Ugh. Clearly in recent chapters there are obvious hints that Ishida likes Inoue (chapter 346). Very cute, but very sad moments I must say—because there is no chance of them getting together. But I'm in denial so it's all good.
Random side note 1: The fic will eventually stop being emo.
Random side note 2: In—retrospect—I—use—a lot—of—dashes.
Random side note 3: Think about it: 'awkward' is spelled rather awkwardly.
Beauty queen of only eighteen
She had some trouble with herself
He was always there to help her
She always belonged to someone else
That song repeated over and over in her head.
His words repeated over and over in her head.
The truth repeated over and over in her head.
The rain poured down threateningly, but her warm tears didn't fall with the cold tears of the clouds. Her gray eyes remained dry and dead set as they stared straight ahead on her concrete path. The heels of her shoes clicked on the sidewalk briskly, syncing along with the thick drops of water falling from the dark sky above. With Uryu's jacket held tightly in her grasp, Orihime walked in the southeastern direction to his apartment determined on getting things finally right.
I drove for miles and miles
And wound up at your door
I've had you so many times but somehow
I want more...
She imagined his strong arms around her, shielding her protectively from the rain—his equally as strong hands holding hers, and then his fingers wiping the tears from her face. With him there with her, she wouldn't have to fake her smiles—fake her meaningless laughs. He would be there, his glasses gleaming with loving taciturnity, making everything better with just his shy presence and security. He had even kissed her forehead, and she thought he was acting out of character. Orihime mentally shook her head negatively at the recollection.
No, he wasn't out of character. That was his character—he was caring, sensitive, and strong. His personality was chivalrous, and he always put himself last—never before anyone else. Never before her. His love for her was too great.
A strong gust of suspended wind blew against her, and she finally sensed the cold gnaw rawly on her warm, tender skin. Absentmindedly, she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the leather jacket, and zipped the material halfway up her body to keep the wet out. Orihime inhaled the sweet musky scent of the jacket through the rain, and it smelled of the same scent on that day—on the bench when she was crying for Ichigo. His scent lingered on the collar—it was a scent that was vaguely familiar, yet as it mixed with rainwater, it threw off her senses. It was a scent that she couldn't stop inhaling without feeling an aftershock of pain, but yet she couldn't help but enjoy the aftershock of happiness and love. The warmth of the jacket washed over her even as the rain still poured, and it felt as though his arms were around her—keeping her safe; loving her through her mishaps. Orihime turned the corner with a deep breath.
She was going to return his love, and Ichigo wasn't going to be in the way this time.
No...not Ichigo...
It wasn't Ichigo's fault. It was her fault. It was her fabricated love —her newfound sisterly love— for Ichigo that wasn't going to be in the way. Orihime was going to make sure that all of her faults would be made up for, even if she had lost all of her chances to make things right. She would make her own chance—she was going to be the strong one this time. Orihime was going to be the savior. She was going to save him from his own pain. She was tired of Uryu, or even of Ichigo, being the hero.
Orihime grinned softly to herself, and she mentally clenched her fist in triumph.
She was going to be the hero this time.
I don't mind spending everyday
Out on your corner in the pouring rain
Look for the girl with the broken smile
Ask her if she wants to stay awhile
Uryu could still remember every lyric, every stanza of that song; he could still remember her voice singing those exact words.
And she will be loved
She will be loved...
He could still feel her hair, feel her warm skin. Her hot tears. Her cold body in his grasp.
As he laid there, on his midnight blue couch in his living room, he imagined every line of her face. Her eyes, her sheepish smile. Uryu smiled slightly at the thought. It hurt to think it, but she was rather cute when she blushed.
The rich sound of heavy rain could be heard as he reflected to himself. Raising his left arm up, he examined the cut on his forearm apathetically. The slash wasn't that deep—the dried blood on the white material of his clothes and the coagulated blood on his skin exaggerated how bad the cut really was. He's had worse, that was for sure. He blinked, and set his arm back down, slightly cringing as the couch brushed against the stinging gash.
Tap on my window, knock on my door
I want to make you feel beautiful
The scars on his heart were the worst.
Is this really what love feels like?
He sighed—he didn't know anymore. Before, he thought he could control his emotions, his mind, and his actions—he thought that he could keep that stoic equanimity. He needed to face the truth—things like that weren't controllable. Humans —their souls— were like free flowing rivers, and love was the huge boulder in the middle, blocking their path. It was futile to attempt moving back up the river to avoid the 'love boulder', and either you hit the boulder and get hurt, or float down smoothly and around it. In his case, Uryu's finally stopped swimming upstream and he hit the boulder head-on. Now, he was just around the river bend floating face down.
He scowled to himself.
A 'Pocahontas' allusion? I'm really reaching the lowest point of my life...
He was in an emotional, inner conflicted mid life crisis—subtracting the fact that he was only eighteen years old. Love wasn't something he was particularly accustomed to—something he wasn't accustomed to feeling. It had been so long since he'd felt any type of love whatsoever. His mother, and then his grandfather were both gone from him. His father, no—Ryuuken, didn't give him love. Only contempt towards him, and his desire to be a Quincy—towards the desire to protect the handful of people he loved. All of the years he spent trying to make him proud were for nothing. Uryu couldn't recall a time when his father had shown him love, or had even given him respect.
And then years later he met his friends. Well, his technical enemies. Love and friendship, these were things he had never felt before with other people—and it was a great feeling. A wonderful feeling. He had friends that cared about him—people who actually valued his abilities without scorn like his father who was only interested in making a profit.
The Quincy archer smiled softly.
And then his inevitable and growing love for the gingery auburn haired princess that had cultivated in his heart for the past few years.
Inoue-san...
He truly did love her. He loved everything about her—even those obliviously random and ridiculous foibles and idiosyncrasies.
I know I tend to get so insecure
Doesn't matter anymore
He shook his head—did it really not matter anymore? Was Uryu just being a coward again? He had told her his feelings in the best way he could—a way that would give her the direct message of his love in a way he knew she would understand. But, this backslide of deep emotion was tearing him apart; just how long could he avoid it? Was he having second thoughts?
He sighed thoughtfully, and began to sit up. Slowly, he stood up from the couch, and walked over to his room to change out of his wet and bloodied clothes. He ignored the sharp stings of the dry, blood matted cut on his forearm as his limb swayed at his side while he strode out of the warm circumambient light of the livingroom. He was thinking too much—like always. Uryu nonchalantly glanced at a darkened spot on his carpet; there was blood on the floor.
Uryu could avoid —ignore— it long enough...
At least until he saw her face again.
Orihime's heart instantly started to beat anxiously when Uryu's street came into the view of her gray eyes. The rain was now a light, foggy drizzle, and it seemed as though the closer she came to reaching his apartment, the lighter the rain would fall. Maybe it was a sign—she didn't completely know, but she did know what she had to do. She breathed faster after checking each address, and with every apartment that wasn't his, her heart would uneasily pulsate. Orihime was nervous; she was afraid; she was anxious; she was terrified. She was hurt. Her heart beat abnormally fast—the emotions that bombarded her made her want to die for suffering the one she loved.
But then...
Orihime felt like she could fly to the moon and back. She was ecstatic and overjoyed—she felt as if she was something beautiful in an ugly place. She attained something inexplicable—and it was love. Love, and the very thought of Uryu loving her made her want to jump up and down and sing out to the people around her. She felt as if this love —and their love for each other— was the only thing right in the world. The very thought of him loving someone like her—she found that ironic, and even a little funny, though it was a good funny; it was a loving funny. Love was something so full of wonder and warmth with so many people desiring it, yet only some acquiring it. She smiled to herself.
Ishida Uryu—the stoic, cold, and sometimes overly dramatic Quincy. Ishida Uryu, her funny and cutely shy classmate, friend, and...perpetual lover?
Orihime passed another apartment and blushed to herself. No, they weren't lovers. She didn't even know if they were still friends. Her smile sadly disappeared.
It's not always rainbows and butterflies
It's compromise that moves us along
My heart is full and my door's always open
You come anytime you want
After one last building her sad gray eyes finally found the right address. His address. She looked up at his apartment—it was a simple establishment, with steps leading up into the stoop and then the front door. To the left of the door there was a window. His lights were on, and her small flame of hope sparked brighter.
I'll fix things. I'm the hero this time, the one who'll save people. Like Wonder Woman, or a fireman, or a mall rent-a-cop...or the nice people at H&R Block who help people with their taxes!
Orihime clenched her fist triumphantly.
I am the Dark Knight, I am...Batman!
With love and determination, not to mention some incongruity, she walked up the wet concrete steps.
Entering the classroom from lunch, Orihime bubbly grinned at her friend. She had been listening to Maroon 5 nonstop for the past few days, and it fueled her actions, her mind, her smile, and her speech.
"Tatsuki! Don't you just love that song?!"
"Hmm...?" Tatsuki shrugged, tired and not really in the mood for her friend's enthusiasm. She had just lost a tournament the previous day, and it sucked every ounce of enthusiasm out of her. "I dunno, it's okay I guess."
Orihime looked at Tatsuki wide eyed. "What do you mean 'it's okay'? 'She Will Be Loved' is one of the best songs ever! It's so sweet! You can tell that the guy singing really cares and loves the girl in it, and that he'd do basically anything to make her feel happy, even in the rain and that whenever she was sad that she could always run to him! It also shows that the guy has a tender side to him...and that he loves her very much!"
Tatsuki sighed. "True—"
"Yeah, but I think that the singer is really a girl, and is trying to tell the other girl in the song that she really really wants her!" Chizuru somewhat rudely cut Tatsuki's agreement off.
Orihime looked at her two friends, who, naturally, started to fight. She shook her head disapprovingly at each exchange of tensely strained words. Even though she was accustomed to Chizuru making a moment awkward and then Tatsuki punching or kicking her in various places, she still didn't like it.
That's not very nice...why do they always have to fight?
Even to the point of excess, there was always fighting, fighting, fighting.
With an exasperated deep breath, Orihime walked over to a desk by the window and sat down. She gazed up at the blue sky, now oblivious to the bickering clamor of her two friends. It was such a beautiful day—so beautiful, so cloudless, that there was no possible way that the weather would worsen. The rich cerulean blue overwhelmed her with a mystic beauty, and suddenly she started to think back to that song. Her hums evolved into a rhythm of words. That song —'She Will Be Loved'— was tender and reassuring; it was filled with such a deep passionate love that it overwhelmed her even more than gazing up at the sky.
I don't mind spending everyday
Out on your corner in the pouring rain
Look for the girl with the broken smile
Ask her if she wants to stay awhile
Love that didn't abandon, and love that didn't isolate. It was a deep love that welcomed with warm and open arms—where the one who loved her would stand out in the pouring rain, holding her, sheltering her, and loving her. One who would fix her broken smiles, and love her for just being her—Orihime Inoue, the one who blurted out random things, the one who ate weird combinations of food, the one safely caught in the arms of her lover after she fell. Just thinking about it made her chest hurt with lonely emotion, yet gave her a sensation of happiness at the same time.
The truest of love possible—a love she wished to feel.
Hidden in the gaze of his dark navy blue eyes contained the very love he wished to give her.
Zipping up a new clean shirt, Uryu sighed to himself. The clothes that Orihime had let him wear were staring up at him from where they were laying on a chair in his room. Yes, he had washed them, yes he had dried them, and yes he was now staring at them. The red long sleeved shirt and khaki pants stared back. Uryu's navy blue eyes burnt holes through each layer of mocking fabric; he scowled lightly, and his sleek black eyebrows creased together in vexation.
His mind returned to that day in the classroom, and the events immediately following it—the rain, her house, him leaving. Then his recklessness. And finally his waist-deep wallowing in self-made self-pity.
Uryu had thoroughly cleaned the gash on his arm and thoroughly bandaged it up, albeit the sting of hydrogen peroxide still lingered in his wound. He raised an eyebrow briefly—hydrogen peroxide was used to bleach hair.
Instantly, the Quincy scowled to himself once more, and turned away from his borrowed clothes.
That bastard Kurosaki is everywhere with his damned orange hair!—if he had a novel or show about his life it would be titled 'Bleach'!
Kurosaki—the main character, the strongest character, the great soul reaper—the one everybody loved. The one guy who always got the girl, the one guy who had friends, and the one guy who was envied for having those friends.
Uryu took a deep breath and looked back at his —well, her— clothes. A humorless chuckle softly emitted from his mouth.
If I had a novel, or even just a short story, it would probably be something by a hopelessly romantic teenager trying to produce a second-rate piece of mediocre writing titled something excessively ridiculous...like 'Owners of Lonely Hearts' or something ineptly stupid like that. Maybe even 'She Will Be Loved'.
He sighed.
Love—foolish.
Yet, those were his feelings—just a foolish teenage love story with him not wanting to admit the truth. Uryu looked away from the clothes for the last time, and his eyes became instantly locked with his own dark blue gaze within a mirror hanging on the wall. There was a small cut on his face that he hadn't noticed since now. He looked deep into his eyes, and stared down the growing contempt which was clouded in navy blue.
And she will be loved
She will be loved
Regardless of his hurt, and regardless of his inner contempt for himself, he smiled lightly at the humor of the circumstance.
He was a fool.
I had to cut off the chapter! This would have been the last one, but, freaking…I'm in my emo hole! Plus, it was reaching thirteen pages, and that's A LOT. I'm disappointed with myself. I chopped off freaking four pages. It looks so skimpy!...Please review! Would be greatly appreciated! Grammatical errors and typos are welcome to point out.
I'm salmon-ing up my emo hole (if you don't understand what that means, or think it sounds dirty, ask me about it—I'll explain), so I'll try to update soon. I finished the epilogue before finishing the last chapters too. I think it's funny. You guys might. Though, with my horrible updating, I would think that none of you like me anymore.
