chapter title: wake up, break down, and fall out
summary: —they both take a leap of faith, while she makes a mad dash and he holds on.
listening to: wake you up (original mix) —coven.
note: this is 5 pages, on word. whoa! this is an achievement for me.
note2: i hate dialogue. wait, let me reiterate, i suck at dialogue.
She dreams sometimes, but they are more like nightmare. Nightmares that make her choke on her own screams, nightmares that are her reality. She wakes up in her own nightmare, where the dead eat the living, and where the living kill the living for everything and anything that lets them survive just a little longer.
This is her nightmare that makes living a terror and death isn't even an escape.
Sometimes though, when she sleeps she imagines that someone arrives, maybe a prince or knight, and rescues her from her prison tower of nightmares. That someone, anyone really, will also save everyone and they will end the plague that is the living dead. This delusion only happens sometimes though, when she sleeps and she hasn't slept—not really at least—in a very long time.
Until today that is, because right now she is sleeping. At least she thinks she is…maybe she's dead, finally. For someone like her, it is surprising that she has lasted so long in a world like this one.
Ah, but dying wouldn't feel like this…she thinks. Not that she has ever died but she is sure that even death is enough to numb her pain. Pain, pain, so much pain everywhere. Her leg…her leg! And that's when she panics, because maybe this is what resurrecting feels like; to die and then come back with an insatiable hunger for living human flesh. Because maybe, just maybe, she had finally gone insane when the monsters had attacked her and she had dreamt up that someone had saved her when in reality she had been dying the entire time.
If that had happened though, she wouldn't feel so alive because even though pain hurts, pain is the one that lets you know that you're still alive.
She realizes at that moment that she is alive, and she is just waking up from a slumber. As she comes out of her dazed state-of-mind, she squints her eyes at the brightness. Her eyes open slowly to white ceiling, to white walls, to white sheets, everything is brightly white and it reminds her of a hospital.
She dislikes hospital immensely and dislike for her is something that she rarely, if ever, feels. She takes in gasping breathes of air, one after another, and she begins to hyperventilate because the room is too white and too small and she doesn't like it. She doesn't like not liking it.
She lifts herself up from the bed, her breathing quick and labored, takes one look at all the IVs, tubes and wires, and hospital monitoring machines and panics even more. She rips the IVs out of herself, barely registering the pain or blood. She rips the wires and tube from her body, not caring if she is messy. She pushes the machines away, even as they beep! beep! BEEEP! So, relentlessly that it makes her cover her ears, like a madwoman. She trips when white sheets tangle around her feet and she can't get them off, they wrap around her like constricting snakes.
The beeping of the machines hasn't just bothered her though, because people come rushing into her room trying to calm her but she can't. She just can't. Everything is wrong, and nothing is right. She dodges hands that grab at her, trying to restrain her from hurting herself or others further.
They tell her to calm down and that everything is alright in hushed tones but everything is far from being alright.
She makes a mad dash for the door, and collides into something hard. She realizes that, that something hard is a chest, and that the man of said chest is holding her to him, pining her arms down.
She kicks, screams, a wild scream that even she can't recognize, but still he doesn't let go and she can't move her arms. So, she does the only thing she can think of doing to get way. She bites. She sinks her teeth into his neck, and she can feel him wince but his hold doesn't falter. She feels when she bites so hard it makes him bleed, she tastes the blood and she feels like puking at the metallic taste. She dislikes blood as well, the smell of it, the sight of it, and now she is able to say the taste of it. Apparently, so does everyone else in the room the moment they see it.
And then everyone is shouting at him, some for his stupidity and others his name (she thinks it's his name) and he's shouting back at them to shut the fuck up because he knows what he's doing. He murmurs softly to her, in a reassuring tone that everything is alright now, that no one will hurt her.
His voice, it is something about his voice that makes her believe him. It is the way he says it, the sincerity, the outright concern and worry that makes her tremble because it's been so long since she's heard someone sound like that. Before she can stop it, she is crying, sobbing as her teeth release his neck and he loosens his hold. She sobs into his chest and doesn't stop until her throat is raw, and the pain in her right leg leaves her unable to stand. She is exhausted, her sobs have turned into small gasps and hiccups.
Everyone steps away from her when he leads her to her bed, helping her into it and placing her sheets back onto cover her. He speaks to the others in the room, which she now sees are a couple of nurses.
"Call Ryūken in here, now."
The nurses hurry out of the room, not wanting to incur the wrath of…wait what was his name?
"Um, w-wait what's…yourrr...name?" she asks, slurring a bit, her tongue feels heavy, and her head hurts. Everything hurts.
"Kurosaki. Ichigo Kurosaki," he tells her, holdings pressure to the bleeding vein in her arm from where she has pulled the IVs out of.
"Mmm...I-I'm, uh, Inoue-ah," she frowns, it is becoming increasingly harder to talk or think properly, "Orihime…"
He gives her a reassuring smile, before turning to shout at a nurse that passes by her door, "Where the hell is Ryūken?!" Making the nurse jump and hurry to find him.
If she this were another world she would have been blushing in embarrassment at his concern for her, but in this world there is no room for emotions like love. She does think that he is handsome though, his hair is a conspicuous color but she likes that, and his eyes are something else. And she blushes when he catches her staring at him. He is about to say something when someone comes into the room, rushing over to her. She flinches back at first when he touches her to put the IVs back into her and reconnect the machines.
"What happened?" This man seems to wastes no time in questions that aren't important.
"I don't know. I got here when the nurses were trying to calm her down."
He spares a glance at Kurosaki, his eyes focusing on his neck before going back to her. He calls a nurse in before sending her off to retrieve something. When she comes back she hands him a needle. She begins to panic again, but the man tells Kurosaki Ichigo to restrain her. He hesitates but does what he is told. She struggles at first but he has already proved himself to be stronger than her so, she thinks there is no point in fighting the inevitable.
The man, Ryūken, inserts the needle and pushes whatever is in it into her. It might be a poison, it might be an anesthetic that he has given her. If she wakes up she will wake up knowing better than to trust anyone, no matter how sincere their voice is. If she does not wake up, then she hopes that she becomes a ghost so she can haunt Kurosaki Ichigo for eternity.
Her senses fade and the last thing she sees is the face of Kurosaki Ichigo; the face of a traitor. As she slips into a state of unconsciousness, all she can hear is his voice and words; the voice and words of a deceiver.
" Everything is alright now, no one will hurt you..."
And the last thing she thinks is: LIAR…!
They told him that they would call him if the girl woke up after he brought her and checked her into the hospital. So, he sat down in the waiting room and before long drifted off in a slumber. He is tired both mentally and physically exhausted from saving the girl and the trip back to base. He shaken awake by a nurse, telling him that there are problems with the girl he brought in.
He rushes off before the nurse finishes explaining.
When he gets to her room the girl is freaking out and lashing out at everyone, like a trapped-rabid animal. She runs into him and he holds her to him, causing her to let out wild scream. The scream doesn't faze him though. The girl seems to take note and does what she can to escape. He winces when he feels her teeth sink into his neck, she bites hard enough to make him bleed. He can feel her shudder in disgust when she gets a taste of his blood. It is when everyone else sees the blood that they begin to panic, because maybe Kurosaki has brought in an infected person.
The nurses in the room shout orders at him and he does the only thing he can.
"Shut the fuck up! I know what I'm doing!" he yells.
He knows that he shouldn't yell at the nurses they are only trying to help but they are being annoying. The important thing though, at the moment, is the girl he holds in his arms. He needs to try and calm her down. So, he does the only thing he can think of doing.
"It's okay, it's okay, everything is alright now. I won't let anyone hurt you," saying it all in the most reassuring tone he can manage.
He thinks though it comes out more worried than anything else, he wants to cringe at the concern he shows to a complete stranger. Soft emotions, like worry and concern, are unacceptable—they are enough to get him killed.
He feels the girl tremble in his arms, and he is surprised that his words were enough to calm her down. He panics when she begins to cry and sob, but he calms down because he has handled worse things than a crying girl. His sisters cry all the time! (only one of them, but still she cried enough for the other one).
Ha! A crying girl is nothing to what I've faced on the outside.
So, he loosens his hold on her as her teeth let go of his neck and holds her until she stops, and all you can hear are her small gasps and hiccups. He leads her to her bed, helping her into it and placing her sheets back on to cover her. Once the girl is settled he turns on the nurses.
"Call Ryūken in here, now."
And all of them scramble to get out of the room.
"Um, w-wait what's…yourrr...name?" the girl asks, her words slurring.
"Kurosaki. Ichigo Kurosaki," he tells her, going to her side and placing pressure on the bleeding vein on her arm.
"Mmm...I-I'm, uh, Inoue-ah…Orihime…" she replies, a frown forming on her face.
It must be hard for her to talk. She had lost a lot of blood by pulling out her IVs like she had.
He offers her a small smile, one he hopes is reassuring. He hasn't smiled in a long time. He turns to shout at a passing nurse to ask her why Ryūken isn't there, yet. The nurse jumps and runs to find him, hopefully—the nurses could be incompetent at times.
He wants to sigh in exhaustion, this day has been tiring. He cannot imagine how tired the girl—Inoue—must be. It isn't just girl anymore, she has told him her name and he should make an effort to remember it. He turns to look at her and finds her staring at him, causing her to blush and turn away. If this had been a normal place, a normal time, a normal anything, he would have blushed in return instead he opens his mouth to say—.
He turns towards the door as someone rushes in, going immediately to the girl's side.
Ugh, Inoue, Inoue, Inoue. I have to remember that.
He watches as Inoue flinches back from Ryūken when he touches her arms, inserting the IV's back in and reconnecting the machines. Ryūken isn't someone who wastes his time on the unimportant so he immediately asks him what happened.
"I don't know. I got here when the nurses were trying to calm her down."
The older man shoots him a glance, his eyes settling on his neck, before focusing his attention back on Inoue. Ichigo feels a sense of trepidation growing as his hand moves up to his neck, he doesn't remember having anything—the bite mark. Inoue bit him.
Ryūken calls out to one of the nurses, he wouldn't take any chance of having someone infected in his hospital. And there is nothing Ichigo can do stop the man. If he decided to exterminate the girl—there was no point in remembering her name—she would be dead.
No one in the survivor colony questions Ryūken's authority, he is one of their leaders. No matter how much Ichigo wants to say No, stop it! I didn't save her only for you to kill her! He can't, he can't do anything.
In this world where everything is chaos, order and authority must have a place. If he spoke out, how long until others began questioning the leaders' authority? No one would be able to survive long in chaos.
So, he could do nothing as a nurse entered the room and handed Ryūken a needle. A needle probably filled with a poison. He can do nothing as Ryūken tells him to restrain the girl, all he can do is as he is told though he hesitates to do it. Inoue struggles against him, but stops because she must already know that there is no point in fighting the inevitable. Ichigo is the strong one, he has already proven that.. And it makes him feel disgusted, because he should be using his strength to protect those he has saved, not to kill them.
He looks away from her, from the needle being inserted into her, because he can't stand the look she gives him as he holds her down—even though he doesn't need to or want to. Because he already knows what she is thinking without having to see that look—he is a treacherous liar.
He only risks looking at her face when he knows that she has closed her eyes, as if she is sleeping but he knows that she isn't. Ryūken would not allow the risks implied in letting her live.
He is pulled out of his thoughts by a hand twisting his face to an angle. It is Ryūken, examining the bite mark. He struggles against the older man's hold, he doesn't feel like being examined.
"Tch. Settle down, boy. You're worse than Uryū."
"And you're just as annoying as my dad," he retorts.
Watching in satisfaction as Ryūken stiffens. If he had been trying to get a rise out of Ichigo by comparing him to his son, Uryū, then he has failed because Ichigo had compared him to his father. If there is anything that Ichigo knows annoys the older Ishida the most is being compared to Isshin Kurosaki.
"Brat," he finally says, giving him a glare.
Ryūken doesn't stop though, he places a bandage on Ichigo's wound before taping it down. He also tries to give him a shot for the bite but Ichigo refuses it, he doesn't feel like taking care of himself right now. Ryūken must notice that he is moping because he keeps staring at him.
"What?" he hisses, he hates being observed by him and his son. Though he can handle Uryū, he can't stand Ryūken observing him. The man's stare is colder than ice.
"Wipe that look off of your face, it makes you look like your idiot father."
"Fuck y-"
"She isn't dead."
"What?"
"The girl."
"But you—didn't you?"
"No. If you had been paying even a minimal ounce of attention, you would have noticed that the machines didn't flat line."
"What did you give her then?"
"Anesthetic. As much as you enjoy getting bitten, I do not." He says, placing a cigarette in his mouth and lilting it—purposefully exhaling the smoke in Ichigo's face.
"..."
"Now get out and let my patient rest."
Ichigo leaves the hospital, only because Ryūken has him escorted out by security guards. He is relieved though. She isn't dead. Inoue Orihime is alive.
He heads home, his steps lighter than they've been in years.
endnote: i like writing in ichigo's perspective he's easy. (heh.)
endnote2: ryūken ishida was a bitch to write
endnote3: fudge, i'm losing focus. i was going somewhere with this, lemme think, yo~
edit: 12042012