Make-up fic for Empath_eia
Title: Death and all His Friends
Genre: Angst
Characters/Pairings: Ryuuken, Orihime
Rating: M
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: He lives in a house of death, and she thunders into his life, to make him live.
Warnings: Character death and some heavy duty angst.
Death and all his friends
We are all humans, transient beings with a predilection towards the afterlife. We’re just particles that burn and fade away. Into nothingness, into a world protected by barricades so powerful, that only decrepit, hollow bodies can enter them, and not the living.
Ryuuken Ishida discovered this the hard way when his only child died.
*****
The battle had raged on for a few years, but centuries seemed to have passed, aging and breaking the young warriors. The despondency of war had driven them into madness, into anger so terrible that the whole of Karakura town had become inundated with lost souls and putrefied Arrancar.
He saw his oldest friend, if you could call him that, become ash while trying to protect his son. Life was the price of war. But his own son would never allow him to do that. It was against the pride of a Quincy.
He had expected his prosaic son to fight till the end, and win. He had seen, felt and held the child’s power the day he had heard his first cries. The day that his wife decided to leave him alone. He knew that it was the child that had destroyed the only relationship he treasured. He hated his son, and had no qualms about it.
But he had slowly begun to admire the recalcitrant boy. He had rebutted him, become strong and had worked his way up in the world. He was even beginning to become proud of Uryuu. Until the day he decided to follow his mother into the underworld while fighting the blind vassal, Kaname Tousen.
Now he hated him even more.
*****
The war had ended and his child had died a hero. A hero, whose forgettable names are carved on frozen stone pillars, whose smiling faces are used to sell tickets to people. His father had suffered an ignominious death, and his son had died a noble one. He would die an ordinary, un-shameful, un-heroic one.
When Uryuu left, Ryuuken hoped that he’d go soon enough, a carcass lying in the haunted streets of a rebuilt Karakura, with no one to inter him and his betrayal. No one to know what he had done to his child and progenitor.
But his son had made sure that wouldn’t happen.
He’d left a wife and two children, one still in the unfortunate girl’s womb. It was almost as if the Gods had cursed him for abandoning his child. Now he had to live with the ghosts of the past, staring gauntly at his face, mocking him and his faithlessness.
And causing him to die inside.
*****
He never expected that his son had such a beautiful and overly cheerful wife. His wife had been a plain woman, a plainness that had been transferred to the next generation. She had been a simple woman, and had somehow managed to love her stoic and distant husband. She was lucent, spreading light through the dark, dank corridors of the mansion.
Ryuuken Ishida had been secretly afraid that the irrevocable emptiness his happy wife had left behind was going to be filled by a forlorn girl with jaded eyes, and emaciated children, malnourished by the death of a father.
But Orihime Inoue thundered into his life and home, upsetting the dead and breaking open the coffin he called home. She had no semblance of grief on her face, and no resemblance to the daughter-in-law that Ryuuken had feared about. She opened the door and caused the whole house to fall apart with her smile.
If there was anything that scared him more than the thought of pained, jaded eyes, it was happy, sparkling ones.
*****
“Otou-san! I’m so pleased to meet you.” Orihime said, giving a low bow. “This is your grandson, Souken, named for his great-grandfather. And this is your granddaughter, and she’s five months old and can kick like a professional.”
Saying these paltry words of introduction, she waltzes into his life without his permission and leaves him speechless in front of his, now their, house. Their house.
Ryuuken’s, father’s and mother’s. Then Ryuuken’s, beloved wife’s and Uryuu’s. Then Ryuuken’s only. Now, Orihime’s, Souken’s and the unborn child’s.
And when he listens to Orihime instructing the servants to serve lunch, he realizes that this embittered house, embedded with the only happy memories he has ever had, is now going to live again.
*****
He cannot bear the happiness that this girl brings along with her. It drives him angry and insane. He wants to throttle the laughter that rings in the corridors. There should be death and grief when a loved one passes away. Loved one. He never loved his own child when he was alive, and now his own repentance cruelly mocks him.
He cannot fathom Orihime Inoue-no, Orihime Ishida now. She has seen the very darkest depths of misery, losing her parents, her brother and now, her husband too. Ryuuken desperately wishes that she would understand being left all alone, without death, and with such intense, numbing pain, that you wish it would choke you to death as well.
Apparently she doesn’t. She is naïve, and has no remorse about her husband’s death. The husband she truly loved, the one she fought for.
Ryuuken cannot understand why the person who loved Uryuu the most doesn’t mourn for him, doesn’t shed a single tear. His soul screams at this impudence. His son’s death deserves to be lamented by this girl, his wife, and not by a sullen father-who was never a father.
“Otou-san, would you take Sou-chan to the park please?” her cheery voice chips into walls of despair and silence around him, infuriating him even more. Her voice belies the fact that she survived, that he survived, but his son did not.
It takes every ounce of his energy not to silence her forever. Instead he replies with a calm veneer, “I’m not keeping well today. Why not take him yourself?”
As her slim form and horrid voice recede into the far shadows, he takes the nearest object and flings it at the wall.
And Ryuuken Ishida slumps in his chair, as the glass around the picture of a little black-haired Quincy breaks into sharp, soul-tearing splinters.
*****
His grandson has his namesake’s eyes, his mother’s bright hair, and his father and grandfather’s pallor. And more power than any of them, including his father who had killed his mother.
“Sou-chan, eat your vegetables!” a desperate Orihime tries to persuade him. “Ouch! See, even your sister doesn’t like you’re bad behaviour!”
“I’ll not eat carrots! I hate ‘em!” replies a very obstinate Souken.
This suppertime drama jars the ears of the patriarch. He hisses to himself, as he sees his home become a circus for screaming children with deadly powers, and not-dead mothers with morning sickness and deadly powers, and unborn granddaughters with deadly powers.
He seethes at the normalcy of the situation and the way it offensively occurs in perfectly normal houses everyday. But now, it has eerily entered his perfectly unhappy house which reeks of dead people. This house is meant for silence and mourning only.
“Look at Daddy in that picture, dear. He’s smiling at you, so be nice and eat the carrots.”
That is the final straw. His son (that child who should have child-and whom he should have died for) was no longer alive. But to talk of him as a smiling, sentient being to make a child eat carrots? Ryuuken Ishida loved the memory of his heroic son too much to not take this as an insult.
“How dare you? My son is dead, nothing can bring him back! He died a hero’s death to save people, not to be belittled like this. You stupid girl, you are disgusting!” Ryuuken Ishida was passionately screaming from his heart, an organ he had probably never used till now.
“But Otou-san, I was only….”
Orihime’s protest is met by a sharp, stinging slap. A slap so hard that it bruises her cheek and makes her fall to the ground.
“You shall leave right now and never come back. And I’ll make sure that you or your children do not get a penny from me.”
Orihime rises silently. “Sou-chan, leave the room.” The frightened child scampers away from the tension-charged atmosphere, a half-eaten carrot in hand.
Then she looks at him, tears welling up in her eyes. “I loved your son from the bottom of my heart. You were the one who abandoned him. What do you know about grief? I have lost my whole family, thankfully my friends survived. These children are never going to see their father again, but I have to stay strong for them. I have to smile and remain smiling till I die. I do not expect people like you to understand human emotion.”
Ryuuken is shocked by these words. How dare she…?
“You abandoned Uryuu, and now you want to mourn him? You should realize what you are, Otou-san. I shall leave this house, in which you have created the impression that you loved your son. And yes, I don’t need a single penny from you.”
And just as she had thundered into his life, she thunders out, leaving him speechless and empty on his doorstep, all over again.
Finally the ghosts of the past and future are exorcised. But they have taken everything with them, leaving a helpless, heartbroken man behind.
*****
Two years later…
Ryuuken Ishida walks along unfamiliar mossy paths, and on unknown grass. He looks at the parents in the Children’s park, smiling, happy couples cavorting with their children. He feels out of place there, much older than anyone else and dressed in a business suit.
Suddenly he feels someone tugging at his pants. He sees a little girl, hardly two years old, playing with his trousers. With eyes like a woman he once loved and lost.
“Sou-chan, go get your sister, she’s troubling the nice gentleman there.” a familiar voice shouts.
“I’m playing, mama!!”
“Tch, okay now I have to get up...”
She stops in her tracks when she sees him. Her father-in-law.
“I’d like to have a talk with you.”
*****
“I work in Urahara-san’s shop now. He says I’m very popular with the male shinigami.”
“I imagine you would be.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“If you choose to accept it.”
“What brings you here?”
“I wanted to see my grandchildren, and have a chat with you.”
“You drove us out of your house, remember?”
“I’m truly sorry about that.”
Orihime was startled out of her wits. Ryuuken Ishida, apologizing to her?
“I know you’re surprised. I spent two years trying to rebuild my life. I realized what I had been and what I had become.”
“And then?”
“I came to reclaim my remaining family.”
There, he had done it. It had taken every effort to say this out loud. He had spent the better part of the last two years trying to realize what a monster he had become. He had wallowed so much in his own despair and pride, that he had forgotten everything else. He had destroyed his whole life. Whatever was left, he wanted it back.
“Do you really think of us as family now?”
“Yes. And I’d like you to come back and live with me.”
“I’ll think about tha…Sou-chan, I told you to look after her! Now she’s eating grass!”
As Orihime rushes towards her children, Ryuuken smiles. He sees her scolding Souken, and trying to pull grass out of the baby’s mouth. This is perfectly normal, and he can try and get used to this. No, he’s sure that he can get used to this. He will do it for his wife. His father. For his son.
Death leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. But sometimes, destruction of the world, gives a chance for something new, something better to be born.
For Death is the greatest mother, and the greatest teacher.
Genre: Angst
Characters/Pairings: Ryuuken, Orihime
Rating: M
Word Count: 2,000
Summary: He lives in a house of death, and she thunders into his life, to make him live.
Warnings: Character death and some heavy duty angst.
Death and all his friends
We are all humans, transient beings with a predilection towards the afterlife. We’re just particles that burn and fade away. Into nothingness, into a world protected by barricades so powerful, that only decrepit, hollow bodies can enter them, and not the living.
Ryuuken Ishida discovered this the hard way when his only child died.
*****
The battle had raged on for a few years, but centuries seemed to have passed, aging and breaking the young warriors. The despondency of war had driven them into madness, into anger so terrible that the whole of Karakura town had become inundated with lost souls and putrefied Arrancar.
He saw his oldest friend, if you could call him that, become ash while trying to protect his son. Life was the price of war. But his own son would never allow him to do that. It was against the pride of a Quincy.
He had expected his prosaic son to fight till the end, and win. He had seen, felt and held the child’s power the day he had heard his first cries. The day that his wife decided to leave him alone. He knew that it was the child that had destroyed the only relationship he treasured. He hated his son, and had no qualms about it.
But he had slowly begun to admire the recalcitrant boy. He had rebutted him, become strong and had worked his way up in the world. He was even beginning to become proud of Uryuu. Until the day he decided to follow his mother into the underworld while fighting the blind vassal, Kaname Tousen.
Now he hated him even more.
*****
The war had ended and his child had died a hero. A hero, whose forgettable names are carved on frozen stone pillars, whose smiling faces are used to sell tickets to people. His father had suffered an ignominious death, and his son had died a noble one. He would die an ordinary, un-shameful, un-heroic one.
When Uryuu left, Ryuuken hoped that he’d go soon enough, a carcass lying in the haunted streets of a rebuilt Karakura, with no one to inter him and his betrayal. No one to know what he had done to his child and progenitor.
But his son had made sure that wouldn’t happen.
He’d left a wife and two children, one still in the unfortunate girl’s womb. It was almost as if the Gods had cursed him for abandoning his child. Now he had to live with the ghosts of the past, staring gauntly at his face, mocking him and his faithlessness.
And causing him to die inside.
*****
He never expected that his son had such a beautiful and overly cheerful wife. His wife had been a plain woman, a plainness that had been transferred to the next generation. She had been a simple woman, and had somehow managed to love her stoic and distant husband. She was lucent, spreading light through the dark, dank corridors of the mansion.
Ryuuken Ishida had been secretly afraid that the irrevocable emptiness his happy wife had left behind was going to be filled by a forlorn girl with jaded eyes, and emaciated children, malnourished by the death of a father.
But Orihime Inoue thundered into his life and home, upsetting the dead and breaking open the coffin he called home. She had no semblance of grief on her face, and no resemblance to the daughter-in-law that Ryuuken had feared about. She opened the door and caused the whole house to fall apart with her smile.
If there was anything that scared him more than the thought of pained, jaded eyes, it was happy, sparkling ones.
*****
“Otou-san! I’m so pleased to meet you.” Orihime said, giving a low bow. “This is your grandson, Souken, named for his great-grandfather. And this is your granddaughter, and she’s five months old and can kick like a professional.”
Saying these paltry words of introduction, she waltzes into his life without his permission and leaves him speechless in front of his, now their, house. Their house.
Ryuuken’s, father’s and mother’s. Then Ryuuken’s, beloved wife’s and Uryuu’s. Then Ryuuken’s only. Now, Orihime’s, Souken’s and the unborn child’s.
And when he listens to Orihime instructing the servants to serve lunch, he realizes that this embittered house, embedded with the only happy memories he has ever had, is now going to live again.
*****
He cannot bear the happiness that this girl brings along with her. It drives him angry and insane. He wants to throttle the laughter that rings in the corridors. There should be death and grief when a loved one passes away. Loved one. He never loved his own child when he was alive, and now his own repentance cruelly mocks him.
He cannot fathom Orihime Inoue-no, Orihime Ishida now. She has seen the very darkest depths of misery, losing her parents, her brother and now, her husband too. Ryuuken desperately wishes that she would understand being left all alone, without death, and with such intense, numbing pain, that you wish it would choke you to death as well.
Apparently she doesn’t. She is naïve, and has no remorse about her husband’s death. The husband she truly loved, the one she fought for.
Ryuuken cannot understand why the person who loved Uryuu the most doesn’t mourn for him, doesn’t shed a single tear. His soul screams at this impudence. His son’s death deserves to be lamented by this girl, his wife, and not by a sullen father-who was never a father.
“Otou-san, would you take Sou-chan to the park please?” her cheery voice chips into walls of despair and silence around him, infuriating him even more. Her voice belies the fact that she survived, that he survived, but his son did not.
It takes every ounce of his energy not to silence her forever. Instead he replies with a calm veneer, “I’m not keeping well today. Why not take him yourself?”
As her slim form and horrid voice recede into the far shadows, he takes the nearest object and flings it at the wall.
And Ryuuken Ishida slumps in his chair, as the glass around the picture of a little black-haired Quincy breaks into sharp, soul-tearing splinters.
*****
His grandson has his namesake’s eyes, his mother’s bright hair, and his father and grandfather’s pallor. And more power than any of them, including his father who had killed his mother.
“Sou-chan, eat your vegetables!” a desperate Orihime tries to persuade him. “Ouch! See, even your sister doesn’t like you’re bad behaviour!”
“I’ll not eat carrots! I hate ‘em!” replies a very obstinate Souken.
This suppertime drama jars the ears of the patriarch. He hisses to himself, as he sees his home become a circus for screaming children with deadly powers, and not-dead mothers with morning sickness and deadly powers, and unborn granddaughters with deadly powers.
He seethes at the normalcy of the situation and the way it offensively occurs in perfectly normal houses everyday. But now, it has eerily entered his perfectly unhappy house which reeks of dead people. This house is meant for silence and mourning only.
“Look at Daddy in that picture, dear. He’s smiling at you, so be nice and eat the carrots.”
That is the final straw. His son (that child who should have child-and whom he should have died for) was no longer alive. But to talk of him as a smiling, sentient being to make a child eat carrots? Ryuuken Ishida loved the memory of his heroic son too much to not take this as an insult.
“How dare you? My son is dead, nothing can bring him back! He died a hero’s death to save people, not to be belittled like this. You stupid girl, you are disgusting!” Ryuuken Ishida was passionately screaming from his heart, an organ he had probably never used till now.
“But Otou-san, I was only….”
Orihime’s protest is met by a sharp, stinging slap. A slap so hard that it bruises her cheek and makes her fall to the ground.
“You shall leave right now and never come back. And I’ll make sure that you or your children do not get a penny from me.”
Orihime rises silently. “Sou-chan, leave the room.” The frightened child scampers away from the tension-charged atmosphere, a half-eaten carrot in hand.
Then she looks at him, tears welling up in her eyes. “I loved your son from the bottom of my heart. You were the one who abandoned him. What do you know about grief? I have lost my whole family, thankfully my friends survived. These children are never going to see their father again, but I have to stay strong for them. I have to smile and remain smiling till I die. I do not expect people like you to understand human emotion.”
Ryuuken is shocked by these words. How dare she…?
“You abandoned Uryuu, and now you want to mourn him? You should realize what you are, Otou-san. I shall leave this house, in which you have created the impression that you loved your son. And yes, I don’t need a single penny from you.”
And just as she had thundered into his life, she thunders out, leaving him speechless and empty on his doorstep, all over again.
Finally the ghosts of the past and future are exorcised. But they have taken everything with them, leaving a helpless, heartbroken man behind.
*****
Two years later…
Ryuuken Ishida walks along unfamiliar mossy paths, and on unknown grass. He looks at the parents in the Children’s park, smiling, happy couples cavorting with their children. He feels out of place there, much older than anyone else and dressed in a business suit.
Suddenly he feels someone tugging at his pants. He sees a little girl, hardly two years old, playing with his trousers. With eyes like a woman he once loved and lost.
“Sou-chan, go get your sister, she’s troubling the nice gentleman there.” a familiar voice shouts.
“I’m playing, mama!!”
“Tch, okay now I have to get up...”
She stops in her tracks when she sees him. Her father-in-law.
“I’d like to have a talk with you.”
*****
“I work in Urahara-san’s shop now. He says I’m very popular with the male shinigami.”
“I imagine you would be.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“If you choose to accept it.”
“What brings you here?”
“I wanted to see my grandchildren, and have a chat with you.”
“You drove us out of your house, remember?”
“I’m truly sorry about that.”
Orihime was startled out of her wits. Ryuuken Ishida, apologizing to her?
“I know you’re surprised. I spent two years trying to rebuild my life. I realized what I had been and what I had become.”
“And then?”
“I came to reclaim my remaining family.”
There, he had done it. It had taken every effort to say this out loud. He had spent the better part of the last two years trying to realize what a monster he had become. He had wallowed so much in his own despair and pride, that he had forgotten everything else. He had destroyed his whole life. Whatever was left, he wanted it back.
“Do you really think of us as family now?”
“Yes. And I’d like you to come back and live with me.”
“I’ll think about tha…Sou-chan, I told you to look after her! Now she’s eating grass!”
As Orihime rushes towards her children, Ryuuken smiles. He sees her scolding Souken, and trying to pull grass out of the baby’s mouth. This is perfectly normal, and he can try and get used to this. No, he’s sure that he can get used to this. He will do it for his wife. His father. For his son.
Death leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. But sometimes, destruction of the world, gives a chance for something new, something better to be born.
For Death is the greatest mother, and the greatest teacher.