Challenge 14: Weekly Quick Fic 5
Title: What You Once Were
Prompt: Marriage without love, "Don't rescue me. I like the saltwater sting.," "Love is louder than the pressure to be perfect."
Bonus? Y
Word Count: 909
Rating: T
Original/Fandom: Bleach
Pairings (if any): Aizen/Orihime, Ichigo/Orihime
Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con etc): past character death, depression
Summary: Once, you were a girl called Orihime in love with a boy called Kurosaki. Now, you have nothing but a hole in your chest and the memories of what once was. You cannot feel, but you are perfect. And maybe, that's not enough.
To say that you are marrying Aizen out of love would be the biggest lie of them all. You are marrying him out of obligation, out of an obligation to save the people of Karakura Town because it is marriage to him or the destruction of your home, and you have let enough people die. The sight and the sound and the scent and the taste of Kurosaki’s death follows you everywhere, but it does not haunt you because you have accepted it into your life. It is your penance to have it follow you everywhere, forever. It is fitting that the cracking of knuckles sounds like his body breaking against the ground, and that every bite of food you take tastes like death and dust not some culinary masterpiece. The fetid scent of him decaying in the desert is the only thing that you can smell, and while you are sure the perfume that is being sprayed onto you is sweetly scented, you are also sure it does smell like the sweetness of a rotting body.
Everywhere you look, you can see the boy you loved. Even now, as you watch them prepare you for your wedding, it Kurosaki that you really see, standing over your shoulder and frowning as you are laced into the white gown. You half expect a red stain to explode onto the fabric, staining the colorless, lifeless gown with the evidence of your own death. Because, when Kurosaki fell off that tower, your heart was ripped out of your chest and fell with him. You are sure that if you return to that place, mixed in with the remnants of him will be your heart, struggling to survive in the wasteland.
It is failing to survive.
Or maybe not. There are some who survive without hearts, and maybe the jagged hole in your chest is just your own hollow hole. Without your heart though, you have ceased to be the girl known as Orihime Inoue and become someone else. You are not sure who, and you are not sure what, but you are more perfect than Orihime ever was.
Orihime had been in love with life and with a boy who had found some greater purpose to follow, and she had followed him in fulfilling that purpose, no matter how foolish she may have been in doing so. Maybe, if she had just stayed home and never dreamed of something greater, none of this would have happened. But, Orihime was flawed and human, and no matter how much she wished she was perfect for the boy she loved, she never could be, and she accepted that because she loved him more than she hated her flaws even though everyday she wished they would disappear and she could become something greater for him.
But Orihime was human because she could feel, and she was flawed because she could feel. You cannot feel, and you are not flawed, and maybe you are not human. You can remember the way you loved Kurosaki, the way Orihime loved Kurosaki; it was bright and vibrant, like the sun was sitting in your chest, but every day the memory of that feeling fades just a little bit. Now, the only thing you can feel is the hurt that flares whenever your salty tears drip into the open wound where your heart once lived, but even that feeling is fading because you are training yourself not to cry, and you are eliminating that hurt.
You will be a perfect bride for Aizen, and Aizen will not want a crying bride; he will want a smiling one. When you practice your smile in the mirror, you think it almost looks real, they say you so beautiful and happy, but you know it is fake, and the Kurosaki who watches you in the mirror frowns more than he ever did in life.
Aizen will know that it is fake as well. He is a master of illusions, and he will see through yours, but you will practice it until it is perfect, until you believe that you love him, and he believes the same.
Because Kurosaki is dead, and your heart is dead, and that girl Orihime is dead too, even though everyone still calls you by her name. You cannot feel, and you cannot love, and you are not sure what you are living for except for a promise you made to yourself when you were still Orihime that you would not let anyone else die, and you are not sure that is enough.
But you can remember the time when Aizen told Orihime to smile, and how much she wanted to follow that order then even though she didn’t, but if he told you to, you would, and if he told you to love him, maybe you could.
You smile again, and Kurosaki frowns still. Maybe it is him that you really need to convince, but you are sure that you will never be able to because maybe he is all that is left of Orihime. You keep smiling though, and you almost look happy this time, and Kurosaki wavers for just a second.
You are not marrying Aizen for love, but you would be lying if you did not say that you were not planning on tricking yourself into falling in love with him. Because, maybe if you pretend to love him, you can pretend to be Orihime again.
Prompt: Marriage without love, "Don't rescue me. I like the saltwater sting.," "Love is louder than the pressure to be perfect."
Bonus? Y
Word Count: 909
Rating: T
Original/Fandom: Bleach
Pairings (if any): Aizen/Orihime, Ichigo/Orihime
Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con etc): past character death, depression
Summary: Once, you were a girl called Orihime in love with a boy called Kurosaki. Now, you have nothing but a hole in your chest and the memories of what once was. You cannot feel, but you are perfect. And maybe, that's not enough.
To say that you are marrying Aizen out of love would be the biggest lie of them all. You are marrying him out of obligation, out of an obligation to save the people of Karakura Town because it is marriage to him or the destruction of your home, and you have let enough people die. The sight and the sound and the scent and the taste of Kurosaki’s death follows you everywhere, but it does not haunt you because you have accepted it into your life. It is your penance to have it follow you everywhere, forever. It is fitting that the cracking of knuckles sounds like his body breaking against the ground, and that every bite of food you take tastes like death and dust not some culinary masterpiece. The fetid scent of him decaying in the desert is the only thing that you can smell, and while you are sure the perfume that is being sprayed onto you is sweetly scented, you are also sure it does smell like the sweetness of a rotting body.
Everywhere you look, you can see the boy you loved. Even now, as you watch them prepare you for your wedding, it Kurosaki that you really see, standing over your shoulder and frowning as you are laced into the white gown. You half expect a red stain to explode onto the fabric, staining the colorless, lifeless gown with the evidence of your own death. Because, when Kurosaki fell off that tower, your heart was ripped out of your chest and fell with him. You are sure that if you return to that place, mixed in with the remnants of him will be your heart, struggling to survive in the wasteland.
It is failing to survive.
Or maybe not. There are some who survive without hearts, and maybe the jagged hole in your chest is just your own hollow hole. Without your heart though, you have ceased to be the girl known as Orihime Inoue and become someone else. You are not sure who, and you are not sure what, but you are more perfect than Orihime ever was.
Orihime had been in love with life and with a boy who had found some greater purpose to follow, and she had followed him in fulfilling that purpose, no matter how foolish she may have been in doing so. Maybe, if she had just stayed home and never dreamed of something greater, none of this would have happened. But, Orihime was flawed and human, and no matter how much she wished she was perfect for the boy she loved, she never could be, and she accepted that because she loved him more than she hated her flaws even though everyday she wished they would disappear and she could become something greater for him.
But Orihime was human because she could feel, and she was flawed because she could feel. You cannot feel, and you are not flawed, and maybe you are not human. You can remember the way you loved Kurosaki, the way Orihime loved Kurosaki; it was bright and vibrant, like the sun was sitting in your chest, but every day the memory of that feeling fades just a little bit. Now, the only thing you can feel is the hurt that flares whenever your salty tears drip into the open wound where your heart once lived, but even that feeling is fading because you are training yourself not to cry, and you are eliminating that hurt.
You will be a perfect bride for Aizen, and Aizen will not want a crying bride; he will want a smiling one. When you practice your smile in the mirror, you think it almost looks real, they say you so beautiful and happy, but you know it is fake, and the Kurosaki who watches you in the mirror frowns more than he ever did in life.
Aizen will know that it is fake as well. He is a master of illusions, and he will see through yours, but you will practice it until it is perfect, until you believe that you love him, and he believes the same.
Because Kurosaki is dead, and your heart is dead, and that girl Orihime is dead too, even though everyone still calls you by her name. You cannot feel, and you cannot love, and you are not sure what you are living for except for a promise you made to yourself when you were still Orihime that you would not let anyone else die, and you are not sure that is enough.
But you can remember the time when Aizen told Orihime to smile, and how much she wanted to follow that order then even though she didn’t, but if he told you to, you would, and if he told you to love him, maybe you could.
You smile again, and Kurosaki frowns still. Maybe it is him that you really need to convince, but you are sure that you will never be able to because maybe he is all that is left of Orihime. You keep smiling though, and you almost look happy this time, and Kurosaki wavers for just a second.
You are not marrying Aizen for love, but you would be lying if you did not say that you were not planning on tricking yourself into falling in love with him. Because, maybe if you pretend to love him, you can pretend to be Orihime again.