FanFiction - Hers and His and Mine and Ours. [IchiHime]
Alright, I know I said drabbles, but I'm lazy and posting something I wrote a long time ago. :3 Enjoy!
TITLE: Hers and His and Mine and Ours.
AUTHOR: lovely-zombie
PAIRING: Ichigo and Orihime.
RATING: PG.
WORD COUNT: 3073 words.
SUMMARY: Together they share one memory and it resides upon her mantlepiece.
NOTES: Alright, well, this is a piece I wrote for my Creative Writing Project last year. The style is somewhat strange and I don't really mention names too much. The idea is based off the Enraku/Kurosaki Clinic fan theory I read over at the Bleach forums. It's pretty nifty and very possible, if you ask me. /grins
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kubo Tite's Bleach and I sincerely doubt I ever will.
HERS AND HIS AND MINE AND OURS.
BY GEORGIA.
The hazel eyes, they remember.
They remember the crashing thunder and the crimson trickles and the brave boy with a shock of ginger spikes.
The grey eyes, they remember.
They remember the bitter winds and the piercing screams and the trembling girl with porcelain skin.
Together they share one memory.
It resides limply on her mantelpiece and no longer on his. Its tawny and stuffed and furred limbs are worn and stained and its button eyes are glossy and scratched and small. It sits softly amongst her most cherished possessions - a framed photograph of her brother and a little gold box and two sapphire hairpins. Things that are not to be forgotten.
And she forgets oh so many things.
Forgets to pack her lunch, forgets to grab her keys, forgets the feel of her mothers’ face or the shape of her fathers’ smile. But never has she forgotten those that dwell upon her mantel, as the dust and moths and webs of silk might tell you. She can’t forget and she wouldn’t forget.
And never will she.
*
The rain is pouring.
It’s spilling down on a town blanketed by night, a town that is riddled with sleep and dreams and peace. But then the sirens awaken. They wail mournfully through the cold, quiet streets and in an instant, her life changes. Bursts of red and blue hover and fade into the downpour and a ghostly white van seems to glow through the dense mist, a scarlet cross slashed against the side. It seems to be grinning.
She is crying.
Her heart stings and pounds and shatters. Desperately, she clings to a metal bar that is blocking her brothers’ grey hand from her own as her pained cries curl through the sirens; both are begging him not to leave. His body drifts slowly by her, resting calmly on a bed of white, and dissolves into the warm glow that gushes from the door.
She wants to follow, but can’t move her feet.
Drops of rain slip down her cheeks and fuse with pearly tears, obscuring their origins, disguising them well. The sirens’ are slowly dying; their bleak moans are being dragged back into the silence that seems to be screaming. Eyes squeezed shut; she prays she’ll wake up soon. The strange building before her stands sombre in the downpour, the door now shut to her. Yet like the persistent wedges of sunlight that erupt through the heaviest of clouds, the windows hum with a pure, loving glow that seems to summon, and that wants to soothe.
But her eyes won’t open.
The despair is almost unbearable. It strangles and twists and bites within, like a thick and terrible snake, coil after coil of guilt and disbelief and anguish burden her chest and she wishes she could just see him again, smiling. The winds’ howling rolls across the drowsy city and stoops and weaves amongst the buildings like unseen shadows, like a thousand shreds of pallid ribbon. The bitter gusts tease her auburn hair, tugging and tossing and snatching, trying to wrench it from her head.
And she’s back there.
Back in fresh memories, back on the stone cold tiles, lying bleeding and crumpled and trembling beneath the long legged girls with scissors and fists and rolled-up sleeves. They’re sneering and spitting and sniggering as their razor-sharp envy slashes and shreds and slits. Coppery clumps dangle and fall and spin around her in jagged strands and unwelcome yet unstoppable tears of humiliation glaze and bubble and spill from her eyes. She wishes she could sink through the earth, and just disappear. The girls take their leave, sharing a round of swift high-fives and nasty giggles and they just leave her there to sob silently, encased in bruises and scissors and straggled shards of chestnut.
The heavens cry on.
The rain reminds her of just how far she has fallen and washes her back to the present. But she doesn’t know where she’d rather be. Lost in her horrifying conscience or in the terrorizing reality. Escaping both is exhausting and agonizing and worthless, but she’ll try again and again and again and she doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t want to understand and trusts she never will.
Time is a healer.
*
He blinks.
The curtain creases and wavers and cracks as two silver eyes stare through the heavy fabric and misty rain; they’re drawn to her like a moth to the dying flame, like a bee to the viscous honey. He’s watched her since his father and the others rushed by, all white coats and stethoscopes and scowls, breathless and shouting and urging someone to stay with them. Just like that little girl standing in the rain had screamed. The thunder’s roaring and lightning fractures the dark sky. And yet she stands perfectly still. Seems flawlessly pure. He can see her perfectly; her tears and her hands and her goose bumped skin. He can see her splintered heart, what remains of it. To him, she’s like an angel shattered, like a ballerina broken.
A bundle of furred limbs dangle from his hand.
Worn by love and despair and trips into space, the bear is his most cherished belonging. One is never far behind the other. The soft paw, his young hand, and all they need is a box of golden sand or a gutter flooded or giant willow tree and their escapades begin. The bear is precious to him; it’s a warm hug, a best friend and a gentle reminder. He’s watching the girl in the darkness of the clinic, the sign declares; after hours. He sees her standing, staring. Drenched and trembling and alone in a harsh night that seems only to drag itself through time and his hand curls tighter around the paw of his teddy.
He knows it too.
He is twelve. Yet knows the agony of loss, the confusion of death, the empty grief that ensues like an unsettled spirit. Watching her stumble and shiver and sob is like he’s staring into a mirror made from glass of his past and is shattered by heartache and horror. He’s watching her and himself through that the clinic window. He recognises the muted screaming and thrashing emotions and that blank and empty mask of paralysis. Behind him, hope is fading fast on the steel and sterile surgical table. His clenched hands begin to sting, white and rigid and shuddering. He wants to hold her. He wants to tell her the pain passes. He wants to whisper that she need not be scared. But he does not know the girl. And she may have seen him at the park once.
And yet they’re closer than most.
Tethered together by tragedy, they share the lonely beat of a fractured heart. Both have lost the most adored thing in their lives, both have had their worlds' crushed in a single moment. She will blame herself and he will accuse others and both hate the departed for leaving them behind. Both too young, both too fragile, both now unimpressionable, they struggle to grasp the concept of death and they will question god and heaven and morality. He will pray and she will beg for forgiveness and both will curse and slander and smear what they can’t see and touch and comprehend. He is twelve and she is twelve and both have lived lives of sixty years.
They try again.
A clash of words and grunts and shouts rumble from his father's room of white and red and hope and the boy falls from his muses. A blood red light burns and flickers and blinks atop his father’s doors of life and death. Of will and won’t. Of bliss and misery. The light, bright, means there’s hope, his dad once said. The boy thinks it more like a monster’s eye. The waiting room is tangled in silence’s thick and knotted and webbed fingers, a grip only loosened by the sounds of his father’s determination and frustration and condensation. He’s trying to save the man that flew by in a flurry of white sheets and lucid tubes and red stains. He’s trying to save the man that little girl loves. Trying to bring him back for her. They think she needs him the most. But really they have no idea.
The handle is cold to touch.
The waiting. The watching. He hates it. Can’t stand it. The blatant truth and the sweetened denial and looming sorrow. The boy’s back there now; back in that erratic frame of mind and back amongst the mass of murky memories. He needs to go. Her needs to talk to her. Longs to feel her silken skin and warm breath against his cold face. He steals a final glimpse of the broken girl, a battle between reason and impulse raging within him and he leaves the clinic, slips out the back way. The rain is heavy, plummeting to earth, splattering on his flesh and fabric, slipping down the curve of his neck and the dip in his chest and the slant in his nose. His feet are soft and wet and numb, turbid water bleeding through his ragged sneakers and threadbare socks, puddles of dappled black and grey bursting on impact, colliding with soles of worn rubber. His hair like wildfire and his blazing cheeks smoulder fiercely through the mist. He’s walking swiftly, mechanical strides, hands shoved and buried into the depths of his lint and lined pockets. Eyes wide open; he often wishes he were dead.
Like his mind, it’s teeming with excess.
The river rushes and swerves and gushes on and never once does it look back. Like a giant’s belt of black and polished pelt, it snakes and bends and meanders across the landscape. Thinking of nothing, caring for no one. Its glassy surface is milky with the faded moonlight and peppered and pocked with a thousand rounds of frozen bullets. Standing on the split and cracked concrete wall, drops of silver caught in his lashes, he realises how much he hates this place. The banks and the bridge and the grass, he detests it all. Slimy from the onslaught of drizzle and mud and fog, the place is comatose and washed-out. And yet, he is drawn there. It’s the place he loathes most and it’s the place he knows best and the place his loved lost.
It’s her turn.
His reflection sways and jerks and wobbles in the river’s mysterious and eternal face. A grave sigh of defeat and his eyes fold shut. At once, mixed memories flash and flood and fill up his mind. He sees her there, his mother, in her tresses of gold and her skin of cream and wearing that smile that would melt an iceberg and light up, even, the darkest of nights. She is standing there against a sky of silver bright and beside a gentle river of crystal blue. Skin, smooth and fair like fine china, her arms are wide open. Ready to embrace and to love and to stay. Whispers. My darling...
In an instant, it all changes.
Screams. The warmth and the love and the heavenly glow, it’s gone in a flutter of black, a surge of cold and a burst of angst. He stands frozen and bewildered, smothered in yellow plastic and drenched to the bone and clutching a fat teddy bear. Rain has broke free from the dense and clotted clouds above. It all happened too fast and it’s much too dark and he is far too young. He whimpers and cries out, turning slowly in his boots of yellow gum. He stops. A smudge of gold and white and green caught his eye and he trundles over, slipping and unsteady in the mud, the smear of colour focusing and sharpening into a figure that makes his little heart stop. Mummy... Lifeless and still with a mass of soggy blonde splashed and coiled and splayed around her face, his mother's misted eyes gaze off into a place unknown. A crimson ooze trickles across her brow of grey and pools beneath her temple and streaks like veins through her hair. He stumbles and falls and clutches and clings... Mummy! Suddenly it’s cold and the boy, he can’t see a thing. She can though, that little girl. And she screams.
She watched him fall.
A blink of truth is all it takes. She smashes through the inert box that horror built around her, and her feet pound in rhythm with her racing pulse. She trips up and skids along and then snatches back her balance. Breathless as her eyes frantically flicker across the violent canal, she’s sprinting towards the waters’ edge. Tears of pearl and rain like diamonds spill and scatter and slither off her cheeks. She had witnessed him crumple and watched him tumble and dissolve into the roiled river. It swallowed him up greedily and all at once, dragging him to a place where no one will ever look. She has never met the boy before and can’t remember exactly why she followed him through the haze and the cold. She reaches the lip of the river and stares into trembling herself. Staring down and she only just recognises herself. But she knows that she must save him.
Pain.
It’s like a relentless machine has ensnared him within its metal teeth and rusty cogs and screeching grinds, a symphony of thrashing and constricting and gnashing. He’s numb with fear and freeze and yet every pore and nerve and cell in his body is inflamed and flouncing and shrieking. A cluster of bubbles burst before his eyes, his mouth is gaping and raw and his ears are immersed in the feeble burble of his own screams. His stiff legs and rigid arms tear and slash and grasp at the dark and icy fate he has plunged to. His chest is taut with scorching agony. Look up. His hands, are they still upon his arms? Look up... His eyelids begin to fail and droop and slip into recession, and silver bright beckons him. Look up... A silhouette emerges beyond and something warm steals his wrist from the depths.
Look up!
A thousand daggers and knives and stakes of ice are driven into his skin and stomach and chest and lungs and face and heart. The bitter air flings itself against his tense skin. It gushes down his gaping mouth and collects in his lungs and it bullies gasps and dregs and groans out from his throat. The agony is welcome. The girl convulses and pants and stutters beside him. He turns shakily. They come nose-to-nose and eye-to-eye. And for a while tremble in one another’s fevered and broken breaths.
He doesn’t quite know why he does it.
It took some time and a bold eruption of strength, but they’re both standing now. Both shake upon rickety legs and share a ragged pulse. No words are said. They aren’t needed. Not just now. Instead their eyes and their hearts speak and sing and scream. They understand the intricate language; it’s one only descendants of torment and sorrow and shock can identify. No words, just a silence that says it all. His name is Ichigo. Hers is Orihime. They need someone, they've lost something. He steps forward, lips trembling and eyes wide and wraps her up into his arms. He’s found someone just like him. She doesn’t move much, just stirs to bury herself deeper into the comfort and safety and bliss that is his sopping chest. Her heart is hammering furiously in her chest, just like a drunken father against the door of his petrified child. His heartbeat is long-winded and soothing, just like the tales a sleepy father tells about a dragon named Bill or a lazy colleague they all call Jane. She looks up at him through her wet lashes and softly her hands drift across his back and cling to his sodden shoulder blades. She needs him close, this Ichigo. His head rests upon hers. That Orihime, she smells like ice and passion and salt. Together in the rain, she cries and he mumbles and somewhere off, in a distant room, that scarlet light above the doors, it expires.
The hope she held dies too.
A dejected man and an exhausted doctor and a father ridden with guilt that is not his, tells her. He leaves, wishing for liquid courage and a second try and one last night with his wife. The boy just holds the girl close in that waiting room, watching her cry and feeling her tremble and hearing her whimper. He doesn’t really know what to say or what he should to do, but what he’s done, that’s enough. He’s been there. He is holding her and knows what she is attempting to understand. He had no one to relate with, when his mother left his and his father’s and sister’s side. The boy had no one at all. No one except...
“Take him.”
She clutches the bear he cherishes most in the whole world and he doesn’t feel sad at all, letting him go. He smiles and knows the love will carry on between bear and being. She buries her face into its fuzz and let her hot tears trickle into its prickly belly. The bear, it says nothing at all and simply stares with glassy button eyes. They remain together throughout the night, hands entwined and hearts heavy with the same hurt, until her relatives come to take her away. She doesn’t want to leave him and she presses her face against the cold glassy window, the car leaving the boy to watch and wave and wonder what if. She cries and doesn’t stop for a long time. She has fallen in love with him. And he doesn’t know.
*
Sometimes they forget, the boy and the girl.
They forget exactly what happened that night. Blocked out by the agony enticed when thinking about it or perhaps they were just too young to understand. And sometimes the girl forgets who gave her the bear, though she remembers when she sees that crop of wildfire hair stride boldly past her. And the boy forgets he ever had one, though he remembers why when he hears her laugh and smile, so dazzling.
But those black eyes and the river wild and the rain that fell from the heavens.
Oh they will remember - how just a young love blossomed even in the darkest of times.
*
/cheesy
TITLE: Hers and His and Mine and Ours.
AUTHOR: lovely-zombie
PAIRING: Ichigo and Orihime.
RATING: PG.
WORD COUNT: 3073 words.
SUMMARY: Together they share one memory and it resides upon her mantlepiece.
NOTES: Alright, well, this is a piece I wrote for my Creative Writing Project last year. The style is somewhat strange and I don't really mention names too much. The idea is based off the Enraku/Kurosaki Clinic fan theory I read over at the Bleach forums. It's pretty nifty and very possible, if you ask me. /grins
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kubo Tite's Bleach and I sincerely doubt I ever will.
HERS AND HIS AND MINE AND OURS.
BY GEORGIA.
The hazel eyes, they remember.
They remember the crashing thunder and the crimson trickles and the brave boy with a shock of ginger spikes.
The grey eyes, they remember.
They remember the bitter winds and the piercing screams and the trembling girl with porcelain skin.
Together they share one memory.
It resides limply on her mantelpiece and no longer on his. Its tawny and stuffed and furred limbs are worn and stained and its button eyes are glossy and scratched and small. It sits softly amongst her most cherished possessions - a framed photograph of her brother and a little gold box and two sapphire hairpins. Things that are not to be forgotten.
And she forgets oh so many things.
Forgets to pack her lunch, forgets to grab her keys, forgets the feel of her mothers’ face or the shape of her fathers’ smile. But never has she forgotten those that dwell upon her mantel, as the dust and moths and webs of silk might tell you. She can’t forget and she wouldn’t forget.
And never will she.
*
The rain is pouring.
It’s spilling down on a town blanketed by night, a town that is riddled with sleep and dreams and peace. But then the sirens awaken. They wail mournfully through the cold, quiet streets and in an instant, her life changes. Bursts of red and blue hover and fade into the downpour and a ghostly white van seems to glow through the dense mist, a scarlet cross slashed against the side. It seems to be grinning.
She is crying.
Her heart stings and pounds and shatters. Desperately, she clings to a metal bar that is blocking her brothers’ grey hand from her own as her pained cries curl through the sirens; both are begging him not to leave. His body drifts slowly by her, resting calmly on a bed of white, and dissolves into the warm glow that gushes from the door.
She wants to follow, but can’t move her feet.
Drops of rain slip down her cheeks and fuse with pearly tears, obscuring their origins, disguising them well. The sirens’ are slowly dying; their bleak moans are being dragged back into the silence that seems to be screaming. Eyes squeezed shut; she prays she’ll wake up soon. The strange building before her stands sombre in the downpour, the door now shut to her. Yet like the persistent wedges of sunlight that erupt through the heaviest of clouds, the windows hum with a pure, loving glow that seems to summon, and that wants to soothe.
But her eyes won’t open.
The despair is almost unbearable. It strangles and twists and bites within, like a thick and terrible snake, coil after coil of guilt and disbelief and anguish burden her chest and she wishes she could just see him again, smiling. The winds’ howling rolls across the drowsy city and stoops and weaves amongst the buildings like unseen shadows, like a thousand shreds of pallid ribbon. The bitter gusts tease her auburn hair, tugging and tossing and snatching, trying to wrench it from her head.
And she’s back there.
Back in fresh memories, back on the stone cold tiles, lying bleeding and crumpled and trembling beneath the long legged girls with scissors and fists and rolled-up sleeves. They’re sneering and spitting and sniggering as their razor-sharp envy slashes and shreds and slits. Coppery clumps dangle and fall and spin around her in jagged strands and unwelcome yet unstoppable tears of humiliation glaze and bubble and spill from her eyes. She wishes she could sink through the earth, and just disappear. The girls take their leave, sharing a round of swift high-fives and nasty giggles and they just leave her there to sob silently, encased in bruises and scissors and straggled shards of chestnut.
The heavens cry on.
The rain reminds her of just how far she has fallen and washes her back to the present. But she doesn’t know where she’d rather be. Lost in her horrifying conscience or in the terrorizing reality. Escaping both is exhausting and agonizing and worthless, but she’ll try again and again and again and she doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t want to understand and trusts she never will.
Time is a healer.
*
He blinks.
The curtain creases and wavers and cracks as two silver eyes stare through the heavy fabric and misty rain; they’re drawn to her like a moth to the dying flame, like a bee to the viscous honey. He’s watched her since his father and the others rushed by, all white coats and stethoscopes and scowls, breathless and shouting and urging someone to stay with them. Just like that little girl standing in the rain had screamed. The thunder’s roaring and lightning fractures the dark sky. And yet she stands perfectly still. Seems flawlessly pure. He can see her perfectly; her tears and her hands and her goose bumped skin. He can see her splintered heart, what remains of it. To him, she’s like an angel shattered, like a ballerina broken.
A bundle of furred limbs dangle from his hand.
Worn by love and despair and trips into space, the bear is his most cherished belonging. One is never far behind the other. The soft paw, his young hand, and all they need is a box of golden sand or a gutter flooded or giant willow tree and their escapades begin. The bear is precious to him; it’s a warm hug, a best friend and a gentle reminder. He’s watching the girl in the darkness of the clinic, the sign declares; after hours. He sees her standing, staring. Drenched and trembling and alone in a harsh night that seems only to drag itself through time and his hand curls tighter around the paw of his teddy.
He knows it too.
He is twelve. Yet knows the agony of loss, the confusion of death, the empty grief that ensues like an unsettled spirit. Watching her stumble and shiver and sob is like he’s staring into a mirror made from glass of his past and is shattered by heartache and horror. He’s watching her and himself through that the clinic window. He recognises the muted screaming and thrashing emotions and that blank and empty mask of paralysis. Behind him, hope is fading fast on the steel and sterile surgical table. His clenched hands begin to sting, white and rigid and shuddering. He wants to hold her. He wants to tell her the pain passes. He wants to whisper that she need not be scared. But he does not know the girl. And she may have seen him at the park once.
And yet they’re closer than most.
Tethered together by tragedy, they share the lonely beat of a fractured heart. Both have lost the most adored thing in their lives, both have had their worlds' crushed in a single moment. She will blame herself and he will accuse others and both hate the departed for leaving them behind. Both too young, both too fragile, both now unimpressionable, they struggle to grasp the concept of death and they will question god and heaven and morality. He will pray and she will beg for forgiveness and both will curse and slander and smear what they can’t see and touch and comprehend. He is twelve and she is twelve and both have lived lives of sixty years.
They try again.
A clash of words and grunts and shouts rumble from his father's room of white and red and hope and the boy falls from his muses. A blood red light burns and flickers and blinks atop his father’s doors of life and death. Of will and won’t. Of bliss and misery. The light, bright, means there’s hope, his dad once said. The boy thinks it more like a monster’s eye. The waiting room is tangled in silence’s thick and knotted and webbed fingers, a grip only loosened by the sounds of his father’s determination and frustration and condensation. He’s trying to save the man that flew by in a flurry of white sheets and lucid tubes and red stains. He’s trying to save the man that little girl loves. Trying to bring him back for her. They think she needs him the most. But really they have no idea.
The handle is cold to touch.
The waiting. The watching. He hates it. Can’t stand it. The blatant truth and the sweetened denial and looming sorrow. The boy’s back there now; back in that erratic frame of mind and back amongst the mass of murky memories. He needs to go. Her needs to talk to her. Longs to feel her silken skin and warm breath against his cold face. He steals a final glimpse of the broken girl, a battle between reason and impulse raging within him and he leaves the clinic, slips out the back way. The rain is heavy, plummeting to earth, splattering on his flesh and fabric, slipping down the curve of his neck and the dip in his chest and the slant in his nose. His feet are soft and wet and numb, turbid water bleeding through his ragged sneakers and threadbare socks, puddles of dappled black and grey bursting on impact, colliding with soles of worn rubber. His hair like wildfire and his blazing cheeks smoulder fiercely through the mist. He’s walking swiftly, mechanical strides, hands shoved and buried into the depths of his lint and lined pockets. Eyes wide open; he often wishes he were dead.
Like his mind, it’s teeming with excess.
The river rushes and swerves and gushes on and never once does it look back. Like a giant’s belt of black and polished pelt, it snakes and bends and meanders across the landscape. Thinking of nothing, caring for no one. Its glassy surface is milky with the faded moonlight and peppered and pocked with a thousand rounds of frozen bullets. Standing on the split and cracked concrete wall, drops of silver caught in his lashes, he realises how much he hates this place. The banks and the bridge and the grass, he detests it all. Slimy from the onslaught of drizzle and mud and fog, the place is comatose and washed-out. And yet, he is drawn there. It’s the place he loathes most and it’s the place he knows best and the place his loved lost.
It’s her turn.
His reflection sways and jerks and wobbles in the river’s mysterious and eternal face. A grave sigh of defeat and his eyes fold shut. At once, mixed memories flash and flood and fill up his mind. He sees her there, his mother, in her tresses of gold and her skin of cream and wearing that smile that would melt an iceberg and light up, even, the darkest of nights. She is standing there against a sky of silver bright and beside a gentle river of crystal blue. Skin, smooth and fair like fine china, her arms are wide open. Ready to embrace and to love and to stay. Whispers. My darling...
In an instant, it all changes.
Screams. The warmth and the love and the heavenly glow, it’s gone in a flutter of black, a surge of cold and a burst of angst. He stands frozen and bewildered, smothered in yellow plastic and drenched to the bone and clutching a fat teddy bear. Rain has broke free from the dense and clotted clouds above. It all happened too fast and it’s much too dark and he is far too young. He whimpers and cries out, turning slowly in his boots of yellow gum. He stops. A smudge of gold and white and green caught his eye and he trundles over, slipping and unsteady in the mud, the smear of colour focusing and sharpening into a figure that makes his little heart stop. Mummy... Lifeless and still with a mass of soggy blonde splashed and coiled and splayed around her face, his mother's misted eyes gaze off into a place unknown. A crimson ooze trickles across her brow of grey and pools beneath her temple and streaks like veins through her hair. He stumbles and falls and clutches and clings... Mummy! Suddenly it’s cold and the boy, he can’t see a thing. She can though, that little girl. And she screams.
She watched him fall.
A blink of truth is all it takes. She smashes through the inert box that horror built around her, and her feet pound in rhythm with her racing pulse. She trips up and skids along and then snatches back her balance. Breathless as her eyes frantically flicker across the violent canal, she’s sprinting towards the waters’ edge. Tears of pearl and rain like diamonds spill and scatter and slither off her cheeks. She had witnessed him crumple and watched him tumble and dissolve into the roiled river. It swallowed him up greedily and all at once, dragging him to a place where no one will ever look. She has never met the boy before and can’t remember exactly why she followed him through the haze and the cold. She reaches the lip of the river and stares into trembling herself. Staring down and she only just recognises herself. But she knows that she must save him.
Pain.
It’s like a relentless machine has ensnared him within its metal teeth and rusty cogs and screeching grinds, a symphony of thrashing and constricting and gnashing. He’s numb with fear and freeze and yet every pore and nerve and cell in his body is inflamed and flouncing and shrieking. A cluster of bubbles burst before his eyes, his mouth is gaping and raw and his ears are immersed in the feeble burble of his own screams. His stiff legs and rigid arms tear and slash and grasp at the dark and icy fate he has plunged to. His chest is taut with scorching agony. Look up. His hands, are they still upon his arms? Look up... His eyelids begin to fail and droop and slip into recession, and silver bright beckons him. Look up... A silhouette emerges beyond and something warm steals his wrist from the depths.
Look up!
A thousand daggers and knives and stakes of ice are driven into his skin and stomach and chest and lungs and face and heart. The bitter air flings itself against his tense skin. It gushes down his gaping mouth and collects in his lungs and it bullies gasps and dregs and groans out from his throat. The agony is welcome. The girl convulses and pants and stutters beside him. He turns shakily. They come nose-to-nose and eye-to-eye. And for a while tremble in one another’s fevered and broken breaths.
He doesn’t quite know why he does it.
It took some time and a bold eruption of strength, but they’re both standing now. Both shake upon rickety legs and share a ragged pulse. No words are said. They aren’t needed. Not just now. Instead their eyes and their hearts speak and sing and scream. They understand the intricate language; it’s one only descendants of torment and sorrow and shock can identify. No words, just a silence that says it all. His name is Ichigo. Hers is Orihime. They need someone, they've lost something. He steps forward, lips trembling and eyes wide and wraps her up into his arms. He’s found someone just like him. She doesn’t move much, just stirs to bury herself deeper into the comfort and safety and bliss that is his sopping chest. Her heart is hammering furiously in her chest, just like a drunken father against the door of his petrified child. His heartbeat is long-winded and soothing, just like the tales a sleepy father tells about a dragon named Bill or a lazy colleague they all call Jane. She looks up at him through her wet lashes and softly her hands drift across his back and cling to his sodden shoulder blades. She needs him close, this Ichigo. His head rests upon hers. That Orihime, she smells like ice and passion and salt. Together in the rain, she cries and he mumbles and somewhere off, in a distant room, that scarlet light above the doors, it expires.
The hope she held dies too.
A dejected man and an exhausted doctor and a father ridden with guilt that is not his, tells her. He leaves, wishing for liquid courage and a second try and one last night with his wife. The boy just holds the girl close in that waiting room, watching her cry and feeling her tremble and hearing her whimper. He doesn’t really know what to say or what he should to do, but what he’s done, that’s enough. He’s been there. He is holding her and knows what she is attempting to understand. He had no one to relate with, when his mother left his and his father’s and sister’s side. The boy had no one at all. No one except...
“Take him.”
She clutches the bear he cherishes most in the whole world and he doesn’t feel sad at all, letting him go. He smiles and knows the love will carry on between bear and being. She buries her face into its fuzz and let her hot tears trickle into its prickly belly. The bear, it says nothing at all and simply stares with glassy button eyes. They remain together throughout the night, hands entwined and hearts heavy with the same hurt, until her relatives come to take her away. She doesn’t want to leave him and she presses her face against the cold glassy window, the car leaving the boy to watch and wave and wonder what if. She cries and doesn’t stop for a long time. She has fallen in love with him. And he doesn’t know.
*
Sometimes they forget, the boy and the girl.
They forget exactly what happened that night. Blocked out by the agony enticed when thinking about it or perhaps they were just too young to understand. And sometimes the girl forgets who gave her the bear, though she remembers when she sees that crop of wildfire hair stride boldly past her. And the boy forgets he ever had one, though he remembers why when he hears her laugh and smile, so dazzling.
But those black eyes and the river wild and the rain that fell from the heavens.
Oh they will remember - how just a young love blossomed even in the darkest of times.
*
/cheesy