Fic: Toy Soldier
SOMEDAY this constant feedback cycle of story inspiration will slow down. But when it does, I'll get just as scared that it won't come back as I am now that it won't let me get work done. (Except that I am getting my work done. So I guess I just want to complain about something. Probably because I'm lazy by nature and being so steadily busy and productive is uncomfortable. But pleasantly so.)
La la la.
Before I get to this fic, which, sadly, breaks my current fic-cycle with Yma by not being a truly direct response to her last one, I have one commandment. I COMMAND THAT YOU READ HER FIC "REVOLUTION," NOW. Looooove. The extent of my love is documented in my comments (plural) there, which are almost as long as the fic. >_<
Also, vicarious_renji made an awesomely evocative wallpaper inspired by Monism. With a little quote from the fic in the bottom left! I feel so -- so -- inspirational and stuff! Man, this is cool. ^_^.
Anyway, here's a positive little Kon ficlet for everyone who made it through the trauma of the -isms with me. ^_^. This could be Ichigo/Rukia if you squint funny, but it's also Kon/Rukia and Kon/Ichigo in a way. This is all that I wished I could say about Kon in Pluralism, but sacrificed for the sake of a sex scene. *is shamed* NOT the same fic-verse as the -isms and Soft Rains, if only because of the teeny detail that in Pluralism, Kon tells Ichigo he occupied a few bodies before he was recalled. In this one, he didn't.
Title: Toy Soldier
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Bleach
Character(s): Kon, Rukia, Urahara, Ichigo
Rating: PG
Summary: No one expected Kon to be a permanent fixture in their lives, least of all Kon himself; but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Author's Notes: *sigh* Something positive for a change. Cleared my brain out nicely. Much love for Kon! (Also, first person makes me twitch. I’m forcing myself to practice it, as well as playing with sensory perception -- writing a scene with no sense to rely on but hearing was HARD!)
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Toy Soldier
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Rukia took me to Urahara’s shop a couple of weeks after she and Ichigo rescued me from recall and extermination. I didn’t know where we were going at first; she didn’t tell me anything, just picked me up while I was lying there watching clouds float past Ichigo’s window and pulled me out of the doll without a word. She put me in her breast pocket. I couldn’t make a joke about it, and that was probably why she’d ditched the doll first thing.
I hated being a pill. The doll wasn’t much to write home about, but I was getting used to it -- fond of it, maybe, in a twisted Stockholm-y sort of way. (I’d been reading Ichigo’s textbooks because I was bored.) But let no one who has never been trapped inside an inanimate object tell you it’s fun. Dumb, blind and paralyzed, I couldn’t question where Rukia was taking me. I couldn’t protest.
But I could hear. It was my last and greatest refuge, sound. I liked to listen to Ichigo’s music when he was away from home, though it had taken me a while to work out a way to poke the buttons on his CD player with a twisted paperclip, as the paws of the doll were too blunt and soft to do precision work like separating stop from play. Ichigo didn’t know. I always put everything back like it was before he got home.
The walk was all noisy silence -- the occassional traffic sounds, the faint sigh of wind and the rustle of the fabric of Rukia’s clothes, her legs brushing together, her shoes crunching on gravel and padding on grass. Her heartbeat, close and thundering. Birds crying out overhead. If I’d had eyes, I would’ve closed them anyway, just to listen.
I guess I spaced out because the next thing I remember was the sound of a door sliding open and voices fading into reality that I hadn’t been listening to before. Those couple of kids in the shop -- the girl, who I was pretty sure was the one who had mistakenly sold me instead of the good merchandise, was talking. (I’d always love her for that little mishap, whatever punishment she might have caught for it later.)
“-chou just woke up, Kuchiki-sama, just this way...”
“No -sama, I’m just Rukia, please.”
“B-but... you’re a Kuchiki... sama...”
“No, that’s just my brother. It’s okay, Ururu, really, I just needed to see --”
“Aa, if it isn’t Kuchiki-san back again.” A yawn. Faint scritching, maybe a hand on the back of a neck, if I remembered that guy’s mannerisms right.
“Tenchou--”
“Thanks, Ururu, you can go on.” Shuffling footsteps leaving, and the door sliding shut again.
“What can I do you for?” I imagined a sleazy grin and wished I could smack that guy. I really, really didn’t like him. Never had, never would.
“I’m just prospecting this time, Urahara. I was going to ask, could you give me a price estimate on a new gigai?”
“For you?” If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought there was a hint of panic under his measured half-and-half combo of curiosity and concern.
“No, the soma fixers seem to be working fine for me.”
“Then could you give me some parameters to work with?”
“Male,” Rukia said. I perked up. What on earth was she talking about? “Young adult. An endurance model, not a fight-or-flight one. Something with some permanence to it.”
She -- what the hell was she asking for? Ichigo had a body. And why did she bring... me...
Ichigo had -- but I -- I didn’t --
No way. No. Freakin’. Way.
“Can I ask what this is about, Kuchiki-san?” Urahara’s tone was odd.
“No, not really.”
“A certain piece of disembodied merchandise you purchased a fortnight ago --”
“Would be absolutely none of your business, I think.”
A thump might have been the seedy shop-owner letting his cane slide down his arm as he raised his hands in defeat. That, or I might have been reading way too much into the sounds I was hearing. I’d gotten too reliant on sight in these couple of weeks.
“Well, Kuchiki-san, I’d say that kind of a gigai would cost you a pretty penny. You still got that much on you after all those soma fixers?”
“I didn’t say I wanted one, Urahara. I said I was prospecting. Just give me an estimate.”
They went into straight-up business mode from then on, but I couldn’t listen anymore anyway. Rukia was asking, not buying -- and she’d brought me. Why?
Because she wanted to break the idea to me, I guess.
I hadn’t thought of it before. A gigai. I was a soul... gigais didn’t have souls. I mean, I guess the reason it hadn’t occurred to me before was because I was technically a fugitive, and gigais were pure shinigami gadgets, stuff I didn’t need to mess with if I wanted to keep myself alive and undetected for a while longer. That, or I just plain hadn’t thought of being in any body other than Ichigo’s or the doll. I’d gotten used to both of them. And, like I said, probably more fond of them than was healthy.
Dead truth, I was scared.
Terrified, more like. I didn’t want to live on my own. A few hours in Ichigo’s hijacked body had taught me that I couldn’t barge into someone else’s life without warning, and a few miserable days exploring and eavesdropping in the Kurosaki household while I got used to the plush body had taught me that I was never going to get some of the things I wanted out of life. A family like Ichigo had, a home and friends, favorite foods and in-jokes and running conversations that probably started years ago and came up every now and then, sticking like a burr under the saddle of everyday routine.
Long-term memories.
I didn’t have anything like that, and I wasn’t ever going to. My life, as far as I was concerned, began with the first moment Ichigo had swallowed me and I’d been able to feel what it was like to be in control of myself, my life. To touch. To smell. To taste.
To see.
Blackness before, and blackness now. Truth be told, I just wanted to live in Ichigo’s room forever, pestering and being pestered, because it was comfortable. Because he’d seen something worth saving in me and had had a big enough spirit to share his life with me, even if he’d probably never say it that poetically. And maybe I loved him a little bit for it. I didn’t idolize him, that was for sure -- he was a stingy bastard and he made human mistakes. But that fondness, beneath my surface irritation... maybe that’s what it was. Love.
If I had a body, a real human body, with a heart that beat and blood that flowed and flesh that could crawl at a touch, what would I do with it? I’d have to become truly human. I’d have to find somewhere else to live. I wouldn’t have the freedom to touch Ichigo or Rukia or anyone else the way I could now. Maybe I could attend school with them, but... what did I know about human life? What did I know about making money to pay for tuition, or rent, or food? How could I survive around that many people, keeping a low profile all the time, being normal?
Normal. It was a concept I just couldn’t wrap my mind around.
Rukia and Urahara talked for a good quarter of an hour, but I was absorbed in my thoughts for a long while after she’d said her polite goodbyes and cuffed Jinta on the head on her way across the yard. But she didn’t go back to Ichigo’s house. I roused out of my thoughts a little when I realized she’d been walking way too long for that.
I wished I could ask her where we were going.
I guess she sat down on a bench then, by the rustle of her clothes and the creak of old wood. It sounded like there were more trees nearby -- wind in branches, falling leaves crunching. Did she take me to the park?
“Kon?”
What? I thought at her irritably. I can’t say anything. La dee damn da. Just talk already.
“Just... wanted to make sure you were listening,” she said, as if she’d realized her mistake. Her voice was low, but if there were people around they were probably giving her weird looks anyway. “I hope you are listening. I’m pretty sure you can hear like that.”
Get to the point.
“I just did that so you could hear it. I want you to think about it. You’d still need to be available to help Ichigo switch, but someday I’ll be able to work out a better method for getting him out-of-body. I can order more Soul Candy, the real kind this time. It’s risky, and you’d have to lay low of any shinigami who might recognize an unlicensed gigai or the reiatsu of a mod soul, because in their eyes you’d be a fugitive wearing stolen goods. But still... think about it as a possibility. For later.”
She sat there for a minute longer, in a silence that even I could tell was awkward. I tried to imagine her face, but no particular expression came to mind -- just the face I always saw when I thought of her, eyebrows raised in a state of perpetual curiosity or cool superiority or disbelief or tentative happiness. There was never a moment I didn’t want to reach up and brush that one stray lock of hair out from between her eyes just to see what her face looked like whole and uninterrupted. Radiant, probably. Like always.
I was kinda grateful I didn’t have to talk right then, to be honest. I mean, her thoughtfulness and sincerity had just increased my pathetic crush on her tenfold.
At some point she got up and started walking again. We went back to Ichigo’s house this time. Rukia climbed to his window instead of jumping, and I wondered if she’d been lying about the soma fixers, because she didn’t seem to be too comfortable with her body from the way she was acting.
I knew what soma fixers were because they’d been developed to help keep dead or soulless bodies from rejecting mod souls that tried to inhabit them. I’d never had to use them, though. I’d never gotten further than the instructional area before the use of mod souls was banned. That was why mod souls could hear even when they didn’t have any other senses -- to be briefed on their purpose for existing before being given bodies. I’d been told all about the things I would do when I was made into a whole being, and then I waited, and waited, and that time never came -- until I was informed that I was going to die without ever truly living, and the waiting took on a different tone, and continued in an eternity of silent nothing. Waiting for death.
“That was fast. Thought you said you’d be gone a while.”
Ichigo’s voice brought me back to the present from that cold, still place in my memory. Even though I knew I couldn’t feel and didn’t need to breathe, I wanted so badly to feel warmer and breathe easier that I almost thought I really did, just for a second. If I’d been in a body, that’s what I would have felt. I guess there was some comfort in being able to say that with absolute certainty, having experienced it.
“I found out all I needed to know,” said Rukia, probably with a shrug.
“Did you take Kon?”
“What makes you ask?”
I couldn’t guess at the nature of the sounds that followed, creakings and rustlings and a soft thump like a drawer being opened or closed. Maybe Ichigo had found the lifeless doll.
“Oh. Well, here.” Did she take me out of her pocket? I heard more than felt her fingernails tapping the thin shell of my pill form. “You can have him back if you want.”
“I dunno, I was enjoying the quiet for once.”
“I think he’ll be quiet for now.”
“Yeah? You do something to him?”
“Not really.”
“Not gonna tell me anything, are you?”
“No. But I think he’d like to be able to see again.”
“Eh. Okay, fine, give it.”
A couple of empty seconds later I felt -- felt -- my real senses returning, or what I’d come to think of as my real senses. I didn’t realize how badly being a pill again had affected me until I saw colors again. Color was something I had never experienced until a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t know how I’d ever lived without it. There was a kind of softness in my head that I knew was stuffing, because in Ichigo’s head there was a kind of heaviness that I guessed was bone and brain. I shifted my little arms, stretched my little legs (my legs). Ichigo was holding me and I could actually feel where his hand was touching my back, and I could smell the smell that was partly sweat and partly just him. I looked up.
“Yo, Kon,” he said, brown eyes staring at me in what might have been real concern or might have just been his usual facade of intensity. His brows were furrowed deeper than usual, anyway.
I blinked at him.
“What’s up with you?” he pressed.
Sometimes Ichigo took being oblivious to new heights. I realized right then that yeah, I did love the guy. As much as I loved Rukia, really, except I did kinda idolize Rukia a little. More than a little. (Plus, she’s hot.) Ichigo, on the other hand, I just wanted to protect and help and punch in the face, all at once. True love, that.
But in lieu of those things, I decided to let him get on with doing his homework. Rukia was right, I didn’t really have it in me to be loud right then; I wanted to drink in the colors and smells, and think. That was all.
“Hey,” I said finally. “I’m good. Can you put me down?” Ichigo was, in fact, staring closely at him, face only about a foot away from Kon’s.
Ichigo stared for a second longer, then shrugged and dropped Kon on the bed none-too-gently. “Whatever,” he said. “Whatever you did, Rukia, it sure shut him up.” This he said over his shoulder without looking, as Rukia had already headed over to the closet and opened the door to pull out her own backpack.
Rukia turned around, holding an armful of books, and smiled. I swear to everything that’s holy, she’s gorgeous when she smiles.
“I’m going to Inoue-san’s house for a study group,” she said innocently.
Ichigo grunted. “Don’t know why you’re actually doing schoolwork like you need to.”
“I have to keep my cover, you know that. Besides, it’ll be fun.”
“I think you’re enjoying it a little too much. I mean, who has fun at study groups? Honestly.”
“It’s because men don’t know how to have fun.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’ve never been in high school before, what do you know!”
“I’ll have you know I’ve lived in a dormitory! You don’t just become a shinigami without training for it! And all men act the same, so why should a mortal high school be any different from shinigami academy?”
“You can’t compare me to some dead guys back in that crazy Soul Society place of yours, you --”
I toddled down to the end of the bed while they were both ignoring me, flopping down onto the covers just far enough away from Ichigo’s feet that he couldn’t kick me across the room. I only halfway tuned out the friendly argument. It was like listening to the brother and sister I’d never had, or at least I liked to imagine that’s what it was like. It’s not like I would know.
But not knowing didn’t matter, somehow, because I had what I had and my life, exactly as it was now, was enough. The next time a Hollow popped up somewhere across town I’d get to occupy Ichigo’s body and eat his meals and run with his legs. And in the between times I’d be allowed to live in his room and listen to his music and look at his books and magazines. Always with someone to talk to. Never alone. Never again.
Now I knew that I could get a human body of my own without much trouble, and with that knowledge alone, my insecurities were mollified. I could be human, I thought. I could be “normal.” But I didn’t have to be, and not many people could claim that right.
If I were human I’d have no past and no future and only emptiness in between. If I stayed as I was now I’d have a home and a family and a purpose.
It wasn’t even a choice when I put it like that.
After Rukia left, Ichigo flipped listlessly through his psychology textbook for a while before stretching out a leg and nudging me with a toe. “Hey, Kon,” he said. “Where’d she take you?”
If Ichigo knew about the gigai proposition, he might get some misguided notion that he should force me to take Rukia up on her offer because it would be the “best” life for me. Better for them both if I took my own future into my hands.
“Just for a walk,” I said vaguely. “She told me some stuff. Nothing big.”
Ichigo glared at me and then looked back at his psych book with a huff. “Fine, nobody’s talking. If I didn’t have a shitload of homework I’d beat it out of ya, but I guess you’re off the hook for today.”
I grinned inwardly, walked unsteadily over to the window and hauled myself up to the sill. I laid down and drifted, watching Ichigo read for a while before turning to watch the clouds go by, just as I had been before Rukia had taken me out.
I didn’t know a life better than this one, and I didn’t feel like finding out. Not right now. If things got tough, I could soldier on. I was created to be a soldier, after all. My discomfort wasn’t the issue; what was right -- that was what was important. And it was right for me to be exactly where I was.
In the end, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else.
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La la la.
Before I get to this fic, which, sadly, breaks my current fic-cycle with Yma by not being a truly direct response to her last one, I have one commandment. I COMMAND THAT YOU READ HER FIC "REVOLUTION," NOW. Looooove. The extent of my love is documented in my comments (plural) there, which are almost as long as the fic. >_<
Also, vicarious_renji made an awesomely evocative wallpaper inspired by Monism. With a little quote from the fic in the bottom left! I feel so -- so -- inspirational and stuff! Man, this is cool. ^_^.
Anyway, here's a positive little Kon ficlet for everyone who made it through the trauma of the -isms with me. ^_^. This could be Ichigo/Rukia if you squint funny, but it's also Kon/Rukia and Kon/Ichigo in a way. This is all that I wished I could say about Kon in Pluralism, but sacrificed for the sake of a sex scene. *is shamed* NOT the same fic-verse as the -isms and Soft Rains, if only because of the teeny detail that in Pluralism, Kon tells Ichigo he occupied a few bodies before he was recalled. In this one, he didn't.
Title: Toy Soldier
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Bleach
Character(s): Kon, Rukia, Urahara, Ichigo
Rating: PG
Summary: No one expected Kon to be a permanent fixture in their lives, least of all Kon himself; but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Author's Notes: *sigh* Something positive for a change. Cleared my brain out nicely. Much love for Kon! (Also, first person makes me twitch. I’m forcing myself to practice it, as well as playing with sensory perception -- writing a scene with no sense to rely on but hearing was HARD!)
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Toy Soldier
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Rukia took me to Urahara’s shop a couple of weeks after she and Ichigo rescued me from recall and extermination. I didn’t know where we were going at first; she didn’t tell me anything, just picked me up while I was lying there watching clouds float past Ichigo’s window and pulled me out of the doll without a word. She put me in her breast pocket. I couldn’t make a joke about it, and that was probably why she’d ditched the doll first thing.
I hated being a pill. The doll wasn’t much to write home about, but I was getting used to it -- fond of it, maybe, in a twisted Stockholm-y sort of way. (I’d been reading Ichigo’s textbooks because I was bored.) But let no one who has never been trapped inside an inanimate object tell you it’s fun. Dumb, blind and paralyzed, I couldn’t question where Rukia was taking me. I couldn’t protest.
But I could hear. It was my last and greatest refuge, sound. I liked to listen to Ichigo’s music when he was away from home, though it had taken me a while to work out a way to poke the buttons on his CD player with a twisted paperclip, as the paws of the doll were too blunt and soft to do precision work like separating stop from play. Ichigo didn’t know. I always put everything back like it was before he got home.
The walk was all noisy silence -- the occassional traffic sounds, the faint sigh of wind and the rustle of the fabric of Rukia’s clothes, her legs brushing together, her shoes crunching on gravel and padding on grass. Her heartbeat, close and thundering. Birds crying out overhead. If I’d had eyes, I would’ve closed them anyway, just to listen.
I guess I spaced out because the next thing I remember was the sound of a door sliding open and voices fading into reality that I hadn’t been listening to before. Those couple of kids in the shop -- the girl, who I was pretty sure was the one who had mistakenly sold me instead of the good merchandise, was talking. (I’d always love her for that little mishap, whatever punishment she might have caught for it later.)
“-chou just woke up, Kuchiki-sama, just this way...”
“No -sama, I’m just Rukia, please.”
“B-but... you’re a Kuchiki... sama...”
“No, that’s just my brother. It’s okay, Ururu, really, I just needed to see --”
“Aa, if it isn’t Kuchiki-san back again.” A yawn. Faint scritching, maybe a hand on the back of a neck, if I remembered that guy’s mannerisms right.
“Tenchou--”
“Thanks, Ururu, you can go on.” Shuffling footsteps leaving, and the door sliding shut again.
“What can I do you for?” I imagined a sleazy grin and wished I could smack that guy. I really, really didn’t like him. Never had, never would.
“I’m just prospecting this time, Urahara. I was going to ask, could you give me a price estimate on a new gigai?”
“For you?” If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought there was a hint of panic under his measured half-and-half combo of curiosity and concern.
“No, the soma fixers seem to be working fine for me.”
“Then could you give me some parameters to work with?”
“Male,” Rukia said. I perked up. What on earth was she talking about? “Young adult. An endurance model, not a fight-or-flight one. Something with some permanence to it.”
She -- what the hell was she asking for? Ichigo had a body. And why did she bring... me...
Ichigo had -- but I -- I didn’t --
No way. No. Freakin’. Way.
“Can I ask what this is about, Kuchiki-san?” Urahara’s tone was odd.
“No, not really.”
“A certain piece of disembodied merchandise you purchased a fortnight ago --”
“Would be absolutely none of your business, I think.”
A thump might have been the seedy shop-owner letting his cane slide down his arm as he raised his hands in defeat. That, or I might have been reading way too much into the sounds I was hearing. I’d gotten too reliant on sight in these couple of weeks.
“Well, Kuchiki-san, I’d say that kind of a gigai would cost you a pretty penny. You still got that much on you after all those soma fixers?”
“I didn’t say I wanted one, Urahara. I said I was prospecting. Just give me an estimate.”
They went into straight-up business mode from then on, but I couldn’t listen anymore anyway. Rukia was asking, not buying -- and she’d brought me. Why?
Because she wanted to break the idea to me, I guess.
I hadn’t thought of it before. A gigai. I was a soul... gigais didn’t have souls. I mean, I guess the reason it hadn’t occurred to me before was because I was technically a fugitive, and gigais were pure shinigami gadgets, stuff I didn’t need to mess with if I wanted to keep myself alive and undetected for a while longer. That, or I just plain hadn’t thought of being in any body other than Ichigo’s or the doll. I’d gotten used to both of them. And, like I said, probably more fond of them than was healthy.
Dead truth, I was scared.
Terrified, more like. I didn’t want to live on my own. A few hours in Ichigo’s hijacked body had taught me that I couldn’t barge into someone else’s life without warning, and a few miserable days exploring and eavesdropping in the Kurosaki household while I got used to the plush body had taught me that I was never going to get some of the things I wanted out of life. A family like Ichigo had, a home and friends, favorite foods and in-jokes and running conversations that probably started years ago and came up every now and then, sticking like a burr under the saddle of everyday routine.
Long-term memories.
I didn’t have anything like that, and I wasn’t ever going to. My life, as far as I was concerned, began with the first moment Ichigo had swallowed me and I’d been able to feel what it was like to be in control of myself, my life. To touch. To smell. To taste.
To see.
Blackness before, and blackness now. Truth be told, I just wanted to live in Ichigo’s room forever, pestering and being pestered, because it was comfortable. Because he’d seen something worth saving in me and had had a big enough spirit to share his life with me, even if he’d probably never say it that poetically. And maybe I loved him a little bit for it. I didn’t idolize him, that was for sure -- he was a stingy bastard and he made human mistakes. But that fondness, beneath my surface irritation... maybe that’s what it was. Love.
If I had a body, a real human body, with a heart that beat and blood that flowed and flesh that could crawl at a touch, what would I do with it? I’d have to become truly human. I’d have to find somewhere else to live. I wouldn’t have the freedom to touch Ichigo or Rukia or anyone else the way I could now. Maybe I could attend school with them, but... what did I know about human life? What did I know about making money to pay for tuition, or rent, or food? How could I survive around that many people, keeping a low profile all the time, being normal?
Normal. It was a concept I just couldn’t wrap my mind around.
Rukia and Urahara talked for a good quarter of an hour, but I was absorbed in my thoughts for a long while after she’d said her polite goodbyes and cuffed Jinta on the head on her way across the yard. But she didn’t go back to Ichigo’s house. I roused out of my thoughts a little when I realized she’d been walking way too long for that.
I wished I could ask her where we were going.
I guess she sat down on a bench then, by the rustle of her clothes and the creak of old wood. It sounded like there were more trees nearby -- wind in branches, falling leaves crunching. Did she take me to the park?
“Kon?”
What? I thought at her irritably. I can’t say anything. La dee damn da. Just talk already.
“Just... wanted to make sure you were listening,” she said, as if she’d realized her mistake. Her voice was low, but if there were people around they were probably giving her weird looks anyway. “I hope you are listening. I’m pretty sure you can hear like that.”
Get to the point.
“I just did that so you could hear it. I want you to think about it. You’d still need to be available to help Ichigo switch, but someday I’ll be able to work out a better method for getting him out-of-body. I can order more Soul Candy, the real kind this time. It’s risky, and you’d have to lay low of any shinigami who might recognize an unlicensed gigai or the reiatsu of a mod soul, because in their eyes you’d be a fugitive wearing stolen goods. But still... think about it as a possibility. For later.”
She sat there for a minute longer, in a silence that even I could tell was awkward. I tried to imagine her face, but no particular expression came to mind -- just the face I always saw when I thought of her, eyebrows raised in a state of perpetual curiosity or cool superiority or disbelief or tentative happiness. There was never a moment I didn’t want to reach up and brush that one stray lock of hair out from between her eyes just to see what her face looked like whole and uninterrupted. Radiant, probably. Like always.
I was kinda grateful I didn’t have to talk right then, to be honest. I mean, her thoughtfulness and sincerity had just increased my pathetic crush on her tenfold.
At some point she got up and started walking again. We went back to Ichigo’s house this time. Rukia climbed to his window instead of jumping, and I wondered if she’d been lying about the soma fixers, because she didn’t seem to be too comfortable with her body from the way she was acting.
I knew what soma fixers were because they’d been developed to help keep dead or soulless bodies from rejecting mod souls that tried to inhabit them. I’d never had to use them, though. I’d never gotten further than the instructional area before the use of mod souls was banned. That was why mod souls could hear even when they didn’t have any other senses -- to be briefed on their purpose for existing before being given bodies. I’d been told all about the things I would do when I was made into a whole being, and then I waited, and waited, and that time never came -- until I was informed that I was going to die without ever truly living, and the waiting took on a different tone, and continued in an eternity of silent nothing. Waiting for death.
“That was fast. Thought you said you’d be gone a while.”
Ichigo’s voice brought me back to the present from that cold, still place in my memory. Even though I knew I couldn’t feel and didn’t need to breathe, I wanted so badly to feel warmer and breathe easier that I almost thought I really did, just for a second. If I’d been in a body, that’s what I would have felt. I guess there was some comfort in being able to say that with absolute certainty, having experienced it.
“I found out all I needed to know,” said Rukia, probably with a shrug.
“Did you take Kon?”
“What makes you ask?”
I couldn’t guess at the nature of the sounds that followed, creakings and rustlings and a soft thump like a drawer being opened or closed. Maybe Ichigo had found the lifeless doll.
“Oh. Well, here.” Did she take me out of her pocket? I heard more than felt her fingernails tapping the thin shell of my pill form. “You can have him back if you want.”
“I dunno, I was enjoying the quiet for once.”
“I think he’ll be quiet for now.”
“Yeah? You do something to him?”
“Not really.”
“Not gonna tell me anything, are you?”
“No. But I think he’d like to be able to see again.”
“Eh. Okay, fine, give it.”
A couple of empty seconds later I felt -- felt -- my real senses returning, or what I’d come to think of as my real senses. I didn’t realize how badly being a pill again had affected me until I saw colors again. Color was something I had never experienced until a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t know how I’d ever lived without it. There was a kind of softness in my head that I knew was stuffing, because in Ichigo’s head there was a kind of heaviness that I guessed was bone and brain. I shifted my little arms, stretched my little legs (my legs). Ichigo was holding me and I could actually feel where his hand was touching my back, and I could smell the smell that was partly sweat and partly just him. I looked up.
“Yo, Kon,” he said, brown eyes staring at me in what might have been real concern or might have just been his usual facade of intensity. His brows were furrowed deeper than usual, anyway.
I blinked at him.
“What’s up with you?” he pressed.
Sometimes Ichigo took being oblivious to new heights. I realized right then that yeah, I did love the guy. As much as I loved Rukia, really, except I did kinda idolize Rukia a little. More than a little. (Plus, she’s hot.) Ichigo, on the other hand, I just wanted to protect and help and punch in the face, all at once. True love, that.
But in lieu of those things, I decided to let him get on with doing his homework. Rukia was right, I didn’t really have it in me to be loud right then; I wanted to drink in the colors and smells, and think. That was all.
“Hey,” I said finally. “I’m good. Can you put me down?” Ichigo was, in fact, staring closely at him, face only about a foot away from Kon’s.
Ichigo stared for a second longer, then shrugged and dropped Kon on the bed none-too-gently. “Whatever,” he said. “Whatever you did, Rukia, it sure shut him up.” This he said over his shoulder without looking, as Rukia had already headed over to the closet and opened the door to pull out her own backpack.
Rukia turned around, holding an armful of books, and smiled. I swear to everything that’s holy, she’s gorgeous when she smiles.
“I’m going to Inoue-san’s house for a study group,” she said innocently.
Ichigo grunted. “Don’t know why you’re actually doing schoolwork like you need to.”
“I have to keep my cover, you know that. Besides, it’ll be fun.”
“I think you’re enjoying it a little too much. I mean, who has fun at study groups? Honestly.”
“It’s because men don’t know how to have fun.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You’ve never been in high school before, what do you know!”
“I’ll have you know I’ve lived in a dormitory! You don’t just become a shinigami without training for it! And all men act the same, so why should a mortal high school be any different from shinigami academy?”
“You can’t compare me to some dead guys back in that crazy Soul Society place of yours, you --”
I toddled down to the end of the bed while they were both ignoring me, flopping down onto the covers just far enough away from Ichigo’s feet that he couldn’t kick me across the room. I only halfway tuned out the friendly argument. It was like listening to the brother and sister I’d never had, or at least I liked to imagine that’s what it was like. It’s not like I would know.
But not knowing didn’t matter, somehow, because I had what I had and my life, exactly as it was now, was enough. The next time a Hollow popped up somewhere across town I’d get to occupy Ichigo’s body and eat his meals and run with his legs. And in the between times I’d be allowed to live in his room and listen to his music and look at his books and magazines. Always with someone to talk to. Never alone. Never again.
Now I knew that I could get a human body of my own without much trouble, and with that knowledge alone, my insecurities were mollified. I could be human, I thought. I could be “normal.” But I didn’t have to be, and not many people could claim that right.
If I were human I’d have no past and no future and only emptiness in between. If I stayed as I was now I’d have a home and a family and a purpose.
It wasn’t even a choice when I put it like that.
After Rukia left, Ichigo flipped listlessly through his psychology textbook for a while before stretching out a leg and nudging me with a toe. “Hey, Kon,” he said. “Where’d she take you?”
If Ichigo knew about the gigai proposition, he might get some misguided notion that he should force me to take Rukia up on her offer because it would be the “best” life for me. Better for them both if I took my own future into my hands.
“Just for a walk,” I said vaguely. “She told me some stuff. Nothing big.”
Ichigo glared at me and then looked back at his psych book with a huff. “Fine, nobody’s talking. If I didn’t have a shitload of homework I’d beat it out of ya, but I guess you’re off the hook for today.”
I grinned inwardly, walked unsteadily over to the window and hauled myself up to the sill. I laid down and drifted, watching Ichigo read for a while before turning to watch the clouds go by, just as I had been before Rukia had taken me out.
I didn’t know a life better than this one, and I didn’t feel like finding out. Not right now. If things got tough, I could soldier on. I was created to be a soldier, after all. My discomfort wasn’t the issue; what was right -- that was what was important. And it was right for me to be exactly where I was.
In the end, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else.
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