IRAF Fic 3: Doll- An Introduction to Rukia [The Unwinding Cable Car-- Anberlin]
Third part of IRAF.
I'm back from my grad night party. I came home and promptly died, just woke up a bit ago, so I apologize for the delay. :D
Title: Doll- An Introduction to Rukia
Featuring:The Unwinding Cable Car- Anberlin
Rating: PG for language
Release Date: June 16, 2007
Word Count: 3,487
Genre: Introduction
Read Only Version
This fic is the second of the two part introduction pieces, one for Ichigo and one for Rukia.
I didn't realize just how little I knew about Rukia until I started writing this fic. She's old, so old that even KT doesn't elaborate much on her past. I suppose that's a lucky thing, because it forced me to fill in the blanks myself. Now this fic is possibly my favorite in the collection because it feels real to me. Suddenly, she feels a lot more three dimensional to me. I got to explore her past with Byakuya, her relationship with Renji and Kaien, as well as her story with Urahara. Strangely, Ichigo only has a small portion in this fic, but it's a very important part, and I think I'm finally starting to grasp just how important.
Rukia's image song, unlike Ichigo's image song, was hell on wheels to find. I've raided numerous playlists to find something suiting. Finally, xilluminationx sent me Anberlin's song through yousendit. It was... perfect. Anberlin is also just... incredible. I might've looped this song for 3 days after receiving it. Perfect fits are so hard to find, but when they're found, man. :)
♥
Jazzy
PS. And more <3's for my betas.
Emotive unstable you're like an unwinding cable car
Listening for voices, but it's the choices that make us who we are
She finds it hard to believe that she was ever alive. There’s no memory of life, only the rushing sound of wind in her ears and bright, bright lights piercing through her tightly clenched eyes. There is no fear, only the feeling of arms wound tightly around her body and the scent of lilacs.
“So how did you come here?” the people in Rukongai would ask her on occasion, and once upon a time she would stutter and blush and look away in confusion and shame. Now, with the hardening of time, she stares menacingly back into their eyes and bites back with a terse, “by dying, moron.” The truth is she doesn’t know and doesn’t remember. It’s that simple. But for some reason, she is ashamed.
She knows that she doesn’t belong, but, in a way, this world is all she has ever known; so technically, this is the only place she really belongs to.
But it isn’t home, she thinks furiously, because home is where memories are and she doesn’t have any to belong to anywhere.
She is homeless, but she hates the word. I’m not homeless, she insists, I’m free.
Go your own way, even seasons have changed just burn those new leaves over
So self-absorbed you've seemed to ignore the prayers that have already come about
The obnoxious red-haired boy laughs at her when she tells him that. He laughs so hard that he is rolling on the dirt road of Rukongai, bits of brown, sandy smudges clinging to his clothes and skin.
“Free?” He gasps at her when he manages to catch his breath, “That’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever fucking heard.”
She grits her teeth and rams her fist deep, deep into his stomach and the boy crumples slowly onto the floor, like a tree.
“You…” he chokes, voice strained and bewildered, “you don’t hit like a girl.” As if it is all her fault.
She glares at him venomously as she starts to walk away, “I’m not tied to anywhere; I’m free.”
He stares back at her as he struggles to pick himself up, his eyes wide, “You’re not tied to anywhere,” he says, “You’re lost.”
She stiffens as she watches him approach her, clenching her fists, ready to slug him again if he tries anything funny. Instead, he holds his hand out to her. “Let’s go,” he says, “you can come with me.”
He’s not much older than her, not much stronger, and definitely not more mature. He’s just like her, really, alone. He protects her, though, even when she doesn’t need protecting and slowly, slowly, it begins to feel like home.
Maybe that’s why it hurts so much when he pushes her away with his words, years and years later. He must’ve made it his goal to give her a home, and when it seemed like she was meant to go farther, he helped to push her there, even if it meant without him. She doesn’t think he’d ever quite forgiven himself for doing so, but that’s water under the bridge now, the feeling of abandonment and loneliness and betrayal, all water under the bridge because now she knows that the door has closed, and there is no way back.
Backing away from the problem of pain you never had a home
You've been misguided, you're hiding in shadows for so very long
The house that adopts her has cold, cold walls. That’s the first thing she notices.
The man who she now calls ‘brother’ is the perfect doll in this house, for he has cold, cold eyes. That’s all she remembers.
When she is taken into the household, there are whispers; she remembers that too. They’re hostile whispers, filled with words and phrases that make her teeth clench until her jaw hurts, but when her nii-sama approaches she kneels and smiles and thanks him, as if she were truly glad to be there. He never looks at her, and she never dares to really look at him. There is an invisible wall between them, and that’s cold too.
The whispers grow louder over time with the sound of protests from the lower levels of the household. She is not welcomed here, she knows, and she doesn’t want to stay. It is just another place in the world in which she does not belong, and she has already learned to accept that.
One day, the whispers stop and the lower members of the house begin to treat her with respect; the servants tend to her with fear in their eyes. She doesn’t know what has happened and it alarms her. Her nii-sama passes her in the hallway later that day; he nods his head lightly in acknowledgement to her greeting per usual, as if nothing had changed.
She doesn’t understand, but a part of her mind tells her that everything is going to be alright, so she stays on, feeling the walls of the Kuchiki house cutting into her presence, until she begins to cultivate her own barriers strong enough to topple theirs.
She still refuses to acknowledge this household as her home, even though she thanks her nii-sama every morning for his generosity in providing her one. But now, she is truly grateful, for the Kuchiki house has given her an identity. Now she is Kuchiki Rukia, the adopted sister of Kuchiki Byakuya of the most noble house of the Kuchiki Clan. The redundancy of the idea hammers it further into her head, and eventually, she comes to identify herself with pride, that she is a Kuchiki.
At times, she passes Renji in the hallways of the academy. He doesn’t speak to her, doesn’t look at her. She wants to reach out and grab him, to force him to look her in the eye as she demands what exactly it was that he had pushed her into. But she doesn’t, because it doesn’t matter anymore.
Don't you believe that you've been deceived that you're no better than...
The hair in your eyes, it never disguised what you're really thinking of
Going into Soul Society is less of a departure than she had imagined it to be. She bids her nii-sama goodbye that morning, after thanking him once again for saving her life. She is to enter Gotei-13 today as a member of the thirteenth division, and as the only member that hasn’t completed her courses in the academy. She hates it, but she supposes that she should be grateful and then she is. She thinks maybe there is a set course for her life, paved by others so that all she has to do is to walk and be grateful. It is as if she is a doll, transferred from one owner to another, living, but not living.
Her new higher officer is her fukutaichou, Shiba Kaien, leader of the thirteenth protection squad in the stead of their sickly taichou. When she meets Shiba Kaien she bows to him like she bows to her nii-sama, adding to his name a label of utmost respect. He pushes her up and admonishes her for being too uptight, speaking in a manner so wild and carefree that it makes her cringe.
Crass, she thinks, he’s so crass.
But she’s instantly drawn to him, to his open gestures and warm smiles. She still keeps her Kuchiki trademarked coolness, but now from the corner of her eyes she searches for him. Little by little she thinks that maybe she is melting, because that is the kind of man her fukutaichou is, blundering and loud but so full of warmth that the walls she had built in the Kuchiki household begin to crumble. She begins to wonder why her nii-sama had arranged for her to be in this squadron, one that would offer such a different upbringing than the Kuchiki house. But one day, she realizes that she can laugh again, and so she stops wondering.
Her fukutaichou has a wife. She is beautiful and powerful and kind. They are happy and in love. When she watches them it makes her happy and sad at the same time. She knows now that she will never belong to Kaien-dono, because he already has another, and she has no desire to see it otherwise. But, for the first time in her life, she wants to belong to someone, and this is the kind of want that hurts. She bites her lips and vows to distance herself, because that kind of want is dangerous to have.
So when he impales himself onto her sword and whispers in her ears that he is grateful and sorry, she doesn’t know what to say. She is grateful too, sorry too; she is a lot of things, but perhaps not for the same reasons.
She thinks that maybe she has killed that want by killing him. She tells herself that she should be a little happier now, but she isn’t, because in destroying the thing she wanted, she has created another kind of pain, and this pain is not tinged with happiness.
It is raining that night, and everything is so, so cold. She stands in puddles of water, watching the watery remains of the walls she had built and he had destroyed, wondering now what?
You're so brilliant, don't soon forget
Now, she thinks, she is truly lost. She searches for ground beneath her feet while she walks and stumbles often. She stays in bed late into the day, losing herself in the patterns of the ceiling.
One day she leaves her bed and pulls on her shihakusho, tightens her sandals and arranges her hair perfectly. Her footsteps are light on the wooden floors of the Seireitei corridors and her eyes a cold mirror. Kiyone tells her that she looks like a replica of her nii-sama and she smiles quietly in response. There is still no ground under her feet, but with her newly constructed walls and distant grace, she feels like she is flying, floating above life and transparent in the air.
That’s fine, she tells herself, it’s only what I deserve, and then she is at peace.
You're so brilliant, grace marked your heart
Soon she is assigned to a new station: Karakura town. Empty city and she finds it slightly amusing that her destination can reflect her state of mind. It might be fate, or the work of her nii-sama, same thing. She doesn’t understand why she, of all people, would be sent to the human realm, she who holds no memories of that place.
Maybe, she thinks, that is why they sent her. She holds no prejudice toward the human realm, has no ties their world. It may as well be a new world for her, a place for her to start over.
She doesn’t know what to make of this decision, but orders are orders and it is not as if she has ever had control over what she wanted.
So she goes to Karakura town, the empty city, carrying with her armloads of nothingness.
With quiet words I'll lead you in and out of the dark
The air in the human world is just as stagnant as the air in Soul Society. She kills Hollows with one clean stroke and watches humans dart around frantically in fear of something they cannot see. She walks down the streets unseen and stares into the faces of people laughing, crying, living and wonders if this is what she would have remembered if she had lived a longer life. She watches over the city at night from tall wooden poles strung together with wires feeling the light of moon pressing into her skin. It is a strange sort of living, this life of a patrol officer, but over time, she begins to settle in and her memories gradually stop haunting her.
There are powerful slivers of reiatsu in this town, she can feel them, and she slowly seeks them out, one by one, quietly. She watches them as their powers sleeps dormant in them while they lead ordinary lives, feeling a little envious.
One day she is called by a little boy and a little girl. The girl is shy and withdrawn but the boy is loud, obnoxious and reminds her of Renji, years and years and years ago. They bring her to a strange man in hat and clogs, of whom she immediately recognizes as Urahara Kisuke, former captain of the twelfth division and an exile. He waves his fan and pushes a cup of tea toward her, telling her that they should become wonderful friends. She accepts the tea and thinks that maybe he has gone a little looney in the head since his captain years. She turns him down politely when he offers her a gigai and anything else I can get you, Kuchiki-san. She is Kuchiki, and there’s nothing she cannot afford that she needs; besides, it would be breaking the law. He pouts at the rejection but tells her to come by anytime. She thanks him and says no, that she doesn’t want to get in any trouble.
Ah, well, Kuchiki-san, he says in parting, just keep my offer in mind.
This is the correlation of salvation and love
When this boy, this idiot of a boy, kicks her out of the air that night, her life turns up-side down, then right-side up, and up-side down again. She doesn’t know what to do anymore, because this boy is annoying and doesn’t believe a word she says. She wants to pound him into the ground, wants to ram her zanpakuto through his annoying face but she knows that she’ll be severely disciplined for doing so. So she binds him with kidou and leaves him there, feeling her life, occupation, and reputation screw itself over more with each passing second. She rushes outside to take care of the Hollow that she didn’t sense when she was dealing with his stupidity, but the boy just won’t leave her alone. He wriggles out of the house after her and much to her annoyance and amazement breaks her kidou to charge at the Hollow.
She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, doesn’t know if her eyebrows are disappearing into her hair out of bewilderment or terror, but the Hollow whips the boy out several feet and looms closer. She unsheathes Sode no Shirayuki and runs over, cursing violently under her breath and prepares to rid the Hollow in a single slice. But the boy, the boy is too close. She glances back in alarm and forces her sword away from the Hollow just in time, only managing to lodge her sword in a part of the Hollow’s mask. The stink of the Hollow is choking her and she can feel its teeth cleave into her shoulder and chest as she fights to keep the Hollow from biting further, a little more would surely kill her. The boy, at least, is safe from the impact that would have been created from her sword, but in her condition, it might’ve been better if he had died.
She crawls painfully to the side of the street, hoping to heal herself enough in time to save the boy. He is staring at her, eyes open wide and mouth gaping. She winces as she pulls herself in, trying to explain between hisses of pain what she’d been trying to tell him all along. He believes her now. He walks over to her and she can see in his eyes that he wants to fight.
No, not fight, to protect.
She knows that she is crazy when she gives him her sword and tells him that she will give him a portion of her powers, but something in that boy’s eyes makes her want to help him. At least, she tells herself, he will be able to stand a chance against the Hollow, even if it is just a sliver of chance, at least he’ll die a fighter, not a coward hiding behind a girl.
The boy, no, Ichigo-that’s what he had told her to call him- takes all of her powers and slays the beast, slinging his holyshitthat’sgigantic sword over his shoulder as he smirks at her. She is slumped in a corner, healing the worst of her wounds and wanting to kick his stupid face in. In the blurring surge of anger, exasperation, and adrenaline-rushing fear, she begins to feel that maybe, there is more to her life than what was paved for her.
Don't drop your arms, I'll guard your heart
She is taking too long to heal, she knows, and it is only a matter of time before Soul Society comes for her. She makes up her mind to leave that night, leaving Ichigo an encrypted note of warning. She has stayed far too long in the human realm; she never should have come in contact with these humans, because doing so is unlocking so many feelings inside of her, emotions that she had tried so hard to put away.
Friendship, love, these are not emotions that she should have. They push at her walls, threatening to break them down. She is a Shinigami and they are humans, she doesn’t belong with them and shouldn’t belong with them. She knows too well the consequences of letting in people she cannot keep.
Forget them, Kuchiki Rukia, she tells herself as she runs faster, wrap up these emotions and leave.
But the stupid boy comes after her, swinging his sword cockily at Abarai Renji -who is now a fukutaicho?!- and her nii-sama. Against all her efforts she is terrified again, wanting him to leave, knowing that it’ll break her but needing to know that he is not going to die.
She is screaming and crying into Renji’s shihakusho when Ichigo falls. It’s strange, she thinks in the back of her mind, she has not cried for anyone in so long. Renji holds her back, stopping her as she struggles to run to Ichigo’s side.
“Renji,” her nii-sama says. “He does bear some resemblance to that man.”
Her head snaps up at his words to stare at Ichigo, feeling the blood drain from her face. Her nii-sama was right, she realizes, Ichigo does hold striking resemblance to Kaien-dono, the way he speaks, the way he protects those he loves, even the way he looks.
Why hadn’t she noticed?
“What the hell.” Ichigo says, breaking the silence and grabbing the edge of her nii-sama’s robes, “I don’t know who the hell you guys are talking about, but it’s not me.”
She stares harder at him, her eyes feeling too large for her head as it dawns on her that he is right, he is not Kaien-dono, regardless of the similarities. He is Ichigo, and to insinuate that he is anyone else would be demeaning.
She makes up her mind then that there is no way she’s going to let him die while she’s still around. So she kicks his hand away from her nii-sama’s shihakusho and puts on her Kuchiki mask, following them through the gate.
It’s funny, she thinks, to be walking away from the only person who has ever come for her, the only person she has ever run away from, the only person who feels that she matters enough to die for. And now he is dying in the rain and the cold, powerless and betrayed as she walks away with her adopted brother and former friend, two men who have pushed her from their lives, only coming back to retrieve her for her execution.
She knows that she will never forgive herself, but now she is a doll again.
That is okay, she thinks, because she has never wanted to disappear as much as she does now.
With quiet words I'll lead you in
When Renji tells her that Ichigo is here, in Soul Society, fighting taichou to save her, her head feels numb. She watches Renji walk away, hearing a silent rumble in her ears. She doesn’t know what to think, what to hope, because she knows that the chances of him succeeding are very, very slim. She walks over to the slit of a window of the white tower and sits down, settling for his safety, his life, that’s all; she just wants him to live through this.
There are warm drops on her face, quickly cooling in the evening air and she realizes that she is crying. They are not tears though, not tears, just the waters of her walls of ice, weeping as they drain away from her heart.
Ichigo, she prays into the cross of her arms, you’re not allowed to die on me; you hear me?
end.
Download song here:The Unwinding Cable Car
View lyrics here:
http://www.lyred.com/lyrics/Anberlin/Cities/The+Unwinding+Cable+Car
All comments are screened until unscreened. Please do not hesitate to point out any awkwardness or errors that I have missed.
I'm back from my grad night party. I came home and promptly died, just woke up a bit ago, so I apologize for the delay. :D
Title: Doll- An Introduction to Rukia
Featuring:The Unwinding Cable Car- Anberlin
Rating: PG for language
Release Date: June 16, 2007
Word Count: 3,487
Genre: Introduction
Read Only Version
This fic is the second of the two part introduction pieces, one for Ichigo and one for Rukia.
I didn't realize just how little I knew about Rukia until I started writing this fic. She's old, so old that even KT doesn't elaborate much on her past. I suppose that's a lucky thing, because it forced me to fill in the blanks myself. Now this fic is possibly my favorite in the collection because it feels real to me. Suddenly, she feels a lot more three dimensional to me. I got to explore her past with Byakuya, her relationship with Renji and Kaien, as well as her story with Urahara. Strangely, Ichigo only has a small portion in this fic, but it's a very important part, and I think I'm finally starting to grasp just how important.
Rukia's image song, unlike Ichigo's image song, was hell on wheels to find. I've raided numerous playlists to find something suiting. Finally, xilluminationx sent me Anberlin's song through yousendit. It was... perfect. Anberlin is also just... incredible. I might've looped this song for 3 days after receiving it. Perfect fits are so hard to find, but when they're found, man. :)
♥
Jazzy
PS. And more <3's for my betas.
Emotive unstable you're like an unwinding cable car
Listening for voices, but it's the choices that make us who we are
She finds it hard to believe that she was ever alive. There’s no memory of life, only the rushing sound of wind in her ears and bright, bright lights piercing through her tightly clenched eyes. There is no fear, only the feeling of arms wound tightly around her body and the scent of lilacs.
“So how did you come here?” the people in Rukongai would ask her on occasion, and once upon a time she would stutter and blush and look away in confusion and shame. Now, with the hardening of time, she stares menacingly back into their eyes and bites back with a terse, “by dying, moron.” The truth is she doesn’t know and doesn’t remember. It’s that simple. But for some reason, she is ashamed.
She knows that she doesn’t belong, but, in a way, this world is all she has ever known; so technically, this is the only place she really belongs to.
But it isn’t home, she thinks furiously, because home is where memories are and she doesn’t have any to belong to anywhere.
She is homeless, but she hates the word. I’m not homeless, she insists, I’m free.
Go your own way, even seasons have changed just burn those new leaves over
So self-absorbed you've seemed to ignore the prayers that have already come about
The obnoxious red-haired boy laughs at her when she tells him that. He laughs so hard that he is rolling on the dirt road of Rukongai, bits of brown, sandy smudges clinging to his clothes and skin.
“Free?” He gasps at her when he manages to catch his breath, “That’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever fucking heard.”
She grits her teeth and rams her fist deep, deep into his stomach and the boy crumples slowly onto the floor, like a tree.
“You…” he chokes, voice strained and bewildered, “you don’t hit like a girl.” As if it is all her fault.
She glares at him venomously as she starts to walk away, “I’m not tied to anywhere; I’m free.”
He stares back at her as he struggles to pick himself up, his eyes wide, “You’re not tied to anywhere,” he says, “You’re lost.”
She stiffens as she watches him approach her, clenching her fists, ready to slug him again if he tries anything funny. Instead, he holds his hand out to her. “Let’s go,” he says, “you can come with me.”
He’s not much older than her, not much stronger, and definitely not more mature. He’s just like her, really, alone. He protects her, though, even when she doesn’t need protecting and slowly, slowly, it begins to feel like home.
Maybe that’s why it hurts so much when he pushes her away with his words, years and years later. He must’ve made it his goal to give her a home, and when it seemed like she was meant to go farther, he helped to push her there, even if it meant without him. She doesn’t think he’d ever quite forgiven himself for doing so, but that’s water under the bridge now, the feeling of abandonment and loneliness and betrayal, all water under the bridge because now she knows that the door has closed, and there is no way back.
Backing away from the problem of pain you never had a home
You've been misguided, you're hiding in shadows for so very long
The house that adopts her has cold, cold walls. That’s the first thing she notices.
The man who she now calls ‘brother’ is the perfect doll in this house, for he has cold, cold eyes. That’s all she remembers.
When she is taken into the household, there are whispers; she remembers that too. They’re hostile whispers, filled with words and phrases that make her teeth clench until her jaw hurts, but when her nii-sama approaches she kneels and smiles and thanks him, as if she were truly glad to be there. He never looks at her, and she never dares to really look at him. There is an invisible wall between them, and that’s cold too.
The whispers grow louder over time with the sound of protests from the lower levels of the household. She is not welcomed here, she knows, and she doesn’t want to stay. It is just another place in the world in which she does not belong, and she has already learned to accept that.
One day, the whispers stop and the lower members of the house begin to treat her with respect; the servants tend to her with fear in their eyes. She doesn’t know what has happened and it alarms her. Her nii-sama passes her in the hallway later that day; he nods his head lightly in acknowledgement to her greeting per usual, as if nothing had changed.
She doesn’t understand, but a part of her mind tells her that everything is going to be alright, so she stays on, feeling the walls of the Kuchiki house cutting into her presence, until she begins to cultivate her own barriers strong enough to topple theirs.
She still refuses to acknowledge this household as her home, even though she thanks her nii-sama every morning for his generosity in providing her one. But now, she is truly grateful, for the Kuchiki house has given her an identity. Now she is Kuchiki Rukia, the adopted sister of Kuchiki Byakuya of the most noble house of the Kuchiki Clan. The redundancy of the idea hammers it further into her head, and eventually, she comes to identify herself with pride, that she is a Kuchiki.
At times, she passes Renji in the hallways of the academy. He doesn’t speak to her, doesn’t look at her. She wants to reach out and grab him, to force him to look her in the eye as she demands what exactly it was that he had pushed her into. But she doesn’t, because it doesn’t matter anymore.
Don't you believe that you've been deceived that you're no better than...
The hair in your eyes, it never disguised what you're really thinking of
Going into Soul Society is less of a departure than she had imagined it to be. She bids her nii-sama goodbye that morning, after thanking him once again for saving her life. She is to enter Gotei-13 today as a member of the thirteenth division, and as the only member that hasn’t completed her courses in the academy. She hates it, but she supposes that she should be grateful and then she is. She thinks maybe there is a set course for her life, paved by others so that all she has to do is to walk and be grateful. It is as if she is a doll, transferred from one owner to another, living, but not living.
Her new higher officer is her fukutaichou, Shiba Kaien, leader of the thirteenth protection squad in the stead of their sickly taichou. When she meets Shiba Kaien she bows to him like she bows to her nii-sama, adding to his name a label of utmost respect. He pushes her up and admonishes her for being too uptight, speaking in a manner so wild and carefree that it makes her cringe.
Crass, she thinks, he’s so crass.
But she’s instantly drawn to him, to his open gestures and warm smiles. She still keeps her Kuchiki trademarked coolness, but now from the corner of her eyes she searches for him. Little by little she thinks that maybe she is melting, because that is the kind of man her fukutaichou is, blundering and loud but so full of warmth that the walls she had built in the Kuchiki household begin to crumble. She begins to wonder why her nii-sama had arranged for her to be in this squadron, one that would offer such a different upbringing than the Kuchiki house. But one day, she realizes that she can laugh again, and so she stops wondering.
Her fukutaichou has a wife. She is beautiful and powerful and kind. They are happy and in love. When she watches them it makes her happy and sad at the same time. She knows now that she will never belong to Kaien-dono, because he already has another, and she has no desire to see it otherwise. But, for the first time in her life, she wants to belong to someone, and this is the kind of want that hurts. She bites her lips and vows to distance herself, because that kind of want is dangerous to have.
So when he impales himself onto her sword and whispers in her ears that he is grateful and sorry, she doesn’t know what to say. She is grateful too, sorry too; she is a lot of things, but perhaps not for the same reasons.
She thinks that maybe she has killed that want by killing him. She tells herself that she should be a little happier now, but she isn’t, because in destroying the thing she wanted, she has created another kind of pain, and this pain is not tinged with happiness.
It is raining that night, and everything is so, so cold. She stands in puddles of water, watching the watery remains of the walls she had built and he had destroyed, wondering now what?
You're so brilliant, don't soon forget
Now, she thinks, she is truly lost. She searches for ground beneath her feet while she walks and stumbles often. She stays in bed late into the day, losing herself in the patterns of the ceiling.
One day she leaves her bed and pulls on her shihakusho, tightens her sandals and arranges her hair perfectly. Her footsteps are light on the wooden floors of the Seireitei corridors and her eyes a cold mirror. Kiyone tells her that she looks like a replica of her nii-sama and she smiles quietly in response. There is still no ground under her feet, but with her newly constructed walls and distant grace, she feels like she is flying, floating above life and transparent in the air.
That’s fine, she tells herself, it’s only what I deserve, and then she is at peace.
You're so brilliant, grace marked your heart
Soon she is assigned to a new station: Karakura town. Empty city and she finds it slightly amusing that her destination can reflect her state of mind. It might be fate, or the work of her nii-sama, same thing. She doesn’t understand why she, of all people, would be sent to the human realm, she who holds no memories of that place.
Maybe, she thinks, that is why they sent her. She holds no prejudice toward the human realm, has no ties their world. It may as well be a new world for her, a place for her to start over.
She doesn’t know what to make of this decision, but orders are orders and it is not as if she has ever had control over what she wanted.
So she goes to Karakura town, the empty city, carrying with her armloads of nothingness.
With quiet words I'll lead you in and out of the dark
The air in the human world is just as stagnant as the air in Soul Society. She kills Hollows with one clean stroke and watches humans dart around frantically in fear of something they cannot see. She walks down the streets unseen and stares into the faces of people laughing, crying, living and wonders if this is what she would have remembered if she had lived a longer life. She watches over the city at night from tall wooden poles strung together with wires feeling the light of moon pressing into her skin. It is a strange sort of living, this life of a patrol officer, but over time, she begins to settle in and her memories gradually stop haunting her.
There are powerful slivers of reiatsu in this town, she can feel them, and she slowly seeks them out, one by one, quietly. She watches them as their powers sleeps dormant in them while they lead ordinary lives, feeling a little envious.
One day she is called by a little boy and a little girl. The girl is shy and withdrawn but the boy is loud, obnoxious and reminds her of Renji, years and years and years ago. They bring her to a strange man in hat and clogs, of whom she immediately recognizes as Urahara Kisuke, former captain of the twelfth division and an exile. He waves his fan and pushes a cup of tea toward her, telling her that they should become wonderful friends. She accepts the tea and thinks that maybe he has gone a little looney in the head since his captain years. She turns him down politely when he offers her a gigai and anything else I can get you, Kuchiki-san. She is Kuchiki, and there’s nothing she cannot afford that she needs; besides, it would be breaking the law. He pouts at the rejection but tells her to come by anytime. She thanks him and says no, that she doesn’t want to get in any trouble.
Ah, well, Kuchiki-san, he says in parting, just keep my offer in mind.
This is the correlation of salvation and love
When this boy, this idiot of a boy, kicks her out of the air that night, her life turns up-side down, then right-side up, and up-side down again. She doesn’t know what to do anymore, because this boy is annoying and doesn’t believe a word she says. She wants to pound him into the ground, wants to ram her zanpakuto through his annoying face but she knows that she’ll be severely disciplined for doing so. So she binds him with kidou and leaves him there, feeling her life, occupation, and reputation screw itself over more with each passing second. She rushes outside to take care of the Hollow that she didn’t sense when she was dealing with his stupidity, but the boy just won’t leave her alone. He wriggles out of the house after her and much to her annoyance and amazement breaks her kidou to charge at the Hollow.
She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, doesn’t know if her eyebrows are disappearing into her hair out of bewilderment or terror, but the Hollow whips the boy out several feet and looms closer. She unsheathes Sode no Shirayuki and runs over, cursing violently under her breath and prepares to rid the Hollow in a single slice. But the boy, the boy is too close. She glances back in alarm and forces her sword away from the Hollow just in time, only managing to lodge her sword in a part of the Hollow’s mask. The stink of the Hollow is choking her and she can feel its teeth cleave into her shoulder and chest as she fights to keep the Hollow from biting further, a little more would surely kill her. The boy, at least, is safe from the impact that would have been created from her sword, but in her condition, it might’ve been better if he had died.
She crawls painfully to the side of the street, hoping to heal herself enough in time to save the boy. He is staring at her, eyes open wide and mouth gaping. She winces as she pulls herself in, trying to explain between hisses of pain what she’d been trying to tell him all along. He believes her now. He walks over to her and she can see in his eyes that he wants to fight.
No, not fight, to protect.
She knows that she is crazy when she gives him her sword and tells him that she will give him a portion of her powers, but something in that boy’s eyes makes her want to help him. At least, she tells herself, he will be able to stand a chance against the Hollow, even if it is just a sliver of chance, at least he’ll die a fighter, not a coward hiding behind a girl.
The boy, no, Ichigo-that’s what he had told her to call him- takes all of her powers and slays the beast, slinging his holyshitthat’sgigantic sword over his shoulder as he smirks at her. She is slumped in a corner, healing the worst of her wounds and wanting to kick his stupid face in. In the blurring surge of anger, exasperation, and adrenaline-rushing fear, she begins to feel that maybe, there is more to her life than what was paved for her.
Don't drop your arms, I'll guard your heart
She is taking too long to heal, she knows, and it is only a matter of time before Soul Society comes for her. She makes up her mind to leave that night, leaving Ichigo an encrypted note of warning. She has stayed far too long in the human realm; she never should have come in contact with these humans, because doing so is unlocking so many feelings inside of her, emotions that she had tried so hard to put away.
Friendship, love, these are not emotions that she should have. They push at her walls, threatening to break them down. She is a Shinigami and they are humans, she doesn’t belong with them and shouldn’t belong with them. She knows too well the consequences of letting in people she cannot keep.
Forget them, Kuchiki Rukia, she tells herself as she runs faster, wrap up these emotions and leave.
But the stupid boy comes after her, swinging his sword cockily at Abarai Renji -who is now a fukutaicho?!- and her nii-sama. Against all her efforts she is terrified again, wanting him to leave, knowing that it’ll break her but needing to know that he is not going to die.
She is screaming and crying into Renji’s shihakusho when Ichigo falls. It’s strange, she thinks in the back of her mind, she has not cried for anyone in so long. Renji holds her back, stopping her as she struggles to run to Ichigo’s side.
“Renji,” her nii-sama says. “He does bear some resemblance to that man.”
Her head snaps up at his words to stare at Ichigo, feeling the blood drain from her face. Her nii-sama was right, she realizes, Ichigo does hold striking resemblance to Kaien-dono, the way he speaks, the way he protects those he loves, even the way he looks.
Why hadn’t she noticed?
“What the hell.” Ichigo says, breaking the silence and grabbing the edge of her nii-sama’s robes, “I don’t know who the hell you guys are talking about, but it’s not me.”
She stares harder at him, her eyes feeling too large for her head as it dawns on her that he is right, he is not Kaien-dono, regardless of the similarities. He is Ichigo, and to insinuate that he is anyone else would be demeaning.
She makes up her mind then that there is no way she’s going to let him die while she’s still around. So she kicks his hand away from her nii-sama’s shihakusho and puts on her Kuchiki mask, following them through the gate.
It’s funny, she thinks, to be walking away from the only person who has ever come for her, the only person she has ever run away from, the only person who feels that she matters enough to die for. And now he is dying in the rain and the cold, powerless and betrayed as she walks away with her adopted brother and former friend, two men who have pushed her from their lives, only coming back to retrieve her for her execution.
She knows that she will never forgive herself, but now she is a doll again.
That is okay, she thinks, because she has never wanted to disappear as much as she does now.
With quiet words I'll lead you in
When Renji tells her that Ichigo is here, in Soul Society, fighting taichou to save her, her head feels numb. She watches Renji walk away, hearing a silent rumble in her ears. She doesn’t know what to think, what to hope, because she knows that the chances of him succeeding are very, very slim. She walks over to the slit of a window of the white tower and sits down, settling for his safety, his life, that’s all; she just wants him to live through this.
There are warm drops on her face, quickly cooling in the evening air and she realizes that she is crying. They are not tears though, not tears, just the waters of her walls of ice, weeping as they drain away from her heart.
Ichigo, she prays into the cross of her arms, you’re not allowed to die on me; you hear me?
end.
Download song here:The Unwinding Cable Car
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http://www.lyred.com/lyrics/Anberlin/Cities/The+Unwinding+Cable+Car
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