[fic] Brokenness and Healing {PART III}
Title: Brokenness and Healing
Author: alstair
Pairing: Ichigo x Ishida Uryuu
Rating: G
Summary: The scars they bear are not only physical. The hurts they've received still endure.
Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Bleach and the Characters of Bleach
PART III
The air had become perceptibly cooler, even the lightest breeze raising goosebumps on any uncovered flesh. The dark clouds that roiled overhead a token of impending snow. Ichigo's breath rose like a mist before him, hanging in the chill air for a second before dissipating and being replaced by yet another white cloud of puffed air. In. Out. In. Out. His breathing an even rhythm as he made his way through his usual course--down his apartment, across the park where in late spring and summer young boys and girls gathered and where forgotten pails, shovels, and a white teddy bear lay in wait for their owners by the sandbox. Then down the hill towards the pier where, if before he merely passed, now he would stop and sit at that bench where he and Ishida had sat together, watching the gulls wheeling overhead, listening to the waves crashing against the raised wood and concrete of the landing. Listening for the sound of footsteps. Waiting for a slim white hand to reach out and touch his shoulder.
But he never saw Ishida. Ishida never visited him.
And the black hands of the watch he wore ticked by the seconds, the minutes, the hours, and the days as he had waited. Waited. And still waited.
Pulling his orange scarf closer, Ichigo turned the corner, eyes hopeful for any sign of the dark-haired Quincy in the vicinity of the pier looming ahead. The scarf had been a present to him by an old lady he had helped when he had first arrived and his hair was still the same color as the cloth now draped around his neck. In those days sometimes he sweated even as his body chilled, the nights filled with torturous dreams until slowly but surely the embers died down and he knew that though there would never be a full recovery he had made it over the hill and the worst had passed.
Initially, the first days since he had met Ishida were filled with staring at the door, jumping with an alacrity he had not felt in a long time each time he heard a knock. But slowly as he began to realize the Quincy would not be forthcoming he began to search the boy out himself. Whereas the running had been a form of therapy now he ran with the single hope that perhaps he might catch a glimpse of the slim back of a once-bespectacled youth he admitted to himself that he loved. But the only backs he saw where the hunched shoulders of workers plying their respective trades, laboring in the cold with their gloved hands, scarves pulled up against their faces until only the bridges of their noses and their eyes peeked out from the frame made between the wool of their varicolored scarves and their woolen bonnets.
One such man watched Ichigo as he reached the pier and sat in his accustomed seat, looking outwards, hands touching the wooden slats of the bench in the same posture from that first morning, waiting for fingers to reach across the distance and grasp his. A source of mild interest, this man watched as the young man, but really he though merely a boy, seemingly struggle with some inner thought, fighting it seemed the temptation to turn around and look, not at him, but for another he seemed to be waiting for. But whoever this was would never come. He had seen him sit there for the past week and the pattern would always repeat itself. Sit. Stare. Wait a few minutes. And then when the clouds began to darken casting patches of shadow across the grounds he would rise and with a single backward glace resume a well-rehearsed run.
Today, however, the boy stayed sitting much longer. Though the men at the pier knew it not, today marked a full month since the start of the never-ending waiting, a waiting for Godot.
Jamming his hands into his jacket pockets, Ichigo balled his fingers, clenching tightly until he felt the stubs of his nails biting into through his white gloves and into his flesh. Though he had lost what little ability he had in sensing reiatsu when he perforce had to rip his soul in order to bind the hollow within him that had bidden its time in that terrible winter of that year when the last battle he'd ever fight was waged--he knew, somehow, that Ishida was no longer in the island. He had felt that for some time but had refused to acknowledge it, hoping against hope. But now he was certain--how he was not entirely sure--but he knew, that Ishida had sailed off to God knew where, returning to his highly compartmentalized life and the falsities of the society he revolved in.
And Ichigo was sick and tired of the waiting. He had never really been one to wait. That had been more the Quincy's trait than his.
Three days later, the workers saw him at the pier with his navy blue jacket and beside him a large black bag, its handles flopping to the ground like some dog's ears. He stood straight, staring into the white and blue that was the horizon with a look that held something of the purpose that had steeled itself in his heart and occupied the entirety of his mind. He stood there amidst the fish crates and the seaside dogs yet all who saw him felt he was no longer there but somewhere else they could no longer follow. They felt in him a strength, tightly wound and ready to spring forth at a whispered call.
The time had finally come to cross, to step into the other's personal space and demand an answer to the question both had always known but had never dared to voice out.
____
To be continued in Part IV
Author: alstair
Pairing: Ichigo x Ishida Uryuu
Rating: G
Summary: The scars they bear are not only physical. The hurts they've received still endure.
Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Bleach and the Characters of Bleach
PART III
The air had become perceptibly cooler, even the lightest breeze raising goosebumps on any uncovered flesh. The dark clouds that roiled overhead a token of impending snow. Ichigo's breath rose like a mist before him, hanging in the chill air for a second before dissipating and being replaced by yet another white cloud of puffed air. In. Out. In. Out. His breathing an even rhythm as he made his way through his usual course--down his apartment, across the park where in late spring and summer young boys and girls gathered and where forgotten pails, shovels, and a white teddy bear lay in wait for their owners by the sandbox. Then down the hill towards the pier where, if before he merely passed, now he would stop and sit at that bench where he and Ishida had sat together, watching the gulls wheeling overhead, listening to the waves crashing against the raised wood and concrete of the landing. Listening for the sound of footsteps. Waiting for a slim white hand to reach out and touch his shoulder.
But he never saw Ishida. Ishida never visited him.
And the black hands of the watch he wore ticked by the seconds, the minutes, the hours, and the days as he had waited. Waited. And still waited.
Pulling his orange scarf closer, Ichigo turned the corner, eyes hopeful for any sign of the dark-haired Quincy in the vicinity of the pier looming ahead. The scarf had been a present to him by an old lady he had helped when he had first arrived and his hair was still the same color as the cloth now draped around his neck. In those days sometimes he sweated even as his body chilled, the nights filled with torturous dreams until slowly but surely the embers died down and he knew that though there would never be a full recovery he had made it over the hill and the worst had passed.
Initially, the first days since he had met Ishida were filled with staring at the door, jumping with an alacrity he had not felt in a long time each time he heard a knock. But slowly as he began to realize the Quincy would not be forthcoming he began to search the boy out himself. Whereas the running had been a form of therapy now he ran with the single hope that perhaps he might catch a glimpse of the slim back of a once-bespectacled youth he admitted to himself that he loved. But the only backs he saw where the hunched shoulders of workers plying their respective trades, laboring in the cold with their gloved hands, scarves pulled up against their faces until only the bridges of their noses and their eyes peeked out from the frame made between the wool of their varicolored scarves and their woolen bonnets.
One such man watched Ichigo as he reached the pier and sat in his accustomed seat, looking outwards, hands touching the wooden slats of the bench in the same posture from that first morning, waiting for fingers to reach across the distance and grasp his. A source of mild interest, this man watched as the young man, but really he though merely a boy, seemingly struggle with some inner thought, fighting it seemed the temptation to turn around and look, not at him, but for another he seemed to be waiting for. But whoever this was would never come. He had seen him sit there for the past week and the pattern would always repeat itself. Sit. Stare. Wait a few minutes. And then when the clouds began to darken casting patches of shadow across the grounds he would rise and with a single backward glace resume a well-rehearsed run.
Today, however, the boy stayed sitting much longer. Though the men at the pier knew it not, today marked a full month since the start of the never-ending waiting, a waiting for Godot.
Jamming his hands into his jacket pockets, Ichigo balled his fingers, clenching tightly until he felt the stubs of his nails biting into through his white gloves and into his flesh. Though he had lost what little ability he had in sensing reiatsu when he perforce had to rip his soul in order to bind the hollow within him that had bidden its time in that terrible winter of that year when the last battle he'd ever fight was waged--he knew, somehow, that Ishida was no longer in the island. He had felt that for some time but had refused to acknowledge it, hoping against hope. But now he was certain--how he was not entirely sure--but he knew, that Ishida had sailed off to God knew where, returning to his highly compartmentalized life and the falsities of the society he revolved in.
And Ichigo was sick and tired of the waiting. He had never really been one to wait. That had been more the Quincy's trait than his.
Three days later, the workers saw him at the pier with his navy blue jacket and beside him a large black bag, its handles flopping to the ground like some dog's ears. He stood straight, staring into the white and blue that was the horizon with a look that held something of the purpose that had steeled itself in his heart and occupied the entirety of his mind. He stood there amidst the fish crates and the seaside dogs yet all who saw him felt he was no longer there but somewhere else they could no longer follow. They felt in him a strength, tightly wound and ready to spring forth at a whispered call.
The time had finally come to cross, to step into the other's personal space and demand an answer to the question both had always known but had never dared to voice out.
____
To be continued in Part IV