[fic] Brokenness and Healing {PART II}
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 II
The parting at the train station should have been the last they'd ever see of each other. At the very least that was what they had each expected, though they had each secretly hoped otherwise. After all, Ichigo had not told the Quincy his address, nor had the Quincy intimated his own plans for moving. But fate plays tricks. Just when they both thought they'd gotten past their unspoken attraction to the other, fate, like a slap in the face, brought them into contact once more.
Two years had passed and the trees had once more become bare and lifeless. Their dark trunks rose sharply like jagged teeth across the blue expanse of the horizon. Grey lines streaked across the flat lands and up the rolling hills, the harvest long since reaped. Far overhead came the cry of gulls and the air smelt of salt and brine. In a few days snow would descend like frosting, coating everything in the white of winter.
They met at the pier. At first they hadn't recognized each other. Ichigo had done away with the loud orange hair and wore a pair of square silver-framed glasses. Ishida chose to forgo his pair and instead wore a cap pulled low against his face. The former was in the midst of his morning jog. The latter, baggage in his gloved hands, was escaping from the demands on his life in the little-known and little-visited island.
From where Ishida stood he watched the unhurried pace of the porters, the children playing tag amidst the fishing crates. A soft sigh escaped his lips. He had thought he would escape his inner demons but they had somehow trailed him and, like a rotten stench, tainted that which he thought was free. And he had ran. Whereas to retreat had once been unbearably shameful, he cared not anymore. Gazing at the old men smoking pipes underneath a shop awning he wondered if it was because of the war--because he had changed him. It was then he noticed the man, rather tall and lean in a navy blue jacket. The man had paused by the roadside, retying a shoelace. Ishida could not dispel the prickling sense that he knew this man, that he should know this man and that his lack of remembrance was somehow a disgrace. Picking up the single bag he had carried from his other lifetime, Ishida made his way across the pier. The sense of déjà vu simply grew as he approached.
It was at a distance of ten feet when the truth hit him like a sledge hammer. "Kurosaki?"
The man raised his eyes and, seeing Ishida, they widened. The voice that replied was the same as it had been except it was a little deeper, a little older, a little more mature. "Ishida."
They gazed at each other, Shinigami and Quincy no more. Simply Ichigo and Ishida. Simply two men, or so they would have wanted to believe. Things changed and they didn't. Passions they thought had died like embers blown by the winter wind they found merely asleep, slowly but surely being roused. They chose not to say anything more. But not because they didn't have anything to say. It was simply that they were back at the train station, the distance between them seemingly unbridgeable, afraid to reach across. Choosing a bench near the water's edge, they sat a hand's width apart, fingers almost touching except they would not. They watched the last of the night's fishing boats arrive and dock. They watched the pier's dogs run back and forth, running underfoot and barking at the occasional passerby. Watching seemed easier than talking.
It was Ichigo that first broke the silence.
"So...how are you?"
Ishida glanced at Ichigo. The Shinigami had changed. It was not just the now black hair and the slightly leaner build. The man before him sat with the ease and grace of a marathon runner poised between rest and flight, perhaps still a little rough around the edges but confident of his prowess--of who he was. It was there in the tilt of his head, the imperceptible forward lean of his body as though his entire being, like the prow of a ship, was pointed to its true north. He has found his peace. It seemed as though the inner demons that had plagued the Shinigami had somehow fled in the night, leaving only the man. A bitter smile threatened to touch Ishida's face. He knew he should not begrudge Ichigo that peace but it was ironic that while the man beside him had seemingly achieved salvation, he could not.
Ichigo noticed the way Ishida's fingers tightened, the way his eyes seemed to harden. He is still hurting. Despite the outward changes in appearance--the glassless face, the slightly shorter hair--Ishida still seemed as plagued by the shadows that lurked in the slight hunch of the shoulders and the darker edges of eyes that would not fade. And yet his pride would not allow him to acknowledge the vast void that threatened to engulf him, would not allow him to acknowledge the pain that threatened to tear his soul in half to another, even if he had already acknowledged as much to himself.
"Fine," Ishida said.
Ichigo turned away. Both recognized the falsehood of that simple word. But neither acknowledged it. Instead they chose to return the banalities they knew were easier than the questions and concerns that they longed to say. Just as it had been during that fateful parting.
"How long will you be here?" Ichigo asked.
"A few weeks." Ishida gazed outwards, locking his gaze with the lighthouse in the distance. His face remained unyielding, the more than a decade of training to silently hold in check each and every emotion, to control every facial muscle to never turn, crease, or twitch was still enforced, even if unconsciously. But here and there could be glimpsed the frayed edges of that facade. And these glimpses into the forbidden room of a heart merely showed a festering chill and the turbulent of seas of a typhoon.
Ichigo looked at Ishida's face and sighed. "I see."
From across the street an old woman who had just opened her door to let the fresh air in watched as the young boy who always jogged past her house stand up from a bench in the pier. With the surety of an athlete he stretched upwards, zipping his navy blue jacket along the way, preparing to continue his run after what seemed to be a short rest. But today he was not alone. His companion turned his capped head towards him and, cupping his hands as though trying to dim the brilliance of the man before him, listened to the youth's parting words. Then, as though following a rerun of a late night movie, the man left seated bowed his head and placed them in his hands the moment he was certain that his earlier companion had truly left and gone. The old woman across the road did not notice the small sheet of paper that had been left in the now empty seat beside him. She had no way of knowing that the words written in the untidy scrawl of the man who had just left were this man's heaven and hell. She merely turned around and returned inside oblivious to the significance of the moment, just as the man left seated was oblivious to the scrape of the crates of fish being hauled up across ramps a short distance away and the whirr of bicycles making their way up to the hill beyond.
Three weeks later the Hoshimi left the pier carrying away only one passenger. The young man who bought passage did not go on deck as they pulled away from the shore as was customary. Instead, he was found sitting on the edge of the bed of his cabin, a small sheet of paper lying on the empty side of the mattress beside him. On it was written a single address. Not his own surely because this man had fine handwriting, much like his fine fingers, whereas the hand used to write the note was haphazard and brash. No, this boy was surely a pianist--or a surgeon. The writer most definitely was neither. If it had been in a woman's hand then the captain might have guessed that the quiet desolation that could be sometimes glimpsed like flashes of color amidst a gray plane in the youth's face was that of a love lost and spurned. But it was a man's. So he merely left the youth to his own devices after a hastily mumbled advice to move on, after all it was none of his business what his passengers did so long as they did not endanger the safety of his vessel, his crew, and his cargo. He did not notice the way the young man carefully folded the sheet and placed it in the middle of a much-thumbed book before replacing it in amongst the neatly folded clothes of his single traveling bag like a precious memento he did not wish sullied or lost.
Ishida's time in that little island had elapsed without his ever having had the courage to take the invitation Ichigo had left that first morning in the pier.
"That is my address. Come see me whenever you feel like it."
And he now likely never would.
_____
To be continued in Part III
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 II
The parting at the train station should have been the last they'd ever see of each other. At the very least that was what they had each expected, though they had each secretly hoped otherwise. After all, Ichigo had not told the Quincy his address, nor had the Quincy intimated his own plans for moving. But fate plays tricks. Just when they both thought they'd gotten past their unspoken attraction to the other, fate, like a slap in the face, brought them into contact once more.
Two years had passed and the trees had once more become bare and lifeless. Their dark trunks rose sharply like jagged teeth across the blue expanse of the horizon. Grey lines streaked across the flat lands and up the rolling hills, the harvest long since reaped. Far overhead came the cry of gulls and the air smelt of salt and brine. In a few days snow would descend like frosting, coating everything in the white of winter.
They met at the pier. At first they hadn't recognized each other. Ichigo had done away with the loud orange hair and wore a pair of square silver-framed glasses. Ishida chose to forgo his pair and instead wore a cap pulled low against his face. The former was in the midst of his morning jog. The latter, baggage in his gloved hands, was escaping from the demands on his life in the little-known and little-visited island.
From where Ishida stood he watched the unhurried pace of the porters, the children playing tag amidst the fishing crates. A soft sigh escaped his lips. He had thought he would escape his inner demons but they had somehow trailed him and, like a rotten stench, tainted that which he thought was free. And he had ran. Whereas to retreat had once been unbearably shameful, he cared not anymore. Gazing at the old men smoking pipes underneath a shop awning he wondered if it was because of the war--because he had changed him. It was then he noticed the man, rather tall and lean in a navy blue jacket. The man had paused by the roadside, retying a shoelace. Ishida could not dispel the prickling sense that he knew this man, that he should know this man and that his lack of remembrance was somehow a disgrace. Picking up the single bag he had carried from his other lifetime, Ishida made his way across the pier. The sense of déjà vu simply grew as he approached.
It was at a distance of ten feet when the truth hit him like a sledge hammer. "Kurosaki?"
The man raised his eyes and, seeing Ishida, they widened. The voice that replied was the same as it had been except it was a little deeper, a little older, a little more mature. "Ishida."
They gazed at each other, Shinigami and Quincy no more. Simply Ichigo and Ishida. Simply two men, or so they would have wanted to believe. Things changed and they didn't. Passions they thought had died like embers blown by the winter wind they found merely asleep, slowly but surely being roused. They chose not to say anything more. But not because they didn't have anything to say. It was simply that they were back at the train station, the distance between them seemingly unbridgeable, afraid to reach across. Choosing a bench near the water's edge, they sat a hand's width apart, fingers almost touching except they would not. They watched the last of the night's fishing boats arrive and dock. They watched the pier's dogs run back and forth, running underfoot and barking at the occasional passerby. Watching seemed easier than talking.
It was Ichigo that first broke the silence.
"So...how are you?"
Ishida glanced at Ichigo. The Shinigami had changed. It was not just the now black hair and the slightly leaner build. The man before him sat with the ease and grace of a marathon runner poised between rest and flight, perhaps still a little rough around the edges but confident of his prowess--of who he was. It was there in the tilt of his head, the imperceptible forward lean of his body as though his entire being, like the prow of a ship, was pointed to its true north. He has found his peace. It seemed as though the inner demons that had plagued the Shinigami had somehow fled in the night, leaving only the man. A bitter smile threatened to touch Ishida's face. He knew he should not begrudge Ichigo that peace but it was ironic that while the man beside him had seemingly achieved salvation, he could not.
Ichigo noticed the way Ishida's fingers tightened, the way his eyes seemed to harden. He is still hurting. Despite the outward changes in appearance--the glassless face, the slightly shorter hair--Ishida still seemed as plagued by the shadows that lurked in the slight hunch of the shoulders and the darker edges of eyes that would not fade. And yet his pride would not allow him to acknowledge the vast void that threatened to engulf him, would not allow him to acknowledge the pain that threatened to tear his soul in half to another, even if he had already acknowledged as much to himself.
"Fine," Ishida said.
Ichigo turned away. Both recognized the falsehood of that simple word. But neither acknowledged it. Instead they chose to return the banalities they knew were easier than the questions and concerns that they longed to say. Just as it had been during that fateful parting.
"How long will you be here?" Ichigo asked.
"A few weeks." Ishida gazed outwards, locking his gaze with the lighthouse in the distance. His face remained unyielding, the more than a decade of training to silently hold in check each and every emotion, to control every facial muscle to never turn, crease, or twitch was still enforced, even if unconsciously. But here and there could be glimpsed the frayed edges of that facade. And these glimpses into the forbidden room of a heart merely showed a festering chill and the turbulent of seas of a typhoon.
Ichigo looked at Ishida's face and sighed. "I see."
From across the street an old woman who had just opened her door to let the fresh air in watched as the young boy who always jogged past her house stand up from a bench in the pier. With the surety of an athlete he stretched upwards, zipping his navy blue jacket along the way, preparing to continue his run after what seemed to be a short rest. But today he was not alone. His companion turned his capped head towards him and, cupping his hands as though trying to dim the brilliance of the man before him, listened to the youth's parting words. Then, as though following a rerun of a late night movie, the man left seated bowed his head and placed them in his hands the moment he was certain that his earlier companion had truly left and gone. The old woman across the road did not notice the small sheet of paper that had been left in the now empty seat beside him. She had no way of knowing that the words written in the untidy scrawl of the man who had just left were this man's heaven and hell. She merely turned around and returned inside oblivious to the significance of the moment, just as the man left seated was oblivious to the scrape of the crates of fish being hauled up across ramps a short distance away and the whirr of bicycles making their way up to the hill beyond.
Three weeks later the Hoshimi left the pier carrying away only one passenger. The young man who bought passage did not go on deck as they pulled away from the shore as was customary. Instead, he was found sitting on the edge of the bed of his cabin, a small sheet of paper lying on the empty side of the mattress beside him. On it was written a single address. Not his own surely because this man had fine handwriting, much like his fine fingers, whereas the hand used to write the note was haphazard and brash. No, this boy was surely a pianist--or a surgeon. The writer most definitely was neither. If it had been in a woman's hand then the captain might have guessed that the quiet desolation that could be sometimes glimpsed like flashes of color amidst a gray plane in the youth's face was that of a love lost and spurned. But it was a man's. So he merely left the youth to his own devices after a hastily mumbled advice to move on, after all it was none of his business what his passengers did so long as they did not endanger the safety of his vessel, his crew, and his cargo. He did not notice the way the young man carefully folded the sheet and placed it in the middle of a much-thumbed book before replacing it in amongst the neatly folded clothes of his single traveling bag like a precious memento he did not wish sullied or lost.
Ishida's time in that little island had elapsed without his ever having had the courage to take the invitation Ichigo had left that first morning in the pier.
"That is my address. Come see me whenever you feel like it."
And he now likely never would.
_____
To be continued in Part III