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It begins like this – abruptly – as a faint memory that sharpens with time.
The day he meets her is probably going to be the worst day of her life, and in retrospect, that’s probably not a good way to meet someone—her, dripping head to toe with blood and sweat; him, his uniform tie still half-undone, the clinic not even open yet. She buckles under his weight, the girl; so small that the only part of herself she gives in identification is her choppy auburn hair. There’s blood everywhere, as it always seems to be and the girl –
She’s buckling. A withering petal peeking out, crushed under the weight of her grief. He’s getting ready for school, the clinic isn’t open yet, and he’s opening his mouth to tell her as much when she looks up at him with raw pain in her eyes.
“Please,” she whispers brokenly. “You have to help him.”
That, if anything, sets Ichigo into motion. His heart is a kick-drum in his chest as he hollers for his dad, blood running hot in his ears when the clinic blurs to life to save this man, this man he doesn’t know. The girl, she follows him around like there’s an invisible lifeline connecting the two, like it’ll snap if she’s more than five feet away. It’s when Isshin nearly trips over her for the third time that he gives Ichigo a significant look, one that Ichigo has learned to read as code for ‘take care of this.’
Of her.
Thing is, there’s not a lot he can do for her at this point. Ichigo isn’t a doctor, but he’s lived in a clinic long enough to read the signs. Eventually, someone – probably his father – will have to deliver the bad news to her, and he knows from experience that bad news is hard enough to hear with your family by your side, worse when you’re alone.
So they sit – him, the girl, and her grief, the silence so loud in the clinic hallway that his ears fill with it. Ichigo is young, but even he knows there’s no cure he can offer her, no remedy he can provide that will remotely prepare her for the years to come. The world is too large and they are too small, floating aimlessly in search of the people who left them. Begging for them not to leave, absorbed in the delusion that they haven’t already been left behind.
Ichigo is young, but between the choking fear of losing someone and the courage of having a comforting hand on your shoulder, he knows which she would prefer.
And so they sit. Ichigo, the girl, her grief, and his hand next to hers. It hardly makes a difference and the girl’s eyes are so lifeless he wonders if she can feel it at all, but her sniffles reduce in volume and that muted helplessness he carries around diminishes and he thinks, maybe –
Maybe he’s helped her for a moment.
Isshin comes out an hour, maybe hours later and his eyes are grave. The lifeline is snipped, and the last of what ties the unknown man to this world is her.
The girl with the auburn hair.
He thinks about her, in the weeks after. If she’s got a mom to hold her close, or a dad to crack a bad joke, or even baby sisters or brothers who’s hands she can grip and make funny faces to – if only for a moment.
If she’s got anyone at all.
And as with most things, he forgets. School keeps him busy enough and car accidents aren’t that uncommon in Karakura for this to be any different.
The world blurs into the future, and it’s almost ironic how it isn’t until years later that he makes the connection.
It is almost entirely a coincidence that Orihime meets him on the first day of school. Such a blip in the grander scheme of things that she’s sure – had the world been darker, uneven, or even slightly off course than what it had been at that moment, it would have never happened at all.
“Kurosaki Ichigo,” Tatsuki says his name is, and Orihime can’t for the life of her figure out why that name should mean something to her. It’s only when Tatsuki tacks on a quick, “—his family runs the local clinic,” that she realizes why.
She shakes his hand with trembling fingers nonetheless. She wonders if he remembers her at all – immediately realizes they are both better off without this precedent defining their future interactions.
She’s captivated, nonetheless. Sometimes, in math class, his brows knit together in a narrow ‘v’ and his lips thin into a line. A strange heat flourishes in her cheeks when she spots him lazing around the corridors with his friends sometimes. And sometimes, when she wishes him good morning, her hands feel damp and her heart kicks up a flutter.
“I feel so clammy all the time,” she says to Sora’s shrine one night, as she folds her clothes.
Sora’s shrine, as always, doesn’t reply and she doesn’t let this dampen her spirit, even if her heart sinks with the realization that she is, truly, alone. She bravely colors the silences with stories, with the sharp wit of Tatsuki’s antics and the vibrant orange of Kurosaki Ichigo’s hair – and does Sora know that Ichigo talks back to the teachers sometimes? How bold!
She doesn’t notice the silhouette hanging by the window, parting her curtain’s with the evening breeze.
She thinks of herself as an utter idiot. There are tears in her eyes – big, fat tears – and she rubs them away furiously as she destroys her belongings in search of it.
“Come on, where are you?” she mutters, bile rising in her throat at the prospect of losing the one thing – the one thing Sora gave her to remember him by. And she just carelessly lost –
There’s a peek of blue beneath her coat sleeve, right under her desk. She lunges for it, the heaviest swarm of relief crossing her chest when she picks her pins up again.
“Stupid, stupid Orihime,” she scolds, neatly tacking them back to her hair. Never again will she take them off, even if it means having a scratchy scalp or messy hair or pointed looks from the other girls. Her hair is beautiful—Sora once said so, Tatsuki says so all the time, and—
“Inoue?”
Orihime startles. Ichigo abandons the doorway and enters the classroom with a confused scowl, only to pick up his bag from his seat. He must have forgotten it. When his eyes take in her teary-eyed face, she flushes and wipes her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” she insists, and his eyes catch on the twinkle of her pins in the light.
“What are those?”
Her eyes follow his to her head and she smiles, with just a hint of rue. “They’re a gift — from my brother.” The reminder of Sora dulls her heart but forces a jubilant smile on her face; can’t let her guard down, can’t let him see her unhappy from the great afterlife, and so she pumps a fist in the air with exuberance. “I wear them every day!”
Ichigo’s stretch wide for a moment before he smiles—actually smiles—all warm, and kind, and so very real. It’s a nice smile, a rare one by his standards. When the first slant of evening sunlight crosses his face, he looks young, like this is the part of himself he protects and Orihime can’t help but wonder why. For a reason she can’t explain, or at least not yet, she feels a fathomless yearning in her heart to see, and to be seen. Something about his real smile makes her wonder about all the fake ones—if they share a similar heartache after all.
“I see,” he says, and his smile becomes smaller but no less kind, brows relaxed. “Take good care of them, then.”
It isn’t until much later that her suspicions are confirmed. The rain seems to fall thick as anything on them both, and the revelation isn’t as painful as she thought it would be. It’s cathartic.
She visited him the night before she was kidnapped.
Ichigo knows this with a surety that sits firmly at the base of his spine. Ulquiorra and Aizen might have spun a web of lies with their carefully crafted mind games, but there’s no greater fallback than instinct. It burns from his chest-up when they tell him she’s gone — (traitor, dead; a lot of words get thrown around) — and he just knows he has to go. The morning of, he wakes up with the numb aftertaste of a nightmare in his mouth, and the last warmth that Orihime left behind lingers in his fingers like a talisman.
It almost feels like she left her heart with him, entrusting it in his care. The finality of it all is what terrifies him, makes him go fuck it, even if it means charging in guns-ablazing without giving Rukia so much of a heads-up.
She forgives him, at least.
Well, she kicks him first but he’s never really been bothered with the semantics.
He loses his powers. Every whisper of air, every cool morning breeze is now just that; even his shinigami badge is just a block of wood, a weight in his pocket that he traces like a bruise when no one’s looking.
Spring settles in and he’s almost used to it, the weightlessness with which his body stalks up the school corridors. In many ways, it’s almost like things are gradually settling back to normal — whatever that used to be, before all of this. Most days he spends on the roof, eyes scanning out the linear horizon of this school, this town and all the ghosts that used to live here.
The ones that still do, the ones that left and haven’t dropped by since.
“She hasn’t shown her face once since all that happened,” Keigo says, and it isn’t until he says it that Ichigo realizes he’d been thinking it, too—yet another bruise he’s been pressing down on too hard. “Kinda cold, isn’t it?”
“No it’s not,” Ichigo defends, a vehement heat flushing at the tips of his ears. “She’s not even in charge of Karakura Town, so it's normal for her not to stop by.”
It sounds petulant to his own ears and even Keigo flares his nostrils, skeptical. There’s a palpable pause, and Ichigo is sure this will be a topic du jour for him and Mizuro later, long after they drop Ichigo off on their walk back home. He knows everyone is walking on eggshells now, and he wishes he hadn’t cracked himself so open and unguarded that he was practically vulnerable.
“You don’t miss her?”
Ichigo exhales, pushing himself off the railing. “There’s no reason to,” he says, in his best effort to be firm and rational. 16 years of waking up to pot-bellied widowers wailing in his bathroom and flinging themselves against the paper-thin wallpapers—he can live with the silence for a while. Can get used to being up-and-dumped too—eventually. It’s not that he’s mad at Rukia—or anyone for that matter—but it does wear him down to the bone, the idea that the power he made his own is someone else’s to give and take. Ichigo’s not one to leave things up to chance, but it’s not like Zangetsu gave him much of a choice. After all, it wouldn’t really be a sacrifice if it came easy.
“Well, I guess that’s true. I don’t want to go through anything scary like that again,” Keigo decides eventually.
Ichigo can’t say he disagrees.
He keeps pressing on bruises, though, because truth be told, he has a lot of time to think and revisit old hurts. One thing he keeps coming back to is the fact that Orihime visited him. He digs into himself with questions, like fingernails on tender skin: why? He can’t fathom why she would choose him — what she could have even said, what the terms of her deal with Ulquiorra were, beyond the obvious. So much of that night was a question mark, but all he knows is that she cried for him, like she did many times before. Orihime wears her feelings with a sincerity more than most and sometimes, he thinks he knows what’s behind those smiles she spares him, each one more radiant than the last. Why she hurts so much when he does. He can grab her elbow, watch the slow color burn its way to her cheeks and think, maybe…just maybe.
But the moments disappear just as soon as they arrive and she’s rambling about something she saw on TV again and he’s left to wonder whether he’s seeing things or if they’re really there — and which implication jolts him more. He’s only ever known how to return sincerity with action, and without Zangetsu, he might as well be at standstill. He can’t protect her, can’t return her faith in him with proof that he’s worthy of it, can’t go two days without remembering the feral way Tatsuki snatched him by the collar and regretted ever introducing either of them to each other. Gone are the days he can promise her anything, and the idea that he can ask — and she might answer him honestly — makes him want to clench his teeth in the worst, most searing kind of pain.
“Inoue,” he says one day, his Adam’s apple weighing down his throat in an anxiety that sinks to his chest.
What did you…why…do you…
Her eyes are curious. Even the surrounding trees in their schoolyard seem to hush in anticipation.
“Are you alright?” he manages to murmur last-minute, breaths coming in shorter than he thought they would.
She smiles, and he sees the bags under her eyes, accepts her lie at face value when she says, “of course, Kurosaki-kun,” very softly. Somehow, that becomes a mutual, unspoken agreement to drop it. While he’s not ready to hear her say she loves him right now, the full and honest truth is that he’d be absolutely irreparable if he heard her say she didn’t.
Somehow, he can’t help but wonder when he gave her that power.
The miracle is this: they stand side-by-side on the frontlines of a war together and come out relatively unscathed. They graduate. Somewhere along the way, Orihime realizes that this is her life now, making the most of what she has while she waits for the next Big Disaster to come and sweep them away. It’s not pessimism — she’s being prepared. She trains with Chad, she goes to her job, she drops by at the Kurosaki clinic whenever Ichigo invites her over. His company makes her feel exultant. She expected to see less of him once he started university, but somehow, she’s over at his more days than she’s not and he almost always convinces her to stay for dinner. It’s a tough fight if you’re unwilling, and Orihime is very much unwilling to give up the chance to just exist around a happy, lazy, comfortable Ichigo. Just over three years ago, she was a babbling mess on her bathroom floor because she thought she paled in comparison to a girl they both loved and held dear. Her life is different now, so devoid of the weight of insecurity she carried around with a placid smile and false confidence.
“What?” Ichigo asks on one of those days — a good day, that is — both legs stretched wide out with their Scrabble board between his legs.
“Nothing,” she smiles, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“Hey,” he protests, tugging the board back by pinching the corner to get her attention. “What? Why are you looking at me weird?”
“It’s nothing.” She’s endeared by the way his scowl deepens. “I’m just thinking about my next word.”
“It better not be 'razzmatazz' again,” he threatens and she belly-laughs,
I love you, she thinks when their eyes catch again. I love you so much.
He flushes, eyes averting back to his board. “It’s my turn anyway.”
It’s in moments like that when she considers throwing caution to the wind and just telling him how she wouldn't trade him for the world, how she's seen him dead and dirty and despaired and loved him through it all because he deserves it. How she thought the world ended once, and she'd never smile again but with him, she's smiling all the time.
It's not even a matter of confidence anymore; it's just that they have it so good right now, she just wonders if she's maybe asking for too much.
"Kurosaki-kun and I are really good friends," she insists to Tatsuki, almost as a way to insist to herself. "Shouldn't that be enough for me? Am I being selfish?"
"I think these are questions you should be asking yourself," Tatsuki tells her honestly, "but also, it feels like he's totally into you—shut up, stop blushing, it does. I mean, he makes you hot chocolate when you go over to his house. Do you know who else he makes hot chocolate for?"
Orihime blinks. "Who?"
"No one!" Tatsuki slams the table with her palm.
"He's just very kind," Orihime reasons, but her stomach sinks all the same. She knows in her heart of hearts that Ichigo is a deeply loving person and that it doesn't take romantic feelings for him to go to the ends of the world to keep his people happy. That's why it tires her out sometimes because while her mind tries to rationalize it, she feels like she's leading herself on in some way. She can't help it; this is the boy she's loved since she was fifteen after all.
On one of the nights Chad calls them over to go star-watching, she and Ichigo end up sharing his car — Isshin's car — on the drive there, a dream-date pulled straight from one of her many fantasies. Ichigo has his arm around the back of her headrest, the other on the wheel, and it's so very high school — so much like the life her classmates in Karakura thought she was leading as princess and it-girl. They could be anyone tonight — lovers on the run, astronauts steering the ship on some very plain-looking fields, Ichigo and Orihime, but IchigoandOrihime. The possibilities are so potent, and her hand thrills when he holds it to help her onto the hood of his car. They don't touch—not in ways that mean anything—but Ichigo is more touch-oriented these days than he used to be when he maintained a respectable distance back in first year. The brushes of his fingers against her back to steady her, the gentle knock of his hand against her head when she makes an exasperating joke—the novelty has yet to wear off, rich and full of giddy delight.
To know that he likes her enough to seek her company, to not be averse to her touch, to seek her out on a battlefield—he makes her feel wanted in a way that gives her butterflies. Like she belongs.
Somehow, the same paperback-novel-esque instinct that made her leave her coat at home makes Ichigo share one half of it with her. It's too cold to give it to her entirely, but this way, they're huddled under his jacket, knee-to-knee, hip-to-hip, staring at the stars. The entire time, she feels as though she's been holding her breath for something to happen, and when it does, it doesn't. Ichigo's nose skims down the curve of her cheek, either by accident or sheer proximity, and his breath is warm just under her bottom eyelid. It's when she nudges her head up and their eyes meet that the moment breaks. Ichigo backs away, the coat slipping off both their shoulders.
"Uh—sorry—" Ichigo clears his throat, looking red-faced and unsure of himself. Orihime suddenly feels cold — not like any cold she's felt in her life — and it's not because of the coat.
"I better go check on those two." He clambers off the hood before she can say anything, jogging down to the car Uryuu and Chad are sharing, just a few paces ahead.
She spends the rest of the night keeping herself in high spirits, and when Ichigo offers his coat in full, she refuses with a resigned smile. She wants to blame Tatsuki, or Chad, or anyone else, but she knows the onus is on her for getting too carried away as per usual. Old insecurities crop up in her belly, and she knows this is where she must draw the line if she wants to avoid going down a spiral and ruining the good that she already has with Ichigo. She doesn't do that anymore; it hasn't been healthy or productive, and her brain is a liar when it comes to its assessment of her importance to her friends, anyway. She just got carried away, is all.
The stars look blurry for the rest of the night, and it's only when she reaches her pillow at home that she lets the tears fall in full. She allows herself at least that much.
"I'm so happy for you," she tells Rukia once again and she means it, her face brimming with joy at the news. She hasn't been able to stop smiling since her longtime friend and her now-fiance caught her at the train station and announced their engagement. With Renji ushered off to the shoten, it was just her and Rukia at their favorite cafe now, basking in the sun. "I'd been feeling under the weather lately, but your news just cheered me up!"
"Oh?" Rukia sips her tea knowingly, which is endlessly fascinating to Orihime because of how she just seems to know things.
"Eh heh," Orihime laughs sheepishly. "You know how it is. Work, life, too many books to read, not enough time."
"And how is Ichigo?"
Orihime's cheeks get a little pink with heat. "Ah, very busy!" She sets her cup down. "I'm worried he might be overworking himself at college."
It's the truth. She and Ichigo have managed to smooth over any and all awkwardness since that night, business as usual. She still texts him pictures of buns she baked, they still argue over the phrasing of whether her boss gives her leftovers or discards, but there is a bit of distance that Orihime has decided is necessary. For them both. If Ichigo needs time to figure his feelings out—whatever they may be—Orihime needs it to prepare her defenses. She's been trying to convince herself it's all very mature and adult, but really it's because she's reached a threshold and needs a break. The day will come one day, and there will only be two ways it can go. As much as she loves being his friend, she can't deny that rejection would hurt a little. And if it's the opposite—
She swallows. Can't think about that. Hence, the break.
"Hmm," Rukia smirks. "I won't pry, but you two better not be angsting at our wedding. I've already made arrangements with Brother to have you and Ichigo be in the front row, you know?"
"Yes ma'am!" Orihime promises, crossing her arms in scouts' honor.
Then, she makes a mental note to sew her best friend the best possible veil in all of Soul Society.
Despite fair warning, he angsts at Rukia and Renji's wedding. Well, obviously there's the fact that his best friends are getting married, but that was a given pretty much the day Renji fell to his feet and spilled his heart and blood out to him about how much he loved Rukia.
No, the heart of the matter is Orihime. She looks so beautiful, face flushed in pink and joy. She can't seem to stop vibrating, and he, like a heel, has opted to take pictures of the couple for her. He doesn't know if it's the atmosphere, or the fact that something has culminated over the course of knowing her for six years, but he knows he doesn't want to spend a single second without her. These days, he wakes up in the morning and the knot in his chest is still there, but it’s not as heavy as it used to be. His present is unfettered by secrets about his past. His future is a boundless possibility. His future with her doesn’t seem as much scary as it does comforting. Like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place.
He wants to promise her the world and then give it to her, wrapped in a bow. He wants to take care of her. He wants so much that he feels it in the back of his throat. All he needs is a little courage. A little push in the direction.
It's when Renji practically calls him an idiot that he gets it. Everything that it's been building up to has been here, this moment.
"Say, Inoue, next time, could you make some time for me?"
"It's been a while," he remarks, cupping his hands around his tea for something to do. The cafe is quiet, and the only thing that rests between them is his camera and a long time's worth of words unspoken.
"I was giving you your space," Orihime says, smiling softly.
"I think you might have been giving me too much," Ichigo admits with the faintest blush, and Orihime's eyes widen. "Listen, Inoue. You know me. You know how I can get sometimes. If...if that's still something you think is worth a shot, if you think I'm worth a shot, then I want to be clear."
Orihime's grip tightened on her handle, her bottom lip trembling even as she nodded.
"I love you," he says, straightforward and direct. He maintains eye contact, because this is a promise, not a statement. Because he's confident, and because he won't let her down if his life depends on it. "I love you. I have, for a while. I wasn't sure about it before. I wasn't sure of myself—you know that. I needed time to think. To get stronger."
Orihime sniffs, but encourages him to go on.
"I am, now. I'm sure now." He braves himself to reach her hand. "I'm sorry for making you wait, Inoue. I know it's been long, but if you'll still have me—"
"Yes," she interrupts, eyes glassy with tears. "Yes, I will. Always."
"I know," he says warmly, with much relief. She always has. Hearing her say so doesn't feel like a revelation; it feels like coming home. "Thank you."
"I visited you once," she admits, two pink thumbs coming around the rim of her cup. "Long ago. Back then."
Ichigo's breath leaves him and he nods. He wants to ask, he wants to know the things he didn't have the courage to, all those years ago. He wants to face the fact that he is loved and believe it.
"I said—a lot of things," she admits, her voice falling to a faint crack where she wasn't sure if she would be able to finish her sentence.
Ichigo squeezes her hand and smiles—a nice, real smile. "You should tell me about it someday."
Orihime smiles, eyes shining with unshed tears.
"I will."
They don’t need to rush. They’ve got all the time in the world after all.