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Orihime's loved him for so long she can't remember a time when she didn't.
He's always been an immovable object, weathered by his loss, certainly, but firm in his strength, his resolve. To Orihime, Ichigo is unyielding metal, and she's always thought that if she could warm him with her love and attention, given time, he would bend, and be remade for it.
Love is supposed to change you, even if she loves him as he is. But perhaps-perhaps that's the problem.
Ichigo's always held himself strong, rigid. Even when he's sprawled and careless, there's a facade to it, a feeling that he's always braced for a blow that won't come, or perhaps hasn't stopped coming. From the day his mother died? From the day he received his powers? The day he lost them, and lost Rukia too? Orihime doesn't know, she's never felt allowed to ask. A part of her doesn't want to know at all.
Because she can live with his not-quite smiles, and not-quite laughs, rejoice in the moments of shade she's been able to offer him when she'd thought that was all he was capable of giving.
Until. Until.
The damage is done, and the immovable object of him met the unstoppable force of her.
Orihime remembers the day Rukia arrived, how she'd swept in cool and confident, and approached him with no hesitation. How, after the initial exchange, Ichigo welcomed her, allowed her into his space -- expected her almost to take up as much of it as she wanted -- in a way Orihime still can't.
She remembers how hard it was in the beginning to see Ichigo's nonchalance melt inch by inch, his tightly reined emotions faltering and unfurling like a flower towards the sun. Towards Rukia. Because of Rukia.
Seventeen months hasn't made seeing it and knowing it easier.
His shoulders, perpetually tensed, softens in the breath he takes when Rukia is there. He slumps, just so, in relief, like he's been holding his breath for all these months he was without her, and he's finally come up for air. It's bitterly poignant that the next breath he takes is in the shape of Rukia's name.
Orihime wishes it was enough just to know that he's happy in a way he hasn't been since his powers disappeared. She wishes it was enough to see him smile in a way he hasn't before, and never at her with a soft smudge of lips upturned at the corners and warmth in his eyes.
She wishes.
But she knows differently. Still, hopelessly drawn, Orihime seeks his eyes, and finds them already diverted, or maybe they'd simply never wavered from their focus in the first place.
Now, Ichigo doesn't aim his gaze at the empty spaces Rukia once haunted, not when Rukia is actually here. Has always been, if Orihime is honest with herself.
Ichigo may have avoided questions about whether he missed Rukia or not, but everyone knew.
He'd made a religion out of her absence: preferring to walk home alone on the same route he'd walked with her, having another juice box at lunch he never drank, tracing the graffiti she'd left behind on his desk, carrying her Chappy keyring looped faithfully at his belt. All this he offered on an altar of a death god who could do nothing but watch her devoted servant recoil from the normal life he deserved.
Orihime understands it, some. She mourned the same for her brother when he was taken from her. He tried to keep her too.
But Ichigo's grief smothered everything else, he mourned the way someone does when there wasn't closure in the loss, and for him, why would there be? Rukia wasn't gone, he just couldn't be with her.
And isn't that the stuff of tragic romances, the heart of all great love stories? That it wasn't enough that Orpheus loved Eurydice, but that they were Orpheus and Eurydice?
Orihime wonders if Ichigo thinks this too, or maybe, if the dark twist to his lips is anything to go by, that it's because he thinks he's the only one who hurts for it.
He'd be wrong, of course.
(It's not just you, it hurts me too.)
Orihime's never been close to Rukia, but she knows her well enough to recognize the metal that shapes her armour, the same way it shapes Ichigo's.
(And that hurts too, the thought that whatever they're made of, it was the same.)
She soothes herself sometimes with the knowledge that it was why Orihime would be better for him. Because she's been hurt too, had lost someone dear and beloved, but she healed differently to either of them. It wasn't better or worse, just different. And with his and Rukia's familiar method of coping, Orihime thinks Ichigo deserves to try to heal differently too. That maybe her way will fix him for good where Rukia's had only put a bandage on the wound.
Besides, isn't there a saying that you shouldn't go back to the things that hurt you? Didn't that count when Ichigo had been so torn by the loss of Rukia, that her coming back was only prolonging the inevitable devastation that would follow?
Orihime isn't the strongest, it's true, but she can protect him, she can if only he'd let her.
If only.
If only he loved Rukia less.
But he doesn't.
Not when he's made whole by Rukia's very presence that it's almost as if he's a different person entirely. There are still not-quite smiles and not-quite laughs, but his eyes are clear, his breath comes easy. And he smiles for Rukia, a proper smile. He laughs for her too. There's nothing almost or not-quite in how Ichigo is when he's with her, and Orihime worries at it like a loose thread she's spun around her finger in the hopes of unraveling it.
He loves her. He could love me too. And round and round the thread goes.
Some say that seventeen months is a long time to have your heart broken, Orihime knows better.