Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ The final embrace ❯ The final Embrace ( Chapter 1 )

[ A - All Readers ]

Title: The final embrace

Pairing: IchigoxRukia

Rating: T

If she had stopped the rain, soothed everything like the moon shedding gentle light over the dreamer's sleep, then what was he to her? The sun at its highest most radiant peak, burning through the inner-darkness of her soul, her guilt washed away as his was in each other's presence?

It could not last. Because everyone knows the sun can't touch the moon.

~*~

It was hard standing in the shadows on that rainy afternoon. Oh how he used to hate the rain, she recalled with a faint sigh. The funeral didn't last long, a few friends from school trailing behind his grieving family. Orihime in Ishida's arms sobbed, because for once her powers hadn't been enough to save him.

How do you think I feel? She who watched from the tree above the gravesite, thought bitterly, his ashes interred beside his mother's, the way he would've wanted. I wasn't even there. A simple hit and run accident on his way home from school. He'd died in the street surrounded by strangers not by friends.

It would have been easier to pretend it didn't hurt. Then maybe it wouldn't have been so difficult to hop from the tree, sword in hand for the ghost of an orange-haired boy looking down at the new grave. “Is that my grave? Am I dead?”

His voice was brittle empty. Drained of remembrances as the dead were, she knew her face was that of a stranger to him. “Yes,” she hesitated, “you are.”

“Oh.” He glanced at her, “boy you're short.”

She twitched, her fist tightening ready to fly; then she remembered, her anger draining away leaving sorrow in its place. “It doesn't matter,” she muttered, feeling him turn and look at her every few seconds until she couldn't stand it. “What?!” she snapped furiously, rounding on him before he had a chance to speak.

“Nothing. It's just…”

“Just what?” they were alone now. The last of the mourners had left the Cemetery gates. Only the melancholy sound of the rain pattering stone and falling through his translucent body disturbed the quiet. “Your face…” he struggled, trying to find the right words to describe what he was feeling, “…your face. It's almost as if I feel like…I should know you. Crazy huh?”

“Yeah…” the lump that she had suppressed in her throat rose up, liquid rolled down her cheeks, “stupid rain—”

His fingers brushed away a stubborn droplet, “why are you crying? Did somebody hurt you?”

“I'm not—” she realized it was a lie, “…crying."

“If somebody hurt you, just point `em out and I'll take care of them for you.” His tone was self-assured, the same as before. Rukia peered through her blurry vision, her heart aching even though she had promised herself never to cry in front of him again.

“You're such a fool…”

“Huh?”

“You're such a stupid-stupid IDIOT!!!” she hurled herself at him, pummeling him with her fists even as he confusedly let her. You're the one who hurt me. It was getting hard to breathe. Her hands clutched desperately at the front of his white shirt, trying to hold him, to feel something beyond the pain.

“You…”

She looked up at him, tilting her face back to see him shake his head, smiling faintly.

“You're crazy.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks, “I know,” she breathed.

He lightly embraced her; his hand patted the back of her head like a child's. She closed her eyes against the faint scent of his shirt. The rain fell in sheets surrounding them but never touching them. It was almost the way it should have been but never was. In time she knew it was fine to let go, her hand sliding over the hilt of her sword. He stepped back, watching her, close to remembering but not quite knowing everything.

“Will it hurt?” he asked cautiously.

“No.” she answered swiftly, “I'll be waiting on the other side.”

“Heh. I didn't ask if you would be, midget.” He smirked faintly, seeing the flash of irritation dart over her face, “but I'm glad you will be.”

Rukia pressed the bottom end of her sword against his forehead, the Konso mark gleaming on his skin.

“I didn't get your name. What is it?”

She smiled through her tears, “Rukia Kuchiki.” It was just like before.

“I thought so.” He disappeared in a brief burst of light, a butterfly emerging with more orange than black spiraling higher up into the gray sky. She left the empty Cemetery then, eager to keep her promise.

~*~

Everybody knows the sun can't touch the moon just as the living can't be with the dead.

But even in the end there is another beginning beyond the darkness.

Where the sun and moon can be together at last.

~Finis~

AN: Don't own Bleach. Anyway nearly made myself cry twice! ;) How was that? Let me know. Review! Cheers. Note: this is posted on another site in a collection of Rukiaxoneshots. So yeah…it is I ;P can't you tell from the 91? ;)

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