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31_days2006-09-12 11:39 pm
go-hifreann-lea.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2006-09-12 11:39 pm
[ 9/12 ][ Bleach ] It Reminds Me
Title: Someone Else's Dime
Day/Theme: Sept. 12 / the inflexible, the irreconcilable, the stubborn
Series: Bleach
Character: KFF (Kurosaki Family Fun)
Rating: PG-13
Note: Future-fic. Not particularly happy.
someone else’s dime
Yuzu, Karin and Ichigo were children at one point. If one met them at that point of their lives, certain details that would be true about them in later years would be skewed. People changed, and few remained the way they were when they were knee-high to a trite saying.
Take Yuzu. Who was she at age ten, eleven, twelve? She was sweet daughter, striving for happiness for herself and others. She was particularly indulgent to her family, who were the most important people to her. She was lovely, in adorable manner rather than in the way beauty blossomed in a rose, pale to begin with and reaching the apex of its splendor for a short period (and what an apex it was) before receding once more into withering. In her face you saw the wrinkled features of a cute grandmother, handing out candies to spoil the children.
But of course, things change. Accidents happen.
Yuzu couldn’t see spirits, Hollows included. Not completely, not ever. All she ever got were shadows.
That shadow scarred her face at age fourteen. Three long scratches, blotchy and red and never-gone, running from her right side of her forehead to just under her lip. She was in the hospital for weeks.
She asked to be home schooled, and soon rarely dared to be seen by the rays of the sun. Especially in the summer, too much exposure occasionally irritated her skin badly, and when she did leave the shade, she wore a heavy veil. She’d taken to wearing darker colors, turning in all the pinks and pastels in her closet. Inside, you could never kill the girl she had once been, bubbly bright and smiling, but you could bury her. You could burn her, light her skin aflame, but personalities did not disappear so quickly, even when lives were irrevocably altered.
And yet, she did not want to revert back to that personality, not when every smile was a crack of skin and an accompanying dull pain. This was who she was now, and it felt almost right, despite the slight chafing of this new skin.
She was irreconcilable.
Karin couldn’t possibly remain the same, not on a diet of faded sister or and guilty brother. She wasn’t Yuzu, who had melted into the Masaki-shaped hole after she passed away. No, she couldn’t do what her sister had done; she simply not that kind of girl.
So she became a wall. Not in the stoic, unfeeling way of the injured Yuzu, only in the manner of a captain. She took complete control in the way Isshin never had. She was the one dolling out the punishments, the one constantly reminding Yuzu that there was a reason for things, for school, for sewing, for friends, for life. Karin kicked Ichigo into place occasionally, but for the most part left that job to Rukia.
Karin hired Ururu, paid her to come to the house three times a week to clean up and occasionally help out with some problem or other that she couldn’t manage on her own. While she never found out about any sort of latent talents of hers in the kitchen, she learned a thing or two from Yuzu, whom she coerced into cooking lunch and dinner for the family. Frequently, she found herself planning out lessons with her father.
When the twins graduated from high school, Karin knew that they couldn’t continue to live in that same house, where everything wrong had begun. Not to say that she was deluded enough to believe that in a new environment everything would immediately be better, but she understood the importance of keeping the past at arm’s length. That was impossible for them now.
They moved into a small apartment in Tokyo. Yuzu tried to find a job while Karin continued her studies, with her stone-hard grip on surviving strong enough for the two of them.
She was inflexible.
Ichigo’s guilt never really receded, along with the lines at the corners of his eyes. He should’ve been there. What had been his promise, at the start? To protect those he could, right? But his dreams had gotten so big, his reach had become to wide—he’d gone off to save others before turning back to check on his little sisters.
And there was little Yuzu, bleeding and scarred on the outside and on the inside, and all he could do was pretend nothing had changed. He went back and forth more often, if anything, more shinigami than human. He preferred living with his sword at his side. Hollows were easier for him to face than the empty blank spaces pasted on his sister’s face.
Everything should’ve been reversed, but time changes things. When Karin and Yuzu moved out, Ichigo was still residing at the old Kurosaki Clinic, stalking down those same streets in his black clothing, frowning.
He found he needed stability more than anything else. This came by way of his father, of Rukia, of his friends, and most importantly, from the Hollows and other various creatures he found himself battling with. Like a drunk chugging back to forget, Ichigo’s memories were washed temporarily away by a river of blood.
His whole life had been a gamble; he’d known this from the start. What he hadn’t realized was that the bet included more than just him. When gambling, you often lost more than you won. Even when you gained something, there was always something you had already discarded. You couldn’t win back everything.
And no matter how many times he was told that it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have possibly known, that if it hadn’t happened then, it would’ve happened later . . . it didn’t matter. Guilt, true heart-wrenching guilt, could not be waved off like a fly. No shoo-fly-don’t-bother-me ditty would make it go away.
He was stubborn.
“blind man on the corner said it’s simple, like flipping a coin. don’t matter what side it lands on, it’s someone else’s dime.”
Day/Theme: Sept. 12 / the inflexible, the irreconcilable, the stubborn
Series: Bleach
Character: KFF (Kurosaki Family Fun)
Rating: PG-13
Note: Future-fic. Not particularly happy.
someone else’s dime
Yuzu, Karin and Ichigo were children at one point. If one met them at that point of their lives, certain details that would be true about them in later years would be skewed. People changed, and few remained the way they were when they were knee-high to a trite saying.
Take Yuzu. Who was she at age ten, eleven, twelve? She was sweet daughter, striving for happiness for herself and others. She was particularly indulgent to her family, who were the most important people to her. She was lovely, in adorable manner rather than in the way beauty blossomed in a rose, pale to begin with and reaching the apex of its splendor for a short period (and what an apex it was) before receding once more into withering. In her face you saw the wrinkled features of a cute grandmother, handing out candies to spoil the children.
But of course, things change. Accidents happen.
Yuzu couldn’t see spirits, Hollows included. Not completely, not ever. All she ever got were shadows.
That shadow scarred her face at age fourteen. Three long scratches, blotchy and red and never-gone, running from her right side of her forehead to just under her lip. She was in the hospital for weeks.
She asked to be home schooled, and soon rarely dared to be seen by the rays of the sun. Especially in the summer, too much exposure occasionally irritated her skin badly, and when she did leave the shade, she wore a heavy veil. She’d taken to wearing darker colors, turning in all the pinks and pastels in her closet. Inside, you could never kill the girl she had once been, bubbly bright and smiling, but you could bury her. You could burn her, light her skin aflame, but personalities did not disappear so quickly, even when lives were irrevocably altered.
And yet, she did not want to revert back to that personality, not when every smile was a crack of skin and an accompanying dull pain. This was who she was now, and it felt almost right, despite the slight chafing of this new skin.
She was irreconcilable.
Karin couldn’t possibly remain the same, not on a diet of faded sister or and guilty brother. She wasn’t Yuzu, who had melted into the Masaki-shaped hole after she passed away. No, she couldn’t do what her sister had done; she simply not that kind of girl.
So she became a wall. Not in the stoic, unfeeling way of the injured Yuzu, only in the manner of a captain. She took complete control in the way Isshin never had. She was the one dolling out the punishments, the one constantly reminding Yuzu that there was a reason for things, for school, for sewing, for friends, for life. Karin kicked Ichigo into place occasionally, but for the most part left that job to Rukia.
Karin hired Ururu, paid her to come to the house three times a week to clean up and occasionally help out with some problem or other that she couldn’t manage on her own. While she never found out about any sort of latent talents of hers in the kitchen, she learned a thing or two from Yuzu, whom she coerced into cooking lunch and dinner for the family. Frequently, she found herself planning out lessons with her father.
When the twins graduated from high school, Karin knew that they couldn’t continue to live in that same house, where everything wrong had begun. Not to say that she was deluded enough to believe that in a new environment everything would immediately be better, but she understood the importance of keeping the past at arm’s length. That was impossible for them now.
They moved into a small apartment in Tokyo. Yuzu tried to find a job while Karin continued her studies, with her stone-hard grip on surviving strong enough for the two of them.
She was inflexible.
Ichigo’s guilt never really receded, along with the lines at the corners of his eyes. He should’ve been there. What had been his promise, at the start? To protect those he could, right? But his dreams had gotten so big, his reach had become to wide—he’d gone off to save others before turning back to check on his little sisters.
And there was little Yuzu, bleeding and scarred on the outside and on the inside, and all he could do was pretend nothing had changed. He went back and forth more often, if anything, more shinigami than human. He preferred living with his sword at his side. Hollows were easier for him to face than the empty blank spaces pasted on his sister’s face.
Everything should’ve been reversed, but time changes things. When Karin and Yuzu moved out, Ichigo was still residing at the old Kurosaki Clinic, stalking down those same streets in his black clothing, frowning.
He found he needed stability more than anything else. This came by way of his father, of Rukia, of his friends, and most importantly, from the Hollows and other various creatures he found himself battling with. Like a drunk chugging back to forget, Ichigo’s memories were washed temporarily away by a river of blood.
His whole life had been a gamble; he’d known this from the start. What he hadn’t realized was that the bet included more than just him. When gambling, you often lost more than you won. Even when you gained something, there was always something you had already discarded. You couldn’t win back everything.
And no matter how many times he was told that it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have possibly known, that if it hadn’t happened then, it would’ve happened later . . . it didn’t matter. Guilt, true heart-wrenching guilt, could not be waved off like a fly. No shoo-fly-don’t-bother-me ditty would make it go away.
He was stubborn.
“blind man on the corner said it’s simple, like flipping a coin. don’t matter what side it lands on, it’s someone else’s dime.”