Day 67: Breakfast

[knightspirit]

For the first time since Kyousuke arrived, waking up didn't feel the slightest bit strange or out of place. It was still like night had suddenly stopped, with nothing in-between then and now, but instead of being disorienting, or like there was something missing, it was like waking up from a nightmare. His breaths came heavy and anxious, everything flooding back to him, but unlike last night, he had more mental clarity, and he actually understood what it meant.

Sora... was dead.

After a moment, his breathing seemed to ease up, and he sat up slowly, and simply stared down at his blanket. The motion hurt quite a bit, a lot worse than it had yesterday morning, but he seemed to be in decent shape, all considered. Sore, battered, a little faint, but compared to worst of it...

He wondered if he should feel upset right now, or want to yell, or cry, but the truth was, he didn't. If anything, he was just numb. Tired and listless. He wasn't sure what to think or feel about anything, but somehow it seemed distant and disconnected, like something that hadn't actually happened. Yet, if he lingered on it too long, the lifelessness grew into something nauseating, heavy and constricting in his chest, and he didn't even notice until he realized he was gripping his bedding unnecessarily hard. So he forced himself to relax, and not focus on it too much. ... He preferred the cold sort of nothingness.

When the nurse arrived, she wasn't empty-handed, unfolding a wheelchair by his bedside and looking at him expectantly, as if she wanted him to settle himself into it. Looking at it was strange and uncomfortable, and he found himself refusing automatically.

"... I can walk fine. I don't need—"

"What you don't need," the nurse said sternly, "is to be overexerting yourself. You got to walk around yesterday, and what do you do? You go and reopen your injuries! Honestly, Mr. Taylor, you might be young, but you need to take better care of yourself! Today, you're resting, and if you're good about it, we'll see about maybe taking the chair away tomorrow."

That was bad enough, but then she wouldn't even let him wheel himself, and pushed him along from behind. This was totally unnecessary... But though it made him feel helpless, Kyousuke didn't have the energy to argue, so he let her do what she wanted. She asked if he wanted to make a quick trip the bulletin, first, but... Would the news be there? There were people who deserved to know, but there would be reactions to it, questions he didn't want to answer, and feeling his stomach give a lurch, he decided he didn't want to deal with it. Any of it.

Once in the cafeteria, the nurse asked him about breakfast, but Kyousuke insisted he wasn't hungry. ... He wasn't. Sensing he wanted to be left alone, she wheeled him off to an easily overlooked portion of the cafeteria, but quickly returned, setting food and some juice in front of him, "just in case." She set a small paper cup with a couple of painkillers on the tray, and after that, she left, leaving the boy to stare down the meal he didn't really want.

[ Kratos! ]

Comments

[repelling]

He bought it.

Unaware of what she thought of, of her struggle with his instinct to isolate (and why shouldn't he, he should, if it made sense and it often made sense), with the memory of that evening and those which followed. And unaware, too, that by pushing her away and continuing to dig his heels into his story, to close the stitches on his way, the most stubborn because he was right and surely she'd see it, if she just calmed down -- that by pushing her away, he pushed her, pushed her to a limit of worry and distress and the terrible, incomparable feeling of helplessness while someone who mattered suffered, a feeling he knew all too well (clawing and breaking his nails into the tree bark as he watched sensei-- the hole through Kurosaki and the wounds still on Inoue-san's face as she howled--), only he shouldn't mat-- no, he didn't think that way, not really, or perhaps not consciously.

He pushed her, so it was only fair, really, what followed, only he didn't expect it. He believed her smile, believed that she was calming down and yielding to his (obviously superior, after all, it was done and there was nothing for it) position.

"I'm not," he assured her, not pushing himself, and reached for a tray. He wasn't (was) pushing himself, but as it turned out, pushing her, so she --

Well, she pushed back.

If it could be called that. Pain erupted in his back and he staggered, and folded, too easily. Much too easily, when the impact reminded him of that time with Kurosaki (and there the memory came, disorienting in its clarity even as it drizzled in: apologizing to Kurosaki and earning a solid, hard kick in the back, the idiot not holding back, and the words that followed buzzed in the background as the floor rushed up, Don't be bothered by things that already happened, idiot! -- As if you're any different--). Though Inoue-san had not been able to completely remove his wounds, and though Kuchiki-san performed only minimal healing kidou on his shoulder and back, though he stood weak and with thus just barely or incompletely mended wounds, when Kurosaki kicked him hard, he grasped at the spot and hunched but stood his ground.

It spoke to his condition, then, that Uryuu's knees buckled now. (And to Inoue-san's strength; black belt that she was). Red erupted behind his eyes, discoloring the memory, and the tray clattered to the floor, shortly followed by one knee, the other pressing into his his chin as his fingers splayed on the floor and the world rocked around him.

"What the--" he gasped, and might have continued, but the nausea resurged strong, incited by the pang in his tongue and rippling up and through him, by the swaying floor. Instead, he pressed his mouth and face into his knee, the soft fabric of his drab gray sweats, and struggled to get himself together. Wondering. Why did-- what, Inoue-san, and mostly, mostly -- he hoped, even through the haze of confusion, irritation, and pain, that the nurses had somehow missed it, and wouldn't trouble her.

[faeth]

Sometimes she didn't know her own strength.

But then again it wasn't like she was holding back either -- she watched silently as Ishida-kun crumpled to the ground like a dead weight, and of course the guilt was immediate, the way it bubbled up her throat until she tasted it sour on her tongue. Maybe she should've been softer, maybe she shouldn't have put most of her weight into it -- maybe, but she knew him and she knew better; had she opted for anything less, he would have brushed her off again, he would have told her to let it go.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Way!" Her voice rose above the clatter of the tray, loud enough for the approaching nurse to hear and lilting enough to hide how her heart twisted in knots within her chest. "I-- I guess I didn't realize I was so strong." It worked -- the supervising nurse tsk-ed, but retreated, withdrawing to her former position along the side wall without a word. Orihime waited until the woman disappeared out of her peripheral before she moved, crouching low on shaky knees to kneel next to Ishida-kun on the floor, her brows knitted together with worry.

"I'm sorry," she said again, quietly, for his ears alone and meaning it; her fingers dug into the material of her sweatpants and wrinkled the fabric over her knees. "I know what you were doing," she continued, and it was difficult, keeping the tremor out of her voice -- so difficult in fact, that she was surprised, when her voice came out strong, unflinching even as her eyes burned inside of their sockets. "And it's not that I don't appreciate it, Ishida-kun... I know you're trying to protect me. And really, thank you -- and don't say that there's no need to thank you. I already know. Let me thank you, anyway."

Her point -- what was it? There seemed to be a million things to say, but as she looked at him, as she watched his chest heave beneath what she imagined to be crippling pressure, as she saw his expression contort in pain, she -- she just wanted to tell him, it'll be okay, and mean it.

But no. No... more than that, she wanted to tell him to stop: stop picking everything up by yourself, stop carrying the burden alone, we had our friends back home so I thought it'd be okay, but you were doing it then, too, weren't you?

At least we know how to help each other -- but even then, you only knew how to help everyone but yourself.

"Ishida-kun," she began again, searching his face. There, in his eyes, she found what she was looking for, nodding before lifting and extending her hand. "I'm going to ask you for a favor, okay?" I need to ask you for a favor. "But first, let me help you up."

Let me help.

[repelling]

Her reasoning was correct, though he could only guess at it: anything less, and he would have continued.

In the seconds following his fall, he found it too difficult to lift his head, to mind the loud and discordant world above him. Above the surface, under which he held his breath and fought the water's pull. He wanted to look up, to attend what Inoue-san declared -- doubtless something to stay a nurse, to prevent further attention -- and to assist in waving off any approach, to play along. He couldn't, not when everything was the gray blurred (to close to his lenses) in front of his eyes, and the fabric against his forehead, and the cool, waxed floor beneath his fingertips, now striking on his sweaty palms.

Pathetic, that such a thing could fell him. That he could still be in such a state. It wasn't an underestimation of Inoue-san's ability, his shock -- he'd known since Soul Society, after all, that he'd better not fight with Inoue-san. But, it shouldn't have hit so hard; he couldn't be so weak, it hadn't been that bad (worse, worst), or it shouldn't be still, after the fact. His frustration fueled him, rising like a wave that beat at the spinning nausea, that righted the ground.

When she knelt beside him, he knew it, pulled himself together and stitching hastily enough that he could look, sidelong, past his lenses so she appeared as indistinct colors, shapes he could clarify by squinting, by filling in the blanks with what his mind knew and expected. Though she spoke quietly, her voice filtered through the blood rushing and beating in his ears, in his head, which he tried to shake in response.

Don't apologize (though he was annoyed, he could recognize that he'd brought it on himself), and you don't know, not really; that's too generous. Too generous to say that, in his selfishness, he had protected her, or tried to. He hadn't done anything worthy of her gratitude.

"You shouldn't," he managed, raising his head enough that he did not speak it into his sweats, having taken care and time to be certain that his voice would not waver, though it came grit and small.

Then, she lifted her hand, and he stared. Long fingers, feminine, and well-kept nails. Everything in him demanded that he stand alone. That he push his hands against the floor and straighten in a smooth, collected motion. Perhaps tense with the struggle he strained to keep hidden, perhaps this side of shakey and unsteady, but able to do it on his own. Without assistance, strong enough, neither troubled nor troubling.

He closed his eyes and inhaled, and wrestled with it. And reached for her hand.

"If I didn't let you," he said, with a weak twist in his mouth, feigning petulant indignation, an accusation, "I bet Inoue-san would have yanked me up and forced it."

His other hand grabbed for the tray, remembering the issue. "And you can ask, anyway."

[faeth]

No matter how hard she tried to fully accept otherwise, this was just one of those things she still didn't fully understand about him -- about them. Orihime knew, from the moment Kurosaki-kun had told them to stay back during their first fight in Soul Society, that there were certain instances, certain rules of engagement that governed the way that people chose how to fight. And now, even as Ishida-kun threw her a wry, resigned sort of smile, she could see it still in his eyes, in the stiff way he extended his hand -- I can do it alone, his mannerisms had said, I'll do it alone.

For the most part, she was ambivalent to it. Orihime knew what that kind of determination felt like, after all; how it could pick up bruised bones and battered flesh and make superheroes out of the broken pieces (like the day she protected Tatsuki-chan; the day she was given a double-edged choice with only one real answer -- to save her friends). At the same time, she couldn't comprehend it, why Kurosaki-kun and Ishida-kun would hold a sword, would hold a bow until their hands cracked and bled from the pressure -- she didn't understand why they'd turn to them on the sidelines, eyes shining as they still said, stay back, like doing it alone was far more important than coming out alive.

She knew this, and didn't know it. Pride was something she felt in tiny bursts like hiccups -- they came, she held her breath and they went away. It was nothing at all like the pride that made the very core of people like Ishida-kun.

And though she might've known it, how important it was for him to go about it alone, she was... still happy at the sight of his lifted hand. Orihime reached back, fingers grazing along the callouses of his palm before wrapping around his wrist. "Yes," she returned, eyes brightening with a small smile, "but I'm glad, because this way's a lot easier." She put her weight into her leg then, propelling herself up into a slight crouch before tending to him -- she lifted his arm by his wrist, ducked her head beneath it and moved, her head and neck by his shoulder.

"Then, I'd like to ask," she continued, as she began to slowly rise, bracing his upper back with her free arm, "... I'd like to ask that Ishida-kun at least give me a clue where he was going, next time. Either way, I would've gone to look for him, so... it would've made things... simpler, maybe."

[repelling]

To say that pride motivated Uryuu, that it had any importance in his life, would be to considerably understate the matter. The moral code of the Quincy, after all, was inextricably linked with pride, such that took its name from it. Though it did not influence his every move (in fact, had been absent or of lesser significance in a few fights, in some of the heaviest times, when he urged her back [contrary to her understanding of it, that had so little to do with pride], when he watched her w--), it did influence him such that he often was not conscious of it.

This was not, exactly, such a moment. As his moist palm stuck on the cold, waxed floor, as he looked at her hand then shut his eyes against it, Uryuu felt it burn in him. No hiccup or minute, brief flare, but an uncoiling, spreading thick and slow and swallowing everything in its path, magma that flowed, trickling fingers down his back, his arms, his legs. He could do it on his own, he knew or had to know. But, he understood, also -- how she might feel, pushed away while told to rely on him. It was unfair, uneven, and weren't they --

Weren't they friends?

So he reached, and felt, before his eyes opened to watch, her fingers ghost along his palm, curling strong but soft on his wrist. That shocked his eyelids up, unexpected, and he goggled at her hand and her smile as she further surprised him. With the unnecessary, positioning herself under his arm, helping him to stand in that way.

(She began to stand and her hair tickled his chin, and she stood close, close enough that her hip bumped his thigh, that her side hugged his, her chest-- and how, how his body with all else that afflicted it, managed still to shoot dashes of blood and heat to his cheeks, how, disgusting and above all inexplicable--)

"I-Inoue-san," he began to protest, almost dropping the stray in his surprise. Her hold was such that, though he tried once, he could not easily shrug his arm off, could not step away from the arm at his back while only half-standing. It hurt to try, a little, and everything wobbled. That, and that she spoke her request, prevented him from continuing. You don't have to--

Her favor dried any further dissent, and bowed his head, preoccupied him such that he even leaned on her. Only a little. His eyes fell toward the floor, catching on the tray angled at his side.

"...No," he said, regret weighing the word, a stone's fall in a pond. "Sorry, but," and deja vu interrupted him for a beat, the still resolving recollection of a hospital room and yet another failure, another piece of inadequacy, of I didn't know, I don't know.

"I coudn't have. I didn't know, and I still don't know where they took me. That's why..."

Why he told Vantas-kun to lie? Part of it, perhaps, if only part.

"If there's a next time, and I know, then... maybe."

Only part and only maybe. Now upright, he tried again to tug his wrist free, to wriggle away.

[faeth]

Something like this doesn't normally happen. Quite like this, anyway. Sometimes Ishida-kun would help her up after a fall, or his hand would hover over the center of her back for support, but -- rarely does she get the chance to do the same for him. Returning the favor was never a viable option. He simply wasn't the falling type.

So, because something like this doesn't normally happen, Orihime would never have expected how difficult it'd be to keep him propped upright. Ishida-kun was tall, taller than her (obviously, yes, but it was never really such a problem like it suddenly was now), and although she never gave it much thought before, it was an oddly startling, peculiar observation that she didn't quite know what to do with. He protested, she insisted -- Ishida-kun, we'll fall if you don't coordinate this with me.

She didn't have to. He slumped a little, and she stopped pondering on how best to move forward when his weight pressed onto her, not heavy per se, but simply there. He sagged against her, and Orihime very nearly toppled from the suddenness of it, from the view of his face filtering in through her peripheral.

Did he always look so tired?

"... Ishida-kun," she breathed. Half of it came out as a sigh while the other half was hitched, restrained, as if she were doing them both a kindness, sparing themselves from the harshness of the reality by pretending she wasn't as affected as she really was.

He started squirming again, and her eyes closed, her shoulders dropped; her fingers, however, remained closed tightly around his wrist.

"If maybe is the best you can do, then... Alright," she replied, willing herself to loosen the hard grip she had on his wrist, finger by finger. "I won't ask for more than that." She already knew anyway, that it was probably too much to ask for, to pry into; and she thought of Kurosaki-kun, wondered if things would've turned out differently had she forced the answer out of him the day she'd gone to his house.

Then again, it turned out alright in the end, didn't it? "... Just let me know when you're ready, okay?" She turned her head and smiled at him, dropping her hand from his wrist and straightening her posture. Her other arm moved from his upper back, lowered to brace the small of it with her hand. "I want Ishida-kun to tell me on his own, then."