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thunderwitch.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tampered2007-12-01 03:58 am
thunderwitch.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-12-01 03:58 am
Log; Complete
When; November 29th, late night
Rating; PG
Characters; Cirucci {![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thunderwitch} & Ishida {anti_buttons}
Summary; After Luppi's departure, the second male she'd become attached to and then lost, Cirucci sinks into a violent depression, exacerbated by a certain Emmett introducing alcohol into the equation. But, while she claims ownership over the Quincy Ishida, all it really means is his words and actions affect her more than most anyone's, occasionally for the better. [aka, thank god she was prevented from going emo on me, she's so hard to kick when she does that~]
Log;
Should he have been on his feet so soon? Absolutely. Had it made him ungrateful to ask Inoue Orihime to help him, even after all Ryuuken and Shizune-san had done? Perhaps, but if there was an option to be in full health rather than recovering for days, Ishida would take it.
Despite the fires, there were stores open, and he opted for those rather than let the Thunderwitch have anything of his. It wasn't with any joy that he faced his new obligation, the trade for which he would receive nothing. If he wanted anything from her, it would be to be left alone – giving her these things, giving her warmth, would encourage it. Ignoring her encouraged it. Asking it had been proved long since futile.
He had more than one reason for his difficulty in keeping the scowl off his face (though he managed it), the tension that refused to leave his shoulders, back, the clenching in his jaw that hurt his ears. But he made the walk, with shopping bags, to her apartment, because to keep busy was preferable to any kind of solitude, in which his thoughts were too repetitive, too cyclical.
Shifting bags to the sound of folding, crinkling paper, Ishida knocked.
>>>
Firstly, Cirucci wondered what had possessed her to drink alcohol. Secondly, what had possessed her to drink alcohol with the most homosexual mortal she knew. It had to have been the pet names. She couldn’t think of a better explanation, and at the same time, she was pretty sure that had a lot to do with the alcohol itself, that she couldn’t think right, which brought her thought process right back to where it has started, and that was laying on her back, sprawled across the sheets.
Her fingers idly curled into them, face to the side and hair messily splayed out beneath her, undone since Luppi had tangled his fingers in it, like her tangled now, and released it from its style. Ah… yes. That was where it had started, she remembered.
With a groan, what an annoying noise, the Privaron rolled over and pressed her face in to the sheets in response to a knock. Who was… oh, yes, that’s right. The sheets were cold. On unsteady feet, with a body whose strongest drink consumption consisted of tea, and only on occasion from the usual of water, she made it to the door, shaky kneed and dressed in one of the few things that wasn’t her uniform, still white dress, but not her uniform, hauling open the door with her senses thrumming, reiatsu reiatsu reiatsu, her own off kilter eyesight and the flush to her cheeks that wasn’t a blush, standing there silently and stepping aside as carefully as she could.
That was right. Shiro Megane Kun had come.
>>>
As if her entry hadn't been indication enough, the Thunderwitch wasn't well. Looking straight ahead, Ishida had looked into the opening door, witnessed the dulled figure before him, though he didn't know what to make, at first, of the color on her cheeks. It was unusual (and he wasn't pleased with his actually knowing her well enough to notice), with as much energy as she moved, she was dead, and a pallor was far more common.
Ishida looked away, past her, almost immediately. He would ignore any opportunity to sympathize.
"I'll set it up," he said, briskly, without other greeting, as he walked through the allotted space. He would, also, not wait for an invitation to her bedroom before moving toward it. "And make sure you understand the instructions."
>>>
“What is it?” Had he told her before? Surely not. … Maybe. She couldn’t remember, and surely if he had she would remember. But she didn’t have any fight in her, not like the last time.
When Il Forte had left, when the first had left, she had been so angry. She’d gone and killed something, she couldn’t remember what. And now Luppi was gone and she didn’t even have the heart – could have laughed at that, didn’t have the heart to be angry. It had all drained out of her and she had nothing, was still struggling with the last thing he told her, another of those horrible words that haunted her, that made her weak.
You know, he’d said, and she didn’t want to think it, shut it out before it could finish, the sound of it, trailing after the Quincy without intent, with the slight slur of her voice and stumble in normally light footsteps, stumbling over the many pillows she kept about and barely catching herself.
>>>
In the act, the act of catching oneself before one could feel. His chin nearly tilted, direction his gaze toward shoulder and beyond, behind him, to the Privaron. She had a way of flitting, like a bird, with her weight more in the air than not, not this mockery of human movement, unable to keep on a single, uninterrupted path.
No, to prevent empathy or sympathy or something wretched, idiotic as that. Ishida kept his attention forward, on the task, and answered her question with the simple fact: "An electric blanket."
Once in her room, he set the bags onto her bed, removing one normal, plastic-wrapped wool blanket, and a larger box. He opened the box, and, though he owned one himself (to excuse leaving the thermostat in his room very low, Ishida had much experience with corner-cutting and cost), flipped open the instruction manual, having every intent to read aloud.
>>>
“Oh.” It took a while to get out, as slow as her mind seemed to be feeling right then, and she wavered, watching him critically. He had to want something, because like she’d said, no one ever came to her without wanting something, and it was true, it was.
“… That side.” She motioned limply, to the far side of the bed, managing to take a seat on the floor, on one of the many piles of pillows there, to curl up and recline on her side but it moved to her stomach very quickly when she realized how nauseous she was.
“I want that side to be warm.” The Privaron muttered listlessly, nails carving in to the pillow beneath her and fleetingly imagining it was his head. Or his heart. Something. But she knew it would never be, because he was stronger than her, because the scar on her breast throbbed with the reminder of shame, and the knowledge that now there was no one she could come home to, and no one to listen to her whine without calling her pathetic.
>>>
Ishida read aloud, as he had intended to do. Not the entire thing, more the pertinent warnings regarding safety, more the how-to so that she could manage it herself, without him. In the middle of his reading, with the next sentence he mind, he looked up, away from the words, and was forced to look down to find his focus. He stumbled over his next words, tongue made sloppy, eyes widening somewhat to see her, curled and too dull on the floor.
Before beginning the next sentence, his mouth worked, quick and silent, to almost be dumb enough to ask her something else. He bit it back, folded the paper, and went to work. Putting first the plain blanket down on that end, he then unpacked the electric blanket and set it up with relative ease. When finished, he looked down at her, apparently impassive, eyes cold behind his clear lenses.
An urge: to bend at the waist, curl a hand around her wrist, and pull her too her feet. To see her like this, he couldn't even gloat. A sneer pulled at his mouth, because if not a sneer, if not disdain, it would be sympathy, kindness, too dangerous.
>>>
She stared back, and it disgusted her, the look on his face, because she hated him, god she hated him so much, and yet it was he who had he most power over her, because he had killed her, not by his own hand but because she had lost to him and now… there wasn’t even a point to it was there? To fighting him, trying to fight him, trying to think she could win. No.
“What did you want?” Cirucci hauled herself up, lurched and managed to toddle t the bathroom, quick and clumsy, because all of a sudden her body rebelled, wretched out the alcohol she’d consumed in the toiler, from her body not meant to consume human food, to consume only souls not… whatever the fuck kind of drink that stupid man had said that was.
Lanks of hair fell into her face and she weakly held them back, wretched weakly and stupidly over the toilet, the smell of alcohol the sight of trembling, of her body rejecting the poison she’d fed it, instead of true food, like the human in her company.
Perhaps she should have asked Alfons, she thought in retrospect, but what Alfons wanted of her was love, and she wouldn’t give it, didn’t want to, and at least she knew Shiro-Megane-Kun would sneer, call her pathetic, maybe, maybe, call her worthless.
Maybe she wanted him to.
>>>
Unraveling. He could feel it, and cursed it, he could feel it loosening in his chest. Sympathy, stupid, damned kindness, that which had stirred when she mangled herself in her futile attempt to win, that had lurked behind his cool words as he stayed at her, crumpled and defeated, on that white floor. He could feel it now, stirring, as he found himself unable to answer her, instead watching her back disappear, curve into the bathroom, listen to the sound of her stomach emptying itself as his shoulders hitched up in nauseated sympathy.
Resist, or to attempt it: at his sides, his hands were tight fists, his mouth thin. His mood too sour to be easily moved, but his feet moved, took him to the doorframe, to cast his eyes down on her.
And she was pathetic. His mouth did not try to say it, his eyes looked it, not refraining, Ishida tried to steer himself toward disdain, not soft things, not something that would look at her breaking and need to help. To brushed her hair back from her lips, hold it behind her ears. She's not a woman, he reminded himself.
What he did say: "I'm finished. I'm going."
>>>
She stilled herself, and waited. Pathetic, maybe. Weak, probably. Disgusting, perhaps.
Nothing came but “I’m going”. And apathy… Cirucci Thunderwitch could take disgust, take exploitation, take rage, take insults and on up the spectrum to affection and attention but what she couldn’t stand was apathy, was an utter lack of attention paid her, neither negative or positive, just… nothing. Cirucci Thunderwitch already had nothing.
She wanted anything but nothing, would seek abuse even, before she let herself fall into nothing.
“You haven’t told me, yet.” Wiped her mouth, pushed back hair, and carefully, so carefully stood up, moving past him, gently, weakly, to crawl into bed, to push the warmth of the electric blanket onto Luppi’s side of the bed because once again it was pathetic but she had grown so used to the warmth there, to being able to feel warmth next to her so often, that it scared her to be without it, but more than that, made her angry when it reminded her she was sullen and cold.
“I told you.” The covers were all messed, and she smoothed them gently, let her expression soften for only one moment before she slunk under them, buried her face in a pillow and let her hair fan out again.
“No one comes to me unless they want something.”
>>>
As she passed, Ishida had stepped aside without comment. He followed her movement to her bedroom, her collapse beneath the covers, how listless, how dull, how defeated, how pathetic. It was terrible. As annoying as it was, it couldn't be denied that a part of him preferred her angry, or teasing, irritating, intrusive. It seemed as if for every time he reminded himself she was not a woman, she would show him another instant of weakness.
His resolve, he told himself, insisted to himself, knew, knew, had not weakened. He was going. He was leaving her to wallow. He would not go to her, to be smug, cruel, he would leave.
Yet, for a long minute, Ishida remained still beside the doorframe to her bathroom. He faced the direction of her bedroom, looking at her crown of black hair, the shape of her beneath the covers. Disdain, focus on scorn, disgust.
"And what could they get from you?" He asked, more scathing, perhaps, than he would normally have been. Vitriol that seethed in his tone, the harshness of his eyes. "You won't give me what I want. There's no point in asking."
>>>
“What could they get?” She could have laughed. What could they get?
“Everything.” That’s why she had nothing, after all, wasn’t it? Of course it was.
The Privaron rolled over a bit, still that dazed, distracted look from alcohol, the glazed hint to her eyes that spoke inebriation, but without cause apparent. Though, a smile quirked onto her lips at the scathing tone, at the insult in the question, the lack of sympathy.
“How do you know?” She murmured, fingers idly stroking through covers, through sheets, still shamelessly memorizing, remembering, smelling, even. Did she miss him? Yes. Was the main reason she’d gotten the Quincy here to have someone around? Yes.
Because she was lonely, this social creature, because she was lonely but she wanted someone to tell her how pathetic she was, to make her realize how pathetic she was, so she could stop, but yet, someone that wouldn’t kill her for it, which ruled out her brothers and made it hard.
The disgust in his voice made her feel a little bit better.
>>>
Would not, could not watch her, her fingers moving over the sheets. Ishida felt as if he was intruding on something deeply personal, witnessing something that he shouldn't, absorbing knowledge he'd rather not have.
He didn't want it. Taking a step back, toward the exit, but not actually turning, because leaving meant solitude with his thoughts and the ticking and the gross reality of what had happened in the past few days. (He could help, should help against the fire, yet Ishida was flammable). To be coming to the Thunderwitch for a distraction, for company? (Someone he HAD managed to defeat?) Never. And he shook his head, suddenly, even violently, against the thought.
"No," he said, "There's nothing you can offer."
Look at you, his tone said. What can you offer, like this? Still cold, he needed to be, impassive, and he would choose cruelty over a gentle hand. Ishida had been too often kind to her, he knew, and to humor this (those words, they made him somewhat sick and ashamed of himself) … Again, he shook his head. His lips drew back from his teeth, but he spoke with detached cool.
"What do I want? For you to leave me alone. Stop obsessing, assuming that I belong to you. I didn't bring you those things at your bidding; consider it..."
And what might anger her most? Ah -- "Charity."
>>>
Charity? … Did she give a fuck about charity? … Not when it was warm. And if she closed her eyes, it felt somewhat similar to the warmth of another person, just not. She settled into a comfortable alcohol delirium, with a comfortable hazed vision and comfortable position, curling in and closing her eyes.
“You don’t like me much, do you, Shiro-Megane-Kun?” What a question. “Is the Octava a better killer, for you?” She asked it, but she didn’t quite mean it, because she didn’t quite want the answer.
“Ah-“ Suddenly she sat bolt upright, grimacing when her head reeled again and she fought the urge to vomit, swallowing hard before looking him in the eyes, distant, but… something.
“You hate me, right?” Please hate me, in her voice. Don’t be like the others, who secretly pity, don’t say anything like like or love or anything at all. Just hate me, please.
>>>
Yet, she received an answer, brutally honest. The dry retort: "I don't like you much. But, I do not intend to be killed by either of you."
With that in the air, it was easier: Ishida took another step, much soon backwards, soon he would leave. But the abruptness of her movement startled him, enough that his arms rose in part, jumping with his shoulders and eyelids, exposing whites and a necessary alertness when dealing with the Thunderwitch. Yet, she wouldn't attack, that much was obvious if only with the grimace. Ishida dropped his arms.
And she was pathetic. Everything was pathetic, her expressions, her need for warmth, her tone of voice, the emotion that needed his disdain. He could feel that, his scorn that needed to be there, lest he pity her.
"No," Ishida said, because he didn't, but he might have been lying: "I don't care about you. Not at all."
>>>
“Good.” She smiled, darkly, twisted, but her expression soon fell, the clouded, no holds barred look brought on by too much alcohol and a need to tell someone.
Oddly enough, Cirucci Thunderwitch only confided in mortals. She could never, would never admit half of what she felt, felt to any Arrancar, because that might as well have sealed her fate, shamed not just forever, but for more than that. No, her brothers, sisters, none of them would ever hear her say anythingshe had admitted to mortals, on occasion. I’m scared, or it hurts, or I don’t know what to do, and now…
“You know what he told me? Before he left?” Her voice grew quiet, and she sat up a little straighter. Because mortals didn’t judge, with the same morals with which she judged herself. They didn’t judge like her brothers judged. No.
“He told me…” She hesitated half a moment, to say it, but she wanted it from Ishida. Arrancar are heartless. Arrancar don’t love. Arrancar are monsters.
“He told me if Arrancar could feel that, he would like me.”
>>>
No, he didn't know what he, whoever he was, had told her. Ishida meant to say, I don't know, and I don't care, and walk out. A thin curiosity couldn't be enough to keep him standing there, not even in the doorway to her bedroom, the distance between them so great it should have been, no doubt was easy to leave.
His eyes followed the curve of her spine, taking judgment from posture, a judgment of the obvious. They moved to her face, that flush and sickly pallor. She'd been drinking, and he would have to suffer her loose tongue. (Unless he walked away, as he should, unless he left her to this).
"Arrancar feel," Ishida dismissed, not wasting the time on surprise, on softening his delivery. "Look at yourself. Is that apathy? A heart doesn't make one feel. Emotions are hormonal. If Arrancar can fear, and I know they can, they can feel everything else. You just deny it, as if denial makes you stronger."
A cold speech, his chin tilted just so, his lenses catching the light and masking his eyes – just so.
>>>
Her eyes immediately opened, that dark purple haze and the odd light to them, the shock on her face, quiet and deeply unsettled, the way she stiffened up immediately and her fingers tightened.
“That’s…” She started to protest, one hand flying to the empty space in her chest and pressing, waiting to see if flesh had sprung up there when she had not been looking, if…
“That’s not what you were supposed to say, Ishida.” No nickname, not now, when he had said such things, horrible things, and her brow furrowed, crestfallen, the way she leaned in his direction, blindly seeking what she wanted to hear.
“That’s not right.” Many people had told her Arrancar could feel. She believed none of them.
But- Ifhe said it, if-
How could it not be true, ifhe said it, and she wanted it not to be so more than anything in the world at that moment. Because if that was true, then it was true that each time, with both of the ones that had left her, that she had made love, not fucked, made love,and with every fiber of her being Cirucci Thunderwitch wanted to be incapable of that action.
>>>
This, that Arrancar felt, or some portion of them did to some degree, was a conclusion he had long since reached. It was true that, being corrupted souls that had undergone whatever else, emotion may not be so much due to hormones. After all, souls felt, and they didn't possess physical form. Not really. But that, there, the scientific explanation.
"There is no supposed to, Thunderwitch." Still callous, but because it sickened him to see her like this, he took a step forward. No – that wasn't the logic behind it, quite the opposite? Only …
"Fear is an emotion. Pride is an emotion. This, whatever this" if Ishida spat his words, he would have spat that, for all the disgust that lathered itself around the word, "is, despair, is an emotion. If you felt nothing, you wouldn't be as pathetic as you are, right now."
Matter-of-fact, and yet repulsed, and yet he took another step closer to her bedroom, not gesturing, not with energy, but with a burning in his eyes, as if through cruelty that was fact,
possibly, yet not what she wanted to hear, he might incite her out of this state.
If she had emotions, she was less of a monster. Ishida couldn't have that.
>>>
Closer, and she half rose, shook her head and the loose hair about her shoulders moved, beautiful, she could be, could have been, beautiful, cruel and beautiful, but she was only tragically so, in the way that her face fell when he spoke. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, he was supposed to say that Arrancar could not feel, Arrancar… had no emotions, no rights, no life beyond the one they leeched off of dead souls, and this… ?
“How-“ How dare you lingered on her tongue but opted for action, a sonido, the reverb noise but it faltered, because goddamnit she was drunk and her head reeled, but it got her out of bed, the safety of her warmth, there, and she headed right for him, stood not a foot from him, goddamn his height, too, because the top of her head, such a small thing, she, in reality, so small and lithe that the top of her head only came to his chin and she had to tip her head back to look at him, to straighten her shoulder, reel a bit on her feet and straighten.
“I’m not pathetic.” She mouthed, a bare whisper. “I don’t feel. I don’t…” She smiled, forlorn, and almost reached for him, cupped her palm where his cheek could be if she could go through with such a movement.
“… I don’t even hate you all that much.”
>>>
Now she approached, and now he knew instinct, it ought to have been reflex to move back. But to move back after moving deliberately forward? To do so would lead to the obvious and true deduction: he moved back to escape her, as if she could influence his motion.
Ishida remain, stationary, his face expressionless with the exception of that curl in his mouth. In the ideal world, his eyes were unreadable. He watched her progress, and looked, first, at anything but her face, where emotion did not lurk but bled, but came like the fumes curling out from her mouth. Leaking, she was leaking humanity, and soon, she would hate that he had seen it as much as he did in the now.
I'm not pathetic – that was spine, and Ishida began to feel relief. But he could not calmly compute the last of it; his eyes widened, and he didn't reel, only, it was much easier if she did.
"Don't –" he said, before he could begin to think and stop himself. Don't look like that. He wanted to shake her, to press his hands over her deceptively fragile feeling shoulders and shake, to remind her that she was a monster and she hated him, and he could properly despise her interest.
"I'm leaving." Without moving, alarm around the only just visible whites of his eyes.
>>>
“Don’t be a spoilsport.” Said almost coyly, almost in her usual tone, but still tempered down with that depression, alcohol is a depressant, you know, Cirucci, mortals never told you that one, with the fuzzy sort of stuffed feeling in her head that told her it was perfectly alright to say anything at all. And possible, quite possibly, she didn’t even mind him seeing her like this, because Ishida, like Alfons, would never, ever, tell. Because to tell on her, to admit that he had seen her like this was almost like admitting to intimacy, to being in a moment that she would be like this with here and she took comfort in the fact that it was one of the dew things he DID NOT want, to be known to have been so with her.
“That’s what’s pathetic, isn’t it?” She ignored his leaving because she refused to acknowledge that he would leave, almost again, reaching, and this time she did, cupped his cheek so delicately the pale white hand might as well not have been there. Cirucci had never touched him kindly, not without ulterior motive, and this was the first time she closed her eyes, briefly, and merely did it to feel him. Human, so human, and so moral it hurt her, the way he didn’t like to see women hurt, wouldn’t strike an enemy while they were down, wouldn’t do that, and it was so righteous it almost made her angry but she couldn’t gather anger.
“That I did all that, and I don’t even hate you that much. I didn’t hate you at all.” She smiled briefly. “Just a funny intruder, a Shiro-Megane-Kun.” She was still wearing those gloves, silky smooth, but her uncovered fingers traced against his cheek, soft, talons scraped soft.
“I did all of that, and you just…” A pause, because even now it hurt to say it, “… won.”
Her shoulders shook, silent laughter, maybe, and she patted his cheek affectionately, if he could interpret it that way, her painted lips tried to curl up into a smile.
“That’s what’s pathetic, isn’t it? That I fought so hard for that, and still ended up like this?”
>>>
Leaving, he ought to have, because now she was touching him, and he had barely recoiled. The lack of hostility in her hand, that it was not an attack or a taunt but soft, it left him disconcerted. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted, his eyelids spread evermore apart, and a breath caught half-way to his lung, or in his lungs, not yet released. The tips of her fingers were soft. The Thunderwitch shouldn't feel soft, though he knew well before today that she did. She did.
"You do hate me," he insisted, ignoring how he might sound like she had, except that he had filtered the desperation from his voice. Not desperate, only cold, fact. He lifted his hand, not to brush his fingers over hers, but to close them hard – not hard enough – around her wrist. He should tug it down.
Ishida began to tug. He didn't know how to handle this. This never happened in the movies, or the books, or anything. Anything. "You … if you think you're pathetic, then that –"
No, he had to have that same hard tone, to be apathetic and disgusted. Not to look at that startling, pleasant contrast between her hair and skin (focus on the mask), the glow of her dulled eyes, the curves of the marks on her cheeks, her fingertips. Ishida thought he might hate himself for his susceptibility to contact, having so long forcibly isolated himself from it.
He tugged, with a little more force. "Don't touch me, Thunderwitch."
>>>
She withdrew her hand, curled it at her breast, to reaffirm to herself the empty space there, to take comfort in it.
“I hate that you didn’t kill me.” The floundering, helpless, altogether helpless sensation of being powerless scared her more than anything. “… But you didn’t do it because I was worthless, did you?” Please affirm me, she screamed. Please, please, don’t tell me I’m wrong, when it took me so long to realize this.
“You spared me because…” Hesitant, not touching, but deflating, in the way her small hand curled under her breasts, and her eyes withdrew, afraid she had come to the wrong conclusion, that maybe she had, only to try and reassure herself.
“I wasn’t. … Worthless.”
>>>
As she withdrew, he did, relief dropping his hand to his side. And a part of him hadn't wanted her, really, to not touch him. Stop, a part of him raged, stop being like this. But that part of him had already begun to lose, overpowered by that which made him weak. His eyes were less harsh, soft, despicably soft.
Ishida could do that much, and he could do it with feeling – or the apparent lack of. A tilt of his chin, again. That same tone, frigid, unyielding. Though this argument had never been a factor, never in his mind. "Shouldn't the worthless be killed? Why allow something like that to live?"
It had never been in his mind, and it felt wrong on his tongue, even he, so accustomed to broad speeches of not entire truth. Ishida looked away, toward the carpet, toward a discarded shopping back, the red
paper. It had smelled like the smoke in the air.
"… I spared you," he did not look, directly, at her. Could not, the admission, "because I thought you could be … nee—wanted you to be worth more than what I had taken from you."
No, not him – Aizen or whoever else before him, but he had reaffirmed it. Ishida did not take responsibility, but spoke in a language she could understand. He did not look, his hands worked into loose fists.
>>>
She broke.
But quietly, beautifully, and with a smile on her face, altogether insanity and cruelty and edge under the veneer, in the curl of painted lips and the softened cant of eyelashes, the tear marks down her cheek and the sudden movement, not the usual seductive ones she took with him, the roulette of either seductive or violent, no, palms to his chest, no reiatsu building behind them, and her lips to his cheek, brief and fleeting like the flighty bird she was.
“Thank you.” She could claim later that it was the drink talking, and perhaps it was, but he’d said it. You’re not worthless. It was quietly said, so quiet, but still barely audible. You were worth more than that. The Privaron withdrew before he panicked. Worth living.
“Awful silly of you, Shiro-Megane-Kun.” Smirk, for him. “Sparing people, though.” A pat on her blade. “They might try and kill you.” A steady growth, the regaining of that confidence, the glow of pride, but now she was teasing him, hands to her hair and realizing it was down, curling soft around her face, and she went to do it up, not letting the smirk die.
Not letting herself die.
>>>
Now it was instinct.
He had not, after all, needed to turn his face, to present at least only a cheek instead of his mouth. He had not needed to, and that was not the instinct, but this, a few hard words, so long practiced on his tongue. He would have pushed his glasses, but the surprise of her touch, still gentle, sudden and strange, this tender gratitude, to which he could only offer that instinct.
A little stilted, a little awkward, his breathing not even: "There's no need to thank me."
Not hard enough, really, because she had pressed a kiss to his cheek and stupid, stupid boy, he could feel the heat not crawling but rushing up his neck to fill the space, even now. She had touched him, and even after she had stopped, palms dropped, his tension did not relax.
"They'll try," Ishida finally managed, worked his mouth around the words and then into a smile that was nearly the appropriate smirking retort.
And he should leave, had to, now that he regarded her with less repulsion and more something like, couldn't be, no, wouldn't come close to identifying it, but that relief to see her smirk, as if he liked it, as if it wasn't annoying. Her long fingers, white disappearing into black curls; his did not twitch to touch. Didn't.
He must leave, because not thinking about what he was not thinking of could be accomplished in less ridiculous, less idiot ways. Ishida turned.
>>>
“Maybe,” She promised him, with the press of her index finger to her lips, as if she passed a secret to him, tossing her head a little to adjust her hair, to move small hands and pin it up, flip the curls and secure, a self-satisfied nod.
She would regret thanking him in the morning, along with regretting alcohol as a general rule, but she didn’t yet, no, and what did one more regret matter? She regretted becoming Privaron. She regretted making love, to two, to losing two, and she regretted mourning their loss. But she also had pride, silly, stubborn, pride, and she also had that too sick feeling in her belly.
“But, I promise you, Ishida-“ and she was completely serious, “If you die by the Octava’s hands-“ Because… if she, if she had died because of him, and Szayel Aporro had used her like that, sliced open her body, violated what little sacrosanct she had left, and then killed her killer?
That made her death too worthless to bear.
But she didn’t have to think about it long, because her stomach rebelled again, what did you feed me, solid, sickly, alcohol, and she was scrambling, clumsy to her trembling knees as her body hurled up acid into the sink, grimacing all the while.
Never again. Alcohol.
>>>
His back was not completely to her when she turned serious, and he let his attention drift back, over his shoulder, that blush conquered in favor of old impassion.
"I won't die," he said, blankly, though it wasn't a promise. Ishida would not intend to die, would not embrace it, but knowing what he did of his situation, the promise was too difficult to make – if made on his pride as a Quincy, it would slight his pride. A stronger smirk: "Your concern is touching."
"Not that" it has anything to do with you, his needed retort, only there, she was gone again. An opportunity to walk out without distraction turned into him, trailing stupid and not, not, not concerned after her, the drunken Privaron, to indulge in denied instinct of letting his fingers move, hitch gentle into her hair, comb it from her face in brief, impersonal (had to be impersonal, only clinical, clean) strokes.
This was not thinking of almost dying, of rescue by that man, of Kuroskai's stupid, fucking guilt. He let his fingers linger, and almost preferred to think of that.
>>>
She emptied what was left of her stomach contents, mostly liquid, no, all liquid, alcohol, damn it, in breath, fluttering heaves of her body, defying biology with that hole straight through her chest barely visible peaking out from the dress, due to the angle of her mirror. She finished, spat, how unladylike, and ran the water in the sink, let her eyes close one moment.
Hands in her hair. She smiled. How silly, her Shiro-Megane-Kun, and no matter, he was her Quincy, her mortal, more than anyone else in this damned City he belonged to her, and because he hadn’t left, she was even more assured, that quiet pride swelling up in her chest and she kept it to herself.
“Mm.” She offered him for his facts, statement, awkwardly standing, barely straight, and trying in vain to walk correctly to her bed. “If you lost to him, I’ll kill you.” She could say it as many times as she wished but Cirucci knew she couldn’t, wouldn’t, no matter how much she had or would wish to do it, and she wasn’t even sure that mattered anymore.
What a mess.
>>>
Disgusting. The sound of it, of the gagging reflex, of the liquid forced from her mouth, the sound of it hitting the porcelain, the smell it left in the air of bile and spirits. Ishida's stomach flopped and he scowled, but in brief, as it wasn't very difficult for him to decide that he wouldn't be affected by something so petty as this, and sought that clinical attitude.
Once she had finished, once she had begun to clean herself, his hands had returned to his sides as if they had never left. At first, he watched her attempt, staying back, in the staying smell of vomit. His nose did not wrinkle; force of will.
"It's none of your business," he returned, easy and cool, not latching enough onto the irritation it incited. Unamused, the slant of his eyelids, the tone of his voice. Like a broken record, but it wasn't only her, now, or he wouldn't waste his breath stating the obvious they both knew: "But you'd never be able to kill me."
It wasn't only her; Ishida told himself it was kindness at her expense and to his benefit, as it would be too pathetic to leave her sprawled on the ground. He moved to assist her awkward path to the bed.
>>>
“It is-“ Stumble, grip him instinctively for balance, steady there, steady and she made it, crawled under the covers without the least bit of her usual seductive manner around him, dropped it in favor of her more serious personality, nodded with a pursed pair of lips, cleaned since she’d run water, washed her mouth, but she still felt sick, damn it all, but she curled up on the warm side of the bed, it wasn’t her side, but all of it was her side again. … Fucking Luppi. She hated him.
“It’s every bit my business.” Cirucci shut her eyes and pointed at him accusingly, opening them again, smirking tremulously.
“If you lose, it will make me look bad.” As if she could look worse, but she tried, fingers curling around his pillow, now hers again.
>>>
He let her treat him as a sturdying post, as a means to steady and balance, without directly helping. Every bit of her behavior, of the shape of her movements, was different from what it had been, if slowly recovering. It was jarring to see, left him in two minds, one that wanted her serious, non threatening, not sexual, not.
But for all that, even through her rising, drunken snark, she looked awful, as dull and crushed and simpering in alcoholic aftermath. For her to say that should have only had him smirking, but Ishida laughed, a little, more a chuckle, and allowed himself a childish retort:
"Really, Thunderwitch, you don't need my help with that."
Suppressing his mirth, juvenile and out of place, Ishida pivoted, began to walk. He would decide when this ended. She would sleep, and he would, finally, make his exit before he succumbed to something else. He would look back on all this, later, with no small degree of fury for his idiocy. As for now, he denied that he felt anything at all.
>>>
“Goodnight.” She murmured softly, eyes drifting closed. She figured it would be more infuriating that way, a response like that, beside what had come to mind, which was that only he could actually make her feel as bad as she often was. Even the Espada, if they broke her, didn’t ever leaving her feeling as worthtless as some stupid human boy could. And at the same time, he had the ability to make her feel worthwhile, cast upon her now, and she smiled, small and delicate, and curled into artificial warmth.
Her bed would be cold again, for a long, long, while. She hated that. Hated being reminded of cold, but Luppi was gone. She could have resolved to never make love again, considering it always ended up this way, and it was easy to do. Fucking was much better. Less attachment, less pain, there, in her emptiness when they left her. Worthless.
But worth sparing.
The Thunderwitch’s eyes stayed closed, and she curled tighter, pilling her cheek against the blanket as her hand stroked briefly at the scar on her chest.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad.
Rating; PG
Characters; Cirucci {
thunderwitch} & Ishida {anti_buttons} Summary; After Luppi's departure, the second male she'd become attached to and then lost, Cirucci sinks into a violent depression, exacerbated by a certain Emmett introducing alcohol into the equation. But, while she claims ownership over the Quincy Ishida, all it really means is his words and actions affect her more than most anyone's, occasionally for the better. [aka, thank god she was prevented from going emo on me, she's so hard to kick when she does that~]
Log;
Should he have been on his feet so soon? Absolutely. Had it made him ungrateful to ask Inoue Orihime to help him, even after all Ryuuken and Shizune-san had done? Perhaps, but if there was an option to be in full health rather than recovering for days, Ishida would take it.
Despite the fires, there were stores open, and he opted for those rather than let the Thunderwitch have anything of his. It wasn't with any joy that he faced his new obligation, the trade for which he would receive nothing. If he wanted anything from her, it would be to be left alone – giving her these things, giving her warmth, would encourage it. Ignoring her encouraged it. Asking it had been proved long since futile.
He had more than one reason for his difficulty in keeping the scowl off his face (though he managed it), the tension that refused to leave his shoulders, back, the clenching in his jaw that hurt his ears. But he made the walk, with shopping bags, to her apartment, because to keep busy was preferable to any kind of solitude, in which his thoughts were too repetitive, too cyclical.
Shifting bags to the sound of folding, crinkling paper, Ishida knocked.
>>>
Firstly, Cirucci wondered what had possessed her to drink alcohol. Secondly, what had possessed her to drink alcohol with the most homosexual mortal she knew. It had to have been the pet names. She couldn’t think of a better explanation, and at the same time, she was pretty sure that had a lot to do with the alcohol itself, that she couldn’t think right, which brought her thought process right back to where it has started, and that was laying on her back, sprawled across the sheets.
Her fingers idly curled into them, face to the side and hair messily splayed out beneath her, undone since Luppi had tangled his fingers in it, like her tangled now, and released it from its style. Ah… yes. That was where it had started, she remembered.
With a groan, what an annoying noise, the Privaron rolled over and pressed her face in to the sheets in response to a knock. Who was… oh, yes, that’s right. The sheets were cold. On unsteady feet, with a body whose strongest drink consumption consisted of tea, and only on occasion from the usual of water, she made it to the door, shaky kneed and dressed in one of the few things that wasn’t her uniform, still white dress, but not her uniform, hauling open the door with her senses thrumming, reiatsu reiatsu reiatsu, her own off kilter eyesight and the flush to her cheeks that wasn’t a blush, standing there silently and stepping aside as carefully as she could.
That was right. Shiro Megane Kun had come.
>>>
As if her entry hadn't been indication enough, the Thunderwitch wasn't well. Looking straight ahead, Ishida had looked into the opening door, witnessed the dulled figure before him, though he didn't know what to make, at first, of the color on her cheeks. It was unusual (and he wasn't pleased with his actually knowing her well enough to notice), with as much energy as she moved, she was dead, and a pallor was far more common.
Ishida looked away, past her, almost immediately. He would ignore any opportunity to sympathize.
"I'll set it up," he said, briskly, without other greeting, as he walked through the allotted space. He would, also, not wait for an invitation to her bedroom before moving toward it. "And make sure you understand the instructions."
>>>
“What is it?” Had he told her before? Surely not. … Maybe. She couldn’t remember, and surely if he had she would remember. But she didn’t have any fight in her, not like the last time.
When Il Forte had left, when the first had left, she had been so angry. She’d gone and killed something, she couldn’t remember what. And now Luppi was gone and she didn’t even have the heart – could have laughed at that, didn’t have the heart to be angry. It had all drained out of her and she had nothing, was still struggling with the last thing he told her, another of those horrible words that haunted her, that made her weak.
You know, he’d said, and she didn’t want to think it, shut it out before it could finish, the sound of it, trailing after the Quincy without intent, with the slight slur of her voice and stumble in normally light footsteps, stumbling over the many pillows she kept about and barely catching herself.
>>>
In the act, the act of catching oneself before one could feel. His chin nearly tilted, direction his gaze toward shoulder and beyond, behind him, to the Privaron. She had a way of flitting, like a bird, with her weight more in the air than not, not this mockery of human movement, unable to keep on a single, uninterrupted path.
No, to prevent empathy or sympathy or something wretched, idiotic as that. Ishida kept his attention forward, on the task, and answered her question with the simple fact: "An electric blanket."
Once in her room, he set the bags onto her bed, removing one normal, plastic-wrapped wool blanket, and a larger box. He opened the box, and, though he owned one himself (to excuse leaving the thermostat in his room very low, Ishida had much experience with corner-cutting and cost), flipped open the instruction manual, having every intent to read aloud.
>>>
“Oh.” It took a while to get out, as slow as her mind seemed to be feeling right then, and she wavered, watching him critically. He had to want something, because like she’d said, no one ever came to her without wanting something, and it was true, it was.
“… That side.” She motioned limply, to the far side of the bed, managing to take a seat on the floor, on one of the many piles of pillows there, to curl up and recline on her side but it moved to her stomach very quickly when she realized how nauseous she was.
“I want that side to be warm.” The Privaron muttered listlessly, nails carving in to the pillow beneath her and fleetingly imagining it was his head. Or his heart. Something. But she knew it would never be, because he was stronger than her, because the scar on her breast throbbed with the reminder of shame, and the knowledge that now there was no one she could come home to, and no one to listen to her whine without calling her pathetic.
>>>
Ishida read aloud, as he had intended to do. Not the entire thing, more the pertinent warnings regarding safety, more the how-to so that she could manage it herself, without him. In the middle of his reading, with the next sentence he mind, he looked up, away from the words, and was forced to look down to find his focus. He stumbled over his next words, tongue made sloppy, eyes widening somewhat to see her, curled and too dull on the floor.
Before beginning the next sentence, his mouth worked, quick and silent, to almost be dumb enough to ask her something else. He bit it back, folded the paper, and went to work. Putting first the plain blanket down on that end, he then unpacked the electric blanket and set it up with relative ease. When finished, he looked down at her, apparently impassive, eyes cold behind his clear lenses.
An urge: to bend at the waist, curl a hand around her wrist, and pull her too her feet. To see her like this, he couldn't even gloat. A sneer pulled at his mouth, because if not a sneer, if not disdain, it would be sympathy, kindness, too dangerous.
>>>
She stared back, and it disgusted her, the look on his face, because she hated him, god she hated him so much, and yet it was he who had he most power over her, because he had killed her, not by his own hand but because she had lost to him and now… there wasn’t even a point to it was there? To fighting him, trying to fight him, trying to think she could win. No.
“What did you want?” Cirucci hauled herself up, lurched and managed to toddle t the bathroom, quick and clumsy, because all of a sudden her body rebelled, wretched out the alcohol she’d consumed in the toiler, from her body not meant to consume human food, to consume only souls not… whatever the fuck kind of drink that stupid man had said that was.
Lanks of hair fell into her face and she weakly held them back, wretched weakly and stupidly over the toilet, the smell of alcohol the sight of trembling, of her body rejecting the poison she’d fed it, instead of true food, like the human in her company.
Perhaps she should have asked Alfons, she thought in retrospect, but what Alfons wanted of her was love, and she wouldn’t give it, didn’t want to, and at least she knew Shiro-Megane-Kun would sneer, call her pathetic, maybe, maybe, call her worthless.
Maybe she wanted him to.
>>>
Unraveling. He could feel it, and cursed it, he could feel it loosening in his chest. Sympathy, stupid, damned kindness, that which had stirred when she mangled herself in her futile attempt to win, that had lurked behind his cool words as he stayed at her, crumpled and defeated, on that white floor. He could feel it now, stirring, as he found himself unable to answer her, instead watching her back disappear, curve into the bathroom, listen to the sound of her stomach emptying itself as his shoulders hitched up in nauseated sympathy.
Resist, or to attempt it: at his sides, his hands were tight fists, his mouth thin. His mood too sour to be easily moved, but his feet moved, took him to the doorframe, to cast his eyes down on her.
And she was pathetic. His mouth did not try to say it, his eyes looked it, not refraining, Ishida tried to steer himself toward disdain, not soft things, not something that would look at her breaking and need to help. To brushed her hair back from her lips, hold it behind her ears. She's not a woman, he reminded himself.
What he did say: "I'm finished. I'm going."
>>>
She stilled herself, and waited. Pathetic, maybe. Weak, probably. Disgusting, perhaps.
Nothing came but “I’m going”. And apathy… Cirucci Thunderwitch could take disgust, take exploitation, take rage, take insults and on up the spectrum to affection and attention but what she couldn’t stand was apathy, was an utter lack of attention paid her, neither negative or positive, just… nothing. Cirucci Thunderwitch already had nothing.
She wanted anything but nothing, would seek abuse even, before she let herself fall into nothing.
“You haven’t told me, yet.” Wiped her mouth, pushed back hair, and carefully, so carefully stood up, moving past him, gently, weakly, to crawl into bed, to push the warmth of the electric blanket onto Luppi’s side of the bed because once again it was pathetic but she had grown so used to the warmth there, to being able to feel warmth next to her so often, that it scared her to be without it, but more than that, made her angry when it reminded her she was sullen and cold.
“I told you.” The covers were all messed, and she smoothed them gently, let her expression soften for only one moment before she slunk under them, buried her face in a pillow and let her hair fan out again.
“No one comes to me unless they want something.”
>>>
As she passed, Ishida had stepped aside without comment. He followed her movement to her bedroom, her collapse beneath the covers, how listless, how dull, how defeated, how pathetic. It was terrible. As annoying as it was, it couldn't be denied that a part of him preferred her angry, or teasing, irritating, intrusive. It seemed as if for every time he reminded himself she was not a woman, she would show him another instant of weakness.
His resolve, he told himself, insisted to himself, knew, knew, had not weakened. He was going. He was leaving her to wallow. He would not go to her, to be smug, cruel, he would leave.
Yet, for a long minute, Ishida remained still beside the doorframe to her bathroom. He faced the direction of her bedroom, looking at her crown of black hair, the shape of her beneath the covers. Disdain, focus on scorn, disgust.
"And what could they get from you?" He asked, more scathing, perhaps, than he would normally have been. Vitriol that seethed in his tone, the harshness of his eyes. "You won't give me what I want. There's no point in asking."
>>>
“What could they get?” She could have laughed. What could they get?
“Everything.” That’s why she had nothing, after all, wasn’t it? Of course it was.
The Privaron rolled over a bit, still that dazed, distracted look from alcohol, the glazed hint to her eyes that spoke inebriation, but without cause apparent. Though, a smile quirked onto her lips at the scathing tone, at the insult in the question, the lack of sympathy.
“How do you know?” She murmured, fingers idly stroking through covers, through sheets, still shamelessly memorizing, remembering, smelling, even. Did she miss him? Yes. Was the main reason she’d gotten the Quincy here to have someone around? Yes.
Because she was lonely, this social creature, because she was lonely but she wanted someone to tell her how pathetic she was, to make her realize how pathetic she was, so she could stop, but yet, someone that wouldn’t kill her for it, which ruled out her brothers and made it hard.
The disgust in his voice made her feel a little bit better.
>>>
Would not, could not watch her, her fingers moving over the sheets. Ishida felt as if he was intruding on something deeply personal, witnessing something that he shouldn't, absorbing knowledge he'd rather not have.
He didn't want it. Taking a step back, toward the exit, but not actually turning, because leaving meant solitude with his thoughts and the ticking and the gross reality of what had happened in the past few days. (He could help, should help against the fire, yet Ishida was flammable). To be coming to the Thunderwitch for a distraction, for company? (Someone he HAD managed to defeat?) Never. And he shook his head, suddenly, even violently, against the thought.
"No," he said, "There's nothing you can offer."
Look at you, his tone said. What can you offer, like this? Still cold, he needed to be, impassive, and he would choose cruelty over a gentle hand. Ishida had been too often kind to her, he knew, and to humor this (those words, they made him somewhat sick and ashamed of himself) … Again, he shook his head. His lips drew back from his teeth, but he spoke with detached cool.
"What do I want? For you to leave me alone. Stop obsessing, assuming that I belong to you. I didn't bring you those things at your bidding; consider it..."
And what might anger her most? Ah -- "Charity."
>>>
Charity? … Did she give a fuck about charity? … Not when it was warm. And if she closed her eyes, it felt somewhat similar to the warmth of another person, just not. She settled into a comfortable alcohol delirium, with a comfortable hazed vision and comfortable position, curling in and closing her eyes.
“You don’t like me much, do you, Shiro-Megane-Kun?” What a question. “Is the Octava a better killer, for you?” She asked it, but she didn’t quite mean it, because she didn’t quite want the answer.
“Ah-“ Suddenly she sat bolt upright, grimacing when her head reeled again and she fought the urge to vomit, swallowing hard before looking him in the eyes, distant, but… something.
“You hate me, right?” Please hate me, in her voice. Don’t be like the others, who secretly pity, don’t say anything like like or love or anything at all. Just hate me, please.
>>>
Yet, she received an answer, brutally honest. The dry retort: "I don't like you much. But, I do not intend to be killed by either of you."
With that in the air, it was easier: Ishida took another step, much soon backwards, soon he would leave. But the abruptness of her movement startled him, enough that his arms rose in part, jumping with his shoulders and eyelids, exposing whites and a necessary alertness when dealing with the Thunderwitch. Yet, she wouldn't attack, that much was obvious if only with the grimace. Ishida dropped his arms.
And she was pathetic. Everything was pathetic, her expressions, her need for warmth, her tone of voice, the emotion that needed his disdain. He could feel that, his scorn that needed to be there, lest he pity her.
"No," Ishida said, because he didn't, but he might have been lying: "I don't care about you. Not at all."
>>>
“Good.” She smiled, darkly, twisted, but her expression soon fell, the clouded, no holds barred look brought on by too much alcohol and a need to tell someone.
Oddly enough, Cirucci Thunderwitch only confided in mortals. She could never, would never admit half of what she felt, felt to any Arrancar, because that might as well have sealed her fate, shamed not just forever, but for more than that. No, her brothers, sisters, none of them would ever hear her say anythingshe had admitted to mortals, on occasion. I’m scared, or it hurts, or I don’t know what to do, and now…
“You know what he told me? Before he left?” Her voice grew quiet, and she sat up a little straighter. Because mortals didn’t judge, with the same morals with which she judged herself. They didn’t judge like her brothers judged. No.
“He told me…” She hesitated half a moment, to say it, but she wanted it from Ishida. Arrancar are heartless. Arrancar don’t love. Arrancar are monsters.
“He told me if Arrancar could feel that, he would like me.”
>>>
No, he didn't know what he, whoever he was, had told her. Ishida meant to say, I don't know, and I don't care, and walk out. A thin curiosity couldn't be enough to keep him standing there, not even in the doorway to her bedroom, the distance between them so great it should have been, no doubt was easy to leave.
His eyes followed the curve of her spine, taking judgment from posture, a judgment of the obvious. They moved to her face, that flush and sickly pallor. She'd been drinking, and he would have to suffer her loose tongue. (Unless he walked away, as he should, unless he left her to this).
"Arrancar feel," Ishida dismissed, not wasting the time on surprise, on softening his delivery. "Look at yourself. Is that apathy? A heart doesn't make one feel. Emotions are hormonal. If Arrancar can fear, and I know they can, they can feel everything else. You just deny it, as if denial makes you stronger."
A cold speech, his chin tilted just so, his lenses catching the light and masking his eyes – just so.
>>>
Her eyes immediately opened, that dark purple haze and the odd light to them, the shock on her face, quiet and deeply unsettled, the way she stiffened up immediately and her fingers tightened.
“That’s…” She started to protest, one hand flying to the empty space in her chest and pressing, waiting to see if flesh had sprung up there when she had not been looking, if…
“That’s not what you were supposed to say, Ishida.” No nickname, not now, when he had said such things, horrible things, and her brow furrowed, crestfallen, the way she leaned in his direction, blindly seeking what she wanted to hear.
“That’s not right.” Many people had told her Arrancar could feel. She believed none of them.
But- Ifhe said it, if-
How could it not be true, ifhe said it, and she wanted it not to be so more than anything in the world at that moment. Because if that was true, then it was true that each time, with both of the ones that had left her, that she had made love, not fucked, made love,and with every fiber of her being Cirucci Thunderwitch wanted to be incapable of that action.
>>>
This, that Arrancar felt, or some portion of them did to some degree, was a conclusion he had long since reached. It was true that, being corrupted souls that had undergone whatever else, emotion may not be so much due to hormones. After all, souls felt, and they didn't possess physical form. Not really. But that, there, the scientific explanation.
"There is no supposed to, Thunderwitch." Still callous, but because it sickened him to see her like this, he took a step forward. No – that wasn't the logic behind it, quite the opposite? Only …
"Fear is an emotion. Pride is an emotion. This, whatever this" if Ishida spat his words, he would have spat that, for all the disgust that lathered itself around the word, "is, despair, is an emotion. If you felt nothing, you wouldn't be as pathetic as you are, right now."
Matter-of-fact, and yet repulsed, and yet he took another step closer to her bedroom, not gesturing, not with energy, but with a burning in his eyes, as if through cruelty that was fact,
possibly, yet not what she wanted to hear, he might incite her out of this state.
If she had emotions, she was less of a monster. Ishida couldn't have that.
>>>
Closer, and she half rose, shook her head and the loose hair about her shoulders moved, beautiful, she could be, could have been, beautiful, cruel and beautiful, but she was only tragically so, in the way that her face fell when he spoke. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, he was supposed to say that Arrancar could not feel, Arrancar… had no emotions, no rights, no life beyond the one they leeched off of dead souls, and this… ?
“How-“ How dare you lingered on her tongue but opted for action, a sonido, the reverb noise but it faltered, because goddamnit she was drunk and her head reeled, but it got her out of bed, the safety of her warmth, there, and she headed right for him, stood not a foot from him, goddamn his height, too, because the top of her head, such a small thing, she, in reality, so small and lithe that the top of her head only came to his chin and she had to tip her head back to look at him, to straighten her shoulder, reel a bit on her feet and straighten.
“I’m not pathetic.” She mouthed, a bare whisper. “I don’t feel. I don’t…” She smiled, forlorn, and almost reached for him, cupped her palm where his cheek could be if she could go through with such a movement.
“… I don’t even hate you all that much.”
>>>
Now she approached, and now he knew instinct, it ought to have been reflex to move back. But to move back after moving deliberately forward? To do so would lead to the obvious and true deduction: he moved back to escape her, as if she could influence his motion.
Ishida remain, stationary, his face expressionless with the exception of that curl in his mouth. In the ideal world, his eyes were unreadable. He watched her progress, and looked, first, at anything but her face, where emotion did not lurk but bled, but came like the fumes curling out from her mouth. Leaking, she was leaking humanity, and soon, she would hate that he had seen it as much as he did in the now.
I'm not pathetic – that was spine, and Ishida began to feel relief. But he could not calmly compute the last of it; his eyes widened, and he didn't reel, only, it was much easier if she did.
"Don't –" he said, before he could begin to think and stop himself. Don't look like that. He wanted to shake her, to press his hands over her deceptively fragile feeling shoulders and shake, to remind her that she was a monster and she hated him, and he could properly despise her interest.
"I'm leaving." Without moving, alarm around the only just visible whites of his eyes.
>>>
“Don’t be a spoilsport.” Said almost coyly, almost in her usual tone, but still tempered down with that depression, alcohol is a depressant, you know, Cirucci, mortals never told you that one, with the fuzzy sort of stuffed feeling in her head that told her it was perfectly alright to say anything at all. And possible, quite possibly, she didn’t even mind him seeing her like this, because Ishida, like Alfons, would never, ever, tell. Because to tell on her, to admit that he had seen her like this was almost like admitting to intimacy, to being in a moment that she would be like this with here and she took comfort in the fact that it was one of the dew things he DID NOT want, to be known to have been so with her.
“That’s what’s pathetic, isn’t it?” She ignored his leaving because she refused to acknowledge that he would leave, almost again, reaching, and this time she did, cupped his cheek so delicately the pale white hand might as well not have been there. Cirucci had never touched him kindly, not without ulterior motive, and this was the first time she closed her eyes, briefly, and merely did it to feel him. Human, so human, and so moral it hurt her, the way he didn’t like to see women hurt, wouldn’t strike an enemy while they were down, wouldn’t do that, and it was so righteous it almost made her angry but she couldn’t gather anger.
“That I did all that, and I don’t even hate you that much. I didn’t hate you at all.” She smiled briefly. “Just a funny intruder, a Shiro-Megane-Kun.” She was still wearing those gloves, silky smooth, but her uncovered fingers traced against his cheek, soft, talons scraped soft.
“I did all of that, and you just…” A pause, because even now it hurt to say it, “… won.”
Her shoulders shook, silent laughter, maybe, and she patted his cheek affectionately, if he could interpret it that way, her painted lips tried to curl up into a smile.
“That’s what’s pathetic, isn’t it? That I fought so hard for that, and still ended up like this?”
>>>
Leaving, he ought to have, because now she was touching him, and he had barely recoiled. The lack of hostility in her hand, that it was not an attack or a taunt but soft, it left him disconcerted. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted, his eyelids spread evermore apart, and a breath caught half-way to his lung, or in his lungs, not yet released. The tips of her fingers were soft. The Thunderwitch shouldn't feel soft, though he knew well before today that she did. She did.
"You do hate me," he insisted, ignoring how he might sound like she had, except that he had filtered the desperation from his voice. Not desperate, only cold, fact. He lifted his hand, not to brush his fingers over hers, but to close them hard – not hard enough – around her wrist. He should tug it down.
Ishida began to tug. He didn't know how to handle this. This never happened in the movies, or the books, or anything. Anything. "You … if you think you're pathetic, then that –"
No, he had to have that same hard tone, to be apathetic and disgusted. Not to look at that startling, pleasant contrast between her hair and skin (focus on the mask), the glow of her dulled eyes, the curves of the marks on her cheeks, her fingertips. Ishida thought he might hate himself for his susceptibility to contact, having so long forcibly isolated himself from it.
He tugged, with a little more force. "Don't touch me, Thunderwitch."
>>>
She withdrew her hand, curled it at her breast, to reaffirm to herself the empty space there, to take comfort in it.
“I hate that you didn’t kill me.” The floundering, helpless, altogether helpless sensation of being powerless scared her more than anything. “… But you didn’t do it because I was worthless, did you?” Please affirm me, she screamed. Please, please, don’t tell me I’m wrong, when it took me so long to realize this.
“You spared me because…” Hesitant, not touching, but deflating, in the way her small hand curled under her breasts, and her eyes withdrew, afraid she had come to the wrong conclusion, that maybe she had, only to try and reassure herself.
“I wasn’t. … Worthless.”
>>>
As she withdrew, he did, relief dropping his hand to his side. And a part of him hadn't wanted her, really, to not touch him. Stop, a part of him raged, stop being like this. But that part of him had already begun to lose, overpowered by that which made him weak. His eyes were less harsh, soft, despicably soft.
Ishida could do that much, and he could do it with feeling – or the apparent lack of. A tilt of his chin, again. That same tone, frigid, unyielding. Though this argument had never been a factor, never in his mind. "Shouldn't the worthless be killed? Why allow something like that to live?"
It had never been in his mind, and it felt wrong on his tongue, even he, so accustomed to broad speeches of not entire truth. Ishida looked away, toward the carpet, toward a discarded shopping back, the red
paper. It had smelled like the smoke in the air.
"… I spared you," he did not look, directly, at her. Could not, the admission, "because I thought you could be … nee—wanted you to be worth more than what I had taken from you."
No, not him – Aizen or whoever else before him, but he had reaffirmed it. Ishida did not take responsibility, but spoke in a language she could understand. He did not look, his hands worked into loose fists.
>>>
She broke.
But quietly, beautifully, and with a smile on her face, altogether insanity and cruelty and edge under the veneer, in the curl of painted lips and the softened cant of eyelashes, the tear marks down her cheek and the sudden movement, not the usual seductive ones she took with him, the roulette of either seductive or violent, no, palms to his chest, no reiatsu building behind them, and her lips to his cheek, brief and fleeting like the flighty bird she was.
“Thank you.” She could claim later that it was the drink talking, and perhaps it was, but he’d said it. You’re not worthless. It was quietly said, so quiet, but still barely audible. You were worth more than that. The Privaron withdrew before he panicked. Worth living.
“Awful silly of you, Shiro-Megane-Kun.” Smirk, for him. “Sparing people, though.” A pat on her blade. “They might try and kill you.” A steady growth, the regaining of that confidence, the glow of pride, but now she was teasing him, hands to her hair and realizing it was down, curling soft around her face, and she went to do it up, not letting the smirk die.
Not letting herself die.
>>>
Now it was instinct.
He had not, after all, needed to turn his face, to present at least only a cheek instead of his mouth. He had not needed to, and that was not the instinct, but this, a few hard words, so long practiced on his tongue. He would have pushed his glasses, but the surprise of her touch, still gentle, sudden and strange, this tender gratitude, to which he could only offer that instinct.
A little stilted, a little awkward, his breathing not even: "There's no need to thank me."
Not hard enough, really, because she had pressed a kiss to his cheek and stupid, stupid boy, he could feel the heat not crawling but rushing up his neck to fill the space, even now. She had touched him, and even after she had stopped, palms dropped, his tension did not relax.
"They'll try," Ishida finally managed, worked his mouth around the words and then into a smile that was nearly the appropriate smirking retort.
And he should leave, had to, now that he regarded her with less repulsion and more something like, couldn't be, no, wouldn't come close to identifying it, but that relief to see her smirk, as if he liked it, as if it wasn't annoying. Her long fingers, white disappearing into black curls; his did not twitch to touch. Didn't.
He must leave, because not thinking about what he was not thinking of could be accomplished in less ridiculous, less idiot ways. Ishida turned.
>>>
“Maybe,” She promised him, with the press of her index finger to her lips, as if she passed a secret to him, tossing her head a little to adjust her hair, to move small hands and pin it up, flip the curls and secure, a self-satisfied nod.
She would regret thanking him in the morning, along with regretting alcohol as a general rule, but she didn’t yet, no, and what did one more regret matter? She regretted becoming Privaron. She regretted making love, to two, to losing two, and she regretted mourning their loss. But she also had pride, silly, stubborn, pride, and she also had that too sick feeling in her belly.
“But, I promise you, Ishida-“ and she was completely serious, “If you die by the Octava’s hands-“ Because… if she, if she had died because of him, and Szayel Aporro had used her like that, sliced open her body, violated what little sacrosanct she had left, and then killed her killer?
That made her death too worthless to bear.
But she didn’t have to think about it long, because her stomach rebelled again, what did you feed me, solid, sickly, alcohol, and she was scrambling, clumsy to her trembling knees as her body hurled up acid into the sink, grimacing all the while.
Never again. Alcohol.
>>>
His back was not completely to her when she turned serious, and he let his attention drift back, over his shoulder, that blush conquered in favor of old impassion.
"I won't die," he said, blankly, though it wasn't a promise. Ishida would not intend to die, would not embrace it, but knowing what he did of his situation, the promise was too difficult to make – if made on his pride as a Quincy, it would slight his pride. A stronger smirk: "Your concern is touching."
"Not that" it has anything to do with you, his needed retort, only there, she was gone again. An opportunity to walk out without distraction turned into him, trailing stupid and not, not, not concerned after her, the drunken Privaron, to indulge in denied instinct of letting his fingers move, hitch gentle into her hair, comb it from her face in brief, impersonal (had to be impersonal, only clinical, clean) strokes.
This was not thinking of almost dying, of rescue by that man, of Kuroskai's stupid, fucking guilt. He let his fingers linger, and almost preferred to think of that.
>>>
She emptied what was left of her stomach contents, mostly liquid, no, all liquid, alcohol, damn it, in breath, fluttering heaves of her body, defying biology with that hole straight through her chest barely visible peaking out from the dress, due to the angle of her mirror. She finished, spat, how unladylike, and ran the water in the sink, let her eyes close one moment.
Hands in her hair. She smiled. How silly, her Shiro-Megane-Kun, and no matter, he was her Quincy, her mortal, more than anyone else in this damned City he belonged to her, and because he hadn’t left, she was even more assured, that quiet pride swelling up in her chest and she kept it to herself.
“Mm.” She offered him for his facts, statement, awkwardly standing, barely straight, and trying in vain to walk correctly to her bed. “If you lost to him, I’ll kill you.” She could say it as many times as she wished but Cirucci knew she couldn’t, wouldn’t, no matter how much she had or would wish to do it, and she wasn’t even sure that mattered anymore.
What a mess.
>>>
Disgusting. The sound of it, of the gagging reflex, of the liquid forced from her mouth, the sound of it hitting the porcelain, the smell it left in the air of bile and spirits. Ishida's stomach flopped and he scowled, but in brief, as it wasn't very difficult for him to decide that he wouldn't be affected by something so petty as this, and sought that clinical attitude.
Once she had finished, once she had begun to clean herself, his hands had returned to his sides as if they had never left. At first, he watched her attempt, staying back, in the staying smell of vomit. His nose did not wrinkle; force of will.
"It's none of your business," he returned, easy and cool, not latching enough onto the irritation it incited. Unamused, the slant of his eyelids, the tone of his voice. Like a broken record, but it wasn't only her, now, or he wouldn't waste his breath stating the obvious they both knew: "But you'd never be able to kill me."
It wasn't only her; Ishida told himself it was kindness at her expense and to his benefit, as it would be too pathetic to leave her sprawled on the ground. He moved to assist her awkward path to the bed.
>>>
“It is-“ Stumble, grip him instinctively for balance, steady there, steady and she made it, crawled under the covers without the least bit of her usual seductive manner around him, dropped it in favor of her more serious personality, nodded with a pursed pair of lips, cleaned since she’d run water, washed her mouth, but she still felt sick, damn it all, but she curled up on the warm side of the bed, it wasn’t her side, but all of it was her side again. … Fucking Luppi. She hated him.
“It’s every bit my business.” Cirucci shut her eyes and pointed at him accusingly, opening them again, smirking tremulously.
“If you lose, it will make me look bad.” As if she could look worse, but she tried, fingers curling around his pillow, now hers again.
>>>
He let her treat him as a sturdying post, as a means to steady and balance, without directly helping. Every bit of her behavior, of the shape of her movements, was different from what it had been, if slowly recovering. It was jarring to see, left him in two minds, one that wanted her serious, non threatening, not sexual, not.
But for all that, even through her rising, drunken snark, she looked awful, as dull and crushed and simpering in alcoholic aftermath. For her to say that should have only had him smirking, but Ishida laughed, a little, more a chuckle, and allowed himself a childish retort:
"Really, Thunderwitch, you don't need my help with that."
Suppressing his mirth, juvenile and out of place, Ishida pivoted, began to walk. He would decide when this ended. She would sleep, and he would, finally, make his exit before he succumbed to something else. He would look back on all this, later, with no small degree of fury for his idiocy. As for now, he denied that he felt anything at all.
>>>
“Goodnight.” She murmured softly, eyes drifting closed. She figured it would be more infuriating that way, a response like that, beside what had come to mind, which was that only he could actually make her feel as bad as she often was. Even the Espada, if they broke her, didn’t ever leaving her feeling as worthtless as some stupid human boy could. And at the same time, he had the ability to make her feel worthwhile, cast upon her now, and she smiled, small and delicate, and curled into artificial warmth.
Her bed would be cold again, for a long, long, while. She hated that. Hated being reminded of cold, but Luppi was gone. She could have resolved to never make love again, considering it always ended up this way, and it was easy to do. Fucking was much better. Less attachment, less pain, there, in her emptiness when they left her. Worthless.
But worth sparing.
The Thunderwitch’s eyes stayed closed, and she curled tighter, pilling her cheek against the blanket as her hand stroked briefly at the scar on her chest.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad.