Log; Complete

[thunderwitch.livejournal.com]

When; February 26th, [backdated]
Rating; PG
Characters; Cirucci {thunderwitch} & Ishida {anti_buttons}
Summary; Since the Privaron took advantage of his cursed state to steal "trophies" from him, the Quincy comes to collect, unwilling to let her possess anything of his to covet or call her own.
Log;

Draped over her couch, lounging on her back, Cirucci Thunderwitch stared blankly at the ceiling. Her head lolled, hair undone, spread under her, a dark curtain, curled and loose. She was thinking about things again, and she hated thinking. One hand, curled around a few things, didn’t move, but the other did. Traced, delicately, down her neck, over the collarbone, over the swell of her breast, across the disfigured scar on her left, down to circle the hole in her chest, with a small shudder, before she tucker the white robe back.

“… It wasn’t even as satisfying as I wanted.” She muttered, her other hand moving, placing the two items on her stomach. Lithe fingers plied at them, rolled the silver gintou around her palm, ran her nails over the crack in one lens of his glasses.

“… Because he wouldn’t just shut up and let me spare him, is why.” The Privaron sighed, looking over to her mantle. Her trophy case. Three shinigami hilt wrapping pieces. A lank of beaded hair, another lank from another, non shinigami. A shriveled tongue. Her trophies.

Her little scraps of pride.

>>>

Whatever the Thunderwitch might intend (and he could little guess what, had no desire to wonder at her intent, but it was telling that she had demanded he come in person), Ishida was resolved on one point: this encounter would be brief. Once he had secured his belongings – though what he would do with that finger he also could not fathom – he would leave and resume his policy of ignoring her.

It was simple, it was settled. With his third or fourth pair of spare glasses situated on his face, subject to constant pushing into place by his restored finger, Ishida walked the irritatingly familiar path to her building, to her apartment. The elevator took him up, its dull, tinny music threatening to begin the headache she would doubtless ensure.

He wouldn't need to count the steps – because Ishida already knew how many, though he wasn't sure how the number had come to settle into the nooks of his mind, familiar, grating. Stopping in front of her door, he raised his hand, fisted it, and almost knocked. Thinking better of it, his hand dropped, turned the knob, and he let himself inside. He remembered: the Thunderwitch didn't lock her door for the same reasons he hadn't before Doumeki. Nothing they worried about would be stopped by locks.

"Let's make this quick, Thunderwitch," he called, even as he walked into the room, gaze moving first to the mantle.

>>>

“Why so brusque?” Cirucci murmured, still draped across the couch, only by now, a book open across her chest, she put it down when he entered, looked over the pages at him, purple eyes. The gintou and glasses she kept beneath the pages, the finger, no where to be found.

But her wounds were still obvious, bruising down her arm, where he’d grabbed, and the bandages, swathing her chest and back, from hips to neck from the Krsnik’s claws.

“You know I hate making things quick.” It was all she could think to say, looking at him. Her gaze lingerered on him, all her wounds, painstakingly inflicted, gone, gone, gone. His gut, his shoulder, his head, his finger, all back to normal, with no proof that she had ever existed on him, no proof she had ever laid hand on him.

… How depressing.

>>>

Ishida lifted his hand, again adjusting his glasses, sure to keep his index-finger outward and the most obvious of all the digits. As if to say, look. No damage you could do to me, assisted by a curse or
whatever else, could hope to be permanent.

It was difficult even to stare at her, to wait, to be forced to take in any aspect of her appearance. She sickened him, made his stomach turn and abdominal muscles clench in remembrance of her fingers,
squirming inside.

"I want all of it," he said, unable to disguise his impatience, the way his teeth almost stuck together, needing to clench out his frustration. "As agreed. The gintou, my glasses, and … my finger."

A bizarre thing to request, and the words were clumsy on his tongue.

>>>

Slowly, she picked the book up again, idly checked her page, and fished the gintou out from between her breasts, moved it idly in her fingers, as if appraising it.

“… I threw your finger away.” She lied smoothly. “It was starting to smell, and I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with it.” She jerked her head at her mantelpiece, at the trophies there. “It didn’t really fit my décor, you know?”

Her words were just as sultry, as psychotic, as always, no change, except when she shifted, propped her head up a bit on the couch arm and kicked her feet, idly rubbed at a bandage around one knee.

>>>

Ishida would have had no way to discern her misdirection. Had he relied only on her voice, on her expression, on the signs available to one detecting lies from the body's disturbances, Ishida may have been fooled. But he didn't trust her; he wasn't a fool, and he wasn't above rolling his eyes to let her know as much.

At her last statement, he nearly laughed in disbelief. Rather than bothering, he simply stared at her, shifted his gaze to the tongue on the mantle, then back to her.

"No, I imagine it doesn't fit at all." His words dripped sarcasm. "Where is it? I'm not in the mood to negotiate."

He had promised not to sever her chain, but not to refrain from threatening her, even hurting her. Pretending to shake his sleeve back was a method to expose his bracelet to the light, the pendant hanging from it.

>>>

“I told you, I threw it away.” Cirucci drawled, pausing to scratch her scalp one second, shift around with a few winces and get comfortable again, still rolling the gintou between her fingers. “What would I do with a finger? There’s no importance to it, since you just grew it back. If it had stayed mine, I would have kept it. But there’s no point to it, if it’s not significant. That-“ She paused to smile fondly at her mantle. “Now that one’s significant.”

But she sighed, then, and checked her book again, read a few lines.

“But, I haven’t gotten new trophies in a long time. And you wouldn’t even let me keep them.”

>>>

"I don't believe you," he said, and it was a struggle to keep his voice flat, to wring the irritation out of it before she knew that she had any effect on him. That it was infuriating, horribly infuriating, to watch her lie languid, itching her scalp and musing over her book, while he needed for this to be over some seconds ago.

Yet, Ishida made a disdainful, tching sound in his throat. "Let you keep it? You'd need to have legitimately won to earn a trophy, Thunderwitch."

Another step inside, his eyes raking the mantle in a futile search. She had the gintou, would give it to him with his broken glasses, but his finger would be troublesome. "If you threw it out, then I'll throw it out."

>>>

“I won.” She pursed her lips, fingers dropped the gintou back on her chest and picked up his glasses instead from beneath the pages of the book, unfolded them with a soft click and placed them on her face, perched light on the bridge of her nose. “And then I spared you.”

What a condescending smile, before she waved a hand.

“If you want to throw it out so bad, you can dig it out of my trash.”

>>>

"An insignificant battle," Ishida returned, the analogy coming easy. "In the war, you haven't a chance."

The world must have been terribly distorted through the cracked, thick lenses; his prescription was strong. He had half a mind to stomp over and snatch them from her face; his fingers twitched, once, with the need, before he'd suppressed it.

She had it; if she hadn't thrown out the tongue, she wouldn't throw out the finger. He couldn't allow her to keep it, but for the time, he'd play along. "Very well," stiff, but composed, apathetic, "then you can dig that jar out of mine. In the meantime, give me the rest of it."

>>>

“Except you want to throw yours away, I don’t.” Cirucci muttered. “So if you want it for that, that’s where it is, and you can have it. But I want you to keep the jar. It’s special.” Her finger traced circles on her breasts, in the shape of a five.

“…” But she paused, to look at him over the rim of his glasses, eyes hard.

“The war doesn’t matter here.” She hissed. “Why do I give a shit about a war anymore, when I can’t go home to it?”

>>>

If she hadn't thrown it out, and he knew she hadn't, then she must be keeping it somewhere more important than her mantle. If not on public display, if not to show whoever might stumble in or be so damned dumb as to visit, then somewhere closer. Feigning nonchalance was an easy habit. He let the seconds tick, cursing himself for bothering to demand a quick encounter, for making it that much easier – a clue in how to annoy him.

He raised his eyebrows. "I had been using a hyperbole to describe our antagonism here." Ishida spoke it coolly, though he had known well how she might interpret it, the Arrancar and their motivations. Why would we start a war if we didn't think to win?

The thought of ordering her up occurred to him, but chasing it came the disagreeable potential of him seeming as if he meant to look, act impressive, to somehow recover ground from the night before. Better to act as if she was nothing, an irritation the size of a fly, pesky, ever-present, too easily dismissed to bother with crushing underfoot.

With that, he crossed the distance between them, holding out his hand.

>>>

“You’ll make me look rude.” Cirucci murmured, hauling herself up as he approached. She winced a little, but hid most of it, made little noises instead under her breath, shifting around until she perched on the arm of the couch, smoothing down her robe. Her injuries were more prominent this way, her whole torso bandaged, for the claw rending down her back, one knee, one bare foot, and the bruises up her arms. But she situated finally, lay the book down, and took his hand.

Gently, and she cupped his hand, her other delicately took his glasses of her nose, put them in his hand, and then retrieved the gintou from her lap and pressed them into this weather palm.

“… It would have been so much more special if you’d at least kept a scar.” The Privaron sighed, her head tipped forward enough that the dark lanks of her hair spilled forward too, exposing one ear.

And the little white stud pierced in it.

>>>

"You don't need my help with that," Ishida answered, his tone dry. It was difficult not to think of her every motion, her every breath as premeditated. If she inhaled, it was to make him think of her as living, as human, as vulnerable, as sympathetic. It might have been paranoia, but he couldn't perceive as her now more visible injuries as anything but machination, and he scorned it. Nothing she hadn't brought on herself: that much was apparent.

For all that, Ishida could not keep from flinching, a minute seizing of the muscles in his arms and shoulders as she took his hand. Thereafter, as fury pressed blood in his neck, he resolved to be less easy, but at that moment, he could have hit himself. He watched, impassive, needing to be impassive, as his glasses were settled in his palm, the gintou sliding alongside of them, metal cold against metal.

He sneered, "It wasn't special at all, I should –"

His eyes widened, caught on the white exposed as the black curls slipped away. He wouldn't have needed to study anatomy, to have looked at the human skeleton in Ryuuken's books to know.

A moment passed, a moment in which he stared, dumb, disgusted.

"Threw it out?" A question without the rising inflection, flat, cotton-mouthed, appalled.

>>>

“Hmm?” She perked up, hands frozen where they were, fingerpads still flat on the cold metal of the gintou, still pressing them into his palm, her other hand, ungloved, still cupping his. Her head cocked, moving her curls again, the bits of bone that were similar to the studs in her ears, that dangled from the piece of bone masking on her skull.

“I already said that, didn’t I?” She either had the gall to lie to his face, or the ignorance to forget what she’d done, something, maybe both. Her lips pursed as if annoyed with his words, and her legs swung slow and steady over the couch arm.

>>>

Queer. It was beyond queer, really, to bend his index finger, to feel the bone pulled by muscles, surrounded by blood and skin tissue. To feel it, yet see the bones hanging from her ears. His eyes wide, having yet to narrow in a blown fury, Ishida gazed at the smooth white, what had been not so many hours ago a piece of his hand.

He knew it, as he knew the ghost-like aching in his abdomen, remembering her fingers. He knew it and she lied, and he opened his mouth as his eyelids drew together – "Give –"

What? His mouth froze on the words, tongue against the bones of his teeth, eyes fixated, unyielding. Give it back, he would say, and she would laugh and swing her leg in a rhythm like a ticking clock, as sensual as the heartbeat she lacked. It would be endless and tiring and aggravating and she had the gall to take his finger, to hang it from her ears.

It had been a long month. It had been a long day yesterday, and a longer one today. Ishida felt the breath slide in through his nostrils, then stop. Ishida felt restraint, logic, control, exhale, and with the exhale his glasses hit the floor, the gintou rolled – he had launched forward.

One knee sank into the couch; his hand was held to her throat, not to strangle but to keep the explosive energy of his bow ready, a shield-like buffer, to hold her down as his other hand reached for her ear with every intent to pluck the bones free.

He wouldn't request, he wouldn't demand. Ishida would take it back.

>>>

She honestly hadn’t expected that.

Whether it was because she didn’t think he’d seen, or because she thought more highly of him that had had yet to be seen, but she hadn’t expected it, and she flinched, seized up and didn’t even have a chance to get out of the way. Before she cut it off, a whimper escaped as she seized, twisted the raw, fresh claw marks down her skin, deep wounds, and treated only as she knew how, which was nothing.

“S-“ She jerker her head back, her painted lips twisting up into some sort of manic grin. “So aggressive today, Uryu.” Her voice came out somewhat strangled, and her smaller hands gripped his wrist in warning, digging in just enough.

Her feet had come up, too, defensive, the front of her heel pressing into his chest to hold him off.

“I should have had you promise not to get frisky with me, too.”

>>>

She wasn't a woman, he told himself – that made this bearable.

Not that very much thought had gone into it, the eruption of his frustration, of lingering emotion from his fight with Kurosaki about her, the culmination of this month and all the rest. Ishida Uryuu had lost control, tossed it haphazardly in the wind and reacted on instinct – an idiot like Kurosaki. She wasn't a woman, wasn't someone to treat with any kind of courtesy, she was a monster, and to put it mildly, he was fed up.

"Shut up," he snarled, thrusting, trying to thrust harder with his wrist, to shove forward with his body even as her heel dug into his chest.

"Just shut up, shut up-" Quickly, breathed hissed swiftly, and he dropped his wrist to gather the reishi within the bow. "I never promised not to kill you. I never promised not to fire right into your neck. Give it back, Thunderwitch."

She wasn't a woman, so his eyes wouldn't fall to the shape of her body beneath her dress, to try and follow down her bent leg, his mind would not be distracted by the thrill of his dominant position, slanted over her, in an entirely different kind of control.

>>>

“I don’t –“ Her eyes rolled a bit, and she slipped off the precarious perch on the arm of the couch, sent her pressing against the back, shudder hard as the wounds opened, with a burst of copper scent in her nostrils. Her feet had slipped, now her toes pressing hard where her fingers had the day before, not her heels, one leg’s pressure much less, swollen and pained.

“Ever like being quiet, you know that-“

Cirucci grit it out, her lips still twisted in that awful grimace of a smile. She had never been afraid of the Quincy. She was afraid of Seele Schnider. She was afraid of his arrows in her hollow hole.

But him? She’d never been afraid of him, and position like this, with a male looming over her, was so familiar it was laughable, nothing to be scared of. It was just like any other time, Nnoitra, Grimmjow, maybe, Luppi, leaning over her with that dominant air. But her fingers twisted, and one hand snapped onto his wrist, dark hair curled around her shoulders, one lank of it twisted in her ivory bone mask, other hiding the small bone studs.

“I said I wouldn’t attack you, Shiro-Megane-Kun.” She muttered darkly. “I never said I wouldn’t defend myself.” But that was laughable as well, as injured as she was. Defend herself? With what strength? That monster she’d fought with Nnoitra had rent her skin to shreds in the back, her fight with the Quincy had injured her knee, her ankle. It was by sheer luck she had both arms working fine, and that the hand grasping his wrist, pushing it away from her, not even minding the other hand at her throat.

After all, it had been a long time, since Cirucci Thunderwitch had needed to breathe.

>>>

An impasse.

Her hand on his wrist, her feet against his abdomen. Ishida could feel each of her toes, the balls of her feet, the lighter pressures of her heels, through the fabric of his shirt. Did the light from his bow reflect against his glasses? Did reishi burn when so concentrated? The sharp spikes of webbing bow extended from his wrist, forced space between him and her, his other hand forced still by hers, reishi caught around his fingers, ready for the shot, piercing through not chain but neck.

He twisted his arm, down to his wrist, experimentally, bone and skin looking for leverage beneath her fingers. His awkward lean, one foot on the floor, the other in the air, left him looking down at her, not panting, as he had hardly exerted himself. In the pause, his mind cleared, the fury that had sent him suddenly forward fading. Even knowing, it was hard to connect the bits of bone dangling from her ears to his severed finger, and now as her hair covered it, even harder.

Without letting himself embarrass for the aggressive brutality of his act, Ishida let the bow dissipate, concentrated energy dissipating, allowing his hand a gentler approach. It was almost a caress, the way his fingers brushed back her hair, exposing the pale cusp of her ear, the white bone hooked into the lobe. His eyes narrowed, were narrowed, the emotion in them not as easily defined as the rage of a minute before.

"As you haven't thrown it out," he said, tone calm, "I'll be taking it back."

>>>

Cirucci would have breathed, hard, but she didn’t let herself. Her chest lay still, no air passed lips or nose, and her lungs shivered still. Cold, cold, her body was so achingly cold, and his was warm enough that she could feel the life in him, and she hated it so much she could die all over again. She hated it, so, so much, and yet she didn’t at all, hated so much that it just died inside her and turned to something else entirely, that wasn’t at all like hate. More like just obsession, obsession she clung to just to stay afloat.

“… Hmm.” She resumed breathing when his bow faded from view, let out air with a soft noise, her white throat tipping back to the near caress, her painted lips tugging into a smirk and eyes lidded to watch him from that angle. A single bead of sweat traced down her jugular.

“You should have asked like that before.” The Arrancar murmured silkily, slowly moving her feet, let them drop from pushing him away, splaying on either side of his hips instead. One hand, the sharp, painted nails, ran through her curls, picked at strands to expose the eat he touched.

“Take them.” It sounded too much like a deal, more so than an offer.

>>>

Trusting her had never been an option. This hadn't, either. The Thunderwitch would always impede his direction, devastate his plans; that much should have been a given, was a given, something to perpetually anticipate. Ishida could not begin to define what, precisely, he felt, as he looked down at her, at the monster with a woman's body, watched the light glisten in the perspiration on her neck. He had no interest in defining it; it was just as well.

As she exposed her neck, as her shapely lips turned, her eyelids fell, as her feet dropped and her thighs spread, Ishida remembered her secret. It would have been more comfortable for him to shift entirely onto the couch, but he knew better. He knew better, also, then to allow his index finger (not the restored one) to hook through a black curl, sliding the glossy strand with a tender push behind her ear.

Ishida lowered his hand, pressing his fingers together over the bone, not focusing as strongly as he should on the small fact that it was his bone. She was beautiful; as soon as the thought filtered through his mind, he shook his head, pulling the bone from her ear, wondering what it was the City had done to him, these trapped months, that he might want a monster like her, that he might want to press his bone into the palm of his hand, feeling it dig into the callused skin, what she had cut and preserved and pierced through her ears, want to feel it hard against his hand, his curling fingers, as he kissed her.

He didn't, of course. With one earring in hand, he reached across her neck for the other, wordless, ignoring her barbs, the connotations to be found in her words, Kurosaki's words ghosting in his mind – he was always making excuses, it was never his own fault. Ishida would have more strength than that, more for his pride.

>>>

She shifted beneath him, bared her slender neck and hummed a bit, a low, warbling noise in her throat, of the soft avian variety she was prone to making on occasion. She moved again, with a small wince, her eyes shut briefly and she repositioned, trying to alleviate the pain down her spine, the faint copper scent in the air behind her. The slip of a white dress did nothing to cover her wounds, and the bead of sweat ran down the line of her throat, dipped down her collarbone and disappeared against the bandages swathing her torso. Her knee. Her ankle. Those stark purple bruises on her arms.

“… There.” Cirucci murmured, softly, but not before she’d run her fingers over where the earrings had been, before she’d fleetingly, oh so fleetingly, traced down his jaw just the briefest moment before taking her hand away.

“Happy?” What an odd question, as she smoothed her dress down, hair tousled back against the couch cushion, still craning neck to look at him, above her.

>>>

The only recognition of her touch came in the inadvertent clenching of the muscles in his jaw. How unbearable, that even sweat could bring to mind sensuality, that blood seeping through white wrapping could somehow call to mind anything carnal. The shapes of his fingers marked on her arm; his stomach turned, recalling the feel of her fingers, thrust through his skin. It should have been, only, only disgusting, repelling. It was easy enough to tell himself that.

"Of course not," he retorted, his composure ensuring an even reply. It would be easier to shift, to let his fingers drift over the bruises he had made. Instead, he adjusted his glasses, did not swallow, moved to shift his weight off the couch, to back out of the framing of her legs.

Beside the couch he crouched, reclaiming his dropped glasses, seeking with grasping, spidery fingers the escaped gintou.

>>>

“Mmm…” Cirucci murmured, throaty, hauling herself up from her slump sprawl against the couch to grab loose bandages from the other side, slowly unrolling them in her hand, nails cutting at the bloody ones on her back as she spoke.

“Of course not, Ishida.” She finished, the white bandage blending in to her dress, to her pale hands. Bandages did that, when they weren’t stained with blood. It had been taxing, to work on seeming like it hadn’t hurt, that just sitting was a throbbing pain, that pressing it against anything was anguish. But she was always best at acting with him.

“Done here, then?” The Privaron queried. “If you want to stick around~” Like she didn’t know his reaction to that already. But she always asked anyway, with that small, somehow still-proud smile.

>>>

One, two, three, four, gathered in his palm. Still crouching, Ishida deposited the gintou into his trouser pocket, folded the arms of his glasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. What remained, then: his bones. He wouldn't thank her, of course, but Ishida could only just resist a smirk at the irony, if that was the word, that he should be living, entirely intact, and yet holding his own bones in his hand. For the opportunity, would he thank the City? Thank the Thunderwitch? Thank Inoue Orihime?

Disgusting, or it should have been, but it seemed fascinating, bizarre, it seemed a waste to throw it out. Which was, he knew, precisely why he ought to, before that kind of thinking became prevalent. It couldn't be healthy. It was better, at least, to muse on the bone, hard and digging into his palm, the white a small contrast against his skin tone, than to listen her voice, velvet and curling from her throat.

Ishida tched, a near-snort, at the suggestion. She knew his reaction; Ishida had no problem with being predictable in that. "I'd love to," he said, dryly, as he stood, glancing down at the earrings in his hand, wondering, briefly, if he would look cool with earrings.

Turning, he walked to the door.

>>>

She smirked broader, despite the obvious pain cloud of haze in her eyes, that seemed to distort her vision as she cut the old bandages from her with a fresher scent of blood, as she pulled them from her with moist, sticking noise and discarded them. Red staining white fabric never was strange for her.

“Good night, Shiro-Megane-Kun.” Cirucci crooned. He couldn’t see them, or maybe he could, those invisible hooks she sank into his skin each time they played this game, each time she could make his eyes move down her body with anything but disdain, every time she could make him come to see her without fighting her, Every. Damn. Time.

Without realizing it, her jaw had clenched, lips had twisted, teeth had grit. Goddamn him, goddamned everything about him and-

Cirucci let her breath out, letting her head loll back before one hand delved at her chest, moved bandages aside and fished out an ivory bone.

“… A whole finger can make more than a little pair of earrings, Shiro-Megane-Kun.” The Arrancar whispered, wondering if he would shiver, feel it, as her breath ghosted across the ivory.

The Thunderwitch knew she couldn’t beat the Quincy. Not really. She knew it with ever bit of her, every bit that she denied that she would never win. She could make him lose his cool, once, twice, she could, between the long periods of isolation when he managed to ignore her aggravating existance, goad him, through violence, through means, to pay some mind of attention to hr. But- Every bit of him, if it was the last thing she did.

She wanted to own him.