Summary: He can break her heart all he can, but they are not the same. Written for @deathberryprompts‘ “ichor.”
Nobody else quite argues as abstractly as Ichigo does, and it drives her mad.
"You haven't ever noticed this before?" He asks her one night, grabbing her wrist. She purses her wrist at the sudden contact, annoyed by his strangely intimate behavior during such a heated argument.
"Noticed what?" Her patience is visibly taut, but he doesn't care. His finger traces the map of veins on her wrist, a concentrated look on his face.
"This... Your blood."
"What of it? It's like yours."
He raises his eyes to hers. "Exactly."
She snatches her arm out of his grasp and starts to gather her clothes.
"I'm just saying, you all act like you're high and mighty--"
"We've had this conversation before, Ichigo--"
"Like you've got some, some goddamn ichor running through your veins--"
"I don't even know what that is." She replies irritably as she slips into her haori.
"It's a Greek thing, don't worry about it. Look, the point is..." he tugs at the back of her robe just as she had tucked it into her pants. She huffs and gives him a legendary Kuchiki glare that would make Nii-san proud. Disappointingly, he meets her expression evenly. "The point is, we're not different. At least, I don't see how we are. And maybe I'm not a genius but I consider myself a pretty smart guy. And I don't see how the fuck you all get off thinking-- thinking I'm below you or something."
"Ichigo, that's not at it at all--"
"It's whatever, I know it's not. But... Jesus, I was left here for seventeen months and if I had never gotten my powers back, would Soul Society just get off on watching me grow old? Would you have just watched me?"
Would you have saved me, like I saved you? She hears the unheard question in his voice, the one he doesn't quite know how to ask because Ichigo Kurosaki doesn't know how to be a selfish man. Her frustration melts away as he manages to break her heart once again (she's already lost count of the amount of times he's already done it. She's starting to understand he will countless times more). Half dressed, she approaches him slowly, flutters her hands up his neck to hold his face between her palms.
"No. No, I'm not sure I would do that. If... If you were truly unhappy, I would like to think I would find a way to be with you, I'm just not sure I'd be the cure to everything."
He doesn't answer, just nuzzles her palm as if it's a blessing or a cure or holy and she just closes her eyes and breathes because what she wouldn't give to be anything like this strange, poetic boy.
(She leaves a couple hours later, once he's fallen back to sleep.)
...
I need saving now, will you do it? His eyes meet hers at his own wedding, over the shoulder of his own bride.
She shifts her gaze, focuses on a prettily stitched flower on Inoue's gown hem.
Ichigo may be an unselfish man, but she is certainly a selfish woman.
