In another world, the Fullbringers never happen, and Ichigo does not regain his powers. He loses himself, but finds something else.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Bleach, and make no claims to ownership and no profit from this fanwork.
A/N: Painting a barn as inspiration, go figure. This one ranks similarly to 'The Taste of Smoke' as far as the weirdness level goes. Grammarians beware, this is also an unfiltered, unstructured, and relatively untidy piece of work, but hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway.
IT CUTS INTO MY SOUL
The first painting is a surprise.
He hadn't even been aware he could paint, not beyond slapping a brush along the walls of the Clinic. He had no idea he could paint like this.
The painting itself isn't much - lavender eyes and black hair, staring through the broken mist. When the art teacher, astounded, asks what he calls it, Ichigo responds without thinking that it's called 'Ghost.'
The second painting is harder - there's more detail, bloodred hair and a muscled back covered in jagged tattoos that he has to draw from memory, because he refuses to ask Orihime or Chad or Ishida if they recall them better.
He doesn't talk to them much, these days.
He calls the second work 'Defiance' and shrugs when the art teacher asks if she can show the paintings to a friend of hers. She doesn't mention at the time that he's an art critic with an expensive gallery in Tokyo, so Ichigo is more than a little surprised when a little man with a mustache and a too-expensive suit offers him wallspace and fifty thousand yen for the first painting.
"The very sight of it cuts into my soul," the little mustached man says, voice eager and hand quivering as he holds out the check.
Ichigo refuses the check, accepts the offer of wall space, and goes back to painting.
The third work is more detailed than the second, and shows a dark-haired man kneeling in a graveyard while a blooming cherry tree rains blossoms down around him. Ichigo titles the work 'Honor' and sends the three of them to Tokyo without another thought.
The fourth painting comes slower, and harder, but eventually finds a shadowed figure wrapped in green and black, grey eyes shockingly clear in the dimness of the painting, and a sword dripping blood upwards in defiance of gravity and logic.
He titles it 'Teacher' and sends it after the rest.
The fifth one, he knows later, is the hardest one of any he will ever do. A copper-haired woman lies facedown on a riverbank, while the suggestion of a monstrous skull leers out of the darkness behind her.
He names it 'Reason' and puts it in his closet, wrapped in a sheet.
The paintings after that flow through him with the same ferocious intensity that once defined his ability to fight. Sixth is titled 'Heritage' and shows a man facing away from the viewer, black-haired and black-robed with a piece of white fabric flowing from his shoulder and a naked katana in his hand. Those who know Ichigo's family well enough might have seen his father in the hair and the line of the shoulders, but he doesn't show the paintings to anyone he knows.
He doesn't talk to them anymore.
Seventh, 'Genius', shows a child in a pale-blue kimono kneeling in snow that matches his hair, cradling a tiny dragon made of ice in both pale hands.
The eighth, ninth, and tenth works are a series, which he calls 'The Betrayed'. The first one, 'Guilt,' shows a mournful blue eye and a flash of blond hair framed by an odd sword, the blade shaped like a squared-off 'U'. 'Anger' is another eye, this one marked with three narrow, parallel scars, framed within the crossed blades of two double-sided scythes. The final piece, 'Despair,' is a brown eye, large and innocent, a tear beading on the lower lid. The eye is underlined by a katana with two thin prongs protruding from the blade.
The next image he paints is perhaps the most complicated he's ever done, but he finds it only fitting. A white-clad shoulder in the foreground, a sliver of neck and part of the chin visible, the mouth in the upper-left corner of the portrait twisting into a condescending smile. In the background, crouched on a white floor streaked with crimson shadows, a man crouches, gaunt and haunted, blue eyes hateful under silver bangs as they gaze at the foreground figure.
The hilt of a wakizashi is visible in the background man's hand, the blade hidden up the sleeve of his white robe.
Ichigo titles this eleventh work 'Love'.
He sends all of them, minus the fifth, to the gallery in Tokyo and can't bother to argue when the little man with the mustache says that there are buyers interested in some of the pieces.
Ichigo receives a check for five million yen a week later. It's almost enough to surprise him.
He paints two more works after the check goes in the bank. The first is 'Destruction', and shows a manic smile full of fangs, brilliant blue eyes, and a background of bone-white sand splashed with blood.
The second is all shadows and darkness, pierced by eyes of unfathomable green and the impression of giant wings. He calls it 'Death.'
His name has somehow become known by this time, and he can't dodge the requests of the interviewers forever, no matter how much he might try.
"Where do you get the inspiration for your work?" the chipper, pretty interviewer asks. Her jacket is an eye-searing shade of royal blue, and her lips are hot pink. Ichigo wonders what she would do if he painted them black, instead.
"From dreams I had when I was young," he answers. It's simpler than trying to explain the truth.
"Each of your paintings seems to feature a unique individual. Is that the case?"
He nods. It's easier than answering, but it also isn't enough.
"Tell me about them. Do they have names?"
"Of course they have names. They're all people."
"People from your dreams," the pretty, colorful interviewer repeats, a little skeptical but no less chipper. "Tell me about them. Who's the subject of your first work, Ghost?"
"That's Rukia," he answers, a wry twist to his usual scowl. "She's the first one I met in those days, those dreams. She's the reason all this started."
She doesn't ask about each of them, which is a relief. He doesn't know if he could stand having to say all of their names again. It's almost worse, though, that she only chooses to ask about one other.
"Who is 'Death'?"
Ichigo is silent for a long moment, remembering pain and horror and dust, vanishing on the wind. "He's someone I couldn't save," he answers at last, and he's glad when the interview is over.
That afternoon, he quietly puts his painting supplies away. Tubes are capped tightly and tucked into drawers in neat order. The palette is scraped down, scrubbed clean, and left to dry. The brushes and tools are stripped of any trace of paint left and laid out neatly on towels, rows of soldiers awaiting commands that will not come again. The canvasses and easel are set into a closet and the door is locked behind them.
When all of this is done, Ichigo quietly leaves the apartment he rents now - the first check was not the last, and he can't bear to spend time around his sisters, who see ghosts, and his father, who used to be one - and goes to the park to sit in the sun.
"You smell like turpentine," Rukia informs him, flopping down on the bench next to him, and Ichigo spends so long wondering if he's hallucinating or dead that she finally reaches out and smacks him on the side of the head.
"Oh, and Matsumoto wants to know when you're going to do a portrait of her. She said to thank you for painting Gin, by the way, you captured him perfectly."
Ichigo stares at her. She's wearing an amethyst-colored dress that brings out the purple in her eyes, and white sandals composed of about fifty tiny white leather straps over clunky cork wedge heels, and she's sitting next to him on a park bench like the years since Aizen's defeat didn't happen.
"Nii-sama won't ever admit it, but he's gotten to be quite a fan of yours," Rukia continues blithely, kicking her feet in her strappy sandals and making the hem of her dress flip up over her knees. "He bought 'Ghost' and 'Defiance' as soon as he the gallery owner talked you into selling them. Oh, and Renji has 'Honor', I got it for him as a birthday present."
Ichigo continues to stare, wondering if he's finally cracked under the influence of the echoing loneliness in his life, in his head, and Rukia finally sighs and shakes her head and looks away.
"I guess it's too much to ask that we could start where we left off," she murmurs, to herself more than to Ichigo, he thinks, and she demurely straightens the hem of her dress and tucks her feet beneath the bench, crossing her ankles as she does so. "Although since I'm in a gigai and he can actually see me, I had hoped for a slightly more scintillating conversation."
There's a whisper of noise that sounds like leaves rustling in the wind, and Rukia hangs her head with a sigh. "If he doesn't want anything to do with us, it's his decision," she says, and Ichigo narrows his eyes suspiciously. The rustling sound comes again, a tiny bit louder and with the faintest hint of words within the noise.
"Then we go," Rukia says, sounding tired. Sounding defeated. Ichigo tilts his head a bit, listening more closely, and - yes! He can hear the words, only just, but enough to make out the sharp-angled roughness of that once-familiar voice.
"And we just leave him here alone?"
"That's what he wants," Rukia answers, and what should have been a defiant snap sounds almost on the verge of tears. She pushes herself up off the bench without another word, taking a step forward to stand beside... it looks like a cross between a heat-shimmer and a shadow, nothing solid, not yet, but the simple fact that he can see anything to do with them is enough.
They've started walking away before he finds his voice.
"Rukia. Renji."
He can hear both gasps clear as day, and when he raises his head to look after them, he thinks he can see a hint of black and crimson in the shimmer at Rukia's side.
"I've been alone too long," he says, smiling for the first time in more years than he can remember as he stands up and makes his way to them. Renji is getting clearer by the second, the darkness of tattoos becoming visible against tan skin, hair worn loose to splash crimson across his shoulders.
"I've been alone too long," Ichigo repeats as he reaches them, looking down at Rukia. She's grown an inch or two, shortened her hair a little. It doesn't suit her, but at least he can see enough to judge that. "I've forgotten how to react when I see my friends."
By the time Renji drags him into a hug, Ichigo can see him just as clearly as Rukia. And if Ichigo doesn't see the wink that Renji throws at Rukia over Ichigo's shoulder as she quietly tucks something that looks like a glowing purple marble away in an unnoticed pocket of her dress, well, that hardly matters in the end.
~ END ~
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PAINTINGS:
1 - Ghost - Rukia
2 - Defiance - Renji
3 - Honor - Byakuya
4 - Teacher - Kisuke
5 - Reason - Masaki
6 - Heritage - Isshin
7 - Genius - Hitsugaya
8 - Guilt - Kira
9 - Anger - Hisagi
10 - Despair - Hinamori
11 - Love - Aizen (foreground) and Gin [title refers to Gin/Rangiku]
12 - Destruction - Grimmjow
13 - Death - Ulquiorra