15. Fingers

Sometimes her fingers would brush over his eyelids, just vague and gentle enough so that he found no time to say anything. He might occasionally be able to slip out her name - Rukia - in that kind of annoyed, kind of pleased voice that carried with it a hint of caution, but usually she was already gone. Like a puff of smoke, or a butterfly made of dust.

"You're like a ghost of some sort," he said one day without thinking, and she answered with such a solemn, empty "Really?" that he immediately felt a pang. That was all she said, but her fingers twined in awkward sad movements in front of her, adding to her message of don't say that. He eventually learned how much her fingers spoke for her. They snatched at his hands when she couldn't cry her joy; they traced his cheek when she couldn't explain her sorrow. They brushed his bangs away from his eyes when she couldn't find the words to comfort him, and she rested them over his heart when she wanted to say she loved him. Silence was often her way, as was often his - he wasn't known for expressing his feelings in words.

But he, thick-headed baka-Ichigo, sometimes bumbled his words out in an attempt to fix the silence - clumsily, not like Rukia when the other part of her leapt up, flinging wise words out of her mouth to batter some sense into him. The silence felt strange to him and he would get the terrible urge to fix it, all at the wrong times.

"You don't need to fix it," she said. Slate-violet eyes rested fearlessly on his, and slender fingers rested firmly on his, telling him everything he needed to know. She taught him how to get used to the silence.

"Pictures tell a thousand words," he replied in understanding, "but silence tells... ten thousand, then." He grinned. "Maybe a million."

And she nodded and smiled - silently.