100.

Title: Momma’s Boy
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character/s: Ichigo, and I guess, it could be IchigoxRukia or heck, even IchigoxOrihime if you wanted. Or there could be no pairing, depending on how you look at it. I don’t know. The pairing’s not important.
Word Count: 673
Warning/s: Spoilers for the Grand Fisher storyline, and um, sort-of but not really spoilers for the Post-Soul Society arc. But not really.
Summary: Ichigo sits down for a chat.
Dedication: To everyone who’s made it this far with me and not gotten too bored along the way. You have a tougher constitution than I.
A/N: Anticlimactic for the 100th drabble? I think so. But it was something I kind of wanted to write for a while and so I just did it. I’m sure the number isn’t anything important, right? Yes. And I don’t personally like this drabble myself for some reason, but it was just one of those that I had to get off my chest, ya know? So I did, regardless of how it may or may not have turned out. I hope you’ll forgive me for that. Like Ichigo, I’m not very good with words, I don’t think. --;;

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He’s never done this before, and so it’s a little awkward, but he thinks that maybe it’ll be okay as long as no one catches him and more importantly, if no one answers back.

Usually when he’s here, he just sits and looks at her grave and thinks to himself that it’s his fault she’s there. He doesn’t try to say anything to her because he doesn’t really trust himself with words a lot of the time and the rest of the time he’s not quite sure what one is supposed to say to the person he got killed, even if she is his mother.

For now he puts a flower on her resting place and stares at it a little bit, trying to figure out how you’re supposed to start something like this after so many years of silence.

He wonders if he’s just crazy.

But maybe it isn’t crazy really, because he of all people should know that death isn’t a boundary, at least not for someone like him, and he’s seen and talked to ghosts that were complete strangers before, so it shouldn’t be harder to talk to someone he loved very much, right?

“Um…hey…” he starts, and his voice dies in his throat a little bit, which makes him frown, makes him think again that he’s a big idiot for doing this.

He doesn’t know why, but with everything lately, he finds that he just wants to talk to his mom for a little bit.

He sure as hell isn’t talking to his old man about it.

Not if he can help it, anyway.

So he scratches the back of his head and takes one last look around and tries again.

“Hi…mom.”

The second time it’s a little easier and his voice doesn’t break away too much, though arguably, that might be because he’s whispering now.

“How are you?”

He pauses like he’s waiting for an answer and then feels like he wants to kick himself.

“This is probably stupid,” he continues anyway, looking down on the lily he brought her before bending down to adjust it slightly, a little to the right, no, a little to the left, down some. “This is stupid,” he corrects after a moment, standing up straight and sticking his hands in his pockets.

He forces himself to go on, though he’s not quite sure why. “So… um… Karin and Yuzu are good, in case you were wondering. But uh, I guess you probably already knew that ‘cuz they do this a lot more than I do, but yeah. They’re good. The old man…there’s still something wrong with him, so he hasn’t really changed. He’s surprisingly good at keepin’ secrets, for such a loudmouthed old fart, ya know?”

It gets easier as he goes on, and before long he’s sitting down in front of her grave talking about all sorts of idiotic things, and it’s probably lucky that no one’s here today to stop and stare at the teenager who’s sitting at a grave talking to it like it’s talking back to him, because if there were, he’d be institutionalized in a heartbeat and part of him would agree that it would be the right thing to do given the circumstances.

He keeps talking because he feels like he needs to. He tells her about what he’s been doing and how school is going, and about the interesting people he’s met through the years. He tells her everything he can until he realizes at about the point when he’s talking about how many unmatched socks he has, that he’s just stalling, really.

So he stops mid-sentence because she can’t possibly care about his socks, because he doesn’t and he’s the one who has to wear them.

Time to get to the crux of the matter.

He takes a deep breath and rests his hands on his knees, looking away from the silent gravestone in embarrassment.

It’s ridiculous that his cheeks are pink as he does this.

“So,” he starts awkwardly, “I met this girl…”

END