Title: Gutter Rats
A/N: I had an idea for this already, but Penny's comment was what triggered it. Say thanks to Penny, everyone! I don't know when updates will be, if you're wondering. There will be twenty chapters as it says on the cover and I feel the need to direct you all to chapters 288, 289 and 290 of my general drabble series Time in Seconds; the former two deal with Sora before he takes Orihime and makes a run for the border, and the latter deals with Orihime after she's had her hair forcibly cut.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Christians say that God takes care of those who take care of themselves, and if that's true Inoue Sora can only assume that either God hasn't been paying much attention to him or that he just doesn't care. If that's the case, God stopped paying attention to him long ago. The only one who's ever taken care of Sora has been himself. No one else has ever bothered to care.

God doesn't listen to my prayers. He never has.

He and his sister have never been anything but gutter rats, and true to form they sleep outside tonight, buffeted by the wind, Sora shielding tiny little Orihime from the worst of it, flinching at the icy breath.

Sora and Orihime are gutter rats, raised in the filth and never given more than a moment's breath of fresh air for every year that they live. What Sora has known is depravity, debauchery and the cruelty of man, counted in every bruise on his body, every scar, every bone once broken that has since healed. Orihime is beginning to realize the sheer ugliness of the world and she's felt it in every bruise she's ever borne as much as her brother.

Cold and flinching, Sora looks at his sister, and wonders what she would have ended up being, if she had stayed in that world.

A thief? A junkie? A whore like our mother, prostituting herself to any man who asks for a quick payout? She's pretty; she'll be a real beauty when she's grown. Sora looks at Orihime and his arms tighten around her. She'd have been swallowed whole by the time she was fifteen, never to be seen again.

God knows they both would have been, even if Sora's so sure He's abandoned them.

The squalid apartment, full of screams and rage that was a mockery of home completely unraveled is left behind. Sora will never go to find it again. His life in that world is done and even if he's a gutter rat all his life he will never go back there again.

The landlord is a man who doesn't ask much questions of his tenants; his reasoning is that he probably doesn't want to know. He looks at Sora and sees a boy he would never guess to be eighteen. His guess is closer to twenty-five—this young man is so ingrained with weariness, nervousness and shadows that no one would ever mistake him for a child. The girl asleep in Sora's arms he assumes to be his daughter and Sora doesn't correct him.

Come back tomorrow, he said with a sympathetic tone and a negligent wave of the hand. The previous tenant's not done moving his things out of the one you're looking at. It'll be ready for you tomorrow; come back then.

There are no hotels within walking distance and the buses don't come to this part of town. Sora returns outside and gets down on the ground in an alleyway, still cradling Orihime to his chest and using the duffel bag as a pillow. There are aluminum trash cans on one side of him and empty crates on the other; they don't help with the wind at all. If Sora looks up, in a window high on the brick wall opposite him he can see the soft, golden light of a television set; it flickers like a mechanical candle for a material age.

It's just one more night. Tomorrow morning there will be a new roof and a new bed and a new life altogether.

Sora sets his jaw grimly.

He and Orihime, they've lived their lives in Hell for so many years. One more night won't change anything.