Written for deathberryprompts' weekly prompt, 'blue'.

Phenotype

by hashtagartistlife

For the barest split second,

Ichigo thought that Kazui's eyes looked blue.

Ichika took after her father. That dark red hair, the confident smirk, the shape of her eyes; she couldn't be more similar to Renji if she'd been cloned, a daddy's girl through and through. The only trace of Rukia in her, the only place where her mother could be seen, was the colour of her irises.

The first time Ichigo saw Ichika, he'd thought her eyes were incredibly blue. The three-and-a-half year old's eyes were an ocean kaleidoscope; shifting with the light to become the light blue of a morning sky to the dark blue-black of the sea at night. The kind of blue that couldn't be defined with single words; the kind of blue that had always made him lose his head.

Perhaps that was why the next words out of his mouth were words that couldn't possibly be explained by any rational person with a functioning visual system.

"She looks a lot like you."

Ichigo still remembered the way Rukia had looked up at him then: the corners of her eyes crinkled a little in confusion, that deep, deep blue colour burning itself into his consciousness. Straight through his soul.

It had snowed the day that Kazui was born, too.

Ichigo remembered waiting with slippery palms, Orihime's screaming being cut off abruptly by the sounds of a baby crying. A nurse had called him into the delivery room and placed a baby in his arms without ceremony. His son was three days early, and much tinier than he could have ever expected; his eyes looked to be about half his face, and were tightly closed against the glare of the surgery lights. There were wispy strands of orange hair atop his head, the exact same colour as his own.

And then his son opened his eyes, and Ichigo couldn't breathe.

Blue. For the barest split second, Kazui's eyes were blue.

"...chigo. Ichigo!"

Orihime was calling for him. Ichigo shook his head; he smiled tentatively down at Orihime, who returned the gesture with a wide smile of her own. Keeping the grin firmly in place, he chanced another glance down at Kazui; and by now his son was blinking about the room with placid brown eyes, no trace of the piercing blue that had stopped his heart just seconds prior. He laughed on a shaky exhale, the sound ringing a little hollow. Of course. Of course Kazui's eyes were brown— they had no reason to be any other colour. Why had he thought they'd be blue? Why had he seen blue, of all colours—

(he knew why.)

For the barest split second,

Ichigo had been looking for Rukia's eyes in his child.