Chapter Text
Ichigo sighed. Glancing at the clear afternoon sky, she wished. She wished. What she wished was a question she was not completely sure she could answer, not sure she should answer. But it burned, it tore at her tattered insides, building and ebbing as unstoppable as the tide before the moon. Once she had the power to tear down the sky to protect her loved ones, once she had felt capable of stopping the tide if she needed to. But now, now she was powerless, now she was human, was but half a soul bound to her mortal shell, and she can no longer stop the tide, could no longer protect anyone, much less herself, much less her heart. And she wished that of all that she could no longer protect, she wished that she never discovered her heart to be a casualty.
She looked down at the colourful mess her desk has become, full of fliers and pamphlets, all full of recommendations for the future. Ichigo sighed. She was still not sure what she wanted to do. Besides, she glanced down, the pencil she is clenching in a fist barely preventing the tremor in her hand. She wasn’t sure it mattered in the end. The only reason she was contemplating further study was, so she didn’t give herself away, so she didn’t worry her sisters. The only way she knew to protect them now, was to fake being fine, by pretending, by being convincing. And that meant studying after school. She knew they would worry if she didn’t go, would know something isn’t right. She was the one that taught them that education was important. She was the one that taught them most of what they knew, so if she said anything, if she hinted that she wasn’t going to bother, they would know, and that was unacceptable.
Her grades were not an obstacle, despite her reputation, she often battled Uryu for the position of top student, a battle which she was currently winning. She smothered a pang of hurt that surfaced when she thought of her friends. Well former friends. Even Ichigo can no longer claim friendship after two lonely years of silence.
She tried to understand, she really did, people drift apart, she could no longer see spirits, she was a liability as she was, if a hollow attacked. She understood. But was it so easy to discard all they had been through together? Was it so easy to discard their friendship? Most damning, the question that rattled behind her teeth each time she saw them, each time they turned their backs, each time they didn’t meet her eyes. Was it so easy to discard her? Was she now so worthless as to not even be worth acknowledging? She had gone to war for them at sixteen, she fought and bled and died for them. She had ripped her soul apart to stop a madman from destroying all the known worlds, and after her pain, after her sacrifice, did she not even warrant acknowledgement?
Ichigo sighed, this was useless, her thoughts were going in circles. Maybe she should go bug Yuzu for lunch. She wasn’t hungry, she never was anymore, but it will bring a smile to her sister’s face, so to Ichigo it will be worth it. Before she could fully stand, she heard Goat-face wailing at her mother’s poster and sat back down. Normally her father would not be enough to stop her from leaving her room, normally. But the secrets he was keeping, that he still to this day refuses to share, chains Ichigo to her chair. The longer he holds his tongue, the longer he pretends all was fine, that he was just a goofy human, the more her patients’ frays, the more the house becomes suffocating, the more her relationship with him deteriorates. She can see the last of her bond to him flecking like golden dust, disappearing into the ether. So, she was avoiding him because she desperately doesn’t want another bond to disappear. But even so it was difficult to face him, difficult to stop the questions, difficult to stop the accusations. ‘Look at me!’ She wants to scream at him, wants to ask, ‘Did you know? Did you know?’ Until he finally answers. But she couldn’t, she wasn’t prepared for the affirmation nor the ignorance. So, to preserve the peace in the house and the little bond she has left, Ichigo sat down.
She could hear shouting and could almost see what was happening as if she was a part of the happenings. She guessed Karin was home from ‘soccer practice’. And wasn’t that heart stopping, when she followed Karin after days of non-answers and saw her heading to Urahara’s Shop. She had almost stormed in after her to pull her out by her ears, but one thing stopped her. She was powerless and even back then she had known something wasn’t right, something in her body felt wrong, so she kept quiet. Following Karin silently to judge the situation before making peace with the fact that her baby sister was out killing hollows, hollows she was incapable of even seeing.
She hadn’t made peace with it. She was nine years old and suddenly a mother, because her mother was dead, dead, dead. She wasn’t coming back. And dad was gone, gone, gone. Always at work, rarely at home. And she had two little girls clinging to her legs, crying, crying, crying. And they looked at her, trusted her, needed her. So, Ichigo swallowed down her grief, tucked away her pain and became the adult they needed. She made sure they ate, made sure they bathed, and tucked them in at night. She taught them all the things she had to learn overnight and loved them, loved them, loved them even as parts of her broke. So, to see her baby sister, her baby, hers to love, hers to protect, fight monsters she can’t even see, killed her in ways she wasn’t prepared for. She hadn’t made peace with it, she couldn’t, but she knew, knew, she couldn’t protect Karin, couldn’t protect Yuzu, not anymore. So, she swallowed the questions, kept the words caged when she saw Karin. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask for help? Why, why, why? Swallowing them all until she drowned. Ichigo didn’t say a lot of things these days, she just faded slowly, and no one seemed to notice.
Suddenly Ichigo felt her throat contracting and lunged for the bucket under her desk. Violent coughs rocked her body, her vision blurring and pain racking through her, all her muscles spasmed. Giving the last cough she unfurled where she had curled around the bucket, shaking out her limbs. She glanced down winching. It seems the amount of blood was increasing, a bad sign for sure. With a sigh she gathered her things, mopping up any sign of blood before heading to the shower, It had become a joke in the house about how many showers a day Ichigo took, she was sure she had seen her sisters betting candy on it. She was glad someone was amused; she thought a bit dryly. She was sure the amusem*nt would evaporate if they knew the real reason. It was a convenient place to wash away the bloodstains of course, but the heat was good for her spasming muscles, and the steam helped with clearing her airways, helping her recover quicker, keeping a longer time between fits.
Standing under the water Ichigo watched the pink water swirl down the drain. Kept watching until the water ran clear. Is this what will happen to me? She faintly wondered; will I just keep fading away till I disappear? With no one to notice or care? Then she thought of Yuzu crying, of Karin finding her body and she had to stop herself from being violently ill. No, she needed to be somewhere else, somewhere she could go missing without suspicion, somewhere big enough and far away that no one would know where to start searching. Well, she thought, now she knew what type of university she needs to enroll in.
Late that night as she was researching universities in Tokyo, she saw movement from the twin’s room. With a sigh she stopped typing and carefully shut off her laptop. She slipped on her shoes before stopping at the door. ‘What am I doing?’ Before she could decide on that, she heard the front door shut and moved automatically. ‘I am an idiot’ she decided. She knew better than to involve herself in the fight, all she did on nights like these is lurk at the edges, watching Karin and her lost friends battle invisible monsters and hate her helplessness. But sometimes it felt like her hollow was still with her, sometimes on nights like these, she wanted to paint the town red, wanted to bathe in the blood of those daring to involve her sister after they had broken her so completely. But she quieted those thoughts with the knowledge that Karin is the last defence her family has now, that once she disappeared Yuzu would still be protected, that it was good that Karin has allies as fickle as they were. But sometimes, just sometimes she hated, just hated and that’s when she has to acknowledge that her hollow had been herself at its base, grew to understand the monster that she once denied, because at her core she was a monster too. It made her miss them more, made her miss the parts of herself she carelessly tossed aside for people she wasn’t sure deserved it.
With a sigh she glanced away from the fights ending and to the man next to her. “Geta-Boshi” she acknowledged. Ignoring the twinge of pain she felt. She knew the only reason she sensed him was because he wanted her to. Afterall he could have been here without his Gigai. “Ah, Kurosaki-chan, what a surprise.” She could hear the unspoken question behind his light-hearted tone. She looked away and clenched her jaw. Once she had trusted this man, once this would be all that needed to be said for her to tell him everything. Once she had thought that even if everything forsakes her, she will still have him. She was a fool, and twice over, because she wants to turn back, wants to tell him everything, wants him to fix this, fix her, as he always has. ‘Foolish’ she chastises herself. So, she says nothing, tracks Karin as she heads home and stands from where she is leaning on the side of a building. She looks back at him, sees his stupid fan, hiding his stupid face, and hates the burst of fondness the shoots through her. She nods and turns away, not trusting herself to speak, and follows Karin home.
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Kisuke frowned watching Ichigo walk away. Something was wrong, more than just missing being a soul reaper. When he had first seen her on nights like these, when he had come to watch that Karin didn’t get over her head, Ichigo would kill him, she looked sad. He had thought that she missed fighting with her friends, but her eyes never left her sister, compulsively checking on her, even if she could only see one half of the fight. Yet even when Karin got hurt, she never intervened, never rushed to keep her sister behind her like always. It made alarm bells rang for Kisuke. He had never known Ichigo to be passive. Oh, she clenched her fists tight enough to bleed, her body would wind up so tight it could snap, but she never got involved, never mentioned her night trips to Karin or her friends, so Kisuke kept quiet, just kept studying her trying to understand the change. And then she stopped. She stopped coming to the fights, stopped following Karin around. So Kisuke had assumed she was doing what Isshin said, mourning and moving on with a normal life.
But tonight, it was the first time he had seen her in more than a year. She had grown up, lost the last of her youthful edges, filled out as a woman, yet something about it seemed off to Kisuke. Even as he drank in her presence, glad to have a chance to see her without discarding her wishes, something seemed off. It wasn’t obvious on the first glance nor the second, but her complexion was off, two shades too pale, not from being indoors either. He could spot the shadows underneath her eyes, concealed as it was by her foundation, which was strange as well. Ichigo never wore make-up, she didn’t need it, still didn’t need it and it seems she was only using it to hide her exhaustion. It could be because of the approaching finals but that didn’t explain the tension in her mouth nor how thin she had become. Even powerless there had always been a strength to Ichigo, an endless vitality. Looking at her now, she looked less, simply less, and that concerned Kisuke enough to break his promise and approach her.
Seeing the hell fire in her eyes made him shiver, made him wonder what he missed, made him wonder about a lot of things. Because when Ichigo saw him, she didn’t flinch, didn’t yell, didn’t say anything really. But her eyes, they kept a loop in his head, screaming out where were you? And the carefully modulated Geta-Boshi didn’t sound anything like the I don’t want to see you again that Isshin said. It sounded out how could you? And Kisuke wondered how much of Isshin’s ultimatum was actually from Ichigo, wondered if any was from Ichigo at all. Because there was hellfire in her eyes, a helpless wrath to burn down the world that wronged her. And Kisuke contemplates how he could have gotten things so wrong.
