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Ichigo measures time like this: on Mondays Yuzu had her study group, Tuesdays was trash day, on Wednesdays Karin had soccer practice, on Thursdays he helped his dad out at the clinic, Fridays meant going home early from school while Saturdays and Sundays were interchangeable. Beyond those little pings of already established routine, of time marching on in that distant vague way that it did, Ichigo wouldn’t be able to tell you what day it was even if forced.
Time moved differently for him, blurring around the edges of empty hours. He doesn’t know when it started, but he has his suspicions. Whether they’re true or not doesn’t really matter, awareness doesn’t make him feel more committed to the present, rather more disengaged – like he’s watching himself live a life through someone else’s eyes, in someone else’s body.
He wonders if he’ll always feel this way.
Then Rukia happens, and Ichigo takes to measuring time by the Hollow hunts, and the training sessions, and the late night sneaking around so that Rukia can stretch her legs outside of the closet she’s claimed for herself.
He measures it by the close calls of almost dying, and almost getting caught doing things no one else would understand except for the other, and the glint of silver in Rukia’s eyes when she smiles, mischief personified.
Three months passes in this way.
He remembers most of the days, but when she leaves, Ichigo is almost certain he can recall that period from memory: “I’ll never forgive you,” she’d told him, through the frame of an oil painting; fog blurring out the unnecessary and smudging the blue of her gaze and the ink of her hair, pale skin dripping rain and tears and -
It’s a memory that doesn’t leave him, its a nightmare that he can’t rouse himself from until it ends. Not until Rukia turns away from him, and the doors being to close in around her.
He measures time in the beat of the black butterfly’s wings, in the defiant tilt of Rukia's chin that demands him to let me go let me go let me go, and the movement of her hair across her shoulders as she steps further and further away from his reach, the doors of death closing shut between them.
Time cannot be measured in this way, he knows.
Dreams are rarely so linear, so reliable.
Which is fine, really, because Ichigo doesn’t intend this to be how he measures time at all.
Because Urahara says “I can get you to her”, and that’s all he needs.
In the spikes in adrenaline in his system, the anxiety roiling in his gut, the flex of his fist around his blade, the blood that he sheds and the skin that he’s torn; the countdown begins, and all Ichigo can think is: I’m coming, Rukia, hold on.