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Even though his wounds had been healed and the medicine he had got from the sandal hat guy worked wonders, his whole body was still hurting. It was not the sharp pain he had first felt upon waking, the throbbing agony that made him realise he was alive. It had become a dull ache, much milder but still constantly there. Ichigo squeezed his hand and watched it ball into a fist. He felt weak, and not only because he had lost his shinigami powers. He had only narrowly managed to escape from the jaws of death. The guy who had taken him down had not even broken a sweat during their fight. He would have crushed him like a bug, if Rukia hadn’t interfered.
Rukia…
They had taken her with them. They said she had committed a crime and that she would be executed. They would kill her, because she had helped Ichigo save his family. Ishida had said that only he could save her, and the sandal hat guy had told him that if he went over to the Soul Society like he was now, he would only be getting himself killed.
The words had stung him, because he knew it was true. That one shinigami alone had managed to completely overpower him. He had struck him down, ripped his powers away from him and left him on the pavement to bleed and die. The sandal hat guy said he would train him, ready him for the trip to Soul Society. Ichigo felt torn. He did not want to waste any time, he was too agitated and impatient to sit around while Rukia was facing a death sentence. Then again, even if he did train, would ten days be enough? Could he really grow strong enough to take on the whole of Soul Society in such a short time?
What good would training now do, anyway? He couldn’t become a shinigami anymore, and he had lost his sword.
And yet somehow, the most unsettling thing about this all was how Rukia was gone. Life went on and school was the same as always. His friends goofed around, and a classmate he didn’t even really know now sat at the desk beside his. No one mentioned Rukia. Her name didn’t come up in the roll call. No one wondered where she had gone.
Her whole existence, erased. And no one even batted an eye, no one remembered…
It felt decidedly bizarre. It had only been two months, but somehow she had become such a fixture in his life that he had forgotten that she never belonged to this world to begin with. The thought upset him. She had left, but only to return to her world. Did he really have a right to drag her back? What if she wanted to stay?
Life would just ease into its old tracks even without her. He would get used to it too, the wrongness, the emptiness of it. The world would keep turning, and he would be the only one who knew, whom she had left behind, whose life she had touched. He was the mark she had made, and maybe…
Ichigo looked at the clouds, lazily swimming on the blue sky. He shook his head. The ache in his chest stilled, his mind was made, his resolve strengthened.
No.
It didn’t matter that she didn’t belong to his world. It didn’t matter if she wanted to stay in Soul Society. He wasn’t going to let her die. It was his fault in part as well, she had offered him a way to save his family and he had jumped at the chance, accepting her sword.
He would fight. He would train with the sandal hat guy, he would go to the Soul Society, and he would get her back. There simply wasn’t any other option.
Because it had only been two months, but nothing was the same anymore. Because she had left her mark on his world. Because the very day they had met, she had sacrificed herself, and turned him into a shinigami. She had saved his life and the lives of his family. She had changed him. She had given him power, the power with which he could fight. The power with which he could protect. He owed to her.
So he was going to make good of that. He was going to pay back his debt. He was going to get stronger so that once again, he could fight. So that he could protect her.
He would save Rukia, Soul Society be damned!