Chapter Text
There’s a horrible darkness building up inside him, filling up the dry cavities in his body like an open tap. Every time he bleeds, every time he hurts, every time Ulquiorra’s eyes burn like soul fire in his face, he can feel it grow deeper. At some point, high, high in that endless sky, he wonders if his skin will burst from it.
He doesn’t have to wonder much longer, though, because Ulquiorra ends up putting a hole straight through his chest.
There’s no pain. No blood, either. The cero instantly cauterizes the wound. Something in him tries to comprehend it — the gap in his body, the feeling of his vital organs being vaporized. In the end he comes up empty. Not everything feels like something else.
He thinks, in ways, this isn’t so bad an ending. He’d done a lot, come far. There will be someone else. Urahara, likely. If you try your best, give literally every ounce of your being, then surely you can’t be faulted if it’s not enough to protect those you love?
Then, at Orihime’s broken plea, his mind shuts , absolutely isolating the only thought in his brain and placing it where his heart once was. The darkness, held only by its own tension, plunges into his skin, replaces his blood and bone, becomes as integral to him as a zanpakuto is to its Shinigami.
He screams but doesn’t hear it, fights but feels nothing. Sees red, red, red.
The sword in his hand starts to cry.
Ulquiorra dies with all the finality of an ancient star, quiet words plowing through vacant space like the layers of a supernova. He can feel the dust that was once the Espada’s body and voice and will shift around his feet, losing color. Returning to sand.
Where is he? He came here for something, someone. Her? That feels right. He takes a step. He speaks. One line, again, again. Yes, good. Once more.
There’s a man in white. He’d tried to stop him once and he had failed, backhanded into the floor. He does it again and turns back to her.
Different. Something’s changed, some tension broken or made. Why are you crying. Why are you backing away. Why are you saying my name like that.
My name?
He feels sand under his feet.
“Are you afraid of me?”
She had said no, then, to the hollow. The one that died with his sword through its neck.
He blacks out.
+++
Indistinguishable voices mush together, pushing against his headache and melding in to other pains. He feels fingers brush his skin, some straightforward, some through the cotton of a blanket.
“-ear me? Hello?”
He groans and the sound processes strangely in his ears.
“...igo…? C’mon, Ichigo, are you there?”
His sight focuses painfully. Urahara’s stormy gray eyes soften from something unidentifiable to a gentle concern.
“Don’t move,” he urges.
He moves to sit up, but Urahara’s hand snaps out to push him back down to the floor. Probably for the best, as his arms give out anyways.
Suddenly, the sounds around him blink out. Urahara’s mouth moves with no words. Something, less like a voice and more like a feeling, flows from the inner recesses of his soul.
“I’m sorry, Ichigo,” it says. “We want you to live, Ichigo. This was the only way, Ichigo.”
Before he knows it he’s standing, body thrumming . Urahara frets, that unidentifiable look back in his eyes.
He… seems so much smaller, suddenly.
“Ichigo…” Urahara says, eyes shadowed, a warning in his voice. “Don’t look.”
He looks.
Urahara takes a step back, something glowing in his hand.
Ah. I see.
He knows what reaction Urahara’s expecting, knows that cold caution in his eyes. Knows that he’s suddenly become a variable, and a dangerous one. Slowly, he brings up a bone-white claw to his face, touching the teeth of his mask. Or was it a mask? Maybe it’s just his face now.
Another minute passes.
“Ichigo…?” Urahara asks eventually.
He tries to reply, but evidently his lungs have been reconstructed in some way. All that comes out is an odd breathy hiss.
“...You seem to be taking this remarkably well,” Urahara continues, banishing the glowing thing in his hand to wherever it came from. He sees him looking and explains, “A seal. Just in case.”
That makes him feel something. Anger, for a second or two. He wonders how strong it was. He wonders if he could break it.
Urahara looks at him critically for a second.
“I’ll get you a pen.”
Urahara slides the door open and departs. He stands and waits for him, motionless. After a bit, Urahara returns, holding a sheet of printer paper and a ballpoint. They sit, face to face, the paper between them. His wild mane of hair pools on the floor around him.
Urahara offers him the pen.
He writes in a shaky, bold font. He’s never kept his fingernails long and claws were certainly a step beyond that.
“WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS,” he scrawls.
He hesitates on the last word, almost struggling to remember it for a second.
A nod. “Of course. They’re in Soul Society. Their wounds have all been treated and they are all alive.”
He blinks, then nods back. He’s not quite sure what Urahara means, but “wounds treated” and “alive” feel like good things.
He picks up the pen again and writes, “WHAT HAPPENED.”
Urahara smiles and hums. “What happened indeed. Well, I was only there for part of it, but I’ll tell you what your friends told me, and what I theorize your… condition to be.” He taps a finger on the floorboards. “From what I know, at the climax of your journey in Hueco Mundo, you faced an Espada named Ulquiorra. You fought and he ultimately killed you with a cero through your chest.”
He gestures to the hollow hole. He scowls internally. He’d been trying to ignore that.
“You then went through what I believe to be a series of rapid evolutions. Your hollow side, being the physically strongest and fastest to heal, overtook your human and Shinigami sides in order to control the damage you took. And also, as Inoue described, to complete your ultimate goal: to save her from Hueco Mundo, which you… accomplished.
“Following this, you and the others were recovered from the land of hollows. Your condition has been kept confidential due to an agreement between the captains. As we speak, it has been about a day and a half since the conclusion of your battle.”
Urahara leans back, steepling his fingers. “And that is the summary.”
He inspects Urahara’s gaze, his posture, the lines of his face. He feels like he’s missing something big. Or, not big exactly, but something small and high density. Something that’s being said to him that he can’t quite take hold of.
He moves to write again, then hesitates. Stares at nothing and picks and the cuffs of red fur around his wrists.
Finally, he sets the pen against paper.
"CAN YOU FIX ME."
Urahara pulls down the rim of his hat.
“I don’t know,” comes the answer, quiet and uncertain. “I just don’t know.”
He looks up, and there’s a sadness sparkling in his eyes. “I am sorry, Ichigo."
He stares at nothing. Urahara sits opposite him, eyes shadowed by his hat.