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Orihime’s eyes are inescapable. Around every corner, at the end of every hallway, sitting in class – she’s everywhere. Ichigo shakes his head, momentarily getting the itchy feeling of being watched off of him. It’s useless though.
“Inoue, if you need something please just ask me,” Ichigo whispers to his friend.
Her head twists away from him. She nods curtly once and does not turn again. At least for that class period, he is safe.
The teacher finishes his lecture on symbolism in Dracula and looks at his watch. Ichigo already has his books put away when the teacher says it is lunch time. Noise erupts in the classroom as people finally stretch out and chat with their friends. Ichigo pushes his chair out and hastily escapes from the classroom.
He doesn’t know where he is going except it’s away from them. He needs to be alone, to breath his own air for a bit. The staring, the questions, they’re all too much for him.
Sitting in the shade of a tree in the field around the school, he lets out a shaky breath. His fingers are tingling, gripping at empty space for purchase on something that isn’t there. Without sparing a thought, he reaches to his side and pulls the heavy steel sword across his lap. Thumbs trace the blue wrapping, mapping out the tight folds around the hilt and the areas that have been worn from gripping. As if he had eaten his first meal in days, his body is settled and nerves calm. The twitching in his left eye subsides.
“Hey, Ichigo, we should talk,” Ishida’s voice breaks his beautiful silence. His friend is standing, looking down in such a way his glasses hide his eyes.
Ichigo isn’t sure if he should be worried or confident. Perhaps Ishida wants to chat about the latest Quincy news. Or, much more likely, he wants to bring up the one subject Ichigo has no intention of ever speaking about. He pats the dirt next to him as an invitation, Ishida sits down.
Ishida sighs. It’s a long, heavy sigh and Ichigo knows exactly what that means. His fingers begin to twitch again and he forces them to hold still. He just needs to sit through this conversation, nod at the questions, and then he can leave. The weight of the sword keeps him down even as everything inside him says to run away immediately.
“Why do you have Pantera?”
There it is. The question in Orihime’s eyes. Really, it's what everyone has been asking him in the way they take a second glance, in their shifted postures, in the way they step to the side to make room for the blade belted to his hip. He’s known this would come up for months but he still doesn’t have an answer.
Ichigo shakes his head. That’s all he can do. Shake the question off, shake the nerves away, shake his own thoughts out so it’s not all crowded in his brain. His hand slides up the hard sheath and notes the cracks and divots in it.
Gently, Ishida’s hand settles over his own. “We have given you time, space, and support. When you disappeared for weeks on end and came back with that,” he gestures to Pantera, “we knew it was going to take time. But you aren’t letting us help you. You’re being a stubborn asshole again instead of our friend, and we’re at our limits.”
Something wells up in his chest. The flash of heat over his skin from a cero barely missing him, stinging pain from scratches down his arms and chest, throbbing wounds as he bleeds out, the phantom sensations he’s been dealing with since then. Tears come unbidden, the first drop splashing on the metal of the guard, and the dam breaks.
“I don’t know what happened,” Ichigo sobs. His knees pull up until he’s sitting in the fetal position, cradling the sword of another man as close as he can. His body shakes, the pain of revelation ripping him apart from the inside out.
Ishida wraps his arms around his frame and just holds him. They sit there long after the bell rings for class. Ichigo weeps until his face is puffy and his sleeves are covered in snot. Ishida offers a napkin and clumsily wipes the salty tracks from his face.
“Tell me what you do know, and we’ll go from there. Ok?” His voice is so calm, so assuring, like Ishida could hold all the solutions to the world’s problems. Ichigo has no response except to trust his friend.
“He came to my house. Punched the windows in and called me out. We had a score to settle and he came looking for me. So, I went with him to Hueco Mundo,” he takes in a rattling breath, settling into the story, “so we could fight without destroying everything in Karakura again. Then I woke up with his sword in my hands and him nowhere to be found. I looked for him. I spent so long looking for him. He was there, somewhere, just out of reach. His sword… I can’t leave it behind. What if he shows up again for it and I’m not there?”
Ichigo blinks away the memories. He looks to Ishida and sees a grim emotion.
“Ichigo, I think I know what happened.” He won’t meet his eyes. “Grimmjow isn’t coming back for his sword.”
He knew. He always knew. Ever since he woke up in that dark world, sand blowing softly over his skin, he had known Grimmjow would not return. A foolish hope kept him searching long after any traces of their fight were washed away by time.
Ichigo’s fingers tremble. They ghost over the hilt, the guard, the sheath. Then, they push the slightest bit and release the sword from its confines. Hunger washes over Ichigo as intensely as it should have for the past months. He vomits.
Ishida rubs his back, not commenting on the spittle dripping from Ichigo’s chin.
“I ate him. Oh god, I ate him. I killed him and ate him while he watched.”
The hands pause. “I know. It’s okay, Ichigo.”
Ichigo wipes his mouth with unsteady arms. His school uniform is beyond repair at this point. He doesn’t care about the uniform.
No matter how much he shakes his head, he can’t get rid of the images flooding his mind now. Blue eyes going unfocused. Hands shoving a sword into his trembling grasp. A toothy, smirking mouth making one last quip. Blood staining his hands as he tears into flesh voraciously. Bodies tumbling to the sand with the victor on top. Masks crumbling into dust on the wind between their wills. A pact being made, with only one person walking away from this fight.
“He’s in me now,” Ichigo says. The shaking stops, his hands and face and body feeling whole and physical once again. “Grimmjow, he’s still here, in me.”
Ishida stands up. His face is neutral, empty of the shock Ichigo was expecting.
There’s nothing to say. No thanks to give, because what kind of favor is it to know he has killed someone and liked it? He stands as well, shrugging his uniform jacket off to set in the dirt. Adjusting the sword to sit at his hip, hanging down on the left with the belt raised on his right, just like its original owner, Ichigo walks back to class.
Orihime’s eyes snap to him as soon as he opens the door. They’re inescapable. She doesn’t look away when he turns to her in his seat. In the reflection of her pupils, he sees the ghostly outline of teeth on his cheek.