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Chapter Text

Ichigo is nine-turning-ten when both his parents die in front of him.

They’re just walking home from karate practice. He’s demonstrating a form for Dad, who offers him pointers on correcting it, and Mom, who nods and smiles and praises him. It’s a good day, despite the rain. His parents both have umbrellas big enough to cover him.

And then he sees a girl on the edge of the rain-swollen river, and his heart jumps into his throat. “Look out!” he yells, taking off and running. His feet slip in the mud, but that’s okay. He’s good at keeping his footing. Tatsuki’s fond of using his greater height and weight against him, tripping him up, and he’s long since learned how to keep his center low and tense his core. It helps in real fights, too.

“Hey!” He doesn’t see his parents share a look, doesn’t hear Dad ask where he’s going, doesn’t hear Mom’s intake of breath.

The woman tilts toward the river. Ichigo reaches out for her cloak, frantic, just a little more…

It’s only when his hand goes straight through her that he realizes he’s touching a ghost.

The ghost vanishes like mist in sunshine, and Ichigo stops, confused. He’s never seen a ghost do that.

Ichigo doesn’t know what a Hollow is, or an adjuchas, or why a ghost would be hunting him. But he knows, when the hairs on the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably, that he’s being watched. He turns, slowly, and sees the biggest, ugliest, hairiest ghost in the world.

With a huge hole dead center of its chest.

That’s all he sees before Mom and Dad get between him and it. “Ichigo! Run!” Dad tells him over his shoulder.

“Dad? You can see it?”

“I know what it is,” Dad says, which isn’t a yes. Ichigo’s scared but he’s not letting Dad fight when Dad can’t even see it. He pushes back.

“Both of you stay back,” Mom says, calm. Ichigo sees blue lines forming on her skin, just for a moment, and then…something happens. His mom, the heart of his family, screams and falls to her knees.

“Masaki!” Dad throws her arm around his shoulder. “Ichigo, run!”

“No!” Ichigo tries to shove between the monster and his parents. He has to protect Mom. They named him protector and he wants…wants…

Mom is limp and Dad is sweeping her into his arms and backing away and the monster strikes.

Ichigo sees his parents fall to the ground, only they’re still standing. One, anyway. His vision blurs. Two of them— two Dads, two Moms. Both the Moms look the same. One Dad is darker than the other, a black-pale blob in his field of vision.

Something inside him fractures, crack crack crack growing in his heart behind his ribs. He feels it spreading through his blood when he breathes, a buzzing numbness edged in sharp-jagged anger.

“No!”

The monster laughs. Laughs at him. Laughs at how he reaches for his parents, how his parents turn to him and reach for him and go straight through him.

“Ichigo,” Mom whispers. “Please run, sweetheart. Find…Urahara Kisuke, or Ishida Ryuuken.”

Ichigo runs and shoves the monster back. It doesn’t budge. “Leave them alone!”

Ichigo is nine-turning-ten and afraid of nothing more than losing his family.

Crack.

“Content yourself with your life,” the monster tells him, sneering down at him. “You live at my whim.”

Ichigo curls his lip in the sneer that keeps getting him into fights and pushes again. He hears Dad telling him get back, Ichigo! Hears the rasp of metal, a sword coming unsheathed. His heart is loud in his ears and he feels something pushing inside him, at the cracks in his heart. Something saying let me out let me out. Something echoing his anger, amplifying it. You’re weak, you’ll die, let me out!

Ichigo screams, and another voice underlies his own, a furious echo. Mom and Dad turn to him, eyes wide with shock.

Anger turns to pain, grief and helplessness all lodging in his chest like a knife. The knife twists, carving itself a home through skin and bone and muscle. He’s still screaming, on his knees now, and then something in him shatters. Swallows him like a shadow spreading over the world.

His own body falls away from him, discarded like a chrysalis. The Hollow in front of him is laughing.

He looks at it and thinks food.

His vision’s gone sharp again. No more tears. No grief. He sees the Hollow clearly.

There’s a sword in his hands, bony claws wrapped around it. Heavy weight of bone on his face. Power in the air. Hunger clawing at his stomach, coiling in his gut.

He lunges forward.

His hair streams behind him, long and orange and bright, and his sword strikes the mask and cracks it. The Hollow staggers back and snarls. “Little brat. What the hell are you?”

It’s not a question he has an answer for, or one he cares to consider. Prey don’t get to ask questions, especially after having the audacity to consider him prey.

He gathers energy between his horns, bright red-white. Cero, something in him murmurs.

Looses it and watches the mask in front of him vaporize.

He hears shouting behind him. Turns. Sees two humans, one chained to a dying body and one in a black robe. Sword. Strong, smells like smoke and fire.

But the Hollow behind him is already dissolving. Wasted power. He turns around and inhales.

He’s not prepared for the ensuing onslaught. Thousands of tattered remnants of soul assault his own. The screams of the devoured, and what was left of the Grand Fisher (his name, he knows his name but not his own) tears at him, tries to take over, tries to unseat him in his own soul.

He shoves reiatsu at it, feels it swarm the Grand Fisher and shatter its soul. His reiatsu absorbs it into all the other howling voices, subsumes them until they quiet to a whisper.

His mind is a mess of instinct and a half-heard echo. He turns again, back to the dying humans. They’ll die and go away, they’re going to leave him…

If he eats them they’ll stay with him. They’ll still die but they’ll be together and that makes it better. He raises his sword, bares his teeth. He doesn’t remember who they are, but they’re important. He has to keep them. Keep them safe in the only way left to him.

“Son,” the one with the sword says, gently.

The woman is sobbing, tears running down her face. She seems faint, about to vanish. Her first. He moves— fast, fast as he can think, and a blade stops him, barring him with the flat of it.

The black-robed man.

“I’m sorry, son,” the man says. “I can’t let you have her.”

Why not?

He doesn’t want to be alone.

“Bankai!” A new voice. Who is this? Reiatsu he hadn’t felt before blankets them all. It smells like blood and something sharp that hurts his nose. He steps back, uncertain. Who is trying to separate him and these precious people? “Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame!”

“Kisuke,” the man mutters, and then “Get Masaki!”

“Ahead of you, Isshin-san!” The man’s tone changes. “Is that…?”

“It was,” the man says. His eyes cloud. “What will we tell the girls?”

“Worry about him first.” Kisuke is bent over the woman, an unassuming man in green with a giant woman towering over him. Their hands are busy with her chain and body.

The reiatsu in the air is stifling. The man is blocking him from reaching the woman. Kisuke has the woman. He can’t win against this frightening power. He is young and new and outmatched, and his instincts change from fight to flight.

His tail sweeps around and punches the black-robed man in the gut, sending him down on his butt, wheezing. Quickly now, quick-quick, find the space and pull. A void rips open beside him and he takes a last look at the scene.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Sorry he can’t keep them. Sorry for the stink of grief in the air. His chest hurts-hurts-hurts, hurts worse when he sees them.

The black-robed man closes his eyes to hide his hurt. Meets his gaze. Says “Be well.”

He flees, and nobody follows him.

He makes jagged ugly platforms that hurt his clawed feet, looks down at himself. His tail sticks out behind him, helps him keep balanced. White with red lines running down it. Red fur at his wrists. Claws on the tips of his fingers, elongated toes that spread out. He feels like he should have more than eight, but they’re all good and sharp-tipped, deadly weapons. More red on his arms. He can’t see his own mask, but it’s heavy on his head with jutting-out horns. Spikes on his shoulders. Some kind of black cloth tied around his waist.

A hole through his chest where something important used to be.

He notes all these down, absently, because it’s the only thing there is to do.

And then he gets dumped into a desert with a crescent moon overhead, and he doesn’t think for a very long while.

Kisuke finishes stabilizing Masaki and shoves her back into her body.

“Urahara,” Masaki breathes. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Kisuke mutters. He looks at the third body, the small one that lies where it fell in the mud and grass.

Its chest still rises and falls without the young soul that should have been in it. A parody of life. A coma, the doctors will say. His brain is fine. No traumatic injuries. No sickness. No explanation. As though he simply got up and left without his body.

Isshin kneels and picks up Ichigo’s body. “I’ll…I don’t know.” He sighs. “It’s pointless to keep it on life support, I suppose.”

“Mm,” Kisuke agrees. “You are a doctor. Take him to the hospital. Have them release him into your care.”

Then kill the empty shell, he doesn’t say. Doesn’t have to. He sees it written all over Isshin’s face.

Masaki rises, pressing a hand to her chest. “To the hospital, then. Urahara, you and Isshin ought to—“

“We’ll see you there first,” Kisuke says with a smile. “Isshin-san, I think you’ll find yourself able to re-enter that gigai. That Hollow shattered the seal, but the body itself will heal right up with your reiryoku. Masaki-san, how are you feeling?” They’d thought the Hollow had fully transferred to Ichigo, but Kisuke didn’t dare risk disturbing the seal to find out.

“Not all that Hollow, but…” Masaki winces. “I don’t think I’m a Quincy anymore either.”

“What?” Kisuke and Isshin both yell at the same time.

Masaki explains on the way to the hospital. How she’d called on blut vene, how she’d heard a bell tolling and how her power had fled her, leaving her weak.

“Hm. Tell me, Masaki-san, have you ever had heart troubles?” Kisuke asks.

“Not unless you count Hollowfication,” Masaki responds. “Why?”

“Because,” Kisuke says, taking out a bag of bloody silver metal fragments, “I found these in your heart while I was…restructuring. Is this a Quincy problem? I can’t think how the seal against White could possibly have caused it.”

“I’ve no idea,” Masaki says, brows drawing together. “Something to ask Ryuu.”

But when they get to the hospital, Ishida Ryuuken isn’t there.

A nurse gasps when she sees the child in Isshin’s arms, calls for help, and Ichigo’s body is swept into a room along with the three of them.

Masaki asks gently where her cousin is and is told that Doctor Ishida’s wife abruptly passed this afternoon, just an hour or two ago.

That makes it pretty definitely a Quincy problem, Kisuke thinks, his clever brain working through what he’s been presented with. He keeps thinking, as much because he has to as to distract himself from the (so small so young forever empty) body lying in a hospital bed, eyes closed as though he’s only sleeping. An IV in one arm and a blood pressure cuff around the other. Pulse oximeter clipped onto his tiny finger. Nothing reading any issues. Calm, steady heartbeat.

He thinks of how small the Hollow wearing Ichigo is, and what heart he has breaks all over again. Just like it did a century ago, when he fled the Seireitei with eight comatose former-shinigami, twisted and tormented into Hollowfication by Aizen.

This is so much worse. At least the Visored were captains, lieutenants. Centuries old. Little Ichigo is– was– nine.

He feels every one of his years weighing on him.

Ryuuken comes walking calmly in, stone-faced. Kisuke doesn’t call how fragile his mask is, and in return he’s not kicked out. They compare notes and Ryuuken shares an old, old journal with them, written in German. He tells them about why he abandoned the Quincy arts, why he tried to discourage Uryuu. He tells them of Auswählen.

It took her, he says, eyes drawing tight. It tried to take my son, too.

He’d done heart surgery on his son to remove the silver as soon as he’d found it in his wife. Ishida Uryuu is asleep in another room, safe and well and alive against all odds.

Ryuuken looks at Ichigo— small and young, his own son’s age— and shakes his head.

I’ll leave that to your care, he says. That. Because the body in the bed isn’t really the Kurosakis’ oldest son. Their son is in Hueco Mundo, roaming the desert. Not dead, or the body would have given out, but as good as.

Kisuke excuses himself when the Kurosakis take their son home, gather their courage to tell their twin daughters.

He walks across town and flares his reiatsu outside a really quite good barrier of negación, and when Hirako Shinji comes out uncertain and suspicious, Kisuke tells him of the little boy swallowed up by his inner Hollow.

“Will you help me find him?”

“Of course.”

Even if it’s only to put him down, out of his misery, the Kurosakis deserve closure. It wasn’t hard to put two (experimental Hollow) and two (reproduced via embedding in a soul) together and get Aizen. It’s why Kisuke helped, why it was his business, why he approached a shinigami captain even though he’s an exiled deserter.

Aizen did this. Aizen created this child.

This child who is now alone in Hueco Mundo, Hollow and hurting and devouring, dead before he saw his first decade.

The Visored drag him in and drink with him. They normally keep their distance, but when they commit, they commit. Kisuke gets jostled, laughed at, challenged, coaxed into drinking games, and at the end of it all he collapses onto someone’s futon and blacks out and does not dream of a vasto lorde with a sword across his small back or an orange-haired elementary schooler comatose in his father’s arms.

Chapter Text

Kurosaki Yuzu was six when her life changed forever. 

Her parents came home with her older brother limp in their arms, sat down with her and her twin sister, and told them there was an accident. 

Will he ever wake up? Yuzu asked, afraid of the answer, and Mom and Dad had shared a look, plastered on smiles, and said Maybe.

It’s been over five years and Yuzu is barely eleven now, and her big brother is still asleep in his bedroom. Dad dragged in a hospital bed, changed him into a hospital gown and set up all the things presumably necessary to keep a person comfortable when their brain isn’t home. Yuzu visits him, sometimes, reads to him. The books say sometimes coma patients remember, when they come out of their coma. So Yuzu sits and explains what she’s learning to him, what she’s doing for homework. She reads him all her books. She tells him about her week and how she wishes he was here.

He never acknowledges any of it. Never wakes up. 

Karin burst into tears when she saw him small and sleeping in a hospital bed, ran out, and hasn’t been back to see him since. Hasn’t cried since either, not even in front of Yuzu. Mom and Dad check on him every day, alternating with each other.

The day they turned eight, Mom and Dad sat them down and told them ghosts were real.

They talked about shinigami, Hollows, Quincies. They tell them Dad was a shinigami captain and Mom was a Quincy. They talk about the day they came home with Yuzu’s brother in a coma. 

Ichigo is in a coma, they say, because his soul became a Hollow. Because on that day, the seal on his soul broke, and the Hollow Mom and Dad were keeping contained swallowed him up. 

His body would die if his soul did, Dad says. So they keep him alive, tend to him. They hope he’s as well as a Hollow can be. 

Yuzu doesn’t stop visiting him. 

Karin is skeptical at first. Skeptical until Urahara Kisuke introduces himself and his shop with a smile and a bow. He’s very kind to them until he kicks them both out of their bodies and shows them their unbroken Chains of Fate, chains tying their body to their soul. Neither of them could breathe, metal weighing heavy on their chests, and their father leaves his own body (his not-real body) and shows them his shihakusho, his haori, his zanpakuto Engetsu. He tells them how he met their mother and fell in love with her. He tells them about the division he gave up, talks about his lieutenant and Third Seat with affectionate crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes. 

(Urahara puts them back afterward, gentle with them, gentle in a deliberate way that says it’s not easy for him to be.)

He is a shinigami too. He helped Dad save Mom once. When Yuzu asks why he’s here in the human world, he only smiles and says that he wanted to try something new. He introduces them to Tsukabushi Tessai and his two adoptive children and the Visored, who break all the rules of being shinigami, who know what it is to be swallowed by a Hollow that grew inside them.

We’re looking for him, Hirako Shinji promises her, getting down on one knee and clasping her hands. We’ll find him.

Yuzu doesn’t say what will you do when you do find him? because she doesn’t want to know.

Mom takes them to a huge mansion (Karin rolls her eyes) and introduces them to Ishida Ryuuken and his son, Uryuu. Ryuuken is a cold, formal man who greets them like an obligation and then talks to the adults. Mostly Mom. Uryuu is stiff until Yuzu notices hand-stitching on his shirt and asks about it, and he animates immediately. They have a whole talk, and he even smiles once or twice. 

Karin mostly watches. 

They learn. Yuzu gets her mom’s Quincy cross and her mom’s training, and Uryuu quietly joins them sometimes. He is much better than her at first, but that’s okay. Sometimes Ishida-san joins too, correcting their stance or demonstrating something silently, then leaving just as abruptly.

Karin learns kido from Dad. He absolutely forbids her from becoming a shinigami (the process is too dangerous, he says), but she can unlock her reiryoku just fine as a human and it’s not only shinigami who can use kido. 

They compare notes and teach each other their techniques until Karin is as much a Quincy as Yuzu, and Yuzu is as much a kido user as Karin. They help Dad contain Hollows that find their way to Karakura, and then they go home to Mom who’s alive but lost her powers, Mom who smiles and hugs them and listens to their stories, Mom who praises them and then helps them do their homework while she makes dinner.

And so it goes until Yuzu is eleven.

Karin has soccer and her own club doesn’t meet today, so she is walking home alone. She senses nothing out of the ordinary. No Hollows, no spirits. A calm night. 

A calm night, until she comes upon a Hollow sitting on a park bench like it belongs there. 

She maybe, possibly, screams a little. The Hollow is facing away from her, but it’s so human. Its hood is up, buttoned neatly around a protruding horn. That’s the only giveaway, really. That and how bleached-pale the fingers tapping idly on the Hollow’s pants are. Hood. Pants. This Hollow is imitating a human. Right down to the reiatsu, coiled tightly in so it doesn’t give itself away.

She remembers Mom’s story of the Hollow that nearly killed them. This one is smart, smart enough to imitate, to lure. 

Good thing she found it before a human did.

It startles at her sound and turns around, and Yuzu goes numb for entirely different reasons because that’s her big brother’s hair. 

Orange. The orange only he ever had, the fiery, sun-bright, dyed-looking hair that got him into so many back-alley tussles. The color Mom snips neatly every two months, right after she trims Karin’s and Yuzu’s hair. Shaggy and wild the way he used to wear it. 

“You see me,” it says, tilting its head. It's even more human like this. It has a face. A kind of triangular face with a gold-colored eye, a nose and mouth. Ichi-nii’s nose, sloped and pointed, and those familiar thin lips. One horn and a fragment of a mask that ends in sharp upper teeth, bisected by a black line. Ends in a pointy chin like a knife. The skin is a shade more cream than the mask, inhumanly washed out. Long hair shifts under the hood, barely visible in the shadows. “You’re…a Quincy? You feel like a Quincy.” It flicks a tongue out— nearly human except for the dip in the center that splits the ends into a fork, like a snake. “Smell like one too.”

“Buh,” Yuzu says. “B–”

It can’t be. 

There’s no recognition on the strange Hollow’s face. It studies her. Looks at the cross in her palm. “Do you want to destroy me?” It smiles like it thinks that’s funny. “I wouldn’t try.”

“I c- can’t just let you go.” Even if this is her brother. Even if it’s Ichigo. Especially if it’s Ichigo.

“Why not?” The Hollow stands, turns properly. It’s in a black-streaked white hooded jacket, unzipped far enough to show the top of its Hollow hole, and white pants. White hakama, she thinks. “I’m not here to eat anyone. My orders are just to watch and report anyone with spiritual presence.”

“Orders?” Hollows take orders now?? From who? (The casual way it talks about eating people makes her stomach twist.)

It hums in response, stays facing her. “I didn’t know there were any Quincies left.”

“W- we’re the last,” Yuzu says, swallowing. “I mean…I am.”

“No you aren’t.” It sounds confident, assured. “I’m one too.”

What.

Quincies can’t become Hollow, Mom had said. It unmakes our souls. 

“I am!” It looks indignant, almost, that she doesn’t believe it. “Look, honestly, I’ve never tried a bow, but I can–” It holds out a hand, and Yuzu feels reishi pull into its palm.

Reishi manipulation. Quincy powers. 

It watches a small orb form, makes a face, bites into it. 

“Not much here,” it explains when it notices her staring. “Usually they’re bigger. I’ve never tried this in the World of the Living. How do you do anything?”

“You’re eating it,” Yuzu says. It thinks her problem is the size?

“The other Quincy keeps getting to Hollows faster than I can,” it grumbles. “The stronger one, I mean, not you. I have to eat something.” (It sounds so human, complaining like Karin when Yuzu beats her to the last steamed bun.) It bites the rest of it, crunches it under sharp teeth. “Guess it might be something different, but Grimmjow keeps calling me Quincy freak of nature and nobody’s told me anything else that can do this.”

Yuzu opens her mouth to say Ichigo? because that’s his voice, the tone he used when he was frustrated and beating on a wall with both hands until it broke for him. 

Looks at the orange hair, painfully familiar, and the gold eye, and the mask covering a third of his face. There’s only black behind it, no glint to indicate another eye. A black stripe runs perfectly down the center like it was painted.

“…What’s your name?” is what she eventually settles on. 

“You always ask your kills for their names?” The Hollow has Ichigo’s lopsided smirk.

“J- just tell me!”

“Zangetsu,” it answers with a mock bow. 

Zangetsu. 

Dad’s sword is named Engetsu, but…it has to be a coincidence. He didn’t say his sword was Zangetsu, he said he was.

And that can’t be her big brother looking at her through half a mask and a bright gold eye and nothing but mild interest on his face. 

“You look a lot like someone I used to know,” she says instead. 

“Yeah? You too.” The Hollow’s hand moves, rests on a sword hilt (a zanpakuto? what kind of Hollow is he?) “Kind of pisses me off.”

Maybe it’s too generous to see that as a warning, but Yuzu’s fairly sure that’s what it is. “Not a friend, then?” she ventures, playing dumb. 

“You’re weird,” Zangetsu says with a small scoff. “Prying into my business? You’re a Quincy. You’re supposed to want Hollows dead.”

“You’re supposed to eat people,” Yuzu replies. “I guess we’re both breaking the rules.” Her heart twists, seeing that annoyed get out of my face expression cut off by Zangetsu’s quarter-mask. What happened? Is this really her brother? It has to be, but it doesn't answer any of her questions.

“Guess we are,” Zangetsu acknowledges. “Get going, Quincy.”

“No,” Yuzu answers, and forms her bow.

She’ll save him, if she can. If she can’t…she can’t just leave him. The little boy she remembers, the boy who got into scuffles over his hair and fiercely defended his friends, her big brother, wouldn’t want to live like this. If any part of Zangetsu is Ichigo, she has to snap him out of it or destroy his soul. 

Zangetsu grins, wide and amused and looking so much like her brother that her heart physically hurts. “All right. Let’s play, then.”

It becomes clear almost immediately that she’s not winning this fight. Zangetsu deflects her arrows with lazy ease, matches her speed easily, bats her away bare-handed with fingers that melt into bone-pale claws. He does not draw his sword. He doesn’t even move most of the time. But he also doesn’t fight back, even though he’s had plenty of opportunity to kill her. 

“You’re boring,” he complains. “Is this what all Quincies are like?”

“Boring?” Yuzu repeats.

“Well, yeah.” Zangetsu actually yawns. “If I actually wanted to kill you, you’d be dead five times over by now.”

“Bakudo 61: Rikujokoro!”

Zangetsu looks genuinely surprised as golden light squeezes him into place. Surprised, but not concerned. “Huh. Who’s that?”

“My sister,” Yuzu says, smiling. They make a good team. (It helps her hide the flush of embarrassment at how thoroughly outmatched she is.)

“Yuzu!!” Karin runs up to her, hand still outstretched. “What happened, who…” Yuzu can tell when she looks at Zangetsu, because she stops dead and goes nearly white enough to match him. “I- I-“

“His name’s Zangetsu,” Yuzu tells her, shaking her head before Karin can say Ichi-nii . “You didn’t tell me you could do the sixties without an incantation!”

“I can’t,” Karin says. “I felt your reiatsu flare and recited it as I was running.”

“Cute,” Zangetsu remarks, and shatters a sixties-level kido with a shrug of his shoulders that belies the absolutely monstrous reiatsu he flexes to break it. Yuzu and Karin are flat on their stomachs and struggling to breathe in under a second, faces ground into the sidewalk. “That’s kido?”

Yuzu can’t breathe or talk or anything, and a second later she hears Zangetsu mutter “Whoops.” The pressure crushing her and her twin into the dirt lifts. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? You were trying to kill Yuzu!” Karin’s first to her feet, pulling Yuzu up after her. Zangetsu just sighs. 

“If I was trying to kill her, she’d be dead,” he says. He doesn’t even sound like he’s bragging. He sounds like he’s stating a fact. “I wasn’t trying to kill her. I don’t like hurting kids, and again, my orders aren’t to hurt anyone right now.”

I don’t like hurting kids. 

Whoops.

That reiatsu had a huge weight to it, but it didn't feel malevolent like most Hollows. It was just there, like waves on the beach.

“You’re a weird Hollow,” Karin tells him.

“That’s a nice way of saying shitty,” Zangetsu says dryly. “I’ve heard. Now go home.”

Karin turns to leave and Yuzu…

Yuzu sees Zangetsu’s bright hair under a hood, his small smile, his stance half turned away from them. She sees his eye darken a shade when he says home.

Just like that, killing this strangely passive Hollow is no longer an option. That’s her brother and she’s going to help him whether or not he wants to be helped. Whether or not he remembers them, he’s still a Kurosaki.

Yuzu steps up and takes his hand, and he jerks in surprise. “Hey—“

“We live at the Kurosaki Clinic,” she tells him, pointing. “If you get bored again. Urahara-san and Dad would probably spar with you, and they’re better than we are. By a lot.”

“Hey, Quincy kid, free life advice? Don’t grab Hollows,” Zangetsu says, pulling out of her grip like it’s burned him. “And I don’t fucking care where you live.” The words are harsh, but there’s open confusion behind them, that gold eye searching her expression, trying to figure out what her game is. 

“I’m Kurosaki Yuzu and that’s Karin,” Yuzu tells him. Not even a flicker of recognition on his face. “We’ll see you around, Zangetsu-san.” It hurts to san her brother, but she can live with that hurt. Especially given the face he makes at it. She swallows a laugh. No laughing at her poor amnesiac brother. 

Karin tugs her hand and she goes. They run, and Zangetsu doesn’t follow them. Once they’re out of range, Karin flicks her phone open and texts Urahara to meet them at the house, while Yuzu handles warning their parents that something happened, and they’re okay, but they need to talk. Urahara, as expected, practically teleports to their door, and is there to greet them. 

“Girls! Such a pleasure to see you again. It’s been so long!~”

“Three days,” Karin says, scowling at him. 

“Which is far too long to go without seeing you lovely young women!” Urahara replies without missing a beat. “Tell me, what required my presence so urgently?”

“Inside,” Karin demands, and Urahara goes without complaint. Yuzu goes and gets Mom and Dad and only has to say it’s about Ichigo for them to come running and leave dinner half-prepped on the counter.

Yuzu takes paper and pencil and draws while she talks, letting Karin take over at the end so she can finish her sketch. 

“This Hollow,” Urahara says at the end, “shrugged off your arrows, broke a sixties-level kido, and outright told you it could kill you, and your response was to give it your address?”

“It’s Ichigo,” Karin protests. 

“It was Ichigo,” Urahara corrects, eyes flinty behind his fan. “Years ago, before the Hollow in him subsumed him. It may be Ichigo again, if the Visored can reach him. It is not Ichigo now.”

“He called himself Zangetsu,” Yuzu says, not looking up. “He smiled the same. He said he didn’t like hurting children.” 

“It threatened your life, Yuzu-san.”

“He,” Yuzu says, stressing the pronoun slightly, “is my brother. He was playing. He could have killed me, and he didn’t. And he only had part of a mask.” She holds up a sketch— Zangetsu’s face with the hood and horn, what she could see of the mask. “He acted like a person. He even had a zanpakuto.”

Urahara leans forward to look. “Ah. White’s horn. Little doubt that’s our Ichigo, then. And an arrancar…hm. He did have a sword before, but to have broken his own mask…”

Masaki’s gone pale. Isshin just looks angry. (Arrancar?)

“We will do what we can,” Urahara says gently to them both. “If nothing else…we can likely send him to Soul Society and begin a search and rescue there.”

“You’re talking about killing him,” Karin says.

Urahara looks at her and says, “He’s already dead, Karin-san.”

Karin’s punch has really improved, Yuzu thinks distantly as Urahara slams into the back of the couch and curls over his kidneys with a wheeze. And her speed, too. She barely saw her move. “…Excellent aim,” he praises. “Those lessons with Arisawa-san are paying off, I see.” He rubs the spot Karin punched with a mildly rueful expression. “As are the ones with Yoruichi.”

Mom looks moderately horrified, but Dad is laughing. “Been a while since you told a Shiba no, isn’t it, Urahara?”

“She certainly takes after you,” Urahara agrees, straightening up. 

Karin’s expression is still thunderously angry, and she turns around and grabs Yuzu’s hand. “Come on,” she demands. 

Yuzu follows her to their shared room. She hasn’t seen Karin let this much anger out since Ichigo…

Left, she tells herself. Left and they’ll bring him home again. 

Karin shuts the door and sits on her narrow twin bed, and Yuzu sits next to her, bumping shoulders. She lets her reiatsu loose just a little, calming, tangling with Karin’s at the edges. A weaving, sort of. She can’t do this with anyone else yet, but Karin is her twin sister. Their reiatsu wants to mingle naturally. All she has to do is let it.

“We have to help him,” Karin says. Her hands fist into her shirt. “Urahara and Mom and Dad and the Visored, they didn’t see him. They don’t get it. He’s still there.”

Yuzu nods. “I have ideas,” she offers, and Karin leans in and listens.

Chapter Text

He eats and walks and eats.

There is no room for other thoughts. There is no room for the fading woman and the black-robed man and the man in green. He eats and gets better at subjugating souls, tearing their power away to add to his own. He ignores the whispers of memories, mostly. Learns some things. He knows four different languages, though he doesn’t have any need to speak them. He has memories of books, movies, quotes unattached to anything.

He knows a name for himself, but he never tells it to anyone. What use do any of them have for names? Names are used for those you love, and Hollows do not love.

He learns more than instinct can tell him. He learns shinigami, the black-robed people with swords. He learns gillian, adjuchas, vasto lorde, though he doesn’t really care which one he counts as. He learns that the Hollows he reveals himself to are shocked when he is strong, and horrified when they see his sword. He learns it’s called a zanpakuto, soul-destroyer. He learns not to use it on Hollows he wants to eat, because they fade into reishi fast and he has to work quickly to get any power from them. 

He learns to cloak his reiatsu, to pull it tightly into himself. It’s harder when he’s eating, so he lets it spread out then, a warning to stay away. He is small, much smaller than most Hollows, and they mistake that for weakness. 

He eats and walks and ignores the ache always in his chest where his heart used to be. Rests, sometimes, curled against a mountain or a crystal tree with one eye open. Not often. It leaves him with nothing to do but hurt and think. 

Time passes, and Hollows start recognizing him. The sword-bearing, tiny Hollow with orange hair. He has to get sneakier. Hates it. He enjoys fighting, getting his meal honestly, as much as he enjoys anything. But very few will fight him, and he has to eat. The hole in his chest never stops hurting, throbbing like the open wound it is, but it’s more ignorable when he eats.

There are other humanoid Hollows, but most of them are far bigger than him. Somehow, he knows he is the only one of himself. He is…lonely? But he can’t hesitate. Can’t stop. He’ll die if he hesitates. There’s no place for weaklings in Hueco Mundo, except between the jaws of the strong. So he keeps learning, keeps moving, keeps eating. He learns how to manipulate the reishi in the air for a snack when hunting is scarce. It doesn’t taste as good, but it keeps him going. Learns how to flex his reiatsu to flatten weaker Hollows. Learns cero, bala, learns how to concentrate reiatsu to his claws to hit harder and deeper. 

Time blurs together in ever-increasing boredom when he senses something new.

Not a Hollow, or not quite. Almost Hollow— the reiatsu has a hungry bite to it— mixed with what his soul-memories identify as shinigami. 

An oddity. 

He’s gone into sonído before he makes the conscious choice, sprinting toward the strange reiatsu signature. He almost feels excited. What are you? What are you?

Are you like me?

He nearly runs into it, has to alter course and brake and turn around. Tries unsuccessfully to stop his tail from whipping as he looks at the new Hollow. 

The new Hollow is cursing up a storm. He didn’t know some of these words, and he’s eaten a lot of people. “Fuckin’ son of a bitch vasto lorde— wait, vasto lorde, shit. You’re the orange motherfucker.”

He’s more human than any Hollow he’s ever seen before, himself included. Human-size, human-shaped. Blue hair and blue eyes with teal estigma slashing underneath them ( reverse eyeliner, he thinks and doesn’t know why). Tiny scrunched eyebrows. Face. No mask. Part of a mask, half a jaw stuck to his cheek, but the rest of him has no bone armor. The only thing giving him away as a Hollow is the hole through his stomach and the mask fragment. 

Sword. 

His gaze falls to the sword strapped on the man’s hip. 

“Curious?” the man asks. He answers by sonídoing up into his space, poking at him with clawed fingers. It really is skin. It’s soft and warm and gives under his claws, though he can’t seem to draw blood. 

“Hey.” The man kicks him back, hard, right where he’s soft and unarmored. It’d be a great move if he didn’t have his hierro. This man must have hierro too, because his foot doesn’t shatter. “Hey, asshole. Personal fuckin’ space. Can’t you talk?”

He can talk. He hasn’t talked in years, he thinks, but it could just as easily be months or decades. He backs off a step, tries to remember, assembling words in his mind. 

“What are you?”

One of the man’s tiny eyebrows goes up. “Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. Arrancar.”

Arrancar. A Hollow who’s torn their mask away, his-not-his memories tell him. This man is like no arrancar any of his souls have ever seen. Not that there are many. Most of his soul-memories are only the word, passed down.

“Closest word, anyway,” Arrancar Grimmjow says, apparently sensing his confusion. “Wanna meet the shinigami that made me? He’s a piece of fuckin’ work, but he’s strong.” A grin cuts across his face. Is he happy or baring his teeth? Both, maybe, with those teeth too sharp for a human-shaped mouth. “You’re a legend. Hueco Mundo’s last vasto lorde. I figure either you’ll join us or you’ll kill the guy who did this, and either way, I’m all fucking for it.”

The teeth on his mask fragment move too, peeling apart to mimic the smile on his face. 

“So what’s your name? I’ve heard Lizard, last vasto lorde, sword-bearer— and where the fuck did you get a zanpakuto that lets you wield it— Orange, but I’m guessin’ you don’t call yourself any of those.”

None of those are even close. 

His teeth crack open again, and he makes his tongue form words, which is frankly more difficult than it needs to be. It’s long and thin and forked and generally annoying to speak with, which is why he never bothers. 

“Zangetsu.”

“Huh. Heard worse. Easier to pronounce than Szayelaporro, anyway. You comin’ or what?”

Why not? He’s bored. This is the most interesting thing to happen to him since—

huge ugly furry monster white-masked looming over him trying to get between it and the others weak too weak they’re going to die and there’s nothing-nothing-nothing he can do

His mind stutters and reboots. 

He follows Grimmjow. 

Even at full-speed sonído, it takes a while to get anywhere in the vastness of Hueco Mundo. Grimmjow lopes more than he runs, hands in his pockets, leading the way. He’s strong, stronger than most Hollows Zangetsu’s met. (Not as strong as him.)

Arrancar.

What a strange Hollow. 

The strangest he’s met, until he runs smack into someone mid-sonído and falls flat on his mask. His hierro means he doesn’t really feel the scouring sand, and the impact only registers as a dull thud. 

Grimmjow is fairly howling with laughter. “Fuckin’ legend of Hueco Mundo tripping over his own goddamn feet! Fuck, I wish I could do Ulquiorra’s trick. Nobody’s gonna believe this.”

“Ow!!” comes a small, delighted voice. 

“Nel!” Two more Hollows come rushing and pick up…whatever he tripped over. Zangetsu gets to his feet and shakes the sand off. Looks up and sees a child. 

There’s a mask on her head that marks her as Hollow, but her entire face is free. Green hair, pink estigma, wide hazel eyes, and the only other Hollow he’s ever seen with clothes. Apart from himself and Grimmjow. Another arrancar?

“You tripped over Nel!” the child shouts, puffing up. “You interrupted our game of Endless Tag! You—“ She falters, taking him in.

“Nel,” the skinnier Hollow mutters, also eyeing them and clearly coming to the same conclusion, “let’s go, now.”

“Nelliel?” Grimmjow. “Nelliel. And her idiot fracción. The hell are you doing out here? Thought someone killed her.”

The wider Hollow’s eyes blow huge and alarmed. “J- Jaegerjaquez-sama! Merely a passing resemblance, I assure you—“

“Huh. She doesn’t remember shit, does she?” Grimmjow circles the three Hollows, prowling around them. “Cracked her mask? Took her and ran? That about right?”

Nel in the skinny Hollow’s arms clings to her caretaker. “S- Scary…”

“Definitely don’t remember me,” Grimmjow says with a snort. “You were never scared of me. Calm the fuck down, fracciónes, wasn’t me who tried to off her. Nnoitra, right? He hated her bullshit.”

“It was,” Skinny says uncertainly. “Please, Jaegerjaquez-sama, we’ve no intention of returning to Las Noches. The Espada you knew is long gone. Nel is a child, and no more.”

“A child playing tag in Hueco Mundo,” Grimmjow says, derisive. “I don’t actually give a shit what you do with her. She ain’t mine. Drove me crazy with that pacifist nonsense, but she was always good for a spar. Nnoitra got her from behind, probably? Ambushed her, threw her out of the city?” He waits for their nods. “Prove that to Aizen and he’d be real pissed. If anyone could fix her, it’d be him. Bastard’s got enough reiryoku for Hueco Mundo to live on forever.”

“She’s hurt,” Zangetsu says, and waits out everyone violently remembering he’s there too. He looks at Grimmjow. “Your people hurt her.”

“Nnoitra’s not mine and if you call him mine again I’ll puke on you. The Espada are just the strongest arrancar. No real connection, ‘cept for Aizen. None of us can stand each other.”

Zangetsu barely hears half of this, fixed on the child’s face. Half-remembered faces stir. Two. One gray-eyed solemn face framed by black hair. One blonde brown-eyed face, smiling, stretching up for a hug. 

He can’t hear what they’re saying but he remembers that they’re his. He protects them because he’s bigger and older and stronger. They’re gone as fast as they came, leaving him looking at Nel and her cracked mask, in the arms of her fraccion.

Someone didn’t protect Nel. He can feel her reiatsu, like a leaky sieve, draining as fast as she generates it. Trapping her in this tiny form.

His hands move without his conscious input, pulling threads of reishi he can weave and press into a pancake. He shoves his reiatsu down and out when Skinny protests, which shuts everyone except Grimmjow up pretty well. He can tune Grimmjow out. He keeps it carefully off Nel while he works. Doesn’t want to hurt her. He’s done this to himself the few times another Hollow has injured him, but never to someone else. 

The reishi glows green-tinged, flickers of his reiatsu in it, deep black-red-gold. He presses it to Nel’s little cracked mask, opens it to feed on the ambient reishi in Hueco Mundo. Sticks the other side down to the mask, the remains of her heart, and thinks stay.

He takes his clawed hands away. It stays, so he quickly creates a reishi ball and hands it to her. “Food,” he clarifies when she just looks at it. 

“Yo, you’re gonna kill them if you keep that up,” Grimmjow calls. “And you’re making yourself a target for, oh, every menos in a hundred-kilometer radius.” He doesn’t sound especially bothered about that, obviously confident that he can handle whatever Zangetsu draws. 

Right. His reiatsu. He pulls it back into himself, and Nel’s fracción gets to their feet. Nel bites into his snack. Her eyes widen (somehow), and she eats more of it, faster, like she thinks it might be taken. 

“Quincy bullshit too, huh?” Grimmjow asks. “What the hell are you supposed to be? Quincies don’t fucking Hollowfy.”

Quincy?

His soul-memories provide him with fragments of men and women in white, wielding bows and arrows, but the ones he sees are from older souls. The younger ones have no recollection at all. 

The air goes pop!

Before them stands a full-grown adult, in torn green clothes. Her boxy, oversize outfit has changed to cover her chest and hips. Her mask is bigger and horned (like his, but curled demurely around instead of jutting out like his do). Her hair is long. 

But the eyes are the same, and so is the pink estigma on her face. 

“Thank you,” she tells Zangetsu solemnly, with a bow. “I am Nelliel tu Oderschwank. Hello, Grimmjow-san.”

“Nelliel,” he acknowledges her. “Meet Zangetsu.”

“Nelliel-sama!” Her fracción crashes into her in a massive hug before bowing to Zangetsu. “You’ve saved our lady!”

“God. Still just as annoying,” Grimmjow mutters. 

“You’re unchanged, I see,” Nelliel says, smiling softly, fond. “What are you doing so far out?”

“Chasing a ghost story.” Grimmjow jerks a thumb at Zangetsu. “Meet Hueco Mundo’s last vasto lorde. You ain’t more than a few hours from Las Noches with sonído, hell do you mean far out?”

Nelliel laughs. “I suppose it’s been a while since I used sonído,” she says diplomatically. “Especially at Espada speeds. Is that where you’re going?”

“Takin’ the orange motherfucker, yeah.” Grimmjow grins. “I wanna see what happens when he meets Aizen.”

“You’re…arrancar too,” Zangetsu says to his three new acquaintances, a question.

“Yes,” Nelliel says. “These are my former fracciónes, Pesche and Dondochakka. I am the former Tres Espada.”

“Come,” Zangetsu decides. He’s keeping this tiny Hollow who became a full-grown woman. He indicates the direction they were going with his tail. 

“Former Espada, Zangetsu-san,” Nelliel says, shifting her feet. “I don’t believe in being violent for the sake of it. I don’t want to return to my position. I would…prefer to stay out here with my fracción.”

“Protect,” Zangetsu says. His mask is stuck in the same expression, but he has a memory of eyebrows stubbornly drawing together, forehead bunching up. He crosses his arms, because it feels right. “Protect Nelliel.”

“I don’t think he’s gonna let you,” Grimmjow says, snickering. “I swear to god he’s pouting under that mask.”

“You won’t stay out with me?” Nelliel asks, looking like she already knows the answer. 

“Come,” Zangetsu insists. He wants to find the Nnoitra who hurt her. He wants to meet the others like him, the Hollows with swords. 

“Stay out here and you’ll get found,” Grimmjow points out casually, like he doesn’t really care. “By Starrk or Harribel, if you’re lucky. Szayel and Nnoitra if you aren’t.”

Nelliel winces, puts a hand on Zangetsu’s arm. “All right, but you’ll have to slow down for us.”

“Hell with that. Pull her,” Grimmjow instructs Zangetsu. “Fracciónes, hang on, I’ll tow you idiots. And I don’t work as a pack mule all that often, so you’d better fuckin’ appreciate this.”

Zangetsu offers his hand, which Nelliel takes. Pesche and Dondochakka are a lot more hesitant about taking Grimmjow’s offer. He more or less vanishes in a blur, and Zangetsu follows. There’s no room for conversation in sonído, no room for anything but the plunge forward, following the blue-white reiatsu ahead of him. 

He feels a little more alive, awake, than he has since…

Since he can remember. 

“…remember that in English the sequence typically goes subject-verb-object, as in he ran to her, as opposed to Japanese where the verb goes at the end…”

This is the most boring thing Zangetsu’s ever heard, and he wandered around by himself in the desert for years. He keeps his reiatsu coiled into himself and listens in. This is where the kids, Yuzu and Karin, spend most of their day. School. He’s been watching for a week, and he’s scheduled to report back tonight. 

Spiritually aware members of the jureichi: Kurosakis Karin and Yuzu, their ‘Dad’ (probably the shinigami presence in the Kurosaki Clinic), two other Quincies (he thinks one is named Uryuu, Yuzu mentions him occasionally), ‘Urahara,’ who feels vaguely familiar, and the resident shinigami, who Zangetsu could kill by sneezing too hard. Maybe that’s not a fair metric. That’s most people, after all.

Also a group of strange shinigami who feel Hollow, which is…weird. They’re pretty easy to avoid, especially since the kids seem to be covering for him. 

The kids have been looking for him too, and he doesn’t understand why. They don’t talk about him, though he’s found food several times at the bench where they met him. Human food, cookies and cupcakes that he’s never touched. Like he’s a stray cat they want to lure in. He’s heard them tell the Hollow shinigami they saw him in parts of town he was nowhere near. They’re protecting him. 

He nearly killed them. Could have, easily, and been gone before they were ever missed. Why do they want him closer? Why would any human want him close? He’s a Hollow, a ghost with a hole where his heart should be and a shredded soul with too many memories. He’s curious despite himself. 

He has his orders, and they don’t include making friends with a baby Quincy and a kido wielder.

The bell rings, and the kids in the room make a break for the door. School must be required, like the Espada meetings that drag on for something south of eternity while Aizen drones about becoming Soul King and the corruption in Soul Society and a bunch of other crap none of the arrancar care about. None of them look like they want to be there. He doesn’t get that either. It’s not like the teacher is threatening them. Maybe it’s some kind of leverage over their families, something invisible, or maybe they’re just too stupid to realize they don’t have to. Or too weak. 

“Zangetsu-san?” It’s very soft, but his ears are excellent. “I packed you a bento today. It’s not poisoned, or anything. You just looked hungry.”

He looks down with a blink. He didn’t think anyone could see or sense him in his spot tucked under the window on a reishi platform, but Kurosaki Yuzu doesn’t look surprised that he’s there. 

She’s holding a bento box, wrapped in cheerful orange cloth the color of his hair. 

He jumps down. “…Why are you trying to feed me?” Might as well.

“You looked hungry,” Yuzu repeats promptly. She doesn’t stop holding the box out. “You said there wasn’t much reishi here. I gathered some for you and put it into the food.”

Nobody just does that. “What do you want for it?” he asks, bristling slightly. Food is never free. In Hueco Mundo, you might share with fracción, but only if they helped you hunt it down. 

Yuzu’s face actually falls. “Nothing.” Zangetsu must look unconvinced, because she continues. “Really! I…I like making food, and I’ve been practicing reishi fortification so souls can eat it. I-it helps when we’re training. Please try it?”

She has even Nel beat in the puppy-eyes department. Zangetsu groans and holds his hand out. She instantly perks up and gives it to him, easily, like he didn’t nearly flatten her last time they talked. Like he couldn’t kill her. She can’t leverage it anyway. He’s so much stronger than her it’s not even funny.

“Do you want to…” she starts, but he’s already gone, using sonído to get under a bridge where he can put his back to a wall. It’s not running. He’s not running from a human child. He’s just…maintaining a defensible position. 

He unwraps the bento and sniffs it, suspicious, flicking his tongue out to smell better. Nothing smells off or poisonous. There’s fluffy white rice, little pieces of sausage that are cut to look like octopi, and some kind of yellow sauce. And two cookies, sweet-smelling. Chopsticks laid carefully in the center.

Eating this is a bad idea, but he hasn’t gotten to a Hollow before the Quincies in a week and he really is hungry. He picks the chopsticks up, breaks them, dips a sausage in the yellow stuff and tears off a bite. 

Holy shit. 

His mouth feels a little like he ate a bala, but holy shit, it’s worth it. He eats with a speed that would put a newborn Hollow to shame, sausage and spicy sauce and rice, wolfs it down. This is the best thing he’s ever eaten, what the fuck. Does that girl realize she could take over from Aizen with this kind of skill? She’d have the Espada eating out of her hand within the day. It tastes nothing like the bland reishi snacks he makes himself when he can’t find real food.

He polishes it all off in less than five minutes, licks the sauce clean, and eyes the cookies. Chocolate, says something deep inside him, deeper than soul-memories. He sinks his teeth in and bites.

Sweet. Nothing in Hueco Mundo is sweet. The chocolate melts on his tongue, sweet and bitter (two different kinds, he thinks), flooding his mouth with pure uncomplicated joy. His eyes flutter closed. The ache in his chest fades, becomes less important. 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he finishes the first cookie and opens his eyes to find them blurry. It’s good but good isn’t enough to describe it. Transcendent. It’s better than anything he’s ever eaten. He can’t feel his Hollow hole at all. He can’t remember if he’s ever felt so calm and happy.

Then the other shoe drops.

The precious bento drops from suddenly-nerveless fingers. It feels like someone’s hooked their hands into his Hollow hole, his soul, and pulled. His soul is tearing down the center from the chest, fissures spreading and cracking, it hurts, hurts please—

He falls backward against the wall, finds himself somewhere else in a blink. Hueco Mundo is his first thought, because the sand under his feet is familiar. Less familiar is the rain that hits his face, a downpour that drenches him and has his hair dripping in his eyes near-instantly. 

Hueco Mundo doesn’t have rain. Hueco Mundo doesn’t have water, except in Las Noches, where Aizen brings in bottles sometimes as a treat for the Espada. (And he does mean ‘treat,’ like good dogs, have a treat. Fucking Aizen.) 

He’s kneeling on the ground, harsh breaths loud in his ears, sucking in oxygen. He’s dead, so oxygen might not be the right word, but it’s close enough. He looks up and sees…himself?

Skyscrapers in the background, wrecked buildings sticking at the wrong angles out of Hueco Mundo’s sand, and his own face panting for breath just like he is, a few meters away. 

“Fuck, old man.” The voice echoes like his own used to when he was a vasto lorde. This mirror of him has darker skin, pale and freckled but not bone-white like his own, and a shock of short white hair. Both eyes are free, one horn sticking out opposite to his own but no other mask. He thinks the eyes are all black at first, then sees the brown rings of irises, blending near-perfectly into the pupils and sclerae.

His mirrored self wears a white robe, and when he looks down, he sees black sleeves. Shihakusho. Shinigami? Why is he wearing shinigami robes? He feels the weight of his mask on his face, his horn, his hair spilling down his back. Still no more shinigami than any arrancar, but the outfit is there.

“You’re welcome,” says another voice, sounding amused. 

The other-him spits into the sand. “Don’t remember saying thank you.”

“Hey,” Zangetsu says. “What the fuck?”

Other-him looks up and cackles, which just feels unfair. “Welcome back, King! The old man finally untangled us after our little fuckup.”

“Somewhat,” the calmer voice says. Zangetsu looks over and sees…yeah, an older man, sitting under the closest skyscraper out of the rain. Long black hair falls forward in waves, and bright orange goggles hide his eyes. “It was a bit of a rush job. But you are, at least, back in your proper position as his zanpakuto.”

This clears nothing up. His other self studies his hands and snorts. “Gave me half his human bullshit?”

“As I said: a rush job,” the old man says. “Neither of you are wholly human or Hollow in any case, particularly after the Hogyoku. I barely got you apart at all.”

“Is anyone going to catch me up on what the hell this is?” Zangetsu asks, gesturing. 

“Your soul,” other-Zangetsu (he needs names for these two immediately) says, clearly aware that he’s not helping. 

“My soul. Which has other people in it. Who the fuck are you?”

“Zangetsu.” Said easily, like he really believes it. 

“The hell you are, that’s my name.”

“It was mine first. You took it, King. We’re apart again, so I’ll be taking it back.”

“Apart—?”

“Zangetsu,” the old man intervenes. They both look at him. “Please, both of you, come out of the rain.” He gestures to indicate the empty space around him. “We’ll sort all this out. There’s no need for you to be cold and wet while we do.”

“I’m not going any closer to you.” Zangetsu reaches for his sword and—

and it’s not there. 

His mind stalls. It’s not like he often uses it, but he keeps it on him. No arrancar would go anywhere without their blade. They’re not helpless without it, but they’re stronger with it. It’s part of their self, their strength. 

“What did you do?!” he demands, reiatsu swirling around his hands and turning them sharp-tipped at the ends. “Where’s my sword?”

“Right here,” the white-haired Zangetsu says, drawing a sealed blade from its sheath and waving it at him with a careless grin. “Want it back?”

He lunges, White Hair jumps back, and they’re fighting with their claws and cero and White Hair’s odd version of his sword. It’s not quite right. The colors are inverted— a white hilt, a metallic-black blade. But it’s unmistakably his. He knows the particular shape of his sealed blade, its hilt and guard, the same way he knows what his own hand looks like. 

He has to dodge the blade, learns his lesson about relying on hierro when he turns to block and it cuts his arm through to the bone. 

He’s never fought someone as fast as him. Never-never-never. Grimmjow and Nel are close but he slows down for them, thins his hierro because he doesn’t want to become untouchable. Nobody learns anything from a round of ‘try and fail to hit the Quinta,’ other than that he’s stronger than them. Everybody knows that already. So he holds back.

With this odd mirrored version of himself, he can’t hold back at all. He meets the doppelganger blow for blow. Their fighting styles are similar, but where Zangetsu is used to going on the defensive— avoid attacking, let them hit you, let them learn— the white-haired version of himself is aggressively on offense. It’s a bad position to be in. Grimmjow would be laughing. But he doesn’t have his sword, and he doesn’t have resurrección in any case, and his reiatsu does not affect this stranger wearing his face. They are equally matched in hand-to-hand.

“Is this all you’ve got?!” his other self demands, sounding pissed off. “Let me ride you for fuck-knows how long and you learned nothing?”

“Go to Hell,” Zangetsu hisses back. “You weren’t riding me. I don’t know what you are, but I know who I am, and I’m not going to lose to you.”

“You are losing to me,” White drawls. “Poor confused King. You don’t understand who you are at all. Maybe you ought to stay as the horse.” He lunges, and Zangetsu falls back, a mirror of how they’d begun the fight. There’s a mad grin on White’s face as he raises that blade over his head. 

Zangetsu ducks and sticks his clawed hand straight through White’s gut. One of Grimmjow’s favorite moves, especially on Zangetsu, the asshole. He and Ulquiorra both love blasting holes through people that match their own Hollow holes. Zangetsu’s never pointed this commonality out to either of them, because he likes his head attached and his guts inside his body, thanks. The point is, he’s had a lot of time to study this particular move, and it’s easy to replicate. He punches a hole so deep he scrapes bone before he stops.

The sword falls to the sand. 

Zangetsu looks at where his fist is buried in White’s stomach, then up, and White’s stunned face turns to laughter. It’s pleased, approving. Even when Zangetsu rips his hand back out, he still laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen. 

“King after all,” he says, getting to his feet. Zangetsu grabs the sword immediately, in his unbloodied hand, and the sword changes. Shimmers and lengthens in his hand, until it’s nearly as long as he’s tall. Like it used to be, before Aizen and the Hogyoku and the Espada. But the shape is new. It’s deep night-black, with a silver-bright edge, red and white cloth wrapping around the hilt. 

White looks at it and nods, approving. “That’s better.” He stretches, and Zangetsu watches the hole in his stomach bubble Hollow-mask white and heal. His own hand is being washed clean by the rain, and soon it’s only red-tinged water on his skin. He doesn’t feel like anything hurts anymore. 

“Gonna tell me what’s going on now?” Zangetsu asks, challenging. 

“Already tried,” White says, passing a hand over his robe to mend it. “Go talk to the old man, he’s better at the touchy-feely shit.”

He’s not getting off that easy. Zangetsu puts his sword on his back, pleased when the wrappings cover it back up and more pleased when it stays put. Then he grabs White’s hand and tows him under the skyscraper, ignoring the two-toned threats of violence. 

The old man only looks amused when Zangetsu tosses White in his general direction and sits down. “Are you two done, then?”

“He’ll do,” White mutters. 

“Explain,” Zangetsu demands. 

“You were the one stopping me before,” the old man says with a small smile. “What would you like to know?”

“Where am I?” he asks immediately. 

“Your inner world. Something all shinigami— and arrancar— have. It’s where your zanpakuto spirit resides.”

He vaguely remembers Grimmjow calling his sword that. He’s adamant that what arrancar have is not a zanpakuto. “Spirit?”

“This,” the old man says, nodding to White, “is Zangetsu. He represents the part of yourself that makes up your blade.”

“But I’m Zangetsu,” he protests. 

“No,” the old man says gently, “you are not. Think back, now. Before Aizen, before Grimmjow, before Hueco Mundo, who were you?”

He thinks. Remembers Grimmjow finding him and taking him in. Remembers the long, boring isolation before the Espada. Before that it’s all blurry, doesn’t want to come to him, but he’s stubborn. He looks out at the pouring rain and thinks. 

He remembers…he remembers…

Rain. 

A woman and a man and a Hollow. 

“Both of you, stay back.”

“Please run, sweetheart.”

“You live at my whim.”

They were protecting him. They wanted him to leave and he wouldn’t, they were important. They were fracción, half of him insists, and the other half disagrees and says family. There was a ghost, a soul that he went to help, and they followed him, and the ghost became a Hollow.

The Hollow killed them. The Hollow killed them and he…

“Ichigo, run!”

Ichigo.

Him?

Ichigo.

Ichigo. Protector-not-strawberry Ichigo.

Ichigo. Ichigo. Ichigo remembers, everything spiraling back into place with what feels like a sickening crunch. His mom, not a stranger. His dad, not a stranger. Not fracción. He was a child and they were his parents. The Hollow killed his parents.

Almost killed. His dad was…a shinigami? A living shinigami? And his mother’s chain hadn’t broken yet.

He remembers screaming, scared and angry, furious at this monster for taking his family. He remembers embracing the broken shards of…of something, remembers pain clawing through his chest. 

Let me out!

He remembers that he wanted to eat them, so they would stay with him. He’d been frightened of losing them. And someone had stopped him.

Bankai!

The shinigami that smelled like blood and chemicals– more like Szayel than anything else, like that sharp-scented stuff Grimmjow is certain the Octava uses to keep the other Espada away. It works, too. Most of them have sensitive noses even in sealed form. He’d scared Ichigo away, into Hueco Mundo. Away from his family. From his parents.

He needs to go. He needs to…

Kurosaki Ichigo. 

“Let me go,” he demands of the two strange spirits. “Those two girls, I have to find them, let me go.”

“This is your soul,” the old man offers quietly. “To leave, or to return, you need only will it. We will be here, Ichigo. Please remember that. Zangetsu and I– despite appearances– are your allies.”

Ichigo yanks wordlessly out of his inner world. He’s up and running, nothing but roaring wind in his head. Those faces. The reason he stopped to help Nel years ago. They’re his sisters. They have to be his sisters. He doesn’t remember anything but their faces, their eyes, smaller and rounder and younger. 

He doesn’t remember where their house is, but he can feel three signatures clustered together and not especially bothering to hide their reiatsu. He sprints there, navigating the streets easily as long as he doesn’t think about it too much. 

They’re his sisters. That’s why they aren’t afraid of him. Even though he’s a Hollow, a menos, and an Espada to boot, they aren’t afraid of him. He doubts he’ll get so lucky with the adults, but that’s a future Ichigo problem. Right now, all he cares about is seeing his baby sisters again, laying eyes on them and knowing for sure that they’re safe. 

Yuzu’s catching Karin up when a quiet tap-tap on the window interrupts her. They both look up. 

“Go,” Yuzu whispers, summoning her bow. It’s late at night and nobody else is awake. If it’s a Hollow out there, the two of them can handle it. Karin pads to the window, avoiding all the spots they know squeak, and pulls the blind up. 

Yuzu barely avoids shrieking. 

Outside the window are two eyes glowing bright yellow-gold, like the sun on a field of buttercups. Their light spills over a pale face, illuminates orange hair and a black-streaked mask. He’s panting like he ran here, freezes when he sees Karin.

“Ichi-nii,” Karin breathes, and throws the window wide open. Yuzu clicks the light on, but their brother’s eyes don’t stop glowing, a pair of fireflies on a marble statue. He tumbles in gracelessly and doesn’t notice when Karin closes the window behind him.

Karin backs up to Yuzu. “Ichi-nii?”

Ichigo’s head snaps up, and he looks at them both with the desperation of a drowning man. “Y u z u, ” he croaks. “K a r i n. R i g h t ?” There’s an odd reverb to his voice, like most Hollows, tuning in and out like static. 

“Ichigo,” Yuzu breathes, and dismisses her bow, running to him and throwing her arms around him.

His knee jabs her in the stomach and she chokes, letting go on reflex and dropping.

“Yuzu!” Karin goes to her immediately, helps her sit up. “What the hell, Ichi-nii?”

Their brother doesn’t respond. Yuzu looks up and sees wide eyes, still shining too bright to be human. Surprised.

“My fault,” she says, setting a hand on Karin’s shoulder. “I startled him.” She backs away, tugs Karin with her, holds up her hands open-palmed. Hides the wince as her abdomen throbs with a forming bruise. “I’m sorry, Ichi-nii.”

“She was trying to hug you, you idiot,” Karin snaps, far less forgiving. “Don’t you know what a hug is?”

“H u g,” Ichigo repeats. He blinks, and the searing light of his eyes dims a little. “Hug. Right. …Sorry.” He opens his arms and folds down to his knees. It’s probably stupid of Yuzu to go to him again, but she does. Slower, this time, so he can read her movements.

Something inside her, something wound tight and small and scared, unwinds when she wraps her arms around her big brother and he returns the hug, resting his chin on top of her head. Ichigo. She lets out a trembling breath against his chest. He’s too cool, like a corpse, but that’s okay. Yuzu has plenty of warmth. She’ll share. 

Karin approaches behind them, and Yuzu opens one arm without looking. Ichigo does too, after a moment, copying her motion.

“...If it’ll make you feel better,” Karin mutters, putting an arm around both of them and instantly getting folded into the sibling pile.

“You’re…sisters. My little sisters?” Ichigo doesn’t sound sure. “You were…smaller.”

“Yes,” Yuzu says gently. “We were six when you…when you left.”

“You mean died,” Ichigo says lightly. “I remember. I don’t remember much else, just that day and my name. Mom and Dad. You. What were they thinking, letting you make friends with an arrancar?”

“They didn’t exactly know,” Yuzu admits. “We were going to tell them! After we made some progress!”

Ichigo’s laughing now, shaking against them, a restrained little ha-ha-ah. “You’re gonna give them a heart attack,” he says. “You’re lucky it was me and not one of the other Espada.”

“...Spades?” Karin asks.

That earns them an ugly snort. “Sword,” he translates. “It’s Spanish. Hollows’ natural language, don’t ask me why.”

“Other…there’s other people like you?”

“Uh…there’s other shinigami-Hollow hybrids,” Ichigo answers. “My boss made them. He made me, too, kind of. Made me look like this, anyway.”

“Mom and Dad said you had a whole mask,” Yuzu remembers. 

“Yeah. Vasto lorde, I guess. Boss turned me into an arrancar. It felt real weird making my face work again at first, but I’m used to it.”

“Who’s your boss, Ichi-nii?” Karin asks, direct as ever. Ichigo winces. 

“His name’s Aizen. He’s a shinigami, a strong one. Collected pretty much all the strongest Hollows in Hueco Mundo into his army, me included. Wants to be the next fucking Soul King.”

The Ichigo she remembers would never have tolerated being on a leash. The way he speaks of this Aizen doesn’t sound like he’s a fan, and yet…

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, obviously seeing the concern on their faces. “I’m fine. He shaped me into something you’d recognize, so I’m grateful for that, anyway. And he won’t notice if I leave to visit sometimes…”

“Wait, are you leaving?” Karin demands. 

“…I have to,” Ichigo admits. “Otherwise they’ll think someone in Karakura caught me. And I don’t want to find out what they’d do to get me back. It’s safer if I go back and keep to what I’ve been doing—“

“Safer for who? Not you, Ichi-nii!”

“Karin,” Yuzu says, putting a hand on her sister’s shoulder. She draws the box of cookies out from under her bed and distributes one to each of them, smiling when Ichigo visibly perks up at the sight. 

If this is the only night she gets with her big brother, she doesn’t want to spend it arguing with him. Karin shoots her a sour look (and which of them is named after a lemon, again?), but she takes the cookie and gnaws at it. 

Ichigo is taking careful nibbles like he wants to savor it, and Yuzu hears an odd rumble in the air. It’s a deep, vibrating sound, almost a hum, and it’s coming from Ichigo. 

“Are you purring?” Karin blurts out. Yuzu elbows her, and Ichigo turns a deep fire-engine red that spreads over all the exposed skin she can see. That’s the same, at least. If anything, it’s brighter without the pigment in his skin to darken it. The purr does not stop, thrumming through the air, almost too deep to hear. “You are!”

“Shut up,” their older brother retorts. He doesn’t even stop purring to speak, which is honestly hilarious. Yuzu does her best to keep a straight face. “...They’re good. You guys baked these?”

“Mostly Yuzu did,” Karin says. “I just did whatever she told me to do.”

“You helped plenty,” Yuzu immediately protests. “You helped me with the reishi distribution, and you sifted the flour…”

“Bossy,” Ichigo teases Yuzu. His brow— the half they can see— furrows. “You always were, weren’t you? Both of you.”

“I’m not bossy,” Yuzu says with a sniff. “I’m trying to teach Karin-chan how to cook before she moves away for college. She can’t live on just instant ramen.”

“S’fine, I have time,” Karin says dismissively. “You’re too responsible.”

“Too responsible,” Ichigo repeats. 

“We’re eleven! We’re supposed to be having fun with our childhood.”

“Mostly it seems like you go to school and kick that ball around,” Ichigo says, visibly realizing as he says it that he’s revealed himself as a stalker. 

“It’s fine, we know,” Karin says with a snort. “Your hair stands out.”

“That’s what the hood is for…”

“The short bits around your horn come out from the opening,” Yuzu says helpfully. “Also, your horn. It’s easy to find you.”

Ichigo sighs. “Fair. Stands out a hell of a lot less in Hueco Mundo. Everything’s pale there. If I stand out for anything, it’s being person-sized. Even as a menos, I was tiny.” He cracks a smile, showing gleaming fangs. “Though Grimmjow did call me orange motherfucker when he met me.”

“Who’s Grimmjow? A friend?” Yuzu asks.

“One of the other Espada. He’s Sexta— sixth strongest. Strongest Espada that wasn’t a vasto lorde to start.”

“Wait, this Aizen ranks you by strength?” Karin interrupts. “Does he think this is a video game?”

Ichigo gives an ugly snort of a laugh. “It’s not really perfect. I think he only does it so we’ll be too busy fighting to try and overthrow him. I’m Quinta, fifth, but mostly because that was the free spot. Here, I’ll show you.” He unbuttons the hood around his horn and shoves it down, pulling his mess of orange hair out from underneath. Yuzu winces. That must tangle horribly. Long and wild as it is, and then to have it almost totally loose…

Ichigo loops the whole low ponytail over his horn, leaning forward. “…This isn’t easy to do. Don’t touch,” he warns. Yuzu’s about to say touch what when she sees it. 

It’s elegant, in a way. A 5 over the nape of his neck, in simple black script that slashes left, down, and then makes a curve out of thick, angled strokes. It ends abruptly, not in the long sweep of a tapered brushstroke. More like a highlighter marker. And it’s unsettlingly dark, matching the estigma on Ichigo’s chest and face and mask. 

Yuzu doesn’t like what she feels in it. Black thorns winding around and through Ichigo’s reiatsu, forming a stranglehold on his core. Over it all is a sweet mist she hardly notices at first, until she hears it whisper don’t look don’t look don’t look to her. To Ichigo. It’s a brand like you’d give to cattle, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s doing something to him it doesn’t want him to see. 

She reaches out and tugs lightly at a hooked thorn, and Ichigo flinches, shuddering as his entire core of reiatsu moves with it. “Fuck! Stop, don’t mess with it.”

“It’s hurting you,” Yuzu argues. “Something’s weird about it.”

“It’s a creepy declaration of ownership, I know,” Ichigo says, matter-of-fact if not entirely calm. He flips his hair back to cover his neck and turns around to face them. “Don’t touch it.”

“It’s not just that!” Yuzu huffs. “Can’t you feel that?”

“Oh, that prickly stuff? Yeah. Like I said. Creepy ownership thing. Aizen’s kind of a bastard, did I mention?” Ichigo absently rubs the spot with one hand. “Don’t mind it. Not like it’s normally visible anyway. None of us put them anywhere you can see them, even the ones who care about their rank.”

Yuzu definitely minds it. She can feel it in his reiatsu signature now that she’s seen the source, a strangling vine coiled tight around a simmering sun. Possessive and foreign. Mine. 

“Prickly? Does it hurt?” Karin asks, frowning. “If this Aizen’s hurting you…”

Ichigo reaches out and pulls Karin into a noogie. “Aw, my baby sister looking out for me? C’mon, isn’t that backward?” He ignores her punch to his unmasked cheek, not even moving, and Karin hisses and shakes her hand out. “Ah, yeah, don’t try that. Hierro. S’ reiatsu gathered on the skin, like a layer of armor.”

“Let me go!” Karin demands. Ichigo gives her hair one last rub with his knuckles to be obnoxious, laughing, and then lets her go. 

“Thanks and all, but you’d literally die. You can’t even stand against me, and I don’t think I could beat Aizen in a direct fight. S’not all bad, though, let me catch you up.”

He tells them about each of his people in turn. Carefully avoids mention of what Aizen’s like or where they are. He tells them he’s safe and not to worry about him. He tells them about Nel, a little toddler he rescued in the desert, a former Espada, now his fracción (he has to stop and explain fracción to them, something between ally/friend/family). He tells them about Grimmjow, who brought him in, who’s a regular sparring partner now. Starrk, who he and the Espada can exist around just fine but who wandered alone a long time before Aizen sealed his power into a sword. Harribel, a sharp woman whose fracción showed him how to tie back his hair and braid it for sleep. He complains about Szayel, who sounds like Urahara with a missing moral compass, and Barragan, who’s mostly on their side but has an ‘ego problem.’

“He thinks he’s actually the embodiment of death,” Ichigo says, gesturing wildly. “What am I supposed to do with that? Seriously!”

“Ignore him?” Karin suggests. 

“I can’t, he’s too strong for that. After Starrk and me, he’s the next most powerful. He’s not completely useless, but god, he’s dramatic.” He groans. “Tell me about you guys. What’d I miss?”

Surprisingly, it’s Karin who speaks up first. “I made the starting soccer team this year.”

Ichigo perks up. “Yeah? That’s great!”

They tell him everything. They tell him about school, about the family. What they like to watch and read. Karin’s soccer. What recipes Yuzu’s trying. They tell him about Urahara Kisuke and Tatsuki and what they’ve been doing to train. Ichigo puts an entire cookie in his sharp-toothed mouth and says thanks for the food with his mouth open. Karin immediately scolds him for his table manners and he raises his hands and says sorry, Mom with a shit-eating grin, spraying crumbs everywhere.

They talk for hours, until a Hollow’s gate to the World of the Living opens in the middle of their room and Ichigo turns from a relaxed predator to a snarling, protective presence braced in front of them. Yuzu didn’t even notice him move. 

“Out the window,” Ichigo commands over his shoulder, hand on his sword. “Get Dad. Don’t argue.”

Yuzu’s already summoning her bow, and Karin is muttering a kido chant under her breath, fast as she can without tripping over the nonsense words. 

Ichigo actually growls, a deep-chested sound of annoyance, before he turns and faces the swirling portal. Something’s emerging from it, and before Karin and Yuzu can do anything, Ichigo’s reiatsu falls onto the house.

It feels like a waterfall. He’s obviously directing it to the intruding Hollow, but Yuzu still falls to her knees, struggling to lift her bow. Karin isn’t any better off, still spitting out her chant in bursts of a word or two. The portal fades, and…

“Nel?” Ichigo’s reiatsu lifts immediately. “Fuck, sorry, I thought you were…”

“Zangetsu!” a new voice retorts, sounding more irritated than anything else. “You’re late! You’re lucky it was me Aizen found first and not Ulquiorra or Aaroniero– are those humans?” There’s a woman getting to her feet, a woman with a skull crowning her head and long green hair, wavy like their mother’s. Yuzu sees reishi gleaming on the skull– green and blue and red-black, over a crack through one of the mask’s eyes. It feels like Ichi-nii. That means…

Ichigo groans and rubs his forehead with one hand. “...Nel, meet my little sisters. Yuzu and Karin. Sisters, this is Nel, my fracción and a pain in my ass.”

“Sisters?” Nel’s attention immediately turns to them. Yuzu lowers her bow, carefully. “A Quincy? Zangetsu, what are you…”

“His name’s Ichigo,” Karin interrupts, getting to her feet and stepping up to Ichigo’s side. “Our older brother.” Not yours, Yuzu hears, back off.

“Karin,” Ichigo murmurs. Yuzu dismisses her bow and flanks Ichigo on Karin’s other side, peering at Nel. She looks pretty harmless, really, dressed in black and white like Ichigo, a pink line over her nose and cheeks. Her hazel eyes are warm, and she’s smiling as she assesses them. Her reiatsu is coiled in like Ichigo’s, but it’s still enough for Yuzu to tell she’s Hollow. There’s a sword buckled to her hip, but she isn’t going for it. Seems to be deliberately keeping herself relaxed, trying to say with her body that she’s no threat. 

“Ichigo,” Nel repeats. “Zangetsu, what…they’re alive, these two.” It’s a question in a statement. 

“Ichi-nii’s alive too,” Karin snaps, folding her arms.

“Uh, I’m really not,” Ichigo corrects her, gently. “I’m dead, Karin. So, hey, Nel, you know how we thought I was a couple centuries old? That might’ve been a little off.”

“By a couple of centuries?” Nel asks, glancing at Karin and Yuzu. “What are they, ten?”

“Eleven,” Karin says in her best chilly tone. “Ichi-nii’s fifteen.”

Nel’s lips twitch. “Fifteen? So you’re actually growing because you’re still a baby? ” She reaches over and musses Ichigo’s hair. “Poor Szayel. He was practically tearing his hair out at your growth spurt.”

“Szayel’s a creep, he deserved it.” Ichigo swats at Nel’s hand. “Cut that out.”

“But Espada-sama, you’re just so cute,” Nel says in a tone Yuzu recognizes mostly from Urahara. She widens her eyes in a credible fake-innocent look. “Your memory of being human, then…?”

“Is back, a little,” Ichigo says with a nod. “These are my little sisters, Yuzu and Karin. This is my house. Uh. Was.”

“Is,” Yuzu says immediately. 

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Nel says, bowing deeply to them both, at odds with the irreverent way she treats Ichigo. “Any family of Zange— Ichi’s?”

“Ichi go, Nel, and I swear, if you make a strawberry joke—“

“I would never, Quinta-sama.”

“I’m gonna stab you for real if you don’t stop -sama ’ing me in front of my baby sisters.”

“Family of Ichigo’s is family of mine,” Nel says to them like Ichigo hadn’t just threatened to stab her. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of him.”

“I don’t need taking care of!”

“Do you really have to go?” Yuzu asks in a small voice. She wishes she could be braver, demand he stay, steal his sword and hide it so he’d have to stay and look for it…

“I do,” Ichigo says, ruffling her hair. “No point making Aizen suspicious. I promise I won’t be gone long this time. A few days, maybe. As soon as I can slip out of Las Noches again, I’ll come back and see you.”

“Ichi-nii—“ Karin starts. 

“In the meantime, talk to Dad, and Urahara-san. Tell them what I told you, and tell them I’m gonna fix this, okay? I’m gonna make sure Aizen can’t hurt anyone. I’m not going to let him hurt you.” That last is accompanied by a flash of teeth and a growl.

The conviction on his face is so much like the big brother they lost and yet not at all. Yuzu swallows, offers him the box of cookies. He smiles at her and takes them, tucking them away into his hoodie and giving one to Nel.

“Come back,” Yuzu says to him. Don’t take so long again. It feels like tearing a piece of her heart out, letting him go back to this Aizen who changed him and branded him. 

“A week at most,” Ichigo says. “I promise. You couldn’t keep me away.” He’s still smiling, but it doesn’t sound like a joke. It sounds like if anyone tries, I’ll make them sorry.

Yuzu decides she’s okay with that and smiles back, waving her big brother off until the garganta snaps closed behind him. Until he’s gone.

Then she lets herself fall to her knees and cry.

“Yuzu, come on,” Karin complains. “Get yourself together.”

“G-give me a m-m-minute,” Yuzu gets out. Ichigo. Ichigo. Her big brother. He’s different and strange and a little more Hollow, but it’s him. It’s Ichigo. “H-h-he’s really b-back, Karin-chan…”

“Yeah,” Karin says gruffly. Yuzu kindly pretends not to notice the hitch in her voice. “Get yourself together and come to bed. We’ve got things to do tomorrow.”

Yuzu tucks herself into her narrow little bed and cries her way to sleep, politely ignoring Karin’s far-more-muffled sobs into her own pillow. Karin is right. They need to bring in the adults.

Ichigo shoves the box of cookies at Nel the second they’re back. “Hide those,” he orders. “Then find Grimm’s fracción. We’ll be meeting after this.”

“And you’ll be explaining, I hope!” Nel chirps. “I’ve never seen you miss a deadline–”

The meeting room isn’t far, even without cheating and using sonído (strictly forbidden indoors). “Just…look, later.” He stops outside the meeting room door. “Go get Grimm’s fracción.”

“Yes, Espada-sama,” Nel says, solemn-faced as she bows. Ichigo elbows her in the kidneys and she laughs again, skipping off to find her fellow fracciónes. 

Here we go. He takes a deep breath and knocks. The door opens easily to him, and he steps in and bows deeply. “Reporting back, Aizen-sama.”

Aizen Sousuke gives a careless wave of his hand, magnanimously ignoring his lateness. “Rise and give your report.”

God he hates this asshole. After a week outside Las Noches, his reiatsu feels even more suffocating. The tattoo on his neck itches.

Doesn’t matter. He stands straight, nods to the gathered Espada and the traitor captains. “Surveillance of Karakura Town revealed several spiritually aware individuals, two of which are captain-class,” he starts, forcing his tone dry and even. “I believe one is Urahara Kisuke— he matches the description you gave. He runs a candy shop that seems to cater to the local shinigami under the table. I didn’t see him release his zanpakuto.” Bankai! Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame! echoes through his head. “However, I suspect he’s concealed it in his cane. His shop hides several other reiatsu signatures. I was unable to get closer without breaking the anti-Hollow wards and giving myself away.”

Aizen nods, even though Ichigo’s sure he knew most of this already. “And the other?”

“The other is a shinigami posing as a human,” Ichigo answers. “He works as a doctor in a small clinic. His name is Kurosaki Isshin. He doesn’t appear to be actively patrolling, but the presence of his reiatsu is strong. I’d guess a fire-type zanpakuto.”

“I know Shiba Isshin,” Aizen says with a calm nod. “You’re correct. His Engetsu’s release command is burn. Were you able to determine why he would pose as a human?”

“No,” Ichigo says, mouth dry. Saying no to Aizen is dangerous. (Confirmation– Engetsu, Zangetsu.) “He has a family. A wife— able to see spirits but with no reiryoku— and two daughters. His daughters are spiritually aware and seem to have limited combat training. I watched them dispatch several low-level Hollows.” Swallow, breathe. “They work with a living Quincy whose father also feels powerful, though I didn’t see him fighting. I heard them call him Uryuu-san. The Quincy is strong enough to handle everyday Hollows, but any of the arrancar could down him easily. Same for the Kurosaki children. There is a shinigami in residence, but he isn’t particularly competent, to the point where the children are more noteworthy.” He bows again to indicate that he’s finished.

“Interesting,” Aizen muses. “Three children and three shinigami. How exactly do the children handle Hollows?”

“Two are Quincies and one uses kido,” Ichigo answers. “Uryuu appears to be the stronger Quincy. None of them are anywhere near Espada-class.”

“You followed the children around, you said. Why?” Aizen asks, leaning forward. “Why not focus on the threats?”

“The adults are devoted to their safety.” Ichigo rattles off the reasoning he’d given himself at the time. “I couldn’t approach Urahara’s shop, and the other shinigami almost never leaves his clinic. The assigned shinigami is generally late to battles. I was hoping one of the children would call for backup so that I could observe the captain-class adults’ fighting, but it didn’t happen.”

Aizen just looks at him for a moment, violet eyes hidden behind his glasses. “Very well. Please be seated.”

He doesn’t feel like Aizen bought that. The man’s twisty as hell. Knowing him, he sent Ichigo to Karakura intentionally to see what would happen. 

“Ah, Zangetsu,” Gin says. Great. His least favorite shinigami. “I notice your sword has changed. Is there a particular reason for that?”

Shit. It’s not the knife it was in his inner world, but it has changed. The wrappings are bright red-and-black now, and the sheath’s gone pitch black. He was hoping he wouldn’t be noticed this soon.

“Yeah, I figured out its name finally,” Ichigo answers, doing his best to sound careless. “I was watching the Quincy kid in school, bored half out of my mind, and that meditation thing finally clicked.” He taps his sword hilt. “Meet Ichigo.”

Zangetsu’s indignation immediately flares. He feels the old man doing his best to temper and soothe it. 

“Interesting,” Aizen repeats. “Well, take a seat, Zangetsu. We don’t mean to keep you on your feet after such a long time away.”

“Thank you, Aizen-sama.” He sits. He waits through the rest of the meeting, while Aizen talks about numbers and recruitment and the Seireitei and all the other crap that makes Ichigo genuinely want to die of boredom. He can follow it just fine, but he doesn’t care to. 

He makes eye contact with Grimmjow across the table, knowing it’ll be taken as the two resident fight-happy meatheads commiserating, and hides a yawn in his elbow. Grimmjow favors him with a slow cat blink back. Message received. 

It’s probably only an hour, but it feels like five before they’re dismissed. The Espada have too much dignity to scramble for the door, but there’s a definite sense of relief, like the bell ringing at Yuzu’s school. 

If Ichigo walks into Harribel’s back on the way out, and if Grimmjow trips over Starrk and cusses him out until Barragan intervenes, well. That’s just what happens when the ten strongest arrancar in Hueco Mundo all try to exit one small door at the same time. 

An hour later they’re all gathered in one of Las Noches’ many, many empty buildings, their fracciónes (save Nel and Lilynette, who are here with them) keeping watch for them. 

“Well? What’s this about?” Harribel prompts, reclining against a wall. “It must be important, Zangetsu.”

“Ichigo, actually.” That earns him Looks from everyone present. “It’s been a weird week. Started when I met this kid Quincy—“

He tells them about Yuzu and Karin, about the bento and the cookie, how his sword spirits (two? Harribel asks. You’re certain?) had talked to him. How they had pushed him into remembering. Leaves out the conversation by lamplight, because that’s private, thank you. Grimmjow would never let him live it down.

“You became a Hollow while a living soul?” Barragan says, holding up a hand. “In my centuries of life, I have never heard of such a thing.”

“Look, I don’t know why any of this shit happened! I was nine years old!” At that, Starrk mutters something that sounds distinctly like a curse, and Barragan and Harribel look at each other with the closest thing to confusion he’s ever seen on their faces.

“Fucking hell, wait, you said your sisters are still kids,” Grimmjow says. “You’re a brat?”

“Fifteen, apparently.” Grimmjow gets a look on his face that tends to precede either a no-holds-barred spar or a solo hunt.

“A teenage brat’s ranked higher than me,” he mutters. “Fucking…”

“More importantly,” Starrk interrupts, “are there more cookies?”

Ichigo rolls his eyes and passes out cookies. Yuzu and Karin made an honestly ridiculous amount, and he gives every Espada (plus Nel and Lilynette) their own. “Here. Yuzu says they’ve got reishi in them. I ate one and it didn’t kill me,” he adds, mostly to Grimmjow. “Way better than Hollow meat.”

“We’ll see about that.” Grimmjow bites off a chunk of cookie like it’s offended him. The rest of the Espada follow suit, more cautiously.

Lilynette eats hers in five seconds flat and scoffs. “It’s not that good!” Starrk breaks his in half and hands the bigger half to her without even looking. Barragan has a thoughtful expression, chewing in small bites. 

“Blech. Too sweet.” Grimmjow tosses his to Lilynette, careless like he hadn’t deliberately aimed it at her. Ichigo keeps quiet. Grimmjow hates people pointing out he has emotions other than ‘pissy cat.’ 

“I like it,” Nel declares. “Your sister made these?”

“Yeah,” and Ichigo can’t help the way he puffs up in pride. The sloppy efforts at food he remembers Yuzu trying as a child have come a long, long way. 

“Interesting,” Harribel pronounces. Her mask gives her the most trouble eating something like this, so Ichigo’s not surprised that she’s not a big fan. She and Barragan eat the whole thing, though, in slow, measured bites. “Tolerable, certainly.”

Barragan nods in agreement. “So, what will you do now?”

“Train,” Ichigo says. “Bring in the Karakura shinigami. Figure out what Zangetsu and I can do. The goal hasn’t changed.”

The goal. Take back Hueco Mundo. 

Espada they may be, but they’re not exactly fanatics. Starrk follows Aizen because he’d been lonely, but now he has the Espada, all of whom can exist around him. With that problem solved, he was simply too decent a person to help Aizen. Barragan was the King of Las Noches and harbors silent anger at his loss. Harribel appreciates Aizen saving her, but apparently he created the problem in the first place— she’d been attacked by an arrancar. 

“He‘s gone mad,” she’d said quietly. “Replace the Soul King? We cannot allow that.”

Grimmjow simply hates being leashed and forced to abide by what he describes as useless human bullshit rules. Ichigo’s seen Aizen nearly crush him with reiatsu before to keep him in line. And Ichigo, well.

Ichigo doesn’t take orders well either, but in the years he’s been here, he’s learned to pretend, to be a good soldier. But he doesn’t like bullies, and that’s what Aizen is. A smug, conniving bastard who thinks being strong gives him the right to rule over other people. Grimmjow introduced him to the other Espada, they talked a few times about Aizen, and somehow Ichigo wound up forming this little group. 

Doble Filo, Harribel called them once, and it stuck. It’s dramatic, but then again, they’re five-sixths of the strongest Hollows in Hueco Mundo. They get to be dramatic.

And now that Ichigo knows what Aizen’s planning, what that means, like hell he’s going to let the man use Karakura Town, kill thousands of people, his sisters and parents and friends, for his own gain. Especially not his sisters. They’re off limits. He’d kill to protect them. 

“We will train with you,” Harribel murmurs. “Outside Las Noches, perhaps. All of us leave to practice Gran Rey Cero and to hone resurrección. And your blade has changed.” She stands. “For now, rest. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin.”

Ichigo opens his mouth to protest, and Nel grabs his jacket and pulls him over. The fact that it actually works says more than she ever could, frankly. “…Fine.” He stands, tucks the box of cookies back into his hoodie. They take their leave one at a time, scattering like good little arrancar. Ichigo slinks right to his rooms, where Nel more or less pushes him into bed. 

“Let me get ready, god,” Ichigo complains, pushing back. He puts Zangetsu next to his bed like always, in arm’s reach. Unbuttons his hoodie’s clasp around his horn and unzips it. “Where’s the…”

Nel’s already tossing him the wad of cloth that effectively blunts his horn every time he sleeps. It’s like a coat, zipping around the oddly angled shape and keeping him from destroying his bed in his sleep. It’s embarrassing to even need it, but apparently he thrashes a lot in his sleep, and after the third time he stabbed his own pillow, he gave in. 

The last thing is braiding his hair back. He remembers Yuzu’s pigtails and wonders if she’d be willing to do this for him as he ties off the end. His own braiding skills are more functional than anything else, born of necessity. He tried shearing it off, but it came right back overnight. 

“Now go to sleep, Za— Ichigo,” Nel corrects herself, ruffling his hair in the front where it’s shorter and spikier.

“Better stick to Zangetsu,” Ichigo says unhappily. “I don’t know what Aizen knows about my family, but if he realizes I remember them…” At best, Aizen might kidnap them as leverage and frame it as a reward, and then he’ll have three humans and a shinigami to keep safe and uneaten. At worst…

He’s not going to think about the worst. 

“All right, then, Zangetsu-sama.” She leaps backward before Ichigo can strangle her and ducks out the door to her own rooms with a cheerful wave. 

He means to try and meditate, but it’s been a long day full of exciting reveals, and he falls asleep more or less instantly. 

Hollows don’t dream, but arrancar do, regifted the ability to process their experiences instead of just wallowing in them.

He dreams of facing down an ugly, hairy Hollow, of inhaling its reiryoku, little fragments of souls assaulting his own like piranhas. Dreams of walking across the desert. Dreams of the first time a Hollow begged him for their life. He’d felt awful after that meal, the tunnel in his chest aching nonstop, but he’d still finished it.

He dreams of Yuzu’s cookies and spicy mustard. In his dream they’re all in the kitchen, all baking together until Aizen bursts in and calls out “Bakudo 61: Rikujokoro! Well done, Zangetsu. These two will make a fine addition to our army.”

“Ichi-nii?” Yuzu asks, fixing him with wide brown eyes, pinned in the center of sun-bright gold reiatsu.

“I didn’t,” Ichigo whispers. “I swear I didn’t bring him here, Yuzu…”

Aizen crushes him under the weight of monstrous reiatsu and laughs as arrancar drag his sisters away. His parents are in the door, horrified, asking how he could ever let this happen. 

He dreams of ripping into Nnoitra again, reiatsu unleashed and roiling in the air. He remembers Aizen and the Espada standing by and watching, letting him claw meat off bones and swallow, and this time Yuzu and Karin are there, watching. Hands over their mouths and wide-eyed with horror. He dreams of Yuzu bringing her bow up, trembling and shaky but determined, trying to put him down like any other monster. He hears Karin shout something that squeezes him tight in place. Sees Yuzu crying as she releases an arrow that goes straight through the hole in his chest and floods it with light that splinters him apart.

Wakes up sweaty and on the floor, tangled in blankets, panting for breath.

“Goddammit,” he mutters. It feels like he didn’t sleep at all. He untangles himself and shoves the whole mess of covers back onto his bed. 

It’s not that he regrets what he did to Nnoitra. The bastard deserved that and worse for cracking Nel’s mask, attacking her from behind that way. It’s just that now he…remembers being human. Remembers the way he used to be, the way Yuzu and Karin are expecting him to be still. They know he’s strong, but he doubts they know what being strong as a Hollow means. The thought of looking them in the eye and telling them why he’s Quinta makes him want to throw up. Because that was the free spot. Yeah, why was it the free spot, Ichigo? Oh, you violently murdered and ate him? Big brother of the year right there. 

He still remembers grabbing one of the bastard’s four arms in his mask’s teeth, reiatsu surging to keep him still and pulling until it slid out of its socket, until the skin and muscles and tendons tore. Until Nnoitra screamed and begged him to stop. 

He hadn’t. He wouldn’t, if he could go back and do it again. 

He’s not a good man. Not a good human. He’s human-shaped but none of the arrancar are quite human, only sealed into the right shape. He doesn’t mind that, for himself, never has. He fits in here, among these human-shaped Hollows who all have their own codes of honor. Their own rules. Ichigo’s rule has always been mess with what’s mine and I’ll take it out of your skin. Nobody starts anything with Nel or Pesche or Dondochakka. It’d be suicide via Quinta Espada. He made that point early with Nnoitra, a couple more times with números that tried the posturing bullshit routine. Aizen leaves sorting those disputes out to the Espada. If they’re not fracción to anyone, they’re disposable. Edible, even.

All of this makes sense to him. If anything, what doesn’t make sense is the veneer of civility Aizen keeps. He took to it better than some arrancar, but he doesn’t like Aizen insisting on good manners when he’s planning to kill thousands of people. Who the hell cares if he remembers to use a fork at lunch?

Would Hueco Mundo make sense to Yuzu and Karin, though? He doubts it. Living World children with none of Ichigo’s Hollow, unused to Hueco Mundo’s way of life…

They might accept him hunting to survive. They won’t accept Nnoitra, or the others he’s killed in cold blood.

He grabs for his jacket, stuffing his hair down the back and buttoning the hood. Pulls the cloth off his horn and finds his shoes, sliding Zangetsu onto his back. Grimmjow won’t say no to a spar, even at this hour. The asshole’s woken him up before, anyway. He needs to get all this cotton out of his head, and a fight’s the fastest way to do that. Needs to stop worrying about Karin and Yuzu. 

Get your ass in here, King. 

He stops dead. “…Zangetsu?”

Obviously. Enough feeling sorry for yourself. You’re upset because what, you acted like a Hollow? Surprise, bitch, we are a Hollow!

“Yuzu and Karin…”

Can either take what we are or fuck off. You wanna blunt our claws for them? Fake being human? He sees Zangetsu sneer. Fuck all the way off. 

Ichigo plops down, pulling his sword onto his lap and sitting crisscrossed, and shuts his eyes. He’s shit at meditating, but his inner world sucks him in. Zangetsu, probably. 

It’s still raining, but while the old man remains under the tilted skyscraper, Zangetsu’s out in the open, sword drawn. It’s still strange to see his own face mirrored back at him. 

“You want a fight,” Ichigo says, drawing his own Zangetsu. 

Zangetsu rolls his eyes, exaggerating the motion. “No shit. Gotta beat the self-pity outta you somehow.” And then he lunges, Ichigo blocks him, and they don’t really need to talk anymore. 

Chapter Text

They go to Urahara first, because if they can convince Urahara, they can convince anyone. 

“So you gave him a bento,” Urahara says slowly, “and he remembered his human life. Just like that.”

“I made the spicy mustard he always liked,” Yuzu offers. Urahara has polite disbelief written all over his face. “And chocolate cookies, with reishi in them so they wouldn’t make him sick.” 

Karin holds up the bento box helpfully. There’s a cookie still in it, abandoned in Ichigo’s rush to find them, the rest licked clean— literally. Ichigo’s reiatsu clings to it in faint traces. His control is good, but he lost his grip for a moment, and the place under the bridge where they’d found the bento is still heavy with Hollow and shinigami. 

Urahara takes it, looks at it, pops open the lid and bites into the cookie. “Hm. Very well done, Yuzu-san. The distribution of reishi is even, and you’ve packed a considerable amount into it. That may have helped— your reiatsu would have, hm, tainted the reishi. Made it taste like ‘you,’ in a sense.”

“Ichi-nii doesn’t wanna eat us.”

“Ichigo-san tried to eat Masaki-san when he first changed,” Urahara says, in the exact same tone he’d used to praise Yuzu’s baking. “He would have, if Isshin-san hadn’t been there. He’s a menos-class Hollow who’s likely eaten hundreds of others. And that’s without even touching the question of what the most human-looking arrancar the worlds have ever seen would be doing in Karakura Town.”

“He mentioned a name,” Karin says. “He said he had to report back in to Ai…Aizen?” she checks with Yuzu, who nods.

Urahara’s fan falls to the ground. “You’re certain?” he asks quietly. Something’s wrong. His carefully constructed façade of cheer and indifference, the harmless shinigami uncle, is gone. He’s gripping Benihime white-knuckled, like he actually needs her for support. “Aizen? He’s reporting to Aizen Sousuke?”

“You know who that is,” Karin says, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Why are you freaking out?”

Urahara laughs, and it doesn't sound like laughing it off so much as oncoming panic. “Oh, no reason in particular, my dear. Have I ever told you why the Visored and I are here in Karakura?”

He hasn’t. and he knows it. Yuzu and Karin wait. 

“Aizen Sousuke,” Urahara says, stooping to pick up his fan. “A deranged madman who, a century ago, attempted to erase the boundary between a shinigami and a Hollow on eight captains and lieutenants, and then successfully framed me for it. Captain of the Fifth Division, powerful, manipulative. If Aizen Sousuke has Ichigo-san, there is every chance Ichigo is on his side. He could talk a fish into buying a towel. Tell me exactly what he said to you, and leave nothing out.” Urahara’s gaze is burning through them both. 

“H-he called himself an Espada,” Yuzu starts. “Said it meant ‘sword.’ He told us stories about the others. Um…who did he say was the strongest, it’s the one with that little girl who plays with Nel…Wolf or something?”

“Coyote Starrk,” Karin says. Urahara is writing furiously. “He called him, what was it, Primera?”

“First,” Urahara says without looking up. “Primera shares a root with the English word primary.”

First sword. Ichigo had shown them his 5, but he’d also said he was stronger than most of them. “Second was…the King? Ichi-nii didn’t like him much, says he’s got ego problems. B…”

“Barragan?” Urahara asks. “The King of Hueco Mundo. He’s only the second strongest?” He clicks his tongue. “I wonder if they’re all arrancar now…”

“Third is the shark lady, Harri- something,” Yuzu volunteers. “Ichi-nii says he’s stronger than her, even though he’s fifth.”

“Hm. Not ranked by strength, then?” Urahara muses. 

“He mentioned the sixth too. Grimmjow. It sounds like they train together a lot.” Urahara writes that down. “And his…his person, Nel, the former third Espada, he talked about her too. Her mask is cracked, and he wouldn’t say who did it but his face went really scrunched.”

“He said it was by strength, but it wasn’t perfect,” Yuzu remembers. “He was fifth because…he said it was the free spot.”

Urahara’s eyes narrow, but stay sharp on them. “What else?”

“He said he had a plan. That he was going to fix everything,” Karin says softly. “And not to worry.”

“Hm.” Urahara doesn’t look relieved. “An incredibly powerful man planning to fix everything rarely goes well, girls.”

“He gave us a hug,” Yuzu says, fists balling on her lap. “He said he loved us. He wanted to know what he’d missed.”

Urahara puts his pen down, pushes his bucket hat back. His gaze softens. “He can say all that and still be someone we have to put down, Yuzu-san. We won’t force your involvement, but you must realize…your brother’s changed. A sword of Aizen, an arrancar. He’s been away for five years, living in a very different world. He can say he loves you. He can even mean it. It doesn’t make him safe.” He sighs. “I want nothing more than to be wrong, girls. Please call me when you see him again, and we’ll talk. I’ll see if I can’t determine what this plan of his is, and if it’s…actionable.”

Yuzu grips Karin’s hand, half to comfort herself and half to comfort her. 

“Let’s call your parents, now,” Urahara suggests. It’s an obvious play to settle them. He’s letting it be obvious. “Karin-san, if you’d like to show Tessai your progress with kido—“

Yuzu feels Karin about to decline and elbows her. “I wanna see,” she chirps. “C’mon, did you tell Tessai-san you did a sixties bakudo yet?”

Karin, predictably, blushes hot and angry. “Yuzu!”

“Oho, impressive!” Urahara says, grinning like a madman. “This I have to see. Tessai!~”

Ichigo expects Grimmjow to ambush him, but he still puts on a show of complaining when it happens. “Grimmjow, I’ve got shit to do, I can’t just–”

“Your shit to do is training,” Grimmjow replies, unimpressed. “You want to figure out resurrección for the first time when you’re up against the shinigami? No? Come the fuck out of Las Noches where we can fight properly, then.”

They go a long way away, out of sight of the dome, after notifying their respective commands that they’ll be gone for a few days on Espada business. They go until they’re absolutely certain they’re out of reach, or at least that they’ll have some warning if someone tries to find them.

“So,” Grimmjow says, drawing Pantera and grinning madly at him. “Show me.”

“That ready to get your ass kicked?” He curbstomps Grimmjow regularly even without his resurrección, and Grimmjow hates it. Keeps throwing himself at Ichigo like he’s a wall to climb. Ichigo doesn’t mind. Just because he always wins doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to work for it. If he gets lazy, Grimmjow won’t hesitate to rip him apart.

“We’ll see, orange motherfucker.” Grimmjow sneers. “Grind, Pantera!”

Ichigo waits until the storm dies down and Grimmjow stands there in the air, on alert, ears pricked toward him. He doesn’t actually know what he’s doing, but…

He looks down at his pale hands, thinks about Zangetsu’s white hair and the cracks he used to get about his own, and the command comes to him easily, naturally. 

“Bleach, Zangetsu!”

Zangetsu responds with a surge of power that nearly knocks him off his own feet. He feels the sword elongate and change in his hands, until it’s once more the curved butcher knife he saw in his inner world. His tail is back, his feet are clawed again, and he feels more balanced– his other horn, he realizes, reaching up to feel it. It sprouts straight out of his skull. 

“Yo, what’s with the shinigami robes?” Grimmjow’s up in his face before he knows it, poking at him. It’s not quite a standard shihakusho– there’s a white-and-red shoulder guard, strapped on with a white X, and as he looks down he can see that his estigma’s different too, two slashing black diagonals that meet at his Hollow hole. 

“Hell if I know,” Ichigo grumbles. “Probably my dad’s fault.” The sleeves are more billowy than he prefers, but well, beggars and choosers. Nobody gets to pick what their own resurrección looks like. He knocks Grimmjow away with Zangetsu, not even really thinking about it, and they go at each other.

Ichigo realizes two minutes in that he’s gotten faster. Stronger. Grimmjow claws his chest up and it heals, bubbling over white like Ulquiorra’s wounds do. He sends Grimmjow to the sands of Hueco Mundo three times in ten minutes. Grimmjow throws a Gran Rey at him out of sheer frustration, and Ichigo steals Nel’s trick and eats it.

Usually even he has to dodge a Gran Rey. The amount of reiatsu packed into a cero that level would vaporize most souls, and damage stronger ones. He saw Grimmjow make the mistake of standing his ground against Harribel’s once. And only once.

But with Zangetsu released and power singing through him, he opens his jaws and inhales on instinct, feeling the cero’s strength flow down his throat and channeling it back to his horns. Grimmjow can’t see him, but he must know something’s wrong, with his cero hanging in the air like this.

Ichigo laughs and fires a deep black-red cero back through the remnants of Grimmjow’s blue Gran Rey. Hears Grimmjow shout what the fu– before his voice cuts off in the roar of an exploding cero. He fully expects an angry cat trying to shred his face off, and when he doesn’t get one, he drops down toward the cloud of sand and smoke, cautious. 

Grimmjow explodes out of the sand cloud, desgarrón sparking at his clawtips. Ichigo barely dodges, and doesn’t bother to hide how he’s still grinning. Grimmjow’s furious with him, swiping at his face and gut, cussing him out. It’s all play to Ichigo. He’s dizzy with power. It’s so easy to run circles around the other Espada. No challenge at all. He actually sees Grimmjow’s claws snap at one point when he tries and fails to get through Ichigo’s hierro. 

Eventually, the other’s resurrección gives out, and he falls to the sand, chest heaving. “What the fuck,” he says, snarling a warning when Ichigo approaches him. Ichigo backs off. Crowding any Hollow is a bad idea, let alone a defeated one. “I can’t even feel your reiatsu. You absolute fucking asshole. I’m going to kick your ass. Don’t think this means I won’t challenge you anymore.”

“As soon as I’m sure you’re not bleeding to death internally, we’ll do another round,” Ichigo promises. 

“Might not have regeneration, but I’ll be fuckin’ fine, don’t flatter yourself.” Grimmjow gets to his feet with a hiss. “I’ll go hunt something, get my reiryoku back up.”

“I can—“

“Make me those tasteless reishi balls? Pass. Keep your freak of nature shit to yourself. I’ll get real food.” With that, he sonídos away, vanishing from Ichigo’s senses. 

That’s pretty much what he expected, yeah. He wonders if Yuzu could coax Grimmjow into trying human food. His reishi snacks are, admittedly, kind of bland. 

He feels so fucking good. Vibrating with energy– some from him, some from Grimm’s cero. His sword finally feels correct in his hands, balanced and light. And his other horn feels fantastic. Shame he can’t just stay like this.

Maybe he’ll go hunting too. His fragmented human memories rebel– what will his family think, his sisters, that’s a person– 

He’s still as Hollow as he is human, though. Even Nel hunts. He remembers his family, remembers what he used to hold dear, but he’s been Hollow six years. Hunting and eating other Hollows is as natural to him as unwrapping a bento and holding chopsticks.

He could probably subsist on reishi, yes, but he isn’t going to, human family or no.

He draws a breath in over his tongue, finds Grimm’s trail, and deliberately sets off in the other direction. Zangetsu settles on his back like it belongs there, and his clawed feet dig into the sand and propel him easily in long, lazy leaps of sonído.

He is what he is. If his family can't take that...well, he would miss them, but he's well accustomed to the feeling of missing something. He's not human, and he'll do what he must to survive and stay strong to protect his precious people. He's no use to anyone if he's starving.

He shakes the cobwebs out of his head and focuses on tracking Hollows. He'll handle his family when he has to. For now, he needs to eat.

Chapter Text

It’s four long days before they see Ichigo again. 

They always check around after school. Karin doesn’t see him at first, until the boy who keeps pulling Yuzu’s hair in third period jerks and looks around. “Hey! Who’s doing that??”

Karin watches him and follows the next trajectory back to…yep, Ichigo, tossing pieces of gravel unerringly at the kid. As she looks, he uses something like the shinigami flash step to change where he is and throw another little piece of crushed rock, snickering when the boy spins around to look for him. 

She approves. 

Yuzu, based on what her face is doing, does not. Karin squeezes her hand and beelines for him, stomping the urge to wave at thin air. He waves and throws one last pebble, smirking when the guy swears loudly and immediately gets three teachers on his ass. 

“Ichi-nii,” she says, trying to sound like she’s scolding him and not succeeding.

“What?” Ichigo asks with a lazy blink. “Little shit deserved it.” He’s really picked up a potty mouth from his Hollow friends. Mom would wash that forked tongue off with soap if she heard him.

Which she’s going to. Yuzu’s already flipping her phone open, and Ichigo sighs. “Guess we can skip the leadup, then. Where are we meeting?”

“Home,” Yuzu says, putting her phone to her ear, then changing her mind and putting it on speaker. Nobody will look twice at the Kurosaki twins sharing a phone call— they do it often enough. And nobody can see the taller Kurosaki lounging against the wall with his hood up and a golden-gleaming eye watching the crowd. 

Click. “Yuzu-chan!” Ichigo makes a soft, punched-out noise. “How are you, my angel? Is Karin there, or are you calling because she got detention again?“

“Hi, Dad,” Ichigo says, and the voice falls silent at once. 

“…Ichigo?”

Not ‘son.’ Ichigo’s lips press together, but all he says is “Call whoever you need to. We need to talk.”

“We’re all walking home,” Karin adds before they can do anything stupid like rush to rescue them. “See you in thirty minutes.”

“Karin-chan,” Dad says carefully. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I’m not going to fucking eat my sisters,” Ichigo snaps at the phone, and stabs the ‘end call’ button with a finger that’s changed into an ivory-white claw. He stalks off, half the huffy little stomp he used to get when he was upset and half the grace of an apex predator. 

Karin and Yuzu hurry to catch up to him. “It’ll be okay once they see you,” Yuzu says, gripping her phone. “They’re worried about your boss, that’s all.”

“They’re worried about me,” Ichigo contradicts. “And they aren’t wrong to be. In general, I mean. But I wouldn’t hurt either of you on purpose. You’re mine.”

There’s a low rumble under his words, a growl. Karin and Yuzu trade looks, and they keep walking. 

It goes just fine until they’re halfway home and Ichigo stops abruptly, grabbing Yuzu’s shoulder. “Stop. Ambush. That ass who was pulling your hair, and…” He inhales, that forked tongue flicking out. “Yeah, brought friends. Four boys versus two preteen girls.” He sneers. “How honorable of him.”

Yuzu feels Karin sharpen up like she always does before a fight. “No kido,” she warns Karin quietly. “And stay out of it, Ichi-nii. They can’t even see you.”

“No promises,” Ichigo says, his visible eye narrowing at the area ahead. “If they hurt you two…”

“Talking to your imaginary friend, Lemon-chan?” Yuzu’s eyes snap to the boy from earlier. What is his name? So-something? Hates Karin because she can outshoot him in soccer blindfolded, and her for…existing, maybe. She doesn’t react to his poking, and it makes him mad. Karin thinks he has a crush, to which Yuzu replied that she wouldn’t hold his hand if he was the last boy on Earth. 

“Yo, Souta,” Karin greets, stepping up, coincidentally getting between the boy and Ichigo, who’s quietly growling in his chest. “Didn’t have enough when the teachers piled on you earlier?”

“Y’know, I can’t figure out how you got so many helpers,” Souta says. He looks angry as a bee, red and furious and straining to attack. Yuzu rocks onto the balls of her feet, ready to dodge. “How many people did you enlist, huh? Just to throw shit at me. You that mad I messed with your twin?”

“Whoops,” Ichigo mutters. 

“You pulled her hair, asshole.” Karin’s hands ball into fists. “You don’t get to touch her.” Of course she doesn’t even try to say it wasn’t her, Yuzu thinks with a sigh.

“You don’t tell me what to do. Go,” Souta says, nodding to his friends. He and the bigger one go after Karin, while the other two jump at Yuzu. She dodges— they’re nothing next to Hollows. Dodge and dodge again. Karin’s fighting her pair, and winning from the sounds of it. 

Ichigo is still, but not calm. She feels tendrils of reiatsu leaking out, angry and Hollow. Angry for her, not at her, but it’s still a little scary. The hair on the back of her neck prickles.

(Yuzu won’t throw a punch. She’ll defend herself, dodge, and that’s all. She could break a bone with her Quincy blut arterie, after all, and her control isn’t the best yet. It just happens when she’s upset or afraid. And both of them were trained by former military. They know how to do real damage. Karin, with practice and sports, is just better at containing it.)

Dodge, block. Ichigo’s rising reiatsu is more a hindrance to her and Karin than anyone else, since they’re both sensitive to it. The menace in the air isn’t aimed at her, but it’s still making it hard to breathe. Everyone is avoiding his spot, even though the boys are all spirit-blind.

Someone throws a punch that she doesn’t see in time, and it connects with her ribs. Nothing snaps. Bruises only, she thinks. Yuzu falls back, activating blut vene to save her skin from road rash. Ow. He’s trying to press the advantage. She needs to get up—

The building tension in the air snaps. Something roars and lunges past her, too fast to see, and when her eyes catch up, Souta’s friend is twenty feet in the air courtesy of Ichigo.

She makes eye contact and shakes her head: put him down. 

“In a minute,” Ichigo replies, shaking the boy by his collar. The boy’s kicking and yelling, but none of it connects, much less bothers Ichigo. He drops him on his friend, making one big pile, then goes after Souta. Plucks him right out of Karin’s fight and hops up-up-up. 

“Put me down! What the fuck?! What’s wrong with you?!” Souta screams. Yuzu sees the other three go still and stare. 

“I’m not doing anything,” Karin says, entirely truthful and enjoying this way too much. Souta looks like he’s about to pee his pants, looking at the bone-breaking drop under his flailing feet. 

“You— put me down, fuck, put me down, put me down or I swear I’ll punch you into next week—“

Ichigo makes a soft grumbling growl and tosses Souta up, flying up after the screaming kid and catching him. Yuzu hears the screams cut off on a choked sound. Must’ve gotten him by the shirt collar again. 

“Not what I wanted,” Ichigo says, examining his handful of shirt. He’s maybe thirty or forty feet up now, still dangling Souta over the asphalt. “Is he always this slow to learn?” He doesn’t sound bothered or concerned in the least.

“— Kurosakis, hey, turn your freaky witch magic off!”

“Or what?” Karin asks, clearly climbing on board the Ichigo Method. “Want us to come up there so you can try and punch us?”

“Let’s get out of here,” the first one to be lifted whispers. The three cronies run like there’s a hungry ghost after them.

“I— I’ll kick both your asses, get you in trouble with the teachers—“

Yuzu manipulates reishi to magnify her vision, an aiming spell Uryuu taught her, and sees Ichigo’s blunt, human-enough fingers grow long, white, dagger-like claws on his free hand. He wouldn’t—

He sets his hand around Souta’s throat, claws and all, and applies a light pressure that makes Souta outright wail. She can see the dents in the skin where the pointed claws threaten to break through and draw blood.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I— I’ll leave you alone, I won’t try a-anything else, put me down!”

“Was that so hard?” Ichigo grumbles. He drops, throwing Souta when he’s a few centimeters from the ground, hard enough to jar him but not to break anything. Souta bursts into tears the second he’s let go, curling up on the sidewalk and sobbing relief. 

“I— Ichi-nii,” Yuzu says gently. “That was too far.”

“He would’ve hurt you,” Ichigo says. There’s no regret in his voice, or on his face when he looks back at her. “I told you, I won’t let anything hurt you.”

“We’re fine,” Karin tells him. “Worst of it’s some split knuckles, and I’m really good at healing those.”

“Show me,” Ichigo demands, so Karin does, letting him inspect her wounds with an honestly over-the-top level of seriousness. “Wash those out before you heal them, you’ll get an infection if you trap dirt under the skin. Yuzu, what about you?”

“Just a bruise,” Yuzu says, prodding at it. Dull pain only, nothing sharp, nothing shifting with her breath.

Ichigo looks at her, searching, and obviously doesn’t like what he sees on her face. “Wouldn’t have killed him,” he concedes. “I’m not… totally insane. If he didn’t back down I would’ve left him on a roof somewhere.”

Yuzu thinks about the cold look on his face, dangling an eleven-year-old thirty feet up saying not what I wanted and wrapping a hand around his throat to get compliance, and wonders. 

They walk on, leaving Souta where he is. 

Isshin is pacing. “Calm down,” Masaki says, aiming for soothing and landing on slightly annoyed.

“Calm down? Calm down? My darling twins are—“

“Being escorted home by their brother,” Masaki says, suppressing a sigh. “If he tries to harm them, they’ll flare their reiatsu. But I doubt he will. He’s already had a civil conversation with them once, and didn’t kill them even though he didn’t remember them.”

“They’re obviously pack to him,” Hirako agrees. “You try to take them away, he’ll probably cero you into next week. Play nice. Just like a wild animal. Don’t poke it with a stick unless you hafta.”

The door opens, and Yuzu calls “We’re home!” She sounds fine. Tired, maybe, but she always is after school.

“Welcome home,” Masaki and Isshin chorus. She listens to the sounds of the twins taking off their shoes and bags, the murmur of quiet conversation. A third, deeper voice, uncertain. 

Then the twins come in, shoulder-to-shoulder. They look a little tired, maybe, and Karin’s knuckles are split again. She got into a fight. Masaki feels Isshin’s tension unwind once he lays eyes on them. 

“Sit down,” Masaki invites them, and they do, Yuzu taking the edge to quietly force Karin into sitting next to her. Masaki doesn’t point out how Karin leans on her and lets out a breath. Her older daughter must be very stressed if she’s letting it show even that much. 

“Got jumped,” she mutters. “Ichi-nii warned us. Helped.”

Masaki files that information away. She’ll ask how he helped later. “Ichigo?” she calls gently. “Come in.”

There’s hesitation, then the soft clack of clawed toes on their floor as her only son comes in. 

She’s ready for him to look different, remembers Yuzu’s drawing, but it’s got nothing on the reality. His hair is down, a wild autumn-fire spill falling over his neck and down his back. He comes in with his masked side facing them. The horn framing his face is an unpleasant jolt that Masaki breathes through. It’s not entirely White’s mask. There’s a thick black streak in the center, down through the eye socket, and a ragged row of teeth along his upper jaw. The rest of his face is soft and human, apart from the color (a milky white she associates mainly with exsanguination). It’s the face of the boy upstairs in a hospital bed, except tense and suspicious. Her son, alive, in her living room.

He takes his sheathed sword off his hip slowly, leaning it against the wall, moving deliberately to make sure his meaning is clear. Steps away from it, out of arm’s reach, and drops into a seated position. He’s watching them all, eyes flitting between the couch, Hirako’s chair, and where Urahara stands. Hypervigilance, Masaki thinks. He’s wound up, and no wonder. 

“Urahara,” she says softly, nodding to Benihime. Urahara sets his cane down, putting her against Hirako’s seat with a murmured apology. Isshin is in his gigai, unarmed, and Sakanade is already out of reach.

She catches sharp-pointed teeth chewing on a lower lip as Ichigo’s gaze roves and settles on the floor. “Guessing you have questions.”

His voice is deeper and rougher, but unmistakably his. How he went through puberty as a ghost, Masaki has no idea, but she’s definitely looking at a teenager. 

“Yes,” Urahara says. “Ah— I’m Urahara Kisuke, the shinigami who originally sealed your mother, and you by extension.”

“Did a shit job,” Ichigo remarks. Masaki swallows the urge to tell him to mind his manners around guests. Karin hides a laugh, but Masaki feels her shoulders shake. 

“Well, a menos in Karakura is rather a rare occurrence, I admit,” Urahara says easily. “When the Hollow tried to kill your parents, it inadvertently broke the seal, restoring Isshin-san’s shinigami powers.”

“Did a little more than that,” Ichigo mutters. “Who’s piano-teeth?”

“Hirako Shinji,” Hirako says with a lazy salute. “Visored. Shinigami-Hollow hybrid, started as a shinigami.”

“Huh. Sounds pretty close to me,” Ichigo says. “You know a guy named Aizen Sousuke?”

“Know, want to brutally murder, what’s the difference?” Hirako’s smile doesn’t change. “I hear he’s your boss.”

“S’that why you’re all looking at me like that?” Ichigo snorts. “Relax, I don’t like him any more than you do.”

“You work for him, though,” Urahara interjects. “Why?”

“Boredom.” He waits a beat— fully aware of the faces everyone’s making, if the little smile pulling at the edges of his mouth is any indication. He always was a bit of a troublemaker, Masaki thinks. Five years in Hueco Mundo wouldn’t have smoothed out the rough edges of the little boy she remembers. “No, seriously, I was Hueco Mundo’s youngest vasto lorde. Didn’t remember shit, so I kind of just wandered around and ate.” His eyes drop at that, and the twins exchange a look. They’ve tried to get them to understand that Ichigo would have had the same dietary requirements as any other Hollow, but she knows it’s different, hearing it from him. He obviously remembers enough that he’s skirting the topic, aware it’s not something humans would approve of. 

“What changed?” Masaki prompts. They don’t need to linger on the necessities of living while Hollow. Especially not with the girls here.

“Smelled a weird reiatsu signature,” Ichigo answers. “Shinigami and Hollow. Found Grimm, he figured he’d get points for bringing me in. That or I’d kill Aizen, he was fine with either. He’s not exactly loyal either. I went with him, didn’t see a reason not to. I think I was what, twelve or thirteen? Hard to tell. I definitely grew after I became an arrancar. Ate three times as much, got growing pains, hit my head on a lamp once, the whole nine yards.” He makes an annoyed little growling sound. “The others didn’t let me forget that for months.”

He’s the baby of the group, Masaki realizes, fighting for her poker face. From the sour look on his face, he’s not that upset about it, just irritated like any teenager getting shit from older siblings. 

“The others,” Urahara repeats. “Other Espada?”

“Espada de Doble Filo,” Ichigo says with a small yawn. Masaki doesn’t understand, but Hirako laughs in sheer surprise. 

“Double-edged sword,” he translates when everyone looks at him. “A sword that harms its wielder as well as their enemies, in other words. I like you, Ichigo-kun.”

“Thanks, piano teeth,” Ichigo shoots back. Hirako laughs louder. “Yeah, other Espada. Look, I’m not going to sit here and argue that I’m a nice, normal, sane human. I’ve got a few screws loose. My sword talks to me, for fuck’s sake.” Isshin shifts at that, visibly surprised that Ichigo is shinigami enough to have a sword spirit. “But we do recognize that Aizen’s, you know, an insane megalomaniac who can’t be allowed to achieve his goals. Karin and Yuzu told you?”

“They mentioned you had allies, and their names,” Urahara says mildly. “They were a bit confused on the specifics of your plan.”

“Didn’t tell them,” Ichigo replies. “Aizen’s planning to make an Ouken.”

Isshin goes stiff as a board next to her. Urahara’s hat drops over his face to hide his eyes. Hirako’s smile is gone. 

“An Ouken?” Masaki prompts, addressing the various shinigami more than her son. It’s Ichigo who answers, though. 

“A key to the Soul King’s realm.” He’s meeting her eyes now with that piercingly gold gaze, steady-voiced. “It’s made by destroying ten thousand souls inside the jureichi— a place where spiritual energy is especially strong in the World of the Living. Right now, that place is Karakura Town.”

Masaki’s mouth doesn’t quite drop open, but it’s a close thing. Ichigo’s commander wants to what?

“Shit,” Hirako says, sitting back. “That’s…fuck, that’s a hell of a lot bigger than a few Hollowfied shinigami.”

“Or a few shinigami-fied Hollows,” Ichigo agrees. “We’re the distraction. He’s going to send us into the Seireitei with the senkaimon while he creates the Ouken in Karakura, then go up to the Soul King’s palace while the Gotei are busy killing us. Like I said. Nice guy. Really cares about his army. Can’t imagine why half his top echelon is trying to stab him in the back.” The sardonic twist to his mouth isn’t quite a smile. “We’d like to avoid unnecessary deaths. And, personally, I’d like to avoid my hometown getting chewed up. I might not remember ninety percent of my life here, but home is home.”

Masaki decides then and there that Ichigo is coming home whether he thinks he belongs or not. She will show him he still has a place in this family. Her daughters have done a wonderful job already. It’s time she and Isshin pulled their weight. 

“What do you consider necessary?” Urahara inquires. 

Ichigo falls silent for a moment, thinking, then says “The Doble Filo have five of the top six Espada. The strongest one loyal to Aizen is ranked Cuatra. Seven through Ten are either loyal, crazy, or both. There’s three shinigami captains: Aizen, Tousen, and Ichimaru, though who the fuck ever knows what Ichimaru is thinking. Aizen won’t give up unless he’s dead. That’s eight, at most. Less if we can convince any of the Espada to stand down. Grimmjow’s been trying to piss off Ulquiorra into admitting he has feelings, but it’s not going very well. Zommari’s a zealot, Szayel’s absolutely fucked in the head, Aaroniero…well, I don’t know what he’s going to do, frankly. I don’t think he knows. Yammy’s just a violent idiot who thinks he’s strong because he’s big.” Ichigo shrugs. “I doubt any of them will flip, but we’re trying.”

This is, obviously, much sounder reasoning than Urahara expected. He sits back, processing, with his eyes hidden by his hat. It’s reassuring to Masaki too. Her son is in there somewhere. She’d known that, but, well, this is new to her. The last time she saw Ichigo, he was held back by Isshin and Urahara, grieving and not understanding why. Now he’s…still not human, but she sees flashes of his personality. Minimizing deaths. Protecting his sisters.

“If you want to help, we’ll take it, on the condition Seireitei doesn’t hear shit about this until after Aizen’s dead,” Ichigo adds. “Them finding us is inevitable, but we can’t handle them and Aizen at the same time.”

And the Seireitei, Masaki knows, would wipe them out, or would try. Wouldn’t stop to question why they were shinigami-shaped or why they were speaking and reasoning. Ichigo’s gaze is grim, like he knows too.

“...Lot of us have soul-memories of shinigami,” he answers the unasked question. “Enough to know how they think. That one smells Hollow, too, and he’s sure as shit not part of Seireitei.” He indicates Hirako with a jerk of his head. “Don’t know why you’re so jumpy around me when he hasn’t snapped and eaten you all yet.”

Tact forgotten in the heat of the moment, as always.

“Forgive our caution,” Urahara replies smoothly. “Hirako-san has spent a considerable amount of time taming his inner Hollow. He’s often described it as, hm…”

“Feral,” Hirako completes with a grimace. “Ain’t the same, Strawberry. Ours were forced on us, weren’t born to it like you. Glad you found yourself. Really. We spent hours beating the shit out of ours in our inner worlds before they finally admitted they were beaten and let us bury them. Mine tried real hard to eat Kisuke, actually, when he was still workin’ out the details of how to bind them.”

Ichigo just tilts his head and says “Huh.” He shrugs. “Sorry you’re scared of it. I’m not.”

Masaki feels Karin’s shoulders shake again with a laugh she’s desperately trying not to let out. Hirako goes for the sword he doesn’t currently have and growls in frustration when he remembers he’s disarmed. 

“The issue of accepting our inner Hollows aside,” Urahara says diplomatically, “you say you want Aizen dead. Wonderful. We agree there. What’s your plan?”

“Steal the Hogyoku and stage a coup,” Ichigo responds promptly. “The main problem is getting access to Aizen. It pretty much has to be when he’s asleep, because all of us have seen his damn sword release– complete hypnosis, he can make you see and feel whatever the hell he wants. You have to have seen his release command at least once, so obviously he makes sure all the new arrancar see it. Pain in the ass. Problem is, Aizen doesn’t sleep in Hueco Mundo. None of the shinigami do. And a high-ranking Hollow in the Seireitei…”

“Would set off every alarm and get you instantly killed, yes,” Urahara finishes. “At best.”

“So we’re stuck waiting for him to slip up for now,” Ichigo concludes. “We can handle the other Espada and the shinigami, but Aizen’s damned zanpakuto…no.”

“Hear hear to that,” Hirako says, pretending to raise a glass. “Same problem on our end. Nobody powerful enough to take on Aizen who hasn’t seen his release. Now that we’ve all established we’re useless…”

“Nobody can be perfect all the time,” Ichigo replies. “He’ll slip, and when he does, we’ll be ready.” His teeth flash again, all short fangs. “Satisfied?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about useless,” Urahara drawls. He pulls a bundle of cloth out from his bag. It looks like a raincoat to Masaki, but Hirako sits up, and Ichigo looks at it curiously. “This was something of an emergency backup plan, but if he’s truly plotting to create an Ouken…well, it may be time.”

“Hell is that?” Ichigo asks, leaning forward. “Feels like you cut your own hand off where you’re holding it.”

“Very astute of you,” Urahara compliments. “It’s a reiatsu-concealing cloak. Something I was developing for the Onmitsukido, before my exile. It can hide a soul’s reiatsu completely, so long as they can fit under the fabric. You’re a bit taller than me, Kurosaki-san, but if you give me a little time…”

“Seriously?” Ichigo stares. “What about my…” He taps his horn.

“We’ll simply cover it in the same fabric,” Urahara answers easily. “Really, Kurosaki-san, do try to keep up.”

Masaki frowns. She doesn’t like the idea of Ichigo being the one to risk himself. She knows Urahara blames himself, partly, for Ichigo’s Hollowfication. Agonized over the would’ve-could’ve-should’ves for weeks, only sleeping when Yoruichi managed to slip something into his tea. But now that Ichigo is in front of him again, he’s folded him into his layers of plans easily.

Perhaps it’s because Urahara has also picked up that Ichigo’s no child anymore. Or perhaps he’s simply put his personal feelings aside. 

“Now, you may not get to all three of the traitors with this, so I would recommend prioritizing Aizen,” Urahara continues. “With any luck, the other two will reveal themselves, and if not, I suspect the remaining Doble Filo can handle them? Excellent. Isshin-san and I will brief you on the captains and lieutenants before you go. Give me, oh, a week or so.”

“A week?” Ichigo makes a face. “Fine. We’ve been waiting for years, a week’s not bad. Be fast, though, Hat’n’Clogs. Aizen’s ramping up recently.”

“Hang on, why does it have to be Ichi-nii?” Karin demands. “Why not you, Urahara-san, or one of the Visored?” Her daughter took the words right out of her mouth.

“Like I’d let anyone else do this,” Ichigo says, reaching out to ruffle her hair. “I’ll be fine, Karin.”

“Biggest problem is getting in and out,” Hirako says, more helpfully. “We can threaten the local shinigami into making us a senkaimon, but whoever goes in has to get out under their own power. A Hollow has the best chance of that. None of our zanpakuto are keyed to the senkaimon— the way into Soul Society, never mind Seireitei itself— anymore. None of the Visored can make a garganta, either. We use our masks to enhance our shikai and bankai, and that’s it. Nothing that comes from Hollows works for us.”

“I can handle this,” Ichigo tells Karin again. “Don’t worry. He’ll be dead before he ever sees me.”

Masaki believes him. Her little boy, who used to cry when he was punched at the dojo, might only be fifteen now, but it seems like he’s aged centuries. Considering the way Hollows consume others’ memories, she supposes he likely has. This Ichigo is used to killing, and not concerned with the blood on his hands. She can’t treat him like the little boy who tried to get between his parents and a Hollow. 

She can treat him like her son, though.

“Will you come home, after?” Masaki asks. Feels everyone in the room’s attention on her and Ichigo. For his part, Ichigo blinks.

“Huh?”

“When you’ve taken care of Aizen,” Masaki says, gently. “Will you come back home?”

“Uh,” Ichigo says, looking at her like she’s declared herself queen of Hueco Mundo, “I’m dead, Mom. I– I’ll visit, if it’s…if it won’t cause trouble for you all, but I can’t–”

“You’re not dead,” Karin interrupts. Ichigo’s visible eye softens as he looks at her.

“I am, though,” he disagrees gently. “I’m a soul, Karin. Though I’ve kept growing, which is nice. Would’ve hated being nine for the rest of eternity.”

“Yeah, you kept growing because you’re not dead,” Karin says. Masaki sees her fists close in her lap. “Just…Just come look, Ichi-nii.” She stands. Yuzu does too. Masaki decides to follow, making a stay gesture to Isshin. Too many of them will make Ichigo feel crowded and cornered.

Ichigo gets to his feet, clearly confused but willing to play along, and the twins lead him up to his old room and pull it open.

He stops dead. Fair enough, Masaki thinks. It’s not every day you see your own body in a coma. She can see Karin taking it in. She hasn’t been in Ichigo’s room in a long time. It’s the same, except in all the ways it isn’t. All the furniture is still there, except his bed. He has a hospital bed instead, to make turning him and changing IV’s and all that easier. He’s got a tube down his throat to feed his body, an IV in his arm, and other things to maintain his body. Isshin uses kido to simulate being awake more than most coma patients manage, so he’s not too badly underweight, and he has a decent bit of muscle on him. His heart beats steadily on the monitor, and his chest rises and falls in a slow rhythm. The book Yuzu was reading him last month rests on the bedside table, a bookmark sticking out. He’s covered in a cheerful blue blanket with his arms and head out. His hair is trimmed short and spiky. 

Ichigo stands absolutely still, staring at his body, and then says “...I need to go.”

“Ichi–”

Ichigo holds out a hand and his sword flies to him (politely coming up the stairs instead of through the wall). Yuzu and Karin both flinch, but he just puts it back on his belt and claws open a garganta right there in his old bedroom. His body’s heart rate speeds up, just for a minute, and then slows back down again as the hole in reality snaps shut behind him.

Maybe, Masaki thinks, she should have saved that conversation for later.

Nel is curled up sound asleep with no idea where her boss is, because she is merely fracción and if her Espada says I’m going out, don’t follow me, then she sits herself down and doesn’t worry about what he’s doing. 

Especially since she knows. If Aizen asks, however, she can say he just said he was going out and be nowhere near a lie. Zan— Ichigo’s careful that way. He doesn’t pull in anyone deeper if he can avoid it. 

So she’s asleep and her Espada is elsewhere, until abruptly a garganta snaps open and her Espada falls straight on top of her in a tangle of limbs. His hood is down and his reiatsu is wild, lashing out, and she elbows him in the throat. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing, dropping into my bed like this? Get ahold of yourself!” 

She hears a hgrk— and he must be really out of it if his hierro is so thin she can get him with an elbow, no reiryoku behind it whatsoever. “..Nel?”

“The one and only,” Nel confirms. She shoves him to the side of her bed and sits up, taking him in. There’s almost no light, but her night vision is just as good as any Hollow’s has to be in Hueco Mundo, and she sees him fine. Sees that he’s a mess. His fingers are clawed and kneading in her blankets and his eyes are glowing molten gold. She’s not sure he knows he does that, but it’s always an adjustment, seeing the yellow light thrown onto his cheek and spilling from his mask. Pieces of his hair fall forward, and he’s breathing hard. “What happened? Who hurt you?” Nel is a pacifist, but if there’s one person or cause she’d take up arms and unseal Gamuza for, it’s Ichigo. She remembers long, clawed fingers spinning reishi from the air, weaving it and smoothing it over her mask. Remembers feeling better than she had in years and then snap ping back to her adult self, her reiryoku finally held in properly again. Her real self. 

Remembers her fracción crying and Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez wearing an expression of utter disgusted confusion and an oddly human Hollow staring at her through a full, flat mask. 

She hadn’t wanted to be an Espada again, and the Hollow had heard her out, nodded, and said “Protect.” A strange word in a strange Hollow’s mouth, a vasto lorde who heals a stranger’s cracked mask instead of eating them like anyone else would have. 

Of course, then he’d ripped Nnoitra to shreds and won himself a spot in the Espada and claimed her and Dondochakka and Pesche as fracción, which is considerably more normal Hollow behavior. Even then, though, he’d done that out of anger for what Nnoitra did to her. For a stranger. Someone he’d only just met. Someone he’d healed and fed and decided to keep.

And now he’s shaking through a panic attack in her bed in the middle of the night. She pulls herself back to the present. Ichigo’s breath is still fast and shallow. She spreads a hand over his back, a grounding touch. “Ichigo,” she says quietly. “Ichigo.”

“Nel,” he rasps. 

“Me,” Nel agrees. “With me?”

“Soon. …Let your reiatsu out a bit?” His own is calming, but not calm, and it’s an easy request to indulge. Feeling another Hollow’s reiatsu like this, close and soft and safe, is something fracción do for each other. Real fracción, the packs that form in the desert of Hueco Mundo. Even Hollows don’t all walk alone. Hunting as a pack is only sensible. Those who hunt solo are either very strong or very stupid.

So she lets a little reiatsu loose, and Ichigo sighs as it smooths the sharp edges still in his. She waits a few minutes, then says again, “Ichigo?”

“Here,” he says, sounding tired but present. He pushes himself up, gets all the way to sitting against her headboard. He doesn’t bother rolling off the bed. They aren’t lovers by any stretch and, jokes aside, everyone knows it. Especially not now that Nel knows he’s a tiny little baby. Fifteen. Fifteen! A vasto lorde at nine! She loves Ichigo fiercely, probably always will. Her younger-older brother. Her family. But when they share a bed, it’s only to sleep in a pile together, Ichigo’s horn safely tucked under padding. 

“So I’m not dead,” Ichigo says, pulling his sword off his back and settling it on his lap. His glowing gold eyes look up, watching her.

Nel blinks. Looks at the Hollow hole on his chest like there’s any chance it went anywhere in the last few hours. Decides this is probably not some kind of delayed denial phase and says “What do you mean?”

“You know I’ve grown since I met you,” Ichigo starts. She tries not to smile at the memory. He shot up like a weed, to the collective amusement of the Espada, and he’s still gangly and half-grown like a teenager. Szayel had thrown his hands up and complained about how Ichigo’s reiryoku levels threw off every test he had. His best guess was that his insanely strong power was trying to give his soul the ability to better withstand and draw on it. “So…good news, I found out why! Bad news: it’s because my body isn’t dead, Nel!”

Nel shushes his half-whispered scream before he brings someone down on them. Then what he said registers. She stares. “…Your body?”

Ichigo throws his entire self into a frantic nod. 

“Your human body?”

“Yes, Nel, my living, human body.”

“Hm,” Nel says. “…That’s…” Well, that certainly is. She had no idea humans could do that. The Chain of Fate snapping and falling out-- which it must have, because Ichigo has a Hollow hole, dead center of his chest-- is supposed to be a death sentence.

“I saw my own body comatose in a hospital bed,” Ichigo says, voice cracking. “That’s fucked up. Not a gigai like the shinigami use. My actual, real body, that I thought fucking died when I turned Hollow. Because Hollows are dead!” His eyes are wild, far too much white showing around his softly flickering iris. “Nel, what the hell am I supposed to do with a human body?”

“Um,” Nel says, and then presses him down with her reiatsu, because he needs to calm down before he wakes up the entirety of Las Noches. His reiatsu is hilariously strong, stronger than any other arrancar, and if it gets loose, the lower-ranking arrancar will have trouble. Not to mention the shinigami will want to know why the Quinta is losing it so comprehensively. He could crush her, but he doesn’t, leans into the gentle pressure. “Usually, I think you…live in it?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Ichigo mutters. 

“I’m not. Why is this bad? You have a family, parents, sisters that make you cookies. Sisters who, incidentally, looked at you, you, in all your scary Hollow glory, Mr. ‘regularly shows up the Segunda and would probably show up Primera if he wasn’t too lazy to spar,’ and coaxed you in like a stray cat.” She ruffles his hair. It’s always short on top, rebelliously sticking up even though it’s down to his ass in the back. Like only half of it grew.

“I’m not human.”

“No,” Nel agrees. “But neither are they.” A shinigami, two Quincy, and a kido-wielding human. The youngest two of which saw her, a former Espada herself, and tried to square up with her for their brother. Their dead brother with a Hollow hole through his chest. “They know what you are.”

“Nel, my dad thought I was going to eat them.”

“Did you?”

“No!”

Nel hums. “So your sisters know you, and love you, and your father will get there. And your mother?”

“Can’t tell,” Ichigo admits. “Doesn’t smell scared of me.”

“Three out of four! That’s a passing grade, isn’t it?” Nel asks. “That’s more than half!”

“Come on, Nel.” Ichigo shakes his head. “They’re just young and naive. If it hadn’t been me, they’d be dead by now. And considering what I pulled today, I’ll be lucky if I haven’t gone backward with them.”

This is news to her. “What did you do?”

“Some assholes tried to start a fight with them,” Ichigo mutters. “I might’ve tossed one in the air and threatened him a little bit.”

Nel considers. “Well, that’s much milder than your usual problem-solving,” she points out, which makes Ichigo laugh.

“Even if my family was okay with it, am I seriously supposed to go to school like a normal kid?” He scoffs. “Make friends with humans? Join a club?”

“Well, if you hate it, you can just run back to Hueco Mundo,” Nel points out. “But why not try it? You’re very good with people, for a Hollow. Your reiatsu is well controlled, and humans don’t notice that sort of thing anyway.” She smiles at him. “You’re younger than any of us ever imagined, Ichigo. You ought to get to grow up.”

“I can’t,” Ichigo says, glowing golden eyes looking straight at Nel. “Stop it. I… can’t.”

Because he’s afraid he might hurt a human, might hurt his family. Nel pulls him into a hug and croons, safety, den, calm. Ichigo leans into it, conscientiously keeping his horn away as always, and lets out a quiet rumbling purr in response. 

She loves Ichigo. Always will. Part of her little pack, with Pesche and Dondochakka. The latter two are more devoted to her than anyone else, but they appreciate Ichigo keeping her safe. It works. Ichigo’s pack. He’s usually the one protecting them, and she’s glad for the chance to repay him. She keeps crooning to him until he falls asleep, and then she puts him under the blankets, pulls Zangetsu (snapping teeth at her as usual) out of his slack hand, and props it against the wall where Ichigo can see it.

Then she goes to steal Ichigo’s bed. Fair is fair.

Chapter Text

Ichigo hates waiting, but he sits and waits as instructed. He misses his family– mostly his sisters, if he’s being honest, but his mom and dad too. He quietly informs the other Doble Filo that they’re making their move in a week, that they need to prepare. Nobody is happy about Ichigo going alone, but he successfully argues that he’s the best candidate.

“They know me at least a little,” he tells Harribel, blocking her slash. They’re outside Las Noches, under Hueco Mundo’s moon, sparring. Well, ‘sparring.’ Unsealed, Ichigo is basically just letting Harribel come at him with everything she has in an attempt to break through his hierro. “Plus, you guys have to be ready. There’s no way Aizen doesn’t have some kind of fucking twisty backup plan in case he goes down. This reiatsu-concealing cloak is a good enough chance to take, but we can’t put all our hopes on it.”

“I’d prefer not to risk you,” Harribel replies, aiming for the opposite horn he gets in resurrección. “Why not send Nelliel?”

“Besides her being a pacifist, she’s not as strong as me,” Ichigo says, ducking the attempted horn-severing. “I’m our best chance at taking Aizen out. He might have a plan, but I bet it doesn’t include us being able to enter Seireitei. Plus, if we have to fight our way out, I’m the best choice. You know I’m right. Don’t start getting weird about me just because I’m young.” Nel would take this, if he asked. He knows she would. She would put on that cloak and kill Aizen.

He’s not going to ask. Not when part of him wants blood from Aizen for what he’s done. Not when the plan is to kill Aizen like a common Hollow got to him. It would cost Nel something to do it, and it costs Ichigo nothing. Ichigo might be a little better at hiding it than Grimmjow, but there’s a reason they’re sparring partners: nobody else can take the way they commit.

“Would I coddle you?” Harribel inquires. He takes the hit she lands on his (unguarded) shoulder in recompense, not that it gets anywhere near breaking his hierro. “We don’t have the luxury. You’re correct that you are the strongest of us, but this is not a mission I would send any single arrancar on.”

“Just get ready for trouble,” Ichigo says, exhaling. “I don’t think it’s going to go that smoothly. Bad feeling.”

It turns out the bad feeling is entirely warranted. Two days after his visit to Karakura, some random arrancar knocks at his quarters to deliver Aizen-sama’s polite request for a meeting at Zangetsu-sama’s convenience. That means immediately, so Ichigo leaves a note for Nel and walks off like a good, loyal Espada who drops everything for his commander. He unbuttons his hood on the way, letting his bright hair free. Just in case. He’d rather be seen than not, if he’s going to an individual meeting with Aizen. The other Doble Filo need to know.

He knocks and waits to be let in. “Zangetsu,” Aizen says, smiling at him. “So prompt! Thank you for meeting with me.”

“Of course, Aizen-sama.” It’s getting harder to bite his tongue as the week goes on, but he has a lot of practice. He bows, only straightening when Aizen gestures him inside, and stands at attention by Aizen’s desk. “What can I do for you?”

“Hmm, hopefully satisfy my curiosity,” Aizen says. That politician’s smile is firmly in place. “Two days ago, an unauthorized garganta opened inside Las Noches, in your fracción’s quarters. Your reiatsu was felt shortly after, in clear distress. Yet nothing was reported.”

Shit. Stay calm. Stick to the plan. He talked with Harribel and Barragan about this possibility. They know travel in and out of Las Noches is monitored.

“It was nothing worth bothering you about, Aizen-sama,” Ichigo says, dropping his eyes, letting his hair shadow his face. “I simply went hunting and stopped to rest, and I had…a nightmare, I suppose? I woke up wanting to get to safety, panicked, and misaimed my garganta. Wrong side of the hallway.” He laughs, nervous, aiming to sound embarrassed. The Quinta Espada shouldn’t be admitting to something like this. It stings his pride, even though it’s a lie. “Nel calmed me down. I felt like a real idiot, after. Didn’t even catch the Hollow I was hunting.”

“A shame,” Aizen says, all genial, oily sympathy. “A nightmare? It’s rare that any arrancar reports that.”

“We have them,” Ichigo answers, easily. Honestly. “But admitting that weakness in such a cutthroat place…well, can you imagine how Grimmjow, for example, would react?”

Aizen smiles. “Indeed. Then it’s a personal matter, and I’ll leave it to you. Before you go, there’s one more errand I need you for.”

“Aizen-sama?”

Aizen pushes aside a privacy screen, and Ichigo’s stomach drops through his feet. 

Black hair. Gray eyes. 

His baby sister, Kurosaki Karin, is tied against the wall and gagged, duct tape of all things over her mouth. There’s fury in her eyes, glaring at Aizen…and Ichigo, which makes his Hollow hole hurt . She doesn’t know him. She’s seen Kyoka Suigetsu, then, and whatever he looks like, it’s not himself. She’s bruised, and Ichigo feels Ossan practically sit on Zangetsu and channel calm, calm, calm, fighting to keep their reiatsu under control.

“A…child, Aizen-sama?” he asks, after a long moment studying Karin. “Isn’t this one of the ones in the jureichi?”

“That she is,” Aizen says easily enough. “She was causing some trouble, so I sent one or two of the lower-ranked arrancar to capture her. You were correct that menos are beyond her abilities.”

Karin makes an angry noise and yanks on what’s keeping her against the wall. Sekkiseki. He can feel the cool stone from here. No kido, no reiryoku. 

“I don’t understand what you requested me for,” Ichigo says, internally struggling to keep his face impassive. 

“I thought you’d enjoy meeting somebody like you,” Aizen says, strolling over and sliding his hand into Karin’s hair, forcing her chin up. She glares a hole through him. “She’s a hybrid, like yourself. Shinigami, Hollow, and Quincy.” His grip tightens when she tries to headbutt him. Good girl, Zangetsu hisses appreciatively in his head. Ichigo can’t say he disagrees. “Far less strongly Hollow, but I’m certain we can remedy that.”

“If she’s working against you, why would you want her in your army?” Ichigo asks, genuinely confused. It’s probably just a pretense to see if he’ll react, but he can’t help it. 

“Not for you to worry about.” Aizen bends down and rips the tape off Karin’s mouth. Ichigo winces internally, seeing the irritated skin. “Introduce yourself, won’t you?”

“Go to hell!” Karin shouts. Aizen simply pushes her down by her hair and gestures to him to go ahead. 

“Quinta Espada, Zangetsu.” He doesn’t bow, not to a captive, does his best to keep his face cold and impassive.

“The hell you are,” Karin says immediately. “I— I’ve seen the Quinta, and you a-aren’t him.”

“Oh, did she catch you on surveillance?” Aizen asks, amused. 

“Her sister tried to kill me,” Ichigo says (lazy, like he doesn’t care, like they’re nothing to him). “This little Quincy kid with a toy bow. It was cute. This one showed up to rescue her, it didn’t work, I got bored and left.” Lying 101: stick to the truth whenever possible.

Aizen nods. Karin blinks, blinks again. Whatever she heard, it’s not what he said.

“Y-you killed him?” Fucking Kyoka Suigetsu. 

“So, she’s for Szayel?” Ichigo asks, ignoring the knots in his stomach at the thought of giving his little sister to that creep. “Glad he’s finally got another hybrid to obsess over.”

“Indeed. However, his capacity will be limited. I believe she will be far stronger as an arrancar, and I would like you to take charge of her.” Aizen smiles at him, like this is a treat. “Strange souls ought to stick together, no?”

This is possibly the cruelest thing Aizen could do to him and he knows it. Having to treat his sister like any other prisoner. Making him watch her Hollowfication. He knows, he knows he’s made contact with his family, and this is his response. Leverage. Giving him his sister as fracción, knowing that she thinks he’s his own killer. He sees the threat, too. Put another toe out of line, and they’ll be separated. Ichigo considers his fracción family and under his protection, something the whole of Las Noches knows after the way he announced himself. Karin will be relatively safe with him, even if she hates him. Without him, she’d have to contend with the números all on her own, a fracción fallen out of favor. Fair game. 

How did he—

That garganta he opened. Straight from the Kurosaki Clinic, Karakura Town, into Las Noches. He’s a fucking idiot. Might as well have painted I REMEMBER MY FAMILY on a banner and hung it from his sword. 

“She’s got fire,” Ichigo agrees, neutral. “We’ll see how she does.”

“Let me out of these stupid things and I’ll show you how I do!” Karin shouts, furious, jerking forward. Her face twists in pain. Broken leg, Ichigo thinks, or maybe a fracture in her upper arm. Or both. Either way, she falls back against the wall, panting.

“So where am I taking her?” Ichigo asks, trying to sound bored and not like he wants to pick his sister up and take her out of here, out of Hueco Mundo, home.

“Well, I thought I’d give you the honor of officially welcoming her to the spirit world,” Aizen says, with the particular twist of his lips he gets when he’s entertained.

Fuck, she’s in her body. He hadn’t noticed. Stupid. He can’t afford to miss things right now.

Aizen reaches down and yanks at Karin’s chest, dragging her soul form out by the Chain of Fate. Karin shouts, half-swearing and half in pain, as he tosses her soul on the ground. “Break it.”

Oh.

Ichigo can’t quite hear if Aizen says anything else, all his attention fixed on Karin’s soul. The sekkiseki’s transferred to her spirit form, and she’s rolled over to take her weight off her bad side. 

Ichigo counts to ten in his head. He feels like someone’s put a hook through his Hollow hole and yanked. He might not remember most of his human life, but he loves his sisters. He knows he does the same way he knows how to hunt. It’s a fundamental part of him. He loves them.

He loves them, and he’s being asked to kill one of them.

If we don’t, we won’t be able to kill the bastard, Zangetsu says, anger tightly leashed, simmering under his words. He doesn’t like this any more than Ichigo does. He’ll kill her himself an’ throw you to Szayel. And probably torture the rest of the traitors outta you.

Right now, all Aizen knows is that he went to Karakura again, that he saw his family, that he most likely remembers his family. This is calculated to make him fall in line, to tell him he doesn’t get to have a life outside of his service to Aizen. That if he tries, Aizen will kill and twist his family. If Aizen thought they were planning to kill him, he would have taken Ichigo’s entire family and strung them up in front of him.

Not helping.

“Zangetsu,” Aizen prompts, that oily-slick-smooth voice sliding through his ears. 

Karin looks up at him as he steps forward. There’s still anger in her eyes, but she’s trembling and trying to guard her Chain of Fate. Ichigo keeps his expression carefully neutral. Ossan helps, smoothing calm reiatsu over his troubled ocean of power, taking the edge off. 

He draws his sword.

Karin flinches back.

Aizen smirks.

It takes everything Ichigo has not to drive Zangetsu hilt-deep into Aizen. He can’t. He can’t. He’s as vulnerable to Kyoka Suigetsu as everyone else. He can’t even be sure if Aizen’s really standing there. He could be a couple of centimeters left, right, back. Hell, he could be outside the room entirely. Kyoka Suigetsu’s range is stupid. Which he knows, because Aizen loves turning his release off and on occasionally to fuck with them. The number of times the world’s tilted around him obnoxiously, everything spasming slightly out of place…

“Don’t,” Karin says, barely a whisper. 

I’m sorry, Karin. 

Ichigo brings Zangetsu down, blade-first, shattering the chain easily. Karin cries out as the chain on the body vanishes and the sound of ringing steel resounds.

“I’ll take care of preserving the body,” Aizen says easily. “Why don’t you take your new fracción to her quarters? Post a guard, of course. Szayelaporro will keep you up-to-date on the progression of her Hollowfication.”

Ichigo blinks. “Preserving?”

“Mm,” Aizen agrees. “I’ve always wondered what would happen if you attempted to force a Hollow soul into a human body. An experiment for a later time. You are dismissed, Zangetsu.”

“Aizen-sama,” Ichigo responds with a short bow (at least her body is alive, at least Szayel doesn’t have it). He looks down at Karin. “Can you walk?”

Karin grits her teeth and braces with her good arm, but the second she puts weight on her leg, she yelps and falls back down, breathing hard.

“Don’t say you can if you can’t,” Ichigo scolds, reaching down and pulling her into a bridal carry, ignoring her efforts to kick him in the face. “Cut that out.” At least being kind to his fracción is in character for him. He can’t show too much kindness toward her, but he’s known for his staunch defense of Nel, Pesche, and Dondochakka. He takes those under his protection seriously. It won’t stand out that he’s not forcing her to walk or hurting her more. He nods to Aizen and walks out, Karin in his arms.

The second the door shuts behind him, he exhales through his nose and starts walking briskly. “We’ll set your arm and leg when we get there,” he says. He wants to now, but he can’t with both his arms occupied, and carrying her over his shoulder would jar the broken bones. 

“Don’t pretend you give a shit,” Karin spits at him.

“You’re my responsibility,” Ichigo goes with, instead of I’m your goddamn brother. “You’ll be staying in my hall, with the rest of my fracción.” Figure it out, he begs in his head. He’s told Karin what Kyoka Suigetsu does. Whatever he looks like now…she’ll see Nel, and put it together. She has to. He can’t give her any blatant hints, because Aizen altering his speech in front of her means he’s expected to keep up the charade. He’d rather she hate him and be with him than be thrown to the wolves of Las Noches. But she’s smart. She’ll get it. She has to. 

“I wish you’d killed me,” Karin says, going limp in his arms and looking dully up at the ceiling. “I’d prefer that to this.”

“Your wishes don’t override Aizen-sama’s commands,” Ichigo replies, fighting the urge to throw up. Aizen-sama’s commands. Fuck.

He has to keep her alive and make sure Aizen doesn’t have any further reason to suspect him. He has to go through with the plan.

Once Aizen’s dead, Karin can do whatever she wants to him for his part in this.

Karin’s heart is in her throat.

Her Chain clinks softly as the new Quinta walks, keeping his eyes forward, deliberately not looking at her.

Long black hair, chest covered in bandages that wind around his mouth and nose. One arm free with black estigma spiraling down it. Tall and broader-shouldered than Ichi-nii. Red eyes. Scary, and she hates him for it, wants to punch him and pull his hair until he’s got no power over her anymore. 

“Nel!” he calls. His voice is muffled and distorted by the bandages. Is that where his mask fragment is?

Nel. Ichi-nii’s former fracción. She’s alive. Alive, but serving the piece of shit that killed her brother. So much for I’ll take care of him.

Nel comes out of a door across the hallway. Her eyes widen when they land on Karin. “Is that…”

“One of the kids from the jureichi,” Quinta says, in a tone that almost sounds like he’s warning her. “She’ll be down the hall from you. Szayel’s going to come check on her, but don’t let anybody else in. You, Pesche, and Dondochakka will be taking shifts guarding her. Eight on, sixteen off.”

Nel’s eyes flicker from Karin to Quinta, and she bows. “Of course, Quinta-sama.”

“Take her,” Quinta says shortly, holding Karin out. Nel takes her with no apparent sign of strain. “Get her arm and leg splinted. Stop her if she attacks or tries to escape.” He strides off like the kind of asshole who always thinks he has something more important to do. Karin grinds her teeth.

“With me, then,” Nel says, effortlessly shifting her to a one-arm carry. It’s gentle, but it still hurts, and she can’t entirely stop a pathetic puppy-whimper. “I’m sorry. We’ll fix your arm and leg in a moment.”

“You’re sorry?” Karin growls. “Shove your sorry up your ass, you–”

Nel jostles her just enough that the end of her sentence is lost in another whine of pain. That was absolutely on purpose. Two-faced little snake.

“Be polite,” Nel admonishes, opening a door and carrying her in. It’s…nice, as jails go. One window way too high to climb to and barred besides, a bed, a table and a chair. Everything is eye-searingly white. There’s an obvious camera in the corner, watching. “You’ll be staying here, like…Quinta-sama said. I’m going to put you down and set your leg and arm.” She makes an effort to put Karin down gently, which Karin rewards with an attempt to bite Nel’s nose off. Nel doesn’t seem offended, just pushes her down onto the bed and rummages around in the room’s small closet.

“I can’t believe you,” Karin hisses, unwilling to let this kind of betrayal go. “What are you doing serving him?”

Nel pauses, then comes back, first-aid supplies in her arms. “Sling,” she says, unhooking the chain that connects Karin’s sekkiseki bracelets and carefully guiding her bad arm into the sling. Karin’s about to bite again, but then she feels a tap on her wrist, deliberate and hidden by the sling.

Nel makes eye contact with her and taps five more times, fast. Then she repeats, one-five.

One-five.

Ichi-go.

What is that supposed to mean? That Nel remembers him? That he’s not dead? If he’s not dead, where is he? Is it just supposed to settle her down and stop her snarling?

She can’t give Ichi-nii away, even in death. He had allies. Friends. Maybe they can finish what Ichi-nii started. And whatever Nel’s game is, she’s not saying it out loud, which means she’s not just here to serve the new Quinta. 

Nel wraps some cloth around her leg, using wood dowels to stabilize it. It’s not great– Karin’s own healing kido could do better if she wasn’t bound in sekkiseki. “Don’t try to walk on that,” she advises. 

“So is my job just to lie here and wait until I turn into a Hollow?” Nel visibly winces at that.

“...Szayel-san will probably speed the Encroachment up,” Nel answers after a pained pause. “Do you know what that means?”

“It’s how souls turn into Hollows,” Karin says. She’s not an idiot. “The Chain falls out of the soul’s chest.”

Nel gives one silent nod. “It’s going to hurt,” she says softly. “Don’t touch your Chain. The last link grows teeth and eats the one above, and they’ll bite your hands if you interfere. When they’re all gone…well, that’s when the Chain falls out.” Her face is drawn, probably remembering her own Encroachment. “I won’t lie and say it’s easy or pleasant, but we’ll do our best to keep you comfortable.”

“Don’t try and make me feel better,” Karin says flatly. “You’re sitting there and telling me my Chain’s going to eat itself and you’re going to watch. Don’t pretend to care.”

Nel’s eyes squeeze shut, such naked pain on her face that Karin nearly feels bad. Nearly. She’s right. She won’t back down just because Nel feels bad . Nel is helping the new Quinta, the one who killed Ichi-nii. Nel is helping kill her.

If it’s to avenge Ichi-nii, finish what he started, Karin might forgive her. But she doesn’t know for sure, and everything so far points to Nel betraying Ichi-nii.

“I’m not pretending,” she says, so quietly Karin barely hears it, and then gets up and walks out, closing and locking the door behind her.

Sure she’s not.

Nel brings her a pink-haired arrancar who immediately gives her rancid vibes an hour later. “This is Szayelaporro Granz, the Octava Espada,” she  says. “He’ll be…overseeing the process as your soul changes.”

“Pleased to meet you, Kurosaki Karin,” Szayelaporro (what a name) says, sweeping into a mocking bow. “Nelliel, dismissed. Go trot off to your guard duty.”

Nel hesitates. Karin glares at her. Whatever Nel thinks she owes Karin, she doesn’t need her. Especially not if Ichi-nii really is dead. 

“Yes, Szayelaporro-sama,” Nel says eventually, bowing and retreating. 

“Well, then, let’s get started. Child, I assume you’re aware of the goal here?”

“Hollowfication,” Karin says, tracking him out of the corner of her eye. 

“Correct! I’ll begin by gathering baseline data. You are, of course, welcome to resist, but I would advise against it. Encroachment is quite unpleasant enough without adding crushed bones and snapped tendons into the equation.” His eyes linger on her splinted leg. 

Cooperate or he’ll hurt her. She inhales-exhales deep, like when they meditate, and nods to show she understands. Tries her best to calm her heart, which hasn’t stopped pounding since she got jumped on the way home from soccer. She’d flared her reiatsu, but nobody had been fast enough to find her. Hopefully they at least know where she is.

Szayel proceeds to act weirdly normal. He takes her blood pressure, heartbeat, checks her eyes and ears and throat. He has her read a chart of letters. It’s like any number of doctor’s visits she’s had in her eleven years. He even does the reflex hammer on her good leg, and she wishes she could kick him with it, but he stands well out of the way.

“A healthy young human soul,” he pronounces. “And a mix of shinigami, Quincy, and Hollow. Aren’t you an interesting one? I’ve only ever met one other like you. Quincies and Hollows shouldn’t coexist, you know.”

Karin stays silent. Of course she knows. 

“Now, let me lay out the procedure for you,” Szayel says, flipping a page on his clipboard over. “Over the next seventy-two hours, your Chain of Fate should begin decaying and eventually fall away from you. I’m interested to see if your body maintains life when your Hollowfication is complete, and if so, if you can go back to it. As a Hollow, you very likely will lose your memory. Do tell me if you manage to hold on to anything from your human life.” He smiles at her, a smile that she suspects is supposed to be friendly and instead comes across sadistic. “As you’re the Quinta’s future fracción, we’ll be treating you gently. However, should you attempt to resist, Aizen-sama has authorized me to use whatever force I deem necessary to subdue you and complete the process. Do you understand?”

Karin nods, this time because she doesn’t have anything else to say. 

“Excellent! Hold out your arm for me.” He doesn’t wait for her to do so, drawing out a capped syringe from a pocket in his weird lab coat.

“...What’s that for?” Karin asks, shrinking away on instinct. She’s never liked needles.

“This is to kick-start the decay process,” Szayel explains. “Natural Encroachment takes months to years to complete, and unfortunately for you, we don’t have that sort of time. Hold out your arm.”

Karin hits the limit of her tolerance and ability to pretend she’s cooperating. “No. I don’t…I don’t want this, I want to go home.”

“Hold out your arm or I will simply tie you down and inject it myself,” Szayel says, the false geniality vanishing like ice in summer. “Your wants are irrelevant. You are Aizen-sama’s prisoner and subject to his wishes. You should be grateful. He’s giving you the chance to turn from a weak human to a menos-grade Hollow.”

Grateful, like her human life was some sort of trap. Like this was a form of strength anyone would ever choose. 

She holds out her arm and watches Szayel. He moves with practiced motions, and she barely feels the needle go in. The plunger going down, though, feels like fire spreading in her arm, and she snatches it away as soon as he lets her.

“Do try to stay in view of the cameras,” Szayel throws over his shoulder on the way out. “Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to visit in person.”

Karin doesn’t hear him. Her arm burns like fire ants, and tears gather in her eyes. She won’t scream. She won’t. The burning spreads across her body, until her only choice is to fall back on the bed and muffle her sounds into the pillow they’ve left her. It hurts. Not even the time Yuzu accidentally shot her with a kido spell hurt this badly. 

And then she feels teeth biting her Chain of Fate, and she loses the battle to stay silent, her pride forgotten in the face of the onslaught. The pillow absorbs her sound and her tears. She wants her mom. She wants Yuzu. She wants Ichi-nii. She’d even take Dad. She wants to be at home with her family, doing her stupid English homework, washing dishes, vacuuming, doing the laundry. She wants her life back.

The Chain finally stops eating itself (she can’t tell how long it’s been), and she collapses, panting into the pillow. She’s sweaty and gross, her hair sticking to her neck and forehead. How many more times is that going to happen…?

She contemplates counting the links on her Chain of Fate, then decides she doesn’t want to know.

Seventy-two hours.

A soft knock on the door. Karin ignores it, but she hears it open anyway. She turns over and sees Nel carrying a tray of food. “Not hungry.”

“Please try to eat,” Nel says, setting the tray down. “You should have at least a few hours before the next Encroachment. You need your strength.”

Karin turns away pointedly. She’s not having this good cop/bad cop shit. 

“I’ll leave it with you,” Nel says. Karin hates how gentle she’s being, how soft, like Karin actually matters to her. “If you—“

Karin snaps. 

She’s up and swinging a fist at Nel before she can think through the repercussions. Nel catches it, easily, stopping it cold.

“Stop,” Karin chokes out. “Stop it. Stop acting like I matter to you. Let me go!” Nel’s other hand is on her shoulder, gripping firmly and keeping her from standing. “Let me go!”

“I can’t,” Nel whispers. “Stop fighting, please.”

Give up like Nel did. Karin bares her teeth and struggles against the arrancar’s strength. Nel has far more leverage than her, is much stronger, but she has to try. She has to. 

Nel switches tactics and lets go, only to grab her in a bear hug and lean. She’s careful to stay away from the fractured leg and arm, but Karin still feels crushed into the bed. 

“He’s alive,” Nel whispers into her ear, so quiet she almost doesn’t hear it. She goes dead still. “He’s alive, and it’s killing him that we can’t save you.” Then, louder, for the cameras, “If I let you up, will you behave?”

Karin grunts, which Nel decides to take as a yes. She lets go and backs off, arms folded. “You’re part of our fracción now, and we take care of our own. If you attack again, Szayel-sama might decide you’re dangerous.” Those hazel-gray eyes hold a warning. “Don’t.”

She leaves with that. Karin turns to the food. Tamagoyaki and rice with soy sauce. Her favorite, when she was much younger. Her favorite as far as Ichi-nii knows. 

Alive. Everything shifts, knowing that.

Alive and can’t help her, because he has to kill Aizen. Aizen who is taunting him with her presence and her Hollowfication. Aizen who must have realized he remembers being Kurosaki Ichigo. 

Ichi-nii is alive. Nel is still Ichi-nii’s fracción. They’re not pretending to care for her. They just can’t save her.

It’s killing him.

She takes a deep breath and starts eating the tamagoyaki.

Only way out is through. If she’s alive, she has a chance. She’s nowhere near as strong a Quincy as Yuzu, not a balanced soul like Ichi-nii is (was). She takes after her father, Yuzu takes after their mom. Hollowfication might not kill her. 

Well, it will, but it might kill her in a way that leaves her able to fight at the end.

Ichigo listens to Karin’s muffled screams in a numb, detached haze. His sister. His little sister. He did this. He broke her Chain. He can’t go in and comfort her, can’t do anything to help.

He flicks open Urahara’s phone. Ichigo’s room is the one place in Las Noches that definitely isn’t bugged or concealing cameras. He knows this because his ambient reiatsu has a tendency to short them out when it flares, and it flares often. Szayel gave up a long time ago. It’s not like the pink asshole can look at all the cameras, all the time, but they tend to assume their conversation is bugged if they aren’t in a known blind spot that they’ve checked and cleared. 

…That’s probably how they noticed him coming into Nel’s room. As upset as he was, he almost definitely broke the surveillance in her room. He hadn’t been trying to, though it might be a good thing he did. He’d been too out of it to mind his words.

Not trusting his voice, he navigates to Urahara (the only contact on this phone) and types Karin captured, alive for now, hurry one painstaking kana at a time. The phone buzzes barely two minutes later. 

3 days at most

God, he can’t stand this delay. If he had any chance of facing Aizen, he’d go kill the bastard right now. Szayel too. His sister is dying right next to him and he can’t fucking do anything.

A soft hand on his back. Nel.

“Pesche is keeping watch,” she says before he can scold her. “The first Encroachment is over. We’re bringing her food. Do you remember what she likes?”

Ichigo closes his eyes to sort through his clouded memories. “Nothing spicy.” Yuzu, to everyone’s amusement, was the one with the spice tolerance. “She likes tamagoyaki. Eggs in general. Soy sauce in her rice.”

“Okay,” Nel says. She pulls him into a hug, and he doesn’t protest. “We’ll take care of her, Ichigo.”

“Like it matters what you feed her when she’s Hollowfying,” Ichigo says tiredly. 

“Even a small comfort helps when you’re all alone.” Nel ruffles his hair, and for once, he doesn’t shove her for it. “Now get out of here. I’ll send one of the other Espada to need you for something. Don’t argue,” she adds when Ichigo stiffens. 

“I’m not going to leave Karin—“

“We’ll stand watch,” Nel says, gentle but firm. “We need you sharp for the mission. That’s how you’re going to help Karin-chan.”

Ichigo growls. She’s right. He knows she’s right. He still hates it with every fiber of his possessive, greedy, people-hoarding Hollow being. 

Nel leaves him, and for a time— five minutes or five hours, who can tell— he’s alone. Suspended in time, waiting to hear his sister, stand witness as the only thing he can do. 

Knock on his door. “Zangetsu! Get your ass up, we’re goin’ hunting.”

Grimmjow. 

Ichigo gets up and opens the door, glowering at Grimmjow for show. “Oh, we are? Nice of you to decide that for me.”

“I’m a generous soul,” Grimmjow replies, grinning teeth-out. “Got anything else to do? No? Then don’t bitch.”

“Ugh. You only want me because Harribel steals your kills,” Ichigo complains. He’s getting up, though. Nel and Pesche and Dondochakka have Karin, he reminds himself. 

“Heard you lost your last prey from Nelliel,” Grimmjow says with a smirk. “Figure you could use some help.”

“Fuck off, I’ll get one first and you’ll be lucky if I share with you.” They take off once they’re out of the hallway maze, using sonído to get to the edge and waving off the arrancar on duty. Then they’re free to really stretch their legs. 

“Grind, Pantera!”

“Bleach, Zangetsu!”

Settling into his released form feels great. Balanced again, tail back. It’s worth the shinigami outfit. 

“So?” Grimmjow asks, loping at his side. “Nelliel found me, said get you out of Las Noches. What’s the big emergency?”

“Aizen’s got Karin,” Ichigo says, then adds, “My sister.” Grimmjow’s good with names when he cares, but he usually doesn’t care. 

“Huh. Fuck. Alive?”

“Chain’s broken. Szayel’s forcing Encroachment.”

Grimmjow whistles through his fanged teeth. “Damn. Five days left, yeah?”

“Three. They’re speeding up with Karin gone. Aizen’s giving her to me, once Szayel’s done Hollowfying her, but she saw Kyoka Suigetsu. She doesn’t know me. Dunno what I look like to her, but it’s not familiar at all. She thinks I killed…me.” His pronouns are failing him.

“Aizen can’t keep that up forever. She’s yours, she’ll be fine. You’re sturdy motherfuckers. Fuck’s sake, you became a vasto lorde and then an arrancar, and your human family still talks to you. All of you are insane.”

“In good company, aren’t we?” Ichigo jokes. “How many sane people do you know?”

“Tch. Sanity gets you eaten. I’ll spread the word. We need to get you her camera feed?”

It’s nice that Grimmjow just gets Ichigo’s rabid Hollow protective instincts, knows how much it eats at him to have a pack member in danger. Much less to leave her there and not move heaven and Hell to take her back.  

“No. She’s…next door.”

Grimmjow hisses through his teeth. “Mid-Encroachment? Damn, Aizen really wanted to fuck you up.”

“Tell me about it,” Ichigo mutters. 

Grimmjow, thankfully, leaves it there, loping along hunting with him. He accepts the exercise, but shakes his head when they bring down a Hollow together. 

“Not hungry.”

“The hell you aren’t hungry, we’ve been using sonído for hours. Eat.”

“If I eat right now I’m gonna become the first Hollow to ever puke,” Ichigo says, flat. He’s already making history as the first Hollow to ever refuse a meal, probably, but he can’t regress and he genuinely doesn’t think he can eat. 

Grimmjow eyes him up and down, decides he means it, shrugs and eats the rest himself. They stay out a while afterward, until Ichigo’s stumbling with exhaustion and has to exit his resurrección. At least he’s too tired to worry anymore. Grimmjow’s good at getting him out of his head. 

Still, when he gets back to his hall and Pesche tells him softly Karin’s had a second Encroachment, it’s all he can do to nod, thank Pesche for the update, and collapse into his bed. He doesn’t bother with the pillow for his horn. Who cares if his bed gets torn up? Karin’s dying.

Chapter Text

Ichigo has never been more conflicted in his life. Or his death. Or whatever the fuck his current existence qualifies as. 

On his phone, ten minutes ago, is a message from Urahara saying simply ready. Next door, his sister hasn’t stopped howling in a quarter-hour. The Encroachments keep getting longer, getting worse, the shorter her Chain gets. 

Every single cell in his body is telling him to go, go help his little sister, protect her, what is he doing? and he’s suddenly very glad the other Doble Filo have insisted on keeping an eye on him. It’s a thinly veiled way of saying we think you’ll run off to save her if we don’t guard you, which, well, he would. 

“She’s strong,” Grimmjow says gruffly from his spot sitting on Ichigo’s desk. “She’ll make it.”

“I should’ve…”

“Should’ve what? Rescued her? With Aizen controlling what you see, feel, and hear?” Grimmjow’s voice has that particular ruthless edge he gets when he thinks someone’s being especially stupid. “Worse, controlling what she sees and hears? Don’t be an idiot. Focus on the plan. We’ll handle her. Deal with your massive goddamn guilt complex after this is all done.”

Grimmjow’s right, but Ichigo still throws a pillow at him. Unsurprisingly, Pantera slices it in half. 

“Bout time for you to go,” Grimmjow says, nodding to the window. “Get out. Leave the damn phone.” Ichigo hesitates, and Grimmjow scowls and yanks him upright by his shoulders. “Go. You wouldn’t let any of us handle this shit. Don’t skip out now.”

Ichigo glares at him, shoves the phone into his stupid sculpted chest. “Give it to Nel.”

“Don’t give me orders, now fuckin’ go.” Grimmjow shoves him out of his own window, and Ichigo yells obscenities back at him before making a show of storming off. Nothing to see here, just the resident idiots arguing again. 

Five days after his panicked escape from the room with his dead body in it, and two-and-a-half days after Karin’s capture, he returns to Karakura.

The familiarity of this place is disorienting. He’s not entirely sure where to go– it’s in the evening, after Yuzu gets out of school. Hopefully they’re at home. He starts walking. His feet know the way, even if his mind doesn’t.

Yuzu waits for him outside their house. The minute she sees him, she bursts into tears and opens her arms in a demand for a hug that he happily indulges. “Ichi-nii! K- Karin, i-i-is sh-she…”

“She’s alive,” Ichigo says, squeezing Yuzu as tight as he dares. “She’s hurting, she’ll need you, but she’s alive.” He makes the executive decision to keep the details to himself. Yuzu doesn’t need the extra burden of knowing Karin’s mid-Hollowfication, especially not right before Ichigo leaves on what could charitably be called a suicide mission. He’d told Urahara, so Isshin and Masaki know, but he doubts Yuzu does. 

“Alive,” Yuzu repeats into his shoulder. “Okay.” She clings another second, then lets him go. “Urahara-san’s waiting.”

Ichigo nods. “Show me.”

When they arrive at the shop, Urahara’s sword is out and pointed at the shinigami who nominally guards Karakura Town. He’s wrapped in kido on top of the sword. “Isn’t that a little excessive?”

“You can never be too careful!” Urahara says cheerfully. Looking at him more closely, he clearly hasn’t slept since Karin was taken. Ichigo’s estimation of him rises slightly. “Hello, Ichigo-san. Ready?”

“Got the cloak?” Isshin tosses it to him, and he unfolds it and puts it on. It’s thorough, floor-length, with a hood that’s had a hole cut for his horn. He does up all the buttons, clips it shut, accepts the cover for the horn. “Did it have to have a drawstring?”

“You’re no fun, Ichigo-san.”

Ichigo sighs and pulls the drawstring tight around the base of his horn, threading it under the hood. His hair is back in a braid that Nel did for him, because Nel has the trick of getting hair to stay where she puts it. Ichigo does not, and this mission is too important to be given away by his bright-ass hair.

(Harribel had suggested dyeing it, but he’d bristled hard enough that she immediately backed off.)

“Good, you’re completely invisible.” Urahara nods. “To reiatsu at least. Stay out of sight. Aizen captains the Fifth Division. The cloak ought to get you past most wards. Move quickly and silently, and come back as soon as you can. If you aren’t back by sunrise, we’ll assume you’re captured and plan accordingly.”

Ichigo nods. He figured. “Nel’s got the phone you gave me, and your number. It’s off right now, but she’ll turn it on tomorrow to check for updates, and send you a message about how things are going for the Doble Filo. And Karin.”

“Ichigo,” Isshin says softly. He looks at Ichigo, expression unreadable. “Make sure you come back.”

“I will,” Ichigo promises. “The others know Karin’s the first priority. Starrk— the Primera— is going after Szayel personally.” He really hadn’t liked hearing that Aizen had captured a living child and then forced her to Hollowfy. It’s rare to see Starrk truly angry, but that had done it. 

“I know you’ll make sure your sister will,” Isshin says. “Make sure you come back.”

Oh.

Thank god Urahara interrupts before he has to respond to that. “Well, then, Afro-san, you’re up!” Urahara waves his hand and dissolves the kido, still leveling his sword against his throat. “Would you kindly open us a senkaimon?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I won’t!” Afro-san spits. “I’ve ignored you, Urahara, and your little candy shop, and you rewarded my kindness by kidnapping me! And now you want me to let a Hollow into Seireitei?”

“Awaken, Benihime,” Urahara responds.

That blood-sharp reiatsu drops on the room. Ichigo isn’t nine anymore, but he still jerks. Last time he felt that reiatsu up close, he was a brand-new, frightened Hollow sent running by a shinigami bankai. Benihime, huh? He took that sword out of his cane, but it looks too big to fit back in now, shimmering with bloodred reiatsu. It hasn’t left Afro-san’s throat.

“W-whoa, damn it, fine! I’ll do it, p-put that away!”

“The senkaimon first, if you please.” Urahara’s tone hasn’t changed at all, still bright and cheerful, pleasant like he’s not half a breath and a slip from killing Afro-san.

“R-right.” Afro-san raises his sword, eyes flicking between Benihime, Urahara, Ichigo, and Isshin (who has his hand on his zanpakuto’s hilt, but hasn’t taken it out). “E-easy now. Simply…”

He eases his sword forward, and half the blade vanishes. Ichigo tilts his head. Now that’s weird. Two doors appear as he turns his blade parallel to the ground, and open for him.

“T-that will let you out Soul Society’s official senkaimon,” Afro-san stutters. “B-by the First Division.”

“Thanks,” Ichigo says, throwing him a quick salute and running forward. He hears “Bind, Benihime!” behind him and winces in sympathy. Urahara’s reiatsu really is unpleasant when you’re on the receiving end. Still, nobody ever died from being uncomfortable. He hurries– he’s heard of the dangai before, and it’s as gross and sludgy as advertised. He uses sonido to get through it in short little hops, exits in a longer jump that makes him simply never appear to the gate guards, and hides.

“Wh…did the senkaimon just open for nothing?”

“Must be having another glitch. Let Twelfth know.”

“The captain?”

“Soul King, no. Do you want Captain Kurotsuchi out here on your shift? Me neither. One of the lower seated officers.”

Ichigo turns away. He’s more or less invisible, especially with sonído and the cloak hiding his reiatsu. Still, he has no idea where the Fifth Division is, so he can’t go too quickly. This paradise of shinigami is way too fucking big, and he sees exactly where Aizen got the all-white look of Las Noches from. His lip curls. The more things change…

Not his problem. His pesquisa is nearly useless with so many strong signatures, but Aizen’s reiatsu is literally etched into his skin. He finds it, orients, and proceeds to lose his fucking mind.

This place is a damned maze. He desperately wants to blast through a few walls, jump over a roof, do something. But he has to be stealthy, and that means he has to play by the shinigami rules. No damage. Nothing that might be seen. So he makes his way through, always searching for a way to get closer to Aizen, even though it takes him hours. Probably hours. The sky here changes, unlike Hueco Mundo’s, and he keeps an eye on it. The night’s half-gone by the time he finds Aizen’s barracks.

Almost there. Zangetsu sits up and pays attention, and Ichigo lets his teeth sharpen into serrated points. Like fuck he’s using a sword on Aizen. He wants him to die knowing damn well it was one of his soldiers, one of the Hollows he kept down and tried to tame.

He climbs the wall, careful, careful-careful, and slides into the window. Aizen is there, sleeping, eyes closed in peace. He sleeps on his back, Ichigo notes. Arrogant bastard. So convinced he’s invincible, untouchable.

He holds his reiatsu close, even with the cloak. His night-sight shows him Aizen in shades of silver and black and gray, but he doesn’t need his eyes to find his prey’s vulnerable neck. 

It crunches when he bites into it, and blood sprays everywhere. Aizen’s body shudders, thrashes, and Ichigo grimly holds on. His death throes are only making it worse, honestly. He’s going to have to find water to wash his face before he can face his sisters. They don’t need to know how he killed Aizen. (He’s sure Urahara and his parents will figure it out.)

Reiatsu coils around him. Ichigo rips away, spits his mouthful out. Like hell he’s eating Aizen. Fucker might be strong, but he is not invited to Ichigo’s soul. 

Oh, but aren’t I already there?

Aizen’s lifeless eyes stare at him, throat a bloody ruin, the echo of his voice in Ichigo’s head.

Ichigo’s tattoo sears, and his legs give out. “Augh!” Fuck, fuck . The reiatsu Aizen left in the brand feels like it’s spreading, blooming, tearing him apart from the inside out. He feels it root in his chest where his heart used to be, burning so hot his ribs feel like they’re going to crisp and melt.

He remembers Yuzu being worried about it. He should have listened to her. 

His little pity party gets interrupted by the clanging of an alarm bell. Shit. Apparently they’re smart enough to monitor the Captain-class sources of reiatsu, and one just vanished. Between the alarms and his tattoo, he needs to retreat approximately five minutes ago. He swipes weakly at the air to create a garganta. 

His fingers catch on nothing.

He tries again. Again. Again. Gets to his feet when it doesn’t work. He has to get out of here. They’ll come straight to Aizen’s quarters and find the very, very dead body, clearly mauled by a Hollow. That’s the other reason Ichigo didn’t use Zangetsu. He doesn’t want to accidentally start a witch hunt. 

He gets to the window and drops heavily out. Lights are turning on, shinigami are running, and he feels like he’s burning alive. This is bad. This is not quite the nightmare scenario (Aizen is dead, he’s dead, he’s dead), but it’s not ideal. 

Get it together, King! Zangetsu snaps. You gotta get us out of here.

“Trying,” he mutters. “Garganta won’t work.”

Better threaten a shinigami real fast, then!

Yeah, he feels threatening right now. Big scary Espada who can barely stand up straight.

The brand on his neck switches tactics, all the glowing heat inside him going sharp-edged and tearing wherever it touches. He can’t possibly have glass actually shredding him apart from the inside, but fuck, it feels like it. 

We’ve got to turn this damn thing off or we’re not getting anywhere. 

Ossan ‘n I’ll do our best. Get moving.

His spirits do something, redistribute the foreign reiatsu in his body and contain it so that it’s only a ball of glass in his stomach, not stabbing into his lungs and head and heart. It’s enough to walk. He hobbles along, jumps on the first roof he sees and crawls. All the shinigami are in groups, ten or twenty or more. No good. He can’t subdue twenty shinigami— well, he could, but at the moment it would take a lot of energy that really should be going toward his escape. If he can just get to the edge of Seireitei… the wards are meant to keep people out, not in. It has to be a pure accident that gargantas can’t be opened here, a result of a thousand years of wards layered on top of each other. But there’s probably no wards against people just jumping over the wall from this side. Probably. He hopes. This mission has gone to shit. 

“…please, Captain, there are plenty of people on the ground. I’m sure Captain Aizen is just fine. I know you’ve pushed yourself already today.”

“Thank you for your kindness, Rukia-chan,” another voice replies, one that sounds gentle. More importantly, they sound (almost) alone. Ichigo crawls forward. He won’t mess with a captain, but the shinigami talking to him…he can handle one little shinigami. 

Very little, he realizes, looking down. The shinigami arguing with her captain must be twenty centimeters shorter than him. He can’t make out much— white hair gleaming in the light on one side, black hair swallowing it on the other. Black shihakusho. White haori. Sealed zanpakuto. 

White hair. Long. Must be Ukitake. Urahara had called him a voice of moderation and reason. Old, he said, but popular and well-liked for his kindness. Also sick, but shouldn’t be underestimated. If he just waits for the man to leave…

“I’m afraid, however, my work is not done for the evening,” Ukitake continues. He looks up, casually, right where Ichigo is hiding. Fuck. He’s been made, somehow. This cloak should completely mask him, but Ukitake knows there’s someone else here. “Won’t you come down, stranger-san?”

“Captain…?” The short one draws her zanpakuto. 

“It’s very good, that technique you’re using,” Ukitake continues, entirely conversational. “I’m certain it would fool most. If it weren’t for the way you disrupt the reishi currents slightly, you’d be perfectly hidden. Are you the cause of the alarm?”

Fuck it, Ichigo decides, and drops down, drawing Zangetsu with a rasp of steel. It fucking hurts to move still, but he clenches his teeth and breathes through it.

“Intruder!” the short one barks. “State your name and business at once.”

“Sure you want to know?” Ichigo asks, unclasping the hood one-handed. It’s too big for him, and with it off, his face isn’t nearly as obscured. His mask gleams in the moonlight of Soul Society. He pulls the cover off his horn and stuffs it in a pocket. 

He smiles, bares bloody teeth.

“A Hollow in Seireitei,” Midget says. To her credit, her zanpakuto doesn’t lower or waver. “Captain…”

“Rukia-chan, alert the nearest squad of an intruder into the Seireitei,” Ukitake orders in a frankly transparent effort to get the foot soldier the hell out of there.

“Captain…”

“Go!” Ukitake faces Ichigo, still without his zanpakuto. “Hello, stranger-san.”

Absolutely not. He’s not fighting a captain if he doesn’t have to. He takes one step in sonído toward Midget (who, unwisely, has drawn her own sword instead of leaving), and Ukitake immediately matches him. Shit. That’s nowhere near his top speed, but he can’t go much faster right now. 

The bristling curl of glass in his stomach picks that exact moment to rebel against Zangetsu and Ossan. Ichigo doubles over with a pained groan. It’s admitting weakness, but he didn’t expect it. 

“Hm. You’re hurting,” Ukitake observes. “May I?”

“Don’t touch me.” Ichigo pulls himself back together and ignores the way the glass feels like it’s slowly coiling tighter, compressing like a snake before it strikes. “Get out of my way.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” the captain says apologetically. “That’s my officer, you see, and I really can’t have you going after her. Could I offer you some tea?”

This man’s insane. Urahara was wrong. Ichigo focuses his reiatsu around Zangetsu, lips already forming the release phrase. “Bl—“

The hot glass in his stomach shatters and tears into him all over again. He fucking trips, barely catching himself before he eats dirt, and howls in pain, two-voiced screeches ripping through the air. Probably alerted everyone to his location, but that battle’s lost anyway. He looks glassy-eyed up at Ukitake, who isn’t approaching, but is eyeing him with some kind of pity.

Fucking shinigami.

“Stranger-san, please,” Ukitake says in a voice most commonly used on feral cats. There’s a genuine note of concern in there, and that’s what convinces him. He’s not going to function in this level of pain very long. He can give them a hint, or he can die tortured by his dead boss’s shitty kido.

He fumbles with his braid. His hands are hot and cold and numb, and moving them feels like walking through a haystack made of needles, but he manages to yank it back over his horn, baring his nape. Prays Ukitake isn’t the kind of person to take advantage of a fallen opponent. 

Ukitake kneels next to him. “Your neck? Let me—“ Ichigo feels him probe the tattoo with his own reiatsu and has to fight the urge to hiss. He hates people touching the back of his neck. Hates baring a weakness like this. Ukitake could snap his spine and he’d never have time to fight back. 

“Rukia!” Ukitake calls. “Find the Fourth, and the Kido Corps. Now!” That finally gets Midget to run like she was told to. “Now, Hollow-san, what could you be doing with Captain Aizen’s reiatsu in a tattoo?”

He’s going to have to figure that one out himself. There’s black nibbling at the edges of Ichigo’s vision. He pulls away from Ukitake’s touch, losing the battle with the hissssss , and Ukitake lets him go. Maybe he’s figured out that Ichigo’s at his limit, or he just knows better than to manhandle Hollows.

After that he catches snippets, at best. He hears Midget calling for her captain. He hears voices saying “…incredibly intricate…” “…the sensory effects…” “…could Captain Aizen really…?” He hurts, hurts too much to move, and whatever his spirits did, they can’t do it again. He feels them trying, but the kido’s far too strong.

“…is that a mask? He’s a Hollow?”

Oh boy. 

“…can’t be…”

“…got a zanpakuto…”

Lucky it’s him and not Grimmjow. If anyone called Pantera a zanpakuto, they’d lose an ear, even with this awful boiling heat trying its best to keep him still. It’s technically correct, and Ichigo doesn’t care, but Grimmjow is adamant that zanpakuto are for shinigami. 

Something goes on his wrists that blocks the hot glass near-totally. Ichigo opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing. White. Las Noches? Did he…no, that’s sekkiseki on his wrists. Seireitei, then.

A woman kneels in front of him, hand glowing with a diagnostic kido. Her hair, braided around her face and down her chest, and calm smile say harmless, but Ichigo’s pretty good with sensing reiatsu, and hers is more like choosing to be harmless right now. 

He jerks back automatically. His thoughts feel scattered. He feels weak. He hasn’t been denied access to his power since it woke, and without it curled in his chest, he’s effectively human. Especially since Zangetsu, his sword, is gone. He could bite, if he had to, if one of them is stupid enough to get close. 

“Unmistakably Captains Aizen, Ichimaru, and Kaname,” the braided-hair captain announces to, apparently, the general universe. “Hello,” she adds to him with a smile he doesn’t buy for a second. “I am Captain Unohana Retsu of Squad Four. I was called in to assist when it became clear you were…indisposed.”

Can’t interrogate him if he can’t talk. Makes sense. Honestly, he’s tempted to give them some answers just for taking the hurt away, but that’s exactly what they’re hoping for. 

“The kido in your tattoo feeds off your own reiatsu,” Unohana tells him. “We’ve sealed as much of it as possible to cancel its effect.”

They’re really playing nice with him. He expected them to stab first and ask questions later. Maybe he looked too pathetic to kill. 

Opening his mouth here is probably a bad idea, but he does it anyway. “Cut the shit. You sealed me because I’m strong and killed your captain.”

“That was a factor,” Unohana agrees, mouth curling up in apparent amusement. Ichigo revises his threat estimate upward. Don’t underestimate Unohana, Urahara had warned. “But I am, first and foremost, a healer. I treat anyone brought to me.”

How nice of her to not just let him die. And simultaneously make sure that he can’t try to escape, because escape means breaking these cuffs. If he breaks the cuffs, he’s going to be incapacitated again. He’s pretty sure he could break them if he vented enough reiatsu, but he wouldn’t even make it to the door. 

He’s well and truly stuck. He can’t even wait for the kido will eat all his reiryoku and kill him, because he has way too much reiryoku for that. Starving him for the next decade might, possibly, do it.

“How are you feeling?” Unohana prompts. 

Like a pancake that got run over, but hell if he’s admitting that. He glares, and she just smiles and stands up. “Do let someone know if the pain comes back,” she offers as she exits the cell. 

After that he gets to stare at the ceiling for a while. It’s not a bad cell, as they go. There’s a bed, a toilet, and a sink. He tries the door, and the midget from before calls, “Don’t even think about it, Hollow.”

“Think you could take me, midget?”

He hears a scoff. “Take you? I carried you in there, idiot.”

“That doesn’t count!”

“I think you’ll find it does.”

So he’s got a guard. A guard, weirdly. Midget’s the only voice he hears. He supposes that’s all he really needs when he’s sealed and human, but it’s still pretty wild. He killed one of their captains, in pretty much the messiest possible way.

He goes to the sink and scrubs most of the dried blood off his face and mask. Ugh. Gross. But that takes up maybe fifteen minutes, and then he’s back to pacing. They didn’t even take his clothes. He’s still wearing his hooded jacket and hakama, though his boots have gone missing. So has Urahara’s cloak. Probably getting picked apart somewhere while they try to figure out how it works. 

He has no idea how long it’s been. It felt like a small eternity when the kido in his tattoo activated, but time turns slippery and unreliable in that much pain. There’s no window, no clock, no anything. He can’t do jinzen without his sword. 

“Hey, Shrimp, is the sun up yet?” he yells at the door. He doesn’t get an answer. Expected. Ugh. 

“She does have a name, you know,” comes a new voice from the doorway. Ukitake, again. “Excuse the intrusion, Hollow-san. Are you well now?”

Is he… He just stares blankly at the strange captain. “If you mean is Aizen’s kido still trying to torture me, yeah, it is, but your healer found a workaround.”

“Sekkiseki,” Ukitake says with a nod. “An unpleasant feeling, I know. Hopefully we’ll be able to locate Ichimaru or Kaname soon. In the meantime, I wonder if you could fill in some gaps for me.” He sits against the wall, like he’s safe, like there’s not a Hollow standing in front of him. 

This is a really fucking weird interrogation. “Gaps,” Ichigo repeats. He’s not going to make this easy for them. They want information? They’d better know what to ask. 

“Who gave you that tattoo?” Ukitake asks. Ichigo can’t quite mimic Grimmjow’s contemptuously slow cat blink, but he does his best. 

“Aizen.” Obviously. Zero points for starting with a question he obviously knows the answer to.

“Why?”

That’s harder to answer. “Control,” he settles on, shrugging. “He liked showing ownership.”

“Forgive me,” Ukitake says slowly. “I have served with Aizen for a long time. He was well-liked, kind to his subordinates. To hear this, to feel Aizen’s reiatsu in such a cruel thing as this brand…”

“Guy was a slimy piece of shit,” Ichigo answers. “He didn’t show you who he was. He showed us.”

“Ah. More of you, then? At least four, I presume.”

“Define me.”

“A Hollow with a shinigami’s blade.”

Ichigo grins, his make my day, try and fight me grin. “Hundreds.” Let them think Hueco Mundo is full of terrifyingly strong arrancar. They need to start negotiating on even ground, especially since he’s out of the game. He’s one of their strongest. 

The other Doble Filo will handle it, he reminds himself. His job is to sit here and wait to be rescued and not start any more diplomatic incidents. And try not to die, get tortured, become a lab rat, etc. Yeah, he has plenty to deal with. 

Ukitake hums. “Any idea where our missing captains might have gone?” His face stays pleasant and neutral, acting like this is just another offhand question. 

“Sure,” Ichigo says, and waits for Ukitake to figure out that’s all he’s getting. 

The captain takes out a handkerchief and coughs into it, folds it so the blood doesn’t show. Ichigo can’t see it, but he smells it, bright and fresh but soured with sickness. “We’d like to open negotiations,” he says at last. “Could you tell me, is Kurumadani-kun well?”

“Who?”

Ukitake sighs. “The shinigami who opened the senkaimon for you,” he supplies. “My Tenth Seat.”

“That guy’s a seated officer?” Ichigo can’t help his surprise. Yuzu’s a better fighter than Afro-san. “Yeah, he’s fine. Probably. Unless he tried something stupid.” He’s fairly sure Urahara and Benihime outclass Afro-san too thoroughly for him to try anything stupid, really. “He’s got a soul phone, doesn’t he?”

“I was just about to call it, in fact. Care to join me?” Ukitake asks, holding up another little flip phone like the one Urahara gave him. (The one he’d given to Nel.)

Ichigo does, kind of. This is going to be pretty fucking funny. He comes close enough to hear, keeping his back to the wall, and raises his visible eyebrow. Urahara flips his phone open and dials. 

It rings once. Twice. Three times. 

“You’ve reached the Urahara Shop, purveyor of candies and interesting novelties! This is Urahara Kisuke! How may I help you?”

Ukitake drops the phone and goes into a coughing fit, fumbling for his handkerchief. 

“Yo, Hat’n’Clogs,” Ichigo says, pulling the phone closer with his foot. “I think you broke Ukitake-san.” He picks it up and hands it back.

“I’m quite all right,” Ukitake protests, looking at his handkerchief and throwing it away in the room’s little trash, apparently deeming it beyond saving. “Captain Urahara?”

“I’m afraid I’m no captain anymore, Captain Ukitake. It’s a long story. What has Kurosaki-san told you?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. He wasn’t in a condition to speak— not due to anything we did to him,” Ukitake adds hastily. “That tattoo of his has a rather nasty kido woven into it that we’re holding at bay.”

“Kurosaki-san?” 

“Fine,” Ichigo confirms. “They handled it, but I’m sealed for now. Call the others, ask if they have the missing captains, warn them about the tattoos. How’s Afro-san?”

“Rather irritated with me, but well enough otherwise!” Urahara replies. “We’ll call back when we’re ready to begin negotiations. Do try not to start a war in the meantime.”

“Hey, only one of us was sentenced to death by the Seireitei and it wasn’t me!”

“Only for lack of opportunity, Kurosaki-san!”

“If they wanted to kill me they would have already. Aizen fucked me over.”

“Mmm, so you said. I did wonder about that brand, but you wouldn’t allow anyone close…”

“Still won’t. Fuck off.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll handle negotiations. We’ll call back, Captain Ukitake.”  

“Wait!” Ichigo blurts out. “Karin?”

“No news yet, I’m afraid.” The line beeps with the end-call noise. 

Ichigo exhales. Urahara’s on it. Nel will find Harribel and Barragan— Starrk might be strongest but he has less than no interest in leading— and tell them he’s alive. Hopefully they haven’t killed Ichimaru and Tousen yet. Hopefully Karin’s alive. He’s not looking forward to letting anyone near his neck. Better than his tongue like Nnoitra had, he supposes. 

“Well, you certainly come with quite a few ghosts,” Ukitake says, closing his phone in a practiced motion. “You look very much like a lieutenant of mine I lost to a Hollow. Kurosaki-san, was it?”

“Shiba Kaien, I know.” Poor Aaroniero. The guy’s so fucked that he even believes his own lies sometimes. Ichigo almost pities him, or he would if Aaroniero wasn’t such an unpleasant manipulator in general.

“But not a Shiba yourself, I take it.”

“Nobody told me if I am.” He hasn’t spent a lot of time wondering about his ancestry. Whatever made him shinigami-Hollow-Quincy-human, it’s not like he can change what he is. Knowing wouldn’t do anything. 

“And who’s Karin?” Ukitake asks. Ichigo glares, and he raises his hands, placating. “Simply an old man’s curiosity, Ichigo-san.”

“My sister,” Ichigo says through his teeth. 

Ukitake clearly doesn’t expect that answer. He nods and stands. “I will do what I can for you,” he tells Ichigo. “Unfortunately, it’s very likely they will allow Captain Kurotsuchi of Squad Twelve in. Do try not to kill him.”

Ichigo heard about Kurotsuchi. “No promises.”

That gets him a slight, knowing smile. “This area is guarded by my own division. Should you need assistance, merely call.”

Yeah fucking right. He nods anyway, with no intention of ever calling a shinigami for help, and watches Ukitake leave. Pulls himself into a corner and gathers his legs in so that if someone does come near him, he can kick them in the gut for it.

“Hello, arrancar-san!”

Like this guy. 

“Kurosaki Ichigo, yes?” The man who enters his little cell has a face painted black-and-white, blue hair, and looks like a living sarcophagus. Kurotsuchi Mayuri, Captain of Urahara’s old division. “I must say, I would have expected ‘orange’ over ‘strawberry,’ but who am I to question?” Real original there, shinigami captain. He’s never heard jokes about his hair before. Even from Nel and Grimmjow, who have, if possible, stupider hair than him (only Grimmjow could look threatening with pastel blue hair).

“Fuck off,” Ichigo answers with a sharp-toothed smile. He can feel traces of his own reiatsu around Kurotsuchi, which means… “Where’s my sword?”

“Safe, don’t worry! Where did a Hollow find a zanpakuto?”

“I didn’t find anything. He’s mine.” He bares his teeth to emphasize his point. Zangetsu is part of his soul, and he wants it back. “Surprised he didn’t kill you for touching him.”

“You’d be surprised how cooperative blades can be when the life of their wielder is on the line,” Kurotsuchi says, that unnatural smile getting wider somehow. “Though he’s an interesting spirit! I’ve never met a Hollow zanpakuto before.”

“We’re a miracle,” Ichigo says sarcastically. “I’m obviously a Hollow. Of course he’s one too.”

“So that’s typical of arrancar, then?”

“No idea. Never asked.” Sword spirits are private shit. He asked Grimmjow about Pantera, once, and took a cero to the face in answer. 

“Well then, Kurosaki-san, I’ll need some samples, and then I’ll leave you be for a while.” Kurotsuchi produces a needle and scissors, and Ichigo flinches automatically away. “Don’t be difficult, now.”

He fully intends to be difficult. He doesn’t have Zangetsu, and his hands are bound, but he growls and shows his teeth when Kurotsuchi comes closer. Fair warning, more than fair. Kurotsuchi ignores it and briskly clips off a lock of his hair, staying well clear of Ichigo’s jaws. He puts the strands of orange into a bag. 

Then he wipes down Ichigo’s arm with something cold and sharp-smelling (alcohol, his human memories tell him, disinfectant). He feels cornered. He tries kicking, and Kurotsuchi doesn’t flinch. No power behind it. So he waits for him to come closer and strikes, sinking his teeth through the white haori and into Kurotsuchi’s arm.

Tries, anyway. His fangs meet metal and stop, jarring him unpleasantly. Kurotsuchi smiles down at him like he’s a misbehaving pet. “A good try, Kurosaki-san. I’m afraid we’ve seen your teeth, however, and naturally I wouldn’t approach you without a way to neutralize them. Please stop thrashing. I do need that sample from you.”

Ichigo rips the sleeve of his haori just to be a dick, spitting it out on the floor. He can’t move away, and the part of him that’s all instinct and Hollow screams at that. Trapped. Helpless. At someone else’s mercy. Never good. 

Kurotsuchi slides the needle right past his hierro, a businesslike jab. Barely registers on Ichigo’s personal pain scale. He still snarls at the captain. 

“Now, now, be good,” Kurotsuchi tells him, all fake concern as he pulls the syringe out. He examines the blood. “Hm, surprisingly close to humans and shinigami in color. I expected it to be paler, based on your complexion. No matter.” The syringe vanishes somewhere, and Kurotsuchi pulls something else out, something with gleaming silver wire and straps. It’s only when he approaches again that Ichigo realizes it’s a fucking muzzle, and it's meant for him. He fights, jerks his head away, snaps his teeth and headbutts Kurotsuchi, but without reiatsu, it’s a delaying tactic at best. Kurotsuchi buckles it swiftly around his head. “Don’t give me that look,” he chides. “It’s very humane. You can speak, and even drink through a straw. What do you eat, Kurosaki-san?”

“Shithead shinigami captains,” Ichigo says with a smile. Like fuck he’s playing nice with the asshole who muzzled him. 

“You will insist on being difficult, then?” Kurotsuchi clicks his tongue. “I have no desire to harm you, Kurosaki-san. I’d much rather study you. I’ve been quite accommodating of you thus far!”

The condescension is almost worse than the outright sadism Urahara told him the man was capable of. Ichigo snorts. “Sure, accommodating. You have me in a fucking cell.”

“You did kill a captain unprovoked,” Kurotsuchi notes idly. “Or was it unprovoked? This seems rather…personal. To go so far as to sneak into Seireitei…”

Nah, Ichigo doesn’t feel like throwing this guy a bone. He turns his face away. After years around Barragan and Harribel, he can radiate disdain with the best of them. He knows how to express you’re not worth my time with his body. 

Kurotsuchi takes the dismissal, for now. Ichigo’s left alone with The Goddamn Muzzle. He tries to get it off, but it’s obviously reiatsu-keyed. Nobody else comes back for him, and he’s left to hope the other Doble Filo are handling things. That Karin’s all right, that the other two traitor Captains are in custody, that Urahara won’t just abandon him as a casualty.

If he has to, he’ll break these cuffs and the damn muzzle and kill as many of them as he can before someone gets in a lucky shot. But only if he has to. For now, he waits, lets himself slip into the half-aware sleep of all Hollows in Hueco Mundo. Asleep but not helpless, awake enough to chew on anything that tries to attack or hurt him.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Chapter Text

Something’s wrong. 

The weird clown guy and the one with the cloth eyepatch are both guarding her, and going to a great deal of trouble to act like everything is fine, but they’re awful liars. She feels reiatsu practically exploding everywhere, a feeling she associates with Dad and Urahara entering shikai, and clashing. Fighting. Some are fading, but she can’t tell which, doesn’t know any of them. 

Karin looks down at the few remaining links on her chain and wonders if she’ll find out what’s going on before or after she loses herself and turns Hollow. 

And then Nel bursts in. “Karin-chan!”

Karin blinks. Looks at the camera. “N-Nel…san?”

“Szayel’s dead,” Nel says immediately. “It’s okay. It’s okay now. Aizen’s dead too, and we have the other two traitors. Starrk-san took Szayel out, Grimmjow killed Yammy…” She must see the lack of comprehension on Karin’s face. “The point is, it’s okay.”

“If it’s okay, where’s Ichi-nii?” Karin demands, and Nel makes a face Karin’s used to seeing on adults, an I was hoping you wouldn’t ask face. 

“Captured,” she admits. Karin’s eyes narrow. That’s not okay at all. “But…but Urahara-san says they’re treating him well! We’re trying to trade the shinigami for him. Urahara-san says they spoke, that he’s under the care of the more reasonable shinigami and he’s fine so far. We’ll get him back. More importantly—“

Karin opens her mouth to say you’d better , but then all the remaining links on her Chain grow teeth and mouths at once, and she screams and falls over. 

“Karin-chan!” Nel is by her side at once, saying…something, some placating nonsense that doesn’t make it through the roar of pain and chewed-up metal and the anchor peeling away from her chest. Karin grits her teeth. 

She will survive this. Whatever she turns into, she will live. There’s no other option. She will see Yuzu again, Mom and Dad, their little shared room in their house. Ichi-nii got his sense of self back. She will too. 

“Karin-chan, listen,” Nel orders, her voice suddenly firm and commanding. “Listen to me. I’m taking these handcuffs off. Think of your father and Urahara-san and what they’ve taught you. You’re half-shinigami, yes? Find that power. Find it and pull on it. Urahara-san says that’s your best chance.” She feels Nel fiddling with the weird bracelet things that block her strength for a bare second before they spring open. 

Karin’s reiryoku returns in a vicious surge. It’s intoxicating after days without it, days spent helpless and hurting and furious. She embraces it even as the Chain comes loose from her chest. Her power. Her family. Her inheritance. 

She thinks of afternoons studying with Yuzu. Grass stains on her legs and socks. Sharing popsicles together in the summer. She thinks of her twin learning to throw a punch properly, learning to summon a bow, learning to shoot that bow while Karin memorized incantations and trained her reiryoku. 

Thinks of how they’re a matched pair, light and dark, Quincy and shinigami, and how Yuzu is far harder than you’d assume from looking at her but still so good. Remembers Yuzu teaching her to add reishi into the flour she was sifting, saying a little at a time, Karin-chan! and giggling when Karin added too much and sent flour flying everywhere. How she’d helped Karin clean up and let her try again without a word of complaint.

She thinks of Dad and his bumbling efforts at parenting. Explaining the shinigami and Hollows to them, and what they were, and what their brother was. She thinks of Dad patiently repeating incantations with her for hours until she’s certain she’s committed them to memory, then letting her practice on him. Thinks of him shouting for Mom and Urahara every time she pulled off a new one, eager to show her off even when he was half-paralyzed or tied up or partially exploded.

Mom. Mom is always there, whether Karin needs a hug or to be talked down from a brawl. Mom is who she goes to when she needs an adult. Mom listens, soothes her fears, makes her feel like she can do anything. Mom was the one to have The Talk with her, tell her as long as they make you happy, Karin-chan when she’d first confessed, red-faced, that she thought her girls’ soccer team captain was cute. 

And Ichi-nii. She barely remembers him as he was, their big brother who smiled and looked after them in his clumsy way and cried when he fell. Ichi-nii the arrancar is far more familiar. Ichi-nii climbing into their room, half-feral, eyes glowing. Ichi-nii slowly uncurling and hugging Yuzu. Ichi-nii listening to them talk, messing with Yuzu’s bullies, defending her and Yuzu both. Ichi-nii eating a cookie and purring loud enough to hear across the room. Ichi-nii intense and focused and ready to fight for their sake one moment, then relaxing and bitching at Nel the next. 

The Quinta— who must have been Ichi-nii— drawing his sword slowly, like it hurt him. Hesitating before bringing it down on her Chain, shattering the connection to her body. Sending her tamagoyaki. Trying to make it better, to protect her. 

Karin won’t let this kill her. She will hold on, for her brother, her sister, her parents. She won’t let Ichi-nii carry this guilt. Her reiryoku flares up, wrapping around her like a blanket. Distantly, she hears things breaking.

And then, for the first time in days, it doesn’t hurt.

She stands in the center of a wide field, lights on, keeping it bright despite the black sky above. Where…? Her inner world?

“Karin!”

Karin turns and sees…a Hollow? A cat-dragon, with Ichi-nii’s horns, a white-masked snout, black armor plating. A white mane and tufts of white fur above its paws, which have armor on top and wicked-looking daggers for claws. 

She feels the ground shake under her. “Karin! Quickly,” the Hollow calls to her. 

“Wh— what are you…?”

“Later! Do you see that soccer ball?”

Karin’s eyes are drawn to it. It sits dead center of the field, not far from her. 

“Kick it in the goal and hurry,” the Hollow says, frantic. “This world is rotting away.”

Should she trust what a Hollow says? But this is her own soul, and she doesn’t have any better plan. So she backs up, then sprints forward, nearly falling when the ground shakes again. Behind her, one of the light poles falls down with a long, drawn-out groan of misery. 

This will have to be perfect. She has no time for a second try. She draws her foot back and kicks, relying on blind instinct more than anything else. Her feet know where the ball needs to go. 

It sails across the field. Karin runs after it, prays it won’t stop short. She can feel the tremors in the ground. They might fuck it up, even if it should’ve  been perfect. 

But no, the ball arcs and drops exactly where she meant it to. Karin puts her head down and runs like her life depends on it (it does) and kicks one more time, watching the ball cleave through the air.

The ball’s turned pure black, and it slams into the goal just like she meant it to. The world stops groaning and shaking. Everything halts.

Then it rebounds, and the black ball comes hurtling toward Karin. 

“Catch!” she hears the Hollow order, and she doesn’t think, just lifts a hand and lets the ball fly into it. It changes the instant it touches her hand, stretches out into a sheathed sword. Zanpakuto. She feels her clothes changing, turning black, flowing down her arms and legs. 

“Well done, my wielder,” echoes through the field. 

Karin opens her eyes. 

There‘s an unfamiliar weight on her face. Nel’s eyes are wide, and her hand is on her sword, but it’s not drawn. The room is a wreck. Everything not tied down is flipped, broken, or stuck in a wall crater. 

“Karin-chan?” Nel prompts gently. Her hand hasn’t left her sword. 

“Yes, I…” Karin stops when she hears her own voice, reverberating with an unnatural echo. She slowly lifts her hands to her face and flinches when they hit bone. 

A Hollow mask. But…but she knows herself. She knows Nel. She knows Yuzu and Ichi-nii. 

She curls her fingers under the edges and pulls, and it comes off as easily as anything, a flat-looking thing with horns like Ichi-nii’s, except hers fade from ivory bone into pitch-black tips. It has two black circles on the cheeks like some kind of strange blush. 

It falls to dust as she sits there looking at it, sifting to the floor in a plume. She sees black sleeves coming down over her wrists and realizes she’s wearing a shihakusho. 

Shihakusho. Shinigami. She made it. She’s not a Hollow. She’s a shinigami. She can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of her, half relief and half hysteria. 

“You did it!” Nel cries. “Karin-chan, you did it! Ohhhh, I’m so relieved. There was so little time…”

Karin grabs on to Nel, just to have something solid, something to ground her, and says “I want my family. Please.” She’s shaking with relief and shock and adrenaline.

“We’ll get you home,” Nel agrees softly. “Starrk-san should be up soon with your body, and then Harribel-san and Barragan-san will take you home and discuss the political side of things with Urahara-san. Grimmjow-san and I will stay and guard the shinigami.” She musters up a smile. “Hopefully we’ll see Ichigo again before long.”

Karin, personally, thinks that if the shinigami have Ichigo, they’ll be begging to return him at best. But failing that, she’ll go to the Say-Whatever place herself and bust him out, and Urahara and Yoruichi would probably help. 

“Nelliel,” calls a new voice. Two new arrancar step into the room, an older man with a crown-shaped mask fragment and a blonde woman who…wow, what is keeping her boobs in that top? Glue? Kido? The man is holding her body, and Karin feels a rush of relief when she sees it breathing. 

…No wonder Ichi-nii freaked out. This is really weird. 

“Harribel-san, Barragan-san,” Nel replies, standing to bow. “We have some good news for you.”

Both the new arrancar look to Karin. Probably-Barragan’s good eye nearly bugs out of his head when he clocks the shihakusho. 

“Hey,” Karin says, waving. “You’re Ichi-nii’s friends, right?”

“Allies,” Barragan corrects in a deep rumble of a voice. “How have you cheated death, child?”

“My dad’s a shinigami,” Karin says, shrugging. “He always said I couldn’t be, that making a living soul a shinigami was dangerous. I guess he was right.”

Nel stifles a laugh beside her. “Barragan Lousenbairn, Segunda Espada, and Tier Harribel, Tercera Espada,” she whispers to Karin, pointing them out. “Harribel-san, I’ve still got Ichigo’s phone, so please keep us updated, and take care of Karin-chan!”

“I’m not so sure she needs to be taken care of,” Harribel replies, something like amusement in her voice. “Please go assist Grimmjow with the shinigami prisoners. Karin-san—“ She doesn’t tear space like Ichigo does to create a garganta, just reaches out and touches thin air. It spasms, somehow, and pulls open. “Please follow me.”

She does. Harribel’s reishi path is golden-yellow and sprouts safety railings on either side. Karin feels mildly condescended to, but she lets it go for the sake of getting to her family faster. 

Home. Yes. She has a home. She won’t be kept away from it. 

They journey together through the garganta, Barragan and Harribel flanking them, and come out in a familiar place she almost knows. Fake sky, sand, but not Las Noches. More rocks.

“Thank you, Kurumadani-san,” comes a voice. “Could you kindly let them know we’ll be there in two hours? Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Stay away from me,” a man with puffy brown hair replies.

“And after I gave you back your sword and your phone! My goodness, such ingratitude…”

“Urahara-san?” Karin calls. 

“Karin-chan!”

Ah. She barely gets her arms up before Yuzu tackles her, squeezing her in a hug and crying all over her shihakusho. “Karin-chan! You’re not dead? You’re not, you’re not hurt?” She feels Yuzu’s clumsy diagnostic kido brushing against her.

“No,” Karin says, returning Yuzu’s hug as best she can. “I’m okay. I uh…woke up my shinigami side when the Chain was broken. Kind of last-minute.”

“Ah, I’m grateful that idea worked,” comes Urahara’s voice. “Hello, Karin-san. How are you feeling?”

“Like there’s a sandbag on my chest,” Karin deadpans. Yuzu does not take the hint, gripping harder and pushing her face into Karin’s shoulder. 

“And I see you’ve brought some new friends! Urahara Kisuke, shopkeeper and researcher, at your service.” Urahara twirls Benihime and bows. Karin rolls her eyes. Drama queen, as always.”

“I am Tier Harribel, Tercera Espada,” Harribel returns.

“Barragan Lousenbairn, Segunda Espada,” Barragan rumbles. 

“Welcome to my humble shop! Barragan-san, could you put Karin-san’s body down, just over here? I’d just like to check that it’s still breathing and all those other pesky human things.”

Barragan complies, kneeling down to place his burden on the floor, and Urahara casts a diagnostic kido, hand glowing green. “Mmm, excellent. Similar to Ichigo-san, it appears comatose, with minimal brain activity and involuntary muscle movement only— exactly what you would expect from a body missing a consciousness, in other words. Karin-san should have no trouble reentering it.”

“After we get Ichi-nii back,” Karin says firmly. She likes being a shinigami, feeling her reiatsu closer to the surface, the weight of her sword on her hip. She wants that strength. Just in case Soul Society isn’t treating Ichi-nii as well as Urahara thinks, or if they get any ideas about keeping him.

“Two hours from now, we’re expected in Soul Society! Come along, Yuzu-san, Karin-san, Espadas-san. We need to notify your parents and discuss our plans now that Aizen is dead. Isshin-san showing up will raise some eyebrows, and with two living children, nonetheless! We also need to contact the Visored and let them decide on whether they’re coming, and who they’ll send…”

“Let’s call Mom and Dad,” Yuzu suggests, gently pulling Karin over to a sheltered area under a rock. “They’ll be glad to know you’re safe. Ichi-nii told us you were alive, but he wouldn’t…well, he wouldn’t really say what they were doing with you.” She swallows. “It made his eyes glow. I don’t think he noticed.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Karin says, leaning on Yuzu. “I got through it.”

“It does,” Yuzu disagrees. “But you don’t have to talk to me about it. Yet.” Her tone is gentle as always, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a threat. Karin lets it stand, ignoring the way it prickles at the back of her neck. It’s Yuzu. If Yuzu’s threatening her, it’s probably for Karin’s own good. 

Yuzu opens her phone and dials home, pressing the speaker button. One ring…two…three…

“Kurosaki residence. This is Kurosaki Masaki.”

“Mom,” Karin blurts out. She really, really wants her mom. As soon as she heard her voice, her knees went weak.

She’s strong, but she’s eleven, she’s been through hell, and she wants her mom.

“Karin!” Masaki exclaims. “My love, where are you?”

“Urahara’s,” Yuzu answers for her. “Karin’s okay, Mom. Urahara-san says we’re expected at Soul Society in two hours.”

“Well, then I suppose I’d better take the time to do my makeup,” Masaki says with a small laugh. “First impressions are very important, after all. Will you look after Karin for a little while longer, Yuzu?”

“I don’t need to be looked after,” Karin complains.

“Of course not,” Masaki agrees, clearly humoring her. “I’ll be there soon with your father, and we’ll have our whole family back together in an hour, hmm?”

“See you soon, Mom.” The line beeps, and Karin lets out a breath. “I’m actually looking forward to seeing Dad.”

“You’re sure Hueco Mundo didn’t drive you crazy?” Yuzu asks, wrinkling her nose. “If he tries to surprise-attack you like he did that one time–”

“Mom practically boiled his ears off with her lecture. He won’t do that again,” Karin says, confident. She reaches up to her hair, unsurprised to find it snarled after three days of Encroachment. “Did you bring a brush? My hair’s horrible.”

“Of course I brought a brush,” Yuzu says, opening her bag. “Sit down.”

Karin sits and bows her head forward, letting Yuzu gently undo her ponytail and start brushing out the tangled nest of her normally pin-straight hair. It takes a moment to get used to again, to let herself come down from high alert, but it feels good. Her twin, doing her hair, like it’s any other day. Like they’re in their shared room getting ready for bed. Mom and Dad on their way here. Aizen is gone. The only remaining Espada are Ichi-nii’s friends, her friends. 

Now they just need Ichi-nii back. 

Getting Ichigo back is an event and a half. 

Mom and Dad come, with their faces set, Dad in his shinigami soul form with Engetsu on his hip. Yuzu irons her school uniform within an inch of its life, because Mom is right. First impressions matter. Mom is dressed in a crisp blouse and a skirt and her best pearl earrings, Quincy cross wound around her wrist. 

Hirako comes with two other Visored, a little girl named Hiyori and an older one named Lisa that Yuzu can never figure out the age of. 

“Are you sure?” Urahara asks, and Hirako gives a single grim nod. 

“If you’re revealing yourself, so are we,” he says firmly. “You saved us, Kisuke. We haven’t forgotten.”

Urahara hides behind his fan again. “Ah, well, anyone with the same knowledge would have. I could hardly let you die, now could I?”

“Think Central 46 might disagree with you,” Hirako says cheerfully. 

Harribel and Barragan take the coordinates from Urahara and promise to be there, vanishing back into a garganta.

Once all’s set, they go to Soul Society, not quite a day after they see Ichigo off to kill Aizen. Kurumadani plays reluctant escort, opening the senkaimon with a stiff bow. 

“Don’t touch the current,” he warns. “It may look sluggish, but it will sweep you away to times and places unknown. Be very careful.”

“In the center with you two,” Hirako says more directly to Karin and Yuzu. “The rest of us can stop the current, we’re all Captain-class. Well, other than your mother and Afro-san. Masaki-san, with Kurosaki-san. Afro-san, stay with me.”

“It’s Kurumadani—“

“My mistake, Fukurodani-san.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You know, I’ve heard that before! Are you sure your captain is Ukitake and not Kuchiki?”

“Quiet,” Dad orders over his shoulder, and they both shut up, to Yuzu’s relief. “We’re coming out.”

Sure enough, there’s light approaching at the end of the senkaimon. When they exit, the first thing Yuzu sees is Nel, waving happily to her with one hand on the nape of a strange shinigami’s neck. The shinigami is all wrapped in ropes humming with kido, and zanpakuto-less. Must be one of the two other traitors. 

The other Espada are there too, plus fracciónes, but Yuzu veers to Nel. She’s met her before, after all.

“Ah, Yuzu-chan, Karin-chan!” Nel says immediately. She smiles. “It’s good to see you well. I’m sure Ichigo would have gone straight to you if he was here. Who else is here? Is that Hat’n’Clogs-san?”

Karin covers a laugh. Yuzu doesn’t bother covering her own. “Urahara Kisuke, Nelliel-san!” Urahara calls out. 

“That’s our parents,” Yuzu says, pointing them out. “Kurosaki Isshin and Kurosaki Masaki.” Next to Mom’s professional human-world outfit, Dad looks like a crazy cosplayer. It’s a surprisingly accurate representation of the family dynamic, though Karin matching him is new. 

“Pleased to meet you!” Nel bows to them both, individually. “I’m Nel, Ichigo’s fracción. Er…something like a lieutenant to the shinigami, I suppose,” she adds, seeing the absolute lack of comprehension on the elder Kurosakis’ faces. “A trusted one.”

“Nel-san!” Yuzu can’t wait any longer. “Nel-san, please, is Ichi-nii here yet?”

“You don’t have to -san me,” Nel laughs. “I told you, Ichigo’s family is my family. They aren’t here yet, but I’m sure they’re coming. He’ll be fine.” She smiles. “Knowing him, he’s more worried about Karin-chan.”

“Um, Nel-san, this is Hirako Shinji, he leads the Visored—“

“THE HELL THAT BALDY’S OUR LEADER!”

“Honored to meet you,” Hirako says, putting a hand on Hiyori’s head. “This is my second, Hiyori— keep shouting over me and I’ll kido your mouth shut, kid— and this is Lisa.”

Hiyori continues shouting and hits Hirako with a flip flop, at which point the two of them scuffle briefly until Lisa sighs and separates them. 

“Interesting,” Nel says, tilting her head. “You’re part Hollow? I can feel your reiatsu.”

“Very much against our will, yes,” Hirako says with a nod. “It’s a long story involving Aizen. I hear you love him about as much as we do.”

Nel opens her mouth to reply, but the abrupt arrival of Captain-class reiatsu stops her. A senkaimon opens, and a double line of people files out, with a really, really old man leaning on a cane at the end. Seireitei’s squad captains. They’re all here. Yuzu swallows nervously and looks for her brother. 

The captains’ calm and focus is impressive. A kid with white hair is openly staring at Dad, absolute fury on his face, and a man in a pink kimono is looking at Lisa like she’s a rope thrown to save him, but the rest of them are doing a great job pretending to not be affected by the composition of this group. 

“Urahara-san,” a woman with long black hair braided in front of her chest says, bowing. “I owe you a great debt. It seems you truly did save the Hollowfied captains and lieutenants where Squad Four could not.”

“Likewise, I couldn’t have saved them without the stabilization efforts of your squad,” Urahara says lightly. “Good afternoon to the captains of the Gotei 13. Forgive me for getting down to business, but where is our missing young man?”

“Here,” calls a calm voice. It belongs to a man whose reiatsu marks him as older than he looks, with long white hair left unbound down his back. He steps aside and makes room in the line. “Kurosaki-san?”

Ichigo shuffles into view. The first thing Yuzu sees is the metal basket around his mouth (muzzle, they muzzled her brother). His hands and feet are bound so that the most he can do is take small steps. The calm man hovers like he’s afraid Ichigo’s going to fall. Most of the others are watching with varying levels of wary interest.

Yuzu plants her feet to stop herself from running straight to him. “Ichi-nii?” Karin calls. 

“Karin!” Ichigo tries to run forward and nearly falls on his face, only saved by the calm man catching the chain on his wrists. “Fuck me, I forgot.”

“Are you all right?” Yuzu asks. Ichigo will hear the have they hurt you? without her needing to voice it. 

“I’m fine,” Ichigo says easily. “Just tried to bite that clown freak, and they don’t want me giving anyone Hollow rabies.” His voice has that dry, joking note to it they aren’t used to yet, but it’s unmistakably Ichigo. “And to be fair, I’d do it again.”

Yuzu looks down the lines and sees the one Ichigo must mean, standing with a wide smile at the opposite end. His face has black and white greasepaint on it, like stage makeup. She marks him mentally and turns back. 

“You’re really okay?” Yuzu checks. She doesn’t trust the clown man, or the Gotei. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” Ichigo gives her a lopsided smile. “What you’re seeing is the worst of it. They haven’t been mistreating me. I think a couple of them even see me as an actual person and not a crazy murdering Hollow, so hey, progress! Karin, are you okay? Where’d you get the—“

“Silence, Hollow,” the old guy says sharply. Ichigo shuts up, but he makes a face at them the second nobody’s looking. He’s got plenty of energy, at least. “You see he is alive and unharmed. Where are our captains?”

“Right here.” Harribel steps forward. “I am Tier Harribel, designated Tercera Espada by Aizen Sousuke. This is Barragan Lousenbairn, the former ruler of Hueco Mundo, designated Segunda Espada. Nelliel, Findorr, please bring the shinigami forward.”

Nel steps forward, along with a blond arrancar Yuzu doesn’t know. Nel’s shinigami, a silver-haired man with a smile like a fox, walks with her easily. Findorr’s doesn’t, gets half-dragged along, stumbling and snarling curses under his breath. 

“Please tell us how you came to capture these two,” the old man says. 

Harribel nods. “Some background is necessary, I think,” she begins. “We the arrancar were created from powerful Hollows by Aizen Sousuke. He used various means to make Hollows agree to join his army, from flattery to force. He was often joined by these two captains, Ichimaru Gin and Tousen Kaname. Several of the Espada, the strongest arrancar, sought to end Aizen’s plan to create an Ouken and become the next Soul King.” She stops here to let the captains exchange disbelieving looks. “Myself, Barragan, and Ichigo are included in that faction.”

“Urahara-san created a plan with Ichigo, which we implemented yesterday night. Ichigo’s job was to handle Aizen, while the rest of us took on the loyal arrancar and the other two traitor captains. Tousen came to us first, raving about a rogue arrancar who had murdered Aizen in his sleep, getting revenge on Soul Society, and so forth. We subdued him with only minor difficulty. Ichimaru Gin arrived later and congratulated us on our victory. He told us of a plan he had to defeat Aizen using his bankai. He willingly went into our custody and gave us his zanpakuto, and has been cooperative since. His only request was that we convey his apologies to Matsumoto Rangiku-san.”

That’s news to Ichigo, judging by the look on his face. The Captains mutter to each other until the old man gestures sharply to cut them off. “Are you prepared to exchange prisoners?”

“We are,” Harribel confirms. “Forward, Kaname, Ichimaru.” The gray-haired one (Ichimaru, probably) stoops and yanks the other to his feet in an impressive display of dexterity with tied hands.

“Come on now, Tousen, don’t leave me all alone,” he hums. “Let’s try to have a bit of dignity.”

“You traitor,” Tousen hisses, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I thought you hated Soul Society. I thought you were like me!”

“I do hate Soul Society,” Ichimaru says, walking forward. “I simply hate Aizen more. Or I did, before the Quinta over there ripped out his throat. Thank you for that, Quinta-kun.”

Ichigo snaps his teeth pointedly, but Ichimaru only smiles.

“Here are their zanpakuto,” Harribel says, nodding to another arrancar who hurries forward with two sheathed swords, wrapped in white cloth. “Our missing Espada, please.”

Some of the captains look uncertain. The one on the end with Ichigo doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but it’s a close thing. He exchanges a few quiet words with Ichigo, then nods and releases the cuffs on his hands and feet. 

Nobody’s prepared for Ichigo’s reiatsu once he’s free. He normally keeps it well in hand, but apparently, it isn’t happy about being leashed. It settles over the area like heavy fog, crushing Yuzu to the ground. She hears shouts of alarm from the shinigami, something about being double-crossed, and spares the time to think stupid. 

Something’s wrong, though. His reiatsu isn’t just strong, it’s lashing out. Hurting. Trapped Hollow, injured Hollow, warning everything around it to stay away. Ichigo’s hands and knees hit the dirt, and he exhales in a pained hiss.

“Ichimaru,” the braided-hair lady says, stepping forward. “Can you neutralize the kido hidden in the brand on Kurosaki-san?”

(The tattoo. She knew she shouldn’t have let it go. She should have yanked those thorns out of Ichigo no matter how much he protested, and then he wouldn’t be lying on the ground hurting so badly the force of it is pushing others back.)

“I can,” the gray-haired one drawls. “Dunno why I should, though. Quinta-kun there ruined my whole plan.”

“Don’t call me Quinta, bastard,” Ichigo growls. It’s not especially scary with how he’s on the ground, face drawn tight with pain. “You won’t win any points from the shinigami for fixing this shit, they don’t care that much. If you don’t, though, I’ll eat you and see if that fixes it.” Okay, a little scary. 

“So aggressive,” Ichimaru says with a light laugh. “Very well, then, as a gesture of good will. Quinta-kun, I’m touching your neck.”

Ichigo tenses up, deliberately so, holding himself in place. Yuzu shoves back against his reiatsu and crawls forward. “Ichi-nii!”

“Yuzu, stay back,” Ichigo warns. “Dunno what this kido’ll do when it’s unmade.”

“Oh, it’s designed to kill you in various creative ways if you meddle with it. Lucky for you, I happen to be keyed into it!” Ichimaru’s long fingers tap the tattoo on Ichigo’s nape, and Ichigo folds instantly forward, reiatsu letting up. It’s still present, but it’s not crushing anymore. She gets to her feet, assesses. The captains are getting up. Ichigo yanks the muzzle off his face (Yuzu feels the kido in it snap under the force of Ichigo’s unbound reiatsu) and crumples it like tissue paper, glaring at the shinigami. “Where’s Zangetsu?”

One of the captains, a guy with weird hair ornaments, holds out a sheath that he’s clearly trying not to touch directly. Ichigo grabs it and buckles it, letting out a sigh of relief. 

“Ichi-nii!” Yuzu can’t take it anymore. She runs forward, hugs her much taller brother around his waist, maybe casts a kido Karin taught her to scan for injuries. He seems fine, physically, and he wraps her back into the hug with one arm.

“Hey, I said I was fine, didn’t I?” he asks, ruffling her hair. “Don’t think I can’t feel that, you aren’t that sneaky. Sorry for the reiatsu burst,” he adds to the general audience. “I, uh, never had it suppressed like that before. I thought I could handle it, even with the kido. I normally have better control.”

“...Think nothing of it,” the old man replies after a momentary pause, clearly surprised to see a Hollow apologize. Yuzu uses the pause to tug Ichigo back over to their family. “I believe we would be well-served with introductions to all present and their allegiances. I am Yamamoto Genryusai, the Head Captain of the Gotei 13 and Captain of Squad One. In order of the squads they represent: Captain Soi Fon, Acting Captain Izuru Kira, Captain Unohana Retsu. Squad Five’s position is, of course, vacant, and I am afraid their lieutenant could not be present. Captain Kuchiki Byakuya, Captain Komamura Sajin, Captain Kyouraku Shunsui, Acting Captain Hisagi Shuhei, Captain Hitsugaya Toshiro, Captain Kenpachi Zaraki, Captain Kurotsuchi Mayuri, and Captain Ukitake Jyuushiro.”

Someone inclines their head or bows with each name, but Yuzu has no idea how she’s meant to keep them all straight. Hitsugaya is the one staring at Dad like he’s seen a ghost, and Kurotsuchi is the one Ichigo tried to bite. Byakuya had Zangetsu, and Ukitake was the one who freed Ichigo.

“Representing the Urahara Shop, I am Urahara Kisuke, and this is Shihoin Yoruichi and Tsukabishi Tessai,” Urahara says next with a bow and a gesture to Tessai and the cat on his shoulders. The first captain on the left makes an undignified noise when she hears Yoruichi’s name. Yoruichi, for her part, simply licks her paw and starts washing her ear.

“Representing Hueco Mundo and Las Noches, Tier Harribel, Barragan Lousenbairn, Nelliel tu Oderschwank, and fracciónes,” Barragan intones.

“Representing the Visored and surviving victims of Aizen,” Hirako says, grinning with that stupid piano grin. “Hirako Shinji, former captain of Squad Five. Sarugaki Hiyori, former lieutenant of Squad Twelve. Yadomaru Lisa, former lieutenant of Squad Eight.”

Everyone looks at them. Yuzu sees Dad moving forward to speak, but she detaches herself and talks before he can. “Representing the Kurosaki family, Kurosaki Yuzu, Karin, Masaki, and Isshin.”

“Family?” the shorter white-haired captain demands.

“Lisa,” the captain in the pink kimono says.

The orderly ranks erupt into chaos. The shinigami are focused on the Visored for the most part, but the white-haired captain (the short one who looks like a kid) storms right up to Isshin and drags him off by the sleeve of his shihakusho. Isshin allows it, shrugging at them like well, what can you do.

“I feel like Dad might have been Squad Ten,” Karin remarks, looking at the kanji emblazoned on the kid captain’s haori. “Do you feel like Dad might have been Squad Ten?”

“Good theory, Karin-chan.”

“He should’ve told them before he was forced to,” Ichigo says, clearly stifling a laugh. “Good old Goat-Face, always avoiding responsibility. Let the little captain fight him, maybe it’ll teach him something.”

“Reign over the frosted heavens, Hyorinmaru!”

“Tosh– Augh! Burn, Engetsu!”

Yuzu points wordlessly at where their father’s being chased by an ice dragon. Ichigo shrugs.

“Lisa-chan!” The pink kimono captain is honestly crying over one of the Visored, who just pats his shoulder awkwardly. “It’s been over a century!”

“It’s nice to see you too, Kyouraku,” Hirako calls.

“Nobody mourned you, piano-teeth,” one of the 

‘acting’ captains yells back. Hi-something, the one with the 69 tattoo on his face. (Yuzu had to look away before she laughed. She’s sure the shinigami don’t know what memes are.)

“Aw, come on, you didn’t even go to my funeral, Hisagi-kun? And here I’ve kept Muguruma safe for you all these years!”

“M- Muguruma-san is alive too?” Hisagi stammers.

“We’re all alive!” Hirako practically crows. “Alive, well, and only a little sanity-challenged.”

“You were always a little sanity-challenged,” the tired-looking blond joins in. “That sword of yours…”

“Aw, thanks, Izuru-kun, didn’t know you cared.” Hirako looks at the Kurosaki siblings. “Only bankai ever banned from Soul Society, y’know? I swear they tried to execute me just so they wouldn’t have to worry about me turnin’ it on them anymore. The Hollowfication was just a good excuse.”

“Sounds like them,” Ichigo agrees, deadpan. “You bite the asshole trying to stick a needle in you one time…”

“Now, Ichigo-san, be fair. Even after the muzzle, you kept trying to bite.” That’s the other white-haired captain, the one that freed Ichigo. His eyes are sparkling with amusement. “Now, whether any of those attempts were unprovoked is a different matter…”

“Hmph! It’s hardly my fault he doesn’t understand my scientific genius.” The one with the weird makeup looks genuinely affronted that Ichigo hadn’t just sat there and let a stranger poke at him. Yuzu notices his haori is lopsided, one of the sleeves torn and hanging in tatters. Must be where Ichigo bit him. That’s her big brother. 

“You made him a captain?” Urahara inquires, pointing to Kurotsuchi. “Really? Him? The lunatic I dragged out of the Maggots’ Nest under very strict supervision?”

“You left us a bit short of options, I’m afraid,” the captain says with a smile. “Hello, Urahara-san, it’s good to see you.”

“Captain Ukitake,” Urahara acknowledges. 

Captain Ukitake looks at Urahara, then Hirako, then bows deeply from the waist. “Urahara Kisuke and Hirako Shinji, I am deeply sorry for the ways in which we have failed you.” There’s tightly controlled anger in his voice as he outright kneels to them. Yuzu’s never seen anyone do that in real life. “You deserved better from the comrades you would have given your life for. We were told, Hirako-san, that you and the others had succumbed to Hollowfication. Had we known…”

“Oh, we did,” Hirako interrupts, apparently not willing to hear Ukitake out. “Watch.” He calls his Hollow mask, its perpetual drooping eyes and downturned mouth, over his face. His voice distorts. “Big, bad Hollow under the bed now, see?”

“Hirako-san,” Yuzu says carefully. 

“Nah, if he’s apologizing, he better know what it’s for. We did succumb to Hollowfication, and those bastards in Central 46 wanted us put down. Kisuke saved our asses, stabilized us, and did it all without any help or support from Soul Society.” He pulls the mask off and dismisses it, watching it dissolve to reishi. “Be sorry for thinking Urahara would experiment like that on his own lieutenant, fer fuck’s sake.”

“It’s hardly Ukitake’s burden in any case,” Urahara points out steadily. “It’s Aizen who set you up and Aizen who framed me, and Central 46 who handed down that judgment without any sort of interest in a defense. Were you told they were cut down as Hollows?” he asks Ukitake conversationally. “The Hollowfication process completed and their souls had to be purified, et cetera?”

Ukitake shakes his head. “The process completed, yes. We were told they’d escaped to Hueco Mundo.”

“Ah, interesting! Wrong realm, I’m afraid, but perfectly plausible. As you see, we’re none the worse for wear. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.” Hirako doesn’t look like he shares this opinion, but he stays quiet.

“Squad Five will need a new captain,” Ukitake says, looking to Hirako. “Or an old one, perhaps.”

Hirako snorts. “Don’t make offers you can’t back up.”

“Then you’ll excuse me to lay some groundwork,” Ukitake says, entirely unruffled. “I feel certain that we can make Central 46 understand their errors and their debts to you all.”

“Could’ve gone worse,” Hirako observes as Ukitake leaves. “Lucky it was him. Believe it or not, he’s as moderate and responsible as the Captains get. Real stroke of luck that he was the one to find the berry over there.”

“Call me that again and I’ll crack your mask,” Ichigo threatens, no heat in his voice whatsoever. 

“It took…ten minutes for this diplomatic summit thing to fall apart totally,” Karin marvels. 

“Personally, I’m just glad it held together until we actually exchanged prisoners.” Ichigo stretches out, cracking his spine. “Harribel’s good at this shit, but Barragan…and no offense, Hat’n’Clogs, didn’t think you or Goat-Face would help much either.”

“I pride myself on being full of surprises!” Urahara sings. 

A pulse of reiatsu draws everyone’s attention to the Head Captain. “If we may continue,” he says, ignoring Ukitake clearly trying to talk to him, “I believe we have several matters to address. Kurosaki Ichigo and Aizen’s death, Aizen’s treachery, Shiba Isshin and his living family, Urahara Kisuke, and the return of our Hollowfied lieutenants and captains.”

“Oh, spare me,” Hirako mutters. 

“Captain Hitsugaya! Shiba Isshin!” the Head Captain barks. “Cease your duel!”

Hitsugaya stalks back into view, sheathing his sword and taking his place in the line. Dad is second, and Yuzu can see patches of ice on his clothes. He’s holding Engetsu awkwardly, so Hitsugaya got him properly at least once. 

Yuzu goes over to him, but he shakes his head. “I’m fine, Yuzu-chan. Captains.” He nods to the Seireitei contingent. “Are we starting, then?”

“I’d like to begin with the issue of Shiba Isshin’s desertion,” the captain with the weird hair decorations speaks up. “And his evident living family, including a Quincy, a shinigami, and a Hollow.”

“Y’know, I don’t actually know most of this story,” Ichigo says. “Dad, Mom?”

Dad sighs and starts talking.

He outlines a mysterious Hollow killing his men and what a young Quincy named Kurosaki Masaki had done to save him when he’d been sabotaged— “by Aizen,” he says. “I assume, at least. His shikai gives him the power to conceal himself if he so desires.”

“Pardon,” pink kimono guy says, raising a hand. “Explain that. Kyoka Suigetsu is a water-type zanpakuto, it can’t…”

“Kyoka Suigetsu’s release allows Aizen to perfectly control your senses,” Ichigo interrupts. “He shows it to all the new arrancar. Showed, sorry. He called it perfect hypnosis.”

“S’true,” Hirako says, nodding. “How he got me a hundred years ago. Didn’t seem to be any limit on distance or number of people. The man was crazy strong.”

“Which is why you chose to assassinate him in his home, I assume,” Hair Decorations says. 

“You have a division dedicated to assassins,” Lisa says, her first contribution to the actual discussion. “The cat used to lead it.”

“I mean, yeah.” Ichigo shrugs. “He made sure we were all under it, and so was every shinigami with any hope of standing against him. Not a lot of roads open to us. Plus, he kidnapped my sister and tried to Hollowfy her. If he wasn’t dead before, he was after that. Keep going, Dad.”

Masaki takes over for this part, explaining her Hollowfication and what Dad and Urahara had done to save her. The life they’d built together. Their children. The Squad Ten captain’s mouth drops open like he can’t believe he’s hearing Isshin and children in the same sentence. 

“And then an adjuchas attacked us, the seal broke, and I happened,” Ichigo finishes. “With Mom dying and Dad’s gigai destroyed, nothing was holding the seal in place. I was fucking terrified, because I was nine and my parents had just gotten attacked by a huge, ugly, hairy ghost. I wanted the strength to protect them. Zangetsu— that’s my Hollow— gave me that. ‘Course, being a newborn vasto lorde, I was totally out of my mind. Hat’n’Clogs showed up and scared the everliving shit out of me with his bankai, so I ran. I wandered around Hueco Mundo for a few years, another Espada found me and took me to Aizen, Aizen made me an arrancar, you can fill it in from there.”

“You named your Hollow the same thing as your zanpakuto?” Hirako asks. Ichigo blinks at him. 

“…No? My Hollow is my zanpakuto.”

This, naturally, makes everything erupt into chaos again. Hirako has questions, Hiyori is shouting, the shinigami seem to be having some kind of existential crisis, and the arrancar are just patiently waiting it out. Harribel is talking with Barragan. Ichigo looks absolutely bewildered.

“Silence!” the Head Captain shouts. It works. “Explain yourself.”

“Uh…well, we kind of merged for a while?” Ichigo offers. “The Old Man– my other spirit–” He waits out everyone yelling over each other. “– managed to pull us apart a couple weeks ago. S’what made me realize my name’s not Zangetsu, it’s Ichigo.”

“And how did your…second spirit ‘manage to pull you apart’?” Kurotsuchi asks, pulling a notepad out of his haori.

Ichigo turns red. (He still turns red, even though he’s dead and by all rights can’t blush. Yuzu loves it.) “...My sister gave me a cookie,” he mutters.

The pink kimono guy is laughing his ass off now, not even bothering to hide it. Hair Decorations looks constipated. 

“I recognized him,” Yuzu pipes up. “Mom and Dad told us what happened to him years ago. When we met him again, he didn’t remember us, so…so we made him a bento, with his favorite foods in it. Stuff we remembered him liking. Spicy mustard and chocolate cookies.”

“And that triggered memories of his humanity?” Kurotsuchi asks. 

“No, my spirit yanking me and my other spirit back into separate halves and pushing me to remember did,” Ichigo corrects. “The cookie helped, though. It was really good. Sweet.”

“I see,” Ukitake says with all due solemnity. “You are a child, then, chronologically?”

“Teenager,” Ichigo corrects with a thunderous scowl. “Fifteen.” Yuzu can see Ukitake struggling not to say that counts as a child.

“Let us leave the issue of his age, for now,” the Head Captain decides, putting a quelling hand on Ukitake’s shoulder. “What matters most is what stands in front of us. Young Hollow, why did you not come to Seireitei with your information regarding Aizen?”

“One: you still haven’t stopped calling me a Hollow, even though I’ve given you my name. Two: didn’t know or trust you. My soul-memories of shinigami are mostly pretty discouraging. Add the firsthand experience of Aizen, Tousen, and Ichimaru, who’d fooled you for over a hundred years?” He shrugs. “You guys had a chance. You blew it.”

That goes over as well as you’d expect, especially when Hiyori cheers and tries to high-five him. Harribel and Barragan step in to smooth things over with the shinigami, and Harribel shoots Ichigo a you have done ENOUGH glare when he tries to join them. 

Ichigo walks sheepishly back to Yuzu. “Whoops. They’re touchy.”

“Who let you talk to them?” Yuzu asks, shaking her head. “Of course they didn’t like that, Ichi-nii.”

Harribel leaves the Head Captain for a moment to speak quietly with Nel, who walks over to them looking apologetic. 

“Are you in charge of Ichi-nii now?” Yuzu asks.

Nel grins. “Whatever you do, Nelliel, do not allow Ichigo to speak to the Head Captain again.” She does a good Harribel impersonation. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll behave.” Ichigo raises his hands in mock surrender. “I’m sure there’s other people to talk to. Like my goddamn family.” He pulls Nel down in a headlock and rubs his knuckles into her head, right in front of her mask. “And don’t go thinking you’re excluded from that.”

“Ichigo!” Nel shoves him back, and he goes, laughing like the asshole he is. “Were they really treating you well in Seireitei?”

“…Eh,” Ichigo says, wiggling his hand back and forth. “It was fine. Mostly what you saw. Couldn’t use my reiatsu, Zangetsu was gone. Got the muzzle when that clown guy tried to jab me with a needle and I tried to take his hand off for it.” There’s not an ounce of regret in his tone. “His face paint stuff probably tastes terrible, anyway.”

“Probably,” Yuzu agrees serenely. “I’m sorry, Ichi-nii. If we’d been there…”

“If you’d been there, he would’ve gotten two weird Quincy hybrids instead of one, and I got real bad vibes once he figured out I was a Quincy. Like Szayel, except he doesn’t get offfff—“ He trails off, clearly remembering that they’re young. “Anyway. Bad vibes.”

Yuzu opens her arms in a demand for a hug, a demand Ichigo indulges immediately (probably hoping she’ll forget that little slip). When he lets her go, his visible eye flicks to Karin. 

“Karin…I’m so sorry,” he says, holding himself like he might have to run, all tense lines and searching gaze. “I… Aizen took you because of me. I wasn’t careful enough, and because of that, you got hurt. I hurt you. I know you couldn’t tell, but that was me. I broke your Chain, I…”

“Ichi-nii,” Karin starts, taking a step forward. 

“You were fucking terrified and you begged me not to and you said you’d rather be dead,” Ichigo says, all in a rush, hands balled into fists. “Don’t you dare tell me it’s all right.”

“Of course it’s not all right!” Karin reaches up, grabs Ichigo’s horn, and yanks hard enough to unbalance him. “But it’s not your fault! It’s Aizen’s! He made you do it, he took me, he let that creepy pink guy at me. There wasn’t anything else you could do, Ichi-nii, I’m not stupid.”

Ichigo catches himself with a hand before he goes down entirely, looks up at Karin with something between shock and pride. 

“And I’m fine anyway,” Karin concludes, gesturing to herself. “Look, I’m a shinigami. Dad said it was dangerous for the living— I guess he was right.”

“Yeah, I still don’t get that part,” Ichigo says, visibly gathering himself as he looks at Karin and Nel. “Catch me up. Is Szayel dead?” The dangerous gleam in his eye telegraphs pretty clearly that if Szayel hasn’t been killed, he will be soon. 

“Starrk shot him,” Nel says with a faint smile. “He didn’t appreciate Szayel using someone so close to Lilynette’s age.”

“Good,” Ichigo says emphatically. “Let the fucker rot into sand. More importantly: shinigami?”

“Hat’n’Clogs-san suggested that Karin might be able to awaken her shinigami heritage under the stress from Hollowfying,” Nel explains. “And it worked!”

Ichigo whistles. “Damn, good job.” He ruffles Karin’s hair. “How’re you feeling? Hungry?”

“Urahara-san fed me,” Karin says with a small huff. “But, Ichi-nii, I met a Hollow in my inner world. A dragon, sort of.”

Ichigo frowns, the visible half of his forehead scrunching. “So I didn’t get all of Mom’s, then,” he says, sounding resigned. “I bet you’re something like Hirako. Don’t be scared of it, alright? It’s part of you. Zangetsu’s fucking annoying sometimes— shut it, Zan— but he just wants me to survive. I’m sure yours is the same.”

Karin nods. She sees a lot of jinzen in her future, but she was planning to do that anyway. “What did you get into, Ichi-nii?” Yuzu watches her hand go to the hilt of her sword, rubbing over it to reassure herself. 

“Eh, you know. Didn’t realize the anti-garganta wards on Seireitei were two-way. Met a crazy captain who figured out where I was hiding, tried to talk it out, and then helped me instead of stabbing me. And then some more crazy captains. Aizen’s fucking dead, though, so…can’t regret it.”

Yuzu can’t help herself. “You’re coming home, right? Both of you?”

“What else am I gonna do?” Karin huffs. “Go to Soul Society? They suck. I don’t like that clown guy. Who muzzles another person?”

“They’ve never met a Hollow like me, don’t be too hard on them,” Ichigo drawls. “Though I’m kind of concerned that they just had a human-sized muzzle.”

Yuzu doesn’t really like that either. Gives her the creeps. But that’s not what they’re talking about, and her big brother is avoiding the question. “Ichi-nii…you’re coming too, right? You’re not staying in Hueco Mundo?”

“Hey, it’s not that bad! As long as you like sand,” Ichigo jokes. “And nighttime. And…emptiness, yeah, okay, it’s boring as hell.” He turns serious. “I don’t know if coming home is going to work. I might be too Hollow to fake being human. I was a vasto lorde for years, and an arrancar nearly as long. It’s not just instincts. I’m used to living on my own.”

“You can do it,” Yuzu says. It’s Ichigo. “You got all these Hollows to work together. Even that shinigami captain likes you.”

“One out of thirteen. Great.”

“We don’t need any of them to like us,” Karin scoffs. “They won’t bother us, and that’s plenty. Besides, you’re family, and we miss you. Even if you turn into a hermit who lives in your room, I need you with us. Please, Ichi-nii.”

Yuzu sees defeat on Ichigo’s face a second before he sighs. “I’ll try. For you two.”

Yuzu cheers and hugs him again (making sure he sees it coming). “Yay! I can’t wait to introduce you to Uryuu-san, and Arisawa-san’s missed you, and everyone will be so happy you’re back! I’ll make your favorite dinner every night for a week if you want.”

“I don’t actually remember what my favorite was,” Ichigo admits. “The bento was delicious?”

“Of course it was, I made it,” Yuzu says with a little giggle. That makes Ichigo laugh, and even as the leaders of the Doble Filo talk about particulars with the shinigami, Yuzu thinks, for the first time since Ichi-nii came home unconscious in Dad’s arms, that their family is going to be okay. 

Chapter Text

Ichigo watches his parents disconnecting his comatose body from the various tubes, needles, and electrodes that have kept it alive for the last six years, and wonders vaguely how he’s supposed to be feeling. Yuzu squeezes his hand beside him, and Karin is a steady presence on his other side. 

He mostly feels, well, disconnected. That’s his fucking body, but hell if it feels like it. This is his body, this too-white skin and the hole through his sternum and his mask and horn. The short-haired teenager sleeping in the bed looks a little like him, but it’s more like his twin brother than himself.

He runs his split tongue over his needle-point teeth and wonders if that will ever change, or if this was a stupid idea.

Do you want to try? his mother asked him, simply, and he’d eventually answered yeah. Yeah, he does. He misses his human life, even if his life is far more than that now. As more of his fractured memories return, he misses Tatsuki, misses Karakura, misses his family. Nel is family too, always, and the remaining Espada are friends, but he has a chance here he can’t ignore.

He watches Goat-Face carefully extracting the tube out of his throat. They’d started before Ichigo got here, and now they’re finishing up. They’re leaving the little finger-clip thing reading his pulse and oxygen levels, just in case. In case Ichigo’s body reacts…badly to a soul re-entering it. Karin did just fine, but Karin went back in after a few days, not six years.

Tsukabishi and Urahara are on standby downstairs, as is some Quincy doctor Ichigo’s never met before. Ishida something. The man makes Ulquiorra look warm and cuddly. 

“Okay, Ichigo,” Masaki says, giving him a smile like this is any other day. “We’re ready when you are.”

When he’s ready.

Ichigo closes his eyes, makes sure his reiatsu is reined in as tightly as he can, opens them again.

He steps forward and realizes he has no idea how to do this. His body is there, breathing easily, like he’s asleep.

Well. The one obvious solution is to sit down and roll into it, so that’s what he does. For a moment, he just feels silly, bumping against his own body, and then, abruptly, he can’t breathe.

Something molds to his skin tight-tight-too-tight, closing around him like a noose. His chest feels like an anvil’s been dropped on it. His legs kick, too weakly. He sucks in a breath through sheer force of will, and it makes the next one easier. And the next, and the next.

His eyes blink open. He’s breathing too hard, and the heart monitor is making alarmed beeping noises, and oh holy shit, he’s breathing. He’s breathing. Not just out of habit, like most souls, he’s breathing because he needs to breathe.

He’s breathing and his heart (his heart!) is pounding in his chest so hard he can feel it. He sits up and looks down at his own hands, freckled and darker than he’s used to, missing the familiar pattern of sword-calluses.

His hair is longer and shorter than it was. Down to his shoulder blades, he thinks. His mask and horn are gone, of course, and so is his Hollow hole. His head feels so light.

He puts his hand over his chest and feels his heart beating. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. His heart. His human heart.

“Damn,” he exhales. “That sucked.”

“It probably won’t be that bad if you have to leave your body again,” Isshin says helpfully, snagging the finger-clip monitor off while he’s distracted. “It was the length of time and your body’s need to adjust to your spirit. But it’s doing very well now! Oxygen saturation, 98%, heart rate returning to normal. Try standing for us!”

Ichigo does, slowly. It feels harder than it should, but this body was in a coma, he supposes. He’s probably going to have to train it back up to where it should be. He can stand, though, even walks across the room to his sisters and opens his arms for a hug. (If he initiates it, then he can’t be surprised by it.)

Yuzu, of course, comes to him right away, sobbing into his shitty hospital shirt, and Karin follows after a moment, one arm wrapped around him and the other around Yuzu. Ichigo makes eye contact with his parents, and they come in too. He pretends not to see Goat-Face crying. That’s fundamentally wrong, honestly. They all pile together for a moment before Ichigo feels way too crowded and panic-spikes his reiatsu. His family lets go and backs away like they’ve done it all his life. 

“How do I look?” he asks, spreading his hands. 

“Ugly,” Karin says immediately. 

“Thanks, Karin.”

“You’re fine,” Yuzu says softly. “You look like usual. Your eyes are a few shades brighter, maybe.”

“Stupid hair,” Karin chimes in, remorseless.

“I’ll throw you out a window,” Ichigo threatens, halfhearted. 

“No you won’t,” Karin and Yuzu chorus. 

Okay, no he won’t, but he could.

“Do you feel okay?” Yuzu asks, forehead creasing in worry. “I know Dad said you were…”

“I feel fine, Yuzu, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Yuzu retorts with more fire than he expected. “You…you just…it just worked? After all this time, w-we, w-w-we never thought you’d wake up and n-now you’re h-here.” Her voice breaks. 

Ichigo swears mentally and pulls Yuzu into a hug again. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. Look at me. I’m fine. I’m really hard to kill, Yuzu, you know that.”

“Your ghost is,” Yuzu corrects him. “B-but this is y-your body and…”

And she’s seen it lifeless every day for six years. His face, his real face, covered by a mask and too pale, isn’t quite the same anymore. She’s seen him walking and talking, but this face is the Ichigo she knows as a living corpse. 

“I know,” he says. He’s not really built for comfort, so he just holds her until she pulls back and looks at him. 

“You’re really alive,” she breathes. “N- not just as a ghost, you’re alive.”

“Takes more than some crazy shinigami to take me out,” Ichigo says with a grin. “I’m alive. C’mon, stop crying. Help me find some clothes that I haven’t been wearing for six years straight. Then you can show me that show you and Karin were watching together, the one you told me about a couple weeks ago.”

“And we need to put him on the chore schedule,” Karin adds, which makes Yuzu laugh. 

“Come on, I was dead for six years!”

“Exactly! You have a lot of catching up to do, Ichi-nii.”

Ichigo puts on a show of complaining, even though half of him is still reveling in the simple fact of having a heartbeat and the other half is adjusting to feeling like a stiff breeze could knock him over (bodies are so fucking fragile, no hierro, no Zangetsu). 

Human again. 

This might honestly be harder than killing Aizen. 

It takes a while to bring him back to life.

Legally, he was never declared dead, but he still has to reestablish his existence. Ishida Ryuuken checks him out and gives him a clean bill of health to avoid awkward questions from doctors like what the fuck do you mean you were comatose for six years with no injury or why are your teeth all pointed. It’s not as bad as his spirit form, but they’re all a little sharper than they should be. At least his tongue isn’t split anymore. That would’ve been hard to explain. Long hair is easy enough— he was a coma patient, and nobody but his family knew Mom cut his hair. His brighter eyes are, too. Eye color changes sometimes as people age, and it’s not dramatic like his soul form’s gold. It’s just a clearer brown, lighter. 

They go shopping, get Ichigo clothes, a new bed, a desk that fits his teenage frame instead of the one he had when he was nine. School uniform. White collared shirt, gray pants, gray jacket for when it’s colder out. He flatly refuses the tie. Having something around his neck like that is practically an invitation to choke him, in Hollow terms. Urahara insists on paying for anything they need, and when Ichigo protests, he lowers his hat over his eyes and says that it’s his way of repaying his debt to the Kurosakis. In his mind, he’s the one who sealed Ichigo, the one who scared him away as a newborn Hollow. And the one who sent him on an insane mission to assassinate Aizen.

Ichigo thinks that’s bullshit (it worked, after all, and who the hell else was going to do it), but they allow it, if only to ease Urahara’s mind a fraction. And maybe a little to keep him from finding more creative ways to ‘repay’ them. Urahara, by all accounts, is insanely smart, emphasis on the insane.

Karakura High agrees to take him mid-year when he passes their entrance exam with flying colors, despite his supposed coma. Everyone thinks he’s just dedicated to his studies.

He’s not. He knows this all. He’s a menos-grade Hollow who’s devoured not-even-he-knows-how-many soul-conglomerations. But everyone involved in reintegration thinks it’s best to introduce him back into human society and give him the most normal life possible, so he plays along even when it makes him feel like a caged animal. 

He takes Karin and Yuzu to Hueco Mundo. He spars with Karin, dodges Yuzu’s arrows, introduces them to the other arrancar. Nel is delighted to meet his sisters properly and always whines when he has to take them home again. Ichigo visits once a week, mostly, and it keeps the itch under his skin manageable.

Tomorrow will be the real test, because tomorrow, he starts high school.

Five weeks after Ichigo reenters his body, he finds himself in a classroom full of apathetic teenagers, standing up front like a particularly uninteresting zoo exhibit.

“Class, please welcome Kurosaki Ichigo. He’ll be joining us starting today.” The teacher (whose name Ichigo cannot remember for the life of him) gestures to him, and Ichigo bows awkwardly and writes his name on the board. 

Handwriting is not his best area. He’s practicing a lot, but his kanji are still unpolished and rusty. He knows his kanji, but reading them and writing them competently aren’t the same thing. “Hey. Uh, I was in a coma for a while, but I’m from Karakura. My family runs the clinic by the river. My name’s Kurosaki Ichigo. Uh…I’m looking forward to meeting you all.”

Someone raises their hand, a kid with a shitty grin like Hirako’s. “Yo, Kurosaki, how much bleach did that hair take?”

“Why, wanna match?” Ichigo asks, flashing a grin right back. 

“Give it up, it’s natural.” His eyes snap to the new speaker. “Hey, Ichigo. You’re late.”

Tatsuki. The girl who used to kick his ass recreationally in the dojo. His friend. He hasn’t had a chance to see her yet, with everything that’s happened, but he knows she teaches Karin and Yuzu at their old dojo. He’s intensely grateful to her for that alone. Just because they can’t beat him doesn’t mean they’re incompetent, thanks to her.

“Natural my—“ Shitty Grin shuts up at whatever look the teacher is giving him. 

“Tatsuki,” Ichigo says, smiling too softly, really, but he can’t help it. He missed her. “Hey.”

“Yeah, yeah, stop being an idiot and sit down,” Tatsuki says with a grin back. “We’ll talk later.”

He rolls his eyes and sits behind her so he can kick her chair. It puts him between two boys, one that feels like a Quincy and one that looks like an entire fucking mountain. So that’s the other Quincy, the one who kept beating him to Hollows when he first came here. He’s studiously ignoring Ichigo.

Ichigo lets a touch of his reiatsu release and takes great pleasure in the glare the Quincy kid sends him. He reins it back in and looks innocently at the board. His first period is English, and he speaks English (and Spanish, German, and others that will probably come up if they’re relevant) fluently, so he slips one of his handwriting practice sheets out and bends over to work on that, careful to look at the teacher occasionally so it looks like he’s still taking notes. He even raises his hand once, to prove he’s not slacking off.

Last month he was one of the most feared Hollows in Hueco Mundo. Now he’s nobody special, an anonymous high school student. Grimmjow would cuss him out for falling so far, but Ichigo doesn’t mind. He feels a bit like a wolf among sheep, folding himself down smaller and unthreatening, but he likes the sheep. He’ll need to stretch back out eventually, but he can play pretend for a while.

Tatsuki waits until lunch before twisting around and pointing to the roof while making eye contact with her dead-not-dead childhood friend. He looks deeply put-upon, but he nods, correctly figuring that she won’t leave him alone about this. He takes out his bento (Tatsuki can spot Yuzu-chan’s work at fifty paces, wrapped in cheerful orange cloth) and follows her. 

He puts his back to the fence and eyes her like a wild animal might, so she deliberately sinks down and leans back. “Damn, you’re tense.”

“You kicked my ass the last five times I saw you,” Ichigo deadpans. 

“And I’ll do it again, probably,” Tatsuki agrees. “You didn’t ghost-stalk me?” She has the pleasure of seeing Ichigo double-take, oddly bright eyes going wide. 

“You know about all that?”

“Hung around your family too much, started seeing ghosts, taught Karin-chan and Yuzu-chan how to fight,” Tatsuki says, summing up an extremely stressful month quickly to spare Ichigo the worry. “Your sisters told me they found you, right before Karin-chan vanished for three days, thanks for that heart attack. None of the details.”

“Karin’s fine,” Ichigo says. Of course that’s the part he focuses on. 

“I know she’s fine, I just don’t know what happened. To either of you.”

“Well,” Ichigo says, and his voice is so light that Tatsuki knows he’s messing with her, “I wandered around Hueco Mundo for a while, got recruited by this guy who wanted world domination, and then killed him for kidnapping my baby sister.”

“Is that all,” Tatsuki says, barely refraining from rolling her eyes. 

“Broad strokes, but yeah, pretty much,” Ichigo says with a wry smile. Tatsuki rolls her eyes and headlocks him. To her surprise, it works. He goes limp like a kitten in her arms. 

“Yuzu told me you kicked her ass! You can’t get out of a headlock?”

“I could, but I don’t want to break you,” Ichigo corrects, and now that she’s looking, Tatsuki sees the tension on his face. He’s going limp to counter his instincts, not to signal defeat.

“Please, you’ve been bed-bound for six years,” Tatsuki scoffs. “Spar with me, I bet I land a hit first.”

“If you snuck up on me asleep, maybe,” Ichigo retorts. “Let go before I bite you.” He doesn’t sound that serious, but Tatsuki releases him anyway. “Seriously, don’t grab me. I don’t want to explain to the nurse that I broke your jaw because you said ‘boo!’ in my blind spot.”

“I’ll baby you for now,” Tatsuki promises. “You’re not getting out of fighting me, though. If you’re gonna get used to human strength, it should be on someone who knows you. I know you’re going to get into fights.”

“I might not,” Ichigo protests. 

Tatsuki gives him A Look, and he slumps. “Yuzu and Karin told you, didn’t they.”

“About you dangling a guy fifty feet up because he tried to jump them? Yeah. Nice job.” Tatsuki holds her hand up for a high-five, which Ichigo gives a withering look to. Fair enough. 

She feels a Hollow’s garganta pull open up in the sky. Ichigo’s eyes snap to it at the same time as hers. “Damn. Tats, watch my body?”

“Uh, fuck no. There’s plenty of idiots who can purify Hollows, let them deal with it.” Ichigo’s already pulling something out and pressing it to his chest, and Tatsuki barely catches his body as it falls to the ground like a discarded chrysalis. 

Karin warned her, but it’s still a shock to see his soul form. He’s in white, an odd mix of a hoodie and hakama, and his hair is far longer. She can’t see his face from this angle, but she sees the too-white hand grip the huge-ass cleaver on his back, not to mention the horn sticking out of his skull. His stance has changed, too, wary and watchful.

There’s a presence speeding toward them, and Ichigo swears and takes his hand off his cleaver so he can dodge. “Nel?!”

“Ichigooo!” yells a happy woman’s voice. “How is everything?? How is school? Ooh, who’s this?”

Green hair, white clothes, huge ram-based hat. Warm gray eyes and a wide smile. Tatsuki’s never met a Hollow so…friendly. 

“Nel, for god’s sake, I’m not a baby,” Ichigo grouses. “Tatsuki, this is Nelliel tu Oderschwank, just call her Nel. She’s harmless. Nel, Arisawa Tatsuki, one of my human friends. You’re damn lucky she can see you.”

“But I missed you,” Nel complains, making what Tatsuki recognizes as puppy-dog eyes at Ichigo. “There’s lots to do in Las Noches still, but you promised to visit!”

“I was a little busy coming back from the dead!” Ichigo protests. “I’ll visit this weekend, and I’ll bring a phone so you can annoy me whenever you want.”

“You said you would visit last weekend!”

“I was busy!”

Tatsuki snorts. “Wow, you’re still a pushover, huh?”

“I could literally kill you and Nel.”

“But you won’t,” Tatsuki says, confident that Ichigo hasn’t changed that much. Yuzu told her about how he let them go, even though he didn’t remember them. 

“Probably not,” Ichigo agrees. “Still.” He turns, giving Tatsuki a good look at the piece of bone stuck to his face. It really does look like just a mask, contoured to his cheek and eye. “Sheesh, Nel. I’m alive, see?” He gestures to his body, which is still in Tatsuki’s arms like a fainting princess. “It’s my first day of school.”

“Awwww, you’re so cute!” Nel squeals immediately. “Look at your uniform! You’re all dressed up!”

“Is this you complaining about my hoodie? I need something over my head, okay, I stand out way too goddamn much–”

Tatsuki starts laughing, can’t help it. “Your hair again?”

“Always my fucking hair,” Ichigo mutters. “Shit, sorry, let me…” He falls backward into his body, vanishing, and then it’s just Ichigo again. Ichigo older and wiser and scowlier than she last knew him, but just another human teenager.

“Your jacket is great,” Nel assures Ichigo. “But you look very manly and cute in your uniform! It suits you better than white does.”

“You should see my resurrección,” Ichigo says, rolling his eyes. “Gives me a goddamn shihakusho. That black thing shinigami wear,” he translates for Tatsuki.

“Pleased to meet you,” Tatsuki says to Nel. “Were you looking after this idiot while he was away?”

Nel laughs. “We looked after each other. My adopted older brother. Though he turned out to be a younger brother…”

“Fuck off!” Ichigo lunges for her, and Nel dodges, giggling.

“Is he really fifteen?” she asks Tatsuki. “We thought he was at least two hundred.”

“Pretty sure his birthday was last month? So he’s sixteen.”

Nel shakes her head. “He’s such a baby.”

“I’ll show you baby, you ungrateful–” Nel lets Ichigo catch her this time, even though he’s certainly not faster than her in his human body. He rubs his knuckles over her head in front of the skull mask.

That’s when Yuzu’s Quincy cousin finds them.

He kicks the door open, glowing blue bow in hand, and stops as he takes in the scene of two decidedly non-violent, human-seeming Hollows playing with each other like siblings. They both look over, expressions growing serious in an instant, and Ichigo lets go of Nel.

“Hey,” Tatsuki says, figuring the best way out here is through. 

“Arisawa-san,” the Quincy (what’s his name, damn) greets her, stiff and still with his bow up.

“You must be Ishida,” Ichigo says, stepping unsubtly between him and Nel. “Yuzu’s talked about you a bit.”

“And you must be her Hollow big brother,” Ishida says. “Yuzu-san mentioned you’d returned.”

“Sorry if she talked your ear off about it,” Ichigo says. “Uh, this is Nel, she’s…a friend. She wanted to check up and see how I was doing here, and now she’s going home,” he says pointedly, staring at Nel. “Apologize to Ishida, Nel, you’ve caused him trouble.”

“I’m sorry!” Nel throws herself forward into a bow, which Ishida clearly isn’t expecting, from the way his eyes widen behind his glasses in alarm. Tatsuki tries not to laugh. She knows from Yuzu that the other Quincy is kind of a rigid asshole, protective but always finding an excuse for it, reluctant to show when he’s feeling something particularly strong. Yuzu’s spent years coaxing him out of his cold front, but Tatsuki hasn’t seen results with the wider world, even though Yuzu insists he’s much better in front of her now.

“I’ll see you this weekend, Ichigo!” Nel says cheerfully, slapping him on the back so hard he stumbles forward.

“Ow! Nel! You can’t do that when I’m in my human body, you’ll break something…”

Nel scoffs. “I didn’t hit you that hard.” She makes a break for it into a garganta, Ichigo yelling after her. Tatsuki loses the battle with her laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, next time I’ll let her hit you and you can see how funny it is,” Ichigo grouches, rubbing between his shoulder blades, just under his long hair. “Fucking…”

“Kurosaki,” Ishida interrupts, and just like that, Ichigo’s back to that guarded stance, less human teenager and more overpowered Hollow used to fighting for his life. “What exactly are your intentions toward Karakura?”

“Didn’t Yuzu tell you?” Ichigo asks.

Ishida takes a controlled inhale-exhale. “Yuzu-san is…optimistic about some things. I would prefer to hear it from the Hollow’s mouth, as it were.”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Tatsuki snaps. Ichigo puts a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s fine, Tats.” The tension around his mouth says it’s not fine, actually, but Tatsuki still shuts up. Ichigo doesn’t need her help to win his fights anymore, isn’t the crybaby she remembers. She used to discreetly beat up the kids who spoke badly of him, when they were young, because Ichigo wouldn’t. They’d call him weak, sneer at his hair, laugh when he cried, and Ichigo just took it with hunched shoulders and shining eyes.

Something’s calcified in Ichigo since then, hardened and settled, and it’s not just from age. She loves Ichigo, will probably always think of him as a friend, but she’s also very aware of the pressure rising and the hair on the back of her neck standing up. Ishida is posturing, threatening, and Ichigo’s responding accordingly, testing him. Can you afford to challenge me?

Honestly. Boys.

“All I want is to live here,” Ichigo says, tone deceptively calm, contrasting the reiatsu bleeding through the air that makes it hard to breathe. “With my family. You don’t need to worry about me. I eat Hollows, not humans.”

His tone is calm, but his reiatsu is a warning. Back off, back down.

Ishida doesn’t. “Forgive my unwillingness to believe a vasto lorde has regrown its heart,” he says, voice just as cool. “You can’t possibly be content playing house with the Kurosakis.”

“I’m a Hollow,” Ichigo says dryly. “I’m used to wanting things I can’t have.” He shifts his shoulders, and his voice turns serious. “I’m as shinigami as I’m Hollow, and I started human. You’re right, I’m not just going to play human twenty-four-seven. I’m going back to Hueco Mundo on the weekends, to get out of this body, stretch, hunt. If I see a Hollow in town, I’ll probably eat it. I can’t guarantee that I’ll never hurt anyone, if I’m pushed.” His eyes reflect golden in the noon sun. “All I can promise you is that I care about my family, and I don’t want to see them hurt. They’re the thing I lost, and I’m not selfless enough to refuse that when it’s offered freely to me.”

Tatsuki resists the urge to wolf-whistle. Damn, Ichigo. Not bad for a kid who used to sob over every bruise.

Ishida finally lowers his bow with a nod. It’s not quite respect in his eyes, but it’s not open hostility anymore either. “I don’t care for shinigami any more than I care for Hollows. Keep your hands clean, and we’ll have nothing more to say to each other. Endanger this town, and I will personally destroy your soul.” And with that he leaves. Ichigo’s reiatsu flares, which drives the breath out of Tatsuki’s lungs, but if Ishida is affected, he doesn’t show it.

“Ichi-go,” she manages.

“Shit.” The pressure abruptly vanishes, folding back up into Ichigo’s soul. “Sorry, I’m used to the people around me being a little sturdier. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, asshole, but if you call me fragile again, I’ll break your nose, super-strength or no.” She makes a fist and swings at him for emphasis, and he politely dodges instead of crushing her with reiatsu, catching her fist, or otherwise showing off.

“Fair enough,” he says with a grin. “Come on, let’s finish our lunch. Yuzu’ll cry if I don’t eat her bento. Did I tell you that’s how I remembered my name?”

“Of course it was,” Tatsuki says, rolling her eyes and smiling despite herself. “Yuzu ambushed you with food and did that thing with her face, didn’t she?”

“She looked like I would literally be ruining her life,” Ichigo deadpans. “I’m supposed to be heartless, and even I can’t resist her sad eyes.”

Tatsuki can just picture it. Yuzu holding a bento box, asking Ichigo– Ichigo in his soul form, with that half-mask and deadly horn and giant sword– if he’s sure he’s not hungry, with those pitiful brown eyes and wobbling lower lip. She’s never met anyone that can resist Yuzu’s face when she gets like that.

“Better eat, then, and I’ll tell you about our classmates,” Tatsuki says, picking up her own lunch. “You met stick-up-his-ass, but there’s Hime, Sado-kun, this weirdo Mizuiro who I swear is in the yakuza.”

“What, does he get in fights a lot?”

“No, he just knows weird shit, he’s always on his phone, and he always has money.”

“People used to say I was in the yakuza.”

“People who never saw you with your mom or in the dojo,” Tatsuki counters. “Mizuiro just has the shadiest vibes, alright? Like, I swear to you, he’s gotten away with at least one felony.”

“You want me to follow him in soul form and find out, or…?”

Tatsuki has to stop and consider that. “I’m not encouraging you to stalk our classmate as a ghost,” she decides.

“Uh huh,” Ichigo says, eyes glinting mischievously. “But are you gonna talk me out of it?”

“Oh my god. Do what you want, I was never here, I never told you anything, and if Mizuiro turns out to secretly be spiritually aware…”

“It’s fine, I’ll just run and pretend I have no idea what he’s talking about in school.”

“Are you a good liar now?” Ichigo’s blush is all the answer she needs. “Okay, forget Mizuiro, let me tell you about Hime. I’ve known her for ages, her hair’s nearly as bright as yours…” Ichigo pays the attention she’s due, listening and nodding like there’ll be a test later on their classmates.

When Tatsuki runs out of names and descriptions, Ichigo puts his empty bento away. “Give me your English work, I saw the face you were making at it.”

“What? You can’t copy my work, I don’t care if it’s your first day back…”

“I don’t want to copy it, I want to check it,” Ichigo says, rolling his eyes. “I’ve got a lot of memories from other people, Tats, I speak English pretty well.”

She almost decides to ignore the elephant in the room– Ichigo was very casual about his cannibalism in front of Ishida, but now that it’s just her, he’s talking around it. It doesn’t seem like he’s bothered by it so much as he’s worried she might be.

“I know how you got them, you don’t have to beat around the damn bush,” she says, opening her bag and handing over their homework from English. “I told you I’d kick your ass if you treat me like I’m fragile, didn’t I?”

Something almost like amusement curls the corners of her old friend’s mouth. “My bad. It’s not you specifically, it’s just…polite company, you know?”

“Polite company is strangers,” Tatsuki hits back. “You don’t have to bullshit with me.”

“Noted.” It’s distracted, and she suspects she’ll have to hit him a few more times before he believes her. “Can I tell you what you spelled wrong now? Because you spelled a lot wrong.”

“Goddammit, fine, give it here, what did I…” Tatsuki grabs for her worksheet, swearing when Ichigo uses his height (cheater) to lean back and play keep-away. “You piece of shit, I’m gonna punch you so hard that horn’ll go up your ass–”

Ichigo’s laughing, though, and despite herself, she’s smiling. They aren’t like they were, but the person he is now is someone she thinks she can handle. New boundaries, sure, new problems, but hell, they’re teenagers. They’re all messes. He’s going to be fine. She’ll introduce him to Sado-kun– another surprisingly kind man who looks like a delinquent, who has to be careful with his strength, who she’s personally seen picking up a baby bird with all due delicacy and putting it back in its nest. Hime, whose gentleness forces everyone around her to take it down a notch. Maybe not Keigo yet, until Ichigo gets a better handle on his strength as it applies to normal humans. Keigo’s a fan of surprise hugs, and Ichigo could probably break him even in his human body.

And he has Yuzu and Karin, who spent a week chasing him down. Masaki-san, who has never met a problem she couldn’t stubborn her way through, who insists Tatsuki come to their house for dinner after Yuzu and Karin’s classes. Isshin-san, granted, is pretty useless, but the rest of the Kurosakis? Tatsuki wouldn’t bet against them.