Chapter Text
Remember me - if at all
Not as a lost, violent soul
*
He didn’t notice it on his way to pick up Karin at her football training - it was a wednesday evening like any other, at almost seven. The days had started to get shorter, and the nights longer. His dad had asked in a stern, no nonsense tone he didn’t use very often that Ichigo walked his sister home on such days, and, well. Late October was full of those.
So would be winter, Ichigo thought forlornly, watching the long shadows cast by the setting sun, their curious, intermingled shapes looking nothing like the road sign, the car or the bin they were drawn after. His own outline was a crudely drawn something on the asphalt, a tangle of limbs looking a bit worn out - they were nothing alike, Ichigo decided, focusing instead on the end of the street.
The football stadium was close, though not close enough to be considered part of his and his sisters’ highschool grounds. He had to walk a few minutes, along the tracks where some people were still training, along the bleachers; out through the school portal, and then take a few turns on the streets. On his way out, he walked past the old, polished dojo where the kendo team trained. It stood tall, maybe taller than the city lights, and impossibly imposing. A few students usually came out around the same time Ichigo reached it, though he didn’t recognize anyone. He had not really made an effort to. Instead, he started walking a bit faster.
Karin was already done when he reached the stadium, speaking loudly and gesticulating wildly at her coach about how the next match would be theirs to win, finally; to you the glory, Ichigo thought fondly, sharing a knowing smile with old Arai-san. His sister had a mean streak to her sometimes, but nobody could deny that it sometimes came in handy when playing a competitive sport such as football. It had certainly allowed the team a few hard-earned victories these past few months.
“Ichi-nii!”
Her bag slung across her shoulders, Karin was hastily pulling her hair together in a messy ponytail; sweat made a few wild strands of her dark hair clung to her brow, and her cheeks were flushed red with effort. She always looked so deeply happy after training, so bright - her joy felt absolute in a terrifying way, one that made him consider all the things he had decided to leave unsaid, buried, undisturbed -
One that made him feel inadequate, and somehow, strangely hollow.
“You had a good time, then?” Ichigo remarked instead, looking at the mess of her hair, at her badly laced shoelaces; there would be time for that, later. His sister, she came first - so he forced a smile, felt it genuinely tug at his lips as Karin started babbling all about that new move she learned, that new teammate they had. And she spoke and spoke and spoke, filling the emptiness inside; until such a time came Ichigo didn’t feel as hollow anymore. Somehow, her happiness had reached him and they spent the rest of the walk home watching silly football videos on his phone.
Life is good, Ichigo decided, letting his sister’s warmth do the trick, batting away his darker thoughts; life is good, he told himself again as he helped Yuzu lay the table, as he watched his dad sit and nod dutifully at Karin’s detailed (and second) recount of this evening’s training session. That gloomy feeling was just a by-product of not enough sun and of the steady, seasonal temperature drop; it would be better tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after.
That was the exact moment he first noticed it, as he was lying in his bed after a nice meal, after his homework was all done - a faint, forceful tug on his heart. He blinked once, twice, thrice, at the ceiling, unsure; then, Ichigo inhaled deeply through his nose, rolled over, and as anyone would have done in his place, decided to shrug it off.
.
They had switched to winter uniforms a few weeks ago, and some had started wearing heavier coats, plushy scarves and light, fingerless gloves; Inoue in particular liked it very much, for she had joined an after school knitting club and winter gave her new ideas every week. Tatsuki played fashion guinea pig every now and then. Not that long ago, her sharp, knowing gaze had started sometimes settling on the horizon the same way Inoue, or Chad, or Ishida’s did, which in turn had made Ichigo wonder. Did she develop powers as well, after all? Were they secretly training her to protect herself? She had come close enough to danger a few times-
“Daydreaming again, Kurosaki?”
He looked up at Keigo, wishing he didn’t look as bored as he felt; life is good, Ichigo reminded himself, pushing this thought at the forefront of his mind.
“Yeah, something like that,” came his uneasy answer, which his friend thankfully interpreted as frustration.
“Can’t wait to be home, too,” Keigo said, sighing deeply.
He was playing this new video game Ichigo couldn’t remember the name of, something something of something, installment five or seven. “Me too,” Ichigo sighed as well, running a hand through his unkempt hair.
They spent most of the break in silence, waiting for class to start again; it felt familiar, as most things did - and inexplicably awkward, as all things did now. Ichigo couldn’t really remember when it had started, this bitterness, this gloom; spring and then summer had been grand, full of everything and nothing, and he had spent all of September and most of October chasing their joyful remnants, their warm but elusive tendrils, wondering where all of it had gone.
It was like it had just up and left, one day.
Class started again, and Keigo turned back to his own textbooks and notes. Maths was easy, Ichigo found, because for all of its complexity it had something hard and logical about it that made him feel better, even if slightly, probably because there were no unexpected or unplanned outcomes. Then, as Ichigo was starting the last exercise on his textbook page (page 98), the sudden screech of a chair on the floor and the shriek of their teacher startled Keigo enough that a few of his pencils rolled and fell from his desk.
“W-wait, Inoue-san!”
She was already out of the room.
A few rows in front of him, Tatsuki slumped a little in her chair, her gaze trained on the window and whatever she could see out there.
Ichigo picked up one of Keigo’s pens that had rolled under his desk, and handed it back to him. “Geez, girls and their bathroom issues…”
That made him chuckle, “I hope she’s alright,” he added nonetheless, with a lightness in his tone that didn’t quite match how he felt eyeing Tatsuki. The line of her shoulders had sunk a bit, and she was chewing nervously on her pencil. He wanted to reassure her, tell her it would be alright - that neither Yoruichi nor the patrolling Shinigami of the week would let anything happen.
That he wouldn’t let anything happen to her, to them.
How empty those promises would sound like, coming out of his mouth.
.
“He won’t see you,” came her voice, her tone careful; it was almost a whisper, said so low that it felt as though only the wind had carried it to his ears. “You know he can’t,” the petite Shinigami pressed on, a bit more mournful this time - her voice was trembling a little, her wording not so careful anymore, her every word tinted with enough sadness to convey that feeling that was so alien to him, that human sympathy she craved so much to share.
Yeah, Grimmjow knew - the whole thing just hadn’t quite registered until Kurosaki had walked up to him, and brushed unknowingly against - through - his entire arm, and his shoulder too, a minute or ten ago. He had turned around, an insult at the very tip of his tongue, yet - yet the words had died on his lips, and there had only been the foggy imprint of his breath in the empty space between them. There had been no searching eyes; none of that knowing, secretive smile Grimmjow hated and still remembered with perfect clarity; all there had been was the absence of what should have been -
“That fucking sucks,” he deadpanned after a moment, his eyes still on the retreating silhouette of that boyish, overpowered brat who had all but disappeared after Aizen’s defeat; and for a while, that had seemed like a fitting end. Kurosaki had just gone back, back to the start: to his plain, ordinary life - and so had he, so had everyone. And for a while, it had been enough-
His gaze fell on the tiny Shinigami that had been haunting his steps for over a day now, on that long white cloak she now wore and didn’t have before; on her longer hair; how long had it been, since his last visit here?
“That it does,” Rukia murmured in agreement, her eyes also trained on hi,; and every step Ichigo took just led him further and further away, until at one point he completely disappeared in the labyrinthic streets of Karakura, amidst a crowd of men and women just as mortal and simple and blind as he had become. Just as ordinary; and that was such a foreign, impossible idea-
“You shouldn’t stay here too long,” the girl said, finally turning to him. Her dark eyes settled on him, laden with what felt a little too close to pity for his taste. “Others won’t be as lenient as I am, Espada.”
Grimmjow snorted at that. “I’ve seen what your leniency does to your friends, yeah,” he spat at her, wanting to sound mocking, ending up angry. Turning his burning gaze towards her, he had half a mind to just slap her, like the idiotic kid she was. They could give her a hollow title, a pretty cloak, a few hundred men to command - none of that mattered to him.
“Careful,” she warned him, trying to sound menacing; with a small gesture of her thumb, she pushed a bit of her sword out of its sheath, the metal flashing a little in the grayish, dying light.
His distant, elusive human memories told Grimmjow that it wasn’t that late, not late enough for it to be night yet. It’s almost winter, came the foreign, yet familiar thought. The street lights would soon pick up where the sun left off, and allow him a few more hours of mindless wandering.
“Go back to your hollow land,” Rukia demanded of him, her blade hidden again, her tone still full of warnings she wouldn’t clearly voice, as if they both didn’t fully know what her kind had done to Las Noches after Aizen’s imprisonment. Their leader had faced a life sentence, and so had they, in a way. Their lives just never were meant to be that long.
“Sure, I will,” he heard himself answer in a mock promise, his body still angled towards the streets Kurosaki had disappeared into; he was faster than she could ever dream to be, and so it was easy to lose her with a few quick Sonido steps.
.
It was cold, but not overly so; the street lamps threw a white, polar kind of light on the asphalt, where his body cast sometimes curious, sometimes shapeless shadows. Kurosaki was harder to find without his spiritual pressure to follow like a trail of smoke in the air - instead there were only the many smells and sounds of the city breathing around him, in its irregular rhythm, in this illusory peace.
He won’t see you, the Shinigami had declared, her voice too sad, too deep for it to be a lie.
Grimmjow reached a crossroads, the streets empty, the lights cold; he looked around, lost.
.
Sakurai’s inquisitive gaze was locked in his as he entered the main room after having changed, walking barefoot on the wooden sprung floors, “Ready?” she asked, and that, too, was a question Ichigo didn’t have an answer to.
Ready for what?
Ichigo nodded instead, wishing away the prickling at the corner of his eyes, wishing away the faint trembling of his hands; he let himself be soothed by the easy rhythm of practicing kata, of following the slow, familiar pattern of movements and Sakurai’s steady voice as she led him through it. And if the wind felt colder than usual on his cheeks and hands when he finally left the dojo after training that night, well - he did his best to ignore it. It was simply winter, again.
“Oh, you’re home,” came the unsurprised, almost bored voice of his dad from the kitchen as Ichigo entered the house; outside, the sky was of a deep, inky black, and you couldn’t see any stars there because of the city lights. He had not really noticed - his walk home usually didn’t take long, but this time it had passed in the blink of an eye.
Ichigo removed his shoes and hung his coat, in that sullen, defeated kind of silence you used when talking would mean crying. He heard today’s newspaper being folded, the chair legs rattling against the tiled floor of the kitchen.
Ah.
A talk, then.
“Ichigo.” Isshin was standing in the door frame, the hard lines of his face outlined by the soft orange lighting of the kitchen; his brows were furrowed, his ink black eyes full of a fatherly concern Ichigo didn’t know what to make of.
It made him so uneasy, and everything suddenly felt so wrong - trying to brush it off, Ichigo angled his body towards the stairs and muttered, “it’s nothing, Dad, I’m just tired.”
His foot was already on the second step when his dad called his name again.
“Ichigo. You don’t have to pretend it’s easy,” Isshin tried to reason with him, and his face had such a hard, painful gravity to it - the line of his mouth was downwards, his gaze inhabited by a sorrow usually reserved for talks of their mother.
“I don’t,” he snapped right back, his voice a strangled something that fooled no one.
Yet he stood there, frozen on the second step of the staircase, his hand on the railing to steady himself; he wiped a treacherous tear off his cheek in a brusque, rage-filled gesture.
“Just - just leave me alone. Please,” he almost begged, wishing he didn’t really sound as pathetic as he felt. He threw a small, insincere apology at his dad before he jogged upstairs, finally reaching the relative safety of his bedroom.
Ichigo sank to the floor, his back to the sliding door of his closet, the very one Rukia had spent weeks sleeping and hiding in - it seemed so long ago now, he thought as a few more tears escaped his eyes. If his inner world still existed somewhere, it must be filled entirely with water by now. Would it all turn to ice then, as winter came around for the first time since he had lost his powers to a higher cause?
It took a while for his tears to finally dry, to finally cease; and when it did, it wasn’t his father that came to see him.
“Mah, when Isshin told me things were bad, I thought they would be worst,” came the mocking, familiar voice of a man Ichigo couldn’t see anymore unless one of them (the only ones that still could) willingly crossed the thin barrier between the living and the dead - Urahara pushed the bedroom door close behind him, his gigai looking a bit too elegant and proper for someone who usually wore close to no shoes and an oversized kimono.
Ichigo looked up at him, sniffing, and rubbed at his eyes. He felt something foreign yet familiar flicker alive inside of him; a tiny, shivering something that was still there, that tugged at him. Maybe, it was whatever had remained after his use of the final Getsuga Tensho.
“Hey, Urahara-san,” he saluted him as best as he could, his smile strained, his exhaustion bone-deep; some days were like that, some others were worst.
“Hey yourself,” the shop owner said back at him, settling near him and bumping into his shoulder. He put his cane across his lap, and for a while said nothing - it was a comforting presence to have, even if Ichigo knew it wouldn’t last.
“I know you don’t want to hear it. But,” Urahara said, insisting on that very word, “sometimes you gotta rip the band aid off.”
“Wasn’t it ripped enough when I-”
“I’ll be the one doing the talking for now, Kurosaki,” he interrupted, a not-so-gentle strike of the cane landing on Ichigo’s knee. It earned Urahara a pained hiss that he easily ignored, his gaze turned towards the bedroom window and the night. “None of this is meant to be easy. That’s not what sacrifice is about, sadly - though I wish it could have been different. And, knowing it isn’t forever, well - it doesn’t make it any easier to bear,” Urahara added in a whisper, his own defeat apparent as he threw Ichigo a concerned side-eyed glance.
Ichigo snorted at that - it had been like learning to walk, talk and hear again, be human again, in those first few weeks right after his power loss and the subsequent month-long coma.
“What you did, it is not unlike a suicide, after all. And,” Urahara added after a short pause, letting his first sentence sink in, “unlike Isshin, you do not really have someone to share it with. He had your mother, and I guess all you have is silence.”
“Understatement,” Ichigo muttered; yet it brought a hollow smile to his lips, to think of his loving mother as this radiant, perfect savior.
Urahara shared that smile with him for a few seconds, before hiding his eyes under the rim of his hat. “Just because you cannot see them, does not mean they cannot see you, Ichigo. Know that in your heart,” he insisted, hammering that truth with a vicious smack of his cane into his ribs.
“Stop that!” He yelped, pushing the tip of that hellish wooden stick away from himself.
“Then stop feeling so sad,” Urahara countered with a poor excuse of a smile - if only it was that easy, Ichigo thought, his amber eyes glaring daggers at the shop owner. “Your day will come again, Kurosaki. I don’t think any attack, however powerful it is, could ever erase such a huge, meaningful part of you. What would it say of our world, if we didn’t reward sacrifice in a more meaningful way than that?”
Ichigo wanted it so hard to be true - and to be true now, so he could feel it for himself again, that serene and absolute certainty, the perfectly tuned background hum of his powers. “So my day will come again, uh,” he deadpanned, almost stammering dumbly at his old mentor, “or something like that?”
Urahara’s confident nod made his hat fall even more into his eyes. “Something like that. You have left quite a strong mark on our worlds, which - well,” he stopped for one, two, and three long seconds, his wording careful when he spoke again. “I’m quite sure trouble will come knocking at your door sooner rather than later.”
They shared a chuckle at that, and Ichigo finally felt a bit lighter. “Thank you, Urahara-san.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” the shop owner told him, winking as he picked up his cane.
Ichigo watched him go, not through the wall but through the door; then, his gaze went back to his window, to the coldness of the night outside; he should thank his dad for calling Urahara-san to his rescue. It wasn’t always the old man who showed up for a pep talk, for a shared moment of comforting silence - Yoruichi was there for those harder moments with him, too, when she didn’t walk him home after school or kendo - she had quite liked the high branches of the trees right outside the dojo, and had already planned to spent spring or summer napping there.
He knew he wasn’t alone, but sometimes - sometimes it was hard not to feel overwhelmed by all the things he knew were there but couldn’t see, couldn't feel; by everything everyone that was around him, hiding in every curiously shaped shadow, in every little blade of grass, in every whisper of the wind.
They still see me, Ichigo firmly decided to believe, because I’m still here.
“I’m still here,” he repeated aloud to his empty room, the words heavy on his tongue.