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hashtagartistlife · 8 years ago

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Clocking in at 6000+ words, this is about double the size of the other chapters. What can I say, I love writing Ichigo’s pov. Once again, thanks to my partner in crime @mizulily for the beta and the wonderful heartbreaking ending sequence suggestions.

Title: Cyclical

Summary: In a peculiar twist of fate, Rukia dies, but Ichigo endures. A century later, she’s the reincarnated headstrong human teenager and he’s the long-suffering shinigami who sort-of-accidentally may have transferred his powers to her. Some things are different. Some things are the same. And some things, it seems, will never ever change. Chapter 5: Ichigo and Good Luck are kind of not on speaking terms. Ichigo and Good Luck are kind of maybe embroiled in a bitter feud that spans decades. Ok, Ichigo hasn’t talked to Good Luck in about a hundred years. Why should things change now, amirite?

Ratings: M

Warnings: none

Archive: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Current Post

Read on ao3 | ffnet

Chapter 5: Compliance

She's not her.

She's not her—

— isn't she?

Missed calls (10 total): Shiba Yuzu (2), Kurosaki Karin (1), Abarai Renji (1), Arisawa Tatsuki (6)

Ichigo winces at the display blinking up at him and unlocks his phone with a resigned swipe. He’s perched on a treetop, out of sight of normal and spiritually gifted mortals alike; unless human beings have evolved in the past hundred years to have night vision, he’s pretty damn sure nobody will be interrupting him any time soon. He's less sure about the prospect of discovery by a member of the afterlife, but he figures that if nobody has come for his ass by now, a couple more hours either way isn't going to make a difference.

He stares at the phone in his hands, contemplating who to call first. None of the options are entirely appealing. Still, there was nothing to be gained by hiding out in a tree and just looking at his phone all night.

He groans and hits dial on the first number in his missed calls list. Yuzu isn't exactly what he would call the best option out of the bunch, but he'd rather her than, say, his Vice Captain. He’ll get to her later. Much later.

“Shiba Residence, Ai speaking. How may I help?”

Ichigo stifles a curse at the unfamiliar voice coming down the line. Shit. He'd forgotten about this. Yuzu wasn’t just his baby sister that he could call up at his whim anymore. Hurriedly, he drops his voice two tones and adopts a foreign accent before speaking.

“Uh, yes, uh, is Lady Shiba available to speak—?”

There's a gasp on the other end of the line. “Kuro— Kurosaki-dono? Is that you? Lady Shiba has been trying to get in touch with you all day—”

“Who— who is this Kurosaki you are speaking of, I am not him—”

“Hold on one moment, Kurosaki-dono, I'll put Lady Shiba on the line right away— LADY SHIBA! IT'S KUROSAKI-DONO ON THE LINE FOR YOU! LADY SHIBA—”

Ichigo takes the phone away from his ear and swears. This was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid.

“LADY SHIBA—”

“Ai, did you just say Kurosaki? Gimme that for a sec— hey, firework brain, you are so screwed—”

“Kurosaki? Why’s that little shit calling at this hour of the night—”

“Ganju-niichan, Kuukaku-neesan, be nice! Onii-chan? Onii-chan, is that you?”

“Yuzu.” Ichigo latches onto his sister's voice with all the fervency of a starved man at Hikifune’s table. “Please, for the love of god, for the love of me, please get yourself a private phone. Blackmail Urahara. Take it out of the Eighth’s budget. I don't care. Just, please let me contact you normally without the whole household knowing.”

The esteemed Lady and Second Head of the newly resurrected Shiba Clan frowns at the phone. “Onii-chan, that's not the important thing here—”

“It's important to me!”

“Onii-chan,” Yuzu says severely, “What have you done?”

“N-Nothing!” he protests. She doesn't buy it.

“Then why did Tatsuki-nee call me three times today demanding to know where you were?”

“... ok, so something might’ve happened,” he admits. Yuzu sighs. “Look, Tatsuki didn't tell you anything about what's going on? You don't know what's happening?”

“Only that you're supposed to be in Australia now, and that clearly something has gone wrong,” she says tiredly. “Look, onii-chan, I'm glad to hear you're alright, but you better call Tatsuki-nee. She was going out of her mind.”

Ichigo starts mentally making plans for his funeral. “Alright, alright. I'll call her right after this so, uh, don't you go calling her to tell her I called, ok? I'll do it myself!”

“I got it, onii-chan. Say, you're not in trouble, are you? You're safe, right?”

He chooses not to answer that. “Thanks, Yuzu. I'll talk to you later. Bye!” he says, and hangs up. He leans back against the trunk of the tree and rubs the back of his neck, before dialing the next number.

“You,” Karin says when she picks up, “are in so much shit.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know,” Ichigo retorts. “So, uh, what’s happening over there?”

“That’s my question, moron, you’re the one who’s been mia for 12 hours—”

“Don’t call your older brother a moron,” he snaps. He hears derisive laughter on the other side.

“We’ve been through this before. You are still physically only nineteen, while I lived a full human life and came to the Seireitei aged 76, thank you very much. And even now, my physical age is 23. What part of that screams ‘you’re older than me’?”

“The part where I was born before you! And I don’t have time for this. What’s been happening? What have you heard?”

Karin snickers. “Nuh-uh. You’re not getting out of calling Tatsuki-nee. I’m not telling you anything.”

“You are a terrible excuse for a sister, I hope Byakuya drowns you in paperwork—”

“Bye, younger brother!” she sing-songs, and hangs up. Ichigo treats the hang-up tone to a hearty round of cursing before trying the next number. He has to call twice before Renji picks up.

“Ichigo, where have you been—”

“Cleaved in half, trying not to die, thanks,Renji, how's things over there—”

“Trying not to—?! Ichigo, what the fuck? What the hell’s going on in Australia?!”

For the first time since he started dialling numbers, Ichigo hesitates; the words stick in his throat, and he takes care to search for the right ones. In his quest to think of anything but the girl he has spent the better part of the last 12 hours with, he’d inadvertently called the one person he should have avoided the most if he’d wanted respite from the topic of Lucia/Rukia. The fact that the girl they’d found together on their last trip to Australia had been named Lucia is not lost on him.

That’s her, Renji had said, I’d know her anywhere.

There was a time when Ichigo thought the same. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

But Renji’s full of shit, he reminds himself angrily. Surely there is more than one Lucia in the entirety of Australia, and so what if this Lucia was the same one they'd found twelve years ago? Neither of them are Rukia. Is a person still that person when they've lost all traces of their memories, all traces of what made them them? Can this girl, even if she is truly Rukia reincarnated, be called Rukia if she hadn't grown up in the Rukongai, hadn't known Renji and their gang of friends, hadn't met Kaien and Byakuya and known the cold snap of Shirayuki in the back of her mind? What makes a person who they are? What makes Rukia her?

“Hey, asshole!” Renji snaps, and Ichigo shoves his philosophical dilemmas away for another time. “You call me up in the middle of the night after disappearing for 12 hours, ask me what the hell is going on, tell me you've been trying not to die and now you're not gonna answer any of my questions—”

“Sorry, sorry! It's been a long day. I ran into some trouble with Australian border security and a hollow, and I've lost contact with the Australian shinigami. I just need a way to get back in contact with them.”

Renji snorts. “That sounds suspiciously tame compared to the amount of angry calls Ise-Soutaichou has been getting.”

“Look, throw me a bone, would you?” Ichigo says, irritated. “I’ll… go be diplomatic or something with the Australian shinigami, I don't know. Point is, I can’t fix whatever mess it is I left behind if I can’t actually get in contact with them.”

Renji considers this. “You can't find one on patrol or something?”

“Not a damn soul. Plenty of plus that need konso, but shinigami are pretty thin on the ground.”

There's a long low whistle, full of static. “Man. I knew we were lending you out because Australia had a shortage of viable shinigami, but it's that bad?”

“I don't know, Renji, maybe I can find out if you'd actually give me some useful information!”

Renji chuckles in an infuriating way. “Alright, alright. I'll go tell Ise-Soutaichou you've checked in. Stay tight and someone’ll probably call back with instructions.”

“Thanks. Sooner rather than later would be appreciated because I kind of got injured and tried healing it myself.”

Ichigo grits his teeth against the roar of laughter. “You tried kaido on yourself? Ichigo, you know that shit knocks you out cold—”

“I don't want to hear that from someone who can't even heal a papercut!” he responds hotly. So what if he tended to pass out after performing any sort of healing kido? It was better than dying from your injuries. Which was what was gonna happen to Renji if he ever got injured on the battlefield.

Then something occurs to him, and he forces himself to adopt a nonchalant tone to broach the subject. “Oh, by the way, is there any way to get your powers back from someone if you've accidentally given a bit of them to someone else?”

The hearty laughing on the line cuts off abruptly.

“... why do you ask?” Renji says, suddenly serious. Ichigo licks his lips.

“.... No reason. Just— just curious.”

“Ichigo, what have you done—”

“Absolutely nothing. Look, never mind, it was just idle curiosity—”

“Like bullshit it is,” Renji snorts. “Fine, then, if you don't want to tell me. Your fucking skin on the line. As far as I know, short of killing them or shattering their hakusui and saketsu, there's no way to get your powers back.”

Ichigo was afraid of that. “Got it. Hey, while you're at it, do you mind telling Tatsuki that I called and—”

“Oh, no. You're not worming out of that one. I don't want to get into a fight with your fukutaichou on a good day but on days like this? The entire Shiba clan couldn't pay me enough to go near her. You're on your own.”

“What kind of a friend are you?!” Ichigo yells, and Renji just sniggers.

“A smart one. Later,” he says, and hangs up. Ichigo only just represses the urge to throw his phone at the ground. Instead, he takes a deep breath and dials a number not on his missed calls list.

It's not like I'm procrastinating calling Tatsuki, he tells himself, I actually need to make this call.

But in true Urahara fashion, the only thing that greets him after three unsuccessful calls are three annoying ‘leave a message!’ responses, a different one each time. Groaning, Ichigo shoves his phone back into his pocket and contemplates the situation at hand.

Lucia. The girl with her face who may or may not have been Rukia, the girl who saw ghosts.

… The girl he may have accidentally just doomed to death by reaper, if he was any precedent. Is creating a substitute shinigami a class-A crime in Australia, too? Ichigo feels like screaming. Instead, he casts his mind back to his own abrupt transformation; what had happened then? He'd been given powers, he'd wasted that Hollow that had messed with his family, and then he'd fallen unconscious and proceeded to think everything was a bad dream until Rukia'd shown up in his class—

Ah. In short, he would have gone on his merry way thinking everything was a dream if Rukia hadn’t shown up. He could work with this. He'd already erased Lucia’s memories; even if the wiper hadn't worked for some reason, it wouldn't matter. Experienced shinigami could shed their gigai without a gikongan, but without him to push her soul out of her body, there was nothing Lucia’d be able to do on her own. He could simply leave things be, and she'd never be able to become shinigami again. What the Australian reapers didn't know wouldn't hurt them, either. Ichigo could essentially ignore the entire incident, and nothing would happen.

He tries not to analyse why this conclusion bothers him more than it should, and files the whole situation away into a mental drawer marked ‘resolved’ just as his phone starts ringing. He checks the caller ID, and swallows hard.

It’s his Vice Captain. Ichigo briefly contemplates applying for asylum in Australia, before remembering the amount of border security involved. Groaning, he picks up the phone.

“Hi, Tatsuki, look, I can explain…”

Three hours, one verbal chew-out, and several healers later, and Ichigo feels almost back to normal. Tatsuki’s tirade had been interrupted thirty minutes in by a much more reasonable member of the Australian version of Gotei-13, and Ichigo finds, to his great relief, that they've apparently reviewed the security tapes and have cleared him for any criminal charges leveled against him. Of course, they're charging Commander Ise for damages (he'd winced at that), and they were putting him on probational duty for the next month, but all things considered, Ichigo reckons he's been let off incredibly easy.

Which, of course, immediately makes him suspicious. He and good luck are most definitely not on speaking terms about 95% of the time.

“Well, I say probational,” the woman— she'd introduced herself as Mononeeta— sighs in a tone of voice that Ichigo is all too familiar with. Overwork. “The truth is, even with a halved radius of work, you'll be in charge of an incredibly large area of land. As I'm sure you must have noticed already, we're not exactly the most well-manned reaper taskforce in the world. And you're, well, frankly speaking, we did ask for someone with as much spiritual pressure as possible, but you are beyond even our wildest estimations. We're discussing giving you a much larger radius than we'd planned for when your probation is lifted.”

“Not a problem,” he replies, poking at his now much more expertly applied bandages. “I could use the space and distraction, to be honest. I'll be glad to help any way I can.”

Please, please, please keep me busy. Busy enough that I don't have time to think about the substitute shinigami I created today.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Mononeeta visibly relaxes. “You'll get a day off to recover from your injuries and to orient yourself with our system— oh, please don't look at me like that, Benjamin was a special case, I promise we're more competent in other areas— and after that you'll be straight on duty. It shouldn't be very different from what you did in Japan. Eliminate hollows, perform purification for plus.”

“So Benjamin was his name—?” Ichigo mutters, remembering the reaper that had tried to detain him at border security. “He alright—?”

“More than alright.” Mononeeta snorts. “He tried to make a case for battery at the meeting, but we all saw the tapes. Well, OK, so it was technically an ‘unprovoked attack’, but we figure in light of the fact that he'd be dead had he gone, he should be thanking you instead.”

Here, she hesitates a little. “In fact, it seems you came very close to dying yourself. I know the alert was for a level two, Menos Grande, but if it gave you this much trouble….?”

“Oh— oh! No, this was— uh, the hollow was fine, I was just— a little distracted—”

Mononeeta looks skeptical. Ichigo improvises wildly.

“The— the sun on the beach, you see— glare—”

“Well, it's true the sun in Australia is particularly strong.” She seems unconvinced, but has evidently decided to move on; Ichigo swallows a sigh of relief. “Anyway, please focus on recuperating, Mr. Kurosaki. We'd like to have you on duty a.s.a.p.”

“Duly noted.”

Mononeeta nods and moves away; at the last second, Ichigo calls after her:

“Uh, hey? Sorry— what was your name—”

“Mononeeta.”

“Mononeeta. Right. Idle curiosity, but, uh, if you're so understaffed, have you considered any other options of recruiting? Say, like, creating substitute shinigami?”

The moment the question leaves his lips, Ichigo knows he misspoke. Mononeeta’s tired eyes become fierce, and she storms right back up to him to grip his shoulder with a tense hand.

“Substitute reapers—? Do you know something about how to create them—?”

“Not— not at all— I was just wondering—”

“Are you absolutely sure? You haven't heard anything to do with substitute reapers—”

“No!”

“— if you know anything about substitute reapers, if you hear anything at all, you must tell us about it, Mr. Kurosaki. It's of the utmost importance—”

“I— I was only just asking—”

As quickly as she had fired up, Mononeeta deflates.

“Of course. My apologies. But it really is important for us, you understand. Matter of national security. So please be sure to tell us if anything of the sort happens.”

“Of— of course.”

Ichigo forces himself to smile, and after a short moment, Mononeeta is placated. She leaves him with a nod and a wave. Ichigo waves back till he’s sure her reiatsu has faded away a safe distance, before he drops his hand like a stone.

It's a matter of national security—

Fuck.

After the fiasco with Mononeeta, Ichigo had been very careful not to even think about the newly minted substitute soul reaper walking around in the Australian suburbs somewhere. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done when he'd had nothing to occupy his mind for the entire day but settling into his new quarters and familiarising himself with a map of his assigned area. On multiple occasions, he'd caught himself wondering what Rukia— Lucia, goddammit, her name was Lucia— was doing at that moment in time. Probably attending school, judging by how old she'd looked; but then again, she was so tiny that even when she'd been a 150-year-old death goddess she'd often passed for younger than him—

Aaaaand there he was, doing that again. Rukia wasn’t Lucia. He had to stop thinking like this. It would only end badly.

Well, that had been yesterday; today, he'd finally been given something to do. Namely, patrols. He'd thrown himself into his duties with enthusiasm, rising at the crack of dawn to tackle the day, but as the hours went by he'd become increasingly bored. It wasn't just shinigami that were thin on the ground in Australia; it simply wasn't a rich land spiritually. That meant no Hollows, and not nearly enough ghosts to keep him busy, even with the ridiculous amount of land he needed to cover. In Japan, the air was thick with reishi wherever he went, but here, he could finally understand why Vice-Captain and above were required to dial down their power output to 20% while in the gensei. That amount of concentrated reishi in such a spiritually barren land would be a goddamn beacon for hollows.

Ishida would hate Australia, he thinks vaguely, just before his soul pager goes off with a vengeance.

He hardly needs the warning. The murky black reiatsu of the Hollow is a signal flare, and even with his patchy reiatsu tracking he can feel it from across the city. Excited, Ichigo unshoulders Zangetsu and slips into shunpo.

It only takes him a few seconds to reach the source of the commotion; a school, of all things. That was bad, but not catastrophic; he was fairly certain he’d be able to lead the Hollow away. He unleashes his reiatsu, trying to tempt the hollow away from the kids, but it's surprisingly resistant. The Hollow spares him a glance before refocusing its attention on the schoolchildren, and Ichigo curses.

“C’mon, you stupid hollow, come get me, there's nothing for you there—”

Wrong. As if the world itself is hell-bent on contradicting him, a student darts out from the throng, arms waving as she ushers the other kids behind her. Ichigo’s heart misses a beat when he recognises her panicked voice.

“Come on, move! Do you want to die? Is that it?”

“Why the fuck is she here?” he snarls, jumping into action. He swings Zangetsu at the Hollow’s head but it ducks out of the way, and now there's nothing blocking the girl from having a clear line of sight to him.

“You—!”

“Busy!” he yells, cleaving Zangetsu in a vicious arc; the Hollow attempts to block it with an elongated nail, but loses the entire hand in the process. It howls in pain and the rest of the students finally seem to get the memo. They still couldn't see what was going on, but Hollow cries triggered flight responses in about 99% of the human population. The crowd starts scattering, and Ichigo gears up; he needed to finish this quickly, for everyone’s safety.

“Get out of my way!” he roars, and Lucia takes the hint; she performs a neat dive-and-roll out of his path, and Ichigo refines his aim.

“Getsuga—”

Behind him, he doesn't see Lucia snap her head up, her eyes widening with something like recognition.

“— Tenshou.”

Black and red light up the sky.

Overkill? Maybe. But hell if he hadn't needed that; Ichigo feels the reiatsu pumping through his veins and something seems to lift off his chest. He hasn't been able to just destroy things in a while, and picking through crowds and buildings while fighting got old very quickly. Maybe Kenpachi was onto something, and it was therapeutic to duke it out with someone to the death every so often.

His next thought is that he needs to see a shrink, a.s.a.p.

Before he can make a getaway and book that appointment, though, someone grabs him by the collar of his shihakushou; he tips his head back and closes his eyes in defeat. He already knows who it is.

“You—” There’s zero confusion or hesitation in Lucia Greenwood’s demeanor, which would mean that the memory eraser didn't take. Ichigo’s not even surprised. With his luck, he should just assume nothing works for him the way it’s supposed to, ever. “Are you— are you okay? Have you been healed? You didn't get hurt just then, did you?”

“No,” he replies, long-suffering.

“Good,” she says, and then she stomps on his foot.

“Ow— woman, what the fuck—?!”

“Memory erasers,” she parrots, sickeningly sweet, “are fifty different kinds of illegal in the human world. Oh, and you know what else is illegal? Attacking someone in their own house and leaving them passed out, you jerkwad!”

“When human laws cover fighting protocols with giant hell monsters, I'll consider abiding by them.”

“Ghosts don't have a concept of decency, then? Is this any way to treat someone who stopped you from bleeding out on the street?”

“As I seem to recall it, the reason I was bleeding out on the street was because I was trying to save your ungrateful ass from being skewered first.”

Ah. He had her there. She removes her hands from his shihakushou slowly.

“And I thanked you for that,” she says, but she's clearly still feeling guilty. Ichigo doesn't like that expression on her face. It reminds him of an expression that Rukia had worn far too often for his liking.

“Yeah, well, no big deal. I've already forgotten it. We done here?”

“Not a chance.” It seems like her guilt over the first hollow only stretches so far. Her eyes narrow and she grabs onto the sleeve of his uniform again, as if she's worried he's going to bolt given half the chance. (She's not wrong.) “But let’s— let's go somewhere else to discuss this.”

She gestures vaguely behind her, and sure enough, Ichigo sees some of her peers giving her odd looks. The thought hadn't even occurred to him, how bizarre Lucia might look talking to thin air, even though it had been a regular concern for him once, too.

(It had been far too long since he'd been human.)

He considers just ditching her and running, but if memory erasers weren't going to cut it, he had to fix this situation somehow. He sighs and nods, gesturing for her to lead the way. She grabs his wrist and drags him behind her to a destination only she knows.

He doesn't let himself think the nostalgic thought that it was almost like the old times.

She takes him to a park. For some reason, this throws him. He'd been expecting a building rooftop of some sort. The play equipment is abandoned at this hour, and she climbs to the highest platform, the one where the slide starts. She sits, cross-legged, and he squats on the platform just below the one she’s on, feeling intensely out of place amidst the bright plastic.

“Tiff doesn’t remember anything, by the way,” she says frostily. Ichigo sighs. So at least one thing had gone the way it was supposed to.

“Good. Neither should you, by the way,” he retorts, and the dirty look she throws him is Kuchiki-worthy.

“Too bad. So now that you can't get rid of me, are you going to explain things properly? What happens to me now? Am I dead? Am I not dead? Do I get to join your little hell monster fighting club?”

“No, yes, no. Look, nothing happens to you now. The powers were a temporary thing. You don’t…. You don’t have them anymore. You just go on with your life like you used to.” A lie, but she didn’t need to know that.

Lucia raises an eyebrow. “I don’t have the powers anymore?”

“Nope. They’re gone, kiddo. No more monster fighting for you.”

“Huh.” She uncrosses her legs and scoots over. She’s right up in his face and Ichigo would back away if he wasn’t instinctively aware that that would be a sign of weakness that she’d exploit to hell and back. “Then why can I still do this?”

She snaps her fingers, and a tiny, glowing ball of reiatsu manifests between them, before exploding in a shower of sparks.

Ichigo opens his mouth, thinks of nothing to say, and shuts it.

“So, I have a proposition,” Lucia says, looking inordinately smug. “Let me help you.”

“No,” he snaps on autopilot. This was bad— this was very bad. How the hell was he going to shut her up now? No, no, even before that— how the hell had she managed to work out, in the span of a day, to manipulate the new reiatsu inside her to that degree of precision? That was the beginnings of kido that he’d just seen; enough to earn her instant admission into Shin’ou Academy. It wasn’t something a human girl with zero previous interactions with shinigami could do.

Rukia’s always been good at kido— he remembers, before squashing the thought down. This was not the time.

“No?”

“No,” he repeats, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. He tries to make his expression as menacing as possible. There was nothing for it— he’d just have to scare her into keeping quiet. “Do you know what the protocol is for human girls who retain power that they shouldn’t be retaining?”

She doesn’t look remotely menaced, which doesn’t do much for Ichigo’s confidence. “Do tell.”

Ichigo lets black bleed into his sclera. His smile curves up a little more than it probably humanly should.

“We kill them.”

She tips her head to the side, scrutinising him with calm eyes. “You know, I don’t think you will.”

Ichigo splutters. “You don’t know my life! I could kill you a hundred different ways in the next thirty seconds—”

“I don’t doubt that you could,” Lucia clarifies, smirking. “I just don’t think you will.”

“You’re awfully confident for someone who’s about to have a sword at their neck—”

“So, do it.” She shrugs. “You wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to save me just to kill me now.”

In response, Ichigo draws his sword and lunges at her.

He sees her eyes widen fractionally in the instant before his arm goes around her waist, and allows himself a grim moment of satisfaction. Then Zangetsu is clashing with a scaled tentacle in the space where she'd been just a millisecond ago, and Ichigo forces himself to concentrate on the fight.

The pager at his hip goes off belatedly. “Fuckers! One hundred years and they still can't make soul pagers that work!”

“Run!” he adds to the stupefied girl, hanging half-on-half-off the play equipment.

“But what about you—”

“This is my job, not yours! Scram—”

Another tentacle comes for her, and Ichigo blocks it with his other sword; Lucia seems to realise the severity of the situation, and takes off. But instead of turning its attention back to Ichigo, the Hollow makes to follow her. Ichigo doesn't understand; he's not hiding his reiatsu anymore, and even currently capped as it is at 20%, it should be more than enough to make the Hollow pay attention. Sure, Lucia can see ghosts, which means she's got some reiatsu, but by comparison he should be a far more rewarding target for the Hollow—

Except. Realisation hits Ichigo like a freight train and he hastily casts out for Lucia’s reiatsu. He can’t feel any of her own, but there’s plenty of his, burning like a furnace just under her skin. In the desolate spiritscape of Australia, she might as well have thrown up a flashing neon sign that said EAT ME.

Idiot. Idiot. Lucia was walking Hollow bait, and it was all his fault.

“Fuck!” Ichigo doesn’t actually swear all that often, but ever since arriving in Australia, he feels it’s been abundantly justified. Lucia throws a look back his way, and it costs her; the Hollow trips her up and she falls on her face.

“Fuck!” Ichigo’s had it up to here with the cosmic unfairness that is his life. He doesn’t have time for some bullshit lower-level Hollow. He skewers it from behind, feeling viciously gratified at the sensation of steel through bone, and offers Lucia a hand up as it dissolves into thin air.

She takes it shakily. “See? Knew you couldn’t kill me,” she jokes, but there’s not much mirth in it.

Ichigo scowls. The only other way to take his powers back from Lucia apart from killing her was destroying her saketsu and hakusui; but he knows from experience how painful and traumatic that could be. There was no guarantee that she’d survive the procedure, either. Lucia was stuck with her— his— powers, either till she died or he could figure out a way to safely get them back. And with Urahara out of the picture, who the hell knew when that might be?

It didn't look promising. Ichigo curses a little more under his breath, before turning to the girl who is dusting her knees off like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

“You alright?”

“More or less.” She’s a little paler around the eyes, and there’s red grazes on her knees, but otherwise, she looks unharmed. “You?”

“Fine.” They scrutinize each other a little while longer, both a little unsure of what to make of the other.

“You still wanna…. help with this monster fighting gig?” Ichigo asks eventually; even though he phrases it as a question, it’s pretty much the only recourse left for them. If Lucia couldn’t be rid of his powers, and they were going to keep attracting Hollows to her, the only thing he could do is either tail her around and protect her himself for the rest of her life—

— or he could teach her to fight.

She fires up at that. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She seems stumped by the question; she blinks, and her hand gestures vaguely. “Well, uh, you know—”

“This isn’t a fun day job. This isn’t some sort of live-action videogame where you earn points for every monster you kill. You could die— you could kill. You already have, once, and you were horrified at the idea. Why do you want to keep going?”

“It’s exactly because of that that I want to help,” she snaps back. “How do I— how do I go back to everyday life after knowing— all that? After knowing that the nice ghost on the corner of the street and the seven-year-old ghost that comes to our garden sometimes and the elderly grandmother ghost that likes to sit under the shade of my local park might get turned into one of those— those things that you keep fighting? That they’ll meet their end impaled on a swordpoint? You said there was a way to send them on before— all that. Before they get turned into monsters. I’m not— I’m not the kind of person who can just ignore all that just because it’s not happening right in front of me. If there’s a way, then— I want to help.”

Whether it’s in front of you or far away, it doesn’t change the fact that they are being attacked! A shinigami has to treat all spirits equally. You cannot conveniently save those you can see, those you can reach!

He closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath through his mouth. Different, different, but so achingly the same— the same face, the same voice, the same demeanour. The same determined expression, fervent with her convictions. Mental flower petals fall to the floor; she’s Rukia, she’s not Rukia, she’s Rukia, she’s not—

He was going to regret this. He was going to regret this so hard.

But what other choice did he have?

“O.K,” he acquiesces through gritted teeth. “I’ll teach you to fight. To do this shinigami gig properly. But in return, one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You don’t ever use your powers when I’m not around, or when I haven’t explicitly given you permission. You don’t tell anyone that all this is happening, either. Got it?” That would take care of the need for secrecy for now. It was a temporary stop-gap, but it was better than nothing.

Lucia looks as though she might complain, but Ichigo hits her with his best glare and she wisely decides to pick her battles. “Done.”

“Fine. We’ll start tomorrow, then. Uh, you’ve got school, right? After school, then. 5pm? You pick a place. I’ll be able to find you.”

“Got it. Is there anything in particular I should be bringing to these sessions or…?”

“No. I’ll prepare everything. Just make sure you don’t have anyone tailing you, or anything.”

“Right.”

“Yeah. Well, if you haven’t got any other pressing questions, I’m going to take off—”

She stops him with a hand around his wrist. “Wait— wait. How do I know you’re not just abandoning me and that you actually are going to turn up tomorrow—?”

Ichigo doesn’t know what instinct it is that draws him to rummage around in his shihakushou at that question; he doesn’t understand why his hand closes around that particular artifact, wooden edges worn smooth after years in his possession. He understands even less why he hands it to her; a girl he hardly knows and has only just met. Practically, the item has very little value; Lucia frowns a little as she takes it from him. But it is, perhaps, one of the most important material items he owns, just after his swords.

“What’s this…?” Lucia asks, fingers tracing the patterns carved into the wood quizzically.

“It’s a substitute shinigami badge,” he replies, and she visibly starts. He can see the questions teeming in her gaze, suddenly relentless on him, but despite her palpable curiosity, she does not ask a single thing. “It’s— it doesn’t look like much, but I like it. I’ll want it back off you tomorrow, so you keep it as collateral for now. Happy?”

“.... it will be acceptable,” she says primly. He nods.

“You should get back to class, then,” he says, suddenly remembering that she’d more or less run out on the school day. Lucia shoots him a look as if to say ‘Really?’ but he won’t budge on this. Schoolwork was important. “Won’t you get in trouble?”

“I suspect Tiff will be covering for me.” She slips the substitute badge into her bag and smooths the creases in her skirt. “But your concern is duly noted.”

He groans. “Just get going, you.”

“... I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” she says, and despite everything, she looks a little uncertain; Ichigo waves her off.

“Yeah. I’ll find you.”

“You better.”

“Do you ever let anyone else get the last word?”

“Not if I can help it.” She grins, and sprints off; Ichigo watches her go, doing his best to keep her figure from blurring into another from his memories. He doesn’t like seeing her back. The flower petals keep falling, she’s Rukia, she’s not Rukia, she’s Rukia, she’s not—

As he tears his eyes away from her retreating figure, the last petal falls to the ground like a revelation he’s not quite prepared to confront; Ichigo shakes his head, and starts making his way back to his quarters.

He only hopes—can only hope, really—that he knows just what he’s gotten himself into.

#Ichiruki #Bleach #Kurosaki Ichigo #Kuchiki Rukia #writer life #Cyclical #EEEEEYYYY UPDATEEEEE #god this was so long im drained #bleach fic

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