#i cannot BELIEVE i placed that ichigo panel there is something WRONG in my BRAIN

[recurring-polynya]

I feel dumb for asking, but what exactly were the specific fears Rukia was seeing in regards to Ichigo, byakuya and Orihime.

Here’s the panel in question:

All of these are scenes from earlier in canon. Unlike the scene in Byakuya’s fight with As Nodt, where it’s very clear that what he fears is Rukia dying, it’s a little vague exactly what these fears are meant to represent, but here are some of my best guesses:

On the upper left is a scrap of Rukia kneeling by Byakuya’s side after he took Gin’s sword for her (the panels under the lefthand speech bubble are just more of this scene); just over Rukia’s left shoulder is the bit where, controlled by Zommari, she’s holding her sword to her own throat. The larger shot of Byakuya is also from the Zommari fight (I am only mildly ashamed to say that I recognized it from the blood spatter on his scarf, but it appears in Ch 302 right next to the other one, so I likely would have figured it out anyway). I think this one is pretty straightforward: Byakuya is a strong guy. He’s incredibly skilled and he doesn’t take chances. He has one weak spot, though, and it’s Rukia. She’s afraid of him dying for her sake, perhaps with a side of fear of failing him, generally.

The Orihime panels are the bit from the Advance Team Arc where Urahara tells Orihime to stay out of the coming battle, and Rukia reassures her and decides to take her to Soul Society to train. I can come up with two possible explanations for this: 1) Rukia fears that Orihime doesn’t believe her, will never feel like she is enough, that Rukia can never impress upon her how much she values Orihime as a friend and a comrade. 2) The alternative is simply that Rukia took Orihime to train in Soul Society, an act that directly resulted in Orihime’s kidnapping. It’s possible the fear here is just... having put Orihime in danger.

I apologize, but I can’t place the Ichigo panel in the upper right, and it’s just too generic, I refuse to dig through the manga, trying to find it (although since the others are vintage Hueco Mundo arc, that’s where I would start, I guess?) The bottom right is obviously the Fullbringer Arc. The dialogue that goes with this panel is Rukia saying “I was able to give you Soul Reaper powers once again!” so the most obvious fear is that she wouldn’t be able to, and Ichigo would remain powerless. A runner up is the fear that Ichigo would reject Soul Society (and Rukia personally), after finding out that he was being monitored and about Ginjo. 

There are two more, sort of below Rukia’s feet, Ichigo on the left and Rukia on the right that I still can’t manage to place. Based on the way the rest of this montage was made up, I would guess that these two panels are adjacent to each other. I checked half a dozen places where I thought they might be, and they were all close-but-no-cigar. If someone else’s Ichigo-recognition-subroutine is better than mine, I’d love to hear it.

HOLD THE PHONE, I just recognized the Ichigo panel by the bandage on his face. It’s from Ch 196, near the start of the Advance Team Arc, where Rukia jerks Ichigo out of his classroom and makes him fight a Hollow to shake him out of the funk he’s in. Again, I guess the fear here is that she wouldn’t be able to do that-- that actually kind of ties things together, actually, if she’s afraid of not being able to cheer both Ichigo and Orihime when they’re down, afraid of not being able to encourage Ichigo toward being the person she knows he can be.

I actually think it’s super interesting that, at least for the Orihime and Ichigo moments, these are times when Rukia comes off as ultra-confident, but I like the idea that she actually felt great doubt in herself, but pushed past it with the power of bravado.

I said in an earlier post that I hoped they would expand this scene and possibly show us what her greatest fear is, but I would also like it a lot if they padded this bit out some, too.

Update: A kind Anon id’d the last couple of panels for me, so check out this post.