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It doesn’t hurt.
That’s what you keep telling yourself as your fingernails claw the strange surface of the dome to keep from flying back any further from the blow, and you steady yourself on one knee and only one hand. Your chest is pounding, and you can barely see for the sweat streaming down your face, but it doesn’t hurt, not really, because the shock of your left hand not being there is so overwhelming that it doesn’t seem quite real.
But you know it is. You saw it happen, so there’s no need to look now, even if your left arm is swaying, the phantom of your hand trying to reach for a Seele Schneider. You’re already dizzy with blood loss when you hear Inoue-san call your name. The horror in her fraying voice hits you harder than the blow that snapped off your wrist, and even though the pain is trying to crush you now, you shove it back and tell her not to worry, to heal Kurosaki, because even if you don’t want to admit it, you know – you’ve known since the day he fought the Menos – that he’s the strongest. He’s the only one who’s got a chance against this monster.
You don’t look at what's left of your bloody arm. You don’t look at Inoue-san, even though you want to, and you don’t dare look at Kurosaki because you can’t bear to see that hole blown clear through his body – no heart, no lungs, no spine – and worse, you don’t want to see his face, blank, unscowling, more vulnerable than you’ve ever imagined it could be. There isn’t time to do any of those things, there isn’t even time to say goodbye as you pull a Seele Schneider from your belt with your right hand and whip it down to activate the blade.
Power surges up your arm, the reishi heating your heart like a furnace, and your legs push you forward into a new attack. Before, you always kept your distance because that’s what archers do, but you can’t use Ginrei Kojaku any longer. Not with only one hand. You’re not an archer now; you’re just the only thing standing between your friends and long-winged darkness, and all you can do is buy them as much time as your failing body will allow.
There’s a tiny part of you that could almost laugh at this, a part of you that wishes Kurosaki were awake – alive –to see you plunging headlong toward an opponent you cannot beat, the same way Kurosaki has done so many times while you gaped in disbelief and yelled that he was an idiot. In your mind’s eye, you can picture him, huge sword clutched in both hands, howling as he collides with an impossible enemy, but you don’t say a word. The only battle cry you have is the sound of Inoue-san screaming name as you charge the Fourth Espada, one slim, blue, soul-sharp blade against black wings and the impenetrable armor of those grave-cold turquoise eyes.
~~~~~~~~
You watch from a distance – one that seems to be pulling farther and farther away as the seconds tick by – as the wounded Espada begins to unravel. Your heart surges when you see him stretch his one remaining hand toward Inoue-san because your first thought is that he is threatening her – but no, it isn’t like that at all. It’s something different, but before you can figure out just how, the creature is dissolving into dust or ash, his wing already whirled away by the dry wind of Hueco Mundo. It happens so swiftly that Inoue-san is left standing there looking bewildered, her hand still outstretched, still offering something that can never be accepted.
Behind her, Kurosaki looks stunned, angry, and oddly wounded – as if his feelings are hurt by the Espada’s unexpected departure – but he’s standing up, his chest is whole and sound, and that horrible mask is gone. Both of them are alive, both of them are all right, and it’s so unlooked for that you want to sigh in relief.
Except you can’t. You start to, but your breath catches halfway and you realize you simply can’t breathe that deep. You haven’t been able to fill your lungs with anything but short sips of air since Kurosaki – no, not Kurosaki, that bestial creature had not really been him – shoved Zangetsu through your gut and sent you flying to hit the rocks.
Even then it hadn’t hurt. Not really. At first you thought he’d turned and punched you in the stomach, which would have been a very Kurosaki-like thing to do, and for a second you’d thought Yes, he’s still in there, if he’s hitting me then I know he’s still there somewhere. It was only when you saw the black blade sticking out of your body as you went sailing backwards that you realized what had happened, what he had done. Hitting the hard surface of the dome hurt more than the sword blow had, and it took you a moment to pull yourself back together – as much of you as there was left, at least – and try to get up again. You stopped when you saw that thing that Kurosaki had become facing you with its blank-eyed mask, the cero forming between its horns, and you knew that this was how it was going to end.
It bothers you that what might have been your last thought was of your father, that your brain’s final, ironic comment was At least I won’t have to go home and face Ryuuken in this condition. Really, death was preferable.
But that’s not what happened, even though you still aren’t entirely certain what did happen or why. Why did the Espada cut off the beast’s horn and divert the cero? Why, how did the gaping hole in Kurosaki’s chest close up? Why did the Espada reach out to Inoue-san like that, and why—why did she reach back?
Too many ‘whys’ are in your head, whirling around like the dust devils you saw as you, and Sado, and Kurosaki raced toward Las Noches. Was that days ago, or only hours? Maybe it was years. You’re not sure, and really, it hardly matters anymore.
You know the drugs have stopped working – your arm has started to bleed again, and the sluggish seep of blood from your stomach is speeding up – but still, somehow, it doesn’t hurt. There are countless smaller injuries that ought to be complaining, but your body is strangely silent. You tell yourself that the anesthetic must have been stronger than the blood-staunching medicine, but the numbness creeping up your limbs tells a different story. Your head is reeling, your thoughts going dark then bright the way the power in your apartment sometimes flickers, and you can’t hold yourself up any longer. You realize you can’t feel either of your hands, and the irony of this amuses you so much that you would laugh if you could only get your breath.
When your elbows give way, and you collapse onto the ground, it seems to take you forever to fall, and when you hit, it isn’t hard but soft, like keeling over onto your futon after a rough day. The strange stone seems to cushion you, but maybe it’s only the numbness lying between your body and the dome. You’re facing the sky, but you can’t remember if it’s the real one or not, and that troubles you. You don’t want a fake sky to be the last thing you ever see, so you turn your face just enough until you can see Kurosaki and Inoue-san. Both of them are still standing there, poised like figurines as the last ashes of the Espada dissolve in the air. Seeing your friends makes you feel both warm and sad.
I’m glad you’re all right. You meant to tell Inoue-san. You were waiting for the right moment: the moment when she would be truly safe, after Kurosaki had won, and she could stop worrying about him, maybe for just a second. That was it, wasn’t it? You wanted her to be all right, and you wanted – just one moment. That was all. A moment where she’d turn and look at you, and really see you, and then you could tell her.
All you were waiting for was that right moment. It’s only now you understand that moment will never come. Not for you, at least. You wish—you really wish you’d just told her anyway.
Kurosaki. That idiot.
There are too many things you want to say to him, mostly things like Stop fighting everything you see! Take Inoue-san and find Rukia, and Sado, and Renji and GO HOME. Find a way to stop Aizen. If anyone can, it’s you, Kurosaki. Only you.
But you know he wouldn’t listen to you. He never does.
You remember the way he looked at you when he came back to himself – when he saw Zangetsu, saw what he’d done. The expression on his face was horror, shock, and fear, and you wish you’d never seen it. You wish you’d never seen him look that way at you, even if the revulsion was only for what he’d done. Because you know that’s what he’ll remember; when he thinks of you, he won’t remember the two of you fighting off Hollows back to back. He won’t remember you blowing the floor out under Yammi to send him howling down to the bottom of Las Noches. He won’t remember you saying you didn’t need to be told to protect Inoue-san.
All Kurosaki is going to remember is the guy he put his sword through. The skinny guy with glasses that he killed.
Except he didn’t. You want to tell him the sword was nothing, that you’ve had worse – and recently, at that. You need to tell him not to blame himself, that you know it wasn’t really him. You want, no, you need to tell Kurosaki that you forgive him, even if you don’t think there’s anything to forgive. It’s just that you don’t want him to look that way. You don’t want your death hanging over his head like that. You don’t—
You can’t. You can’t tell them. You’re not going to get the chance.
There’s something that tastes like bile in the back of your throat, and you understand that it’s regret.
Inoue-san, I’m glad you’re all right.
Kurosaki—Ichigo. It’s okay.
You wish you could have told the both of them. It hurts – it hurts so badly that you didn’t. That you can’t.
It hurts—
~~~~~~
It’s not that difficult breaking away.
You know too much about death to believe that it’s peaceful – your grandfather’s was anything but that – and yet there’s a strange sort of comfort to it. It’s an oddly familiar feeling, and as you pull farther away, you realize it is because you are regaining your distance. This, after all, is what you’ve always been most intimate with: taking the long view, holding things and people at arm’s length, placing yourself so far above and beyond everyone that only an arrow from your heart could ever close that gap.
There won’t be any more arrows now – no more cold blue fire burning in your fingers, no more purpose in the tension of your arm and shoulder – and if you feel some small regret at that, it is not enough to keep you here.
Something else is, though. Even as you are trickling away like the last bit of water running from a spilled cup, something snares you, keeps you from pulling up the last thin roots that connect you to your life. You are so shocked by this sudden restriction that you don’t even think to resist. Soul caught, path blocked, you search for a reason and what you find surprises you even more: the white tendrils of your spirit threads caught in a tangle of crimson. Red spirit threads – Shinigami reiraku – are twisting and knotting with your own, snagging and holding you back.
Before you can even wonder who has done this, you hear two voices: one distant, as if calling from a deep tunnel, yelling your name – “Ishida! Ishida!” – and the other closer, disembodied but just as fierce, growling You’re not going anywhere, dumbass. Come back, or I swear I’ll come after you. If you die on me, I’ll never forgive you!
Of course it is Kurosaki. Kurosaki who can never just let anything be. Kurosaki who has to do the impossible. It’s not enough that he pulls himself back from the edge of death, he must drag you back as well.
“Inoue! Inoue!” Kurosaki still sounds like he’s screaming from the bottom of a well, but even muted by distance, his tone is fierce. He sounds angry, but then, Kurosaki almost always sounds angry, so maybe this is something else. Panic? Desperation? You can’t tell. You’re not really sure of anything except that it bothers you that Kurosaki is yelling at Inoue like that.
“Inoue!”
“Kurosaki-ku—Ah! Oh—oh no! Ishida-kun! Ishida—Souten Kishun!”
There is no resisting the power that embraces you at those words. You couldn’t even if you wanted to, but you don’t. You don’t want to resist at all. Even though it makes you feel like one of your sewing projects – something tattered that has to be patched, re-stitched, remade – you submit to its warmth without question. You understand this power is leading you back toward pain and uncertainty, but when it takes your hand, you follow like a child.
The voices grow clearer as you are drawn back. Instead of sounding like they are at the bottom of a tunnel, now it’s like listening to a conversation in a different part of a traditional house – one with rice paper walls that blur but do not silence words. Even so, you can hear the tears in Inoue-san’s voice.
“Ishida-kun, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please come back, Ishida-kun. Please be all right!”
You want to tell Inoue-san to stop apologizing, that there’s no need. She sounds so upset, so sad. Is it because of you? You never wanted to make her feel that way.
“What’s the matter? Why isn’t he waking up?” Kurosaki’s voice is loud and irritating, and his manner as uncouth as ever, but then he makes a strange choking sound and curses.
“His hand.” Even blurred and distant, Kurosaki’s voice is tight with horror. “Where’s his—oh god. Did—did I—?”
“Ah! No, Kurosaki-kun,” Inoue assures him. “No, Ulquiorra-san—did that. When Ishida-kun attacked him.”
“He attacked Ulquiorra?” Disbelief frays the edges of Kurosaki’s words, and you would clench your fists and teeth if you were close enough to your body to feel them. Is it really so hard for the idiot Shinigami to comprehend?
“Why did he do that? Why were you two even up here? I told him to protect you!”
“It’s my fault.” The misery in Inoue-san’s voice twists at your heart. You can’t stand to hear her cry, especially not over you. “I made him bring me up here. I wanted—I wanted to make sure you’d be all right. He did it because I asked.”
Hearing this is more painful than any of your wounds. You want to tell her that she shouldn’t blame herself, that you would have gone up anyway when you felt that huge reiatsu. Besides, it isn’t her fault that you couldn’t say no to her.
Kurosaki still sounds confused, like he can’t grasp how any of this has happened, and maybe you would be more understanding about that if Inoue-san wasn’t so obviously upset. It hurts to hear the self-recrimination in her voice as she tells Kurosaki what happened – how they had watched in horror as the Espada sent a cero through his chest and dropped him, how she had caught him with Santen Keshun, and how Ulquiorra prevented her from healing him.
“That’s why Ishida-kun attacked him,” Inoue-san sniffs. “When Ulquiorra-san turned away, I ran past him to get to you. Ishida-kun kept attacking him so I could heal you. But I couldn’t – it wasn’t working. Then Ishida-kun got thrown back, and I saw his arm was all bloody, and—his hand was gone. He acted like it didn’t even matter. Ishida-kun said not to worry, that he’d already taken drugs for the wound. He told me to take care of you, and then he just—” Tears are drowning Inoue-san’s words now so that she can hardly continue, and you want to kick Kurosaki-kun and tell him to say something to comfort her, to get her to stop crying, but he doesn’t say anything at all.
“I didn’t know what to do.” Inoue-san is weeping now, and you want to tell her Don’t cry, please don’t cry but you still can’t feel your mouth, your limbs, anything at all. “I couldn’t heal you, and I thought Ulquiorra-san was going to kill Ishida-kun, and I just didn’t know what to do anymore so I—called out to you. To save us.”
“You—called me?” Kurosaki’s words are softer than they have been. He sounds very young when he says that; like a boy, instead of the brash young warrior you know. “And I—?”
“Yes,” Inoue-san admits. “When you stood up, I didn’t know if that was really you. Even though you’d been lying there only a moment before, there was something so dark and heavy around you that I couldn’t tell. Then you called your sword right into your hand and swung it down and—it was like a storm blew me backwards. I thought I was going to fly off the dome,” Inoue-san tries to laugh, “but Ishida-kun—he caught me. Even though he was hurt, even with only one hand—he protected me.”
There’s an odd timbre to Inoue-san’s sweet voice as she says this, almost as if by remembering, she is seeing it again for the first time.
“What happened?” Kurosaki asks quietly. “Did I—did I really attack him? Was I the one who stabbed Zangetsu through him?” When she doesn’t answer immediately, he adds, “Inoue, I need to know.”
“Ishida-kun was trying to stop you,” Inoue-san says at last, trying to hold her voice steady. “You defeated Ulquiorra-san. There were only—pieces of him left. You were about to cut off his head, but Ishida-kun stopped you. He grabbed your wrist and told you that was enough. He said—if you kept on, you weren’t going to be human any more. That’s—that’s when—.”
“I stabbed him,” Kurosaki finishes. The words are spiritless, almost a drone, and for some reason that upsets you more than anything else, even Inoue-san’s tears. Really, the two of them acting this way is more than you can bear, and you begin to struggle for the ability to respond, to say something.
Before, it didn’t hurt. At first you’d been too numb, and then too disconnected. Only your thoughts had been painful – your memories, your regrets. Now, it’s different. You come back to yourself with a jarring lurch, like a boat bumping up against its dock, and you gasp because your insides are being twisted and the nerves in your hand feel like electric fire.
Wait—your hand?
Merely opening your eyes takes a concerted effort. Part of you thinks it might be better not to look, but you shove the uncertainty back and pry your lids apart, blinking once, twice. You are surrounded by a golden glow, by warmth that reminds you of the first bright day of summer, and somehow you don’t mind the discomfort as your body is repaired. Turning your head slightly, you raise your left arm and stare at the hand reforming on your once-mangled wrist. It seems insubstantial at first, but even as you watch, it solidifies. You turn it back and forth, flexing your fingers, astonished at its return.
“He moved!” Kurosaki’s voice, too loud as usual, but at least he doesn’t sound like a husk of himself this time. “Inoue, he moved! The wound is closing!”
There are blurry shapes behind the golden shield, and when you study them, Kurosaki’s and Inoue’s faces become clear. Kurosaki looks worn and haunted. Inoue’s face is streaked with tears.
“Ishida-kun.” When she sees you looking back at her, she breathes your name like a sigh of relief and smiles. It makes your chest feel funny when she does this, and at first you think it’s because of the healing, because she’s putting you back together, but then you realize it’s just because she’s looking at you.
Really looking at you.
There was something you were going to tell her when the right moment came, and you see your left hand reaching up and toward her. Your fingertips press against the healing shield, unable to go any farther.
“Inoue-san,” you whisper, your throat creaking, as if you haven’t spoken in years. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Tears are wetting her lashes and starting to run down her face again, but Inoue-san’s smile does not waver.
“Thank you, Ishida-kun,” she tells you. “Thank you for protecting me. For coming back to us.”
“For not dying,” Kurosaki grunts.
You turn your head to see him crouched beside you, leaning as close as the Souten Kishun will allow. Kurosaki is wearing his trademark scowl, but his eyes are like open wounds. There’s so much behind them that your gut twists when you look at him, and it isn’t an echo of the sword wound but something deeper. You know what he’s seeing when he stares at you, and it pisses you off.
“What’s with that look?” you demand.
“What look?” Kurosaki snaps back.
“That expression. It's pathetic. You look like some kid whose dog just got run over.”
The spark of irritation that flares in his eyes eclipses the pain and self-doubt for a moment, but the angry retort you expect doesn’t come. Instead, Kurosaki looks away.
“Like I’d cry over you,” he snorts. “You’re not as much fun as a dog.”
“What was that?”
“Or as obedient,” Kurosaki adds with a smirk.
You stare at Kurosaki through the golden haze of Souten Kishun, remembering the tug of crimson spirit threads and seeing something deeper in his eyes. If you die, I’ll never forgive you.
“Moron,” is all you manage to say.
“Dumbass,” he tosses out.
“Idiot,” you fire back, trying to push up on your elbows.
“Kurosaki-kun, stop it,” Inoue-san tells him before he can say anything else. “Ishida-kun, please lie still. I haven’t finished healing you yet.”
“Yeah, do what Inoue says, Ishida,” Kurosaki directs, trying to get the last word in.
“I would have anyway,” you say, not letting him have it. Really, as soon as Inoue-san finishes healing you, you’re tempted to try out your left fist on Kurosaki’s jaw.
“Thank you, Ishida-kun,” Inoue-san sighs when you ease yourself back down and close your eyes. "Just--thank you. For everything."
“Yeah,” Kurosaki echoes quietly, almost under his breath. Maybe he doesn't mean for you to hear him. “What she said.”
You could say something, but you don't.
This time, you let him have the final word.
FIN