He dies quickly, suddenly. Despite the phenomenal strength he has shown in these past months, he is simply outmatched, and it's a decisive blow, one he doesn't even see coming, doesn't even know is possible-
He hears it though. The world goes still and quiet, where before it was movement, and anger, and determination, and the urge to protect. For an instant all he can hear is the whisper of cloth, and the beginnings of a desperate scream that is quickly drowned out by the roaring in his ears.
He falls for what seems like hours but is seconds, a hand instinctively lifting to his chest, where a blade protrudes through his heart, he is pretty sure. His sight darkens, color leeches out of his vision.
The sword is tugged out of him as he falls, and for a moment, a bright painful moment, light returns as does sound and someone is screaming, and he knows that sound, wants to say something, wants to protect, so desperately that he manages to reach out and grab his killer's (and he knows he is dead, has seen death before, he just hasn't realized it yet) shihakusho-
He feels so cold…
Rukia screams, her voice high, shrill, pained. Renji's arms holding her back falter, so she breaks out of them, racing to Ichigo, as small and swift as a butterfly, even as he falls, incomprehension written across his face.
His hand had instinctively flown to his wound, and he is sprawled on the floor before she reaches him, because she was fast but not instantaneous, like she could have been, should have been.
Her brother pulls his sword out. Time stretches and she realizes she is still screaming, when Ichigo's hand shoots, fast, to grab the hem of her brother's shihakusho, even in death trying to keep him back, trying to protect her, and she thinks for an instant he still lives-
Then she's by his side and raising his head, waiting for something, somehow hoping that it wouldn't be so, he was so alive a moment ago- But it's his last spark, and he chokes, coughs and dies as she tugs him into her arms.
She breaks.
Rukia stands, laying Ichigo carefully onto the ground, and her brother, the (traitor, not a brother, she has seen a true brother now, knows the difference) captain, looks briefly lost, those eyes of his widening briefly, because this is the Rukia that wields Sode no Shirayuki, famed for beauty, in battle, not his clumsy eager-to-please little sister.
She knows her powerlessness then, unable as she is to access her reiatsu. And she knows she can die here, end her unworthy life where it is, having personally caused the deaths of two of her closest friends, two men she is proud to have met, the greatest warriors she knows.
But Ichigo died to save her, as did Kaien Shiba so long ago. And Kaien's killer is gone, dead. Ichigo's killer stands in front of her, and if Rukia cannot kill him, if she cannot even make his life hell, headed as she is to her probable execution, she will expose him for what he is, a child killer, and drag what is most precious to him, his pride, their name, with her.
Her chin rises and she lines her gaze with all the frost of her soul, all the contempt she can muster. Her hands are bloody with Ichigo's life-blood, and she feels her own blood drip down her cheek from her only hurt in the entire battle.
It is oddly appropriate.
The storm breaks and rain falls around them, as if the weather mourns with her, and within her soul there is a whirling screaming snowstorm of grief, desolation, and so much guilt.
Rukia speaks, and her voice is ice, "Are you proud of yourself, Byakuya?" It is the first time she has addressed him by name, or without honorific. He has gathered himself, and does not react, or even look at her, those steel grey eyes heavy lidded.
"You killed a child. A sixteen-year-old, living child who barely knew the meaning of the word reiatsu." She gathers all the scorn she can pull into her voice and repeats, "Are you proud of yourself?"
And I loved you! she howls soundlessly in the screaming snowstorm, gets no answer, I loved you!
"He has sisters, you know that?" she continues inexorable. "Two little sisters that have anchored themselves by him ever since their mother died, whom he has taken care of almost like a father, and who will cry, waiting for him to come home, grieve for him, night after night-" And it's my fault, but you killed him she doesn't add, and her voice breaks slightly, so she stops for a breath. Renji is frozen still where she left him, hands reaching after her.
That too is appropriate.
"They love him, and he loved them more than anything and a society he barely knew the name of, let alone it's laws, felled him for sacrificing his independence to save them."
Her voice is damning. There is bitterness in her mouth, and she is afraid of swallowing it down, afraid of the tears that lurk beneath it.
"Do you even know his name? Ichigo Kurosaki, he told me, when he impaled himself on my blade, knowing he could die, but with no hesitation because they had cried, cried for him, knowing he would come. He broke a hado to run to them, attacked a Hollow with a chair, not knowing anything but that it was a monster that threatened his family.
"So now, are you proud, captain of the thirteen court guard squads, meant for the purpose of protecting humanity from hollows? You have killed one of those you are meant to protect, an innocent who worried about his homework before your sister involved him in an impossible world of monsters, and forced duty on him. You should have made him reparations not-"
"Enough." Byakuya says, dares interrupt her. "Your crime stands. Rukia Kuchiki, you will return to the seireitei with me, immediately."
Rukia grants him a sharp smile, pleased in a bitter (and it hurts, hurts so much, and she won't recover this time) way, when she sees him look down at Ichigo for a long moment before stepping forward.
Pleased that is, before she realises he intends to perform konso on Ichigo.
She darts forward, placing herself between them both, and snarls wordlessly. Her bro- Byakuya stops, surprisingly.
This time she speaks, and her voice is raw in it's conviction, "No. You do not get to send him on."
He tilts his head slightly, considering, before clearly deciding to disregard her warning. He draws his zanpakuto, flipping it.
"I will intercept it." Rukia says. "You don't know what that will do to a soul like mine." Like hers, missing most connection to her reiatsu, a dead soul in any case.
He concedes.
She knew he would.
She walks between them, between her escort, and they don't touch her. She wonders if they realise that the snowstorm within her has stopped, crystallized into a brittle thing and a touch could shatter her, she feels so fragile.
Her throat is clogged with tears, but her shoulders do not shake. Her eyes are wet, but her cheeks dry. She walks with pride, with the grace with which she battles.
And she swears closure. Somehow.
It's with deep regret that Urahara approaches another failure. He had not believed a Captain of the seireitei would have killed a child, a human child with such little compunction, believed it all the way until Byakuya, that ruthless excuse for- anyway- had plunged his sword through Ichigo's chest, killing him near instantly.
He was too slow, too cautious, and once it was done, Ichigo dead, there seemed little point in exposing his own involvement. Not when he could still help somehow. Maybe.
Yoruichi, on his shoulder, is the only warmth he can feel.
He approaches slowly, reluctantly, and wonders with a bone deep ache, if this will cost him another old friendship. He reaches Ichigo's body and kneels, smoothing away that last expression, the ever present frown, those open eyes with a tenderness rarely seen in him. His eyes are shadowed by his hat for a long long moment, as he carefully shelters the boy from the rain, though it seems so pointless.
When someone groans behind him he remembers that Ichigo is not the only casualty in this. The quincy boy is waking up,
He doesn't turn, waits til the boy has dragged himself upright, lets the boy's own gasp, hastily indrawn breath speak in the silence.
It takes a little, but he turns, pulls himself away from obsessively running through his own lack of foresight, and the dread of what Isshin will say, and offers the Quincy a fake smile.
"I can fix that," he offers, gesturing at the boy's injuries.
The boy, and he really needs to learn the name, nods subduedly, perhaps in shock, and he suppresses a sigh. Children don't believe their heroics can get them killed and it's sometimes a good thing, allowing them to be so certain they can't die that they never give up.
But not always. He let Isshin's son go up against a seireitei captain, and look what happened.
He rises with Ichigo, because thinking of him as Isshin's son is just making the situation worse, in his arms, lets Tessai, conveniently there when needed, as always, carry the quincy boy, who may or may not protest, and moves towards Isshin's clinic.
He tells Tessai to take the quincy back to his own shop, but the boy protests, says something about needing to tell Ichigo's family, and Urahara is too weary to protest anything.
They enter the house, and Isshin is waiting for them, and the look in his eyes is familiar, that haunted gaze, the sorrow in the line of his shoulders, and Urahara knows, that Isshin already knows.
Urahara opens his mouth, (to- to beg mercy) to say something, apologize, when Isshin fixes him with one of his steady looks and says simply, "Please, go."
It's as if every bad thing has happened at once, and he's lost a companion as long as any of the vizards, as close as Yoruichi, and his heart stutters for an instant before he bows his head. (He will respect-)
Isshin sigh, shakes his head, "No, not forever, Urahara. Just," He swallows, "I can't do this with others around."
Urahara is willing to give anything, at the moment, whatever Isshin asks of him. Isshin, who follows him out onto the porch, to so-carefully take the burden from Urahara's arms, and says "Don't- don't blame yourself, okay?"
Urahara nods, because what else can he do, reaches out to grasp Isshin's shoulder, and says, "You'll need to perform a konso." He doesn't think his friend has noticed, but he's wearing the black of a shinigami tonight.
Isshin simply replies, "I'll take care of it," and turns away.
Yoruichi makes an odd plaintive noise, deep and masculine as it always is in this form and licks his cheek with her scratchy tongue. He gently pulls her off him and sets her on the floor. He wants to be alone.
Urahara doesn't think about killing his friends son (he doesn't!) when he is flashing away, faster than ever before, discarding his harmless shopkeeper persona without care, the world blurring around him.
Tessai follows. (maybe Yoruichi does too.)
Isshin carries his son inside, knows, somehow that he is in his shihakusho, manifesting as a soul reaper for the first time in his human life. He feels Engetsu at his side, feels his presence in his mind, and knows it rains in there, that it has been overcast since Masaki's death.
He had felt, before Masaki died, that the crown to all his happiness would be Engetsu's presence. After her death, he didn't think it would comfort him to have power with which he might have saved her.
Now he has his zanpakutou back and his son is dead. And in his mind rain falls, heralding his grief as it has since Masaki's death, since the time when none of his children would step out of the house if it was raining, times when he had to go collect his daughters from school because Yuzu had been crying for hours and Karin wouldn't let anyone get close to her.
He remembers the day he found out those episodes hadn't stopped after a few weeks, and that Ichigo had been going in his stead.
He remembers- and he wonders if he can go through this again.
He kneels, putting Ichigo on the floor, and pulls his bunched up haori off of his shoulder, and wraps it around him, leaving his face uncovered, hoping that'll make him look less dead.
He succeeds to an alarming extent. Ichigo looks asleep, as if Isshin has just carried him home after he tired out, tucked a blanket around him, because it is too tiring to carry him to his own bedroom.
He banishes the thought from his mind.
Isshin wonders how he'll tell his daughters that their elder brother is dead.
He sits there and wants this to not happen, so desperately. He wants Ichigo to wake up, to scowl, to snarl at him and dodge his attacks, and hit him, to do anything except lie there dead!
He broke something, he thinks, or they heard Urahara enter. It doesn't matter what, except that his daughters are there, and they look from Ichigo to him, looking in through the door, before suddenly Yuzu gets it, and a choked sob later, she's hurtling across the room to land by Ichigo's head, already shaking her own back and forth.
Her breath is coming heavily, and Isshin knows he cannot be the only one breaking slowly at the sound of the rhythmic, "No, no, no, no, no..." on her breath when Karin comes into the room slowly, as if she is dreaming, and stops in front of him not looking at her siblings.
"Daddy," she says, and it breaks his heart that she's calling him that again, "Daddy, tell me this isn't real." He remains silent, and her voice breaks, "It's not real! It's not!"
He just reaches out and pulls her against him, and she breaks within his embrace, her shoulders shaking as great heaving sobs are jerked out of her. She's keening softly, too gone to really realise.
And he just feels numb, terrified.
It takes a while before he comes back to a general consciousness. The cold doesn't go away, and he feels sort of bound, and it isn't comfortable.
But it's raining, and he's at the place where he- he died, he guesses.
Now what? He finds that he is tethered by his soul chain to the ground where senkaimon opened, and that he can't go too far from it.
He leans against the fence lining the road and waits, he isn't sure what for. Maybe some soul reaper will turn up and Ichigo can try and attack him.
He looks around thoughtfully and concludes, with his teeth.
… why, yes, he's angry.
Word count 2479 , which is good. Since second edit: This is no longer true. Just cutting down on sentence rambling, and replacing pronouns with proper ones occasionally.
Now for evil cackling and general explanation. Because, oh yeah, I totally killed the main hero of a story in my First. Two. Words.
Which of you got that death isn't exactly death in Ichigo's life, anyway? It always makes me wonder what the screaming and 'Don't die, Ichigo!' is about, when you can drop by and see him in seireitei any time?
So I put penalties in place. Later, those.
Oh. So I've been thinking about this scenario for a longlonglong time. Mostly the scene I pictured is in the next chapter (I think. If I ever write it, cuz I am unreliable like that) I also wanted an Ichigo that was kinda mad at seireitei in the 'you wronged me' sense.
Also Byakuya, WTH Hero, you're not supposed to be killing high-school students, or leaving them in a street to die as the case may be. Really.
Oh, so. Edited, cuz I forgot authors note, which would be terrible, cuz I need some cacklings.
Edited again (third time)
Hija.