"…Other Worlds Than These"

A/N: Hello everyone. So here we have an extremely AU story. It begins in the middle of episode 271, so if you're not that far yet, then here there be spoilers! You have been warned…

Also, let's get this out of the way… I do not own Bleach and Ichigo would be rather glad for this in this story.

This story is finished, but I am taking my time with the edits so I will be regularly updating with new chapters at least once a week, possibly more often.

Along with that, I have a quick request. Is there anyone out there that would like to Beta for me? It irritates me when I go back and read my stuff and find stupid mistakes but I have been having difficulty finding a Beta that will actually respond to me or get back to me. Just throwing that out there.

For anyone interested, the title is taken from Stephen King's, The Gunslinger.

Also, I will apologize for long passages that will appear in this story that are directly taken from the show. There are some things that stay the same and I felt needed to be kept in the story for completeness sake.

So, let the universe alter and our story begin…

Chapter 1

Inoue's cry for Kurosaki-kun to save them cut through the air. Ulquiorra paused in front of Ishida who was now lying on his back, struggling to get up after the last toss that the Arrancar had delivered to his already battered body. The Espada glanced back over his shoulder at the girl and saw her honey colored hair whipping about in the wind as she stared with wide, tear filled eyes at him and the wreckage of her friend that he had created.

His gaze shifted sideways to take in the prone body of Kurosaki Ichigo, still encased in Inoue's healing dome. The body continued to lie there, unmoving, unchanged in any way. "I told you, woman," Ulquiorra said softly. "You cannot change his fate. The man that you entrusted your life to is dead."

Inoue glanced back at Ichigo as more tears poured from her eyes. His blank eyes were still staring unseeingly towards her, completely devoid of life. "Kuro…saki…kun," she whispered to him. There was no response.

Slowly, Inoue reached up and brushed the tears from her eyes. With a swallow, she forced the flood of more tears back down as she turned to face Ulquiorra again and slowly stood up. "Please," she said to the Espada softly. "Let Ishida-kun go. I'll stay here with you."

"Inoue-san!" Ishida cried as he finally managed to sit up. He was about to climb to his feet when Ulquiorra tail lashed out at him and wrapped around his throat. He lifted Ishida from the ground to dangle in front of him in just the same manner he had done to Ichigo before he had killed him.

"No!" Inoue cried, but remained where she was. "Please! You don't need to kill him too!"

Ishida gasped as he tried to speak, but was unable to find enough air to do so. His fingers were clinging onto the Espada's tail, ineffectually trying to pry it off. Ulquiorra turned them both so that they were in profile to Inoue. He raised a finger slowly and pointed at Ishida's chest. The Quincy's eyes grew large as he finally realized that he was also about to die just like Ichigo had a few moments ago.

Ishida was mentally berating himself for having engaged Ulquiorra in the first place. He had known from the start that he wouldn't be able to defeat the Espada; especially given what he had just witnessed him do to Kurosaki. But he had thought that Inoue would have been able to bring Kurosaki back. He realized now that he had come to depend on Inoue's healing abilities just as much as Inoue had come to depend on Ichigo being able to save her. He had turned a blind eye to her weaknesses, and now it was about to cost him and her their lives.

He thought to himself how if he had simply grabbed her and retreated as soon as they had seen the Arrancar kill Kurosaki, then they might have escaped. Attacking this beast to give Inoue time was the worst thing that he could have done.

I'm sorry, Kurosaki, he thought. I promised to protect her with my own body and I have failed.

"Please, don't do this," Inoue said softly as she began to walk towards them slowly.

Ulquiorra looked at her as she approached them. "You are no longer of any use, woman," he told her. "Why should I spare either of you?"

"Because there is no need to kill us either. But if you want to kill me, then fine. But please, let Ishida-kun go. I… I can't bear to lose another friend today."

Ulquiorra watched as she made her way closer. He could hear the Quincy struggling for breath, but he was in no danger of dying at the moment unless he so willed it. Slowly, he lowered his finger and turned his full attention of the girl.

"Woman, are you afraid now?"

Inoue stopped and stood there looking up at the Espada for a moment. She wanted to look to Ishida, to see if he was still all right, to see if he had come up with any plan. But she forced herself to only look at Ulquiorra. She had been putting her trust in everyone else too much and if she was going to save at least this one, she was going to have to stand on her own this time.

"I am not afraid," she said softly, echoing her previous answer to this question.

"Your friend is dead; I hold the life of his one now. You had said that your heart was with your friends; how can you not be afraid if I am killing off that heart?"

Inoue swallowed before saying, "You did kill off a piece of my heart when you killed Kurosaki-kun. But I am not afraid because I know that you will not kill any of the others if I ask this of you."

The green and yellow eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her closely. "Why would I do this?" he asked her.

"Because… because you are interested in me. You want to know how it is that I can stand in your presence and not be fearful. If you kill off all of my friends, then you won't be able to find out. If you kill them, you will be killing me as well, and then you will never get to see my heart like you said you wanted to see."

There was a long silence then as the two stood there, staring at each other across the barren sand. Suddenly Ulquiorra flipped his tail and sent Ishida flying towards the hole that he had brought Inoue and himself up through. Ishida landed heavily several meters away from the hole. He coughed at his sudden ability to take a deep breath after having had his airway restricted for so long.

"Leave here, Quincy," Ulquiorra spoke without looking at him. His eyes were still locked with Inoue's.

"Inoue-san," Ishida gasped in a horse voice as he painfully picked himself up from the ground. He managed to make it to a wobbly stand, but he knew that there was very little fight left in him. He was covered in bruises and knew that several bones had been broken. His right arm was wrapped around his chest, trying to keep some crack ribs from moving too much. He glanced down at where his left hand should have been and saw the bloody stump that Ulquiorra had left.

"Please go, Ishida-kun," Inoue said in a soft, resigned voice. She kept her eyes locked with the Espada in front of her. She had one arm wrapped around her body as if she were using it to hold herself together, but Ishida knew that look in her eyes and she was determined to go through with this. She was determined to sacrifice herself to save him.

"Inoue-san, I can't leave you here," he said even as he felt his consciousness beginning to ebb. He wasn't going to be able to remain standing for much longer in this condition.

"Please," she said again. This time she finally turned her eyes to him. They were once again filling with tears as their eyes met. Ishida felt himself take in a breath at the overwhelming sadness that was behind those eyes. But it wasn't sadness for herself; it was for him, for the loss of Ichigo, for all the suffering that her friends had so recently gone through for her sake. She couldn't bear to have any of them suffering a moment more for her.

"Inoue-san," he said almost as a sigh as he realized that he was not going to be able to save her, but she was saving him. If he fought now, he would die and that would tear her apart. If he left, though, it would tear him apart. He couldn't leave her to this creature. But there wasn't a choice now. She wouldn't flee if he used the last of his energy to attack the Espada, so trying to use himself as a sacrifice wouldn't work in this case either.

With one last desperate glance, he looked over to where Ichigo was still lying. Inoue had never dismissed the healing dome around him, but he also was still just as unresponsive as ever. He looked back at Inoue and said, "All right, Inoue-san. I see I am left with no choice."

More tears spilled from her eyes as she took her bottom lip in her teeth to keep from sobbing. But Ishida saw it wasn't because he was leaving her, but because she was so glad that he was going to survive.

"Go then, Quincy. And if you ever return, I will destroy you," Ulquiorra said as he slowly began to transform back into his human form.

"I have one last request," Ishida said. "Let me take Kurosaki's body back with me."

Inoue stifled another sob as she looked to Ulquiorra with pleading eyes for him to allow this.

"What do I care what you do with him?" he said. "Take his carcass and go, Quincy. Leave here and leave Hueco Mundo."

Ishida swallowed and gathered his remaining dregs of energy before walking over to where Ichigo was lying. When he reached his friend's side he paused and looked down through the golden haze of the rejection field at the dead, blank eyes that still stared off to the side. "How could you fail her like this, Kurosaki?" Ishida said softly.

The two fairies suddenly stopped their work at the rejection field and flashed up to hover around Ishida's arm. He looked down at the small yellow glow that extended past where Ulquiorra had torn his hand off and was amazed to see the appendage rematerializing. Ishida glanced back at her and saw her still trying not to cry as she stared down at Ichigo's body. "I'm so sorry, Inoue-san," he said to her, unsure how to thank her for her final healing act on him.

As soon as the healing was finished, the fairies zoomed back to return to Inoue's hairpins. He then bent over and clumsily hefted the body onto his shoulder. It was a difficult process being so weak and sore, and with Ichigo being heavier than himself. But he managed to drape the unresponsive body over his shoulder before he finally turned and looked back at Inoue.

He wanted to tell her that it was going to be all right, that he was going to come back and rescue her and that he was going to find a way to bring Kurosaki back. But he couldn't tell her any of these things because he knew that they were all lies and he just couldn't bear to tell her any more lies.

"Inoue-san…"

"Thank you, Ishida-kun," she said to him as she took a step backward towards Ulquiorra. "Thank you," she repeated with another step. She now was nearly touching the Espada with her back. "Tell the others thank you as well, Ishida-kun. I… I want them to know… Please tell them all that my heart will always be with them. And you too, Ishida-kun."

"Ino… Orihime…" He swallowed hard and looked away a moment and gave his glasses a nudge with his newly healed hand before turning back and looking her squarely in the eyes. "Orihime, I want to you know that I love you and that my heart will also always be with you."

With that, he turned and vanished from sight to reappear for a split second at the cusp of the hole in the top of Las Noches. He glanced back at her and their eyes met one last time before he leapt through the hole and out of sight.

"How interesting," Ulquiorra said. "They all risked so much to save you, but only one was willing to sacrifice his life."

"You're wrong," Inoue said as she continued to stare at the place where she had last seen Ishida. "You're very wrong. All of them, every last one of my friends, would have laid their lives down, just like Kurosaki-kun did, to save me. But Ishida-kun realized that I wasn't going to let him do that. He knew that, even if he did sacrifice himself, it would not save me. This was the only way for a piece of me to be free, because he took that piece with him when you allowed him to leave."

Both of them stood in silence for a time before Ulquiorra spoke again. "If that is true, then I have not held up my part of the bargain."

Inoue turned around and looked up at him, wondering what he could possibly mean. He continued. "He told you that you also had a piece of his heart with you. By keeping you here, I have not completely freed him."

Inoue gasped as she suddenly realized what the Espada was saying. She hadn't really let Ishida's last words to her sink in yet. She was just too relieved that he was going to survive for her to be able to process those words. Now she realized what it was that he had said to her. He had told her that he loved her… For the first time, she understood now that she had also been condemning Ishida to this capture because he had given his heart to her. Now he would be living in as much pain from that separation as she would be to be separated from him.

She let out one more gasp as that last thought really settled into her brain. She knew now, now that he was gone and lost to her, that she loved him too. Not just as a friend as she had thought, but really, truly loved him. But it was too late now. He was gone and she was to remain with this monster for however much longer she had left to live.

"I see," Ulquiorra said as he looked into her eyes as she processed all of this information. "I hold both your heart and his in my hands. I have power over both of your lives just by holding onto one of you."

"Please, get this over with," Inoue said as she looked down at the ground between them, no longer wishing to hear any of this. She was just beginning to see that she might have made the wrong decision.

He stood there for another long pause, looking down at the top of her head, before he turned and walked away from her. "You may leave, woman," he said as he walked away.

Inoue's head snapped up as she stared, unbelievingly at his back.

"Leave here and follow him before I change my mind. You no longer interest me now that I understand. You humans are so frail that you have to connect with each other to be able to survive. You need each other's strength. With that combined power, you are able to do things that you should never be able to do." He paused now in his walk and glanced back at her. Their eyes met before he said, "You have given me a small amount of respect for you humans, take it and leave."

With that, he turned again and walked out into the barren desert of Hueco Mundo, alone.

Inoue stared after him for a long while, uncertain what had just happened. She couldn't believe that he was just letting her go. She feared that as soon as she began to believe it, he would change his mind and return for her. But he just continued to walk away. His figure was growing small now as the distance between them steadily increased.

As she became light headed, she realized that she had been holding her breath for some time now. She suddenly gulped in air hurriedly, attempting to catch her breath again. She blinked back a few tears and looked one last time at Ulquiorra's diminishing figure. Finally, she turned around and ran for the hole in the roof.

When she reached it, she peered down and saw just how terribly far down the ground was from her. She had a fleeting moment of panic that she was now about to be left up there, all alone, forever. Ulquiorra had walked away and Ishida had left, thinking that she was now Ulquiorra's property and thus unreachable. But as she took several deep breaths she began to think a little more clearly.

"Ishida-kun brought me up here with some platform he was able to make using spirit particles. Maybe I could use my shield for the same purpose." She called out her shield and had her fairies hold it out flat over the hole. Gingerly, she stepped out onto it and found that it did indeed work the way she had hoped.

She glanced back in the direction that Ulquiorra had headed, but he was no longer within sight. "Thank you, Ulquiorra-san," she said quietly and then directed her fairies to descend.

XXX

Rukia stood before Chelute Rudbornn, a giant tree like Arrancar, and replied to him, "You are the one with the flawed strategy." She was kneeling in front of his with her Zanpakuto driven into the ground. A path of ice spread from her blade to the roots of the Arrancar and was creeping up them.

"Cursed Wretch. Was this what you were plotting?" he accused her.

"You bet," she readily replied. "That combo was just to draw your attention away from me. I figured out what to do when I realized you grow soldiers like a tree bearing fruit. All I had to do was freeze the branches. Everyone knows a frozen tree can't bear fruit. You should never have let me see how your ability works."

"Damn it!"

Suddenly a giant hand came out of no where and smashed right through the frozen Arrancar, shattering him into a million pieces.

"What the?" Rukia gasped as the giant Arrancar attached to that hand sailed over the wall and landed on the ground below. She, Chad, and Renji were quick to follow his motion and landed on the sand below in front of him.

"What the hell!" Renji exclaimed.

"That's…" Chad uttered as he waited for the dust to settle. "Yammy?"

"Yammy?" Renji asked. "Isn't that…?"

But a gasp from Rukia interrupted him as she spun around and looked up in the distance. The boys followed her line of sight and saw a glowing blue disk descending from the hole in the roof of Las Noches.

"Ishida!" Rukia gasped. She glanced back at Chad and Renji. She knew that something was wrong but she couldn't go and investigate while they were facing such a large enemy.

Renji spun back around and faced off to Yammy, pulling Zabimaru in front of him. "Go see what's happening, Rukia," he told her. "Sado and I will keep this guy busy."

She looked between the two of them and then nodded once before taking off towards where Ishida was descending.

XXX

Ishida had called out his platform of spirit particles as soon as he had disappeared through the hole in the fake sky, controlling his descent. It was a long way down, which meant that he had a long time to think about everything that had just happened. He had failed… he had failed them all. Not only had he failed to protect Inoue as he had promised Kurosaki, but he had also failed to protect him as well.

The body of his friend was becoming very heavy in more ways than one. He knelt down on his disk and gently lowered Ichigo's body from his shoulder. He laid him on the disk at his feet and cradled the body in his arms. For the first time, Ishida finally took a good hard look at what remained of his friend.

Ishida felt a wave of sorrow as he finally looked directly into those unseeing brown eyes. He stared down at those eyes for a long time, thinking that somehow, any moment, they were going to blink and Ichigo would be there again with that old determined, yet burdened look in his eyes. But nothing happened, Ichigo was gone from them and this time, it did not look like he was coming back.

Ishida couldn't bear to look at the hole that was in the center of Ichigo's chest. He simply swallowed and looked straight ahead of him again. It hurt far too much to see his friend like that. Ichigo was dead, and that meant that all of their hopes of defeating Aizen had died along with him.

In failing to protect Ichigo, he had failed to protect everyone. He now held all of Karakura town's last hope of survival in his arms. The last hope is now gone, forever.

He tried to swallow the lump back in his throat, but it wouldn't go away this time. A tear began to form at the corner of his eye that he knew he was not going to be able to blink away. He was slightly stunned when he suddenly came to halt on the sand. He had reached the bottom. Now all he had left to do was find the others and tell them of his failure.

"Ishida!" he heard a voice that he really did not want to hear right then call. The call had come from behind him so the small Shinigami would not be able to see yet what he was holding in his arms.

"Kuchiki-san," he sighed as he slowly stood up, holding Ichigo in his arms. He closed his eyes as he turned around to face her. He could hear her hurried steps towards him falter and suddenly stop still several meters away.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at Rukia. She was standing with her mouth slightly open and eyes locked on the form in Ishida's arms. "No," she finally breathed after a long silence. "No, it can't be… he can't…" she looked up at met Ishida's eye's begging him with her look to tell her that it wasn't true. That she had it wrong and things were not as bad as they appeared to be.

But she saw the same pained expression in his eyes that she knew was in hers and understood that it was all true. "Ichigo," she heard herself sob as she collapsed to the ground where she stood. She couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't hardly breath with the weight of sorrow and despair that she was suddenly being crushed by.

Ishida couldn't hold it back any longer at the sight of the strong willed, determined, hot headed Shinigami weeping like that in the sand in front of him. The tears that had threatened to fall from his eyes finally began to flow.

"Kuchiki-san… Rukia… I'm so sorry. I was too late. I should have gotten there sooner. I should have tried harder to give Inoue more time… I…"

"Inoue," Rukia suddenly gasped in the middle of her break down. Her head snapped up and her tears stopped for a moment as she looked around. "Where is she? Why isn't she with you?" Rukia demanded as she climbed to her feet again and began to advance on Ishida again.

"Rukia, I…" he couldn't take it any more. He collapsed where he was standing, still clutching Ichigo's body to his chest, and began to weep where he sat. "She saved me…" he gasped between sobs. "She sacrificed herself… made a deal with Ulquiorra to let me go if she stayed with him… And I left… I left her there…" he couldn't speak anymore as he was wracked with grief.

He had expected Rukia to become enraged with him at this point. After all, it was his fault that two of her best friends were now lost to them. He was a little startled to feel her small arms wrap around his shoulders. She held him as he continued to sob. He hadn't cried like this since he had been very small. He knew he had cried when his mother had died, because he could remember his father chastising him for it. Though he couldn't actually remember crying. It was the death of his grandfather that had been the only time that he could remember crying like this.

He knew his father wouldn't want to hear his grief, so he had gone out to the waterfall where his grandfather had taught him how to be a Quincy and would cry himself to sleep out there every evening. He would wake up exhausted around midnight and stumble home to sleep in his own bed, but he had done that for weeks.

Now, all of those feelings came rushing back to him. He had lost both his best friend and the woman that he loved, even if she never did return that love, all at once. And it had been his fault, again. He failed to protect his grandfather all those years ago, and now he had failed to protect his friends.

He wanted Rukia to yell at him, to tell him how horrible he was. He thought it was well within her rights to demand retribution of him and challenge him. He wanted her to blame him and take it out on him so that at least she could feel like some justice had been done. But she was there, holding him, comforting him and sharing his grief as if he had had nothing to do with their loss.

"Ishida-kun!" he heard a very soft, distant cry far above him.

He felt his chest contract even tighter at the sound. He was hearing her voice now; she was condemning him even now from wherever she was. Maybe Ulquiorra had already killed her and her spirit was being sent to haunt him. He deserved much worse than that.

"Ishida-kun!" her voice called again, this time closer and louder.

He felt Rukia shift and then give a startled gasp. She released her hold on Ishida and moved away. He continued to kneel where he was, holding Ichigo's body, listening to another cry from Inoue from beyond the grave.

"Inoue!" Rukia cried, finally getting Ishida to look up.

There, rapidly descending from the sky, was Inoue. She reached the bottom and stumbled off of her shield right into Rukia's arms.

Ishida felt his mouth open in utter disbelief as he watched the two girls embrace tightly, both of them crying. "Inoue, what happened? How'd you get away?" Rukia was asking.

Inoue couldn't answer through her tears of happiness to see that Rukia was still all right. She had worried that, even though Ishida had managed to leave unharmed, that her other friends had all ready been hurt.

She finally opened her eyes through her tears and saw Ishida kneeling on the ground staring up at her completely stunned. She quickly pulled herself from Rukia's embrace and rushed over to him. "Ishida-kun! It's all right! He let me go. He isn't going to hurt us anymore."

He sat there, gapping at her as she collapsed in front of him and babbled. She suddenly became worried that something had happened to him with his complete lack of reaction. "Ishida-kun. Ishida-kun, please, say something," she said.

Suddenly she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. "Ishida-kun, I'm so sorry I did that to you. I didn't realize what I was doing when I had you leave. I didn't understand how painful it was for you until after you had gone. I'm sorry, Ishida-kun… I'm so sor…"

"Inoue-san," he finally spoke and pulled back from her slightly. "You're… you're all right… that man… he, he let you go?"

She looked at him and nodded excitedly. "It was what you had said before you left, Ishida-kun. You saved me, in the end. I had meant to save you, but you still managed to save me."

"What I…?" he began to say and then he remembered what his last words to her had been:

"Orihime, I want to you know that I love you and that my heart will also always be with you."

"…But, why? Why would that cause someone like him to change his mind? What…?"

"Does it matter, Ishida?" Rukia said quietly behind Inoue.

Then both tore their eyes from one another to look up at her. "Inoue is back with us. At least we have managed to keep that much of our word to Ichigo."

Ishida swallowed as he suddenly realized that he was still cradling the body in his arms.

Inoue quickly leaned back and looked down at the grotesque sight. Her hand came up to her mouth as she tried to keep from crying again.

But just then a yell cut through the air, grabbing all of their attention. "Ira!" The cry was followed by a blast of red light and a rush of power bowled into them from the direction Rukia had just left.

"Sado, Renji." Rukia gasped as she spun around, realizing that the situation she had left must have just gotten worse.

Ishida released his hold on Ichigo and slowly stood, looking off towards the explosion. In the heart of the red wall of reiatsu, he could see a figure rapidly growing larger.

"No," Rukia gasped. "How can that be?"

"What is that?" Inoue asked as she also got to her feet.

"Yammy," Rukia said. "I left Sado and Renji to take care of him when he didn't appear to be too difficult."

Ishida glanced down at Ichigo's body before he said, "Inoue-san, please, stay here. Kuchiki-san and I will take care of this."

"Ishida-kun!" Inoue gasped as she spun around.

Ishida shook his head. "No, Inoue-san. Please don't get involved in this." He hesitated a moment and then pressed on. "I nearly lost you once. I couldn't bear to have you in danger again so soon."

Inoue looked up at him with a trembling lip and said, "Please be careful, Ishida-kun." She looked to Rukia then and said, "You too, Kuchiki-san."

Rukia nodded once in determination. "I promise you, Inoue, you won't lose any more friends today."

She also took one last look at Ichigo's body and then looked up to Ishida. They nodded to each other and then vanished from Inoue's sight, flying off to help their other friends with the monstrous Arrancar.