DISCLAIMER: I do not own Bleach or any characters associated with Bleach.

Angst abound. You've been forewarned. :D

Ch 1

When you're young, you don't think about all the shit that can go wrong. You don't think about how life is so uncertain. People can be ripped away from you at any moment. You don't think about shit like that, 'least most kids don't. But I knew how that felt at an early age. When mom died, I knew how that felt all too well. My mothers death was hella hard on me, but with a lot of time, I got over it. That's how it normally goes. The pain'll ease with time and support from loved ones; a shoulder to lean on. I mainly have Rukia to thank for that. She wasn't a loved one, at the time. And she was hardly the type to lend me a shoulder to cry on. But through our long friendship, she gave me all of what I needed and then some. Without even trying, just by being herself. She was that stability I needed that I couldn't completely find in my family. At first, I'd been almost afraid to let her in, and it's hardly surprising. My mom had been snatched away from me only a little while before. But I did, and it was probably the best decision I ever made. She made me feel whole again. So you can only imagine, and even then, you really don't have a damn clue as to how I felt when I thought she'd been snatched away from me too.

:::

It was really hot that day. A break between our junior and senior year. We'd only been out of school about 3 days and I'd spent most of it with Rukia, doing the usual. Bumming around her brothers mansion (he's loaded), avoiding my dad when we went back to my place, prowling the streets with Renji, bored as shit with nothing to do; the usual. Until I had to part ways from them. I had a curfew, neither of them did. So I went home at around 11:30 and was knocked out cold by about 2:00 a.m. A normal day, normal evening, normal night.

The next day I got up late, it was almost an hour past noon. When I sat up, I fully expected to see Rukia in my room, sitting at my desk. She could literally function on five hours of sleep nightly and was always up at practically dawn. She'd normally come to my house and dad was usually around to let her in. She'd come up to my room and read my manga or fool around on my computer till I woke up. And then there's those times that she would be purposefully loud to ruin what sleep I had left anyways.

But not today. She wasn't around and it was getting late and I was getting curious as to where she was. So I got up and left out. I went to her place first, but no one let me in at the gate. I remember rolling my eyes. Byakuya was always trying to find ways to keep me out of his entirely unhumble abode. Byakuya had never liked me and I had never really given a shit. I had my ways. I scaled the gate only to find out it was for nothing. She wasn't there. In fact, she wasn't anywhere. I called and text her, went to all our favorite hangout spots. I called and text Renji too. I was getting goddamn worried. It was rolling on midnight and I hadn't heard from her all day and it just wasn't like her. Renji either.

But none of that mattered in the end anyways. Come to find out later, my girl, my best friend, had died. Fucking died man. But you couldn't really call it that. She'd been hit by a car; killed. They'd both been hit. Her and Renji. Rukia, probably because she wasn't paying attention. Renji, because he was trying to knock her out the way. I know because I would have done the same thing for her. A fatal car wreck killing one teenager upon collision and putting the other in a coma while the driver got off with a mild concussion and some bruising. Fuck it wasn't fair. Goddammit, so fucking unfair.

:::

I missed a week or so of school to get over that shock, that depression; to get all that shit out of my system. It wasn't enough, I should have taken a month. Coming back to that dull classroom and seeing that horribly empty desk next to mine, and knowing that it was going to stay empty, literally made me sick. On that first day back I hadn't even sat through the morning lecture before I was stumbling down the hall to the nearest restroom to puke my guts out, as silent tears rolled down my face. Oddly enough that was the first time I cried about it, in that bathroom slumped over the toilet. I cried until my head hurt, my throat was numb, and my stomach was sore from my earlier retching and trying to suppress the sobs. I told myself I wouldn't cry again. Rukia'd have been kicking the shit out of me if she saw me looking so pathetic. So I sucked it up and went home. I stayed out of school another week, but I never cried for her again, no matter how much I needed to.

Honestly, time flew after those first few weeks. When the shit first happened, I thought I wouldn't even be able to make it through the day. But soon enough, after those three weeks of school I missed, it was surprisingly simple and routine to go through the everyday shit without her next to me, but it sure as hell wasn't easy. My mind was always on her. I'd find myself turning to my side (the side that she should be next to) to tell her something or just talk to her, only to find that she wasn't there and to remember that she would never be there ever again. The first time it happened I was with a group of people. Keigo, Mizuiro, Tatsuki, Inoue and Chad. I had turned to my side to elbow her roughly in the ribs and had uttered her name before I even knew what was happening. The group quieted for a few long seconds until conversation started back up again, louder this time to cool off the tense atmosphere. I excused myself and went home after that. They all knew how hard I took her death. That wasn't the last time it happened though.

But after that first month without her, or maybe the second, something weird began to happen. Weird and… and scary. I don't know what I was talking about, can't remember, but I mentioned Rukia at school to Keigo one day. I tried not to talk about her most times. People would usually get that fucking sympathetic look when I did, and I could never take much of that. I'd already been through that with mom and her death. There was nothing I hated more. But that day I brought up Rukia, even though it always caused me physical pain and when I did, I got something I never would've expected. Keigo's goofy smile vanished and he looked at me blankly. He cocked his head to the side and scratched it. His face scrunched up a little, shrugged and he asked me who Rukia was!

I was shocked to say the least, then extremely pissed; pissed beyond all reason. Keigo tends to have that affect on me as is, and then the fact that he seemed to be fooling around about something, something that everyone knew got to me in the deepest of ways. It surprised me. Keigo may be a dumbass retard but I'd never thought him to be so hurtful, so cruel. And hell, at one point he seemed to worship the ground Rukia walked on. I didn't get it. But I figured he had to be pulling one on me. Had to.

Come to find out later, he wasn't. None of them knew. After I almost decked him in the jaw so hard it would have broke for acting like a hideously insufferable bastard, he frantically called over Mizuiro and Tatsuki. Funny thing is, they acted the same way he did. They didn't know her either. Ishida, Chad, Inoue. None of them knew. Even sensei. I didn't know if it was some kind of goddamn cosmic joke. Some horrible, shitty 'fool Ichigo and lets make him feel even more shitty, even more depressed, even more like hell than he already has for the past two months' joke.

But my family was the same. Rukia'd spent so much time over the house that she had her own spot at the dinner table, but only a few months after her death my family couldn't fucking remember her? Dad, the idiot that proclaimed her to be his third daughter the first time he met her, couldn't remember? How could dad forget his third fucking daughter for Christ sake?

I even visited Renji at the hospital. I know I'd been a shitty friend. I had barely been to see him in the two months since her passing. He'd come around and woke from the coma three weeks before and I hadn't been to the hospital at all. As horrible as it sounds, I just didn't want to see him. He was a big fat reminder of what happened to Rukia and I just couldn't take it, cowardly or not.

I walked in his room and that big grin spread across his face. He was happy to see me. We clapped hands and I felt even worse, thinking they must have already told him about her dying at the scene. He didn't bring it up but I thought he was just trying to put it behind him. Knowing that I could possibly ruin that for him, I said her name anyway. It was selfish, but I didn't care. I needed to know that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't the only person. I wasn't loosing my mind cause Renji would know. He'd known Rukia longer than I had, since their diaper days. He had to remember. A brief flash of recognition passed his face, I saw it, it was there, but then it was gone just as fast. I left his room abruptly before he could ask who I was talking about, hearing him call out to me as I walked away.

After that, I stopped bringing Rukia up. People were starting to look at me funny and ask if I was 'ok'. I couldn't take that any more than the sympathetic looks.

I didn't know what to do. I mean, what do you do about a girl that you knew, your best friend, that was killed in a car wreck and now seemed to have been erased from everyone's memories? I'd never felt such sheer and absolute devastation in my life. I'd never felt so alone. I was - I was really fucked up over it for a long while because I didn't know what to do. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone. So eerie, so cryptic. And I was so confused, yet I swear there was nothing I could do.

:::

Again, time moved fast for me. With it moving so quickly, five years had passed and I hadn't even noticed. I had managed to salvage my frindship with Renji earlier on. I clung to him. He was the only real link to Rukia's memory that I had. None of my other friends were particularly close with her. But even if he couldn't, I could remember the times the three of us had together.

Five years had passed and life just seemed to rush by in a cloud of meaninglessness and nothingness. I was out of high school years before. Graduated in the top ten percentile of my class. Highest marks the Kurosaki family had ever seen on a high school grad. College looked to definitely be in my future, but I just wasn't ready. I worked at the clinic with my dad after graduation. The old man was disappointed I opted out of the big text books and the higher education, but I didn't care. I was still battling depression and I honestly didn't want to do anything.

Towards the end of that fifth year, during the summer, I moved out. I was twenty-two. I no longer wanted to be a burden to my family and my depressing mood swings seemed to be affecting them, no matter how much they denied it. I had a good portion of money saved from the clinic and I was still working so I had a steady income. My first home was small, in the same apartment building as Chad. For the first time in a while I was happy, more or less. Being so close to Chad gave me some much needed company. A month later Inoue moved into the same building, saying it was closer to her cooking school. The company the both of them gave me helped me more than they will ever know. I was finally able to somewhat put Rukia's death and strange circumstances following behind me and try to focus on the happier things life has to offer. I'd spent too much time obsessing over it. It was time to move forward in that same painful process I'd been through thirteen years prior with mom. But I never forgot about her. I never could. I didn't want to.

:::

The day was hot again. Uncomfortably so. I had went home to visit and eat dinner with my family. I did this every week. Dad was still the same. He was graying at the temples but still so energetic. Still bat-shit insane. Karin and Yuzu were growing up, had grown up. They'd already graduated high school and were headed off to college in a few weeks. I was so proud of them, but it depressed me deeply. To see how life just carried on when not all your loved ones could. Mom and Rukia would have given anything to see them so grown up, so matured. And it hurt to know that they'd never get the chance, or that they'd have to see from so far away.

I left my family just as it was getting dark outside. Some parts of me wish that I would have stayed so I didn't have to see what I saw that night, but then another much stronger part thanks the fucking stars at my timing.

As soon as I turned a corner to get to my apartment I saw a flash of black. And then the ground shook. I thought it was an earthquake at first, but then I heard the howling too. I looked around me but no one seemed to be noticing the howling, the screaming; just talking about the earthquake. But then I saw it, the figure in black again, which happened to be a girl. She was short and had dark hair, black hair cut in a very very familiar fashion. My heart stopped and time slowed and I literally almost lost it when a monster stepped out in front of her. A fucking monster!

I thought I was dreaming but knew otherwise because that monster was too fucking scary and that howling was too fucking real to be anything my mind could have conjured on it's own. But none of that mattered. Should have, but it didn't. I watched on, enraptured and entranced as the girl took down that monster, killed that monster with an enormous wave of ice that came shooting out the tip of a sharp as shit looking pure white katana with a long snow colored ribbon attached to the hilt. When she swung that beautiful katana in a downward motion, the ice cracked and shattered, dissipating in the wind along with that monster she had incased in it.

I hadn't gotten a glimpse of this girls face, but I knew. I hadn't heard her speak, but I knew. I stood there, stock still on the corner of the street. Something happened that I didn't catch and her once pure white sword changed shape and color and turned into a regular katana, one that you could find easily enough if you checked the right places. She took that normal looking sword and sheathed it, and for some reason I got the feeling that she was leaving. I called out to her and shouted her name, what I thought was her name, surprised at how emotional and broken I sounded. But then again, I wasn't surprised. Not really.

The girl stiffened and slowly turned to face me. For some reason, as she slowly turned to me, I closed my eyes. I know I wouldn't be able to take it, at all, if this turned out not to be her. I'd fall to pieces. The pieces that I spent the past five years carefully gluing together and making sure no one saw how difficult a task it was. I didn't want that possibility. I didn't want to have to go through with that hell. So I closed my eyes and prayed that I'd wake up, even though this felt like no dream, before I broke even more than was already done. But then I heard a light gasp and my name float ever so softly from a voice I thought I'd never hear again.

My eyes sprang open and it was her. It was her, it was Rukia. In all her tiny four-foot something glory. Those big purple eyes trained on me as if she saw a ghost. At the irony from the look on her face, and in spite of the fact that I thought that I could very well be losing my mind, I smiled.

:::

That night, probably in the top 2 best moments of my life. Because of it, I like to go back and reminisce. To all the different moments I've had. Some good, some great. Yet I've had my fair share of shitty moments too. Probably more than my share; more than anyone's share. I just - ever since Rukia came back I find myself… reminiscing. Over and over. Like some goddamn old person that can't get over the past and move forward. But I have gotten over it, as best I can. And I have moved forward, to a place where I'm happy. It's just - going back over those parts of my life, seeing where I've come from, where we've come from… I - I dunno. I think all the shit I've been through has fucked me up. Traumatized me, in a way. But maybe it's good, cause I can appreciate what I have so much more. Makes all that wasn't so shitty in my life seem that much more golden to me. And so, maybe that's why I can't stop the memories…

And maybe, if I share some with you - maybe you'll see and be able to explain to me why, more so than I can.

A/N: this won't be like the original Bleach story (as you can tell if you've read it). i am, though, taking concepts from the manga/anime. pretty much focusing on Bleach in a way where Rukia and Ichigo knew each other before... and, well, it's just different... Bleach told from a different angle (hence the name). i do promise that it won't be a retelling of what we've already seen in Bleach. when i say different, i mean different. just with similar shit.

Anyways, just throwin a new idea out there. Sooo, worth continuing or trashing? Review?