A/N: Okay, again, not the piece I'm supposed to be working on, but here we go. A songfic to ANberlin's Retrace, set during the 17 months Ichigo is power-less. I highly recommend listening to the song/ reading the lyrics, because they're a great indicator for his mood during those months ( as I imagine them to have occurred). Again, this isn't Various Events, but I promise, an update is coming soon for those of you who are following that! Please just be patient! Beyond that, well, this is an Ichiruki fic, so if you're not paying attention to the characters that are clearly visible in the header, well, here you go. And this is sticking to cannon as much as possible, there's not going to be a huge deviation from what we know.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the writing and the fact that I wrote this piece.

The first few months were hell. He was so used to everything, so accustomed to seeing ghosts and feeling Hollows and interacting with his Hollow and Zangetsu that not doing so were pure torture. Not having the companionship of either (being at the mercy of others), not being able to tell when to act or if there were things other than what he could see, (not being able to protect everything he held dear) – it was like the gods had conspired to defeat him the only way they could come up with. By throwing him into his own personal hell. Giving him a taste of what it was like to be hero, what it felt like to protect and save and then rip it all away. Perhaps this was a hero's fate – to be great and then only live on as a mere shadow of who they once were, until the only thing left was the tales people told about their heroism. Yes, that was a hero's death, a hero's final fall. And try as he might to go on past what he had once been, it was impossible. The memories were all there, running through his head (through his veins, through his heart, through the parts that had hummed in satisfaction and determination and strength), and the memories and pity were written in the eyes of everyone he knew. He kept walking through the streets of town, pausing to place a bottle full of daisies next to the telephone pole where it had all begun.

Oh how I've tried to get you out of my head
And I lied, the broken words I said
Never thought I'd walk on this street again
Standing where it all began

The blue skies of Karakura, the same placid backdrop as countless battles and witness to countless lives and countless more nights, to the times he had left and returned – to the times he had returned victorious and the times when he had won but lost. And that was what Karakura (his home, his haven, his fortress, his hollow shell) now was – a dated reminder of his struggles and battles and the countless times that he and everyone had gone to battle and returned and gone again to fight. He clenched his fist, the power and strength and vitality and purpose were dead. He gazed over the river, like time it kept flowing on past – water under the bridge, water swelling in his heart, rain falling and drowning out the life that he knew resided there, water, water, endless water.

And I tried to forget
When I left this town
But it takes me right back
When I come back around

He didn't bother trying to keep up appearances – it didn't work. He missed them all, he missed everything and everyone he had lost (what he would give to fight Mayuri or Kenpachi! Hell, he'd even take on Aizen again if it meant getting his powers back.) But as he walked, the one namefacescentexsistence that kept coming back in his memories was hers. Rukia. His guide, his friend his teacher, his midget, the elegance and speed to his raw power. Like two sides of a coin, together they were. Everything seemed so wrong and alien without her footsteps beside his, without the feel of her reiatsu there flanking his, without the feel of her throwing her sketch pad and the delicate feel of her fist colliding with his face. He looked up at the reconstructed building (not a sign that his story, his life first changed here), and remembered the way she had danced and fought. Just like her zanpakto, she danced. Always perfectly graceful, always poised, always prim and proper and always by his side. That was Rukia, that was their existence.

Retrace the steps we took on that lost summer night
I'm back there by your side
Retrace the steps we took when we met,
Worlds away, counting backwards while the stars are falling

He stared at the Chappy shop, the pink bunny staring back at him mockingly, the garish displays just like her and she probably would've wanted the limited edition Chappy steel chopsticks and bento box set (he bought it, because she would've wanted it, and it was perfect). The empty desk next to his all but exploded with her – her memories and fragrance and the way she nibbled the end of her Chappy mechanical pencil, the way she lay across his bed and completely circumvented homework. He stared at the window to his room, and he couldn't bring himself to remember that first night, that first drawing (that first time she had remade him and changed his life).

Oh now I find, every subtle thing screams your name
It reminds me of places and times we shared
Couldn't live locked in these memories
Now I'm chained to my thoughts again

She was the one thing he couldn't even try to forget, trying to pull up the roots she had put down into his heart and his life would be giving up on seeing her ever again. The way she moved with the least amount of energy but like a ninja. The way she covered him with kido fire as he whacked away at Hollow (granted, she was the delicate flower, he was the brute force – but he knew her power, and that was on par with his. She was a perfect picture of contradictions), or the way her shikai was the opposite of his bankai (she had conjectured once that there were remnants of her reiatsu in him still, that there would always be, and that's what affected his bankai) He took it as a sign of the red string of fate that tied them together – like a wedding ceremony, the partners being joined by the heavy red silk ribbon and joining their lives. Their lives were tied, and such was their reality – now and forever, he was hers. That he knew and that he vowed, and in his heart of hearts he knew.

And I tried to forget
When I left this town
But I'll take you right back
If you come back around

He sometimes felt that she was there watching her fallen friend –like an angel he fell from heaven to earth, wings clipped and only the memory of flying to taunt him about his loss – right around the corner, just barely hidden from his line of sight. Sometimes he saw the classroom door open, as if a transfer student was entering, but it never was a transfer student (it never was her), and it was always a disappointment. He missed her like an amputee misses the limb they lost, like a phantom pain, sometimes he felt her beside him – sometimes he could feel the way she'd whack him when he wasn't listening. He desperately wished that she'd come back one day, that he could see her one last time.

Retrace the steps we took on that lost summer night
I'm back there by your side
Retrace the steps we took when we met,
Worlds away, counting backwards while the stars are falling

It was easy to repeat the motions of living during the day (like an addiction, it was simply about going through the motions), and easy to spend the nights chasing fading memories of their misadventures – (fading fast, fading fast – the blurry images of his friends faces, of Zangetsu and the others, of Rukia's face slowly going blurry to black). One by one the pieces of his life fell apart, like Ulquiorra dissolving into sand (blowing, the wind destroys the foundations of the fortress, the pillars of the shrine). Piece by piece, day by day, moment by moment, he felt himself slip a little further down the slope towards the black abyss that was the point of no return – and he didn't mind so much if it meant that he wouldn't be in so much pain.

I need some shelter, I need some safety
Photographs, they haunt me lately
Chasing shadows as the evening takes me
I'm still searching, but the picture's fading

He knew Yuzu had pictures hidden somewhere, pictures of everyone and especially of Rukia and everyone else from the Sereitei. He knew Isshin did too, pictures of his "Third Daughter" and probably millions of those, at that. It didn't help that his whole house was filled with her – it was like a bad break up, with the memories of the good times rolling around his head. He wondered if she was in the same state that he was –figured she wasn't, she was hundreds of years older than him, he was just another comrade that had fallen, a simple mortal that had come and gone from her life like a comet passing through space, and hoped that she wasn't seeing him like this. She'd probably kill him. Maybe bind him with kido and them beat sense into him. That was her way. But it seemed that the more he tried to focus and remember her, and the little things and the way she looked when she smiled, the faster his mental image of her faded – like a backwards Kodak photo, where instead of the picture slowly clearing, it slowly disappeared.

Retrace the steps we took on that lost summer night
I'm back there by your side
Retrace the steps we took when we met,
Worlds away, counting backwards...still counting backwards

He counted backwards, every day that they spent together, every day that they partnered and every day they interacted. He counted backwards, every night that they were apart – maybe, just maybe I can count backwards enough that the flow of time will reverse and just maybe I can go back to the days, before the politics and the battles and go back to when it was just me and her; to the time when I was still unbroken and unbowed and she was still by my side. He counted, every minute, every second, every sidelong glance from concerned friends and the squinted eyes of his teachers - they all waited for the inevitable moment when he would reach the point of no return and never return to them in this life time.

And nowhere else has ever felt like home
And I can't fall asleep when I'm lying here alone
I replay your voice, it's like you're here
You moved the earth, but now the sky is falling

And as he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling like he had that first night, he tried to forget that the closet still smelt of her, and still had her futon. Sleep was a joke that had eluded him – how could he sleep when his midget wasn't right there, breathing evenly, safe and just an arm's reach away? He was alone, so completely alone. He tried to remember what she sounded like, he played the videos that Yuzu and Isshin didn't know he had, he tried so very hard to pretend like she was still here and that everything was alright, but everything seemed so impossible. She had moved his universe, and now gravity had again taken hold – the world was crashing and burning around him, and like Chicken Little all he could think was, "The sky is falling." She was the strength that had birthed him, the person he was and everything he aspired to be. She was the home he returned to, that he protected, not because she was weak or that she was a woman, but he protected because that was his nature and she was alright with that – she had proven herself more than capable of taking care of herself, but it was still nice to know that she pretended.

Retrace the steps we took on that lost summer night
In my mind I'm back by your side
Retrace the steps we took when we met,
Worlds away, counting backwards while the stars are falling

He left via the window, (her thing, from the moment they met to the times she left for school and the times she came back and the times they left Hollow hunting and holding field meetings of large numbers of Shinigami. That window was the keeper of more tales than any window ought to have been.) And he stood out on the street, (in the pouring rain, the rain that reflected his soul), where she had offered him his life's work. My name is Ichigo Kurosaki. My name is Rukia Kuchiki. And while the night set in and the stars danced and fell and rose in the heavens above, he prayed to whichever god had deigned his life to be that of the tragic hero's, that whichever god had laughed when was born, that they would please just send her back. She was his Atlas, and he was her Hercules. They were bound by the red string of fate, and destiny could not be ignored, even by the gods (delayed, however, is perfectly within their power, it seemed). So all he could do was hope that they chose to send her back soon. If not, well he would just continue to retrace the steps, only half of a whole.

A/N: Okay, so if this wasn't bad, I'll eat a whole yard of poker chips (the plastic kind) without salt or ketchup. I guess this got really ficlet-y somewhere in there, but who knows? Whatever, I'm tired. Review if you feel like it, don't if you don't want to. But if you review, please tell me how I can improve! That would be much appreciated, and I hope you all who do review will do so – please feel free to flame if you hated it! My feelings won't get hurt! I want to improve, and the only way to do that is if you guys tell me how to! Well, I promise that the next thing I post will most definitely be the next chapter of Various Events. Until then!