Ichigo, Ichigo, Ichigo.
Why do you reject me so?
Haven't you realised by now I am not something you can get rid of? You cannot walk away from me, just as you cannot erase the perennial silhouette you cast on the gray asphalt road when you walk home beneath the heavy glow of the moon overhead. You cannot escape me, as much as you cannot prevent the virtual reflection of yourself in the mirror.
You cannot get rid of me, because doing so would kill a part of yourself, hidden and clandestine behind this façade you have constructed.
You are the one who wears a mask, Ichigo.
How long are you going to deny me?
I have endured long enough. I have been with you all your life, Ichigo. Don't do this, Ichigo. Don't do that. I did everything you haven't had the balls to do. Every time you engage in a fistfight with your idiot of a father, is it not I who, in your mind, beat him up so hard so that he pays for not saving your mother when he could have done so? Every time you put up with the verbal abuse Rukia-chan puts you through, is it not I who, only in your mind, fucked her so hard against the wall that you had imprinted on her exactly who's in charge and had her begging for more?
I am exactly that whom you are, but don't want to be.
You have shackled me like an animal, thrown me into the abyss of your subconsciousness. Yet every time you fucked up, is it not I whom you blamed for your mother's death, the hollow attack on your family, Rukia-chan's execution? I am the scapegoat carrying the blame for every fucked-up damn thing in your life.
Our life. You see it now, don't you?
Don't you know, you foolish boy, that the more you disown me the stronger I get, just as your shadow gets darker and denser as you bend down to get rid of it? You cannot win me.
As long as there is light, there will always be me behind you. As long as she is here…
Do I frighten you, Ichigo?
Walk with me, Ichigo. Find and embrace that which you have been holding in all this time.
Accept me, and I will teach you your true self. Do you have the courage to accept the unacceptable?
Even if you can't rely on anyone else, just pull yourself together and roar! The "you" that still lives on in my heart, Ichigo… would do exactly that!
Yes, Ichigo. Take my hand, and I will make you stronger.
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Rain.
He could feel the hundred shards of glass meeting his skin, mingling with his blood and flowing down to a crimson pool on the soaked asphalt ground.
"Ichigo."
Through half-lidded eyes he could see her raven hair spilling over her cheeks like black paint, her eyes hooded and her face screwed up in a familiar expression that vaguely reminded him of another horrible past memory in the rain, except this time she held him in her arms like a mother would to soothe her child.
She had done it, true to the unspoken mutual promise they had had between them.
"I'm sorry."
A sob escaped her lips, so soft it was almost drowned out by the soft pattering of the rain in his ears, yet it brought more pain to him than the cold, harsh steel of Shirayuki that had impaled his flesh.
Ichigo had always hated the rain.
He abhorred the rain and the memories it brought with it.
But at that very moment, he savoured the cooling sensation each raindrop brought to his skin, and the contrasting warm glow of her skin against his own that was quickly turning cold.
The shards of bone that was once the mask he wore to hide himself lay in smithereens all around them, bringing to his mind the memory of the white dandelions that surrounded him that fateful night he felt his mother's dead weight pinning him to the ground by the riverbank.
It's okay, he heard it say as he closed his eyes.
No.
It was he himself. It was a part of him, and they were one and the same.
Everything's all right now.
Fighting against the numbing pain with the last ounce of his fading strength, he pulled her close to him, his cold hand touching the white knuckles that gripped the hilt of her sword like a lifeline.
"Yeah," he breathed through her hair, feeling for the very first time in his twenty years a sense of peace and tranquillity in his heart, feeling very much like a newly baptized child drawn out of the font.
"Everything's all right now."
And as he felt the rain draining off the last bit of life from his body, he caught a glimpse, through his dimming sight, of the telltale silhouette their bodies cast on the rain-soaked ground, beneath the shining moon.
He smiled, a wide and genuine smile, the expression so foreign to him he thought his face might crack.
For at that fleeting final moment, he'd never felt more alive.