Title: Historia de una muerte
Word-count: 1764
Genre: Oh God. Angst? General? It's not very angsty, idon'tthink...
Rating: PG-13 to R. The boys do have mouths like sailors, after all.
Characters: Ichigo, Renji, Hitsugaya in varying quantities. Vague hints of IchiRuki and RenRuki (mainly RenRuki).
Spoilers: Through Soul Society arc and minor, really quite insignificant Arrancar arc spoiler.
Summary: We live, we die, we are reborn.

First BLEACH fic. Standard disclaimer applies (please, Kubo/Santa, let me have Renji. In a box. With a tickle-stick), as do apologies -- for any OOCness, bastardisation or just plain wankery. Also because I'm sure this has been done before. And it's rather fractured.

The day Kuchiki Rukia dies is a Tuesday. It's summer, the sun is shining, and it dries her blood to his spirit arms as he carries her to Uruhara, swearing at her to open her fucking eyes, she's not going to die, not yet, not now, even as her reiatsu gives a final little blip and then is gone completely.

He doesn't cry until much later. Tessai hands him a wet cloth; even Shinigami need to be clean, he prompts. Ichigo snaps back that he's fine, this isn't even his real body, Kon's at home and shitfuck he can't tell Kon this, because the fuckin' thing adores Rukia and shitshitshit what does he tell Karin and Yuzu and Isshin and fuckgoddamn he should have gotten here faster--

Uruhara comes out from the back, wiping his hands clean and closing the shoji with his foot. He tells Ichigo that they will be here soon, and Ichigo doesn't even ask who 'they' are, because it's hard to speak with Tessai's shoulder in the way.

----

The Captain of the Thirteenth looks older, paler and taller than Ichigo remembers, his third-seats strangely silent at his side and the little broken body limp in his arms and somewhere, in the back of his mind, Ichigo has to give Ukitake credit for not giving into the strangled expression that's lurking just beneath his face.

He asks Ichigo what happened, and Ichigo tells him, how they were careless, and how he misjudged. He asks what Ukitake's going to do now.

Ukitake gives him a curious, sad look. "Take her home, of course," he said, cocking his head in the direction of the butterflies on his shoulder, "Byakuya will want to bury her. Nobody blames you, Kurosaki-kun," he adds, a few minutes later as Kiyone opens the gate, and Ichigo knows he's lying.

Ichigo blames Ichigo.

----

Two days later and he's in Soul Society, standing near the front of every Shinigami in the Seireitei and feeling sickeningly out of place even though he's in his shihakushou with Zangetsu strapped to his back (and the old man is shitty in situations like this). Chad's hand is crushing his shoulder, but he can't refuse the support, even though it's making his knees buckle (at least, he thinks it's Chad's fault). Almost every fucking Shinigami has given him the sympathy-look, and it's all he can do to tell them to stick their sympathy; he doesn't want it. There's an awkward air hanging around Seireitei; nobody really quite knows what to do with the ryoka now that their -- his -- only real tie to their world is dead.

Kuchiki Byakuya is surrounded by his vassals, but he's tall enough to stand above them; Ichigo saw him, briefly, as he paraded in, his kenseikan in a different style than Ichigo remembers. Some nobility mourning shit, he thinks, and stands straighter: if Byakuya is going to blame him, he's at least going to see his shunpo before he gets run through. Instead, the look Byakuya gives him is the most open one he has ever seen on the man: there is no blame, and there is no malice, but there is so much understanding that it wrenches Ichigo's stomach and makes him want to be sick. He doesn't want understanding, he thinks. He wants somebody to punch him.

He catches sight of Renji as the funeral ends, flanked on either side by a hungover-looking Kira and Ikkaku. He looks about as bad as Ichigo feels, all done up smart with his armband tied tight and his hair pulled back and with a look in his eyes as though he wants to hit something -- anything -- but won't, because he's missed his chance to.

Ichigo's felt the same, once, a long time ago.

----

Time passes slowly. Quieter. After a while, Kon moves into the Urahara Shoten (strangely, at the same time Ururu hits puberty, Ichigo notices), and there is too much room in his closet. He gains more control over his reiatsu and Shirosaki and soon the only Hollows coming to Karakura are barely worth him reaching for the license. Soul Society send squads to deal with them, but they never deal with him.

He comes to prefer it that way; the way it should have been all along.

----

Ichigo is twenty-three and in med school, talking to his cadaver after class. Ojiisan (Ichigo doesn't know his name, and Ojiisan is not willing to tell him; after all, this is science, boy, not a talk-show) knows that Ichigo could send him on, but he's more interested in looking at what the atom bomb did to his liver than moving on to Soul Society (and Ichigo has told him all about the Rukongai anyway). A flare of reiatsu in the corner of the morgue makes him stumble and he turns, clenching one fist tightly to stop himself from shaking; it's been too long.

"Toushirou."

"Kurosaki."

The Shinigami's eyes flick disinterestedly to Ojiisan (who is cowering beneath his own legs) and then back to Ichigo. "We had a report," the Captain says, all stiff and formal. "that Vice Captain Abarai was in the Tokyo area. Have you seen anything?" Have you seen him? is what Hitsugaya's really asking, even though it's none of their damn business if Ichigo has or not.

"No," Ichigo says, and it's true; Renji hasn't been in Tokyo for months.

Hitsugaya gives him an unbelieving look, his small nose in the air and for a brief moment, Ichigo is reminded of Karin when she was smaller, and particularly indignant. "Hn. Well, if you do," he says, his voice loaded with meaning, and leaves, adding, "And you know damn well how to perform a burial, Kurosaki."

----

Ten more years and Dr. Ichigo Kurosaki is a paediatrician, thirty-four, lives in Osaka-fu because his wife is from there, only he hates the people not because of anything they've done, but because he stands in a queue at the convenience store, hears a particularly nasal tone and has to choke down the urge to punch the stretching, sickening smirk off of Gin's face, even though Gin is nowhere, or at least, Ichigo hasn't felt his rebirth yet. Hopefully, he thinks, Gin never will be reborn. Not near him, at least.

He has two boys, five and three and so far, neither has said anything about seeing things in the night, even though their father's a full-blooded shinigami and their grandpa is too. He's thankful that they don't know who's hiding beneath their bed or in their closet. When his eldest starts school, he asks Ichigo what school's like. Ichigo tells him stories, but doesn't really mention high-school.

----

He sees Renji again when he's thirty-seven, two days from thirty-eight. The Captain looks tired, now, older (but Ichigo had always assumed Renji to be so old anyway, if Rukia had been a hundred and fifty when they had met), his hair cut shorter and so many tattoos on his face now he looks almost like the Maori Ichigo sees on TV. Renji cuts that cocky 'I'm a bastard but I'm better than you' grin across his face, saunters across the street and they find themselves sitting on the steps outside a backstreet shrine, hot vending machine drinks to the side.

"You still got that shitty license they gave you?" Renji asks, out of the blue when conversation lapses a bit -- there are only so many times he can repeat the anecdote about Shunsui and the Seireitei garden party before it gets old -- and Ichigo shrugs.

"Yeah, somewhere," Ichigo replies, over the lip of his coffee can. "S'in a drawer at home. Not something I want the kids to start throwing around, y'know?" and Renji does, and makes a crack about what would happen if one of them took the damn thing into school one day.

They don't talk about Rukia.

Even though Renji has not stopped looking, and Ichigo knows he has not stopped looking, because he hasn't really stopped either.

"That white coat makes you look like a fuckin' lab rat," Ichigo says at one point, waving to where for all his roughness and sharp edges, Renji's captain's overcoat looks as clean as it was the day he was presented with it. He notes, silently, that Renji has changed the badge of the fifth division from bluebells to the cucumber flower and wonders if anyone other than them would notice the significance.

Renji shrugs easily, a large hand crushing his tea can into a metal lump. "Yeah, but it's worth it," he says.

When Renji goes, Ichigo doesn't ask him if he's going back to Soul Society, because the Hell Butterfly that lands on the man's shoulder tells him that. And he doesn't ask when Renji will be back, because that's none of his business; he's not part of that anymore. "Don't get your ass kicked, Renji," he says, smirking, and Renji returns that by flipping Ichigo off.

He doesn't wish Renji luck. There are eight billion people in the world, now, and they both know the futility in those odds.

----

His children grow old, marry, have their own kids. His youngest son moves up to Tokyo, his oldest stays in Osaka and Ichigo gets himself a reputation as the crabby guy on the Shinkansen twice a month who must be going through a mid-life crisis with that hair (he got tired of defending his follicle rights when he hit twenty-five). He doesn't hear from the Soul Society again, he knows that he shouldn't really expect to, and the Shinigami license gets lost to the attic, in a box full of stuff he knows he really should burn but can't bring himself to.

----

When Ichigo is a cranky, crinkly old man sitting in a park, bent with arthritis and disgruntlement, the flare at the top of his spine lights up and his head jolts up to come face-to-face with Hitsugaya, and the damn kid doesn't look any older.

"I'm not dead," Ichigo says, with an ironic smirk that's not matched by the white-haired boy. "There's a cemetery two blocks away, go do your burials somewhere else."

"That's not why I'm here." And Ichigo knows just why Hitsugaya's here, and knows that, now, after so many years, he doesn't want to know.

"Renji found her, huh?"

"Fifteen years old, living in Kanagawa," says Hitsugaya briskly, not looking Ichigo in the eyes out of male tact and Ichigo is glad; it's embarrassing for a man this old to be so damn hung up. "She's... well."

"Good. That's... I'm glad."

There's a silence, for a minute, and then Hitsugaya opens his mouth as if to say something, then closes it, understanding. "Hn," he says, and shakes his head, amused. "Alright. We'll see you soon, Kurosaki."

"Like hell. I ain't dying yet."

Hitsugaya doesn't say anything, resolving to smirk at Kurosaki in a month or so. He walks past Ichigo and back through the gate, and does not look back at where the old man is staring very resolutely at the falling leaves.

--end--

a/n -- Am new to the fandom, hullo hullo! C+C adored, I'm still trying to find my feet with these characters!

-commie