a/n: literally what the title said. if kubo had written this or better (urahara is alive in my world ok dammit), it would've been easier for me to accept the last chapter. but noooo he went straight for the kill. (i'm just being butthurt, don't mind me.) i'll let someone else fill-in the plot holes and missing characters and ten fucking year gap.
Ichigo watches him disintegrate completely without a single sympathetic look on his face. There is pride etched into him as he finally gets to revel in the feeling that he has defeated the man who truly killed his mother. Despite his fatal wounds, Yhwach continues to speak his last, pitiful words.
Ichigo says nothing and coldly stares him down, until Yhwach completely disintegrates nothing. Then he turns to Aizen, who is standing upright, as if the wound had never been there in the first place. Ishida and Renji keep their gaze on the next villain, weapons ready to be wield no matter how injured they may be.
Aizen ignores them and just gives Ichigo the same cold smirk. "Will you kill me now?"
"No." Ichigo says after a heartbeat, placing his two swords on his back. "You won't do anything."
"How arrogant," he chuckles, "And what makes you think of that?"
"...I don't know," Ichigo says simply, "I just do."
With those words said, Aizen is once again chained back to the chair. He merely shifts his gaze to Urahara, and through his cold gaze, there is a quiet, undeniable rage written in them at being beaten once again. "Ah, of course."
"The head commander here told me to bind you back in case something went wrong." He shrugs indifferently. "So I did."
The ground swallows him whole yet again, but before he could be sent deep down in the chambers of hell, he catches the sympathetic gaze from Ichigo, and smirks the whole way down.
(what an interesting character, he thinks.)
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Ichigo and Renji go back to help the others that are injured as well despite protests from friends and family. It's until Isshin knocks both of them to the ground with a kick that they finally shut up and allow themselves to be treated once again by the medical division.
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Ichigo is up and kicking as always, despite trivial protests who tell him to rest and for god's sake let his wounds heal. He finds Inoue, who herself was treated by the twelfth division, treating other patients. He grins when he finds Byakuya in another room, still being treated; because the last time he saw him was all injured and wounded. He grins when Ishida is scowling at him from the cot and telling him to get the fuck out with that irritable face of his.
And then, there is his Dad, slightly scathed from helping out in the fights against the Quincy as he fought against Yhwach in Soul Society. Ichigo sits beside him on the floor of the Thirteenth Division.
"So," Ichigo breaks the silence. "What do you want to tell me this time?"
"The Shibas are part of your family too," Isshin says after a moment of quiet, "I heard, from Kuukaku how you met them, and their impression of you. You did good."
"What else?"
"I visited Kuchiki Rukia's hospital room just a moment ago, and I nearly sent her to convulsions again." He chuckles. "I told her that I knew everything and that I'm sorry I never apologized for recognizing and knowing her, and that there was nothing to forgive when I had never blamed her in the first place."
"I see." Ichigo waits patiently.
"Your cousin's death." Isshin says simply, gauging Ichigo's reaction. "He was the lieutenant of the thirteenth division. It was a freak accident that ended up in his death."
"Oh," and it makes sense now, he thinks, why Rukia understood him so well. "Tell me more about this cousin before I go visit Kuukaku and complain to Ganju about how the fuck I'm related to him."
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When he visits Kuukaku and Ganju as family members he never knew he had, they instantly rekindle the same strong connections they had when he first met them. Ichigo learns about what happened after he left Soul Society and when Yhwach appeared. He promises to visit them again soon.
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As Ichigo passes down the hallway, Renji opens the door and walks down the hallway with a grin. When they're close, he points with his thumb. "She's expecting you. 'Took you long enough, don't you think?"
"Nah, had some other shit to do first," Ichigo replies with a grin, the words falling from his mouth easily. Then, he straightens and eyes him seriously. "Can I talk to her for a moment?"
Renji rolls his eyes. "Of course you can. I just told you didn't I?"
Ichigo shrugs and doesn't say a word, because a part of him still hurts, a part of him is afraid. Renji on the other hand roughly pushes his shoulder towards her room. "Stop wasting time, y'bastard. Do what you gotta do."
"You and Rukia," Ichigo groans, "are so damn pushy."
"That's 'cause you're being a little bitch," he releases his hand on his shoulder when they get to the door. He pats his shoulder lightly, the only way Ichigo would ever get any sort of consolation from this man and finally steps back to leave. Before that, he raises a fist to his shoulder with a bratty grin. "See ya later, wannabe shinigami."
"You piece of red shit," Ichigo returns with a grin, feeling much lighter than before, and watches the redhead walk down the hallway, before turning to the door and mentally preparing himself. He breathes, in, out, and pushes the door open.
He spots the midget easily in bed, sitting upright and straight and proud like the Kuchiki she is.
"Yo."
"And here I thought you'd be a shit bag and just leave without saying a word," she grins, sitting upright in bed, placing her work and pen aside (because she'd work even while being injured of course, he muses). He leans against the wall and watches her closely. The facade falls, and she bows lowly. "I'm sorry."
"Idiot, I don't blame you at all." Ichigo chuckles lightly. "So raise your head."
"I know," she says, raising her head and looking at him straight in the eye with a half-smile. "I just felt like saying it."
They chuckle for a bit, before she sighs and twirls her pen, lost in thought. "We were so young back then eh?"
"Yeah, and I saved your ass," Ichigo drops in without a second thought, both minds in sync. He breathes in, and out. "It was so easy back then."
She leans back against her pillow. "I'm staying in Soul Society, you know that don't you?"
"Yeah, I'm going back to the Human World as you guys call it," he says simply, but the weight of it says otherwise.
There are expectations and duties they both must fulfill separately, and neither of them can deny that anymore. They are not kids, and they are not idiots who cannot see what is in front of them. But, somehow, she believes it'll be all right. She closes her eyes and thinks about who she'd want to always remain by her side and prosper and talk about the little things and laugh and share all those moments with, and that person is not Ichigo. Not anymore.
They will not tip-toe around the topic, because that is not who they are.
She opens her eyes.
(two years could do so much, she thinks sadly.)
"I have to thank you," she says with a half-grin, "for rekindling my bond with Renji."
"You two are so weird," he laughs, "he said the exact, same thing to me."
A flush of red climbs up to her face, and she sends a hmmph his way. "Then I take it back. That idiot. I'll send him a beating when I see him again."
"Sure you will," he drawls with a lazy grin.
It's quiet for a moment again, the not awkward silence between them, because both of their minds are in sync, and they know. They know.
"Ichigo," she begins softly, "you and I, we cannot be."
"I know. I- and I have moved on. I have," Ichigo says, scrunching up the fabric. He's known for a long time, her answer during the entire two years she had never visited him. He's seen it too, after she saved him again, so he knows all too well that this is inevitable, but. But. "It's just..."
"You're here to end your lingering feelings for me, and I to you." She says for him boldly, and she flips the covers out and stands on her two feet in front of him, straight and proud. Their heart beats are in sync, and it is a familiar pose of when she was in front of him, fading away in front of his eyes and his heart had constricted and suffered during that whole year she'd left him and never went back. The farewell after she'd saved him and returned his powers though, he thinks, was a different story.
The farewell between them hadn't had bittersweet feelings of any sort as when he'd left Soul Society after saving Rukia, nor was it painful as when he could no longer see her. Instead, it'd been a mutual parting without any bittersweet feelings or longing or missing; just an I'm happy to finally see you again; see you later. He hadn't understood then, this change, so he'd locked away the moment to the bottom of his mind.
(now, he is facing her, and he knows all too well why.)
This farewell, he thinks, is completely different from all the other farewells they've had. She and he, they are both ready to leave each other and move on with the people that have stood beside them all this time. They are ready.
"Thank you for everything." He says without wavering. "You changed my world when we first met, lifted the rain, and saved me countless times. For being my best friend and for trusting me...thank you."
"That's my line," she says with a watery smile. "I liked you a lot back then, Ichigo, and I'm sorry for never visiting you in a Gigai during that one year."
"No, you were aiming to be a lieutenant and had to pick up the pieces that Aizen destroyed," Ichigo says, pausing to bite his lip to hold the waterworks in. "There was no place for me."
"You're right," she says quietly, and it stings, for the both of them. She remembers the day when she'd been ready to visit Ichigo in her Gigai, after so, so many months of finishing her work as a lieutenant, she'd managed to squish a surprise visit in her schedule. And yet, the day she'd worn the gown Inoue had given her as a gift; suddenly, Rukia felt very foreign in it. It was odd and strange and when Renji had come in without knocking (rude, she still thinks), something had clicked and all of a sudden she could not move. Before she could completely register it, she'd tucked away the thought and her plans to visit Ichigo and hid it away with a smile.
(a coward, who couldn't tell him she had moved on.
.
but now, this is different.)
She straightens her shoulders.
"See you later," she inhales, exhales, "Ichigo."
"See you...Rukia." He says quietly.
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(he leaves first.)
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Inoue rushes down the hallway, panting from the energy that was required to do so, and she doesn't care that her injuries are hurting even more just by doing this, because his reiatsu- oh my god, she gasps in pain, his reiatsu-
-she pushes the door open and stares piercingly at the slouching figure on a chair ahead of her, confirming everything that she expected: a defeated posture that screamed in pain and deep, black bags that begged tears. What shakes her the most is when he looks up at her with an empty stare, that there is no fake-smile that he would usually show others that he is ok.
He cannot hide his pain.
(he is in so much pain.)
She rushes towards him and pulls Ichigo down to her chest, feels the way his reiatsu is heavy and full of weight and suffocating the both of them with its sadness. Tears spring up in her eyes.
"I...I'm so sorry." Her entire body trembles under the weight of his pain, her tears rolling down her cheeks and into his hair; her voice wavers. "I'm s-so...so...sorry."
Somehow, her reaction doesn't surprise him. Inoue has cried for him plenty of times before, and he figured that this would be no different. Still, he wraps a hand around hers and revels in her warmth she exudes. It's warm, he thinks, and he doesn't have to suffer alone.
(she feels the tears soak into the fabric and holds him tighter.)
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Rukia feels her heart loosen the moment she feels Inoue with Ichigo, and thinks, finally. Ichigo will not suffer alone, and that he has someone like Inoue to share the loss with. She grins a little and leans her head against his shoulder. "You feel that, Renji?"
"Yeah." He replies, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed; he tightens his hold on her hand. "They'll be all right, Rukia. You worry too much."
"Shut up." She drawls, lying her head on Renji's leg. "I'm going to sleep."
"Sure," he looks out the open window in front of them, watching the clouds pass.
(he pretends he doesn't feel her tears fall onto his leg's shikahusho.)
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When Ichigo leaves Soul Society, Rukia does not go to watch.
(they'd already said their goodbyes.)
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-fin-
a/n: alright. i'm dead kubo. i submit, you've officially killed me.