For as long as she could remember - perhaps for as long as she'd been alive - Taylor could see the old man, just like she could see ordinary flesh-and-blood people.
He was a strange man, wrapped in a concealing black cloak which covered everything but the tattered collar of his white undershirt. He might have looked like an aristocrat or a king, if not for the strange orange sunglasses he wore, and his untamed stubble. Altogether, he seemed more like a character out of one of her mom's anachronistic fantasy novels than a real person.
But he was still very real. Taylor just knew it, the same way she knew that her name was 'Taylor.' It was one of the fundamental truths of her existence.
The man himself wasn't always there; he came and went on his own ineffable schedule, keeping himself out of the way. Sometimes he would watch over Taylor from the corner of her room, and she was never afraid of the dark, not with him watching over her.
Other times he would trail behind her through the streets of Brockton, or follow her into the corridors of school. But he was never a problem, not really - he never made a peep, and people seemed to pass through him like he never obstructed their paths, as if he was made of air.
At first, when Taylor told her parents about the old man, they were worried - they seemed to think that the man meant her harm. But when she actually tried to get her parents to meet the man, they couldn't see him.
They relaxed, and thought he was an imaginary friend, but they were wrong. And even if Taylor could never show him to anyone without looking crazy, she knew that he was real.
She didn't need to verify his existence with anyone but herself. Whatever her mother and father thought, whatever Emma might think, he was real.
When Taylor actually confronted the man about his nature, he shrugged and offered noncommittal, cryptic answers. Or he just wouldn't answer at all.
He never gave his name, either, so she compromised. She decided that his name would be 'old man,' and it stuck with him.
And when her mother died, he was there for her, there to hold her and wrap his cloak around her and wipe her tears away. The only thing he had to say for himself was a sorrowful 'it shouldn't have happened again,' something which Taylor would never understand. But it was enough, just to be comforted by the strange and inscrutable man.
And she wished that her father could see and touch the old man, because her presence alone seemingly wasn't enough to help her father out of his funk.
Before long, the old man had a reason to always be there, always be with Taylor. His presence was like a lifeline, a blanket of protection which made things marginally better. When students bullied her and teachers failed her, his invisible glare was always there, staring down those who made her life worse. And if they felt a chill go up their spine, felt like someone was watching them, well, no-one could prove something was wrong.
He was an intangible thing, who couldn't help Taylor throw a punch if her life depended on it, but his unseen and darkly threatening presence was enough to make even Sophia hesitate to push Taylor around.
She still only ever hesitated for half of a moment, and Emma and Madison didn't hesitate to make Taylor's life hell anyways.
And if Sophia sometimes felt reluctant to directly hurt Taylor, well, there were certainly other ways to get at the brown-haired girl.
"Give it back."
Taylor Hebert stared resolutely into the eyes of her tormentor as she confronted her, her brow furrowed with her unhappiness.
It only took Emma Barnes a moment to string her thoughts together.
"Give what back?"
Taylor seethed quietly as she spoke, getting madder and madder but lacking the courage to project her anger outwards.
"You guys broke into my locker. You took my flute. It's something my mom left me, something she used, that my dad gave to me so I could remember her. Just… if you've decided you hate me, if I said the wrong thing, or led you to believe something that wasn't true, okay. But don't do that to my mom. She was good to you. Don't disrespect her memory."
Emma sneered, completely brushing off Taylor's words and picking at the vulnerable parts of the brown-haired girl.
"If it was so valuable to you, then you shouldn't have brought it."
That gave Taylor pause, and she actually turned in on herself, just a bit. Too beaten-down to see Emma's words for the victim-blaming that they were.
"Can you blame me? Since school started, you've been… after me. As if you're trying to make a point or something. Except I don't know what it is."
Emma scoffed haughtily. "The point is that you're a loser."
It stung, how Emma wasn't responding to Taylor's prompts, that she was taking every pause as an excuse to rag on Taylor.
"…Even if it's just a flute and a memory, maybe I wanted to feel like I had some backup here. I thought you were better than that, screwing with me on that level."
"I guess you're wrong," Emma replied. The words festered in Taylor for several seconds, before she continued. "Doesn't look like she's offering you any backup at all."
Taylor winced, and looked down, barely able to get out her next words.
"I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me."
She didn't see Emma's sneer, nor did she see Emma turn and walk away, but she felt those things nonetheless.
About an hour later, Taylor got a single note from Emma, a white slip emblazoned with a black pencil scrawl.
I didn't take your flute, but I did find it.
By the time that she was able to follow the directions left in the message, she was too late, and she could only stare at the flute in horror.
Seeing the flute again should have brought a smile to her face, but instead, the silver object only brought tears.
It was lying in a pile of trash, in the garbage which would have been taken out to the dump come another day. But she could retrieve it and clean it.
Of course, when she took a closer look, she was sick to her stomach. The problem at hand was that the flute had been destroyed, completely and utterly.
The flute had been hammered and stretched out into some silver plate by god-knows what. The keys which would have controlled the pitch of the instrument were mostly missing. And, last but not least, the flute was smeared and covered in something which was not ordinary garbage, something which filled Taylor's nostrils with the worst smell she'd ever inhaled.
"Oh, god…"
Taylor swallowed, reaching down to pick up the flute with a shaking hand. She almost couldn't bear to touch it…
But...
The old man's comforting presence approached from behind her, and he actually wrapped his cloak around her, wreathing her in warmth and untempered protection.
"Here, Taylor. Let me help you with that."
She hesitantly reached down and grabbed the flute, her smaller hand guided by his own larger-but-unseen arms, and she pulled the flute out of the trash.
"Do you remember Fullbring?"
"I don't even know what that is." She whispered slowly, looking at the flute as if she was in a trance.
"Don't worry," the old man whispered, "it will come to you."
And, after reaching into the flute with a power she didn't even know she had, she pulled her power back, guiding it and shaping it on instinct and through the old man's suggestions.
And the flute became whole again in a crackle of green light, metal distorting and deforming as if by magic to return to it's old form. Missing and shattered keys and keypads were made whole again, and the disgusting ichor which splattered the pipe from bottom to top slid away like water off of a duck's back.
Even Taylor's hands were clean again. She could barely breathe, looking at the flute like she expected the rug to be pulled out from under her at any moment.
The cloak and his presence retreated, and she whirled around to face him.
"What are you!?"
He was already gone, departed to whatever place he lived in when he wasn't with Taylor.
In another place, within the dreamscape of Taylor's soul, the old man appeared soundlessly and in empty air.
A figure in white approached him, seething and frothing at the mouth.
"I'm going to kill those fucking backstabbing BITCHES!"
She was the pale to his dark, a person who might have been called albino if not for the yellow of her pupils and the black of her sclera.
"Calm yourself, Zangetsu. That's not your choice to make."
The old man knew extremely well that Zangetsu wasn't being hyperbolic with her declarations of killing intent.
"Up yours, asshole. It's your fault that Ichigo is so weak! In his past life, he wouldn't have stood for any of this shit!"
The old man sighed, positioning himself in front of Zangetsu - a woman who looked extraordinarily like Taylor, a Taylor in pure white.
"I haven't done anything but let Taylor live as she should - with a blank slate."
"BULLSHIT!" Zangetsu roared, brandishing an enormous khyber knife at the old man. "Ichigo doesn't even know who he is anymore! He thinks he's some wimpy girl named Taylor! He's up the bend! Completely deluded!"
The old man dug his heels in.
"Ichigo is Taylor, now, Zangetsu. That's reincarnation. If Ichigo hadn't become Taylor, then why would you look so much like her?"
Zangetsu turned away, looking petulant.
"Even I know that you don't keep your Zanpakuto spirits after you reincarnate. Something's rotten here and you know it, you old bastard."
"I won't argue metaphysics with you, Zangetsu, because I know as little as you do." The old man eventually said. "But Taylor's life is hers to live. If you try to take control and deal with Taylor's tormentors yourself… I'm going to stop you."
Zangetsu stared at him, her face a rictus of hatred, before she finally slumped over and descended from the air and settling herself on the glass-walled buildings below. And the old man watched her go.
Zangetsu was Taylor's Zanpakuto spirit, her Inner Hollow, her darkest side, the personification of her id. Even the old man knew that, and he was sorry for her.
Because she was a part of Taylor, she felt every cutting barb and bullying taunt that Taylor did. And unlike Taylor, Zangetsu didn't have any moderating impulses to temper her emotions.
She was just in as much misery as Taylor was, if not more.
But Zangetsu didn't offer any words of consolation, because he understood that she wouldn't accept them.