There are no words to describe the tears that fell while I wrote this trying to overcome the writer's block still present for my three main stories. Enjoy… but read at the risk of your feelers and magical eye water makers. Thank you.

Love... hate… and regret. Those three things had been a majority of his life since he had become a Soul Reaper, someone who dictates the very nature and predetermined place in accord with the will of the Soul Society. As harsh a fate that could be rendered upon someone, even no punishment at all could be the cruelest form of retaliation for all the events that had transpired over the past seven years.

"Well… damn. I guess there really is no rest for the hero, is there?" OF course he didn't believe a single word he had said, nor did he hold himself in regards to a hero. Maybe, he was a hero to the people involved on his side of the war, but there was no way to bring back the dead who had passed long ago, ever since the Holy War ended. Chad. Orihime. Rukia. Uryuu. What have I done to you all would never describe the pain that I hold inside of my heart right now, when everyone and everything I knew to be true is completely gone.

A deep, screaming, soul shattering pain rippled through the furthest etches of his mind, making his brain twist and turn in ways that he had never imagined when the sounds of their voices reached to the opening of his ear lobes. As much as he trembled and siphoned the pain from mental to physical form, the way he had continued to hold his legs to his chest was in no form, a type of comfort.

"Even then, they would all tell me that it wasn't my fault that they all died… but how would it continue to replace the never ending emptiness I feel where my heart should be?" Ichigo whispered, his voice being lost to the tranquil breeze that tumbled by, brushing against the soft grass and greenery that encompassed the area around him for miles. With his hand clutched against his chest, all of his muscles became erratic and unresponsive as tears glossed the surface of his eyes.

Why did I fail to save them all? Why did I continue to think that I was keeping everyone safe? And when they all needed me the most… Even someone as strong as he could not bear the end of that single thought, especially as the flooded dams broke free, a fresh river of salt and water poured from the crevasse of his eyelids. And, even the spirits of the past could no longer comfort him, for he had been broken in ways unimaginable to anyone who had not lost before.

He, who was destined to become the hero of all worlds that he resided in, was also destined to walk alone, to bear the pain of the world without asking anything in return. But, there would never be a way to heal his broken heart in which he suffered in watching his friends perish before him- especially the auburn haired girl he had even come to love. He clasped his head with both of his palms as his face twisted into nothing but his despair, the smile he had come to show being changed into the self blaming scowl he'd held since he was a small boy.

Please… don't cry Ichigo-kun. It doesn't suit you…

The tears that had been described as a broken dam became an ever flowing river of his negative emotions as the sound of her voice rose from the back of his mind. Her voice, which was as kind as the world had to offer, with a heart of gold and a personality sweeter than the most golden of honey, he couldn't dare himself to face her in his pit of self-destruction. As much as he knew that he should have done more… he couldn't have possibly.

Rain had all but begun to pour from the weeping skies, almost as if angels cried out to him in their efforts to reach him, the thunder rolling and as loud and powerful as the cries he let out, his throat hoarse but not dead as he questioned everything he'd ever learned. If only I could just tell her goodbye… then I would have at least have been able to stay true to her dying wish… am I really this weak? Or does it even matter anymore.

The picture of her dying face, more beautiful than she had ever been in his eyes, the life she had led so vibrantly was lost at the final moments of the battle. Pierced in her heart was an arrow, the arrow that had sent a divide in his life as blood had sprung free from her body. Even then, as she passed away in his arms, she never grew cold, and her form had never lost the glowing grace of hope that she possessed until the end and beyond.

"Why?!"

…

…

Even then, as his desperate cries echoed against the even further reaching distance of the Soul Society, his heart strings were jerked back and forth in harsh ripples, making his legs turn into gelatin in a mixture of sparks and frost, where he no longer had the strength to stand anymore. For how could he? He had been standing there for so long, for the past six days until the anniversary, he hadn't the will to move himself from the spot that he had made special. The cherry blossom tree that the two had first confessed to the other right before the final battle against the ever growing monster named Yhwach. Never, in his entire life, did he think that the girl he had gone through hell and high water for multiple times, would pass in such a cruel and unforgiving manner. But, he had not to blame himself, but the blatant reality that everyone was caught in, where death, war, hate and exile grew past their constraints.

"Why do I feel so empty after everything… when all I had wished was to spend the rest of my eternal life with someone… but in a place where everyone is gone?" What he supposed was simple loneliness; he knew there would be no way of escaping from despair on his own this time. When he had blamed himself for his mother's death, he had known all along that it was not ever his fault, but the result of a bloodthirsty hollow. Even then, he never held it against the hollow that had taken his mother's life in the end, as it was, as he supposed, part of their inherent nature to consume what they could. In trying so hard every day, they survived by feeding off bits of energy from time to time, and they would eventually come to a point where they did not need it anymore.

The two proud shortswords that had decorated his person lay flat against the wet mud that had become the ground. Even then, the haori he wore in part of being the Captain of Squad 5 was no more than a brown, muddled mess around his shoulders. Of course, he managed to get a new one every year when he came to that spot to meditate, as he would dirty it beyond repair or reprieve. But nothing of the sort mattered at the current moment, when he grasped the hilt of the sword to his right with one of his calloused, torn hands from years of training and nonstop fighting.

The sword slid from its sheath in a resounding grind of metal against the material it was made from, clinking as it clattered to the ground once it had been freed of its restraint. And so, the rain poured down even harder, pattering in rough pellets against his shoulders, as well as the blade that had been raised below his chin, the sharpened tip pointed towards his slow beating heart. I wonder… what lies at the other side of life, if there is a world of some sort beyond this one where I can be free from this pain, if it does not lie in this afterlife.

A smile was graced upon his lips as he thought of the prospect of becoming happy once more, more so when the thought of someone who waited for him at the other side. A small chuckle came across through his throat, too small to be noticeable from the dryness of his throat, parched and hoarse from countless hours of weeping for his dead friends he had come to love more than himself. I promised them that I would do anything for them… but the broken man they see right now in whatever world they might be in is certainly not the same one they had died fighting for.

It was true, even more valid than the sure flow of blood that was to follow if he impaled himself on the spot where he had wept. But, it wasn't enough to stop the screaming of his own twin zanpakuto in outcry against his actions, ringing in his head as to save him from a sealed room locked from the inside where only one remained. All sound, thoughts, and senses went blank as he reached forwards as far as his arms would allow, his muscles straining tight against the unusual pressure put on them. Is this is far as I can go, Orihime?

Rough splashes and the sound of mud being ripped away was enough for his grip to loosen, enough so that the intruding foot could kick the blade from his vice-like grip, where a pair of arms could wrap around his torso, holding his arms to his sides as to prevent him from moving. A faint scent, one so familiar that he could tell who it was without looking, the smell of gunpowder and wild berries came across his nostrils. Skin as smooth as the surface of cotton, whiter than any snow that could fall within the confines of the world he lived.

"Don't… please…" Her voice was cracked and filled with worry, more likely than any other time of the year ever since she had become his lieutenant. Her uniform was her usual clothing that she had been wearing for longer than he could remember, but only now getting wet because of the speed she had been moving in order to find him. She knew of his sorrow, but even if he was too blind to see what he had left, she would make him see. One way, or another.

She held back her own tears once she'd seen the poor sight of his face, hollow and without energy from days without sleep or any type of food, all caught in his despair from the war that happened a few years prior. She, above anyone else, knew what it was like to hold regrets in losing someone they cared so much for, mostly in her brother, Kaien. Ever since he died, she had been nothing but an empty shell until the young orange haired man had come into her life. He alone was the one who spurred her to start appreciating the life she led, to learn to be happy once more when he had made her his most trusted subordinate. But, not even she could completely remove it, but instead remember what the memories she held meant to her and live on. She hoped that in time he would learn to do the same, with her helping him.

"I can't see myself anymore… Kukaku. How did you live with it every day? What made you happier after your world had been torn apart from the inside out?" Her grip only tightened, the squelching of the wet haori against her skin becoming loud as she wrapped herself around the young man. She too, as he had been doing for so long, gazed into the skies above, the sad and depressing rain having already removed the typical bandages she kept around her head to hold her wild hair in place. Without cutting it for so long, it fell past her shoulders, the spikes not losing shape as they were dragged down by the water falling from the skies.

"I was never good with words… not with hyperactive dumbasses like you, Ichigo. Heh." Even Ichigo let a small laugh at the heartfelt jab that she let loose, as the constant banter and barrage of interesting and wacky insults never ceased to amaze him. Even if those insults were usually responded in ways that even made her quiet for once in a while, he still laughed along.

"Yeah… I never was any good with words for firecrackers like you either." She ruffled his hair, allowing him to sit on her lap as he laid his head on her shoulder in comfort of her natural warmth. What had surprised her most, though, was the deep chill that came into contact with her when she had touched his blade.

"Well, I was always like this. Freely flowing, not bound by the usual worries everyone else always have in daily life. But even I was affected by Kaien's death. I prayed every day that it was a dream, and I stopped when I met you, Ichigo." He tensed a bit, slowly allowing himself to be relaxed once more into the giving warmth that still continued to come from the woman of his eye. How brittle and cracked he'd already been, though, before she had become the center of his entire universe.

"Why? Why me of all people?" By now, her heart was racing too fast for her to start comprehending what came out of his mouth, and she'd come to respond through simple instinct, through the gushing feeling that she had been experiencing for the boy for the past year and a half. She wouldn't let him fall… ever.

"Because… I think… when I had met you that I knew that there was something special from the first time we shook hands, or from the first exchange of words we'd had. It was the first moment, in the very beginning of our time together that I saw what lied beneath that will you had to fight, to rebel against something you thought to be unjust, the heart of gold that kept shining into the souls of others. What makes everyone so loyal to you, and determined to be as close as possible to you, without turning away from you for a second. That's why. Why I chose you." Even then, his mind was still confused and befuddled, unable to decrypt what the woman had been saying this entire time, and stuck in confusion for the riddles she spoke in. He wasn't the brightest, but he was perceptive, and he knew something big had just happened. He could feel it. Burning from head to toe, he couldn't keep himself from responding. He craved to know.

"What do you-" He hadn't been able to finish the next word, and as much as his shock and negativity had been changed so quickly within a simple action, he would never be able to understand. In such a warm, caring action that left him speechless, his mind blank of any other thought than those of the woman before him. Huh?

With her head turned slightly, mouth ajar and eyes closed in a gentle caress of his cheek with the palm of her hand, was a pair of soft pink lips mashed desperately against his own. It didn't take very long for his mind to reboot from the blue screen that had surely come across the screens inside his mind, and for him to return the eloquent suction that took him over for a spin. He felt lightheaded in the show of affection, his fingers and limbs tingling in a light and untraceable chill that came from the base of his spine.

He hadn't noticed when she separated, his face glowing brightly in shock, awe, and a pleasurable surprise as his chin rested on her breadth, arms clasped tight against the middle of her back as to keep her close, afraid of losing what he had left. She too, had her arms embracing him, her hands gently brushing through his wet, dark orange locks to the scalp in repetitive strokes, motions that calmed and gave a sense of safety to the racing thoughts in his mind.

"I won't let you run away and deal with this on your own, Ichigo. I'm here for you in every step of the way for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not… you dumbass strawberry. My dumbass strawberry." He smiled at the thought of the two in the result of their bond, and for once in the time he had lived after the Holy War, felt at peace in her arms.

As if nature itself bent to the whims of the two cradling the other in the grassy plains, it stopped. The dark clouds that Mother Nature had cast across the skies, almost as if to compensate for the tears of the angels in the skies above, broke apart and cast an outlying ray of sunlight upon the two, producing an almost magical effect as no shadows were cast from the tree that hung above.

The two continued on in their affection for the other, Ichigo continuing to bask in the presence of the dark haired goddess that held him, and said goddess, Kukaku, just smiled and enjoyed the breeze as it passed them by, ruffling the now dried cloth of the clothing she wore across her back, mainly the strap keeping her badge to her belt.

"Kukaku… thank you. For everything." Almost as if on cue, her playful nature came back to his head, in the form of a light punch across his forehead that came accompanied with one of her famous smiles. Her face was framed by the beautiful tresses of ebony hair that flowed past her shoulders in an almost careless manner, and the smallest of blushes creeping across her cheeks.

"Idiot. You don't need to thank me for anything. I did all of this because I love you, not because anyone told me to. Otherwise, I would have let your dumbass get yourself hurt because of this idiot stunt you tried to pull." As much as he tried, he couldn't hold back the laugh aimed at himself, but definitely wasn't expecting the second slap, one that was hard enough that it had almost left a bruise upon the clef of his cheek.

"But still, don't ever try something like this again. You have much more to live for now that everyone here knows… now that I know of your pain. Live for me, and I'll live for you… Ichigo." Her smile was brilliant and absolutely stunning to the orange haired reaper, illuminating the doubt and dark places that had stayed, removing any type of sadness held within his mind, for he knew she was right. Tears had even went to the corners of her eyes, spilling and stopping at the end of her chin, not dropping from her face even an inch.

He reached up, wiping away the wet marks made with his thumbs, and leant forward to capture her lips in a passionate union once more, encouraged by the hands that held tighter from the simple action of their shared kiss. She's right.

…

…

Because now that she's in my life, I can live in a place where the rain doesn't fall…

Thanks for reading…

I felt that these two needed a chance to expand, you know? I hope that this brings a lot of you other fans of this pairing some hope of more stories in the future.