D1: First fic I've posted in a VERY long time.

A present for Gairon of DeviantART for his excellent comic 'Bleach: Happy to Serve You'

Bleach – Memories Dancing In The Wind

The sudden gust of wind made him look around as others around him on the bridge murmured their displeasure. Ichigo saw something carried by the wind out of the corner of his eye; he instinctively reached out and caught it without realising what he was doing. Ichigo looked at the item in his hand, a red hair ribbon, and paused. There was something about the ribbon that seemed familiar to him but he knew he'd never seen it before. Almost like trying to remember a dream, his thoughts seemed to be fluttering though his head just beyond his reach.

A girl rushed past Ichigo, her friends giving chase. The girl's face seemed as familiar as the ribbon in his hand but again he knew that she was a stranger to him.

He found himself tucking the ribbon into his pocket as he started walking towards school again. Despite trying to put it out of his mind, Ichigo couldn't shake the feeling that he'd forgotten something. Something very important. But like trying to hold onto a dream, it slipped from his grasp every time he got near to remembering.

Ichigo was so deep in thought that he didn't realize he'd reached the school until the morning bell jerked him back to reality. He met with Orihime, Chad, Uryu and other members of his class as they all filed towards the classroom. Ichigo didn't say much after an initial greeting to each of his friends, too lost in his own thoughts to attempt further conversation. The others noticed his quietness but decided to leave him alone to his thoughts.

Once inside the classroom, the party all took their seats, Ichigo's mind still a thousand miles away. Whatever he'd forgotten, it seemed like a puzzle that was begging him to solve. All the pieces were there but in a mixed up pile with no rhyme or reason to it. Ichigo pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind as the teacher came into the classroom and school began.

By the end of the school day, Ichigo had dismissed the forgotten memory as unimportant. Something from a dream that refused to slide away into oblivion as all dreams usually do.

He waved a goodbye to his friends at the school gate, deciding to take a different route home than normal.

It wasn't a different way home as much as wandering through Karakura town's streets. Noticing it was getting late, he decided to make a positive effort to get home instead of just wandering. He changed his direction, taking a shortcut through the park. The autumn leaves were thick over the ground, carpeting the path in a gold and brown blanket.

He kicked his way through the carpet, ploughing a path through the debris. The wind decided to make itself known; blowing past him and whipping the heat clean out of him. The wind picked up the falling leaves and those on the path before sending them up twisting into the sky. The sight of the leaves flying upwards made Ichigo stop dead in his tracks.

The feeling was back again, stronger than before.

Ichigo shook himself and resumed trudging through the park. He decided that if this feeling wasn't going to leave him alone then he'd have to figure it out and put it to rest. With that decision, he doubled his pace, steaming towards home.

Lying on his back on his bed, Ichigo tried a more logical approach to working out the puzzle.

The red ribbon.

The oddly familiar girl who he'd never met.

Autumn leaves caught in a gust of wind.

All those fragments were joined by something. By whatever it was that was always just out of his reach. He'd tried linking putting the fragments in various orders. Tried to find a commonality between them but there was nothing he could think of. Regardless of how he looked at those disjointed thoughts, he couldn't see any like between them. Despite that fact, he felt that they were somehow all parts of the same puzzle.

Several hours of staring at the ceiling of his room and Ichigo had made no progress. He rolled over to face the wall next to his bed, letting out a frustrated sigh as he did. Something a friend had once said to him floated to the surface of his mind.

"When you're up high, all the stuff that looks confusing and messed up... suddenly becomes crystal clear."

Ichigo couldn't remember who had told him that and groaned as he realized it was yet another thing linked to the memory it was that he was searching for. He forced himself off his bed, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair as he passed. Instinct was telling Ichigo that he wasn't going to find an answer staring at his ceiling so he went for a more proactive approach. He headed down the stairs and towards the front door.

"Going out for a bit," was all he said to his family as he left the Kurosaki clinic.

Ichigo let his feet guide him, following instinct more than anything else as he let his mind wander as freely as his mind did. Whichever way he turned the puzzle, whatever trick he tried, he couldn't untangle it. He passed a temple as he walked thinking to himself that the festival stalls must have been tidied away already. But the temple was never one to have festivals; it was too out of the way to attract enough people. Ichigo's foot jarred against the pavement as he felt that thought was another part of the story. Ichigo set off again, thoughts racing through his head. It seemed like each time another fragment of memory joined the others, whatever it was grew bigger than it already was.

Reaching the top of the hill, he turned a corner and saw a graveyard. Ichigo felt another piece of the puzzle floating through his head, telling him he'd been here before. He knew he'd never been through the graveyard before; it was too far from his home, school or any other place he frequented. The feeling was little more than a sense of déjà vu, but it was all Ichigo had to go on.

He wandered between the graves, following the paths around the graveyard often doubling back on himself and retracing his steps in an effort to locate another clue. He soon decided that trying to home in on a clue using his sense of uneasiness was stupid and headed back towards the street again. As he was about to leave the graveyard, he noticed an offering by a family grave and stopped to pay his respects. He didn't know why he did that, but it seemed appropriate and he had given up trying to make sense of this strange day. He caught sight of the name on the grave as he turned to walk away and paused. At the same moment, Ichigo could have sworn he heard a voice from behind him.

Senna.

Ichigo didn't know where the name had come from; it had floated towards him as if someone's voice had been carried by the wind. Wherever it had come from, the name was a tipping point. The dam burst and a flood of memories came back to him. Senna's mysterious appearance and shinigami powers, the Blanks, the battle with the Dark Ones and her sacrifice to save both the Seireitei and the Living world from being destroyed. Everything to do with Senna, even her tightrope walk in the shopping centre. But with the realization came a cold weight of sadness. Even if he remembered, no-one else would. The Memory Rosary was always composed of the memories of thousands of Blanks and when those Blanks had retrieved their own respective memories there was nothing left for others to remember.

Ichigo turned and left the graveyard in a daze. He didn't know where he was going or why. All that mattered was that he remembered Senna but there was nothing he could do beyond that.

Ichigo continued along the bank of the river, lost in his own thoughts. His route from the graveyard had meandered through Karakura again until it ended with him reaching the river, more by chance than anything else.

Finally managing to make sense of the memories everyone else had forgotten left him with a hollow satisfaction. He remembered Senna, even if no-one else did. But she was gone.

Rediscovering a friend only to realize they were already gone produced a strange mix of emotions within the substitute Shinigami. The puzzle that had plagued him was gone but in its place was the sadness of a lost friend. The answer he'd spent so much time trying to find wasn't at all what Ichigo had expected. At first he wished he'd never remembered. But as he had wandered, he realized that to forget Senna would have been even worse than the sadness that was now burdened with.

He stopped and stood for a while, looking out over the river and back at the bridge where he'd last seen Senna. It wasn't long before he became aware of someone sitting down by the riverbank. Ichigo stiffened as he noticed the brown blazer, skirt and black hair. He skidded down the slope of the embankment, coming to a stop a downriver way from the girl.

"Senna!"

She didn't respond, just kept looking out over the river towards the opposite bank. He took a few steps towards her and tried again.

"Senna?"

Now he was close enough to see her face, he knew it was her. The amber eyes were unmistakeable. As he drew closer the girl stood, eyes glazed and dark hair fluttering in the breeze. The blank look she was giving him and not reacting to her own name told Ichigo that she'd also forgotten herself. He decided to start with the basics.

"Senna. Your name is Senna."

Deep within her eyes, Ichigo saw a spark of understanding. And it exploded through her mind as her own memories started to resurface and sort themselves out.

"Ichigo?" Senna seemed to be piecing her own memories together as she looked at him.

Her eyes focused on him and he saw Senna coming back to herself.

"Welcome back," Ichigo smiled at the girl as she stared up at him with her large amber eyes.

Senna's own face broke into an equally large grin as Ichigo reached into his pocket, pulling out her red ribbon.

"You dropped this," He said as he handed it to her.

Senna took it from Ichigo's hand before pulling her hair back to tie it with her ribbon. Ichigo started walking along the path again; Senna seemed unaware of this as she fussed over her hair.

As she finished tying the ribbon, she looked around and saw him walking away.

"Hey! Wait for me!" Senna called sprinting, although she looked to be almost dancing, after Ichigo.

END.

D1: This feels so rushed and disjointed but it refuses to let me smooth it out anywhere. I'll just claim it's on purpose. Not my best work and I may rewrite sections of it later when I have the time, but for now I'm fairly happy with the end product.