This is completely unwarranted. I am supposed to be focusing on While I Sleep, but the plot bunny latched on with its vicious little fangs and refused to let go until I appeased. So here is this, and here we go.

Disclaimer: Neither Bleach nor any of its beloved, beloved characters belong to me.

Other: ideally, this would be set after the Hueco Mundo and Fake Karakura arcs. Since (in reality) I have no idea what Tite Kubo will choose to do with those arcs, any references to that story's outcome is entirely guesswork. And me playing around with plot to suit my liking. But mostly guesswork. This is rated for some pretty heavy angst and some violence.

Summary: -I give you my heart and soul, Ishida-kun. I give you my hopes, my dreams, my everything. They are yours to keep. Because if not for you…I'd probably still be alive.- Ishihime.

One: The Dead Girl

Uryu stood on the fringe of the funeral procession, an outcast and exile amongst the only people who would have him. They probably wouldn't have him now. They would look upon him with pity and hate, regret and shun his existence because of what he had done. What he had allowed to happen.

"Ishida-kun, look out!"

His shoes were sinking into the mud. His tie was silently, slowly strangling him, his pants itched, and his shirt did nothing to block out the cold of a windy winter day. It felt like the ground was about to give out beneath his unsteady feet and pitch him forward into a dark, endless hole. Everyone was crowded around the casket like a group of starving people around a feast. They stood with heads bowed, their bloodless, grieving hands clutching flowers to place around the dead girl's head. Everyone had come. Ichigo, Chad, Keigo, Mizuiro, Chizuru; Rukia, Byakuya, Rangiku, Hitsugaya, Renji. People live and dead, humans and shinigami alike, familiar and unfamiliar. Some of them stood off in the distance, looking for all the world as if they didn't belong, and others bunched around the casket as if waiting for the deceased to leap up, alive once more.

He wished, more than anything else in the world, that he deserved to join them in their mourning. For in that casket lay Orihime Inoue, the girl he had loved and would never have.

One of the mourners moved forward and placed his flower in the casket. There was no mistaking the shock of messy, orange hair, even if the boy's shoulders slumped beneath the weight of his grief. Ichigo shoved his hands into his pockets and lowered his head. Uryu couldn't imagine what the other boy was saying to the girl who had loved him, a girl whose affections he hadn't noticed and now never would. He watched Ichigo turn suddenly, his lean frame coming toward Uryu in the jerky movements of someone holding himself together only by the threads of his dignity.

The substitute soul reaper lifted his head and, suddenly, met the Quincy's gaze. His mouth opened in surprise, a question apparent in his eyes.

Uryu whirled on his heel. He had come. He had paid his respects to the girl whose death was as good as his fault. He wasn't needed there anymore.

"Ishida," Ichigo called. The orange-haired boy's footsteps squelched behind Uryu's as he slogged through the mud and grass. "Ishida!"

Uryu sucked in a breath and stopped. He knew Ichigo. He knew the other boy wouldn't stop unless he was knocked unconscious.

"What do you want?" he asked over his shoulder.

Ichigo hesitated. "You came."

Uryu tried hard, so unbelievably hard, to look the other boy in the eye. But he couldn't. He couldn't even bring himself to turn his head toward Ichigo, because all he would see was a towering, monstrous creature of horns and long, animal hair, a Hollow mask and a leering smile bearing toward him, glinting off the deadly blade clutching in its merciless, groping claws. Black spots erupted across the world, and Uryu closed his eyes, breathing slowly to fight back the panic attack.

"Of course I came. She was my friend too."

Ichigo shifted uncomfortably, entering the edges of Uryu's vision. He was visibly shaking from bowed head to toe. "I know. Sorry. I don't think I can…be here anymore, you know? I mean, she's just…she's just lying there, and…"

By the casket, the priest began to read off the sutra that would end the funeral process.

"There's been no word of her soul," Ichigo said quietly. "The shinigami haven't seen her in Rukongai and it's already been days since…well, since she died."

He made a sound that caught itself halfway between a cough and a sob. Uryu nearly looked at the other boy then; he had never seen Ichigo cry. The other boy had always been too strong for that.

But grief could break down even the most impenetrable of all facades.

"Don't…don't cry, Ishida-kun. I'll be all right. I'll be…"

The priest finished reading off the book in his hands and closed it with a final thwump that reverberated through Uryu's entire frame like the folding of a dying bird's wings. He blinked, breathed out, and turned his back.

Walk away. Walk away, Uryu. It's over. You're done here. Now get out before they chase you out.

"Ishida."

There was a hand on his shoulder. There was a hand on his shoulder and his entire, shaking frame was going to collapse under the pressure. Uryu closed his eyes.

"Kurosaki, I don't need to talk to you right now. Or anyone. I need…I need to be alone."

Ichigo released Uryu's shoulder, but the Quincy didn't hear him move away. Rukia entered his field of vision with Chad at her side, her wide violet eyes creased with concern. He felt like shying away from it all. There was a throbbing pain spiking at him from behind his eyes. He needed…he needed to sit down.

"…Yeah," said Ichigo finally, and his voice was that of a stranger's, weak and grief-ridden and full of regret. "Yeah, alright. Sorry."

Uryu trudged away across the cemetery grounds, ignoring the stares he felt boring deep into his unprotected back. All he wanted to do was go and hole up inside his apartment forever, never have to face the people he was sure hated him for letting Orihime die. For killing her.

He hated him for killing her.

"Don't worry…about me…go find…find…"

She had been too weak to finish what she'd meant to say. And now all he could think of when he pictured her was her ginger-orange hair, long and curling like the roots of a bloodied tree, stained crimson with the lifeblood that soaked into the ground, his heart and soul. He would never forget that image. She'd been stretched out before him like a dying angel, and all he could do was ease the pain of the death that should have been his.

Orihime was gone. The death gods had no idea where her soul was. She was truly, truly gone in all senses of the word, now that her body was about to be reduced to a patch of fragile, precious ashes small and fine enough to be clutched in the palm of his unworthy hand.

Gone, gone, gone…

He'd been too slow. He had failed.

His feet stopped of their own accord, almost as if he was a motor-controlled puppet and he had been turned off. Uryu blinked and stared at the gate facing him. He looked around him, taking in the narrow walls, the people going about their own business, alive and well, as she should have been. He was at Orihime's apartment.

Uryu swallowed and it felt like his heart was passing through his esophagus. What was he doing here? Walking into her living space would only cause him pain. And yet…he pushed open the gate and strode up the steps leading to her door. The doorknob gave beneath his hand when he turned it, the door itself creaking like an old man's joints when he pushed.

The apartment smelled of faded youth and dust and her. Uryu took in the room and stopped in the doorway, his mouth threatening to fall open. It was…empty. What little furniture she had was stacked up against the wall, all her belongings overflowing from cardboard boxes piled on top of each other. Someone had been here after her death. Someone had come to pack away all her memories and had left them for him to find.

Uryu knelt by the nearest box, catching a glint of silver amongst the heaps of photos, clothes and cooking utensils. He pulled the object loose. It was a tiny silver locket in the shape of a heart, and when he clicked it open, Orihime's smiling face stared up at him.

The Quincy nearly dropped it back in the pile. It felt like sacrilege, just holding this locket in a room that still smelled so much like her—like strawberry and sweet pea and just the faintest hint of freshly baked cake. He didn't know if it was a gift for her or from her. What if she'd meant to give it to someone? What if she'd meant to give it to Ichigo?

Uryu pried open his fingers, which had somehow clenched possessively around the locket.

Let go, he willed himself, but his fingers wouldn't cooperate. They wouldn't let the locket fall back onto the pile of her belongings, belongings that would be given away to strangers who had no idea how strongly she had loved, laughed, lived.

He ended up slipping the locket into his pocket. Slowly, his mind still buzzing with the lingering effects of the panic attack that had nearly beset him at the funeral, he wandered through the house in a daze. He memorized every detail, every crevice, every scent, even though there was barely anything left of her in the place. He wouldn't be coming back. He wasn't strong enough for that.

Uryu closed and locked the door behind him. It wasn't right that anyone could walk into her house, even if she no longer lived there. It was Orihime's home and it always would be, in his mind.

His shoulders were hunched painfully by the time he got home. His mind and feet were on autopilot, and before he realized how much time had passed, he was standing in his own living room, staring around him and hating the fact that he was alive and she was not.

It should have been me. She should still be alive.

This is all my fault.

And suddenly, the world was too much for him. Uryu stumbled over to his couch and threw himself down across the cushions. In his pocket, the locket burned into his skin like a brand. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the wounds that no one would ever see.

In his dream, Orihime was just as he remembered: beautiful, smiling, happy. Not a hint of blood or slick, gleaming white bone in sight. Just as it should have been.

"Ishida-kun," she said softly, and touched his hand. "Don't be angry with me."

"I'm not," he said, his tone harsher than he'd intended. She pulled back her small hand, dove-gray eyes huge. The hurt in her gaze killed him.

"Oh," she murmured. "Okay."

He closed his eyes and counted silently to three – one, two, three – reminding himself that it wasn't her fault she couldn't read his mind and soul, couldn't see through his impenetrable defenses and into his heart. "No, Inoue-san. It's not okay. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that."

"It's fine!" She laughed and rubbed the back of her head. If there was one thing Hueco Mundo had not changed about her, it was her unfailing ability to hide her hurt and plaster a smile over lips that only wanted to twist into a grimace of pain. "Really, Ishida-kun. Don't apologize. I understand."

"No," he said, because she really could never, never understand. How could she, when she didn't know how he felt about her, when she couldn't see how it made him feel when her eyes lit up around Ichigo, around the boy who had become the monster, the same monster that had stabbed him clean through with a Hollow's sword and stuck him to the ground like a pinned bug?

"No, Inoue-san, you don't understand. I—"

And then there was light, and her scream—Ishida-kun, look out—and she was dead.

The sound of shattering glass brought him up from the depths of his nightmare. Uryu was up in an instant, his Quincy bow glimmering in his hands as his blue eyes searched for an invisible foe. His heart pounded somewhere at the base of his throat. The noise had come from the kitchen; he could see into it just a little bit from where he was, but if he stood up…

There was a flash of color in the kitchen's entrance, and he heard the sound of glass shards shifting as whoever was there bent to clean up the mess. Uryu got to his feet, eyes narrowing, but the couch squeaked when he pushed away.

The person in the kitchen went quiet. Then, there were eager, quick footsteps right before the person appeared in the doorway—and Uryu wondered if he had gone insane.

"Hello, Ishida-kun," said Orihime Inoue timidly, the soul chain in her chest jingling as she moved. She bit her lip. "I'm sorry I broke your measuring cup."

A/N: The end (kidding). :P

-Kimsa