Wow, it's been so long since I last posted a story. I had an exquisitely long period of writers block but it is over now.

Okay so this story is interpretable as Ichiruki and I have tweaked the timeline of the manga slightly to accomodate what I have written here. In this story the Zero Squad does not arrive until a day after the battle with the Quincys, so Ichigo and everyone else are temporarily holed up at the Fourth Squad for treatment. I know some people are slightly allergic to changes made so I hope this clears it up again. Please read and review.

PS: If anyone has any ideas about a story to write could they please PM me? I would be very happy indeed to write. I think I'm suffering from lack of inspiration. I do not own Bleach nor any of the characters (oh Kubo Tite you lucky man)

Shades of Gray

The sterile white hallways of the Fourth Division smell of flowers and antiseptic. Orderlies move quietly but hurriedly between wards, tending carefully to the injured and ailing.

The cries of the suffering are cut short as soon as the polished ward doors shut.

In a room in the intensive care unit, Rukia lies awake, staring at the chink of moonlight that manages to escape through the gap in the curtains. She lies quietly channeling a small stream of her still weak reiatsu to her injured eye while the other watches dust motes dance lightly in that beam which stretches across the room.

On a futon a little ways away Renji lies asleep. His reiatsu fluctuates in a graph of highs and lows as he tosses and turns restlessly and mutters incoherent things.

She can't sleep either - the red label of the medicine bottle on the table is burning into her good eye. It reminds her too much of blood. Blood red. Dried blood. Blood gleaming in the wreckage of a ruined house. Renji's blood. Her blood.

A tentative knock at the door and her eyes fly open, her spiritual pressure already reaching out, reacting with the one outside. It is so powerful that not even the specially designed walls can block it out completely.

The shōjo door slides open a crack.

"Ichigo come in." Her voice is loud enough to be heard but low as well, so as not to wake the restless Renji.

Ichigo bends slightly to enter, shutting the door behind him with a soft click.

For a moment they stare at each other as he shifts from one foot to another, whether from awkwardness or anxiety she can't say. Unusual.

"You - you okay?" Ichigo asks. His voice is low and slightly gruff. Rukia suddenly thinks he might have been crying earlier.

"We're surviving," she smiles back. He doesn't return the sentiment but he does cross the room to settle beside her futon in a cross-legged position. There is something wrong about him, like earlier but Rukia cannot decide what it is in the shifting shadows of the room.

He asks about Renji and Rukia shakes her head non-committedly as her concern grows.

"I came from the special care ward," he continues at length. "Byakuya..."

Her brother's name seems to hurt tonight in a way that is subtly, enormously painful. She only remembers a brief glimpse of him, covered in blood, being rushed past her room. All she sees is a bloodstained hand clutching the hilt of a shattered zanpakutou, scarlet ribbons weaving their way through his snowy skin. It had taken four nurses and a sedative to prevent her from going after him.

"Unohana says he'll make it." The Shinigami-daiko feels guilty at causing her pain. He can see it in her eyes like a veil, extinguishing the limpid shine in them.

She sighs.

"What's wrong Ichigo?"

The question is sharp, unexpected. Ichigo starts.

"Noth -"

"Do not lie." Rukia's voice is low but he hears the ring of familiar steel in her tone. "Look at you. You're sitting like you are carrying a large burden on your shoulders. You're slumped."

Ichigo looks at the floor then at her. All the shadows in the room seems to fly into his eyes. She is reminded eerily of his Hollow.

"I let you get hurt," Ichigo says slowly. "I came back to save you and got my butt kicked instead."

"You came back to save Soul Society," she corrects quietly. "Soul Society. And you didn't lose - they retreated. What happened exactly?"

Something lurks beneath the brown of his eyes. When the reply comes, it is slow and measured.

"I used a Quincy technique on the Quincy King."

Confusion manifests itself in the furrowing of the smaller Shinigami's brow.

He explains. Haltingly. Slowly. Ichigo tells her of his escape from the magical prison tbe Quincys had trapped him in, his use of Blut Vene, the shock when the Quincy's recognised that he, a Shinigami was using a Quincy art. The King's conversation with him.

"That guy...he told me that...memories were being awakened in my reiatsu. He said "You don't even know anything about your own family...not even your own mother."

Rukia misses a breath as she considers infinite possibilities, impossible conclusions. The scale of that statement is incredible.

But when she looks at Ichigo again, the way his body is drawn and tensed, the flecks of pain and uncertainty in his eyes, Rukia feels sorrow instead.

She stays silent and expressionless and the orange haired boy feels a stirring of unease as he looks into her stony face. Unconsciously, he slumps some more and turns his gaze to the floor.

"When he left he called me his son." Anguish rises in his voice. "My old man's a Shinigami, I can deal with that but...my mother...who the hell am I Rukia? What the hell am I? I don't know anything about myself. I don't even know my family anymore. I don't know anything."

Ichigo's eyes are dark and depthless and flecks of gold seem to erupt across their surfaces like lava bubbling from a volcano.

Then he shuts his eyes and the fires momentarily burning in them leave bright afterimages across Rukia's own eye. He draws up his legs and rests his arms on them.

"What am I?"

Rukia blinks. It is almost a plea.

"You're Kurosaki Ichigo."

A twitch.

"You're Kurosaki Ichigo, Shinigami-daiko. You like in Karakura Town with a nutcase family. You're a high school student who complains about school but still gets great grades. You're smart, stubborn and sensitive. You are the kind of man who will protect someone he loves at the cost of his life. But Ichigo, I could go on for days. Because, to me - it doesn't matter what you are."

Silence.

"You are a person of such great willpower that you will drive yourself to the edge trying to do what is right and what is good. That is who you are Kurosaki Ichigo."

He raises his head slightly.

"We are your nakama Ichigo. We care about who you are - not what you are, not who your parents are. It doesn't matter whether you are Shinigami, Human, Quincy, whatever - we care about you. YOU. We know you. I know you. The question is not whether you know what you are but whether you can understand and accept it."

Ichigo is fully erect now, looking intently at her. The light in his eyes, she is glad to see, is like a spark of sunlight; even the moonlight rippling in the breeze blown curtains seems dim in comparison.

"Thanks." His lips twitch. "It's not so...so black and white after all is it?"

"No," Rukia smiles gently. "Sometimes you need to appreciate what it is in between as well."

Speckles of gold dance in his eyes like fireflies above a molten river as she reaches out to gently put her hand on top of his in the act of reassurance that he needs and to stifle the thanks that is surely coming.

What neither of them is prepared for is the reaction of their spiritual pressures.

Later, Rukia will surmise that the similar patterns of their reiatsu and the emotions of the moment led to something that will take her breath away even hours later. Ichigo will never understand.

Her fingers brush lightly across his skin and there is a sudden surge in their spiritual pressures, a tingle and then a rush like waves breaking past a barrier. The tingle passes through Ichigo's body and makes every single one of his hairs stand on end, electrifying him. It is like being a tuning fork struck by lightning. A sudden whispering fills his ears; it sounds for a moments like Zangetsu and then it is gone.

He gasps.

Rukia almost bows her body off the futon as the energy rushes through her body, completing the repairs to her damaged eyes. She sighs as the surge - not entirely without pleasure - takes her like a flame burning it's way through ice.

The feeling passes - she withdraws shaking fingers to unwrap the bandages around her eye. Trying to disguise her shock.

The white wrappings fall to the floor, discarded, as she blinks in amazement at her restored vision. The rest of her body is still a mess though - she briefly she wonders if this is what it is like to be Ichigo - to have such speedy regenerative powers...

"Sorry," Ichigoc blurts. "I have no idea..."

Rukia raises her head and then looks at him. He thinks her eyes shimmer in the moonlight which lends a silvery sheen to them. It is like looking into blue frosted mirrors.

The smaller Shinigami shrugs and then reaches down to retrieve the bandages, acting as though nothing has happened. When she looks up, Ichigo has rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes.

"I couldn't sleep all day," he laments.

She smiles though he can't see. "Well what's stopping you now?"

"Thanks." Ichigo smiles back and sighs.

"For what?"

"For listening. And not caring. About the Quincy stuff I mean."

"You're still Ichigo. Still human and annoying."

"You're the annoying one midget," he replies as he stretches out on the floor beside her futon and rests his head on his hands.

"Don't call me midget you fool," she admonishes him as she pulls the covers around her more securely. "And don't make me come over there and beat you up. You're injured enough as it is."

Her friend laughs quietly but within moments he falls asleep, breathing easily and deeply. In sleep, his face still turned towards her, Rukia realises how young and stubborn he looks. Especially with the scowl still lingering on his face. She too gradually falls asleep with a faint smile and her mind more easy.

The moonlight falls on the both, cool and silver upon the middle distance between them. It ribbons itself around their fingers, slipping through Rukia's slim ones and Ichigo's larger hands and pooling in the minute scars on both their palms a consequence of hours spent on the sword.

In the end, only Renji is left awake, lying in the shadows and wondering why the futon only a short ways away feels like it is light years apart from his own.

He thinks - and it isn't the first time - that it might have something to do with the small pale hand he let slip from his own years and years ago.