Yo! This is Kari with a fresh baked batch of angst~ Ash says she liked it, so I hope y'all will too!
A warm hand settled carefully on his back, rubbing slow soothing circles in an attempt to comfort the obviously distraught teen. Really, Isshin generally did not allow himself to be this soft, but when his children were in distress, he would make an exception. Right now, with everything the boy had been forced to endure, softness was probably for the best anyways, lest he be mistaken for the one who had dealt the teen such suffering. This notion was only further cemented by the helpless look of misery on Ichigo's face when he looked up to face Isshin. "It's okay Ichigo, it's okay. You're allowed to need help."
Moving to perch at the edge of his son's hospital bed, Isshin picked the chopsticks up off the tray where they'd fallen. He took up a bit of rice, holding it up before his son's mouth. Even as the teen's face flushed with shame and embarrassment for his inability to eat on his own, the elder Kurosaki remained steadfast. "C'mon Ichigo." he prodded the teen's lips once with the utensils.
Ducking his head forward slightly so his bangs obscured his face, the teen took the proffered bite. Despite his shame, Ichigo was quick to swallow the first morsel and take the next. The rice was cold and bland and slightly hardened from being left out too long, but Ichigo couldn't care less about the flavor at that point. He was so relieved to have something in his stomach other than bile or blood, it was probably better that Isshin was helping him eat. Otherwise, he would have gorged himself much too quickly on the rice and choked or made himself sick.
Setting the rice bowl down, much to Ichigo's disappointment as his stomach growled hungrily once more, his father picked up a cup of water with a straw to hold to his lips. The teen hadn't realized how thirsty he was until that moment. Taking a long sip from the straw, he glanced up cautiously at his hollow from beneath his bangs.
The teen nearly choked. He hadn't been expecting the other to be staring right at him.
"Yer feeding him now?" the hollow spat. "How pathetic. What, is he so fucking fragile he can't hold a couple of sticks on his own now? "
Ichigo flinched, eyes falling to stare at his lap where his hands rested, still shaking even though he was not trying to use them.
"He's not fragile Shirosaki," Isshin's voice was flat and cold when he spoke. "He wouldn't have been able to survive all that utter hell you put him through if he was, and you know that. That little mind-control stunt you pulled caused dozens of problems besides the obvious mental trauma. This here is a direct result of nerve damage that impaired his fine motor skills mixed with the long term fatigue and anxiety, all caused by your little mind games."
The hollow snarled at the accusation, but otherwise remained silent though internally he was seething.
The list just kept getting longer it seemed. Ruptured organs, heart problems, anxiety, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, nerve damage fatigue, trauma this, trauma that, on and on and on Ichigo's father and the Quincy doctor would go. Always another thing to add to that list of their, to accuse him of doing.
It was pathetic. Worse- all this coddling they were harping on his King was just undoing all his hard work. Couldn't they tell they were just letting him fall back on all those weaknesses Shirosaki had painstakingly rid Ichigo of? He'd forced the Shinigami to learn to operate on only a few hours of sleep at a time, to go for days at a time without it at points. Now they were pumping him full of chemicals to make him sleep for nearly half the day! He'd gotten Ichigo to eat only once a day, and then only when he'd earned a meal, now they had tubes stuck in him to 'fix' the results of his 'starvation'. He'd trained him for hours on end every single day for months now, but he wasn't allowed to leave that godforsaken hospital bed any more.
Yet, the worst part of all of it was how he was letting them do this.
Shirosaki was standing idly by, letting them undo all his hard work.
Because he couldn't get that image out of his head.
Ichigo, clutching at his abdomen and crying every time he tried to move. Crying. Sure, he made his King cry sometimes with the nightmare he forced him to endure in the early days to make his mind stronger, but that was different. Those nightmares were made to seem as real as possible. They were made to push all his limits and realize each and every one of Ichigo's fears.
That day though… Ichigo was crying in pain.
Even when Shirosaki pushed him to all his physical limits, forced him to endure pain after pain over and over again, and get back up to train some more- even through all of that- Ichigo never cried. Screamed. Begged. Bitched. Yelled. But he never cried. His body was too strong for that. His pain tolerance was too high for that.
On that day though, he couldn't force Ichigo to stand, even with the mind control…. He literally had to pull the teen out of bed, but when he let go, Ichigo crumpled to the floor in a heap. Shirosaki remembered ordering him to get up already and kicking him in the stomach only for the teen to begin bawling.
"Sh-Shiro please please stop… make it stop!"
Ichigo had already been hysteric with pain and exertion and fever at that point…
"Pain… heat… hot…. It's too hot… cooking… cooking me… DAD! Hurts… hurts hurts… too much. PLEASE DAD! I can't- caN'T, HELP! Burning bursting burning- SHIRO PLEASE-!"
Shirosaki hadn't known what to do then… Ichigo had been too far gone to be coherent… He had to get Isshin then… He didn't know what was wrong with Ichigo, but it wasn't anything he could fix with regeneration, and that scared him. His host, his shinigami, his wielder was crying on the floor, unable to move on his own, and the Zanpakuto couldn't do anything about it.
But Isshin could… The fucking Shinigami seemed to know exactly what was wrong, just by touching Ichigo, by listening to his strange babbling.
Now they were here with him being forced to remain manifested by some device the annoying blond Shinigami Shopkeeper had slapped on him, and his Shinigami bedridden by his father's and the Quincy Doctor's decree because, apparently, the Zanpakuto's training was breaking his wielder. The hollow didn't want to believe it, but the Doctors were insistent. They'd showed him charts and comparisons between Ichigo's physical conditions and a normal human's and a dying human's…
The fact Ichigo's charts looked closer to the dying person's was alarming… Assuming they weren't lying. And that really just pissed him off! He was supposed to making him stronger! Why the fuck wasn't it working? How was him removing all those damned weaknesses somehow killing his Shinigami?
It was frustrating as all hell.
Isshin had turned away from the hollow by this point, returning his attention to his son who looked to be having trouble keeping his meal down.
"Ichigo, are you alright?"
"Y-Yeah…" Closing his eyes, the teen took a few deep breaths. Maybe he had somehow eaten too fast… "'m sorry… for all the trouble..."
"Stop apologising Ichigo." his father sighed, running a hand through the teenager's hair. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"But-" Isshin cut him off with a stern glare.
"Enough. You aren't at fault for any of this."
Ichigo nodded mutely as if in agreement even though the look on his face clearly showed that he wasn't convinced. He should have fought harder… tried harder… done more so this wouldn't have gotten to this point… so his family and friends wouldn't have to deal with all this bullshit… Yet he didn't argue. They wouldn't listen to him anyways, so convinced that he'd done everything he could…
A hand brushed through his hair, interrupting his thoughts. Ichigo flinched away, breath hitching for an instant as his vision unfocused. He swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut, as he tried to ward off the feeling threatening to overwhelm him. The feeling of nails scraping against his scalp, running down his neck, wrapping around his throat-
Snapping back to reality, he realized it was only his father. His father trying to comfort him. "S-Sorry dad…"
Isshin patted the teen's shoulder. "It's alright." He knew he wouldn't be able to get Ichigo to break the habit of apologising just yet. The cuts were too deep… too fresh… to break him of that. "Do you think you can manage some broth right now? Or was the rice too much?"
Ichigo bit his lip. He'd only eaten about half the rice, but he felt full- fuller than he should be from such a small amount. Still, the broth sounded good… "M-Maybe… a little…?"
Isshin nodded, picking up the soup spoon this time. Dipping the spoon in the broth, the elder Kurosaki made to lift it towards his son's mouth when a chilled hand grabbed his wrist.
"Let me do that."
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