Her eyes slowly opened again, but she couldn't see clearly. It was obviously past sunset by now...so a few hours had gone by since she collapsed, but it was impossible to tell how long it had really been. Her back was cold and her mind felt like it was swimming, but despite it, she knew somehow she was moving. She felt limp, but it was clear she was securely held onto whatever it was she'd noticed she was leaning against.
"Mn...uhn..."
It had become horribly cold since the earlier parts of the day, and the warmth she felt against her front was accented by the bitter icey wind at her face. Trying to regain her focus, she looked around, her head bobbing like she'd just woken from anethesia. Looking straight up, she could see the huge white blur in the sky denoting the moon, and millions of much smaller dots floating all around. She couldn't comprehend where she was. All she knew was that it was cold, dark, and something under her was moving.
"..You're awake?"
"Mnnh.."
"Guess not."
It all faded to black again.
Her eyes opened once more when the sun was out. It was mid morning, there was a thin layer of ice on the grass, making it crunch underfoot. The movement had stopped; Rukia noticed she was quite a bit closer to the ground than she had been before. Her head felt significantly better though and it was only a moment before she felt strong enough to push herself to a sit. She rubbed her eyes and looked around, having no earthly idea where she was. All she could see in every direction were trees and rocks.
"These must be the mountains beyond Mount Koifushi," She said, "We're really far west. Ichigo?" She looked around for him, finding him collapsed in the snow behind her. What perplexed her was where his haori and under kimono were...and then she realized they were drapped over her own shoulders. Frantic, she pulled them off and tossed them over the obviously chilled shinigami, "Oh you idiot! It's too cold out here for you to try to be nice. How-the-Hell far did you take me!?"
"...Th-threeeee days.." He said, shivering, "F-fffollowing...a h-high reeiatsu.."
"A high reiatsu, all the way out here?" She forced the orange haired shinigami to sit up, brushing the ice off him as she did so, "You must be dreaming still. These mountains haven't been inhabited for centuries. We need to get back to Rukongai before you freeze to death."
"M-me??" Always trying to play the tough-guy, "I c-can handle th-this bett-ter thannn you can!"
"I told you already not to be stupid! My zanpakuto is an ice type, the cold doesn't affect me as much as it does others. Now put your clothes back on and let's get moving!" She tossed his haori over his head and stood back, looking out towards the snow rifts. The mention of a high level reiatsu came to her thoughts again, wondering how there could possibly be such a thing this far out in the middle of no where. Surely it was just a figment of Ichigo's imagination? She didn't want to waste time on it, and once he'd gotten ready again, started heading east down the mountain. She supposed the first order of business would be to find some sort of shelter. It would be easier to use shunpo after a day's rest than it would be to stumble through the frozen forest for a week.
They walked in silence for about an hour before Ichigo's teeth stopped chattering long enough for him to speak coherently.
"Wh-what the Hell was that before anyway?" He grumbled, "Passing out like some twit who doesn't know to bend their knees while standing still?"
"I don't know." She said matter of factly, "Last thing I remember is laughing at your antics and then feeling really dizzy. It doesn't matter. It won't happen again."
"Yeah, you say that now."
"And I mean it." Rukia's tone was firm, "Right now my biggest priority is getting you out of those rags and back into a uniform befitting of a shinigami. You look pitiful."
"So would you."
"I wouldn't have given up trying to make contact. I'm not the first person to go to Karakura...far from it."
"I never saw the others, if there really were any."
"You must be joking." She said, turning to look at him with her arms crossed and a brow raised, "There were numerous time that Captain Kurotsuchi's scientists went out there to investigate various things. You had to have been knowingly avoiding them."
"Like I told you, there wasn't word or whisper from anyone the entire time I was out there before you showed up. I'm not so petty that I'd stop trying to get someone's attention when I know there's people around." There was silence again for another hour or two before Ichigo spoke again, "Did anyone ever find Orihime?"
Rukia slowed her pace, and eventually stopped, still looking ahead, "No. There's been no trace. I'll assume she's not in Karakura given that you're asking."
"No.."
"You still carry that guilt on your conscience, but it really wasn't your fault."
Ichigo bit his tongue before replying, then shook his head lightly, "Nevermind."
"Look there, on the other side of the valley. There's a famous cave there, it was once used by traveling shinigami who were going between Rukongai and the western cities."
"There's more than just Seireitei?"
"Oh sure, there's lots of other cities out there. Soul Society is made up of countless cities with an equally countless number of souls living in them. Seireitei is the capital of this region, surrounded by the numerous Rukongai districts that your Hollow destroyed. If you had kept going west like you were, you would've possibly, eventually, gotten to see the city of Midian."
"Midian...isn't that.."
"It's not quite like the Midian described in your world. The Midian here is just a place with few shinigami. Instead, their version of our Court of Pure Souls is made up of a society of ancient people who've chosen to remain in Soul Society instead of being reborn. Generally speaking, most of them are a couple thousand years old, with younger souls living further from the center. Captain Kurotsuchi wants to go there one day when, as he claims, he gets bored of studying for the Protection Squads."
"Being reborn.."
"Oh, you don't know?" She turned back to him and let him catch up by the paces that seperated them, "When a soul either dies or choses to cease existing here, they are reborn in the new world as a blank slate. They live a new life, their soul basically recycled, and eventually make it back to Soul Society after their living existence ends. It's a big cycle."
"So peoples souls come to here as infants too?"
"They can, if they die in the living world at that age. Everyone comes here representing the appearance of their soul at the time of their death. They age much slower here than they do in the living world, hence why ages upwards of two thousand aren't entirely unheard of."
"Given how young you look, and yet your claim to be over two hundred..."
Rukia lowered her eyes to the ground, "I don't know anything about my life before Soul Society. My sister, Hisana, abandoned me as a baby in Rukongai and I grew up with Renji instead. She apparently was taken as my big brother's wife.."
"Huh?"
"Not that it's really important, but I was adopted into the Kuchiki family. According to big brother, my sister asked him to find me shortly before she died, and to watch out for me. He did so, finding me while I was going through the Shinigami Academy. So to that end, Byakuya isn't really my brother..."
Ichigo just glared in disgust at the prior assumption.
"I call him that out of respect for my sister. That's all I can really say." She started walking again to try and remove the awkward silence coming from her companion, "But since we're prying, what about you?"
"What about me?"
"You told me once, long ago, that your mother was killed...and then we found out it was the Hollow Grand Fisher."
Ichigo didn't respond.
"Your sisters don't look anything like your mother's poster or your father."
"Yuzu and Karin are fraternal twins." He started, "So they don't look the same. But, they look more like my mom's family." It dawned on Ichigo at that moment that he never realized his father had never mentioned his own family. "AAAHHHHH. I'm so stupid! How couldn't I have noticed that!?"
"Huh?"
"My idiot father...never once did he ever speak about his own parents or any brothers or sisters. I should've noticed something was weird about that." He grumbled to himself, "Feh..."
"Did you still keep in contact with your mom's family after she died?"
"No. We weren't particularilly close to any of them, and when mom died, we just drifted further apart. They're all probably dead by now anyway."
"That's grim."
"Eh." He plodded along through the crisp foliage, "Wasn't worth the effort."
"Your father keeps a poster of your mother still. That was always weird, whenever he'd talk to it.."
"He does that." Ichigo muttered, "Karin always makes him stop though. Yuzu just complains from the background; most of the time no one hears her."
"Apparently you do." Rukia looked back at him through the corner of her eye, though he said nothing, "There's no reason to be modest. It doesn't take a scientist to know you care about your family."
"I think the disconnection was best." He said flatly. "They probably think I'm dead. All the better. I've given them nothing but stress since becoming a Shinigami. Now that I'm gone, they can focus on their own lives and make something of themselves."
"Don't say that, Ichigo. Your sisters were worried about you, but that didn't stop them from doing the things they liked. They had faith in your ability to solve your own problems, even if they didn't know what they were. I saw it written all over their faces every time they snuck into your room and fell asleep by your bed while you were healing from some injury or another."
Saying as such just made Ichigo feel rather guilty, though he didn't show it.
"I visited your family once, a long time ago, after they had reestablished their clinic in another city. Your father told me that he'd gotten the girls to believe you had simply run off somewhere and couldn't be found. I think, deep down, they still believe you're alive out there. Mr Kurosaki never once told them that you might be dead. Maybe you should visit them one day."
"Tsh, yeah...after fifteen years, with what body?"
"Oh...I suppose I should mention that...Kon has been existing in your body since we brought him and it to Seireitei."
Ichigo was dumbfounded, "He's been living in my body for fifteen years!? That bastard! He's probably completely ruined my image!"
"You have none in Soul Society, Ichigo. For the most part, only members of the Protection Squads know anything about you, and they're all well aware of the circumstances surrounding that mod soul. The only thing that's changed, actually..." She paused for a moment, trying to find the best way to explain it, "..Well, let's just say Kon's been existing in your body for fifteen years after your purification. Your human body doesn't stop aging just because you're soul isn't inside it. It's continued aging all this time."
"...So...my body looks like...I'm thirty?"
"It's part of why it was difficult to recognize you in Karakura right away, I suppose." She nodded to herself, "You look quite a bit like your father."
"This is horrible!" Ichigo whined, "I'm thirty years old now! I should've been through university and had a girlfriend and everything by now!"
"You don't seem the type to care about such things, why does that bother you?"
"Oh I don't know, because I've been stuck as a ragged ghost for all this time with no hopes of a future probably."
"Ichigo, please try not to forget what I explained before."
"I get it I get it, believe me. Still...wouldn't you be upset if you found out YOUR BODY was twice as old as you last remember it? I haven't exactly had a mirror to look in. As a shinigami, I can't see a reflection in anything in Karakura. It's still creepy."
"Well, if it bothers you that much, you can visit Yuzu and Karin in a gigai made to look like you used to." Rukia shrugged, "It's not as though that's beyond our power."
They'd finally reached the entrance to the traveler's cave, and Rukia ducked into it, the mouth of the cave significantly more narrow than the inside.
"No...if Yuzu and Karin have aged fifteen years then it's expected that I have too. I may still look like I did when the Winter War took place, but my real body...it shows me for who I really am." Ichigo sat on the rocks, which were mercifully warmer than the ground outside, "I'd have to use it to go to the real world."
"What would you tell them?" Rukia asked, removing her haori to make a softer place to sit, leaving the hakam and underkimono where they were, "Where have you been these years?"
"I'll just say it's not important."
"Would you stay with them?"
"I..." Ichigo shrugged, "I don't know. I could try to pick up my life where it starts for a guy that old, but Kon's been here instead of out there studying for me. My body's worthless as far as that goes."
"..Maybe...you could stay here then." She suggested, "Your sisters claim they can see spirits, you could visit them as such. You wouldn't have to come up with much to explain yourself..."
"No.." Ichigo mumbled, laying on his back with his arms crossed behind his head, looking at the ceiling of the cave, decorated in centuries of pictographs, "I'll think of something. Maybe I'll just explain to them what really happened...there's no way I can just start a new life from where I left off. Even if it was in a gigai that looked like I was still as old as I feel, I'd have no history, no records, nothing to validate my very existence in the living world...and if I used my body, I'd have nothing to show for my education. Ah...why am I ranting about this to you..." He turned to his side, his back facing the rest of the cavern, "I don't need to explain myself."
Rukia watched him for a moment, resting her chin on her knees, "Maybe it's time to say goodbye then."
He didn't answer. He'd probably fallen asleep already, exhausted from their long run through the woods.
