The rain had stopped and the sun had set, casting a deep twilight over the cemetary. Ichigo cried out and Rukia, who had been sitting on the root of a tree, her knees pulled up to her chest, started and looked up.

He'd been unconscious for a long time. In the last half hour, she'd returned his soul to his body and brought him here, under the shelter of the trees. At the sound of his voice, she picked up her bag, matter-of-factly, and stood up:

"We need to get you back to your family."

"Shit, Rukia! Ah, Rukia!" His voice broke somewhere between anger and a sob, and her name slurred into a stream of incoherent profanities. She turned. He was still on his back, his hands balled into fists; his eyes screwed shut: "Rukia, my shoulder! Ah, why didn't you heal me? Fuck, it hurts! You didn't heal it!"

"I was too busy healing the massive hole in your chest," she said coldly. He was too accustomed to her reprimands to see the tears that were gathering in the corners of her eyes as she turned away: "Get up. Come on."

Not once had he ever complained about an injury. She had initially healed him as a matter of course, but, as her powers had waned, it had started to become a drain on her, and she had stopped. It hadn't mattered. He walked away from most fights with only scrapes and bruises. Yet today had been something else, and when it came down to it, she had barely been able to close the wounds, let alone take away the pain, despite labouring over him since the end of the fight, draining the last of her strength as if, in some way, she could atone for having brought him to this.

She swiped tears away from her eyes. She couldn't stop them falling and she told herself that it was exhaustion. She had used up the last of her reiatsu trying to drag him back to consciousness.

Behind her, he got to his feet. He was quiet now, though his breathing was short and shallow. She couldn't doubt the pain he was in or the determination it took not to show it:

"Thanks, Rukia," he said as he came up beside her and fell into step. She folded her arms across her chest and kept her head down.

When they reached the path, Ichigo spoke again. Until then, the only accompaniment to their steps had been the rain dripping from leaf to leaf and the short, sharp sound of his breathing: "I want to visit my mother's grave," he said. She nodded:

"It's probably best if I don't come with you."

"Why not?"

She looked up:

"Because your family will see me. You didn't want them to see me, did you?" His lips parted and his expression, if anything, was one of longing. She felt her chest tighten over her next breath: "They'll ask too many questions."

She stepped backwards, the rain soaked grass lapping around her legs. She could still see him on the path, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his head on one side, staring after her. He stayed that way long after her figure, for him, must have melted into the shadows. She only started to breathe again when, with a slight nod of his head, he moved off down the path.

What the hell was that?

She shivered as she made her way deeper into the woodland, forging a path to the slope above the cemetary. Her thoughts seemed to be running too fast for her to get a hold of them, but, at least, for now, confusion seemed to have eclipsed her sorrow.

She arrived at a spot overlooking the cemetary. She would not be seen from here, but she could see Ichigo standing by his mother's grave, having lit a handful of incense. Its perfume wound itself around the rain-soaked air. As she watched, he was joined by his father, Isshin. Rukia knew him well by sight: a broad-shouldered man with a puggish face and hair on both his head and chin that had the consistency of thin wires. His figure was a contrast to Ichigo's tall, slender build and the boy's shock of unruly red-blond hair. Father and son could not have been less alike.

Ichigo looked up. His father was smoking. Isshin placed one foot unceremoniously on the step to the grave.

"I thought you quit."

"I did. I only have the one. Each year."

"Why?"

Isshin breathed out a long spiral of smoke:

"The only praise I ever remember your mother giving me was the day before we married," he said: "She told me I looked cool with a cigarette. So I come here and smoke one. Every year."

Ichigo stared at him and, after a beat, his thin shoulders sagged as if someone had landed a blow across his back. He dropped his gaze and, when he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion:

"Why? Dad? Why doesn't anyone blame me? It's my fault!" A sob caught in his chest: "It's my fault, so why isn't anyone angry with me?"

"I couldn't be angry with you," said Isshin softly: "You're the man my wife died trying to protect. She would never forgive me." Ichigo took a deep breath and met his father's gaze as the older man continued: "Let me tell you something, Ichigo: a father's advice to his son." He dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his heel: "Live out your life and make sure that you outlive me." He stepped past Ichigo, walking back towards the gates of the cemetary, but lifting his voice so that his son would hear: "Grow old. Grow fat. Grow bald. And, for goodness sake, smile a little sometimes."

And then he was gone. Ichigo stared after him, then looked back at his mother's grave. When he spoke, there was a new timbre in his voice:

"Rukia, I want you to train me. I want to grow stronger and stronger, so that no-one else has to feel what I've felt. I want to grow stronger, or else I can never face my mother."

Rukia held her arms tight across her chest:

"Oh, Ichigo," was all she said, but he couldn't know how the words stung her. These last three months had changed her. What she felt now was a sense of regret and of trespassing. She had stepped into this world, his world, and had changed his fate, had twisted it. Time and again, she had dragged him into danger and, in her heart, she knew that there would be no solution. Her powers had altered him, turning him into something that was neither a human nor a god, but it was something strong enough to interest her superiors. She did not think they would let him live. That was the fact she had to face.

Human beings had been her duty: brief, bright creatures, existing in a world of routine accumulation that she knew nothing of. Ichigo had been an aberration. An inconvenience. Then a curiosity.

Then something else.

He'd protected her. But he'd teased her too. Reprimanded her. Taught her. When she was with him, she felt safe and, when he wasn't there, she was lost. And it had been easy, so easy to play along.

When he had looked at her that way though, it had ceased to be a game. No make believe. He trusted her implicitly. And she was about to betray him.