Following my initial breakdown of Ichigo's situation; this is the most likely result, regardless of Unohana Retsu's interference. There has to be some drawback to being human, after all, and when not familiar with living bodies... well. There's a reason medical school lasts so long.
Chapter 2
When his alarm went off, Ichigo took several seconds to register the sound before making an attempt to stop it, struggling upright against his blankets to swat at the snooze button before sliding the alarm switch to 'off'.
Abruptly, the previous night's events registered and he staggered to his feet, stumbling down the stairs in his haste to check over his sisters. Unohana had healed them, but that didn't mean much for emotional state.
"Karin, Yuzu, are you two all right?"
"Last night… it was strange. It feels like a bad dream," Yuzu set a plate on the table, "But…" she looked out the side of the house, where there had been a wall and window at one point.
"Yeah, there were spirits here. One of them healed you two. Also… there's one in the clinic. I should go get her and remake the bed, in case someone needs that room later." Ichigo blinked slowly, his vision fuzzing around the edges.
"Onii-chan… are you all right?"
"Yeah," he ran a mental check of himself. He wasn't feeling bad, really, "Just… really tired."
He turned toward the clinic, calling over his shoulder, "Oi, Yuzu—could you make a spare plate? I don't know if she can eat human food, but…"
"Mm," Yuzu nodded, smiling. "We can't be bad enough hosts to not offer!"
Ichigo hid a faint smile. Even if she couldn't see her guest, Yuzu loved having people to take care of. It had apparently been the perfect way to cheer her up… and when Yuzu was pleased, Karin was pleased.
xxxx
"Oi, Rukia," Ichigo tapped the door firmly.
A moment later, said door swung open, revealing a somewhat ruffled-looking Shinigami. "Oh, good morning, Ichigo."
Ichigo ignored her somewhat subdued attitude, chalking it up to either sleepiness or misplaced guilt—the latter of which he wasn't touching with a ten-foot pole without knowing the Shinigami better. "Yuzu's made breakfast; you hungry?"
"Um… aa, but… I'll need a gigai since it's human food. I ordered one earlier this week; it should be ready by now. I can go pick it up and be back in ten minutes."
Ichigo shrugged, "Sure, go ahead. Yuzu would like to meet you, anyway—she loves having people to feed. I'll let my sisters know you'll be a few minutes after I walk you to the door."
After the front door shut on what looked to the girls like empty air, Yuzu came out of the kitchen, holding a wooden spoon and visibly disappointed, "She didn't stay?"
"Eh, she said she'd be back in ten minutes or so. She can't eat human food without a fake body, but she apparently has one of those waiting for her at some Shinigami shop in town. When she gets back, you should be able to see her."
Yuzu's disappointment morphed into happiness.
xxxx
Ichigo smiled as he watched his sisters from his spot at the table, Yuzu cooking and Karin attempting to help and summarily being chased back from whatever mess she threatened to make. They were okay—really okay. They'd been scared, but they weren't traumatized, and they were healthy and well-rested.
Which was more than he could say for himself. 'Well-rested' was something that he definitely was not, although he wasn't sure why he was this tired. Sure he'd only gotten about three hours of sleep, but he was a teenager and it was hardly the first time he'd stayed up late. Some aftereffect of the 'soul separation' that they couldn't fix, maybe?
Ichigo sighed, closing his eyes for a long moment only to open them when he heard one of his sisters—Karin, of course, with Yuzu still in the kitchen—stop next to him.
"Are you sure you're all right, Ichi-nii?"
Ichigo offered a smile, "Yeah. Just… tired. I wish I didn't have school today; I just want to go back to bed."
"Maybe you should," Karin eyed him carefully, "Oyaji would probably call it in if you asked him. He was pretty freaked last night."
"He had reason," Ichigo muttered, rubbing a hand over his face, "but the healer looked me over. I should be fine."
The doorbell promptly interrupted and Ichigo started to pull himself up before Karin, scowling, pushed him back.
"I'll get it. You said we'd be able to see her, now."
When Karin had that expression, it was best not to argue if you didn't have a really good reason.
xxxx
"Do you have a place to stay?" Ichigo asked Rukia, ignoring Isshin sulking in a corner, a metaphorical raincloud above his head.
"Ano… not yet, no. I was only supposed to be here for a few days, but the Eighth Division member who was supposed to be assigned here next was injured in a fight with a strange Hollow and he won't be out of the Fourth for another two weeks. I wasn't expecting to be here so long."
"Well, we've got enough space, I guess. You can't keep using the room in the clinic, though—we're planning on letting your captain have that one when he gets back."
"She can stay in our room, ne, Karin?"
"If Ichi-nii carries in the extra bed from the attic," Karin said dismissively. In truth, she didn't have anything against it—that Shinigami girl had fought to protect them, and fought hard.
"Tou-san can do that," Yuzu stated firmly, turning to give their father a firm look. She didn't want Onii-chan to strain himself until he got some rest.
Isshin wandered in the appropriate direction, wailing loudly about cruel children.
Rukia stared, taken aback at the ridiculousness of the action.
"Ignore him," Ichigo advised, "He's a total spastic man-child."
"Just be glad none of us take after him in more than hot tempers," Karin advised.
"…" Rukia decided it was safer not to comment on the madness and went with her first question, "Ukitake-taicho's coming back?"
"Uh, yeah. He's got a pretty nasty cough, and from what your healer-division's captain explained… we might be able to cure him. I mean, I can't promise it'll work for a Shinigami, but it sounds like Tuberculosis, and we have a cure for that. If it doesn't work, Unohana-san will see about finding something that will with the science division, now that she has a better idea of what might be causing it."
Rukia stood frozen, a faint tremor running through her frame. "You… have a cure? You can heal him?"
"Maybe," Ichigo corrected, "There's a chance, sure, but I don't think human medicine has been tried on Shinigami. Don't get your hopes up just yet."
A breath and she was slumping in place, something undefinable shining in amethyst eyes. "A chance… is better than anything we've had."
xxxx
Isshin kept a discreet eye on his son the entire morning, noting the blatant exhaustion with concern. He had sensed both Juushiro and Retsu in his home, and Retsu would not have left injuries untreated or reiatsu depleted—which meant whatever was wrong with his son was probably purely physical and on a level that Retsu didn't know how to recognize.
Damage to a body was far different from damage to a soul, and while most Shinigami who were assigned to the living world and all of the Fourth were trained in healing wounds to flesh… illness and physical exhaustion were two things they wouldn't even recognize through diagnostic kido. They were trained on gigai dummies, of course, and gigai—despite looks and structure—were not human bodies.
When Ichigo stumbled a bit when heading towards the door with his school bag, Isshin drew the line. His son wasn't going to get anything done in class, anyway, from the looks of it. He intercepted Ichigo before he could get to his shoes, skidding to a halt with his usual goofy grin but refraining from attacking. "Ichigo!"
Tired brown eyes blinked at him.
Isshin's—this time mostly faked—flamboyant cheer evaporated. "Go back to bed. You're not going to school today; I'll be up to check on you later."
Ichigo blinked again, clearly taken aback by the shift in attitude, but didn't protest.
That was very… telling. Isshin's worry grew sharper as he watched his son drop his school bag on a kitchen chair before stumbling his way back up the stairs.
xxxx
"Uwaaa!" Tatsuki stared into the Kurosaki dining room through what once was the wall, gaping in shock. When the teacher hadn't bothered to roll-call Ichigo, only muttering 'Right. Parental call in,' when she got to his name and Tatsuki had been worried for her best male friend.
Kurosaki Isshin wasn't known for 'calling in' except once a year, and Tatsuki knew the reason behind that once a year. Considering the man was a doctor with his own clinic—a sniffle wasn't going to have Ichigo getting a free pass out of school.
Thinking of Isshin, he was talking to someone on the phone about repairs and the clinic had the 'closed' sign up. The man sighed audibly as he hung up the phone before turning to face the hole in the side of his house and wave tiredly, "Hello, Tatsuki-chan."
Now Tatsuki was more worried. The crazy idiot was usually a lot more… dramatic. "Isshin-san? What happened?"
Isshin was silently grateful they'd agreed on a cover story. "A delivery truck ran through the wall last night; Ichigo and the girls were in the room. Of course, when Ichigo noticed it through the window he got the twins out of the way and they're fine, but…"
Tatsuki's blood ran cold, "Is he…?"
"He's sleeping," Isshin sighed, rubbing a hand over his face wearily. "He was only a bit bruised by the impact itself, but one of the snapped wires shocked him pretty bad. I thought—I thought I'd lost him for a while there. His heart stopped for almost three minutes."
Tatsuki swallowed and Isshin came closer to the missing wall, reaching to give her a hand up to the dining room. "Has he… is he… all right?" Brain damage was a very real possibility.
"He was lucid earlier; stumbled his way downstairs to ask after Yuzu and Karin as soon as he woke up, and then he had the nerve to ask if I'd been hurt, so no blatant personality changes or obvious memory loss. I've got an IV and a heart monitor hooked up to him just in case," Isshin gestured to the beeper attached to his waist. "Right now, though, the best thing for him is rest."
Tatsuki nodded shakily. At least now she knew why Isshin wasn't as crazy as usual. "Can I see him?"
"Not today," Isshin shook his head. "He needs the sleep and I don't dare give any hypnotics or even sedatives* under the circumstances. He'd wake up if you went in. If you come by tomorrow after school, you can see him then."
True enough. Ichigo was pretty light sleeper, no thanks to his father's usual wake-up calls. "Ichigo's friend Sado…"
"Bring him along. I don't have his number; could you let him know what's going on? It'd be easier to get all this," a vague gesture indicated the mess that used to be a wall, "sorted without him coming by."
"Sure," Tatsuki made as if to go towards the front door and Isshin offered a wry grin.
"Might as well use the temporary entrance while it lasts."
Tatsuki chuckled halfheartedly and turned to hop down out of the broken wall. "… Take care, Isshin-san."
xxxx
Isshin sighed as Ichigo's black-belt friend left. Aside from the part about trucks and electricity, everything he'd said was true. Ichigo hadn't even protested the medical equipment too much.
What he hadn't said was that Ichigo had started running a fever a few hours before. The IV had a dose of fever reducers, but Ichigo's exhaustion hadn't been helped by his taxed immune system giving in to what was shaping up to be a bad cold. Not deadly even under the circumstances, so long as Ichigo kept hydrated, but he was going to be in for a miserable few days.
"Tadaima*!" Yuzu's voice echoed from the front door and Isshin blinked.
"What she said," Karin kicked off her shoes much less neatly than her sister, but she did pick them up and put them out of the way.
They'd walked right past the open wall and Isshin had been so absorbed in his own thoughts that he hadn't noticed. He'd have to work on awareness again. Just because he couldn't currently see spirits, didn't mean there weren't ways of telling they were there—and he'd really rather know when someone was in his house.
"Oi, Oyaji, how's Ichi-nii?"
… and there came the question he didn't really want to answer. Even though he knew that Ichigo should be fine in a day or two, Isshin couldn't quite manage to stamp out his own fears. The girls were going to be so much worse.
When Ichigo started feeling better, he was going to kill Isshin for worrying his sisters.
xxxx
Ichigo blinked, slow and hazy. His room was dark and he remembered… not going to school in the morning. He'd slept the entire day? No wonder he felt groggy.
He blinked again, using the faint moonlight to confirm he was in his own room—and… huh. IV and heart monitor? The monitor was silenced and had the little green 'transmitting' light on, which meant the information was being sent directly to a hand-held alarm. Which meant… Jeez, he'd been way more out of it than he'd thought.
What had happened? Had he been asleep for more than a day?
"Ichigo?" Query. Quiet but firm.
"… Oyaji?" Ouch. That was kind of… stinging, really, with a dry throat.
"You have a fever," Isshin looked him over for a moment and moved closer to help him sit, passing over a glass of water from the desk. "It's gone down quite a bit, now. You'll probably be able to head back to school the day after tomorrow."
Ichigo accepted the water gratefully, sipping to sooth the dryness in his throat. "How long?"
"A little over twelve hours. Your immune system took quite a beating last night; it's no surprise that you got sick."
"Hm," Ichigo passed back the empty glass and Isshin stepped back.
"Try to stay awake for a bit longer. Yuzu made chicken-and-rice soup earlier and we saved you some. I'll go heat it up."
Ichigo watched silently as his dad left the room with the empty glass, everything feeling kind of surreal. Isshin was acting like a responsible adult?
The world was doomed. He was going to wake up in the morning to find fire and brimstone raining from the sky.
xxxx
Sedatives: a class of medication used for calming a patient via chemical. Despite common misconception and side effect, sedatives are not designed to be sleep aids. Medications intended to cause sleep or unconsciousness are hypnotics.
