Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. I am making no money from this. Tite Kubo owns all, I'm just playing with them for a while. I also do not own any of the quotes I use at the start of each chapter.

Author's Notes: I mentioned before that this may have spoilers for some of you, but thought I would make sure everyone remembered that, as this chapter and the next one will feature major spoilers from episode 272 of the anime. (Some parts are a downright retelling of part of the ep, in fact.) Also minor spoilers for up through 404 of the manga. Thanks to those who reviewed, I'm glad to hear things are moving at about the right pace and people are mostly IC.

Oh, and this chapter actually gets a dedication. This is for you, CrazyAce, for two reasons. One: for being awesome with reviewing, and for giving me a new couple idea: Uryuu/Nemu. Not that I'll have time to do that for a while, and I'm not sure I can get in their heads anyway, but it's an idea. And Two: Because she told me one of her favorite quotes from Bleach, which means she's gonna totally love part of this chapter.


I'll Stand By You

By Lady Callista

Chapter 3: Memories

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"Kurosaki-kun is trying to save me because I called out to him. Why? I didn't want to get in his way, so I trained myself. I wanted to protect him, so I came here alone. So why? Why do I always end up relying on Kurosaki-kun in the end?"

Inoue Orihime, Bleach episode 272

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"Good morning, Inoue-san." Ishida said as she took her seat in front of him.

"Good morning, Ishida-kun." Orihime made herself smile at him as an image flashed through her head of Zangetsu sticking out of his chest. It would have been her fault if…

"You seem a little happier today." Ishida commented quietly as other students began taking their seats around them.

Orihime glanced over towards Ichigo's desk, noting that he wasn't there yet. She hoped he wasn't going to be late because he'd been helping her. "I…I'm fine, what do you mean?"

"Inoue, you don't have to pretend with me." Ishida said it quietly, but his eyes held hers firmly.

Orihime flushed as he looked at her; she had forgotten what it felt like to have his quiet intensity focused on her. And she had forgotten just how perceptive he could be. "I'm sure none of us are fine after what we went through, but I'll be okay, really."

"Inoue…"

Whatever Ishida had been about to say trailed off as a female voice shouted, "Orihime-chan!"

Orihime reacted with blind panic as she was grabbed from behind. Tatsuki's voice screaming at Chizuru didn't register, nor did the fact that the hands that had grabbed her were gone after only an instant. In her mind they were not human hands, not the hands of a girl who had done this to her many times before. They were the hands of…

Ichigo was almost to the classroom door when he heard Inoue scream, terror in her voice. He charged into the room expecting to find, well he wasn't sure what he expected, but it wasn't what he found.

Tatsuki and one of the other girls were dragging a struggling Chizuru away from Inoue, who stood with her hands raised, Ishida's grip on her wrists likely the only thing that had stopped her from touching her barrettes and activating her power. Chad stood beside her, facing the other girls, two overturned desks beside him indicating how hastily he had sprung to her defense.

"Kurosaki-san, move."

Ichigo quickly stepped into the room as his teacher's voice spoke behind him, and he followed the woman as she crossed the room to Inoue's side, everyone moving out of her way.

Inoue had collapsed to her knees, shaking slightly, and Ishida knelt in front of her with his hands still lightly on her wrists. He seemed to be saying something to her, and Inoue's head began to shake back and forth.

"Inoue-san, what happened?" Their teacher asked as she pushed a desk out of the way and knelt beside the trembling girl.

"Nothing… she just surprised me… I'm sorry." Orihime knew her face had to be as red as her hair, so she kept her head down as she answered her teacher quietly. She knew everyone in the class had to be staring at her, and she felt Kurosaki-kun there as well. Why did she always have to be so weak? Why couldn't she just get past what had happened?

"Are you sure? Do you want to go to the nurse? Or just go home for the day?"

The fact that her teacher would even make the offer told Orihime just how bad she'd been doing at hiding how she was feeling. "No, I…"

"I'll take her to my father's clinic, he's treated her before." Ichigo cut her off brashly.

"Kurosaki-kun, I…" Orihime's voice trembled as she spoke slightly louder, and she felt Ishida's hands slide down from her wrists to grip her hands comfortingly for an instant before he pulled back from her.

Orihime let that bit of strength flow into her, took a deep breath, then turned and raised her head enough to look at the boy she loved. "I'm alright, Kurosaki-kun. Like I said, she just startled me."

Orihime saw him about to protest, and locked her pleading eyes on his. The scene she'd created was bad enough, but if she went home everyone would make even more of it. And if she wasn't in school today it would be easier to not go tomorrow. And the day after that.

Ichigo caught the look in her eyes, and realized that pushing things would only embarrass her more. He nodded, although he did reach a hand out to help her to her feet.

Orihime's eyes widened as she took his hand and rose to her feet, releasing him quickly and dropping down into her seat, eyes firmly focused on the desk. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned just enough to see him helping their teacher to her feet as well. It was so like him that a tiny smile almost made it to her lips.

"Well, what are you all standing around for?" The voice of her teacher barked. "Why aren't you in your seats?"

The room was suddenly filled with the bustle of students moving hurriedly, and Orihime sank a little lower into her seat, almost wishing that she had taken her teacher up on the offer to just go home today. Everyone would be bugging her at lunch, asking her what was wrong, and…

"It's okay, Inoue." Kurosaki-kun's voice came quietly from above her. "Nothing is ever going to happen to you again. Your friends won't let it."

Orihime managed to nod, letting him know she'd heard him, but she couldn't bring herself to respond. If what Aizen had told them was true, if her powers had truly come from the Hogyoku, then why wasn't she stronger? If it truly gave you what you most wanted, why was she still so powerless? Why did everyone always have to protect her? And despite how much she hated that Ichigo always had to protect her, why did it make her heart so full to know that he always would?

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"Symptoms of intrusive memories may include:

-Flashbacks, or reliving the traumatic event for minutes or even days at a time

-Upsetting dreams about the traumatic event

Symptoms of anxiety and increased emotional arousal may include:

-Trouble sleeping

-Being easily startled or frighte…"

"Ichigo, what are you doing?"

His father's voice startled Ichigo, and he quickly looked up from the book he'd been reading. He sat at his father's desk in the clinic, several psychology books he'd found among his dad's medical books scattered about, open to various pages. "Just… uh…"

Isshin moved closer, reading the title of the page his son was currently looking at. "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. " He made a non-committal sound. "I hope you're only doing research for school."

"Um… yeah." Ichigo took the easy way out his father had offered. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Well, I know it takes time to develop. And most of the symptoms appear in anyone who went through something traumatic." Isshin said as he sat down across from his son.

"What do you mean?" Ichigo asked as he closed the book, looking up at his suddenly serious father.

"By definition, you have to have been experiencing the symptoms for about a month before it's diagnosed as PTSD. All the feelings and reactions are normal to have after you go through something traumatic. It's only if you don't deal with them that they keep occurring."

"How do you deal with them?" Ichigo asked intently.

"You're taking this very personally for a school project." Isshin said with a tilt of his head. "Or is it more than that?"

Ichigo met his father's gaze firmly. "If you really want to start playing 20 Questions, I get to go first."

Isshin held the gaze a moment before chuckling. "Fair enough, my son. It depends on the person and exactly what they went through, but the most important thing for most people is to know they have friends and family supporting them. Even though most people don't want to talk about traumatic experiences, it's very healthy to do so. Repressing things and keeping them to yourself is one of the worst things you can do."

"Anything else?"

"Many times the patient will develop phobias of things that trigger memories of the trauma. Working through these is also important, because sometimes the phobias will stick around for life, even if true PTSD never manifests." Isshin replied, knowing what he had to say next would be hard for his son to hear. "You can't fight the battle for the person; you can't protect them from what's in their own head. All you can do is be there for them."

"I don't like the dark much anymore…"

Inoue's whispered confession echoed in Ichigo's head, and he nodded his head as he rose and started putting away the books. "Uh, thanks dad."

Isshin studied his son's back for a moment before saying quietly, "I hope you can help your friend. I won't worry if you're gone all night again."

Ichigo spun around to confront his father, but the man had already vanished.

You can't protect her from what's in her own head.

He'd just see about that.

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"How were the kids today?" Ichigo asked as he walked into the kitchen, glancing down at the table she had mostly ready for dinner. There was none of her strange cooking tonight, but nice and normal sukiyaki.

"They were great. I just love teaching at that school." Orihime smiled, turning away from the window and the beautiful view of Tokyo Bay to face her husband.

"I'm glad you found something you love." Ichigo said as he crossed the room to her and drew her into a gentle hug.

"Besides you, you mean?" Orihime giggled as her arms slid around him tenderly.

Orihime pulled back from the hug a moment later, popping a pastry into her mouth.

"This one's amazing, Orihime." Ichigo said as he finished chewing a small cream puff.

Orihime reached into the basket sitting next to them on the blanket and pulled out a selection of fruit tarts. "I'm just so nervous. The pastry shop opens next week, and I'm still not sure which deserts are good enough to serve people."

"Well, the puffs filled with red bean paste you made the other week are probably not a good choice, but everything else has been good." Ichigo replied as he reached over and brushed away some sakura petals that had fallen into her hair.

Orihime caught his hand and held it for a moment, unable to help glancing over his shoulder at the impressive old Imperial Palace. "No red bean paste. Check."

"Red bean paste?"

Orihime turned to find herself facing a clerk from an ice cream shop that had a confused look on his face.

"No, um… you know what?" Orihime said with a grin. "Give me one of each."

"One of each what?" Ichigo asked as they cuddled on the couch. The Osaka dialect of a news anchor was a dull murmur in the background.

"Nothing, I was just thinking." Orihime replied, tilting her head up to kiss him softly.

"Now's not the time to be thinking, love, concentrate on the mission." Ichigo replied, glancing over at her as she finished putting on the helmet of her spacesuit. He couldn't believe that in a few minutes they were going to be walking on the moon.

"Mission?" Orihime glanced over at Ichigo as they walked down the street together, a light breeze from the Sea of Japan playing with her hair.

"Didn't you say you had an important stop to make on the way home?" Ichigo smiled at her, his eyes flickering briefly down to her rounded belly. "Something you've been wanting to do for a while but thought today would be good for?"

"That's right." Orihime smiled back at him as she marched determinedly into Mr. Donut.

The door closed behind her with a bang, and she spun to face Ichigo in his full Hollow form. Ishida's corpse lay at her feet, Zangetsu sticking out of him, and she knew that Kurosaki-kun would never come back, never be who he was, and it was all her fault. A cero began to build between his horns, and she screamed his name louder than she had ever screamed in her life.

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"KUROSAKI-KUN!"

Ichigo jolted awake as she screamed his name, banging his head on the windowsill as he leapt to his feet.

Inoue sat upright in her bed, and even as he watched she pulled her legs up to her chest and dropped her head onto her knees, looking for all the world like a small child curled up into a ball. A ball that was shaking and sobbing.

"Inoue." He said her name quietly, not wanting to scare her, and although her head whipped up to look at him, she didn't scream again.

"Kurosaki-kun." She whispered, one hand trying to wipe the tears from her face while the other clenched the blanket tightly around her. "Why are you here again?

"You seemed to sleep better when I was here." He saw the same embarrassment on her face that he'd seen the night before, as well as something else he didn't understand. "Do you want me to stay again?"

Orihime let out a frustrated sound at the neutral tone of his voice. "Why am I the only one who can't deal with what happened? Why am I the only one who's this weak?" She knew her own voice was close to whining but couldn't help it.

Ichigo crossed the room to kneel beside her futon. "I'm having nightmares too. And you're not weak. In some ways you're stronger than any of us."

Orihime's eyes widened in confusion, causing more tears to fall. She brushed at them in annoyance as his hand started towards her face, but fell away without touching her. "I'm not the strong one." She whispered.

"What would have happened if they'd tried to kidnap Rukia? Or Chad? Or me? We would have fought them, most likely to the point that we would have been killed. What you did was harder. You let them take you, and you trusted us to save you." Ichigo said softly, wishing she hadn't buried her head in her knees again.

"They said they would kill you if I didn't go with them."

Ichigo could barely make out her mumbled words but chuckled slightly when she spoke. "That wouldn't have mattered; the idea that I could lose wouldn't have occurred to me."

"It wouldn't have mattered if I'd fought them and won." Orihime took a deep breath and looked up at him. "If they didn't return, they said you would be killed as well."

Ichigo was trying to follow his father's advice, trying to get her to talk about things, but damn was it hard. He just didn't have the personality to be someone's counselor.

Yet even to him, it was obvious that talking about her kidnapping was bothering her. But she was talking, which his father said was good. So he tried changing tactics.

"So that means you saved my life, right? Then I guess we're even." It took effort to put humor into his voice, but he hoped it would help.

Her eyes grew to the size of saucers. "You've saved me so many times. You… you almost died saving me. And I almost got Ishida ki…" The image of Ichigo in full Hollow form flashed through her head again, and she stopped speaking with a moan.

Ichigo's hands both clenched into fists unconsciously, and he had to force himself to relax them. "Will you tell me what happened? I don't remember any of it." Maybe it would be easier for her to talk about that than her kidnapping, or her time alone there, although his father's voice in the back of his head told him those were the things they should be talking about. But he had to know.

"It was my fault. It was all my fault. I rely on you too much, and…" Orihime trailed off with a sob, letting her head drop back to her knees. The sudden hand on her shoulder didn't scare her, it seemed nothing could scare her when he was around, but it did cause her to look back up at him.

"I remember Ulquiora punching a hole through my chest, then nothing until I woke up with you kneeling next to me. Ulquiorra was mostly dead, and Ishida… Whatever happened, I think I'd be dead if it hadn't. If you say it's your fault, then that just means you saved my life again. Please, tell me."

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"Kurosaki-kun...there were so many things I wanted to do. Become a teacher, or an astronaut, or open a pastry shop, or go to Mr. Donuts and say 'Give me one of each,' or go to the ice cream shop and say 'Give me one of each.' If only there were five of me. Then I could be born in five different towns, and eat five different meals, and have five different jobs... And all five of me could fall in love with the same guy. Thank you, Kurosaki-kun. Goodbye."

-Inoue Orihime in "Bleach 237: goodbye, halcyon days"

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TBC…


AN2: Just had to use the end quote, as it's one of my favorite quotes in the entire series. It was fun building a dream around it, and I hope I didn't confuse too many of you. Although I am kinda curious how long it took various people to figure out what was going on. (I was hoping most people would get it by the 'give me one of each' at the ice cream shop if nothing else.) It got too wordy when I actually tried to get in 5 jobs, 5 meals, and 5 towns on top of the specific references she makes, but I did what I could. And I'm once again worried about OOC in this chapter, I think it's gonna be a constant worry with this fic, but for the most part I think I've just finally accepted that writing romance in the Bleach world means making them a little OOC and just keeping it as close to IC as you can. Reviews are enjoyed almost as much as new chapters of the manga are.