The dream crashed around Ichigo's skull it was so vivid and as is it only happened yesterday. He was there in Soul Society frantically running towards Urahara. The blonde man watched him approach and for once did nothing to hide his face and the pained expression.

"Your back. You've even brought the shop. What's going on? They won't let me go home."

"Aizen. He's ready."

"Ready?"

"Ichigo. There is nothing we can do." Byakuya was there beside him, for some reason pleading with him. The face on the noble was for once open as it implored him to understand the futility of his madness. The man was trying to make him see reason he knew that, he knew it. But the hard hitting fact that his family and friends had been left at the mercy of the 'Soul Collection' Aizen was about to start was just too much.

"No! We have to get them out, we have to warn everyone!" Ichigo tugged on the green scarf. "Byakuya! Help me!"

"Its too late Ichigo." Urahara cut in and Ichigo flew to him angrily.

"You knew! You knew to get out! Did you warm anyone else? Did you tell my dad?"

"Ichigo." Byakuya tried to pull him back off the shop keeper.

"NO DON'T PATRONISE ME!" Ichigo spat angrily at the dark haired captain. Once he'd trusted him. He trusted him with his life...no, he couldn't be as heartless as them all and abandon everyone he cared about. He ran and ran towards the closest Senkaimon gate. Numerous Captains tried to restrain him, they tried to hold him back, but he was far too determined.

"Let him go." Yamamoto-Genryƫsai Shigekuni voice echoed around the white buildings. "Set it to take him home." The old man nodded at Ichigo. "Good luck Kurosaki Ichigo."

As soon as his feet hit the floor of the Dangai, Ichigo could hear Byakuya and Rukia screaming not to go alone, to take them too. But his feet ran on.

"Ichigo!"

...

I woke feeling groggy, had I slept at all? I laid there accustomed to waking in strange places by now and looked around me. That dream... damn that dream it always comes... it always comes with the memory that I failed them all. I couldn't protect any of them. When I ran out of the tunnel into a world of total silence I knew I was too late.

Oh when will I stop crying over it? I wiped my eyes on the bandages and try to shake the memories away. I was right next to the clinic and when I ran in... When I ran in... I saw... I saw... Them... My dad was first... His body was so warm... I'd missed them by seconds... Every single member of my family was dead because I failed to protect them. I failed... Yuzu looked as if she had fallen asleep at the table and Karin on the sofa... They looked so peaceful... So comfortable... I buried them, I buried them all before I let myself give in to the despair I was felt. It hurt so much and I screamed and I screamed... I screamed and cried until my body was numb and my mind blank. My own body was there in my bed where Kon had been taken too and I slid into it.

I walked from the house around the town, one friend after another was buried in their garden. Inoue was last... Inoue... So innocent and sweet... Too nice for this world... I found her inside her apartment, she had been in bed and looked as if she was just sleeping... At first I couldn't move her. I couldn't bare to admit that my last friend was gone... I sat beside her, stroking her hair, even shaking her from time to time and telling her to wake up... I sat her up and dressed her... I talked to her endlessly about how I felt and how scared I was... Inoue, my sweet Inoue... You believed there was good in everyone... Two weeks past and the smell become unbearable. The town was littered with flies and the dogs had resorted to eating the bodies where they lie as their hunger began to fester.

I kept Inoue's windows shut and attacked any fly that come inside as if it were a mortal enemy. I couldn't see that she didn't look the same any more. I couldn't see that her lips and fingers had become blackened. I still sat talking to her as if she was still there with me. If I accepted she was dead, I had to accept that I was as good as living in hell. Everything I cherished and cared for meant nothing... So I kept on talking to her. I kept on pretending...

One day I fell asleep. I'd sat on the steps outside with the door open pretending in my mind that I was just waiting for her to wake up and then we'd go and see my dad... But I fell asleep.

I woke... I wish I hadn't... I wish... I wish I couldn't still see it... I wished I couldn't see what they were doing to her... The dogs were there. I wish I could have gouged my eyes out... My rage was fierce and within moments the dogs were dead. They looked worse than her. They deserved it. They deserved me letting go to my Hollow he did what I could not...

I sat holding her, rocking her gently, my heart finally broken beyond repair. My grip on sanity gone... I laid the remains, even her arm that I found later, in a hole in the ground and buried her along with my past life. Everything was gone. Even me now. Even me...

"Stop Ichigo stop!" I screamed at myself I had to stop remembering I had to stop. No, don't do this to yourself, you know you can't do this... I have to get out again... I have to get away...

I scrub at my hair and look around for anything that will make me forget those memories. This bed had the perfect view of the snow falling outside and even feeling as weak as I did, I stumbled over with the bedding wrapped around me to see the view. In all my time alone I had never witnessed anything as beautiful. I wasn't sure how long I had stood there looking out lost in the beauty of it, but eventually I wanted to share it. Share the view.

"Inoue come see." I turned and looked to the bed but it was empty of the beautiful girl and instead my eyes saw...

"Byakuya?" I turn and stumble literally to the floor. "Is it...is it you?" I scrambled my way on my knees to the bed and looked into his beautiful eyes. "You came for me?" I whispered my voice so scared of finding out this was not real... Please be here... Please don't torture me... I reach out scared that if I touch him, he'd disappear... Scared... I have to touch him... I have to... My hand reaches forth and I can almost feel his peach soft skin under my fingers I can feel him!

Suddenly I blink away my madness as pain rushes up my arm and I scream out in agony. I look at the black dog growling at me his teeth clenched onto my wrist. This beast dared to take away my dreams and I couldn't allow that. I wasn't going to become his pet food. I pushed my arm deeper into his mouth gagging him so hard he whined and opened his mouth. My other fist hit him like a steel bar and I watched him fly across the room.

'Hichigo!' I screamed as I stumbled onto unsteady legs and dashed for the stairs. More barks echoed from the rooms down stairs and I flew towards the front door as my hollow stole my mind and instinct took over. My bleeding hand grabbed my sledgehammer and bolt cutters where I had left them and I turned just as one huge dog leapt for my neck. The bolt cutters shattered his skull and the sledgehammer broke the front legs of the next. My arms flew around my body, throwing fatal blows at all the canines left. When he released me, I looked at the damage my hollow had done. Blood splattered up the walls and over the floor. Seven dogs in total lay around me. My new clothes were stained and my arm bled profusely. But I was alive and they hadn't got to eat me for another day.

Thankfully there was still come boiled water from last night and I mixed up an overdose of disinfectant. My dad would have said I needed stitches, but I couldn't do that one handed on myself so I did the best I could with the last of the medical supplies this house held and swathed my arm in tight bandages. I felt cold as the winter chill entered the house and shivered as my blood loss become noticeable. I ate a quick mouthful of toast before I changed yet again and when I found an overnight bag, I stuffed it full of clothing.

Content that I had stripped the house of everything I could; I next dumped the soft toys and plushies from the back of the van and threw my newly acquired sleeping bag, blankets and pillows in the back. I headed back to the supermarket and piled the van high with cans, batteries, torches, bottled drinks, packets of food and boiled sweets. I cleared the shelves of their medical supplies and headed back home.

The snow was getting worse now and with out the heating working I knew I'd need to leave this town for a while again. Heading south was the best bet, it was always much warmer there.

At home I injected a tetanus jab into my arm. Upstairs I looked at the stranger in the mirror and shaved away the weeks growth on my chin and took the scissors to my hair that had grown past my shoulders. I felt only slightly better for the image looking again like me. If I could ignore the pale colour of my skin, the way my cheeks hollowed in from my recent starvation, the bags and dark circles under my eyes, I might look even closer to the me I knew. But that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

...

Byakuya stood in the labs of the 12th and tried to remain impassive to the revolting captain he was trying to appease.

"...what you are implying is that I might have information that would prove if the substitute shinigami is still alive?"

"I am wondering if you recorded the time of the gate opening and the time of the Soul Collection. If there was even a second delay after the collection, he may well still be alive."

"SO you want information?"

"I am not making accusations."

"Indeed..." The smirk Kurotsuchi Mayuri gave Byakuya was not pretty. "Your guilt getting to you again?"

"What would you have me do? Beg?" Byakuya stole himself and looked at the vile yellow eyes. "Kurotsuchi Taicho, would you look for me. Please."

"That might do." The man said grinning in his sadistic way and turning to his computer. His fingers tapped away and he let out a cry to indicate he had found the records. "Well, it seems that Soul Society may have saved the life of one Japanese nationalist after all."

...

Rukia and Renji crept towards the gates in the mansion gardens. They were going to need a distraction to get past the Kuchiki family guards but nothing would deter them for leaving tonight.

"Come out Rukia, Renji." Byakuya's tone cut across the cold winter garden.

"Nii-Sama. We were just out for a walk." Rukia smiled sweetly at her brother as they climbed like naughty children out of the bushes.

"Then you will not mind some company." The noble spoke and the two friends shared a moment of disappointment.