In the Royal Realm, the girl stepped back, away from the falling remnants of her shield. Her fairies hesitated before returning to their crystalline petals, murmuring soothing words she couldn't quite make out. A few Guardians awkwardly tried to do the same, but none of them had had much contact with anyone under two-hundred years old in centuries, much less a teenaged human. They hovered for a bit before drifting away, some to drink, some to sleep, some to wander until they could banish the nagging guilt that would haunt many of them for the days to come, and drive them to avoid the girl as much as they could.
For a moment, Hikifune was tempted to join them. But she steeled herself—those children were just that: children. Even most of the shinigami that had been with the group had been far too young to know much about the situation, and what could have happened if she hadn't done what she had to do. This was truly the best method for everyone involved.
Besides, she told herself sternly. Isshin wouldn't have left those orders if there was any other way—he always was too softhearted.
"Hikifune-san?"
She blinked, somewhat startled by the brunette standing in front of her. She hadn't thought the girl would be able to tear herself away from the closed gate for hours yet. "Yes, child?"
"If it's alright with you, could we…" she hesitated, glancing back towards the closed passageway briefly, with such intensity in her eyes that the captain was sure she was going to break and run back. But then took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders and meeting Hikifune's gaze. "Could we start tonight? Now?"
The woman couldn't help but feel taken aback by the determination of the Royal Realm's newest inhabitant. She had expected it to be days, even weeks before the human recovered from the separation enough to broach the subject. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some time to get settled in first?"
"No," her hairpins glittered in the fireflylight, the night's greatest source of illumination in the sheltered, tree-roofed little clearing. "Forgive me for saying this, but… I want to get started as soon as possible. Because I want it to end soon, too."
"I suppose you would, wouldn't you?" Hikifune murmured, wondering why she was surprised. After a moment, she gave a brisk nod, more to herself than to the caramel-haired teen. "Very well, then. But not quite yet… there's something you will most likely wish to learn first."
The child hesitated, curiosity and even slight suspicion—after all that she had been through, even the greatest of saints would be a bit jaded—warring with the raw, rough-edged grief in her eyes. "What is it?"
"How to use a Hell Butterfly." A gasp, but the Guardian continued onwards. "After all, you'll need to tell him where to go if he wants to see you when the time comes."
The girl frowned, confused but with a tenuous hope beginning to leak into her heart. But the deal… "You mean when I'm as strong as you are? When I can…" The words caught briefly in her throat, but she forged onwards. "When I can go home?"
They had sent her body through, yes, but not for a funeral—it would be preserved, allowed to age, so that if the optimistic young woman did prove the Captain wrong she would be able to return and settle back into her human life. Certainly, it would have been easier and probably better for the body to be allowed to die and be displayed for a funeral. But with the deal the child had made…
She would have grown up and older, but if she managed to beat the odds and precedents and triumph in less than a century—an impossibility that was growing increasingly easy even for the stubborn Guardian to imagine—well… who knew?
"No," HIkifune shook her head, but she was smiling. "There are days when the boundaries between the worlds thinned. The night traditionally reserved for the Royal Realm was not this one… Samhain is the time of Western Spirits. Ours is the seventh day of the seventh month."
Orihime almost fell to her knees, out of relief or misery she couldn't be sure. Possibly, no, probably both.
The irony was cruel, she knew abstractly, cruel and painful that the day of her namesake would be hers as well. But at least it was there. At least it would be one day… one night. She could deal with that, and if she couldn't she would anyways. She would wait, and she would train. And one day…
For that one day, she would wait. If it took one year or her five lifetimes… that day would be worth it.
It had to be.
She just hoped that Kuro—that Ichigo didn't hate her when that day came. The others would miss her, just as she'd miss them, but with what she had done to him… she couldn't blame him if he never wanted to see her again.
But still, she had to try. And even if he turned away, even if he refused to so much as look at her… she was too weak not to hope.
"Are you ready, Inoue Orihime?"
"No," she said, more to herself than to the Guardian. "But I will be."
I'll see you again, Kurosaki-kun, everyone. Until then… I'll go forward, and I hope you will as well.
------
"Ichigo… give me a chance too. I promise, I'll come home."
------
"Fuck," Renji muttered, swishing the last few drops of sake around his cup. "Where'd it go?"
"Where'd what go?" Matsumoto Rangiku slurred from where she tipped dangerously back in her chair, the cup in her hand held deceptively loosely. Of course, they all knew that it would be easier to yank every hair out of her head than separate that fukutaichou from her alcohol.
No, Rukia somehow managed to correct herself through the pleasant fog of drunkenness, not fukutaichou anymore. I wonder if anyone else still thinks of her like that…
"That…" She murmured, gesturing in the vague direction of the air next to Matsumoto's legs, which was about a foot above the edge of the haori hanging of the sides of the chair. "That doesn't… don't fit? You should ask Kyoraku-taichou where he got his coat, and his flower petals, and this… this…" she waved the cup around in lieu of naming it. "This this. And Ise-san, because Kira-san would probably be too nervous to throw them on you."
"Throw what?"
Then again, the dark-haired shinigami found herself stumbling back a subject through the maze her drunken thoughts had become. I still don't think of myself as a fukutaichou, or Renji as a noble. "Hey, Renjiiiiiiiii..."
"Mmm?" He mumbled into his bottle.
"Are you a noble?" She asked, wiggling beneath his arms and curling up in his lap.
"Dunno," he slurred, the tattooed brows arching as his forehead creased bemusedly. "That lady whose... thingies you stuck your head into—"
"Wasn't on purpose..."
"Thingies?" Hisagi echoed, cackling.
"This coming from the guy who can't get near them?" The redhead shot back, sobering slightly. "And yours don't count! Anyways, that lady said I was one. And the captain. And didn't you?"
"I think I did..." Rukia buried her head in his chest. She didn't really feel like thinking now. But she'd gotten him started and he wanted to follow it through.
"And didn't someone give me lessons on manners and boring stuff like mannerisms?" He mumbled, finger-combing her hair absently. Then, he blinked. "Heeeeey, that's right! Isn't Kira supposed to be here to teach me something?"
"Would not!" The vice-captain of the Third Division protested, but then tilted his head in slight bewilderment. "No, wait… were you talking to me?"
"I thought you were taking lessons from Shiba-san now, since you and your girlfriend—"
"Not my girlfriend!" Both Renji and Rukia chorused automatically, the ingrained reaction breaking through the pleasant buzz of the sake.
"Just your friend." "Who's a girl."
"He is?" The Thirteenth Divisions' fukutaichou pulled away from the tattooed chest of her oldest friend. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't even tell me," the redhead said sheepishly, "I think. And shouldn't you have seen?"
"Good point... maybe I missed it, because it's usually really really dark?"
"Maybe."
"Anyways," Matsumoto cut in, looking slightly mischevious and less drunk. Had the others been in a similarly clear state, they would have been terrified. "You blew up that..." her brow wrinkled. "That place, you know, the one with all the fancy stuffs..."
"The Kuchiki Manor?"
"Yeah, that's it!"
"That's what?"
"...I don't know." The blonde woman admitted. "Were you talking to me?"
Rukia frowned; she wasn't entirely sure. White, she knew, she had been speaking to something white, like Matsumoto's haori. "Are you Chappy?"
"You were talking?" Hisagi Shuuhei hiccupped, blinking sluggishly at the dark-haired shinigami sitting across from him.
"I was?" Hinamori Momo tried to scratch her head in confusion and ended up almost falling out of her seat.
Hisagi frowned bemusedly. "Was what?"
"You'll find he is a whiz of a Wiz," Matsumoto warbled, "if ever a Wiz there was."
"What's a wiz?"
"Someone who whizzes." Hinamori cracked, this time actually falling out of her chair and hitting the ground with a giggle.
"Hinamori-san!" The sake in Kira's hand went flying as he tried to jump over the table, only to almost miss it and fall off the edge, right into Hisagi's lap. The older vice-captain stared blearily down at the blond for nearly a minute before patting him on the head like one would a tired puppy. His kohai didn't notice, since he was apparently trying to doggy paddle to where the vice-captain of the fifth had begun rolling around on the floor, still chuckling. "Don't worry, I'll save you! I'm a lifeguard!"
"When did you learn to swim?"
"I can swim?" The blond shinigami blinked for several long moments, running that through his hazy mind. Then, he let out a yelp and started flailing. "I can't swim!"
"Help!" Hisagi waved his arms, forgetting that there was still a bottle of sake in one of them and drenching everyone around him, including himself. Kira only grew more panicked as the liquor splattered him. "He's drowning!"
"Ooh, are we at the beach?" Matsumoto slurred. "I like the beach. It's sandy, but warm sandy not like Hueco Mundo, and it's sunny and wet too. I'm going to get a nice tan."
And without further ado, she stumbled out of her chair and onto unsteady feet, shrugging off the white haori that marked her as the captain of the Third Division.
"You have got to be kidding me."
There were several seconds during which the only sounds were Hinamori's laughter and Kira's declarations, as the less befuddled drunkards attempted to remember why that voice seemed so familiar.
"Karin-chan!" Naturally, it was the greatest drinker of them all who recognized the voice. Matsumoto waved with her bottle-holding hand at the newcomer. "Have some sake!"
"I'm underage." She said flatly.
"Still?" She pouted. "You need to loosen up! Even Ichigo would always say, "Maybe later" and he was the biggest prude ever! No, wait, Orihime-chan always used to say what you said... what's the drinking age in Hueco Mundo, anyways?"
"Wrong world." Kurosaki Karin, now a young woman, sauntered over to the group and flung herself down into Kira's vacated seat. She leaned over slightly to give the still flailing vice-captain a sharp poke. "You do realize that you're not underwater, right?"
"Of course not, he's too heavy to be underwater!"
She rolled her eyes. "Do you idiots even know what day it is?"
"But it's not day, it's too dark…" Renji slurred. He glanced down at Rukia. "Isn't it?"
"Of course it is!" She hiccupped. "And there're stars, too! So, it's… um… what is it again?"
"Saturday!" Hinamori managed to stop giggling long enough
"No, it's Tuesday!" Hisagi argued. "Yesterday was Thursday, so today's Tuesday!"
"Damnit," Karin wasn't in the mood to deal with the shinigami as drunk as they were. She could only deal with one Isshin at a time, and she could currently hear that one shouting somewhere off in the distance. "How do you activate that sobering kidou Unohana did?"
"They managed to break it last year, so she said that she was going to hide it this time."
She turned to glare at Ishida as he strode through the door. "How do you break a kidou?"
"They're drunk." Chad said bluntly as he stepped in from behind the Quincy. "They'll find a way."
"Yup!" The entire group of drunkards cheered, clinking their bottles together.
Karin rolled her eyes, but there was little real anger behind it. After a moment, she sighed. "Seven years, huh?"
"Really? It seems like it's been longer…"
"Yeah…" the dark-haired girl blinked as something occurred to her. She whirled around to glare at the speaker. "Hey! Weren't you drunk?!"
"Oh, please," Matsumoto snorted, "after twenty-three bottles? I'm not a lightweight like these guys."
"Hey, we're not lightweights!" Kira slurred.
"You're not, that's for sure." Hisagi agreed with a bob of his head, the blond was still trying to dog paddle off of his lap.
"I don't think I am, either…" Hinamori mumbled, before her elbows slipped off of the table and she fell back down to the floor. This time, rather than giggle, she started snoring.
"Twenty-three bottles?!" The youngest woman echoed, gaping at the woman before she was forced to shake her head in exasperation. "You know what? I'm not even going to ask, the answer won't make any sense anyways. Now where's that kidou…?"
"You mean the one Unohana-taichou set up?" A nod, which cued a less-than-reassuring giggle. "I threw that out the window before we even started."
Karin's jaw dropped. "How does Toushiro survive with you as his vice-captain?"
"I like to think I add some color to the division." Matsumoto replied smugly. "Taichou's always so gloomy, after all!"
"And now we know why…" Ishida muttered under his breath. Chad made a mental note to offer the white-haired captain some migraine medication next time he was in the living world.
"Oi," the door opened again, and a spiky black head poked its way inside. Unlike the others, Tatsuki had grown her hair out during the last seven years. It was just long enough to be tied back into a messy ponytail, which was how she tended to wear it. "What's taking you so long? He'll be back any minute, and… are they still drunk?"
"Unfortunately." Ishida sighed.
"You humans need to loosen up!" The buxom blonde told them, shaking yet another bottle of sake invitingly. "Come on, a few sips won't hurt."
"You actually left them a few sips?" A new voice drawled. Tatsuki jumped several feet into the air, startled, and turned around with a scowl already on her face…
And then she took a step back, and another, and another until she tripped over the unconscious fukutaichou of the Fifth Division and ended up falling back on her butt. She didn't even seem to notice, and kept on gaping at the new arrival.
Or more accurately, the new arrivals. Rukia's alcoholic haze cleared as she felt Renji's arms tighten around her almost painfully, but she couldn't tear her shocked gaze away from the door long enough to even think about hitting him for it.
"Hey, guys," Ichigo said, shifting the orange-haired infant in his arms with the awkward, nervous, and yet fiercely proud grip of a new father. "This is Kurosaki Ringo."
They gaped. Rukia bolted to the window to rid herself of the last of the alcohol. When she learned, less than a month later, that the shock of learning she had an honorary niece hadn't caused it—but despite the knowledge that it was firmly the fault of the founding father-to-be of the Abarai clan, she still took it out on the one who was already changing diapers.
------
Kurosaki Orihime trained long and hard every day for the chance to be return to her family, not only those related by blood shared but by blood shed. She matched herself again and again against the strongest of the Royal Guard, who she'd have to equal if she could ever be safe in the worlds she would always call home. It took almost twenty years, but soon after she returned she stood with her husband, holding his hand in the sunlight for the first time as they watched their eldest son enter the Gotei Thirteen, smugly looking down his nose at those who would have to wait to join him. It was odd that he managed such a feat, considering that Abarai Hisana took after her father in height and towered a good foot above her older nakama, and it was clear from the way she was about to bash him over his spiky orange head that she knew it.
"Niichan, niichan!" Little Sora and Masaki, thankfully, took after their mother in pacifism, and managed to latch onto their brother's new uniform and dissolve the tension with their tearful gazes. "Why do you have to go?"
"So I can learn to kick Hollow a—" Someone coughed meaningfully, and he caught a glimpse of blue hair in the crowd. He gulped; he hadn't inherited that much of his father's insanity. "Er, so I can learn to be a shinigami like tou-san."
"But you're not tou-san, you're niichan!" The male twin sniffled, hugging the leg he had grabbed tighter.
"Don't gooooo!" The other wailed, doing the same.
"Now look what you've done," Hisana drawled in a tone that bordered on gleeful, "you idiot!"
"Shut up and help me out, they're cutting off my circulation!"
Renji and Rukia shook their heads in fond exasperation as their heir made patently false excuses, giving each other "there's no way she gets it from me" looks. The veritable army of aunts and uncles of the soon-to-be combatants, both actual and honorary, moved to make sure that none of children of some of the most ridiculously powerful and famous shinigami ever born blew anything up again. Meanwhile, Orihime leaned against her husband's arm, taking in his scent, the feeling of the Soul Society's wind against their skin—so close together it might as well as been shared between them, one body, one being. He drew her even closer against him, knowing he'd never let her go—
"ICHIGOOOOOOOO!"
Well, except for when his father tackled him like that. He couldn't exactly let him go without fighting back, after all. And he definitely couldn't let the senile old man anywhere near his wife, she was crazy enough on her own.
------
"I want to know what that one is."
Her gaze followed his, and he turned just in time to catch her smiling, really, truly.
"Kurosaki-kun," she murmured, "that's the north star again."
------
A/N: Well, that's that. There were a couple scenes I never got to write out, such as Byakuya giving Rukia the badge, along with Hikifune finding out that the Vaizords were still alive, so maybe I'll write one of those sometime. But for now, I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out.
ETA: Added in a bit to the drinking scene and the one after it. I wanted to make sure that the wishes described in the beginning carried through to the end in more than just my head, and put in a bit more detail about the kids.
