Edited on 7/13/2010


Chapter Seven: Making Amends

There was a sterile feel to the stark white room, one that could only be associated to hospitals and laboratories. Everything around was white and sterile down to the crisp sheets on the bed and the tiles of the floor. The smell of cleaners and disinfectants barely masked the scent of illness and death in the air. The bright phosphorescent lighting was a pain to sensitive eyes, and the beeping and whirring of machines were not conducive to the healing of a headache. Despite the fact that his father ran a clinic, Ichigo Kurosaki despised hospitals.

"Well you seem to be in fine health," the doctor, a woman named Unohana, said. "You're free to leave today the moment someone signs you out."

"Will it be ok if I signed him out, Retsu?" Byakuya asked from his seat in the chair beside the bed Ichigo was sitting on.

"Unfortunately not, Byakuya," Unohana said. "Kurosaki must be signed out by a parent or legal guardian."

"But you must understand the circumstances-"

"I already called my dad," Ichigo cut the man off; "He's on his way."

"Kurosaki?" Byakuya looked questioningly at the boy.

"It's time I went home," Ichigo said simply.

::-::-::-::

"Ichi-nii!" Yuzu screamed in excitement, "Welcome home Ichi-nii! It's so good to have you back!"

Ichigo smiled at his little sister. "It's good to be home."

Yuzu threw herself into her brother's arms. "I'm cooking all your favorite things for dinner. We have so much to catch up on." She enthusiastically tugged her brother's arm leading him into the house, only to stop right inside the entrance. "You are home to stay this time, right?"

Ichigo's smile was sweet, but didn't touch his eyes. "Yeah, I'm here to stay."

::-::-::-::

"What no two week notice, Kurosaki-kun?" Urahara asked. "Just going to leave like this."

Ichigo shrugged. "I don't need the job anymore."

"Really," Kisuke lowered his fan and fixed Ichigo with a hard look. "From where I'm sitting it looks to me like you're running away."

"I said I don't need the job anymore," Ichigo spat before turning and stalking towards the exit of the small candy store.

"You know cutting ties isn't going to make things any better."

Ichigo ignored the comment as he slipped out onto the cold unforgiving streets.

::-::-::-::

"Hey Ichigo, I'm teaching a martial arts lesson at the Community Center after school today, care to come help out?" Tatsuki asked. Ichigo, Tatsuki, Chad, Ordihime, Ishida, and a couple of their other friends were sitting in the back of the classroom at lunch time about weeks after Ichigo had returned home.

Ichigo tried to keep his voice cool and detached as he busied himself with opening his juice box. "Um, I promised Karin I'd help her with her homework today, sorry."

"No big, maybe next week?"

"Uh, next week I'll be spending the day with Yuzu. The girls want to make up for lost time." Valid excuses, but still excuses and lies.

A look seemed to pass between Ichigo's friends. "Will you be busy with them Wednesday?" Ishida asked.

"I don't think so, why?"

"Because there's an archery contest at the Community Center and I wanted you to go with me."

"Oh, uh, I think dad wanted me to help out at the clinic Wednesday."

Another look passes between the group. "That's it, I'm not buying it," Keigo declared.

"Nor I," Mizuiro agreed.

Chad shook his head to say he agreed with them as well.

"Ichigo," Ordihime said, "You know you can talk to us if there's something wrong."

"What makes you think something is wrong?" Ichigo asked nonchalantly.

"Other than the fact that you've been avoiding the Community Center like the plague nothing at all."

"I have not been avoiding the Center. I've just been busy that's all."

None of his friends looked like they believed him.

::-::-::-::

Ichigo lied on his bed in his room staring out the window at a patch of blue sky barely visible behind the clusters of clouds. The clock on his wall ticked the seconds, minutes, and hours away until he no longer felt a sense of time, just a suspension in space, an existence that wasn't complete. His heart beat in his chest and he wondered how it was possible to be alive while feeling so much pain. He wanted to rip the beating organ out of his chest and throw it from the window; it would feel far less painful than letting the ache it caused continue.

Ichi pulled his eyes away from the window and allowed them to fall close. His face played like a silent film in his mind. Moments spent together, small smiles, concealed laughs, amusement, anger, exasperation, gun metal grey eyes, hair spun from darkness, chiseled features; all things he wanted to forget.

He pulled his pillow over his face. Words played through his head like a broken record. Whispered promises, sweet declarations, speeches, stories, lies, a dull baritone voice that washed over him like silk; he just wanted to forget.

Why was it so easy to love him like a fool? Why was it so hard to let him go?

He just wanted to forget him. Forget all the time they spent together, the days in his car, the nights in his home, the time at the center, dinner, shopping, dating, sleeping; every second of everyday spent with him or waiting for his return, he wanted to forget it all.

He'd been the one to leave, yet he would give anything to be back with him, lies or not, whether he was a replacement for a dead lover or not, he needed him.

"Ichi-nii there's someone here to see you." Yuzu's voice cut through his thoughts.

Ichigo sighed and pushed himself up from the bed, letting his blanket of depression slip from his shoulders and stay behind to await his return. Padding across the floor he exited the room and made for the stairs. "Ichi-nii!" Yuzu called up again.

"I'm coming, hold your hor- oh." Words escaped Ichigo as he saw who was waiting for him in the living room, sitting with Yuzu and Isshin as if he belonged there among Ichi's family.

Seeing Byakuya in person hurt more that letting his depression drag him off to remembered moments. The director of the Change of Hearts Program sat with the poise and air of decorum of a prince, his ink black hair pulled back away from his face save for a few strands that fell around his eyes contrasting against his pale cheek and making his lightning eyes stand out all the more furiously.

"Byakuya," Ichigo whispered softly the name he hadn't allow himself to say in the three weeks since his departure of the man's company; his heart cried and leaped in his chest begging him to run into those arms that he'd missed so much. Pleading for him to kiss those thin lips and forget he was ever angry.

"Kurosaki," Byakuya stood from his seat on the couch as took a step towards Ichigo.

Ichigo was melting from the man's mere presence and forgetting all past woes at the sound of his voice. It took all of his self control to school his features into a hard look and ask coldly, "What are you doing here?"

"I came to talk to you," Byakuya said, taking no notice to the anger Ichi was forcefully emitting. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding and I've come to clear it up."

"A misunderstanding," Ichigo raised one eyebrow at the statement. "Not at all, I believe I understood everything just find."

"Jyushiro was out of line in saying what he did and-"

"How so? He was speaking the truth wasn't he? I saw the picture, Byakuya, the resemblance really is uncanny."

"Ichigo you must believe me when I say-"

"I don't want to hear it Byakuya! I don't care anymore, so save your breath."

"Hear me out Ichigo, I-"

"I said I don't want to hear it! I'm done letting you play with my feelings. I'm done causing myself grief over this. I'm not playing along with your games anymore. I'm done being his replacement."

"I never once thought of you as a replacement for Kaien!" It was such an out of character thing for Byakuya to raise his voice that it silenced anything more Ichigo had to say. "I never once thought of you as his replacement," Byakuya said again. "Admittedly it was your resemblance to him that initially caught my interest, but not in a good way. You drug up memories I'd whether forgotten. You made fresh pain I thought I'd gotten over. I wanted to push you as far away from me as possible. I thought you the devil incarnate sent to put me in my own personal hell.

"But then I started watching you and how you behaved with you friends and all my preconceptions of you vanished. You were nothing like Kaien and at the same time so much like him I couldn't understand it. It was like all the good traits in Kaien had been taken and put in you, but you added a fire to it, powerful, dangerous, and beautiful. The more I watched you the more I realized that you weren't Kaien and the more I began to fall for you. I fell for you Ichigo Kurosaki, not because you look like Kaien, not because you acted like him, but because you had such a kind and caring heart, the ingrained will to protect all who were close to you and disregard your own self to do so, you had patience and temperance among friends, but still burned with a fire unlike any other. Once I realized I was falling for you, I never for a second thought of you as Kaien's replacement. Kaien is dead, I loved him first that is true, but I love you now Ichigo and I love you more."