A/N:

- Tan: yeah, the orphanage is something far more sinister than what its name might lead one to believe. I thought I'd left enough clues about its true nature in the previous chapters, but I guess they didn't work out too well... (shuffles uneasily) About burning it down: it wouldn't work. As long as there is demand and funding, those things keep re-inventing themselves (growls in anger at real-life people involved in such human trafficking).

About Rukongai: you've put the finger on my one mega-weakness: I just don't understand all the technicalities of the functioning of Soul Society in general, and Rukongai in particular! You know that map of Seireitei that Ganju drew for himself? That's about my level of understanding of the whole darn thing (blushes furiously). I really REALLY need an Idiot's Guide to Rukongai or something. Anyone knows where I can find that?? Whether it's the matter of districts and population layouts, or the question of what exactly determines just how quickly a soul apparently ages, or the matter of who exactly eats/gets hungry and why and when, or even the stupid question of whether souls can actually reproduce in Soul Society, I'm equally lost on all of those! Somebody help, please?

About Ikkaku: yeah, being around kiddie Yumi calms him a bit, but that's not the only reason. If (hopefully) I get down to writing the whole series I have in mind, you'll see that there are real reasons for present-day!Ikkaku to be quite a bit more violent and unhinged than past!Ikkaku. Still, I agree that my Ikkaku is a tad too tame at times... (sighs)

- v-a: you win :-) ! Want some of Vanessa's cookies? They're great! And I'm sorry I'm making you feel bad for Yumi :-( I'm afraid I have a thing for survivors, so I have an almost sadistic tendency to put all my favourite characters through Hell just to see them come back from it. Sorry about that.

- lelann: death is like life: some things go well, some others... not so well ;-)

- rinda: glad you like it :-) !

- About today's chapter: short and angsty, but absolutely unskippable, from a psychological plot point of view. Much more action in the next chapter (another one of my badly-written fight scenes, sorry), which will also be the last chapter, if you don't count the epilogue. I'm already working on the next installment in the series, though.

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Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

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Chapter Ten : Trust and Lies

Yumichika lay lazily in a mossy patch of forest ground, bathing in the last not-so-warm rays of the afternoon sun. Ikkaku had gone to town again, so Yumichika was going to have another quiet evening all to himself. He didn't mind that at all, in fact he rather appreciated the peaceful solitude those hours away from Ikkaku provided him with. As much as he had come to enjoy the often silent presence of the bald man, he was still a loner at heart and as such welcomed those opportunities to be entirely on his own, away from everything and everyone. Among other things, those times allowed him to fully retreat into his inner world and to meditate at length on whatever problem happened to be the most pressing one in his life at the moment.

Right now, his foremost topic of thought was Ikkaku's unexplained sudden change of mood. The man was trying to pretend that everything was normal, but Yumichika wasn't blind, he could clearly see that something was deeply disturbing Ikkaku. It had all started ten days ago, when Ikkaku had gone on another fight-and-shopping trip to town. Yumichika had been sleeping when the man had come back, but he'd noticed right away upon waking up the next day that something was off. Ikkaku was no more and no less silent than usual, but it was somehow the quality of his silence that had changed. Yumichika couldn't quite put his finger on what signs had alerted him, but he'd immediately intuitively known that Ikkaku was troubled, very troubled.

Nothing in their routine had changed, and yet at the same time everything had changed. The training sessions, for example, were just not the same anymore. Ikkaku still put as much energy into them, but he didn't seem to enjoy them as much as he used to. Sometimes his manic grin would reappear during a particularly rousing bit of fighting, but overall he just didn't seem to take as much pleasure into sparring as he did before. In fact, it almost seemed at times as though he weren't even focusing on it, as though his mind was occupied with something else.

There was also, of course, the rather worrying fact that for the first time since Yumichika had met him, Ikkaku had actually flat-out lost a fighting tournament. He hadn't explicitely said so and Yumichika hadn't asked, but, well, there simply hadn't been anything to eat that night or the next day.

It wasn't just the lost fight that they had somehow silently agreed not to talk about: it was the whole business that was bothering Ikkaku. The man was not letting on anything, but Yumichika could feel and sometimes even catch Ikkaku looking at him with a scaringly grim expression on his face. Ikkaku had never looked at him like that before, and the change deeply unsettled Yumichika. He couldn't figure out what it meant, and this was putting him on constant edge. And yet at the same time he found himself imitating his mentor's attitude to the letter, pretending not to notice anything, pretending that everything was all right, and refusing to ask questions or voice his worries. They were both skirting the obvious issue, and the uncertainty that was born from this shared avoidance was driving Yumichika crazy with anxiety.

A shiver ran through his body, and he realised that the sun had gone, hiding behind the trees as it fell on the horizon. The evening chill was rising, and with nothing but the memory of a rather light breakfast in his belly, he was starting to feel a bit cold. He got up and went to grab the blanket. As he shook it open, he noticed a ball of paper flying off from it. He instinctively caught it in his hand and uncrumpled it out of curiosity.

His heart fell. His blood froze. The world around him disappeared. All that was left of it was himself and the piece of paper in his hand. He stared at it, and stared at it, for what felt like an eternity. He couldn't think, he couldn't move ; all he could do was stare. He couldn't rip his gaze away from the representation of his own face and the unimaginable amount of money offered for his capture. He could feel himself falling slowly but inexorably down a deep, dark well. He could feel his freedom and his new-found life slipping through his fingers like water. He wanted to retain them, he wanted to grasp at them, but he could feel them evading his clutch - his life was coming to an end, and there was nothing he could do about it...

Or was there? Slowly, a hot feeling awakened in his belly - anger. Pure, raging anger. His hand holding the piece of paper started to shake with it, soon followed by the rest of his body. Hot anger poured over him in large, white waves. How did they dare!? After the hell they'd put him through, after he'd finally managed to escape, after he'd found someone who was willing to help him build a new life, this was what he had to deal with?? He'd known they would look for him, of course, but he certainly hadn't expected them to go to such ridiculous lengths. So much money, so far away from the orphanage... Yumichika felt his jaws clench and his hands roll into balls, as his body and mind prepared to fight the odds once again.

But... What could he do? As much and as hard as he thought about it, he could only figure one single alternative. He could "stay put" as Ikkaku would say, stay with the man, and hope that the lure of so much money would not lead to betrayal. Or he could run away again, live on his own, somehow evading people all the time. Strangely, for the first time in his after-life, Yumichika found that his mind and his heart did not agree on the decision to be made. His mind was screaming at him that nobody could be expected to resist the attraction of so much money, that Ikkaku was bound to sell him off sooner or later - maybe he had already? Maybe he would come back tonight with undesirable company? It was possible, so possible, Yumichika knew it. And yet for some unexplainable reason, he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. It was all plausible, and yet it all seemed unreal. It sounded like a theoretical possibility, not a practical reality. It was something that could happen, but that somehow Yumichika knew was not going to happen.

Confused by the opposite desires that were tugging at his brain, he grabbed the blanket, rolled himself into it, and plopped down under a tree, trying to clear his head and to come to a definite and logical conclusion. But no matter how much he thought things through, no miraculously obvious solution presented itself, and he was left to choose between what he thought might happen, and what he believed was going to happen. This was a first in his life, and he didn't know how to handle it. He tried to make up an escape plan, but the heavy dark cloud that invaded his mind and heart at this idea quickly forced him to give up on that project. And so it was that for the very first time in his entire after-life - or as far as he could remember anyway - , Yumichika decided to ignore the paranoid screaming of his survival instincts, and to deliberately put his trust into another human soul.

He just hoped with every fiber of his being that he would not come to regret it one day.