Chapter 14

When Grimjow finally left her, she was completely naked, but he had unchained her. She crawled to the pile of rags that had once been her shihakusho and slid it on.

"It's so cold…" she murmured. Once everything was on, she closed her eyes to retreat from her defiled body. After several long moments, her eyes opened again on her inner world.

"Ichigo…" at the soft voice of the older portion of her zanpakuto, her head slowly raised. Instead of the fire that usually dominated her gaze, a dead weight had settled, muting her brown eyes from their warm chocolate to a muddy gray. "He cannot control your fate." She shook her head, eyes sinking once more to the stained cement scene that controlled the majority of her inner world. Overhead, clouds rumbled and boomed with thunder and lightning, but no rain fell. Rain meant depression and depression was the opposite of hope. Ichigo was merely empty.

Behind her, Shiro sat on the edge of the one building that still stood amidst the destruction. An exact replica of the Kurosaki clinic was perched at the edge of the river. However, instead of concrete and cement, this building was made of glass. Windows reflected old memories, the ones that used to drive her. However, this time the muck of her hopelessness and lack of despair muted all the colours to the gray tone that made up her eyes.

"He's right, Kouhi," Shiro muttered, voice carrying despite the thunder crashing through the air, "They don't decide who you are, you do."

"But how can I go on?" she asked, voice breaking, "When all of this… All of this… Means nothing…"

"If you give up that easily, then hell yeah it means nothing!" Shiro shouted, going from apathy to fury in less than a second. The white figure was up in Ichigo's face moments later, golden irises boring into brown ones. "I thought you were better than that!" she hissed. Ichigo glanced away a moment later, no fire sparking in her gaze.

"…I'm not…" she whispered, trying to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling over the edge, "Can't you see what they're doing to me? I can't… I can't stop them."

Finally overhead, rain drops began to fall. Emotions overwhelmed the girl and the storm finally broke. Shiro stepped back, surprise lighting her face.

She hadn't… She hadn't known exactly what would happen, prodding Ichigo like that, but… This… This wasn't what she was aiming for. Suddenly, Shiro felt Ichigo's emotions running through her. While this was nothing new, the intensity caught her off guard. Anger, hate, disgust, fear… All of these she felt so much stronger than the soul that hosted her, but despair… Despair she only felt echoes of. However… These feelings knocked her over like a feather in a hurricane; there was simply no other way to describe it.

She looked up and made eye contact with Ossan. The glare on his glasses dropped for long enough that his piercing eyes revealed what she wanted to know. She had gone too far. This was a time to be gentle. With a sigh, Shiro dropped down to sit next to Ichigo. She leaned against her and the pair sat back to back, one staring at the rain and the other next to a bloodstain.

"You are better than that," Shiro said after a long period of silence, "Don't you remember back when you had just 'defeated' me in battle and you were still getting used to our mask? As you moved through Las Noches, you managed to beat so many different opponents that would've killed you in one attack even mere hours before you battled them."

Ichigo remained silent, but allowed her eyes to stray from the blood stain and up into the sky.

"Yeah, you're in a bad situation, but it's only a little worse than what you've been in before. So what if he did that? It'll just give you more fuel to use against him later. You ain't human, hollow, zanpakuto, or Quincy. You're just Kurosaki Ichigo, substitute badass." A slight smile showed on Ichigo's face and a small ray of sunshine split through the clouds.

The storm was still raging just as fiercely as before, but rays of light shone through the clouds. With a grim determination on her face, she turned to face her two zanpakuto spirits.

"We know what that pink haired freak is doing, right?" she demanded, already sure of the answer.

"Yeah," Shiro answered nodding as she leaned against the clinic's windows.

"He is enlarging your reirkyou coils to attempt to jumpstart your reatisu output." Ossan added, perched on the edge of the building's roof.

"So…" she mused, thinking over her next few questions carefully. As she thought, the rain overhead slowed. It didn't stop, but seemed to form itself off into one portion of her inner world. Both of her spirits noticed this immediately, but Ichigo herself seemed unaware of the climate change. "Is it working?" she finally asked, looking up at the two figures opposite her.

"To an extent," Ossan replied softly, "But your wound runs deep. Healing this particular condition is similar to attempting to fill a self-healing cup with a large hole in it. With added material, the old will grow back over the new, but it is possible that too much will merely destroy the cup entirely."

"Okay," Ichigo said, nodding with a serious expression on her face, "Well… How about we make a side compartment in that cup?" Shiro looked up sharply at that.

"You want us to help compress your reatisu so you can get outta here after that guy juices you up!"

"Yeah," she answered as the clouds finally broke overhead. Instead of the sun that once shined overhead, the red moon shone down on the three figures, "Yeah I do. And we will make them pay." There was no added venom to the word, but the air around her glowed dark with menace in the gleam of her gaze.

AUTHOR'S RAMBLINGS

So... Here is the chapter for today! Please let me know what you think of what happened and what you think should happen next!

AnonymousGuest: I'm glad you liked the last chapter! Let me know what you think of how the story is going now! Thanks for the review!

Andrey258:That's a good idea! I think there's still some issues that Grimmjow needs to work out with Ichigo, but I didn't really have a plan for what happens to do with him after that. Thanks for the suggestion and for your review!

OK everyone, I'll have another chapter for you on Thursday!